#FB
#Ferris Bueller/funny blogger
Today I decided to take a break and have a day off. I started by playin’ some .IO & VOODOO… for a few hours.
I played Tornado.io, Agar.io, Paper.io 2, Dune, TwistyRoad, and Crush?
When we were going to breakfast I said:
“Flip flops?”
And you can guess what dad said:
Sure!
¡Later I learned how to do Spanish punctuation! ¡! ¿?
Since I learned to ride a bike, I had free range in my neighborhood. Before that, I was already spending a lot of time outside the house, poking around with my sister Maggie in the back yard swamp for hours on end. We walked ourselves to school from kindergarten through junior high.
Occasionally there would be our little neighbor, Mikey, running down the road to find grownups. “Ben has blood! BEN has BLOOD!” Mix wheels and steep roads and sand, or bare fingers and plate glass, or bike pedals and untied shoes, and accidents will happen. There will be blood.
By the age of 7 or 8 I was riding my bike along Rt. 16, past Memorial School to downtown South Natick: Olde Towne Market, church, the library, the waterfall. By the age of 10, now in Sterling, I was riding my bike everywhere. To the soccer fields, to my friend Wes’s house all the way across town, and eventually to work at Johnson’s Garage or the beach, hoping to run into friends there.
If there was any protocol to keep our parents informed, I’ve forgotten it. Eating at a friend’s house, or sleeping over, I’m sure demanded a phone call home. But at a young age, if I wasn’t spending an entire summer day in front of my computer at home, I was out on my own exploring my world, unaccounted for, until dinner.
This was a lot of set up for my main point: my kids do not have this. They don’t know what they’re missing, and we don’t know how this might handicap them later. The world is no more dangerous now. Seems it was already riddled with pedophiles needing help finding their lost dogs. We barely had seatbelts in the 70s. It feels like as parents we’re just holding on a lot tighter these days?
With this in mind, I’ve given Harry an extra measure of free range on this trip. Unintentionally at first!
On our first day in Reykjavik, we explored the city a bit, walked down to the waterfront, and then back up the hill and found a café. I was working away on my laptop after we finished our croissants and hot beverages. Harry said, “I’ll meet you back at our hotel.” I distractedly said okay, sure, thinking I’d catch up to him right outside in a minute.
10 minutes went by, and I realized I should probably get out there and join him. I thought he’d probably be looking in the windows of shops on the street outside. No sign of him. I went to the corner, looked up and down both streets. Gone baby gone. I circled the block, starting to worry that I lost my son in a foreign country. Finally I gave up and left proximity of the café and walked to our hotel on a parallel street 3 blocks away.
Harry was sitting in the sun on the front steps, just people watching. My heart rate normalized. I nonchalantly asked him, “How’d you know your way back?” He said, “I was paying attention and keeping track of where we were.” Duh. Same as we did before cell phones.
So every time on this trip he asks, “Can I go climb on the rocks, or the icebergs, or the seals, or …?” the answer is, “Yes. Remember, we don’t know if there are hospitals in Greenland. Just make sure there’s at least a body I can bring home to your mother.” He respects that protocol. I think he’s right when he said, “I’ve grown up a lot over the last few days.”
Me too. I’m still watching nearly his every free range movement from an invisible distance, and still checking for signs of breathing every morning when I wake up before him. But that’s on me.
On Thursday we went to the water taxi, put on a giant water-suit, got into the taxi, and started going to the restaurant.
The water was very choppy so we went flying. We caught two things on that boat: fish and air.
When we got to where we could see the restaurant, we were heading straight toward a rock! Just in time, we stopped and the boat driver, Snowflake, pulled out some fishing thingy. He showed us how to use it. He caught a fish. Dad caught a fish. Sarah caught a fish. And I caught two fish.
When we got to the restaurant, we saw the chef cut up the fish. He gave us white things from the head of the fish.
On our way back the water was really choppy. It made my butt hurt.
33 years
Slow hiker/quick runner/???? boater
22 years
???? hiker/????? runner/good boater
Today is midsummer, the longest day, and we met Sarah at Café Esmeralda. Me and dad told Sarah about geocaches and we left to get one. Then we went and joined a silent parade. Next we watched a short concert. Then we went to eat. Then we went to the island to get another geocache.
33 years
???? hiker/???? runner/???? boater
We arrived in our hostel cabin Monday afternoon to find we were not alone. We expected at least some of the other 3 bedrooms to be occupied, but all of them were. The fridge was stocked, common areas installed with personal items. Welcome to #HostelLife!
The Internet only works reliably when near the hostel’s café, which is closed Mondays. 😭 So I spent the afternoon on the cafe’s deck, swatting mosquitoes and breaking would-be café patrons the bad news. We saw a couple head into our cabin, so Harry ran down to greet them. Moments later, the couple was trying to reach the (closed) reception desk in the café.
They were a delightful Danish couple who had been booked into the hostel by a tour company, and had no idea it involved communal living. They thought they had the entire cabin (8 beds) all to themselves, and Harry must have burst that bubble big time. Better as they were just arriving back for the day, vs. during morning shower time! 🤣
We chatted for a while as they made other arrangements (no easy feat in a city with only one obvious hotel!), and reassured me that it was them, not us! “Have you ever heard of such a thing as staying with strangers?” They offered me a beer, and told me about the purpose of their visit: earlier that day they took a water taxi ride to the site of her helicopter pilot father’s tragic crash when she was 6, 46 years ago. She laid a flower and a lock of her curls over his water grave. By the end of our toasting to her dad, they had a hotel room waiting, and wished we would go stay with them there. Ha, and surrender this view?! We compromised, and gratefully shared their taxi into town, where we enjoyed our first of many meals at Café Esmeralda.
On our first “night” in Nuuk, with the whole cabin to ourselves now, we set up my camera on GorillaPod legs pointing out our cabin window. The sun had already set over the rocky hills around the hostel, out a side window of our cabin, but was still shining on the mountain tops. Little did I know it would rise 3 hours later straight through the middle of my time lapse!
Halló, recently Benj and I explored an island called Qasigiannguit Nuuat. First we had to wait for the tide to go down so we could get there.
Then we went to the weird stones that looked like they used to be a Minecart track.It lead us to a lighthouse looking thing I saw from the hostel. From the hostel it looked 4 feet tall but when we hiked to it we found out that it was more like 7 feet tall. When we walked past that, we saw a plastic bin with rocks in it. We walked even further on the island and saw a giant iceberg offshore.
Then we went down to the shore and saw another iceberg (see next paragraph). Then on our way back we did some parkour over the rocks.
I climbed 2 icebergs.
1.tiny, tall, dry…ish
2.large, pointy/smooth, sopping wet
Halló, welcome to migratory pebbles! Recently me and Benj went to Logan Airport and we flew to Reykjavík. Then we went to a hotel and watched four episodes of STRANGER THINGS. The next day we went to a tiny airport in Reykjavík and flew to Greenland. It was so snowy that it reflected the sunlight into my eyes, and you couldn’t close the window. Then we went to Nuuk and took a taxi to our hostel.
On the way to Logan Airport we stopped at REI and got these cool (actually pretty warm) waterproof hiking shoes. I also got zipper leg hiking pants/shorts.
My style of leisure travel is to walk everywhere I can. I see more of the destination, get a better ground-level feel for the place, benefit from the exercise, and save $$. Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris: all big cities where if there were a map of my cumulative walks over the years, they’d be painted red. Those maps would fail to capture the fact that I’d have my backpack and maybe even a roller board suitcase in tow.
I probably pulled this shit with Jessica a few times, politely tolerated at first during the honeymoon phase, before she ended it. Permanently. I want to say it was at the Copenhagen train station, walking a few blocks to our hotel with 2 young children and all our luggage. Fair enough I suppose.
Harry doesn’t know any better than to just go with it. (Or, gawd help him, he’s like me!) I’ll take that as the best ever father’s day present. We slept 2 hours max on our red eye flight to Keflavik Sunday morning, then stayed awake walking around town, no napping, until 10pm. On Monday after a 12 hour sleep, we hiked our luggage over to the domestic airport, Harry pushing his suitcase up the hills. When he stumbled, and I went back to check on him, he had a grin on his face. “I’m just not used to the gravity here yet.”
We’ll be back to Reykjavik in a week. Onward!
Harry and I are headed out on an adventure tonight. We’re excited!
For the last 3 years both Harry and Felicity have been going to overnight camp in Brevard, NC. Shout out to Gwynn Valley, a place we dearly love and will miss! But this year Felicity will be attending a dance intensive instead. So Harry asked if he could go camping with me rather than going alone to camp. Hell yeah!
We spun the globe and landed fingers on a place that was conveniently close, yet still dramatically remote: Greenland. And it turns out you can only get there via Iceland or Denmark. We’ve already enjoyed Denmark (other than Harry’s forehead vs. Tivoli Gardens gravity boat deck), so Iceland it is! And we may as well explore Iceland, too, while we’re there anyway…
The title of this post may seem addressed to myself. Getting off a plane and exploring a new place with my son will be the ultimate Father’s Day gift to myself. But the truth is, I’m addressing this post to my father, and dedicating this whole section of the blog to him. Dad was supposed to join us on this trip, but he suffered a freak Pickleball injury that sidelined him for the season. I wanted the trip to be his father’s day present, but instead a blog will have to do.
This blog is a combination of adventure trekking and photography, two things Dad instilled in me. (Was it nature or nurture? Do I have instinctual wanderlust, or did I learn it from watching him?)
Dad put a series of 35mm cameras with B&W film into my hands from a very young age. I learned the hard way such things as not swapping half-exposed rolls of film (gotta have the right ISO for this bright beach day!) in a “dark” corner of our station wagon. We developed film and made prints in his basement dark room. It was hours of intimate time spent together on weekends in the dark or dim red light. But first we needed to take the photos!
If you’ve seen a photo of me on a hike laden with camera body, multiple lenses, and tripod, just realize this is an extrapolation of my youth. With camera, canteen, and often binoculars strapped around my neck, Dad would take me hiking. He even dragged his large format camera (think old-timey with black curtain draped over the operator) around to get shots of landscapes or of me in the landscapes. We hiked to a place we called The Moon, which was the big water tank in Natick Town Forest. Great memories!!
Here’s to you, Dad. We’re thinking of you as we embark on this adventure, and hope you heal up before our next! 😘
Every other blog post was written in the moment, live on the ground. This last one is being written by me, Future Benj. Hindsight is not 20/20. Six weeks commit memory murder. I’ll do my best to piece these last few photos into a believable narrative. They’re from the zoo and the beach, so it shouldn’t be too hard! I seem to recognize the main characters. I’ll keep words to a minimum.
One thing you might not have noticed is that all the photos in this blog have a caption. You just need to hover your mouse cursor over them. If you don’t have a cursor, then use your finger to press down on the photo. Maybe the caption will pop up? It does on the Chrome app at least. Figure it out, and then reread the entire blog cover-to-cover to bring some new meaning into your life.
So this zoo adjacent to our hotel was created back in the 70s when this place must have been hopping with tourists from all corners of the globe.
A lot of people have asked Future Benj, “Did you see any jaguars?” The answer has been, “Yes, on our final day!”
There were lots of cool animals at this zoo, and they all seemed to be thriving. But you’ve been to the zoo before, right? You don’t need me to explain this to you. Animals in cages. But this last one’s my favorite.
After the zoo, we killed time by walking to Ponta Negra Beach. We hoped to find some delicious food options, but the beach vendors were all selling beer and candy. I guess if you’re in the right mood, that might be the perfect mix. But we headed back to the hotel and ate pizza at their one restaurant for the 3rd time. (This resort hotel used to have many!)
Maurice and I hit two geocaches near the airport, in what clearly appeared to be drug transactions to passing cars. I think we’d raise more eyebrows if it looked like anything else. We spent all afternoon and night at the airport just chilling out. There was nothing to do there. I got a sandwich and some sort of açaí drink. Eventually near midnight we went through security and boarded our night flight.
We dropped Eric off in Miami at much too early an hour, and proceeded on to Boston.
Now that we’re home safe and sound, here’s a collection of the Top 10 lessons from this trip, in case you want to skip the previous 14 blog posts. (I definitely recommend reclaiming that half hour of your life. You can still pretend you read it all.)
Until next adventure, Future Benj signing out.
We all woke up around 4:30am to get ready for our “sunrise contemplation” excursion. I drank a couple of coffees while 9 of us going on this boat ride assembled, and then we motored off into the darkness. We reached a big lake about 30 minutes before sunrise, and just sat there and contemplated. There were thick clouds in the sky and fog on the lake. There would be no sunrise, so I made my own on my phone while the rest of the boat continued to contemplate.
We had our last breakfast at Anavilhanas, and I chatted with a boy, maybe 12, from São Paulo who asked if I was a basketball fan after learning I’m from Boston. (Clearly he doesn’t know that in Boston we excel at all sports.) He’s a Houston Rockets fan. I should have invited him to Boston to reconsider his options. Cool kid, irregardless.
I skipped the morning hike excursion, my first bail, so I’d have enough free time to finally cross-stitch. I dragged it across continents, down rivers, and through jungles for 2 weeks. I wasn’t going to allow over-programming by our eco-resort to rob me of my hobby time. I spent two solid hours stitching some light blue around the fish in my scene. UNTIL I RAN OUT OF LIGHT BLUE!! This hasn’t happened to me ever, running out of a color. I must have lost a length of it at some point in my travels. In the 15 years I’ve been picking away at this project, I’ve probably been on light blue for 2+ years. There’s a strand of it on the armrest of a couch somewhere in the world. Note to self: hit Michaels and pick up some more Dimensions #17976! [Future Benj: I picked up the closest thing Michaels has. It’ll have to be close enough. Or I could pull out and redo the last 2 years worth of progress…]
Last lunch was delicious as always. Apple pie (Amazon deconstructed style) for dessert. And a cute little monkey watching from the trees next to our table. Something new every day! Sorry that this is our last.
At 2pm we were picked up for the long bumpy road back to Manaus.
By 4:30pm we were back at Tropical Manaus hotel. This place was really nice at some point maybe a decade or two ago.
It’s like a big old haunted palace. A ghost town. Creepy as shit.
But it has some nice Amazon river frontage.
We missed opening hours for the adjacent zoo, but we’re kind of expecting more of a pet cemetery anyway. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, since we have all day to kill before our red eye. But now to see if the one remaining restaurant at this resort actually opens at 7pm like they say…
