When you realize you stopped, start again

Good morning,

It’s very early in the morning and I can’t sleep. It’s been a minute dear reader and the first question that comes to mind is, why do I write to be read instead of just writing for myself?

Truth is there are a lot of things I write just for me. You can’t read them. It’s all part of the process. So many documents in random places as I have moved about mediums and storage spaces, changed emails that link to google docs here and there. Writings were lost in the divorce forever encapsulated in her external hard drive. That has happened twice actually. I wonder if some of it has ever been read by the ones who got the devices.

I digress. I haven’t written for you, beloved, in a hot minute. It’s been on my mind to do so. If you are reading for the first time, there are troves of treasures hidden in varios blogs, ha, even vlogs from other lives. It would be a fascinating project to link them all, out there in the inter-webs.

I realize I haven’t written in some time. I realize it. I am starting again. No shame. No guilt. Just now. My present.

There are lingering thoughts that weigh on my mind. I recently had a loss. A first in recovery for me. I lost my beloved Prius. She was the nicest car I have had since the Nissan Maxima that I bought when I was 20. She died on the way home from my last trip to my parents. Some kind of belt that pushes the coolant to the engine died, murdering the Prius in total. We looked into fixing her. She needed a new engine. It was unexpected as I had been taking care of her better than I ever had.

She had three and a half newish tires on her. She had brand new brakes and was far from her next oil change. She had a new windshield that required a patch in the bitter cold of winter. Even my therapist asked why I spent $400 on a new windshield when it wasn’t blocking my view.

All that being said, she was beat to hell and back. She bore marks of a different time. With little recall, I could point out three very visible body damages from my days of drinking and driving. At one point she had been my home, housing all my worldly possessions. She was my in between when I had lost the privilege of being housed with other humans.

Responsible: party of one? AAA took her to the dealership for diagnosis.

She was taken from me suddenly. And I was faced with, talk about privilege, ha, a CHOICE. Alone, I was relatively content on my bicycle for a whole week, but I am not alone anymore. There is a child who does not reside in biking distance. There is a wife who exists in my world, in my space, in our shared experience. A wife who was experiencing stress. A wife who came to my aide.

A wife who, very calmly and diplomatically with a world of grace, helped me make the choice. A wife who did the leg work through my sadness and immobility. A wife who signed papers with me. And held my hand.

5k to fix beloved Prius with little guarantee of her life expectancy. 13k for her death. 13k for a new start. Thirteen thousand dollars! I have never taken on a debt such as this and it’s unnerving. I drive the new car in fear.

Her name is SeaGlass and she’s beautiful. We upgraded Prius by six years. We took out a loan for five. It weighs on me. I am processing the fact that I just threw away a whole car. I am processing driving ten thousand dollars around town scared to bump into something. Scared to throw a hatchback full of wood in her. Where will be stow the kayaks when we paddle ten miles on the Kansas River?

We made the transfer in the back lot of the dealership. I bought a whole car at a dealership! Walked in, talked to car guys, was offered and drank two bottles of water as I sat in the lounge waiting on them to look at the door panel. We drove SeaGlass around back and emptied the Prius into SeaGlass. No warning. No prep. Ten years in a car grabbing what I needed and just abandoning the rest. “Leave the trash,” the finance guy said.

My baby grew up in that car. We brought her home from the hospital in that car. We had our bohemian summer in that car. We camped, went to the lake, the pool, the library, uber, vomit, five years at KU. I moved to Wichita and back in that car.

In my sobriety, I have a tendency to let things sit. For a long time… like years and the Prius was no exception. There were baby toys, baby hair clips, souvenirs, paperwork, so much paperwork from repairs, blankets, clothes, tennis gear, old letters, pictures, baby sunglasses, car games, umbrellas, chairs. Life.

My understanding of the world has increased. My understanding of money has increased. It was at an all time high to begin with having one more payment on my very last undergraduate class. Having paid regular ole bills like the mortgage and house bills reverently for the last five years. Knowing how much money I make in a year versus by the hour. Rising to the occasion of caring for a whole house. Thank god for my wife. Praise the very breath of her life. I could not do any of this without her. I mean, I probably could, and I would, but my gratitude speaks that I do not have to.

I am working through this, Dear Prius. Thank you for ten amazing years. You will be missed. You were loved. You are grieved. I pray you are stripped of any part of you that might be useful to another Prius owner. I pray you save someone money with a gently used part. I hope that you went to a good home where crafty car people know what to do with you to help others.

I will cherish SeaGlass, pay her off religiously, and drive her till she dies. Thank you for teaching me the value of my very privileged resources.

First time in the Kansas River

Kayak trip.

Staring at the lights one day when I was laying in bed. Decided to clean the lights like grandma.

Taught to drive. Grandpa always said it costs money to brake a car. Thinking about grandpa when I drive.

Pen in pocket.

Grandma preparing was showing love. Also control.

Send wedding invite to Gary and Rebecca Blanton. Call and just ask for Chris address.

What do we do with the thoughts of those people that will never leave us? Kate. Chris. Erynn. Heather. Sam. How do I keep the line open without badgering them. Why are they still in my thoughts if the universe removed them AND the relationships were not mutually beneficial? Do I just need to remember the past or is there supposed to be more in the future? Tell the stories of the past.

It takes 100% of my tools and skill <50% of the time

Parenting. I am going to keep talking about it. Keep processing. Putting things on paper. When Bella was born, I knew what I was doing. Then some stuff happened, and now I don’t.

I don’t know how hard to be on her. I don’t know how far to push her. I don’t know what to let her get away with and what to call her on. I don’t know what she can handle or what might send her into real struggles.

She claims to have anxiety. She misses a lot of school because of it. So much so that it makes me nervous and I’m not sure there is anything I can do about it. She has taste and sound issues. I don’t know enough about autism to put here anywhere on the spectrum. Is she just a picky kid? Would she have been this way if I hadn’t had the time away from her?

If I switch from her to me, what I can I do? What have I already done? I have never, in my adult life, thought about what things were like for me as a kid, than I have in the past 1-2 years having her back in my life part time. And of course there is blame. Would she be this way if I had never been away from her? Who gets the blame there? Blame is defined as the discharging of pain, but if I am blaming myself, then I am discharging the pain that I already hold on to myself. That sounds dangerous. If I blame her other mother, that sounds like a great way to not take accountability for my part. Can we do no blame? It is what it is? Sure. See paragraph 2.

I want her to think for herself, but I also want her to be polite! I want her to do whatever the hell she wants to do, but I also want her to go to bed on time. I want her to eat what someone cooks or serves for dinner. I want her to learn to relax and take it easy without instantly becoming bored.

It’s shame

And forgive, and forgive again, and then live on a higher plane without their permission and without apology because your life might just depend on it.

I recently mowed part of my yard. I mean part, like just part of the front. I did what I could do and then I rolled the mower to the back. It was long before I started and unfinished when I was done for the day. I got to thinking how my father would be less than thrilled about the current state of my yard if he were to drive by. This led directly to a sincere desire that maybe a boomer would drive by and scoff, just like my father might. And by the time I was done taking pictures, I was hoping that this would cause discomfort to any drive by boomer.

Where had all that come from? Well, I am still harboring some anger about my last visit to my father’s hometown in which he asked me why I was wearing a pride shirt in Ellsworth, KS. God for fucking bid. AND, I recently came through what was the closest I have come to a drink in about three years. How do these connect? Give me an hour on the phone with my most beloved, who is away for a week, and I will verbally process the shit out of these things.

It’s shame, folks. Shame is the connector. Projected shame. Perceived shame. And best of all, shame resilience.

My beloved Angela is out of town on the second of two trips in as many months. Last Saturday, I came as close as I have come since getting sober this last and final time, to drinking. I still struggle with depression and anxiety. After a few days on the other side of this incident, I discovered that I had made a window for myself to drink. At the time, it felt like I barely made it through this incident. But, again, a few days on the other side, I see that I did, or my higher power did exactly what needed to be done to get through it.

In order to set myself up to drink, I canceled plans. I thought it was because I just wanted to be in my space and relax in a nice cool dark room. Watch my TV. Sit in my chair. When I realized I was doing this, I did not reschedule the plans I had canceled. What I did do was tell someone that I felt like drinking. When I was unsatisfied with how I felt after I did that, I told someone else. And then I told someone else. I texted several women from my support system. I kept talking. I declined several invitations that felt like too much commitment, but I kept talking. I made it home safe to a booze free home and I stayed put. At the time, I was a little down on myself for not doing more. Not going to dinner. Not letting someone come over and sit with me. But now that I look back on it, it was the perfect middle. I didn’t drink. And I didn’t make myself more uncomfortable by doing something I really didn’t want to do.

It turns out that getting just a little down on myself can be a new theme that runs through my life. There is no room for shame. Fuck shame right in it’s ear. Celebrate everything. Talk about everything. Connect the BS that happened with my father over the 4th of July to this incident and things can creep in. Once they creep in, I am susceptible to lying and hiding. Shame cannot survive in the light.

Thanksgiving Start 2024

I can’t help but think that we are just starting to fuck our kids up. If we fuck our kids up, then the next generation of adults is going to be fucked up. Did it start with us? Of course not.

Depression and anxiety and anger have a long history in as many of my family members as I know of. My beloved Della used to wring her hands back and forth, back and forth. She would usually start noon lunch at 10:30 am ensuring that most everything was overcooked. It was endearing to me as a granddaughter, especially as an adult granddaughter. It was an impossible act for my mother to follow enhancing the anxiety cycle.

Before that, what little I know not even first hand but second is that the very old man that I knew as a great-grandfather whose skin was thin, whose movements were slow and deliberate, at one time beat the hell out of my great-grandmother. He probably beat the children, My grandmother and her siblings too.

That’s just a drop in the hat of one of the 4 sides of my grandparents. That’s a tiny piece of what I know from my own experience. Fast forward to my own family. The children of the afore mentioned. Boomers. Still okay to spank your children. That’s me, the spankee. Now 4 generations of hit or miss, pass and go first and second hand knowledge. I know more. We know more. Here’s my question: are we doing better with what we have? Okay there are more questions: Are we evolving? Is that even the right question? Are we blaming evolution? If we know better, are we doing better? Are we refusing to do better even though we know better? Are we just switching tactics which are just as harming?

I just got back from Thanksgiving 2024 with 90% of my family from my father’s side. I could write for day about how much I love each one of them. I could write a blog post about each individual family member, wha they mean to me, what I love about them, individual experiences we have had, and how I pray to have many more. My gratitude abounds. That’s not what this particular writing is about.

My family is challenging to be around. This too, I could write for days on. While cooking breakfast on our last day, one of my brothers took to blaming his eight year old daughter for the reason he yells. Imagine, blaming an eight year old child as the reason you cannot control your own anger. After I raised my mouth from the floor, I took the opportunity to explain to my beloved niece and brother as well about victim blaming. I doubt I was heard. My daughter was in the room as well, though, and so was god.

What I wonder, with all our resources and knowledge though is if we aren’t propelling our children into destruction at an ultra modern rate while claiming no need for new age baloney, or that’s not how we were raised. I no doubt think this could have started as early as my parents, but who knows before that. I have friends who were not spanked, and when I say spanked, I am giving my parents the absolute most amount of grace and antiquated speech within my reason. Let me remind you that I could write a book on how much I adore my mother because, there is a huge part of me that would like her to read this. Will it draw anger from her? Will she throw up her hands and say, we did the best we could while continuing to make the same mistakes? Will she continue to turn a blind eye to the generation below her, and the one that follows that?

Upon leaving my parent’s house, my daughter went in reluctantly for her goodbye hug. She goes to all who want a hug reluctantly. How can I have a kid who’s not a hugger?! That’s a different blog. Daughter goes to Grammie for the hug. Grammie holds the hug and claims that they have a better relationship because they have now been through a conflict and have come out the other side. I was aware of the conflict. I had spoken with both after the skirmish. Cousin wanted to watch the Macy’s parade. My kid didn’t want to and she was using her influence to draw cousin from the parade. Grammie stepped in to attempt to let my kid know what she was doing. My kid spouted off that she didn’t care or something of the sort that my kid would do, and instead of slowing down… anger struck. When I looked over, my mother was in my kid’s face with a finger and I was out of my seat to stop whatever was happening. My daughter was in the process of being shamed for not thinking of others. Conflict.

There has been some kind of shift. Some kind of glitch in the Matrix. My grandmother might have beat the hell out of her children when they were young and they might have had the hardest lives know to boomers when they were babies, but by the time my grandmother got to me, I would have never experienced that kind of anger from my grandmother. This is, of course, all my own experience. I feel bad for my kiddo. I want to protect her from the anger I experienced. I also want her to know and love my family like I do! I cannot think of a single reason at this moment that I would shame my kid. But I think in that moment, she was called a name or had some kind of shame placed on her for not thinking of her cousin. She ran upstairs crying. My mother walked into the room where a family is enjoying a holiday tradition announcing that a child is somehow malicious because she is using her child influence to keep another child from a parade.

Again, I spoke with both sides. To my mother, I explained that my kiddo has a hard shell and a slow processing time. “No” first, process later. To my kid, I explained what my mother failed to when she was too pressed to take the time, add grace, maybe she didn’t know how with my daughter’s face or mouth saying “no” and “I don’t care.” I explained that my kiddo that she was using her cousin influence to keep her cousin from the parade that the cousin really wanted to see. Of course my kiddo didn’t want her cousin to miss the parade. Her cousin was having trouble expressing how strong her desire was, and that’s okay. My kiddo wasn’t taking the time there either. She recovered quickly and came down to let the cousin know she wanted her to watch the parade if she wanted to.

Now I don’t know if my mother ever spoke to my child about this conflict, but when she hugged her goodbye she said, I think we have a better relationship now that we have had conflict. And I am sorry by the way. But now that we have had a fight, we are better. Next time, fight back.

I sit here now, 24 hours later in a quiet house rubbing my face while I think of what to type next. Conflict resolution? Therapy? For me? For my kiddo? Serenity prayer anyone?

Pretty sure what happened in real life at the time was me looking at my kid with my eyebrows raised as high as I could raise them, and then looking at my wife for help, and then back to my kid with an “eh or not” kind of permission for my kid.

Send help. What are we doing to our children? How far apart will the separations be when we still have people, within the same family, participating in old disproven irresponsible behaviors that they refuse to even see?

An Open Letter to the People of Mindo, Pichincha, Ecuador

Thank you.

Thank you for hosting us. Thank you for all of your kindness and patience. Thank you for the laughs and smiles. Thank you for all the information you gave freely, especially when you had to give it twice or wait for the google translate to help us understand.

Thank you for sharing your beautiful town with us. Thank you for the work you put into your town. Thank you for the murals and statues. Thank you for the clean park and the kind workers who maintain it.

Thank you for the love you have for the world we live in. Thank you for improving your town and maintaining it’s existing beauty. Thank you for the extensions of the small town out into the cloud forest. The nature preserves and tourist attractions show how much you love the small part of the world in which you live.

Thank you to the kind pharmacy for the medications, foot powder, ibuprofen, aloe wipes, antacid, and patience as we fumbled through describing our needs.

Thank you to the street vendors for tying our bracelets, and getting down items for us to try on. Thank you for answering our questions about your crafts; stones in the jewelry, fabric in the blankets and sweaters, how you make your items. Thank you for telling us about yourselves. And thank you for asking about us. Thank you for your patience in translation.

Thank you to all the restaurants. We were always served with kindness and patience. Every question we had was answered, even when we both had our phones out to translate the back and forth. We were up for trying anything and everything, and you delivered time and again. I’m not sure I could count how many new things I tried on account of your willingness to stand by my table while I looked up words on the menus that I did not know.

And thank you for the delicious food. We ate our way through Mindo on the streets, in the cafes, in the mom and pop shops, all the way to the nicest restaurants in town. We dined in a group of two, all the way to a group of 20. We never once had a rude server.

Thank you to all the mini-markets, bakeries, and coffee shops. Every store was clean and we maintained. As we browsed about, looking a new and different things, if we saw a worker and asked a question, we were always answered with ease and kindness. We must have been to almost every mini-market they have in Mindo. Some days we were after lunch for the day. Other times we were just browsing to see how they package food, or look at different things. We dottled

Omg I’m hooome

Coming home. Such joy. So many feels. The comforts. The familiarity. I woke up in my own bed with a cat nudging my arm. Thank you to a higher power, that I dare not describe for fear of missing something. You brought us to it. And you brought us through it.

The infamous, the incomparable, Sam Muse Brown.

Guess what guys! This story starts with keys again. But I cannot truly start there as I am sitting home in my chair, drinking my coffee with the windows and doors open. I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee in two weeks. I even switched fully to tea because that was so much easier to attain. Skip caffeine for those two weeks? How dare you.

The first thing I noticed was how wonderful if was to fill my coffee pot up with water from my tap. I just turned it on and sat there watching it fill. This is not something you can do in Ecuador. The tap water is not drinkable. We had plenty of bottled water and all was fine. But filling that coffee pot full of 12 cups of water was something else. I prayed, in that moment, to never take this for granted, knowing that I would before too long at all.

When we left it was too warm to even open the house in the mornings. Now it is cool and brisk. Right away, I notice things I brought back with me. My ears are more tuned to the birds. I checked out my Merlin app to see what was making all the racket in the back yard. Merlin is an app that will listen to the sound of the birds and ID them for you. I have a small start on a new love of birds and it’s one of the first things I noticed this morning post coffee and pain ointment.

My morning meditation spot at Hotel Libertad in Mindo, Ecuador.

Then I grabbed my keyboard and came to sit in my morning meditation spot, my chair. Oh how I love and missed this chair. My back is comfortable, my feet are up. The sun is streaming in one window, the breeze, birds and bugs in the other. The cat begging for more attention. The noise is different. I did not miss waking up to the Mindo dog sanctuary or the rooster this morning. But the cars are so loud. There is a airplane overhead, a crop-duster size. What a racket! But no rooster, and no dogs. That rooster started at 430am every day in Ecuador. The dogs went nuts when they were fed every morning and sporadically throughout the day. The rooster continued to crow long past dusk.

My morning view in Mindo, time-lapse watching the rain from the previous night rise out of the cloud forest.

As I sit here, I am looking at the old clock on the table. It stopped running at 9:00. I can’t wait for it to pass 9:00 so I can wind it and get it ticking again, a constant reminder of my beloved mother. Since there is such excitement when going on vacation, especially to a place that has so many unknowns, I did not actively think, I am going to miss that clock. But now back at home, I cannot wait to get it going again.

Keys. God luck. When we arrived in Ecuador, maybe even before, I carelessly tossed my keys in my red suitcase. As we were packing to leave, I just happened to find them in that same suitcase front pocked where they had stayed for two weeks. With just a little care, I put them in my carryon pocket. As we landed in Kansas City at 1130pm, we were notified that one bag hadn’t made the full trip. It still didn’t occur to me that the car keys had miraculously moved from the suitcase to the carryon. Sure enough, it was my suitcase that hadn’t made the full trip and without that little stroke of god luck, the keys would have been somewhere between Miami and Kansas City.

It still didn’t occur to me until I asked Angela if I should ride the bus and go get the car while she waited for the bags. With my backpack on my back, I turned on a heel and headed for the bus, only to turn right back around to grab the keys. My face told the tale: I need the keys from my suitcase: the suitcase is not here yet: wait, they are in my backpack. I didn’t even remember which pocket I had put them in. I put the backpack on the ground and then my step tracing training kicked in. I found them with ease and a prayer of gratitude.

When we got home last night, as we were unloading the car, I asked Angela, how would we have even gotten in the house if we had taken an Uber last night? We both shrugged, too tired to laugh, and continued unloading the car.

Good morning, Lawrence, Kansas.

At least Three Cultures for the Price of One

One of my favorite things about traveling is getting in below the surface level and experiencing the culture. For this reason, it has been amazing to know not only my beloved profe, but her entire family here in Ecuador.

I have experienced not only the Ecuadorian culture, but also the tourist culture, and the retired gringo culture. They are, of course, meshed within each other, but I have gotten a distinct experience of all three.

When my beloved and I are alone, especially when we are zip lining or wandering through the rain forest with a tour guide, we have gotten to experience how Ecuador, or Mindo specifically, treats it’s tourist. The people are so kind. They are light hearted and knowledgeable. I’m not sure if we have asked a single question that has gone unanswered. Many speak English, but if not, they are super patient with our Spanish. The prices are set; the currency is the American Dollar, and we have not been overcharged or had to “haggle” for anything.

We have also experienced retired gringo life, some first hand, and some in stories from the over a dozen friends of Keri and Paul that we have met. Keri told us that the vendors here will raise prices for building materials and services for things like wood or working on their house. They told us that if their Ecuadorian daughter goes in first to set a price on something like building materials for their house, they are grated a better price than if they were to go in on their own.

From left to right: Kansas, Canada, Paul, Missouri/Kansas, England (2), Missouri (2), and I think Michigan. Jose, the gentleman on the right is Ecuadorian by birth but lived many years in the US, and then returned to Ecuador. He is the owner of the establishment that we had our coffee tour. He built that business from the ground up and then retired, leaving his daughter in charge.

White people are assumed to have more money than Ecuadorians. To a certain extent, this is true. The Ecuadorian minimum wage is $4.25/hr, so if you are traveling, depending on your budget of course, your money will go farther here, as a general rule. Most touristy things are not overpriced. We have spent $10-$20 per activity on touristy things: zip lining, night walks, coffee tour, etc.

Also, depending on how much you retired with, of course there could be a reserve that would go farther here than in the US. But once you move here and become part of the permanent community, it is my humble opinion that you should be granted the same prices as the Ecuadorians. You are living here, you are building and maintaining your home here. You are contributing to Ecuadorian work in many forms.

We have been invited to several of the retired gringo lunches and activities. They definitely live a different life than the average Ecuadorian. They are the owners of several of the establishments, hotels, restaurants, even some of the tourist attractions. We have been to some of the nicest restaurants in town on account of the retired gringos. If you are white, no matter where you retired from, you are considered a gringo. It’s possible that this is a self-named title. I am not certain.

One particular gentleman that we met is Eric, here living and making his living because of “all things creepy and crawly” according to his website and tourist attractions. He is a guide and has built a business on the reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids that many of whom, only existing in the climate and location on the earth. The biodiversity here is second to none. We took his night walk tour and it was fascinating. His employees are bilingual and very knowledgeable about many many things in the rainforest. The tours are on his own land up in the mountains near Mindo where he also lives. It was beautiful. He is a conservationist, a scientist, and an Ecuadorian, but he is also a gringo. I personally felt super grateful to have met him. He is a super nice guy who is fascinated with anything that moves in Ecuador.

Terrible picture of Eric on the right, who is originally from Canada. Many other cultures were represented at this dinner as well.

The night we met him, we had been invited to a fondue party at another expat’s house and restaurant, Di Di, the Frenchman. Eric had a snake in his bag that we all got to hold and play with. He had found it on his way. Angela asked him how many snakes he owned and he quietly shrugged and said, “It’s hard to say, because I picked this one up on the way here.”

Because Keri is such an a awesome tour guide herself, we have learned about many of the typical Mindo experiences, road construction, customs, and gossip. My reference point has been good ole Ellsworth, Kansas. Mindo is about the same size as Ellsworth. This has helped me exponentially. There are many things that they have to “go to the city” to get. There are no big grocery stores here. No Home Depot. No Cosco. Quito is the nearest city and it is two and a half hours by car. I’m sure further by bus, but there are busses that go there. One could exist here without a car, but a car is handy.

This is a single Catholic Church in town. It is small and quaint. I have seen one other church. While we haven’t walked every street, we have been down many and have walked everywhere in town.

Wood carving of St Francis of Assisi. The tree branch next to him is covered in beetles that have been preserved. They are, however, real beetles called rhinosaras beetles.

Adoration Chapel with host holder carved from wood.

Cross on the side of the sanctuary that I can only assume is used for reenactments. It is tied up with green cord and has a place that a human might stand for reenactments.

We have bought food off the street from street vendors: cookies and fresh fruit. There are vendors that have carts that can be pushed, hooked to bicycles, some even motorized. There are also trucks that drive around the streets selling fruit or bottled water. The water here is used for washing dishes, showering, etc, but not drinking or preparing food unless boiled.

There are no closed doors in Mindo. By that I mean that everything is open space. Many homes do no have windows and all store fronts are open air. There is no winter here although it’s kinda chilly in the morning. As I write this, I am in track pants and a sweatshirt. Everything is damp.

The main street is lined with shops that are also open air. Several of the grills for the restaurants are located on the street in front of the stores. I think most of the stores have pull doors that close over them at night, like in a mall, but I have not been awake late enough or early enough to see this for myself.

If you can afford to do so, the best home designs are built off the ground. Some are just a few feet off the ground and others have their first floor as their garages. It is naturally dryer in town than in the country and especially in the cloud forest. The hotel where we are staying, Hotel de Libertad, has it’s first floor made from cement and holds the laundry room, the pool, and facilities for the pool like showers and restrooms. Bikes, motorcycles, and cars can be stored here as well for guests or residents.

My current view including humming bird feeders. There are 48 different species of humming birds in Ecuador. We have spent several mornings in the common space watching the humming birds come to the feeders. The sound is the dog rescue place up the street.

The wood starts with the stairs leading to the second floor with reception and several rooms. There are three or four separate stairs that have rooms, and the final one is the kitchen and dining area. There are no screens on the windows. The gathering areas in reception, my morning sitting space, and the kitchen, are all open air. No windows.

Let’s see, what else? Because many people do not have cars, there are taxis readily available even though the town is the size of Ellsworth. Taxis will take you to any tourist attraction in the mountains, and even the airport or the coast. I would assume they would also take you to Quito for your big city needs, but a bus would be much cheaper.

Tourists, gringos, and locals. Not bad. Three cultures for the price of one. Thank you Keri, Paul, Grace, Estepha, Leo, Wendy, Jeremy, los gringos, y la gente de Ecuador.

We Learned How to Make 100% Pure Chocolate!

These are the fruit or the pods of the Cocao tree.

This is the single fruit we worked with.

Carolína cut the fruit without cutting into any of the seeds. She said that if you cut into any of the seeds, you release bacteria into the entire fruit and none of the seeds would be useful for chocolate.

Close up of the inside of the fruit with the cocao seeds. The fleshy part of the seed is had an awesome sweet tart taste. We each got to suck on several. The texture was wet and cool.

The pure cacao seed cut in half. That is the most raw version of cocao. If you were to bite into the cocao at this stage, it is super bitter and raw, kind of like a peanut or a coffee bean. Carolína said that it would suck the moisture out of your mouth. It is worth stating that there is no sugar in cacao. We add that as humans. It’s quite bitter in it’s natural state. I am personally not a fan. I like my Hershey’s with all the milk and sugar that they can cram in to it. Cacao in it’s natural state is nothing like a Hershey’s bar.

This picture shows the Nacional Cacao tree. It grows about three feet and then splits off. It does not start producing fruit until it is three years old. The seeds take on the flavor of nearby plants. For example, if you plant vanilla close to a cacao tree, you will have a hint of vanilla in your cacao seeds.

Although you cannot see the base of this tree, this is the hybrid called CCN51. It was developed in the 1970’s but did not become popular until the 1990’s. This tree produces fruit in two years. It also produces twice as many fruits to be harvested. The down side is that it does not have as much flavor or variety of flavor from seed to seed. The farmers and producers of chocolate like it, however, for obvious reasons.

This is the flower that turns into those huge fruits. The flower is pollinated by mosquitoes. It’s super tiny compared to the giant fruit that comes from it.

Notice the tiny flowers in the top left corner of this picture compared to the fruit in the center of the picture.

These are the fermentation boxes. They ferment the seeds for two weeks flipping the boxes every 24 hours. The fermented liquid drains out of the boxes and is caught in containers below for booze de cacao. Nothing is wasted. It was hot as shit in this greenhouse. Easily 20° hotter than the temperature outside.

The moisture is kept in the boxes with banana leaves. The boxes must be carefully maintained as well since the seed could still take on any flavor they come in contact with.

The drying process. This was in the same greenhouse as the fermentation process.

Dried cacao beans that have not been shelled. We tasted five different cacao beans and each had a slightly different flavor.

Here the shells of the seeds are removed after drying. They use the shells of the seeds for cacao tea. Again, nothing goes to waste.

This machine takes the seeds and turns them into a thick paste.

Here is a close up of the gritty paste. 100% pure cocao which contains the cacao oil.

Then the paste is put into this machine that grinds in stone on stone at over 100 degrees. I can’t remember how long they did this. Here she stated that the shiny color starts to come out so you know if it is good chocolate or not. She also stated that these two types of trees do not produce bad chocolate.

The chocolate is them moved to a cold room which is 70 degrees. The chocolate is poured into molds or drops and sold as bars or bags of drops.

100% cacao does not melt like milk chocolate. For example, the “cold room” and the loco chico are at 70°.

100% melted cacao. When we tasted this, it is bitter and sucks the moisture right out of your mouth. Your whole mouth becomes void of moisture and you have to lick the roof of your mouth and lips to re-moisturize. It was rough on this milk chocolate lover but I loved the experience.

The final product and taste test of the different percentages and additives. 67%, 77%, 85%, cafe is with coffee, macadamia is obviously with the macadamia nuts, jengibre is with ginger, ají is with hot pepper, sal y pimienta is salt and pepper, cardomomo is cardamom. The front three were sugar, raw sugar, and 100%.

Examples of the final chocolate bar product.

The Travel Bug

It’s pretty intense the things we do for travel. We deprive ourselves of sleep, comfort, regularity, routine, home. We save and plan. But if you have the travel bug, there is not much you can do to suppress it for too long.

We save up our vacation and take time from work. We enlist our friends and family to watch our dog, our house; take us to the airport at god awful hours. Or we semi-abandon our cars in parking lots. We take cars to busses, to trains, to planes, taxis, hikes, bikes. We put ourselves in dangerous places. We visit doctors and get shots. We bring medications and comforts with us. We converse and dream. We research and look at pictures of far away places. Exotic plants and animals; people, food, destinations and places on the way. We plan timing and location, things to do, experiences to be had. We hire guides and talk to strangers. All in the name of Travel.

I have long called myself and experientialist. I have traveled to many of the places that I have on my invisible list. I have done many of the things I would like to do.

This particular trip started with a grand plan, as usual. This plan was a loose plan. There are certain points we need to hit like flights, but the soft center is quite open. Stay tuned for my final review on the when, but my lovely wife, Angela and I both got off work at 5pm on a Friday. Our flight was not scheduled till Monday morning. The same is true for coming home. We arrive on Friday and will still have the weekend before returning to work. This sounds like perfect timing to me, time to get ready, and time to decompress.

I don’t think I can continue without acknowledging my privilege. For me, as a recovering alcoholic, gratitude and privilege tend to be intertwined. I could not speak on my privilege without speaking of my gratitude and versa visa. I don’t know if my gratitude changes my privilege. That is an entirely different blog post.

3 am on the shuttle bus from parking lot to airport.

One of the many many gifts of this trip was that we were able to each take two full weeks off of work. We have weekends bookending our trip. I think that sounds divine. Our first morning started at 1am getting up in order to catch a 5am international flight. I don’t know if things are more relaxed at airports or if people who use airports are just more used to all the hullabaloo. In any case, We were up at 1, on the road by 2, and in the airport by 3 for a flight at 5. I didn’t think much of it until I started to calculate when we would be arriving in Quito, Ecuador. We had a 9 hour layover in Miami, where we decided to hit the beach and get some Cuban food. Sounds simple enough. And before I go into the full story, I want to say that we nailed it. We were back in the airport with plenty of time to catch the flight. Some of you may remember that we were not quite that lucky when leaving Chicago that one time.

I love traveling in big cities and taking public transportation. It’s always like a puzzle that you need to figure out. Our greatest delay in our Miami travels was figuring out how the hell to get out of the airport. Once we nailed that, we found a very friendly public transportation worker, told her our plans for the day, and she guided us on a day pass for the buses. We hit the rail out of the airport, then hopped a bus to Miami Beach. The bus dropped us off two blocks from the beach. Minutes later, we were on the beach staring into the Atlantic Ocean.

We had come directly from the airport, so we were still wearing travel clothes but had our swimming suits with us. We grabbed a little fold up cabana thingy and changed in the sand. A few minutes later, we were in the ocean. The waves were soft and the water was warm but not too warm. The sand on the bottom was gradual enough that we were able to go out quite far and still be able to touch. If that was what got us into a little trouble, it’s hard to say.

At some point, we started seeing translucent objects floating around us. The first one I saw, I let pass without much of a thought. The second looked like some kind of mesh trash. I reached out and touched it. It was smooth like the sting rays we had touched in Chicago. I knew just enough to know that it was a jellyfish and that they stung so I pulled my hand back. At this point I was feeling little stings here and there. All of a sudden we were engulfed in jellyfish. We quickly swam out of the area, but not before Ang was stung in the back of her leg. I was feeling little stings here and there. I’m sure for all the ones we could see, there were probably many more that were smaller. Ang was a pro, very calm and cool. We left the water and she promptly peed on herself, letting it run down the part of her leg that had been stung. I believe she was still feeling pain for a little while, but managed to keep it decently in check. She was always calm.

About the same time, a storm rolled in, so we were forced to pack up and find some shelter. I was kind of grateful for that since I was feeling some smaller stings on my thighs. Jellyfish can be quite small, so I didn’t know if I had any caught in my shorts. We packed up and headed back off the beach to the nearest overhang. You quickly realize that you are out in the open world with no car, no home, etc, when a storm rolls in and you have no shelter.

We found a hotel overhang and hung out while we decided what to do next. As it started to rain harder, I rinsed the salt out of my hair and swim shirt and shorts in a run-off from a roof on the edge of the hotel drop-off spot. Something like that can make you feel so alive. Away from home and rinsing your hair in the clean water Mother Nature is providing. Also the stinging stopped.

After the quick and wild ride of several emotions, I was pretty spent and not fully funcional as we decided what to do next. Cuban food. But where and how do we get there? I searched for an Uber. She suggested a coffee shop to regroup. My solutions was something like $20. Hers was a two minute walk after we got our bearings. Since we each paid something like $2.50 for the day bus pass, $20 was a large increase. Instead we found Starbucks literally across the street. We were not alone either since the storm had sent all the beach goers away. We dried off and searched for a Cuban restaurant.

Two tries and about a mile later, we walked into Bella Cuban Restaurant.

The appetizer we ordered was half and avocado with shrimp and greens. When it arrived at the table, it was massive. Neither of us had ever seen an avocado that big. Main course was a traditional Cuban sandwich with pulled pork and Swiss cheese. I’m sad to say that the pork was dry, but there was a strange sauce on the side that made it manageable. It was something like mayonnaise, but orange. For dessert we ordered caramel flan. It was divine.

A little bit of caramel and the cinnamon from the decoration on the plate made it incredible. I found out quickly with a small test that the dark brown liquid was rum instead of caramel, so I steered clear of that part, but otherwise, marvioso!

At this point, I think the time was creeping into midafternoon. Our flight was at 6:57. We wanted to be back to the airport about 4:00. We had already walked about a mile with backpacks and such, so the nearest bus stop back to the airport sounded like a plan.

There is a similar bus in Mexico City, maybe for folks just like myself that have a layover and want to see the city. It goes from the airport to downtown in the touristy spot and back. Again we hopped the 150 bus right back to the airport with minimal stops. One direction was about 40 minutes and again for about $2.50, beats a $40 Uber for these travelers any day.

Back to the airport and through security again just so we could lay on a hard dirty floor and wait for our next flight. Ahhh, travel. We were asked by speaker and Angela’s great detection skills to change gates where we did more laying until boarding. Boarding an airplane is always an adventure in itself to stow your crap in the overhead and find a tiny little seat in this cramped space. Our first flight was half empty so we got our own rows, but this one was full, and longer.

Turns out that the flight was about an hour longer than scheduled because we had to divert between two of the storms coming in to Florida.

Not really knowing any of this, we sat on this plane wondering, has it been four hours? Did the time change back from East Coast time? We were both too tired to calculate it. Once we arrived in Quito, another burst of energy got us off the plane a to wait for our luggage and find our friends who awaited with smiles and cameras.

Their foresight from doing this with other friends paid off as we settled in for the night at a local hostal ten minutes from the airport. The time then was about 12:30. After getting up at 1 am to leave from Kansas, it was very rewarding to fall asleep in Quito, Ecuador.

Not as rewarding as waking up to this view, but rewarding all the same.

Adelante, Ecuador. Love, Holly