reflections: differences between being in Sitka and Cleveland

I'm aware that a couple of my recent posts may not have been as positive as I would have liked (products of exhaustion and travel), so I will attempt to keep this post more neutral or positive. This may be difficult, as I intend to compare the place where I grew up with the place that my family has chosen to live.

Weather
The most obvious difference between Sitka and Cleveland is the weather. Everyone who visits Cleveland in the summer from somewhere drier always comments on the oppressiveness of the humidity. Similarly, the winters are oppressive to people who live in warmer places. Sitka has daily temperatures of 45-65 Fahrenheit and 80-90% humidity on a regular basis. You'd think that Cleveland would be a relief after that, but it's the exact opposite. The key is that the high humidity in Sitka almost always results in drizzle or rain, whereas the warm humidity in Cleveland just hangs everywhere around you, inducing sweat. Also, we are all VERY acclimated to the cool.

Sun
18 hours per day versus about twelve. The big difference is that I've never sunburned in Sitka.

Wildlife
Wow. At home, we have eagles and ravens around the house all the time. We see some hummingbirds and sparrows or finches, but the big birds are about it. We don't live in the right places to be seeing deer or bears on a regular basis, and the marine life isn't visible from our house at this time of year.

In Cleveland, however, my grandfather's bird feeders have made this place crazy. At any given time, there might be two blue jays, a cardinal, a red winged blackbird, and a handful of sparrows all at one of the three main feeders. In addition, there will probably be a few squirrels preparing an invasion. The other evening, we saw a pair of young bucks walking through the front yard and across the street. This place really lacks large predators.

People/Stores/Radio/Family/Driving
OK, it's not even worth pretending to be neutral here. Sitka wins, hands down. I miss Raven Radio, I miss our grocery store, and I miss the people who have developed a caring small-town culture.

I constantly do Sitkan things while driving (forgetting to check the speedometer, stopping to let cars from side streets in front of me, waiting for pedestrians who don't expect a car to stop for them).

Going into Giant Eagle the other day was a shock. All that space seemed to result in no greater selection than at SeaMart - there was just more of everything on the shelves. In fact, there were a lot of places (in the veggie section, even) where our rural store that relies on barges and planes was better stocked than the one with daily truck deliveries. Even more amazingly, some of Sitka's prices were competitive.

Turning on the radio is a weird mix of nostalgia for the radio I heard growing up and sadness that most people simply don't know that radio can be done like it is at KCAW.

It is good to get in a lot of time with family. It's been two years since the entire families have visited, though, so there's a lot of relearning each other.

Scale
The biggest adjustment for me is scale. We've confined our visit mostly to a small area of the eastern suburbs of Cleveland so far, but this place is so much bigger than Sitka. Everything is bigger - the roads, the traffic jams, the stores, even the houses. Unfortunately, this means that people just don't know each other the same way as they do in a small town, so they talk to each other differently and are far more capable of pretending not to see each other. This was painfully evident at a Wendy's yesterday (one that I've been visiting with family members since I was in kindergarten or earlier and whose decor has not changed in that entire time), when the clerk at the cash register helped us make our order with as much personal care and consideration as a touch-screen ATM. It would be just as efficient and a whole lot cheaper (and possibly less impersonal) to have turned the register around and let us put in our own order without her there. I remarked to my father that all throughout Canada and small-town USA, we'd grown accustomed to service with a smile and the appearance of genuine care. Oh, well.

The Kids
Our kids really miss a lot of stuff about being in Sitka. A lot. However, they have a big back yard to play in here that is full of grass. They are excited about getting to the local pool and they have bikes to play with here (a huge driveway, flat sidewalks, and a walking/running trail are much easier to learn on than what we have at home). They do miss their friends, but exploring this house and spending time with family is still very exciting to them and they will eventually re-establish themselves on a daily schedule.

Summation
Ugh, sweat. I'll do another post soon about our first impressions on digging through my grandfather's house, but that's a completely different topic. In short, the man was interested in everything, maintained everything, and never threw anything away. Anything.

Porter's Traveling Harmonica Show

I was about to upload this video to Facebook, but then I decided it was worthy of its own blog post. It's less than a minute long, but here are some things to watch for:

• Continued blowing minus the harmonica
• A brief, yet incomprehensible mid-song introduction by the artist
• An up-turned chair
• Exit over the back of the couch

In other news, we went to a going away party for the niece of Sitka's favorite watercolor artist, Keith Greba, on Saturday. Ashleigh is going to college in Georgia and spent this summer in Sitka, working at Sea Life Discovery Tours, learning to paint under Keith's instruction, helping Keith stage his house for sale (which sold in under an hour of listing!), and occasionally coming upstairs to visit with me at work.

While we were at Keith's place, though, Porter was sitting in a folding camp chair on the deck out back and one of the legs of the chair fell off of the 12" deck, landing Porter on a pile of rocks with the chair on top of him. At first glance, he was fine, if not a little shocked by the fall, with only a bitten tongue. After a few moments, another person pointed out that there was blood on Porter's forehead. Sure enough, there was a 1/4" long puncture wound in his head, presumably from the chair falling on top of him. Stephen took him inside and cleaned him up and we put some ice on his head for swelling. There wasn't much blood and I wasn't all that worried, but we decided to leave the party early and take him to the doc for a once-over, bracing ourselves for this trip to include a couple of stitches.

If I haven't said it enough already, I absolutely love the doctors out here. I called ahead to the emergency room and they ordered Porter's chart while I was on the phone. Then, I went directly into the emergency room and announced my presence. The records clerk dropped off Porter's chart right after me and I was asked if I checked in up front. No, I didn't, but the nurse called up front and checked us in so we wouldn't have to backtrack. Within about 2 minutes, we were sitting on a bed and a nurse was fetching some baby shampoo and wet gauze to clean the wound. The longest part of our visit was waiting for the doctor to arrive, as he was on-call from another department (presumably Maternity, since all of our OBs are family practice doctors). He asked me what happened, checked Porter over in a thorough-yet-casual manner, and commented on how charming he is. The doc then told me that the cut was not in a place that warranted concern about scarring, that head-wounds rarely see infection, but to keep it clean and dry and go on as normal. The only reversal he had on this opinion was that I was to call him if Porter started vomiting. That was it--a quick swab with Bacitracin and a shiny new bottle of ibuprofen, and we were on our way home.

Keith and his wife, Martha, were both very concerned for Porter and have kept up with his healing progress over the last few days. Porter, on the other hand, has not shown the slightest bit of concern for his head since about 15 minutes after the accident took place and he and his sister are back to rough-housing as normal.

Whale Park Adventures!

It was a beautiful day on Friday, so the four of us took Nika out to the Whale Park to picnic, take in the scenery, and do some creature-watching.

The gazebo where we ate is one of four at the park. The concrete whales are popular for climbing children.

A small squirrel came to watch us eat from a safe distance.

After lunch, it was down the steps to the shore.

There are a lot of steps to get down there.

Climbing on the rocks.

A tide pool with starfish of every color, lots of pretty green anemones, and seaweed. All the black in the foreground is a bed of mussels.

Starfish pile!

Seren touching a starfish.

The view across the bay.

Anemone and seaweed in a mussel bed.

We discovered that Nika's not a half-bad climber, but she was sure tired when we went home.

Soon it was time to climb back up the steps and head back to the car.

Porter wanted to ride the whale one last time before getting strapped into the car.

good news and bad

It's about 10:30pm on Tuesday night, as I am writing this. I'm home and the kids are asleep. Stephen, however, is in the emergency room dealing with a bout of what we believe might be a nasty case of pink eye. He's been screened, but the doc has not yet seen him, so I am just waiting for him to message me with the final verdict so we can plan out the rest of the week (whether or not he will be working, etc.). If you're like me, the very thought of pink eye gets your nerves to twitching and you're now doing everything you can to keep from reaching up and rubbing that phantom itch out of your eye.

In other news, we have just about the best landlords imaginable. Yesterday I was talking to Joe (Joe and his wife, Micki, are our landlords) about the goings on with our house. He wanted to let me know that he was going to have some scaffolding up to power wash and paint the exterior of the house over the next few days and I wanted to ask him about shelving solutions for our living room. The result was unbelievable: Joe offered to build and paint us some shelving at his own expense. Additionally, since the road crew will be on our street this week to repave it, Joe and Micki are paying to have our driveway paved at the same time. Again, this will not affect our rent agreement or payment schedule in any way. We are pretty excited to have a brand new driveway before winter sets in because our current gravel driveway will prove difficult if it gets icy. It's about a 10-foot vertical drive from street-level to our parking spot.

Even better news is that Porter took his first two steps today. After Stephen picked me up from work today, I took Porter out of the car and brought him inside the house. I set him down on the floor of the living room on his feet (he was still standing when I let go of him) and he squatted down to set the toy he was holding on the floor and stood back up without any assistance. I was standing about 5 feet away from him and watching him do all of this, so I took a step toward him and knelt down to call him to me. He reached out, took two big steps and landed a giant hug on me, before collapsing on the floor and crawling off to do something else. To be fair, Porter is now 14½ months old, which already puts him almost 2 months behind Seren at the same stage, but he has quite a bit more bulk to haul around than his sister did. Seren took her first steps at about 13 months and started fully walking about a month after that. So we'll keep you updated, but as those of you who have been through this before already know, learning to trust the feet beneath you is a long and trying process.

Update: Stephen has just returned from seeing the doc and he does not have pink eye. It appears to be a "corneal irritation," meaning something entered his eye under his contact lens and scratched his cornea, causing the redness and pain. This also means that Stephen is not contagious and will be able to return to work tomorrow. As a side note, I'd like to mention that this is the quickest e.r. visit I've heard of in a long time. Total time spent from the time he left to the time he returned home: ~1 hour.

here and there and back again

There are a few things I've wanted to post about but haven't yet for one reason or other, so this post will probably be a mishmash of just about everything I can think of.

Three days after we arrived in Sitka, we celebrated Porter's 1st birthday. We didn't have the energy (or the money) or the resources to throw a big bash, so we bought a grocery store carrot cake and had a quiet dinner at home. The fun part was doing everything picnic style for lack of furniture.

Porter's birthday cake.

Singing 'Happy Birthday.'

Getting ready to blow out the candle (Seren helped, of course).

Birthday cake is serious business.

It's just what babies do.

Very contented.

Decisions, decisions.

A close up of the icing.

"What?"

Good thing it's not carpet.

Yes, that whole mess is his.

One of Seren's favorite places is a little out-of-the-way area called the Whale Park. It has massive statues of whales in the front that she likes to climb on, a picnic area, and lots and lots of boardwalk and stairs that take you down to the shore. At the bottom of all those steps, you will find a small sheltered area with viewfinders so that you can whale-watch for humpbacks, orcas, sea lions, seals, and other mammals common to the Sitka Sound. There's even a submerged microphone for listening to whale song.

The steps leading down. (There are more below!)

Boardwalk to the viewing area.

The shore.

The view.

Rainforest all around.

One of the hardest things for either of us to leave in Arizona was the wealth of authentic Mexican food. You can imagine our joy when we found a little restaurant out here (advertised as a pizza joint) that serves Mexican food nearly as good as what we are accustomed to. The place is called Pizza Express and this is what a taco dinner looks like:

Two shredded beef tacos, rice, and beans, garnished with red tortilla chips.

The best part? Not only is it good and not terribly expensive (relatively speaking, of course), but they deliver, too!

Speaking of food, I made Salmonberry Cobbler over the weekend. Salmonberries grow all over the place up here. You may be asking, "What is a salmonberry?" A salmonberry is a cluster berry, much like a raspberry or a blackberry. They are about 2-3 times larger than your average wild raspberry and are on the sweet side in comparison. They are called salmonberries because they are salmon in color, ranging from a dark yellow, to orange, to deep red.

Salmonberries.

Cobbler.

Want the recipe I used?

• Melt 1/2 cup butter in the bottom of a medium to large baking dish.
• In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1½ teaspoons baking powder, and ¾ cup milk.
• Pour mixture over melted butter and spread evenly. DO NOT MIX!
• Drop 2 cups berries evenly over the top of the mixture. DO NOT MIX!
• Top with an additional ½ cup sugar. DO NOT MIX!
• Bake at 350°F for about 40 minutes or until browned.

In other news, I finally got to see a little bit of Stephen's new school. It's a nice place with very friendly people. I got the 10¢ tour of the administrative offices, the field house, and finally, the space that Stephen gets to claim as his own.

Stephen's practice space. (His office is attached off to the right.)

A really neat mobile made of hundreds of folded paper cranes hanging in a corner of the practice space.

stats and trivia

There have been a lot of comments made about how we ever survived such a long road trip with seven bodies in such close proximity. Well, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't as bad as one might think. There was a learning curve, for sure.

When we started out, the car was packed to the gills, there was a highchair strapped to the roof, the kids were in their car seats, Stephen & I were in the front, Nika (our dog) shared the second row with the kids, and the cats were in individual crates. By the time we got to Cleveland, though, one of the cats (Rosie) had made it widely known that she preferred to roam about the car, so we let her do so as long as it did not interfere with the driver's perspective or reflexes. After we left Cleveland, we discovered that our other cat (Al) had become acclimated to traveling enough that he also preferred to roam about, and since we had a little more room at that point, we allowed him to do so as well. The only difficulty with doing things this way was that we had to make sure the litter box was accessible in the car at all times. There was no smell, since Stephen did well to scoop it at almost every stop, but it does take up quite a bit of otherwise stackable space that way. I had Rosie in my lap and Al was under the driver's seat for probably a third of the total trip or more. All of the animals were very well behaved and we had little trouble with them at all.

Seren & Porter were happy enough in the back seat. We had a tote bag full of books, coloring books, crayons, and small toys for Seren to occupy herself with. Of course, this didn't keep her busy the whole way, but it was a big help. Once the contents of the bag started to lose her attention altogether, we had to be more creative and draw her attention to sights and sounds outside of the car. By the end, she was pointing out every train, track, boat, bridge, body of water, and wild animal that could be seen from the car. (Seren also did quite well with some of her favorite music. By the end of the trip, we could ALL sing almost all of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack as well as her favorites by Peter, Paul, and Mary, Tenacious D, Queen, and Simon and Garfunkel. Naturally, I'm very proud of her musical tastes. --Stephen) Porter was a little more difficult, as he is not yet of an age where his attention can be captured for any extended period of time. We had a few toys in the car for him, but he was happier just to sleep away the miles. When he was awake, we tried to let him have healthy snacks (apple chips were a hit!) or play with Seren as well as he could with the limited range of vision that his car seat affords. Most difficult was trying to find ways and places to get them out of the car to get the exercise, stimulation, and interaction that they both needed. Canada has some very nice rest stops with playgrounds, but we were never able to stay very long and it always felt as though we were tearing Seren away from much-needed play time to get back on the road. Porter would get very upset if he didn't feel like he was able to romp and play with us and Seren enough. As I said, his car seat doesn't allow him to see much more than the seat directly in front of him, so there were a few stops made just to take some face-to-face time with him. All in all, they both did very well and made us both very proud parents for the way they behaved for the majority of the trip.

Stephen and I whiled away the hours taking in the scenery and talking about any silly thing that popped into our heads. We both enjoy road trips, so we didn't have many issues - with each other, or otherwise - the entire way. Sometimes we preferred silence, but mostly we had the radio* on in the background. We talked and played with the kids from the front seat as much as we could and I took a few naps in the passenger seat. We laughed at billboards, enjoyed weather changes, and dreamed together about the end of this long, long road to Sitka.

*By radio, I don't mean broadcasted stations. That would have been far too much work, considering all the areas we were passing through so quickly. Instead, I loaded over 1,000 songs onto a hard drive and plugged that into our stereo receiver. Once in a while we would tune in to see what kind of local stations there were, but never for long. We had the music we liked to listen to with us and it only just started to get old by the last leg of the trip.

Another thing we did was count license plates on the highway. Here are the game rules:

• Collect as many license plates from as many different places as possible.
• Plates only count if you are inside the vehicle when you see them.
• Plates on large commercial trucks (semis) do not count, but those on passenger buses do.

We did this collectively, not individually, on this trip to earn a more complete collection. We started the game on I-17 soon after we left Orme. The results? Inside the U.S.: ALL 50 states, plus a large number of tribal plates from Oklahoma. Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Northwest Territories, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Yukon Territory. Mexico: Chihuahua.

Finally, for all of you who have been with us since mile one, here's our total mileage. We left Orme with 78780 miles on the odometer. We arrived in Sitka with approximately 84650 miles. That's a grand total of...

5870 MILES!

(2 oil changes, 1 tire rotation, and too much gas to even think about)

the house

We were so excited to see the "real" Sitka when we got off the ferry, we spent the next hour or so just driving around and checking things out. We weren't without aim or purpose, though. One of our first stops was at the Post Office to make sure we had a working mailing address. (If you want the address, please email or call me.)

USPS Sitka, AK.

We went into the downtown area and saw all the shops and tourist attractions. We went across the bridge to see where Mt. Edgecumbe High School is and get a feel for how the campus is set up. We went up some streets and down others until we felt we had satisfied ourselves for the moment, before finally contacting our new landlords and heading home.

O'Connell Bridge, passage to/from Japonski Island.

Finally able to hang up our coats in our new home.

I guess the most difficult part of being here right now is that our house hasn't arrived with us. If you'll remember back before our road trip began, we had sent all of our belongings via Allied Alaska while we made our way across more than 5,500 miles of the U.S. and Canada. It turns out that it can take a really long time for everything to reach its destination that way, so we won't be seeing our furniture, clothes, or toys for about another 2 weeks. That's ok, though, because Sitka has a number of retailers who were happy to sell us air mattresses!

I imagine you want to know what accommodations we found for ourselves, sight unseen... Well, we weren't disappointed. We rented the lower lever of an up/down duplex. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and includes stove, fridge, microwave, washer, and dryer. It's not as much space as we're used to at Orme, but it's more than sufficient for our needs. Seren & Porter even have bigger bedrooms than they had in Arizona! (Sorry for the blurry pictures. I took them with my phone.)

Our new house.

Kitchen.

Living room.

Seren's room.

The kids' bathroom (washer & dryer are behind the towels).

Porter's room.

Master bathroom.

Master bedroom.

After we unloaded the car, we discovered we still needed a place to sit, so we bought a couch.

Couch.

So that's it, that's how we're living right now. We're not uncomfortable, but we're living slim. Since we've sorted out the living spaces, Stephen and I frequently talk about how we wish we'd gotten rid of more stuff before we left Arizona. To that, I say "We still can!"

...............................

As a side note, I want to address a concern we've heard from a few of you who are following along with our adventure. We are not giving up the blog just because we've arrived in Sitka. As far as we're concerned, the adventure has just begun and we are very happy that all of you are interested in what we are doing and staying connected with us in this way. We intend to keep the blog going as long as we feel we have interesting things to share with you, as long as it is entertaining for us as writers and for you as readers, and as long as it continues to have value as a historical account of this time in our lives. Thank you all for your love and support, but also for the little comments and stories you've shared with us along the way. Your active readership helps to make this blog worthwhile.

Cleveland wrapup - we've been busy!

In the time we've been in Cleveland (since Monday), we've been able to see a lot of my family, including all three of my grandparents. My sister, mother, and wife were able to help my grandfather sort through my grandmother's personal items and I don't think there were any badly hurt feelings as a result. I got to see both of my uncles in the same place for the first time in a while and a number of people got to see Porter for the first time. We've worked out our route, then completely reworked it (I'll possibly post that later). We've had the car repaired. We've seen one of my best friends and given him several baby items and made arrangements to see my two other best friends tonight and Monday. We've finally gotten the bill for our move and have started paying that off. We've tried to catch up on sleep and let the kids have some semblance of a normal schedule (although we've really failed at the latter - poor Seren is desperate for regular naps and time to run around like a kid her age needs to do). We've confirmed that we can keep Verizon service through Canada and that it'll cost the same as our current plan. We've even gotten new insurance cards for our car.

Looking ahead, we'll be seeing some old family friends tomorrow and doing a lot of packing. Monday, we hit the road, with a stop planned in Albion, Michigan to get lunch with one of my best friends, see a professor I've been missing a lot, get some dishes, and enjoy a barbecue chicken pizza and some Oberon! After that, we're going to head for the Chicago area for our first night back on the road. Unfortunately, we'll be missing out on the stop we hoped to make in Churubusco, Indiana to see some of JoElle's family. We had to cut time out of our trip, and the Michigan trip only made the cut because of the dishes (much as I love Oberon, 'Relli's pizza, Kyle, and JimBall). Expect more frequent updates during the next week and a half!

last day on the road (headed east, that is)

Yesterday we made a somewhat unscheduled stop in Joplin, MO to see my second family, the Kirbys. We only stopped for a little over an hour for lunch, but it was definitely time well spent. We had about 15 years of catching up to do, but Mike & Edythe seem to be getting along just fine and Shauna has a brood of her own. I was hit with a few surprise events (deaths, retirement, and a few other things), but somehow even after all this time, it felt like we were to able to pick up where we left off. It felt like home. The fact that yesterday was Father's Day only made it that much better. So if there are any Kirbys out there reading this post, thanks for making me one of your own. I love you guys.

On a much less sentimental note, today will be our last day on the road before we reach Cleveland. The animals are doing well and have been great on the road so far, but the kids are both a little frayed around the edges. Sleep schedules have been thrown out of whack and diet requirements are never easy to maintain on the road. Add to that a round of summer colds for the whole family and you get four people who just want a soft bed to call their own for a few days. Today will be about another 8 hours in the car before about a week of endless running around to see as many people as we can before packing the car up again and heading west.

things i've learned or observed recently

In no particular order...

 1. Moving sucks
 2. Moving is made only a little less sucky by paying someone else to pack for you
 3. People will often surprise you
 4. Family members are not often among the people referred to in item 3
 5. Alaska is really, REALLY big
 6. Alaska is really, REALLY far away
 7. Kids are made of rubber
 8. No matter how minimalist you try to be with your possessions, you still end up with more than you need
 9. Family is stronger than distance and sometimes they just need to be reminded of that fact
10. It's only money
11. Alaskans are more friendly/helpful than the average American
12. There will ALWAYS be unexpected expenses (refer to item 10)