Greetings summer people and Happy holiday:
“Truth is within ourselves”…..Robert Browning
Another wet week in the mountains- we can’t seem to find summer yet. The week started off simple enough a with trip to the favorite East Chinese restaurant in Rutland on Sunday night-with our dining partner, the Jewish Fish Monger……that after the most recent POND fiasco. Speaking of which, THE POND is pretty crystal clear for the moment after the last round of kitchen straining of the algae and the noxious spraying……Ah….but this week the Bacteria goes in to start the cycle of pond care that will lead to the world’s cleanest POND….wait with baited breath for that update…
Monday came with another round of wet and cold…and Jenn took me down to Albany that night to catch a flight to San Jose for my ridiculous 36 hours in Santa Cruz. Got to San Jose around midnight and then had to drive an hour down foggy, winding mountain roads…with construction, no less…to get to Santa Cruz –arriving at 3 a.m. my time…but no so bad, really. After a day of wandering around lovely Santa Cruz, and visiting my old boss, Judge Louden and wife Shelly, at their state of the art double-wide home, I had a dinner and full day of work for the Casey Foundation convening to transform the art of juvenile probation. All well enough, and a good set of meetings to boot. I left Santa Cruz, then, at 3 p.m. on Wednesday to catch the red-eye going east…which ultimately led to 18 hours of travel and 36 hours of staying up. Got to Boston at 5 a.m.- after overnight flight and then scheduled to wait for five hours in crazy Logan airport to catch the dreaded six seater to Rutland (five minutes from our house). As you might imagine, running below empty at this point…and then the lovely announcement that we could not fly to Rutland because of wind and rain (and the fact that on the previous flight down form Rutland, all six passengers had barfed on the plane, requiring a change of aircraft). So now….having been up over 30 hours… we got diverted to Lebanon, New Hampshire (flight only slightly smoother, with two of the passengers caressing rosary beads the whole way and murmuring Hail Marys) and then had to take a van ride back to Rutland. In the very crowded van, I sat next to Marco, the driver, who regaled me with stories with break neck speed -non-stop for the hour ride, with me trying not to fall off the seat into a semi-coma.
Made it back at 12:30- with 45 minutes to spare before the family showed up, en masse , from Florida………raring to go for a three day visit.
To say we had a whirlwind visit, would be an understatement. With three late teen boys and constant rain….and the fact that these are extraordinarily URBAN folk, it was a challenge to keep them entertained in our mountain hamlet (“where is the action”?). We spent day one doing the quaint village circuit with a last stop at the surreal Vermont Country Store (foosball and PEZ) and then a trip to Ramunto’s in Rutland for pizza- a requirement due to the fact that nephew Ryan is an avid devotee of the lunatic pizza review guy blog (“one bite- everybody knows the rules”). By 10, I had to be carried up to bed – to slip comatose into 11 hours of sleep. Friday dawned –dark and wet, so we started late but headed up to Brandon and Middlebury with a group of unhappy young campers (three skirmishes in the car) and a very happy Lucy (who loves to go for any ride). After an outdoor lunch between rain drops, at Mama Corleone’s (Costello’s) Italian Deli in Middlebury- we split up for the ride home. Les, the boys and I headed over the Middlebury Gap, across the Snow Bowl and down to route 100 ( with nephew Josh rapping to the blaring hip-hop, shirtless and extoling his hard nipples, nephew Ryan pleading to know when we could have some real food, and their Israeli friend Matt, wondering where the people all were ) . Though my pleas to get out and take a hike were booed down, we eventually stopped at Texas Falls…to see…Duh, the Falls. And actually got the urbanites out in the woods for fifteen minutes, which provoked a shared state of virtual exhaustion. Everyone crashed when we finally got home, and slept until we had a reluctant dinner that Jenn prepared (“we don’t ever eat at home”, they said…and we “definitely do not eat dark meat”). But, everyone was a good sport and at the end Ryan insisted we do the “one bite” reviews for Jenn’s dinner, which resulted in a very generous score of 86). By Saturday morning, the urbanites had enough and decided to cut the visit short and head to the familiar confines of northern New Jersey, so we took them to the general store (stocked up on two dozen bags of snacks for the four hour drive), then to the town dump (no one would get out of the car due to the black flies) and then down to the world’s largest Farmers’ Market in Rutland (two more skirmishes on the way). After they finished grazing the food selections for an hour, we put them on the road south, and headed back to the mountain to recover.
But….I then found out I had been asked to play a gig in Woodstock at six p.m.…..which I tried to refuse , but was met with tears….so caught an hours’ nap, and schlepped up to Woodstock, to find the event was at the very upscale horse club where forty riders had paid their first born to spend the day on the trail, be fed and liquored and then have us play for them. Admittedly, my first time playing for a group with jodhpurs and riding boots……and having not practiced or not even any forethought. But we winged it for two hours and the old riders loved us… happily having drunken singalongs. I even made $60, and managed to drive there and back with the deeply crazy woman from folk club.
So now back in the mountain home, sun is out a bit, it might be a sweltering 55 degrees out and nowhere to go for the moment…..except we have our first guests for the Airbnb season arriving in a few hours….from France…….I gotta go…I gotta go….I need oil in my lamp-keep me burnin’, burnin’, burnin’….drifting, drifting, drifting……….gone….
Bon soir mes amis,
Monsieur Stuard
