I have moved!!

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Blackberries and Bicycles

Moscow Sunsets

Southeastern Summers

My parents' pond at sunset

Johnson Farm at the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Otter River

I grew up in the Southeast.  As a teenager, I was involved in a summer tennis league.  Our practices were from nine to eleven in the morning.  I would bike home from practice and turn on the garden hose and soak myself in the freezing water to cool down prior to going in for a shower.  It was that hot and muggy.

When we traveled back east to visit family last week, the weather was unbelievably well-behaved.  It had rained all summer, so everything was verdant.  The temperatures barely reached into the 90s at their worst, and in the mountains, the temperature one morning never exceeded 70.  Perfect.  While I can't say I have any regrets about moving to the Northwest and having dry summers with cool evenings, I will say I do occasionally miss the lazy, warm summer evenings.  And it goes without saying I miss the trees and the flowers and the abundance of water.  I also had forgotten a lot of things about southeastern summers.  For instance, I had forgotten that if you take a hike in the morning, your sneakers will be soaked with the morning dew.  Your feet and ankles will be covered with fresh cut grass snips or leaf bits.  The same dew also makes the really outrageously ginormous spider webs visible.  Except when it doesn't, and you walk right into them and spend the next 30 minutes trying to pick off bits of sticky, hoping against hope that the spider wasn't home at the time you crashed into its domicile.  And gnats.  I had completely forgotten that gnats existed, until they made their presence known via kamikaze runs into my eyes.  But I loved the streams bubbling in late summer, and the squishy ground, and the moss covered trees.  I loved the butterflies and the hummingbirds, and the fact my mom's rosemary looked like a sequoia compared to mine.  Yes, the northwest is home now, but what a lovely southern visit!!  

A Better Way to Travel

Earlier this week, I took an Amtrak passenger train for the first time in my life.  It's true.  Even though I'm from a train-crazy family, I had never been on a passenger train (outside of subways) in the United States.  

It was a mistake.

I have traveled extensively for work the past few years and I have my airline routine down--what I put in my carry on, what I wear, and maximizing outfits out of a minimum of clothes and shoes.   I am used to the drama of delayed flights and middle seats and short layovers.  No problem.  But I hadn't really realized how far airline travel had deteriorated with respect to comfort until this week.  Until the train.

Admitedly, my sample size is small and I traveled a relatively short distance on a non-holiday.  But the absolute ease of the boarding process, followed by the roominess of the seats almost instantly won me over.  And I could go on and on from there!  No worrying that the DVD player will run out of batteries before your child runs out of movie, no "seat belt light" preventing you from taking a trip to the (much larger) bathroom, snacks and drinks any time you want...well, you get the idea.  Three hours on a train with a small child is much shorter than three hours on a plane with or without the child.  As one of my friends put it, it is a more human pace of travel.  Our collective love affair with automobiles and airlines have relegated the trains to the poor stepchild of travel, but we have been deceived!  Those of us in my generation, who have so little experience with trains, did not know what we were missing!  No more!  I am already planning my next trip!!

Rain in Culpeper, VA

The Crescent Line:  New York to New Orleans!

Union Station in Washington DC

The Potomac River in DC, at sunset