Costa Rica Part II - Arenal and Monteverde

Tues 12/25 (Christmas)

Ho, Ho Ho! There’s nothing better than spending December 25th away from the insane frenzy of the U.S. holiday season, particularly for those of us for whom Christmas is an incomprehensible (and often inconvenient - ever need to make a quick run to the store for something in late December?) whirlwind. People on our tour wished each other a jolly “Merry Christmas” over breakfast and the hotel staff was quick with a “Felix Navidad,” and that was about the beginning and end of it.

For breakfast I had for the first time what was to become my Costa Rican standard breakfast: rice and beans (known here as gallo pinto) with some scrambled eggs and whatever other starchy thing looked good - in this case, pancakes. Since I was trying to stay on the wagon caffeinewise, I eschewed the delicious local brew in favor of my sad little decaf Via Brew, and I will repeat my kvetch about how frustrating it is to be drinking instant coffee in a place that prides itself in the quality of its coffee (Costa Rica, as every guide will tell you, competes in the world coffee market on quality rather than quantity) and where fresh, high end coffee is available everywhere.

The saddest picture in this whole trip

Our morning activity was a hike at Arenal National Park. This was our first indication of how wrong this land tour was for Valerie. As soon as we entered the park the bus pulled over so we could all look at an Eyelash Pit Viper. Yes, this is a venomous snake; 3-6 people die per year in Costa Rica from viper bites, and since the snake is arboreal the bites are often on the head or neck. So there’s Valerie, thinking, “Why are we standing at the base of an active volcano, within striking distance of a highly poisonous snake??!?!” while the rest of us were thinking, “Cool! A chance to see neat wildlife and an awesome volcano!” Valerie may be the only sane one among the group.

 

Stopping to look at a snake

The hike was on a trail that was well groomed with a slight elevation for most of the way but ended with a climb up a rather rustic staircase then a rock scramble over old lava flows to an observation point. It was a pretty hike and the views of the volcano and Lake Arenal (a dammed lake which, in addition to being striking, provides 70% of Costa Rica’s power through hydroelectric generation at the dam) were just gorgeous. Along the way we saw interesting birds like the Montezuma Orapendola, and cool plants including orchids, ficus and bromeliads. Unfortunately the scramble was really tough for Valerie, both because of the steep grade and the unevenness of the tread (Valerie has poor depth perception, which makes walking on uneven terrain really challenging for her), and she was glad when we were back at the bus.

Montezuma oropendola bird

Single day orchid

 

At the transition from secondary to primary forest

Don't go there

At the scenic viewpoint

Lake Arenal

Park entry sign

Our planned activity for the afternoon was the “Cultour” - no, not a tour of a Central American Santeria cult (which would have been interesting in its own way), but rather a local culture tour. The experience was billed as including singing and dancing by local schoolchildren and a hayride through a working farm. The whole thing smacked of fake touristy experience, kind of like the “authentic Bedouin tea ceremony” Teddy and I got schlepped to in Israel. I was not looking forward to it; however, in part thanks to the nature of the place and in part because it was Christmas the experience greatly exceed my expectations and was, in fact, quite a bit of fun.

The location of the Cultour is a villa built by a former president of Costa Rica. It didn’t immediately strike me as a presidential kind of estate, but when I thought about it I realized it was probably pretty palatial by the living standards of its day. It certainly was well situated on a bluff overlooking the Central Valley with the Arenal volcano in the background. The view might even top that of Mount Vernon (to compare one presidential estate to another).

 

A view worthy of a President's home

Our visit started out with complimentary shots of some potent sugarcane moonshine they brew onsite, followed by fruit juice and watermelon (let me interject here that the fresh fruit and fruit juices in Costa Rica are uniformly amazing). This was all as we relaxed on the front porch while the family dogs lazed nearby. The proprietress welcomed us but said she’d be with us in a bit as her son had gotten an inflatable pool for Christmas and was really eager to get it set up. Clearly this was no Disney-style fast moving tourist production line.

We were put in the care of one of the employees, a friendly Nicaraguan guy with a rack of gold teeth. We started with a tour of their herb garden, including explanations of the medicinal and other uses of the plants. The guide was speaking Spanish, which Erick would then translate into English. Interestingly, since I had a lot of context and the guide was speaking fairly slowly, I was able to get the gist of a lot of what he was saying in Spanish. We continued with an explanation of how sugar cane is grown and harvested, including a demonstration of a sugar cane press driven by oxen and chance to taste the fresh juice. I’m sure the oxen are just for demonstration purposes and that they have a more modern press elsewhere - according to Erick, it is still a working farm in addition to their tourist business.

Valerie meets the oxen

Back at the villa I was thrilled to learn that the singing and dancing schoolchildren had the day off for Christmas and that we would instead have a chance to prepare tamales as a group (tamales being a traditional Costa Rican Christmas dish). We had a fun time in the kitchen wrapping ingredients in banana leaves and trying our hand at making corn tortillas. All the tamales were boiled, except the for the one guy who insisted on making vegetarian versions - his (mine, that is) were cooked in el microonda (the microwave).

Musicians entertained us

Making tamales

Tamales ready for cooking

We ate in a covered, open terrace, watching as the clouds cleared out mostly uncovering the peak of Mt. Arenal. We were also entertained by an amazing variety of songbirds (yellow headed tanneger, honeygripper, etc.) flitting around bird feeders just outside the terrace. A musical duo (guitar and marimba) entertained us with Costa Rican songs.

Songbirds

An aside: the musical duo was somewhat sloppy - either this was a pick-up gig or they had been drinkjng to celebrate Christmas. It put me in mind of a Christmas party gig I played last weekend - unrehearsed, backing up a singer/guitarist I had never even met before. I cringed a little thinking about how sloppy we must have sounded. But you know what? No one but me seemed to have their music critic hat on at my gig or at this one, so I did my best to just go with the flow. Towards the end of the day the proprietress introduced the marimba player as a world-renowned Costa Rican professor of music. That was a little eyebrow raising. Actually, the best performer of the day was the proprietress herself. We picked up a guitar and played and sang a couple of songs and was quite good! She also coaxed Erick up to sing and play - apparently he’s a musician too. Oh, and there were percussion instruments for the rest of us to join in as well. So all in all it had the feeling of a casual Christmas Day party rather than a formal tour. Quite nice, really.

Back at Hotel Los Lagos we had a little time to ourselves, though not really enough to go into town and explore La Fortuna. As usual, I took a short nap and while Valerie continued to rest I went out. I walked down to the pool area and started on writing up our adventures so far.

Unfortunately, after dinner Valerie started to feel sick. Montezuma’s Revenge, she said, though technically Montezuma has no grudge here since we’re south of the outer limits of the Aztec empire. Costa Rica was sort of a neither here nor there area between the pre-Columbia  Central American and South American empires, so what Valerie had would more appropriately be called “some local chieftain whose name is lost to history’s revenge”. But that's not a melodious.

We were going to be moving on again in the morning and so I repacked our bags while Valerie continued suffering.

Weds 12/26

I guess there’s no Boxing Day tradition in Costa Rica, as no one wished us a Felix Dia de Boxeo as we made our way to desayuno (breakfast). I will also say that my trips tend to suffer from too much moving from place to place. Whether my time is spent bent over a kayak hatch or tugging at the zipper on an over-stuffed suitcase, I spend way too much time on my vacations packing and unpacking, loading and unloading, and just generally schlepping. Today we packed our suitcases once again and after breakfast headed across Lake Arenal via boat. This was kind of cool, though I was blasé about the wildlife sited - cormorants, herons, osprey, kingfishers - as I see these birds every day along the Potomac.

Lake Arenal boat ride

When we got to the other side of the lake we got back on the bus to continue to the Moneverde area, where our first stop was the Don Juan Coffee Plantation Tour.

AAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Sorry, that's coffee-loving but caffeine-avoiding me freaking out about another opportunity to savor delicious, but caffeinated coffee.

Don Juan is a small, historic coffee plantation. We me 80 year old Don Juan himself. I think these days most of their income is from tours rather than coffee. The guid took us through the cycle of growing and processing coffee. When I started chatting about roasting to the point of first vs. second crack his eyes opened a little wider - who was this gringo who knew about coffee roasting in such detail. The coffee part of the tour culminated in grinding, brewing and enjoying a cup. Yes, I did indulge.

Ever wonder which countries drink the most coffee? It appears Scandinavia has it locked up.

Coffee beans growing

Drying room

Pan roasting coffee beans

The finished cup

The restaurant at Don Juan has a variety of roasts. Drink all you want!

After our "cupping" of coffee was completed, we continued on to the chocolate part of the tour, where we went through a similar process of learning how cacao is grown and processed. This included grinding cacao beans and mixing them up into a chocolate to taste. Valerie's mouth was watering ... until the last moment when the tour guide mixed in some pepper to make the chocolate spicy. They also gave us some pre-made chocolate to snack on, another somewhat forbidden food I indulged in. 

Grinding cacao.

We ate lunch at Don Juan and then continued on the bus to our last hotel, El Establo in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. El Establo is beautifully sited high on a mountainside looking out over the Monteverde area. The place itself is a little odd. As with Los Lagos, it's a large resort, but it's so vertical that it's really impractical to walk up from the entrance (where the restaurant is) to the rooms, which are spread out in buildings up the mountainside. The buildings themselves have a sort of medieval castle-like feel, with big, empty stone hallways. The rooms themselves face out over the view, with large mostly glass walls providing a picture view. As we and our fellow guests congregated outside our rooms to take in the view we were treated to a sighting of a raccoon-like coatimundi (the animal, not the guy from Kid Creole and the Coconuts).

I'm sure you recognize the motmot, the national bird of Nicaragua

View from our room

Per our habit, after a day of touring and bus riding we took a nap. I explored a little ways up the hill from our room to find some hummingbird feeders and the hiking trails said to be up at the top of the property. I explored for a little while but didn't do any extensive hiking, particularly since we already had another hike on the day's agenda ... or should I say, the night's agenda?

Outside our room

Coatimundi

Hummingbird at El Establo

So, let me tell you about our awesome night hike at the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest within the Monteverde Cloud Forest. The place carries this name because a group of schoolchildren went on a hike there in 1987 on a school trip and were never seen again. No, not really. The true story is rather cool - that it was a group of schoolchildren who spearheaded the fundraising and conservation of this very special area. Our guides mentioned Costa Rica's biodiversity multiple times over the course of the trip - it is considered to have the densest collection of diverse plants and animals on the planet. Despite being only about the size of West Virginia, Costa Rica has about 500,000 species of animals, including 300,000 types of insects. Which makes it pretty amazing that we didn't once have to use bug spray on our trip. I mention this because the Monteverde cloud forest is a premier place to experience the country's range of flora and fauna.

Let me next say that if you set out to design the most unpleasant experience possible for Valerie, you could hardly do better than our terrible night hike at the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest . An awful experience for Valerie should definitely start with creepy, dangerous bugs (say, 300,000 species or so?). Valerie doesn’t see well at night, so add in darkness. Next, mix in outdoor exercise, like maybe a hike over uneven terrain (which is hard to navigate when you can’t see anything) through a humid rain forest. Random wildlife would be a nice touch, along with uncomfortable temperatures (n.b., I found the temperature quite comfortable, maybe even a little on the cool side). And make sure before even starting that she wasn’t feeling well and was weak from not having eaten all day. That combination would be pretty awful, but y’know what would make it even worse? If the activity had a guide who, while knowledgeable and fun, also maybe joked a little too much about the dangers of the jungle at night. Boy, that would suck for her.

Our group met just at sunset at the entrance to the park, and we started by walking out to a platform to view the sunset over the forest, which depending upon your mindset was either (a) a chance to see a pretty sunset in a beautiful natural setting, or (b) an opportunity to confirm that you can’t see anything in the ultra-darkness of the forest and worry that you’re therefore going to step the wrong way and plunge off the platform to your death. Oh, and it being dusk, lots of bats were flitting about, which was (a) cool / (b) terrifying.

Sunset at the Children's Eternal Rain Forest

As darkness fell we flicked on our flashlights and started out for a (a) moderate / (b) seemingly endless hike. There’s something particularly (a) entrancing / (b) terrifying about being in the rain forest at night, stepping (a) easily / (b) with great difficulty down the trails, listening to the (a) once again entrancing / (b) once again terrifying night sounds. Our guide for the night hike was really impressive in being able to pick out wildlife at night. The guides help each other out and as we went along our guide traded tips with the guides of other groups we’d encounter coming from the other direction so he knew a little what to look out for, but still it never ceased to amaze when he’d suddenly point his light up into a tree revealing something like a sleeping toucan or a large katydid under a leaf. Very cool. Unless, of course, you were a non-nature lover struggling just to put one foot in front of another without tripping as we traversed the ups and downs of the trail.

Toucanette

Tarantula!

Sleeping bird

Giant biting katydid

At one point the guide said, “let me show you a trick.” We were stopped alongside a vertical dirt embankment. He wiggled a stick in front of a hole low on the wall and sure enough, a tarantula came out. Yay! We got to see a tarantula! Way cool, except if you’re the kind of person who has a fear of disgusting, poisonous spiders and you are deep in a dark rain forest and already near your breaking point. At this point Valerie started to lose it.

Oh, wait - have I mentioned only the first tarantula? A little further up the path our guide repeated the stick trick in front of another hole and out came a mommy tarantula. How did we know it was a mommy? Because when you peered into its den you could see dozens of little baby tarantulas milling about. Unless, like Valerie, you’re the sensible kind of person who doesn’t think it wise to stick one’s face up to a hole full of tarantulas who have just had their evening disturbed. The guide wasn’t helping any when he described an ancient indigenous rite of manhood involving sticking your hand into a glove filled with tarantulas. Or when tried to reassure Valerie by telling her of the many times he’d been bitten by various insects to no lasting ill effect.

At this point, tired, sick, stumbling in the dark and envisioning being swarmed by playful baby tarantulas, Valerie totally broke down. Fortunately the guide was able to find a species of caterpillar which completely paralyzed Valerie with its bite. We trussed her to a pole and had the bearers carry her back to the bus. No, not really. In reality, her incredibly supportive husband and sympathetic guide got her through the rest of the walk and only then did we we sedate her via a paralyzing caterpillar bite. No, not really. Back at the starting point I purchased her a cold drink (some energy drink which was the exact green color I imagine paralyzing caterpillar venom to be). She sat on a bench and had a chance to recover her composure. While she rested I ran to the bathroom but by the time I got back our group (including Valerie) was gone! Fortunately I saw a flash of light way up the trail and I had my headlamp with me. Using the light of my headlamp I was able to sprint up the trail and catch what indeed turned out to be our group on its way back to the bus. Back at the hotel we collapsed, exhausted from the harrowing experience (which, by the way, was awesomely cool and to me, one of the high points of the trip!). In fact, I was so jazzed by the experience that I went outside and spent a while staring up at and trying to photograph the night sky.

The night sky at Monteverde - amazing stargazing!

Costa Rica Part I - First Days

Sun 12/23

Valerie likes to get to the airport really early. While I understand her desire not to stress about making the flight, sometimes I roll my eyes a little at how early she wants to get to the airport. This trip, though, getting to the airport super early paid off. Even on Christmas weekend there are no crowds at 5:30 AM. As a result we got through everything quickly - even after checking a bag, passing through security and eating a leisurely breakfast we were at the gate 30 minutes early. The flight was smooth, and I got to watch as much of Crazy Rich Asians as I need to (I enjoyed the book but don’t really need to see the whole movie). At the San Jose airport we were met by a driver holding a sign with our names (exciting in and of itself!), who transferred us to the airport Hilton Doubletree. Yeah, it’s a little weird to stay at an American brand hotel in another country (the hotel is so American I even connected automatically to the Hilton Honors guest WiFi), but it was reassuring on our first night to go with a brand that assured us of some level of quality standard. Not that the hotel was even our choice - it was part of the package.

The Doubletree Cariari was a nice enough place, with a definite Spanish Colonial style. Lots of dark wood. It was also our first experience with the open architecture of a country with no winter. The lobby area of the hotel flowed into a restaurant which was open to the pool deck, so everything was partially open air. Exploring the hotel took all of ten minutes - the room, the lobby, the restaurant, the pool. Like most airport hotels, this one is pretty isolated from anything and so we really had no choice other than the hotel restaurant for lunch (actually, there were other choices within walking distance, but we didn't realize it at the time). I had salmon casado (casado is a Costa Rican national dish with rice, beans, a fried plantain patty and some pickled veggies), while Valerie had a more gringo-ish club sandwich. The setting, looking out over the pool and lots of palm trees, was very nice, but the food was ... just OK.

 

By the pool at the Doubletree Cariari

Later in the afternoon we returned to pool deck to relax and read. It surprised me was how cold it was! It was quite breezy and the temperature was only in the sixties. Since I get cold easily and really hate being cold I immediately started fretting that I hadn’t brought warm enough clothing. This was not a worry I expected to have in Central America. Rather than focusing on my book I spent my poolside time obsessively checking the weather forecasts for the places we were going to be visiting on the land tour. To my relief, they looked to be considerably warmer. Apparently the mountains down the middle of the country separate the climate into Atlantic and Pacific zones. San Jose is in the cooler Pacific climate plus sits at a considerable elevation, while we would be spending our land tour on the Atlantic side.

We were starting our trip with a pre-cruise land extension to see the typical Costa Rican sights - Arenal, Monte Verde, etc. Not everyone who goes on the cruise takes the pre-trip, and when we all met up for dinner we discovered it was just ten of us. We met our guide Erick, a twenty-something Costa Rican, and the rest of our group: besides us there was a multi-generation family of six from California/Colorado (two grandparents, two parents, two early teenage children), and a 70-something couple from Chicago. The group met over dinner in the hotel’s restaurant (which was once again ... just OK) we coordinated plans for an early start the next morning.

Mon 12/24

Our first full day in Costa Rica started with chocolate oatmeal. No, that’s not a traditional Tico dish; rather, it’s the kind of mistake one makes navigating the breakfast buffet in a foreign country. I often like to add a little crunch to my oatmeal - at home accomplished via slivered almonds and sometimes a sprinkling of Grape Nuts cereal. Here I sprinkled on something I mistook to be multigrain dry cereal but which turned out to be some sweetened chocolatey kids’ cereal. Well, nothing chocolate is totally bad and so I ate the whole chocolatey mess all up.

Another meal challenge for me in Costa Rica is that there’s an abundance of delicious, locally grown regular coffee at every meal, but not a drop of descafeinado - decaf, that is. I have studiously been avoiding caffeine since the disaster of March 2017, but I may wind up full recidivist by the end of this trip. I will say as an aside that the Ticos drink their coffee brewed strong, and drink it black - my kind of people! At breakfast I asked the server if they had decaf. He said “only regular” and I said that I'd have a cup (I report on this level of detail only because I'm proud to be able to report that this conversation was entirely in Spanish) and so, with a sigh I accepted his offer of a hot, delicious cup of regular coffee.

The challenges of breakfast having been surmounted, the group headed out for a whitewater rafting trip on the Pozo Azul river. “Good news!” announced Erick, our guide. Since there was construction on our planned route we were going to get to take an alternate route that would give us an opportunity to see several waterfalls. What he didn’t mention is that the route was on a series of seriously twisty mountain roads. The ride was in fact, interesting, and expertly navigated by our driver, Marco.

We spent a lot of time on the bus

La Paz waterfall

San Fernando waterfall

In addition to the waterfalls, which were pretty, we got to see a number of small towns and agricultural areas, including Starbucks’ Costa Rica processing plant as well as plantations growing any number of tropical plants, including pineapple, cassava, manioc, and ornamental ferns (which are apparently a significant export). The most peculiar thing I saw along the way was a house flying the Israeli flag. When I spotted it I thought it must be some similar looking Central American flag, particularly since it was breezy, making the flag hard to see but look at the picture; it’s an Israeli flag.

Not the Costa Rican flag

And yes there are Jews in Costa Rica, our guide was telling us during the ride about the country’s colonial history, which include missionaries as well as conquistadors. Valerie (who asks a lot of questions) asked whether Catholicism is still dominant in the country (yes) and what other religions there were in the country. The first thing the guide mentioned in response was that San Jose has a significant Jewish population. And later Googling about Jewish Costa Rica turned up the fact that a major local coffee brand (sort of the Starbucks of Costa Rica), Cafe Britt, was founded by a Bronx-born Jewish guy named Steven Aronson. Go figure. Those people are everywhere.

During the ride we got our first taste of Marco’s amazing ability to keep one eye on the road and the other scanning for wildlife. Every once in a while he would pull the bus over, having spotted some wildlife for us to see. The first time it was a white hawk, spotted way in the distance in a tree. Other sightings on those first days included a sloth, a howler monkey and a toucan.

Spotted along the road: three-toed sloth

 

Spotted along the road: howler monkey

Even with stops for waterfalls and wildlife we made it to our rafting put-in close to the target time of 10 AM, at which point many of us were a little green around the gills from several hours of uninterrupted mountain switchbacks. Fortunately, we were all able to shake it off pretty quickly and after changing into our water clothes were ready to go whitewater rafting.

Any day I’m able to slip on a PFD and hit the water is a good day, and it was nice to be doing it with Valerie for a change. The trip promised class 2 & 3 rapids. It was a nice mix of tame class 2’s and some rapids big enough to be exciting - one rapid knocked Dick, the husband of the 70-something couple, out of our boat, and I splatted onto the floor of the raft at one point - but nothing really scary.

Getting ready to hit the rapids

 When Dick fell out, he and I were in the front positions on the raft, and so when the guide maneuvered the bow of the raft near the swimmer I was the closest person to him. I just kind of instinctively grabbed the shoulder straps of his PFD and held onto him. I was ready to haul him back into the boat, but then the raft guide and our tour guide took over at which point I backed off from the rescue.

Valerie with Alberto, our raft guide

 It was a really nice trip. The water was chilly but the air was warm enough that getting splashed by a little old water didn’t matter. As we went downriver the guide pointed out birds, which were of course many of the same species I see all the time on the water - cormorants, kingfishers, egrets, and herons. But of course, there were also animals you wouldn’t see on the Potomac. Monkeys, three-toed sloths, and iguanas basking on tree branches are not things I run into on the waters of the mid-Atlantic. After every rapid our guide, Alberto, would have us raise our paddles together and say “Pura Vida!”, which is the Costa Rican saying for the good life. I will say, the Costa Rican’s do seem to have a positive attitude about life (or at least the ones in the hospitality industry do). 

 

Sliced pineapple snack

About halfway through the trip we pulled over onto a sandy beach for a break. As we munched on fresh pineapple, I said to Valerie, “Nice morning, huh? Floating down a river, checking out the birds and other wildlife, chilling out on the river bank ...”

“This is the life,” she agreed.

I smiled, knowing that experiences not all that different from this one are a routine part of my life and not something limited to the rare active adventure vacation. “Now you know why I spend my weekends the way that I do,” I said.

At the end of the rafting trip we boarded a dilapidated van for the shuttle back to the put-in (I suspect there is a secret international standard mandating a certain lack of roadworthiness for post-padding shuttles - they’re all clunkers). At the start of the trip I had changed into rafting clothes in an exceptionally  grungy changing room out back (at least I found the changing room - others changed in the even grungier bathroom), but after the trip I realized there was a much, much nicer changing room right in the main building. But I guess not everyone figured that out, as Erick and I were the only ones in there. As we changed he got to see my scar and I got a gander at his extensive set of tattoos - though of course, neither of us commented on the other’s modified torsos.

We ate lunch at the rafting place, which had a pleasant dining room overlooking the river. The main courses were a leathery pork (perhaps actually tapir? coati mundi?) and tilapia, but I was ready for a meatless meal and so had rice and beans (called gallo pinto here and seemingly available at every meal at every restaurant in Costa Rica!), plantains and vegetables. Once again I couldn’t resist and indulged in a cup of regular coffee.

 

Lunch spot view

After lunch we continued on to Hotel Los Lagos, gorgeously sited at the base of the Arenal volcano. This place was a resort with grounds so big it has a shuttle bus to ferry people around - and those grounds are quite pretty and exotically tropical. I kept expecting to run into Herve Villachaize. Valerie and I hung up our wet stuff and rested for a bit. As usual, my nap was short and so I went for a stroll around the hotel. I didn’t see the wild peccaries others had seen earlier, but I got up close and personal with some crested guans (large birds). I considered hiking the 2 km trail up to a viewpoint of the volcano but by this point it was cloudy and threatening (too cloudy for there to be much of a view) and so I just walked around and when it started to drizzle I headed back to the room.

Crested guan

Christmas Eve dinner was at the hotel - a very good buffet. I had creamy squash soup, a made to order pasta dish, and an assortment of veggies, breads and other stuff. I was disciplined and had only fruit for dessert, despite an abundance of pretty little desserts, including some traditional Costa Rican Christmas cake. And I skipped having coffee :(

More Music

Over time this has become a blog of my musical as well as outdoor adventures, so I figured a post about recent gigs won't be out of place.

A couple of weeks ago my phone rang at about 6 PM on a Friday. "This is Bob - what're you doing tonight?" said the voice at the other end. It turns out Bob was hanging out with Cletus*, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of a band that was scheduled to play at a local bar that night - but without their usual keyboard player, who was out of town. Bob suggested me as a fill-in. As it happened, I was free, and so a gig was born!

Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cletus had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there. I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. I went up and introduced myself to Cletus (who I recognized because I had seen him play before). We chatted for a little bit but he kept calling me "Joey". I thought maybe he just has a weird sense of humor. Anyway, the band went about their business and a little while later I approached Cletus again about where he wanted me to set up. He seemed a little unclear as to who I was and so I mentioned my name again and that I was the keyboard player. He told me where on that stage their usual keyboard player set up. At that point they were still rigging the PA and drums and so I held off on setting up. A little while later my phone rang. It was Cletus, asking why I wasn't there yet. I walked the twenty or so feet from where I had been sitting to where he was and reminded him that I was there. He apologized. "I'm really wasted," he explained. Well, that worried me - I've played with a lot of people who think they play better high or drunk but in fact most of them, while they may perceive themselves as playing better, actually get sloppy and forgetful. Which reminds me that some day perhaps I should write about the time a band leader showed up for a gig in the midst of a multi-day bender in honor of his 50th birthday. He was responsible for bringing the PA and arrived with this very cool state of the art digital PA system he had borrowed from a friend - no mixing board, everything controlled form an iPad. The only problem was that in his state of intoxication/hangover he had no idea how to set the thing up. And of course he showed up very late. We used what time was available to (unsuccessfully) try to figure the thing out but wound up performing the first set without PA (not good!). In between sets I jury-rigged something to give us at least a modicum of amplification. Not a great show.

Anyway, a few weeks later Magnolia Blue had a chance to share a double bill with Cletus' band at Gypsy Sally's in DC. I don't know what gave the club the idea of combining these two bands - our New Orleans, horn-driven funk and Cletus' more John Hiatt-ish honkytonk Americana; however, while the styles may have been an odd mix, the bands have overlapping fan bases and so a good crowd of people turned out.

Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cornelius had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there (the other band was sound-checking). I sat down at the bar and read my book and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. Playing at a venue like Gypsy Sally's is really nice; they get national acts there and so they treat their performers well (they don't pay well, but that's another story). There's a real green room (backstage lounge for performers), stocked with beer and ice water. No relying on unreliable band members for PA: they have a high end house system which supports separate onstage monitor mixes for the band members (say, for example, I like to hear lots of kick drum to help with timing but the drummer doesn't need to hear his own foot going "boom") and fills the house with nice, clear sound. They have a separate sound person for the house mix (what the audience hears) vs. the monitor mix (what we hear onstage) - that's a real big-time luxury that's rarely available in the kinds of places I play. Once we were finished sound-checking they even provided dinner of pizza and salad. Nice. I ration my pizza intake to once per month for cardiac reasons and had been saving my November pizza for an upcoming trip to New York, but decided to allow myself an extra pizza meal this month and ate heartily.

Sumptuous backstage dinner

Backstage, I ran into the other band. Cletus was there draining quite a bit from a bottle of tequila he had brought along and was smoking something to boot. After he had imbibed a quantity well beyond what would have rendered me unconscious he said, "I better hold off - I don't like to be wasted onstage". I smiled.

Cletus and company do their thing

Anyway, our set went well. Cletus' set went well. A good time was had by all. I felt well taken care of by a venue for a change. And Cletus and I both had a great evening kicking off a week of life events - my birthday, and his wedding.

*Not his real name

Veterans Day Bike Ride

Let's start by settling punctuation: Veteran's vs. Veterans' vs. Veterans Day. Judd, the leader of today's Veterans Day ride, works for the Veterans Administration and says that according to their official style guide there is no apostrophe. The day doesn't belong to Veterans; rather, it is a day in honor of Veterans. Now you know.

I left home at around 9 AM to bike to Velo Cafe at The Wharf in DC, the starting point of the ride. At that time of the morning it was quite cold - my first ride of the season with temps in the thirties. I dressed warmly and so was comfortable - of course, with the exception of my hands which were cold despite gloves, glove liners, and little chemical warmer packets. I spent about the first half of the trip into DC obsessing about how my hands were going to hurt all day. Fortunately, in the second half of the trip I distracted myself with another train of thought and, since I wasn't focusing on them, my hands didn't bother me as much.

At Velo the earlybirds got coffee while the rest of the group drifted in and schmoozed (note: they don't have brewed decaf coffee at Velo, so I ordered a decaf latte. They have almond and soy milk but not non-fat, so I got my latte with whole milk). Once everyone (about 15 people) had arrived we made a presentation to Bob, a rider who is moving away. Josephine had put out a call for photos and reminiscences and on very short notice put together a really lovely book. My contribution to the book was this photo:

Cardiac Coffee Club (Bob is in the rear)

Just a few weeks after my surgery last year, a group of the morning bicycle coffee clubbers took coffee club on the road and brought it to my house, Bob among them. This was a super nice gesture and was a warm spot of cheer during the tough period of my initial recovery. Bob was also a role model in terms of athletic recovery after serious illness. He had a bout with cancer, after which he came roaring back. He is the kind of rider who can knock off 100 miles like it's nothing day after day after day. Last winter he dropped out of Freezing Saddles in the middle for personal reasons but had already ridden so many miles that he remained in first place for weeks after he stopped riding!

Presentation to Bob (in patriotic jersey) at Velo Cafe

DC is a city that is not short on monuments, even if you limit yourself to a theme, and so we had plenty of Veteran-themed monuments to tour. We visited the American Veterans Disabled for Life monument and the DC War Memorial (honoring DC residents who died in service to their country), where there was a wreath from the "Association of Oldest Residents of DC". I figured this was an organization of centenarians; I later looked it up - their membership requirements are being at least 40 years of age with at least 20 years of residence in DC, which means that if there was an equivalent organization in Arlington I would qualify as an "Oldest Resident of Arlington". In fact, I'm so old that I could qualify as an "Oldest Resident of Arlington" and an "Oldest Resident of Brooklyn".

At the American Veterans Disabled for Life monument

Association of the Oldest Residents of DC wreath

We continued on to the WW II Memorial, then crossed the river back to Virginia and headed to the Merchant Marine Memorial (sometimes known as "waves and seagulls") near Columbia Island. After riding past the Pentagon we went up the hill to the Air Force Memorial. One interesting thing about that memorial is it had a mistake in it - General Billy Mitchell received a Medal of Honor granted by the President, but it wasn't the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was accidentally included in a list of Air Force Congressional Medal of Honor recipients and his name was included in those listed on the memorial. When the mistake was discovered his name was chiseled out and a blank patch of marble put in its place - a very obvious "oops" in the memorial. Mitchell was considered the father of the Air Force, but he was apparently a difficult person - he was promoted to brigadier general then demoted back to colonel not once, but twice! He was posthumously awarded the rank of major general.

The Air Force Memorial

Judd gives a talk

Group panorama

Nadine wanted a picture of Cynthia and me together because we matched (interestingly, she didn't ask for a picture of me with SteveO, who was wearing the identical jacket to mine - see preceding photo)

As the day wore on it definitely warmed up  - into the upper 40's at least, and I went down to wearing only one pair of gloves and put away my balaclava.

We finished up at the Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima), a fitting place to say our goodbyes to Marine vet Bob and head on our way. A subset went out for tacos at the Rosslyn District Taco. Then we all went our separate ways. Four of us headed west so I had company as far as Ballston.

Group photo (thanks, Ricky!)