What I Learned From Four Days in Minnesota in February

 14-Feb-13

Well, I’m on my way home from the great white north on Delta, the airline whose hub is in Minneapolis due to its acquisition of Northwest Airlines some years ago.  Thanks for the direct flight Delta; you’re the best.   It’s Thursday evening now and I’ve been here since Sunday evening; time to get back to the wife, kid, tike and pooch (who is so depressed right now by my absence she should be in the drug commercial where everything is grey and the depressing classical music is playing in the background).

I’m looking out the window and all I see is white, white and more white with some patches of dark blue thrown in for what I presume are trees not yet completely covered with snow.  See, ever since I saw snow thicker than 1.5” for the first time in my life when I was 28, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington over Spring Break, I’ve wanted to experience a real winter.  Not our Texas winters with maybe a 0.5” of snow every other year and temperatures struggling to get below the mid-20s.  Nah, I wanted to experience a winter where you have to have a battery warmer on your car battery so your car will start in the morning.  I wanted to experience a winter where the walk between the office and your car makes you cry.  I wanted to experience a winter where I would see people going nuts for lack of sunlight.

Did I experience these things?  No, I did not.  However, I got snowed on and learned a lot.  Here is some of what I learned:

Snow plows are a fact of life during the winter.  What was my first sight upon looking out the airplane window upon landing in Minneapolis (MSP)?  About fifteen slow plows lumbering down the runway beside us in what appeared to be single file (though what I later learned was staggered), their huge headlights piercing the fog and snow like giant craft from some Aliens movie.  It seriously felt like I was on another planet looking at those things.  Come to find out everybody with a driveway owns a snow plow just like in Texas everybody with a lawn owns a lawnmower.  Unless of course you pay someone to do it for you.  And there’s a lot of that.  I kept wondering why I saw pick-up trucks with plow attachments on the front of them.  Were they contracted by the city?  Nope, they were making money plowing peoples’ driveways.  A lot of them were landscapers who of course don’t have as much to do during the offseason. 

There are three options to clearing your driveway.  The first and easiest is paying someone to do it for you.  The second is using your own snowplow, a contraption that looks fairly similar to a roto-tiller and requires, according to one of my shuttle drivers, at least a 15-year old to operate it competently despite the fact that it is self-propelled.  The third option is to bust out that old snow shovel and shovel the snow yourself, Charlie Brown-style.  This is ok if there is maybe an inch or two of snow but not for more than that and particularly now when the snow is ‘wet’ and thus heavy.  Yeah, there’s heavy snow and light powder.  

The really fun part about snow plowing is that it doesn’t just heat up the snow and evaporate it.  Nope, it just moves it from one spot to another.  Your snow plow blows the snow from your driveway onto your lawn.  The city snow plow that comes through your residential neighborhood blows the snow onto your lawn AND your driveway which of course is fun if you’ve plowed your driveway.  Actually, the city plows always hit the major highways first and then work their way down the major roads to the small ones.  So for your commute the toughest part is usually getting to a road that’s plowed, after which you’re probably golden.  Unless there’s ice caused by rain falling and then freezing.  Or black ice which forms when it’s so cold car exhaust fumes freeze and coat the road with an invisible coating.  While I was there there were small amounts of ice but not enough for people to be concerned about.  And thankfully, my hotel provided a shuttle that took me everywhere I needed to go so I didn’t have to cope with the stress of driving.

In parking lots, front end loaders seem to be the vehicle of choice for snow clearing.  Another fun fact about snow plowing is in the Minnesota winter the temperature doesn’t get above freezing that often.  Thus the snow plows must find places to stack the snow, usually the corner of a parking lot or, if it’s on a city street, in certain parking spaces.  In the parking lots during particularly bad winters, you might have a pile of snow that’s 45 feet high.  It’s been a mild winter for snow this year so far in Minnesota so unfortunately I didn’t get to see anything like that.

The lakes are frozen up here.  Yeah, even the big ones though apparently the ones that get the most wind are the last ones to succumb.  This allows of course for ice fishing!  Not your grandfather’s ice fishing where some schlub is sitting on an overturned bucket with one line.  No, people can now put ice fishing cabins out on the ice, complete with beds and cable television (and for all I know, space heaters).  Here’s an awesome article on it (may require a free subscription):

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/travel/escapes/15icehouse.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

You can also drive out on the ice if it’s thick enough.  There are people whose job it is to drill test holes to determine whether the ice is sufficiently thick as the thickness is not necessarily uniform across the lake.  Sometimes there are specific ‘roads’ marked off for people to drive.  And sometimes people will drunkenly drive off those roads and into a soft spot in the ice, thus breaking through.  Under bridges are particularly tricky as they are usually the last places to freeze up.  One of the shuttle drivers told me four people have died this winter already for driving through the ice.  Yeesh. 

The lady sitting next to me is from Iowa and is flying down to Austin to visit her dog for the winter.  Yep, her dog is a snowbird, eh!  Actually, the dog is a labrador retriever that is being trained to retrieve ducks.  Since it’s difficult to train a duck to swim in a frozen lake, the dog gets sent down south with a trainer for the training.  Apparently this weekend there’s a test and since she hasn’t seen the dog, named Kyrie (sp?), since November, now was a good time to visit.  The dog is actually is down in Fayetteville just southeast of Austin and is two years old (six months is the minimum age to begin training).  No word on whether the dog will be nervous during the test, eh.

I didn’t really catch much in the way of different use of language up here.  Many people do have a bit of a north woods accent but nothing overpowering.  Disappointingly, I didn’t hear anyone say “You betcha” or “Oh geez.”  I got excited when a lady at the hockey game I attended called napkins “nappies” but when I asked the people in the office whether they used that word they looked at me like I was nuts.  Now I’m doubting whether I heard her correctly.  Darn.  They call soda ‘pop’ but that’s not exciting. 

Since I enjoy attending Texas high school football games, both for the game and the cultural experience, I absolutely had to attend a high school hockey game in Minnesota just to see what it was like.  My shuttle driver, who was amused that a hotel guest wanted to be taken to a high school hockey game, dropped me off outside the Richfield Arena.  There were two games to choose from: Shakopee vs. Holy Angels and St. Thomas Academy vs. Richfield.  St. Thomas Academy was ranked #1 in the AA division so I figured I’d watch them just in case they got upset (I didn’t find out until later that Richfield was something like 5-14-1 at the time). 

I bought a slice of pizza and a bottle of water, paid my $8 admission and walked into the small arena.  I passed the ‘Chuck a Puck’ table where you can buy a puck for a dollar and chunk it onto the ice during the second intermission.  Closest puck to the center of the ice wins a prize, probably a space heater.  I sat down in the Richfield section just in time for the teams to take the ice.  Richfield had two honorary squirts or something like that, kids who weren’t more than eight years old, skating out with the Richfield team.  Their last names: Gustafson and Mikkelson, ha!  Disappointingly there weren’t many names I identified as Scandinavian and even fewer people who looked like they stepped out of a Jack London novel.  Oh well. 

I knew it would be bad when the guy behind me said to another guy before the game, “Think they’ll spot us ten goals?”  Richfield was down 6-0 at the end of the first intermission.  I turned to my neighbors and half-jokingly asked if there was a mercy rule in high school hockey.  I was secretly hoping there was so I could leave and go over to the Shakopee game (which ended at a more respectable 7-1 as I found later, Holy Angels prevailing).  Unfortunately, the mercy rule is that in the third intermission there is a running clock.  My neighbors were actually the grandparents of the only benchrider on the Richfield team, a freshman.  Richfield had about thirteen kids which was the same number that tried out for the team.  Not good times for Richfield.  They had only two lines to go up against St. Thomas Academy’s three and the St. Thomas kids were skating rings around them.  At least their goalie was getting lots of good practice.

For those who haven’t been to a hockey game, there’s something really odd about it compared to other sports: the loud rock music.  They play heavy metal music before the games, during the play stoppages and during the intermissions.  It was playing so loud during the intermission that I could barely hear what my neighbors were saying (granted, my hearing isn’t the greatest but still...).  I also got tired of hearing Green Day’s “We Are The Enemy” every time there was a face-off after St. Thomas Academy scored another goal.  The music of the second period was, for some weird reason, Ben Folds Five’s “Rocking the Suburbs” (...just like Michael Jackson did!!!  Rocking the suburbs!!  ‘Cept that he was talented!!!!).  They even bleeped out the cuss words.

Watching a blow-out hockey game is more entertaining than a blow-out high school football game.  In a high school football blow-out, the underdog goes 3-and-out, 3-and-out, 3-and-out, over and over.  They never sniff the end zone.  At least in a blow-out hockey game the underdog gets a shot on goal every once in a while.  At least the St. Thomas Academy crowd didn’t cheer like crazy every time they scored; I thought it was rather polite actually.

The second intermission came around and Chuck a Puck began.  It was the most boring Chuck a Puck I’d ever seen.  No announcer, no enthusiasm, no yells of “that’s my puck!”, no nothing.  They didn’t even announce what the prize was.  It was almost like some weird ritual that an alien from outer space would presume is something religious.  At least they turned off the loud music for a little bit.  Afterward I snuck over to the Shakopee game but they wouldn’t let me in without buying a ticket because “the guy at your game isn’t letting our people in.”  So much for ‘Minnesota Nice.’  I headed back into the Richfield game which at this point had STA up 12-0.

STA quickly rang up four goals and then went into keep away mode.  Thanks STA coach, that was a bit late but still classy.  Richfield was thankfully good enough to steal a pass every now and again.  Also, the Richfield coach, finally realizing that garbage time started in about the fifth minute of the first period, let my neighbors’ grandson into the game for all of two minutes.

I managed to do a bit of walking around on the snow.  I had to watch out for ice as the temperatures were getting into the mid-30s during the day, melting the snow prior to the return to freezing temps during the night.  One thing I don’t like about snow is not knowing how deep it is where you’re stepping.  I presume some snow holds weight better than other snow but I wasn’t taking any chances, sticking to paved surfaces.    

Winters are long in Minnesota.  They can’t start planting their gardens until May at the earliest and are still at risk of a frost.  I was told by several people that winter is great until about Christmastime after which the cold and darkness just get depressing.  The sun may set as early as four o’ clock in the dead of winter but now in February sets around 5:30.  While I was here they saw the sun for the first time in two weeks.  I was so happy for them, eh.  I can’t wait until I talk to them in summer when Austin is into its 63^rd straight 100 degree day.  They also claim that the mosquitoes start appearing exactly on July 4^th.

So now I’m flying home and it feels like I’m on a starship leaving the ice planet Hoth.  I’ll see if I can swing coming back by next year and in particular plan the trip at the last minute based on a weather report, eh! 

Family Weekend on the Llano River (May 2012)

This trip occurred at the beginning of May.  A long time ago, I know, but Jennifer told me that if I didn’t write about it (and a subsequent family trip to Port Aransas) I’d have to change the url of this blog from mattjennifertravel.blogspot.com to matttravel.blogspot.com.  Besides, I should write about it anyway at least for posterity, though of course we’ll never forget being attacked by sheep.  

So, here goes:

I always enjoy the Beck family gathering in Concan, on the far side of the Texas Hill Country along the Frio River, every Columbus Day weekend.  The Hill Country was one of the main reasons I decided to relocate from flat-as-all-get-out Houston.  So now that I have a family of my own there’s no reason not to try to repeat the Concan experience with them.

Jennifer and I had several criteria:

-        

                         It had to be a cabin.  I camped growing up.  We’re both fine with camping.  But when you’re taking a family trip for the first time and particularly with a two-year old who may be keeping you up all night anyway due to unfamiliar surroundings, we needed four walls, an air conditioner and indoor plumbing.  We’ll wait a few years to actually camp.

-                      I preferred a cabin that was by itself on a bit of land allowing us to roam.  Kind of like a mini-state park.  I didn’t mind if there were other cabins though.

-                      It had to take pets.  Not only was the Kid going to be with us (we might not take a trip by ourselves until sometime in 2016 at our rate, eh) but Maisy the pooch would be a fine addition to the party...maybe.  But we’re optimistic and besides, it’s easier to bring her along than to find someone to take care of her and cheaper than boarding her.  Actually, we boarded her one time which was fun for us because you can watch on webcam.  Maisy was always the dog by herself, either in the corner watching all of the other dogs or tagging along right behind the kennel workers, not waiting for food but rather for acknowledgement.

-                    It had to be on a river.  Texas in May of course is hot so you need a river to cool off in.  The Hill Country rivers in particular are awesome for this purpose as they are shallow, cold and rocky, meaning that there is little mud to obscure the water.

-                      I also preferred a cabin on the Llano River on the northern edge of the Hill Country.  Everyone knows the Guadalupe and the Frio but nobody really talks about the Llano.  Yet I kayaked it once a few years ago and it’s awesome, particularly because of the red granite seemingly growing right out the river (the same stuff that Enchanted Rock is made of).  Plus since we live in North Austin, the Llano is a bit closer than the others.  And it’s far enough away from Austin and San Antonio that you aren’t necessarily going to get huge crowds.

I settled on this place:

http://www.llanoriveradventures.com/amenities.html

To me, it seemed perfect.  By itself on 25 acres with a little cabin overlooking the Llano River.  The nearest town would be London, population 180.  Plus it would be close to Junction, a town I’ve been through a few times and that I knew would have a few restaurants for the nights we didn’t want to cook dinner.

We made reservations for Friday and Saturday nights.  I took a half day from work on the Friday, we loaded up the Kid, the pooch and all of the provisions in the trusty minivan (its first family trip) and we were off.  I’ll take a second to have a word on minivans: holy moly can you fit a lot of junk in them.  And no more do I have to actually plan for how I’m going to pack stuff like the time I managed to fit the Kid’s wagon in the small trunk of my Toyota Camry Hybrid (which loses 1/3 of its space to the battery).  I can just throw everything in.  It’s like sacking groceries actually; just be careful not to put the breakable stuff on the bottom.

One of the great things about driving through the Hill Country is also the drive, particularly if you can get on the little two-lane roads and off of the larger roads like 290, 281 and I-10.  As long as the road doesn’t require four-wheel drive, I’ll drive on it.  You just never know what you’ll find on some of these roads.

Getting out of town on the Friday afternoon, we got on FM 1431 west of Cedar Park heading to Marble Falls.  1431 is an awesome road just for all of the twists, dips and turns.  It was always the road I took people on first when taking hiking trips in college; it’s like the Hill Country slapping your face and saying “Here I am, vato!”  Of course, with a family there are sometimes other considerations as I’ll get to later on. 

Oh, another note.  The Sienna had come with three months free SiriusXM radio and our subscription hadn’t run out yet.  It’s quite nice driving on a long trip and not having to search the radio dial for a station that suits you.  Of course, you also miss some of the local color such as the really small radio stations playing country music from the 1930s or local talk radio hosts who know all of the callers personally (and of course Jennifer and my favorite is still the Memphis provocateur who referred to a local politician as ‘Buffalo Butt’).  At the same time, when you’re negotiating two lane roads for 2-3 hours, it is nice not to have to fiddle with the dial either.  If you’re wondering, our station of choice is the current light pop station, played low.  Think Train and Maroon 5.

After you cross 281 in Marble Falls, 1431 kind of curves northwest following the Colorado River.  Before it hits US Highway 29 (one of my all-time favorite roads), you can cut west on a small two-lane road called FM 3404.  It crosses the Llano at a place we later learned was called The Slab.  At this point the river was about ¼ mile wide but seemingly not more than 3-4 feet deep except for lots of pockmarks resembling moon craters.  There were a few people just lazing about in those craters.  Awesome.  I’ve resolved to go visit sometime, preferably when the Llano has sufficient flow to enjoy it (i.e. not in late summer after it hasn’t rained substantially for several months).

Eventually the small road hits US Highway 71, the highway that begins in coastal south Texas, goes through Columbus, Bastrop and Austin before ending somewhere out northeast of Llano.  We’d need to take it to get to Llano; there was no other good east-west connector between 290 and 29.  We stopped at a small barbecue joint in the south side of town.  Jennifer stayed in the minivan while the Kid and I went inside.  When we walked in, everyone (well, all 7-8 of them) turned and looked at us.  I don’t mind that sort of thing, particularly since the Kid’s flaming red hair always draws a comment from somebody.  Or he sees a woman and pretends to be shy.  Anyway, I don’t remember the details but I remember cracking a joke or two as we ordered brisket and sausage sandwiches to go.  What’s the point of visiting the Hill Country if you’re not going to eat barbecue at least once?

We headed west out of Llano on 29 until we reached the metropolis of Mason.  Mason is home to Texas Monthly’s #1-rated barbecue joint in the state, circa 2002, though it’s fallen off the list since then.  Jennifer and I had been there specifically to sample the meat which I remember as the most awesome brisket I’d ever eaten (Jennifer doesn’t agree, for the record).  So anyway, we were familiar with Mason.  From there, we headed southwest on RR 1871, a little two lane road that was so small the river crossings on the Llano were one-lane (actually, this is not uncommon out here).  This road was great with plenty of scenery, even some leftover flowers from the springtime bloom.

After about three hours of driving, we arrived at the cabin.  The entrance was so non-descript we almost missed it.  It was very remote and definitely reminded us we were out in the countryside.  We had to pass through the first gate (with a combination lock) and then a second with what I’ve always heard called a ‘gap’.  A gap is a gate in a barbed wire fence that, rather than being of a solid frame, is essentially several posts linked by the barbed wire.  You have to unhook the post on one side and carry it across to the other side as the wire bends and wraps around.  My grandfather on my dad’s side would always make fun of me whenever he would watch me open one of the several of his property near Rockne.  “Put your back into it, City Boy”, or something to that effect :) 

Anyway, once past the gap we were at our cabin.  It wasn’t much to look at, being made of cinder 

blocks, but it would do.  The thing that struck me actually was the vegetation.  It was more sparse than I’d expected and most of the plants were unfamiliar.  That’s when it hit me; this is what Austin will look like if we keep getting less precipitation every year.  The plants this far west were adapted to a drier and hotter environment yet I still saw plenty of flowering plants.  I was inspired to try to get only native plants, preferably from the Edwards Plateau region, integrated into our landscape from now on. 

The cabin had a bedroom with bunk bed (awesome for the Kid), a full bed and a separate room with a kitchen, dining table and couch.  The intended clientele were actually fly fishermen and birders.  I had no idea that this part of Texas was such a great place to watch birds (I’d been warned by the proprietor that this was a good time of year to see painted buntings, several of which I did see during the weekend).  There was a cute back porch that looked out over the river valley. 

  Since there was still an hour or two of daylight left, we decided to head down to take a look at the river.  There was an easy walking path down that took you through the sheep area.  The property was divided up into thirds.  The first part contained the two cabins, the second was an L-shaped area hugging the first area and the third was the part with river frontage.  The second area was the domain of the sheep and we would have to cross it in order to access the river.  No problem.  We crossed through a gap just below the cabin, walked maybe 150 yards through brush, crossed through a second gap and voila, we were by the Llano River!    

We spent maybe ten minutes scoping out the river.  On the upstream side was a small lake formed by what appeared to be a natural bottleneck in the river.  On the downstream side was a wide open flowing river that couldn’t have been more than five feet deep at the most.  Separating the two was a small stretch of rapids with some calm and shallow riffles where we could chill out.  It was perfect except for a lack of trees which would have provided some shade for a five month pregnant Jennifer (who wasn’t planning on swimming).  Satisfied we knew what was available to us, we headed back through the second gap to the house.

We had not seen the sheep on the way down but we had heard them.  Well, we had heard one of them, the one who had a bell on.  Ding-ding, ding-ding.  While we were down by the river, we heard it again.  Ding-ding, ding-ding.  As we crossed back through the gap by the river, we heard it again.  Ding-ding, ding-ding.  There was no cause for concern on our part because a) they’re sheep and b) if there were a problem the owner would have mentioned something (his cabin visitor’s manual he sent me in Word after making the reservation had even warned about mountain lions and water moccasins and admitted he put it in for liability reasons).  And again, they’re sheep.

 Ding-ding, ding-ding.

And away on our right in a draw we saw them.  In the lead was a ewe with the bell around her neck.  She was followed by around twenty or so shorn sheep who looked more like goats to me.  They were no taller than the middle of my thigh.  No problem.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

Then I noticed the two rams in the middle of the pack.  They both had curved horns that spread out sideways from their heads, did a corkscrew and pointed pretty much forward.  And they were with the herd of sheep that was recognizing our presence and was slowly walking towards us.  OK...

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

I knew what they were after.  They were thinking that the man, woman, little boy and dog that they had never seen before had food.  Thus they would trail us until they got within a certain respectful distance, getting no nearer but following us until we either gave them some food or until we got through the gap.  This was my totally logical thought based on my limited experience with my grandfather’s cows.  And I’d never visited them with a dog whose behavior in the face of farm animals was unknown.

Hmm...

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

I told Jennifer to walk faster.  She was holding Graham by the hand and I was walking Maisy on a short leash.  The sheep reached the path about twenty feet behind us, made a right turn and proceeded to match our speed in a big pack.  And one of the rams was moving toward the front.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

We kept walking.  I was of course trying to act like everything was perfectly ok as I didn’t want to worry Jennifer or Graham.  We weren’t even halfway to the gap that would lead us to the safety of the cabin.  I wasn’t worried but it would be a lie to say I was perfectly calm.  I snuck a look behind me and saw that one of the rams was now in the front.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

OK, no problem.  All they want is something to eat.  They’re not going to get any closer than ten feet.  And the ram is in the lead because he’s the boss.  The ram seemed to have sped up and was definitely closer than ten feet.  I was starting to get very, very nervous.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

Walk faster, I told Jennifer.  At that moment the ram was probably six feet behind the dog and I.  Maisy, in her infinite wisdom and in a spirit of being friendly, stopped, turned around and tried to walk toward the ram.  Bad idea.  The ram lowered its head and tried to buck her at the same moment I yanked back on the leash as hard as I could, let out a strong cuss word and yelled at Jennifer to run.  I have no idea whether the ram hit Maisy with the crown of its head or whether it was aiming with the horns but Maisy was unfazed as she and I started running after Jennifer with Graham in her arms.  After running for twenty seconds, I turned around and saw that the sheep had not matched our pace but were still ambling down the path after us.  Better hope we don’t have trouble opening that gap.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

I hadn’t been that scared of anything since I don’t remember when.  I was very, very agitated but still thinking clearly.  We had to get to the gap, open it and get through before they reached us.  I was fairly confident we could do it.  We reached the gap with the sheep maybe fifty feet behind us.  I got it open with little difficulty, ushered Jennifer, Graham and the dog through, hopped in after them and shut that sucker with about thirty feet to spare.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

Suck it sheep.

After seeing us flee the scene, the sheep stopped their pursuit, made a left turn and disappeared into the brush.   The dinging grew fainter and disappeared all together when we went into the cabin, relieved to not be having to rush our dog to the nearest veterinary hospital.

Yeesh.  How the heck could we not have been warned about this?  I felt like I needed to talk to the owner of the property who had helpfully left his phone number, at the least to tell him to ‘for the love of all that is holy, warn people about the aggressive sheep if you’re going to warn us about mountain lions’.  He didn’t pick up when I called but returned the call about ten minutes later, explaining he’d been outside hanging laundry.  Matter of fact, his own dog had been headbutted by one of the rams out of nowhere earlier in the week but no harm was done.  AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO WARN ME ABOUT THIS EVEN KNOW YOU KNEW I’D BE BRINGING A TWO YEAR OLD AND A DOG?!!!!!  Well, I didn’t say that but you’d hope he got the hint.

So we then set to figuring out how we were going to get to the river the next day.  There was no way to get there without crossing sheep territory but there was a dirt track we could drive on to get down there, still having to cross through two gaps.  I’d scope it out the next morning to see how passable it would be with a Toyota Sienna, ha.

We had a nice time watching the sun set over the far away plateaus.  Thankfully we also couldn’t hear any ringing bells.

Still a little shaken from our sheep encounter, we set about getting the Kid ready for bed.  The cabin had a little shower which was not a problem because the Kid loves taking showers.  We shuffled him into his nice bunk bed, sat around and talked for a while before turning in ourselves on the full-sized bed which, as we discovered, was a bit too small for us due to its annoying habit of buckling in the middle, throwing us together.  Graham woke up several times during the night so none of us really slept well.  At one point I took him outside to calm him down.  We looked out at the stars in the inky blackness.  It would have been nice except for a certain sound we kept hearing down in the draw below the cabin.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

Stupid sheep.

The next morning I chanced a walk with Maisy down the dirt road to the river in order to make sure we could drive the Sienna over it.  I figured that with just the two of us we’d be ok because we could outrun the sheep.  Luckily we never saw nor heard them.  The overgrown road had some ruts but nothing a car higher than a low rider couldn’t handle.  Feeling pretty good, I returned to the cabin with the good news.

Later in the morning we headed down to the river in the Sienna.  We had to park about fifty yards away from the river but at least it was on the river side of the fence and not on the sheep side.  I was thrilled to have a day to hang out in a Hill Country river.  They’re simply awesome.  Spring-fed, they’re usually quite cool, particularly when the temperature is 95 degrees as it was that day.  Flowing over rock as opposed to mud, they’re quite clear.  And not having tons of water in them, they’re usually shallow enough to have a space to chill out in and relax (you can’t relax in a river with steep banks and is 20 feet deep).  The Kid liked it a lot (though he likes the beach a lot better).

The interesting thing about traveling with a toddler is nap time.  We’re naptime zealots, keeping the kid on schedule as much as possible.  What this means is that whenever we’re someplace fun, we still take time off from 1-4 to make sure that the Kid has his nap.  When we’re at home, it means we have time to do projects and work we couldn’t necessarily do with him awake (or just additional work).  With us being on  long weekend, it meant that Jennifer and I had about three hours to kill where we were doing a big fat load of nothing.  For me, it meant three hours of reading books, some of the time on the back porch watching for painted buntings (I saw several).  For Jennifer, it meant taking a nap and reading. 

The rest of the day was uneventful as we went back to the river and then into Junction to find barbecue to eat.  Unfortunately Graham got sick with an ear infection sometime during the night so we had another restless night (and this time I slept on the floor next to his bed).  In the morning, it was apparent he was really sick so we packed up the car and got on the road by 10am.  We stopped for a quick lunch in Burnet at Storm’s (the local Hill Country equivalent of Sonic with quite possibly the greasiest burgers I’ve ever had) and headed back down 1431.  This was a great idea from the scenic point of view but a bad move from the sick kid point of view.  Halfway through the drive he puked on himself and we had to stop on the side of the road to calm him down and clean him up as well as the car seat.  I drove more slowly the rest of the way, cranked up the a/c and we were all glad to be home. 

So thus ended Graham’s first foray into the wilds known as the Hill Country with just his family and his second overnight trip anywhere besides his grandparents’ houses in Dallas and Houston.  It also fulfilled a strong desire of mine to have our own weekend out in the Hill Country wherever the heck we wanted.  It didn’t work out perfectly, what with the killer sheep, crummy bed and illness but it’s always better to get out and try than to stay at home doing the same old same old.  Here’s looking forward to more Hill Country weekends in out-of-the-way places!

Singapore.

I had never been to Singapore but I knew a few things about it:

-        -   It is a small island city/state at the bottom tip of Malaysia measuring about 30km wide and 20km tall

-         - It is a center of world trade, particularly since it is situated at the convergence of three major shipping lanes

-         - It has a mixed population of Malays, Chinese, Indians and ex-pat British and Australians

-         - It has a Formula 1 race, something that Austinites are paying more attention to since an F1 track is being built southeast of town

-         -  Situated on the equator, it was going to be hot

I’m always interested to see new places and Singapore was no exception.  I had made sure that my first stop on my trip was Tokyo though since flying from Austin to Singapore would have involved a three hour flight to Los Angeles, an eleven hour flight to Tokyo and then another 6.5 hour flight to Singapore, plus time for layovers.  Since I was already in Tokyo, was fully rested and had dealt with the first two flights, a 6.5 hour flight seemed like nothing to me.  Seriously.

My flight was scheduled to depart at 6:25am from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport so I spent the night at a hotel right next to the airport.  ‘Right next to the airport’, however, does not mean ‘right next to my terminal’, so I was obliged to catch a shuttle in the morning.  I went to bed at 11:30 fully intending to wake up in time to catch the hotel’s first shuttle, the 5:02am, but woke up well before my alarm (at 4:06, to be precise), so I hustled to catch the 4:20 bus.  If I’d missed it, I would have had to wait until 5:02.  Anyway, it was sitting out there waiting for me and packed with travelers.  The funny thing is that even though it was 4:20 the sun was already starting to rise.  I’ve probably said this before but the thing that would drive me crazy the most about living up north would be the crazy long days in summer and the crazy short ones in winter.  Give me the more steady daylight hours of Austin’s latitude any day.

Anyway, I made it to my gate without delays and caught the last ten minutes of Spain’s 2-0 Euro 2012 quarterfinal victory over the French.  Nothing quite like a soccer tournament to unite foreign travelers, at least the male ones.  Today’s flight would be with Singapore Airlines which I mentioned in the Tokyo travelogue so I won’t rehash it here.  My one additional comment is that they are the airline most likely to put on the ‘Fasten Seatbelts’ sign.  Most airlines wait until it gets to the point of actually being uncomfortable but Singapore Airlines seemed to do it at the slightest bump.  Again, these are the things I notice.

The flight was uneventful and we landed in Singapore’s Changi Airport without incident.  I was expecting, being the tropics and all, huge thunderstorms when we landed.  Nothing of the sort was around thankfully though there were lots of tall clouds that we had to maneuver around and through to land.  No rain though.  In fact, the locals were telling me they were in a bit of a dry period.  That didn’t prevent the humidity from still being quite high, though not quite Houston levels, I think.  And, interestingly enough, the temperature never got above 86 degrees or so.  So for you people baking in 40 degree Celsius/105 degree Fahrenheit temperatures in Texas, people on the equator at sea level have it better than you.  I wandered around part of the island for five hours and never was in fear that I would dehydrate or collapse. 

I caught a taxi at the airport (sometimes the office sends a driver to pick you up but apparently not in Singapore which is ok).  I immediately showed how clueless I was about Singapore by attempting to get in on the wrong side of the cab.  I prefer to sit up front in the passenger seat (better view and, if the driver speaks English and is talkative, better conversation) and had gone around to the driver’s side.  You mean you guys drive on the left down here too?  OK.  Apparently they do in Malaysia as well.  Actually, that reminds of something: in Singapore, you must pay a tax of around $75,000 to $100,000 just to own a car.  That’s right, you have to pay huge money upfront just to own a car.  Why would they do that?  Well, on a small island that isn’t getting much bigger with a population of five million people, there is already gridlock around the island.  The way the government has decided to limit the number of cars on the road is the tax.  It’s of course not fair to lower income people but at least there is a fairly good network of buses and trains.  And cabs are everywhere and very, at least by my American standards, cheap.  I was thinking about the car tax and really, what would the alternative be?  A lottery?  No one owning a car?  It’s an interesting dilemma. 

My hotel was the Intercontinental, a swank hotel that was solely designed to remind me how much I feel uncomfortable in luxury hotels (though I have now decided that I need to get with the program since this may be my life for the next thirty years).  First, a man opens the taxi door even while I’m still paying the driver.  Second, another man offers to take my bags to my room even before I have approached the front desk to check in.  Not seeing the point of losing my bags when I might need them and no, I can take my own bags thank you, I politely refuse.  While checking in, another man asks if he can take my bags to my room.  What part of ‘no’ do you guys not understand?  Two minutes later a third man approached to ask.  Well, I was just then finishing the checkout so I still refused but he gave me this look and implied it would be quite difficult for me to do on my own so I said yes.  It turned out the difficult part was a small staircase in the middle of the hallway of maybe six steps which is about 1/10 of the number of stairs I’ve sometimes negotiated with my bags while in subway stations and airports with broken escalators.  In fact, the poor guy decided to go take a service elevator off to the side rather than mess with the stairs.  He opened the door to my room and wow, it was quite swank.  It was huge and felt like I was staying in a banana plantation owner’s house.  It had a very nice couch in it with lots of cushions (that I promptly strewed my clean clothes on), a nice desk, a huge soft bed and a bathroom with both a shower and a huge tub.  And wood floors.  Nice.  This I could get used to.

But back to the whole luxury hotel uncomfortableness thing.  I did tip the porter (I never know when it’s appropriate to tip but I don’t care, I do it anyway) so that much I can deal with.  But when I tried to leave the hotel, well, I didn’t want to go all the way down the warren of hallways to take the elevator down one floor to the front desk.  In any low- to midrange American hotel, from Super 8 to Courtyard, there is a stairwell you can use to go down to the first floor.  Just at the end of my hall was a door marked exit.  I opened it to find that it led onto the roof.  Incredulous, I took a peek around the corner to see more roof, not letting go of the door lest it closed and I get locked out.  Deterred, I turned around and headed back inside only to see a hotel employee staring at me.  Still disbelieving what I’d seen, I asked him if I could get out that way. He shook his head emphatically, I sighed and headed back down the half mile of hallways to the elevator.  On the way out the front door, a porter asked if I would need a taxi but I said I was going walking.  He didn’t acted surprised or miffed and, truth be told, I was really expecting some sort of resistance on his part.  Nice guy, eh.

One new experience at the Intercontinental Hotel that was luxurious that I did enjoy was the Lounge/Club.  I forget the full name of it (Business Lounge/Club) but I was given access to it by the lady checking me in because, well, I presume because I’m an international business traveler and they have a quota to meet.  What access to the lounge means is that you have a private area where you can chill out, have breakfast or drinks and overall just relax away from the other non-business traveler guests, i.e. the ones with kids.  No offense to kids but it was extremely nice to have a private place to quietly eat breakfast with other mostly solitary business travelers.  I was worried when I saw that there was a ‘Smart Casual’ dress code but that was never a problem as I was always dressed up for work anyway.  The breakfast food was quite decent as well which, in Asian terms, means I didn’t have to eat corn, kidney beans or fried rice :)  I can also understand why frequent fliers covet the airlines’ private lounges now.

At around 3 on the Sunday afternoon I arrived, I set out from the hotel for one of my strolls.  I really need to get a small backpack or messenger bag to carry my stuff in because I had to rely on a plastic shopping bag from Tokyo.  The equipment I was carrying consisted of:

-        -  Bottle of water

-        -  Umbrella (ever since I got caught in a freak thunderstorm in Slovakia two years ago, got drenched to the skin and lost a digital camera because of it, I always carry one of these, except maybe in Arizona)

-        -  Digital camera (waterproof, eh).  It’s nice not to have to worry about water anymore but it’s a bit too bulky to put in my pockets

-        -  Map of downtown.  I feel dumb these days using a map in this day and age of GPS but I don’t care; map-reading is a skill both of my kids will have, whether they like it or not.

-        -  Snacks. just in case I have a tough time finding a suitable place to eat.  If I stocked up properly before leaving the US, I should still have trail mix and granola bars (my latest discovery is Fiber One...those are awesome)

I was fully prepared to venture out into the heat as I had put on sunscreen, had my bucket hat and was wearing one of those moisture-wicking shirts that doesn’t show the fact that you are sweating to beat the band.  As I get older and travel to places in the summertime that don’t make as liberal a use of air conditioning as we do in the US, I realize that, man, I sweat.  It actually reaches the point of being uncomfortable in many places, even as people around me are walking around in long-sleeve shirts.  It’s weird and it really does bug me.  I mean, if you’re working outside, you’re supposed to sweat and that’s ok.  But when you’re strolling around downtown, you shouldn’t.  Anyway, wherever I travel, I refuse to let the lack of air conditioning or miserably hot temperatures deter me from seeing the places.  Thankfully the shirts can at least hide most of it; whoever invented those things should get a Nobel or something.

I tried to head to the ocean from my hotel but to do so, I had negotiate not one but two malls.  Singaporeans seem to like their shopping malls but actually I think they like their air conditioning.  Several times I’d walk into a shop and the ac was set so low a polar bear would shiver.  Or sometimes I’d walk past a shop with an open storefront and feel cold air blasting out into the open air.  Anyway, after finding my way through the malls and passing what was termed the largest fountain in the world, called the Fountain of Wealth, (I’m not sure if I believe them but whatever), I found the ocean. 

There’s just something about the ocean, isn’t there?  It’s calming and mysterious at the same time.  You can stare at it for inordinate amounts of time.  If there’s a beach, you can create a whole family vacation around it.  I don’t understand it but I knew when I started my walk that that was the thing I had to see first.  I sat there for maybe ten minutes just watching the harbor before pushing on. 

The rest of the walk wasn’t that thrilling really.  Singapore is just like any other city with its parks, markets, traffic and pedestrians.  In some ways, I get a kick out of seeing those normal things being replicated in a different culture.   Like the wedding I passed by that had probably one hundred guests under a pavilion with a large buffet and a very jolly MC describing the proceedings and giving instructions in both Malay and English.  In fact, it was a mirror copy of a birthday party I stumbled upon in a park in Bloomington, Minnesota, that was being given by an Indian family for a large Indian community (except there it was an older, but still jolly, Indian lady speaking in English with the microphone).  I saw people picnicking in small groups and large, teenage couples trying to find some privacy (including two who were getting a little frisky on a cannon I wanted a closer look at...I let them have it), parents walking with their children and tourists shopping.  I also saw unusual things like a cricket match which, after watching for ten minutes, I still didn’t understand, and Little India.  I had been warned by a former co-worker of mine that it would be extremely crowded since all of the Indian laborers would have the day off and indeed it was.  About 95% of them were young Indian men either walking around or sitting together in large groups.  You could imagine them enjoying the relief of being out in the open and not working or in their cramped living quarters.  The sidewalks were quite crowded and there were very few non-Indians around but that didn’t bother me.  Actually, as long as there are people around, I never get nervous when walking.  Anyway, I looked extensively for some flowing Indian-style shirts for Jennifer but decided not to get any due to the prices; if they were that cheap were they really going to last?

Singapore has an interesting history.  When the British East India Company showed up in 1819, the island was only inhabited by a few hundred people.  Before that, it had been a city/state off and on but kept getting invaded by Malaysia, Java and Siam (there was even one story about Siam attacking it but withdrawing after a Chinese messenger who happened to be passing through told them to knock it off).  The island had a spring not too far from the ocean which made it a good stop for ships needing to replenish their fresh water suppliers.  The British took the island over and proceeded to make it into the powerhouse of commerce it is today.  The British still owned it when the Japanese attacked Malaysia and Singapore in World War II; it did not go well for the British and they were forced to surrender.  The account is fascinating if you’d like to read it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Singapore#Invasion_of_Malaya

The food in Singapore was kind of Chinese-like but I think the guys in the office always ordered me things that they knew were more palatable to Americans like chicken and rice.  That’s ok.  I’ve experienced foreign foods wherever I travel and, while I like to try new ones, I always just go with whatever place people decide to take me to and eat whatever is ordered for me (though people know I want to eat local food).  The flagship meal occurred when I was treated by one of our service providers the night I was to fly out to Shanghai at 1am.  We ate at an oceanside seafood restaurant and it was one of those meals where there are nine thousand different things to try on the lazy susan including duck, sea cucumber and other interesting things that I don’t remember.  I’d told them I’d eat anything except sea cucumber since the only time I’d ever tried it I gave up eating it after seven minutes of chewing with no results.  The boss guy didn’t know that when he ordered though but this sea cucumber, while tasting revolting, was at least able to be chewed into little pieces and thus swallowed.  I’m pretty good with chopsticks and had no problems with that and I was also used to being relied upon to take the first bite of anything so that everyone else could join in.  In fact, the pecking order was me, the boss man and then the guy to my right.  After that I didn’t pay attention. 

We finished dinner around 9 but my flight wasn’t going to leave for another four hours (yes, I was cool with taking an overnight flight...that’s the confidence Ambien brings, eh).  So some of the guys from the service provider decided to take me to, of all places, a Latin dance club.  Yes, six older to middle-aged guys sitting in a Latin dance club in Singapore, drinking whiskey mixed with coke and watching mostly Chinese-looking people cutting a rug on the dance floor.  The band consisted of three Colombians and a lady from Adelaide, Australia, who looked vaguely Hispanic and didn’t even know any Spanish when she joined the band.  To my disappointment, they played mostly music that couples dance to like cha cha and salsa, not the more club friendly stuff I danced to back in my college days.  Not that I was going to get up and dance anyway, despite the best encouragement of my compatriots, none of whom were getting up and dancing themselves, hopefully not because they were dependent upon me.  Sorry guys.  Still, it was an interesting experience.  I spent a good part of it teaching them important Spanish words like ‘corazon’, ‘salud’ and ‘alma’ and explaining why the Cotton-Eyed Joe is the best dance song of all time. 

They drove me to the airport while one of the guys found the Cotton-Eyed Joe on his cell phone for us to listen to.  And with that, I was at the airport and on my way out for another flight.  The 1am-6am Singapore to Shanghai flight is supposedly popular for businesspeople since you can sleep on the plane and then go right to work but it was only a third full and looked to mostly be used by younger people and families.  I realized to my chagrin that I couldn’t take the Ambien since I’d been, um, drinking but thankfully had a free seat next to me and managed to knock out 2.5 hours of sleep which for me is enough. 

It was my third time in Shanghai and I really can’t speak much about it that I haven’t written before.  The experience of visiting Shanghai is always the opposite of what people think it would be: “Wow, you’re visiting Shanghai!”   Well, imagine flying into Houston and only visiting Pasadena.  Imagine flying into Dallas and only being around Fair Park.  Shanghai does have culture but the parts that I’m always in are more new and master-planned and surrounded by factories.  I will speak highly of my hotel which was right next to the office and I slept surprisingly well even though my mattress was seemingly made of granite.  Oh, and breakfast usually consisted of corn, kidney beans, cucumber, grape tomatoes, bread, fried pork and fried rice (which actually made it a fairly healthy, though unusual breakfast).  I even liked staying in my hotel since there is a pizza restaurant (that I almost never see anybody else eating in) on the first floor.  This time it was manned by bored teenagers watching music videos on their cell phones when I walked in.  But the pizza is actually not bad and of course pizza is my ultimate on-the-road comfort food.

Right now (Sunday morning) I’m in a hotel at a ski resort in Korea chilling out for the weekend but I’ll write more about that later.  Ciao!