Manufacturing Content

South American Roundup

So, how was South America, in ten words or less?
Although an eternity for a vacation, two months and ten days is a short time to be in one continent.  We’ve met people who are spending a year in one country down here, working, leaning the language and getting to know the people.  Sometimes I envy those travellers who can pick a country and see the shit out of it.  I’m a bit too ADD to spend so much time in one place, and this constant changing of surroundings is heaven to me.  Although I’ve been to Peru before – and thought I was somewhat prepared for South America – I’ve seen places, landscapes and people I would never have imagined.  I can’t wait to get to those places that I never thought I would visit, like Africa and India.  Even out next stops in

Spain and France will be incredible new experiences.

Was that ten words?

Not really, but I’ll talk to the editor and see if we can’t clean it up.
Right on.  Make me sound smart, if you can.

I’ll do what I can.  So what were the high and low points of South America?
Do you mean literally or figuratively?

Um, both?
Okay, well literally, the high point was Aconcagua, Argentina the highest mountain outside the Andes.
Figuratively, the high point would probably be, of all things, the bus ride from Copacabana to La Paz, Bolivia during our first month of travel (which was not an overnight, by the way).  I don’t know if I can explain why - the scenery, while picturesque, was easily trumped by countless other landscapes.  The bus wasn’t particularly comfortable.  If I had to guess, it was probably just the first moment on the trip when I felt at ease, and started to get into the groove of traveling.  I had the love of my life at my side, a jar of Pringles, and all my belongings in a bag under the bus, and that was all I needed.  This feeling has come and gone many times since, but that first time was special.

Wow, deep, bro.  And the lows?
Well, the literal low point was probably doing yoga on the beach one morning on Iha Grande, Brazil – looking out into the Atlantic and keeping an eye on the forest behind me in case any pumas decided I looked tasty.
And the figurative low was eating the bad chicken on Ilha Des Sol in Bolivia, and staying in a hotel room with no heat.

How about your fellow travellers, how have they been?
Great.  I’d say the best travel friend we’ve made remains Simon the dog in Bolivia.  But the people are good company too.  I’m particularly impressed with the old folks trekking along down here.  Mom, Dad (not that you’re “old”, of course) take heed: you can travel anywhere, do it!

And how many Canadians have you met?
Only about four groups, two of whom were from Quebec.  C’mon Canucks, start representing in South America!  Tough it out in Peru and Bolivia.  Party it up in Brazil.  And eat steak with a spoon for $10 in Argentina (oh, the steak is sooooo good here).  And do it now because already prices are starting to go up.  Argentina has doubled in the last two or three years (but still cheep) and Brazil is already ridiculously overpriced.  Bolivia and Peru are still cheep like chips, but not for long.

What’s been your biggest complaint about the trip so far?
Well, in Peru and Bolivia, it was “Why don’t they just charge a little bit more for tourism and do it right!”  This was in response to shoddy tour operators and hostels that were only concerned with getting the most tourists through as quickly as possible.  However, Argentina has erased that complaint completely.  For just a few more pesos, you get a fantastic tourist experience.

Will you be back?
I’d love to go back to Bolivia and Argentina.  Bolivia was a great growing country, and I’d jump at the chance to go back and help in some way.  Argentina needs to be visited again with the luxury of taking K shopping.

For shoes?
Yes, for shoes.  The poor thing has to survive the whole ten months with only three pairs of shoes – none of which make her taller than me, or have sparkles.

Sounds like you’re really roughing it.
You bet!

D.

Slightly freaked

So, we are officially 38 days away from leaving.  On paper, cutting-and-running seems like an easy thing to do.

Step One:  Give away all your furniture
Step Two:  Buy a plane ticket, a backpack, sunscreen and some water purification pills
Step Three:  Fly away

However, reality has a way of getting all caught up in practicalities, so we’re mired in a slew of paperwork, research, and logistics.  Luckily, K is a logistics Queen.  And, after a few cracks of the whip, it turns out I’m at least a Prince, maybe a Duke, or a local Magistrate?  Something less officious and powerful than Queen, anyway.

But, as she said, by focusing on one thing at a time we’ll get through the list in no time.  This can be tougher than it seems.  Boo-urns to those who say “getting there is half the fun” because this stage, this pre-planning, is not “getting there” in the traditional sense of the term.  The trip is one whole year of “getting there”, where the actual destinations are secondary to the experience.

I can’t wait for the real “getting there” to start, because it will be more than half the fun.

Today, for example, I can only focus on the event horizon, when the pull of the unknown is far too great to turn back. 

When the paperwork is all done, and the goodbyes have all been said. 

When our accumulated junk has been safely stowed in my parent’s basement, our cats safely lodged in a townhouse in Bowmanville, and all of our remaining worldly possessions safely checked at the Pearson Airport. 

When she sips her first airport Caesar (her travel drink of choice – a great combination of veggies and alcohol) and I sip my first whiskey (my travel drink of choice - sophisticated and concentrated), and we are the only two people left in the world.

That, my friends, is when the real journey begins.

D.

‘Twas the season

Growing up, the lure of all those mysterious presents under the tree made me the sort of kid who got up at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morning.  My poor little brain just couldn’t handle the excitement.  For those who know me as cool-as-a-cucumber, this may come as a surprise, but it won’t be for those who know me as an overgrown child.

With the exception of the one Christmas I spent working in a hotel in the Swiss Alps, this was the only year I spent away from my parents, but that year in Switzerland remains the only one I’ve spent away from family.  I know, I know - it’s tough to deal with for the loved ones who weren’t woken up absurdly early.  But rest assured I’ll always remember Christmas morning as a child.

I remember the huge fir trees we decorated in our basement, and trying to find my presents in my Dad’s office.  I never did find my Mom’s secret stash.  I remember the vain efforts my parents made to try to get me to sleep in on Christmas morning – keeping me up late, having everyone open a present the night before.  They never worked.  At least I was always allowed to wake up my sister, who fought through the grogginess and was always a good sport.  We would sneak to the basement, turn on the Raffi Christmas album, and open our stockings and presents from Saint Nick. 

And I remember the traditions as well.  Brunch and dinner on Christmas morning were always special.  They were one of the few occasions that my Dad, the chef, would dust off his fancy tools, don an apron, and cook a family meal.  For a while, we went to church on Christmas Eve, but that fizzled as we grew, and that evening became one for the family to gather and watch a movie – never a festive one – or play a game.  We would drop off a box of food at the food bank and feel like good citizens.

Extended family was never near at hand, and we never had the stress of visiting multiple houses.  In fact, this year’s trip to W&J’s house for dinner was the second time I had ever left my house on Christmas day.

My recently minted family, including my still-blushing bride and our two kitties, started the long road of building our own traditions and rituals this year.  K, who lives for this time of year, had the apartment decorated within the first week of December, and quickly set to work on her yearly Christmas banner.  We put the Santa hats on the cats for about thirty seconds, and giggled at their displeasure.  Sufjan Stevens’ “Songs for Christmas” collection magically appeared on our iPod.  And we hung our new stockings.

Christmas morning, we woke up and curled up on the couch in our un-insulated sun-room, and opened the presents under our glowing tree.  We laughed, and awed, and gave our cats their catnip toys, and glowed ourselves in the love and happiness of the season.  I felt that this was the start of many traditions, some new to me and some old.

And while I did wake up at 5:00 a.m., the lure of presents under the tree wasn’t quite enough to force me out of our warm bed this year – not with a beautiful Christmas angel lying beside me.  No sir, this year, I made it to 7:00.

D.

Why?

K lies asleep beside me, her question still ringing in me ears. She asks not because she doesn't know the answer, but rather because she just wants to be reminded and reassured.

Why are we traveling around the world?

For all of her big talk and bravado, K worries a lot about the coming adventure. In the simplest terms, to answer her question directly, we are taking ten months out of our lives in order to really live our lives.

Does it get anymore complicated?  Is there really a need to further justify this little adventure of ours?  I mean, if you are going to put your life on hold for 10 months, seeing the world isn’t such a bad way to go.  What’s the alternative, having a baby?  Same time frame, less responsibility, you decide (please note that I can’t wait to be a Dad and for K to be a Mom – we’ve got names already, try not to steal them).

What are we doing?

But, she is right.  There is more to it than that.  We’ve always called this trip a “learning experience” and a “life changing voyage”.  We are wholly expecting to return with a brand-new pair of (rose, verdant, crystal?) coloured glasses.  And, what’s more, this trip has already changed me in so many ways.  Because of it, I’ve learned to scrimp and save.  I’ve gotten myself into the best shape of my life (whatever that’s worth).  And, I’ve become a better person because of it.

After only the planning stages, I’ve increased my knowledge of the world around me by leaps and bounds.  Go ahead, ask me about Africa – I can finally rhyme off a half-dozen countries on that continent! 

But, but, but…

Oh, sure.  It isn’t all fun and games.  We’re without a home, or a car.  Our comfortable little lives here in O-Town will be put on hold.  Our family and friends won’t see us forever, even as we wean them onto our blogs, and enticed them with promises of photos, postcards and travel opportunities while we’re on the road.

Sure, we’ve put everything we’ve been doing for the last three years into this trip, but it all comes back to the most simple of statements:

We’re traveling around the world for ten months.

See ya.

D.

Mmm…. Cupcakes…

Following the ongoing theme that is being explored in recent posts, here’s another story about why K is an awesome wife.

I found out last Monday that I would need to bring food in for our office Halloween Party, or our “Fright-oriented non-specific, and certainly not satanic, gathering” – for the sensitive.  With every intention of baking, I emailed K at work to ask her for the recipe for this great pumpkin loaf she made a few weeks ago.  I like to don an apron and shmush my hands in floury dough every so often.

So, I get home after work to find her in the middle of cooking up a storm which included puff-pastry topped chicken-pot-pie. Upon further inspection, I noticed that she had cupcakes in the oven, and her mom’s famous home-made icing in the mix-master.

The end result was cupcakes topped with orange-coloured icing and green icing stems sticking out from the centre – little cupcake pumpkins.

“This kicks-ass, K,” I told her.

“Oh, it wasn’t anything special.  The icing was so simple and the cupcakes are routine.  And I really wanted to eat one, so it was a bit selfish of me.”  As it turns out I married a woman for whom making two-dozen cupcakes for my co-workers is a selfish act.

“But they’re soooo good!” I pushed on.  “The icing especially.”

“It’s nothing, I just mixed in a bit of vanilla, lemon, and cinnamon.  You know, regular home-made icing…”

Of course, the first empty tray at the “Fright-oriented non-specific, and certainly not satanic, gathering” held her cupcakes.

D.

iTouch, therefore I am

The award for best present ever, and also winner for coolest gadget ever, is the iPod Touch.  It's giver, the winner of the accompanying "best present giver", is K, whose recent awards, "best wife ever", "best dinner ever", and "wedding planner of the year" was surprised by the award.

"I thought I had a good shot," said K.  "but I knew that I needed something extra to push me over the top.  Then I got the idea to have it engraved.  I think he appreciated it.

D, the gift's recipient, could not be reached directly for comment, but in a released statement said "I can't talk right now, I'm too busy using my iPod Touch to blog while surfing the Internet and making a new mix CD for C, K colleague who keeps me in well stocked with Turbonegro tunes - they're this really kick-ass Norwegian punk-rock band."

D.

A long, long time ago, in a small village far away…

Well, now that the full effect and meaning of the best day of my life has sunk in, there is nothing left to do but look at the photos and reflect.

I remember the moment before the ceremony, waiting in the back room of the restaurant with my parents, K’s parents, and my soon-to-be little sister-in-law, dolling out last-minute instruction and having lovingly hand-made corsages pinned on our garments.  I knew she had arrived – I could hear the media scrum in the main floor below us – and tried to catch a glimpse of her dress, her hair, maybe even her eye.  The minstrel was ready, the bride was here, and everyone was seated with quiet anticipation, getting their tissues ready.

I walked down the isle, following my parents, and followed by K’s.  It was a quick walk, but the seconds stretched as I ran through the memories I shared with each guest I passed.  I savoured it, as I savoured the anticipation of waiting for K to come up the stairs.  There was no stress, no worries, only giddy nerves jumping around in my gut, hoping I would remember my vows amidst K’s radiance. 

I saw the back of her head first, then her dress, and not until she turned the corner, and I had time to take in all of her wedding pageantry, did I see my wife.  We stared at each other, me giving her strength and support as she tried to hold herself together, and her granting me the fortitude to do so.

She is always the most beautiful woman in any room, and I only have eyes for her.  That day, however, she might as well have been the only woman who ever existed.  Her dress was perfect for her, for the day, for the venue.  Her “wedding hair” was a beautiful, natural display.  And her eyes shone with love and elation for the event that had finally, after much planning and toil, come.

Then, after the ceremony, and forever after that, we were husband and wife. 

K, in her eternal eloquence, has already summed up the day to a tee – although she could have gone into a bit more detail about how great she looked.  Her account, including photos from our fabulous photographer, is more detailed and better written.  Whether you were a guest or not, it is essential reading.

Thanks to all who made the day special.

D.

Coming down

In my pre-wedding blog-abstinence, I actually started about a dozen wedding related posts.  Most were deemed too gushy, too cutesy, or too close to the things I wanted to say to K on the wedding day itself and were scrapped, or chopped up and used in this post…

One of them was about a comment that K made in the week leading up to the wedding about how she was “Christmas excited” about it.  The significance of this is that K lives for the yuletide.  If you’ve been to one of her Christmas dinners, you’ve had a taste of this.  Since she worked at Christmas stores over the holidays as a student, and grew up in a house that was a Christmas store for at least three months of the year, I can understand where this comes from.  And I’m thrilled that the idea of getting married to little ol’ me can solicit the same level of feelings. 

Just call me Santa.

K has been in tireless and unstoppable party-planning mode for the last year.  In fact, it started exactly one year before the wedding date as we sat in what would become our venue and made a guest list, which hasn’t changed much since.

A casual observer would only guess at the amount of effort she’s poured into the day since that starting gun went off – but I’m well beyond being a casual observer.  I know how much she cared about it, and that her mind has been writing lists, checking things off, and planning for every single contingency, non-stop.

Now, granted I had only a limited vantage point on the wedding day itself, but I would have to say that it paid off.  The day went off without a hitch – unless you count us getting hitched (haw-haw). 

As we know, after all the presents are unwrapped, and the stockings removed from the chimney, the post-Christmas blues start to set in.  Sadly, this is where my little holiday season metaphor starts to fall apart.  Despite stubborn jet-lag and coming back to work after two glorious weeks off, I’ve never felt better, and K is more relaxed that I’ve seen her in months.

And in case you need more good news, Christmas is already just around the corner!  In fact, the malls already have their hideously early decorations and displays up and running.  Ah, ‘tis the season, ‘round and ‘round we go.

D.

Turkey for Thanksgiving

You know, I’ve never properly had a Thanksgiving turkey dinner.  Sure, there have been close calls such as Pietro’s noble attempt at student cooking in ’05, which will be forever known as the “pureed potatoes incident”. 

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. 

Thanksgiving dinner in my childhood home was always a culinary adventure, and I would inevitable show up to school on Tuesday morning with envy-inspiring stories of “duck a l’orange” or “braised lamb”, owing to the fact that a) we were a family of four, and cooking a whole turkey would mean eating leftover turkey for weeks and b) my dad’s a Swiss chef, and “turkey and gravy with all the fixins” is just not in his repertoire. 

I merely bring it up as a moderately clever segue into the best Turkey experience ever.  In fact, even the Thanksgiving part is merely incidental.  What I’m really trying to say here is that the best Thanksgiving turkey ever was actually honeymoon in Turkey. 

Dinner on said occasion was chicken, stuffed peppers, tuna casserole, salad, and a variety of melons for desert, prepared by the crew of our Turkish Mediterranean cruise, enjoyed in the company of two other Canadian couples, and one Turkish economist.  Over delicious Effes beers, we gave thanks to being on a sunny boat cruise instead of in the rainy fall of Canada, then we probably talked politics for a few hours before falling asleep to the gentle rocking of the boat on the calmest, clearest water in the world.

I had visited Turkey before, at the tail-end of my “Finding Myself European Tour 2001”.  At 5 am this morning, when jet-lag woke me up, I re-read my old travel-journal entries from my time in Turkey.  It’s incredible how much a country can change in seven years. 

But equally incredible is how much a person can change.  And for that, for finding my wife, and finding new strengths in myself through her, I am thankful.

D.

Songs for a Fall Wedding

This mix CD was part of the long string of wedding favours and special touches that K and I prepared for our guests.

1. Let’s Never Stop Falling in Love – Pink Martini
2. World Container - The Tragically Hip
3. The Builder
4. Don’t Forget - Martha Wainwright
5. Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe - Okkervil River
6. I Found a Reason - Cat Power
7. Start a War - The National
8. Cinder and Smoke - Iron & Wine
9. We Will Still Need a Song - Hawksley Workman
10. Wolf Like Me - TV on the Radio
11. You're Pretty Good Looking (for a girl) - The White Stripes
12. Nothing in This World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl - The Kinks
13. To Be Alone With You - Sufjan Stevens
14. Wildflowers - Tom Petty
15. Beach Day
16. The Crane Wife 1 and 2 - The Decemberists

Also, now playing on the side-bar, are the first round of photos from the wedding. Enjoy responsibly.

D.