Today is a sad day in our family.  We are losing one of our own.  One who has been with us for over 20 years, through thick and thin, always there when needed.

I refer, of course, to the Saturn.

I have written before about some of the, uh, quirks of this ancient car.  Last January George at the Village Garage told us it was unlikely to pass inspection again due to the fact that the frame is basically disintegrating into rust.  (Engine still running great, though!)  With our upcoming 11-week absence, it seemed like a good time to say goodbye.

I bought this car when I was 22 years old, having just gotten my first real job out of college.  The Saturn and I moved to NH together.  Never did I imagine that 20 years later, when everything else in my life is different, it would still be hanging on.

We pretty much stopped driving it on 1/31, when the registration and inspection expired.  It is not easy to be a one-car family!  Bob and I had to plan our itinerary with the precision of a military campaign to get everyone where they needed to be.  Even so, we had to rely heavily on the generosity of our wonderful friends, who gave us rides and shuttled our kids and loaned us their cars.

I paid extra for this tape deck back in 1994.

(One of the car loans was when I had to run an errand from work one day.  My friend Charles loaned me his BRAND NEW AUDI, just off the dealer’s lot.  Many people would have found this fun and exciting, but all it did was stress me out.  I couldn’t even start the car successfully.  As is the new normal around here, the roads were snowy.  The car has all these button and sensors and kept beeping frantically at me all the time.  I was much happier driving Chris and Trisha’s vintage Subaru.)

But what to do with the Saturn?  My friend Sue suggested putting it on an ice floe in Lake Winnepesaukee and setting it aflame.  Though a Viking funeral would have been fitting, I preferred not to get arrested so we went with donating it to NHPR.

A few days after we stopped driving it, Bob tried to move it to clear the driveway.  And it wouldn’t start.  We know that this means: the Saturn knows.  Like those old couples who die a few days apart, the Saturn apparently doesn’t want to go on without us.

It was necessary to move the chickens at night…

Sprayed clothing drying in the basement. I call it the “Irish tenement” look.

Bob and I are pretty busy getting ready for this trip.  We’ve been gathering information for homeschooling, dealing with bills and accounts and other logistics, and trying to declutter our house so the nice people who are living here while we’re gone will actually have someplace to put their things.  Figuring out what to pack is an ongoing chore, and I think I’ve gotten carpal tunnel from spraying down our clothes with the heavy-duty insecticide that was recommended by the travel nurse and I bought on amazon.

Zoe has had a slightly different focus.  She knows that Lanie, being the youngest and smallest, usually ends up being the limiting factor in what adventures we’re able to take on.  So she’s had Lanie in her own intensive boot camp training, trying to strengthen our chain by bolstering the weakest link.  Luckily Lanie is also a fan of adventures and so has put up with this fairly cheerfully.  (Sadly, I think Zoe is doomed to discover that all the boot camps in the world won’t convince us to take the family on the adventure she’s been salivating over: The Black Hole Drop.

One can only imagine what Day 6 will bring.

This week she’s upping the ante.  She has created an “advent calendar” for Lanie, which requires her to do various physical feats in order to receive a small prize.  Before 7am the other day (when Lanie is usually not even awake yet), I found her in something resembling the plank position, so she could get her prize before Zoe left for school.

Bob walks into town for supplies, much like Pa Ingalls did out on the prairie.

That’s the message that we feel we’re getting loud and clear from Mother Nature these past couple of weeks.  The weather is certainly doing its best to lessen any regret we might have about leaving.

We actually like winter and snow.  But jeez, enough is enough.  Of the past eight school days, three have been snow days and two others have had 2-hour delays.  We should have left for this trip earlier, since the kids pretty much aren’t going to school anymore anyway.  Given the amount of snow currently in our yard, I predict that we’ll still be able to enjoy it when we return at the end of April.  (Based on past observations, our yard retains spring snow longer than any other place in the continental US.)

Semi-buried chicken coop.  Chickens are not fans of this weather either.

Thawing toes after a day on the slopes

Worse than the snow, though, are the sub-zero temperatures.  We’ve managed to get in four ski days this year, and it has been absolutely frigid Every. Single. Time.  Last Saturday we daydreamed of beaches and palm trees as we shivered on the lift, outerwear arranged so that no bit of skin was exposed to the icy wind.  It’s hard to believe that a week from today we’ll most likely be complaining about the heat.  (That’s if we don’t turn into popsicles en route to the airport, wearing our light fleece jackets and Keen sandals.)

It’s been so cold that the kids are wearing their ski goggles to play outside in the yard.

This is not directly related to our big trip, but it was cool and it was quite adventurous.  Also, there are some good pictures to post up here, so I’m going to go with it.

A lot of people have been asking: Are you packed yet?  And it’s a good question because at any given time in the past month some or all of us have been packing for something: a ski trip, a sleepover, a New Year’s sleepover that dovetailed into a ski trip.  We’re good at packing.

As it currently stands — and this is subject to change — my big trip this year has been to New Jersey.  I over-packed, because, even though it was only for a weekend, I was going with my pal Justin, and he’s a very stylish fellow.  Now I know that when Justin goes to the Jersey shore he goes for blue jeans — at least that’s what he wears in January — but going into this trip I had to be prepared for anything.

At this time of year, we were not going swim or sunbathe.  That leaves only a few other reasons to head to those parts: gambling, outlet stores and Springsteen.  For this trip, we took on the latter two.

J-man and I pose for a “selfie”-style photo on the way out of the Stone Pony

Really, it was Bruce who brought us down.  The blue jeans should have tipped you off.  Outlet stores were just a time-killer.  Though I did find some nice shorts in a store that I had believed was for skater kids.  They’re water resistant, though they don’t look like a bathing suit.  Just what I need for Central America. $45 for one pair; $50 for two. Credit the J-man for discovering them.

Other than that, we were in a Bruce Bubble: listening to E-Street Radio, walking where the Boss walked.  We went to the famous Stone Pony club on a Friday night and saw some bands.  We walked the streets of Asbury Park (which was actually a lot nicer than I expected — a nice mix of Portsmouth and Hampton Beach, if you know the Seacoast).

Madam Marie still telling fortunes on the boardwalk after her apparent parole.

And then the big event.  Saturday night was the Light of Day concert at the grand, old Paramount Theater, part of a huge edifice that straddles the boardwalk and points to a time when several hundred people would flock out of the sun to a movie matinee.  On this night, it was all about raising money for Parkinson’s research.

Southside Johnny on left in foreground, Bruce on right, La Bamba’s Big Band (from Conan O’Brien!) in the background.

Aw, hell.  It was all about the Boss.  He’s never on the official line-up for the concert, but he’s performed at 13 of the 15 Light of Day shows they’ve had, or something like that. There’s a buzz around town about: “Will he show up this year?”  And people walk around on the beach during the day to see if the can hear the sound check.  Then they post what they’ve heard to the Internet.  Then at some point they change the order of bands in such a way that people know he’s going to be there. All day at the outlet mall Justin kept checking his phone for info.  We were pretty confident when we walked in.

With good reason.  What we saw was basically a Bruce Springsteen concert with about 14 opening acts.  The theater was packed.  Bruce apparently walked down the aisle a couple of times during the early hours  of the event, but Justin and I didn’t notice.  The music was good.  We saw a variety of acts that were new to me, plus several names I recognized, such as Southside Johnny, Willie Nile, John Eddy, Vinny Lopez and — a special favorite for me — Pat DiNizio, lead singer for the Smithereens.

It was a truly entertaining and enjoyable night, and I owe Justin a huge thanks for pulling it together and for inviting me.

Bruce takes the mike to sing “This Little Girl is Mine.” Gary U.S. Bonds was sick that night.

Bruce hit the stage at around 11:30, and from then on it was his show.   He would occasionally hand a song off to his backing band, Joe Grushecki and the Houserockers, but there were lots of Springsteen songs on parade. He got to “Thunder Road” and I looked at my phone, possibly to call someone who might want to listen.  It was 1:45.  Too late to call anyone on the East Coast, at least.  That wasn’t even his last song.

The next day, Justin and I left our hotel at 11, only to find that all the bridges into Staten Island were closed.  The bridges were iced up and there were more than 400 accidents in Jersey alone.

Given where we were, we made the best of it and went to a mall.  They’re easy to find in this part of the world.  By the time we shopped and ate lunch (alas, it was Sunday so the Chick-fila was closed, but we found a good place across the parking lot), the bridges were open again and we were able to head back to the island.  From there I was only three states from home.

The Saturn got in the last major trip of its storied career (ending mileage 237,898) and I got to listen to both NFL conference championship games.  It was a good end to a fine adventure.

Then I unpacked.

Turns out that there’s a lot to think about when you’re packing for an international 11-week trip.  Especially if you’re the sort of person who likes to be prepared for every contingency.  And you need to be able to carry it all on your back for a few miles if necessary.

You can see here that we’re certainly prepared for medical contingencies.  (Especially diarrhea — we’ve got lots of stuff for diarrhea.)  I even packed a few pages from an approximately 2-inch-thick printout that the travel nurse gave us listing every possible illness and misfortune that could befall us (including things like corrupt policemen and getting ripped off by taxis, which you would think would be a bit outside the wheelhouse of the travel nurse).

Even though we’re heavily prepared for diarrhea, we’ll still do our best to avoid it.  To that end, we have a few products to treat our drinking water:

(The ad for the LifeStraw shows people bent over with their straws in the churning muddy rivers in the jungle, happily drinking through the straw.  Although Zoe really wants to try that, I think we’ll stick to less dramatic water sources.)

Breaking in our new shoes

I think we’re doing OK on clothing as well.  We included some necessities on our Christmas and birthday lists, so we’re armed with such things as quick-drying pants that convert to shorts, and travel underwear.  And our shoe of choice, Keen hiking sandals.  Since we’ll be carrying our belongings on our backs, bringing a lot of shoes would not be practical.  And after doing some research on the kinds of conditions we’ll be encountering, I’m thinking (hoping) that the Keens will pretty much cover all our bases.  We’ll have some wool socks with us in case we encounter colder weather, and we’ll have some lightweight sandals/flip flops for the beach and casual wear.  If we need something else, we’ll have to buy it down there.  (That’s right, no sneakers, so my illustrious running career may be on hiatus for a few months.)

My clothing for 2.5 months

In case anyone is curious, we each are planning to bring:

• 1-2 pair pants (Bob and I have ones that convert to shorts)
• 1-2 pair shorts or capri pants
• 1 skirt (well, not Bob)
• 4-5 short-sleeve shirts
• 1-2 long-sleeve shirts
• 1 bathing suit
• 1-2 pair wool socks
• 1 lightweight fleece
• 1 raincoat
• 1 pair Keen closed-toe sandals
• 1 pair flip flops (or in my case, lightweight sandals since I HATE that thing between your toes)

(If you happen to see five people driving through 3 feet of snow to Logan Airport in a couple of weeks, wearing sandals over socks and shivering in inadequate jackets, that will be us!)  All items have been chosen to be as lightweight and quick-dry as possible.  Access to washing machines is uncertain, and access to dryers extremely unlikely.

Of course, there are some other extras as well.  We have plenty of art supplies, for example.  (The girls got some great travel ones for Christmas.)  We have journals.  We have compact travel towels (the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have, of course) loaned to us by our wonderful friends, the traveling Brookses.  We have various electronics and books and toiletries and anything else that popped into our heads and was stuck into the “Central America box” that has resided in the corner of our bedroom for the past several months.  And we’re packing an extra suitcase full of school and art supplies to donate to the local school that is supported by La Mariposa.

The blue one is Nadia’s, of course.

These guys will also be accompanying us on the plane. Happily, Lanie was motivated to donate several stuffed animals — win/win!

La Mariposa

Two and a half weeks left!  We fly out on 2/11, from Boston to Atlanta and then on to Managua, Nicaragua.  It will be a long day, but the nice thing about traveling south is that we don’t have a big time-zone shift.  Nicaragua is on Central time, only one hour behind us here in New England.

Trip planning is proceeding, although in a much looser fashion than is the norm for us.  We have so little idea of what to expect that we want to leave ourselves with as much flexibility as possible.  However, as previously mentioned, I’m not one to just show up at the airport with a backpack and a guidebook (especially since we’ll be arriving at 9pm).  So, as a compromise, we have our first three weeks planned out and will be planning the rest as we go along.

Our excursion schedule.  Nadia is looking forward to the “salida en caballo” on Sunday mornings.  I’m excited about the finca de pina on the day after our arrival.

Stuffed animals Lanie selected to donate

The first two weeks were easy.  In fact, our destination is what drove our decision to start in Nicaragua to begin with.  We’ll be staying at La Mariposa Spanish School, which looks almost too good to be true.  The first time I read about it, I decided then and there that this would be the start of our trip.  We’ll be doing one-on-one Spanish lesson in the morning, and excursions to volcanoes and farms and villages and beaches in the afternoons.  In the evenings there are movies or salsa lessons or lectures.  The school is an eco-lodge in the mountains, surrounded by gardens where they grow their own food and coffee.  (And just to make sure Nadia is as happy as the rest of us, they also have 16 horses.)  And we’ll be getting all this, including all meals, for $221 per day for the five of us.

We hope to have an opportunity to help out in the local schools and will be bringing what we can for donations.  They especially want children’s books in Spanish, so if anyone has any lying around, let me know.

After we leave La Mariposa, we’re headed northwest to the coast and the colonial city of Léon.  The plan is to stay there two nights.  Léon will be nice to explore in and of itself, and it’s also ringed with volcanoes that we hope to tour.

Rancho Esperanza

For our last planned stop, we continue nortwest to the Rancho Esperanza, in the seaside village of Jiquilillo.  Again, this place sounds totally amazing.  It’s a hostel, so we rented out all the beds in a six-person dorm.  (Otherwise I’d pity the poor unsuspecting sixth person stuck in with us.)  We’ll be right on the beach, taking surf lessons, kayaking in the mangroves, and relaxing in the beachfront hammocks.

After this, we don’t have set plans, although the idea is to head inland to the mountain town of Esteli and the nearby nature preserve/farming cooperative community of La Miraflor.  We’ll keep you posted.