Preparing the Palate

a standard rule of thumb - never adventure to an unknown territory without ample preparations. note my artistic assortment of irish beverages. the plan is to drink them all. consider this akin to getting a particular vaccination. if i introduce sufficient amounts of irish whiskey, guinness and lagers into my blood stream in small (or medium) dosages prior to my trip, i am therefore less likely to be jolted by them (i.e... schedule-threatening hang-overs) once we are officially ON our trip. Africa-bound travellers get Malaria vaccinations, those bound for South America get Typhoid vaccinations, and while there's nothing clinically proven for Europe - I figure I should be on the safe side and well... self vaccinate. and this advice, totally FREE!

RED SHOE GALLERY: Episode 2 - "Fair Weather Fans"

okay... so i'll openly confess that i watched my very first football game (from kick-off to finish) this past weekend when our beloved Seattle Seahawks made it to the play-offs for the first time in 25 years or somethin'. of course, drakey and i don't do much without making a celebration of it, so we went all out (for ourselves) and made lil' smokeys in bbq sauce, home-made nachos with the WORKS, bought a bunch of beer, choreographed some special hi-fives, and played crazy "football fan" for an entire afternoon. and you know... honestly, i don't know if it was because i accidentally wore an all blue outfit on the "blue friday" before the game, or if it was because of my virgin spectatorship or not, but by golly, our Seahawks KICKED ASS and made it to the Super Bowl for the first time ever in the history of the world!! you see, normally they just suck, so i've never had to concern myself with this 'seattle loyal sports fan' bidness. anyway... to get on with the purpose of this story - drake and i came into the possession of some real, live, genuine Super Bowl tickets this evening. don't ask, it's complicated. so the question lingers, should the red shoes take a trip to 8-mile, to Super Bowl XL? or should they sell the tickets on ebay for billions of dollars? Ireland 2006? "Hey Bartender, make that a double!!"

shaming the vine

I received an email forward from a friend and member of our wine tasting group today about Walmart Wine and suggested names. http://user.pa.net/~nrwing/buyamerican/walmartwine.html
Freakish, I know. The sad thing is that while most people thought this was purely a hoax, I distinctly remember about 5 or so years ago reading about a business venture between E&J Gallo and Walmart to sell a private label of cheap swill of believe it or not, 4 different varietals under the name of Alcott Ridge Wine. After reading the email today (link above) I immediately googled this to make sure I wasn't hallucinating and shore 'nuff, found the following exert from Wine Spectator Online's "Grapevine" publication in late 2000.

Wal-Mart, the chain of discount stores that sell everything from clothing to garden supplies, is becoming a wine retailer, too. Many Wal-Marts in the United States and overseas now carry the company's exclusive wine brand, produced by California giant E. & J. Gallo. The Alcott Ridge Vineyards brand includes four varietals -- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay and White Zinfandel -- each priced under $7 a bottle.

'Shaming the vine!', that's what I've got to say about that. Walmart supported Pro-lifers, clansmen, and NRA aficionados, drink your heart out!!! What next? Are they going to open The Walmart school of Viticulture? A Walmart sponsored sommelier certification program?

I can see it now...

"Hi... welcome to the KKK (Kentucky Kritters Kitchen) Diner. I'll be your sommelier this evening. Most of what we're pouring tonight will be coming straight from our finest quality boxes. Might I recommend the Walmart private label cab sauv with your pork rinds and squirrel-kabobs. It has these exquisite hints of gasoline and foot fungus with a finsih slick enough to grease your rifle with. Bon Appetite, and please don't forget to pick up your complimentary burning cross at the counter."

keeping your priorities straight

had a bad day? might i reccommend hot dogs and tequila. no joke. it's a marvelous recipe to cure all sorts of ailments, including: bitterness, sorrow, exasperation, disappointment, rage and yes... even disgust in the human race. step 1: purchase cheap hot dogs. kick it up a notch by burning them (slightly), split-style in a cast iron skillet. if you're bold (or crazy) go for the cheesy dog. don't think about it, just do it!! step 2: tequila. don't compromise here. you've got to go top shelf - nothing less than Patron. step 3: take one part hot dog to three parts Patron. continue as needed until you finally achieve that Calgon moment. step 4: relax, smile, and pat yourself on the back for understanding the basic neccessities in life. priorities and balance... that's what it's all about!! bottoms up.

don't leave home without it

we've been fairly dependent on this Rick Steves (travel guru character) for the gist of our travel preparations. he says up and down, backwards and sideways to "PACK LIGHT!" this, mind you, is a relatively foreign concept to us. i mean, we're not super high maintenance or anything, but drake does have a rather meticulous cleansing and bathroom ritual involving a multitude of products; what amounts to about a 40 pound travel toiletry bag. i'm not kidding. the reoccuring joke of every camping season is drake's "face basin" and the fact that every camping trip, without fail and regardless of circumstance, she's up at 2am in the morning boiling water by lantern light to create the appropriate face washing experience while everybody else is stumbling blind, dirty and drunk off to their tents. all this while drake screams repeatedly at me "erin rae - brush your f*cking teeth!!!"

so, "pack light" are words that we've been playing over and over again recently trying to figure out how we're actually going to accomplish this. drake approached me this evening with some "absolute essentials"... which i really can't protest (note photo above). we've been told that it was generally a significant increase in $$ to get hotel accommodations with "en suite" commodes. need i say that this was devastating news? and it goes without saying that we're now travelling in nothing less than 3.5-4 star hotels/B&B's with full "en suite" accommodations thanks to the fact that drakey has reminded me on numerous occasions of the infamous toilet scene in the movie "Trainspotting". you might have to use the whole packet of seat covers on that one. cheers!

THE RED SHOE GALLERY: Episode One


behold a thing of beauty; truly.

so preparation step # 247 to our european adventure was to puchase some very comfortable, arch-supporting, all-weather walking shoes. side note: rumor has it that despite the obscene amount of ale and whiskey travellers tend to imbibe in Ireland, you actually end up *losing* weight due to the even greater amount of walking you do. so after our routine saturday lunch at Gordon Biersch, we headed out to REI for some "practical shoe" shopping. the much dreaded "tennis" shoe, to be precise. we quickly realized that practical and fashionable simply do not jive; a lesson Mrs. Lomdue probably tried to teach us long ago, but we didn't bother listening cuz at the time, what did it matter? so... we perused the assortment of butt-ugly shoes, shared polite comments on their soft soles and arch hugging interior, and then ultimately busted up laughing and said "no way in hell!" god forbid immediate judgement befall us from the Brits on part of our sensible, soccer-mom shoes. it became clear that we were definitely in a quandary. we took a few minute to troubleshoot, and came to the conclusion that really... we couldn't compromise comfort (given the rumors and all), so we figured, when in doubt... GO BRIGHT! color may not disguise the hideous factor, but it sure as hell can put some spunk and spice into a thing. so there we have the bright red tennis shoes. i do truly love them and if i'm being honest, i've been hanging out secretly waiting for a pair of red tennis shoes to claim me as their rightful owner. i have subsequently been planning my outfits around them. drakey also ended up getting a pair of pretty cool shoes as well, although sadly, they are not yet featured on this blog posting. all in due time.

so this drawn out detail is really for the purpose of introducing my red tennis shoes and the artistic (ha!) idea of mine to create an entire "red shoe gallery" as part of our european tour. every picture of me will be shot from the knees down - featuring my red shoes in various cultural and historic scenes: my red shoes visit Buckingham palace, red shoes at the Guinness factory, red shoes do the literary pub crawl, etc. and if i need to stand upside down on my head in order to capture certain signage, well then i'm happy to do so. in fact, all the better.

so... stay tuned - as the red shoe gallery unfolds.

follow the yellow brick road

welcome to the soon to be “travel blog” of drake and erin. i’ve always wanted to host a blog, but i figured i’d need to have something to say, as that seems to be the point of these thingies; although i’d venture to argue otherwise based on some dribblings i’ve read. but whatever. so, i've seen prego blogs, political blogs, work blogs, poetry blogs, food/cooking blogs, etc. i thought about doing a wine or board game blog, but i figured that would get old after a couple of days… or drinks. i'm not now (nor ever will be) pregnant, politics make me too enraged to talk about, and a wine blog would likely be overwrought with a lot of sentimental ramblings, grammatical errors and misspellings, so those were all out.

but… alas, drake and i have *finally* planned our first european adventure and i’ll be damned if there won’t be something interesting to say about it, once it’s all underway. i would also like to note that this was no small feat, as we’ve literally been talking about our “soon to be” trip to
ireland since we shacked up 11 years ago. but planes, trains and automobiles are booked, new luggage and super cool, bright red, comfortably-trot-around-europe shoes have been purchased (more on this later), dog sitters are in sitting (or at least crouching) position, and this thing is actually going to happen!

so we’re doing sort of a cracked up, whirl-wind, tour of europe. fast and furious… that’s what it’s all about. we’re hitting london, ireland (dublin, galway, kilkenny and some pub stops in between), edinburgh, scotland and york; rarely in one place for more than a couple days. this will be the first time either one of us has ever left the country (canada not included) so our clueless asses trekking around europe will be at the very least, comical, if not disastrous. i think we’ll be okay with small dosages of disaster, however; it is, afterall, a learning experience. example of how clueless we are: earlier this week, we had to call around to our friends in order to find out how to make an international phone call. we’re definitely on our way to becoming wicked cultured lezbos.

don't be shocked if the writing styles here change slightly as our trip progresses. we may pick up on certain phrases like "lovely jubbly" and if we're "on the piss" then we're liable to even get profane or sloppy in our choice of words. after all, we are "bent as a nine-bob note". anyway... what i'm trying to say is that we’re both highly susceptible to influences and completely void of any semblance of embarrassment if you people decide to make fun of us on this matter. :)

ireland and guiness, here we come! we’re gonna drink yer’ country dry!