kitchen_kink | Entries tagged with travelogues

imlad and I spent a week in Austin, TX, with

faerywolf's Feri workshops as a centerpiece. But it was also a true vacation, and an experience I'd only previously had as a 3-day blitz during the Nebula Awards.

I should probably start by saying that it was 100 degrees, at least, every goddamn day. This was my fault, of course, for visiting East Texas in June, though the proprietress of Ancient Mysteries told us that the weather had come early, and usually it's ten degrees cooler around this time. Thanks, Texas, for knowing I was coming. Heatstroke, anyone?

Luckily, I've been to Burning Man a couple of times, and know to carry water around with me and drink it even when I don't feel thirsty. Even luckilyer, just about everything is air conditioned down there. I mostly only had to handle the heat between the house and the car and between the car and wherever we were going.

Besides the workshop and some other personal magical work we did, which was all super-intense, we did what one generally does in Austin: ate tex-mex and barbecue, drank margaritas and beer, hung out with cool people, listened to amazing live music, and went to the Botanical Gardens. Oh, and ogled the ubiquitous scorching-hot waitstaff. Ngarrgh.

For further evidence of our trip (but sadly, not of the hot waitstaff), ( clicky. (I cut because I care.) )

Reading everyone's "I just got back from Burning Man OMG" posts makes me realize that in cataloging my own Burning Man experiences - two years ago - I only got as far as Tuesday.

Yeah, that's a problem. And I haven't yet finished writing about my honeymoon, either, which is really only a question of copying what I wrote into this space!

Laaaaaaame.

So I'm going to try and get back to those, before I lose both experiences entirely. Hey, it's only been nearly a year since my honeymoon, right?

Seattle. It's a strange city for me. The first and only other time I was here was at the crossroads between the beginning of one relationship and the ending of another. Both were incredibly important to me; in this particular case, one had to win out over the other, though I wished it could be otherwise. A trip to Seattle was a brief respite from that struggle, a time to relax and be distracted and try to make it all work again. So the city is a bit fraught with that feeling, still.

The inn I'm staying at smells funny, but is beautiful. It's a bit of a schlep from the city, but driving there is simple. Our room is lovely, and

imlad is in it now, passed out on the bed while I wait for Chinese food to come. Glamorous, I know. We've been marching around Pioneer Square and the Space Needle and so on all day, and are still jetlagged. My body thinks it's midnight, but is starving anyway.

The inn is quiet but for a loud mantel clock down in the living room area. It ticks quite comfortingly and a few minutes ago charmingly struck the hour of nine. I'm appreciating the quiet, the break, the ability to just sit and read a magazine and, well, not be planning a wedding anymore.

(The wedding. Ah yes. More on that later. It was...indescribable. I'm still absorbing all of it.)

Today we went to the Elliot Something Bookstore, the cafe in which is supposedly the model for Cafe Nervosa on the show Frasier. In it, we met these two very intelligent, snarky and well-spoken brothers who told us all the great places to go along the coast, and of course disagreed and contradicted each other at every opportunity...

My food is here. More soon.

"Barnaby Evans’ WaterFire® is an artwork involving movement, participation and surprise. When visitors encounter WaterFire, they cannot absorb the sculpture from just their sense of sight or even from a single vantage point -- they must walk through the installation and they must use all five of their senses. WaterFire is full of motion -- throughout the night the firetenders stoke the fires, the boats move past the flames, the rivers flow quietly beneath the braziers, and the flickering flames reflect off the dark surface of the water animating the architectural fabric of the city."

A few weeks ago, I went to Providence at last to experience WaterFire. Neat, I thought: bonfires on canals. Should be cool. So

imlad and I piled into the car and endured the annoyingly trafficy drive to Providence and met up with my old friend C. and her friend, K.

I'd only been in Providence a few times, and, being there mainly to see shows, I wasn't so much gazing at the architecture. This time I saw everything by daylight, and had the opportunity to walk around downtown. The preservation and neatness of the old buildings here puts Boston's counterpart to shame. And besides, there are all of these canals running through the city, along the edges of parks, with bridges over them, with statues and stone libraries and brick and cobblestone everywhere...this is a place where you really feel New England.

After having dinner we strolled down and saw where they were still lighting the fires. In the middle of the canals, at regular intervals, stood braziers filled with wood. Long black boats with names like Prometheus passed them with torches, setting them instantly ablaze. This was a fairly impressive sight. The lighters wore all black as well, giving the boats the solemnity of funeral vessels. And we strolled along the banks as it grew darker, and watched the fire flicker on the surface of the water. At the end of the line, we looked down the canal to see them all lit in a line, like an endless string of holiday lights.

Pretty.

And for a while, that was it. Okay: pretty. Fire and water. Yay! There was music floating from speakers installed beneath the bridges, creating maximum resonance in this outdoor setting. Haunting things, sounding like Eastern European composers (I later found out that what sounded like Arvo Part probably was), arias from Italian operas, snippets from especially moving film scores. We kept on walking. At some point I became aware of the woodsmoke smell, and the scent of the fuel they were using to light the braziers so efficiently. My head became heavy and light at the same time, and with muffled senses I strolled along, entranced by the flames. At a beautiful stone railing we stopped again and stared out. Some unspeakably gorgeous piece of music was echoing through the space: a mournful alto singing in some unknown language, over some intense instrumentation I cannot recall. I only know I felt I wanted to close my eyes and listen, but I have a voice in my head that tells me how I am supposed to experience art, and a conflicting desire made me want to keep them open and watch the flames. But at last I felt a moment of calm assurance that a few moments of isolated listening was what I wanted, and so, I gave in and my eyelids dropped soundlessly. The voice washed over me, the smell of the wood still reaching me, the fires still flickering behind my eyelids, the sound of their crackling a counterpoint to the music, and I entered a mystical realm of experience: the feeling of being nowhere and in no time, being within a bubble of sound, that sound at once the only thing existing, and the irony striking only afterwards that music, entirely dependent on the passage of time for human perception, is one of the few things that can transfix me in utter timelessness.

We continued to walk, and I was quiet, observing. Fires. Smells. More haunting music. Passing beneath the stone bridges, where there were hanging chandeliers and sconces alive with candles, creating the feeling of a medieval castle. What had seemed like a simple arrangement of elements had become spellbinding.

A bit later, we moved away from the water and checked out some of the exhibits nearby: a collection of large sculptures, one of which threatened to eat us (but which we frightened out of it by banging with our feet simultaneously on its metal hull); a mile of sidewalk chalk drawings in different levels of skill; a combination magician/mime, who actually did neither but wore a top hat over his adorable red head and created small origami creatures as we watched, then soundlessly handed them to children (including our C.); and the gargoyles.

The gargoyles might be getting a short story of their own. They were two men, dressed in horned workboots, tight jeans and pieced-together padded armor painted the same shade of stone grey. Their facial masks were in pieces to allow them expression, and their fingers were extended into spindly points. Left alone, they sat at the base of a huge statue, unmoving. Given a little money, they would animate and interact: scritching your head with a quizzical look, kissing your hand, even grabbing you a bit. One engaged in a staring contest with a child who eventually shrugged and walked away, leaving the gargoyle to put his head in his hands, distraught. One woman stood with him for a while, exploring touch and engaging in a kind of slow contact improv. Interactive spontaneous street performance. I yearned to explore their inner lives.

At last we walked up the hill to beautiful Benefit St., where C. had parked her car, which was full of Camus and apples. We ate luscious Cortlands and parted ways.

WaterFire does a full lighting for the last time this year on October 9. If you can make it, do. But remember to spend a few hours and be patient. This is an experience that washes over you.

I still have sand in my ears.

[Finally getting back to this...I'm not sure why I feel that there should be an online travelogue for this trip, but I do, so I'm copying/adapting much of it from my paper journal. Does my sharing of these experiences make them more real?]

Tuesday found everyone very tired and lazy, and we all farted around the house except for

ert, who kept running in and out of the house to tend to his iBook, which had died the previous day, and N---, who was on his last day and went skiing alone.

The rest of us ate a leisurely breakfast enhanced by much cholesterol, a prominent feature of the meals on this trip as a whole, and at some point someone decided to play Seafarers of Catan, a variant on Settlers which I'd never played.

I lost.

Painfully, miserably, slowly. I lost. It stopped being fun and got sort of frustrating. I think I screamed at someone at some point.

Later, though, we decided to go to the hot springs after picking up N---. We drove around madly trying to figure out from which hotel bar N--- was hailing us with his walkie-talkie in one hand, a martini in the other. (One of these martinis apparently ended up shattered on the floor of whichever hotel bar it may have been, due to some wild gesticulations as N--- explained to a cute patron how the walkie-talkie worked.)

We found him at a castle-like structure, flushed and happy, partly from a good day on the slopes and partly from being somewhat baked. We drove off to Banff Hot Springs, at the base of that same Sulphur Mountain I'd failed to climb the day before.

It's no Harbin, to be sure, but then I'm not at all sure that anything is. But the pool is big and surrounded by high walls that keep the heat in, and you can see the mountains in the near distance. You have to wear bathing suits, but that's fine: Harbin is a place of meditation and prayer, and people know how to respect each others' nudity, for the most part. The crowd Banff gets seems just a trifle different: less free love and more American Express.

After a good soak we climbed out and changed, and the whole party headed to downtown Banff, where we found a sushi place with a train. If you've never experienced this, you should: a horseshoe-shaped bar with a kitchen at the open end surrounds a single preparer, who works furiously at a counter. He swiftly assembles amazingly fresh maki and sashimi and nigiri, puts it on little plates of various colors, and sets the plates on the flat cars of an electric train, which makes its way lazily around the horseshoe and through the kitchen. You take what you want and pay by the color and number of plates.

The sushi was spectacular and made us all high and light for the rest of the night. (The sake helped.) We walked the streets of Banff, got pictures taken in front of a store called Pika Village (everyone except me had lived at an MIT co-op called pika), then moved on out.

All in all, a decadent day, and we rested in preparation for Wednesday's exertions.

Or, "I grow old, I grow old, / I shall wear three pairs of trousers 'gainst the cold."

Or, "Proof #368 That I'm Not an Athlete"

Day Two found me gettin' my butch on. I donned long underwear, a long-sleeve shirt, sweatpants, a sweatshirt, rain pants and a jacket. New Smartwool socks, new hiking boots. Big ol' gloves, neck warmer, ear warmers, sunglasses. Clif bars. All set.

D------ and I drove out to Sulphur Mountain, in Banff. We were to hike a fairly easy trail, about 5 km and 2000 ft gain in elevation, then take a free gondola ride down. Whee!

Did I mention it was the second day? Did I mention that we started at 5,600 feet?

Did I mention I've lived at sea level my entire life?

Now, D------ is a very experienced hiker, in all kinds of terrain. She's done most of the US national parks and the Inca Trail in Peru. She is Nature Girl.

I, on the other hand, am a wussy day-hiker.

So we started up the mountain, and really, it was a small mountain. The way up was all switchbacks, mostly at approximately a 30-degree angle or less, with the occasional 45-degree at the turns. But there were about six inches of snow, and it was slippery, and did I mention the elevation?

I wasn't aware, or had stupidly forgotten, that elevation can have such a profound effect. After a few minutes I was already quite winded. I was working much harder than it seemed I should be. My legs weren't tired at all, but I was breathing hard, my lungs were burning, and I tasted blood in my throat. In fact, after about 15 minutes, it felt like I had been running hard for that long.

Now, I've never been a runner. I hate running. Detest it. Five minutes of running and I'm completely wiped. I can ride bikes or walk for hours, I can do aerobics, but something about running kills me immediately.

ert loves jogging, and keeps teasing me to try it. I tell him that in high school, I had to do a track unit in gym where the goal was to run a mile. I had to run every day. And it never got any better. I just think I'm not cut out for it. (Anyone have any ideas on this? I've always wondered.)

In any case, I felt hot, I felt short of breath, sick, like I was going to pass out...and D------ sent me back down the hill.

Admittedly, it needed to happen. We'd only been at our living elevation for 36 or so hours, and D------ told me later that one needs 48 hours to acclimatize, every 2000 feet of elevation one gains.

Thanks for telling me! ;)

So I felt like a wuss for the rest of the day, went down and checked out the site, and the hot spring, and had a veggie burger and a hot chocolate and wrote in my journal a while.

Which was fine.

Later, folks came back from skiing and such, dinner was had, Ert and I took a soak in the jacuzzi, and the bed welcomed.

We arrived Saturday night after long flying, and I was surprised to see no mountains at all--in fact, Calgary is a flat expanse of farming and industry. We met up with S---- in the airport, found out that two of our pieces of luggage hadn't made it onto the connecting flight, had various ridiculous arguments with the idiots at Avis, and at long last, drove toward Canmore.

Canmore is a precious little town of 15,000 or so, nestled in the Canadian Rockies. It hosted the 1988 Calgary Olympics Alpine events. (My favorite of these is biathalon--skiing and skeet shooting! What a great idea!!)

We drove along, making periodic cell phone calls over the mountains to those of our friends already at the house--"bring ice cream, pine nuts, clementines, anchovies and pickles"--and made several shopping stops. S---- wanted a malt, but discovered that the manager of the local Dairy Queen had been living under a rock for several centuries. Much pouting.

All at once we saw that we were approaching the mountains. The drive was very dark, but the moon was bright even though the clouds hung low, and all at once the hugest mountains I'd ever seen reared up out of the landscape like solid pieces of sky.

We found the house relatively without incident, in a little vacation housing development on a cul-de-sac named Paddy Padmore (those crazy Canadians!). In we walked, and found the place bustling with Pika folks. I felt a bit intimidated at first, as I often do when surrounded by MIT geeks, particularly ones who have known

ert for nearly 15 years. But this week was to prove fruitful for my getting to know these old friends, and settling in with them proved fairly easy, especially with Settlers to help us.

We tucked in, tuckered out, not long after.

The next day, our baggage having arrived, most folks went off to ski and snowboard. I stayed home and did a brief exploration of the area, which I wrote about in my paper journal shortly afterward. I'll record some of that here as well, though it turns into rather a long-winded spiritual blather.

( Philosophical self-importance. )

I'm aware this thread will offend some people who are churchy or ritual-y or otherwise into communal religious experience, but it reflects my gut feelings on spiritual experience, as I have felt it. No offense or devaluation meant; simply my assessment of what I've found to be true for me.