Hobbits In Rivendell

We’ve arrived, at long last. Tales of the travel will have to wait a wee bit, as we need to go out & take care of a few things such as getting local cell phones. After we’re connected to the telephone / text world, we’ll be feeling a bit more ourselves. Having a decent meal wouldn’t hurt, either. It’s a shame when the best food you’ve had in nearly a week has been at an airport bar at JFK Airport! The meal at Dublin wasn’t bad, either, but … well, everything else just didn’t get it.

More anon.

– D & T

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In hotel. Showered, hotel restaurant, buy new luggage, sleep.

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Latest word is that we'll get to Penn Station around 8:00 E.S.T. From there it's 1 hr to hotel.

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Well, the longer section of our train trip is over now, and we’re back down to sitting with the ordinary people (as soon as we’re out of the First Class Lounge, that is). The first half saw us bumped up to First Class, which gave us a sleeper room, albeit not one of those with its own bathroom. We enjoyed quite a few naps, but no real sleep, as our train was constantly trying to make up for having waited for several freight trains. We didn’t ever quite make up the time, and arrived here in Chicago about 2 hours late. What this means for us is that our layover is a bit shorter (thankfully), but that time for checking email is awfully short!

This time tomorrow evening we’ll be in New York, looking for a cab to take us to the airport. There we’ll sleep, have decent showers (without time limits), and have another chance to catch up on email. Oh – and to perhaps consider buying new suitcases, as our mismatched assortment of various bags has gotten upon our last nerves, and we really do not want to lose anything.

So, perhaps another post tomorrow evening, but for now we’re off in search of something decent in the way of food, and then … to just sit, waiting for our bodies to stop humming from three days on the train!

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2:26 p.m.

Call from Amtrak.

“Would you like to upgrade to First Class for $175 until you get to Chicago? You will have access to the first class lounge at Union Station during your six hour layover, and have snacks and beverages.”

Me: gobsmacked.

Do you know how much First Class costs!? At least $2K. Per person.

Someone mentioned the other day that this is the right time for us to do this, that this is meant to be.

I think… YES!

– D & T

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“Are you excited yet?”

That’s the question we are peppered with the most, and though we have tried to generate excitement and anticipation, the answer is…

No.

It’s not that we’re not excited about the choice we made, to leave the country and do this Adventure thing. We have no regrets – seriously. It’s not that Scotland isn’t an amazing country, or that this opportunity to attend a prestigious school isn’t a blessing. It’s just that… we’re traversing the country of our own lives, looking at the carefully wrought ant-trails of our own existence, and when we look up to think about Scotland, it’s just a big blank space on the map. Not even a ‘Here There Be Dragons’ to inspire fear. Just… nothing. It is so utterly foreign and completely different that we can’t get excited yet.

Sometimes it’s hard to feel anything except that there’s yet another little detail to which we need to attend, another pile of bank paperwork that needs to be completed and mailed. We’ve been on autopilot for the last month, just trying to get things done.

In the next four (!!!!) days, there is still much to do… and in another way, not much to do. We need to really thoroughly clean the house (and the fridge). We need to run a few last loads of wash. We need to vacuum pack the things we won’t be using this week, and lock them into a suitcase. We need to sit down and write cards of thanks and affection to so many, many, many of our friends.

And then we’ll get excited.

Reading some of the more ‘quaint’ turns of phrase in the language across the pond, we’ve come upon the phrase ‘knocker-up.’ Please note, it is not at all the crude American term, but it is archaic; it’s from the late 19th and early 20th century when factory workers were awakened by someone knocking on their window to get up. That same person often extinguished the gaslights in the street as well. NPR did a lovely piece on a new children’s book Mary Smith who uses a pea shooter in her small village to waken its inhabitants. The book looks like a lot of fun for the early reader. Oh – and speaking of children’s books, we’ve been asked to host Flat Stanley for a class of Vacaville 2nd graders.

For those of you not in the know, Flat Stanley is the silliest of all children’s book characters, and a book of the same name was published in 1964 by Jeff Brown. Stanley is a perfectly dimensionally normal child, until a bulletin board falls on him during the night. He awakens… dimensionally challenged, but he takes it as a huge adventure. Teachers began making Stanley an even bigger adventure and he has been used to teach letter writing units in myriad schools all over the world. There are ‘flats’ by other names; host families take pictures of Stanley doing ‘activities…’ Well, it’s for second grade. You get the picture.

Well, there are windowsills yet to be painted, and classes to be taught. We’re off and running, but we’ll keep you posted!

– D & T

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So, after many years of having a marvelously thick, felt hat (which had shrunk), D. broke down and fixed the problem himself: he washed it & stretched it. We bought D. this hat when we went to Alaska, because it was so cold & wet, and he hadn’t prepared (ahem!). So, after spending a week in the wet of Alaska, the hat promptly returned to California … and generally just got smaller.

We’d looked for someplace on the web, we’d taken it to the cleaners, we’d asked friends of ours (who, surprisingly, buy from a company which makes beaver-skin hats). No luck. With the impending move, though, drastic action was required. So, prior to our trip to the Embassy, D. washed it by hand in very hot water & stretched it out over a makeshift “frame” of a burlap sack filled with rice. After four days of sitting, full of rice, it had dried out and retained its slightly larger shape!

The question now, of course, is where, in all of the chaos, does one hang a hat? The next question will be how to preserve its shape against the wet of Glasgow … but we hope that treating it with (cringe here at the irony) Scotchgard should do the trick. 🙂

– D & T

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