For my cousin Cari

Upcoming Trips: Oregon Coast, Madrid & Liverpool

Next week my dad and I will take our third annual trip to the coast on his motorcycle. It's always an exhilarating experience to be on the back of his roaring Harley, partly because it's work to stay on and partly because the bike attracts appreciative looks wherever we go. I love being out in the open at 50 or 60 miles an hour, feeling the moisture and breathing in the smells of the highway and coastal air in August. Our trip is something I've come to consider as one of the few traditions in my life, and it's something I look forward to every year.

Am also excited to have not one but TWO trips to Europe planned for this fall.

View from the window of my former 8th story flat in Las Águilas, Madrid.

 First trip will be back to Madrid for two weeks of vacation in September. Plan to see several friends--from the U.S., Spain, Australia--as well as perhaps some former students. Might also meet a friend from Poland in Paris for a weekend. Ah, how I miss being able to jet to Paris for a long weekend!

Second trip will be to Liverpool in October for a professional conference. Although I've been to England a few times, have not yet been to Liverpool. Am looking forward to exploring a new town, perhaps taking a Beatles tour, not to mention geeking out at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference.

A couple years ago, when I imagined my life in the not-too-distant-future, I'd seen myself being in a position, both financially and in terms of vacation time, to travel abroad for a month every year. It's important to me to continue to expose myself to new ways of being in and perceiving the world, as well as work toward my goal of being fluent in seven languages before I die. While I can't yet quite afford to spend a month of each year abroad, I am incredibly grateful to work at an institution where they're willing to make such a significant investment in me as to help send me to an international conference abroad.

time warp: summer bike trip with Dad

In August my dad and I took a weekend trip to the Oregon coast on his 1996 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail.

We started in Salem and headed west, stopping at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and Cape Meares on the way up to Astoria. Had never been to any of those places before, so was awesome for me.

Tillamook Cheese Factory was crowded and the store at the end of the self-guided tour made me feel claustrophobic and panicky, but watching them make the cheese in the vats, and watching the machines poop out enormous bricks of yellow cheese, and seeing how the huge bricks of cheese come out of the aging coolers onto the conveyor belt & get chopped down into 1-lb. loaves and packaged...man, that was cool!

Cape Meares was on our agenda because my friend Cheryl told me about the Octopus Tree, which sounded interesting, and it was, but not as interesting as the fat banana slug we found partially smooshed nearby.

To the left is the Octopus Tree, which is really just a deformed Sitka Spruce. Some people think Native Americans rested burial canoes in the branches when the tree was young, which is why the tree ended up that way.

To the right is the banana slug. Gross, eh? =*)

We got to Astoria after dark and stayed with a friend of my dad's who reminded me quite a lot of Grandma Mary. The impression was strengthened by the fact that she treated me like one of her own grandkids. We ate dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant on the pier (very good food), and the next day we went to see the Astoria monument and the Goonies house. We also went down to the docks, where we saw dozens of fat, ornery sea lions lined up along the docks, alternately napping and barking for no apparent reason. They were hilarious, but I could see why the local fishermen don't appreciate them blocking the passage to the boats.

Riding on the back of the Harley is always something of a challenge. I think I do a pretty good job of going with the flow and not trying to counter-balance the turns, but since I'm not hanging onto my dad and the backrest only comes about halfway up my back, it's a challenge to stay comfortably upright while we're zooming down the highway at 55mph with the wind pushing at my torso (or accelerating or going up a hill). I guess my back must be bendier than most people's. It gives my stomach a killer workout though. And I love being in the open air, smelling the breeze and the smoke from the campfires, feeling the mist on my face and the wind against my clothes. I don't even mind getting rained on a little bit.

For more photos of this trip, click here.

Indianapolis--part 2

Place: downtown is pretty much what I expected, though I did see a public square last night that reminded me quite a bit of Madrid in that a memorial column thingy was in the center, people and bikes parked on its steps, and all around the square were restaurants with outdoor patios & people actually sitting outside enjoying the last of the warm (i.e. 60 degree) weather. There is a Hard Rock Cafe here, which I didn't expect at all, as well as a couple "Irish" pubs and some very nice restaurants downtown, one of which is in my hotel--called Shula's--and is horribly overpriced but the food tastes good. The hotel itself--the Westin--has a magnificent lobby but room doors that don't open on the first try and drains that don't drain properly and bath towels as rough as sandpaper and a 12-oz bottle of water that would cost me $3 to touch. Speaking of water, the water that comes out of the tap here is positively undrinkable (yucky yuck yuck!). Ah well. At least there's free HBO and a very comfy bed.

People: at the conference I met a couple colleagues from South Texas College and one from a community college in Western Pennsylvania. Had dinner last night with the STC peeps: it was very nice of them to invite me out and I was not completely neglected, bu they did spend quite a bit of time on their Crackberries and reminiscing to each other about past trips to other places with other people. Hmph. The guy from Western PA was a PhD in Higher Ed, married, originally from Rhode Island (where I lived for a short time when I was younger), not completely satisfied with his job and trying to figure out what would make both him and his wife happy ever after. At the pub next door to the hotel tonight (where I went for dinner, thank you very much) I met four fine gentlemen between the ages of 26 and 70 who kept me entertained until I no longer had the will to finish grading papers. One of said gentlemen is a bartender at Shula's, two are bartenders at pub-next-door, and one is a Vietnam vet who is a regular at pub-next-door and who complimented me several times on my cleavage. Hmm.

Indianapolis--part 1

I am off to Indianapolis for a professional conference. Am far more excited about the conference than I am about Indianapolis. I've never been there, but I've never heard anything about the city that would cause me to be curious about it either. And the tourism photos I've seen feature downtown modern glass skyscrapers, which doesn't particularly appeal to my imagination.

Then again, a lot of the Portland tourism photos feature our downtown skyscrapers, with or without the river and bridges included either in the foreground or background, and while it's a nice view, it's not representative of the Portland I've come to know and love.

So here I am at PDX, having arrived at the gate a couple hours before departure time, taking advantage of the free Internet and trying to imagine what Indianapolis will be like while knowing full well that I won't have time to explore more than a few downtown blocks around my hotel. At least I'll be staying in a nice hotel.

I realized shortly after arriving at the airport that I hadn't even thought to bring my camera, which might be an indication either of how rarely I take photos or of my assumption that there won't be anything worth taking photos of. We shall see.