Revisiting Home

When I was six my mom remarried and the law firm my step-dad worked for transferred him to Maui to work on some big case there. At the start of second grade we moved from California to Maui — Keikilani Street to be precise. We had a big cream colored house right at the T-intersection of Keikilani Street and Nalani Street. Things like this grew in our front yard:

Shortly after we moved, someone told my mom that a girl around my age lived in the first house on Nalani Street, just across the way from us. After what I can only imagine was a lot of coercion on my mom’s part (I was a shy kid) I went and knocked on the door. A girl answered and after a slightly rocky start (turns out we bought the house from her former best friend who had just moved, so I wasn’t exactly a welcome replacement), Colleen and I were basically inseparable for the next seven years.

Colleen and Kate, circa 1989.

Kate and Colleen, circa 2011.

Later in elementary school two more girls moved to our neighborhood — Kealia and Sesame. We pretty much had the greatest childhood ever, bouncing between each others homes and parents. We all went to the same school, rode in the same carpool, acted in plays at the same theater, took the same dance classes…etc. We had only one big blowout fight, which I think is quite good for four middle school girls.

Kealia, Sesame, Kate. 2011.

Right around the end of eighth grade (ninth grade for Colleen), we all moved out of the neighborhood: Colleen to the next town over, Kealia to Oahu, Sesame to Arizona, and me to North Carolina. We’ve kept in touch (sometimes more or sometimes less) over the last 18 years, and last November we all reunited at Colleen’s wedding on Maui.

Burak and Colleen, two of the nicest people on earth.

It was a wonderful trip. I hadn’t been back to Hawaii since 2000, and while I’ve seen Colleen fairly regularly over the last few years, it was great to get to know Kealia and Sesame as adults. It was the first time all four of us had been together in 11 years.

On my last day there we toured our old stomping grounds.

The house I grew up in, slightly modified since I saw it last.

The house Colleen grew up in. I probably slept there as often as at my own house.

Little critter.

Nothing beats donuts on a stick.

And of course there was the wedding…

It amazed me how few things had changed — almost all the stores I remembered were right where they were when I left, and despite a couple of new roads, I still knew where I was most of the time. I can’t wait for my next trip back…

RAGBRAI recap (finally)

On our way to Iowa my bike suffered a flat tire. We had no idea how this happened since it had just been sitting in the rack on the back of the car. We (Jessie, Amy, Heang, and I) tried to patch the tube before replacing it completely. Then, as someone was pumping it back up the whole thing exploded, which meant I had to get a new tire as well as tube. Not really a big deal, but mildly annoying since we were not even in Iowa yet.

Then (450 bike miles and many car hours later), when we got home from Iowa I realized it was flat again. Finally we put two and two together and realized it was the heat from the exhaust pipe that damaged the tire – melted it really. (Exhaust pipes and I do not get along well on long trips, but that’s another story.)

Somehow it took me until today to go to the bike shop and get the tire replaced. Yep, over a month. So, in honor of finally coming out of biking retirement, today seems like a good day to post some RAGBRAI photos and do a little recap.

The team (minus Steve and Kelly), sporting our "Heang and Chicks" shirts on day one.

The scene, all day every day: farmlands and bikers from horizon to horizon.

Hot and tired and ready for a pie break. We ate pie every day. Usually more than once. There was a lot of pie.

World's largest bike. It wouldn't go very far though.

Elkhorn, Iowa - My favorite town of the whole trip. Amazing cinnamon rolls, great windmill, and the friendliest mayor.

Tasting the goods at the Templeton Rye Distillery.

219th Street.

Biking through the sunrise. The mornings were wonderfully cool and clear. You'd almost forget it was 6:30 a.m.

Meet Baron, the most adorable sock monkey. Here he's on a train in Boone, IA.

Lots of people would sit out in their yards and greet the riders. Sometimes they brought farm animals to pet. This calf is named Mudball.

Me and a llama.

The last overnight town, Coralville, had the best arrival to town. On the other side of this entryway (put up just for us) were bleachers full of people cheering you on. So charming.

The trip was great. Iowa is not flat, and actually not boring. The scenery was lovely, and the pie delicious. I loved the freedom of just riding a bike all day and having nowhere else to be. And eating strawberry shortcake for breakfast. And having a ‘last-leg beer’ early in the afternoon. I didn’t love trudging around with my impossible-to-carry duffel bag, but I loved the sight of the tent city each night. I loved hanging out with my friends for a week straight.

My favorite part was riding into the towns and being greeted by what felt like literally every resident waving and cheering and saying, “Welcome, we’re glad you’re here!” Sure, the towns benefit from having us come through (quite a tourism boost for the day), but that isn’t the motivation for the families sitting in their yards waving at us and welcoming us to sit under the shade of their trees and rest. That’s just RAGBRAI.

RAGBRAI

In just one and one half short weeks, team Heang and Chicks will set off for Iowa to participate in RAGBRAI 2011.

What’s RAGBRAI? It’s a great big group ride across Iowa. By great big I mean about 8,000 strong. And by across Iowa I mean like this.

That’s this year’s route. Every year it changes. Why Iowa? That’s just where it is. And why not? I’ve heard it’s magical there (yes, I’ve been told that).

We shall soon see.

Here are the awesome shirts we had printed, designed by Brent.

The team is:

• Heang (duh)
• Jessie
• Amy
• Me
• Steve
• Kelly

I don’t know Steve and Kelly, but I’m hoping sure they are nice.

I’m really excited about this adventure, but I’ll admit, a little nervous about riding 474 miles in 7 days. I’ve been training. 713 miles to date. The RAGBRAI people suggest riding 500 – 1000 miles in the months leading up to RAGBRAI. I’m in that window, but still pretty sure that by day three my legs are going to try to remove themselves (think127 hours here people) and walk home, leaving the rest of me stranded amongst the corn.

Thankfully, it looks like there will be a lot of pie and beer and fried food along the way, and I’m sure that will be good motivation.

Also serving as motivation will be thinking about great bike trips some friends of mine have taken and the perspective they give me.

• Last year Heang rode from Astoria, Oregon to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – all alone, pulling a trailer, in the heat of summer. Pretty impressive. But even better than just the facts of that ride are the stories that he shared on his blog. Here’s my favorite one (part one and part two) but there are many more if you have a few minutes to peruse.
• Right now, as you read this, another adventurous friend is biking with her husband and another friend from Sitka, Alaska, to Glacier National Park – 1200 miles through Alaska, Canada, and who knows where else. Every post I read about their trip makes it sound like they are having the time of their lives (though they look freezing and exhausted!). Emily describes the trip here and has been posting updates every few days.

I’ve been reading the RAGBRAI blog now and again and every time I do I get excited about how ‘into it’ people are. All the towns seem genuinely excited to have 8,000 sunburned, tired, probably smelly people ride through, grab a bunch of food, probably leave a bunch of litter, and ride off again. I’m also excited to see parts of the state that you’d probably never experience (other than gas stations) driving through. This will be my first trip to Iowa and I can’t think of a better way to get to really see the state. I mean, we will certainly see lots of it. Close up.

Also, I’ll be seeing a lot of this beauty.

A while ago I posted a farewell post to my old bike (which I actually still own), but never got around to introducing the new one. Well, there she is. Pretty, huh? Also, she’s a nice bike to ride, and for that I’m thankful.

One thing I hope not to see a lot of on RAGBRAI is this:

“Aaand We’re Off-skies”

A year ago yesterday Jessie, Brent, and I set off for England. It’s hard to believe how fast time flies. I had a big plan that in honor of that anniversary I was going to splurge on some Magner’s cider and reminisce. That didn’t happen because instead I spent the afternoon at the mall shopping for various wedding and birthday presents and then going to a birthday dinner. Not a bad afternoon and evening at all, but just not my plan.

Oh well!

So, in lieu of the Magner’s I’ve got wine and in lieu of reminiscing, I’ve got a quick story…

One of our stops, after our great jaunt through Ireland with Aker, was Edinburgh. We flew there on Ryan Air for something like $3 and our flight was at some ungodly hour. Then we rented a car, figured out how to drive and navigate on the other side of the street, and headed into town — all in a half-awake, certainly needing a shower and a large coffee type of state.

By the afternoon we were beat but had that “We’re here, we’ve got to make the most of it and do something” feeling. You know the one. So we opted for a bus tour of the city so we could simultaneously sit and explore. The best most memorable part was our guide. I don’t know what she looked like, but in my head she has fuzzy hair. She also had (in real life, not my made up version) a very high pitched, lilty voice. She liked to point out things that we could see “through the fffoooeeliajjje” (that’s foliage, but spread out and lilted) and every time the bus started we got a chorus of:

“Aaaanndd we’re off-skies.”

I still hear her voice at least once a week when I set off to do something.

Some Edinburgh photos:

The Hoffmans

A few weeks ago Charles and I and the Francesi took a trip to Jacksonville to celebrate Katie and Andy’s wedding. I wrote a great post about the trip, but then WordPress lost it, so here’s a redo, and a warning: and it’s probably sub-par.

The Hoffman’s are a couple of very stylish folks and the whole wedding was beautiful. Especially Katie. How adorable is she?

I can’t say I loved Jacksonville, but our hotel view was really quite nice.

We made an effort to go ‘do things’ on Saturday, but we didn’t have a lot of success. That’s okay though, because that wasn’t really the point of the trip.

Everything was great: From the bridal lunch with big hats and delicious chicken salad and the royal wedding on TV and the most adorable grandmother ever…

…to the rehearsal dinner…to the actual wedding itself.

The wedding was at a big house — sort of a plantation house but not quite, in a state park or reserve of some sort. That’s a really inept description, but it was really beautiful. There are lots of photos on StyleMePretty (a wedding blog) and if you like to look at happy people and tasteful, unique decorations, you should check them out.

We walked down to the beach and took a prom photo.

The best part is that almost half of those people actually went to high school together, so it sort of could be prom.

Then there was some dancing.

That’s Katie and her brother, in case you thought her husband shrunk.

And the end of the night ended sort of like this:

Great trip.

Seals

No, not this kind…

Or this kind…

This kind…

This (obviously) is the Florida state seal. It’s a little weird. Turns out, state seals in general are a little weird. Florida’s state seal has always had the same key parts:

• Sun rays
• A cocoa tree
• An Indian woman scattering flowers
• A steamboat

None of those things, except maybe the sun, make me think of Florida, but apparently they were all important to the 1865 legislature who set out the stipulations for what the state seal will always contain.

I also didn’t know steamboats look like pirate ships.

North Carolina’s seal is “a representation of the figures of Liberty and Plenty, looking toward each other but not more than half fronting each other.”

Over the years those two have had a few different backdrops:

Kind of wish we still used the phrase ‘half fronting’.

In case you’re interested, you can find out more about state seals here.

Quick (NYC) Jaunt

Last weekend a whole herd of people descended upon NYC for a mini vacation. It was cold and fun and busy and freezing and full of walking and seeing things.

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It was a great trip, except that I could not stop singing that Jay Z song.

 

Pubs and Pints

One of the reasons we planned our trip to England this June was we thought it’d be fun to be there during the World Cup. Turns out that was true, even though England didn’t do all that hot – though, thankfully, they were still in it while we were there.

The games gave us a good excuse to take a break from sightseeing and walking and looking at things to find a pub in the afternoon, then head to dinner, and then maybe find a pub again in the evening. During all that, of course, we drank a lot of beer.

Jessie and Brent have both blogged about our time in the pubs (here and here) so now it’s my turn. My favorite thing was that the beer was almost always served in glass just for that beer. And it wasn’t like American pint glasses where just the logo was different — many had different shapes, sizes, and weights. Even the small microbreweries got into the act. It made each beer seem special and, in a way, fancy — even if it was the most common beer in the bar.

I started taking pictures about halfway through the trip, so I didn’t get a shot of all the beers we tried, but you get the idea:

West Coast

This weekend I squeezed in yet another wonderful vacation to Seattle, Whidbey Island, and Portland. It was an all around good time. Whidbey Island is in the Puget Sound and I’d always wanted to go there, but never made it. Luckily a friend from grad school was getting married there, so that seemed as good of an excuse as any to go!

In typical Kate-vacation fashion, we packed a lot in: we saw a Mariner’s game, visited with some of my grad school friends, visited with one of Charles’ friends, went to a wedding, visited an art museum, rode every type of public transportation imaginable (including a ferry), and walked in a park. I even got Charles to go camping and — shh, don’t tell him — I think he sort of liked it.

Another thing we did was wait in line for over thirty minutes for donuts. I tell you this not because I’m proud of this fact or even that it was such an interesting part of the trip (although the conversations we heard were nothing if not entertaining), but because it highlights one of the other major things we did on the trip: Eat.

Somehow we kept finding ourselves in situations where food was just too good to pass up. I mean, really, why wouldn’t we have a crepe for dessert even if dinner consisted of appetizers at various restaurants?

In no particular order here are the things we took on the plane with us on our way back:

• Two Voodoo Donuts* – one tangfastic flavored (better than it sounds) and one raspberry filled with powdered sugar
• One cinnamon roll the size of your head
• One bag of cherries from the farmer’s market
• One bag of peanut m&ms – not tear and share, we aren’t total gluttons
• One baggie of cinnamon-honey almonds
• One footlong Turkey sub
• One Nalgene of water

Have no fear, none of that went to waste…nor did the peanuts and cheese nips that the flight attendants handed out. We are out of control.

Cue photos:

*Voodoo Donuts is a Portland staple. They have some crazy donuts, including maple bars with bacon on top, donuts rolled in every kind of sugary candy imaginable, and something called ‘triple chocolate penetration’ that I would never be able to order, despite the fact that I like chocolate.

England: Photos of Days

One photo from each day we were in England with lame captions just to tell you what’s what. More to come!

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