A Shore Dive Kinda Life

Risk Management, St. Elsewhere Style

2011-09-30T21:36:00.001-04:00

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

“Dogs! Reef! Roxie! C’mon!” we yell as the four of us tumble into the owner’s bedroom. Rick’s spotted a bee cloud racing across the fields toward the house, and we run for the closest room with glassed-in doors and screens. We sit in the dark, me peeking out from behind the blinds, as if letting them see us would pull the hive in our direction.

I try to remember the rule about wild animals and eye-contact; is it don’t look, so you don’t appear to be challenging their alpha-maleness? Or look, so they know you’re as tough as they are? Or is that only with orangutans, but not with bears? And is there a rule for bees?

Or cows? Like the other day, when I instinctively ducked my head, turned on my heel, and walked quickly away when a large brown cow charged the dogs – though not retreating so quickly as to signal fear, or to cause her (or him) to want to chase me. I knew the minute I spotted her (or him) that this was no ordinary, road-wandering cow like you see here every so often (that is, every time you leave the house, since a dozen cows, along with a small family of donkeys and a mangy flock of chickens have claimed our side yard as their own).

This was a cow (or bull) who clearly felt she (or he) owned the entire English Quarter, a windswept bluff of open fields backed by thorny acacia trees where we had taken the dogs for a walk, and where – apparently – cows like to hide.

As the dogs trotted out, happy to be among new smells and tastes, the cow (or bull – we never got quite the right angle on that) stepped out of a thicket. She was a good 15 feet away, so no worries, I thought. She’s just a cow. But this bovine fixed her gaze on Reef and Roxie - who, for their part, were skipping ahead, following their noses - and gave them a look that clearly said, “Stop. Frolicking. Now.”

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, because once I saw her move in our direction, I did my pirouette, dropped my gaze (or is that for moose? mountain lions? Think!), and headed back in Rick’s direction. I think I abandoned the dogs – I definitely didn’t invite them to follow me. I could hear the cow pick up steam, heavy hooves pounding across the grass. I thought of all those Western movies I’d seen as a kid, where the feisty dogs run like mercury on cattle round-ups, and I assumed instinct would kick in and they’d run that cow in circles, yipping and yapping like their forebears.

Reef and Roxie are, however, labradoodles, not border collies, and their instinct tells them to chase tennis balls and lie on your feet, looking elegant. Nipping at the heels of charging cattle is not in their DNA.

“Confused” is how Rick described their response to the cow attack. “They just seemed confused.”

Safe, after the attack

But they moved out smartly on the bee drill today. They knew who’d win that battle. And they looked darned good in retreat.

The B&B Trial...and Error

2011-09-29T12:02:00.001-04:00

The helpmate, working off his B&B chores

Many of us wonder what it would be like to run a B&B. To live in a Caribbean villa and welcome guests who pay good money to marvel over our (temporary) home, our fabulous breakfasts, our TripAdvisor-five-star hospitality.

We know B&Bs are a lot of work; any owner will tell you that, with a big, tired smile. But we figure they just don’t have a good system. With a good system in place, how hard could it be? A little shopping, a little cooking, a little bed-making.

Many of us think that becoming a fill-in B&B manager would be a great way to see the world, for free! If you just manage your time well – if you have a good system – you could whip up your gourmet breakfast in the morning, dash out to see the sights for a bit, then return to the inn to welcome your charming, punctual guests with a little wine and cheese before heading out for a fabulous dinner a deux with your spouse/helpmate. It’s a full life, but a satisfying one, we tell ourselves.

Many of us are delusional. Many of us learn about our dark side when an unregistered guest shows up at 6:30, with a suitcase and a demand for the room with the big, private patio (and the sleigh bed that takes twenty minutes to make up). In the morning, we are secretly gleeful when we realize we have somehow locked this guest into the house when we hurried out to take our husband to the dive shop.

Many of us are surprised at the depth of the passive-aggressive well of monosyllabic outrage we harbor when two guests, who are at least on the register, show up at 9:30 p.m., with nary an apology, but instead a story about working late and etc. when we know they were having dinner with our neighbor. (Small island.)

Many of us are shocked at the primordial ooze of resentment and creative guest punishments that flow from our suburban core: for arriving late in the evening – no small talk for you! For 7:00 a.m. breakfasts – imperfect scoops of honeydew in your fruit bowl! For asking for eggs – extra-brown toast! For using both hand towels in the bathroom – deceased palmetto under your bed!

Many of us secretly think that, given the chance, we’d cook like Martha Stewart, chat like Oprah, and all the while smile like Rachael Rae. Many of us are sadly mistaken.

Diving In (with American history)

2011-09-26T19:50:00.021-04:00

(Rick's view: Divemaster on St. Elsewhere)

I had no idea what to expect when I showed up at the dive shop for my first day of practical PADI divemaster training here on St. Elsewhere. Having been here before, I knew the shop and most of the dive sites. But before I actually got here, nobody could tell me what the new PADI curriculum would require.

The second thing my instructor, Mathias, did was to examine my online training report. The first thing? We went diving (of course). A group wanted to dive in a well-known dive site here on the island; it was a perfect chance for Mat to check me out. The sun was shining, air temperature in the mid-80s (Fahrenheit -- about 26-27C), the water was 80 degrees, and visibility underwater about 60 feet (18 meters). The bottom was white sand, and the spectacular caribbean creatures were all there, just as expected. We saw stingrays, jawfish, blennies, garden eels, and even several mantis shrimp. (The last is found worldwide but not usually seen in the Caribbean; I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen them myself.) The group was well-behaved and the dive, easy.

On day two we started with the "drudgery" -- the tests and demonstration of required skills. Mat, another divemaster candidate and I walked to the end of the pier and jumped into the 80-degree, blue water. The bottom is white sand, bordered by a shallow wall. If this weren't hurricane (rainy) season, the water would have been crystal clear. We swam down the wall, passed the cannon, and quickly found a flat piece of sand where we could practice our skills.

Wait a sec. Cannon? Yes, Virginia, St. Elsewhere has history. This tiny island so few Americans know was critical in supplying the then-revolutionary army during America's war of independence. True to their Dutch heritage, the first settlers here reclaimed land at the shore to make their port and warehouse district; the sea took it back sometime since then. There is so very much history here that new artifacts from the time of the American revolution turn up almost daily; rubble and cannons remain visible and unrecovered underwater. (To be clear: They are protected and must not be removed, but much is still on the bottom where casual divers and snorkelers can easily find it.)

The wall? It's not just a reef; underneath is a colonial stone wall. The cannon leans against it, pointing out toward the deeper sea -- I imagine just as intended when it was put here.

So here we sit -- underwater on the sandy bottom, practicing mundane diving skills; taking off our masks and buddy breathing. Just past the cannon, amid ruins of a port that was part of the American revolution.

How cool is that?

It's a Small World

2011-09-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

I grew up in the suburbs. The town was small enough for me and my friend Betty to ride our bikes past all the houses of Belair Junior High’s most interesting boys, but big enough that we could profess ignorance about the geography if we had been spotted. (You live here? Oh, we were just riding around and…got lost.)

Here on St. Elsewhere, with only about 3,000 people on an island that runs about 8 miles from head to toe, and 3 miles from side to side, there’s no hiding. One upside of island living is never losing your keys, because you just leave them in the car; the island’s dozen roads would make for the world’s shortest police chase.

And that’s the downside, too: You’re going to get caught. No matter what indiscretion you’ve perpetrated, someone has seen you do it, and they will tell.

Sonja from across the street has only been here a couple of weeks, so she’s still getting used to maneuvering the maze of one-way streets in the historic town center, where low stone walls regularly take their pound of paint from careless drivers and SUVs. Her first rental car incident was minor – she backed when she should have forwarded. She inspected the car, saw there was no damage, decided not to report it, and went on her way. A few days later, the stone walls took their toll on her bumper, so, like a responsible driver, she called Mrs. White – aka the rental car company – to ‘fess up about scrape.

Mrs. White appreciated the information, but asked her why she hadn’t called to report the first incident, too.

In St. Elsewhere, you can run, but you can’t hide.

Found fruit and hagelslag

2011-09-20T23:05:00.001-04:00

I knew that living on St. Elsewhere for a month would offer lots of my favorite kinds of fruit: found and ground. And the island has not disappointed.

We gather mangos from the lawn of the archaeologist and his wife down by the beach, avocados and breadfruit from the trees across the street (the property of a resort manager on a high-end neighboring island), and star fruit from within the confines of the walled yard of McDiver’s absentee neighbor (McDiver is an excellent climber).

McDiver’s own land provides soursop, and our acreage here at House on the Hill features papaya trees dripping with fruit, tiny guava, coconuts, and passion fruit (which, in case you didn’t know, grow on vines not trees). Our overgrown greenhouse also offers up the occasional pepper, and a few spring onions.

McDiver – the most intrepid of eaters and explorers – has also helped me to sample sea grapes, and he lived to tell the tale after snacking on what may or may not have been a lychee that he picked up off the road.

The mangos, in particular, ripen fast, so we eat them daily, and what we don’t finish we put into the blender as the base for our homemade mango ice cream. For a foodie like me, there are few things as satisfying as finding food still connected to its source, not to mention free.

But the real food find since I’ve been here is not the mango ice cream, or the homemade poppy seed bread I make every few days for the guests’ breakfast, or even the $11 plate of goat stew and peas ‘n rice we savored at the local bar/pool hall down by the airport. The happiest surprise was when our across-the-street Dutch neighbor, Sonja, explained hagelslag to me.

Hagelslag (or “sprinkles” as it’s known in the U.S.) has been a mystery since it showed up in our daily breakfast basket at a hotel in Curacao a couple of years ago. Was it meant as a sweetener for the tea? Or to roll up in the ham slices, to compliment the salty flavor? Or maybe just to eat by the spoonful for dessert? We had no idea.

At dinner the other night, Sonja rhapsodized over the glories of a little hagelslag melted onto a warm piece of toast. Ah, so that’s it. It goes on the bread! Sounded plausible, but I was dubious.

A couple of days later, Sonja tracked down a box and gifted it to me. I tried it out, and wow. It’s like Dunkin Donuts in a box, without a trip to the bakery. All you need is a piece of toast, a little butter, and a generous sprinkle of hagelslag.

So now mornings start with a little found fruit, followed by a little found hagelschlag.

The Expats

2011-09-18T13:22:00.000-04:00

Chloe the coroner and Beverly stopped by to see how I was getting along, and also to take a look at Wagner’s, the house across the street, which they’d heard might be coming available for rent. Chloe loves her little two bedroom rental near the beach, but the owner won’t let her spray for bugs, and earlier this week she was stung by a scorpion while grabbing some shorts out of a cupboard, plus she mentioned something about tarantulas. Mostly, though, there’s no pool, and she and Beverly, her friend from Canada who’s just quit her job to move here on a whim, would really love to have a pool. So now they’re weighing their options: pool (move to Wagner’s) vs. view (stay put).

Chloe pays $1,000 a month plus electric now, and the rent would go up to $1,300 at Wagner’s (not including electric), but she’d have Beverly’s help, and Wagner’s has a little one bedroom cottage – no kitchen, but a nice little deck - that she could sublet to a medical school student for $600 or $700 a month, she figures.

St. Elsewhere isn’t Chloe’s first Caribbean residence; she lived on Grand Cayman for years, and in Belize City, too, where she had a 24-hour police escort. I wasn’t connecting the dots on why a coroner would need a 24-hour police escort until she explained how the occasional body would show up riddled with bullet holes. Interested parties would prefer for the case to be labeled an accident, instead of a homicide. It was her job to apply the label.

I invited Chloe and Beverly to join us for a pina colada tonight; I'm guessing they may have a few stories to tell, and I’m taking notes.

House on the Hill

2011-09-17T11:36:00.000-04:00

View from my room

I’m on St. Elsewhere for a month, housesitting, dogsitting, and B&B sitting. The house is spectacular – a six-bedroom villa on several acres, with an open-air design that captures the hilltop breezes and the nonstop Caribbean view. It’s owned by Europeans who visit a few times a year, and managed by an American couple - the former owners of one of the local dive shops - who’ve been on the island for nearly two decades.
Our friends Gigi and McDiver introduced us to the island and the dive shop owners, and like everyone lucky enough to get an invitation to House on the Hill, we were immediately smitten.

On our last visit, I planted the idea of Rick and I as housesitters; and it’s worked out better than I could have imagined. Four weeks for me (three for Rick) to pretend like we own the joint, playing in the pool with Reef and Roxie, tooling around the island in our host’s rugged 4x4, raising a hand in greeting - just like the locals - to those we pass on the hair-raisingly narrow town streets and rutted mountain roads.

It’s not all free mangoes and pina coladas, though. This palace comes with a list of to-do’s as long as my arm. I am cook, baker, laundress, and housekeeper for the B&B guests; dog walker, bather and feeder; gardener, fish feeder, grocery shopper, pool monitor and cleaner, mail and paper collector. I had to draw the line at mowing and emergency preparedness, which is why McDiver joined me here for the week before Rick could break away from work. He’s the mechanic, the lawn jockey, the guy who steps out on ledges to pull down the malfunctioning hurricane shutters and frees jammed keys from locks.

This is 100% different from my life at home, where I spend 100% of my time sitting at my computer as my ass grows ever wider. This is constant slow motion in 90 degree temperatures, where there is always one more chore and where the internet is so slow that signing in to Facebook can take several minutes, or forever.

I wonder if anyone has ever correlated the body fat of Facebook users v. non-Facebook users? Could be interesting, but you'd probably have to take pina coladas out of the equation, and that's just not gonna happen here on St. Elsewhere.

Meet the Family

2011-09-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

This is Roxie. She’s a Labradoodle, and way too hairy for life on St. Elsewhere, but here she be. She’s lived here her whole life – about six years. I’ve known her since she was the diva of Dive St. Elsewhere, the scuba shop her owners operated for years. Back then, she’d collect pats and scratches from arriving divers as they assembled in the morning. By mid-afternoon, in the tropical heat, and worn out from the ebb and flow of strangers, she couldn’t be bothered to move her carcass out of the doorway.

These days, now that her owners have sold the shop, she passes the time snoozing at home. Her favorite spot is on the cold tile floor, snuggled in as close to my legs as she can get without becoming an actual extremity. I don’t know much about dogs, but I figure she may have separation anxiety, or she may just be a fickle love-puppy. In the morning, when she greets me at my bedroom door with her partner, Reef, she gives me a huge, scary smile, full of big teeth that she bangs into my hand. Why, I have no idea. But as long as she’s smiling, I guess we’re doing okay.

Fruits of Knowledge: A first real bite

2011-09-12T18:13:00.000-04:00

I was all prepared to write this meaningful little piece about how I can’t spot the passion fruits on the big passion fruit trees in the yard; they just show up on the ground, like little passion fruit gifts. Surely that’s a metaphor for something.

But fortunately, before I put that deep thought out there into the blogosphere, my friend McDiver wandered by and told me he’d spotted another one of the yellow fruits on the passion fruit vine growing in the fichus trees in the yard.

So that, also, is a metaphor: For how little I know about life in the Caribbean.

I’ve had lots of those moments, six days into a 30-day housesit on a tiny island that you’ve almost certainly never heard of. And I ~~expect~~ know there’ll be lots more. I’d just like to leave this island with a smidgeon more knowledge, about the flora, the fauna, the politics, the people, and myself.

More to come…

More Starfish in Sulawesi

2011-01-10T09:07:00.001-05:00

Starfish wearing a mink

Starfish tripping over a rock

Starfish pushing up daisies

Parachuting starfish

Starfish Hide 'n Seek

Starfish after the guillotine

The starfish huntress

All photos copyright Nancy Bauer

Siladen Island: The view from beneath the sea

2011-01-09T05:59:00.001-05:00

Starfish getting a loofah

Starfish levitating

Agoraphobic Starfish

Bullriding Starfish

Starfish Zumba

Woe is Me Starfish

All photos copyright Nancy Bauer

On the Menu: Brunswick Squirrel Stew

2010-08-28T22:55:00.003-04:00

I’m in Brunswick County, VA, sitting on a blue tarp on the side of a rocky hill 50 feet from Lake Rawlings. Rawlings is an old rock quarry-now-scuba destination for legions of wannabe divers from Rocky Mount to Rockville. Rick is here to check out his new, lightweight gear in preparation for our trip to Indonesia later this year.

I can’t be bothered. So instead I’m reading the Visitor and Newcomer Guide to Brunswick County, and it turns out I am smack in the middle of Brunswick Stew Country. This excites me no end. Stewww. That homiest of homey meals. The meal that stirs memories of seven Bauers packed around the kitchen table on cold winter days, eyeing the dwindling stew pot and barely bothering to chew – the better to be first on seconds.

That’s how good was my mom’s beef stew, with big chunks of potatoes and carrots, melting onion, the occasional bay leaf, and, the best part, kernels of corn and lima beans in the bit of gravy at the bottom. Brunswick stew, as I now know, is squirrel-based, with a pound of butter, some onions, a bit of stale bread, and heavy seasonings of black and red pepper. Or at least that’s how Uncle Jimmy Matthews, the creator, cooked it back in 1828, along with a shot of brandy or Madiera.

Over the years, the recipe evolved to become a lot more like my mom’s stew, and a lot less like Uncle Jimmy’s. The Story of Brunswick Stew (page 4) attributes this to “squirrels being harder to come by,” and I think: have you stepped outside in the last decade? In my little piece of Virginia, squirrels are the new Japanese beetle. They are everywhere.

Bobbing and weaving on the driveway. Pawing through the basil. And kvetching. Oy. Like they own the joint. Little do they know there’s a stew out there with their name on it.

In fact, back here in the Lake Rawlings wilderness, I’m noticing that the woods and picnic pavilions are surprisingly squirrel-free. And I see here in the Visitor’s Guide that the big Brunswick Stew Cook-Off is coming up in just a few weeks.

Coincidence? I think not.

Wine Bloggers Like Us Are One in a Million

2010-08-27T17:02:00.004-04:00

We’ve been operating without business cards. And without a card, you are nobody. A big nothin’ ball. Because (as we heard loud and clear at one winery recently) there are a million of us out there. “Us” being wine bloggers.

I was vaguely aware of this when we started our project. But in the fifth-largest winery-producing state in the vast landmass that is the U.S. of A., I figured there was room for all. And besides, we are TRAVEL APP WRITERS, not wine bloggers.

(Pay no attention to the blog behind the curtain!)

(Okay, okay. We're wine bloggers. You caught us.)

That said, I still believe there’s room for all, but having a business card doesn’t hurt.

We try to keep it low-key at the tasting bar – we’re doing research (fun, fun research), not looking for handouts, and not doing investigative journalism. But Rick’s big camera click-clicking away and my note-scribbling do tend to attract some attention, and if asked, we do tell. We say we’re doing a travel guide app on Virginia wine country.

Which is exactly what we said one stop after the “there’s a million of you out there” winery. And waddya know, the lady at the end pipes up: “Hey, I’m a wine blogger, too!” She was ultra friendly (we wine bloggers are) and offered up her expertise on how many wineries to visit in a day. Three, if you’re wondering, unless you want to completely blow out your taste buds.

We here at Virginia Wine in My Pocket don’t have time to stop at three, of course, because we have a schedule to keep, and miles to go before we…get to drink any wine but Virginia’s. (Good thing things have come so far since we first drove these roads in search of vino.)

And we don’t have to worry too much about palates and such because… we’re not really wine bloggers. We know as much about wine as the average citizen (who is crazy about wine, takes wine classes, goes to tastings…you know, the typical D.C.-area wonkety wonk). But we are not aficionados – we focus on the travel, where to stay, where to eat, the beauty of Virginia’s trails, the infatuating people you meet along the way. We are travel app writers that specialize in Virginia’s beautiful wine country.

And you’d know that. If only we had a card.

Beer?? Everyone knows it’s WINE before waltz

2010-08-26T00:44:00.006-04:00

Just like you and your spousal unit, when Rick and I were engaged, we thought it might be prudent to learn how to dance. Nothing fancy, just a neat little waltz or maybe a watered down samba.

So we signed up for ballroom instruction, and rendezvoused in the parking lot before class. I don’t remember whose idea it was to bring beer, but we got into the habit of having a quick, cold one before heading in, to loosen us up.

The beer did not help. We did not magically click on the dance floor. It was not effortless. We stepped all over each other. Kind of like building our second app.

Our first app was easy – I wrote it, Rick photographed it. Rick built the web site, I promoted it. Clear division of labor.

The Virginia Wine in My Pocket project? A little different. We’re more ambitious with this one. Rick’s got big ideas about online winery maps and merchandise; I’m scribbling notes to myself about travel articles and interviews. We’re moving fast. But that doesn’t mean we’re dancing to the same beat.

For example: Rick thinks we should banter in our blog (this is the blog). Make it a he said/she said kind of thing. I think of Gene Weingarten’s face-offs with Gina Barreca in the Washington Post Magazine, and decide, “No way.” We’re just not that interesting. But I go ahead and offer up some provocative hooks to pull Rick into the blogersation, and…nothing.

Several days later I say, “Why didn’t you jump in? I gave you an opening!”

And he says, “That was an opening? I didn’t have anything to say!”

Well, we did dance on our wedding day. We busted out our best 9th grade dance moves, wrapping each other in a big bear hug and swaying to Valentine. And someday we may actually be in step on Virginia Wine in My Pocket, too.

Murder and mayhem on the Chesapeake Bay Wine Trail

2010-08-11T10:51:00.008-04:00

Three months ago, Rick and I published a travel guide for the iPhone, called Rehoboth in My Pocket.

It took many, many hours and has yielded teeny tiny bits of money.

“Let’s do another!” we said.

So we settled on Virginia Wine in My Pocket as the second travel app for our In My Pocket Guides label. (Impressive, huh? We hear the editors at Frommer's Guides are trembling...).

In April, we launched a web site, so you could follow our wacky antics and zany exploits. And so you’d be standing breathlessly in line (virtually) when the app queued up for launch in early summer.

And then May rolled by, followed closely by June, and no app. “What’s the deal?” we asked ourselves. “Where’s the Virginia Wine in My Pocket app? Why the hold up?” (No one else was standing in the virtual queue yet, so we queried ourselves.)

Life, as you’ve probably guessed, intruded. People got married, people had birthdays. And, surprisingly, Rehoboth in My Pocket did not shoot to the top of the iTunes charts overnight, and needed some cuddling and encouragement.

I fretted; my rule-bound approach to marketing required that we first publish the app, and then hit the road to promote it. Ergo, we could not begin visiting wineries until we’d published the app. Meanwhile, the summer skipped by.

Rick, not being the marketing strategist that I am, suggested a different approach: “How about if we put the rules aside and just have fun with this?”

Nervous, I was. That was just crazy talk. We’d be digging ourselves into a deeper behindedness if we spent precious weekends running off to wineries instead of bent over our computers. But it was July already, and our backs were against the wall.

So we scrapped our strategic plan. “Let’s just drive,” we said. Like when we were dating, a decade ago. Back then, we just wandered, visiting tasting rooms, feigning interest in residual sugar and harvesting schedules when we really just wanted some free wine and a seat in the Adirondack chairs, looking out toward the Blue Ridge.

Now, of course, it’s our business. Or, at least, we want to make this our business and cut loose the 9-5 yoke. Traveling around, meeting eccentric wine makers and brave winery owners. Taking pictures that land on magazine covers, and getting patted and pinged by readers. A life with a new mission statement: “How about if we put the rules aside and just have fun with this?”

So there we were last weekend, whizzing along the Chesapeake Bay Wine Trail on Virginia’s Northern Neck, approaching winery number 30 on our “150 Wineries in 150 Days Tour: Virginia.” It must have been butterfly season on the Neck, because swallowtails were everywhere and, sadly, we nailed one.

Rick said, “You know the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind when it gets hit by a car?”

“No, what?” I asked.

“Its ass,” he said.

Rick is completely heartless, of course, and a babe in the woods marketing-wise. But he’s got a great sense of direction, and I like where he’s taking us.

Loco-motion

2010-07-26T21:55:00.026-04:00

This blog is about my husband, Rick, and I working our way into a portable future. One that lets us dive on small tropical islands that have names we can't pronounce. And do other things, too. Lots and lots. Even stuff that's not vaguely tropical.

Tropical island diving has become a sort of shorthand for where we're headed - a shore dive kinda life.

But before we can step on that plane and wave goodbye to dry cleaning and rush-hour snarl-ups, we have a short list of to-do's to check off:

Sell the Rehoboth rental house and, if not make a profit, at least get out from under the debt

Minimize our expenses, save some money, and remember what it's like to live without precisely what we want at precisely the moment we want it

Get rid of the roomfuls of stuff that surround us: books, coolers, photos, treadmills, flower pots, little personal salt & pepper shakers for the 10-person dinners we never have

Build up a portfolio of portable, passive income-producing skills, or products, or programs. Like photography, travel writing, teaching, blogging. Something we can do on the move.

So here's where we stand:

We sold the house in June. We didn't make a profit. But we got out most of what we put in, and are using that to...

Minimize our expenses, including paying off a car, and all our bills, which is motivating us to...

Get rid of stuff, all this stuffff.......

And now, since January, we've written a travel app, Rehoboth in My Pocket, and have another on the way (Virginia Wine in My Pocket). Not exactly the golden ticket, but lots of promise.

So we've been feeling pretty good. Lots of forward momentum. Excited.

But this latest thing...this is just over the top. It's as if the universe is conspiring to push us out of our Northern Virginia nest, knowing maybe we're a little too timid to step out on our own.

Last month, Rick sold a photo of Quirigua in Guatemala to Archaeology magazine. Then Washingtonian magazine bought a half-page picture of Rehoboth for its "Beach Favorites" article.

And then...the most amazing thing. This stuff NEVER happens...

The Washingtonian bought another photo from Rick. And you can see it now. It's the one at the top of this post. On the COVER of the August issue!

Is it just me, or does it seem like we're making some progress?

One App, Two Apps, Three Apps, Four...

2010-04-15T23:27:00.009-04:00

Now it gets exciting! We are launched, actually available AT THIS MOMENT in the iTunes store. Just saying that makes me feel like a pro. Yeah, sure, we have an App in the iTunes stores. Us and Apple, we're buds. We get together for a little Everquest every third Tuesday.

But mostly I can't keep my eyes open. I'm selling ad space AND marketing the App AND drafting new content AND editing the existing content (now that the current merchants we've listed have seen the App and apparently my powers of observation - and my spelling - aren't quite as good as I would have myself believe).

And this is the night job ;-)

But this...right here...is what gets me up in the morning. How many more did we sell? How many more people have downloaded OUR App? That is excitement beyond measure.

Now, though, off to bed ;-)

Wizard of iPhone Travel Apps

2010-04-03T17:43:00.020-04:00

Well, my goodness. There’s a…a…whole bright, sunny world out there. Out there beyond the screen of my laptop. After two and a half months of 15-hour work days, following our “Eureka!” moment at the Society of American Travel Writer’s Institute, Rick and I have finally completed our first – of what might well be many – In My Pocket-branded travel guides. And it sure does feel good.

It’s not a guide book: we learned at the Institute that print travel guides pay slave wages for the most part. Instead, our travel guide will be delivered via the iPhone: Rehoboth in My Pocket, a travel app featuring Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Just $3.99, and updated regularly, for no additional investment on the buyer’s part. Each $3.99 is portioned out to three parties: us, our technology partners, and Apple.

Truth be told, given what we’ve invested and what we stand to earn, slave wages are actually starting to look pretty good. But, oddly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier. Partly, that’s due to the sheer joy of being in motion toward a goal. We want a portable life, a life that takes us to far corners of the world, and I dream that travel app development – and the opportunities it brings, if not the big bucks – just may be laying the first shiny bricks on our personal yellow brick road.

I’m happy, also, because of the synchronicity of this moment. All my bits and pieces of experience and knowledge from 25 years of being a career vagabond are coming together to help me know just what to do. There’s no guide book for writing iPhone travel guides, but that’s okay. I know how to organize a hit list of what to feature in the app, how to write a restaurant review, how to craft a press release, and how to set up a Facebook page. Even the things I don’t know how to do – like selling advertising - I’m figuring out. And fortunately, I have a husband and partner in this project who knows how to do all the stuff I have no interest in, like taking the pictures, and setting up the website, and figuring out the sometimes inscrutable (to me) technology behind the iPhone itself.

So, I’m happy. But did we pick the right subject for our first-ever travel guide? Well, let’s review: We picked Rehoboth Beach, with a year-round population of about 2,000, and maybe, maybe 2 million visitors a year. New York City, by comparison, has a population of more than 8 million people and 50 million annual visitors. So, no, we probably did not make a particularly strategic decision there. We made a sentimental decision, and a hopeful decision. We love Rehoboth. We know Rehoboth. And we love the idea of becoming a closer part of the community.

And we’re hoping that someone may notice what we’re doing and invite us to develop an app for them, in some exotic location, and pay us a million dollars. Hey, we can dream.

Who knows? Maybe that’s our destiny and reward after we finish our next app this summer: Virginia Wine in My Pocket. Can’t you just see it? Chilean Wine in My Pocket! Or how about Argentinean Wine in My Pocket? Or – dare I say it – Italian Wine in My Pocket??

Destiny, if you’re out there, and you’ve got a million bills burning a hole in your pocket, we’ve got the team, and we’ve got the time. Who needs sleep?

Apps R Us

2010-02-28T01:49:00.005-05:00

Can it be as simple as this?

Six weeks ago, at a travel writing conference, Lee Foster mentioned that he'd just launched a new app for iPhone - San Francisco Photographer's Guide - and sold 60 downloads already. Like so many travel writing endeavors these days, this one had generated just a pittance so far for this talented photographer. But...where might it lead?

Who knows? This is the wild wild west of smart phones, and travel guides have only just begun to make their entrance. But the possibilities...hmmm.....

So here we are, Rick and I, now on the verge of launching our own app after a frantic six weeks of research, marketing, web development, picture taking...oh, and some writing. Rehoboth In My Pocket started as an app, then expanded into a web site to help promote the app, then a blog to keep the website alive, then a widget to gather a mailing list of those who'd like to stay in touch with Rehoboth. Soon will come some fun freebies from Rehoboth merchants for app owners and web visitors. And next week I step out of the shadows to volunteer at the Rehoboth Chocolate Festival, where I've been encouraged to hand out my (new) Rehoboth In My Pocket flyers and business cards.

We've already announced our plan for the next app: Virginia Wine In My Pocket - and the crazy notion of visiting 150 wineries in 150 days this summer to kick it off. We are getting encouragement and interest from every quarter; everybody wants their own app now. And here we are, holding what may well be the golden ticket to a travel-centric future.

Or is it? Stay tuned...

Do I Know You?

2010-02-17T00:57:00.002-05:00

I wear a lot of ladies trouser socks. Not all at one time, of course. Just one pair is plenty. I like that they’re thin and don’t bulk up inside my shoes, and that they go all the way to the knee instead of stopping mid-calf, which never made any sense to me. Makes me think of those pictures of rock climbers cheating gravity, leaning backwards while clinging to an overhanging ledge. And anklet socks are even worse; they always leave a draft down below.

So I’ve given a lot of thought to this, and trouser socks have been a part of my life for a couple of decades. Unbeknownst to Rick, apparently, who stood kind of slack-jawed – to me, he really looked horrified – as I stooped to pull up my black knee-highs during our morning stroll along the boardwalk in Rehoboth this winter.

I thought I read his reactions like a book – no poker face, his: He thought I was wearing supp-hose, like his 75-year-old dad. Like an old lady; a doddering Q-tip who long ago flung fashion to the ground and pulled on her practical tights with the resignation and relief of old age.

Rick and I talked about this Kodak moment a couple of weeks ago, and he said, “What are you talking about? I wasn’t even looking at your socks. I was thinking about my web site.”

You can live together for a decade, a lifetime, and still not completely know each other.

All Hands on Breast: My New Cancer Prevention Protocol

2009-11-17T21:39:00.009-05:00

C’mon everybody, gather round. Real close – there’s room for everyone. Ok, great, you’re all in nice and tight. Now, I want you to reach out your hands – one, both, I don’t care, just reach out. And now, please place them firmly on my breasts. Yes. Now. Go ahead. Excellent! Thank you! Oh, and if you have a free hand, use that to call all your friends and neighbors, and tell them to come on down. There’s plenty room for everybody, and if I run out of breast, we’ll just start rotating everyone in, or hand out numbers; I’ll stand here all day! Because the more of you there are putting your hands on my breasts, the more chance I have of not dying from a tumor that I didn’t find because the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends against women being taught how to do regular breast self-exams.

Oh wait. I already know how to do self-exams, so maybe I don’t actually need your help. My doctor taught me. And yes, the first time I put my hands on my breasts to mimic what she’d demonstrated for me, I felt pretty ridiculous (was I doing it right? What the hell is all the stuff in there, anyway?), not to mention a little perverted.

Now, I’m the first to admit that all that breast touching took some getting used to. I did skip a fair number of months. And I confess that sometimes I fibbed to the doctors when they said, “Your mother had breast cancer at 36? Is she still living? You are doing monthly self-exams, aren’t you?”

But here’s the thing: all that breast talk got my attention. I did a lot of self-exams – I paid a lot more attention – than I would have if there hadn’t been a schedule, a concrete action plan. I never really got over feeling pervy about it. But I’m not sure that a generic focus on “breast awareness” - instead of monthly self-exams - can compare to the lyrical hook of “buddy checks.”

So you can just take your hands off my breasts. Go on – off with you. But don’t go too far, because my nieces are going to be needing you. No one’s going to be haranguing them about “buddy checks,” and they won’t be seeing those little hang-tag reminders in the showers at their gym, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d stay tuned to lend a hand.

And according to a CNN.com article I read today, my nieces won’t be the only ones who need your help. Dr. Anne Wallace, professor of surgery and director of the Moores Breast Cancer Program at the University of California-San Diego, says she “has seen patients with large dents in their breasts and tangible masses within. When she asks them whether they had noticed anything there, they say, ‘Oh, gosh. I can't touch my breast. I don't know if it's new.’’

I read this really quickly at first, and interpreted it literally: Can’t touch their breast? Huh? Are their arms too short?

But then it dawned on me that they were saying they are too embarrassed to touch their breasts. Too self-conscious. Too modest. And I thought, well, okay, the idea of monthly self-exams probably is a bit much for them, then, but those prim women are not my nieces. And modesty should not get in the way of education.

My mother was a paragon of modesty - so much so that, on the first day of school, my sisters and I each presented this note to our gym teacher: “Please excuse my daughter from group showers for the remainder of the school year. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Mrs. Bauer.” And even she managed to put her hand on her breast when she felt a strange burning inside. The perv.

The firestorm that was launched this week will no doubt burn for weeks and months to come. And the good people of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force did not make their recommendations lightly; this is a challenging and multi-faceted quandary. But so far I’m hearing that women shouldn’t be encouraged in self-exams because the protocol is “overcomplicated,” or because many of us have trouble sticking to the monthly “schedule” and then we face huge guilt trips and blame ourselves when we get diagnosed, or because those of us who do self-examine have more biopsies. And that some of us are just too modest to touch our own breasts.

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me that self-exams cause cancer. And maybe then I’ll shut up.

My mom may have been a perv, but I sure did enjoy the last three decades we had together.

(Stay tuned...A Shore Dive Kinda Life will be right back ;-)

Rehoboth Nor'easter Follow Up

2009-11-15T23:51:00.005-05:00

For a follow up (with some good pix) to my blog post about the nor'easter on the Mid-Atlantic coast yesterday, see Rick's post here.

Rehoboth Nor'easter: The Friday the 13th Storm

2009-11-14T22:49:00.021-05:00

This is what keeps me awake at night: Fires and floods.

When a teenage guest in our beach house decided to cozy up on a winter’s day last year, he piled wood into the living room fireplace, just as he’d seen his older cousin do the evening before. He stuffed in some newspaper, lit a match…and didn’t open the flue. He didn’t know what a flue was.

It cost us $500 to repaint the ceiling, and we decided to ignore the rest (except for the dozens of soot-filled cobwebs now clearly visible in every room). And I got to thinking about what would happen to us financially if the house burned down on, say, Memorial Day—the beginning of rental season. Sure, there’s always insurance money to rebuild, but what about the (many) thousands in rent we collect every summer, the money we use to pay the mortgage on— what we hoped would be—our retirement investment? Our dreams for a Shore Dive Kinda Life would go down (or, more precisely, up) in flames.

As I drove to the beach house in Rehoboth yesterday, with a fat nor’easter plopped down just off the mid-Atlantic coast, my anxiety wasn’t stoked by fire, but by flood. Rehoboth Beach and other towns up and down the shore had been beaten about the head and shoulders for three long days and five massive tides, with another tide rising.

On the ride in, I’d passed dozens of low-lying houses up to their ankles in water, and I worried about my own, just three blocks from a very literal “sea-level.” I headed straight to the beachfront, not knowing what to expect. I wanted to see for myself.

Forty-odd years ago, a similar monster—now called the Ash Wednesday Storm—sat on the same coast for three days and nights. The water surge, driven by near-hurricane force winds over a 600 mile span, inexorable and raging, took out the Ocean City, Maryland boardwalk, washed away burial vaults in Chincoteague, Virginia, and joined ocean to bay in Dewey Beach, Delaware—Rehoboth Beach’s next door neighbor—turning the little town into one big swim-up bar, at least until the tides receded.

Thirty years after the Ash Wednesday storm, I saw for myself what a nor’easter could do. Driving back to my rented home—an oceanfront stilt-house in Virginia Beach—after a couple of days away, I noticed a screen door askew here, an errant garbage can there. Then, turning a corner, a hundred yards of beachfront road gone, washed out to sea. I pulled onto my concrete drive – or what was left of it: half had collapsed into the surf and washed away the night before. The outside staircase leading up to the big sundeck now hung, unsupported, six feet above my head.

Inside the swaying house, I stood and looked out at the building waves, not sure what was happening. My phone rang and the rental agency told me to pack up and get out, now. The nor’easter was still out there, the tide was rising fast, and it would be dark soon.

I didn’t need to be told twice; there was so much debris in the road on my way in that I’d run over a nail and my tire was slowly leaking, so I threw ten pairs of socks and my tax return records into a plastic bag and fled. (That was also the moment I learned that I have absolute clown-like reflexes in emergency situations.)

I took a hotel room on the Virginia Beach boardwalk and listened to that storm smack the hell out of us all night long. The next day, twenty-five of my neighbors had lost their homes.

So as I pulled up to the boardwalk yesterday, Friday the 13th, I was concerned. I opened the car door and nearly sacrificed a leg as the wind whipped it back at me. I repositioned the car so the passenger side took the brunt of the gale and stepped out, staggering the few feet to the beach bent over 45 degrees like Geraldo on hurricane duty.

The waves were ferocious, bulky…and close. The dune grass was waging a mighty battle to hold its ground, but the relentless pounding had already taken a toll, carving short cliffs into what had been 100 feet of gently sloping sand. So much water. So much rain.

Nor’easters don’t care about retirement investments, or mortgage payments. And fires burn where and when they want. The moves we get to make in life are like a game of chance: we blow on the dice, toss out the best roll we can, and whoop and holler until our fate is decided. And if we’re lucky, we get to roll again.

Back on Scarborough Avenue, our house is fine. We’re still in the game. And we’re leaving our chips on the table. Rehoboth is pretty beat up, but the dune line held, and Rick and I feel a lucky streak coming on.

Dewey Beach storm photo copyright Journal News

Getting Off on the Side Road

2009-11-07T22:52:00.016-05:00

Last week started with the worst kind of Monday morning. The weekend before had been gray and gloomy, rain for three days straight. But then came Monday, with me back on the clock, yoked to an overflowing desk, and out came the sun, laughing and rolling around in the sky like a puppy that’s slipped out the doggie door.

So I do what any responsible professional who’s supposed to be earning money for a Shore Dive Kinda Life would do: I check my email for work emergencies and, seeing none, head for the mountains. The Blue Ridge is always a magnet on bright fall days, pulling me to get in the car and just drive, searching for side roads.

In my new favorite book, Tales of a Female Nomad, author Rita Golden Gelman’s travels are nothing but side roads. Hers are a little more exotic than Berryville—my lunch stop on Monday (where I found a great smoked ham and lentil soup at Bon Matin Café). Rita writes about sleeping next to sea lions in the Galapagos Islands, dancing in a protective circle of Zapotec women in Mexico, and meeting orangutans at Camp Leaky in Borneo. The side roads she chose weren’t travelled on a tour bus, and she’s teaching me a lot.

As much as a traveler’s life pulls me, the thought of going through the world as Rita did—diving into the deep end of human relationships instead of my usual splashing around in the shallows—makes me afraid. True, no one’s forcing me out of the tide pool. I think most of us just skim the surface of the countries we visit, and that’s fine—there are plenty of fish to see in the shallows if we just take time to stick our face in the water.

But any diver knows that being on the water can't compare to being in it, and that's what lures me. Part of the siren call of a traveler's life is the sweet shock of stepping off a puddle jumper into a shack of an airport, or realizing you can’t understand the road signs as your taxi whizzes into town. It’s the differentness that both attracts and frightens.

And I’m afraid that—not at all like Rita—I’ll settle for an expat experience that’s divorced from the local reality. Or that I’ll fall into loneliness and gain 30 pounds eating chocolate, like I did in college when I lived in Spain. I’m really afraid that if I do finally screw up my courage to walk down an unmarked street or through a scary door, I’ll end up like my friend Jan: in someone’s living room, admiring their knick knacks as if they’re for sale, nodding in a friendly way to the family who own the house but are too polite to say “Gringa, why are you in my house?” I’m afraid to look like a boob.

So, reading Rita, I’m gaining both courage and tips. In Antigua, Guatemala, hoping to meet some of the local expats, she sat by the door of a little breakfast place where they gathered each morning. She brought no book or magazine or post cards to write – she just sat. And as people came through the door she made eye contact, gave a little smile and a nod. Each (painful) day she became more familiar to them, and by the fourth day she was one of the gang.

If you’ve ever spent time alone in a restaurant—and I have, lots—you know how much courage it takes to just sit, with nothing to hide behind. And that as you sit, you’ll be taunted by your own personal gremlin, whispering in your ear that everyone is talking about you and you probably have dirt or pudding or something on your face.

So Rita’s example is a great tip: Just give it some time, let people get used to you. Be open. And don’t worry about the pudding.

At a Zapotec village in Mexico, Rita walked up and down the hot and dusty village streets each day, smiling at the women as she passed (when they didn’t run away at her approach). After several days of this—women fleeing, children scurrying (and men reacting the opposite)—one woman fell into step beside her, then offered a loan of the traditional skirt, blouse and long waist scarf that would help her blend in and begin to be accepted.

Rita had waited patiently and respectfully for the relationship door to be opened, and maybe it never would have but for one curious lady. But once invited in, Rita made the most of it—standing side by side during meal preparations, shooting marbles with the children. She spent a month in the village, alone but welcome.

As for me, when I’m being honest with myself, I suspect that a Zapotec village is not in my future. Were I to take a deep dive into Rita’s kind of side road travel, it’s not the tourist amenities I’d miss; I wouldn’t care if I never saw another boutique, antique store or cute clothing shop again. And historical markers hold my interest for… zzzz.

But I do love a good bowl of smoked ham and lentil soup. And I'd never say no to a little pudding.

Blue Ridge photograph by Ken Thomas, Wikimedia Commons

A House for Life

2009-10-25T23:16:00.025-04:00

This is a blog about leaving one kind of life for another, with some helpful websites and books and stuff thrown in for those who are ~~thinking~~ dreaming along the same lines.

I try to keep my posts on point, because as much as I’d like to laugh with you about the boardwalk pet parade in Rehoboth this weekend,

or get your opinion on these shoes I recently bought,

there’s really nothing worse than a blogger who lures you in with a creative proposition, only to intrude on you later with football fancrazy opinions or "I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long!" fauxpologies.

I admit, I did take that granita detour, but at least I tried to pass it off as something Shore Dive Life-ish.

The hard part about sticking with my theme isn’t that there’s not enough to say—it’s that almost everything we do is somehow linked to creating our next life (and by next life I don’t mean the next life, for any new readers just joining— although I suppose my wine consumption and tendency to run with scissors are probably pushing me in that general direction…).

This weekend we’re staying at our rental house in Rehoboth Beach. On the face of it, this has nothing to do with a Shore Dive Kinda Life. Except that we are trying to sell this house to finance what comes next. And we just reduced the price again – to $990K. Crazy price for a house, I know, and that's $250,000 less than where we started more than two years ago. At this point, we might have enough for a Starbucks after we pay back the bank.

So, I’m learning about power washers and leaf blowers, rose bush pruning and house painting (and not the easy inside kind). Yesterday, our neighbor weighed in with a few ideas. What he actually said was, “I can say this because I’m gay, but basically you need to gay it up a little.” We said, “We’ve been trying to gay it up!”

He recommended a carpenter in town. The carpenter’s name is John. John stopped by today to talk to Rick. (That’s one of the things I adore about Rehoboth – you never actually make an appointment with the plumber, the carpet cleaner, the pool guy. They just come by. Even on a Sunday.)

So Rick (husband) tells John (carpenter) that our neighbor suggested some spruced-up framing for the big plate glass windows out front. The neighbor says that would really help the windows look less cheap and cause the house to “pop.”

John is a 50-ish guy with a torn t-shirt and disheveled hair. Rick is a 50-ish guy with a scruffy beard and disheveled hair. (He’s a hard sleeper on the weekend.) They stand side by side on the tiny front yard, look at the windows, scratch their disheveled heads and say, “Uh, I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

This place is never going to sell.