Fruits de Sprong

Crabs!

Before Delaware, we did not know what a "sprong" was. We were just told we would be staying in Uncle Bill's cottage located on one. We knew that boats go in it and crabs come out of it. We debated whether it was a new kind of body of water that we had never before experienced or a local Delaware colloquialism for something with which we were already familiar (bay, river, inlet, etc.). We finally settled on it being local, Dela-speak for "prong," as in the branch of a river. We liked our new word. It was satisfying to say.

Sprong?

Sadly, the word only existed in a fleeting period of accidental mispronounciation.  It turns out, there is no such thing as "sprong."  The cottage was actually set on a "prong," a thin body of water stretching inland from Rehoboth Bay.  It was a nice little prong, with ospreys (we think) soaring above and rabbits hopping on the banks, but definitely not a sprong. 

We were told that crabs live there, somewhere in the depths, and there were crab pots in the garage of the cottage.  As we were short on time, we decided to let professionals do the catching and cooking, which is how we ended up here. 

That's Dick on the left, with the eye patch and pipe

The place was chock full of of kitsch, americana, and all the colorful, full-blown innuendo you would expect from a place called "Crabby Dick's."  That evening, we drank Yuenglings and hammered away, with our small wooden mallets, at a dozen and a half blue crabs piled on brown paper.  They were delicious, whichever sprong they sprung from.

Hyperlinked Haiku About Donkeys

rum punch on the beach

 underneath the seagrape trees

where are the donkeys?

Resort Lizard

The iguana of my dreams

As a child, my family had a lot of pets.  We started with the traditional family cat and dog, then moved on to a slew of rabbits (that's slew, not stew)--starting with "Starsky" and continuing on through a steady stream of androgynously-named (no one wanted to check) soft, fuzzy, brown, black, white and grey bunnies.  There were a few guinea pigs and miscellaneous rodents in the mix, the last one--a small, brown, vampire of a hamster--ended badly, with a nasty bite to my index finger, immediately followed by a slow arc through the air and soft and final thud on the carpet.

After that, I shifted my attention to cold-blooded critters.  I had an aquarium full of tropical fish for some time, but I never was very good at cleaning the algae off the glass walls and plastic plants.  Eventually, after they all died--it could have been way after they all died since the visibility was obscured by all of that algae--I drained the aquarium.  Don't worry, the fish died of natural causes that did not involve an eyes-wide-open porcelin slide into oblivion. 

Iguana tracks

This led me to my reptile phase (doesn't everyone have a reptile phase?).  I really wanted an iguana, but the idea of a giant lizard roaming freely around the house eating her plants did not immediately appeal to my mom.  So, I settled for a smaller version--a normal-sized lizard that could easily be contained in an aquarium and subsist on crickets and mealworms.  My miniature iguana-substitute led a brief, boring life before joining the others in critter heaven (a.k.a. a small plot in the backyard or the suburban septic tank version of burial-at-sea) and I left for college. 

Happiness is a palm tree and a large lizard

I guess I've never fully gotten over my iguana-thing, as I was a bit fixated on them, to LSB's amusement (or was that unease?), while on our recent vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Loads of these guys roamed the hotel grounds in St. John--climbing trees, grazing on flowers, and doing other cool lizardlike things.  I watched them with with interest, took way too many photos, and followed their tracks on the beach, but I did not take one home to our apartment.  I think the customs people frown on that sort of thing. 

Dear Prudence

...won't you come out to play?

Ah, it's been a while, hasn't it? Seems like a cannon (apparently named "Prudence" by someone on the USS Constitution) is the proper way to break such a prolonged silence.

 

After over 10 years living in metro Boston, I finally made it to the penultimate stop on the Freedom Trail (and finally have a legitimate opportunity to use "penultimate").  Past attempts were derailed by tired feet and sudden thirst--coincidentally occuring near the same stretch of pubs around Quincy Market or the cozy restaurants in the North End.  Thanks to our friends visiting from Atlanta, we finally crossed the river into Charlestown and climbed aboard Old Ironsides.  An impressive old boat--worth the difficulty in trying to figure out if we could take the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge on foot (we couldn't) and then navigating a meandering set of walkways across a dam and a series of locks filled with cormorants.

Next time, maybe we'll make it all the way up the hill.

#306 (mostly)

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome,
dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.

May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

- Edward Abbey
(from Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey)
^^^^^^^^^^

I spent my last evening in Phoenix, sitting at the bar of the Pointe in Tyme Grille drinking a margarita and listening to a group of locals talk about accidents their wives got into with their pick-up trucks, "those Chinese" and "those Mexicans," and the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. 

The auction, held in neighboring Scottsdale, was on most of the televisions in the bar and seemed to have held the attention of the tourists and the locals alike.  One particular group of locals, a bit overserved at this point, tried to include me in their conversations about the cars being showcased.  It started by me asking if this auction was a "big deal" (I got some blank, "well, duh" stares on that one) and ended with everyone trying to guess the final bid on each vehicle.  The drunkest/friendliest of the group kept over-guessing by about 50-thousand dollars, which immediately brought to mind those people on The Price Is Right who would inexplicably guess the price of a toaster to be ridiculously more than any reasonable person would expect.  Maybe they were drunk, too.

I left after my second margarita, to the dismay of the over-guesser who seemed to have taken a liking to me, as I needed to get up early to take advantage the first sunny day in a week and my last in Phoenix.

Hoping to get caught up in the desert spirit, I brought an Edward Abbey book with me on this trip.  After two rainy days stuck on a mostly unoccupied resort complex, I was ready for the desert.  It was a crisp, cool morning and had a few hours to kill before I needed to head to the airport. 

At the edge of the resort was a gate.  On the other side of the gate (which was locked at dusk "to protect hotel guests" according to a sign"--I imagined packs of coyotes invading the resort after dark and carrying off small tourists) was the North Mountain Preserve, a large area of protected land in metro-Phoenix with several hiking trails. 

I took the Shaw Butte Trail, or #306, as it was listed as moderate to difficult and 4 miles seemed easy enough to finish with enough time to make my flight home.  The trail was nice--not too rugged, not too easy--but it certainly wasn't Abbey's desert.  Every scenic view was of civilization, the endless sprawl that is Phoenix, though there was usually a big cactus in the foreground.  We don't see many of those in Boston.

The trail system in this little park is simple enough, yet somehow I got a little confused at the top of the butte and then ended up going the wrong way on trail #100 at the bottom.  Nevertheless, I eventually found my way back to the hotel with enough time to grab lunch and a beer at the bar by the pool before heading to the airport.     

Self-portrait with cactus and sprawl
(hair made awesome by desert wind and hat)