Ever have those days when you feel like you’re being, well, crapped on? No, I mean, literally.
Today we visited the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park in Albuquerque. As we were crossing the parking lot, I noticed that a large painted turtle was crawling under the wheels of a car. I picked it up, meaning to set it down in the grass alongside the parking lot. And it peed on me. Really peed. I mean—it gushed all over my camera and my hand in the few minutes it took to carry him to the roadside. I’m sayin’ that turtle must’ve been hollow with the entire inside filled with turtle pee.
My husband found this totally amusing until I asked for his handkerchief to wipe off my camera.
No good deed goes unpunished.
And then later we went to the Albuquerque Biopark (zoo.) At the lori display, this very engaging lorikeet hung on the front of the cage, seeming eager to get my attention. I came closer. He stuck his tongue out at me. Intrigued, I came even closer. Then he projectile pooped on me.
I didn’t even know such a thing was possible.
After that, I was paranoid. I’m thinking kamikaze hummers.
I’ve noticed something disturbing as I criss-cross the continent—people seem to have developed a widespread, persistent fear of handrails.
For example, I am in Acadia National Park and we are descending a steep stairway to Thunder Hole, where the ocean crashes into a narrow passageway, spewing high into the air.
Seems like a place where handrails would be a good idea, right?
I observe a young girl reaching for the handrail to steady herself.
“Don’t touch that!” her mother bellows, grabbing her daughter’s arm and yanking it out of danger.
Days later, in Quebec City, we are climbing the long staircase from the Rue du Petit Champlain to Haute Ville—a staircase aptly named Escalier Casse-Cou, or the Breakneck Stairs. Again, a child innocently takes hold of the handrail, and her mother scolds her, whipping out a container of antibacterial foam and smearing it all over her daughter’s hands.
We’ve gone beyond aggressive handwashing and anti-bacterial dispensers on every street corner. These days we’re air-kissing the handrail.
Having been a recent victim of Norovirus, I totally appreciate the dangers in touching contaminated surfaces. But in a risky world, we have to prioritize. I can’t help but wonder if we’ll have an epidemic of people falling to their deaths over cliffs and down staircases and escalators.
I recently climbed the Beehive in Acadia, clinging for dear life onto those iron handholds bolted into the rock. Believe me, I wasn’t worrying about whether I might develop symptoms tomorrow. I was worried that I wouldn’t see tomorrow.
More important than fear of handrails? Fear of falling.
My opinion—handrails are our friends. With handwashing to follow.
In the good old days, before we left on vacation, we used to sit down with a bunch of maps and plan out any travel, turn by turn, ahead of time. We noted any major water crossings (note: how to get across Lake Erie, here?) and towns and bodies of water along the way.
By contrast, travel by GPS is impulsive, exciting, and full of surprises. Planning, bah! Having a GPS lulls you into a false sense of security. It also highlights how little you remember about geography.
We are currently traveling in Canada, with not one, but two GPS systems—one a Garmin, the other the Navigon app for the iPhone. Sometimes we run them both at once, and it is disconcerting when the ladies disagree.
They both sound calm, reasonable, and compelling. Even when they don’t know where the hell we are.
We were traveling through Quebec from the Bay of Fundy to Quebec City. To our right lay a huge body of water that went on and on.
“I think that’s the St. Lawrence River,” I say.
“That’s a river?” my husband says. “Isn’t it awfully big?”
“I wonder how big a river has to be to be called a seaway?” I muse.
In the map-reading days, we would have known. Or we could have checked the map. On the GPS there’s a large blue unidentified blob.
Somewhere in the middle of Quebec, the ladies become confused. “There is insufficient GPS signal to navigate,” the Navigon lady—let’s call her Navvy—says. “Will resume when able. Or do you want to simulate?”
The Garmin lady (I call her Greta) merely repeats the same, increasingly desperate word: “Recalculating. Recalculating.” On the electronic map, she has us rattling across open fields. Good thing we’re driving the SUV.
Eventually Navvy recovers, and takes charge once again. We turn Greta off, because all that recalculation makes us nervous.
All is well until we get into the city, heading for the Hotel Frontenac in Old Quebec. We follow Navvy’s directions, turn by turn, until she sends past a sign that says, “Ferry Only.”
Ferry?
And, before we know it, we are paying our $9.75 and driving onto a huge ferry boat. We park in our designated spot and look at each other.
“Huh,” I say. “Are we supposed to be here?”
My husband doesn’t want to say, either way, so he furrows his brow and says nothing.
The ferry pulls away from shore, and we are off across the mile-wide St. Lawrence. On the opposite shore, we can see the looming fortress of the Hotel Frontenac, which is reassuring. At least we know we are heading in the right direction.
Making the best of the situation, we get out of our car and take photographs of each other, acting like this was all part of the plan.
Once on the other side, Navvy takes us on a dizzying spiral through the narrow streets of Old Quebec, a fingernail of space on either side of our car. It seems that thousands of other tourists have already found their way here, with or without GPS’s, and they mob the streets, making things more complicated.
Finally, we turn through a stone arch and we are at our destination, a beautiful castle that looks like it could withstand an assault of thousands of Anglophonic tourists.
My husband and I look at each other. We never want to move the car again.
I have a poor track record when it comes to seeing wildlife. We always arrive just as the buffalo herd has departed for the high country. Or where the bears chased the hikers into the lake two days ago. Or where the signature species has just declined from threatened to extirpated (a word I learned on my beach walk at Point Wolff, Fundy National Park, yesterday.)
Part of it is, I don’t pay attention. The conventional wisdom is, writers have a keener eye than normal people. Me, I’m focused on the fascinating stories in my head. I wouldn’t survive a minute as a mouse—that hawk would snatch me up while I was making up stories about the doings down by the creek.
Even if my hawkeye husband spots something, it takes me so long to hear and react, the animal opportunity is gone before I can fully participate. Sometimes I claim I saw it anyway, because I am so tired of missing everything. That sort of behavior can get you into trouble if you are married to a trickster.
So we’ve been in moose country for a week now. Everywhere there are signs of moose—and not the kind of “moose sign” rugged, hunky guides talk about on wildlife shows. No, these are official signs along park trails and highways warning of the possibility of moose encounters and offering instructions for what to do when it happens.
We writers are notorious scaredy-cats. We can imagine all sorts of horrific things happening. We do it for a living, after all.
So I study the guidelines, committing them to memory as if it were a surgical manual and I was about to operate on my mother. I develop my plan of action--just like in bear country where I walked the trails, singing campfire songs like a lunatic to warn any nearby bears we were coming. It must have worked, because I saw no bears. Only worried hikers.
We do see some wildlife. I see a red fox near the border crossing in Maine. I see a frog in Bar Harbor.
I see lots of red squirrels in New Brunswick.As night falls, brown hares are partying along the Matthews Head trail along the Bay of Fundy. We see invasive European green crabs on the Fundy beach and a rat in the Public Garden in Halifax. Canadian black flies feast on my tender Midwestern flesh.
I see no moose.
So I’m in a gift shop in Vermont, sheltering from a downpour, and the subject naturally turns to moose.
“I’ve lived heah more than twenty years,” a customer says. “Never seen a moose in Vermont.”
“Really?” I say, feeling somewhat vindicated.
“The only moose I ever saw were in Ohio. Saw moose twice, over theah.”
I furrow my brow suspiciously. Maybe that’s how the locals have fun with tourists from Ohio. But I haven’t mentioned being from there, and I came in a car with Connecticut license plates.
“Ohio? Moose in Ohio?” I say.
The woman nods. “I’m thinking they likely came over from Pennsylvania. Wild country over theah.”
It figures. I come to the northeast, hunting moose, only to find they’ve just left for Ohio.
We visited with my husband’s cousin in Connecticut, the first time in many years. I love New England, although I suspect it is way too blueblood for me. Everywhere I look there is eye candy—clapboard houses with attached barns, white Congregational churches, dry stone walls, crinkled woodlands too rocky to keep under the plow. And, like a special gift, glimpses of the Connecticut River through the trees.
We visited the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn. I’ve been a fan of Twain’s for years, because he always said what people were really thinking, and said it so disarmingly, and with such humor, that he could get away with it. Also, we was a southerner who was anti-slavery at a time when that was unpopular.
Also, he saved my life in high school when I had to do an oral book report on The Last of the Mohicans. I discovered Twain’s hilarious critique of James Fennimore Cooper. I used excerpts in my speech, which made me look so witty and clever on the lonely auditorium stage that they asked me to join the Debate Club. I declined, but, still—it was nice to be asked.
The museum guide told the story of how the lowborn Clemens courted his wealthy bride, Olivia Langdon. When her father turned him out of their house, he slipped on the walk and had to be carried back into the house to recover from his injuries. It took two weeks—and in that time he won Livie’s father over.
Back in East Haddam, we walked through the Riverside Cemetery (formerly the Landing Burial Yard) behind St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. I have an affinity for graveyards—old ones, not new ones, which tend to be cloyingly sentimental. The best graveyards are in New England—full of death’s heads and dire warnings to the living souls left behind.
As we walked, we read the stones. One was dedicated to the memory of “Joel, a Black Man, born a slave for life, but who through industry, fidelity and faithfulness obtained his freedom at the age of 26 years and lived 14 years in the full enjoyment of the priviledges of a free man. He died July 10th, 1802 at the age of 40 years.” Twenty-six years of service for fourteen of freedom—not a bargain.
Another stone tells the sad story of one Amata Brainard, a ten-year-old boy who was killed one Sunday in 1799 by the falling counterweight of the church bell as he was walking into church. Ah, irony. There is, indeed, danger everywhere. At the least he could have been walking out, freshly churched, when it happened.
But would a ten-year-old boy have wanted to spend his last moments in church?
Another stone eulogized poor Patrick McCormick, who drowned.
I think families should be required to put how their relatives died on their gravestones. It would make modern graveyards much more interesting.
Behind Riverside Cemetery, high above the Connecticut River, stands the schoolhouse where patriot Nathan Hale briefly taught. Apparently he found the backwater town of East Haddam too slow-paced after his years at Yale University. He left after one term on his way to martyrdom at the hands of the British.
I am shopping my way through northern New Mexico. I’m a great one for adapting to the local environment. As soon as I arrive in the southwest, my lust for all things silver and turquoise and cowboy resurfaces. I tell myself, Of course, I’d have lots of places to wear that squash blossom necklace or concha belt or chaps in Ohio. It’s all about attitude.
Just like I know I could wear a sarong in Columbus, with the right accessories. And a heavy sweater.
The woman in the store always encourages this. She slings that sarong around your body in one minute flat. But something will happen to it on the way home, so that the first time you go to wear it, you will fuss with it for an hour and then wad it up and throw it on the floor of the closet behind the leather leggings.
There are two standard greetings in tourist shops. First, they find something you are already wearing to compliment you on. That’s a lovely bracelet, they say. Or that’s a stunning jacket you have on, did you buy that here? Or, those socks are striking—I wouldn’t have thought of putting those colors together. This convinces you that you have good taste. That way, if something looks good to you, you will have the confidence to buy it on impulse and overpay.
The second standard greeting is, Where are you from? Which lets you know that they have immediately marked you as a tourist in search of genuine Native American curios. And you say, Ohio, and they say, We see lots of people from Ohio, which makes you think there’s this mass exodus from Ohio to New Mexico, and you’re at the tail end of it. And maybe all the sarongs have already been bought.
Oh, wait. Not sarongs. We’re buying turquoise this trip. And fetishes, which always sound a little dodgy to me.
Every shop in every tourist destination is having a 60% off sale, that day only, and isn’t it lucky that you chose to visit on that very day!
If you have any hesitation about buying something, they whip out the ultimate weapon: the Certificate of Authenticity and Appraisal, done by their brother-in-law in the back room.
And the thing is, you have to buy it. Because if you don’t, that thing will look better and better in the rear view mirror.
There are no poisonous snakes in New Zealand, nor scorpions nor deadly spiders, either. That’s a plus, in my eyes.
Australia is different—it is home to more poisonous snakes, frogs, spiders, lizards, stingrays, jellyfish, vertebrate fish, and other dangerous creatures than anywhere else on earth.
It’s become politically incorrect in the U.S. to demonize animals—even dangerous predators—as vicious killers. We even tend to romanticize businesslike kill-or-be-killed lifestyles. Nothing personal, but I’m above you on the food chain.
Australians, on the other hand, seem to embrace the dangers of life in the bush with relish.
It reminds me of the old Crocodile Hunter show—“These are the most DANGEROUS animals in the world!” And it was true in his case—he died of a stingray sting in the chest.
While in Sydney, I stopped in at Galaxy Bookstore, a specialty sci-fi and fantasy bookstore. I was chatting with one of the clerks, and said I was just beginning a tour of Australia.
“Watch yourself out there,” she advised me. “There’s lots of snakes.” Meaning, don’t let down your guard, even though right now you’re in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
Turned out she knows what she’s talking about. She’s specializing in reptile studies at university. Seems like a good field to go into down under.
We visited Sydney Wildlife World, which was teeming with deadly creatures—dangerous birds, snakes, lizards, insects—you name it. In case you missed anything, lurid warning signs highlighted the most dangerous creatures on display.
Not enough worries? Across the way was the Sydney Aquarium, displaying deadly denizens of the deep.
Whatever the topic, it seemed to stray onto deadly subject matter. The guide at the seemingly low-risk koala breakfast explained to us the difference between poison and venom. “Venom works through the bloodstream,” she said. “It’s injected. Poison, on the other hand, can be ingested in different ways. We can touch a poison frog, eat a poison mushroom, breath in poisonous gases or brush a poison plant. Got that?”
Remember the Foolhardy Family? They wouldn’t last a minute in Australia. Get past the fauna, and the flora and the terrain is dangerous, too—blistering deserts, unpredictable seas and shipwreck coasts, bottomless crevasses, unstable cliffs, and poisonous plants. Of all the rogue introduced plants, it seems the only ones that have caught on are the noxious ones.
I’m a writer. My fertile imagination tells me there’s danger everywhere. I hiked through Alaska, singing at the top of my lungs, to drive off the bears. I walked through Florida wetlands scanning the underbrush for wolf spiders and alligators. I hiked through the “national forest” – ha! – desert in New Mexico, my eyes darting to either side, searching for rattlesnakes.Never thought I'd have to watch out for the lizard in the laundry room!
My advice: Watch yourself out there—it’s a dangerous world.
If you want to go to Australia, you pretty much have to go through LA. So we flew into Los Angeles this morning, arriving about 10:30 a.m. Unfortunately, our plane to Fiji didn’t leave until 11:30 p.m. (2:30 a.m. by my home town clock). Fortunately, our travel agent gave us passes to the Continental President’s Club.
I’d always gazed longingly at those fancy wood-paneled doors, wondering what delights lay within. So I was practically giddy with anticipation as we pressed the little doorbell and were admitted.
OK, I’m a writer—my imagination always surpasses reality. But it was still very nice—much better than huddling in a cracked vinyl chair in the boarding area or wandering the concourses, looking for a place to plug in my power-depleted laptop. There were work carrels with power outlets, lights, and telephones. There was wireless Internet access throughout the club. There were comfortable chair groupings with more power outlets. There was a pantry area with tea, coffee, water, and snacks including crackers and cheese and fruit.
Did I mention there were power outlets?
I did a last quick-edit of The Exiled Queen before sending it off to my editor using the handy wireless access. My husband updated my website with photos from the Demon King tour. I looked around at the other patrons, wondering if they were really presidents or if they’d got in on a pass like us.
I couldn’t help thinking that it would be nice if such a lounge was made available to airline passengers if, say, their flights were cancelled or delayed through no fault of their own. Recalling my night spent sleeping on a baggage cart in Laguardia Airport (it was raining), and my night spent sleeping under a chair in Heathrow Airport (air traffic controllers strike) it would have been much more pleasant to have spent them hanging with the Presidents.
My husband and I took photos of each other sitting in the President’s Club, because who knew if we would ever get there again.
So the other day I’m on my way to the airport to leave for a school visit in Dallas. I’m within two miles of the airport exit when traffic on the freeway comes to a standstill. Emergency vehicles scream past us on the median, and I realize there must be a serious accident up ahead. My pulse accelerates as I contemplate the consequences of missing my flight—a missed dinner with a group of librarians and a school visit that’s been nine months in the planning. After ten minutes of parking lot frustration, cars begin squirting off the highway through whatever openings they can find. I follow them, even though it’s not part of my long term survival plan to drive the wrong way down a freeway entrance ramp.
I drag out the GPS, which sends me into a construction zone, a maze of flagmen and single-lane tunnels between massive construction equipment. My blood pressure rises. Amazingly, I make it to the airport with just enough time to get to the gate. Whoa, I think, taking deep cleansing breaths, already crafting the story I’ll tell. There’s always drama in my vagabond life. Drama drama drama.
As I’m standing in line to go through security, I hear the twenty-something guy ahead of me tell the screener that he’s just been in a car accident. I focus in more closely, and see that his hand is wrapped in gauze and blood is spattered over his khakis.
“Um,” I say, “Were you just in an accident on I-71?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Someone lost control and rammed our car and we rolled several times.”
“Um,” I say. “How did you get here?” My unspoken question is, How in blazes did you beat me?
“Well, I called the airlines and they said if I missed my flight I couldn’t get out until tomorrow. I need to get to LA today. So I called my dad who works by the airport and he picked me up and brought me the back way.”
“What about the car?” I have visions of him abandoning his ride on the highway.
“The car’s totaled,” he says matter-of-factly. “My aunt was driving. They were loading it on the truck as I left.”
I can’t help staring at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He seems embarrassed by the fuss. “Yeah, it looks worse than it is.”
“Do you know you have blood on your pants?”
He shrugs. “I think that’s somebody else’s.”
While we stood in line, he took several cell phone calls from worried people. “No, I’m fine,” he said. “Looks like I’ll make my flight.”
I felt like a hysteric next to that guy. I wanted to be hysterical FOR him (perhaps I could offer a service?) Being a writer, I wanted to write his story. So I did.
The first time I flew on an airplane, I was in 7th grade, and we flew from Little Rock back home to Ohio. I was beside myself with excitement. I sat in the window seat next to a stockbroker from New Orleans who good-humoredly entertained an aggressively verbal 12-year-old. We were served a full meal on china, and I remember looking down on lighted swimming pools like aquamarines set into the dark landscape.
Since then the flying experience has, shall we say, deteriorated. I’ve learned to keep a weather eye when I fly to the east coast. The east coast air traffic grid is like a delicate sand sculpture that dissolves to mud whenever it rains.
Recently I flew to New York for a meeting. It was meant to be a quick trip—I took an obscenely early flight on Thursday morning, with a return flight 8 p.m. Friday night. It began raining mid afternoon on Friday, and umbrellas bloomed along Fifth Avenue like black mushrooms. I arrived at the airport two hours early. A few minutes before our scheduled departure time we were told our plane and crew were stranded elsewhere. For the next three hours we shuffled like refugees from gate to gate on Concourse C in response to announced gate changes. Finally, it seemed we might actually depart at 11 p.m. The plane was there, the crew was there—all except the captain, who didn’t show up. They couldn’t find a new captain. The dreaded announcement came over the speaker. Our flight was canceled, and we were instructed to approach the podium to reschedule.
The savvy among us leapt forward to be first in line. The mood grew ugly as the podium staff denied passenger requests for vouchers for a hotel room or even cab fare. We were told that because the cancellation was due to weather, we were on our own. No, we said. The delay occurred because of weather. The cancellation happened because the captain didn’t show. American Airlines was unmoved.
They said the soonest they could fly me out was 5 p.m. the next day. I vigorously objected. Finally, they booked me and three other women on a Delta flight to Atlanta that left the next morning at 6 a.m., with a connection to Cleveland.
I joined up with Sharon, a sales manager from the Cleveland area, and we made our way over to the Delta terminal together. The ticket counters were deserted, the walls lined with sleeping bodies, bundles and bags like the homeless on some desolate urban street. I went to the Delta office to see if I could score some of those plush airline blankets. “How many would you like?” the clerk said. “Oh!” I said, so beaten down I was expecting abuse. “You mean it? I can have more than one? I’ll have two, please.” The clerk handed over two blankets and said, “Would you like some crackers, too?”
“Crackers? I can have crackers?” Tears sprang to my eyes and I nodded mutely. It was the nicest thing that had happened to me since I left Manhattan.
Back in the gate area, Sharon and I rolled baggage carts into a corner and spread blankets over them. We joked about our slumber party hosted by American Airlines. I worried that we could be rolled away during the night by white slavers. Nevertheless, I curled up on my side, still in my skirt and jacket from my long-ago lunch, and sought sleep.
It was long in coming. Loud music blared over the overhead speakers. Cleaning staff relentlessly circled our small camp with floor polishers. Some intrepid passenger was snoring, and a child fussed nearby. I maybe slept an hour and a half.
At 4:30 a.m. the Delta ticket counter opened and we checked in. When we went back through security for the second time in two days, we were in for a rude surprise. As a last minute booking, we were flagged for “special” treatment and shuffled over into the “special” line. Our carry-on baggage was opened and searched and run through a special x-ray. We all spread our legs and raised our arms and submitted to pat-downs, thus completing the full contemporary airline experience.
By the way, this is the third time in three flights on American Airlines that my flight was canceled and rebooked for the next day. Two flights were to the east coast, and one was to Wyoming.
So what is the airlines’ responsibility to the stricken victims of flight delays and cancellations? True, the airlines don’t control the weather. But it doesn’t make sense to have a system so fragile that the slightest perturbation destroys it.
