Old Cape Cod - September 7-8, 2007

B & B with private Porch




Breakfast is served!.................................................The Murphy Bed



Desperado from Colorado

(Although I wrote this one year ago, Cape Cod is still the same and so aren't we. Daktari)

Cape Cod is beautiful this time of year. Rena and I are heading for a romantic getaway to a bed and breakfast in Wellfleet. It’s bright and sunny in the late afternoon and the dashboard thermometer reads 93 degrees F. Time to head for the beach!

We stop at a nice restaurant outside Plymouth to have a pizza and a salad in a small café while the Friday evening traffic clears. The waitress is incredibly perky and the Red Sox are winning. So far so good! I tell Rena how thankful I am for this opportunity to be alone for a weekend. “We’re always doing something but never by ourselves. It’ll be like old times.”
“What do you mean we’re never alone!” protests my wife of 36 years.
“When was the last time we did something just the two of us,” I counter.
She thinks for a minute then cracks a wide smile. “Hey, we just spent 38 hours alone together flying from Cape Town to Boston.” We both break out laughing. That trip was not exactly quality time – 4 flights, three stops, endless lines, bad food and expensive airport coffee. Like steerage on the Mayflower – to use a phrase from Cape Cod’s pilgrim past.

We pull into our bed and breakfast about 10 PM. It looks beautiful – a small Victorian house right in the main part of the village. There’s a Koi pond in front filled with fat orange fish coruscating beneath underwater lights. There’s a private entrance to our room which is spacious and has a fireplace. The bed is a Murphy bed – one that folds down from the wall – What fun! We have our own porch so we slip a note under our hosts’ door to serve breakfast outside at 9 AM. And so to sleep – perchance to dream.

Sleep must have been dreamless. I don’t remember anything. The next thing I do remember is scrabbling noises coming from the bathroom along with muttered curses. “Whazzup in there?” I inquire. “I left my deodorant at home,” wails Rena. “Use mine,” I suggest. “But then I’ll smell like a guy,” she complains. “Consider the alternative,” I admonish.

It’s 9 AM and we are sitting on our porch, both smelling vaguely like guys – ahh togetherness and sharing – isn’t that what this weekend is all about? Our porch overlooks the front yard of the Flying Fish Café where the locals are reading their papers and sipping their first java of the day. Our hosts, Dan and Brad, bring the breakfast. They are a very nice couple. (and they smell like guys too!) After introductions, breakfast is served.

Breakfast is fresh coffee, granola, fruit and a basket of muffins – yum! We ask Brad and Dan a little about Wellfleet and try to remember the last time we stayed here. I think it was at least 30 years ago. “I remember our favorite restaurant, Aesop’s Tables and the seafood crepes with a white grape garnish,” I say. Dan and Brad exchange looks. “ Then I think one of us must have served dinner to you guys,” says Dan. “We were the waiters at Aesop’s Tables for years and years.”

Dan gives us some tips on places to eat and then suggests we head to Great Island on the Bay side of the Cape. It’s a nature reserve where footpaths lead to several isolated sandy beaches. Isolated beaches sound good to Rena. In addition to forgetting to bring deodorant she has neglected to bring the bottom of her bathing suit. “I can’t help you there,” I say. So she decides to make do with her bathing suit top and a pair of yellow and pink underpants. She tries on her ensemble and we both laugh. “Hey, this is the Lower Cape. It’s not the first time that folks wearing men’s deodorant take off for the beach in underpants and a bra,” I exclaim. We are laughing again.

The sky is azure and it’s mid-80 degrees. Perfect! Rena’s little orange car with the pink-and-purple mermaid on the driver-side door takes us along the bay to the reserve’s parking lot. Making sure the coast is clear, we hike off along a piney forest path toward Great Island. We remember characters we met on our old days on the Cape: Mary who used to swim down from the nude beach in Truro, heaving her 250+ pounds out of the ocean covered with goose bumps to trudge happily back the way she came. Michael with his boundless enthusiasm. And beautiful busty Rhonda with the seagull feathers in her hair.

We find a beach where there are no other people and arrange our little enclave – folding chairs, newspapers, towel, plastic bag of peaches. The sun is warm but a sea breeze keeps us from feeling it. We both get a little burnt! I go for a swim but can’t entice Rena to join me – underpants at the beach is one thing but wet underpants is definitely over the line.

A woman and her two boys – one aged about 8 and the other about 4 – approach along the waters’ edge. The little one goes on strike just before they reach our spot. He sits down in the sand and won’t go further. Mom and older brother continue on. For some reason this little tableau strikes me. It’s a contest of wills. Will the angry little boy get his way? Will Mom and big brother come back for him? Will he give up and run to join them as they get farther and farther away? Finally Mom gets too far ahead for her own comfort. She turns and heads back, picks up her younger son and the three recede the way they came. It’s mostly wordless – no pleading, cajoling, or angry words. A decision is made without thought. This family could be gazelles on the savannah or ancestral anthropoids traversing the great lake-bed at Olduvai. In the dazzle of the shore, they stand out so clearly illuminated. Parenting seems an ageless dance, complicated but familiar – coming together and then going apart and coming together again. Sometimes I think that beyond words lies a whole “nother world”– like ours but more authentic. The world of dancing birds.

Rena and I hike back the way we came. After changing into tourist outfits back at the B & B, we walk into town and explore. The Wellfleet General store combines food, books and bumper stickers with multi-colored kites and assorted tapes and glues. I buy a bumper sticker which has 01-20-2009 at the top and the caption says “Bush’s Last Day”. I plan to send it to my Mom. Rena spots a poster for a coffeehouse in Eastham. “Tonight 8 PM – Paul Rishell and Annie Raines - Blues Concert”. Sounds good to us.

We set out to find dinner and the coffee house. I give Rena a couple of gifts to mark our little adventure. A CD of tunes that I’ve compiled from the internet and a black and white photo, enlarged to 5 x 7 and framed. It’s me at age 21 when I was working as a hail-chaser in New Raymer, Colorado. I’m in jeans and a work-shirt with binoculars slung over one shoulder and a large sombrero. All of us hail-chasers were wearing sombreros that summer in imitation of the bad guys in the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. I’m sporting a scruffy beard. My first facial hair - I remember I was quite proud of it at the time. In the background is a washing machine piled high with the detritus of my bachelor prairie existence. It’s 1969, the same year that Rena and I met.

We drive off listening to the new CD and searching for food. Just before passing out from starvation I find a bar and grille in Falmouth where we score a table for two by the window. We share a great lobster salad followed by lobster alfredo. The Red Sox are still winning!

The coffee house is hard to find but we make it just before all the seats are sold out. Great blues - only my damn shoulder has been starting to ache and by intermission it is killing me. It’s been three weeks since I wrenched it while cage diving for great white sharks and it still hurts at the end of the day. We skip the second set and return to our nest to curl up with a DVD. After Rena falls asleep, I turn off the TV.

As I watch her sleeping, I’m thinking of the backyard wedding that we passed earlier on our stroll through Wellfleet. Will the young groom be staring at his spouse’s back in 36 years and fondly remembering the old days? I hope so. Silently in the middle of the night, I wish the two of them the best of luck and many happy years together. Us too.

Daktari

Peeing in the Public Baths - Budapest, Hungary August 25, 2001

Szechenyi Baths Outdoors.......................................................................................Indoors

Vajdahunyard Castle

TECHNOMUSIK RULES (NOT)

THE DANUBE BY NIGHT

PEEING IN THE PUBLIC BATHS
The next day Bernadette, Rena and I take the subway to the Szechenyi Baths. We’re not feeling particularly grimy but everyone says the public baths in Budapest are not to be missed. They are fed by some of the hottest springs in Europe.

At the subway station, Rena notices that nobody pays the fare except us. “Buying a subway ticket must be a tourist thing.” she observes. We stop paying for public transportation after that. When in Budapest do as the Budites and the Pestians. Incidentally, the fare is not the only thing that is free on the Budapest subway. Free entertainment is provided by handsome young Hungarian couples who kiss and nuzzle constantly while riding to and fro.

The Szechenyi baths are a combination of indoor and outdoor pools. The warm pools are relaxing and refreshing on a summer’s day. They are also an acknowledged source of merriment for the locals. Watching tourists from all over the world struggle with the etiquette of bathing in public is a popular spectator sport.

The two ladies and I pay our entrance fee in one line and then move to a second line – this being the one to enter the changing area. After a few minutes, I tumble to the fact that I am the only guy in a long line of women, who are all looking at me and whispering. This happens to be a recurring theme in certain dreams of mine. Quickly, I check my fly to make sure it’s zipped. Whew – all OK there! I smile and say my only Hungarian word (kozonom or thank-you) as I stumble forward to find the men’s line. Guess what? There is no men’s line. Curiouser and curiouser.

Next thing I know, my elbow is seized by a short male bath attendant who is holding back an entire file of whispering women with his other hand. Talking slowly and loudly in Hungarian, he guides me through the turnstile and into the baths. I try to relax – it’s no use. On the far side of the turnstile the whispers are becoming more animated.

Now I’m in big trouble. I’m on one side of the floor-to-ceiling turnstile and Rena is on the other side. She’s way in the back of the women’s line. And she has my swimsuit in her bag! Yikes! I try going back through the gate but the turnstile doesn’t budge. It’s one-way only!

By this time, my cool has deserted me entirely. I’m reduced to calling “YooHOO!” through the slots in the turnstile to try to get Rena’s attention. This must be a very funny word in Hungarian. The whole line of heavy East European women stop whispering and begin to titter and giggle. Meanwhile the male attendant is getting more alarmed. He has probably received training at bath attendant school on how to spot Western perverts. Now he’s becoming suspicious that he has a live one. Calling “YooHOO” in a pseudo-falsetto at a large group of women could be the final event before full frontal exposure. The attendant’s hand grabs for my elbow again.

I try to de-escalate the situation by pantomiming pulling on my speedo - afterwards holding my hands palm up, shrugging and shaking my head. The Magyar ladies are roaring out loud now. Scattered applause is about to break out when the crowd hands Rena to the front of the line.

“You’ve got my suit,” I yell desperately. “Your what?” Rena inquires. “My swimsuit. Give me my swimming suit!”

Rena gives a big “Ohhhh” and collapses on the floor, laughing so hard she wets herself. This brings the house down. Hungarian women are guffawing with tears in their eyes and slapping each other on the back.

Finally my wife stops convulsing long enough to extract my horrid black and green jams from her backpack and shove them through the hole in the turnstile. I grab the suit, shuck the amazed bath attendant, and flee to the men’s room. For the rest of my time in the baths, I wear sunglasses, hoping that no one will recognize me. Wearing sunglasses in an indoor bathhouse does attract a few searching looks from the uniformed pervert patrol but I am able to maintain a modicum of anonymity.

HOUSE OF SEVEN BRIDES
From the baths we sidle over to the Vajdahunyard Castle. This is on an island in City Park. We walk through a “Disney-like” archway into a small courtyard, which is jam-packed with brides. The castle apparently is where every Hungarian Princess comes to marry her Prince Charming. It’s astonishing - at least 7 brides in white and scads of bridesmaids, groomsmen, photographers, antique limos, etc.

“Is that thunder?” asks Bernadette, paranoid about another summer downpour. “No, “ I answer confidently, “It’s just the yard where they turn the trains around.”

We are both wrong. It’s Budapest’s annual ear-shattering techo-musik Love Parade. Flatbed trucks with major amplifiers drive through the streets while hordes of Magyar teenagers climb aboard dancing to the loudest thumping and screeching you have ever heard. Extremely high-energy but the voltage is too much for us. Back to our hotel for aspirins and a cold glass of wine followed by a tour of the opera.

THE HUNGARIAN STATE OPERA
The Opera House is hot, smells of varnish, and is not air-conditioned. But it is free of techno-musik, and the guide explains the lives and loves of the last of the Austro-Hungarian emperors with enthusiasm. While Rena rests her bare back against marble pillars to cool off, our girl guide tells us about Franz Joseph, who disliked Hungarians and hated the opera. So, naturally, he built his Hungarian subjects an opera house - probably as a form of revenge. The Empress, Elisabeth, nicknamed Sisi, spoke Hungarian, loved Hungarians, loved opera and even had an affair with the Prime Minister of Hungary. Hungarians loved her too and built a very nice bridge over the Danube called the Sisi Bridge, so that she could keep assignations with the P.M.

After the opera tour, we learn two more Hungarian words = Karolyi Turos. This is Hungarian for jello and whipped cream mixed together and served on stale piecrust. Don’t get it!

KLEZMER’S GREATEST HIT
We have our showers and naps and then go out for the evening. It’s Saturday night and a crowd is assembling in front of a Jewish community center next to our hotel. We go inside and pay a small fee to see local young people play Klezmer music. They are great! All the old Yiddish and Hebrew favorites. We clap along and keep them playing for over an hour.

The music gives us our second wind and we walk to the waterfront to take a boat ride on the Danube. All the sights are alight and there’s a small fireworks show off the starboard bow. We glide by palace after parliament after church after bridge while drinking free champagne and taking lots of photos. The commentary on the headphones is in Arabic but so what. It’s actually relatively understandable compared to Hungarian!

Midnight finds the three musketeers noshing on blintzes with sour cherries in almond sauce in the public square, while an old man blows up balloons and sends them flying through the moonlit sky. Bye, bye Budapest! We love you!

Daktari

Eurasian Aliens Invade Lake Gardner - July 26, 2008

...................


...Research team Assembles........................................Kat's Weed Gear

KAT WATCHING CAT DO YOGA

Lake Gardner Reflections

.

.............White Water Lily..........................................Eurasian Milfoil

It’s six o’clock AM on Saturday and quiet as a mouse. I brew a pot of tea while I watch the sun pull clear of Powow Hill on the eastern horizon. I’m up early to advance the cause of environmental science. Science is my favorite subject, so why not? But I’m a little worried that today’s expedition won’t get off the ground. Gabriel, my 16-year-old science helper, had a fight with his Mom last night and is grounded. Bummer!

I immediately offered Rena the chance to go muck around the lake at the crack of dawn. That didn’t fly. Rena is definitely not a morning person. Finally, in desperation I called Kat. I know she’s not a morning person either, but I think I talked her into it. Still I’m not sure if she’s actually going to show or not. How many amazing scientific discoveries have been lost due to failure to show up? Woody Allen says 95% of life is showing up and I tend to agree.

At 6:32 AM Kat’s Jetta pulls into the driveway. Amazing – she’s early!! I hand her a mug of my special Kenya tea – a mix of super-strong Kericho Black cut with Borden’s sweetened condensed milk and flavored with a special spice blended by Rasik Sangrajka’s wife and sent to me from Kisumu on Lake Victoria. It’s heaven in the morning and packs quite a caffeine jolt!

The tea combined with perfect butterfly weather (no wind, warm sun and blue skies) dispels any lingering cobwebs. We sit on the deck sipping tea and rubbing the sleep from our eyes as we gaze at the perfect mirror surface of Lake Gardner.

“What exactly are we doing again?” asks Kat.
“Saving the planet from invading aliens,” I respond.
“No way!” exclaims Kat, She throws me a skeptical squint through a cloud of chai vapors
“You’re right, “ I admit, “but pretty close. Bruce thinks that Lake Gardner is besieged by exotic alien plant species which have invaded our backyard ecosystem and are strangling the waterway. Today we’re mounting an expedition to find out.” (My neighbor Bruce is a member of the town Lakes and Waterways Commission.)
“Wow,” says Kat. “Why so early in the morning?”
“Tradition,” I explain. “Vampires and alien invaders are best tackled by teams of scientists and always at the crack of dawn.”
“Vampires?” Kat expostulates. “Who said anything about vampires?”
“Don’t worry, I’m packing garlic just in case.”

I load up Kat with a ton of scientific gear – weed rake, life jacket, paddle, fresh croissants, zip lock baggies, yellow plastic rope, hot-pink measuring tape and a clove or two of garlic – and we head down to the dock. We dump the water out of the old Alligash canoe and clamber aboard. Kat is an experienced kayaker so we have no trouble paddling a mile or so to the Amesbury town beach. We are the first team there. Bruce’s wife Bernadette has baked a fresh blueberry coffee cake to nourish the troops.

At 7:20 we have eight teams of two, each with a canoe. Bruce hands out the maps. Kat and I have sector 1 and sector 2. We re-embark in the canoe and backtrack another 1 ½ miles to the opposite end of the lake. The warmth of the sun on our backs and the calm reflection of the dark green forest ahead, mirrored on the still surface of the water, is delightful. Dragonflies are everywhere and the white water lilies are in bloom. My favorites.

When we reach the first sector line we set up gondola-style, facing each other. I get the boat in position and measure the depth to the bottom. Then Kat dredges the bottom with the weed rake. The resultant smelly collection of bottom weeds is decanted into a ziplock bag. Then I re-position the boat 10 feet further out on the sector line and we repeat the process. When the water is about 8 feet deep, the amount of sunlight reaching the bottom is too little to sustain plant growth. We tie our specimen zip-locs in a trash bag and paddle off to sector 2. What a team!

At sector 2, Kat receives morning greetings from a black cat doing the ‘downward facing dog’ pose on an upturned rowboat. It is a beautiful shot and I snap a pic with the digital before we set to work sampling the bottom feeders at our new locale.

Kat and I are feeling it in the biceps, as we paddle to Bruce’s backyard to examine our finds. All the other teams join in and we discover that only one species is truly threatening our beautiful Lake. It’s the Eurasian milfoil, Myriophyllum matogrosense, and it’s ubiquitous to a depth of about 6 feet. The milfoil is a popular home aquarium plant which has escaped into the wild and now threatens lakes in every state except Wyoming and Montana. Now we know what we’re up against! Bruce says milfoil is a pain to control. One idea is to lower the level of the lake in the winter, exposing the milfoil, so it will freeze to death!

Kat spies a piece of goo sticking to the underside of a lily pad. Oh-mi-god! It’s a Plasmodial slime mold. I get so excited over this little critter. A Plasmodial slime mold involves numerous amoeba-like cells attached to each other. There are no divisions between the amoeboid cells. Instead, a common cell membrane encompasses the whole colony. This "supercell" is essentially a single bag of cytoplasm containing thousands of individual nuclei. Most slime molds are smaller than a few centimeters, but the very largest reach areas of up to thirty square meters, making them the largest single cell organisms on the planet! Our little guy is only about a square centimeter in size, but even so, it’s a rare treat to see a one-cell organism with the naked eye.

By 10 AM the party’s over and we paddle back to my backyard, where Rena is sipping coffee and reading a book on the back deck. “You missed a good one,” I enthuse to Rena. Rena casts a glance at our slimy and smelly exteriors and shakes her head.
“Too early and too dirty, if you ask me!” she says.

Still, Kat and I feel satisfied with our morning’s accomplishments. Kat has a two-year-old’s birthday party at noon, so I wave goodby as she puts the top down on the Jetta and speeds away.

“Vampires, slime molds, crack of dawn, ubiquitous Eurasian invaders – all in a day’s work for Daktari,” I muse as I head for the showers.
“De gustibus non disputandum.”

Daktari

The Miracle of St. Gellert - Budapest August 24, 2001

Dohany Synagogue
St. Gellert with an admiring pupil

Elisabeth ('Sisi') Bridge links Buda to Pest

We are staying at the K + K Opera Hotel right next to the Budapest Opera House. Breakfast is a meal so substantial that we don’t eat again until 10 PM. We exit the K + K and walk a few blocks to the old Jewish quarter. Security is tight for the Wallenberg Memorial and the Dohany Synagogue. The Dohany is the largest synagogue in Europe and second largest in the world. In the synagogue is a traveling exhibit of Chagall paintings. It’s too nice a day; it costs extra; we don’t go.
Instead, we stroll to the Danube waterfront to buy tickets for a Sunday cruise on the river. Sorry - sold out! I step into an antique shop where a small ivory netsuke is calling my name. Only $250!!
We decide to hike to the hilly Buda side of the city - across the “Sisi” bridge, up the Gellert Hill to the Citadel and then down the back of the hill to the Taban or hot-springs district. Here the ancient Celtic inhabitants would sit in the hot water snacking on wild grapes and mastodon jerky while waiting for spring. Much later, Scandinavian diplomats would build embassies and art-deco hotels with saunas and swimming pools heated from the very same springs.
HUNGARIAN- ONE EASY LESSON
Language is a big problem in Budapest. Hardly anyone speaks English. The Hungarian language was brought to Hungary by mistake when Attila, the original Hun, made a wrong turn in 896 CE. He was looking to sack Rome, that being the Holy Grail of Hundom, but stopped in Budapest for a hot bath and voila - a whole country speaking Hungarian.
Incidentally this was also where we got the famous quote, “I think you’re making a wrong turn, Hun.” Spoken by Mrs. Attila of course but in Hungarian, so no one in Europe understood a word. Mrs. Hun had her heart set on spending the winter in Italy with the Pope but, true to his macho origins, Mr. Attila ignored her totally. No one else in the horde much cared one way or another. If grapes and hot baths were good enough for the Celts, they were good enough for barbarians too.
Which brings us to the one word of Hungarian that we manage to learn. It means “Thank You” (we hope). The first time we hear it, we think it’s pronounced “Goosin ‘em”. It’s very hard to express our thanks without breaking up. Especially after we forget the last part and can only remember the “goosin” part. Imagine the consternation of the polite Hungarian waiter who brings an extra plate to the table only to have a group of seemingly sedate American customers yell out “goosa -me” and fall off their chairs laughing. “Goosa -you” is also hilarious.
Bye and bye we find out that the actual expression of Hungarian gratitude is spelled Koszonom and is pronounced “cursin em”. This is a major improvement over our previous efforts. We’ve been cursin’ em in Hungarian ever since.
THE MIRACLE OF ST. GELLERT
At the Citadel, Rena and I try on some surplus Russian military headgear while Bernie manages to lose her guidebook in the ladies toilette. The three of us ponder the fate of St. Gellert, patron saint of Hungarian primary school teachers. Gellert led a saintly life and taught the children of the Hun invaders how to read and write Latin. Some years later, a group of his former pupils recognized their saintly, white-haired teacher. They promptly lassoed him, dragged him behind their horses, stoned him and lanced him through the heart. (Latin, apparently, was not their favorite subject.) Death by former students qualified him for martyrdom – (as if teaching a classroom full of obstreperous Huns was not punishment enough). Beatification followed martyrdom sometime in the 11th century.

While we are looking at St. Gellert’s femur and other bits of bone, Rena goes to the same toilette as Bernie and donates her sweater. An hour later Bernie and Rena realize they are missing one sweater and a guidebook. They go back to the toilette and retrieve their goods from the efficient Magyar toilette attendant. It’s another miracle for the blessed St. G! Is there a patron saint of things left in public toilets? I nominate Gellert.
THE ETERNAL SEARCH FOR FOOD
Hiking down from the Citadel, our stomachs begin to growl. It is quite hot and we are thirsty. We skip the Semmelweis Medical Museum and cross over the “Sisi” bridge into Pest. After Rena buys two embroidered table cloths, we cash some dollars at the local beauty parlor and, flush with forints, saunter into the Central Cafe for a light snack - coffee laced with vanilla ice cream and accompanied by Dobos torte - seven layers of butter creme separated by thin slices of chocolate cake. Topped with caramel! Yum.
This pretty much settles our appetites. Back to the K+K for naps and showers. At night, our maniacal cabbie, Karolyi, takes us to the Hungarian State Folklore Orchestra. The orchestra plays beautifully and the dancers are enthusiastic, but I get distracted by the cello player on the end who is a dead-ringer for Gene Wilder. I kept expecting him to fall off his chair or shoot his bow out into the audience.
After the concert we stop at an outdoor cafe to eat. After two hours with nothing served but a salad and a bowl of goulash, we plunk down some forints and leave. Now we know why Hungarian girls are so thin!
Our stroll home is very pleasant with no tropical downpours. The lighted chain bridge and parliament buildings and the bulk of St. Stephen’s Cathedral guide us back to the opera house and home. Five squares of Toblerone and another hit of Ambien and it’s lights out.

DAKTARI