How sweet it is..

So DH and I are home from the crazy family reunion, and I have to say that I am glad that we went, but more glad that we opted to come home tonight rather than stay overnight with at my grandparents.

Most importantly - I DROVE - the entire 3 hour (normally 2 hour) drive to my grandparents! This included getting to the gas station, driving 270 and the Beltway, the EZ pass toll at the Bay Bridge, and, most intimidatingly, stop and go traffic for MILES on Rt 50 and 404 in MD and DE. I did stall 3-4 times, but recovered quickly and it wasn't a big deal. The car is SO much fun to drive, but a little dangerous, because all it takes is the slightest tap of the gas and WHAM! You're driving 80-85 miles an hour. I drove about 1/2 way home; my contacts dried out and my eyes were strained, so we had to pull over and let DH drive.

It started raining as soon as we exited 270 on the way home - and the top was naturally down with the cover on, so the interior got rained on a weee bit. But I had a towel so I dried it all off quickly.

Randomicity

This weekend DH and I are going to a family reunion in Easton, MD. It ought to be, well, interesting. It's my grandfather's family and they're getting on in years. I'm thinking that these events aren't going to happen for too much longer, so might as well do it while we can.

I found out today that VW is going to declare the title for my NBC "lost," which means that they are going to have to apply for a duplicate title, which is going to have to be sent to the guy from whom I bought the car, who then has to sign off on it and send to me, so I can apply for a MD state title. You know, this great deal isn't looking so peaches and cream anymore. I don't think that I am going to have the title for another 2 weeks at this point, which is rather ridiculous.

We're in desperate need of rain; for some reason all of the rain that has been in the area has passed south of us. I'd really like for my garden to get a good soaking, and I think that I need to fertilize or something because my Roma tomato bush is suffering from blossom end rot. The tomatoes aren't coming on as strong as I would like them to, either. I don't know whether its the weather or the two weeks of neglect while we were on vacation, but the garden is in a sorry state.

My feets are still aching from yesterday's activities. Poor things - and I wanted to wear cute shoes tomorrow, Doesn't look like that's going to happen now.

Oh what a circus!

Today I spent my entire day in Alexandria where the NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson is docked for three days, hosting public tours for VIPs and summer-camp kids and the general public. Needless to say I am beyond exhausted. I made a poor choice of footwear (heeled sandles) for navigating downtown Alexandria's hilly brick sidewalks. I walked from King St Metro down to the waterfront in those poor sandles and destroyed my poor feet (15-20 blocks...I was nuts, but this morning's weather wasn't bad). And this afternoon was hot and humid and I was not a happy camper. And the trip from Alexandria to Silver Spring (via Metro) was really, really long.

Ugh.

I did get a choco-vanilla twist frozen custard at the Scoop Grille on King St, and I do really like the area (when can we go guys?). I will, however, make a much more educated and intelligent choice in footwear.

Here are some pics I took:


Stern shot


Bow shot


Flag shot


Poor-little-kid-whose-parents-dressed-him-like-a-Nancy-boy shot

It's the pen-penultimate countown

If you're a fan of the CBS show "How I Met your Mother" (and if you aren't - catch up on this smart funny show PDQ!) then you know that Marshall has 3 slaps left in his slap bet against Barney! Thankfully, CBS has offered us this handy-dandy countdown clock to Slap #3 - the pen-penultimate slap.

Congrats too to Doogie Howser - a.k.a. Swarley - on the Emmy nod!

First SOLO drive!

So tonight I had an inkling to take the NBC out for a spin... solo. And I did it. My first solo drive - exactly three miles down to the lake, turn around in a parking lot, practice parking once, and then back home. I even did it with the radio on!

I stalled once at a stop sign at a fairly busy little intersection, but I didn't panic! I just turned the car back on and was on my way (although I think that I screwed up traffic a little bit), and one time I left my foot on the gas pedal a little when I put in the clutch, which caused the engine to rev momentarily before I lifted my foot off the gas. But that was okay too!

I'm so proud of me. And many thanks to the many people who have tried to teach me to drive stick over the years! It's finally working!

Yeah! Now if only the title would get here already!

First post-vacation weekend

Ahhh, the weekend. Everyone's weekly vacation - except when you've been on vacation. DH and I actually got quite a bit accomplished:

- Friday night, to raise our spirits, we got the ultimate happy-food - Indian. Yummy. Life just never can be bad with some yummy Tikka Masala (oh so yummy)

- Saturday morning we picked another 6 lbs of blueberries at Butler's Orchard. We were hoping to snag a few blackberries as well, but it looks like it's going to be another 2 weeks before they really come on

- Saturday afternoon we took the NBC (New Beetle Convertible) for a drive at Black Hills Regional Park. I drove a little, stalled out trying to avoid hitting some woman pushing someone in a wheelchair in the middle of the road (and avoiding oncoming traffic), and we tried to ascertain whether there would be enough breeze to sail a little Sunfish sailboat (maybe!!)

- Sunday afternoon we finished the structural part of the little raised section of the deck! Yeah! Now we have to order all the floorboards and start re-laying the deck. We also brought a whole ton of stuff to the dump!

On top of all that, DH got his much needed haircut, I watched Evita on On-Demand, and the assorted normal weekend chores.

NBC's title should arrive tomorrow! Crossing my fingers that it's all good!

St John vs. Grand Cayman - no contest

To be fair and in the interest of complete and honest disclosure, DH and I have spent 3 wonderful vacation on St John, USVI, and one vacation on Grand Cayman. Being so enamored with St John has clearly colored the lens through which I viewed Grand Cayman. They are two completely different islands, with different histories, cultures, perspectives on tourism, etc. Nonetheless, I'll go ahead and compare them with my thoughts since it is a question commonly raised on travel boards.

Topography/geography - Winner: St John.
Grand Cayman is generally flat, with few distinguishing geographic features. It's like a tropical version of Delaware, and if you have ever driven a distance through Delaware, you'll understand how boring it is. Sadly, Grand Cayman was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and has not fully recovered in terms of foliage or in infrastructure, which leaves bits of ugliness in full view.

St John, in contrast, has been lucky not to have been struck by any hurricanes since I believe Marilyn in 1995. It is a lush and green island, and more importantly, mountainous, which makes driving both challenging but also interesting. It also offers superior choices for non-water based activities like hiking. It's a common statement that the mountainousness of St John makes the water less clear than Cayman because of the runoff - but we've never seen that to be the case. St Johns many coves are actually much better protected from wave action (gosh, I don't think we saw any wave action on any beach with the exception of Drunk Bay on St John) whereas Caymans beaches are mostly exposed, protected only by the barrier reef ringing the entire island, which dampens but doesn't quell most wave action. This silts up the nearshore areas on Grand Cayman more than any runoff silting we ever saw on St John.

Beaches: Winner - St John (with a caveat)
My ideal beach is secluded, ringed with tropical green foliage, and private. Size is not an issue - the beach could be just a couple of yards wide across and to the waterline. This describes St John's beaches perfectly. There are several places where you could potentially be the only person at the beach at any given time. Because most of the beaches are inside of the National Park, there are not towers of condos and hotels lining beaches - eradicating all traces of palms and sea grapes from view.

In contrast, Cayman's signature beach is 7 mile beach, which is beautiful in its own right - powder white sand, gin colored water, etc. But it's so darn crowded - whether it be by beach toys, people, buildings, stuff in the water to mark swimming areas seperate from boating/motorized areas. Just not my style. Now some people love the idea of a perfect sand beach with all these amenities there to entertain you, but that's not me. I'm entertained by quiet, and good snorkeling.

The East End of Cayman is the closest one gets to a comparable St John experience. The big "but" here is that it is really challenging to find those great spots. There are no signs marking anything but public beaches, and there is so much water front development either there or in progress you're never really sure whether you might be intruding on someone's private property. Not fun. The closest we got was on the beach near the Queen's Monument, where there was fantastic snorkeling, a secluded little beach (somewhat) and very few other people to be seen.

Tourist Services: Winner - St John (hands down, no doubt about it!)
While I think that accomodations on St John might be more expensive than those on Cayman (much more competition on Cayman, only two real resorts on St John) the restaurants on St John are much more reasonable in price, value, and quality (in my opinion). I just felt like we had a lot more choices for reasonably priced meals on St John, and they were far more accessible regardless of where you were staying. Now, I'm not being fair in that Grand Cayman is 22 miles end to end vs. St John's 8 - but it's not my fault that Grand Cayman hasn't done a better job of locating some of it's tourist infrastructure on the East End to compensate.

One huge disparity was the ease of finding beaches and neat places to explore. On St John everything is marked with a sign - from trailheads to beaches. This is mostly because these places are within a National Park, which provides the basis for marking all these places with the ubiquitous brown and white signs. It really made it so much easier and less stressful for us on our first trips to have all those signs, so we could match our research with our location.

I can't think of a lot of other things to compare the two on. Driving on St John might be a lot more challenging because of the hairpin turns, hilly roads, and unexpected beasties wandering around (donkeys and goats and cows, oh my!) There isn't a lot of "entertainment" infrastructure on St John, like clubs and jet ski rentals and parasailing and whatnot. Of course, that's why we prefer it. Cayman can't do anything about it's topography and it certainly caters to a different kind of tourist - but they could appeal to the St John crowd by making those secret spots a little less difficult to find, limiting the amount of waterfront development to keep secret beaches and pretty little coves from feeling like someone's private property, and spreading out some of the basic tourist infrastructure (like places to eat) to the East End to help people who want to stay out there.

Different strokes for different folks. Thank goodness for that. Now I'm just wondering how I can get back to St John!

Grand Cayman vacation review - Part 2

Days 9-12: Sunshine Suites Resort, Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman

Friday we packed up all our things and moved across the island to meet up with the dive club we were diving with at Sunshine Suites. The first thing that you notice when you get closer to the west side of Grand Cayman is the ridiculous traffic. Truly unbearable for people who are trying to get away from it on vacation. We found the "resort" easily enough. It is actually down a block and across a very, very busy streen from Seven Mile Beach. I was completely unimpressed by Seven Mile Beach itself - it looked like Miami Beach, replete with water bikes, jet skis, and all other sorts of watersports junk. Not my cup of tea at all, frankly, but I know that it suits other much more. Different strokes for different folks.

Our room was a first floor unit with a queen bed, regular-sized fridge, microwave, and stovetop (two burners). There was no balcony or private patio, which became a huge issue. This place caters to divers, I believe, and without a patio or balcony you don't have anywhere to hang/leave your stuff to dry. Everything we had was more or less constantly wet, which was really annoying and after a couple of days, really stinky. On our last full day we found the rinse tanks and storage room where divers could leave their gear to dry, but even that was pretty inadequate. Not pleased with that at all.

This part of our vacation was nothing but dive, dive, dive. Similar to the beginning of our vacation, there was never enough time to wind down from the activities of the day. In hindsight, we are not really "crazy divers" and a two-tank morning dive for two or three days over a vacation would probably be plenty for us in the future. The best past of being with the dive club was absolutely the social aspect. I really had an awful lot of fun with the people we met, and after being together 24/7 for the past 9 days, I am sure that DH and I appreciated having someone else to talk to besides each other.

We dove with Divers Down, and sadly it really wasn't optimal. They advertise that they don't usually dive with more than 8 divers at a time, but we always had at least 11 divers aboard (likely because we were on this organized trip that things were done differently). It was pretty crowded and overwhelming at times for the divemasters I think. Our first dive was a complete mess (unexpectedly strong current, divemaster who didn't read the crowd well, etc) but subsequent dives were better. There were just a lot of them. The most disappointing thing for me, I think, is that we rarely saw anything different than what we saw snorkeling, in terms of sealife. Oh well.

Our flights down and back were fairly uneventful - with Miami Airport causing the most stress with their out of control construction and confusing signage and whatnot. We spent way more than we anticipated spending, and never felt like we got a good value for our money. Food was ridiculously expensive at restaurants on both Grand Cayman and Captiva, and not good enough to command those prices. We almost always come back from vacation feeling like we need another vacation, but this time, for me at least, that feeling is especially strong. Unfortunately, it looks like mini-weekend retreats are all that we'll be able to afford for a while! C'est la vie. We have a deck to finish, a new car to pay for, and credit card bills that will haunt us until September!

I don't want to end this on a down note, so I will say that when we were having time to relax, it was nice. I read "To Kill a Mockingbirg" for the first time in one afternoon sitting on a comfortable beach chair at The Reef Resort's beach. We did meet some very funny, interesting, and friendly folks diving that made the time diving very fun. We did learn some skills and get credentials that will allow us to take vacations in the future that interest us. Most important of all, DH and I left work behind for 12 days and spent time together doing stuff we love, and all our memories - good and bad - will make great anecdotes to tell over and over again!

Florida and Grand Cayman vacation review - Part 1

I think that it's time to post a little review of all we did on vacation. I think that I'll post a follow-up comparing Cayman to St John, since it's a frequent question on travel message boards.

Days 1-5: Captiva Island, Fl. South Seas Resort. Offshore Sailing School's Learn to Sail class

The resort: We had a 3rd floor harborview room with a garden tub, balcony overlooking the harbor, two queen beds, and in-room fridge. The resort itself is actually quite large, and it took 10 minutes to get from Captiva's main road to where we were staying. The room was clean, nice view, stayed cool. There were an awful lot of kids there (understandable since we were there the weekend after the 4th of July, so probably lots of vacationing families). Not my favorite place in the world but the beaches were nice, there was an amazing variety of birdlife around the resort (lots of Ospreys, pelicans, assorted herons, ibises, etc). If we hadn't been doing the sailing class I would never have stayed there on my own. That being said, there was probably the opportunity to do some nice kayaking along the wildlife sanctuary and stuff.

The sailing class: From 8-5 for three days straight, the instructor was wonderful and patient (his name was Biete!) and I really feel like we learned a lot. The boats (Colgate 26) were purpose-perfect; lots of room in the cockpit, sheets clearly labeled, etc). It didn't give us an awful lot of time to unwind from the hard day's work, but that was the nature of the class (there was an extended course that would allow you afternoons to do the vacation thing). Would definitely take another class with the school. Learning to sail was pretty expensive, though, like all of our hobbies it seems.

Days 5-9: The Reef Resort, Grand Cayman.

This was supposed to be the relaxing part of our vacation. The Reef Resort is located on the northeast corner of Grand Cayman, easily a 50 minute drive from the airport along a very boring road. Frankly, I was unimpressed with Grand Cayman overall, but more on that later. The resort itself was pretty nice. We had a second floor Deluxe Studio which was an end unit, balcony overlooking the pool and beach. King size bed, jacuzzi tub, small fridge and microwave and toaster, and some basic kitchen supplies. The walls were paper thin such that you could hear everything in the neighboring room, and the tiled walkways meant that you could hear every sound elsewhere (like people dropping brooms or mops or whatever with a loud clatter). I didn't really like how two rooms were entered through a single door with a little entryway. (We were in room 206B, there was a room 206A, you entered both through a door marked 206 and walked through a little tiled entryway to get to your own door). That entryway just echoed all the noise from other people entering their room, which was annoying. Not a fan.

DH and I normally love being remote and secluded from the tourist meccas at our various vacation destinations, but Grand Cayman doesn't support this very well - or at least the resort made it a little challenging. There was a restaurant on site, but almost every night we were there there was some "special" resort thing going on that made eating there impossible. Monday nights the restaurant is closed, fair enough to give the staff a day off (common in Europe). Tuesday and Thursday nights are "Barefoot Man" performances, where you have the privelege of paying too much to order off an extremely limited menu and listen to this guys music (hopefully you like it, if not you're SOL!) Wednesday night they did some kind of outdoor Mexican night thing; I have to admit that was a night when we went out for dinner, so I am not sure whether you could eat a normal dinner at the restaurant or not.

None of this would have been an issue, had there been more restaurants on the East End of the island. We went out twice - driving 30+ minutes both times - to virtually the only options available to us. This was a big turn-off for us. I'll tell the little story about our last East end restaurant drive another time, but suffice it to say that there just isn't enough infrastructure on the East End to keep a tourist who wants to stay away from the madness of 7 mile beach happy for an extended period of time.

Finally, it was near impossible to identify good beaches with snorkeling on the East End as there are few to no signs indicating destinations. We had read about a couple of spots online and were able to figure out one (Queen's Monument). Overall, it just felt like to much work to stay away from the crowds on Grand Cayman.

There was good snorkeling and a nice beach at The Reef Resort, but so many people who were inexperienced or poor snorkelers kicked up so much silt that it made it difficult to see as the afternoon wore on.

This post is getting too long - I'll continue it in the next post.

More pictures from vacation...

So the pictures that we took were pretty crappy, sadly. Maybe I'll load some of them onto the blog (the ones that weren't as bad). However, I do have some pics that were taken by one of the dive instructors on our trip.


Me diving, unfortunately with my alternate and SPG hanging off me. Bad diver!



Me 'n' DH, cute as can be


STINGRAY ATTACK!


Hey! A picture of Brian rather than a picture by Brian!

Introducing... Brian Vallelunga photography

So, on our dive trip we met one very funny Brian Vallelunga, from Adams Morgan. He's a great photographer, and was brave enough to bring some very expensive equipment onto a very wet dive boat. He took these pictures:





This is my favorite picture



His Flickr gallery with all his pictures from our dive trip is here.

I'm back!

We got home about 11pm last night after traveling for what seemed like forever. Miami airport is a total clusterf*&k, everything else went fairly smoothly. It was nice to be home and have kitties piled on me while I slept. I went out to the garden this morning to check on how out of control it was, and there were about 7 baseball bat sized zucchinis taking over the place. Hopefully picking them will allow some little ones to come to life. The tomato plants are a little thin - but maybe some training of the vines will help. Things did seem well watered, though.

Tonight I'll try and download the pics and videos we took on vacation - and also upload some pics taken by those we met down on Cayman. It was a fun trip - perhaps slightly overscheduled - and we met some really fun people!

We're comin' home!

After 12 days of being on vacation - it's time to come home! We've done SO much - except really relax. Well, that's not really true, there were one or two days where we totally vegged, but they were the minority. Actually, it's kind of time to come home - we miss the kitties and I know my garden is out of control. And then there is the new Beetle stuff I have to do (like learn how to drive it!)

As we always say, we need a vacation from our vacation! Miami Customs and Immigration here we come! Yea!

Cool stuff that we've seen/done so far

It's been two long, hot days learning to sail. I think that before we left, I thought that DH was going to enjoy sailing far more than I; the reality is that I think that I have a much more instinctual feel for it, while he's trying to engineer/techie it and deconstruct what happening and understand what's going on and what to do in a very sequential, orderly fashion. In any case, it's been great fun and I love sailing.

We've seen tons of dolphins both days, but today we had a dolphin come up right alongside the boat. Then he swam off, leaping into the air and doing bellyflops three times... that was pretty cool. We saw a couple of turtles surface for air. We also saw two manatees as we were pulling into the harbor. They were so sweet, but it breaks my heart to see the boat prop scars across their backs.

We also saw a Beetle that looks exactly like mine driving around the islands! So exciting.

Blogging on Vacation - that's unpossible

Well, it's a wired society and we're all wedded to our technology... so here I am blogging on vacation. We're on a 1/2 hour break from our first day of our sailing class (all classroom thus far - haven't been on the water yet). The weather is okay - intermittently cloudy and threatening to rain mixed with bright, hot sunshine. The resort we're at (South Seas Resort on Captiva) is a little family-friendly for my personal taste (there are loud kids everywhere... I can't wait to get out on the water where there won't be any). I'm looking forward to doing this class and then going on to Cayman to our decidedly more private, more remote, and likely less family-centric resort.

The flight was uneventful, the pick-up of our rental car painless, and driving to the resort was okay. The scenery is nice - since most of the area is a wildlife refuge.

Ah! Time for sailing!

Weather Update; Follow Up

So we're under a tornado watch here in G-town, which is so weird. There was actually a documented tornado here (maybe about 5 miles from where I live) a couple of years ago; I'm just worried that a storm will knock over my tomato supports again. There's some pretty significant thunder rumbling in the area, though. Hmmm, this could get interesting.

I've spent nearly the entire day cleaning the house - like really cleaning it. I don't know why, but every time we leave for vacation I spend the day before cleaning the whole house - cleaning the kitchens and bathrooms, vacuuming, changing bedsheets and whatnot. It's got some logic to it - there's nothing more stressful than coming home to a messy house, but at the same time it is a bit odd. At least I won't come home to a sinkful of dishes, dirty bedsheets, and an icky bathroom. The cat hair will cover the couch again, I'm sure.

I also put the car cover that came with my New Bug on him today. It's custom made for the car, so it fits like a glove. The cutest thing was that it had these two little pouches for the side-view mirrors that looked like little ears! So the Bug has been put to bed until we return.

Weather Update

So I added two little weather tracker things for the two places we'll be on vacation; Captiva, FL and Grand Cayman. Somehow I don't think that the differences between the weather here and the weather there will be as dramatic as it would have been had I gone on vacation in, say, February.

As long as the little weather tracker thing doesn't say 'hurricane conditions' I'll be happy.

Crossing my fingers that we have a good flight tomorrow with all the Great Britain drama.

More Bug pics

So the Beetle is still in the garage. I messed up the loan check I wrote out for the car and have to send a replacement, so in the garage the Beetle stays until its paperwork is all clear. But no need to not have a few more pics:


Pic of DH driving the Bug, as viewed in my rearview mirror. I'm surprised this came out so well without me causing an accident.


A girl and her Bug.... feel the love.

No more blueberries :(

Last Sunday DH and I picked 9 lbs of bluberries at Butler's Orchard in Germantown with Jeffro and CC. Tonight, I put the last 1/4 cup of blueberries in the freezer for future muffins, pancakes, or waffles. And thus ended our haul of berries. It actually took us less than a week to go through 9 lbs of blueberries - that last 1/4 cup has been in the fridge for 3-4 days.

I'm sure that there's someone out there who can do the math of how many antioxidants or whatever DH and I each got from eating about 4.5 lbs of berries in a week.

I guess we'll have to get more once we get back from vacation!

Things I have found cleaning out "George": Part 1

As I prep my 1995 Saturn "George" for sale, I'm sure I'm going to find a lot of interesting artifacts. Today, I started vacuuming the backseat area and I found:

- An old test prep tape for taking the NASD Series 6 licensing exam; this was for variable contracts.

- An old Russian conversation tape (from my Russian class a hundred years ago)

I'm sure there's lots more treasure hidden in my trunk, under my seats, and elsewhere. Stay tuned for next exciting installment of "What's in Erika's car?"