Ottawa Marathon

“There is no Try. There is Only Do or Not Do.”
- Yoda, Jedi Master.

This is the first year since 1999 that I haven’t written a public marathon report in the Ottawa Citizen. For longer than that, I’d been running on the race weekend, and then coming into the Citizen on Sunday afternoon to put out the race results section for the next day.

The run-publish ‘duathlon’ was fun to do, with runner and graphic designer Chris Macknie and the small group working that evening.

At a suitable break, we’d eat takeout pizza and chat about the day, and get the section to pre-press just in time. This year that didn’t happen. The paper decided that with electronic race results so accessible, it wasn’t prudent to devote about a dozen newsprint pages to names and race times.

It was also good timing, because Chris is in Africa for three months and not here to do that painstaking design task. If you think it’s not important, just try taking phone calls from relatives the next day bemoaning the fact that someone is missing from the results. (It usually turned out that they really were there, just slower than originally thought.)

So here is my less public report on yesterday’s marathon, my 14th:

First of all, I will never again criticize the “dumb” drivers who don’t know about road closures. I was sitting on my front porch Saturday at 5:15 waiting to be picked up by a friend, when the lead group of 5k runners passed by my door, followed quickly by everybody else. It’s a good idea to check the routes of all races, not just the one we’re in.


In spite of the long bleak stretches where I felt I was running alone, I met so many interesting people along the way. There was a woman who said she quit last year in the heat at km 37 and was mad at herself all year, and came back to redeem herself. I was there when she passed 37 this time. There was a bike store owner from Windsor who started running at 57, and was back to the Ottawa Marathon for the second time. In just a few short kilometers he told me what bike I should really be riding. There were excited first timers from Markham, and repeat visitors from Peterborough, and everyone thought Ottawa was great, and they like the new course.

Thanks to my friend Larry McCloskey who kept up the tradition of watching for me on Colonel By and running beside me until Carleton. The distraction is so appreciated. And unlike the other people who dropped in and out of race life, he stayed at my pace.

Congratulations to my friend Anna Shannette who did the 10k Saturday night and then the marathon Sunday. I turned her down when she invited me to join her in what I deemed a crazy pursuit, and then went back and forth to City Hall so many times Saturday, that I ended up doing more than a 10 k anyway, with no bragging rights.

The rain over the second half was much better than heat; I thought the weather was perfect for running; though unfortunately less so for spectators and volunteers.

There were certainly times during this long marathon when I questioned why I was doing it. I’m tired, my feet hurt, my race times get slower and slower, so why bother. Nothing is ever as exciting as your first marathon, so why keep doing it if you aren’t getting faster.

Sure, I’ve got some health problems that could be used as an excuse, but I continue to be in awe of people for whom nothing is an excuse.

It takes a particular brand of courage for the back of the pack marathon participants to keep going for so long, and without the crowds, the validation of those with faster times, or Pace Bunnies.

And even though I force myself to run along, I am aware that walkers are walking faster than I am running. Lots faster.

I guess it’s about continuing to meet the challenge. I’m a different age, so it’s a different race. As Yoda says, “There is No Try. There is only Do or Not Do.”

I’m already signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon for the fall.

Still Tri-ing after all these years

My triathlon ‘career’ began with an e-mail in 2001.

“To a ‘budding triathlete’”, he wrote, alluding to an overly flattering tag line about me on an article I’d written about him ... On September 19th, 2000, my colleague and Ironman athlete Chris Macknie forwarded me an e-mail he had received about the Ottawa Triathlon/Duathlon 2001.

The e-mail thanked him for attending “the inaugural Ottawa Tri/Du last May.” It said the event would be on Somersault Promotions’ 2001 Triathlon/Duathlon schedule - on Saturday May 26th, 2001. It was a 500 metre swim/ 20 k bike/ 5k run.

I laughed.
Nevertheless, that April my friend Kristin and I mailed in (those were the old days) our applications instead for the shorter Try a Tri. She pushed me to do it. I was absolutely terrified.

I wrote at the time: “Well, we have done it! We have swam (swum?) - two laps in a 50 metre pool - and biked 12k and run 5k. I am delighted to have done the swimming; Kristin was particularly proud to have done the running. And we organized our clothes and equipment, and made the transitions! If the marathon is 95 per cent mental and 5 per cent physical, then the triathlon is at least 50 per cent organization and 50 per cent physical.”

Well, it’s seven years later, and I can’t believe I’m still doing this. Coming almost last in the race but first in my age category - 1 out of 2 for women 60 plus - on the 500 metre swim, 22 k bike and 5 k run on May 19th.

And I’ve figured out why the wait for the Sprint Tri swim at the Early Bird seemed so eternably long.

It wasn’t just that more swimmers were added because of the extended Carleton University pool time - and so the slowest swimmers didn’t get into the pool until after 10 a.m.

It was because the weather was so perfect. Last year when hypothermia hovered outside, we were happy to stay in as long as we could. This year, it was great to finally get outside, and then not to have to hassle with additional clothing for cold, wet temperatures.

It was like the Teddy Bears’ Picnic to finally reach the water station the woods for the run turn-around.

Since becoming a faster swimmer doesn’t seem to be an option for me, I think next year I’ll bring a pillow and a sandwich, or go to Tim Hortons for two hours in my body marking and bathing suit. Although it was nice to have time to really get to know the people near me in line.

It’s amazing how interest in triathlon continues to grow, and now the number of nifty triathlon suits in the pool.

It’s great that Somersault now has the competitors’ names large on the race numbers for all the races, so cyclists can bike by me and say, “almost there - Louise”, and I can say, for instance, “Thanks - Barry” as I read their behinds.

And nice shirts!

Cuba 2007

Cuba Diary: One Week in the Varadero Sunshine

January 12-20, 2007


Short Version:

Louise highlight: The square in Old Havana that was suddenly a piece of Europe, with fountain and outdoor café.

Naomi: Getting out of touristy Varadero and getting a glimpse of everyday life in Matanzas, school girls in their uniforms, stray dogs, and the history and excitement of Havana. It is all so colorful.

Diana: Participating in Aqua Gym - "Aqua Jeeem!!!" in the pool; dancing in the finale of the evening show when audience members are called up; group stretching on the beach.

----------------

Long Version:

Once upon a time, on the day that David Beckham revolutionized U.S. professional soccer, another revolution was taking place.

The three Rachlis women were traveling together for the first time on a family intergenerational bonding excursion to Varadero Beach in Cuba. Each had arranged a week off work, taken cigar orders from co-workers, and done her research - Louise on the architecture of Havana and the history of the revolution; Naomi on the swim-up bar at Hotel Tuxpan, and Diana on the most flattering bikinis. All research proved useful!

As research for an upcoming Health and Beauty feature article, Louise had had a laser skin tightening treatment last week, necessitating 45 SPF sunscreen on her face and neck, and a Havana Club safari hat at the first souvenir market.

Lorne was able to ditch a Minister of Education conference call to return home and drive his women to the airport. The new hybrid is able to transport three wild women and their luggage containing besides the bikinis, dozens of old unused Ottawa running race t-shirts which apparently are “like gold” in Cuba. Similarly baggies-full of Mary Kay cosmetics from Naomi’s friend. The plan is to give out the t-shirts and the makeup if we actually manage to see any “real” Cubans.

As I said, it’s an internal journey. Go Travel All Inclusive. Zoom Airlines.

Waiting to board, after all her care to move Diana’s magnesium liquid medication out of carry-on, Naomi forgot she had a corkscrew from work in her purse, so it was confiscated.

Chatted with Marcia and Dick Zuker leaving Barrhaven for Australia for three months via London in their zip-off pants, then with Dave McPherson from the Citizen and his daughter who was running the Arizona Rock and Roll Marathon. They were leaving the airport because their flight via Chicago was cancelled because of weather and they had to go home and try again the next day. We were sooo lucky with weather, avoiding the storms here and enjoying a full week of sunshine there.

In flight, we very carefully filled out the Cuban Visa forms, because the attendant announced their price was included in our ticket price, and if we needed another form we’d have to buy it. Because we didn’t order far enough ahead, there was no gluten free meal available for Diana - choices were pasta or meat with gravy, both of which had wheat.

Anyway, she was still full from her airport Aero bar, much more tempting than the 12-vegetable bars from Rainbow Foods.

In flight, Diana read Cosmopolitan, as it seemed, did half the plane. Naomi read “How to Be A Starving Artist” and they took breaks together working on “Learn Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day.”

I was across the aisle beside a hefty man in a baseball cap who sighed the way Lorne does when he got in and out of his seat.

The free food and free wine was generous, but between the lactose intolerant, the celiac and the vegetarian, we ate less than one total meal among us.

Naomi remembered to bring her headphones, so Diana didn’t have to pay $5 for headphones to watch the Jimmy Smits prisoner with a heart of golf football movie.

Arrival

When I was 11, the last year for paying half price children’s fare, my parents flew the family from Ottawa winter to Florida in the middle of the night. My whole life I have remembered the surprise warmth and humidity getting off a plane at 4 a.m. and engulfed in tropical smells.

As we disembarked in Cuba at midnight in 22 C it felt the same, and the girls were so excited about palm trees waving in the night.

No problem changing the money or getting the shuttle bus. Note for next trip: Pain in acrylics on the luggage. So many black or red suitcases, but the black one painted with a butterfly really stood out. Did Leonardo da Vinci paint luggage with wheels? Birds of Paradise coming up.

Day 1

We walked in the sand down the beach to the town of Varadero, and stopped for lunch in a thatched roof restaurant, El Rancho. The girls wanted chicken, and the waiter said it would be 40 minutes. While waiting and sipping lemonade, we looked behind the window shade and noted the chickens wandering around the backyard. “Agh,” screamed Naomi, realizing where lunch was coming from. “I’ve just become vegetarian. Again.”

We snap like chickens at each other whenever one of us gets hot, hungry or tired, but we were able to laugh about whose turn it was to become one of the three dwarfs, “Cranky”, “Hungry” or “Moody”. Having two hotel rooms for three is good, so the one good night’s sleep can be rotated.

Had my first Mojito cocktail in Cuba at the hotel bar, sugar, lemon juice, fresh mint, soda water and rum. Mmmm.

Smoking everywhere in the hotel and in the country, cigarettes and the unpleasant famous cigars.

“Where did you three meet?” asked an Ottawa English-speaking man who became Naomi’s friend as she ended up as translator between him and the almost entirely French-speaking other Hotel Tuxpan guests.

Hotel Tuxpan is large - 211 rooms - and the lobby and eating areas are tropically spacious with high ceilings and glass, and large plants hanging down several storeys. At the bread display at the buffet, little birds swoop about inside, and hover to peck at crumbs.

The small guest rooms lean more towards summer camp, hard mattresses, skinny pillows and thin walls through which you hear every sound next door. But in this beautiful weather, who wants to be in a room anyway. A pleasant touch is that our maid, Maritza, folds the clean towels in a different shape every day, like a swan or a bird, and centers them on the bed, with pajamas or nightgown similarly shaped aesthetically.

It was a four-star hotel and still the meager toilet paper roll was empty by end of day, and the sliver of soap was used by three for a week. It’s a good idea to bring your own.

We booked the Sunday bus to Havana because the city would be quieter, with more regular people out. Our guide, Ismya, wore long corn row braids, and spoke French, English and Spanish. Havana is 234 k along Via Blanca from Varadero. We had asked for a wakeup call, which was done in Spanish, and we continued to get unasked for wakeup calls for the rest of the week.


As became the norm, chicken for lunch, omelette for the vegetarian, and a band playing once again Guantonamera.

As we walked around Plaza de la Cathedral, Naomi took photos of all the skinny stray dogs sleeping on the pavement in the sun. A stilt dancing little parade played Guantonamera, and women in multi-colored flower headdresses kissed tourist men for photos.

After lunch, among the sites was Necropolis Cristobal Colon which has one million graves, many with a story, and the world’s largest cemetery. After three years, bones have to be exhumed, because there’s no room in the cemetery, and no cremation permitted in Cuba. There was a large empty space in the “people’s” area of the cemetery, which our guide said is rumoured to be reserved for Fidel.

Gave our first bunch of t-shirts to Ismya, who was very excited about them and said she’d give them to people herself rather than have us accosted. However, later on we found it was a pleasure to give out the shirts individually, and there was never any problem.

Back at the hotel, we attended the free evening show at the Tropicale, outdoor stage near the pool. It’s very loud and directly under our windows - so it’s attend on the ground or “attend” in the room incapable of sleep. My fault, I think, for requesting an “ocean view.”

That night it was a musical quiz with audience members running up if they thought they knew the answer. Each right answer got you a ticket and most tickets at the end got you a bottle of rum. It was like reality television to see the people who had been drinking and smoking 24 hours a day since they got off the plane, hopping around vying for the spotlight, and the rum bottle, in French, English and Italian.

The pool area is uncrowded and beautiful, likewise the turquoise beach, with thatched huts, coconut palms and soft breezes.

The buffet is bland as predicted, and frequently quirky. For instance, there are devilled eggs, yolks dyed bright green, and flat beige cake with the coco puff style cereal from breakfast sprinkled into the pink icing. Dessert is always what we dubbed “Cuban Baklava” - it’s flaky pastry like baklava, but there’s nothing in it, just sugar sprinkled on top.

The 9:30 p.m. free show is different every night, usually dancing from different countries, and at the end, audience members are invited onstage to join in and learn the moves. Diana did that every night, and did a great job, thanks to her aerobics experience. She also took part in the pool “gymnastica” aquafit in the morning, and went for pre-breakfast run with me along the sidewalk, not the beach, past the bushes laden with red, pink and purple blossoms, to the statue of Don Quixote.

Naomi watched CNN in the room every night, and came running in one night to announce that CNN says Fidel hasn’t been seen since July 31st and is near death. Funny, our guide in Havana told us he’s getting better, but no one knows where he is. The guide said Castro would regularly give four to five hour speeches to one million Cubans assembled in the July heat in the small empty plaza where we were standing.

There are no foreign or local newspapers around, and nothing of news elsewhere except occasionally the state paper Granma which has a French, English and German edition that was free in our hotel.

While we debated the merits of bus trips to other Cuban cities, the days in Varadero are so beautiful that we couldn’t give it up for four hours each way on the bus for a few hours in Santa Clara or Trinidad. Another time.

We walked into the town via the beach most days, spending time in old Parque Josone where there are ostriches, a camel, and wandering chickens. We gave t-shirts to the friendly park security guard who chatted with us, the old man on a bicycle who chops coconuts with his machete for drinks, and the female driver of our coco-taxi or Coquitos or Huevitos who drove us around.

William, the bartender at the swim up bar, told us about his friend in Toronto, and charmed all the women, and sold cigars under the table as a sideline.

There is Cuban music everywhere, a band every night at dinner - same guys, different colored shirts, every day - at the hotel, in restaurants, and the loud, colorful singing and dancing on the outdoor stage.

A bus loaded with staff returning home stopped and offered us a ride when we were walking at the side of the road. A horse and wagon did the same another day, offering to take us back to the hotel for one pesos.

Diana added “group stretching on the beach” to her participation activities. I painted a half dozen watercolors.

On the beach, the safety flags - red, yellow and green - have rarely been green. We really enjoyed the green day when the waves weren’t as choppy and we could swim along parallel to the shore without getting swamped by waves. On green days, rental boats and hang gliders are allowed in the water, making it more picturesque.

On the last day, we had to check out at noon despite a 2:30 a.m. departure flight. We stored our luggage and took a bus to Matanzas, and the 2,500 m. long Bellamar Caves discovered in 1861.

Lonely Planet Cuba says of Matanzas: “Straddled with humdrum ration shops, a painfully dismal restaurant scene, and a decrepit and scruffy central park that is crying out for an architectural version of the ‘extreme makeover’ , the local buzz in Matanzas’ dilapidated streets is as downbeat as it is elusive. If it’s five star comforts you’re after, hop on a Viazul bus straight back to Planet Varadero ... Otherwise, welcome to the real Cuba.” Exactly!

The caves were worth seeing, but our reason for going was to spend time in dusty, crumbly Matanzas, and it was just as we had hoped. Our guide who looked like Mr. Bean was named Castro, and besides giving us a walking tour of Matanzas, he told us about his daughter and her husband, who had moved out of his house, and his son and grandson who live there still, but the son is now building an extra room. You can get government permission to add a room, but you can’t sell your house or buy another.

It is quite a country, and despite the ever present rules, the Cuban people we met were friendly and proud of their country. (More so than the drunk tourists running on the stage in their underwear and jumping in the closed pool in the dark. (No, that wasn’t us! But Diana now loves pina colada with cinnamon, and Louise and Naomi are hooked on mojitos.)

Until next year!

Love from

Louise, Diana and Naomi

Turning 50 (1997)

Onward and upward: Some thoughts on hitting 50


It was when we were both talking casually about 1964 that it hit me.

We were discussing the Beatles, or something like that.

"I started university in 1964," I said.

He paused. "I was born in 1964."

And until then, I had felt we were the same age.

I may be 50, but I feel as if I fit in with those who are 20 or 30 or 40, even though I know that that’s not how younger people may perceive me.

What is 50?

For me, it’s not a lot different than 40 - although there is certainly a heightened sense of making the most of time available.

I find myself wishing I hadn’t wasted so much of it when I thought my options went on forever. In the past couple of years I’ve pierced my ears ( at least it’s not any other part of me), studied watercolour painting, taken a workshop on Romance Writing - and not written the novel - and become more regimented about keeping fit.

There’s a particular joy in discovering late blooming pursuits, even if you can’t help thinking if you’d started sooner, maybe now you’d be Picasso or an Olympic athlete. I take strength from a quote by author George Eliot (1819-1880): "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

Anticipating an "empty nest", my husband and I moved downtown from the suburbs. Our downsized dwelling bulged for a year with three adult children - and then they left again.

Because we’re generally healthy, active and involved, we in our 50’s tend to be an invisible age. Alike and yet different.

And yet I know from discussing this category with the 20-somethings and 30-somethings at my office, it’s easy for them to group together everyone between 50 and 100 as 50- plus, separating them into them and us.

As with any age group, it’s hard for someone who’s not in the category to really understand it. And it’s hard for us to know our place.

I suddenly find myself asking, "do I look silly doing this?", or "am I too old to do that?" It’s an odd place to be, and it happens in an instant.

I think the message that this generation wants to get out about ourselves is the same as that for any other - don’t generalize about us; we’re all different, and don’t judge us by our appearance; there’s a lot going on in our heads.

Newfoundland 2002

LORNE IS BACK IN UPPER CASE ITALICS!

Note: This letter is a reconstruction; not the original. (just like all the historic sites we’ve seen). Lorne clicked on ‘options’ in hotmail on Louise’s finished draft and it all disappeared. We have attempted to re-create it, doing the best we can, under the circumstances. LOUISE SAID IT WASN’T A BIG DEAL – SAID SHE COULD EASILY RE-CREATE THE LETTER FROM HER NOTES. HER NOTE ABOVE EXPLAINS WHY SHE DIDN’T TALK TO ME TODAY.

June 29

On the way to the Ottawa airport, Louise says to Lorne "The house we're staying at for a week in Salvage, Newfoundland, doesn't have a house number. It doesn't have a street name either. Edythe, the landlady, told me it’s between the fish plant and the church. It’s the house with yellow doors. Doesn’t that sound exotic?"

"At least it has a door," says Lorne, still a whiner (despite his best efforts), even after surviving I LIKE TO THINK OF IT AS ‘OVERCOMING’ the Cotswold walk, the PEI bike, and the Banff hike. NEXT YEAR, SEPARATE VACATION. I THINK I SAID THAT LAST YEAR, TOO.
The journey begins.

July 1, 8 a.m.

Lorne walks past three airport billboards saying, in big red letters: ‘Do you have any sharp objects ?' He knows it doesn't apply to him, so pays no attention. Goes through security. Gets pulled to one side. "Do you have scissors in your carry on bag, sir?" says the nice security guard. "No", says Lorne. "Yes, you do" says the formerly nice guard, motioning another guard over. "Do you have a shaving kit in this bag?" asks the guard, knowing that the answer is yes. "Oh, yes. I do," remembers Lorne. "And I have nail scissors in it".

After 10 minutes, Lorne is cleared through security, sans nail scissors. Says to Louise, "We’ll buy new ones. Did you know they have a big pile of them in back?" After a moment’s reflection he says, "Remember when you said that travelling with me is stressful for you? Like that time I lost my passport? Well, I just do this kind of thing to get you to lighten up."

Flights are otherwise uneventful. LOUISE SAYS I SHOULDN’T MENTION THE CUTE 9-MONTH OLD BOY IN HIS GRANDPA’S LAP RIGHT BESIDE ME. TWO MINUTES INTO THE FLIGHT HE MADE A NOISE LIKE A GARBAGE TRUCK BACKING UP AND DIDN’T STOP UNTIL JUST BEFORE WE LANDED. OTHERWISE UNEVENTFUL. EXCEPT FOR THE TURBULENCE..

4 pm

Drive rental car into downtown St. John’s and find house Jamie Allister is kindly letting us stay in for the week, 15 Victoria Street, a maroon-coloured townhouse on a very steep street lined both sides by colourful rowhouses, most renovated or under construction. BEGINNING AT 6 AM EVERY MORNING, RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET. HAMMERING, TEARING OF NAILS. It is walking distance to everything downtown, as we soon found out. ENGLAND IS WALKING DISTANCE FROM HERE, TOO, ACCORDING TO LOUISE. It is completely refurbished and renovated. We have won the accommodation lottery!

As we got here first (our friends the Winqvists will join us on Thursday), we chose the top (third) floor bedroom which has a functional fireplace and a whirlpool tub. When we enter, it is hot in the room, as the house has been closed up. Lorne sees a portable air conditioner unit on floor. I refuse to help install it and instead open a window. After 20 minutes of grunting and mumbling, Lorne has the unit in place in another window. It works. Room has cooled down by now, except for Lorne, who is sweating from work (unaccustomed as he is). Lorne admits we don’t need it (cross breeze on a July night in St. John’s makes room a sleep-able 15 C) and puts unit back in its place on the floor.

We walk along Water Street (main downtown street) and go for a traditional Newfoundland dinner in a small diner. (For some reason Louise had been eating roast beef sandwiches for the past two days.) Louise gives cod tongues a thumbs up. Lorne prefers the traditional part of the cod. FRIED. WITH FRENCH FRIES. Maybe eating fish every day will improve Louise’s swimming.

July 2

Went for a short early morning run along the harbour, beside a big red Russian ship and an orange Coast Guard vessel tied to the wharf. Couldn’t manage to run back up the huge hill to the house. If I ever say I’m going to do the Newfoundland marathon, tell me to go to ‘hill’. OK. GO TO HILL.

Walked around old St. John’s. There are 30 pubs within walking distance of the house. Drove back to the airport to have the insurance surcharge deleted because we are in fact covered on our personal auto policy. We have this debate EVERY trip. Fish and chips for lunch.

p.m.
Climbed Signal Hill, used for signalling since 1704. Flags from the top were used for military defence and to let merchants prepare for ships coming in. Marconi received the first trans Atlantic wireless signal here in 1901.

Then, just warmed up from that upward climb, we drove to Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America and climbed some more. The views were spectacular at both. Lorne surprised even himself that he wasn’t complaining as much as usual. I DIDN’T COMPLAIN AT ALL. THOSE EARLY MORNING WALKS/JOGS IN STRATFORD HAVE PUT ME INTO TERRIFIC SHAPE. ON THE INSIDE.
Checking out all the local crafts, but saving my business for the craftspeople of Salvage next week. The population of St. John’s is about 100,000 but there must be double that in the population of little wooden men in yellow raincoats. If any of you want one, let me know.

As is common knowledge, everyone here is friendly. How friendly? Cars stop in the middle of a block if they even think you want to cross the street. AND THEY WON’T MOVE UNTIL YOU CROSS. SOMETIMES WE DIDN’T WANT TO.

Everyone says hello on the trails. Shop people are willing to help with advice or information even if it is clear you aren’t buying anything. A friend of Jamie’s (the out of town owner of the house we’re staying in), who is himself a friend of a friend, calls to make sure everything is fine with us and to say we should call him if we need anything.

July 3, 2002

This morning we drove to Quidi Vidi Village and climbed the Cuckold Cove Trail DON’T ASK up to the Ladies Lookout, the highest point in the area, where sailors’ wives used to go to wait for their return. It is a 25 minute uphill climb (15 minutes coming down). Lorne’s legs are still functioning. NOT MUCH GOOD FOR WALKING ANYMORE, THOUGH

Like Marconi, further communications to follow. (if we don’t accidently delete them.)

Love to all

Louise and LORNE

Learning to swim

Memoirs of a little girl who cannot swim

My black bathing suit with ‘Carleton’ across the front doesn’t really say ‘Carleton’.
What it says in neon letters 12 feet high is, ‘I can swim!’ I don’t really believe it yet, but it’s a start.

For almost a year now, I have been a member of the Carleton University Masters Early Birds. I am easily identified as by far the slowest of the slow in the slow lane. I provide passing practice to others.

"After the first couple of weeks, I thought you’d leave for sure," a member of the group told me last fall. She was giving me a compliment. "So did I," I replied.

I have never felt so intimidated, scared and out of my depth in my life, as I feel in the Masters’ swim group.

I wear my waterproof watch and obsessively sneak peeks underwater to see if it’s over yet.

So why am I there?

Because for the first time in my 57 years I could dream of it. Terrible swimmer that I am, I could be close enough to try.

Until I watched the Varsity swimmers training in the morning before our Masters group started, I hadn’t even known what "real" swimming looked like.

It is not a part of my heritage. Among my early memories is a jerky black and white home movie of my family and me at the concrete swimming pool at the Di Lido Hotel in Miami Beach. I am splashing and dogpaddling, head above the water pretending to swim. My parents are nearby, my mother in the same padded and boned blue Esther Williams-type bathing suit I remember her wearing for 25 years. The same for my father’s beige bathing shorts. They never wore out, because they never went in the water. I never saw my parents in the water.

When I was old enough to go to the beach myself, I walked with a friend to Brighton Beach on the Rideau River, and we’d lie on towels, read junk and fantasize about the lifeguards.

At summer camp, I flunked my Junior Red Cross, as well as the "lengths" test to be allowed to swim in the deep end at general swim. More lying on towels in the sand.
And for years onward, swimming just wasn’t something I did; it was something I pretended to do - until May, 2000.

As her Mother’s Day gift to me, my then 20-year-old daughter agreed to take me into the pool at the Y and teach me. I had never worn swim goggles or swum a lap before. I didn’t then. I’d collapse, hugging the wall, half way down a lap.

Shortly after, I went to the pool for the first time myself. Avoiding the lifeguard’s sympathetic gaze, I swam a pathetic lap and then while panting at the side, noticed those floaty belts in a bin. Aha! I figured if I wore a floatation device, I wouldn’t worry so much and would be able to work on strengthening my arms and legs. I didn’t even know how to keep track of how far I’d gone.

I signed up for Learn to Swim adult classes at the Y.

It was a milestone day for me when I did a whole swim lesson without putting on the floatie belt.

Fresh with enthusiasm - or oxygen deprivation - I signed up for a Try a Tri Triathlon that May.

On May 26th, 2001, I finished the Somersault Early Bird Try a Tri Triathlon. After two laps in a 50-metre pool, the biking and running was just an afterthought. Totally spent from the pool, I couldn’t believe that other people swam further.

That winter, I also took a triathlon training course at the Y - lots more laps, but little improvement. I still remained stationary while kicking a flutterboard, and went backward while attempting the breaststroke.

The training began easily enough, but like cakes on a conveyer belt, it kept coming faster and faster and soon I couldn’t keep up at all.

During that year’s Early Bird Sprint Triathlon, when I exited the 100 metre Carleton University swimming pool after my 500 metre swim, there was no one else in the pool area at all. I was a sea creature crawling onto a barren land. When I hurried in the pouring rain to my bike, it stood out in the transition area all alone. But no more "Try-ing", I had done it.

On to the next step, a terrifying Carleton Place Triathlon in "open" albeit shallow, water in July. Unimaginable, and once again last, but once again I did it. Just.
It was time to get better.

And that brings me back to my Master’s group, 7:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, and optional Saturdays. On my first day in the pool, what I didn’t know could fill an encyclopedia. The daily workouts on the blackboard were from a foreign country.
For instance, I didn’t know that IM was individual medley - fly, back, breast, free; I thought it was Ironman. As I bumbled along, I said "sorry" so many times it blended into one long apology to my fellow swimmers.

I would arrive at work afterward, late, frazzled and famished.

As for the bathing suits, last fall, coach Lynn Marshall asked who wanted to participate in the order. Well, for such a badge of honor, I decided to hang on in class at least until the suits arrived. I waited.

The man who had taken the original order died. A re-order went in.

Waterpolo suits came by mistake, and were sent back.

While I waited, my flutterboard and my breaststroke actually began to move forward.

And as this fall’s swim season begins, I’m still in the group, hanging in as tough as the Polyester in those bathing suits.

Joy 2004

Cynics begone; it’s the season of joy all year round

At a baby christening last month, the tears rolled down the cheeks of my niece as she watched her son dressed in the gown his grandfather had worn for his own christening many years before.

Her joy was contagious.

I love true joyful moments; more than when I cry listening to Roger Whittaker albums or watching Somewhere in Time, but the actual life experiences that bring butterflies of pleasure.

Recently, at the Ottawa Public Library Foundation Gala, I met author Denise Chong. author of The Concubine's Children and The Girl in the Picture, who shared with me her joy of writing.

Even though writing fiction is one of the hardest things to do, the Ottawa author says she has never considered not doing it. "I tell my children, if you find something you love, hang on to it."

It’s a similar expression to the one a Citizen graphic designer pasted on the wall of his office: "If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it."

He had two goals for this year’s Ironman Hawaii which he completed: "To finish, and to smile all day." He did both, and what could be more joyful than that. I smiled all day myself just thinking about it.

It is the joy of accomplishment, of reaching your own unique goal. When this summer as a novice swimmer I was able to swim around the island at Meech Lake for the first time, I was beaming like a one-year-old taking her first steps.

Joy is contagious. It spreads like a candle flame - lighting many more candles, but never diminishing the light of each one.

There is personal joy, there is joy in sharing the delight of others, and there is the chain of joy from one to another.
A carefully chosen compliment can create joy. For an interminable stage of my childhood, I was an awkward, skinny, frizzy-haired girl with protruding teeth. Yet a friend of my parents stopping by, greeted me and said, "what beautiful hazel eyes you have!" Eyes? That was a part of me I hadn’t previously considered. That I still remember, shows what an impression her few words were able to make on me. And I have followed her example, seeking out specific ways to praise those for whom praise in a particular area is not obvious.

A father tells me that what he remembers joyfully from his own childhood is a chocolate ice-cream cone his mother bought him for the first time when they were out shopping together. Whenever he had ice-cream for years after, that wonderful feeling came back. It continues to give him understanding of the delight his own three-year-old is feeling from new experiences.

Gobble the joyful moments like ice-cream and spread them around.

Fifty plus and beyond

Getting older, getting better


o The Older Traveller: ...Children will gravitate to you. Local women will be protective, and you’ll suffer less from unsolicited male advances...If you’re experiencing the hot flashes of menopause, pack a wardrobe of ‘layers’ that can easily be adjusted to your fluctuating body temperature."
- Advice for the Woman Traveller, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

o "Most journalism is about young women and middle-aged men. But young women haven’t done anything yet. Middle-aged women have lived through so much; this is a great untapped subject."
- Canadian Malcolm Gladwell, writer for The New Yorker magazine, who loves doing stories on middle-aged women. Interviewed in The Toronto Star.

Ah, the different ways of looking at middle-aged men and women. The different ways we see ourselves. I even hesitate to be writing this at all, to be saying, ‘Look at me, a middle-aged woman’.

Is it different past 55 to want to grow, to learn, to travel, to exercise, to feel romantic, to have friends of all ages? C’mon, we’re a lot more than wrinkle cream.

One day, I was looking for a birthday card for my friend Laurie. A sign of aging, no doubt, is that the funny cards just weren’t funny. For instance, one card listed ‘Ten Things We’re Still Too Young For’: "10. Plastic rain scarf. 9. Tissue box cover made of yarn. 8. Adhesive shower floor daisies. 7. The once-a-week hairdo. 6. Drawer of newspaper clippings. 5. Huge vinyl purse with a padded strap. 4. The seven-day pill organizer. 3. Tissue in every pocket and/or sleeve. 2. Shaky lip outline. And the number one thing we’re still too young for: Finding a second use for bread bags."
I’m 57, and it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.

I am heartened by the friendship of women over 60 whom I admire and hope to emulate. Women like Roseanne who runs marathons, Helen who travels alone for months to Mexico and Central America, Cynthia who laughs and shares and makes you feel good to be with her.
It is a paradox that my childhood and teens can seem so far away, and yet like yesterday. A blur of fuzzy memories, usually governed by worrying too much and relaxing too little. It took a long time, but I have learned that lesson now. I approach 60 with more serenity than I had at 50. I am taking chances and enjoying life.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m trying for the Guiness Book of Records for most things done badly within 24 hours. Other times I am so greatful to still be learning and growing. I have run eight marathons and look forward to running 50.

I am a before and after in my life, but the difference is internal, not makeup. I can say with amazement that since the age of 50 I have learned to run marathons, to cycle to work, to swim laps, and to cross-country ski. Starting from 0. It frustrates me terribly that I can’t do any of those sports faster, or with the perfect form. How I wish I had received this divine inspiration sooner, and that I had the "body memory" of sport learned in youth. But I look forward, not back.

I have a friend who shrugs, "anyone can do an Ironman if they do the training." To my surprise, I now know that’s right. And there is no shame in "doing the training" no matter how long it takes, or when you start.

Europe 06

From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Subject: Europe e-mail 1 – Fair warning

"Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice, there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors."
Henry James
1843-1916

Last year Lorne and Louise followed in the Scandinavian footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen and Henning Mankell’s Inspector Wallander. This year, as we traverse parts of Spain, Italy and France, we (me) are inspired by Charles Dickens, who in the 1840s wrote Pictures from Italy:

"There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all Italy, but could be easily buried under a mountain of printed paper devoted to dissertations on it," he wrote. "I do not, therefore, though an earnest admirer of Painting and Sculpture, expatiate at any length on famous Pictures and Statues. This Book is a series of faint reflections - mere shadows in the water - of places to which the imaginations of most people were attracted in a greater or less degree, on which mine had dwelt for years, and which have some interest for all. The greater part of the descriptions were written on the spot, and sent home, from time to time, in private letters. I do not mention the circumstance as an excuse for any defects they may present, for it would be none; but as a guarantee to the Reader that they were at least penned in the fullness of the subject, and with the liveliest impressions of novelty and freshness."

Pretty smart, eh, that Dickens. I think he’ll go far as a writer. So that’s what you’ll get over the next few weeks, "faint reflections of our impressions," as we proceed July 5th to 24th, through Tina and Tom’s wedding in Ibiza (or Evissa in Catalon), Spain; a few days in Barcelona; a week in Venice; and a week in Aix en Provence.

I will be penning like Dickens rather than blogging, so I’ll try to get to an internet cafe about once a week. Forgive me for likely being unable to respond to you in transit, and for the typos incurred while Lorne paces outside the cafe while I finish up.

A happy summer to you all.
Louise and Lorne


From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Friday, July 7, 2006 11:57 AM
Subject: Europe 2 - The uneventful journey of the Rachlis luggage

It was 11:30 a.m. Wednesday by the time our pre-flight preparations were done, and I could go for a last minute run along the Rideau Canal. I was admiring how beautiful it was - already looking at scenery through the eyes of a tourist - when a cyclist pulled up beside me and asked how to get to the University of Ottawa. My first thought was, "Oh, she can speak English." I had been mentally prepared for Spanish, Italian or French.

When we checked in at the airport, our luggage tags for Ottawa-Toronto-Frankfurt-Barcelona-Ibiza were so long the clerk had to split them in two on the handles, but at least the luggage was checked through to our final destination, and we wouldn’t have to reclaim it at any or each leg. Ever skeptical, Lorne kept asking different staff at the Frankfurt airport, our entry to the European Union, "Are you sure we don’t have to reclaim our luggage?" He of course also expressed doubt that, at the end of our 17-hour journey, we´d ever see the luggage again. His glass is half empty.

Toronto to Frankfurt was with Lufthansa, a "Star Alliance Partner" of Air Canada, on a Boeing 747. The plane was packed, and if they give a Consumers’ Choice Award for smallest seats, tightest lack of leg room and loudest wailing children among 500 plus passengers, they´d get gold. They even provide real metal cutlery, including knives, with the plastic meal because no one could pry themselves out of their cramped seats fast enough to do any harm. Getting out was hard enough when you have to go to the air-borne out house.

Real dishes and plates at the coffee kiosks in the Frankfurt airport where we spent a couple of hours! So civilized! It’s much easier to avoid creating paper garbage here than in North America. Inside the glass display case, the ordinary bread sandwiches were called "American". The whole grain, healthy, multigrain ones were called "German". They also sold frankfurters.

The worst part in transit for me was the several hours in the Barcelona airport, second from last leg. Jet lag thumped me and I just had to lie down. At least the benches didn’t have those are rest metal dividers and I could stretch out with my now indispensable, red, traveling neck pillow that I relied on the whole way. Lorne stood, rather, sat guard, he having been able to snatch several naps during the transatlantic leg.

Once we were actually on the delayed Air Iberia flight (flight time from Barcelona to Ibiza is less than an hour) we prepared by mentally rehearsing getting our rental car, getting used to a new car in a new country, finding our accommodation (at least it would still be daylight) and then finding Puck’s rented villa for a wedding guest get together that same evening. But first, pick up the luggage.

Walk past the palm trees, enjoy a minute’s sunshine and on to the luggage carousel. And watch. And wait. And watch as our two bright red suitcases with special ribbons so you can’t miss them on the conveyor belt don’t arrive. Lorne is so sweaty we have our own personal space. (I’m immune to it now. On second thought, no, I’m not.)

One bag is in Canada, and we have no record of the other, reports the clerk, proud of their excellent tracking system. We’ll call you. Don’t worry, this has happened before. (Including to five other people on our flight.) How can we reach you?

Instead of late afternoon sun to guide us, we are now driving at dusk. Lorne is re-learning the standard shift. Luckily the couple we stopped to ask how to put the car into reverse spoke enough English that they showed us how. You can imagine what they told their friends about the crazy tourists they met while walking home. We lurch along twisting roads, discovering the unique personality of our Renault diesel rental car as we attempt with difficulty to find Club Calla Lenya. (We were not delighted to learn that it is not in the town of the same name.) The Spanish phrase book is in the luggage. I was sure I thought of everything for this trip - except the right place to put it.

Skip forward an hour. We are now in our little stucco room, part of a six-plex unit as far from the main building as possible. (Sometimes we walked, sometimes we drove.) But minus everything that wasn’t in our carry-ons.

So this is a moral and a caution for you, dear friends and family. A carry-on filled with paperback novels is little comfort when what you really need is earplugs (guess why), a toothbrush, a party dress and a bathing suit. (Remember, this was before the scare in England regarding mixing innocuous-seeming liquids to make a bomb.)

But the fragrant hibiscus, oleander, and bougainvillea are bountiful and the sky is blue. Ibiza is truly beautiful, 572 square kilometres (one-fifth the size of Ottawa according to Lorne) of red sand, green pine-covered hills, deep blue water and white plaster walls on all the buildings. It was a trading seaport as early as 7 B.C. Now all the billboards advertise the popular-for-the-moment singers at the tons of nightclubs, including Privilege, The Largest in the World (in Guiness Book of Records according to the ad).

"Along the harbor streets, it’s possible to see the oddest characters whose sex condition is not easy to guess," says the free Ibiza pamphlet from the airport. It doesn’t refer to Lorne and Louise in their same three-day old Ottawa clothes. "It’s part of the island’s spirit of freedom brought by hippies ... Ibiza farmers knew how to accept these long-haired calmed youngs, who settled in the island during the Sixties," says the flyer. "Nowadays still happens the same, they have a kindly look at these craziness that sometimes seizes the island in summer." So there.

Note: Of 120 wedding guests from all over the world, we are now aware of at least six with lost ("delayed" in airline lingo) luggage.

Ibiza is popular with little children, too. The Director of Education inadvertently booked us into a ‘family resort’ 45 minutes from the main disco strip, the highlight being an evening puppet show in English and German. The good news – the kids go to bed early, and the food was all-inclusive, including three buffet meals a day and free snacks and drinks, including local alcoholic beverages, by the pool all day.

I’m off now to buy a bikini and flip flops, so I will fit in where "go-go dancers advance daily parties swinging the hips."


From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Sunday, July 9, 2006 11:54 AM
Subject: Europe e-mail 3: How to get married in Ibiza

The invitation cautioned: "You cannot park at the hotel. The roads in Ibiza are very busy on Saturdays so expect delays. If you miss the shuttles, you’ll miss the wedding!"

Tina and Tom’s wedding was set for 6 p.m. at the Hotel Can Talais in San Carlos, Ibiza, Baleares. As directed, we parked near the old white church in the centre of San Carlos (population 100) and then headed to one of the minivans which proceeded through the pine trees up a long dusty one-lane dirt road to the top of a hill where the hotel overlooked the Mediterranean. The driver said to wait a minute for the dust to settle before opening the van door, and I understood why I’d seen a number of extremely dirty black car windshields in town with "wash me" and other comments finger written in Spanish.

The hotel was actually a large villa, formerly owned by the late British comedian Terry Thomas and now by his son. The main room has a life size painting of Thomas in traditional English riding gear. The house has just five large guest rooms and gets its clients only by word of mouth. "It’s a real find," said our British shuttle driver, who said she left the Midlands for Ibiza 16 years ago. She also advised that you never get used to the afternoon heat.

It was the kind of wedding setting you see only in movies, outdoor patio overlooking the sea, white clothed tables and chairs, sprinkles of flower petals everywhere, a soft breeze, large white umbrellas over each table to provide shade.

There was a brief non-religious (and non-binding—civil service performed in London last week) outdoor ceremony conducted by the groom’s friend, with passages written and recited by the couple. Following a Buddhist tradition they had picked up in Nepal, the best man (why doesn’t the bride marry the ‘best’ man?) handed a thin yellow rope out from the bride and groom and attendants, up and down each row to each of the guests - to symbolize that we were all tied together in friendship, the theme of their wedding after their nearly 10 years together. After 10 years, friendship is a pretty good deal.

There were small wooden fans placed on each seat for the guests at the outdoor ceremony, and wide orange ribbons tied the napkins at the meal, both of which went home with the guests, along with their own wrist-length pieces of the yellow cord. The tall blond bride looked like Grace Kelly in a slim low cut lace cream gown; the groomsmen each wore a single orange orchid blossom on their dark jackets.

The meal of local Spanish dishes served by attractive young British servers ended with chocolate tasting – platters consisting of six different tiny chocolate creations, like chili chocolate pots and heart shaped truffles.

By the way, our suitcases both finally arrived in Ibiza a day apart, Lorne’s the day after our arrival, mine the next day and fortunately just before the wedding, sparing my attendance in flip flops and the red/orange hippie wrap around skirt and top I bought here to go over my new orange bikini that says Espagne on the bum. (It’s not rude; it means "Spain" in Spanish.) We never did get to see much more of the island than the road to and from the airport. (The luggage ‘delay’ was caused by Air Canada in Toronto, which never got them on our transatlantic flight.)

We have just arrived back in Barcelona via Air Iberia, the last day before the Iberia pilots go on their annual strike. We’re planning our Barcelona activities, and I’ll tell you how it all works out in a few days. Buenas noches.

From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 11:59 AM
Subject: Europe 4: B-art-celona

When we got into Barcelona, the first thing (well, almost the first thing) I did was ask the hotel desk clerk to suggest a bar that we could walk to so we could soak up the local atmosphere, eat and, most importantly, watch the World Cup Final. He wrote down directions to the "Phil Harmonia" which turned out to be a traditional English pub named the Philharmonic, filled to over-capacity with loud, under-25 English, and a ton of cigarette smoke.

My only regular bar experience is the crowded and noisy annual TriRudy triathlon group silent auction at a pub in Vanier. This was just the same, except for the smoke. And the English accents. And the roof shattering cheering. (Lorne apparently has other and more extensive experience with bars which he hasn’t shared with me.)

The corners of buildings at most street intersections in old Barcelona are cut off, thus forming an attractive octagonal plaza effect. On a side street near La Rambla (famous wide boulevard with cafes down the middle) in downtown Barcelona, I’m drinking red wine and eating a baked potato in an English pub, with an BBC World Cup TV broadcast on a large screen, English only menus, Brit servers, and Lorne’s eating steak and kidney pie and quaffing Guinness. When in Rome …

This is a contrast to our usual Spanish experience so far where most Spaniards don’t speak fluent English. Gunnar, (bride’s uncle, Claes’ brother), one of many quadrilingual Swedes we know, says it’s because in Spain they dub the American movies into Spanish, but in Sweden (smaller population, smaller movie market) it’s Swedish subtitles, so they get to listen to - and learn - the English.

So our first evening in Barcelona was like a bonus trip to Britain, then manana (can’t figure out how to make the curly thing) after the Cup, back to Spain.

I’m particularly conscious of being judged as a tourist and needing to set a good example as a foreign visitor. At a local bar in San Carlos on Ibiza a bartender had been particularly unpleasant to Lorne after crankily serving him a cerveza and growling, in Spanish, "You blinkety blank New Yorkers … " then turned and wouldn’t pay him any more attention. We see good and bad behaving tourists and we (me, anyway) are especially trying to be polite, use the language whenever we know the words, even make sure our wet laundry is hanging neatly in the hotel room. It’s hard to break stereotypical images and harder when you can’t speak to each other.

I am sooo glad we are able to spend some time in Barcelona, which was just going to be a transit point. I knew about the art and architecture, but to actually see it is wonderful. Every building, sculpture, fountain is so grand. The thickly treed boulevards, iron and flower bedecked apartment balconies, motor scooters as vehicle of choice parked in rows on every sidewalk like bicycles were in China ...

We bought two-day on-off tour bus passes, broiling like Swiss Chalet chickens on the top of the double deckers because, if you’re cool inside, you can’t see the tops of the buildings. (Mad dogs and Englishmen .... )

On the shopping streets there is chain retail and chain food. Yes, McDonald’s. It is the art and architecture in public places that makes a city unique. (And it was such a big deal for Ottawa to ‘save the Cattle Castle’ and they wouldn’t even fix the Strathcona Park fountain for years!) On the city streets, the magnificent buildings tower above, and from the top of the double deckers, the miniature pedestrians fill the wide sidwalks below.

Antoni Gaudi’s early 1900s buildings and sculptures make me feel I could sculpt a building freestyle out of clay instead of measured iron and steel. His work is so creative and inspiring. The apartment building, with an inner court, curves everywhere, a window for every apartment room (including the storage room but not the maid’s room), marble tiled floors with more intricate patterns in public areas, was still, after over 100 years, in move-in condition. The exhibits showed how Gaudi designed his buildings with models composed of weights, counterweights, strings, sticks and so on rather than the traditional slide rule and T-square. A true genius.

We also saw the football stadium that seats more than 100,000 where Maradona and Ronaldinho played, and the stadium that was the site of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

For lunch we bought components at El Supermercat two doors down from our hotel. Always interesting to see the regional differences at the stores where locals shop in what food is emphasized and how they do things. For instance, after lining up at the cashier, I had to go back to the fruit and vegetable department and weigh the produce myself. The smell of the freshly baked bread was hypnotic.

Eating my piece of baguette and Spanish mejillons en escabeche (pickled mussels) in the hotel room, I had a flash of eating at my desk at work. I dripped highly colored food onto my clothes just like at home. I guess I haven’t been on holiday long enough. Tomorrow we will bus to and picnic at Bogatell beach on the Mediterranean, beside the city’s oldest cemetery with its centuries old crypts.

I have a few minutes left on my internet card, so I decided to write now while Lorne’s having his siesta. Please forgive as always typos, illiteracies and the nonsense from writing while the clock is ticking. (I know, it’s how I write at work all the time :-)
Buenas tardes. I’ll be back in touch from Venice!

---------------------------
From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 4:55 PM
Subject: Europe 5: Alas, poor Venezia

Bonjourno (sic)
I’m writing a quick note standing up at the hotel clerk’s counter, because the other computer, the one in the TV room for guests to use, isn’t working and he’s letting me. Please ignore the lack of apostrophes - I can t find them on the Italian keyboard. (I added them after I got home.)

Three things I learned from a combination of Italian guidebooks while eating tapas and drinking wine at an outside cafe on La Rambla in Barcelona the night before leaving for Venice:

1. Venice is 100 islands, 400 bridges and 2,000 alleys. (All numbers grossly exaggerated we later found.) The city is shaped like a fish. (If you’re a mile up in the air looking down.) Addresses are hopelessly confusing. "Revel in getting lost." True. And that does panic Mr. Organization. Me, it’s my natural state.

2. "Avoid the area around the railroad station where it is less than pleasant ... Don’t stay in Mestre, a polluted industrial sprawl across the causeway."

3. The word "ghetto" comes from getti, the jets of the brass foundry located there before the word was inherited by Venice’s Jewish community when required to live on the site from 1516 to the late 1700s when the gates were opened by Napoleon and then reinstated by the Austrians.

Guess where last March the Rachlises reserved a hotel room for six days. You’re right. The answer is number 2. And the moral is - read the guidebooks BEFORE you make a reservation. (As with our luggage, we’re living these challenges just so everyone else will know what not to do :-)

So it was with some apprehension we approached our pre-paid Hotel Piave in Mestre near the railroad station. But nothing was going to ruin our visit to Venice. I’d read so many splendid novels set here in the Middle Ages. Who cared if the CAA Travel Book calls Venice, "Crowded and expensive, crumbling and shabby." As it turns out, they are right on.

We’re now entrenched in our dear devoid-of-charm Hotel Piave hotel room in Mestre, which bills itself as a "modern Venice hotel". That’s like saying that Bathurst and Wilson is the "modern Toronto". And it actually looks a bit the same. But we’re only sleeping there. (And Lorne doing his laundry.)

We had dinner outside three nights in a row at Ristorante Dante just down the street from the hotel. We just couldn’t manage the local custom of an afternoon nap at the height of the afternoon heat with a long and leisurely evening, beginning with dinner after 8. Especially since it meant a half hour bus ride back to the hotel and then another ride back to the islands. So we dined al Mestre. On the outside patio, under the stars, the first night listening to a table from Toronto expound on their adverntures. On each of the three nights, at 8:30 precisely, a bus load of tourists would arrive, be fed, and be back out the door by 9:30. We were in no hurry, which was lucky because for that hour it was hard to find our waiter. The food was great, the ambiance interesting since we were seated1 metre from a pedestrian / bicycle mall. By the third night the waiter thought we looked familiar. And then we were gone.

Eera squisito! (We’re language lagged. After struggling with the Spanish phrases and mastering "la cuenta per favor" to ask for the bill, it’s now "mi porta il conto per favoree". I’m getting hives from red wine so I m ALMOST ready to give it up. (Never did. And the hives went away.)

After wonderful breakfasts included with our rooms in Ibiza and Barcelona, the plastic packaged pseudo-croissants in "modern Venice" seem especially lame. Our tablemate one morning was a Dublin-area woman who had been here with her family for nearly a week and happily recited in her Irish lilt her entire itinerary and advice on everything such as that the churches for a fee will loan you a shawl or wrap so you will be modest enough to enter. (Actually shawls were provided gratis to women for the synagogue part of the Jewish ghetto tour.)

On our way into Venice the first morning we stopped at the train station as planned to buy tickets from here to Aix. To our surprise, you can’t get there by train from here - without at least four stops or an overnight in Geneva. We spent several hours investigating alternatives, all expensive and inconvenient. No direct flights – would have to stay overnight in Prague ! I’ll let you know how it ends up. (Found out it’s cheaper to hire a driver and car than to rent and drive yourself and about the same cost as flying or training without changes and stopovers. So that’s what we did. Moral: book all travel ahead when you have the time to discover what the options are and the cost is cheaper than the day-ahead price.)

Mestra is one railway station away from Venice (cost 1 euro each way) or, from our hotel’s bus stop, five bus stops away. (Bus pass is also good on the water buses.) So for the five days we went, by the time we were off the city bus and onto the water bus in old Venice, it was the heat of the day and the crowds were a sweating, heaving amoeba-like mass of gelato-eating, T-shirt buying, cell-phone talking humanity surrounding a nuclei of gift shops.

The ghetto and Jewish museum were quiet and uncrowded. You could be pretty sure that anyone going off the beaten tourist track into this area was Jewish. Weird feeling. It was interesting to tour two preserved synagogues from the 1500s. Both were essentially hidden inside innocuous looking buildings, on the second floor, with seating for about 100 people each. One way of telling there were synagogues inside was the presence of five (for the books of Moses) windows. Of the five original synagogues, three were Ashkenazi (eastern European Jews) and two Sephardic (middle Eastern and north African). Two of the Sephardic (the ones we saw) are actually still in use, one in the summer because it’s cooler and the other in the winter. The congregation consists mainly of elderly folks. There are a few jewelry and gift stores specializing in Jewishabilia, and one kosher restaurant on the edge of the canal looking as if it had been transplanted from suburban Jerusalem.

Most of the buildings in Venice are three, maybe four storeys high. No elevators. Except in the ghetto. When the island was completely built up, the only way to house a growing population was up. So here there are eight and nine storey buildings. Still no elevators.

Locking Jews up on their own island at night was a gesture by the Venetian government to the Pope and had the unintended consequence of protecting the Jews at night because that was when many believed we did our evil deeds. The only exception to the lock up was for doctors if needed for a medical emergency during the night. In return, the Venetian Jews were spared the Inquisition. (There are just 400 "affiliated" Jews (mostly elderly) in Venice today. The ubiquitous Lubovitchers from Brooklyn have an office here near the museum for the summer, but they don’t count, said our guide.)

Venice and the canals are substantial and impressive in their history, but the first day I was heartbroken. At first I thought the graffiti in suburban industrial Mestre was just a result of poverty in a run down area, but to see graffiti spray painted in so many locations on the buildings and bridges and alleyways of Venice itself, and overflowing garbage bins, brought me to tears. My dream city was under attack.

The water in the canals looked clean, counter to my fears of garbage and smells; it was the human-created detritus on the land that upset me. What a shame. I’m a dreamer, and, as always, a little late to the party, but I’m still glad I was there. A pui tardi (see you later) and Ciao.

________________________________________________________________________
From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 2:20 PM
Subject: Europe 6: Venezia - learning to love it

A quick note in keeping with today’s theme of glass-making, because I want to correct the impression yesterday’s ‘meltdown touristique’ might have given. As we get to know the city and the buses (land and water), and we know where to go and where not to go back to, Venice has a happier face than my initial pessimistic view. (Attribute it to dehydration.) There are beautiful shaded spots to sit and listen to the cicadas chirping, or to swing your legs over the fondamenta (a street that runs along the canal) and eat a box of strawberries beside the water, balconies to feel the breeze and watch the boats go by.

Murano Island (where glassmaking was moved in the 1400s to avoid fires in Venice) was quiet and pleasant. When they started blowing glass in Murano it was to imitate the first Chinese porcelains that had just reached Venice. Ironically today, many Murano shops have hand printed signs exhorting customers to avoid cheap Chinese imitations which, they claim, will destroy Murano’s glass industry.

At the Museo del Vetro there are examples of hugely ornate glass centrepieces for the Doges’ tables called deseri with one extreme example being a complete Italian garden with fountains, arches and flowerpots, and mythological theatre scenes. I guess they can still have such fragile glass bowls and goblets from the 15th century because there was no Air Canada then. (Couldn’t resist :-) I was looking at some glass bead necklaces and rings in the glass museum showcase, and thought hmph, pretty plain. Then I read the label that said they were from the first and 2nd centuries. And I had thought them to be current jewelry.

Surreal and fascinating, Venice has grown on me as we walk and take the vaporetti (water buses) around in the heat and the crowds. (Other places try to be Venice - I’ve water toured a town in China called the Venice of China, and Gothenbourg, the Venice of Scandinavia, but Venice with all its positive and negative components, they’re not.) Regards from the Venice of Venice.
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From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 10:27 AM
Subject: Europe 7: Happy End of the Plague

Buongiorno! (Now I know how to spell it correctly) Before leaving Ottawa, when we checked (of course too late) Tripadvisor.com for comments about our beloved Hotel Piave, "modern Venice hotel", one of several derogatory posts mentioned "the surly bald guy at the desk." So it was with some excitement we realized, "that’s him! The surly bald guy!" When I politely inquired about using the advertised feature of "internet access, see desk", he replied, "still not working. Go down the street."

"Down the street" there’s a corner small business run by a nice Pakistani man, basically a shabby room the size of a convenience store with booths and telephones used by immigrants for long distance calls. The computer he offered was in the back room beside the mop and pail, for 1.5 euros (no time limit!). Lorne sat on a folding chair in the waiting area in front and read the pocketbook he’d brought for the occasion since he knew he’d be waiting. "Why," he asks, "have the last three mystery books you’ve given me to read begun with the murder of a woman jogging?"

Anyway, I’m patronizing the corner man again so I can tell you about yesterday’s Festa del Redentore, an annual festival of thanksgiving for deliverance from a plague five hundred years ago. They build a temporary pontoon bridge across the canal to the Great Redentore Church. There was a long, decorated parade of boats, lanterns and other decorations are hung, and fireworks at midnight.

"Unbelievably ornate display of wealth, money lenders needed to raise money for the growing war effort against the Muslims, a massive display of weapons of mass destruction, prisons for those denounced by anonymous accusations ..." Plus ca change...
But no, we haven’t been reading the newspaper; we spent the morning listening to a seemingly endless audio commentary in the Doge’s Palace at St. Mark’s (excuse me, San Marco) Square learning history.

Quick tour of a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit housed in a church. Replicas of his papers accompanied by functioning models of what he had designed. For once Lorne took longer to get through an exhibit than I did. There might be something to the male / female brain theory.

Then, after a bikini swim in the waves of the Adriatic (Louise, not Lorne) on the small public beach of Florida-like Lido Island (which we liked so much we went back again the next day), we came back to St. Mark’s Square and had a drink al fresco while listening to a jazz combo and watching the pigeons eat from the hands of tourists from all over the world.

Venitians, like the rest of the world, now come in all variations, all speaking Italian. We had caffe decaffeinato and zupa di pesce alla marinara at a Chinese-operated paninoteca near the Rialto Bridge (they spoke Italian but not English, just like the sushi bar in Stockholm where the Japanese cooks spoke Swedish but not English), and we share the bus back each evening with young men of African origin and their giant bags of knock-off purses that they sell off blankets each evening at busy Venice pedestrian intersections. (The first time I saw the big bags, I thought they were nice boys going to the laundromat).

Oh, and you know those Peruvian Indians with the long black braids who play Andean music on a variety of pipes and recorders and sell their tapes and CDs in every major North American city? They’re here too, but for some reason are wearing Disney-concept North American Indian headdresses and fringed pants and jackets instead of their familiar white shirts and black pants. Whatever works …

In abundance: little pet dogs, pigeons, cloth bag folding shopping carts pulled by mature women in print dresses, gelato stands (1 scoop 1 euro, 2 scoops 2 euros, up to 3), and masked or maked-up (made-up (?) and costumed buskers, some on pedestals, some on stilts (!) posing as statues for coins. Rare to extinct: public benches, chairs and washrooms. You are expected to buy a drink and do your sitting (both kinds) at a cafe. The small public beach area on Lido had almost no facilities while next to it on both sides on extensive hotel beachfront, guarded by a security man, were cabanas, beach chairs, rental boats, change facilities and food outlets. And on Sunday, the little facility there was closed – no rental chairs, not even a working tap to wash off the salt water and change rooms closed so people held up beach towels while their friends changed clothes.

People push through lines here, none of that sheepish waiting your turn, so you have to fend for yourself. We start together getting onto boats or buses and have to look for each other inside as people crowd past and between us. Service is variable. An older North American Italian woman pushing a man in a wheelchair was yelling at a vaporetta attendant who told her to go over to the chart and look it up herself to find out if this boat went to St. Mark’s.

I thought two men chatting across the walkway from our evening restaurant were using sign language, but it turned out they were just talking and using their hands for emphasis. (Q: How do you make an Italian mute? A: Make him sit on his hands.)

When I get back I’m going to put a posting on Tripadvisor.com to counteract the ones that would have discouraged us had we seen them earlier. Looking back on six days and nights in Venice, each day I have become more attached. Ordinary adjectives don’t do justice to the uniqueness of this place. Pictures and descriptions in guidebooks are nothing like the real thing. I will think of Venice as we enjoy the chauffeured all day Tuesday drive along the Mediterranean coast to Aix en Provence.

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From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 12:39 PM
Subject: Europe 8: Aix and Pains

"Après moi, le deluge," said King Louis XIV, and in an afternoon thunderstorm, we arrived at the door of Hotel Kyriad in Aix en Provence, 25 km north of Marseille and a 7 hour drive from Venice along winding four-lane highway through dozens of tunnels, past terraced hills and gorgeous views of the Mediterranean. We had had conversations in English in Venice – at the kosher restaurant Gam Gam outdoors beside a canal with a couple from London, and on a bus boat with an American marine from San Antonio serving in Bosnia who was meeting his American fiancée in Venice for a 3-day romantic interlude and asked us for directions ! (Every sentence of his included the word ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ depending on whether he was addressing me or Lorne – so darn polite). It was so nice to meet up in Aix for an evening with Claes and Puck, the parents of the Ibiza bride, for meaningful dialogue, a nice change from the predictable conversation between us. (Typically, Lorne: Here’s all the things that can go wrong today. Louise: Shut up.)

Aix is like a small scale Paris. We had a wonderful meal outdoors, under cleared up sky: Except for breakfast, we haven’t eaten inside for weeks. (The title of this email refers to the excellent bread and everything else to eat here.) Puck and Claes had arrived in Aix a day ahead of us and were and heading to Amsterdam the next day. Puck had good advice to smooth our way:
- Don’t take the Aix tourist mini-train in the morning for sightseeing when street deliveries are being made - traffic jams. Go in the afternoon when it’s not as busy:
- On the way into the Cezanne exhibit, pick up an English brochure; it has the same information as the plaques, but inside they aren’t in English.
- Don’t get a Eurail pass in the summer because of the long lines for reservations. TGV Train Grand Vitesse is the way to go in France with beautiful shining cars and sleepers.
We actually followed advice number 1. Didn’t need the other two but good advice just the same.

It is 100 years since artist Paul Cezanne’s death and the region is in great celebration of the centenary with a variety of exhibitions, and tours of his childhood home, studio and everything in between including the coffee shop he frequented.

There’s a lot else to our stay in Aix (pronounced Aches (you know, aches and pains, including the ‘s’ – somehow a contraction of Aqua and Sextius, the latter being a Roman general who built an aqueduct 2000 years ago to bring the aqua from the hills to the city) including a crocodile farm (why, we asked the tour guide? – to attract tourists and to make leather for shoes and purses) plus day outings to Avignon and the Popes’ palace there, and to Arles.

In the old part of Aix (remember to pronounce the ‘x’) itself, only a 20-minute walk from our hotel we were told (40 if you are human like us), we discover le Cours Mirabeau, a road built in 1649 for horse drawn carriages and sedan chairs. It is lined with thick trees, 100 statues, cafes, fancy historic mansions from the 17th century with wonderfully intricate doors and embellishments, and huge ornate fountains. One fountain dating from 1734 spews warm water from a hot spring. Running off of the broad main streets is a maze of narrow, winding pedestrian streets (which cars sometimes used), crowded with shoppers, and towered over by 3- and 4-storey buildings with no front yards lining the streets, housing fancy shops selling caviar, wine, designer clothing plus boulangeries and cafes. There are of course the highly elaborate churches and convents, city hall, palaces, bell towers, and the requisite now disappeared (where they used to live) Jewish quarter. There are still remnants of the Romans from 1 A.D.

Aix is the county seat for Provence and full of very rich people. The narrow winding streets are lined with courtyard walls and building walls, looking pretty much the way they did four hundred years ago. But inside the walls – sometimes what appears to be several dwellings has become one. There are courtyards and even swimming pools inside. We saw people leaving one villa because the garage door had been left open and inside we saw a large open courtyard, circular driveway and a Maseratti car (worth a half million euros, Olivier told us). We’re not just out of their league. We aren’t even playing the same game.

Lorne has been dutifully washing his clothes in the sink each night, while I, who never perspire, had been saving mine. In Aix it was time to find a laverie. We traversed the narrow streets and finally found what we were looking for. As we were figuring out the instructions, another man doing laundry comes over to help in French. He switches to English when he realizes we are. Turns out the white bearded man with the large cross is Father Ronald Young, originally from California but now an Oblate missionary and teaching at St: Paul’s University around the corner from us in Ottawa. He’s living at the monastery in Aix to learn French and perhaps save a few souls: He’s going to write an article on his summer for me for our community paper The Mainstreeter. So here’s Lorne talking politics and sharing his N.Y. Herald Tribune with a clergyman from Ottawa. Lubovitchers in Venice, Oblates in Aix; every denomination is out to proselytize in the sunshine.

Sorry for the typos and cutting short of my stories. I’ll have to tell you in person. I don’t think I’ll be emailing again from here; the French keyboard is driving me crazy. It’s very different and slows me down too much to find the letters; and internet in Aix is 5 euros for 15 minutes. Instead, on our last week of vacation, I will stop and smell the lavender. Au revoir and all good wishes.....
_____
From: Louise Rachlis
Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2006 2:11 PM
Subject: La fin d’une semaine en Provence

Hi
I still can’t work on this strange keyboard, but I wanted to quickly record some more of our trip so we will remember it. We’re sitting over an absolutely fresh, just caught fish lunch in Avignon, and Olivier, our tour guide, is pontificating about the evils of the microwave and take-out coffee. "Why would you take it out? ... It takes just a few minutes to drink it ...When I was young, it was the height of rudeness to eat a sandwich on the street ..." He insisted on taking us to a real non-tourist restaurant that prepares food properly, and expostulated on everything from the carrots "right from the garden" to the fresh-pressed olive oil.

For our last few days here, we have been taking small guided trips outside Aix and thanks to Theriot and Olivier, and their charming French accents and idioms, we have learned a lot about Marseille where we spent Thursday, and the Avignon area Friday. Marseille is a huge, very old, "bouillabaisse" city, Theriot ‘s word for melting pot. Its downtown area has been revived and is worth a visit. The view from Notre Dame de la Garde church of Marseille and the mountains surrounding it is amazing. This according to our guide of Marseille who also lives there. According to Olivier, who lives in Aix and guides tours from there, Marseille is an unsafe dump.

For the trip to Avignon on Friday, there was just us, tiny Agnes Lan from Taiwan, who we spent the next two days with, and burly Rick James, from British Columbia, who is working here for four months as a maintenance mechanic on the local fire-fighting aircraft. Forest fires are a constant threat, and, the country-side being all built up, must be eliminated tout de suite. So, looking for smoke and dive bombing with water or chemicals are constant work.

The four of us, plus Olivier; a thin, medieval priestly-looking man in a Panama hat, spent the day in the vicinity of the Pont d’Avignon, formerly heavily fortified (big castle now a museum on one end) and the only crossing point between the ancient Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. (No, they don’t dance there.)

It was around 40 degrees at the 2000 year old Roman aqueduct, looking as good as new, but I hear it has been very hot in Ottawa too. Actually it has been 35 to 40C everyday, but it is a dry heat. Unless you stand near Lorne. Hail Caesar and pass the gelato. The lavender fields are pretty well faded, the sunflowers are wilted and only irrigated crops are surviving in the heat. But we’ve seen huge olive groves and apricot orchards, drunk too much Cote du Rhone regional wine and eaten tomatoes, olive oil and herbs at almost every meal.

Avignon was packed with people for the local theatre festival which brings in plays from all around the world. Advertising for plays included hanging posters everywhere, walking around in costumes and leading a donkey in the courtyard of the Popes’ Palace and elsewhere.

Saturday it was just us and Agnes with Olivier – a private tour! We spent the day in the Alpilles mountains, Saint Remy de Provence where Nostradamus was born and Van Gogh was hospitalized, and we saw both sites, and also in Arles, which is called the Rome of France because it has Roman amphitheaters and baths built by Julius Caesar. (They were on the winning side against Pompeii. Marseille, then called Marcellus, sided with the loser and Caesar razed it.) We walked around all morning and took photos at many of the spots which Van Gogh had painted. Reproductions of the paintings were conveniently placed on signs beside the real thing. The old buildings in Arles are half the height of those in Aix, and the town is also much smaller. We couldn’t afford to live there either.

They have bull fights in Arles, but they kill the bulls only once a year. This, we were told, was the civilized thing to do. (Not like you know who in the country next door.) We did see lots of bulls in pasture in the countryside. Except for the annual homicidal event, the task of the bull fighters is to capture a flag or ribbon attached to knives embedded in the bulls’ backs.

We had lunch in the medieval village of Les Baux de Provence, overlooking the rocky hills that Van Gogh painted, and eating fish soup. Out the window down below was a Michelin four star restaurant with a helicopter pad where the rich from Monaco fly in just for dinner and order from a menu with no prices. (If you have to ask you can’t afford it.) The town itself has been converted into a tourist village – no one lives there. Every house is now a café or shop.

After the two day tours and our own walking of Aix, we’ve now covered all the territory of Provence and have a better understanding of the area, its produce, scenery, crafts and history. Now to read the book. Must remember to reserve it at the library.

Sunday we walk the streets of Aix for the last time and have a splendid meal at the Deux Garcons where Emile Zola and Paul Cezanne spent their afternoons. Dessert is a frozen hollowed out lemon or orange stuffed with sherbet. Delicieux.

We fly to Barcelona, have just enough time for one last walk on La Rambla, and then a relatively uneventful three leg air journey home, where, believe it or not, our luggage is waiting for us, customs waves us through, and our taxi driver home assumes we are Italian because of our tans. A perfect ending for a glorious trip..

China 2004

Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 7:55 AM
Subject: Ring a ding ding, we’re in Beijing!

Hi everyone

Just a quick update to see how fast I can type at the 20 yuan per 15 minutes Internet cafe. It’s so interesting being here; I love everything, the bright characters on the neon signs, the bicycles, the food...
I’ll start at the beginning:

Our flight: Ottawa-Vancouver
It began with Lorne winning a free Tim Hortons roll up the rim coffee in the airport, and then we get on the plane, just 1/2 hour late because of de-icing. I open my March Air Canada Enroute magazine and there’s my name, under "Letter of the Month", and it says I receive two bottles of Ironstone Vineyards wine. (They never told me they were running the letter about "the death of cool" that I wrote on the way back from the Bahamas.)

This is becoming a silly hobby to see how many letters to the editor I can get in print while on holidays - e.g. the Chicago Tribune printed my Chicago letter and the Globe and Mail printed my Calgary Stampede letter. Closest thing to being a travel writer. (I’ll send my China letter from home.)

The in-flight movie was Cheaper by the Dozen with Steve Martin, a.k.a. Cheaper by the Dozin’. I am starting these notes in the beautiful Vancouver airport, eating tofu and noodles and hot and sour soup, and looking out at the mountains, kicking myself for not having my watercolor paints in my carry on.

I finished my first of six trip books, Girl With the Pearl Earring, as the plane opened its door in Vancouver. A wonderful, ‘suck you right in’ picture of life in 17th century Netherlands.

Vancouver-Beijing
So we get on the second plane, and propelled by boredom induced Starbucks decaf I ask the Air Canada flight attendant where the washroom is. She looks me in the eye and says, "you know how poor we are, we’ve done away with them."
Okay, says I, open a window. :)

Then follows a string of meals and movies each of varying quality. Fish, chicken, Cup o Noodles, Master and Commander, Runaway Jury, I Love Lucy, infomercials...I slept not a moment, thanks to heartburn likely from the hot and sour soup. Lorne took a Gravol and slept peacefully between Enroute crossword puzzles. Read second book, "Storm: Stories of Survival from Land and Sea", and looked out the window at Siberia.

China experience begins as we leave the Beijing terminal to the sound of honking car horns and jostling taxis, the overpowering smell of cigarette smoke, and a muggy 20 degrees F. (It was frigid by the next day.)

We drove along a modern industrial highway dotted with brand new 30-foot trees put in to help with the polluted air and prepare for the Olympics.

Signs have more English than I would have thought, in imaginative translations. Within the city there are as many bikes as cars, with their own boulevard for bikes only but so many near misses at intersections that I couldn’t look.

We are staying at the Wangfujing Grand Hotel. A "five star" hotel where There’s a sign over the sink that "Tap Water Is Not Potable" and you have to use your hotel key card to activate the electricity to turn on the lights. We are with two other school board employees, Geoff who just got here from Seoul, Korea, where he was arranging the same kind of partnerships, and David, who grew up in Nanjing and attended Carleton University.

My first impression? It’s so nice to see so many people out on their own, not surrounded by SUVs. Yet it’s eerie in the smog; like the colours are missing and it’s like a black and white movie. The first evening, without having slept for 24 hours, we went out to one of the many huge Peking red and gold duck restaurants for the ritual duck, pancakes and soup. Every table but ours was chain smoking.
Looking out the window in the morning was the same white haze around dozens of gray/silver low rise apartments. But poking through in the distance were a few pagoda roofs from the Forbidden City spreading out beyond. I went for a swim in the basement pool before the hotel breakfast included with the room - my favourite breakfast of Congee, red bean dim sum buns and fried noodles.

Liu Jing Jing, a 20-year-old student practicing her English, waited with me at the embassy Wednesday morning while Lorne met with the Canadian Ambassador, and then she spent the day with us at the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square and the Great Wall.

At the Forbidden City I was surprised when a Chinese woman asked me to be in her family photo, but Liu Jing Jing said the Chinese like getting pictures of foreigners. Tian’ anmen (several different spellings) is the largest square in the world. The Forbidden City or Imperial Palace operated for five centuries and 24 emperors and ordinary Chinese were forbidden from even going near it. It1s a huge kilometer in length.

We’ve been driving around in little taxis with no seatbelts and no room when the four of us cram in. I have been most amazed by the mountains on the way to the Great Wall because they look so much like the China in pictures I’ve seen for so long.

At the Great Wall, we fought off the attack of the souvenir t-shirt, ‘have your photo taken on a camel’ peddlers, not the Mongol hoards. There were no hoards. The sun came out but it was so cold and windy there were more peddlers than tourists. Fascinating; I wanted to spend longer.

Tomorrow we fly to Nanjing for meetings with City Education Bureau and Provincial Ministry of Education, two days later drive to Suzhou for school visits, then drive to Shanghai. I’ll write again in a few days, and also when I get back.

Lorne is keeping his own ‘business trip’ diary and also sends love to all.

Louise

Nanjing

Date: Friday, March 12, 2004 9:00 AM

Subject: notes from Nanjing

Hi everyone
It’s time to leave Nanjing - I’m starting to know my way around.

Here’s a bit of what we’ve been doing:
Wednesday March 11
Flew Air China a bumpy 1 1/2 hours from Beijing to Nanjing, a crowded flight filled with businessmen in black suits. Nanjing is an attractive city of "just" 5 million. It was raining when we arrived and the thousands of bicyclists were wearing colorful rain ponchos, and the cherry blossoms were about to burst open on the long treed avenue similar to the Champs Elysees.

We are staying right downtown and walked to the "Radio and Television University" we were visiting. In the evening we were hosted to a ritual banquet with unending dishes, including a huge, smiling Yangtze River Fish, multiple toasts and smiling and nodding. It’s our own version of "Lost in Translation."

I read "How to Do Business in China" the week before we left, and there was a whole chapter on "the banquet" which was very useful in understand the procession of the evening.

Shortly after the last course, soup and then fruit, while we were in mid-sentence of a conversation, the top host waved his arms and said the dinner was over. Immediately everyone hopped up and put on their coats.

Fortunately I knew that and didn’t take it personally. Also not personally do I take the plopping down of a fork beside me by the waitress whenever I1m eating with chopsticks. It’s the same when I speak French in Quebec and get replied to in English. In both cases, I can manage, but just seem awkward and so they’re trying to be helpful.
In the morning I was on my own while the men went to meetings and then picked me up for yet another hosted meal.
I walked up Hazhong Road with my "Please Drive Me To..." card from the hotel, with Chinese instructions on how to get there in case I got lost. The uneven sidewalk was packed with hurrying people, bikes and scooters; good excuse for not running while I’m here.
The two downtown Nanjing department stores I went to had the latest styles and brand names I don’t buy at the Rideau Centre - lots of pointy, spikey shoes; in fact it was just like the Rideau Centre, only with staff.

At least one uniformed person at every table, every counter, every door, every two feet, and more staff dusting and cleaning. I paused to look at some lingerie and had no idea at all what the lingerie table woman was telling me; maybe that after all the eating I’ve done this week, nothing on her counter would fit me.

The only purchase I’ve made so far has been an "I Climbed the Great Wall" red sweatshirt from a Wall vendor.

On the streets, I look at all the bicycle riders in their regular clothes and carrying an unbelievable load of packages,
paraphernalia and children, and I think, what am I doing biking in Spandex. Lunch was hosted by the Nanjing Bureau of Education in the old area of the city. (I need a whole book to describe the food and decor, including live goldfish in a big bowl in the centre of the table.)

Then we walked around Zuan Wu Lake, and climbed up 392 steps ("commemorating 392 million Chinese people") to the tomb of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. We were joined spontaneously by Guo Jing, a university tourism major who wanted to practice her English with us.

But absolute highlight today was our visit to Mr. Gu’s college, where the four of us were placed on chairs at the front of the class so 15-year-old "broadcasting" students could ask us questions. The girls were particularly interested in me - they kept saying I was beautiful! - and couldn’t believe I was left handed (when they made me sign autographs.)

They presented us with bouquets of flowers, and took photos. I had some of my bio art cards in my bag, and they fought to get them as if I were a rock star. Another banquet for dinner, and a walk around the Confucius temple area at night.
Tomorrow the brocade factory and drive to Suzhou. By the way, at the banquet we had an animated discussion on working hours and effort in both countries. Lorne told them the night before we left for China, I had gone in to work.
The Chinese men said "Ohhhhh and it was no contest.

I’m afraid to edit or spellcheck this note or hotmail will disappear again, so forgive the imperfections.

Best wishes to all, and I’ll get back to you in a few days.
Love
Louise

Suzhou

Date: Saturday, March 1", 2004 4:05 AM

Subject: a note to you from downtown Suzhou (doesn’t rhyme; it’s pronounced Sue Joe)

Hi everyone

A short note about today, as I sit in the Suzhou Garden View Hotel and wait for Lorne to finish his meetings. In high school, I had learned briefly about the Nanjing Massacre, but it had meant little until we went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial site this morning.

The memorial to the 300,000 Nanjing residents killed and worse by the Japanese in 1938 was very impressively done with outdoor statues and stones, and a museum, and had a continuous line of visitors paying respects, including busloads of school children in their uniform track suits. It seems most school children have colorful school track suits.

After the massacre site, we walked over to the Nanjing Brocade Research Institute (there really wasn’t any research) and watched the factory workers on huge two-person looms working as their ancestors did. It takes at least five years to be trained in their family tradition.

There was a display of very hold historic robes and other brocade fabrics. Lorne bought a silk brocade tie and I got a reversible red brocade jacket. As is usually the case, the alleys and back streets are filled with laundry hanging, individual commerce and vibrant street life. We walked along a back street then hailed a taxi back to the hotel checkout to pick up our van ride to Suzhou.

A three hour drive past continuous gray stucco housing and rice cultivation. The "service centre" just off the highway had a woman selling live rabbits, turtles and gerbils in cages, mandarin oranges and other fruit, as well as Chinese snack food. A truckload of large live pigs parked beside us at the service centre, but we hadn’t seen any other animals all the way along. The public "bathrooms" no longer surprise me, and I’m getting much more efficient.

Best wishes to all.

"Talk" to you in a few days.


Louise
Date: Monday, March 15, 2004 1:19 AM

Subject: cycling in Suzhou!

Hi everyone Here I go again...I’m writing these notes as a reminder to my own fuzzy brain, and sharing with you in case any of it is of interest. Because it’s more important for me to be out doing than writing, it’s a sporadic chronology only. Please invite me for a philosophical discussion of Eastern and Western ways, with tea, when I return, and forgive what may seem superficial. I really am doing a lot of thinking.

So much of what is in my memory is vignettes:

... the beggar with the monkey, the street sweepers with their twig brooms, the women in Tong Li washing their clothes in the canal, the eagerness in the city to learn new words and practice English with us. Mr. Gu says his 8-year-old daughter started learning English in kindergarten.

Two little girls when we were out walking called out, "Hello, how are you?" to us.

With the World Heritage Congress coming up in Suzhou in June, there is beautification construction everywhere, bricklaying, tree planting, much by men wearing suits and white gloves and no hard hats.

The pattern and discipline of all the artists, whether doing embroidery, root carving or bonsai. I will try to remember that... Alain had told me of Suzhou1s centuries old reputation for the beauty of the city and its women, and it truly is a unique place. It was founded in the 6th century B.C. on a network of canals to control Yangtze flooding. Silk and gardens are its historic pride.

At the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute (workers and shop, no research visible) we watched women embroidering with strands 1/40th of a silk thread that you could barely see. They take at least three years to learn how to do it. The works on display were unbelievable - including a full-size embroidered Mona Lisa. It was amazing to someone like me who represents three generations of awful sewing tradition.

We then spent several hours walking around the "Humble Administrator’s Garden", acres of ornate pagodas, trees and flowers overlooking reflecting water. I hope to paint from my photos when I get back.

In the afternoon we drove to Tong Li, an ancient water-bound town on the water that is truly Venice-like. We took a gondola ride around and then re-traced our steps beside the canals.

Everywhere we went was crowded with local, not international, tourists, and some asked once again for us to pose for their cameras. For a change from Chinese cuisine we have also eaten McDonald’s takeout while travelling - as research for Diana, and I saved the box. Last night the four of us at supper at the Australian restaurant next door to the hotel that was having a Tex-Mex night. One hamburger was enough to propel us back to Chinese food.

In our hotel with black tile roof and whitewashed walls, the Suzhou Garden View Hotel, the courtyard magnolia trees are blooming, bamboo is growing, and it really is a perfect, serene setting right on the main street which has so much traffic it1s almost impossible to cross.
This morning Lorne was off on more school visits, and I stayed back to rent a bicycle, which I1d been anxious to do since we came to China. When in Rome... It was a coaster bike, "Cowboy" model.

Victor, a very friendly 25-year-old clerk from the hotel offered to go with me to practice his English. He was wonderful, leading me in and out of intersections, back alleys, main roads around to "Shi Lu Foot Street" and "Shi Lu Road International Business Street" according to his description. We biked for 2 1/2 hours and had lunch at KFC - his choice. He had a hamburger and I had a spicy chicken wrap with vegetables that tasted very Chinese.

The biking was a real experience. Nobody - pedestrians, bikes, cars, scooters - stops for anyone, or signals. They just weave in and out.

Scooters honk, cars honk, but you never know what for, and they go the wrong way in the lanes. And there’s construction mess and bicycle rickshaws and obstacles everywhere.

Victor says it must be wonderful in Canada where everyone has a car and he wanted to know the make of mine. I told him I thought bikes were better than cars. Now I’m going to sit in the hotel garden and paint until tonight’s banquet.

I wish all of this for all of you.
Love, Louise

Hangzhou

Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 11:00 PM

Subject: Food, schools and an English lesson

Hi everyone This will be my second last e-mail (tomorrow Shanghai and then home Saturday.)

We are now in beautiful - even in the pouring rain - Hangzhou, famous for the West Lake, honeymoon capital of China "since Marco Polo wrote about its captivating women and the loveliness of its temples and gardens." Marco was right. Think Niagara Falls meets Lake Louise.

The past couple of days we’ve been alternating eating and meeting, so I will describe a couple of each.

Monday night at the banquet hosted by the Suzhou Municipal Education Bureau, the wine was traditional Chinese yellow wine (fermented with rice) and the table was decorated in coral and gold, with each of the eight napkins folded differently, the highest napkin for the host. He took his role very seriously and served us himself, insisting we eat and drink everything before us. We were grateful for no banquet the following day in Hangzhou, but food was still very good.

For dinner we went with a Chinese educator to a popular Chinese family restaurant that Mao used to frequent. Among our food items was West Lake Fish in sweet and sour sauce, "Beggar’s Chicken" in Lotus leaves, and bamboo shoots in spicy soy sauce.

The gleaming new school we visited in Suzhou Tuesday morning has 1200 students, grades 1-9, located in the Suzhou Industrial Park. We sat in a glass-walled meeting room, at a rectangular glass table with ferns lined up in the open centre part, and we were served the traditional cellophane wrapped oranges, bananas, and tea in paper cups with the school name on them. (I hummed to myself "you serve me tea and oranges that come all the way from China" by Leonard Cohen).

Arrangements were confirmed for 10 students and two teachers to come and join Henry Larsen Public School in Ottawa for five months. It is a pilot project, with hope of more to follow. The students will come in August and stay to experience Canada’s great winter cultural festival, Christmas.

The school we visited in Hangzhou in the afternoon was a $4 million government funded grade 7- 12 school for 4000 students, the best in the region. I don’t think a more beautiful school exists anywhere in the world. It puts to shame Carleton University.

Now a bit on the language...I am laughing with not at the problem of translation. They are trying. The sign for the rest stop on the highway said "lie fallow". Here are the fire regulations on the back door of our hotel room (they mean, the dot on the map above, shows you where you are): Security Scattering Sketch Map Declaration

… Place don’t worry if a fire occurring. Our hotel have owned succor gathering facilities to sure you transmitted safely

… Place follow the direction route to the information corridor and there safeguards will take you out to the security belts

… Point profess your excellency seat.

The room service menu has "intestine roll with egg" for breakfast. Sausage? A few other choices from the menu where I had lunch yesterday, a very fancy place with couches and private rooms:

"Su the metre fear soup of sense of shame"

"Irish sheep leg thick soup"

"Lotus soundly north mushroom slippery chicken meal"

"Thick flat spit out departent" which may be a baked potato. Fortunately David Wang of the Ottawa board is with us some of the time and can help out.

Perhaps there is a market for Ottawa Citizen advertising features to provide second stage translation services. I’m going to look into that. Anything to get back to this wonderful place more often!

That’s it for now; we have another school to visit.
Love
Louise

Shanghai

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2004 6:28 PM

Subject: Shanghai and goodbye

Hello everyone

A few more anecdotes to complete the cycle. Even as I was waiting for the internet, I had a nice chat with a woman from Florida working here to upgrade hospitality training.

Wednesday afternoon we visited Hangzhou No. 4 Middle School and met with the woman principal at a round table with a massive flower arrangement coming up from the floor in the centre, even bigger than the one at the last school. And to the standard fruit and tea offering was added fresh lychees, huge grapes, and the fruit of which they were most proud, plump purple plums with the label from Chile still on them.

The teacher "monitor of the day", a man wearing a red armband to signify that, would take bananas and other fruit from the bowls, and place it in front of each of us to make sure we ate.

Then two hours later, with liaisons accomplished and arrangements for exchanges made, the principal led us across the street to the tea house for tea - and also strawberries, sugar cane, smoked fish, pine nuts, raisins, Asian pears, noodles and a selection of little fried pastries in an unending procession of little bowls.

I want to point out that these schools we’ve been visiting have been the absolute top in the country. They are the ones with budgets for education and travel. The great majority of schools are crowded and in very primitive surroundings.
In China there are now 125 million middle class people, and yet 900 million rural peasants.

The contrasts are hugely evident whenever you turn a corner off a main street. I1m so dumb the first time I saw laundry hanging on a tree in front, I thought it was for sale.

After a very worthwhile visit to the Ling yin Temple with a 65-foot Buddha (founded a.d. 326) and its hill covered with carvings, and the room with 500 giant Buddhas, each different, we left Hangzhou for Shanghai. The cities we’d been in for the past few days have been "small", just six or seven million. Shanghai is more than 1" million. The density is mind boggling. Out our hotel window the high rises look like matches standing up in a matchbox. There have been 3,000 highrises built in the past five years.

A few memories of the bumpy three-hour drive from Hangzhou to Shanghai:

… clusters of identical houses and people working by hand in the fields, on every single piece of land, the whole way. (Doze for 20 minutes, look up and it looks the same.)

… a rest stop ‘fast food’ operation offered only leaf-wrapped sticky rice in six options e.g. meat, nuts, egg etc. Heaven!

… Men holding small signs by the side of the highway near the entrance to each city. They offer to guide unfamiliar drivers on streets that might not even be on maps yet. (They hop into your car or bus.)

… Shanghai’s huge traffic jams, yet they are trying to control cars by making people bid on a limited number of plates each month. Wei Wei, the mother of an international student now in Ottawa, told us she didn’t win a plate last month with a bid of $39,000 RMB. (A car can be another $100,000.)

The CEO of a Shanghai drug company and husband of a man who makes TV shows, she hosted us to a rich banquet and then escorted us across the street last night to a Laura Ashley-decorated coffee shop. We sat listening to "Feelings" and "Don’t Cry for Me Argentina" sung by a live Chinese trio. There were pastries and sliced fruit, grape-sized oranges on the table, and traditional Chinese attentive service providing Irish coffee and cappuccino.

Afterward, David Wang, our school board liaison, invited us to visit the two-bedroom Shanghai apartment he rents for $700 a month Canadian. Yes, the difference is the salaries here.

You can tell this is Shanghai and not a "smaller" centre because the internet room in the hotel is open 24 hours instead of the brief hours in the other places. It’s 7 a.m., and Lorne is still sleeping.

I’ve come down to write my last e-mail before we head out to the Shanghai history museum , Yu Garden, and the European-like Bund area. Jessie, a finance student at the university, is accompanying us this time. We met her last night, and her English is amazing considering she has only been school taught and never lived in an English-speaking environment.

I could go on and on with observations and experiences. Can it really be just over a week since I came to China? I won’t be checking the internet again.
See y’all soon.

Love
Louise

Date: Sunday March 21, 2004

Subject: We’re back

Hi for the last time about China; this is the addendum, completing the circle. I want to be as hard-working and disciplined as the Chinese people I saw. On the second last day, we rode the Shanghai subway - new and well laid-out, with English translation, and good shops. Nicer than Toronto’s subway and 50 cents Canadian for a ticket.

The Shanghai Museum was excellent, telling the long history of the area with wax models and streetscapes. Then we took the subway again to Nanjing Street for dumplings for lunch, a huge basement "fast food" chain restaurant packed with people. The three of us (me, Lorne and Jessie our student "guide") sat at a table for four with a woman we didn’t know, and we didn’t speak to her or she to us the whole time. Crowded, but you have your privacy.

In the afternoon we had Danguipiangofiang flower tea at the teahouse at Yu Garden, a busy area of small shops. The tea house proudly displayed a photo of Bill Clinton and Hillary drinking tea there. I bought some Chinese paintbrushes in a shop, with Jessie as usual doing the bartering for me. She told me the shop woman yelled at her, "You’re Chinese and you’re poor, why are you helping her get a lower price!"

We joined Geoff and David for our last supper at a Japanese hot pot restaurant near our hotel, then walked around the lit-up Bund followed by coffee on the 54th floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel facing the Huang Pu River and the Bund from the other side.

We took the elevator higher to the 85th floor for a further magnificent view of Shanghai at night. I was skeptical when Geoff said we had to go to the hotel, but he was absolutely right. It was unbelievable.

The hotel has an interior courtyard and you can look down and down and down as if you’re in a space ship.

In the morning at our hotel, a Toronto woman who works for a Taiwanese auto parts company was happy to talk to a fellow Canadian. She sells to Wal-Mart which is expanding in south China.

Wei Wei, who had hosted us for dinner earlier in the week, came by with a gift of tea for us and a shopping bag "care parcel" of stuff for her daughter who is attending high school in Ottawa. She generously donated her company van to drive us to the airport.

On the way to the airport we spent a couple of hours at Zhujiajiao village, 40 km sw of Shanghai. Lively narrow streets packed with food vendors and crafts. Women sold goldfish for people to release into the river. Lorne and the other men had shoe shines on the street, by a woman carrying around a stool and polish.

We still managed to get to the airport, 100 km from Shanghai, way too early, despite all the forms to fill out. We dawdled at our last Chinese Chinese buffet, and bought a Beijing Olympics 2008 t-shirt.

We were glad our luggage wasn’t overweight with all the gifts we’ve been given and have bought.

We had just enough time for our connection in Vancouver because the airport was extremely busy, perhaps because of the end of March Break, and arrived in Ottawa on time. Air Canada was very helpful and professional.

So zai jian (good-bye) for now.

I will miss writing these e-mails.

Love
Louise