Monkeys Tell No Tales, but I Do

I tried. I really did.

I know that the proper thing to do after our two-week vacation in Africa is to write a travelogue blog. So that’s what I started to do.

I was going to tell you about all the rare and exotic animals we saw on our safaris. I was going to wax poetic about Victoria Falls, “The Smoke That Thunders,” one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. And, of course, I was going to say a few words about the diversity and foodie scene in Cape Town. That is what any blogger should do, right?

But you all know me, and you know I can’t write that stuff without getting schmaltzy and falling into one cliché after another. So I stopped writing that post and began this one, about the unexpected moments that helped make the trip memorable.

Take the porter at the Johannesburg airport. Barb had asked him how we could check that our luggage had been transferred from our incoming flight from Amsterdam to our flight to Victoria Falls the following day. He held our boarding passes up to a scanner, nodded, and said we were fine.

I reached into my wallet and pulled out several South African rand notes. He looked at me with disgust.

“That money is no good here. I want twenty U.S. dollars,” he said.

I told him he was lucky to be getting ten. He swore and waved us into the wrong passport control line.

Then there was the evening our group ate dinner at a boma, a traditional African enclosure now commonly used as an outdoor dining area, and NOT an acronym for “British Officers Mess Area,” as one guide glibly told us.

We were enjoying our grilled dinner when a scream came from the far end of the table. A member of our party had received a gift from above. Whether it came from a large bird or a baboon, no one knew for sure, but it was unquestionably a direct hit, right on the top of her head.

That was a tough one for our otherwise implacable tour leader to deal with.

Nancy faced an even more delicate situation when a distraught fellow traveler reported that her outdoor shower had been interrupted by an unexpected visitor—not a baboon or an elephant, but a maintenance worker who had wandered into the wrong suite.

I suspect the poor woman would have been less distressed if it had been a baboon.

Monkeys tell no tales.

To be fair, the local staff performed some heroics as well. Our safari driver found a lost wedding ring in his vehicle before its owner even knew it was missing. Another porter successfully fished a fallen gold-and-diamond necklace from beneath a slatted wooden boardwalk. That saved its owner, a 22-year-old woman, from considerable grief, most of it likely coming from her worried mother.

So yes, the animals were magnificent and the falls thundered, but it was the little things that made our trip unique.

And next time, I’ll be sure to wear a hat to an outdoor buffet.

You never know what might fall from the sky!

Our Gorilla Dilemma: How a Dream Trip to Rwanda Became a Daily Debate

It’s hard to let go of a dream.

Ever since our trip to Tanzania and Kenya nearly 20 years ago, Barb has had one item at the very top of her bucket list. While a meet-and-greet with Neil Diamond would rank a close second, number one has always been to follow in the footsteps of fellow occupational therapist Dian Fossey and see the mountain gorillas of Africa up close.

So when friends asked if we would like to join them on a tour of South Africa, we immediately recognized an opportunity. We could safari with them, and precede the trip with gorilla trekking in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park. Through a travel agent in Cape Town, we were matched with an outfitter in Rwanda, and soon the permits, accommodations, and travel arrangements were all in place.

But as the saying goes, “Man plans, and God laughs.”

Two weeks ago, when Barb first mentioned Ebola virus to me, I missed the significance. Since then, we have carefully scoured the news and public health announcements each day for any potential impact on our trekking plans.

The outbreak appears confined to specific areas of Uganda and the Congo, and there have been no reported cases in Rwanda. Our Cape Town travel agent has urged us not to cancel. In YouTube videos, tour guides implore viewers to ignore what they describe as hysteria from the Western media. ChatGPT and I have had daily discussions about the low likelihood of a larger outbreak. But Rwanda shares a border with Uganda, and the current strain of Ebola is quite deadly.

For the past week we have changed our minds daily, and sometimes hourly, about whether to risk the trek. Barb finally reached out to a friend who owns a home in Kenya. Her advice was to be very cautious, not because she thought we were likely to contract Ebola, but because if the outbreak spread across the Uganda-Rwanda border, our gorilla trekking permits could become worthless and stricter confinement rules might suddenly be imposed.

Our final decision is to continue with our plans is South Africa, but to cancel the gorilla trek. It has required a whirlwind round of emails and phone calls with our travel agent and the airlines. The Rwanda arrangements are non-refundable and our travel insurance excludes disease outbreaks, but we feel that with our permit fees, we have made a contribution to preserving African wildlife.

It’s hard watching Barb let go of a dream she has carried for nearly twenty years.

On the other hand, if anyone knows how to arrange a meeting with Neil Diamond, please let me know.

From Bedford Falls to Beyond: The Journeys of Our Beloved Travel Companion

You remember George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” right? He needed a suitcase big enough to be his flying carpet, big enough for labels from Italy and Samarkand, big enough for 1001 nights. His old boss, the pharmacist Mr. Gower, surprised him with the perfect bag. Sadly, as far as we know, George never got to take that trip.

But Barb and I have had a flying carpet of our own. I can’t recall when we purchased it–it might even have been a wedding gift. But that big old black bag has been our companion as we have traveled the world together over the past 45 years. With the red “Raff” sash, a gift from some long-forgotten travel agent, it has greeted us on baggage carousels around the world.

That bag has taken us all over Europe, first as twenty-somethings on an “if this is Tuesday we must be in Belgium bus tour,” and in later days via more upscale means of travel. It journeyed with us to Israel, to Southeast Asia, and to the wonders of South America and Machu Picchu. We left it at home for our African Safari, only because the travel company required that we use the duffel bags that they provided.

Friday we returned from a three-week journey through New Zealand and Australia. Our bag supported us on seven plane flights and one long train ride as we visited wine countries, and salmon hatcheries, and geothermal springs. It waited for us in our hotel as we witnessed the Southern Cross. the Milky Way, and Orion’s Belt, star-gazing at midnight at Mt Cook, one of the darkest spots on the planet.

Our bag got us to Melbourne where we toured the street art scene, to a luxury resort in Tasmania where I took an unexpected tumble into an ornamental pool, and to the heights of Sydney’s magnificent Harbor Bridge which we ascended like alpine mountain climbers. Only the Cessna Constellation that Barb “co-piloted” from Milford Sound to Queenstown had no room for our rectangular companion.

Regretfully, while Barb and I have recovered from our voyage, our beloved suitcase has not. The zipper pulls are gone, the interior plastic shoulders are crumbling, and the cloth fabric is starting to tear. It is no longer willing and able to be our raft to a million far-off places.

We’ll buy a new piece before our next adventure–a case with a tough, light-weight, shell, one with better wheels, and a smaller turning radius. I’m sure many more travels await us. Japan and the Arctic are still on the bucket list. And if we are lucky, we might even find the way to Bedford Falls and a chance to invite George Bailey to come along.

26 And Me. The Unhandy Side Of Retirement

Did you read my blog detailing my first year of retirement? If you did, and I hope that was the case, you read about travel and pickleball, playwriting and volunteering. What you didn’t see was a description of any of the multitude of home improvement projects that kept me busy. There is a good reason I didn’t include them in my post. You see, there were none. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

To be quite clear about it, my Y chromosome totally lacks the Y326798g gene, more colloquially known as the “HandyMan Gene.” First identified in Bob Villa’s righthand-man Norm Abram of This Old House fame, with a variant discovered in Home Improvement’s Al Borland 10 years later, it is Y326798g that gives a man the confidence and the ability to hang drywall, paint a baseboard, and to cut once without measuring twice. I just have a big, gnarly, gene deletion where that stretch of DNA should be. It’s a gap only CRISPR could repair.

Despite my genetic deletion, there are some minor repairs and adjustments I am capable of accomplishing. For instance, Barb has repeatedly reminded me that the pair of twin beds in one of the loft bedrooms are as close to collapse as the Berlin Wall had been in the autumn of 1989. In an attempt to avoid an international incident, I lugged my toolbox (more on that later) up the stairs, used trial and error to select the proper hex wrench, and in the span of slightly less than one hour tightened the 16 bolts that kept the two Bob’s Discount Furniture beds from falling apart. Tragedy averted!

Now about the toolbox. I may use them rarely, but I have a lot of tools in that black box; 26 pounds worth, to be exact. It has an insert tray of wrenches and another of screwdrivers. It contains whatchamacallits and thing-a-ma-jigs and even a petite-sized hand saw with a rusty blade that reeks of tetanus spores. Where most of the tools came from is a mystery to me, but I love their brilliant patina. I just can’t recall buying any of those wrenches, screwdrivers, thing-a-ma-jigs, or either of the two hammers that nestle at the bottom of the rectangular box.

I did make one significant tool purchase recently. The ancient electric drill we inherited from my father-in-law drilled its last hole a few months ago, ending its life in a blaze of sparks. Feeling emasculated not owning a working driller (a name bestowed upon drills by a long-ago Israeli boyfriend of our daughter Laury) I ventured into Home Depot and found a menacing-looking battery-powered model for under a hundred dollars. I have only used it once, but it looks cool hanging in the garage. At least, it looks cool to me.

So if any of you need help with something around the house, please don’t call me for my help or my advice. But I will be happy to lend you my tools, all 26 pounds of them. You can borrow my cool drill too. Just be sure to return it to its spot of glory on the garage wall. I might even find a use for it–someday soon.

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A Snowy Night In Chicago –1979

A recreation of that long, cold, walk. Photo created by Dall-E

Looking out at this snowy January day takes me back 45 years, to the very beginning of my marriage to Barb, and to a snowstorm that paralyzed Chicago. The Blizzard of January 12-14, 1979 dumped about 20 inches of snow on the city and surrounding area–and led to one cold and frigid walk through Skokie, a northern Chicago suburb.

I was doing a fourth-year medical school rotation in gastroenterology at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, while Barb was early in her Occupational Therapist career at RIC, Chicago’s famed rehabilitation center, just off the Magnificent Mile downtown. Knowing that a storm was brewing, we both elected to take public transportation–a walk to the Skokie CTA station for a short journey on the Skokie Swift, a transfer at Howard Street to the main North-South “L,” from which I would get off at Wilson, and Barb continue on to the Chicago Avenue stop.

As the storm approached, I was able to leave my rotation early, and reversing my morning route, made it back to our Skokie home without incident. For Barb, the situation was quite different.

After seeing her last patient of the day, Barb trudged through the falling snow the the subway stop. Following her descent down the elevator to the platform, she found herself engulfed by hundreds of commuters, the daily regulars plus the throngs of people like her who had opted not to drive on that wintery day.

As Barb waited on the northbound platform, two, three, four trains hurtled past, overfilled with passengers and not stopping at her station. Before panic set in, Barb decided to head in the other direction and was able to board a train that took her four stations south. From here, she was finely able to board a northbound train.

More than an hour later, in the black and cold, Barb disembarked from the Skokie Swift and began the half-mile walk to our 2nd-floor walk up on Lavergne Avenue. The snow was blinding and the temperature falling rapidly. Barb struggled as she slowly made her way, huddling in doorways every few minutes to try to regain some warmth in her fingers and toes.

In the meantime, I had called Barb’s parents wondering if they had any idea where she was or if they had heard from her. In those pre-cell phone days, we were all as deeply in the dark as Barb. Finally, close to three hours after she had left the bright lights of the rehab center, Barb made it up the stairs to our apartment, home at last.

Barb vowed that evening never to take a Chicago “L” ever again. Since then we have ridden the subways of New York City, Boston’s famed MTA, London’s Tube, the Paris Metro, and Berlin’s U-Bahn. But I don’t think Barb has ventured onto a CTA platform since that frigid day 45 years ago. Some promises you keep.

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We Played Airline Bingo and We Won!

The bingo game started at the beginning of the year. Our daughter Laury let us know that she and her family would be renting a house in Hilton Head, South Carolina for a week in June. Barb and I politely suggested that if they upgraded to a slightly larger house we would be happy to join them. A first-time visit to Hilton Head for us, some extra babysitters for them. Perfect plan!

The kids agreed and located the perfect house. Barb and I booked seats on the same XYZ Airline non-stop flight to Savannah as the kids. So far so good.

We hit a bump on the runway in February. While Barb and I were visiting several transplanted Chicagoans in the Phoenix area, Laury messaged us that the details for our Savannah flight had changed. Our voyage now included a 30-minute layover and plane change en route. Laury felt this was undoable with a toddler and an infant, even with grandparent assistance.

After some back and forth, we all decided it made sense to drive instead of fly. Laury’s family’s tickets had been booked with XYZ miles, so a refund was easy for them. Not so simple for us, since we had paid for our tickets. As it was the airline that had initiated the flight changes, XYZ agreed to let us cancel without penalty, but would only give us an airline credit, not a cash refund. So there we were with a decent-sized credit for an airline that we rarely used,

But then an opportunity to use the credit knocked on our theater door. We learned that A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond bio-play, would be having its worldwide debut in Boston over the summer. Since no Broadway dates had been announced, we decided this was our best chance to see the new play, based on the life of Barb’s musical idol. We bought theater tickets, booked a hotel for a weekend in June, and used our airline credits for the flight to Bean Town (or is it Beantown?)

But wouldn’t you know it, shortly after everything was booked and in place the producers announced that the New York run of A Beautiful Noise would begin in the fall. Boston is nice, but Broadway is Broadway so we decided to skip the Cradle of Liberty and plan a November anniversary (our 44th) weekend in the Big Apple. We put our Boston theater tickets up for sale on StubHub, and converted our airline flight from Boston Logan to NYC LaGuardia.

Confused yet? To recap, after two major itinerary changes, we were fairly even with the airline. But then something good happened. Barb and I both received a message from the airline telling us that the airline was revamping its credits program and each of us had a full travel credit remaining. We felt as if we had passed go and collected $200. The only kicker was the credit had to be used for travel beginning no later than January 5, 2023.

Our schedule is fairly packed between now and the end of the year so we didn’t see any way to add a new trip. But then we realized that on January 4th we are scheduled to fly to Florida for a week-long visit with some snowbird friends. And THOSE tickets on United Airlines were booked with miles, so they could be easily canceled and our miles refunded.

We spent an hour or so toggling between two computers, switching our flights to use our Airline XYZ travel credits. We reclaimed our United miles and high-fived each other for a job well done. As far as we can figure out, we just got a free flight to Florida.

Maybe from now on, I won’t bitch so much at XYZ Airlines!