On the road again: Barcelona, day 7

Wow did my flight from BCN to JFK suck. Whatever I caught--my current best guess is the ill-advised hot-and-sour-cat soup at the Chinese place in Figueres--hit me hard last night and then today as well. I've been able to get down maybe 150 calories--and then only for a few minutes; you don't want the details.

My fever comes and goes, I shake periodically, and my stomach constricts in pain frequently. So, I'm writing this entry from a JFK Admirals Club, and I'll be crawling into bed as soon as I can after I get home.

I'm sure I'll be fine in a day or two, with luck even tomorrow, but right now I feel as bad as I've felt in a very long time.

No more cat soup for me.

On the road again: Barcelona, day 1

Well, really, there is no Barcelona for me today. Instead, I'm heading there and will arrive tomorrow after the usual fly-all-night trek. Still, the trip is ultimately to Barcelona, so that will be the title for these entries.

At this red-hot moment, I'm sitting in the JFK Admirals Club enjoying their free water, Diet Coke, and carrots. I do wish for Coke Zero and a broader selection of snacks, but I find such complaints hard to make, sitting as I am in the lap of airplane lounge luxury. I am living a life of such greater affluence and experience than the teenage me would ever have believed possible that I feel ashamed whenever I utter such complaints.

Speaking of teenagers, I have two, and I both like and love (there is a huge difference, of course) them greatly. It helps that I am stuck at 16 on the inside, which means that both kids are now aging past me. (Of course, I don't know yet what their internal ages are, so perhaps we'll end up close.)

Two recent interchanges, one spoken and one in email, should serve to illustrate why I enjoy my time and conversations with them so much. Each is silly, of course, but in a very different way from the other.

The first is a snippet from a recent conversation with Scott that began after Rana observed that he was clean-shaven.

Scott: Yes, I shaved. In fact, I shaved a lot more than my face.

Me: I prefer to wax mine. Very smooth.

Scott: Nah. Shaving is better, because you can shave "THUG LIFE" into your pubes.

Me: Excellent point.

The other is a recent email exchange between Sarah and me.

Sarah:
I am emailing you because you are the most sensible of the family when it comes to proper dessert policy. Scratch just released its holiday menu and having spent so much time there this semester I kind of want to share how delightful their food is with you guys (although it is definitely expensive). Is there anything that catches your eye? If so, I could order and pick it up - if not, I'll just bring a couple donut muffins back with me.

Me:
I’d have to vote for at least the Vanilla, Mexican, and Apple pies, as well as the Pecan and Gingerbread cakes.

Of course, I’m holding down the quantity to try to be sensible, as always.

I’m so proud that you have inherited this great sensibility.

None of these desserts, by the way, are for the Thanksgiving holiday. These are the pre-holiday desserts, the safety desserts to ensure that the holiday goes well. It is only sensible that we get them.

It should be abundantly clear to anyone who knows me that yes, these are indeed my children.

Just how much are the Spanish into ham?

This much:

Yeah, that's right: Ruffles with ham flavor.

Sorry about the wrinkles, by the way. I carried that bag all the way back from the Barcelona airport after Scott and I consumed the contents while waiting for our plane. When he first told me we had to buy some chips, I argued with him that potato chips were both unhealthy and unnecessary, but after he showed me the bag, I knew instantly that I should have trusted my son. Of course we had to eat them!

Lest you worry that these chips tasted like the chemical abominations they probably were, relax: They were yummy. Our only regret was not buying two bags.

I'm very glad not to have seen them for sale in any store near us, because then I'd have one more bad habit to break.

I think it's time to order some Jamon Iberico.

On the road again: Spain, day 8

Note to self: Always carry a reliable alarm clock, maybe two, to international locations. Why? Because our room lacked a single visible clock. Thus, I had to rely on the hotel for an early morning wake-up call. Never mind that the hotel had been completely reliable in all previous such calls; I'm too paranoid to trust anything I don't control the night before a plane. Take that fact, add too much late-night caffeine, and mix with a full measure of my usual nighttime demons, and you have a sure-fire no-sleep cocktail. I might have gotten an hour of slumber, but I doubt it was that much.

So, morning came entirely too early, and with it the long transit process began. Everything proceeded as one would expect, though I was amazed to find the same woman who always seems to be in the check-in line in front of me, her travel woes requiring infinite explanation, to be in Barcelona as well as U.S. airports.

The least pleasant surprise of the morning was the additional security for U.S. passengers: A man with almost no English searched me manually (and I must say was rather gentle, perhaps too much so; did he wink?), and then completely unpacked my briefcase. This latter act may not sound like much, but that would be only because you've never seen how much I carry in my briefcase.

I was never so happy to have allowed the full three hours in the airport for an international flight.

I'm on the plane now, working after a brief doze. No airplane bandwidth is on offer on American's transatlantic flights, and I consider that to be a great loss. Still, it is not anything I can affect, so I will deal with the accumulated work later.

Every time I get to fly First Class, which we're doing this trip thanks to my many accumulated frequent flier miles, I wish again that I was wealthy enough to do this all the time.

No flight status, however, will save you from a late plane, an altered departure time, and huge lines at Immigration. We had all of those, which led to a lot of fast, sweaty walks and frustrating waits in queues. By the time our plane from Barcelona landed, our initial two-hour window to take-off was down to 90 minutes. We hit every kind of delay, including bad information from airline officials, but we still made it to our plane before they closed the door.

As frequent fliers will guess, what happened next was both frustrating and common: an announcement that we'd have to sit on the tarmac for quite a while due to a taxiing delay.

Still, when the plane leapt into the air, we were on it, and that's what counts in the end.

We arrived smelling like 23 hours of baked ass, but long showers--in my case, first hot and then several cold minutes to wake me fully--fixed that.

My plans for the evening are simple: a little food, a little socializing, a little work (which all too frequently turns into a ton of work), and then a lot of sleep.

I shall enjoy my 37 hours at home.

On the road again: Spain, day 7

We slept, as usual, a great deal in our lovely chilled and dark bedroom, then awoke to greet a gray, also chilled day. We wandered the now roaring Mercat Boqueria, which is a great market indeed. We ultimately lunched at a small restaurant there, a place with chairs that let us get out of the crowd but still observe it. People watching in a big city is always fun, but it's particularly interesting in large outdoor markets like this one, where the expectations of the visitors seem to vary as much as their nationalities and bearing.

We have to get up insanely early tomorrow morning to begin the long travel process, so no late blogging or email for me.

I will, as one would expect, be very sad to leave. I'll miss having so much time with Scott, and I'll also miss Spain, Gaudi, Spanish ham, the view of the Mediterranean that greeted me each morning, a culture that eats late, sleeping late, and so much more.

On the other hand, I'll be happy to be home, to know the language almost everyone speaks, to be among family and friends, and so on.

On the third tentacle, I am sad in advance because I get to be home for only about 36 hours. I have to leave the house insanely early Sunday morning to fly to San Francisco. Now, normally, I greatly enjoy my trips there. I have some good friends in the Bay area, SF is a great town, and I am always happy to visit it. This trip, though, for reasons I really cannot explain (and may never be able to explain; it's a work thing), I am likely to be booked essentially 24 hours a day and never be able to have free time. I do not expect to have any time to myself that isn't dedicated to work, nor am I likely to get to see my friends at all, which sucks, but so it goes. On the scale of bad shit I've faced in my life, this really doesn't appear, so I have no real right to complain further.

When I next write, it will be from either a plane to the U.S., a plane in U.S. skies, or home.

On the road again: Spain, day 6

This morning began far earlier than normal for this trip, because we wanted to try the supposedly awesome hotel buffet. Try it we did, and it was indeed awesome. Nothing starts your day better than scrambled eggs with truffles, Iberian sausages, Jamon Iberico, fresh fruit, fresh bread, a wide selection of local cheeses, and so on.

We hit the aquarium today, and it was a fun time. I've always disliked snakes, and that dislike transfers without my conscious thought to eels, but at the same time I find both types of animals fascinating. This place had a lot of eels. Both fun and skin-crawly to see. I also enjoyed watching the sharks swimming overhead and up to the walls of the glass walkway. Their eyes had that "I'd eat you if you opened that wall" look that sharks always possess; I was quite glad for the wall.

We walked, played on our various electronics devices, had ice cream, and ultimately wandered parts of La Rambla before sitting down to an unexpectedly cheap dinner. The meal was so inexpensive because my mushroom risotto entree, which was yummy, featured a surprise appearance by an unlisted ingredient: a piece of broken glass. I found it while chewing a mouthful of food, but fortunately I extricated it without damaging it or me. Its mere presence triggered a subdued but multi-management-level Spanish rendering of the Monty Python dirty fork skit, by the end of which we paid for less than half our meal. I never asked for anything, mind you, other than a replacement dish.

The dinner appetizer, by the way, was pan-fried cheese stuffed with Jamon Iberico. Wow, that was good!

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I will miss Spanish ham when I'm home.

On the road again: Spain, day 5

Today was Gaudi day, with many worthwhile hours spent wandering La Sagrada Familia and Park Guell. The best part of being on this trip is getting to spend so much time with Scott. The second best part has been seeing so much of Gaudi's work.

From the pictures I had seen before, I was tempted to think of some of the work as too much, or too emotional, or too something. To some degree, that's still a temptation, because his work is so over the top so often--and yet, having seen it in person, I cannot help but feel that I was in the presence of a soaring genius, of the kind of divine madness that let him see the whole and every detail all at once, that caused him to always mimic the natural while simultaneously perfecting the mathematical. Moving and silly, grand and playful, local and universal, organic and mathematical--his work, particularly La Sagrada Familia, constantly embodies opposites. That cathedral today joined my short list of favorite buildings in the world.

Interestingly, yesterday as we tip-toed around a service in progress in a lower chamber, we also got to experience the acoustics, the moments of prayer and song characteristic of so many ceremonies, and the space proved highly functional as well as amazing to see.

I can imagine many people hating the place for its strangeness and its many unusual choices and interwoven styles. I, however, fell for it completely. The Park Guell also charmed me, as did the house where Gaudi lived and worked for over two decades. His intentionally rough stonework throughout much of the park was a commercial disaster at the time, but now its genius is evident.

I owe Scott a lot for choosing this city and for having an interest in Gaudi.

In more mundane news, we've discovered a local ice cream chain that we quite love, and every day we eat Jamon Iberico at least once. Damn, but I will miss the view of the Mediterranean, the amazing Spanish ham, and getting to be with my son so much. I am a lucky man.

Tonight, as we left the restaurant laughing after a dinner of beef and Jamon Iberico appetizer--we were in a meat mood--the hostess said, "You are father and son, si?" We nodded. She motioned toward first Scott's face and then mine. "Like photocopy, si?" She smiled. We smiled. Scott and I are different people, each his own person, but it's nice to be so obviously his father.

As I said, I am a lucky man.

On the road again: Spain, day 4

After another intense and lengthy sleep, we headed uptown to see Gaudi's famous La Sagrada Familia. The majestic cathedral was more amazing than all the pictures and descriptions I've seen of it. We're going to spend more time at it tomorrow.

We walked the city a great deal, ate a very odd late lunch of pasta with ham, cheese, and hot dog--yes, hot dog--and generally had a very good day.

At my insistence, we walked down to the water and put our hands in the Mediterranean. I know it's silly, but I felt we had to do it. I'm glad we did.

Tomorrow, more of La Sagrada Familia and, I hope, some significant time at Gaudi's Park Guell.

On the road again: Spain, day 3

Traveling with a teenager who's exhausted from too many late nights filled with homework and way too much jet lag is perfect for me, because I'm always exhausted, too. I'm not going to say exactly how many hours we stayed in our beds, but I will note that we hit double digits. It was great.

A magnificent storm filled half the sky as we headed over to the carnival for a quick snack of sausage and soda. It passed over us as our food came, so we enjoyed the rain from the protection of the vendor's awning. People were milling about and laughing and singing and pointing at the rain, turning the hard shower into a small party. When the rain let up enough that we'd get only partly soaked on the walk to our hotel, we headed back.

As the dark gray clouds passed and the rain stopped, a beautiful rainbow plunged into the Mediterranean; the view from our room's windows was perfect.

Shortly thereafter, we set out for La Rambla and the old town. The Concierge suggested we taxi but allowed as how we could walk, so we walked. We found our way there and strolled up the famous street. We chose a tapas place largely by the size of the crowd inside and enjoyed a very tasty dinner there. Spanish ham really is everything you've heard it is.

We're trying to adjust our clocks, so we'll probably crash a bit earlier tonight than last night.

Tomorrow, barring awful weather, we see some Gaudi!

On the road again: Spain, day 2

I'm going to be keeping these short both because this is Scott and my time and because it's probably going to be late when I can get to them.

We did the usual overnight flight thing, and as such passings go, it was swell. We spent multiple hours in the hotel lobby, however, waiting for our room, so by the time we reached it, we were both exhausted. We took a long nap, and after showers felt pretty good.

We explored this ocean-side area a bit on foot and ultimately settled for dinner on a restaurant that was chock full of folks speaking Spanish and many people clearly fresh from their day at work. I like eating where locals eat. It was a good choice. The sausage sampler and croquettes were great, and the paella was very good, though more than two of us could finish.

Barcelona really is a late-night town. We sat down to eat about 10:30, and the restaurant was getting busier when we left.

We walked along a row of nightclubs and marveled at the themes and the crowds. By midnight, the clubs were just beginning to get moving; quite a contrast with Raleigh.

In a first for me, I filed a book, Jump Gate Twist, from another country.

It's almost three-thirty in the morning here, so I'm going to crash. Tomorrow, we hope to be adjusted to local time and to do some exploring.

On the road again: Spain, day 1

When I went to bed at 6:30 this morning, I still hadn't started packing. By the time I left the house, however, I was reasonably but not entirely confident that I had everything. I sincerely hope so, because aside from this layover in JFK, where the Admirals Club is spiffy and provides all the Diet Coke and carrot slices I might want, I will not be on the ground again until we touch down in Barcelona. I've never been to Spain before, so I'm quite looking forward to seeing it.

Bandwidth and time permitting, I will continue to blog--but if I miss a few days, or even a whole week, it's because Scott (my son) and I are out having wild parties, not because anything is wrong.

While on the plane, I will put the finishing touches on the Lobo story, and then from the hotel in Barcelona I plan to file the complete Jump Gate Twist.

My next writing project will be the completion of The Wild Side anthology, and at that point I will be done with every contracted project. I'm quite looking forward to that moment.

Off to Spain!

Spain, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and another storm

Friday night before the movie, we watched the No Reservations episode on Spain. The food looked simply incredible. I've been saying for some time now that I was prepared to fly to Spain simply to have dinner at El Bulli, but now I am convinced that I need a much longer culinary visit to that country. Perhaps during my sabbatical next year....

Last night, we went to see Woody Allen's latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Javier Bardem was absolutely wonderful. Penelope Cruz was the psycho girlfriend from hell that you would never be able to resist. Scarlett Johansson was as delicious as always but with more depth than usual. The scenery was magnificent, the cinematography was flawless, and now I want to go to Spain more than ever.

Unfortunately, as the credits rolled, I felt unsatisfied. I think the reason is that no one really changed during the course of the film. Everyone entered a certain way, engaged in life-changing activities, and then despite those actions left more or less as they began. I don't need or want an shoot 'em up plot from a Woody Allen film, but the characters should change as a result of their experiences.

Yesterday, I wrote about the wonderful storm that hit us. Another dropped buckets of rain on us today, and I was out driving for part of it. Despite the normal tension of driving in rain so heavy you can't see more than four or five car lengths ahead of you, I nonetheless enjoyed this storm almost as much as the first. I hope we get more soon.