My hometown

Samuel, I regret to say, has identified himself with a certain fictional character: Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. “Greetings, my name is Calvin,” he proclaims. “GREETINGS, MY NAME IS CALVIN. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

They do look alike.

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Aunt Linda – my parents’ oldest sibling – is visiting from Missouri. Samuel and Daniel are turning on the charm for her. My parents are at our house, too.

They reminisce about the Ecuador of the 1950s and 1960s. My dad talks about the night his family’s house in Esmeraldas burned down because a kerosene lamp was lighted with what turned out to be gasoline. After the fire, my dad’s family had to stay over with some missionaries who lived on the plot of land where, eventually, the Hotel Cayapas was built. I don’t envy my dad’s family their ordeal, but I am slightly intrigued. I grew up a block from the Hotel Cayapas; it was one of the fixtures of my childhood; it seemed the height of luxury and class (the grass in its yard was cut silently, with a reel mower, by a starched-shirted worker). I ate in the restaurant once or twice and dreamed of spending a night in the hotel. My dad slept there – or on the same land – during his family’s time of greatest need.

It’s strange to think of the hotel not existing. But, of course, travel to Esmeraldas was hardly easy in those days; vacationers certainly didn’t flock there.

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In theory, it wouldn’t be very hard for me to sleep in the Hotel Cayapas now. I look it up on Kayak: a night’s stay costs a little over $50. The hardest part would be traveling to Ecuador. The second-hardest part would be to avoid being kidnapped or killed. In recent years, Esmeraldas has become a hub for foreign drug cartels and their domestic recruits and conscripts.

When I was growing up, I’d go to sleep listening to the loud music of the discotheques on the beach. Now, because of violent crime, that nighlife has pretty well ceased. In the 1980s and early 1990s, that was unthinkable: that sort of thing only happened in Colombia, and Esmeraldas always would be a party town.

Our trip to the east

A fright

Last night, we were zipping along the Ohio Turnpike at 70 mph when the gigantic face of Chucky the killer doll loomed over us on an outdoor theater screen. Karin almost drove off the road.

Airbnb

It was our first time using the service. It went very smoothly and cost just $40.

Breakfast at a hipster restaurant in Cleveland

Karin’s colleague asked her to send pictures of our meals.

So Karin photographed my burrito:

The Southern Tier Expressway

This is one of my favorite U.S. roads. It’s fast, uncrowded, curvy, hilly, and lush. It runs next to gorges, small towns, and picturesque 19th-century farms with red barns and grazing cattle.

We stopped for lunch at Tim Horton’s in Jamestown. The steep streets and old buildings reminded me of Ithaca (still almost 200 miles away) and considerably lifted my spirits. Until then, I hadn’t realized how strongly I’d missed the region.

Our baby did summersaults in Karin’s belly all afternoon.

The old Salvationists

Karin got her first glimpse of Ithaca from several miles away. She marveled at its beauty. But rather than enter the city, we turned up a narrow, steep road to the town of Danby. There, the Salvationists were eagerly awaiting us.

They gave us supper and recited their ailments. But, to me, they seemed not to have aged very much at all.

Submission

I turned in the dissertation. The last days of writing it were just awful. I felt like Daffy Duck trying to write the end of The Scarlet Pumpernickel.

The dissertation is about as looney as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, too.

No, really, it’s pretty bad.

Karin & I will begin our journey to Ithaca tomorrow (Friday). We’ll spend the night at an Airbnb near Cleveland and arrive in the Finger Lakes region on Saturday.

I’ll defend the dissertation on Thursday at 3:30.

An announcement has gone out around the philosophy department so that faculty can decide whether to attend the defense. I hope no one does, except my committee members. Then I hope they give me the chance to revise a lot of Chapter IV, and maybe the other chapters, too, and to take a bunch of things out. Really, the dissertation is pretty bad. I shudder to think of its being uploaded to ProQuest in its current state.

Anniversary, pt. 3: Madison, Wisconsin

I’d like to say that in Wisconsin we kept a sharp lookout for hodags. We didn’t, though – except in Madison. The State Capitol there is adorned with statues of small mammals.

Clearly, this statue is of a badger.

But this one? Badger, or hodag?

(Photos not by me or Karin.)

Another feature of the Capitol is its collection of fossils embedded in banisters, stair-steps, etc. We obtained a brochure about these fossils and dutifully sought them out. (This is the sort of tourism that Karin enjoys. She also likes finding her way through corn mazes.) To our frustration, no fossils revealed themselves. Then we realized we were misnumbering the floors. We retraced our steps and easily found an old starfish in a stair-step.

We walked out toward the University. Having years earlier forsaken UW–Madison for Cornell, I was eager to see what I’d missed. It boiled down to two things.

(1) The lakes. Of course, Cornell also has a nearby lake. But at UW the shore of Lake Mendota goes right up to the campus.

(2) The restaurants. Madison, I read, has more per capita than any other U.S. city. Had I lived there, I would’ve spent all my money eating out.

Karin & I stopped at a Peruvian restaurant near the campus. This, for me, was the high point of the trip. I ate lomo saltado and Peruvian ceviche, which, lacking tomato, is very different from Ecuadorian ceviche. Afterward, I told the chef that Ecuadorians put ketchup in their ceviche, which surprised and disgusted him.

Another nice feature of UW is its row of pompous old churches. The Lutheran church, of course, is by far the largest.

I seriously considered going to the Engineering Building to look up Nick Hichton of the Up documentaries, but I didn’t. (Too far to walk.)

We had a scare trying to check into our Super 8. Our reservation was for the previous night. But the helpful clerk got our fee refunded, and our refund was larger than what we paid that night, so we came out ahead.

Anniversary, pt. 2: Sheridan Road, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Google Maps

We chose Wisconsin because we thought the travel would be easy. It wasn’t. According to Google Maps, the House on the Rock – our final and most remote tour stop – lay less than five hours from South Bend. And yet our return took us nearly eight hours. Our rests were brief; our detours were minor; traffic in Chicago was relatively painless. Google just got it wrong.

Around 12:00 last night, we reached home and joyfully were reunited with Ziva and Jasper.

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The trip to Wisconsin was lengthy by design. In Illinois we kept to the Sheridan Road, hugging the lake. I wanted to see the mansions in Evanston, Kenilworth, and other obscenely rich towns. Then we drove through some merely well-off towns; through the grimy naval town of North Chicago; through Waukegan, where I’d lived as a three-and-four-year-old; and through Zion, where I’d spent the third grade. I showed Karin my old haunts (the fast food restaurants). We stopped at my old church, which now seemed very small, and I pointed out all my acquaintances in the photos on the missions bulletin board. We then went downstairs and interrupted a baby shower. I said hello to the pastor’s wife, who made me greet her husband on the phone.

Then it was north through dismal Kenosha and west to Milwaukee, where our goal was to eat some famous bratwurst. The bratwurst was so delicious and the pretzel so enormous, we’ll probably never eat at that place again (the food was felt well into the night).

The music inside the bratwurst pub was very loud. This distressed Karin, who’d never been inside any kind of pub. (She also was distressed when one drunk young man swung around and serenaded me with “Call Me Maybe.”) Traffic downtown in Milwaukee was bad. Parking was expensive. We called it a night and settled into our Waukesha Super 8. The TV was showing a marathon of Law and Order (the version with Lenny Briscoe and Jack McCoy).

Next entry: Madison, etc.

A grand day out

Spring Break came and went. Mainly I spent it on the couch, thinking about my diet. (My goal is to fit into a particular suit by David’s wedding-time.)

I lost five lbs.

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After this morning’s work shift, I treated myself to a stroll along my old haunts: westward on Mishawaka Ave.; northwestward, next to the river; to and fro, down-town. Then, for the first time, I went into the DoubleTree Hotel. In the lobby I browsed the well-stocked bookshelves. I detected no thematic pattern to the books: spine color (white, gray, black, or blue) appeared to be the sole criterion for inclusion.

I wandered over to the hotel’s enormous, empty atrium. There I bought a Starbucks drink and sat and read. Light flowed down from the high glass ceiling; heating machinery distantly hummed. Cozy in my armchair, I was happy.