Getting There From Here

As I write this today, I'm on a train on my way to NYC with my husband and my youngest kiddo to see a Broadway play. A couple of firsts for me in there--going to NYC, seeing a Broadway play, and being on a train in the United States (I've been on one in Spain and England). 

I won't post this until I'm back home, of course, because I know better than to tell the Internet that I'm not at my house :-)

When I was young, I had HUGE wanderlust. I mean, I still do, but I'm also a pragmatist, and I picked up a really expensive hobby along the way (children), so it's been a while since I took a trip that wasn't with the grandparents or to visit family. When I was younger, I'd go almost anywhere if I could afford the gas or get someone else to chip in for. So many road trips! 

I took a fair number of road trips when my husband and I were dating, too, because we had a distance relationship and found it fun to choose locations halfway between his grad school and my then-home so that we could explore new places together while falling more deeply in love. 

But after we married and had a second child, we had to let a lot of that kind of thing go--not enough hours in the day or dollars in the bank. Kids, like I said, are an expensive hobby, especially if you want to spoil them like we do. 

So, it's REALLT nice to be traveling again, even if I have to keep a mask on the whole time. Traveling by train is enjoyable (so far…ask again in 6 hours). I have a table and wifi, and it's okay that I didn't pack all that compactly because there's a little room to sprawl. 

Across my life, I've taken a lot of modes of transport. And it's interesting how the method of transportation affects a journey. 

Day to day to I mostly travel in the little bubble of my own car, which allows me to treat it like a little house on wheels, loading it up with all the things that bring me small comfort, like a bottle of water, a plastic box full of tictacs, charging cables for all my devices, and tethers to keep my dogs from crawling over me while I drive. 

I have my first-ever brand new car now, and it seems very posh to me--with technology that all functions and some fancy stuff like heated seats and a back up camera. 

When I travel in my car, I'm in complete charge of the trip (well, except for things like highway traffic speed or delays). I choose the route, the departure time, the stops, what plays on the audio system, and what's allowed in the vehicle with me. What luxury!

We also have a decent public bus system in our area which I've used from time to time when my independence of movement felt less important or I didn't want to have to deal with parking when I arrived at my destination or I knew I could travel light (not much to carry). 

You never know who is getting on the bus with you…and cleanliness really varies from system to system. But the ride is short, so even if it's less than stellar, it's okay. 

I've only done the cross-country bus a couple of times, generally a charter bus full of kids traveling together--going to Disney with the band when I was a teenager, being a field-trip Mom for my kiddo on a class trip to Washington, DC, that sort of thing. Charter busses offer a little more room and luxuries like tables, and on-bus bathroom access, so they can feel fancy compared to a public bus or a school bus. I've yet to do the Greyhound experience so far. 

I've also flown in planes of various size, from a four-seater bush plane in Alaska to a grand trans-Atlantic monstrosity, though I was eighteen before I ever rode in one. My years in Alaska meant that I flew quite a bit, since I tended to keep living in places that weren't accessible by road. 

Smaller planes are noisier, but more comfortable in some ways. They tend to be cleaner, actually, maybe

because they're owned by individuals who care instead of being maintained by corporations who try to do the least they can to maximize profits. 

Once I rode in a helicopter, too, and I hated that. I guess I don't have much of a future as a rescue pilot. Noisy and airsickness inducing, at least for me.

Trains, on the other hand, are like busses in that you don't know who you're going to have to share space with and that cleanliness can really vary, but it can be lovely to just sit back and let someone else worry about getting you there.

Looking out the windows at trees turned into streams of green by speed until it feels like you're hurtling through an impressionist painting. Fields, houses, and city blocks go by in a blink. It reminds me of being little and riding in the back of the car, just staring out the windows while my parents drove me to Grandma's house. 

Traveling by train in Spain scared me a bit, but then I was young--20 or so--and my Spanish wasn't that great, and people kept scaring me about all the bad things that could happen to a young woman traveling alone. My fear probably wasn't really about the train. 

In England, when I was 30 and finishing grad school, I LOVED traveling by train. A nice lady came around and brought me tea and sold me snacks and I could do my work while we traveled, and my mum went with to be my Granny-Nanny for my elder kiddo. 

The train I'm currently on is a lot like that, except I'll have to walk over the café car if I want any food or snacks. 

I have yet to travel on a train that looks or feels like the Hogwarts Express or the Orient Express, but that's probably for the best. I'm not ready for candy frogs that hop away from me while I try to eat them, or dead people in the car behind mine. 

Exciting transportation is fine for books and movies, but I'll keep my real-life travel a little on the safe and boring side, please. 

Do subways count as trains? That's going to be another first for me on this journey: a NYC subway ride. I've only done The Underground or The Tube and the The Metro, both of which were lovely and convenient, if a little nerve-wracking the first time.

I haven't had the opportunity to travel by boat much. Some few-hour excursions when I was at the beach, a few ferries (including the 12 hour long ferry ride from mainland Alaska to Kodiak). 

I don't think I'm much interested in taking a cruise on one of those giant floating hotels, but I'd love the chance to move among islands in a sailboat or something like that. 

When I have been out on the sea, I find it impossible to feel sad--the wind in my face seems to blow all my worries out my ears, and the miles and miles and miles of open water is soothing. Not to mention the likelihood of seeing something cool a landlubber like me doesn't usually get to see like a whale or a pelican. 

We used to go river canoeing or kayaking for my dad's birthday each year when I was an older kid/teenager, and I loved that. 

The combination of slow and fast, meandering miles of water with sudden exciting bits where you had to work to keep your little stick of a boat going the direction you wanted. It made me feel strong and capable like I'd really DONE something when I got to where I was going, even if there was a guide in the other boat prepared to pull me out of the water if I did something foolish. 

So, what do you like? Planes, trains, or automobiles? Boats? Public commuter transport or individual arrangements? I'd love to hear about your travel/transportation experiences in the comments!

C is for Carolina Theatre: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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C is for Carolina Theatre

The Carolina Theatre is a lovely old dame in downtown Durham, North Carolina. We discovered her some time shortly after moving to this area and are now regulars for many of their events.

We spend the most time enjoying their Friday night retro film series, which plays both classics and cult classics and everything in between. It's a favorite date night for the husband and me, and sometimes we take the kids, too, especially when we feel their pop culture education is at stake! Recently played films I've enjoyed include: The Princess Bride, Bladerunner, Cowboy Bebop, The Secret of NIMH, The Evil Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Gaslight.

The theater itself is beautiful, designed in the 1920s in the Beaux Arts style. There are several different performance spaces inside, for movies or stage events. Besides the retro series, we've enjoyed multicultural performances like Japanese drumming, musical performances by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Madeline Peyroux, and presentations of various sorts.

Between the events, the lovely people who run the place, the gorgeous venue, and the yummy snacks, the Carolina Theatre is definitely my kind of place.

Going to the Theater

I love tickets, especially tickets to the theater.

And 2016 has been a great year for going to the theater so far.

There's something about a live performance, even a bad one, that resonates with me. Sure, I love the movies, but LIVE, in person is a one-time thing. No one on any other day will ever see exactly the show that I just saw, even if the same cast is in the same venue. It's like the moment when a dolphin leaps out of the sea. You only see it if you are there. No pause, no rewind.

My first show of 2016 was Ragtime by NC Theatre at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. Groupon was selling inexpensive tickets on a day when I had a few dollars, so I snatched some up and dragged my husband off with me.

We were seated so close we could watch the actors sweat under the lights. It's really a rather awkward show, using a mechanic where the actors stop and soliloquize in third person about themselves to the audience. Oddly for a musical, there were no "catchy" songs. Though performances were solid and even, at times, stunning, there was no song I walked away remembering.

Our conversation over dinner afterwards though was about striking moments, and our curiosity about which elements were true to history and which were fictional. I admired the difficulty of the writing task to present such a story. My husband admired some of the staging decisions to highlight the contrasts between the different social groups represented. We talked about how the play might have accomplished the narration it needed less awkwardly. So, even a play I don't love brings me joy in the talking about it afterwards.

The second trip to the theater was Matilda at DPAC. We bought the youngest Bryant tickets as a holiday gift. She already loved the book. It's always exciting to see these local versions of the Broadway show, even if it makes me a little sad to imagine all these actors working so hard to recreate a performance first created by someone else instead of getting to make a character their own. But still, we loved the clever staging and several of the songs. I got the double-joy of discussing it with my daughter afterwards, talking about what changes they made from the book and whether those were effective or not. She might be my kid :-)



Not too long afterwards, I got a Shakespeare date! (Those tickets were my holiday gift from the hubby). We saw an experimental production of Twelfth Night by Filter Theatre at Reynolds Industries Theater. In a lot of ways, the show was fun, with audience interactive elements and improvisation. In other ways, it was tedious (like when a game they played with balls went on far too long) or just plain confusing (when they had one woman play both twins, making the identity mix-up more puzzling than amazing or comical). Because my husband and I are Shakespeare geeks, we've seen this play more than once together, so we got to talk about how this production compared to other ones we've seen on stage and screen, recounting favorite moments and how different actors and actresses interpreted the roles.

Then, a few days later we got to go the Carolina, one of my favorite venues. This time it was a family date, though the elder daughter had to back out at the last minute due to homework overload. Tao: Seventeen Samurai is a diverse and exciting show intermixing Taiko drumming with choreography, stagecraft, and creative costuming. At one point or another, each of us gasped with delight from the sheer spectacle and impressive feats of the performers.


The conversation in the car on the way home was all "did you see it when" recounting and our cheeks hurt from smiling.

So, three shows in three months, way above average for what my pocketbook will usually allow. The eldest got some theater as well, seeing The Cabaret talent show her school put on and a high school production of Beauty and the Beast in which a friend played Belle.

Each show is a treasure in its own right, a moment in time, shared with those you brought with you and those who just also showed up. Someday, when I'm fabulously wealthy, I'll go to every show in my area. It's wonderful living in the twenty-first century, a time when performers from all around the world can come to my corner of the planet and let me watch them work. Lucky, lucky girl!