The Great Mid-West Roadtrip

First, the very bad news: John has been diagnosed with cancer at the base of his tongue. We're in for a few nasty months of unpleasant treatments. Fortunately, it was caught early and prognosis is good. Positive thinking makes a big difference in this battle, so I'm going to start by posting happy pictures of our summer.

This post is not about exotic adventures overseas. It is all about life back in the states.

The girls and I returned to the states for a few months over the summer to avoid the intense summer heat of Abu Dhabi and to see family and friends. However, our house in Oak Park is rented out and we had no single place we could make our home base. Instead we arranged for condo sublets in Chicago and lots of visits with extended family throughout the Midwest. We became what I like to call the Mooching Bedouins. We saw every single member of both sides of the family and put thousands of miles on our rental car.

A visit to Chicago isn't complete without a trip to Millenium Park. Cloud 9, aka "The Bean", is always a favorite. It turns out that Hannah's wonderful Abu Dhabi art teacher, Anna Goeble, was the lead assistant in the leg sculpture titled "Agora" at the south end of Grant park.

Unintentional artsy photo of the Tribune Tower.

We visited my parents in Champaign, Illinois. A trip to Arthur, the nearby Amish community, somehow inspired a little house on the prairie look back home.

One of the highlights of the summer was a family reunion in Frankfort, Michigan. This was the week that John took time off from his job in Abu Dhabi to visit us in the states.

Lots of cousins and friends enjoyed several days of leisure on Lake Michigan.

Cousin Barbara and her husband Rob organized a big party at Rob's family cottage on Crystal Lake.

Tubing on Crystal Lake. Cousin Edward and his son.

Cousin Kenny organized an outing aboard a fishing boat on Lake Michigan

We visited Trick Dog, a popular local artsy cafe. My sister's sleeping Cabbage Patch twins were there, along with my brother Mark and his wife Irene.

Jumping off of the pier proved to be a popular activity.

Biking and brothers, Howard, and Bob

Sister-in-law Renata, brother Steve, me, their daughter Celeste

Our good friend Brad and more family shots

Memorable family portraits.

                       

Some beautiful sunsets lead to a few pensive moments on the beach and pier.

I'm afraid there was a serious gap in photo taking the following week. We had a whirlwind high school reunion visit back to Champaign and Kenny's son Kirk got married in Louisville, Kentucky (a very nice event). We also spent quality time with John's parents in Frankfort, Kentucky (not to be confused with Frankfort, Michigan). I swear I took more pictures, but all I can track down is a photo of a horse:

But this is not just any horse. This is Funny Cide, a Kentucky Derby winner. We met him at the Kentucky Horse Park outside of Lexington.

After Frankfort, we visited John's brother Wid and his family in Santa Claus, Indiana. The local pool offered hours of fun. We finally got a chance to visit Holiday World, one of the oldest amusement parks in the states. Every single person in our family forgot to bring a camera, but it was a blast.

We moved on to St. Louis to visit John's sister Lois and her family.

Citygarden downtown has lots of interactive sculptures.

Forest Park, bigger than New York's Central Park, gave us several days' worth of activities. Here's a portrait of the cousins in front of a favorite waterfall.

Lots of animals at the St. Louis Zoo, one of the best in the world.

John's sister Lois and her husband Michael. He has an unusual hobby collecting and restoring antique firetrucks.

Some absolute strangers pointed out the fact that both of our T-shirts matched the Monet at the St. Louis Art Museum perfectly, so they took our picture.

John's sister Beth and her family happened to be visiting St. Louis too. Their oldest daughter was moving in to a new apartment to start a two year contract with Teach For America. More photo ops in front of her unique in-wall water fountain that the landlord had just installed in the dining room.

Then we headed to Columbia, Missouri to visit my brother Mark. His wife Irene was visiting her sister in Venezuela.

A visit to a local winery overlooking the Missouri River.

A lush state park just outside of Columbia with a lengthy cave system and wildlife.

Back in Chicago, we got a chance to catch up with friends.

   

 

Much of our time in Chicago at the beginning and end of the summer was spent with my sister and her recently expanded family. Hannah and Mackenzie learned that changing diapers, feeding, bathing, and changing clothes is a lot of work, but we all had lots of fun helping out and hanging out.

Wadi Madbah, Part II

We have been in the states since mid-June and I have lots of photos to post about that as soon as I can. But first, one more story from our overseas adventures:

As promised, a few weeks after our first visit to Wadi Madbah, we returned with a few of Hannah's friends to celebrate her birthday. We left for Oman on Friday the Thirteenth of June. While John was driving us there I read an article in The National (an Abu Dhabi newspaper) about superstitions. Apparently one local superstition is it's a bad omen to accidentally kill a bird. This was a little disconcerting as we had just killed a bird that flew into the front of car a few minutes before. But we're not superstitious and, aside for feeling sorry for the bird, we laughed it off. Perhaps we should have worried.

The trip began much like the first: a few hours of driving, a quick passport check at the border, and a few rough kilometers on a very rocky road.

Goats still do roam on the road to the wadi.

We picnicked at a small not so shady orchard at the top of the plateau near the wadis. There was a group of perhaps a dozen Omani nationals picnicking nearby, all guys.

Always full of energy, even in the heat, the girls climbed both a nearby bluff and a tree. After lunch, we drove just a few minutes to the top of the trail. After a ten minute hike down, we were at the wadi.

More jumping at our favorite wadi.

We were completely surrounded by rugged cliffs.

The narrow canyon.

It turns out that the wadi is full of little fish that like to nibble at your toes. This helps to clean off dead skin and is in fact an expensive service at fancy salons. We got it for free.

Here's where the bad omen strikes. We drove back to Al Ain, an oasis town just over the border in the UAE. We had decided to spend the night at the Mercure Hotel in Al Ain instead of driving all the way back to the city of Abu Dhabi. The hotel is located on top of Jebel Hafeet, a dramatic lone mountain that stands 1,240 Meters tall. The road up has many hairpin turns. John tried to honk the horn at a rather inattentive driver on the way up, but the horn did not work. This is not something you want to find out on such a steep road. But we made it to the hotel safely. Once we checked in, a bellboy helped us with our luggage. When we arrived at our rooms, John reached for his wallet and discovered that the cash he had just pulled out of an ATM the day before was gone. 1000 Arabian Emirate Dirham, about $300. Since the guys near the wadi were the only people we had seen that day, it didn't take long to figure out what happened: while we were at the wadi, someone must have taken the money hidden in the armrest console from our locked car. They probably unhooked our horn (through the car's front grill) so the alarm wouldn't go off when they jimmied our door lock. At least they didn't take the credit cards, the i-pod players, or the loose dvd player in the back. Just the cash. For that we are thankful. Somehow I'm glad that it didn't happen in the UAE. Crime is in fact very low in the UAE because most Emirati are well to do, punishments are severe, and Ex-Pats would just be deported after serving time in jail. Oman is less wealthy and apparently this type of theft is fairly common in the area. We were upset for about an hour, but then we moved on, not wanting to put a damper on an otherwise fun weekend. I guess the moral is don't leave valuables in your car no matter where you are, especially if it's on a Friday the Thirteenth and you've just accidentally killed a bird.

Back at the hotel, the girls jumping in the pool.

The view from the pool at the top of the mountain.

Miles and miles of desert.

The next day we went to the Green Mubazzarah in Al Ain, the only source of fresh water in the Abu Dhabi emirate, with natural springs used for both swimming and drinking. The girls took lots of pictures of the resident cats.

A view of the valley surrounding the springs.

The girls at Green Mubazzarah. So we lost a little cash, but the weekend was still lots of fun!

Day Trip to Oman

We were invited by friends of ours to join them for a day trip to Wadi Madbah, just a few hours away in neighboring Oman. We knew it would be hot, but jumping into cool swimming holes fed by a mountain stream was way too tempting to turn down, so off we went.

Hannah took this nice photo of beautiful flowers against the rugged mountains of Oman.

After about 5 kilometers of driving on a very rocky road, we reached the start of a short hike to the wadis.


Goats do roam, on the way to the wadi.


The lower wadi was small, but deep enough to jump into.


More jumping...


Our friend Tim, jumping in.

There was another wadi a few minutes up the trail. This one was just deep enough for wading, but we saw lots of fish and a nice row of frogs keeping cool in the shade. A small water fall fed the wadi, but the cliff surrounding the fall was too steep to climb, so we turned around and headed back to the cars.

At the last minute we decided to drive around the cliffs to check out the upper wadi. This was the best wadi yet. The pool was bigger and deeper and had lots of options for jumping. The canyon got so narrow at the far end that there was only room for swimming. If you stretched your arms out, you could touch both walls of the canyon.

We jumped from higher and higher cliffs.

The view from the plateau at the top of the cliff.

We picnicked nearby, at a place called Wonder Wall.

Wonder Wall is known for rock climbing. We didn't have ropes, but some of our group still had the energy, even in the heat, to hike up to some shallow caves.

The view from the caves.

A cool striated mountain next to Wonder Wall.

Hannah had so much fun at the wadi that she wanted to go back again, with a few friends, to celebrate an early birthday party. And so we did. Just this past weekend. More on that later.

Aston Martin Driving Experience

"Keep your foot on the brake an push that button." The V8 erupted to life with a loud brap and settled into a cackling, sputtering, uneasy idle. I was strapped in a GT4 spec Aston Martin V8 Vantage getting ready to take off on the first of two ten minute lapping sessions at Yas Marina Circuit with a driving instructor strapped in next to me. The first three cars left the pit lane and then I was next waiting for the marshal to give me the go ahead. Heart rate up, palms a bit sweaty and throat dry...I got the go and took off.  The sound of the car was intoxicating.

The car is a race ready Aston Martin with a stripped out interior, full roll cage and race suspension. It is noisy, cramped, unfamiliar and wonderful. This night has been about two months in the making and the anticipation had reached a fevered pitch by the time we showed up at the track. There was a session in progress when we arrived and we got to watch and listen from the lounge on the second floor which only served to heighten the already intense anticipation. We attended a briefing and then it was down to the pit lane to wait for the beginning of our session.

There were five cars total and by the time I left the pits, the first car was already running at full song down the long straight. There was a series of tight turns and then the very long straight where I buried the throttle and ran up through the gears - immense sound, tach racing through the rev range and violent upshifts. The stands blurring by on either side and the pools of light increasing their cadence across the car as we accelerate all the way to the braking zone. 

I ran a bit cautious to get a feel for the track and the car but consistently shortened my braking zones and upped my cornering speed as we progressed. In the end we were going way faster than I thought they would allow...we were hauling ass for someone (me) who could not afford to buy a crashed Aston Martin. We stayed on the track and I had a very memorable experience - one that I will repeat in the near future.

Before we got strapped in.

The beginning of the long straight.

Coming down a fast sweeper to a 90 degree left hander - hard braking and banging downshifts.

The car is raised on integral jacks. I can't remember if they changed the tires as my instructor was giving me lots of pointers.

Yes....I was fired up when it was all over.

Still getting pointers when it was all done.

A great evening and an awesome experience.
I'll still take a ZR-1.