Travels with The Rayman

Here I am in Corvallis.  It’s  been an interesting time here, a beautiful little city.  Not too hot so we’re taking walks, shopping for new stuff (junk), arranging for phone, gas, water, sewage, garbage, electricity services.  Much time spent on the phone.  Amazing that it took me 51 minutes, mostly on hold, with AT&T to get a land line ordered.  Really.

So, with all these secretarial type activities, I decided to work on my website which at this moment (last night) a complete and utter disaster.  Don’t ask me why.  I can’t figure it out.  Can’t crack the code.  Can’t get er done.  Frustration was so high, that yesterday I logged into the Sandvox software user’s former and cried out for help…something to the tune of, “I’m desperate in Corvallis.  If anyone nearby could help me figure out this program so that I could get my website organized, please email me.”.  And guess what?  Someone did.  He lives in Portland and does web designing and was familiar with Sandvox.  So after a series of emails, he convinced me that Sandvox was a lousy program and that I needed WordPress, another program that is used by vritually everyone not named Dianna.  So, I entered into an agreement with him and for $200 he would re-do my website in WordPress and furnish me with the user name and password once his work was done and bill paid.  So…here I sit waiting for to hear from him.  I am very excited.  One of the interesting things he did was to let me join him on his computer through the magic of the internet and watch him work.  OMG.  He moved around so quickly it made my head swim.  I can see now that I have been quite foolish trying to do this on my own.  It took me weeks to do what he did in a few minutes.  And since time is money, I have pennywise and pound foolish.  OH, well.  Enough self-flogging.

Ryan, number one son, is sick with a cold.  We sit here waiting for him to arrive so that we can go to breakfast.  I’m looking forward to blueberry pancakes!!  Ray and Ry ordered them yesterday and they were fabulous.  My mouth waters.

Other than the stone cabin with no air conditioning, this trip has been a normal one.  Read boring to blog about.  We’re staying at a Best Western in Corvallis and it is very comfortable.  The Beauman likes it.  He hasn’t even barked.  We have a first floor unit with a fenced patio so he can go out to sniff.  It also has a couch, three chairs, a table, microwave, refrig, huge TV.  Oh, and a king bed.  Nice.

So…I guess all this to say I will announce a new website in a few hours.  Same name.  New look.  Can’t wait!!

It is July 30th at 7:49 p. m. and I am in bed. Feeling the pain. The back pain. The groin pain. Earlier the headache pain. Vicodin to the rescue. And plenty of wine with dinner to cleanse the mind of memories of the Great Move of 2012. OMG.

 

Let me state that no one should have space under the house because it collects things like old skis, old golf clubs, Xmas trees, old boxes. Old tools, like axes, rakes, stuff we no long need or want because we have our gardener, Vicente, and he has all those things in his truck which he has been driving to our house since 2004. It took us about 20 trips to empty that space. A trip is defined as a slog up the stairs and down the stairs. Up and down, up and down. Where we insane to keep all this? In a word, yes.

Okay, so every move must end like this with a list of incriminations to oneself, don’t you think? The incrimination department is overloaded because we really went above and beyond to stimulate the economy in the boom times. Evidence abounds. One must not, however, get carried away (with reciminations, that is). After all, Rayman’s mom died. My mom died and we ended up with gobs of stuff. Mom’s bedroom furniture (I sold it on craiglist) made an early exit. Then the 50-inch Sony WEGA set with wi-fi also got sold using craigslist. The big red couch is now sitting in the consignment shop along with those plaid chairs that the Rayman always disliked but put up with. The lone barstool? To consignment. The TV amoiire, to Goodwill. The coffee table in the media room? It’s in the storage locker in Morro Bay (I think). Ditto for the game table which has not been the scene of a game since it was acquired about 8 years ago. But I digress.

It took us several weeks of packing boxes. This move was a product of other moves in our past. We bought mostly small boxes because fully loaded, they weigh less than a medium or large box. And we numbered each box until the very end when it went something like this. “I’m just writing what is in this box because it is the dregs of what is left in the kitchen.” Rayman responds with, “Okay. Whatever.” Up until this point, we were up to box 170. No that is not a typo. 170 boxes. And more without numbers. Then when we got desperate to finish, we resorted to plastic bags, 13 gallon size. Purses in a bag. Shoes in many bags. Pillows in bags. And the list goes on. Then there were waste baskets filled with stuff. Toilet plunger in a waste basket. A regular cornucopia of storage remedies were applied to the wound. Would the bleeding ever stop? Toward the end, many things met a sorrowful death. “I’m throwing this away.” “What is it?” the Rayman queried. “Hell if I know so it’s going.” Or the Rayman would say, “I’m sick of this. I’m just throwing this away.” “Okay by me”, I snorted.

“What is this?” “Oh, that’s the rusted out steel whatchamacallit that I’ve been moving around for 15 years thinking that sometime it would come in handy. Never did.”, Ray demurred. “Well, out it goes”, I announced cheerfully yet with a certain tone of I-can’t-believedness. And so it went.

We ended up with the biggest POD they had, filled to the ceiling with our Lets-keep-this-furniture-to-see-if-it-works. And about 100 boxes thrown in to fill the gaps. And we rented a big storage locker in Morro Bay (henceforth referred to as MB) that is filled to the top with boxes and bedspreads, and god’s-know-what-else. And Uncle Ralph’s house. It looks like Beacon’ Van and Storage. One bedroom is filled with pictures and fragile stuff. And behind his house are bikes, vacuum cleaners, a whale sculpture, all the succulents from the yard, fence art, dust mops and swiffers, cleaning agents, flammable items. It looks like Camp Poodie.

And we paid $178 for GOT-JUNK to pick up our, well, junk. This was the heavy duty junk, the there-is-no-question-this-is-junk pile. Included were about 750 hangers, an old Sony Trinitron 27 -inch TV. ETC. I have already forgotten what was in this pile. But it was definitely junk.

This all lead me to thinking about what we do. We buy future junk, don’t we? We go to the mall, find just the right junk and then buy it. So, you better really, really like the junk you’re buying because once you leave the mall, no one is going to give you anything for it. I tried to sell hiking boots (worn twice and tossed aside because they rubbed my pronated ankle bones), our red couch, our TV amoire, my old antique Jenny Lind spool bed that had been in the family since the early 1900’s, my draperies, my drapery hardware, my golf cart that I bought and didn’t like…no body wanted anything but the golf cart. This experience resulted in my saying, “You guys should have moved a trailer to the front of my house because we have made about 43 trips here with donations”, to the Goodwill donation trailer attendant. Really. They should have. All the thousands and thousands of dollars we spent on all the junk was essentially worthless (disregarding the tax write off). So there you have it. Our lives reduced to this. You work hard, you buy stuff, the stuff becomes worthless, you donate it for a tax write off and then you go shopping. Did I mention that the Rayman bought a new golf club bag today and dropped the old one off at the Goodwill trailer this p.m.? The beat goes on. History repeats itself.

Let me also say that I am married to a saint. He worked his ass off. We both did. But he worked harder. I packed boxes, he lifted boxes. Oh, I lifted them too but he lifted more of them. He was the first one to rise and the last one to quit. This a.m. (we were to be out yesterday) there were still a few things left in the garage. In our defense, we stopped at 6:30 p.m. because Ray’s brother from Virginia was coming through on his Harley with a friend (another man motorcycle guy) and wanted to stay. Well, we had no place to stick him so we rented a Best Western room in MB and took them out to dinner and stayed out unti 9:30 entertaining. OMG. We couldn’t believe it. What are the chances that the timing would work out exactly that way?

But i digress and will continue to do so until I tell you this story. When we actually loaded the POD and the U-haul truck (required for the spillage which was destined for the…wait, wait. Let’s back up. We organized things so that the will-keep junk and furniture destined for the new house would go in the POD. The no-sure-if-this-will-work junk and furniture was loaded into the truck and destined for the MB storage locker. Those two things were parked side-by-side. While in the passion of loading, along comes the Cayucos Sanitary District officials who proceeded to park on the street. I think there were four trucks (they have too many trucks) They were researching a drainage problem that a neighbor below the northern most house on our street had complained about in a letter. So…the very day we had hired three movers to load the POD and truck and 2 workers we hired to move all the garden furniture and potted plants up to Uncle Ralph’s …there appeared an armada of trucks filled with investigators to muddy the waters if you’ll forgive the pun. Oh, and they turned on the water from the hydrant and created our stream through the back yard. Yes, siree. Never a dull moment.

I must retire now. It’s 8:48 and my lids are drooping…along with a few other body parts. Time to go to bed early so i can get up and play golf tomorrow…first time in 2 weeks that we’ve had a day without packing. Oh, joy. But, don’t despair, there is more to come!!

We are busy packing. And packing. And packing. At this point it time, it seems reasonable to suggest that we may never finish going through all the stuff we have apparently dragged into this place over the years.

Books. We have donated hundreds of pounds of books to the local Morro Bay library. Stuffed them into shopping bags so that we could actually lift them. And when I say lift, I mean lift. You lift the bag into the car. You lift the bag out of the car. You lift the bag to place in on a hand dollie. You lift it off and put it in the store room with all the other books that have been donated. And then you notice that you are single-handedly responsible for most of the books in the room. 20 bags perhaps. Or 30. Who counts?

And I discovered today that we have not one, not two, but three bags of organic plant food tucked away in a cabinet. And Miracle Gro coming out our ears.

Nails. Ray has a collection of ancient nails I never knew about. They appear to have been collected for the past 40 years. All shapes and sizes. Some rusted, some not.

Old cords to long ago appliances. We are especially rich in cords from electronics of the music variety. The appliances…gone. But we kept the cords. Just in case, I guess.

Hats with stains. Sweat stains. Paint stains. Wine stains. Hats just faded from the sun. Why did we keep them? Who knows. But we did and now we get to throw them away.

And did I mention my tea cup collection? OMG. I must have over 100 antique tea cups from England, mostly. These tea cups, like so many of our things, are well traveled. They started in Paso Robles, moved to the bay area, moved on down to San Diego still wrapped in newspaper from Paso Robles Press circa 1953, back to Cayucos and here they reside. These are going to be put in an antique shop and I’ll see if anyone in the entire universe wants a fancy tea cup…or 100.

Heritage Santa Village porcelain xmas trees, santa’s workshop, elves, boxes and boxes of this stuff. An entire village I guess. They were gifts from his ex and we won’t have room or the inclination to display them…so they too will get the antique shop booth routine. Maybe someone wants this stuff. Who knows. Not me.

We have spent a day now in Istanbul having arrived yesterday mid-day and retrieved from the Ataturk airport by Cenk (pronounced Jenks). They drive on the same side of the road as we do so the ride to the apartment felt normal.

The flight on Turkish Airlines was uneventful except that the Rayman spilled red wine on his white pants…never a good combination and as I write this, he is traipsing around looking for detergent, heavy duty detergent for his wine-stained pants. We flew on a 777 in comfort class which is just above coach class. More leg room and very comfortable. The food was very good and somewhat Turkish…think pistachios, canapés with hummus etc. Wine wasn’t bad either. A very good flight. No turbulence and not too long. Out of JFK it took us 9 hours.

When we arrived we visited and took naps. It is hot here and humid. And we were tired even though we slept on the flight. Then we went to dinner and took a walk along a street that stretches a mile or so and is closed to cars. Music blared. Everyone in Istanbul was there as it was very crowded. All the shops were open on both sides of the boulevard…shops like Verizon, Quicksilver, Starbucks. There were lots of local stores but I was surprised at how the multinationals have penetrated the marketplace…at least on this street.

We rode an elevator to a restaurant and we had a communal dinner, all 11 of us. My cousin, Susie, and her husband, Larry. Their two daughters, Ali and Kristen and Kristen’s husband, Cenk, their 2 month old baby Layla, Cenk’s brother and girlfriend (names escape me). Larry’s brother, Phil, from San Francisco. Oh, and us. Excellent food. Then back down the elevator (which comfortably holds 2 but we crammed 5 in on the way up) and Rayman got that claustrophobic feeling so we limited it to 4 going down. The elevators here are incredibly slow with no visible sign of a phone or a camera. Perhaps a person could be trapped for days before being discovered…well, probably not because everyone uses the elevators…it’s too hot to walk up.

After dinner we went back to our apartment which is located on an alley of a street and it has a police station (think steel and glass box that just big enough to hold about 2 people). A rabbi lives up this street a few doors and requires constant protection. Yikes. The apartment is very small but adequate and air conditioned. We’re on the 6th floor but it is numbered 5 because the ground floor is number zero. Quite inventive if you think about it. The basement would be -1 if it had a basement. No guessing what button to push once you figure out their scheme. An elegant solution to an age-old problem. On the top floor is the “suite” where Cenk, Kristen and Layla stay. it has a big balcony and that is where we gathered after dinner and stroll to drink wine and eat double pistachio candies. Yummy. And cool because the sun was down. And that was our first day.

This a.m. I got up and visited with Susie. Rayman was still sawing logs. Larry was showering. This is when I found out that my cousin has a few pet peeves in life and one of them is mildew in the shower/tub. “There are sprays for that and they should use it.”, she exclaimed. Second pet peeve…knee high socks that don’t stay up. Third pet peeve. I forget. I’ll have to ask her again. That made me wonder what my pet peeves are. But then I complimented her. Having gone through many years on this earth, her pet peeves are very simple and not very serious in the grand scheme of things. When that thought popped into my head, I stopped wondering what my pet peeves were. I’m sure they will be enumerated as blogging goes on!!

After breakfast on the patio where I ate the most incredible honey dew melon of my life, we took to the road. Ali, Larry, Ray and I headed out for some sightseeing. Ali and Larry have been here before. Ali is a history teacher in a high school in Portland and traveled the world. So…we got a first rate tour led by Ali. It was fabulous. Hot but fabulous. It involved a lot of walking at a clip that is comfortable for a 30 something. It also involved a fair amount of tripping (think cobblestone streets). Here are some pictures.

 

 

Me, myself and I was very interested in seeing the Blue Mosque but before we reached that mosque, Ali lead us through the spice bazaar into a tunnel and up to a mosque tucked above the bazaar. Here’s a picture of fabulous dome. The “strings” hanging down support low low-hangling candelabras of sorts. We were provided long skirts and scarves for the visit and we were required to take our shoes off. There were few people here.

And then we went to visit the Ayasopya. It took 6 years to construct and for the life of me, I don’t see how they could have done it in 360 a.d. It was built as a church out of wood and burnt down a time or two or three and the final product which stands today was commissioned in 520-something. It is now a museum. What is amazing is it’s size. Built as a church originally, the muslims conquered the area and they converted it to a mosque and covered up much of the interior with, I forget, but I think cement. It also has a minaret and other pious buildings on the grounds. My camera battery was running low so I only took a picture or two. We may go back…it’s that spectacular. Pictures, please.

My camera could only get the bottom part. There is a huge dome not pictured here…but the Rayman is in the picture.

A fabulous mosaic of the Byzantine period. Much of it was destroyed by the cent. The tlles were tiny and were they gold? I don’t know. May take the audio tour when we return. Fabulous.

As an aside, around 5 a.m. I was awaken with the call to prayer. It is fascinating. One mosque starts and then one by the one the others join in and it lasts 15 minutes. It fits the place. And they just had another one. It’s about 11 p.m.

So, today was very hot and humid and it was tough to be out and about sightseeing. However, I don’t dare complain because we saw so many muslim women in scarves, burqas, full length coats with scarves. And that’s what I mean about a city of contrasts. Here’s a picture I snapped. Don’t know if you can it…but her naked back is showing. Go figure.

And this. I snuck a picture of this woman on the tram. She has sunglasses on. The only skin showing was her hands. There is a woman behind her without the garb. Look closely. Why didn’t she have gloves on? Complete the ensemble. When I first saw her (there was a whole flock of them together) I thought I was looking at her back and she had sunglasses on backward. Further glance and I was amazed.

I’m convinced this is a form of torture. These women are tortured. Dressing like this in the noon day sun with the humidity. OMG.

On a lighter subject.

This is the Blue Mosque. It smelled like sweaty feet. The mosques are carpeted and people are required to remove their shows. Hence the order. After seeing Anaopya, the Blue Mosque was a let down. Still, it was quite beautiful. And it is used today, closed for visits during prayer time.

The spice bazaar was fabulous. Here’s a pic of Ali, Larry and Ray at the spice bazaar…complete with Turkish flag hanging behind them.

What I loved about the bazaar was that there were no Bed, Bath and Beyond, no Albertson’s, no Ace hardware. All the shops were small business. You can buy everything from belly dancing outfits, to wine, to fresh fish, to Iranian saffron, to a hammer, to an ice cream cone. The variety was fabulous and it went on and on. Could have spent hours just looking but didn’t.

And finally, just an interesting contrast. The roasted chestnuts and corn on the cob offered up by a cell talking vendor.

Oh, and being a muslim country, there are bars and liquor stores everywhere. Sort of reminds me of Salt Lake City except the people have dark hair (not blond) and they don’t have goofy rules about drinking in bars, and no state owned liquor stores. So, you see the women in their layers of clothing on one hand and bars with women drinking while wearing very modern clothes on the other hand.

Tonight we had wine on the patio again and helicopters kept flying over. The Queen of the Neatherlands was here a few doors away visiting her embassy. They were commemorating 400 years of friendship or relations. Remarkable.

Before you get all excited about the title of this blog, I’m just kidding. Looking for attention, I suppose.

Yesterday was our first big day in NYC on the way home from Turkey. We were tired. Things didn’t go so swell. First, it rained and we had lightening and thunder and the thought of traipsing around was a non-starter. It literally took us until noon to brave the city.

Being the intrepid travelers that we are, we went to the subway and rode into Manhattan with the intention of seeing the Statue of Liberty. Well, we did see her but from afar. In a moment of inattention and confusion, we hopped on the Staten Island ferry. Then as the ferry left the dock, the Rayman announced, “We’re on the wrong ferry.” So, we did what any old person would do, we just stood there and watched the statue from afar as our ferry chugged along toward Staten Island. When we arrived at Staten Island, a man came through announcing that everyone had to disembark as the ferry was not returning to Manhattan. This reminded us of the time in Paris when the train conductor expelled us from the train because the train was not going any further that night. We have a knack.

We spent the next 30 minutes in the terminal waiting for the next ferry. A muslim family apparently was attracted to us because they came and plopped down across from us. The mother was in the full regalia. Older daughter in head scarf. Too funny. Felt like Turkey all over again.

When we got back to Manhattan, we jumped on an hop-on, hop-off bus which drove us all around the city and pointed out all the sights. We sat across from a man and his daughter, about 11 years old, I’m guessing. They were fiddling with their camera when we heard dad say, “Gina. You just erased all our pictures.” She tried to convince him it wasn’t so. But it was so. Mom and brother were sitting behind us. Dad couldn’t bare to talk to his daughter. The steam coming out of his head was almost visible. She didn’t try to talk. Pretty sure she felt horrible. But what could she do? (At this point, people, please make sure you download your pictures on a daily basis. It is just to easy to screw up and erase everything and there is no way to get the pictures back.) We felt really badly for them. Then it stopped, the bus that is, at Times Square and the guide said the bus was not going any further, that we could catch another bus up the street. Really? Really.

Then it started raining. We made a mad dash to the Metro and rode it back to Brooklyn. Rain had stopped and we walked to the hotel. My back was killing me. Why? Probably from pushing bags around. I found it exceedingly difficult to get going. Once I started walking things got a bit better…but this was not a good situation.

Back at the hotel, we received a great restaurant recommendation and took a $7/5 block ride to the restaurant because it was raining again. At the restaurant, we spotted Kristen Schaal who appears on the Daily Show as one of the correspondents. As soon as we were seated, I ran over and said, “We watch you on Comedy Central. You’re a scream.” She looked up at me with a big wad of bread in her mouth and replied, “Thanks.” I retreated to my table and we had an excellent meal…Italian Trattoria.

We walked back to the hotel, no rain, and threw ourselves into bed and spent the rest of the evening reading. No Broadway plays for us. Not even a movie. Hell, not even TV. And that’s how we spent our day in NYC.

It’s 6:00 a.m., Tuesday and this is our last day in Brooklyn. Tomorrow we move to Newark as we have an early morning flight out of Newark on Thursday.

Why didn’t we see any dead cats on the roadways? The cats of Turkey are wily. Everywhere you go you see cats. They all look emaciated, bones sticking up around their collars. We watched them dodge the cars everywhere we walked. So, why don’t they get hit once in a while? Just wondering?

Why do they spell Turkey…Turkey? The official Turkish spelling is Turkiye and to my eye, that looks much better than the englishized version. It looks more exotic. And Turkiye is exotic.

Turkey is not a cheap date. We did not live high on the hog in this pork adverse country so why did it cost so much? To this question I have an answer. They do a lot of business in euros. The euro is strong against the dollar and much stronger against the Turkish lira so we found ourselves getting charged euros when we thought we were being quoted Turkish lira.

Does TV work here? Don’t know. Never turned a TV on the entire time in Turkey.

Will escrow close? I think it will. The buyers are in most days measuring for new carpets, getting estimates for interior painting. Sounds serious to us. Just wondering just the same.

OMG. Where will we live? Who knows? And where will we stay until we buy another house? Who knows? Rent? Who knows but probably.

And why do we charge and imprison Sandusky while all these priests run around scot free? The priests should be in jail too. I know about Sandusky because of computer, not the TV. Apparently it made headlines back home. What made headlines here was Syria downing a Turkish plane. Glad we’re flying west today.

And why do they have Turkish squat toilets in modern buildings? It seems archaic, dirty and unsanitary. Came across one yesterday in the Izmir airport. Let a woman in a head scarf go ahead of me while I waited for a modern toilet. And the modern toilets here are wonderful. They have a squirt feature in the back just below the rim that is plumbed for water. You can clean up with it…use the imagination if you have never encountered such a device. They are marvelous. May need one in the new house.

Turkey is a long way away. Almost 10 hours from NYC. We flew over Belgrade, top end of Germany, Copenhagen, Scotland, the Atlantic, Greenland, Canada and into the U.S. Asia Minor is not next door. Asia Minor has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it. But perhaps in this age of global smallness we shouldn’t have been shocked. We had hiked about 2 hours in Cappadocia to a high spot where we came across a Turkish rest stop. Yes, a man peddling fresh squeezed orange juice (you can get free squeezed orange juice everywhere and it is good, fresh, healthy, and cheap). He also had an assortment of Lay’s potato chips, post cards…really anything the hiker could possibly need. But we were not the only people there. A young couple and their guide arrived while we were enjoying OJ. She was in news. He was in banking. Now there’s a pair to draw to…they were both beautiful. He was from Austin and she from Colorado (in the news world apparently Colorado is a city). Oh, I kid her. They live in NYC. And he trades, are you ready for this….derivatives. “Well, there are two professions to draw to,”, I exclaimed. After each pronunciation following that, I gave out a hardy hoop. Really. This happened. He was a currency derivatives trader for a hedge fund…or in other words, a hocus pocus trader. OMG. We had a lively discussion and we took advantage of our age to tease them unmercifully. It as great fun. But what are the odds?

The Marina Hotel warned us not to bring food from other places into our room. If we did, they would charge us? What’s that all about? Didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Funny notion.

The Turkish people were warm and friendly. Most are secular. The women in black are mostly older so that may be a tradition that is dying. The head scarf women can be any age. Will that custom ever vanish?

One senses that the Turks really want to do the right thing in the tourism department…they just don’t know western ways in some regards…so they take a stab at it and hope for the best. They are completely approachable. The young people wear t-shirts that are written in english, they listen to western music, they eat McDonald (horrors of horrors). They have iPhones, blackberries. Never saw an ipad. Saw computers in the airports and in our internet cafe. Deodorant at times seemed missing in action. Quite a bit of body odor in confined places such as trams.

Riding to the Ataturk airport for our flight out, our driver of the van from the Holiday Inn ran a red light. Apparently that’s just a suggestion? The Rayman yelled at a man and his young son because he thought they were going to be run over. They crossed half way and paused in the middle of the street and laughed at him. The Rayman clearly didn’t know how to cross the street Turkish style. We joined in the laughter and waved at each other. Rayman’s kindness and concern was appreciated and acknowledged.

It’s raining with thunder and lightening in Brooklyn. We are exhausted. No one has made a move this a.m. to sight see. Yesterday was brutal. Watched the Black Swan (dark…people with no sense of humor are dangerous to others and themselves) and some movie about a birding watching competition with Steve Martin and Owen Wilson (sweet and silly). Rayman watched war movies. Didn’t sleep much on the flight. Took a 1/4 of an ambien and it didn’t work very good so awake I remained most of the smooth flight west.

Anyway, I have bored the dear reader long enough. Here’s some pictures.

This photo above is the mocha stop…Ray is converting currency on his iPhone before he drinks his drink. Having never ordered a mocha before, we were stunned and delighted with the drink. Notice we were the only people inside in the air conditioning. Everyone else sat outside. Their music was great…lots of Beatles, Radiohead. Fun.

At Ataturk airport after yet another flight.

Notice our driver straddling the line. He was not, I repeat, not changing lanes.

Snapped a picture of these living flower murals at the entrance of the airport. Very ingenious.

So, this picture shows you how they drive. Notice it’s willy nilly. And see that van turned sideway? He just decided to turn left, back up and heaven knows what? Each driver has his own set of rules. Really, folks, a passenger was in the front seat and he said, “I’ve spent the last couple of days riding with my eyes shuts.” He was happy to arrive unscathed.

And finally, there are two interpretations here. Man robbing bank or the bank robbing man. Nice of the bank to provide shade. What they need is to add a fan to their ATM. There’s another money making idea for some entrepreneur.