Driving, Daughter and Dublin, Part III: The Diary

PART III — last in a series

We didn’t want to go to France. We wanted to spend a couple of hours in an Irish town called Cobh. Apparently there was more than one ferry in this place!

Once we explained that we wanted to remain in Ireland and were looking for a small river ferry, the attendant got out of her kiosk, lifted a gate and walked us to an exit lane. She told us where we wanted to be, and we were on our way again.

We found the river ferry, which could accommodate six cars (no passports required), and made it to Cobh. It’s another beautiful waterfront city full of life and spectacular scenery. We walked through the Titanic museum (the Lusitaniaalso departed from

Cobh, from St. Coleman’s Cathedral

there – hmm. I think I’d find a new departure city if I were traveling by boat), climbed the hill to wander through St. Coleman’s Cathedral, ate ice cream, drank coffee, and wondered why we had never heard of this city before.

Then it was back in the car for a drive to the area where all of my traveling friends said we must visit – the Dingle Peninsula. And of course they were right. Every turn on that narrow road produced another gasp from both of us – the rocks, the waves, the different shades of blue – light, dark, purple, navy, royal, powder  — were both in the sky and the water as it crashed toward the jagged rocks.

At one point we climbed a hill and walked into a pasture full of very calm sheep. At another point we explored one of the “bee hive” dwelling places of an ancient civilization.

This is the advantage of having a car instead of being bound to a bus schedule. When we wanted to climb a hill and look down on the waves crashing the coastline, we could. When we wanted to stop into a pub for some soup to warm us from the cold wind, we could. Wherever we stopped the people were friendly and helpful. They gave good advice on what to see, where to eat, what to avoid.

We spent a day taking in the sights of Dingle, then headed to another place our friends recommended. We wanted to hear some authentic Irish music, and we wanted to see the Aran Islands, so Doolin was next. For all that we had heard about Doolin, we were surprised at how tiny it was. A few streets had shops and restaurants, but that was it. There were a lot of new housing tracts, but the houses appeared to be empty. It was as if the village planners heard that a great expansion was coming, and got ready for it, but it never came.

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Driving, Daughter and Dublin, Part II: “Where Do You Think You’re Going?”

PART II

Last month I introduced my driving adventure in Ireland with my daughter while she was studying there for the summer. I had requested a car with an automatic transmission, and the good people at the car rental office gave me the biggest car — a Mercedes — I had seen in that country.  The reason my heart sank was that everything I read about driving in Ireland involved narrow roads, near-death experiences when encountering tour buses or trucks, tiny parking spaces, and neighborhoods with streets made for pedestrians and horses, not for hummers.

Plus, I used to own a car like this – a much older version. It was a Mercedes 500 SEL, which my mechanic dubbed The Exxon Valdez, because of both its size and the amount of oil it left wherever it sat. It was a car made for the autobahn, not for avoiding sheep, goats and bicycles on narrow country roads.

I could tell that the rental car man was confused by my lack of enthusiasm, but he was still convinced that this was my dream come true.

Kinsale, Ireland

We pulled out of the lot, I remembered what side of the road to drive on, and we headed for Kinsale. With my adult daughter on the left, in the passenger side, it felt as if we were doing reverse driver’s training.

“Dad – you’re too close to this bike on the left.”

But if I moved right, even a little, I risked running off the road.

“Dad – you’re almost off the shoulder over here. Dad – you turned into the wrong lane.”

But my favorite was:

“Dad! STOP!”

She said that when the road narrowed so much that it was impossible for two-way traffic to proceed. Someone had to give. Might as well be Sinatra and his daughter in the limo. She also said it one time when we thought we were on a road but turned out to be a pedestrian-only walkway. The pedestrians had to move out of our way twice – once when we nearly ran them over, and again when I had to traverse the same path in reverse.

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Driving, Daughter and Dublin, Part I: My Lucky Day?

Earlier this year I wrote about traveling cross-country with my son, with the false hope that our old Volvo would make it across the desert, over the mountains, and then live out the rest of its Swedish immigrant life being driven by my son and daughter in law in the flatlands of Kansas. You can read about how none of that happened in my “Volvo in Vegas” series, parts 1-3.

My daughter and I had a different kind of cross-country driving experience last year. She was going to be studying in Ireland for the summer, and wanted to know if my wife and I wanted to join her for the week before her program was to begin.  None of us had been to Ireland. My mom is Irish — she and my dad and brother went there several years ago to see where her tribe had begun, but I couldn’t go.

This time, things looked more possible. At least for me. My wife wanted to travel with us, but her job (she’s a big shot accountant in an international company — they work year round!) was not as accommodating as mine (college professor, summer break = duh!) My daughter was already in Europe with some friends, living as cheaply as possible. Couch surfing and baguettes can stretch even a U.S. dollar in the Eurozone.

So I agreed to meet her in Dublin. The plan was to travel through as much of the country as possible for a week, get her settled into her summer apartment, and feel more confident about her being there on her own, studying peace and conflict, specifically as it applied to “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland. I vowed to not think of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Read more

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Volvo in Vegas, Part III: The Trump Card

 PART THREE — Conclusion

On the Las Vegas Strip we looked for an anatomical sign, or even an astrological one, so that we would know whether to stay in Vegas and hope the Volvo could be repaired right away, or cut our losses like so many others who come to this town with high hopes and leave defeated. Seeing nothing helpful in the street or the stars, we called our wives. Barring some kind of vision or intervention, we decided we’d leave the Volvo in Vegas and head out the next morning in the rental car.

Within about an hour of the next morning’s drive, I felt confirmation of that decision. The hills, mountains, landscape, sky, were spectacular to look at. And the constant climb created certainty in me that our old car would not have made it out of Nevada, either. It was too steep, too hot, and that car was too old, too weak. We proceeded guilt free.

And yet, I still wondered what I was going to do about the car. Fix it? Even if I do, how do I know I’m not getting ripped off? I left it at an empty mechanic’s shop recommended by a tow truck driver who had just taken hundreds of dollars from me on an overheated Saturday afternoon, and everything would have to be handled over the phone. Let’s see – the mechanic has the car, my key, and the knowledge. I have, hmm, a credit card and misgivings. Advantage mechanic.

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Volvo in Vegas, Part II: In Search of a Sign

Even if I were an atheist, I think I would believe in God after that, just because it seemed like the universe was putting such an exclamation point on our predicament.

The tow truck showed up and drove us 60 miles to Las Vegas, to a repair shop that the driver said was good. This was a Saturday afternoon, so the shop was closed and the lot was empty. After handing over several hundred dollars to the driver, I left Blake and his belongings with the Volvo, as the tow truck driver took me to the airport where I could rent something else. We thought we could still make the show. We’d figure out what we were going to do with the car later that night, we decided. First things first – get to the Bellagio. Soon I was in a car headed back to Blake. He had found the one spot of shade in the mechanic’s parking lot – about a two-foot triangle. Temperature was 110.

This time we weren’t so careful packing the rental car. It was a little bigger than the Volvo, so the bike fit inside. We were dehydrated, hungry and hurrying.

When our kids were little, if there was a glitch in the plan, my wife and I tried to keep everyone’s spirits up. Parents go into flight attendant mode – mostly cheerful and helpful, keeping the harmful information from the passengers (Of course we’re not going to crash! Of course there is plenty of oxygen. Of course we anticipated that turbulence! Would you like some more peanuts?). When a different Volvo broke down on the way to Disneyland years ago for our daughter’s birthday, an observer would have thought this was all part of the fun. Look! We get to rent this cool car for the day! My wife and I did that for years – trying to put on a good exterior while stomach acid poured into our internal organs. I was under no such pressure this time. Blake had traveled plenty through South America, Africa, Central America, where buses broke down in heat that was worse than this. Things fall apart, Achebe said. Good plans don’t always work out. Adapt or die.

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Volvo in Vegas, Part I: The Desert Speaks

Stranded on a stretch of highway between Baker, California, and Las Vegas, both of us noticed the SUV pull in front of us on the side of the road. It was 107 degrees outside, in the middle of the afternoon, and we had just commented on how this pull-off area smelled like a sewer. A few feet to our right we could see that the road’s shoulder was littered with plastic soda and water bottles, and all of them had the same color fluid in them, baking in the sun, leaking into the ground. Drivers had apparently used these bottles to empty their bladders, then tossed them out of their vehicles, all in this one area. It appeared as if this practice had been going on for years, judging by the number of bottles.

We had the windows down and were waiting for a tow truck. The driver said on the phone that he thought he knew where we were. That was a relief. The dispatcher said she had no idea where we could be. But the driver said he’d be there in an hour or so.

The dad in the SUV walked around to the back door of his vehicle and he looked over at us and nodded slightly, hesitatingly, I thought at the time. We just stared back at him in that heat-soaked way.

Our trip had been effortless until just a few miles back.

The idea was that Blake and I would pack the family’s 1993 Volvo with as much stuff as possible, then drive it from San Diego to Kansas City, where he and his wife were starting the next chapter of their lives together. We would leave the car with him and I would fly home. Who wouldn’t want a 19-year-old car with almost 250,000 miles on it?

He and Amy had been living in Central America teaching school, both in Honduras and Guatemala. They were married in the U.S., but then left right away for their jobs, so a lot of their shower presents were still in our garage, and a lot of stuff from Blake’s room in our house was still here.

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Hanging Out With Ray Bradbury

Yesterday’s death of Ray Bradbury got me thinking about his time at our Writer’s Symposium By The Sea in 2001, where he so delighted the audience that his appearance is one of the most memorable in the 18 years we’ve been putting on the Symposium. Even the sound check was funny, when he started rattling off a profane limerick. I don’t remember the poem, but I do remember it involved Emily Dickenson.

When he and I talked about how the evening event would go, he gladly agreed to an interview with me, but he insisted on giving some remarks in addition to the interview. So the Symposium began with Ray talking about life, writing, the beauty of the universe, and advice. He stood at the lectern and spoke for nearly an hour without any notes. Then he sat down and took questions from me.

I prepared for that interview the way I prepare for all of these interviews — with tons of reading. I try to read every book the author has written, and read interviews, essays, reviews — whatever else can help me ask insightful and challenging questions. One question that stands out in my memory was about a quote I saw attributed to him. I thought the quote said “I write to present the future.” I asked him about that quote and he very quickly corrected me. “I said I write to PREVENT the future,” he said. That made even more sense.

In today’s obit on Bradbury in the New York Times, they included a clip from that interview where he gives advice to writers.

My30-minute  interview with him, which aired on UCSD-TV, is here:

His speech is here.

The universe is ever grateful for Ray Bradbury for what he presented AND prevented.

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Dean Interviews John Ortberg

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Dave Eggers, Chris Hedges, Rachel Held Evans All On Our Stage

I can think of only one place where you’ll find three of the most important cultural voices of our time, all in one location. People expect us to bring in good writers for our annual Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, but do they expect us to bring in three in a row, all at this level of quality? We may have outdone ourselves this year.

Dave Eggers almost never gives public interviews. But he’s coming on Feb. 29, and he’s letting me interview him in front of an audience of about 350. Those tickets are almost gone. It won’t be videotaped, either, so it’s a once in a lifetime event! It will be heartbreaking! It will be staggering! It will be genius! (I channelled him a little just now.)

Chris Hedges is a fearless reporter who has covered wars in Somalia, Central America, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia. He has been captured and imprisoned twice. He and I both spoke at an event a couple of years ago at Amherst on The Future of Journalism, and I thought he was incredible then. He has since been very involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and he recently sued President Obama for keeping suspects in remote prisons around the world, without bringing charges against them. He was trained at the Harvard Divinity School, and now speaks out about war, love, fascism in America, literacy, spectacle vs. substance, and on and on. He’s one of the most fascinating people you’ll meet. He’ll be here on Feb. 28.

And starting off the Symposium on Feb. 27 is Rachel Held Evans, a brilliant writer and thinker who writes about faith, science, fundamentalism, womanhood, with a boldness that is refreshing. She has gotten into some very public debates with bullies of Christian faith, and she gives encouragement to those who are willing to ask tough questions.

Also, there will be workshops on writing about True Crime, and about the future of publishing.

Most of our past Symposium events are available through our media partner, UCSD-TV. Are these events popular? They have been downloaded from the UCSD site more than 1.3 million times. We even have a fan in a monastery in southern France.

Tickets are available here.

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My New Best Friend in Mexico

Last fall I spent three days in San Cristobal, the town where Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico, grew up. The town is in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and is really one of the most picturesque places I’ve been in a long time. Fox invited a few of us to spend some time with him at his compound, which now houses his presidential library and leadership institute, Centro Fox. I had breakfast with him and his wife Marta in the very room where he used to have his meals as a little boy, growing up on the surrounding ranch.

Much of the ranch still exists, surrounding Centro Fox. We talked at his breakfast table, then later in his office under a portrait of him and Marta, and then we walked through the Centro Fox grounds, looking through his presidential memorabilia. Most of what we talked about is in the January 2012 edition of San Diego Magazine, in my story The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

I hope this is just the beginning of my conversations with him. He’s worth listening to. Here are some photos of Centro Fox and the nearby city of Guanajuato.

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