There and Back Again

David and Kittie at the Louvre

It's taken me about a week to mentally digest the trip to Paris with sister Kittie and brother-in-law David. We'd been planning it for months, and then in one fell swoop the whole thing happened.

I'm splitting this up into days. The first day is actually three in one. Who knows, I may meld other days together into one entry as well. I do have to write enough to fill the space between the pictures.

This trip started with a half-serious Facebook post. I had seen a video promoting Le Salon du Chocolat, shared it on Facebook and posted, "Does anyone want to go with me. I'm serious."

Kittie replied, "Dave and I want to go. Got an idea of cost? Flight, hotel, diabetes treatments?"

Several e-mails later, a plan was afoot and we were planning it all out.

Saturday, Oct. 21

Pam, David, Kittie, Steve after Sunday breakfast

So the day came. Oct. 21, Steve, Pam and I drove up to Minneapolis. David and Kittie flew into Minneapolis from San Luis Obispo in the afternoon. We picked them up and headed to lunch, since it was almost 2 p.m. It was a little place called Chevy's, a Mexican restaurant, and I got the worst heartburn from their burrito.

Then we headed to the Comfort Inn, where we had room reservations overnight. There is an Outback steakhouse attached to the inn, so we gathered there in the evening for dinner. The next morning we slowly congregated around the indoor pool and had the complimentary breakfast, which I found very lacking. We paused for picture-taking, then checked out, with Steve and Pam dropping us off at the airport, a good four hours before our flight time.

Sunday, Oct. 22/Monday, Oct. 23

iPads at the tables are ubiquitous now.

Once at the airport, we were assisted by a very helpful agent who walked us through the process of using kiosks to register our passports and print our boarding passes. I haven't flown out of the country in three years, and that was Montreal. Even in those few intervening years, the technology has advanced. I definitely felt like I was being processed by the machine.

Through security (rather quickly), we found our gate right away and spent most of the next hours waiting in a bar/brasserie called Mimosa. We had lunch there, which gave us the right to play on the iPads while waiting for the gate agents to show up for our flight.

On the plane

I was kind of on tenterhooks because Delta, the airline we were flying, only assigns economy seating at check-in. I was really looking forward to sitting together, three across in the middle section of the plane, because once we were in the air, we could lift the arm rests and make it like a couch.

My sciatica, which flares up every couple years and takes weeks upon weeks to resolve, had started acting up, and shlepping bags around an airport and standing in lines was not helping it any. This early in the trip, I was getting unconditional concern from my travel mates. When the agent finally arrived at the gate desk, Dave went right over and got us seats together, just as we had wanted.

Selfies on a plane

The seats in the plane were a tiny bit larger than on domestic flights (we were on a 777), and there was a bit more leg room. When airborne, it was as pleasant a flight as one can hope for these days, sans some magical upgrade.

Nine hours folded into an airline seat, however, take their toll on my back, and I was hobbling when we got out of the airplane. Luckily, David had left his journal behind on the plane and had to run back and retrieve it. This gave me some time to sit and stretch even more. Following, of course, was standing in lines to go through the French border police. Because I had a checked bag, I was separated out from the carry-on-only folks and got through the checkpoint first.

Our car was there and waiting by the time I got to baggage claim. I knew because the driver was texting me. And this brings up another new facet of this overseas trip: wireless connectivity here in the 21st century. I find it rather fascinating.

My cell provider, Verizon, has an overseas plan for $10 a day. It allows you to take your stateside cell plan along with you in most countries. So when I landed in Paris, I turned my cellphone off, then rebooted it, and I was getting service through a French provider.

The sign says "Welcome to Paris."

Kittie and David, who are with AT&T, had chosen a $40-a-month plan that allowed them to use data services, but calls were charged on a per-minute basis. There was an $80-a-month plan that included talk, but they didn't feel the need to pay twice as much for calls when texting would do. And it worked perfectly for us.

But on Kittie's phone (an iPhone4), the time did not update. On Dave's phone (an iPhone 5), it did. On top of the cell service, we had Wifi at the apartment we were renting, so checking e-mail and such was feasible, though none of us felt the urge to do it.

Front door of the apartment

So when we got separated at the border patrol checkpoint, I went ahead to claim my bag and hoped they would get my texts. Once through the checkpoint, one can turn right or left, both of which lead to baggage claim areas. I texted "go to the left," and they found me. I had already retrieved my checked bag, a large green affair from the 1980s with four wheels on the bottom and a leash to pull it.

Once together, we found the driver, who dashed through the terminal toward his car. I was not able to keep up with him, dragging my checked bag behind me like a reticent poodle, hobbling mildly and feeling very uncomfortable. Finally in the car, I discovered that my change online (from an older apartment address to the new apartment address) had not be processed by the car service. I made a mental note, since this same company was picking us up to return to the airport in a week, and they would be showing up to the wrong address.

We left Minneapolis at 4:30 in the afternoon and arrived in Paris at 7:30 in the morning. It was still dark outside, so we greeted our ride into Paris and the sunrise (such as it was in a drizzling rain) at the same time: morning rush hour.

Four flights up

I have learned to trust local local drivers completely. They are professionals and understand traffic conditions and the etiquette of the road. This is what you are paying them for.

We were supposed to meet the real estate agent at the apartment around 9:30. I got a text from him saying he was running late at another showing and would be there around 10:00, which is about when we arrived. We waited about 10 minutes, then another agent showed up a few minutes later. It turns out their offices are just a block or so away from the apartment.

The fellow was very nice, and spent a good deal of time familiarizing us with the particulars of the apartment. We were given two keys to the apartment, so David took one and I took the other. If Kittie needed one, we could switch off if need be. The only drawback of the apartment: it was a three-story walkup, which means four flights of stairs up and down. As a point of interest, the place was for sale (they showed it once or twice while we were out, always with our permission); asking price: $1.15 million!

Kittie and David get cash from the ATM.

We took some time and unpacked, then lied down for about an hour before heading out to the Eiffel Tower. We had reserved tickets for 2 p.m., and the wording on the website seemed to say that if you were too late, they might not honor the tickets.

So we headed out a little after noon and stopped to get cash out of the bank. I had hit an ATM at the airport, but Kittie and David hadn't. Smart, though; you get a better rate in town.

When we went down into the Metro, I realized there were new machines everywhere. The simple ticket machines of ten years ago no longer existed. Now it was all touchscreen technology and, even in English, I didn't know which buttons to push to buy a carnet (a pack of 10 tickets at a discount).

Me lagging behind.

By the time I purchased the tickets and we got onto the train, my back was singing. After the flight and the lines and only a bit of rest, my back was protesting. The block-long treks underground between trains didn't help, nor did the fact that we ended up going the wrong direction on the regional train that we transferred to. We caught the mistake, and a very nice young woman verified in which direction we should be going. Soon, we emerged from the ground to the site of the Eiffel Tower.

At that point, I had to stop. I told David and Kittie to go ahead while I rested my hip. After about 10 minutes, I got up and set forth (slowly) to the tower.

Later on, David and Kittie told me they had no problem and walked right into the security stations (one to get onto the grounds of the tower, a second to get onto the elevator or stairs at one of the four legs). In the few minutes that had passed before my arrival, there must have been an influx of people, as it took me about 15 minutes to get onto the grounds and almost 40 minutes to get through the security at the elevators.

In line to get in line.

I texted them and let them know I was on my way and would meet them on the 2nd story. We had tickets that allowed us to go all the way to the top on a second elevator. By the time I got up to the 2nd story and waded through the mass of people, I found Kittie and David nearly through the long line for the elevator to the top. I was in no mood to wait for 30 minutes in another line, so I sat and waited for them to come back down.

Sitting on a bench, it hit me that this is the tower of Babel. There are people from all over the planet who had come just to see this tower, climb it, take photos, be able to say they were there. Like me.

My back was tired and begging for rest. The idea of hobbling through the Metro back home did not appeal to me, and it was starting to rain, so we decided to get a taxi. I attempted an Uber ride but was totally confused by how the car would know me. We found the taxi stand in front of the tower, David and Kittie grabbed a cab (there were many people wanting one but no one bold enough to just go up and nab one), and we crawled through afternoon rush hour back to the apartment. But we were dry and comfortable.

Menu is eight pages of choices.

After a little relaxation, we went out to discover the neighborhood. One of the things Kittie wanted was to find a grocery store and get goods for breakfast the next morning. It turns out that we happened upon a health food store. They did have eggs and ham and fresh fruit, so we got our food and headed back to the apartment. At my suggestion, we stopped at a dim sum restaurant I had found online.

The majority of their business is obviously take-out. The kitchen and cash register are in the front of the shop as you enter, but a short trek to the back reveals a very minimalist, nicely appointed, Asian space. The place smelled amazing, and the menu provided a huge assortment of foods.

We realized that we hadn't had a decent meal all day, and we all chowed down. We ordered four different dim sum dishes, and each of us got a main dish as well. Some of the dinner did come back to the apartment with us, including the sautéed marigold greens Kittie ordered.

A mutual decisioni was to set no alarms for the next morning. We were all running on batteries after almost 24 hours awake. Kittie and I took turns taking hot baths (a tub was a prerequisite for me), and we crashed around 10 p.m. The bed was comfortable enough, and I slept a solid night's sleep.

David's Slideshows

David took a huge number of pictures. In order to share some of them with you, I'm adding a slideshow to the bottom of each page as he makes his pics available to me and I can process them for the web.

This is a blogger widget, so I don't have a lot of control over it, like sizing the depth. It imports with the tallest photo as the default for the slideshow box, so please bear with all the white space on horizontal pics.

This page has two slideshows: From Minneapolis to the Apartment and Visiting the Eiffel Tower. Hopefully, not too many of the pictures are out of order. Ask David; he'll know. Enjoy.

From Minneapolis to the Apartment

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Visiting the Eiffel Tower

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Seven-Year Cat Scratch Fever

Carla at the locks on the Mississippi

We had visitors. Close encounters of the nerd kind. There were people sleeping in my guest room. And a most surprising development in months, maybe even years.

Brother Jim and his wife Carla flew in from Everett, Wash., for a weeklong visit with the Wisconsin arm of the clan. It was a really nice time. I'm beginning to think we're all just terribly wise not to visit one another except for once every couple of years. It keeps things fresh.

Columbia at the Eagle Center

So Jim and Carla flew into Minneapolis, rented a car and drove down to Ettrick, staying with Steve and Pam for three nights and then staying three nights with me in La Crosse. I went out to Ettrick for the regular Friday Pizza Night, giving 50-50 on whether the Washingtonians arrive before I faded.

Natalie and Lake Toys carousel

They stopped and had dinner with Amanda in Winona (on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi). Around 9:30, I called it an evening and drove home. Good thing, too, as Jim and Carla arrived between 10 and 11. I had to get my beauty sleep, as we were all going to make the Cheese Shop-Eagle Center-Lake Toys River arc the next day.

The idea of this day trip is drive north on the Wisconsin side of the river. Stops are Alma (the great bluff view of me), Nelson (with a great cheese shop). We cross over to Wabasha and the Eagle Center on the Minnesota side continuing south to Lake Toys, then Winona and home.

This time out, we had lunch at Slippery's (famed for being a location shoot for "Grumpy Old Men"), visited the eagles and stopped off at Lake Toys for fudge and ice cream cone purchases, as well as a ride on the carousel for Natalie.

The Coulee Valley, I guess it's called

I skipped out on Sunday's excursion, as I was still working on cleaning the house. I had paid Emily to come over and clean the week before, but there was still stuff to do (there's always stuff to do), so I was a busy guy. Patty always gets upset when overt cleaning takes place, so I try to do it as surreptitiously as possible.

Speaking of Patty, something amazing happened. A few weeks ago, Steve and Pam were sitting in the living room at my place and Patty came downstairs and meowed at Pam. From the landing, of course, but she did allow herself to be seen.

After seven years, Patty starts socializing.

Then, Tuesday morning, I believe it was, Jim was up and in the bathroom and, as he reported it, Patty came in and started rubbing up against his legs. He reached down and she let him pet her. Afterwards, she came down in the evening and got petted by Jim and Carla. It seems she's realized the pleasures of socialization.

On Monday, around noon, Steve came into town with Jim and Carla (Pam was at work at Western Technical College, as she is not yet retired). It was a gray day, drizzling/raining off and on in the afternoon, but we did get in a stroll through the International Gardens. and check out Riverside Park.

On Tuesday we drove back to Minnesota, about an hour east, to a small town called Lanesboro, which is something of an arts colony, as well as an Amish stronghold. Carla was interested in a tour they had, about 3 hours long, which showed you working Amish farms and gave you a chance to purchase their wares as you stopped at each farm.

An Amish farmhouse

Of course, being Amish, they dealt only in cash, and that was probably a saving grace for me, because I only had about $50 in my pocket. So I ended up buying a very nice door mat for the front door. I could have dumped a couple grand or more into the amazing furniture they had available, but alas, lack the funds. Beautiful work.

Tuesday evening we went out to dinner at Piggy's, which was a very disappointing experience. This is a restaurant down in the arts district (across the street from the Pump House Art Center and catty-cornered from the community theater). I have had numerous lunches there, and the food was really good. This time, we went "upstairs" for fine dining and, after about an hour of waiting got lukewarm food and dismal service. The woman wasn't rude or abrupt, just terribly trained. I had steak and scallops, and the scallops were on the point of being bad.

Wednesday, Jim and Carla went to Pettipoint Island and some canoeing. I stayed at home and nursed my back, which had received a lurching in the tour bus much like I experienced on the train going cross country. It took several days (in both instances) to work out the sore muscles that resulted.

Wednesday evening, Steve and Pam and Amanda and Natalie joined us in the back yard for brats. Amanda did the cooking. I thought it was a fitting conclusion to Jim and Carla's Wisconsin experience.

I got an e-mail from the place in Paris that is renting us our apartment. Seems, because of some regulatory changes or something, the apartment I originally rented (and have already paid for) is unavailable. So they sent a list of similar properties for about the same price but none of them had two bedrooms or a bathtub.

I went online and picked out another property, only a few blocks from the original one, and replied via e-mail that this was the property I wanted and to apply my payments to this one.

I got a reply back from an actual person (Vesna), and I think things are back on track.

It's getting close to leaving time and I'm starting to get excited about this.

And since I didn't end this blog at the ten-year mark, I suppose I'll have to make a really long entry about Paris when I get back. (I don't want to lug the computer overseas and the rules on bringing them into the country are murky right now.)

Untidy Timing

Well, Sept. 11, the 10-year anniversary of my starting this blog, came and went and I never got around to putting together a deeply meaningful, comprehensive final post.

So screw that. I guess you're going to be inflicted with photos and a painfully long post about the upcoming vacation in Paris. That won't be for a while yet.

That's all. Nothing to blog about.

Nothing to see here.

Go away and do something more interesting.

Summer Stuff

Let's see. What's been going on? Like most of my life, there's not much to report.

From left, Ada, Pam and Penny attack tabletop s'mores.

In July, longtime Solberg family friends visited (Sam, Ada and Susan). I joined them, Steve and Pam, and Pam's sister Penny at the Cameron Park Farmer's Market, then we walked over to the Twisted Moose for dinner. The food was good (the place is new, and Steve and I had had lunch there recently), and Ada insisted on ordering the tabletop S'mores for dessert. It was really quite interesting.

Picnic cake

That was on Friday. On Sunday, there was a family get-together in Ettrick and a great host of Solbergs were present for the festivities. Someone brought a really great cake that looked like a picnic basket on top of a checkered blanket. It even included ants marching toward the food. I didn't get a single bite of it, but I'm told it was as tasty as it was creative.

The day's repast was typical Wisconsin, with barbecue (which is ground beef with a tomato sauce served on hamburger buns) and hot dogs. There were also numerous finger foods, appetizers, and sundry goodies that everyone had brought. And seeing as everyone had brought a little something, there was lots and lots of food.

The family gathers, including a squirming Natalie, far right.

To give you an idea of how many Solbergs there are (and were there), here is a group photo of the clan as it convened for the above-described gathering.

The next Saturday was my 64th birthday, and Steve and Pam took me out to a real Wisconsin supper club situated on the banks of the Mississippi in Trempleau, north of La Crosse. The environment was evocative of supper club places in Oregon that our parents had taken us to as kids, except it did not have the relish tray on the table. Emily and Jim were also in attendance, and it was a great birthday present.

Steve and Pam at the Viroqua War Memorial.

Steve, Pam and I went on our second day trip, this time to Viroqua, which is south of La Crosse and home town to my friend Deeann Hoff, who was art director when I worked at the Hollywood Reporter. I wanted to check out Gary's Rock Shop, which I had seen on the news, and I wanted to try out lunch at Driftless Cafe, which had won a national award and also been on the news. I bought a stone carving (a bison or a bear or something) and lunch was very good.

As of the first of August, I've started volunteering at the Center (full name is Seven Rivers LGBTQ Connection) on Monday and Wednesday evenings, 4-8 p.m. On Mondays, a board member named Kellen hosts a live Facebook feed focusing on folks in our community. And on Wednesdays nothing of importance occurs, so things are pretty dead for my shifts.

There was one Wednesday when the board met to discuss expanding the Center into an adjacent space in our current building (we are literally busting at the seams), and I got to tag along and inspect the proposed expansion space. It would be a real improvement, and make a coffee bar and hangout space a reality.

Plant on April 5 this year

Just today, my quietude was broken by a tall gentleman who walked in. Turns out he's been in town for all of 10 days, is in residency at Gundersen Healthcare (my provider) in alternative and spiritual healing. He asked lots of questions about the town and the people, what we did at the Center. I filled him in as much as I could, explaining that I had only been here two years, which is considered an outsider by the locals.

Repotted plant

The plant in the living room (I have no idea what it's called) has grown so much that it required a second transplanting. I found a nice planter at Menard's — lightweight and just stylish enough for my tastes (also it has no drain hole, which is good for the floors). I messed up the dining room preparing the soil and pulling apart the dense root ball. It turns out there are seven separate plants, so now it is/they are repotted and just starting to take off after establishing new roots.

To give you an idea of how happy this plant is, I've posted a photo of it from April, when it got its first transplant, and after this second transplanting. Please note there is no longer a table underneath; the pot is a standing planter.

Patty sleeping with her eyes open
and her tongue out, just because.

I think I've finally found a person to do my yard. I've been looking for someone who can do the weeding and trimming and let me do the mowing. He also does snow removal, so I may have the same deal with him in winter: I do the sidewalks and he does the driveway. We're meeting tomorrow, so all things should shake out then. Cross your fingers: a good , reliable yard person is hard to find here.

Another fun household thing: the knob on the shower no longer mixes hot and cold water, but provides one or the other. I am also sick of the toilet upstairs, and when its ballast ball broke off last week, I decided it was time to replace it with a high-profile unit. So I had the plumber out this week to check things out. He took pictures and will get back to me with a quote. Doesn't matter; if it's within reason, he can do it ASAP. I'm sick of showering in the basement (although the basement shower is really nice, and much cooler in the summer).