By this time, the cough which I thought was just due to all the smoking in Barcelona, has settled into a nagging cough probably more associated with days of exhaustion. The old part of town where we are staying in Altea is the perfect place to recuperate - quaint, quiet, no cars, no smokers nearby. In fact, these first couple days here have been completely lazy recuperating - sleeping, walking, to the open-air market, napping, chatting with the neighbors, working on my blog. Tomorrow I suppose I should actually put some time in on work-related work!

Tips for next time: Avoid airport transfers. Limit the itinerary (i.e., don’t visit too many places in one trip.) Have backup plans and contact methods for missed/late arrivals. Spend the money to travel as direct as possible (for example, now that we’ve seen Barcelona, next time we could fly directly to Alicante from either London or Paris). Book rooms non-smoking and on the quiet side.

It turns out that U.S. Government restrictions make it problematic (if not actually illegal) to “export” any government software without who-knows-what process and approval, so instead I decided to just use my personal laptop, and work on a couple of things not directly involving the project source code - One is to work on tools and processes (build automation, code formatting and analysis tools, etc.), the other being to learn about Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The project I’m working on is moving towards an SOA implemented with Web Services, all based on open-source software such as Linux, JBoss, PostgreSQL, etc, so there’s no export restrictions to worry about. More than a few weeks of work there!

To become aware of some of the cultural differences we might run into, I read a couple of the Culture Shock! series of books, covering France and Spain. I highly recommend them to anyone heading abroad. For example in Spain, having your hands in your lap at the table is bad manners - keep them visible on the table. And in France, don’t smile walking down the street - the French do not trust a smile - they will think you are an idiot. And a couple tips on understanding what comes across to Americans as French rudeness: “The French are quick to criticize everybody and everything, but that is often only to make an opportunity for discussion, to ‘break the ice’, so to speak.” “…showing discourtesy is a Parisian way of paying a compliment…the ruder you are to people, the greater value you give to their existence.” And French fashion: “The French are not frivolous about their street clothes.” “The Parisians do nothing so well as dress…” Good stuff!

I also looked around for a way to refresh the Spanish I took in school years ago, of which I remember how to count to 100 and ask “Where is the bathroom?” (”¿Dónde está el baño?”, of course!). I looked at a bunch of online options, and decided to try Coffee Break Spanish from the Radio Lingua Network. Their podcasts were perfect for my commute, since I had a 20 minute walk from my vanpool to my office, and no one in the neighborhood really noticed me walking along at 6:30 in the morning mumbling to myself in Spanish! The host of the podcast, Mark, and his “learner”, Kara, make a great team. The show is produced in Scotland, so I loved listening to their accents. I really enjoyed when they imitated an American accent to make a particular pronunciation point - what a kick!

As to learning a bit of French for our time in Paris, I defaulted to Cindy, both because Cindy had been to Paris before with her friends, and because I managed to drop-out of French in college after a week - I couldn’t make the sounds correctly, and couldn’t stand talking to myself in the Language Lab! C’est la vie! Having said that, I did spend a few times while out running listening to Mark and his French learner Anna on the first few lessons of Coffee Break French, which is every bit as good as Coffee Break Spanish, though Anna already has (what sounds like to my ear) excellent pronunciation. Mark needs someone like me on the show to be his “learner” - If he could teach me how to get my French pronunciation right, it would be miraculous!

The first unexpected trip arose from Sarah having six weeks on her own between her semester studying abroad in Greece and a design program in Italy. I had (naively) assumed there would be groups of students getting together to travel around Europe after the program was over, it being summer and all. But apparently many were heading straight home, or just weren’t what Sarah was looking for in travel companions - sounded like many were more interested in the best places to party rather than roaming the back-roads and by-ways and examining the architecture as Sarah is wont to do. (Wonder where she inherited that trait…! ) We had certainly considered the idea of using Sarah being in Greece and Italy as an excuse to visit, but the timing was wrong for us - besides not wanting to travel much for awhile, there is the expense (especially with the U.S. dollar in the toilet), and it would also be in the high season. We would much rather go in September, for example, now that Sarah and Max are off to college.

But after hearing “I think traveling alone for a month will make me go
crazy, for want of companionship and support when things go wrong” and reading “That’s it, I can’t travel alone. It’s all well and good when things go smoothly, but when the going gets tough, the stressed out Sarah-bean becomes completely miserable”, we began to change our mind. How many more chances will we get to spend time alone with our daughter? And after having two lack-luster summer breaks (the first in New Zealand with us, away from friends, in winter, the second alone in Portland commuting by bus every day to a summer class at Portland State), we hated the idea of her going through a third one. (Yes, it builds character, but Sarah has had plenty of character-building experiences by this point!)

So, we made the decision to go, and started trying to decide what to do. None of us wanted to be running all over seeing sights, and would prefer a small town where we could experience “living”, with lots of walking opportunities, preferably along a beach! Also, being fairly settled, I could put in some work hours both to defray the cost and the impact of being out of the office for a month. As luck would have it, through the miracle of family connections, we were able to book Dr. Osborne and Julianne’s place in Altea, Spain. Clearly this was well-received by Sarah - “But life is truly good. In my bout of loneliness after Corfu, I asked my parents to help me — there was no way I was going to get through a month traveling through Italy with my sanity unscathed. So they did the best thing ever, and booked an apartment in Spain (thank you Julianne and Dr. Osborne!).” Music to a parent’s ear! We grabbed some round-trip tickets to Paris that showed up on special one day, deciding to add a few days on the end in Paris as part of our 25th wedding anniversary year. Then we arranged flights to meet Sarah in Barcelona, and spend a few days there before heading down the coast to Altea.

The other unexpected trip still in the draft stage is taking Sarah to Hawaii to meet a retired NASA engineer who is looking to tutor someone in the art of inventing. Probably sometime this fall, to see if the two of them “click”, and it becomes an opportunity for Sarah to pursue after graduation next year. A mutual friend who introduced us to the idea thinks Sarah is a perfect fit, and Sarah is excited to pursue the possibility.

And what about Max during all these escapades? He has just wrapped-up his first year at college, plans to continue his summer career in an architecture office on Bainbridge Island, and spend his money thus earned to fly down to Los Angeles to visit a friend. And hopefully he will pick a suitable place to study abroad in a couple years so we have an excuse for Travelmania 2010!

Cindy and I have been working hard in the yard (check out the photos on her blog till I get my flickr account updated). We’ve got a lot of plants and trees in, trellises up, etc. Things are starting to bud and bloom. This was going to be another weekend to get garden work done, trees in the ground. But cold and snow somehow put a damper on those plans. (Motivated me to start writing in my blog again, however!)

My co-workers in San Diego don’t understand our excitement for a sunny day, or how we have no desire to travel away from our homes during the too-few summer months. It’s true, they have nice weather all the time, but it’s never so sweet after 6-9 months of cold gray damp!

Of course, it’s all relative - my sister and her family in Anchorage just had a couple feet of snow!

I can’t believe that the last time I wrote I was still in New Zealand! So, what new roads have there been for me/us since then?

(Now, this blog is about my “Roads Less Traveled”, meaning the meanderings and branches in my road through life. Not necessarily roads less travelled in the real world - for that, go read something like Dervla Murphy’s “Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle” or “Where the Indus is Young: A Winter in Baltistan”. Crazy Irishwoman!)

We came back from our year with the intent of moving closer to Cindy’s family, and then staying put and relaxing for a bit. Not doing any travel, working in the yard… And what do we end up with? Possibly one of the busiest travel years! But that’s fodder for a future post! (Hopefully not a year-and-a-half from now!)

So what have I been doing? Obviously not writing my blog much, though I have so much I want to write about. (I guess I’ll have to back-date the posts when I actually get them written!) Well, obviously from the last post, returning to the States to get Max back for the beginning of the school year. We had a relaxing and busy month (which I’ll write about Real Soon Now), then I had to return to New Zealand to finish up my year commitment to Navman (and meet the IRS requirements to be out of the country for a year to qualify for foreign income exclusion!).

And instead of a relaxing six weeks of wrapping-up work, walking on the beach and writing blog entries, it has taken an amazing amount of time to sort, pack, sell, and ship my remaining stuff. (That’s a blog entry in itself!) I’ve certainly done a couple excursions (yes, yes, I will be writing about those as well), but shutting-down and transitioning a household is a heckuva lot of work. Oh yes, and we’ve also been buying a house in Gig Harbor as well - dealing with my half of that project remotely has also been somewhat time-consuming!

Okay, so I have a huge backlog of things to write about - maybe after I get back I’ll have time to just walk on the beach with Cindy and write…

In addition to getting ready to head back to the States, we’ve been squeezing-in a couple last trips - the caving trip Sarah and I did, and a family trip to Tiritiri Matangi.

The past couple weekends were our last chances for a family excursions before heading back to the States. We had been wanting to visit a couple of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf - Waiheke, which sounds a lot like Bainbridge Island, Rangitoto, a recent volcanic addition to the Gulf (only 600 years ago), and Tiritiri Matangi, a nature preserve. One weekend Cindy had her last miniature group meeting, so Sarah and Max and I were going to go to Rangitoto and hike to the top. It turned out to be quite rainy, so we went to a movie instead. But then the weather looked good this past weekend, so we all headed to Gulf Harbour to catch the morning Kawau Cat ferry over to Tiritiri.

Tiritiri used to be farmed, but since the 1970’s has been a nature preserve. A huge effort by volunteers and the Department of Conservation have eradicated invasive species that have devastated the native bird populations (rats, stoats, possums), and re-planted native trees over most of the island. The volunteer group, the Supporters of Tiritiri, maintain a great website with information on all the native birds and trees restored to the island. They also conduct tours on the island, so we went along with Vic and Des, who told us so much about the plants and birds over the next couple hours - fantastic! With their sharp eyes, we spotted many species during our walk around the island.

After warming up over lunch and hot tea in their visitors center, we had a delightful wander along paths back to the afternoon ferry and the trip home.

Photos are here.

What’s with all the caving anyway? I decided that of all the opportunities for activities down here, caving is the one that we don’t have too much of around the Northwest. Also, Sarah is a willing caving partner, whereas for some reason Cindy and Max don’t like crawling around in the mud and water underground! (I can’t imaging why!) So, while the kayak has been sitting neglected since Coastbusters, and before Sarah headed back to college, we fit in one more trip, this time to Puriri Cave near Port Waikato with the Auckland Speleo Group.

It had been raining heavily, and the rivers were swollen and flooding. We had quite a scramble up a muddy slope and cross-country to the cave entrance. I asked about the stream level in the cave, but “no worries”, you don’t have to worry about that in most North Island caves. We had about fifteen people, so we split into a few groups, and spaced-out our entering. It was a fairly typical stream passage cave, with a couple of side passages to explore. Sarah and I had both woken up at the wrong point in our sleep cycles, and had been quite tired and groggy all day. After a lunch break, we had reached a point in the cave with a 20′ down-climb, which neither of us were too excited about. While we rested, some people had gone on ahead. Just as we were deciding to give it a go and carry on, word came back up that the water was too high further on. So, Sarah and I were saved having to face the down-climb just in the nick of time!

But then as we started back out, what had been a flowing stream was now quite a torrent! Instead of knee-high, it was waist-high and quite strong! Well, that got our adrenaline going, because we remembered there was a low crawl further on. When we reached that point, the group backed-up while taking turns crawling through the rising water. Sarah and I might have gone in feeling tired and groggy, but by the time we came back out, we were wide awake and thrilled by the cold rushing water and adrenaline!

We tromped back out to the road through the soggy ground, Sarah stopping to corral a tiny baby lamb back to its mother, observing water burbling-up out of the ground, and me sinking to the waist in a swamp crossing to the applause of the group! While the rest of the group went on to another cave, we hitched a ride back with Michael and his son Tommy (thank you!).

Photos are here.