Ava's Birthday

Ava's friends and their mothers and I went to Lost Pines to celebrate her birthday. I mostly sat in the air conditioning and read my book. The kids did the lazy river all afternoon while the mothers sipped drinks. Then we met for dinner at the big lovely room that houses the restaurant.

After dinner the kids went off for the customary s'mores. It was oppressively humid and the clouds finally opened up with a bout of torrential rain. At first everyone hurried back indoors. Then our kids ran out into the lawn to play in the rain and other kids soon followed.

This was an early celebration - we missed Ava's actual birthday. A few weeks later, when we were at an event in Providence where you could dedicate and light a Santa Fe style paper luminaria, Vivian lit one for Ava's birthday.

Shoot 'em Up

Evan's friend had a birthday party at a nerf gun shoot 'em up place on a Sunday morning before we left town. Evan had a huge amount of fun. He darted out and shot his way to capture the opposing flag a few times. I chatted with a few dads and tried to get the owner to understand how much better the experience would have been for the parents if we had a nice cafe / wine bar attached.

We had to leave early before the customary cake / pizza / juice ritual in a small cramped room where every kid jockeys to sit next to the birthday boy because we needed to leave for another birthday party- neighbor Ava's!

Yak Photos

Yak porn sounds pretty disgusting. So here are some yak photos from the mid-summer Grace Garden meet-up.

At some point during the evening, the boys were discussing six packs and showing them off for the girls. Apparently it left an impression on Evan because the next day Jo overheard Evan chatting with his school mate who had come over for a playdate. The seven year olds wistfully discussed how they only had four packs at this point.

Modeling

Suddenly Evan is very concerned about his looks. Here he is at a faux photo shoot from a visit to the Shah's.

Football Camp

Cousin Cade stayed with us for the week and Evan and he went to British soccer camp. They lads had lots of fun and talked big.

While Evan was in football camp, Vivian and I went walking around Town Lake. When she was little we'd walk and feed the swans and turtles. This time it was a bit of work. Just walking with Dad isn't that exciting any more.

Evan's Art

Jo sent me a text while I was sailing. It contained a photo of a sketch Evan made at school, and the accompanying caption:

"They were playing scary music. It made me think of a man with a knife in his belly and a pool of blood all around him in a graveyard"

Apparently the teachers played different kinds of music and the kids were asked to draw the image that the music invoked in their minds. They probably didn't play scary music again.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile back at the ranch Evan and Vivian were having a great old time. Vivian was at rock climbing camp and Evan was finishing up his last week of first grade. Vivian ended the week by climbing and caving at Enchanted Rock and now throws around bits of pseudo technical rock climbing lingo like "Oh Daddy - it's so much harder to smear on a gym wall than on real rock". Evan gave himself "awesome" on his self assessment at the end of school.

Then Jo packed for Italy, packed for Evan to spend a week at Aunt Cole's, packed for Vivian for a week at camp Slumber Falls, dropped everyone off at Aunt Cole's, and got herself to Austin airport for her flight to Palermo.

Aunt Cole took the girls to camp - here they are settling into their cabin at Slumber Falls. Am I crazy or do cousin Ava and Vivian look so alike in this photo? Vivian enjoyed camp. She and Grace were still discussing boys when we met her a week later. And she did comment that bible stories are not as interesting as the ones involving greek gods. Rick Riordan strikes again....

While Vivian was apparently directing vespers (she had to explain to me what the word meant), Evan was having a ball with the boys. Aunt Cole took them to the DoSeum in San Antonio (like like a museum where you presumably do stuff) and here you can see Cade, Quinn and Evan dressed as spies.

Jo and I got back to Austin on a Saturday night. On Sunday Nicolle brought the kids down to Austin. I hadn't seen Vivian and Evan for about 18 days - a long time - and got the biggest longest hugs from them. Good to back at the white wooden house. 

Lingua

After a delightful day checking out Salina and the little villages of Valdichiesi and Pollara, we got back home to Santa Maria and napped for a bit. If Jo peeked up from her hammock she'd see the next island of Lipari. And if she leaned over far enough and I grabbed her ankles, she might have been able to reach the neighbor's lemon tree across the alley.

For our last night in Salina Jo and I scootered down a few miles from Santa Maria to the little village of Lingua where the road dead ends and teens hang out on their phones like everywhere else in the world. We sat by the sea and watched the sun set and ate another amazing meal - the waiter brought out the fresh catch in a cart and after we selected our fish they packed it in salt and baked it. He brought back a mound of salt and broke it open and filleted the cooked fish into our plates.

By the time we finished it was pitch dark and we slowly scootered back to Santa Maria. Next morning we took a hydrofoil to Milazzo in Sicily, then retrieved our Fiat Spider and drove to Palermo. The autostrada ran on bridges suspended between mountain tunnels with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean and costal towns and villages. Next morning we boarded a flight to New York and then to Austin and walked into an empty white wooden house.

Pollara

From Valdichiesa  we turned our scooters north westward towards the tiny hamlet of Pollara - the setting for Massimo Troisi's film - Il Postino. The village sits inside one half of the crater of the other extinct volcano of the island. The rest of the crater has collapsed into the sea leaving a dramatic bay with high cliffs and a black rock island that was the original plug of the volcano.

We scootered down some crazy switchbacks and crazier views and stopped at the Al Cappero - a tiny restaurant recommended by Jon Carlo back in Santa Maria. They use local ingredients from the island and grow and sell their own cappers (I bought a bag). In an amazing two weeks of eating, I think this was the best. Jo's grilled spada (swordfish) was so good that it turned her from a swordfish hater to lover!

After lunch we walked down from the point to the tiny beach in the bay that I had sailed into about ten days earlier. The water was cool and delicious and we swam around for a few hours. We saw this young buff Italian man selling sodas and sandwiches but there was no stall or restaurant in sight - turns out he takes your order, calls his buddy on the mobile, his buddy makes a basket, scooters over from Pollara, and they use a pulley and cable system made out of old bicycle parts to then send the basket down to the beach.

Scooter Rides

In the morning after a light (haha) breakfast of Nutella stuffed croissants and expresso to die for we walked to the scooter rental place at the other end of Santa Maria Salina and got ourselves a couple. Neither Jo or I had ridden one before so we got a 5 second class in mimed Italian - the man closed his right fist to show he was holding the throttle and then rocked his fist back and forth a couple of times. Thus armed with this knowledge we then drove off over uneven mountainous curvy roads with blind switchbacks and hurtling buses for a trip around the island (strictly not around because the roads don't fully encircle the island). The most dangerous aspect were the extremely distracting stunning views.

Salina is the greenest of the Aeolians and has two extinct volcanic peaks - giving the island a distinctive shape. We drove around the north and west coast and then up away from the sea towards the little village of Valdichiesa (population 89) nestled in the saddle between the two volcanoes and named for the famous sixteenth century church of Santa Maria del Terzito. Here's a quick peak inside the church.

Back to Isole Eolie

Leaving Ortigya we drove into the main city of Siracusa and visited the ancient greek (arial photo by fotovideomike from Italia (Michele Ponzio, @michele_ponzio) - Teatro greco di Siracusa, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33264647) and roman ruins. A cursory look at the ruins illustrates a pretty big difference between the two great western civilizations. While similar at first glance, a quick look at the "backstage" area reveals that the greek theater was built for acting while the Roman amphitheater was a place for gladiators and animals.

We left Siracusa and headed off north on the autostrada along the rugged Sicilian coast with frequent views of Etna smoldering high above us till we reached the seaside town of Taormina perched on a cliff. This old Greek, Roman and Arab town was the location of the G7 summit a month ago - and for all the man's shortcomings I do not begrudge Trump for riding in a golf cart while he was here. But unlike the other six, Donald could not stay in Taormina and instead had to commute by helicopter from the Naval Air Station at Sigonella 50 miles away because the presidential SUVs were too big and too numerous for the streets of Taormina - better suited for my Fiat Spider. Jo and I stopped for a very relaxed slow lunch at the Hotel Belmond Villa Sant'Andrea.

After the Prosecco had settled we continued north up to Messina where the Italian mainland is separated by only a few miles of sparkling blue Mediterranean water and turned westward towards our destination of Milazzo. At the ferry terminal at Milazzo we traded our car (in a very shady looking garage via a very informal process which prompted me to take a photo of the makeshift sign for the garage to later produce if the rental went missing) and hopped on a hydrofoil to return to the Aeolian islands.

The ferry dropped us off at Salina where Jon Carlo met us at the pier. He drove as close as he could and then walked us last few blocks down narrow winding alleys - Jo literally had to run to keep up - to our home for the next couple of days.