travel

Travels

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 4 Comments

In my adult life, I’ve lived in fifteen homes: one in Key West, Florida; seven in California (six in Santa Cruz and one in Watsonville); two in Portland, Oregon; one on Orcas Island; and four in North Carolina (three in Asheville and one in Black Mountain). Yesterday, I landed at my sixteenth, this one in Sonoma, California.

While my body feels near collapse, well aware of what it just went through, my mind can’t really believe that we traveled for 8 days, crossing North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before reaching the Golden State.

The day we left, we awoke at 6 a.m. and spent the next five hours loading the remainder of our belongings into a PODS container, then making the house look like this:

The dogs had to guard the door to make sure we didn’t forget them.

That was a miserable, exhausting experience, followed by a 7-hour drive. Thankfully, the AirBNB that greeted us in Jackson, Tennessee featured several of these lamps, which was a pleasant consolation for the somewhat miserable day:

Just as he did before our last cross-country move, my husband JR got us walkie talkies for the journey. When I mentioned this to my mom, she said, “Will we have handles? I want to be Eager Beaver.” She chose this moniker in homage to a weekend trip we’d taken with two other families when I was a kid. There had been a CB radio in each family’s vehicle, and the kids in said vehicles had periodically taken turns singing The Beaver Song to each other. [For reference, here is a YouTube lady enthusiastically demonstrating The Beaver Song with wide-eyed glee.] After one particularly rousing version, there’d been a brief pause, and then a grizzled male voice had crackled over the airwaves and asked, in a thick Southern drawl: “What in the HELL was that?” All us kids had laughed about that for the duration of the weekend, and then over the next ten years.

I told Mom that yes, of course we’d have handles, and that JR and I were Joe Rodeo and Chickenhead, respectively. About an hour after we embarked on our journey, Mom heard her walkie talkie crackle and thought one of us was trying to reach her. She picked it up and said, “Eager Beaver, come in!” Unfortunately for her, neither of us had been trying to reach her, nor were we within range, and it was some random man who replied, “Eager Beaver? Hey, y’all, we got ourselves an eager beaver over here. Eager Beaver, I got some wood that needs choppin’ – come on!”

😂

Mom let out a squeak and threw her walkie talkie to the floor. She didn’t change her handle, though. Eager Beaver for life!

Over the 8-day trip, we stayed in six AirBNBs. I learned that there seems to be a rule among AirBNB hosts that their home should feature at least one image of a cow.

Also, a framed version of 1 Corinthians 13:4 is very popular, because all travelers need to remember that love is patient, kind, etc.

Our journey was long, tiring, and really quite wonderful. We got to experience the big skies of Arkansas and Oklahoma:

We got to see family:

And beautiful places…

The Foothills in Albuquerque

Painted Desert National Park

[I used Magic Eraser to edit out Daisy’s leash, and now this photo gives me heart palpitations.]

Heading towards the San Francisco Mountains in Arizona

The dogs slept and snuggled through it all.

In my 2025 calendar, this is the image for November:

Before we embarked on our journey, I sent the photo to Mom and JR, suggesting that we, as a traveling trio, would likely be rotating through the emotional states of the pictured wolves, namely: frenzy, wariness, and irritation. In reality, though, we were more like this:

We stayed positive, kept ourselves and each other sane, and savored each leg of the journey.

And now, though it feels unbelievable and surreal, we have arrived in Sonoma, and we have so much learning and exploring to do, it’s a bit overwhelming. However, I’ll strive to face the task just like our 8-day journey:

Stay in the moment.

Breathe.

Observe.

Appreciate.

Take my time.

And enjoy.

Not a Polyglot

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 4 Comments

I’ve started learning Portuguese, and after two months of daily lessons, I think it’s safe to say I’ll never even know enough to be vaguely conversational. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll keep trying – but by the time I return to Portugal next spring, I believe I’ll have a greater chance of accidentally saying something in Mandarin than I will of forming an actual Portuguese sentence with my mouth.

As someone who speaks only one more than zero languages, I find polyglots downright magical. Not only do they manage to learn whole new sets of words, grammatical rules, and pronunciations, but they’re also willing to practice and mess up a ton, which includes being misunderstood and (if/when people are jerks) laughed at. I do okay with learning new things, but being the subject of mockery…?

Not my favorite.

I have a dear friend who immigrated to the USA from Colombia in her 20s. She has an excellent command of English, but no matter how well someone learns a language, there will always be little oddities to trip them up. While that sort of thing makes me want to sink through the floor, my friend navigates those moments like a champ.

She called me one day several years back, sounding both confused and concerned. At the time, she was employed performing audits for companies that wanted to be more energy-efficient. She’d just gotten a report back from a crew that had completed their work assignment, based on her assessment.

“Mija,” she said, “what do you call those big coolers in restaurants? Like, those giant refrigerators where they keep all the food?”

“A walk-in refrigerator?” I replied.

“Spell that,” she said. I did. There was a brief pause, and then peals and peals of laughter. When she was finally able to catch her breath, she explained what had happened.

During her audit of the restaurant, the manager showed her the walk-in refrigerator, but what she heard him say was “walking refrigerator,” so that’s what she wrote in her assessment of the restaurant’s needed upgrades. When she received the work crew’s report, it said this:

Completed all identified upgrades. We couldn’t find the walking refrigerator, though. It must have wandered off.

In truth, I’d love to know enough Portuguese to make a 1-letter mistake like my friend’s, but I’m lightyears away from that level of sophistication. I’ve got “Slower, please!” and “I don’t understand” pretty well dialed-in, which should be helpful, but I should probably add a few more key phrases, like: “I’m learning – take pity on me,” “Let’s just try to talk with our hands,” and, “Does anyone around here speak English?”

My husband and I agreed to practice Portuguese during dinner. Our learning is being guided by two different apps, both of which seem to lack practicality when it comes to basic communication, so our dinner conversations (translated into English for your convenience) tend to sound like this:

Me: “The chicken at this restaurant is delicious.” (Particularly apt since we’re both vegetarians)

JR: “How great! Does the chicken like to dance?”

Me: “The chicken is tired, but I dance quickly at the bus stop.”

JR: “That bus over there is blue. It is not green.”

Me: “Okay, thank you! Check, please.”

See how prepared we are? Once we’ve learned “walking refrigerator,” I think we’ll be good to go.

Who Asked You, Jason?

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 2 Comments

Last year, we visited Ambergris Caye in Belize. Our little condo on the beach had a guestbook, and as soon as we settled in, I started perusing previous visitors’ comments. Several folks offered helpful dos and don’ts, local info, and lots of praise for the hosts. And then I reached this entry:

Leave this place immediately. This isn’t the true Belize. Get out of your comfort zone, people. If you want to be in a place that’s exactly like America, just stay there. – Jason

After my head exploded a bit, I took several deep breaths, then performed a dramatic reenactment of Jason’s commentary for my husband and friends. Everyone agreed that Jason sucked and should fall into a sinkhole. Since no one had written on the other side of page, I tore his entry out of the guestbook and folded it into an airplane, and we all took turns throwing it into the ceiling fan until it was obliterated.

Since that experience, I refer to a specific category of people as “Jasons.” A Jason is much like a Karen, with one important difference. While Karen wants to speak to your manager, Jason thinks he is your manager.

We’ve all met Jason, right? He’s that super fun guy who offers a veritable treasure trove of smug, unsolicited advice, leaving you wondering how you’ve managed to survive without him. And really, how have you? You had no idea what a shit job you were doing at life until Jason popped on the scene to save you from your ineptitude.

I recently met a Jason at a gas station. This Jason informed me that, if I didn’t place my palm on the outside of the car to ground myself between inserting the nozzle and touching my door handle, I would blow up. He imparted this gem of wisdom with pronounced gravity and sternness, as if I had just put myself and everyone in the vicinity in grave danger by skipping his tried and true grounding technique.

True story. I’m telling you, Jasons abound, spewing their guidance hither and yon while remaining entirely oblivious to the prickly social cues of their victims.

By the way, here’s how we felt about Ambergris Caye:

Take that, Jason.