Homeward bound: Sadness and Joy
Well, Friday the 13th came on Monday this month. We packed over the previous 2 days and were ready to roll for Palermo. Actually, Cinisi, which is only 10 -15 minutes from the aeroporto for Palermo. Before leaving we finally took a picture of Toto and Pascale, our friends that own Verdetecnica with Bozo I. As I related in an earlier blog the poor Bozo has sprung a leak around his inflation valve. We Amazon'd a couple new ones before Christmas and had Rae bring one with her. We left Bozo II in his bag and ran with #I, filling him up every time we wanted to use him in a shot. It was strange. Sometimes he deflated fairly quickly, while other times, like our tour at Fuedo Arancio he held air. We're going to retire Bozo I before we leave for Spring Training.
This post's title is derived from the Sadness of having to leave after only 90 days. We could not get an extended visa simply for touring. It's as if it doesn't matter that being retired and not wanting to take someone's job is an issue. Nor that my retirement income is 3-4 times the average income for Italians. It just isn't considered. We will miss the new experiences, the new people we met, Sicilians and American, over our 3 months. Sergio and Linda in Sciacca. Nino and his son Thomas in Cinisi. Karen in Sciacca but actually from Havre, MT. We will miss our friends we've come to know and spent time with, Franco, Paola, Pietro and their family in Calabria, Katherine and Toto in Bolognetta, and of course, Pascale and Toto in Sciacca. We will miss the fresh fish, fruit and vegetables you get due to the long growing seasons and small family restaurants we found where the service and food and owners were tops.
We made new friends in more than one place. We visited 4 major vintners and toured 3 of them. In two of them we ended up connecting with the winery's reps much like we have done with some of our favorite Yakima and Columbia valley vintners. We also ended up with a new restaurant owner/chef as a friend to look for when we return. He gets added to the ones we already have in Seattle.
We will miss seeing the weather get warmer and drier. They had the coldest and wettest few months while we were there that they have had in decades. Toto was claiming that the rain followed my cell signals from Seattle. It was just starting to change. The forecast was for more sunny days than the 50/50 we had been living with. We were fortunate that while Rachel was there the sun was out and that it didn't rain, or snow, while in the freezing and near freezing temperatures in Marzi, Venice and Florence.
We missed getting to Morocco or Malta. Morocco for my experience since Cathy has been there and simply wanted to go back with me to enjoy it again. Malta for seeing friends made when we were there for Rachel's graduation in 2013. I would have loved sitting with Mark, Rachel's cohort-mate who had been Malta's ambassador to the US, and discussing the current political situation in our countries and the Mediterranean area.
The Joy comes from having central heat, ample hot water, clothes dryer, real supermarkets and better roads. Electricity is expensive, exceedingly expensive. Our host said that it costs about 7000 euros a year for their apartments. It's also really limited. You can only use 5800 kw in your home. If you use more than that the main breaker pops. You aren't allowed to use central heat till mid-December. This is in Sicily, I'm not sure about up north. The local authorities make it real difficult to do anything to improve the situation. Toto has been working for 15 months to get permits to install solar panels on a lot on his property. He plans to generate about 17000 kw from the project. The local electricity "cartel", government and provider, apparently don't want people being able to take themselves off the grid. The electrical utilities see it as a loss of revenue and the government sees a loss of taxes from the power sales. Neither seem to be able to understand or care that the excess power can generate economic growth.
In the same vein, it is impossible to get a permit for a personal wind power generator unless you are someone's friend. There's a personal unit on the mountain near Toto & a Pascales' place. It's huge and looks like an eggbeater with only 3 blades. Toto claims that locals say it cost 300,000 euros. It sits above the cemetery and can be seen for miles from the west of town. It is almost as dominant a landmark as the basilica of San Caologero on top of the mountain and it's damn ugly and inefficient to boot. Personal windmills, small versions of the standard utility sized ones, can be seen on some farms but they cost 80,000 euros, if you can get a permit. There's almost always wind on that coast. Using some of the relatively inexpensive helicoil style wind generators for personal homes would be ideal in areas outside of the central city but there is no way in hell you'd get permission. Again, opportunities are lost due to inefficiency and indifference.
Oh well, enough of the bad parts of Sicilian life. It's best to focus on the people, culture and cuisines.
We had an uneventful series of flights from Palermo to Rome to New York to Seattle. It was a 29 hour trip. That's a killer. We got home about midnight on St. Valentine's day and got to bed after showers about 1 AM on the 15th. I slept till 11 while Cathy's circadian rhythm got her up about 7:30. Needless to say we both phased out about 9 that night.
On the way into JFK I was able to get some photos of Long Island as we came in from the East. It looks pretty good covered with snow. At least it wasn't snowing when we were there. We had 6 hours to kill before our flight to Seattle left, and it was a 5 1/2 hour flight. Thankfully the pilot kicked it into high and we got into Sea-Tac a half-hour early. We caught a Shuttle Express home, and at that time of night the only "van" available was an SUV. It's nice to get that level of service when you're dog tired.
Our first day back was spent refilling the fridge. We had emptied it before leaving to avoid having multiple science experiments when we got home. It ain't cheap when the cold hole is empty. We haven't spent that kind of money since we put together a full family holiday dinner.
We've got 3 weeks and then we're off again. AZ via Pendleton, Twin Falls and Las Vegas. We'll be stopping in the Yakima Valley for some wine to take with us. It'll probably be a case overall. 1/2 from Cultura and 1/2 from Sleeping Dog, a couple we subscribe to and near the interstate.
The bitch drive is the one from Twin Falls to Vegas. It's 7 1/2 hours via the Great Basin Highway. There's 2 routes. One in the mountains and the other via the valley. It's winter, so its the valley. Maybe 2 towns with motels that you would sleep in and nothing but jack rabbits along the road. I don't even recall seeing cattle on our trip last spring. At least this time we have a good motel/hotel on the west side that we'll target for the night in Las Vegas. There's a good sushi restaurant, Ohjah Japanese Steakhouse, within a mile of the Courtyard in Summerlin. We stayed and ate there on the way back from Phoenix on our Burning Bridges tour.
My laptop is in the repair shop. It's been a bit hinky lately. When it does a software update that requires an auto restart the thing locks and I had to cold boot it. Yesterday when I went to save this post it locked up. I couldn't get it to restart and I got error messages about restoring the damn system. I'm finishing this on my iPad. If it's a hardware problem it can be up to 6 weeks for repair and return. That means there's a better than 50/50 chance that it won't be back for our AZ trip. I just hope they can save all the photos. I haven't deleted any from the camera's card from this trip but I could loose some from last fall's trip down the coast. I believe I saved all the Burning Bridges photos on our desktop external drive. Either way, if it's not back it's iPad app time for Spring Training which means no photos. Sorry.
Ciao for now.