This Town

So, today I went on my first proper mountain biking ride. As tradition would have it in this family, the person who is more experienced in this kind of intense physical activity and agility is at least twenty years my senior - this time, my father. A similar pattern has emerged with ping-pong and hiking (my grandfather) and running (my uncle).

So, today, my father and I hopped on the bicycles here in Santa Cruz. We zipped down West Cliff Drive, the winding road that follows the coast through most of Santa Cruz. On our way, we saw every single bit of Santa Cruz culture. Surfers clambering down the rocks to the beach, skateboarders as nonchalant as humanly possible (one on his cell phone with a bag of bagels in the other hand, another who took his t-shirt off while cruising down a slight hill on the bike path), scarily driven parents who are jogging with a fancy athletic stroller containing their small children, dogs of all shapes and sizes accompanying people of all shapes and sizes, frizzy-haired peaceable folks meditating in the scrub near the ocean, and a general beach attitude down by the Boardwalk, the small amusement park/beach downtown. Keep in mind that while the East Coast is in the middle of the so-called Arctic Vortex (soon, our news people will run out of ways to make things sensationalist. We'll  just be too jaded. Vortex. Good grief.) and here it's mid 70s. Kind of hard to reconcile in my brain that both can happen at the same time.

After the Boardwalk, the bike path started meandering out of town and into the woods where it lead to the most exciting and challenging bike trips I've ever taken. The route is through a forest called Pogonip and brilliantly, the trail was designed as a bike path - not as a hiking path that then some bikes decided to use - but actually as a bike path. That means the twists and turns, the curves and the dips all make sense on a bike. Now, they're not easy, but they're manageable. I have not, in a long time, ever had a time when I so frequently thought, "No, there's no way." Whether it was a root that I would have to get up speed to ramp over, a curve with dust that spun underneath my tires but I had to get around and keep moving, or just a very steep hill when my lungs and legs refused to comply -- several times I thought, "I can't!" -- don't get me wrong. Once or twice, I was right. I was triumphed by roots and rocks a few times and had to stop, and then the fun part was getting enough speed going to actually have the bike moving again. Kind of tricky while going uphill. But even though sometimes the 'can't' was right, it wasn't all the time. And that's cool.

I asked my dad as we were meandering through the very beginnings of the path and seeing other bikers come whizzing towards us. "Is there a difference in the trail?" I asked, "Which way you go on this trail, I mean?" "Oh, yes!" he replied. "The other way is all downhill. The way we're going is all uphill."

And so it was. We ended up on the UC Santa Cruz campus, which was far more gorgeous than I ever knew, even though with the drought here much that ought to have been green was brown. Then, of course, we got to ride back down all the hill that we had gone up - though a different route. It was a great loop and a great ride and at the very top of the hill, we had a view of the ocean over some of the rooftops and trees of the town. It felt too beautiful to be allowed, or to be real.

Of all the places to be...

...this is pretty damn cool.

The Airplane Twilight Zone

It just so happens that I have recently been flying quite a lot. Well, let me put this in perspective. Since I can remember, my family has lived so spread out across the states that the closest family member (outside mom/dad/sister) was a six hour car drive away – the others were only reachable by plane. So at least twice a year since, well, whenever I have memories, I’ve been flying. Then, I went and attended college in California, so there were lots of flights. So when I say that I’ve been flying a lot recently, I really mean it. I flew to Budapest at the beginning of the semester, to Germany from Budapest during that semester, and then in the last four weeks, I went: Budapest-Paris-Detroit-Erie –/-- Washington, DC – Istanbul – Frankfurt --/--Frankfurt-Detroit-and in 2 hrs and 12 minutes as the monitor screen tells me, I will land in San Francisco.

There comes a time in transatlantic flights, after whatever boxed up and tiny meal has been delivered in plastic packages, after you’ve gotten the chance to doze just a bit but are really coming to terms with the fact that you won’t properly sleep – when it’s either the middle of the night in the timezone that you’ve just come from or in the one that you are currently flying through, so darkness is either everywhere inside your head or in front of your eyes – and it’s the twilight zone. I don’t think this just happens to me, but then again, I’ve never asked anyone else about it, so maybe I am the only one. Basically, in these moments, you aren’t just concerned with whether or not you’ll have to wake up the person next to you so you can get out to the aisle and head to the bathroom. You’re not worried about making your connections when you land, nor are you thinking of the people waiting to meet you. No – this is when you do serious life-thinking. Sometimes, this might feel like life-panicking, depending on who you are and what time in your life you are making this evaluation. I’m not sure how the situation can make me feel so utterly far from my own life, but I feel as if I’m looking at it through a piece of plastic wrap, or through a see-through tapestry. Funnily enough, I think it has as much to do with being in the middle of the air above the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (at least, in my case) as it does with the fact that I’m traveling alone and haven’t had a real human connection with anyone in hours. I need real contact with people. Real conversations, even if they’re short. Someone who asks how I am and means it, or who comes over for a cup of coffee. But traveling? I’m around more people, far more people, than usual and there is (under normal circumstances) absolutely no human connection.

But sometimes things break that monotony and that together but very separate feeling. For example, today there was a very, very large line of us waiting to go through immigration at the airport. We had just stumbled dazedly off the airplane from Frankfurt, a solid nine hours of flying behind us, stiff and smelling like plane – and I, in particular, felt that I must be sleepwalking since about three and a half weeks ago I did the exact same walk down the seeming miles of gray, unremarkable airport, to I believe the exact same immigration desk and then picked up my bag at the exact same baggage claim carousel. So, that was surreal and I felt the best way to deal with it was to pick a comfy looking spot on the floor and lie down, but of course, I’m getting close to being an adult now, which I think just means that you don’t always do things like lie down and take a nap, - it doesn’t mean you never want to. So, I imagine things were going similarly for most of my fellow travelers. There was the typical shuffling in the line, getting pissed at the person in front of you just because they’re going to get to be done with the line sooner, griping in your head about most things and just realizing how tiring standing can be. So, we were there in the gray no man’s land between plane and US, in lots of little plastic lane dividers and amongst huge signs against cell phones and assaulting officers, not much conversation going on. Then all of a sudden, there was a little dash of pink.

Embodying all of our desires, a girl who couldn’t have been more than four years old had ducked under the dividers (or just walked, I think she was small enough), skirted right under the noses of all the immigration officers (her head didn’t go up to their desks, so how could they notice?) and started wandering around on the other side of this huge international barrier in her flowing, Disney-worthy pink dress. “Uh-oh.” I heard about ten people behind me. Her mother moved through the line, trying to see her on the other side of the desks. We couldn’t see anything since the girl was so small, and despite angry looks from the guards, the mother then ducked under as well and went and tried to find her. A few seconds later, a guard who had been standing with his arms folded, looking both intimidating and bored simultaneously, cried out, “Ah! I’ve found someone!” and he walked back towards the line and when he came around the corner of the desk, we saw the girl hanging tight on to his leg, grinning and waving at her mom, calmly and absolutely refusing to let go.

L is for Lebenslauf and Lasertag

It has been a while. For the past week and a half, I've been chilling in by second home - Mainz, Germany. Since C has a lot to do with both her job and her Master's program, I've had a lot of time to myself, time to realize that I'm really not a student anymore, at least at the moment. It's been time to look over my Lebenslauf (CV), for example, and bring it up to date. It's been time for me to consider doing my Master's here in Mainz, to look for summer employment before then, and to start teaching myself the programming language Python.

It's also just been a time to reflect. This is my first real vacation in a long time, as I mentioned in my last post. When I arrived here, it was New Years Eve. It seemed wonderfully fitting to spend my first night in Mainz watching the sky burst into flame with fireworks. Two years ago, when I was living here, there were of course lots of fireworks as well - New Years is a holiday that without a doubt, is much more fun in Germany than in the states. I wrote a long entry two years ago about watching the fireworks rise in a curtain above Wiesbaden, the city on the other side of the Rhine from Mainz. Well, this year instead of being down at the river, we were on top of one of the highest hills in Mainz with about seven friends, some champagne, and some sparklers. Of course, some people are too impatient to wait for the actual time of midnight to send the fireworks into the air, so at around 11:58, 11:59 I wondered whether the time had already come and we had just missed it -- and then 0:00 hits and your eardrums stop working. The sky is filled with red, green, blue, white, and yellow and it goes on without even wavering for at least fifteen minutes. It's incredible to reflect to calmly even within that din. Starting the year off with a bang - or maybe, giving the last one a proper sendoff. Last year was one of the most emotionally intense ones I have ever experienced, and even though there was never really a doubt that I wouldn't, it was somehow incredibly satisfying and relieving to realize that I had actually made it through.

Since then, as I said, I've been keeping busy, but I've also been letting myself get a bit of rest. I'm not usually type who can take three hour naps and still go to bed around 10:00 and fall asleep easily, but that's happened more than once. Something tells me that on a deeper level, I've been pretty tired, in both body and brain. So, for my body, I've been letting myself sleep. And for my brain? Well, as my old friends know, when I am letting myself just relax, one of the things I love to do most is watch cooking shows and nature documentaries. So, at least one of those things is being watched each day as well. :)

I'm at a junction now of More Studies and Work, and it's good to just see both possibilities and not freak out, at least to try to. Just to think about one and then the other, realize that whichever I choose at the moment won't necessarily be what I do for ever and ever. I don't know if any of the things I'm applying for will work out, so I won't write about them here until I know whether or not they will.

But what about that Lasertag thing in the title of this post? Well, one of the best things recently has been what I sometimes call 'active relaxation', or 'active hanging out'. Basically, I think it's tricky these days to have a nice night out with friends where you are NOT either a) watching something or b) eating something. Options that are not those first two are sometimes hard to find, sometimes expensive, and sometimes hard to convince ourselves to take part in since they require at least a small amount of effort, sometimes more. For example, last week C and I went on a walk. Okay, that sounds boring. What I mean is, we walked from her apartment to the river, across the bridge where the trains go, and then followed near the train tracks until we were about three stops from Mainz - just a casual six mile walk for fun. Then, another night, we went to a bath house - okay, really not much effort involved in that, but still, it's different than sitting in a restaurant or a theater. And then last night? Well, last night was Lasertag.

:)

So, we went with four of C's friends to this new Lasertag place in one of the suburbs of Mainz. It was hard to find - small signs, not well lit, in the back of a parking lot - all looked very shady. Only one of us in the group of five had ever played such a game before, and that was a long time ago for her. So, we got there and learned that our first game was going to be a standard game - our team of five against another team of seven that had signed up for the same time slot.

It works like this. You get a vest with several lights attached to it - two large V's of light on your chest and back, two small ones on each of your shoulders, and one light on the top of your phaser. Our team had red lights, the other team green. If you get hit by someone else's laser, then your own phaser tells you "You've been hit!" and your lights go dark for about five seconds. During that time, you can't be hit and also can't hit anyone else. Then, the lights come back on and you're ready to go. If you are playing in teams, then for ever hit that we (the red team) made on the green team, we got 5 points. And for every time they hit us, we lost 3 points. They also keep track of individuals, so I could also see at the end of the game how many times I had hit each of the other players on the green team, and how often each one of them had hit me. So, at the end, you have two team scores but also an individual ranking (everyone's phaser has a number on it, so no names or anything, but everyone knows their own number).

The first game was nuts. Each game lasts twenty minutes and you go into this dark room - filled with smoke and large pieces of wood that are formed into walls for you to hide or duck behind, and loud music (some kind of movie soundtrack, Pirates or something similar) playing. Really sets the mood. On one side of the (quite, quite large) room, there was the green base - on the other, the red base. There, there's a big red light under which you have to hold your phaser to 'recharge' every so often (after you've been hit five times). For the first five minutes of the game, I don't think hardly any of us red folks even left our base. We were so shocked at how big the room was, how dark, how easy it was to get hit from behind as you were peering around another corner to try and shoot someone else, and for me, it seemed like the green folks were just everywhere! But eventually, we became more daring and tore out of our shelter and into the fray.  I think I jumped and dashed and ducked far more often than was necessary, but suddenly the twenty minutes were up and we were sweaty and panting and trooped out of the dark room to see how we had done.

I should mention here the that the green team had just played another team before us, and we had never played before. So, both experience and numbers were in their favor (though one could argue that we had more targets to shoot at than they did). And so, we did lose, as we had thought from being inside the arena. 630-something to 450-something. The girl working at the counter told us that for a first game against a team that already knew the layout of the room that our score wasn't half bad.

And.... the individual player ranking? Though we lost by a considerable amount, I was the top scoring player above even all of the green team's players. I've never played at war before - even as a kid, my sister and I were more inclined to play gorillas or horses, or to build forts in the woods than to even play something like cops and robbers. But even so, even in my pacifist thoughts, to stand there afterwards and hear all the people on the green team muttering, "Who was number 8?" was just thrilling. :) It's the little things in life.

The second game was just our team and was every girl for herself - it was exhausting and hilarious. A malfunctioning phaser, a big collision involving a new friend and myself and lots of laughter afterwards, and plenty of cruel sneaking up on friends. It was a good night.

Istanbul

Not exactly a direct route from Washington, DC to Frankfurt. But, I go where the cheap flights go. The system confuses me sometimes. There are at least five different airlines that offer a direct flight from Washington to Frankfurt, yet it was cheaper to go an extra three hours East and then backtrack.

(As an aside, I would gladly fly on Turkish airlines again. The plane was quite new and in addition to the individual TVs with a great choice of movies (V for Vendetta! They won my love immediately just for having that film under ‘classics’) and a USB charger port on the back of the seat in front (I made absolutely no use of either of these things, since I closed my eyes as soon as I was fed and slept nearly the entire flight – a feat made possible only because their seats went incredibly far back ((enough for so that I, the amazing-sleeper-but-only-when-the-surface-is-horizontal-person, could in fact get to sleep ((( Okay, we’re getting triple-parenthetical here. I just want to express my distaste at the fact that since the word ‘I’ is already capitalized, we cannot capitalize it for emphasis. Yes, I know italics are an option, but sometimes, capitalization carries the emotion better….))) )) ) [I feel like I’m doing a programming assignment here, counting all my parenthesis and making sure I’ve closed them all...], they also had at every seat a tiny pouch that contained very cozy slippers, an eyeshade, lip balm, toothpaste and a toothbrush, and really, really good earplugs. The white noise is, for me, the worst part of being on a plane – and these earplugs certainly helped me to sleep. So, long story short, good experience with this airline!)

And I’m having a bit of a surreal moment right now at Kapi 210 (I assume that means ‘Gate’) – just a few seconds ago a young girl, probably six or seven years old, dashed past my knees with red/blonde hair flying everywhere and a backpack bouncing on her tiny shoulders. Then, a woman just a bit older than I am dashed past me, calling “Emily!!! Come back here!!” I was proud of my young self. I always did like to run. But after that moment,  I came and sat down, smiling a bit to myself and another woman sat down two seats down from me and I swear, she is wearing the one perfume that I ever wore consistently – which I did for about a semester during my Sophomore year at Mills, which feels like eons ago. So, I’m breathing in that scent right now and I have to admit, it’s kind of a nice memory. Scent memories are just insanely powerful.

All of a sudden, it’s December 30. I suppose that makes sense – I left Budapest on the 19^th. That’s almost  harder to believe than the fact that the year is almost over – the fact that I was in my tiny apartment in that great city only a bit more than a week ago.  The re-entry in Detroit was a little painful. Few things make me angrier than waiting in the line to come back into the States and seeing on more than five screens the cheesiest, most infuriating, “look how diverse we are, look, we still have cowboys and all families have two kids and a dog” disgusting video, “welcoming” videos to the states. It feel more like propaganda even than the media to me. I’m not quite sure why I loathe these videos so much – you see similar ones at most entry points to the states. Maybe it’s because I’m usually coming from somewhere that is very unlike America, and then all the cheesy and blunt patriotisms and “we’re so awesome”-ness in that particular brand of US-arrogance seem like a slap in the face. I actually love the US, I really do – it is my home. I love my family, my friends, what that country has turned me in to. But I don’t like that being the first thing that happens when you go back.  If I were a dog, I’d have my hackles up in that line.

But after getting through that line and staring down the employee who raises his eyebrows when I tell him that I was in Hungary to study math, I found my bag, re-checked it in and got on the tiny puddle-jumper to Erie, PA. There, I found my mom and sister and we headed home.

At home, I finally got the chance to see my animals again. Well, our animals. Technically, one of the cats is mine – she is the cat I care about most in the world, which says a lot – I’m not a cat person, I am realizing – or maybe it is more accurate to say that I am a  dog person. This particular cat, Summer, has been with my family for at least 14 years and is possibly the tiniest, daintiest cat you will ever meet, who keeps the delightfully soft fur  on her chest a pure white that would put anyone who has ever tried to keep their own clothes white to shame.

We decorated the tree, I saw old friends. I walked the dog, drank tea with my sister. I slept – that deliciously heavy jetlagged sleep – on a proper bed after a semester of sleeping on a couch.  It’s so easy to feel like you’ve never been anywhere else once you’re home again.

And then we drove to DC to visit the rest of the family. My family is quite spread out across the states, and DC was the area of highest concentration this year so we decided to have Christmas there. Every time I get to see my relatives these days, I get to know them better. This time, I had some particularly lovely moments with my mom’s mom, drinking wine and tea together, talking about math and music and travel. My mom drove us around the neighborhood where she grew up and I got to do one of the things I love the most and take multiple dogs to a dog park. :) We cooked and wrapped and opened presents, and eventually, my dad got to DC as well and my sister and I spent some time with him and his mother. We played pool and laughed, played card games and went for walks.

And now, all of a sudden, I’m back in an airport. I’m on my way to see Claudia, and I couldn’t be happier to be spending the New Year in Germany with her. My last New Years in Mainz, I was still pretty hard-hit with mono and the excursion to the Rhine to watch the fireworks was the most exertion I had had in about a month. This time, I’m in good health, on proper vacation (for the first time since last Christmas, I realized – because I started my summer internship before my classes ended at Mills during the summer!), and ready for this time.

I think we’ll be boarding soon. Time for one of my favorite, favorite things to do: listen to an audiobook while doing Sudoku. That’s how I get through these plane rides. Sudoku and Free Cell are so incredibly satisfying to me. No more work for me tonight. :)