The line for the ferry was like nothing I have ever seen there...

…crazy numbers of Giants fans on 101 from Sebastopol to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal….they finally tossed the schedule and ran boats non-stop for free! Thanks ferry people…

Anyhow, this is not the kind of pitch where he is nearly perfect (not even close actually), but still…

Even so, there are the positives: reconnecting with long-lost friends, funny shared information, that 16 square feet of saved rain forest, lurking in the shadows of the lives of others, making contact with minimal effort, sharing my backyard gopher and weeding victories, drinking binges that don’t ruin my life, the potential for the Lance Armstrong alert at any time, my public declaration of love for my hair salon, Hawaii, Billy Bragg, the Taj Mahal, and tree bark. Can I really give all that up?

Perhaps now that the learning curve has plateaued, the novelty worn off, I can use the thing responsibly. Strictly for bombarding Jennifer with those creepy lil’ green people and 80’s music videos, cyber-stalking, and approving the efforts of the most adept quippers with a hearty thumbs up. We’ll see. For now, I feel a lot safer here in my one-way conversation where I am the queen, I am a tad selective about content and you are much more grateful for my verbiage of 140 characters or even more. I feel better already.

Anyway, I wanted to post a quick one here to give Jenni and whoever else wants it, the grand opportunity to find out if that RSS feed thingy (red symbol in the corner to your right, at the top of glorious blog) works. So, Jen, hopefully you got an email telling you it’s your lucky day and butterflymilk.com has spoken again at long last.

And one other new, exciting development: I have successfully put in a video for your viewing pleasure. The nerd factor continues to elevate. So here is dramatic footage of my backyard right about now. Please to enjoy!:

Plus, I did manage to get a reasonably identifiable shot of this guy:

Actually, I think it’s losing focus the more I mess with it, but I swear, it’s Lance. I need to do something about these blurry pics.  First the elusive Bengal Tiger, and now the elusive Lance Armstrong. Maybe I just  need to calm the hell down.   

We believe we had a brush with his greatness while we were waiting in the car out of the rain before the race began. A large, shiney, black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows was lost, looking for the race start.  A team car, asking for directions, which sadly we  did not know. The  stressed out looking guy asking, informed us that he was driving Team Astana (team of Lance, Levi, and many of the race and my favs). So, we concluded that it’s only right that I should get a semi-decent shot of the guy who didn’t roll down the window to say hello to his suffering frozen fans. Another Lance near-miss–oh the tragedy of it all.  It’s probably just as well though, because I never envisioned our first encounter involving me looking like Cartman from South Park, and wearing yellow rubber Gorton’s fisherman rain pants. 

Anyway, getting up at 3 AM to make it to SF in time for this few glorious seconds really takes it out of a person. As I mentioned to my accomplice earlier, cycling really asks a lot of its fans. It’s not like baseball or football, which asks that you sit in an armchair, eat nachos, drink beer and enjoy  (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Cycling, in my limited experience, asks that you show up to remote places, without facilities, very far in advance, pack a lunch, and wait for a long, long time, in this case, in the bitter freezing rain, wind and cold, until, at last, they arrive and give you in return, about ten seconds of heart-pounding thrill.  Yet somehow, it seems more than fair. It helps that there are other crazy-ass people present who understand why you would do such a thing. And exhausted as I am, I would do it again tomorrow.  But it’s still dumping rain in Sebastopol (good, we need it!), and the race is traveling farther south, so I think I’ll just watch tomorrow’s San Jose to Modesto stage from my puffy, purple, velvet chair in my nice, warm living room.

I wanted to post my historic photo o’ Lance on the GG Bridge right away…but now I must rest my sleep deprived brain and enjoy the sound of all that righteous rain hitting the skylight.

Lessons of the day: When you have to choose among: champagne, camera, or umbrella–ditch the umbrella. Two: they are faster than you think. 

Until tomorrow race fans.  Go Levi! Go Lance!

Arrived to Mumbai International aka Chhatrapati Shivaji International Aiport, with the now especially unfortunate code (BOM), and took a taxi through the vast surrounding slums of North Mumbai, on our way to the swankier neighborhood of Colaba to the Hotel Suba Palace. Once past the slums, Bombay is the city I can identify with most readily.  Bombay has rules in place and enforcement to go along with them which keeps the financial center and tourist spots much nicer than most.  The roads are paved, the drivers honk less, people beg less, public urination, spitting (and worse) are greatly diminished.  I sense the ghost of European colonialism in the familiar order of things, the older Victorian buildings and the city’s arrangement along the water’s edge. It’s in this area, on the bay’s edge in Colaba, where the recent terrorist attacks took place.  Clearly they chose the most western influenced spots to hit. Oberoi Hotel:

I am glad to be here because it feels more familiar, it’s cleaner, and I like the idea of coming to visit despite the vicious actions of stupid, ignorant, angry scum. I felt good about offering solidarity in some small way, just by showing up, and in doing so, also offering up a big FU to terrorists. The Indians refer to this day as 26/11 (in colonized-by-the Euro style, date comes before month) and it is very much their 9/11.

The Hotel Suba Palace where I’m staying is not quite a palace like the Hotel Taj Mahal; it’s quite puny actually, but we are only there for two days and its location is nearly perfect. We are near the waterfront where the boats will launch to go to our next destination, and also near the big fancy hotels and restaurants (where all that awfulness took place), and near the cooler tourist spots, which is fine with me.  I am on an adventure down-swing, and I welcome the idea of menus in English and paying for comfort, ease and beer. One of the most popular tourist hangouts in the Colaba area of Bombay is Cafe Leopold.  We went there twice. You can still see remnants of 26/11 there:

But life goes on.

My mission for Mumbai (or at least on of them): a tailor-made suit.  A suit you ask?  And your confusion is of course, entirely justified, but here’s my thinking:  While I may not have much need for a business suit at present, working from home and all, I can actually afford to have a skilled tailor make me a suit here, and it will fit. Plus it just seems so cool. It’s something I couldn’t likely afford at home, and when am I going to be in India again?  Who knows? I could have a meeting someday, or get an actual job that doesn’t allow pajamas in the work place, so I think it’s a wise and practical decision. I chose the tailor after much online research and because he is not listed in the Lonely Planet (again, if you’re heading to India and want the tailor’s name and address, email me and I’ll share. The suit came out really nice).

Chander, our point man in the tailor shop is very good, as is the ever silent Muslim tailor. I never realized picking out materials and styles for such a thing would be so difficult (I think it would have been good to have a well thought out plan and some photos. That way I could’ve shown Chander what I meant by more Sarah Palin, less Margaret Thatcher—next time), there are so many options. Oh the burdens of the wealthy, I had no idea.  

After the first fittings, and being oh-so-glamorous as I am, we went to the beach resort town of Murud for a few days while the clothes were being refined. I am a happy person when I swim.  Getting into the Indian Ocean was a necessity.

Bombay to Murud was a long journey by boat, bus, and taxi. The Murud area is more tropical and humid and lush than the other areas of India we visited, and I was happy to see this side of the country. I could tell that we had barely scratched the surface of the India still, and now I could see that places in the South resembled some of  my romantic India fantasies more closely. But I could also tell that if this is Southern India in winter, I would have a really hard time in the summer.  The weather must be unbearable for a sahib chick like me in the hot season. Even in winter it was 85 degrees and humid. And the locals must not have thought it was the least bit warm, nobody was on the beaches or swimming.

In fact, the whole three warm days the beach was all ours, except for an English couple from our resort.  Strange how empty the beach was, but I am not one to question a secluded, clean beach on a hot day in India. Sure, there were warning signs about rip currents and such, but Kahn, the resort manager, informed that those were meant for non-swimmers. I assured him I was a pro, and I didn’t let Tim’s warnings of some  razor-backed, toe-snapping, deadly Indian sea floor bastard mystery fish deter me either. It is hot. I see ocean. I get in.

The place we stayed was called the Prakruti Resort, just outside Murud on Kashid Beach. It’s a weekend getaway for Bombay people who can afford it.  Perfectly manicured grounds, really good swimming pool, nobody else swimming, nice big room, balcony overlooking pool.  I loved the place.

But as is the case with such all buffet, all the time, all-inclusive places, it was hard to escape. And I am not such a fan of the buffet. Too much food, already visited, picked over and rejected by strangers.  This is just not my thing. We got a car to take us into the town for dinner at a seafood restaurant.  The car costs about ten times as much as the dinner and the resort staff is baffled by our desire to leave the grounds and skip the included buffet. They keep asking us if we want something less spicy. What we do want is seafood, which they don’t seem to serve even though we are right on the beach, and there are fishermen all over the place. I have the feeling that seafood is poor man’s food here and the resort is catering to the yuppity Bombayites, so maybe they just skip it.  Who can say? (We say that a lot with our bad Indian accents as well; it is befitting of pretty much every confusing situation.)

Incidentally, they appear to be adding some sort of disco/conference center that seems out of place (I should talk), but still kind of cool:

No matter. I am swimming daily and getting sun, and not being pestered in any way, except by mosquitoes. I think warm weather and humidity bring them out, so if I’m going to get the malaria, it will be here. I don’t care. They can’t get me so long as I swim.

Three days of sun and swimming is very good for a Hawaiian Californian attempting India. I think we did a pretty good job of alternating cities with peaceful, chill places overall. It always seemed like the serenity came just in time. Locals seem to have a way of keeping mellow regardless.

These lovely ladies spent the entire day scrubbing the bricks in front of that new disco-y building at the Prakruti Resort. I don’t know if it’s the huge population in need of work that prevents them from seeking better tools, but I’d be bitching for a power washer at this point. 

Next time, from Murud back to Bombay, then home, via Dubai it turns out (have told Jet Airways to suck achar, and will come home on Emirates instead–I may have already told you about that since I’m skipping around some).

Further ramblings;

-So what do you think? Decent or expert?:

-I forgot the tacks for my friggin’ mosquito net. I have been eaten alive in the south. Remind me to take the malaria pills for two weeks after I get back.

-People carry stuff on their heads a lot. I think the weight pressing down on them eventually makes them bow-legged. 

-Chickoo juice is good.

-That clothes-pinned nose, high-pitched singing style that exemplifies every female Indian singer is fine in small doses, but now it’s starting to get to me. They could use an alto,  perhaps some Hindigo girls?

-It’s not a vacation– it’s a trip, a journey, an opportunity, a gift, and many lessons. Lesson number one: lucky me, lucky you.

Love & Phir milenge…