Moving Right Along

Most of the time, life strolls along at a predictable pace. You wake up, you go to work, you come home, you go to bed. Rinse, and repeat. There. I've summarized most of life, in two easy-to-read sentences.

Sometimes, though, for whatever reason, life propels itself into some kind of bizarre hyper-speed.

Waffle Guy and I went to New York this weekend to visit his Eldest, and it was a head-spinning whirlwind of a wonderful weekend. For all the amazing travel adventures the Guy has had, this was only his second time in the city--and the first time, he only stayed for 18 hours. I felt obligated to provide him with the comprehensive New York City tourist experience in a single weekend.

In less than two full days, we went to dinner with the Eldest and her BFF, walked around the Upper West Side, went to the Empire State Building in the middle of the night, explored Chelsea on foot, visited Ellis Island, bought a light meter at the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market, saw +/- 0.3% of the Met, ate at a darling little Basque joint, had brunch at an old friend's place (To be clear, he's not old. Our friendship is.), and came home. I'm so tired that every word I type looks misspelled to me.

And yet, I want more.

I wish that we had the energy to wake up every single day and sustain that level of enthusiasm and adventure, and to make the most of every minute, and to remember to appreciate the people we meet along the way.

I hope that, when it's our time to go to the Great Nuthouse in the Sky, we will leave behind a list of full-throttle adventures like this one. I hope that people will understand that this is why we go to crazy places and do crazy things and obsess about making crazy-good waffles.

Life passes by awfully fast, you see, and I can't think of anything that matters more than whirlwind weekends and the memories that they create.

Worth Doing: Meteor Madness

Stay up a little bit late tonight. It's worth it.

The famously active Perseids meteor shower peaks tonight, and between minimal moonlight and a relatively clear forecast, it looks like conditions should be ripe to see between 45 and 60 meteors per hour. Head outside after midnight, look Northeast, and start counting.

Anything measured in meteors per hour has got to be good, right? 

Lessons from a Tourist's Photos: It takes awhile, sometimes.

First, my Letter Writing Campaign fell miserably flat. This is primarily because I had a massive two-week bout of writer's block, but also partly because it was a dumb idea. This is what happens when one drinks too much coffee and stays up until four o'clock.

Second, I'm learning to make peace with the obstacles. Sometimes there are obvious reasons you can't move forward, and sometimes it's a mystery. But we're all stuck, sometimes. And when it happens, there's no point in wishing you were somewhere else. You've just got to listen to the music of honking horns, and notice the lights and the colors and the patterns around you, and stay behind the wheel, and wait.

After all, we all arrive at the same place eventually. It's what we see along the way that matters.

Buenos Aires, May 2010