Filed under: Eating Mindfully and Sustainable Agriculture, Family Ministry, Pastor Smiley Speaks, Travels | Tags: Denver, family gathering, vacation, wedding
Mile-High Vacation:
I flew to Denver Wednesday and stayed with nephew and his new wife, from Brazil. Her mom was visiting too. Bottom line: Great trip to meet my new niece-in-law and see my nephew so happy after so many challenges in his life. I stayed longer than 
the American tradition of 3 nights– but I was able to not only discern that his wife is genuine, sensitive, joyful, caring and strong–but also to fall in love with her myself. Learning a bit of Portuguese was icing on a very rich cake.
I slept on the narrow sofa in the living room. Not much room to turn around or roll over. Had a nice hike one evening on Dinosaur Ridge. After my brother and his wife arrived, we three guys went for a bike ride downtown, along a creek and up to the Platte river. Denver has lots of B-Cycle locations for bike sharing, where you put in a credit card and take a red bike for an hour or so, then put it back at another site.
We had great food. Mark grilled corn and wild coho salmon on their balcony. And his new mother in law was always cooking. (His wife doesn’t cook much, but she’s a housekeeper with a strong sense of order and cleanliness. This has basically revolutionized my nephew’s life.)
Dining Out:
Friday night I tried to pick a restaurant to treat them, one that I would also enjoy and feel good about (farm-to-table sustainability, strong hops in the local beer, etc). You know that a place is too hip for you when you call at 5 PM for reservations and they ask, “Which evening?” The place that Yelp (and I) had chosen first had nothing till 10:30, so I tried a sister restaurant. Their earliest was 9 PM, but they said we could come in and get on the waiting list, or try for the bar. So, after a lot of time-consuming family grooming, we hopped in the pickup truck and headed out. Parking it in a residential neighborhood was no easy chore, but he did.
Linger restaurant, in an old brick building, serves “global street food” at big-city American prices. Locally raised, sustainable, very tasty, with great Colorado beers on the menu. But the downstairs was packed, and on arriving at 8 PM I realized I should have taken the 9 PM reservation over the phone when I could have. Now added to the waiting list, we went upstairs to the bar. Big, crowded, and loud, with crowded big open-air tables overlooking the skyline and full moon. As I prepared to breach the crowd between us and the bar to order some drinks, I asked a bar manager about how one may grab a booth if it comes open in the bar area–sit down or sign up? “Like that one!” I said about a booth at window suddenly vacant.
He said, “Take it.” We were as close as possible to outside, and as far as possible from the middle of the din, and the menu offered the same thing we would have gotten downstairs. As it was, we ate a lot of small plates and left before our waiting list time would have elapsed.
Saturday night my retired big bro and I treated the gang to Cafe Brazil, a half hour outside the city. Most of us had seafood and/or chicken. Very rich food. Too much!
On my own, I enjoyed many snacks and easy times at Under the Umbrella Cafe, just a walk from their apartment, and next door to the little ice cream shop that makes all three flavors fresh daily: chocolate, vanilla, and flavor of the day. I borrowed Mark’s copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, since he said it was about business and consumer culture. I’ll say. I’ll blog about it soon.
Church Going:
Sunday morning I walked 2.1 miles, thanks to Google maps, to the lovely tree-lined neighborhood where, at 14th and Lafayette, I found First Unitarian Society of Denver, where a friend who finished seminary when I did and attended extension ministry training with me is the minister.
It was only one of two UU churches in the whole metro area where a minister was preaching, and I’m glad it was the closest too. It was a beautiful service in many ways: welcoming and authentic tone, inclusive style, music to listen to and to sing along with, and a great sermon by Mike on the spiritual work of hospitality. Challenging to his congregation, but also affirming. And quite moving.
Results? A number of people DID speak to me afterward. Not sure if that was because of the sermon itself or because Mike introduced the clergy who were visiting and made us stand. It was a great surprise to see the District Executive and the Director of Congregational Life from the UUA, and to talk after the service.
August is a big month for church-visiting by those who are thinking of a spiritual home, so it’s good when the minister is present and when the programs, even if lay-led, are well-planned and delivered, so that all who come are fed, whether they are new or long timers.
Wedding-Celebration BBQ: After I walked back to Mark’s apartment we had a big meal of grazing all afternoon at their apartment, with a number of Mark’s close local friends (and his wife’s new friends), plus family. Ceviche (Brazil mom), grilled corn, guacamole (Indiana mom), salsa (Mark), grilled and marinated chicken, sausage, Brazilian “mayonesa” salad (potatoes etc.). All tasty. I didn’t touch the beer because I was going to do a brief ceremony for the couple. But everyone else was going through the beer fast, so I got the show on the road by 3. I had offered this ceremony to the couple and told her mom. Not sure if his folks expected it, but the other guests didn’t. (The couple had gotten legally married at the Denver court-house in December, but there were no guests or family present for that occasion.)
To be a little fancy we went inside from the hot balcony and stood in the empty dining nook in the kitchen. My quickest ceremony. Though I did have on a stole, it was also my first one to do in shorts and a Tommy Bahama shirt and Colorado Rockies flip-flops. (I started with bare feet, remembering God’s command to Moses to remove you shoes when you are on holy linoleum, but someone thought I looked under-dressed.)
It was also the first ceremony where my voice cracked several times as I tried to get the words out, where I thought I might break down, as I read the words and thought about Mark’s life and our friendship, his loss of his bio mom to cancer when he was 1-year-old, his parents and their 34-year marriage, his career in the Marines, his rock climbing prowess and his year-long series of arduous brain-tumor surgeries and his mid-30s completion of a B.A., just in time for the 2008 melt down.
Definitely I was moved by the friendship. He lived with us after his bio-mom died I was 12-16 in this period), and he visited me in college and traveled with me to Chicago when I was a young adult, so he’s like a brother. But now that his Brazilian wife calls me “Ankle,” I am happy to retain that venerable title.
After I got home I realized that while the mom who raised him and his dad stood smiling on the couple at the ceremony in the kitchen, just in the next room was a shelf of photographs, including the happy couple and Mark’s parents and younger brother. Facing our small gathering also was a framed picture of Mark’s biological mother and his father, in their early 20s, joyfully sharing a sip from the same silver cup, at their wedding reception over 40 years ago. And smiling down on us.
Going and Returning: Traveling mid-day meant I could take the YoloBus #42 from downtown to SMF airport for only $2 and take it home. A quick trip if you catch it at the hourly departure. But it doesn’t operate at the crack of dawn. Coming back, I caught a bus near downtown Denver, paid $2.25 and got a transfer. I got out at a wide, busy, exposed intersection in the hot sun and waited for the Sky Ride bus. The cost was $9 to get to Denver’s airport LESS the $2.25 I had already paid! A better deal than Supershuttle, and the only inconvenience was waiting in the warm air.
Filed under: Eating Mindfully and Sustainable Agriculture, Travels, Uncategorized | Tags: Hawii, Maui, snorkel, vacation, whales
We stayed at a small hotel on Kihei Road, just across from a calm beach on West Maui.
The entire first day we drove the scenic highway to Hana, along the north coast, with dramatic views and changing vegetation, and a couple of hikes through bamboo and over rocks to see waterfalls. We bought freshly-made pineapple, papaya, banana and cane-juice smoothies from a weathered German woman in a snack truck at a farm near one waterfall. What happens to the cane stalks after she presses out the juice? “Composting. For the Goddess.” Most spectacular views were down at the water’s edge on a peninsula, watching waves crashing on rocks and beach.
The second morning we took a snorkeling trip to Molokini coral reef (next to the crescent-shaped remains of a crater) and Turtle Arches, on tour boat operated by Pacific Whale Foundation.
The naturalist guides/crew members/food servers/bartenders were young, enthusiastic, and very on the ball–and busy!. On the first dive I felt chilled in 70-degree water, even with the recommended wet suit top, and fretted that I’d give up early, even though the corals and colorful fish were fascinating and very cuddly in the way they swam close to me. But time was going faster than I thought, and the hour was over. Just as striking as the schools of fish was the sight of hundreds of humans (from numerous ships) bobbing close together, faces down, snorkels up. On the ride to the next stop, a naturalist showed pictures of some of the sea life we’d seen, noting which fish had been characters in “Finding Nemo.”
The second of our two dives included an in-water tour by another naturalist, who would dive down and point out sea turtles, a small eel, and an octopus. He brought up the brown octopus and held it near the surface so we could touch it. Very cute–until it latches itself on your head and sucks your brain out! One turtle swam and surfaced right in front of me before diving back to sit on the floor for an hour or so. The most striking thing was to dive down a bit and listen to the singing of the male humpback whales. I hadn’t imagined that you could hear it without special Jacques Cousteau equipment.
The ride back to shore featured hot dogs, grilled chicken sandwiches, pasta salad, and a very open bar. But the best part of the ride was whale soup–not on deck but in the water. We saw many pods and individual whales–a few straight-up breaches, lots of flukes (tails) shown as they surfaced for air, and a long display of two whales rolling on their backs flapping dorsal fins (arms, I guess) in and out of the water. A whale watch at no extra charge.
After a nap (was it the snorkeling, the drammamine, or the beer that tired me?), we drove up-island to Haleakala National Park. Fortunately a naturalist recommended that we try to see sunset, rather than sunrise, which meant leaving at 3 PM instead of 3 AM to drive all 10,000 feet to the top. My thanks to Aman for doing all the driving (Hertz charges an extra $65 for a second driver), especially the steep, winding road, which took us through clouds and various climates and landscapes.
At the summit, we hiked down into the crater a bit and back out–layers of dark red, brown, gray and green rocks made it seem like an unearthly landscape. Back at the rocky top (whose clear air and high-up observatory equipment yield the 4th best astronomical views in the world, but the observatories weren’t open), we watched a long sunset over the ocean. By then it was cold! We had a late pizza and salad dinner at Flatbread in the mini downtown of Paia. We sat close to the brick oven fire and I enjoyed the true ethos of the Hawaiian islands–I had no idea that all their other organic and funky sites are in Mass, NH, VT and Maine!
Lots of Mahi Mahi meals on this trip too. Somehow we avoided the island favorite, Spam, but I pointed it out on the breakfast menu at a diner. Aman is a computer programmer and the only kind of spam he’d heard of is that with a small s, not the Hormel brand of canned slabs of spiced, chopped ham.
On our last afternooon we visited the only town on the island with a true (and touristy) downtown, Lehaina. It had several historic buildings and museums; we visited a whaling exhibit housed in the old court house and saw the banyan tree that takes up the full block of a downtown park–it looks as if it has several trunks but it’s all one tree (planted 1873). We visited the charming little public library. Lots of locals online and reading books, with one teenager reading a surfing book–in his trunks with a beach town on his shoulder. Perusing the periodicals I read that big eye tuna is at risk of extinction due to overfishing–sushi lovers know it as ahi tuna! A map on the wall showed that in the 2000 census there were about 250,000 Hawaiians on the Islands and another 150,000 or more spread out in all the other states. I read elsewhere that 1 in 1,000 people speak native Hawaiian, but given the cultural renaissance of the last 30 years it’s expected that the proportion will have risen by the 2010 census.
Aloha!
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