Bubbles

Yesterday was pretty rad.  I got up early, got clean and pretty, and wandered out to find an infamous flea market.  Once there I realized that there was pretty much no way for me to buy anything.  All I had was a little bit of change and a ten euro note.  Hard to haggle when you don´t share a language and can´t count out exactly what you want to pay.  So I just browsed.  After some time, I got tired of holding my  wrap around dress closed every time the wind picked up, and it was time for lunch, so I headed back to the flat.  That and my victory curl wasn´t obeying me very well.  The combination of no curling iron and no hair product made for a very floppy curl that just wanted to unwind itself.  Nothing undoes a good outfit faster than always self-consciously fixing it.

Side note:
I have a book from the 50s on how to have poise and confidence.  In one section the author is talking about how she has a friend who is a wonderful professor, but who doesn´t take time with her outfits.  She wears navy tights with a black dress, for example.  And as a result, she never feels quite comfortable when dressing up.  You can´t take shortcuts.  I think it´s important to figure out how nice you want to look, then do it all the way.  That´s not to say, as the book states, that one should wear  heels and an evening gown to the grocery store, but if one wants to wear a house dress, one doesn´t pair it with rubber boots.  The outfit must fit the situation.  It´s true that I feel most confident when what I am wearing fits with what I am doing.  Yesterday my outfit of a black skirt paired with walking shoes, a red t-shirt and Per´s bailout bag made me blend into the crowds both around tourists and local shoppers.  At least I didn´t stand out blaringly as being American and therefore and easy mark.

My new gps device needs to find satelites before it can give me any maps.  It told me to find an area away from tall buildings.  Here.  That was a special little challenge.  I grabbed my paper map and headed up the mountain.  I finally emerged at an overlook where I could see the Atlantic, a lovely suspension bridge, and gigantic cross.  The gps finally figured out that I wasn´t on Lombard street anymore, and cleverly told me how to walk to Jorge´s castle.  It was spitting distance, but I still feel much more confident about driving 200 km north into unknown territory with the machine´s help.

Castelo de Sao Jorge was super fun.  It´s the most castley castle I have been to!  The fortress at Pus Mountain in Sweden was cool, and the Tower of London was cool, but this one was way better.  I will post pictures when I get home just to prove that I am not over-selling it.  They had a museum with archeological finds from the past two thousand plus years.  One display was of animal bone fragments.  I was really bad at guessing what bones they were part of.  I think I got four out of twelve.  Not stellar for someone who constructed a skeleton.  I guess some actual book learning could help in that deparment.

After the castle I wandered over to a health food store, buying some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor on the way.  I got a block of six dollar tofu and almost got some vegan cheese but didn´t have enough money on me.  I love trying fake cheeses.  They are usually terrible, but it´s interesting to see how different companies interpret cheesieness.

I only interacted with a few people today.  Wandering through the alleys, twice there were bubbles floating down from top floor windows.  One boy caught me watching, giggled, and disappeared inside.  Another time I was getting ready to make a left down a particularly narrow pathway when one of three old men sitting at a table playing dominoes, rattled off some quick warning with a shake of the finger and a point to the nose.  I thought that was very nice.  I don´t need to smell bum pee mixed with fish guts.  I am okay without that.

The day of walking and looking and learning really wore me out.  My stomach hurt pretty much the whole day, so I know that didn´t help.  I had tried to massage it earlier in the day but it hurt too much to even touch.  Oddly my digestion is fine, so I won´t complain.  I called it an early night, watched a movie.  I drifted to sleep lulled by a melatonin and some port, listening  to the sounds of people enjoying their Saturday night.

Fashion and travel

Somewhat like fashion and cooking, I do not mix well with travel.  I am not the one emerging from the plane fresh as a daisy, handling my carry ons and checked baggage with grace.  Rather, I spill out with a lap full of breakfast´s orange juice and a fresh face of white-heads.  Why do they always happen on the plane?  Didn´t I suffer enough already with the moist lap?  And to add insult to injury, I dropped Jane´s hard wheel case full of 50 pounds of food, tools, and obviously wheels, onto my high-heel damaged acheles tendon.  The actual event did occur before the insult, but the injury was lingering.  Turns out a bruised and swollen ankle doesn´t, in fact, get any better when you sit on a plane for nine hours.  Who´d have thunk?

All griping aside, I am on hour 26 of no more then twenty minutes of sleep and I still got out of the apartment for an evening march around the neighborhood.  I was too nervous to explore anything, though, because the streets are so illogical and twisty.  It´s built on the side of a big hill and there are tons of Fado restaurants that all look the same.  I just picked one street and followed it more or less for a while then turned right around.  I don´t need to be that exhausted American girl, lost in Alfama all night.  Not my plan.  But tomorrow I am going to go to Jorge´s Castle!  Whoopie!  Also, hooray for not speaking a word of Portuguese.

Day two. So sad.

October 19th

Today I've been a very good housewife.  Plus, I started weight lifting again.  Slowly.  If I rush back in in the fall, I inevitably hurt myself and have to take more time.  Nonetheless, it felt great to be back in the gym.

With Per in Switzerland for the next few days, it's my responsibility to post either photos or a video proving that I'm keeping up with the bargain.  "Keeping up appearances," if you will.

What's black and white and red all over?

A newspaper.  Without any pictures.  Like this.

So hide your mock surprise because there's more.  Seven years ago I dumpstered a pair of carhart shorts.  Too ugly to wear, they were promptly ripped and resewn into a skirt.  Being a skirt, with nothing to chaff on a saddle, this article of clothing has stood the test of time.  Appropriate rockabilly wear?  Probably not.  But still, this is what I'm wearing.  I have, however, topped it it with some very classy hair and makeup, so it's flying under the radar.

Nationals was last week.  I did manage to dress appropriately.  It's easier with nice weather.  LA felt like a balmy Oregon fall, as opposed to the real fall we are going to be looking at pretty soon here for the next seven months.  You know it's coming.  And I certainly need to figure out a coat situation.  But back to Natz.  Bringing curlers to our vacation rental full of racers trying to pump up for the next challenge seemed a little over the top.  I opted, instead, to sleep in big, bouncy pin curls.  Worked like a charm!  And my hair loved the weather!  Not so much the pain in the ass of setting my hair after each dip in the ocean, but life goes on.

I understand that team pride is an important thing to exhibit when standing on the podium, but I sure wished I could have dressed up a little.  I did what I could, but it didn't turn out looking so hot.  I will never try to make my hair look "nice" again.  It just looks out of place being down.  Like a gym teacher in pumps.  Again.  But standing on the podium, in my bright red ballet flats, felt pretty damn good.  Last year I was only next to the podium in the team sprint, but this year Nissy and I clocked in at third and got up onto a step!  I won a metal last year, but nobody knows what you call the metal for 5th.  3rd, however, is Bronze.  Say it with me.  Bronze.  Pretty swell.  I had practiced trying to punch it hard out of the last corner, to drop my second lap rider off at the highest possible speed.  During the final (which was .7 seconds faster than our qualifier!) I got it into my head that acting like I was at the bottom of a particularly hard squat might make that last burst a little faster.  Trying new things during a race is rarely a good idea, but something worked.  Right as I was starting to see my final straight, I took a big breath, tensed everything like I was pushing against a belt, and poured everything I had into getting my legs to spin as fast as possible.  I shot out of the corner and dropped Nissy off a lot faster than before.  That felt really good.  So I either owe my stellar start to that or to Per and my recovery ride in a pedal boat the day before.  Pelicans, anchovies and sea lions, oh my!

Photos to come soon.  Hopefully.