We are home now. I found my SPF lip balm. It was on the coffee table.
And we are back just in time- it is supposed to snow tomorrow!
You know who else would be excited about the snow? Powder.
Powder is the polar bear that graced the wing of our plane this afternoon. Much better than Joe-Bob the badger, imho. (Though the flight crew might not have concurred- they did not introduce him during the safety announcement this time; I had to google it when I got home.)
It was an interesting plane flight today all around. First of all, did you know that Stroopwafels are available for purchase as part of Frontier's "Breakfast on the Fly" offering? Regular readers of this blog* already know about the international delicacy that is the Stroopwafel.
There was also quite the interesting cast of characters** onboard with us.
A girl (approximately 13 years old?) carried on three stuffed animals, all cats. This seemed like a rather liberal interpretation of either the one personal item rule or the therapy animal rule.
The guy in the window seat of our row started mumbling to me towards the end of the flight, which I did not notice initially because my eyes were close and my earbuds were in. He wanted us to get up so he could go sit by his friend. "This way you girls can have more room," he mumbled (I think). His friend was sitting a few rows ahead, in a window seat, with no one in his middle or aisle. This was very nice of the guy to offer but why did he wait until the captain announced we were beginning our descent to do so?
My favorite was the man sitting two rows behind us, who, prior to takeoff, asked the flight attendant if she was the one who made the landing announcement. He explained that he would like her to say "we will be landing shortly" rather than "we will be on the ground shortly" because there are many ways to reach the ground, and not knowing if the plane was going to use 'landing' to do so gives him anxiety.
These are real people.
Then again, I seriously considered asking the flight attendant for one of the Frontier trading cards***, so maybe I should reign in on the judging a little bit.
Most importantly, the flight got us home safely, on time, and with our luggage, and for that I am of course grateful. Flying is wonderful and vacations are wonderful, but home is wonderful too.
*Hi Mom!
**Speaking of interesting cast of characters, our book club selection for this month was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie. I finished it yesterday- as Emily pointed out, a new record for days reading was completed in advance of actual book club meeting date- and it was really good. Check it out.
***They are probably intended for children but age was not specified in the seat-back booklet which advertised the cards' existence.
A week or so before we left for this vacation, Mom suggested that it might be a good idea to rent a car. I concurred. The resort we'd be staying at looked to be a good distance from the airport. There would be a small town about a mile down the road, but it was unclear how often or reliably the local "safari bus" ran. Taxis were a possibility but could get expensive quickly, and walking to town didn't sound like a real viable option. So Mom set about to reserve the car, provided I would agree to drive it.
See, they drive on the left side of the road in the Virgin Islands.
I said yes and figured it would be an adventure.
When we landed, our little red Ford Focus* was waiting for us. Things didn't get off to a tremendous start owing to my driving out of the lot with the parking brake on.
(Which, really- why? I feel like this should not be held against me.)
Once I'd gotten the parking brake off (and put the car in D instead of L**), the transition out of the airport and on to the real roads was actually pretty smooth. You drive on a one-way road that merges gently from the left into the two-way traffic.
Ugh, but then you have to make a turn.
So as I discovered during my four days puttering around, driving in the left lane isn't that hard. It's just like driving in the passing lane of a two-lane road. What is much more difficult is navigating turns from the left lane. You have to really think about which way traffic is coming from, and which lane you need to go toward, and convince your brain that what it wants to do is wrong. I was honked at more than once for not turning left quickly enough. And the roundabout! Those are complicated enough when I'm driving at home!
I'm happy to report that there were no major incidents, though, and actually the most challenging part of driving had nothing to do with what side of the road I was on. The most challenging thing was the actual roads themselves.
The islands of St. Thomas and St. John are small and hilly. To get from point A to point B, one has to follow the terrain, which usually means going up and over. And in such a compact space...have you ever wondered what it would be like to drive in MarioKart but for real?!?!
Imagine careening down a 45 degree slope, and also making a hairpin turn halfway through. Or coming over the crest of a hill so steep that you can't see which direction the road continues until you get there. And the speed bumps! They really like their speed bumps. Potholes too- the abandoned red and green shells of the course, if you will.
Another unique driving experience was taking the car ferry over to St. John. They are only able to load and unload the ferry from one end. Therefore, in order for cars to drive off the ferry facing forwards, those cars have to load the ferry facing backwards. It is already a little nerve-wracking driving your vehicle onto a barge that's listing just ever-so-slightly back and forth. Having to do so backwards, and then having to fit the car in a narrow lane and within a foot of the car behind you, just seems like a lot to ask. And when I really thought about it...wouldn't it be easier to back off the ferry? Because the spacious parking lot where you'd make the Y turn would be more forgiving to a small error than the cramped boat, no?
But all's well that ends well. I managed to successfully navigate the ferry situation both to and from St. John, and felt like, overall, the driving on the left and in the hilly terrain went fine.
(This minor damage to the rental car might tell a different tale, but it popped right back in so MOVE ALONG FOLKS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.)
*It was little and red like Stella but it was NOT Stella. It smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke and was not nearly as fuel-efficient. I called him Stanley instead.
Now that I have been to all 50 states, I've turned my attention to additional challenges*. Among them is visiting all 59 of our national parks. I've only been to 22 so far, and getting to all of them will be a tall order. (There's at least one in Alaska that is so remote it has no roads in or to the park- you have to take a bush plane! But it does have bears so I think it'll be worth checking out.) (There's also one in American Samoa. Hmm. That could be tough.)
Today I got to cross a big one off the list, though, as we went to Virgin Islands National Park.
As you can see, our selfie game at the park headquarters was not on point. It was blindingly sunny, hence the sunglasses, but the glasses made it impossible to see the phone screen. Also, my mom's hair...
Virgin Islands National Park is located on St. John, one of the three main US Virgin Islands. (We are staying on St. Thomas; the third is St. Croix which unfortunately we won't have time to visit this trip**.) To get there we took a pleasant half hour car ferry ride across Pillsbury Sound. Looking back as we crossed, we got a nice view of the condo we are staying at.
Upon arrival in St. John, we took the above terrible selfie and chatted with the park rangers to get their suggestions for the day. Also did a little shopping at park headquarters but I really feel that those purchases support a good cause so it's fine that I bought three different things. Maybe four***.
Next we drove along the north shore of the island, and stopped at the scenic vistas along the way, each more picturesque than the last. Here I am at the overlook of Maho Bay.
I mean, seriously.
We continued driving, and made our way to the ruins of the Annaberg Sugar Mill. The buildings were cool and the views were great, but the best part is that there was an interpreter there sharing traditional food and drink! Though there's a slight possibility that the methods of preparation they used might not have been completely authentic to the 1700s.
The "local drink" was delicious and tasted like Kool-Aid. Oh. Yeah.
After a brief stop for lunch, we returned to Maho Bay, this time to the beach. There were several snorkelers in the water, so after setting up our towels and chairs, we waded into the water to see what the fuss was all about. And it was a pretty sweet fuss- there were several sea turtles out swimming around!!! I probably saw at least four different ones, at distances of 15 yards away to as close as a couple of feet! It was truly incredible.
The day concluded with some more relaxing on the beach. I will now watch this video whenever I am having a stressful day, and would encourage you to do likewise.
*Others include seeing each MLB team play a game at their home stadium (19/30), and visiting all of the Big Ten campuses (11/14). Can I interest anyone in a trip to Tampa, Oakland, Houston, Arlington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Iowa City, East Lansing, or Piscataway???
**Even more so because they have the rum factories, and we all know how much I love factory tours. And rum.
***To be fair, the fourth item was lip balm with SPF 20 rating because I might have left mine at Mom's house, or it might have fallen out on the plan, who can know for sure. And sunburnt lips are the worst. And probably unhealthy. And the lip balm tastes like coconut.
They are pretty red right now, though not as red as Emily's knees. And I really can't complain about a sunburn, since the forecast was for rain all week and instead we woke up to this-
So, yeah, St. Thomas is awesome!!!
We arrived yesterday in the late afternoon. It was a little humid- we could tell it had very recently rained when we got off the plane- but it has since dried out.
Today was completely gorgeous. We started the day with breakfast at Margaritaville. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable re: the Margaritaville franchise, as I have dined in their establishments in other tropical destinations, but this was something a little different. It was a whole Margaritaville-branded resort. Jimmy Buffett must have more money than God at this point.
The restaurant and resort were actually both very nice, and the location right on the beach was lovely, but the food was just meh.
After breakfast we returned to our resort, and hit our beach.
Other than to occasionally go in the water, I did not move for several hours.
I mean, can you blame me?
Sunburn? Worth it. Skipping lunch? Worth it. Sharing the beach with two iguanas* and this weird old guy? Um...
We finally pulled ourselves away from the beach** in the late afternoon, and did a little exploring of the island. We made our way to Drake's Seat to watch the sunset. Per my vast internet research:
The bench is named after the British privateer Sir Francis Drake, who is said to have used the bay as an anchorage point for his ships and may have climbed to this vantage point as a way to identify ships to later plunder.
The sunset was kind of a bust as the bench faces north; equally disappointing, we did not see any plunderable ships.
So we headed to a different overlook, this one facing roughly southwest over the city of Charlotte Amalie, and watched the sun go down from there.
All in all, was a pretty great day! Now if the lady in the condo next to ours ever gets off the phone, I'll get some sleep and get ready for another busy day tomorrow. I am definitely putting sunscreen on all extremities tomorrow.
*Picture was taken while lying on my beach towel and with no zoom. That iguana was like 2 feet from me. Weird old guy was also closer than I would have preferred.
**So there I was, ready to leave the beach, when we learned that it was just one beach down the road from the location used to film the Hannah and her Horse DirecTV commercials!!! Which you know Emily & I have been quoting nonstop since then. (https://youtu.be/EVgp62LGYr0, if you need a refresher)
The best part of flying Frontier is finding out which animal is on your plane's wing. What would it be this time? A moose? An eagle? Maybe a dolphin, since the plan is headed to Florida? Or maybe I'd hit the jackpot and get one of the bears?!?!
😒
The badger's name is Joe-Bob, in case you were wondering. No, I didn't ask. The flight attendant included it in the pre-flight safety announcement.
I don't have to go that far back, relatively speaking, to find my family's most recent immigrant.
My great-grandmother, Maria, came to the United States from Hungary in 1910. That is not that long ago. I know it seems like a long time, but it's not. It was only 70 years before I was born. Now I am halfway to 70 years old myself.
I don't know much about my great-grandmother, except that she lived in the apartment above my mom's family's in New York City, and she made lunch for my mom every day during school. She spoke Slovak and taught some to my mom, including (I think) the Lord's Prayer but (I don't think) any of the swear words.
(Maria is second from the left, sometime in the 1920s.)
She married an immigrant, John, who came to the US in 1898. Her daughter would marry the son of immigrants, Robert and Rose*, who came to the US in 1908 and 1906, respectively. Her granddaughter would marry into another family of immigrants, my dad's, from which I have relatives who came from Germany as long ago as 1845 and as recently as 1882.
Maria was 20 years old when she came to America. In some ways I cannot comprehend this**. She stepped on a boat and left everything she knew on the shore behind her. Her family, her friends, her entire culture. She gave all of that up, and for what?
Even though we never met, I know that it was, at least in small part, for me.
My life is unquestionably better for having been born in the US. I am lucky and privileged and objectively believe I have it easier than 99% of people on the planet. I've always known I can do and be anything I want. I have a TV that beams college football into my living room like 5 days a week, I live close enough to a Target that I will never want for lack of M&Ms, and in all honesty, the worst thing I have to worry about in my life right now are the two weddings coming up next year for which I do not have a date***. So I know I have it pretty good. And I owe that to people like my great-grandmother, who didn't have it easy, who instead spent her life surrounded by others who didn't wear the same clothes, or celebrate the same holidays, or even worship the same god.
I am my great-grandmother's American dream. And I am not the only one. We all came from people who came from somewhere, which is why I find myself today pondering the question: How did we become this self-loathing nation of immigrants?
There were so many factors to this election, and I'm not all that political so I'm certainly not an expert on any of them. But our forthcoming response to Syrian refugees, a call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and the generalization of Mexicans as rapists and drug users...those were issues that spoke to me. I feel like they're representative of the bigger picture, of how we treat other people. Especially those less fortunate than us. Especially those who just want the same opportunities we were, in many ways undeservedly, already given.
I understand that in order to win an election, a candidate must appeal to a wide variety of citizens. So no matter how reprehensible I find it, I understand the president-elect's strategy. He cast a wide net, and in doing so, gave voice to bigots and homophobes and extremists. In motivating his citizens to go to the polls, he told these deplorable people what they wanted to hear. He said appalling things, and normalized behavior that was vile and demeaning. He proved his character to be so unfit to lead our nation, that nearly every newspaper in the country endorsed Clinton, including several who'd never before endorsed a Democrat or endorsed any candidate at all.
In retrospect, what all this insane rhetoric overshadowed was the fact that he also tapped into the very real, very legitimate insecurities of a number of disenfranchised citizens. People who are underemployed, or have lost their jobs completely (to foreign workers, no less), started listening to him. He gave them reason to believe he could make their lives great again, and in turn, could improve the lives of their children, and their children's children. And if he had offered actual, real solutions to these economic woes, maybe it would have been acceptable! But the thing is, he didn't offer any real solutions, just hate and indiscriminate blame.
Maybe I am idealistic, or maybe I have just watched The American President too many times:
"And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumpson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only- making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
I don't believe that everyone who voted for the president-elect yesterday is a racist or a misogynist, though many of them clearly are and that is disgusting. But what breaks my heart is this- how bad must things be to be able to look past all of these glaring character flaws, and vote for the guy anyway? How hopeless do you have to feel to be able to reconcile such repulsive statements with your own values? I truly believe most of the people who cast those votes this week knew they were voting for a reprehensible person, a person whose character does not reflect their own, but who felt they needed to ignore that in order to bring about the change they are so desperately seeking in their own life.
I hate that it's led now to such divisiveness. The prevailing phrase now seems to be that America "was more divided than we thought". But I'm not sure it's so simple. I don't think this election shined a spotlight on millions of xenophobic people who'd previously been in the shadows. I think this election gave a bullhorn to a couple of hundred zealots, and that bullhorn legitimized their beliefs.
It made it okay to hate other people.
I thought I lived in a country that valued individuality, tolerance, and respect, and although on the whole I think I still do, I am acutely aware now that the whole is not necessarily the total sum of its parts. For those who want someone to hate, the easiest targets are naturally the people who they were told are to blame for their problems. The people who took the job they could have taken, to make a better life for their great-grandchildren. The people who don't wear the same clothes, or celebrate the same holidays, or worship the same god. The ones people have given up their entire culture to make a better life for their great-grandchildren.
Our American experience is so universal.
This song came up on my iTunes yesterday, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. It is originally by Paul Simon, and is performed here by Eva Cassidy. The video is a little cheesy, so just close your eyes while you're listening.
I don't know a soul who's not been battered Don't have a friend who feels at ease Don't know a dream that's not been shattered Or driven to its knees oh but it's alright It's alright You've lived so well so long When I think of the road we've traveled on So far away from home So far away from home
****
This week was sad and shocking, I think partially because idealistically, we don't want to believe that we as a nation were capable of this, but also realistically because no one expected it. Clinton was up by double digits in most polls, and had more than a 60% chance of winning. The explanation we've been given for this mass miscalculation is the failure to account for "silent voters". Those people who, when asked by pollsters, wouldn't admit who they were voting for.
I have to believe that on some level, they knew that the act they were committing within the anonymity of the voting booth was wrong.
And this may sound incongruous, but that actually gives me a small measure of hope. It means that if they knew that what they were doing was wrong, maybe at some point in the future they will be open to changing their mind and doing what is right.
Indeed, the best thing I saw all week was this tweet:
Here are the election results if only millennials voted... Progress is the longterm future of this country for both parties. pic.twitter.com/8TxWcD7tg5
Maybe this is too simplistic. Like I said, I'm not that political. I don't know what the future holds. I sincerely hope that things get better, now that people's voices have been heard, but do I think the president-elect can make that happen? Not really. That makes me even more nervous because where do these people turn next?
Or, even more terrifying, do they get that opportunity? Am I over-dramatizing the situation by asking if this is the last open and fair election of my life?
I hope not. I hope we evolve. That we become better, more empathetic people. I hope four years from now we elect someone who can spur economic prosperity and who reflects our values- I know those people are out there. And I hope that when all is said and done, the United States will be a place that immigrants will be welcomed into, to start their American dream alongside those of us fortunate enough to have had a great-grandmother Maria do it for them those not-so-many years ago.
*Okay, so this is one of my favorite stories. In college one of my good friends studied abroad in Ireland, and I went to visit her. While I was planning the trip and telling my mom about what we were going to do, she casually asked "Are you going to go visit your relatives?" I asked her what on earth she was talking about, because, to my knowledge, we were not Irish. "Sure we are!" she said. "Your great-grandma Rose was from Ireland!" I was 20 years old and had literally never heard the words 'great-grandma Rose' in my life. So she explained that Rose McCabe (yes! that is actually her real name!) was from Ireland and therefore we still had relatives there and I was one eighth Irish, a fact which has since greatly increased my appreciation for and participation in St. Patrick's Day festivities, well, mostly just the wearing green but also I guess the drinking. Anyway. I asked Mom why we'd never heard of this great-grandma Rose from Ireland, and as it turns out, it was a little scandalous! Rose was Irish, which meant Catholic, and she'd married an Englishman, which meant Protestant. They had to run off to the Caribbean to get married!!!
**I mean, what was I doing at 20 years old? (That is sort of rhetorical but if you want to get specific, see above-referenced trip to Ireland and imagine zero responsibilities and quite a bit of Bulmer's Irish Cider.)
***I am open to suggestions on the date front, so if you or someone you know enjoys eating champagne chicken, wearing a suit and making small talk with strangers, please don't hesitate to get in touch! I promise I won't talk politics at all and will instead spend most of the night just dancing really, really poorly.
****Immediately after this song played, Crazy by Britney Spears popped up, and both of these songs, back-to-back and available at my fingertips anytime I want, reminds me that although we do have problems, America is already so great.
