The week with the ridiculous itinerary

By Sunday morning, we were really glad to get out of the Catskills and back to civilization. Civilization obliged, in the form of William's former co-worker Eric, and we spent a pleasant night in Newton, MA (just west of Boston) with his charming family in their lovely big house. There was wine, yummy dinner, a garden to admire, and Eric's 5-year-old daughter Nina was thrilled to have new people to play with, even if it was just for the evening. On Monday, we felt ready to tackle our next challenge: New York City. Our original plan was to stay in Stamford, CT and take the train into NYC on Tuesday, but, in a session in East Durham at about 1 am on Sunday morning, Doug the piper said, “You should all come and visit me in Queens sometime” and we said, “How about Monday and Tuesday?!”. Being the very nice person he is, he agreed and we took up all the space in his living room for about 36 hours.

We got to Queens about 8 pm on Monday and set out for a session at Spike Hill in Brooklyn almost immediately. It was great, if a bit crowded, but everyone was very friendly and welcoming and they had amazing veggie burgers, along with Chimay and Original Sin. I think we left about 1 am and, after realizing that the next subway train would leave in 27 minutes, decided to take a cab back to Doug's. William moved the car due to street-cleaning regulations and we collapsed. Tuesday...was a heck of a day. William came back from going to retrieve the car with the heart-stopping news that the car was NO LONGER THERE. A quick phone call to the NYPD revealed that the car had been towed and that they would be happy to give it back to us if we gave them lots of money. We got a cab by standing on the corner looking frantic and the driver took us over to the car pound. It was raining, and since William is the registered owner of the car, I was not allowed to go anywhere after we got in the front gate. So I stood under the Kosciuszko bridge getting drizzled on and meditating on the futility of careful planning and time management. William said later that everyone was very gruff and hostile until he gave them money, and then they couldn't have been friendlier. So...we had the car back and we were somewhere called Maspeth...somehow we found our way back to Doug's place where we very carefully parked the car and got ourselves ready to go. William had a guitar lesson scheduled at 2:30 in uptown Manhattan with Kevin Gallagher and we had just enough time to get there – there was another few minutes of panic while we tried to find the digital recorder, but we got it, got ourselves on the right train and, eventually, the right train going in the right direction, and went to Manhattan. We got to the 145th street station (on the 'A' train, no less) at about 2 and found ourselves right across the street from Raw Soul. It was pricey but very good and the place itself had an extremely soothing atmosphere which was just what we needed. We got to Kevin's place on time and William said the lesson was excellent – given the amount of stress we had been through at this point, that was good news. Afterwards, we got some coffee and meandered down to midtown...we walked around, it rained and dripped and drizzled, and eventually we got to Candle 79 where we had plans to meet Anna, a friend of mine from college, and her friend Sue. There was a slight mix-up with the Candle Cafe location but we all got there and had the best vegan food I have ever had and probably some of the best I will have for a while until we learn to cook that well. We had a wonderful time and managed to leave the rest of our stress behind – we successfully navigated the subway back to Queens and got ready to leave in the morning.

Wednesday, we drove back to Massachusetts. This time we went to Mattapoisett to see Mark Roberts and Andrea Cooper, along with their son Fenton, who we know from Friday Harbor Irish Music Camp. They just moved to MA in May, so they're barely settled in but we had a splendid time with them....they made dinner and we took it down to the beach for a picnic with swimming and beer and sand and all sorts of relaxing things like that. After the saga of New York City, this was a calming sort of experience and stopping for ice cream on the way home didn't bother us in the slightest. We played a few tunes but got to bed on the early side that night. Thursday, on a whim, we drove north to New Hampshire and west to Vermont and spent the night in Brattleboro. This town has an infinite number of bookstores and coffeeshops, an excellent food co-op, and a pub with local beers – I think we both briefly considered just staying there indefinitely but, again, we'd really need to get through a New England winter before making up our minds and I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't make it past January.

Friday and Saturday were spent in Cinnaminson, NJ, with the ever-hospitable Kaplan family. Alan and Carol took us for a walk by the Delaware River on Friday night, followed by ice cream (what else?) and on Saturday we spent most of the day in Philadelphia which is just across the river. We walked around the historic part of the city but decided to skip the crowds and not go into the buildings, and then we wandered around the Philadelphia Museum of Art for 2-3 hours soaking up culture. We have missed going to museums and that's something we're planning on doing when we're in Pittsburgh and Tulsa, so it was nice to get in an unexpected afternoon of art. I took a ridiculous number of photos that day and I'll put the better ones up soon – one of the exhibits at the museum was photographs and drawings of skyscrapers and it was truly inspiring to look at what a master photographer can do with light, shadow, and a building.

And then it was Sunday,. Another long day of driving – we went through parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina – brought us to the Outer Banks and the annual Bajzek family vacation week at the beach. Which will be the subject of the next post...

Catskills Irish Arts Week

And...on to the Catskills Irish Arts Week, which was held from July 12-19. We've never been to this before – I've heard about it for years, but it was all the way across the country and there was always something else to do in the summer. Finally, there we were and it certainly was an experience. We drove down on Sunday and stopped in Plattsburgh, NY for lunch, a book for me, and a swimsuit for William, and then we got to our cabin at the Emerald Motel at about 5 or 6. The original plan was to share one cabin among 6 people, but the owners really wanted us to take two cabins (for more money, of course) so we wouldn't be too crowded. In some ways, I'm glad we did that but in others, it was a really bad idea. More on that later.

CIAW is held in and among the towns of East Durham, Cairo, Oak Hill, and Freehold. The entire area is about 10-15 miles long and even locations in the same town are fairly spread out. There are classes during the day and sessions at night, and if there's nothing scheduled at night in a particular pub it's generally alright to go in and start playing. What this all comes down to is this: you either have to have a car or friends with a car, unless you REALLY like biking or walking long distances at 1 am on the side of a main road. You can take one class in the morning and/or one in the afternoon. There are lectures in the late afternoon and a concert every night, along with the sessions led by the music teachers. Since we didn't take classes, our days looked something like this: Get up around 11 or 12, lunch, get online and/or go out for groceries and/or practice for a few hours, dinner around 6 or 7, get in the car at 8 or 9 and start making the rounds of the East Durham night life. Generally we agreed on where we wanted to start out with the scheduled events – the only problem with this was that if someone we wanted to hear was leading an open session, it meant that about 80 other people wanted to be there too and play along, which led to semi-organized chaos and resulted in us not wanting to stick around for very long. After midnight the scheduled events were over and then we just wandered around from pub to pub looking for a) good musicians playing b) interesting tunes with c) 10 or less people total. Needless to say, this combination didn't happen very often but we did our best and had some lovely early morning sessions with wonderful people and decent beer. We generally got home about 3 am; our cabin-mates were more likely to stay up until 5 or so but we have not yet reached that level of fortitude.

So that's about how we spent our week. On the positive side, some of the best Irish musicians in the world were there...we heard Mike Rafferty, Willy Kelly, Liz and Yvonne Kane, Michael Rooney and June McCormack, Jackie Daly, Matt Cranitch, Benedict Koehler, Blackie O'Connell, Paul De Grae, bohola, Pat and Laura Egan, Joanie Madden, Kate McNamara, Charlie Coen...and so on. For food, the Oak Hill Kitchen is a wonderful place, especially if you're hungry at 2 or 3 am. The Catskills area is lovely if you like being in a forest, which we do, and we did get out one day to do a bit of sightseeing. The people we stayed with were good musicians and lots of fun to be around, and we got in a LOT of playing over the week.

But then there were the cabins. Accommodations at the Catskills are legendary – we've heard stories of bedbugs, caved-in roofs and collapsed floors, people waking up in the middle of the night with something chewing on the ceiling. We got a functional kitchen and bathroom, hot water, and a bed that only sagged a bit in the middle. Also, the air conditioner worked. But, by the end of the week, most of our cabin (only ours, not the other one that we almost shared) was covered with what we think were carpet beetles. They got into our clothes and shoes – it was easy enough to get rid of them by putting everything into the laundry and running the shoes through the dryer, but it really wasn't that much fun to deal with. And, to top off our adventures for the week, on Thursday afternoon I noticed it smelled like something was burning in the hotel lobby...further investigation revealed that the lady of the house (the owners' house was attached to the lobby and the actual motel, not to the cabins) had left a pan of rice on the stove and then disappeared. The house was full of smoke when we figured out what was going on but there was no real harm done except I think the cat was extremely disgruntled with the whole affair.

Will we go back? Probably. This is like Mecca for Irish musicians and we really did have a lot of fun. However, there are other camps and events that I would like to check out and we can't do everything. I think we'll give it a couple of years and then contemplate doing it again...but I think we'll either stay in a B&B outside of East Durham or bring a tent.

Interlude

I have a LOT of pictures to post, but the Internet connection here at the Outer Banks is too slow to get everything uploaded in a timely fashion. So, here are a couple more text posts and I'll catch up with the pictures sometime next week.

Montreal in text

Montreal is a lovely, lovely city. I realize that we were there in the summer and that the winter is quite noticeably different, but I think we'd be happy to move there - French and all other issues notwithstanding. Although we did learn that when you move to Canada, you are required to provide an inventory of everything you own, with its value in Canadian dollars! If we're going to do it, I suppose that now would be the time, since we just got rid of 75% of our stuff...

Anyway, on Wednesday (July 8th) we drove up from the Adirondacks and had no trouble whatsoever crossing the border into Canada. We found the place we were staying fairly easily and our host, Brad Hurley, found us some lunch and made us very welcome. I responded to his hospitality by taking a two-hour nap, waking up just in time to take a shower and go out on the town. We took the metro downtown and found it to be ridiculously easy to navigate, fortunately. As luck would have it, William's cousin from Australia, Jeremy, was in Montreal at the same time, so we met him for dinner, found Burritoville, and then headed for O'Regans pub where the Irish session was going to be. FYI, Montreal has excellent local hard cider.

Thursday, the Kaplan/Jones contingent from the Adirondacks came up to Montreal. William opted to stay in and practice but I went out for the day and had a wonderful time. We went to the Botanical Gardens for the afternoon and I sincerely wanted to go back another day, even though it turned out not to be an option. All of the gardens are well designed and set up so you can go through individual ones as quickly or as slowly as you want. If you have the time, you can continue past the main gardens and go up to the Arboretum, which takes up most of the total space of the park, but it's just as fulfilling to pick a few of the theme gardens and take your time looking at them. After the Arboretum, we wandered down to the Old Port area, where everyone but me went to a fancy dinner at Chez Queux. I went to the Indian place two doors down - Restaurant Kashmir - not as fancy (or expensive) but very very good all the same. We met up afterwards to go to Cirque du Soleil's new show, OVO, and here's where my luck really kicked in: Alan Kaplan (Miriam's dad) was not feeling well and had decided to stay in New York that day, so I got the extra ticket and had the privilege of seeing my fifth Cirque du Soleil show. It was, of course, stupendous and magical and all the other things that people say about the shows...it was also EXTREMELY loud and my ears were ringing a bit afterwards. I made it home on the metro all by myself with no problems and fell into bed immediately and gratefully.

Friday we went to the Jean-Talon Market with Brad. AMAZING. It takes up an entire city block and it's got everything: produce, prepared foods, wine and cider sales and tastings, flowers and plants...and then around the outside of the main pavilion are the permanent shops...wine, cheese, meats, ice cream, everything you can imagine and nothing but the best. And it's open every day! The most obvious difference from a regular farmer's market, as far as the produce goes, was that instead of a pile of one vegetable next to a pile of another vegetable, most of the vendors (unless they only sold one or two things) arranged the items tastefully in baskets and combined colors or sizes or different types until the entire display was something you couldn't possibly pass up, simply because it was so attractive. The samples that were put out for tasting practically called out to you from across the market...I have a few photos but I really didn't do it justice; someday I want to go back and spend the whole day there with the camera. Friday night we went over to another friend's house to play some Irish music (surprise!). We met Guillaume 2 years ago at Friday Harbor Irish Music Camp and haven't crossed paths since then, so it was very nice to see him, and we had a terrific session with some friends of his. That turned into another late night – we left at a semi-reasonable hour but had to wait about 45 minutes for the bus from the metro to Brad's house.

Saturday it RAINED. Before it started, William and I decided to ignore the weather forecast and went over to Ile de la Visitation to walk around for a while, and then decided it was time for lunch just as it started sprinkling. We tried the falafel place right by the park (I can't find or remember the name, unfortunately) which was superb, and I distinguished myself by nearly getting through the entire order in French...until she asked me a question and I said 'Si' instead of 'Oui' (pronounced 'Way' in Quebec, by the way). At least I tried. The rain just got worse and worse – we walked back to the house just fine and got ready to go to a party with Brad and Claire, but by the time we got going it was absolutely pouring and we heard later that part of the road we had been on was flooded for a while. It was a 2-hour drive and we took about 3 hours total – when we finally arrived, there was a great party in full swing, in a gorgeous house with a pond in the backyard, full of interesting people (mostly Irish musicians, of course) and fabulous food. Worth the drive, I'd say...but I wasn't driving so I can't really say anything there. We met several people there who were going to be at the Catskills Irish Arts Week starting on Sunday (the next day) so that gave us a lot to look forward to.

And that is where I will leave this post: just before a week in the Catskills with amazing musicians and adequate lodgings.

Montreal in photos

Jean-Talon Market

Botanical Gardens

New York

Gull Pond in the Adirondacks

IL-MI-OH-PA-NY

Yes, I do plan to get through as many states as possible in this post. I need to catch up! Monday in Evanston was very relaxed; we made the excellent decision to go to Blind Faith Cafe for lunch and then we did some shopping so we could make dinner for our kind hosts. I'm really happy that we got to see them and reconnect, and it looks like we'll get to see them fairly often in the future since Lynn's family is in Washington State. The evening finished off with the arrival of two of Joe's nieces, neither of whom I had seen in about 13 years...more tunes were played and songs were sung and we reluctantly got ourselves ready to leave in the morning.

We drove to Traverse City, MI on Tuesday and spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights there. I haven't been back to Michigan since I left in 1996 - I lived at Interlochen Arts Academy for a year as a dorm counselor - and I was very happy to be back, even for a couple of days. I was actually hoping to get up to the U.P. but Traverse City was far enough out of the way that we decided to leave it at that. We did some hiking on Old Mission Peninsula, which divides Grand Traverse Bay, and out at Sleeping Bear Dunes; the weather was cool and cloudy with a few showers but nothing too overwhelming. 

And then we ate. If you happen to find yourself in that part of Michigan, I would like to highly recommend the following: Poppycock's, The Cook's House, and Serenity Tea Shop. Traverse City isn't very large but they are really on top of things as far as vegetarian food goes. Just like almost everywhere else we've been so far, we are already making plans to go back for a longer visit. Do we actually know how we're going to manage all this traveling? No, of course not...

Thursday found us driving through Michigan and Ohio on the way to Pittsburgh, where William's family lives. We'll be back there in August for 3-4 weeks so this was just a quick stop to see parents and siblings, catch up on email, and do some laundry. The highlight of our weekend was the making of vegan cupcakes on Sunday afternoon, with a recipe taken from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. They. Were. Amazing. If my in-laws agree, I shall post the picture of all of them lunging for the cupcakes right after we brought them out. 

Monday, July 6th, we drove to Paradox Lake in the Adirondacks to stay with Michael Jones, Miriam Kaplan, and Miriam's family during their annual family vacation. Michael and Miriam were our hosts for our first few days of being homeless and it was terrific to see them again after a month of traveling and catch up on what's been going on in California. We spent a quiet couple of days in the woods...with the mosquitoes...and I got in a bit of hiking and photography on Tuesday afternoon. There were lovely thunderstorms and billiards and a few rousing games of Carcassonne. We are continually amazed at the kindness of people who have extended their hospitality to us and we are very much looking forward to getting ourselves settled and having the opportunity to welcome guests to our home. But not just yet - there's still a good bit of traveling to be done.

Michigan

Old Mission Peninsula, Grand Traverse Bay

Sleeping Bear Dunes, Lake Michigan

Midsummer in the Midwest

We had the good fortune to be able to stay with William's brother Peter in Madison for an entire week, which was a much-needed break from the long days of driving. So much of a break was needed that we barely did anything at all on Saturday and Sunday (June 20-21): we did walk around downtown and the Capitol a bit until it started raining on Sunday but most of the time that weekend was spent reading and catching up. Also, it was generally 95-100 degrees during the day - Pete's apartment is air-conditioned and we were theoretically happy to go out and walk around but the reality was that cool air is frequently preferable to heat and humidity, no matter what there is to see. On Monday afternoon we went over to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum and saw lovely flowers and trees until (once again) the heat drove us into the visitor's center. They had a good selection of books on sustainable living and urban homesteading but the limitations of the car are such that we really shouldn't be buying anything at all besides groceries on this trip. It's all for the best, really. That night we went to Buraka for Ethiopian food, which was delicious, and I think that may have been the night that we made root-beer floats at the apartment as well. 

Pete had to work on Tuesday and Wednesday so we decided to get all our necessary errands out of the way on Tuesday while he was busy. We got the car washed (twice; they sent it back after the first time because it was so dirty!) and the oil changed, and got some stuff to put dinner together. However, some of Pete's friends invited us over for pizza and cocktails and we were able to introduce them to Tokyo Tea which was one of our favorites from O'Flaherty's in San Jose.  On Wednesday we thought we would settle in and catch up with email and photos...but William's hard drive crashed and so we got to go over to the local Apple store where they determined that there was nothing they could do to retrieve his data. We've been backing everything up regularly since then so hopefully there will be no more major disasters. 

Thursday and Friday were the days of the major expeditions. We spent most of Thursday hiking at Devil's Lake (photos in a previous post) which involved going nearly straight up through a hill of boulders until we got to the top and could see out over the lake and the forest. The landscape was fascinating and there was always something new and interesting around the next corner, even if that something turned out to be a gaggle of Girl Scouts on a field trip, but about mid-afternoon we decided that we had done enough for the day and that we needed to head on to the next adventure. So we proceeded directly to Blue Spoon Cafe in Prairie du Sac where, in the best life-is-uncertain tradition, we had excellent gelato for lunch followed by sandwiches for dessert. We got ourselves home and cleaned up just in time for some friends of Pete's to come over for the evening. Friday we rented a canoe and lurched around the two lakes right next to Madison: Lake Monona and Lake Mendota. They are joined by a short canal and there is a lock from the canal to Lake Mendota, which was a lot of fun to go through in a canoe. I originally thought that paddling a canoe would be the perfect thing to do after the hiking on Thursday - my legs weren't working, so I would use my arms instead - but it just meant that EVERYTHING hurt on Friday night. The only possibly solution to this dilemma was margaritas, so we had some with our burritos at Casa de Lara and then wandered off back to Pete's where I wrote the last non-photographic blog post. Maybe I should have margaritas more often, and then the blog would get updated???

We went to the Farmer's Market on Saturday before we left, mostly so I could stock up on cheese curds for the 3-hour trip ahead of us, and drove to Evanston, IL on Saturday afternoon where we stayed with Joe and Lynn Jencks. Joe is a close friend from college who has spent the last 10 years on the road as a professional singer-songwriter, so it's rare to find him at home and I was extremely pleased that our schedules managed to converge. Lynn is in graduate school at Northwestern but she's not *quite* as busy in the summer so we managed to spend a lot of time together catching up and comparing notes. They had a few friends over on Saturday night: the standard BBQ progressed into folk singing and whisky tasting and we all had a splendid time. Sunday afternoon we went for a walk and ended up wandering into Nevin's where we found John Williams holding forth with his usual exuberance  - we didn't have instruments so we sat and listened for a while and then I distinguished myself by singing a song in Irish. We had dinner at Addis Abeba (more Ethiopian) and drove 45 minutes south to the other side of Chicago to go to Kevin Henry's session. I may have a post entirely devoted to sessions in the future - I have a lot to say about them at this point in the trip, and not all of the things I have to say are complimentary - but this was absolutely the best session I have ever been to. People were kind and welcoming, men who have been playing for longer than I've been alive were courteous and asked about people they knew who lived in the Bay Area, stories were told, we were invited to play and complimented when we did so, and the lift and lilt of the tunes was...magical. We played standard 'beginner' tunes that suddenly sounded lively and full of spirit, and then the twisty tricky tunes had a simplicity and grace that made me wonder why everyone doesn't play them. I can't wait to go back.

This is turning into a long post, so I think I'll leave it there. Stay tuned for Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and Montreal, which is where we are right now...

William's photos from Chicago & Michigan

Party at Joe & Lynn's in Evanston, IL

Sleeping Bear dunes, Michigan

July 6-8

Angeline's photos from Devil's Lake

Peter's cats (Madison)

Travis

Molly

Sigh

My laptop's hard drive died in Madison, and I lost my photos from Bozeman and the Badlands... Maybe at some point I can find a way to affordably retrieve the data (if possible) and post them.

William's photos from Devil's Lake