Farewell to Scotland

We rolled into Scotland fresh off the boat (really -- we drove off of a ferry and onto the left hand side of the road) back in October. The autumn light was amazing. It made our snapshots look like photographs.

We decided that the hearty Highland Cows are maybe the coolest looking cows on the planet and that we like the sheep with the white fleece and black faces best. We yelled, "SHEEP!" and, "HORSES WITH COATS!" whenever we drove by, well, sheep or horses in their winter blankets. Later we just said it, not yelling. We started counting pheasant roadkill, but decided it wasn't really very challenging. We learned to carve turnips, and the differences between red squirrels and grey ones (aside from the obvious color!). We learned to ride the buses, and the rails. We drank hot tea at lunch. We made new friends and visited with old ones. We saw more of Scotland than many Scots will see in their entire lives. We made homemade tablet and mince pies, and sampled other local delicacies -- some I can recommend, others... not so much. We found words like 'bit' and 'wee' and 'brilliant' entering our vocabulary. We figured out how to

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How To Take A Shower In Los Angeles

Here are instructions for when your very nice friend Dave lets you stay in his very nice house in Los Angeles, and then the water heater doesn't work. 

• Turn on the water, hoping the pilot light that you lit yesterday, after your cold "essentials only" scrub, didn't go out again.
• Curse.
• Go out into the backyard to peer under the water heater for a flame.
• As you are peering, on hands and knees, wish you had put on clothing before going out

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Less Is Sometimes More, and Hard Is Often Good

We're packing up for our next big move, and our goal is to cut our belongings in half (again) before we leave. At this rate, when we get back home we'll each have a swimsuit and a t-shirt to our name. And a steamer trunk full of electronic gear.

Today our job is to pick up every single individual item we own, decide what pile to put it in, and either give it away, send it back to LA in a suitcase, or keep it. We're about half done. I'm exhausted, the house is a wreck, and I leave for LA tomorrow morning, while Bob carries on by himself. 

We're giving LOADS away to charity shops: extra electronic stuff, UK electrical adaptors, winter clothes bought from other charity shops six months ago, markers and notepads and little plastic toys from cereal boxes, maps to places we've already been, book we've already read...

We all have our own way of dealing with the paring down. Eleanor has been

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A Good Problem To Have

We've spent the last few weeks working on the calendar, trying to figure how to puzzle out the next few months. It's a megillah! But still - figuring out where you're going to travel next, and how to puzzle everything together, is a good problem to have.

We've just booked seven weeks in a little town in the south of France called Saint Quentin la Poterie. I am the luckiest girl in the Whole Wide World. We got a good

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Small Towns Everywhere

A comforting thing about travel is finding the similarities among the obvious differences. The other day we were eating breakfast at a small town coffee shop in England called Friar Tucks. It reminded me of the White Lantern, the diner/hangout in the small Illinois town where I grew up -- not in looks so much as in feel. I noticed that several times the folks sitting in the booths would wave hello to the folks walking past outside. At one point an older woman waved to a man about my age, he waved back, and then she waved him inside to sit with her and her husband. I imagined he was their son.

Another, even older woman from the booth next over says to the guy coming in, "Do you always wear a helmet when you cycle, Casey?"

"Yeah," he said, to which she responded

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