Running with cows

Some stereotypes about cows are wrong. (Based on my experience running with cows.*)

Cows--the cows I run with**, that is--do not really like humans. They really, really do not want to be petted.

Some are aggressive. By "some" I mean, about half of them. And not only the "male cows"--are they actually bulls? I think someone did cut off their nuts. I hope they are not bulls, whatever that means, because I am running with them and I do not want to run with bulls at this point--also the female cows.

*Like swimming with dolphins!
**One of said cows pictured above. Actual photo taken while running.

I'm out of meadow

Alpine toe story

I enjoyed very much hiking in the Alps with CC and the occasional Ibex (or Chamois) (pictured)
despite dropping CC's laptop on my toe the night before we left for the hike. The toe (pictured), as Tom put it, saved the laptop "from certain smashtastrophe." Happily it turned out that the toe didn't hurt much once I soaked it in a bidé and strapped it into a hiking boot.

The Hills are Alive

Surf Munich!

Queen of Pickles

Deep in the marshes east of Berlin lies an ancient land, er, forgotten by time, where people travel by barge from farm to farm, a former hot-spot of East German tourism (the "Venice of Germany") where the mail is delivered by punt and members of an ethnic/cultural minority (the Sorbs) won fame for their pickle recipes: the Spreewald.


I have wanted to go here for a long, long time, but no one else wanted to go--until CC! [Birds chirping, puppies frolicking, flute music.]

(Picture: we rented a canoe and paddled around. Sadly my camera ran out of batteries.)

By canoe, we reached a village beer garden and the Pickle Museum. The Pickle Museum underwhelmed (until, at the end and after trying unsuccessfully to talk us into buying sausages, they gave us those same sausages for free.) But, at the Pickle Museum, I found out about the Queen of Pickles Pageant.

Each year, ladies of the Spreewald dress in traditional costumes, fix up a basket of pickles according to an original recipe, embody Spreewald culture, and arrive by barge to be judged by one old man and two old ladies. The winner is crowned Queen of Pickles.


The Sorbs of the Spreewald endured some harassment by the Nazi regime, which wanted them to stop speaking their dialect, etc. Under the communist East Germany, flocks of tourists included a friend of mine who went for a day. Her family lived in West Germany. When West Germans went into the East, they had to buy 25 Marks worth of East German money. They weren't allowed to take any back with them--they had to spend it all in the DDR. My friend said the canoe rental cost them 1 Mark, and at the end of the day her dad was left with like 20 M, which he had to get rid of. So he tipped the woman selling french fries 20 M. This was apparently very embarrassing for my friend because the french fry seller took offense.

(Picture: mail delivery by punt)

(About the french fry story: me being an American*, I was like, "Why was she offended? Hey, free money!" My friend was like, 'well it's like, you big rich West Germans come and eat our pickles, and lord it over us, you think you're so great, etc.')

*Read: insensitive

It's spring!

CC and me went on a bike ride all over Toronto. First we fixed our bikes at Bike Pirates. Then we biked way out on this peninsula/island in Lake Ontario.


View Larger Map

We biked to the lighthouse (point B on map). It was kind of cold and far away from the city. I was tired. CC wants me to write: I was tickled pink.



On the peninsula were all these colored bricks and rusty metal scraps (CC: rusty scrap metal). The sun was setting.


(Photo by CC)

We took the subway home, which I was very glad about. (Subway ride between points C and A on map.) It was sort of spring. Spring: no snow, fix bike, bike ride! Sort of not spring: wearing 2 pairs of pants and mittens, freezing cold, riding on subway with bike.

CC sadly only had one pair of pants and was cold. Then I got home and realized I'd had a spare pair (a third pair, just in case) in my backpack the whole time. Woops.

Canoe NJ

Yesterday we canoed on the Wading River in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. As a little kid, I drove through the Pine Barrens with my Mom. We stopped at a diner in what seemed like the middle of the night, and Mom told me that the people in the next booth, who appeared from their dress and hairstyles to be living in the nineteenth century, were Pineys. Since then, I've been fascinated by the Pine Barrens, and I wanted to take CC there.

On the river yesterday, we saw no Pineys but did see lots of moss. CC took my picture with some giant moss. The moss provided us with moral examples of success against adversary. CC was sad about our impending move from our lovely house (I am too), but we canoed past an island of all moss, and I said, "Look at that moss, I bet it was sad when it had to start growing on that island, but now look at it!" I hope that she felt inspired by the moss. I did!

We canoed around some islands in the Wading and up a narrow, nearly impassable branch of the river. This enabled me to demonstrate my canoeing special technique, which I call "move it out of the way." In this technique, when we come to an obstacle in our path I climb out of the canoe and into the river, then wrestle the fallen tree branch or whatever is blocking the river onto the bank. Then return to canoe and proceed with paddling. This technique is not endorsed by the Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association.

When it started to rain a lot, we were undaunted, because we knew that in just an hour a bus from the canoe livery was coming to pick us up. Not like the night we were stuck at the Lake of Stimulus, home of the World's Largest Leech.

Later yesterday, I fell in a cranberry bog. Then we left the Pine Barrens and bought ice cream from an insolent teenager. Today I have a cold, yuck!

How was your vacation?

When people ask me, 'how was your vacation?' it is hard to explain, concisely, that it was a wonderful experience, full of fun times, passionate romance and great stories, but that during much of it, I longed to cry, sleep and/or hide in a bush. Oh, and that I saw a moose.

(Mom (upon hearing the news): You are the first person in our family to see a moose.)

I did cry during part of it, actually. (Not the moose part.)

Anyway, so this may take a few posts. It started like this. Exhausted from teaching all summer and moving, CC and I set out on a 12-hour drive to Quebec to canoe-camp. Though we used words like "vacation" and "relax" when we arrived in the enormous La réserve faunique La Vérendrye we selected a 60 km canoe route that would require us to canoe about 20 km per day (that's 10 miles).

CC: 20 km is what experts do, if they are going for a workout.
Me (on second canoe-camping trip, ever.): OK.

You can put your canoe right in the lake at Le Domaine (which rents canoes and serves all other needs you might have, being just about the only town in the reserves 1,000 plus square km). That's easier than driving for an hour, much of it on an unpaved logging road, to put the canoe in a remote lake. Which is what we did, naturally, since neither of us had ever put a canoe on a car before.

(Next time: portage of despair and lake of stimulus.)

Fiord

Voyage to the Isle of Rushin

As some of us paddled down the Delaware (while others of us drank, smoked and dragged their legs in the water) Rushin sighted an island. From about a quarter mile away, this island seemed like a good place to stop. The trouble was those rocks (pictured). When you are not wearing shoes, they really hurt to walk on. Sometimes, you fall. And for about 100 yards around the island, the water is very shallow and the raft can't sail over these rocks, so one must get out of the raft and walk to the island (which also consists of these rocks). But it was Rushin's birthday and he had no shoes, so he demanded that people with shoes pull him in the raft over the rocks to the island. Rick said we had to do what Rushin wanted because it was Rushin's birthday.

Some people gave up and crawled to the island. Crawling on the rocks was not a big improvement versus walking on them. This island exploration trip took about an hour and our raft was more than an hour late for the pick up bus.

But Rick did eventually stop crawling and drag Rushin, in the raft, to this island. This island is known as the Isle of Rushin.