Shoveling the Boat

Snow shushes beneath my feet as it falls through the grate of the dock ramp to the water below. Thick fat snowflakes quickly coat my eyelashes, wet and white. The Disreputable Dog has gotten used to this route now although, like me, he is probably still wondering how we got ourselves roped into shoveling this boat. I mean, we don't even shovel at the house with the exception of the two steps. The rest will get packed down by feet and if I must drive I've got 4-wheel drive and can usually get out eventually. Even when it snows 5 ft in one snowfall (which it hasn't yet this winter) I don't shovel. The calm snow globe world has disappeared and I can hear the crash of the waves whipped into a frenzy even here in the calm protection of the bay. It's not a good day to be on a boat, I think. The sky is flashing lightning, which I don't think I've ever seen here, but it's muted by the clouds and there is no thunder. The wind is pulling at my scarf and my hat and I am glad that there are no exposed places for it to suck the heat away from me.

Soon I am warm enough from shoveling the heavy snow off the boat. Ever notice that shovels seem to have in-built heaters? My dog lies happily in the snow with his head resting on the side of the dock keeping an eye out for sea lions and seals but none appear. He is shedding his summer coat for the winter one right now. He loses about a dog a day. This time of year no chickadees hop over to pull it out for their nests (which, amazingly, he tolerates) and when I take the boat brush to him he luxuriates in it. Finally we are done and we walk back along the abandoned tourist shops. I like the dock sides a lot more in the winter when I have them to myself. No busloads of tourists unloading, no hundreds of pounds of fish being photographed and filleted. These shops are cute but they don't sell anything a local would need and so they are all shut and shuttered for the winter. The mountains loom over the sail masts as the soft snow quickly fills our lone footprints across the boardwalk and we head home to hot apple cider.

Living in a Snow Globe

Bald Eagle on old pier posts

I love this weather. It's like living in a real snow globe. Fat, luscious snow flakes whirling around and falling so fast they coat your eyelashes and clothing in seconds, the sea a quiet slate of dark gray. Every grumpy or cranky thought I've had this week flies out of my head in this kind of weather. I'm going to have to shovel the neighbor's boat in the harbor tonight. It will be fun. The Disreputable Dog and I will take our evening walk there tonight. I love walking in this kind of weather too - every noise is muted like it's under a blanket. Every surface is softened. The smells seem muted to my nose too but I know they're not really because the Disreputable Dog is really enjoying all the smells dug up by the snow plows and I am enjoying seeing the animal tracks that he finds by smell and that I normally can't see. I love winter! And this last Sunday we got out for our first ski of the season! Yay!

The Disreputable Dog loves it too. Look at that smile!

In Holland

Preface: I traveled through Morocco with a dear friend I met ten years ago in Ghana, West Africa. When we lived there people constantly asked us, "Are you twins?" which at the time seemed laughable because she is a least a foot taller then I am and has bright red hair while mine is brown not to mention the fact that she is from the Netherlands and I from North America. However, I often wonder if the Ghanians didn't see something beyond the surface, something other then "all white people look alike", because although it's been seven years since we saw each other last and much has happened to both of us in that time, both good and bad, it was as if we had only seen each other moments before. After Morocco I had the luxury of being able to travel to her home in Holland and finally meet her husband and two children (who thought it was about time the met me). It's one of the most amazing connections that seems to persist no matter how outwardly different our lives might appear and I am grateful for it.

So here are some images from a wonderful visit with a dear friend which included such delights as bicycling everywhere, playing with her kids, going horse riding, eating luscious Dutch cheese, joking with her husband, having dinner with her mother, bird watching at a local park, walking through autumn leaves, going grocery shopping. We were both recovering from salmonella that we caught in Morocco (did I mention that?) so we were lazier then we otherwise might have been. At the end we both felt so strange saying goodbye because in so many ways it felt like I had always been there, sleeping in their attic.

Notable Smells: farmlands and manure, rain and water, fresh cheese, autumn leaves, rich chocolate and hot tea, line dried laundry

Notable Noises: small children playing in the streets, the sound of bicycle bells, migrating geese, crunching of leaves underfoot, the sound of children in the house, laughter

Look at all those bicycles!!! There was about a kilometer of them, this picture doesn't show the half of them. This is the bus/ train station. I don't think there are this many bikes in the entire US. I love watching the bicylicists during rush hour in Holland: men with their ties flying out behind them, women in fashionable skirts and boots, and teenagers in packs often with linked arms down the pathways.

A village street. Notice the bicycles (you wouldn't imagine that I'm in favor of bicycle commuting from reading this post would you?). Here we went into a delightful store that specialized in freshly roasted nuts. Yum!

Fall colors at a lakeside park.

At a bike trail crossroads...and the bike I borrowed from my "twin's" neighbor. I tell ya', they don't make bikes like this in the USA. This was the limousine of bicycles. I have recently been trying to get a pedal power operated light for my bike because it is cold enough here that batteries freeze up and then I end up with no light. The main response I seem to be getting is that it isn't available because after all they would slow you down! Well, this lovely bike comes with one built into the frame and it even has an automatic setting that turns it on when it gets dusky out. And it may be that it slows me down but you'd hardly notice unless you were in a race and that's not something I'm planning on doing any time soon. Ooo - and this has a cool built in lock that just goes around the back tire, no need for a bike rack. I want one!

My "twin" and her two children (faces obscured) using a common mode of transportation. When we went to pick up her oldest child (rear seat) at school I noticed that only two of the parents had driven to pick up their kids, the rest had either ridden bikes with similar child seating arrangements or walked. Notice too, the lack of helmets, the Dutch think Americans are absolutely hysterical over helmet safety.

Just boating through the neighborhood. Something that one can do most anywhere in Holland due to all of the canals.

Traditional thatch roofing on a farm house.

A picture of the village that my "twin" lives in.

Unusual Cultural Differences

It's not something that would usually come to one's attention but there you go. Historically, it would seem, that there was a cultural difference between how Moroccans and Scottish would deal with their political rivals and bring down monarchs. In Scotland it seems the story of anyone of historical political importance ended with "and they were beheaded in the year...". In Morocco beheading wasn't so much the thing, they perfered to poison them and the historical literature is full of tales of the various poisons used and the tricks of applying them.

Morocco: People & Patterns

A hip shot from the Casablanca Medina to the Mosque

I love watching people. So do the men in Morocco. All of the cafes & tea shops have their chairs on one side of the table facing the sidewalk. The men sit here and watch. If women come or couples they are usually escorted to an upstairs seating where no eyes will pry on them. In the west if a strange man has been staring at a woman and she catches his eye he will immediately drop his gaze. Not so in Morocco. As a result the men stare greedily at all the women and the women look at no one. It gave us the sense that women are judged responsible for men not being able to control themselves rather then men for for not having that control. We sat among the men on the sidewalk. In other places that we have both been this would have been reacted to negatively and we would have been shooed away but here, although they clearly found it odd, they tolerated us and we were able to watch the streets too although we were careful to never meet the eyes of the men sitting near us.

A cat & an Arabic sign. We found that the relative health of the cats were a pretty good indicator of whether or not we wanted to stick around in any one place. That and our golden rule of travel: If there are no women & children around it's likely not safe for you to be there particularly by yourself. We only visited one place like that and the cats were sad to see. It was on the coast and it was clear that at another time of year it might be a wonderful place but we did not linger.

A yellow door! Look at those colors! The house, the door, and the sari.

Women walking to the mosque in Casablanca.

Woodwork. This work is gorgeous and has been used liberally int the newest and bestest and biggest mosque in Morocco. We quietly but cynically commented to each other "Oh, that's what happened to all the large cedar trees in the Atlas Mountains" as we had only seen one dead specimen of the sizes they had once reached.

I love this contrast with the Mosque on the left and the apartments on the right. The Mosque is a grand piece of architecture and amazing artistry. Of course, the story of the Mosque that is presented to the public mostly leaves out the fact that it was built over the city's largest slum and that thousands of people were displaced without compensation to make way for it.

More mosaics.

Look at all those satellite dishes!

A most scrumptious and traditional meal.

Thursday Morning Antics of a Drowned Rat

I bring this brief pause from the travelogue... I still want to share more about Morocco & then there's still the Netherlands but my morning has taken my thoughts elsewhere. Besides, I have a scrumptious picture of a Moroccan meal which, of course, I left on my memory stick at home today and it has disrupted my plans for the next post. So after this message we will be back to our scheduled programing.

And now - a brief moment of crankiness (not over anything life shattering or even life altering but a little mundane morning thing). It's pouring down snow out today. That means although its mostly frozen it lands as wetness on humans and slush on the streets, big fat flakes the size of mice and just at the freezing point. It's cold and gray and makes you wish for nothing other then to curl up in front of a warm fire with a hot beverage and dream of that hot weather in Morocco. On my way to work this morning, as usual, I was bicycling, I blew a tire. Blew it all over the place in the middle of the road.

I heard a funny noise and then felt a lurch. Naturally I stopped to see what the trouble was but I encountered difficulty as a) wasn't exactly light enough out to see b) my glasses were so covered with rain that I couldn't see through them and c) when I took my glasses off I couldn't really see either. What I could see was a smear of green goop which usually coats the inside of the tire tube, and I could see that my actual tire was no longer on the wheel rim. So, I attempted to take said wheel off the bike so I could at least get the tire & the donut tube off as they were currently caught up in the braking system making even pushing the bicycle a no go. So here I am kneeling in a puddle of slush with water streaming down my face in rivulets trying to get the lever to move but it won't because it's frozen solid. I'm off to plan B which is to use the bungee cords I have on my bike to attempt to secure the said tire & tube out of the way of the brakes and the rim so that I might be able to push it the rest of the way to work. I am successful in this and begin to push. Let me say that pushing a bicycle in half a foot of slush is a lot harder then pedaling through it.

It feels like a loooonnng way to work and I keep hoping that some co-worker will drive by and take pity on me but of course, I take the scenic route which my co-workers, in their rush to work, probably avoid. Finally I get to the location of the covered bike rack at work. I take off my dripping wool hat and my glasses and wipe the water from my face. Then I get back to work on the lever. I grunt, I make loud noises, you know, the kinds of noises you do to put a little extra umph behind your arms. I notice a few co-workers scurrying past, I'm sure they're all terrified to come too close and after all, they just want to hop from their nice dry cars to their nice dry offices and avoid any lunatics in the parking lot. I do succeed in getting the lever to move finally and remove the rear wheel. I park the bike in the rack and next to it the tire and the rear wheel frame and lock it all together, the tube I take with me and then, with my glasses still clenched between my teeth I make my way to the door. My colleagues comment, as I walk determinedly to my cubicle that I look a little wet, a little like a drowned rat.

On dropping my sopping wet outer gear and wishing I had a towel for my hair which is wetter then if I had taken 10 showers this morning I inspect the tube. It has been a spectacular blow out and will not be repairable (and of course, the nearest open bike shop is in Los Anchorage). My male colleagues all gather round to look at the tire and make comments, they laugh at my story, they make useful suggestions as to who might have an extra tire lying around of that size, they suggest that I am utterly crazy for biking in this weather (except for one co-worker who actually passed me on his bike who comments "You didn't look like you were in trouble or I would have stopped"). It is the female colleagues who, after the male colleagues are done laughing and review the events, quietly offer me & my beleaguered bike a ride home in the evening.

Morocco: The Atlas Mountains

You didn't think I was done showing you pictures of Morocco, did you? I fully intended on posting more last night when my jet lag finally caught up to me and I fell fast asleep at 5pm on my couch and it was all I could do to drag myself to bed at 9 when I was awoken by a distinct lack of circulation. Here I present to you the Atlas Mountains.

The village of Baihlil

Olives for sale! Oh, delicious, scrumptious olives! And the only thing that didn't leave your teeth feeling furred with sugar after eating them.

Our gracious host in Baihlil showing off the pride of his hearth, the pounded silver dishware. Interestingly enough the man only spoke Arabic and German and so, after stuttering through my French (in which my ears are better then my tongue), I suddenly found myself in full communication in a language I did not expect to find in such a tiny little village.

A donkey in the protected Azrou Forest. So strange to see donkeys and apes side by side (unfortunately the pictures documenting the event are not all that good).

Man traveling along side the road.

The formal entrance to a house that is dug into the cliff sides in the village of Baihlil.

Barbary Ape mum and two kids.

Village mosque.

The entrance gate to the village of Baihlil with men chatting at its entrance.

The Azrou Forest which looks for all the world like a Ponderosa Pine forest for those of you who know them. But these trees are cedar and larch. Unfortunately the giant trees of ore have most been harvested for fancy woodwork in the Mosques.

An Atlas Mountain view.

There is one particularly funny story about our Atlas Mountain trip. We wanted to go to Bab Merba (or lake Merba) to see the famous bird life there (after all we are -ologists). On arriving at the lake we started to laugh. Our taxi driver smiled nervously at us. There was no water in the lake. Not a drop. Sheep and cattle grazed across it although it was mostly devoid of plant life as well. Nobody had bothered to tell us that the lake is only full of water in the rainy season - if we wanted to go to the lake well, they would take us. We walked across the lake enjoying the sounds of the Berber tongue which flitted to our ears through the autumn colored trees (another surprise) from the sheep herders.