Blog as medium
Having started to read a few other blogs, I feel a need to improve this one. I will work on making it more informative, more incisive, and more personal. The discipline of writing frequently has been good, but now I need to develop a message and a voice. I am still not sure what the right balance is between travelogue, observation, professional development, spiritual journey, fact, commentary, etc.
As expected, India has gotten deeply into planning the trip. We have a spreadsheet which provides day-by-day details from August 3rd until at least early January. She is making hotel reservations and flight arrangements all over the place (getting excellent help from Geographic Expeditions and from Wings Travel, our old friends from South Africa). We are expediting additional pages in passports, scheduling vaccinations, and applying for visas. In the midst of our reality-suspended Catskills idyll, the trip is taking shape.
Today was supposed to be a recovery day on the bicycle, after riding about 120 miles in the previous three days. India and our hyperfit friend Holly allowed me to tag along on a hike, which I assumed (naively) would be leisurely and short. In the roughly two and a half hours we marched through the mountains, I estimate we covered 11-12 miles, and swatted 300 deer flies. The highlight for me, as we ran up yet another hill was Holly shouting back at me over her shoulder: “This is boot camp. That’s why you are wearing boots, buddy.”
One more funny kid experience to describe. We spent the early evening up at our pond, enjoying a camp fire and looking at the small, nearly completed stone hut. Eventually, Tallulah and I took out the canoe, and Zola stood on shore with his net, catching and releasing frogs. After a while, the three of us went swimming in the warm, still water. A beautiful evening.
As we prepared to go back down to the house, Tallulah (naked) started dancing around the canoe, and punching at it with her tiny open hands. She did this for a few minutes -bobbing and weaving away, and then moving in with a smack smack smack. We laughed, and India asked what she was doing.
“I’m chopping, Mommy.”
“Why are you chopping, Lula?”
“I have to chop, Mommy. I’m a Choppinese fighter. Chop, chop, chop.”
Three is a sweet age. She is learning a lot at camp.