Author: Mimo Caenepeel

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Bike city

Vancouver is cool, for many reasons.

One of them is the way the city celebrates movement. Whichever way we look, we see people walking, rollerblading, skateboarding, swimming, playing volleyball, doing handstands…

Most of all, Vancouver loves its cyclists. They have been given wide, safe paths. Over and over, cyclists are invited in where other vehicles are told to keep out. Cycling in Vancouver feels good, deliciously good, not in the least because you (or your bike) feel so welcome.

The area we are staying in is called Kitsilano. It used to be a hippy hang-out; now it’s become urban professional territory that oozes a relaxed air. It is bordered by a seemingly endless waterfront dotted with small parks and beaches. Cycling along the sea, as we do pretty much every day, we fantasize about living here. In our imagination, it’s always summer.

Kitsilano has the longest open-air swimming pool we’ve ever seen: 140m, 25 degrees, salt water.

Vancouver aims to be the greenest city in the world by 2020.

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One day in New York

One day only. We are predictable and take train no. 7 (Express) to Manhattan.

Our destination is MoMA, an undisputed highlight. But MoMA doesn’t open until 10:30 and, being jetlagged, we’re early. That almost never happens.

To fill up the time, we take a stroll in Central Park. We’re struck by how well-cared for it is, and chat to a friendly, open-faced woman who is part of a group of volunteers busy trimming and tidying. After a while, we pause on a bench near the pond. We feel contented. All is well with the world.

The robed Buddhist monk who approaches us with a smile increases our sense of peace. He strikes up a conversation of a kind; his English is a basic but he does manage to tell us he is from Taiwan. We want to tell him about our own connection with Buddhism, but out of the blue, he takes hold of my arm, then Ewan’s, and slips a wooden-beaded bracelet on each of our wrists, muttering ‘gift, gift’.

We are perplexed; we are not in need of a bracelet (as we are trying to shed rather than acquire stuff). A little tussle ensues (‘no, no, thanks, thanks’ – ‘yes, yes’) which he wins, and as we surrender (remembering that loving kindness is one of the heavenly abodes), he shoves a lined page with names and amounts (ranging from $ 20 to $ 100) onto my lap. The message is clear: look what others give, you must do the same.

Our feeling of harmony has been replaced edgy sense of feeling manipulated – something we don’t respond well too. I feel a little dazed and confused as the smiling monk puts a pencil in my hand and gestures pointedly.

Our friendship with the monk is short and not very sweet, and all three of us know it. To put a stop to it, Ewan reluctantly digs up a $20 note, asking for $10 change. The monk hastily throws us five dollars and turns away. We watch him go, marveling at being such easy prey.

A small illusion poorer, we head for MoMA, which restores our spirits within minutes.

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Routine bites the dust

Zen garden at Green Gulch

Routine started to disintegrate at dawn today with more phone calls from the UK — a small family crisis for Ewan. We did manage to paint a mandala each, although (like breakfast) this was about two hours later than planned. Finally left the house noon-ish and headed north to Marin county, turning left at the Arco petrol station where the worst of California (urban wasteland) abruptly transforms itself into the best (fragrant hills hovering dreamily between earth and sea). 

W e disembarked at Green Gulch Farm, a Zen Buddhist center where we naturally fell quiet as we waited for the office to open. What did we want to know? We were not sure; we’d missed the most recent tea gathering (chado) and are still too steeped in family life to volunteer. We browsed the bookshop instead (actually somewhat tortuous since I have pledged not to buy anything I cannot leave behind) and strolled around under the peace of tall trees. We did not even see the inside the meditation hall (it felt wrong to view it in a touristy way) but left feeling somehow more serene.

High windy Highway 1 — with ‘rough road’ warnings — took us to Stinson Beach, where we had a very late lunch in an all-American place that looked so gloomy and greasy it made us a bit hysterical; and then we did do the tourist thing: Ewan slept on the beach, I walked along the ocean edge, and Maaike read (Gossip Girl, more American fare). And we didn’t even get stuck in the traffic on the way back. 

So not a bad day, particularly given that Gov Schwarzenegger and the Democrats have cut a historic deal on greenhouse gas emissions. 

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Routine strikes

Iconicfigure on Telegraph Avenue

Somewhat scattered start today with phone calls to UK over Klein family issues; and email; and some travel arrangements up in the air. When we finally got out of the house we had a serious meeting in front of Peet’s Coffee on Solano about the need for routine. We were all three awake in the night, and restless; Maaike had a nightmare. We will remedy it all with rhythm and routine.

So Ewan worked and visited a contact at UC Berkeley, and Maaike and I went up Indian Rock and down Shattuck, to Shambhala, which occupies part of a floor in a huge and pretty austere 50ies building. I made a note of meditation times. Pema Chodron teaches every second Tuesday of the month, which is the day we set off for Fiji.

Back home we immersed ourselves in Maaike’s first home schooling tutorial, on the US of A and its history. We need an atlas; there is a lot to learn. The civil war for instance, and how slavery got abolished. Not to mention contemporary race relations. 

Maaike cooked. Stuffed artichokes with delicious dips, and jazzy tofu, seriously. All worth the wait. Life feels more settled tonight. 

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Bad Hair Day for Maaike

Maaike set off optimistically for her course today; sailing in the morning, but alas, the day was exceptionally misty-moisty and refused to clear. Having booked Maaike on the course to have some time to myself I ended up feeling quite bereft without her. 

The course was not a success. Just a handful of other kids (school has started again this week), and they seem to have ganged up against Maaike, the British latecomer, in a bit of a mean way. Maaike declares she is no way going back. W e regrouped at the Farmer’s market, where we sampled white peaches and crosses of apricot and plum (pluots), all organic. Organic farming is big here — apparently the California soil is like chocolate. The chocolate on the other hand is 87% cacao, which is quite something.

We ended the day all three sprawled in front of one of the four TVs in this house (the house also has four cars attached) watching a pretty pointless Cosby Show spinoff, the best on offer out of umpteen channels, and somehow we enjoyed it anyway. 

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Slump

Exhaustion day. W e stayed at home all day. Maaike was awake in the night and couldn’t be woken up in the morning. I sat in the garden reading an Alexander McCall Smith novel I found in the house: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate,with a photo of Peckham’s on the cover. A strange choice for day five in Cal. 

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Back in Berkeley

I am finally properly jet-lagged, wide awake from 4 am onwards, and crabbily drinking too much tea until we head downtown Berkeley to meet up with Line Mikkelsen: old friend, CogSci student and another precious ex-babysitter.

Customers on sidewalk of Cafe du Monde.

Spirits lift as we have beignets and cafe au lait to celebrate the 35th birthday of Chez Panisse, and lift again as we get a guided tour of the Berkeley campus. We end up shopping on Telegraph Avenue; Maaike buys two pairs of shorts for her Discovery Course tomorrow, and a very pink dress!

Later in the afternoon Maaike and I have popcorn in the tiny local cinema, where we watch Trust the Man.

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Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz! Home of our year-long sabbatical in 1995, when we hung out on beaches and playgrounds with two-year-old Maaike and lived next door to the most beautiful campus we know. That moment of excitement when the urban sprawl south of San Francisco turns into Highway 17, and everything becomes greener and clearer. We reminisce about how we did this in a Limo when we first arrived in January 1995 and Maaike threw up at every curve of the highway.

We went to New Leaf grocery store first, off 41st, for a sunrise smoothie, the illusion of virtuous consumerism, and memories. Then off to see our old friends the Lax-Garcia family. Lena was five last time we saw her, and Rose a day old; now Lena is about to turn 13, and Rose seven and-a-half. It almost makes me cry, they are both so beautiful. Lena and Maaike, best friends at age one-and-a-half, embrace awkwardly but are soon off to look at something on the computer and essentially don’t stop talking for the rest of the day. And here is June, who used to be Maaike’s child-minder and adopted granny, still looking just the same age 86.

We laugh, we talk, we walk to the place where Maaike fell into the blackberries in ’95 and had to be disentangled, along the beach (where Maaike was scooped up by a wave and lost her first left shoe) to 26th Avenue (where we lived for a few months and Maaike fell down the porch and got that scar in her eyebrow). We are almost in a bit of a time warp: everything is the same, and different too. We eat at La Palomar on the harbour at 3:30 and finally stroll downtown, on Pacific Avenue, which in 1995 still bore traces of the 1989 earthquake but has now been fully rebuilt, pretty glam actually, and end up in Bookshop Santa Cruz, where else, discovering that Natalie Goldberg has a new book, on failure. Where does the day go? It passes on a high of happiness, and when we finally take Highway 17 north again, Maaike cries most of the way home.

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San Francisco

Maaike on Market and Powell

We walked San Francisco today, up the hill, through Chinatown up to Fisherman’s wharf, then down again hanging out of a cable car. The City seemed slightly scruffier than I remember, but still at least as glorious. Exhilarating views, mesmerizing painted ladies, the historic City Lights bookshop and honey-sweetened ice-cream I could eat (peach).

The day only went a little pear-shaped towards the end when the Ford Explorer of our hosts stalled about 15 times on the way back from North Berkeley BART station and got us home tetchy and grouchy.

There are many panhandlers in California. We sometimes give them money (usually at Maaike’s insistence) but rarely remember their faces, even if we make brief eye contact. But a woman at the BART station today has stayed with us. She was in a wheel-chair, quite old, pretty smelly; she was missing a leg and was covered in sores; but her eyes were very light and alive, and full of intelligence. She said she was hungry but Maaike and I couldn’t give her money straight away because we were waiting for Ewan, who had change. So we hung out with her a bit while we waited, talking about the street performer she knew. I wanted to ask her what happened to her, her leg, these terrible sores everywhere; and I couldn’t. We looked out for her on
the way back, but she was gone.

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The Sky is Blue

85I The Alameda, Berkeley (where we are)
60 Leamington Terrace (where our exchange partners have landed)

California! I’d (almost) forgotten how the air smells (of eucalyptus and blossoms with a whiff of mint), how low the toilets are, how big the cars (and the food portions), how sweet the sun – and the people! (apart from the odd cab driver). Maaike and I slept all night and after a slow start ambled down the broad avenues of Berkeley where the Elephant Pharmacy prescribes yoga, and where south Asian cuisine rubs shoulders with one-screen cinemas.

We had lunch at Cafe Gratitude — we ordered “I am joyful” (quinoa, tahini sauce and steamed vegetables — more delicious than it sounds), as well as “I am luscious”, “I am eternally sweet” and “I am accepting” ( the bill). We found Black Oak Books, our first second-hand bookshop of the trip, and I eventually had to drag Ewan out. Maaike declared (at least ten times) that she is going to move to California. If she does I will follow her, and become Berkeley’s first CPP psychotherapist .