North v. South

A week ago, I returned from my most recent visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  I wrote a detailed account of my visit last Monday, and then -- in what I interpreted as an admonition from my Muse -- accidentally deleted my draft while doing final preparations for its publication.  

Perhaps my Muse was right.  What I did at the North Rim -- what it's possible to do at the North Rim -- was pretty well described in my July 2022 essay on the same subject.  Except that I did less hiking this time because of a bum knee.

The South Rim is a vast stretch of well-developed National Park -- lodges, shops, camp grounds, museums -- everything that the tourist needs for a day's visit or for a week's visit.  Even, since my last visit, bike rentals to cover by bicycle the network of small roads and trails that stretch along the rim and behind the rim.  They even have a train running between the South Rim and Williams, Arizona -- a 2¼-hour ride I've never taken, but keep promising myself that I will.

Ninety percent of Grand Canyon visitors visit the South Rim without ever sampling the offerings of the North Rim.  Understandably, because the drive between the two rims takes 4.5 hours.  

But the North Rim has its own charms, often felt in terms of the absence of the tourist attractions of the South Rim.  And of the hordes who visit the South Rim.  The North Rim has one and only one lodge -- Grand Canyon Lodge.  The lodge does not offer rooms, but is surrounded by a large number of rustic cabins, in several classes of size and amenities.  As part of the lodge complex, it has an informal take-out type café (contrasting with the rather luxurious dining facilities inside the lodge itself), a "saloon," a park headquarters, and a small gift shop.  

The South Rim has two trails leading down to the river bottom; the North Trail has one.  The South Rim has a network of trails along the rim and in the country behind the rim.  The North Rim's lodge is on a promontory protruding into the canyon, and is thus surrounded by canyon on three sides; the only trails provided are either short walks, or a few much longer and more serious trails leaving the road from the park entrance several miles before one reaches the lodge.

These differences create quite different experiences for the visitors to the two rims.  The South Rim feels like a small but bustling town, crammed with tourists.  The North Rim feels like a quiet resort.

Aside from the 220-mile road between the two rims, the only approach to the North Rim is through empty land, part of it Indian reservation, a long driving distance from the nearest "civilization."  It is 264 miles from Las Vegas, the nearest commercial airport.  It is 145 miles from St. George, Utah, the only place that feels like a small city between Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  Once you're at the North Rim, you are reliant on whatever you've brought with you, or what you can purchase at National Park outlets.  

Some tourists miss rubbing shoulders with fellow tourists.  I don't.  It's not that there aren't others at the lodge or at the campground to talk with -- but their company is in no way forced on  you.  Even when you're with a "crowd" of thirty or forty other visitors on the lodge's back deck overlooking the canyon, you find many or most of your fellow visitors simply staring straight ahead into the canyon, fixing its size and beauty in their memories, contemplating the inescapable evidence that our home, the Earth, has been around and in flux for millions upon millions of years.  And that our human race has made an extremely last-minute arrival on the scene.

Not all North Rim visitors are philosophers, if course.  But the decision to visit the North Rim, in place of or or in addition to the South Rim, is in itself somewhat self-selecting.  You don't visit the North Rim just so you can stick a "Grand Canyon" sticker on your car.  And I enjoy feeling that the people around me, however diverse -- and you hear many languages spoken by visitors from many countries -- are in some way similar to myself in the kind of experience they're seeking.  I like the sense of relative isolation -- I say "relative"; this isn't a wilderness area -- and the feeling I achieve that the Canyon sits placidly before me, welcoming me, opening itself to my meditations, whatever those meditations may be.  Of the passage of time, of the complexity of the earth's development and formation, and of the hypnotizing beauty of the canyon.  And of how our human minds somehow interpret the naturally-created rock formations before us as "beauty," a beauty that raises our consciousness, however briefly, beyond the concerns of our daily lives. 

And so, would I even think of visiting the South Rim?  Sure.  Probably the next time I visit the Grand Canyon.  It doesn't offer an inferior experience from the North Rim.  Just different.

North Rim. Again.

On Wednesday, I begin a four-day mini-vacation to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  If this sounds familiar, it's because I've made similar Grand Canyon visits repeatedly over the years, each commemorated with its own post on this blog.  Most recently, I visited the North Rim in July 2022.

On my first North Rim visit, in 2013, I hiked down the North Kaibab trail as far as Roaring Springs, a 9.4-mile round trip to a point three thousand vertical feet below the rim.  It was an exhilarating hike, although I arrived back at the rim, five hours after I'd set out, exhausted, thirsty, and suffering from the August heat.  Luckily there is a water fountain where i was able to refill my water bottle on the way back up, at Supai Tunnel, 1.7 miles from the top.

In 2017, as the indolence of advanced years began setting in, I made it down only as far as the Supai Tunnel, a 3.4-mile round trip.  In 2022, I ignored the trail down into the canyon completely, but did a number of hikes on trails along the rim and back into the plateau at the top.  One of those trails, the Uncle Jim Loop Trail, 4.7 miles in length, was reasonably strenuous with some steep ups and downs.  Others were longer, if one wished to go their full length, but easier walking. 

Since 2022, I've developed arthritis in one knee.  It doesn't keep me from walking reasonably long distances, but does make me cautious.  I don't see myself plunging down the North Kaibab Trail any substantial distance, certainly not to Roaring Springs, but I'll be out on other trails.

A four-day visit to the Grand Canyon from Seattle really means two full days at the canyon.  I fly to Las Vegas, rent a car, and then have a five to six hour drive to the North Rim.  But that will be plenty of time to do a little hiking; tp hang around the lodge, perched on the very rim of the canyon, enjoying the view with an IPA in hand; to have great meals in the lodge's beautiful dining room; and to sleep soundly in my very own cozy, rustic cabin.  (Grand Canyon Lodge itself has no sleeping accommodations, but is surrounded by acres of rental cabins.

The North Rim is far quieter, less touristed, and more sedate than its South Rim cousin.  It is so remote  that you feel as though you're in a separate world once there.  The fact that I can't resist returning, year after year, is the surest recommendation I can give.  I love it!

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Photo:  Sunset view from near the lodge (2017) 

Cycling the Loire

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

--Lewis Carroll

As avid readers of this blog, you are well aware that -- since late February -- I have written about little else other than my impending bike ride down France's Loire valley, and my preparations for that ride.  Five essays, in all.  So, you ask, did I do it?  Did I survive?  Was it a feat that any moderately handsome, suave, intelligent, athletic, and sincerely modest 84-year-old might accomplish?

To all such questions, I can only bow my head demurely and reply "Indeed.  Yes.  And here I am, standing before you."

In prior essays, I've focused on my concerns about the physical demands of the trip, but I want to save my comments on those questions for a later post.  For now, I'll describe the trip in general, with any comments about its physical demands offered only casually where necessary.

Our trip was originally conceived by Jim -- by far the most experienced cyclist of our group -- as a marathon ride by himself, together with anyone who had the guts to join him, from Basel, Switzerland, through the Loire valley, to the French coast.  No one jumped at the chance, but the Loire did have appeal to many of his relatives.  So, kind fellow that he is, he compromised with a route limited to a ride from Orléans down river to Tours.  This route attracted his wife Dorothy, his adult son Graham, his brother John and wife Ann, his sister Anne, and -- last but not least -- me.  As part of his compromise, he and John decided to continue biking down river from Tours to Nantes, and then south along the coast to La Rochelle.  Even as I write, they should be relaxing after the fourth day of this extension.

For Jim, I suspect, the attraction was primarily the biking itself.  For many of the rest of us, certainly for me, the biking, like hiking, was a means of locomotion, and the objective was the chateaux and natural beauty of the Loire valley. For me, especially, because the horrors of arthritis make long distance hiking virtually  impossible and biking offers an acceptable alternative.  But for all of us, the fun of biking and the esthetic and intellectual appreciation of the sights and history we encountered are so intertwined that separating them makes little sense.

Our group gathered on May 11 in Paris, where we had booked rooms for three nights in a hotel near the Austerlitz station.  For some of us, this was a first visit to Paris; for all of us, Paris offers sights that are well worth seeing regardless of prior visits.  While still waiting for our room to become available, after a long flight from the U.S., Jim and I discovered that our hotel was almost adjacent to the Jardin des Plantes, sort of an arboretum for growing things smaller than trees.  It was surprisingly beautiful, extensive, and interesting, and was but the first of many fortuitous pleasures we ran into in the city.

The next day we followed my suggestion that, rather than select a specific sight to visit, we should just begin walking along the Seine, which flowed not far from our  hotel.  We walked down past Notre Dame and through the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde.  Then, tired, after five hours of walking, we acquainted ourselves with the Paris Metro for our return to home base. 

The two highlights of our Paris visit, for me, were (1) the Eiffel Tower, which I'd summited with my nephew Denny and our friend Chris in 1997, but which was every bit as much fun to do a second time in 2024, and (2) attending a performance of Scarlatti's "Stabat Mater" in the incredibly beautiful chapel of Sainte Chapelle. 

But by May 14, we were itching to sample the pleasures of the Loire, and we left Austerlitz station by train, headed for Orléans. The next morning, a minion of the organizer of our unguided tour arrived with our bicycles and made sure each fit its intended rider.  Jim, Dorothy, and John had normal road bikes; we other four had chosen electric-assisted bikes (which we were relieved to learn were by far the most popular form of bikes used by the hordes of cycling tourists). The truck then drove off.  We were left with bookings at hotels in Beaugency, Blois, Mosnes, Amboise (2 nights), and Tours.  We were also left with an app containing maps and directions, and, hopefully, with sufficient native intelligence and common sense to get us through the next six days.

Each day was the same in some respects.  We had breakfast, usually quite substantial buffet breakfasts, at our hotel.  By 9 a.m. or so, we were on the road.  The mileage covered each day varied from 8 miles to about 30 miles.  The suggested time varied from about 1½ hours to about 3½ hours, but we generally exceeded those benchmarks rather substantially.  This was especially true for the last two days of biking, where frequent intersections or forks in the road caused our convoy to stop, study the situation and our maps, and proceed -- usually but not always without argument.  Upon arrival at our hotel, we might rest a bit and then check out the sights.  For the first couple of nights, there wasn't much but a small town to walk around in.  But we visited the first of our major chateaux -- Chateau de Chambord, the largest chateau in the Loire valley -- en route to Blois.  Unfortunately, we could only view the exterior, and the exterior from a distance, as there was an admission and tour charge, and firm fences fairly far away from the actual chateau.  We were short of time because a defect in Graham's bike had taken time for the rental company to respond and to correct.

Once we reached Amboise -- the second to last stop -- we hit the chateau jackpot, however.  We visited Clos Lucé -- the final residence of Leonardo da Vinci who had come to France at the invitation of King Francis I -- when we reached the city.  The next day, we took a city bus about 20 minutes to the Chateau de Chenonceau --ignoring the official tour's instructions to bicycle some thirty miles round trip to Chenonceau during our "rest" day in Amboise.  Chenonceau is probably the best known of the Loire chateaux, notable for its extension by way of a bridge, containing long impressive galleries -- over the River Cher.  And then, after our return to Amboise, while others tended to various affairs, I explored the Chateau Royal which looms on a cliff over the Amboise downtown.

Our final day's ride was to Tours -- a short 17-mile ride that required about four hours to complete.  The route deviated from the river and wound along an intricate network of roads through the famous Vouvray vineyards.  The scenery was beautiful and the small villages we passed through possessed a quiet intimacy that was strangely attractive.  But half way through the ride, the heavens opened and we rode for probably two hours through a continuous downpour.  I had laughed at bringing rain gear, as the others had -- "Hey, I'm from Seattle.  We don't dissolve when we get wet!"  The temperatures were in the 60s, but eventually being soaked even at 65 can cause a chill to set in.  I was glad when we crossed the bridge into Tours and located our hotel.

No chateau to visit in Tours.  But instead, the dazzling Tours Cathedral, built between the 12th and the 16th centuries.  Incredible interior, appearing to rise almost to the clouds.

A night in Tours, and then five of us took a TGV train to the Paris airport where we stayed in an airport hotel.  The next day -- May 22 -- we were on our way home.  Over way too quickly, but with lots of wonderful memories.  (And the other two, brothers Jim and John, well, they're still pedaling along, and still have adventures lying ahead.) 

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PHOTO -- Chateau de Chenonceau

Wandering about Italy

 

I've written about little else recently, so those of you who consult my blog frequently should be aware that I fly out of Seattle for Paris on Friday.  I now find myself in that half-pleasant, half-disquieting period when all preparations have been made, my packing list has been drawn up, nothing remains to be done but to pack -- but when it's much too early to begin packing. 

So I sit around idly, worrying about how the cats will survive without me (they'll do just fine), and waiting for the remaining hours to pass.

The weather is improving, as predicted, and so I'll do one final bike run either tomorrow or Wednesday.

I've been reading Bill Bryson's 1992 comic account of wandering about Europe, apparently as a youthful 40-year-old, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe.  Traveling with a backpack and without advance bookings, as I had twenty years before him, but with a far greater supply of travelers checks to bail him out when necessary than I had ever enjoyed.

But his experiences and mine were close enough to remind me of how much fun it is to travel from place to place on your own, without following an itinerary, even an unguided itinerary, set by a trekking company.  (I had done something similar to Bryson's wandering as late as 1999, when I traveled for a couple of weeks in eastern Europe.)

I always relied on tourist offices at railway stations to find myself a cheap hotel.  Bryson did so occasionally, as well, but he seems to have spent a lot of time wandering about the city, heavy pack on his back, looking for hotels in parts of town where few hotels existed.  He then so exhausts himself, at times, that he ends up paying a lot for a marginally acceptable room in an expensive hotel.  I preferred a little more certainty, of the sort that the official travel offices afforded.

Now, of course, we have Expedia and other services on the internet.  I can book hotels far in advance, if I want to arrange some sort of itinerary for myself, or even at the last minute on arrival in a city, using my iPhone.  Smart phones, the internet, and universal acceptance of credit/debit cards makes things easy.

I'm leading up to the announcement that -- replacing my hoped-for stay on the banks of Lake Como with friends and family for a fourth straight year in August -- I'm arranging a solo wandering about northern Italy on my own.  I've more or less arbitrarily -- guided by airline prices -- booked flights going on August 23 and returning on September 9.  

Before actually booking the flights, I had already booked a hotel for five nights -- the same hotel I stayed in a year ago -- in Florence.  Florence was where I studied for six months as an undergraduate, and it's the city I've returned to time after time.  My return visits have always been just long enough to revisit some of my favorite Florentine sites, before moving on.  This time, I hope also to use Florence as a base for day trips to various towns in the surrounding Tuscan countryside, ones that I've already visited, perhaps, like Lucca and Siena, but also smaller towns that played a role in the Renaissance history of art and politics.

After I had nailed down my airline and Florence hotel bookings, I began planning where else to visit.  To date, I've added Rome (for my arrival and departure), Como (not my old haunt in Rezzonico, but just the city itself), and Venice (which I last visited in 1974).  That leaves four nights still to be filled.  I'll take my time and choose carefully.  My schedule, as it now stands:

2 nights in Rome

5 nights in Florence

2 nights in Como

2 nights in Venice

4 nights (to be decided)

1 night in Rome

I rather like Italy, as you may have gathered.  More information as my plans firm up.  

Once I return from successfully biking my way down the Loire river valley!
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(June 3)  Change the "4 nights (to be decided)" to:

1 night in Milan
2 nights in Riomaggiore
1 night (to be decided)

My number two post for April!

In the years since 2007, when this blog was founded, I don't believe I have ever passed through a month when I posted only one entry.  Fanatical fact-checkers may work their way through all those years and discover that I'm mistaken.  If so, I concede graciously, while wondering at the absence of better ways of spending one's time.  (But I grow bitingly sarcastic in my Old Age.)

Whatever.  Whatever my past history, I don't want April 2024 to be a one-post month.  Hence, this post -- my second after my discussion in mid-month of my forthcoming biking trip, a trip that is now only ten days away.

I still have no thoughts -- whether approving, disapproving, or merely puzzled -- about the state of the world and its many obsessions.  I suspect that as I grow older, I've more or less given up on Man's Fate.  I hope not.  Only the future can tell.

But what I am interested in is my upcoming travels to and within France.  In preparation, as noted in my last post, I've been going on distance rides of similar length to what I'll confront in the Loire Valley.  I had reached 22 miles two weeks ago.  I've done rides of 24 and 26 miles since then, plus a few shorter rides just to keep limbered up.  Only one day on the actual tour exceeds 26 miles -- the second day, between Beaugency and Blois, will be thirty miles.  I don't think I need to reach that mileage here at home to be prepared -- thirty miles is just like 26 miles but a little longer.  If I'm wrong, I'll wait and be surprised.

I've been averaging about two bike rides per week.  I would have done more, but we've had persistent rain -- never a lot, but always enough to make me reluctant to get too far from home and find that "showers" have turned into "hours-long downpour." The weather looks good for tomorrow, and I think I'll ride 20 miles in the afternoon.  The ten-mile point on the Burke-Gilman trail, the turn-around point, measured from my house, itself a long mile from the trail itself -- has the fortuitous benefit of being marked by a friendly Starbucks.  I can stop for R&R -- a little caffeine, a free glass of water, a little rest for my tender rear end -- before beginning the ride back home.

I should note that the Burke-Gilman trail itself is worth riding.  It follows the shore of Lake Washington, passes through very nice neighborhoods, and is beautifully landscaped in forested land that makes you forget that urban Seattle is just a block distant from the trail.  So my practice rides are fun and rewarding, as well as a bit laborious.  Just as the Loire will be, once I'm there, I suspect.

Wish me well, and I'll summarize the experience upon my return.  (Yeah!  I've now done two posts in April!)
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Photo -- Park in the Matthews Beach area, alongside the Burke-Gilman trail.

Keep on pedaling

Twenty-five days from now, I fly out of Seattle, meeting up the next morning with six friends (everyone but me related by blood or marriage) in Paris.  After three nights in Paris, we take the train to Orléans.  The following day we will be outfitted with bikes and begin our six day bike ride down the Loire river valley.

We will start out strong, riding 25 miles the first day and 30 miles the second a beginning which still seems somewhat formidable.  Our distances will vary from 8 miles to 30 miles, with the average being 21 miles.  Three of us will be riding standard road bikes; the rest of us will be riding electric-assisted bikes.

I will be one of the latter.  In my prime, thirty miles on a standard bike would have been unremarkable.  In 1998, my nephew and I rode fifty miles, our first day in Southern China, in 95 degree weather.  We were tired at the end of that first day's ride, but nothing that a cold beer at our hotel couldn't cure.

My last ride of any length -- nothing approaching that Chinese adventure -- was in Laos in 2007.  Since then, I've ridden only occasionally around town.  I slid past my 84th birthday last month.  I therefore feel entitled to a little "electricity" in my life.  In fact, if it weren't for the availability of the electric bikes, I probably wouldn't have attempted this year's ride in France.

Which would have been a pity.  The arthritis in my knee, of which I've already complained bitterly, makes the daily hiking that has played so central a role in my vacations become pretty much impossible.  But a bike ride, although using muscles in your leg, doesn't stress the knee joint.  In fact, along with swimming, biking is a most highly recommended exercise for arthritis sufferers who want to stay in any sort of physical condition.

So, about a month ago, I rented an electric bike for a day, and took it out on the Burke Gilman bicycle trail near my  home to see how it went.  I was delighted with discovering that it caused no discomfort at all to my knee (or to my Achilles tendon in the other leg, which at that time was still a problem).  I completed a ride of 13 miles, and cut it short at that point not because of any leg problems, but because my butt was getting quite sore sitting on the bike's saddle.  

It wasn't until the next day that I found out that my leg muscles -- not my joint, the muscles -- were so sore and weak that I could hardly walk.  But as a hiker, I'm used to that kind of pain.  It means your muscles are beginning to strengthen in reaction to stress.

So my muscles needed strengthening, and my rear end needed callousing.  I needed to do some training rides.  I hauled my long-disused road bike out of the basement, had it checked out and oiled, and its tires inflated, and began riding.  (I also bought a couple pair of padded bicycle shorts.).

Eighteen days ago, I set out on a modest route that took me 3.4 miles.  Revelatory.  I found out that on a level course -- such as a bike trail -- you really don't need the electric assistance.  An ordinary 21-speed road bike is just as easy to pedal, and easier to handle when you're not pedaling.  But there will be times on the Loire when the route gets a bit hilly, and the power assistance will be important.  The next day, I rode 10.8 miles, and the day after that 12.6 miles.  There was then a period when I had relatives visit, and I missed a week or so of practice rides.

Unfortunate, but two weeks ago I rode 15.8 miles.  A week later, I was up to 18.8 miles, and last Friday I reached 22 miles -- longer than the average daily ride on our tour.  At this point, additional miles are far easier to achieve than they were at the outset.

In the final 25 days before departure, I want to get my mileage up to 30 miles.  I also want to make sure that riding, say, three days in a row doesn't tax my endurance.  Or my rear end.

But things are coming along well, and on schedule.  Actually, better than the schedule I had planned in advance.  I'm definitely excited about our ride, and trust I'll still be happy and in good physical shape when we pull into Tours on our last day, before taking the train back to Paris.

Birthday surprises

Hear that whine?  That continuing whine over the years, as I tiresomely complain that my far-flung family members so rarely visit Seattle?  

Well, that whine settled down to a purr this past weekend, as I reached yet another in a succession of scary birthdays.  I had known for months that my sister planned to visit me for my birthday, much as good-hearted women have always visited the sick and the lonely and the bereaved.

And she arrived five days before my birthday, for a week's stay.  Her travel from central Idaho was not without incident, however, as her new car was crushed by a falling boulder not long after leaving her house.  Repairs would take days, if not weeks.  Luckily, the repair shop already had custody of her youngest son's ancient car, awaiting a new suspension system.  Yes, she could exchange cars, her son agreed, and so she engaged the manual clutch and lurched and bounded across two mountain ranges like a character in a jalopy in a 1930s cartoon.  

But she arrived safely, if somewhat dizzy and showing signs of shock.

That was on Wednesday.  So we had good times, good conversations, some hiking in nearby parks, some eating at Seattle restaurants.  And I awaited a quiet but enjoyable birthday celebration a deux. 

Then on Sunday, I awoke from a brief afternoon nap to hear voices downstairs.  I thought that either my sister was on the phone, or we had been visited by a mutual Seattle friend.  I arrived in the living room, and saw the back of a head on the sofa, a head that was quite unlike that of the female friend.  I cautiously walked into the room and -- it was my brother!  A brother who doesn't do all that much travel out of California.  He had flown up from Palm Springs, just for the occasion.  I was stunned and delighted.  We all three went out to dinner at a very good neighborhood Italian restaurant.  (Yes, the lasagna was excellent.)

The next day, Monday, my birthday, the three of us were chatting in the living room, in preparation for a dinner at a very good seafood restaurant overlooking Puget Sound.  I had been half expecting our Seattle friend to join us -- if not for dinner, at least to wish me a Happy Birthday -- so I wasn't surprised when I heard a loud knocking on the door.  I was surprised, however, when I opened the door.  There, grin on his face, stood my oldest nephew, up from San Francisco.  He had expected to join us the day before, but there had been mechanical problems with the flight from San Francisco, and he had departed a day late.  

I now understood the number of changes that kept being made at my sister's request to the number of guests on the dinner reservation -- changes that had been attributed to supposed questions as to whether our Seattle friend was able to attend.  Instead, both my nephew and his father, himself a resident of Seattle, joined the three of us.

The dinner was topped off with a birthday cake my sister had brought with her, which was put on a plate and  served for a mere $20 restaurant "corkage" fee.  Well worth it.  And I think there were five candles on the cake -- I was grateful that the full actual number were not displayed, which would, in fact, probably have violated local fire code regulations.

So it was one of the best birthdays I've had in years.  And it would have been so, even if we had done nothing but gathered together at my house and talked.  

You just can't beat a family get-together, regardless of the pretext.  Especially when you live isolated in the "Northwest Corner."

Septdecennial

 

Yes, today is the seventeenth anniversary of my first blog post.  On March 20, 2007, after several hours fiddling around with setting up a blog, I posted:

Ok, my friend. Now that you've spent too much time deciding how this blog page should appear esthetically, and even more time deciding how best to present to the indifferent world an idealized description of your ever-important Self, you really might want to decide what it is you're going to write about. Don't you think?

Gosh and golly ... I stare off into space ... and await inspiration.

After 1,580 posts, I still find myself at times asking myself the same question.

In calendar year 2023, I posted 52 times -- the worst showing in all of my seventeen years.  I can't explain it, even though it was the end result of a three-year downward trend.  I just hope it was, in fact, the "end" and that things will be looking up in the future

As for this past year, I'll follow last year's example and not provide a "most popular" list.  The constant activity of robots scanning blogs now makes those figures somewhat meaningless. 

I do have a few personal favorites, but this year those almost all were related to my personal travels, not to issues of general interest.  I'll try to be more generally appealing in the year to come.

 

Friends again with my trusty bike

 

The photo above shows my road bike when it was still young and bright and shiny.  It was used to illustrate a short essay that I posted in June 2008, when I was considering joining a friend in a group ride across the wilds of Darkest Iowa.  My friend did it; I seem to have chickened out.

In my essay, while still pondering the Iowa boondoggle, I considered some preparation:

Ok, I'll dust my little friend off this weekend, fill his tires up (I see they've gone flat) and oil his chain, haul him upstairs, and take him out for a spin.

That was pretty much the last time that I gave my bike much attention; it has sat brooding in the basement, its spirits and its tires deflated, until now.

Today, I pushed it, deflated tires and all, some three or four blocks to the bike shop.  They will give it a careful examination -- cleaning, lubing, tightening -- as well as inflating the tires.  They will do this for only $90, unless the tires prove no longer sound enough to be safe for driving.  With new tubes, they would add another $70 to the bill.

I should have it back in my hands by tomorrow afternoon.  My test ride of an e-bike last Friday convinced me that the biking we plan for the Loire Valley in May will neither injure nor irritate my arthritic knee.  But it also showed me that my leg muscles -- those used for pedaling rather than walking  -- have been disused for too long.  They need a work out.

And that's what I plan to give them between now and May.  With my old pal, the road bike.  Who was already perking up at the attention I gave it before taking it to the bike shop.  He'll be beaming with happiness, like a puppy coming home from a kennel, all shiny and polished, when I go to pick him up tomorrow.

Me and my bike.  A team!

St. John Passion

On Saturday -- half way through Lent, and just three weeks before the Easter weekend -- I attended the performance by the Seattle Symphony, joined by the Symphony's Chorale, of the St. John Passion by J. S. Bach.

The work was  played by an orchestra considerable larger than would have been used in Bach's time -- a fairly full orchestra and a large chorale, with four soloists.  The Passion was sung in German with easily readable super titles provding an English translation projected high above the stage.

More so than do most concert pieces, even those with a religious theme, the St. John Passion tends to arouse actual devotional emotions in the audience, or at least it did so in me.

I was totally unfamiliar with the work; so far as I can recall, I had never heard it even from recordings.  The performance lasted for two hours, with a twenty-minute intermission.  As the title suggests, the "plot" follows the story of Christ's arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial, as related in chapters 18 and 19 of St. John's Gospel.  The gospel is presented in sung recitative, with the voices of the major characters -- e.g., Jesus, Pilate, Peter -- sung by soloists.  

Most of us are well familiar with the gospel reading --  John ch. 18-19 is the traditional reading for Good Friday services.  But Bach's Passion goes beyond the words of the gospel, interspersing arias and choruses suggesting the proper emotional response from the congregation/audience,  and exhorting us to prayers of thanksgiving and of devotion.  Most stirring, perhaps, are the numerous chorales sung by the full chorus, based on Lutheran hymns familiar to Bach's original German audiences.

The music of at least one short chorale "Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod" seemed clearly familiar to me, or at least reminiscent of a similar-sounding hymn.

A very full house in Benaroya Hall, with a larger than usual number of receptive children and teens in attendance with their parents.  I myself am sorry that I'd never heard this work by Bach before.  If I have the chance to attend another performance some day, I'll definitely do so.

The gospel story ends with Christ's body being sealed in the tomb.

Rest well, you blessed limbs,
now I will no longer mourn you,
rest well and bring me also to peace!
The grave that is allotted to you
and encloses no further suffering,
opens heaven for me and closes off Hell.

I left the auditorium looking forward to Easter morning. 

Getting prepared

As discussed in my last post, I fly to France in May to join friends on an e-bike ride down the Loire river valley.  I leave Seattle on May 10, spend three nights in Paris, and then take the train to Orléans on May 14.  My seat will first touch the saddle after breakfast on May 15.

May 15, which is just over two months from now.

In my February 26 post, about two weeks ago, I sounded more convinced than I actually felt that the arthritis in my right knee would not trouble my biking.  Even biking of twenty miles a day.  I recalled  that last August, when the arthritis was still less a problem than was my left ankle Achilles tendinitis, I seemed to do fine biking ten miles a day for two days.

But in France, I'll be biking an average of 21 miles per day, with one day requiring 29 miles.

I needed some evidence that my confidence was not unfounded.  And so, on Friday I conducted an experiment.  I rented an e-bike from my neighborhood bicycle shop, and connected to the nearby Burke-Gilman bike trail, which parallels the west side of Lake Washington up to its northern tip.  My goal was to bike from my house to the small town of Lake Forest Park, a total of eleven miles.  With the return trip, I would have biked 22 miles, approximating the average daily ride required in France.

I didn't achieve that goal.  I turned around at the 6.5-mile mark, for a total of 13 miles.  But my knee (and my left Achilles tendon, as well) did great.  I had no pain in either location while biking, or that evening after biking, or the next day.  I met my Waterloo at 6.5 miles, not because of my knee/ankle concerns, but because of a very sore butt!

The rental e-bike came equipped with a very narrow, hard-surfaced saddle, which became increasingly uncomfortable on my un-calloused rear-end.  Also, I was wearing street clothes, just a pair of jeans.  I think I can handle the seat problem with a pair of padded biking shorts, together with a substituted padded saddle.  Plus a little more time acclimating to the experience.

Even more unsettling, although it didn't occur to me until the end of the ride, was the fact that my thigh muscles weren't used to prolonged peddling.  I haven't biked for years, and my daily walks have been severely shortened because of my knee problem.. By the next morning, it was difficult to walk when I first got out of bed, and painful the entire day.  By today, the second day after my ride, that pain has pretty well disappeared.  But I have to be ready to ride six consecutive days in France, so I obviously need to get in better shape.

I have a standard road bike that I haven't used for several years, but that seems to be in good condition.  Except the tires have gone flat with time.  Once the tires are pumped up, I plan to spend some time riding it around the neighborhood, just enough to leave me with a little discomfort in my thighs after each ride.  I've prepared for similar rides in the past -- although not since 2007 -- and had no difficulty being prepared by the time of the group ride.

But I'll be careful,  My nephew and I joined a group bike ride in China in 1998.  One of the members of our group lived not far from my home in Seattle.  He didn't appear for the trip, but his wife did.  Her husband apparently had been preparing for the ride conscientiously, with daily rides on Seattle streets.  At some point, disaster struck and he was thrown from his bike.  No permanent damage, but a severe enough injury to prevent him from joining our China trip.

I'll pretty much stick to bike trail rides, but even there something can always go wrong.  But life is full of risks.  As we like to tell folks scared of flying, their greater danger will be an auto accident on the way to the airport.

Further reports in the future, as events warrant.

Biking down the Loire

It's been two months since I last complained in this my blog about being afflicted by the one-two punch of  tendinitis in my left Achilles tendon and arthritis in my right knee.  Don't assume that my silence means that these afflictions have gone away like magic.  Or that I'm no longer suffering from all the disruption to my favorite activities that they cause.

Actually, the tendinitis is considerably improved, and I have hopes that the tendon and related muscles are gradually healing.  The arthritis, however, .... well, arthritis doesn't really "get better," so far as I know.  Most sources say that the best you can do is to slow down the degeneration until you either pass on to a better and less painful world, or pay for an artificial knee.  I'm nowhere ready for the latter, and hopefully am not looking at a near approach of the former.

These problems, taken together, kept me from taking part in a pre-paid  hike with friends in Scotland last August.  But, as reported to you, I nevertheless joined the group and traveled by baggage van each day, joining the hikers when they arrived at each day's target town.  

Except for two days, when I stayed with the group on a bicycle.  A bicycle.

I found that bike riding bothered neither my tendinitis nor my arthritis.  Unfortunately, the remaining days of the hike were over terrain too rough -- at least in my estimation -- to make for comfortable biking.

But now we come to 2024.  Same fellow hikers.  But this year we are planning to be fellow bikers.  My university friend Jim is an untiring biker, and has taken part in weeks-long group rides throughout the U.S.A. -- including one ride from the east coast to the west coast.  

So Jim has organized a bike ride through the chateau-infested Loire Valley in France, two and a half months from now in May.   As with our past hikes in Britain, he is working through an organization that arranges each night's accommodations, as well as provides maps and tour descriptions.  They also arrange for bike rentals.

We will be a group of seven.  Two of us -- Jim and his brother John -- are purists who will ride conventional road bikes.  The rest of us will ride e-bikes.  The entire group will ride from Orléans to Tours.  After a day's rest in Tours, the two hardy brothers will continue on to Nantes near the coast, and then south to La Rochelle.  The rest of us will return to Paris from Tours, and then home.

The ride as far as Tours is rated as "Easy."  We will be biking six days on mainly level terrain, with daily miles ranging from eight to 29 miles, averaging out to about 21 miles per day.

We plan to spend four days before the ride in Paris, training for the ride by consuming ample provisions of truffles, cassoulet, bouillabaisse, and coq au vin -- washed down with hearty French wines. 

 Getting to bed by 1 a.m.

Should be great. Wish me luck!

Chicago adventure

The whistle blew twice.  Exactly on time, at 4:55 p.m., Amtrak's Empire Builder moved slowly out of King Street station, plunged immediately into the tunnel beneath the streets of downtown Seattle, and emerged minutes later into early twilight along the shore of Elliot Bay.  I settled back in my roomette, smiling contentedly.  In forty-six hours I'd arrive in Chicago.

Hey, knock it off.  You're just giving the readers a quick summary of last week's trip.  You're not writing a lousy novel!

OK, OK.  I'll summarize.  It was dark by the time we reached Everett where the train turned right, heading east.  I had dinner (Atlantic Salmon) in the diner at 7:15 p.m.,  and was sound asleep in my bed long before we reached Spokane.  The section of the train arriving from Portland was hooked onto our train in Spokane, but -- as in my last trip on the Empire Builder in 2009 -- I slept soundly through the process.

I awoke at a predawn stop and several inches of snow in Whitefish, Montana.  I pulled on some clothes and enjoyed a few minutes outside the train in the crisp mountain air before proceeding to the diner for a French toast breakfast.  Altogether, Amtrak served me two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners -- all included in the ticket price.  The train proved unusually uncrowded --- maybe only half the roomettes and bedrooms were occupied.  

We crossed the Rockies just south of Glacier National Park, and then glided across the vast, flat, snowy expanse of eastern Montana and North Dakota.  The second morning, we pulled into St. Paul, Minnesota, by which time we were beyond the snows of the prairies, and headed southward uneventfully to Union Station in Chicago, arriving fifteen minutes early at 4:30 p.m.

The final trip of my three-year Chicago-by-Amtrak trifecta had been completed -- California Zephyr in 2022, Southwest Chief in 2023, and now the Empire Builder.  

I have a strange attraction for long distance railway travel, obviously -- at least when I can do it in sleeper accommodations -- but I was excited to arrive in Chicago.  My friends Jim and Dorothy had taken a Greyhound up from West Lafayette, Indiana, and had arrived at their (and my) hotel on Wacker Drive about two hours before my arrival.  Rather than hunt around for the station's inconvenient Uber stop, I decided to take an available cab to the hotel.  Bad Decision.  The cab was unmetered, and the fare for a ten-minute ride was a shocking $56.  (It would have been $12 by Uber.)  Be warned.

We had arrived Tuesday evening.  On Wednesday, we took an interurban Metra train from Union Station to suburban Aurora.  Aurora may be a suburb of Chicago, but it is also the second largest city in Illinois, and is full of theaters and other activities devoted to the arts.

We attended an excellent performance of the Billy Elliot musical -- unexpectedly good dancing by the thirteen-year-old star, good singing and acting by all, and very good production values in general.  

On Thursday, we visited the Chicago Museum of American Writing.  It's a little difficult to imagine how you could make a museum of writing, but it was done well, and I walked away feeling like I'd had a quick refresher course in American Literature.

Dorothy then went off exploring on her own, and Jim and I took a rail transit -- after some absurd walking around in circles attempting to find the station -- to the south shore and the Museum of Science and Industry.  After caffeinating ourselves in the museum cafeteria, we spent all our museum time exploring the exhibit of the German U-505, captured by the U.S. Navy during World War II.  The first capture of an enemy ship in battle since 1813. 

It wasn't easy to capture a German sub.  It would have been far easier to simply blow it out of the water.  But extensive planning had gone into the capture of this submarine, forcing the crew to abandon the ship before they had time to successfully set the explosive charges that would have scuttled it.  The capture gave us valuable information about German technology -- not only the ship itself but a large number of documents and cryptology information, including an Enigma decoder.

I enjoyed most the museum's documentary exhibits in the corridors leading to the ship itself -- which seemed huge from the outside -- but we also toured the interior of the sub itself, giving me a gut appreciation of what it would have been like to find myself cooped up with a large number of fellow crew in what was actually a very small tube, while depth charges were going off all around us.  Not fun.

We all got back together for dinner, and then walked to a nearby theater where we saw a stage production of Highway Patrol -- a three person cast in a play about the heartbreak of fake identities on the internet.

Then, the next morning, we bid each other farewell -- Jim and Dorothy returning to Union Station for their Greyhound ride south, and I taking the CTA to O'Hare airport for my Alaska Airline flight to Seattle.

A lot of fun, and enjoyable adventures with two enjoyable friends.  I'm ready for more travel.  But then -- when am I not?

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Photo -- Train stop at Whitefish, Montana.

Travel to Chicago. Blog visits from Singapore

Just a brief notice that I leave Seattle tomorrow, on Amtrak's Empire Builder, and will arrive in Chicago Tuesday afternoon.  I'm meeting my friends Jim and Dorothy, who are coming all the way up from West Lafayette, Indiana, to hang out with me.  We plan to see a couple of theater performances during my visit -- Chicago being in the midst of its annual theater festival.

I'll return to Seattle by plane Friday afternoon.

While I'm away from Seattle and from my blog, I'd like to ask the person or persons or organization -- or whoever you are -- in Singapore who has been visiting this blog repeatedly during the past three weeks to explain what on earth he, she, they, it is doing.

The last two hours have been typical -- about sixty visits.

I love being visited, but it's a  little disturbing when the visits are spaced evenly throughout all 24 hours of each day, every day for three weeks.  The total so far is something like 9,160 visits -- compared with a typical 545 from the USA during the same period.

  

Cuppa Java?

When I was a kid, my home town had a doughnut shop that I frequented on occasion.  I could get a large, tasty doughnut for just five cents.  I remember noting in passing that a cup of coffee to wash it down would have been another five cents.  Not that I ever bought coffee.

I tasted my mother's coffee once or twice, and was nauseated by the taste.  I was 23 before I began sipping an occasional cup of coffee -- to stay awake, in lieu of  my usual No-Doz tablets.  Finally I walked up to a fast food counter and ordered a cup.  I don't remember what I paid for it.  More than five cents, I'm sure, but not much more.

What I do know is that I now pay $4.91, including sales tax, for a cup of Starbucks coffee.  An article in this week's The Economist persuades me that I'll be paying much more in the years to come.

As is so often the case, nowadays, the villain is Global Warming.  Coffee -- especially Coffea arabica, by far the most popular species today -- is fussy about the temperature zones in which it grows.  Studies quoted by the article indicate that by the end of this century, depending on how much warmer it gets, between 35 and 77 percent of today's coffee-growing cropland will be unsuitable for growing Arabica coffee.  Even by 2050, the unsuitable cropland will be between 43 and 58 percent.

Of course, certain cooler lands now unsuitable for coffee will then become suitable because of Global Warming, but maps included in the article show that those newly suitable lands will be far fewer than those lost.

Several remedies are suggested, all of which present problems.  Another species, Coffea rubica, is sturdier and less dependent on a narrow range of temperatures.  But Rubica coffee doesn't have as appealing a taste, and is used at present mainly for instant coffee.  For consumers like me, who drink coffee primarily as a hot drink, and secondarily for caffeine, this probably won't be a problem.  But many or most coffee drinkers are more discriminating when it comes to taste.  By analogy, some of us may also drink jug wine, but many others gladly pay large premiums for high quality wine.

Coffee agriculturalists are examining other lesser known species.  Coffea affinis and Coffea stenophylla, both rare and both found primarily in Sierra Leone, have pleasant flavors, and are less dependent on cooler temperatures than either Arabica or Rubica.  Another possible candidate is Coffea dewevrei, commonly known as Excelsa, a species with a good flavor, that was once grown extensively in the Congo region, but in 1931 fell prey to disease, wiping out many growers.

All of these alternatives show promise, but each presents its own difficulties which would have to be dealt with by coffee growers.  The article seemed cautiously optimistic that one or more solutions would be found, and that coffee would continue to be drunk by future generations.

I, myself, of course, will drink almost any liquid that is hot and black.  Coffee drinkers like me, however, aren't the consumers that concern growers and roasters of coffee in today's world.  It's that fellow ahead of you in line at Starbucks, the one who demands to know in which part of Sumatra his coffee was grown, who offers both the challenge and the rewards to tomorrow's coffee industry.