I REMEMBER...all Americans eat orange rinds.

I have had the great fortune to travel extensively.  It is great to learn about other cultures and dispel (or create) myths about Americans abroad.

It was about 1976 and I was in Ireland.  The Killarney hotel I was staying in had access to various day trips throughout the region for tourists to savor the "feel" of rural Ireland. I signed up and off we went for a full day of exploring the Irish hills and countryside.


There were about 30 tourists from all over the world on this particular adventure.  We had an early breakfast of kippers, potatoes, eggs, toast, tea and biscuits and were off a bit after sunrise.  We were all quite tired as there had been an IRA bomb scare in the middle of the night. We spent a few hours standing in our sleepwear in the parking lot, while the bomb dogs sniffed their way through our rooms.  Nevertheless, we were soon on our way (that strong Irish tea can kick some serious espresso butt) and we were definitively awake.  


This particular adventure was to be a three-part journey.  The first part was by Irish jaunting cart to the base of the foothills, a horse ride to the top of the hills, and then a boat ride back down the mountain through a series of canals and locks.  The jaunting carts were rickety and jostled us back and forth until we were quite queasy.  We were happy to get off the wooden plank seats and onto the horses, or should I say, "out of the frying pan and into the fire"?  Butt weary, we finally arrived at the top of our little mountain and took a break for lunch.

Slight digression:  Some twelve years before, I  was a junior in High School and on the Cordova High School wrestling team.  I loved the sport.  Truly an individual athlete's opportunity to shine.  Although you are on a team, you compete individually against a wrestler from another school.  The down side is that if you do poorly, you can't blame it on anyone for not blocking, passing, defending, etc.  Everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose, it was all on you...which is also the upside.  When you win , it is all you.  After all- everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose. 

Sooooo...I was competing at the 112 lb category, which was about 15 lbs below my normal weight.  The down side was that I was seriously thin and looked like a refugee from a concentration camp.  The upside is that I was HUGE for my category, my opponents were much smaller, and I won a lot.  Downside2 was that I constantly had to diet to maintain my weight category during the wrestling season.  My daily diet for lunch  (for two years) was a hard boiled egg, a cold minute-steak, an orange and water (1/2 liter bottles of water had not been invented yet...so it was a heavy stainless steel Thermos bottle of water.)  I was so starved at the end of lunch, I would stare hungrily at my trash...a paper bag, wax-paper wrappers (baggies not invented yet), egg shells, and orange peels.  Not enamored with the taste appeal of paper, wax or egg shells, I learned to eat (and enjoy!) orange peels and still maintain my diet. 

Back to the original story.  We are at the top of the mountain after a half-day of a kidney-jolting, open-air jaunting cart ride and a butt-blistering mountain pony ride to the top to connect with our afternoon downhill boat rides.  There was a series of canal locks back to the base of the mountain (and then more jaunting cart rides back to the hotel).  Here we are sitting on the precipice, lovely shades of green throughout the mountain and valley below, enjoying the hotel box lunch.  A Guinness, fish and chips (Irish chips are potato fries; American "chips" are called crisps) and of course, an orange.  So, there I was, in the company of thirty or so people from all over the world; I was the only American in our group.  Gazing out over the countryside, enjoying my lunch, I finished the fish and chips, drank the Guinness and proceeded to eat the orange in its entirety, just like an apple.  I had acquired a taste for orange peels from my high school athletic-diet days, and since I was gong to consume the orange peels anyway, I had learned to skip the peeling-the-skin-off part and just eat the whole thing.


It was quiet and peaceful...but I soon noticed, a bit too quiet.  All conversation around me had ceased.  I looked up and noticed that everyone was staring at me. I had no idea why.  I asked what was wrong and someone ventured - "You are eating the whole orange, peel and all!"  The only thing I could respond with was, "All Americans eat oranges this way, don't you?"


The pleasant boat ride through a series of locks winding back down the mountainside was comfortable, uneventful and extremely quiet, as everyone sat far away from me, taking furtive glances at me from time to time.  I am sure my international traveling companions included me in many  "American culture" post-vacation stories back home.


"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”  Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien

I REMEMBER...the Irish Pub Crawl

…traveling to Europe in the early 70’s (a lot of my life stories strangely happened in the 70’s) and spending time in Ireland. The pubs were a particularly intriguing phenomenon I had an interest in. Warm, friendly, a local tavern for food, drink and fun.

I was somewhat lucky at darts and Irish pubs harbored dart boards much like American bars have pool tables. I won my fair share of pints, dazzling the locals (who admittedly drank faster and in larger quantities than me…perhaps that was my asset in the competition).

So having met some new found darts & drinking friends at a pub one evening (they were off-duty ambulance drivers- I hope they were off-duty…) we forged a deal. The public taverns closed rather early during the week (so the workers would actually show up to work the next day) – the only bars that stayed open late were the ones inside the nicer hotels for the hotel patrons. They offered to treat me to a “Pub Crawl” (which is a much more apt description than the Americanized “bar hopping”. I observed that there were definite tricks for a successful pub crawl that seemed to incorporate rugby/roller derby moves and teamwork. A good pub crawl needs at least two big, strong, rugby/roller-derby guys that are socially ambivalent to under-breath comments and glares, the money man and the rest of the drinking team. Note: all the best pubs in Dublin were packed and everyone seemed to be speed-drinking, so there is no “getting a drink and going back to your table” – that action is too lightweight to survive. Each bar was packed and several people deep. Alone, I never would have even made it to the bar and if I had and then left – I doubt if I could have made it back for a second beer (pint).

So, the game plan was to have all of us (about six) line up behind the two bruiser “breakers (literally). They would elbow and push their way through the throng until, at last, the biggest and strongest found the bar (zygote!!). He would plant himself there and the second team member would be right behind him fending off all other drinkers to maintain a strong line. We would string out behind the first two, foot to foot, with the money man at the end. This was our fire line- like a bucket brigade with volunteer firefighters (except these guys were medics/ambulance drivers). Money man passes money forward through the line to get to the main bar position holder, who secures the pints and passes them back down the line until we are all properly lubed. This pattern is repeated, to insure an uninterrupted and even flow of suds until a. the money runs out or b. the pub closes ( or in my case, after b. comes c. – the acquisition to your “line” of a tourist with a pass to the after-hours bar in an upscale hotel- good for a couple more hours of drinking).

Note: I have no idea what these guys were talking about that evening (probably beer, women, and tourists) as their brogue got thicker and my hearing got fuzzier as the evening wore on. I remember we laughed a lot, so it must have been humorous.

I pick up accents fairly quickly and when motivated by inhibition, fairly well also. My biggest compliment of the evening was being mistaken for a drunk from Scotland. Hoot, laddy, not so bloody bad, eh?

I REMEMBER...Stonehenge

...traveling to England in the late 70's and going to see Stonehenge. This is a short observation about how really small the world is and a small moment in time for me.

Backing up a bit...

A few years earlier, I had opened a leather and jewelry store in Chico called Lone Eagle Leather. The night of my grand opening, I had an open bar, a lot of friends and a band playing. As a gift to the guys in the band, I made custom leather belts with the name of their band stamped in the back. Store worked great - an awesome time to be in the crafts business, I expanded to a second store, and then a wholesale leathergoods business as well. I had accounts with the Tower Records chain and the CSU college bookstores throughout California. I was a madman and worked far too much and burned out.

Friends threw me a birthday party on my 28th birthday and put 35 candles on it. A subtle hint I should slow down and take a break. Sold the business, bought a houseboat, put my house up for sale and temporarily "moved" to Jamaica. This is another blog, and the mention here is meant only to show some passage of time.

Came back to town, worked as a carpenter and burned out again (hmmmm...is there a pattern here?).

When I was 30, I went to Europe and stayed in England for awhile and managed to make it out to Stonehenge for the day. A rare sunny day (see me in red tank top in one of the photos). So, I am walking up to the stone pillars approaching the crowd already gathered there for a history lecture being given by one of the caretakers. As I walk up , I see at the back of the crowd, a tall guy (see pic of guy in white pants and white shirt at the back of the crowd with his hands on his hips) that stunned me. Here I am many miles and years away from the Grand Opening of Lone Eagle Leather in Chico, California, and there in front of me is one of the band members wearing my custom made belt. Turns out he was traveling with his dad and was only going to be there for a half hour (a tiny moment in time). I never would have seen it if I had been earlier, later, walked slower or had been less observant.

I am fascinated with time. The time we have, the time we don't have and how little moments in time have special value. This was one of those special moments.

Quote of the day:

Time is the coin of life. It’s the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let others spend it for you. .....Carl Sandburg