tbaroundtheworld

We went shopping a couple of days ago for a handful of things we forgot to buy on the way down. One of them was minced garlic, an almost daily staple for us. Yes, I know we can mince our own garlic, but the pre-cut stuff is a lot easier for me as I am afflicted with some sort of weird skin condition that retains the smell of garlic, shallots and onions for days after I handle them. And yes, I know about those stainless steel bars that supposedly absorb all the garlic smell from your fingers via magic. I have one and it barely works and in any event it's home hanging on a nail under a drive out skein of garlic cloves. We went to the place where one might expect to find it, the spaghetti sauce aisle, and it wasn't there. Not dissuaded, this is the store after all where the matches are stocked with the candy, my second thought was with the vegetables and lo and behold there it was. Not packaged in nice glass bottles with leak proof lids, but rather in a can like green beans. But...

We always have a housesitter when we travel, so it's a case of "no news is good news" when it comes to knowing what's happening on the homefront. However, while we're almost a thousand miles south, we encounter lots of little New Mexico-isms on a regular basis. First there are the license plates of the guests at our vacation spot. Then there are the Kokopellis that grace much of the tourist-wares for sale in town. And then a boat or two in the marina with a New Mexico placename on the back and even the catamaran here on the beach that hails from Santa Fe. We're far from home but never far away. Some reminders are less pleasing that others. Like the Mother of All Goatheads we found in the lawn two nights ago. We had just that day been opining that Goatheads didn't seem to grow down here, surprising considering the sheer volume of those awful green ground clinging vine producing abominations we have at home. But in truth we had never seen a single one, tha...

I knew we were in for an experience when I saw the waiters peeking around the corner of the building as we walked up the sidewalk to the door. It was on the early side, so being the first guests of the evening was not wholly unexpected but there was something about their sense of surprise that worried me. But since we're always shopping for an experience, we forged ahead and chose a table on the edge of the restaurant, overlooking the sea. One of the waiters brought a floor fan over and set it on a table so we'd have a breeze. He took our margarita order and went off for menus. The view was wonderful, a crescent moon setting over Tetakawi, the water in the cove slowly turning to inky black. MLW told me the story of how she'd found the big Abalone shell she still has, under the cliff off to my left. The waiter returned with our drinks, in plastic birthday party glasses. We found this a bit odd considering one can buy those giant margarita boats at just about any store. Oh ...

Every year we try to come in early October, and every year we swear we're never coming back in early October. Well, I don't know if that's literally true but it sure seems that way. The water is hot which allows us swim every day, the only time of the year when this is possible outside of summer, and no one comes here in the summer. The problem is early October is close to Columbus Day and school holidays so the place fills up with vacationers. This shouldn't come as a surprise since this is a vacation spot but given how we like to spend our time away, the people and the noise can be quite jarring. We do persevere and enjoy ourselves in spite of it. And really, the people are mostly okay except for those with dogs. As the place fills up the courtyards ring with the sounds of abandoned animals, their sad howls echoing off the stuccoed block walls.  Turns out there's a gal next door with a dog that barks plaintively whenever she leaves it alone. We didn't much l...

Last year I had the extreme misfortune of getting stung by a Stingray. The Eastern Pacific Round Stingray (Urolophus halleri) is common in the shallow waters of the Gulf and in the Pacific off of Baja from April through November. 2012 was apparently a banner year for them, I got it once, MLW got it twice and some little girl swimming close to us got it too. I knew that because of the way she howled as she limped out of the ocean. While it hurt a lot, a real lot , the pain went away within an hour and the whole episode became nothing more than an interesting tale to relate to friends back home. Particularly friends who think that sharks are waiting there to eat them. But here we are a year later, and for the past month or so the site of the one-time wound has been bugging me. Not hurting per se, but just a feeling that something isn't right. Like there is something embedded in the inside of the arch on my right foot. Kind of a "presence." At first I attributed it to Yo...

October is beach time. Just about every year for the past 20 we've packed up the car for the long haul down south. Two days, roughly 11 hours and 762 miles. But it's always worth it if only to bob in the ocean and watch for those interesting little tidbits that make getting out on the road interesting. Day One from Albuquerque to Tucson usually doesn't offer too much to get excited about. On this trip it was mostly about giant grasshoppers sitting idly on the pavement waiting to be run over. I suppose they might be better known as "locusts" as in Biblical plague locusts because they are really large, probably two or more times bigger than the cousins that eat my Zinnias. They sit there daring the traffic to run them over and I will admit that I try to avoid them as much as I can for no reason other than I hate uselessly killing things. I wonder how many meet their end under my wheels?  Not so lucky and harder to dodge are the migrating butterflies. Thousands o...

Some things require no words, Part Two September 1, 2013

Some things require no words. June 14th, 2013

When I quit my job, I went looking for fun projects to fill some time. Of course there are tons and tons of things to do associated with our house, my bikes, horses, dogs, gardens and whatever else. But one thing I really began to enjoy when I was living abroad was taking lots of photos. Living over there, and traveling back and forth offered many opportunities to stretch my creative legs, and to that end I took a few hundred more than 20,000 pictures during the 5 years I was on the road. In 2007, while wasting some time in a business meeting I stumbled on photography website called pbase. Basically a large storehouse for amateur and professional photographers. I kept coming across the term "PaD" as in "My 2006 Pad Gallery." It took me a few minutes before the light bulb came on and I realized that it stood for "Photo a Day," or more specifically a collection of pictures taken every day for a year. I gave it a shot and took 365 pictures between July 2007...

Sevilla's Feria de Abril presented us with countless opportunities to admire and photograph horses. While everyone knows we're involved in the equine business, it often seems that their spirits follow us everywhere we go. From the immeasurable impact of horse cultures on the historical sites of China, to the Ming Dynasty Appaloosa horse in the Forbidden City to the Irish National Stud to the horse parade we stumbled into on our first morning in Barcelona - they always see to be around. This gallery reflects our favorites from this trip, just a sampling of the 100s of photos we took, all of which were special in their own way. Please click on the  link below to visit the gallery - Caballos De Sevilla   .

The biggest problem with every journey is the trip home, particularly when that trip requires 22 hours of being awake in airports and planes. There is nothing about that prospect that rings attractive. I had a text message from Juan, the customer contact for the rental company we use in Madrid. We had planned on meeting at 10:30 on the morning of our departure, the kind of thing that I, the Nervous Traveler always worries about. “He’s going to be late,” “There won’t be a taxi,” “We’ll miss our flight,” “The traffic will be bad because of the rain,” - all things that drive me batty and yet have never happened. Well, in an unusual case of positive travel serendipity, Juan had too many things scheduled on Tuesday morning and so was hoping that he could come by and return our deposit early. In other words an offer I couldn’t refuse. Tuesday morning broke partly cloudy and dry – another worry out the window. We packed up and left, bouncing our suitcases down the cobbled street tow...

The weather hadn't improved when dinner time rolled around. We left our place and combed the neighborhood for somewhere to eat, but the menus just weren't thrilling and it was only 8:30 and all the places were empty. Even though it was raining cats and dogs, I just couldn't bear the shame of being the first couple in the place. So we left our barrio and crossed the street into the tourist land at Plaza Mayor. While the outside tables were set up, and covered with umbrellas, there were no patrons – it was just too cold. As we walked around the outer portico checking menus, a short waiter tried to get us into his place, but it looked like the worst diner on the worst day of the year so we went on. We stopped at the first main gate and read the menu for a place halfway down a set of slippery stairs. I told My Lovely Wife to wait at the top – no reason to climb if the menus stunk. I liked to looks of one of them but when I got to the bottom of the stairs, they were not yet o...

It took us three attempts to get to the Royal Botanic Gardens today. This was the first bad day of weather on the trip, bad in the sense that it was cold, windy and raining pretty hard. Our first time out, we made it as far as the Corte Ingles on Calle Arenal (~.5 miles) before it just became too wet. So we browsed their bookstore and stopped for coffee before returning home. After sitting around for a bit and looking out the window, it seemed like it might be letting up little bit so we left again, this time heading across and out of Plaza Mayor (~.5 miles) before the wind and rain really kicked in and we called the journey due to weather a second time. Three-fourths of the way back to the house we decided to wait out the weather over lunch and stopped by one of the places that had relegated us to their basement last year for being too early for dinner. We were seated in a pretty fancy dining room, one way more deserving that the bocadillos we wanted so when it came time to order we...

We spent the better part of Sunday trying to figure out the washing machine. Before that though we took a hike to El Rastro, Europe’s largest flea market. But before that, we had to figure out how to get across Calle Mayor without disrupting the Madrid Marathon. It turned out to be a day of this and that, a mishmash of interesting stuff. We awoke to the sounds of helicopters go hovering overhead and figured it was just another demonstration. Only when we walked up the street did we discover that we were on the route of the marathon. Trying to get across through a never ending stream of runners was tough, but we finally found a window and scooted through the throng, hopefully without disrupting anyone’s pace. We popped into Mercado San Miguel of the off chance of finding some coffee but the bar was three deep and frankly I burned up all my interest in jostling during my years in China. We left and headed downhill to the flea market and spent the next couple of hours roaming up and dow...

I’ll admit that this waiting around until later than 9 PM for dinner is a bit annoying. The Mali fellow at the African restaurant told me that they sometimes stay open until 3 or 4 in the morning for dinner guests. This makes me wonder how this country functions because I’d be of no use at work if I was out drinking and eating until 4 every night. After lying around and recovering from our day of hiking in Toledo, we decided to go out for dinner. It was 8:30 and so we’d at least be hunting and gathering at a more socially acceptable time. On the walk over to Plaza Mayor, My Lovely Wife hit on a brilliant idea – let’s act like Spaniards and go eat tapas instead of dinner. That’s what they were all doing, and we could pretend we are like they are, only we wouldn’t be going out to dinner at 11 after we finished the tapas. I suggested one of the places we’d eaten last year, the one where we were relegated to the basement when we’d incorrectly answered the Test Question, “Dinner or Tapas”...