The Wagner-Bailey "Year Off" Blog
Greetings to all. As many of you know, I, Jamie, quit my job, we sold our house in Washington, DC, filled up some storage units, and headed initially for points midwest (Chicago) and then south (of the border). The plan, in a nutshell, is to spend 12-14 months, not working, on the road, enjoying family, appreciating different locales and cultures. I am excited and optimistic about the adventure. Some prognosticators predict that a year of 24/7 with me will drive Jenny crazy. Though I’m sure their point of view has some merit – to be fair to me, she was pretty far along already.
Our summer in Chicago
On June 10th – 10 days before we needed to be packed up and moved out of our home, I most inconveniently broke my left leg "playing soccer" at a charity event for Tibetan women. Alas, Liam discovered that I was not invincible – though anyone that knows him, realizes that my accident did little to inform him of his own mortality. Indeed, when admonished to refrain from some dangerous activity, Liam regularly reminds me that "Steve Irwin does it" (yes, the "Crocodile Hunter" and no, we haven’t told him...I know, I know, but it’d break his little heart). Anyway, Jenny shouldered much more of the packing burden than we had anticipated, and I hobbled around at about one-tenth of my predicted usefulness (some would say less). Neighbors and friends (Luc, Natasha, Palden, Tsering, Taku, Sonia) helped us immeasureably (my Dad, the mathmetician cringes, "Actually, Jamie, it is measurable"). After the frenetic packing, in part to make up for the disproportionate amount of work Jenny had done and also in order to show my manliness, I drove a Uhaul truck with our car in tow from DC to Chicago, with my broken leg in a walking cast. A 13 hour drive, with only bad radio (my Ipod still with no songs downloaded – you know how it is, Jake) and a tin of Skoal. Upon my arrival in Chicago, we moved into a lovely 2 bedroom apartment a block from Lincoln Park/Lake Michigan and a block away from Jenny’s sister Marcey (and Stu) and her folks, Bob and Marlene.
As soon as we arrived in Chicago, we headed north 400+ miles through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, specifically to the City of Ironwood, the home of the "Pasty" (a Welsh pot pie of sorts inherited by the Finnish and Swedish miners of the area) and the childhood home of Jenny’s mother. There we attended the Kilponen family (Jennifer’s maternal Finnish grandmother’s family) reunion. Here we wandered the rolling wooded mountains and played on the Lake Superior "seashore." We drank a lot of medium to bad quality beer with Jenny’s cousins and thankfully could drive all the back dirt roads with "roadies" because Jenny’s cousin is the Town Manager. My only lament is that my broken leg hampered our aspirations of mountain biking and raquetball. We had much fun with Jenny’s cousins and aunts/uncles. Liam and Marcus found many frogs/crickets and bonded closely with their many cousins, so much so that many tears were shed upon our departure (Liam: "...sniffle, sniffle, but Dad, I just love cousin Katie...").
No sooner had we driven back to Chicago (god bless the portable DVD player) than we boarded a flight to Quebec City, to join my family (all my siblings and their offspring, my aunt, cousins, and certain friends) in a fete for my father’s 75th Birthday. Our clan essentially took over a large Inn a block away from the Chateau Frontenac (where my parents spent part of their honeymoon in 1959). Quebec, a city full of lovely architecture, and Franco-Anglo tension, was a perfect venue for wining and dining for 4 days of celebration. From the city, we headed east into the Gaspe peninsula of Quebec, where my sister Lori’s family and my brother Dany/Meg camped in the lovely Parc du Bic (and we stayed at a nearby Inn), where we did a lovely hike (me still on crutches) along the tidal St. Lawrence, with views of small mountains and the occasional seal. Liam and Marcus had a ton of fun with their big cousins, Ian and Gavin, making competing forts of rock and wood. I too had fun on the slow gimpy return hike with Ian and Gavin, where we discussed the "best" music from the 70's to the present (me voting for Zeppelin and Gavin pushing for Slayer: Ian saw the merits of several genres). From the Gaspe, we drove through New Brunswick into Maine, via the border town of Madawaska (last time I was there was in 1983 when my soccer team had just lost the state semi-final game and we had a morose 5 hour drive home). I enjoyed the drive south: the blossoms were on the potato plants, the signs in franco-american. We spent a couple of days in Orono, Maine (my childhood home), sent Jenny back to Chicago (to fly to Spain) and then headed to the coast, Sorrento, Maine, where Liam, Marcus and I practiced our camping skills on my father’s lawn. Lori’s family also drove south with us and in Sorrento we rejoined my Dad and my sister Kim’s family. In Sorrento and at Acadia National Park, we swam at the salt water pool, canoed in the Atlantic, built castles at sand beach, and ate mint chip ice cream in Bar Harbor. Ahh...Maine.
Back in Chicago, on July 29th, Jenny’s baby sister Marcey, tied the knot at the beautiful Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park. Liam and Marcus were ring bearers, Jenny the matron of honor, and I was honored with a speaking part. Despite the cast on my foot, Jenny and I danced with abandon, especially to "what you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk up in your trunk..."
We spent the summer visiting Chicago’s sites, with a focus on: 1) Grandma/Grandpa’s house with Tia Marcey and Stu; 2) the Lincoln Park Zoo (yes, of course); 3) the beach; 4) bike rides with the trailer (once my leg improved); 5) the playground and the surrounding park; 6) the Shedd Aquariam; 7) the Children’s museum; 8) playing with cousins Erica and Connor (and Uncle Lumpy and Aunt Valeria); 9) reading/writing at coffee shops; and 10) physical therapy. One noteworthy day trip – which we twice made – is a "scenic" spot only an 1.5 hour drive from Chicago: Indiana Dunes National Seashore, which unlike any other venue I have visited in the National Park system, boasts huge sand dunes in a 10 mile stretch of land situated between two gigantic steel mills and a Nuclear Power plant. Aah, Indiana.
Shortly before our scheduled departure to Oaxaca, Mexico, two events delayed us another 3 weeks: Not to be outdone by my accident, Jenny got strep throat and mono, so that she too could visit the ER (Liam also decided to visit the ER again, 3rd time in 7 months). In Oaxaca, political unrest and massive strikes (with machete-wielding individuals) forced us to chose another venue in Mexico. We chose Guanajuato.
The First Leg of the Latin America Trip - Guanajuato, Mexico
Sept. 20, 2006: Our loving motorcade (Bob and Marlene Bailey and our new brother-in-law Stuart McDonald) dropped us at O’Hare with too many bags for easy travel. Yes, I know better, but I had to uphold my reputation for sartorial diversity and excellence. In addition, Liam and Marcus each have a backpack full of their respective animals and books – the most important being Liam’s well-thumbed "great big book of everything" - a several pound animal encyclopedia.
True to our form, we were the last to board the Mexicana flight to Monterrey. During our layover, Liam suggested that we had flown far enough and that we could find a "rental house" in this part of Mexico. Whilst in Monterrey, Liam and Marcus both received their first stamps in their brand new passports! We landed in Leon, Mexico and a wacky ex-pat American (who brokered the rental for us and had a "taxi service" on the side) picked us up and drove us to our casa/hacienda in a village 5 kilometers outside of Guanajuato – one of Mexico’s lovely colonial towns built by silver money. Our accommodations caught us by surprise, i.e., they were much grander than we had expected. We have a two-bedroom inside a 300+ year old structure, with stone walls 20 feet high surrounding the grounds. Grand arches form a colonnade where the boys spend many an hour chasing the dog and cat of the house. We have the luxury of letting the boys have the run of the place and often need to search the grounds to find Liam and Marcus either in the magnificent climbing tree, catching butterflies, or making a "clubhouse" hither or thither. We have been extremely happy to have our friend Anne-Marie Gibbons here in Guanajuato with us. Together, we wine, dine, hike and study.
October 26th will be my last day of instruction at Academia Falcon, a spanish language school in Guanajuato. I took courses for 2 hours per day for 4 weeks...and now speak much better than Jennifer. Que padre! Jennifer, due to her linguistic abilities, had no need of language instruction, but thankfully has fallen in love with Mexican cooking and took two weeks of instruction. Jenny also took a week of Mexican Constitutional Law (so if you ever need a lawyer in Mexico...) and a course on Indigenous Cultures. It has been a real joy to study again, especially because we’re using our heads much differently than we have for quite a few years. Liam and Marcus are just about to finish their 4th week at a Mexican kindergarten (Jardin de ninos), 5 hours/day. It has been a full on immersion situation for them as it is a purely Mexican school and they are the only gringos. Thankfully, they seem to have picked up quite a bit of spanish in the last month. Now it is up to Jennifer and me to "home-school" the boys for awhile. I have a distinct feeling that the curriculum will be heavily slanted towards "los animales".
In our "spare time" (isn’t that all we have), we have been spending many hours hiking in the rolling mountains surrounding Guanajuato, along with the exploration of several villages that time has left behind. We were enchanted by the villages of Santa Rosa, Calderones (where thousands of butterflies reside) and Cubo (where the boys charmed the old ladies...and Liam gave a big kiss to a ninety year old senora).
After the El Dia de Muertos (The Day of the Dead), a couple of days on the beach around Ixtapa, and a visit to our friends Lawrence and Megan (and wee Cooper) in Mexico City, we will fly to Quito, Ecuador, and set up for a week in an Eco-lodge, and make arrangements to head to the Galapagos Islands.
We hope everyone is well...and will update soon.
Jamie, Jennifer, Liam and Marcus.
Our summer in Chicago
On June 10th – 10 days before we needed to be packed up and moved out of our home, I most inconveniently broke my left leg "playing soccer" at a charity event for Tibetan women. Alas, Liam discovered that I was not invincible – though anyone that knows him, realizes that my accident did little to inform him of his own mortality. Indeed, when admonished to refrain from some dangerous activity, Liam regularly reminds me that "Steve Irwin does it" (yes, the "Crocodile Hunter" and no, we haven’t told him...I know, I know, but it’d break his little heart). Anyway, Jenny shouldered much more of the packing burden than we had anticipated, and I hobbled around at about one-tenth of my predicted usefulness (some would say less). Neighbors and friends (Luc, Natasha, Palden, Tsering, Taku, Sonia) helped us immeasureably (my Dad, the mathmetician cringes, "Actually, Jamie, it is measurable"). After the frenetic packing, in part to make up for the disproportionate amount of work Jenny had done and also in order to show my manliness, I drove a Uhaul truck with our car in tow from DC to Chicago, with my broken leg in a walking cast. A 13 hour drive, with only bad radio (my Ipod still with no songs downloaded – you know how it is, Jake) and a tin of Skoal. Upon my arrival in Chicago, we moved into a lovely 2 bedroom apartment a block from Lincoln Park/Lake Michigan and a block away from Jenny’s sister Marcey (and Stu) and her folks, Bob and Marlene.
As soon as we arrived in Chicago, we headed north 400+ miles through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, specifically to the City of Ironwood, the home of the "Pasty" (a Welsh pot pie of sorts inherited by the Finnish and Swedish miners of the area) and the childhood home of Jenny’s mother. There we attended the Kilponen family (Jennifer’s maternal Finnish grandmother’s family) reunion. Here we wandered the rolling wooded mountains and played on the Lake Superior "seashore." We drank a lot of medium to bad quality beer with Jenny’s cousins and thankfully could drive all the back dirt roads with "roadies" because Jenny’s cousin is the Town Manager. My only lament is that my broken leg hampered our aspirations of mountain biking and raquetball. We had much fun with Jenny’s cousins and aunts/uncles. Liam and Marcus found many frogs/crickets and bonded closely with their many cousins, so much so that many tears were shed upon our departure (Liam: "...sniffle, sniffle, but Dad, I just love cousin Katie...").
No sooner had we driven back to Chicago (god bless the portable DVD player) than we boarded a flight to Quebec City, to join my family (all my siblings and their offspring, my aunt, cousins, and certain friends) in a fete for my father’s 75th Birthday. Our clan essentially took over a large Inn a block away from the Chateau Frontenac (where my parents spent part of their honeymoon in 1959). Quebec, a city full of lovely architecture, and Franco-Anglo tension, was a perfect venue for wining and dining for 4 days of celebration. From the city, we headed east into the Gaspe peninsula of Quebec, where my sister Lori’s family and my brother Dany/Meg camped in the lovely Parc du Bic (and we stayed at a nearby Inn), where we did a lovely hike (me still on crutches) along the tidal St. Lawrence, with views of small mountains and the occasional seal. Liam and Marcus had a ton of fun with their big cousins, Ian and Gavin, making competing forts of rock and wood. I too had fun on the slow gimpy return hike with Ian and Gavin, where we discussed the "best" music from the 70's to the present (me voting for Zeppelin and Gavin pushing for Slayer: Ian saw the merits of several genres). From the Gaspe, we drove through New Brunswick into Maine, via the border town of Madawaska (last time I was there was in 1983 when my soccer team had just lost the state semi-final game and we had a morose 5 hour drive home). I enjoyed the drive south: the blossoms were on the potato plants, the signs in franco-american. We spent a couple of days in Orono, Maine (my childhood home), sent Jenny back to Chicago (to fly to Spain) and then headed to the coast, Sorrento, Maine, where Liam, Marcus and I practiced our camping skills on my father’s lawn. Lori’s family also drove south with us and in Sorrento we rejoined my Dad and my sister Kim’s family. In Sorrento and at Acadia National Park, we swam at the salt water pool, canoed in the Atlantic, built castles at sand beach, and ate mint chip ice cream in Bar Harbor. Ahh...Maine.
Back in Chicago, on July 29th, Jenny’s baby sister Marcey, tied the knot at the beautiful Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park. Liam and Marcus were ring bearers, Jenny the matron of honor, and I was honored with a speaking part. Despite the cast on my foot, Jenny and I danced with abandon, especially to "what you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk up in your trunk..."
We spent the summer visiting Chicago’s sites, with a focus on: 1) Grandma/Grandpa’s house with Tia Marcey and Stu; 2) the Lincoln Park Zoo (yes, of course); 3) the beach; 4) bike rides with the trailer (once my leg improved); 5) the playground and the surrounding park; 6) the Shedd Aquariam; 7) the Children’s museum; 8) playing with cousins Erica and Connor (and Uncle Lumpy and Aunt Valeria); 9) reading/writing at coffee shops; and 10) physical therapy. One noteworthy day trip – which we twice made – is a "scenic" spot only an 1.5 hour drive from Chicago: Indiana Dunes National Seashore, which unlike any other venue I have visited in the National Park system, boasts huge sand dunes in a 10 mile stretch of land situated between two gigantic steel mills and a Nuclear Power plant. Aah, Indiana.
Shortly before our scheduled departure to Oaxaca, Mexico, two events delayed us another 3 weeks: Not to be outdone by my accident, Jenny got strep throat and mono, so that she too could visit the ER (Liam also decided to visit the ER again, 3rd time in 7 months). In Oaxaca, political unrest and massive strikes (with machete-wielding individuals) forced us to chose another venue in Mexico. We chose Guanajuato.
The First Leg of the Latin America Trip - Guanajuato, Mexico
Sept. 20, 2006: Our loving motorcade (Bob and Marlene Bailey and our new brother-in-law Stuart McDonald) dropped us at O’Hare with too many bags for easy travel. Yes, I know better, but I had to uphold my reputation for sartorial diversity and excellence. In addition, Liam and Marcus each have a backpack full of their respective animals and books – the most important being Liam’s well-thumbed "great big book of everything" - a several pound animal encyclopedia.
True to our form, we were the last to board the Mexicana flight to Monterrey. During our layover, Liam suggested that we had flown far enough and that we could find a "rental house" in this part of Mexico. Whilst in Monterrey, Liam and Marcus both received their first stamps in their brand new passports! We landed in Leon, Mexico and a wacky ex-pat American (who brokered the rental for us and had a "taxi service" on the side) picked us up and drove us to our casa/hacienda in a village 5 kilometers outside of Guanajuato – one of Mexico’s lovely colonial towns built by silver money. Our accommodations caught us by surprise, i.e., they were much grander than we had expected. We have a two-bedroom inside a 300+ year old structure, with stone walls 20 feet high surrounding the grounds. Grand arches form a colonnade where the boys spend many an hour chasing the dog and cat of the house. We have the luxury of letting the boys have the run of the place and often need to search the grounds to find Liam and Marcus either in the magnificent climbing tree, catching butterflies, or making a "clubhouse" hither or thither. We have been extremely happy to have our friend Anne-Marie Gibbons here in Guanajuato with us. Together, we wine, dine, hike and study.
October 26th will be my last day of instruction at Academia Falcon, a spanish language school in Guanajuato. I took courses for 2 hours per day for 4 weeks...and now speak much better than Jennifer. Que padre! Jennifer, due to her linguistic abilities, had no need of language instruction, but thankfully has fallen in love with Mexican cooking and took two weeks of instruction. Jenny also took a week of Mexican Constitutional Law (so if you ever need a lawyer in Mexico...) and a course on Indigenous Cultures. It has been a real joy to study again, especially because we’re using our heads much differently than we have for quite a few years. Liam and Marcus are just about to finish their 4th week at a Mexican kindergarten (Jardin de ninos), 5 hours/day. It has been a full on immersion situation for them as it is a purely Mexican school and they are the only gringos. Thankfully, they seem to have picked up quite a bit of spanish in the last month. Now it is up to Jennifer and me to "home-school" the boys for awhile. I have a distinct feeling that the curriculum will be heavily slanted towards "los animales".
In our "spare time" (isn’t that all we have), we have been spending many hours hiking in the rolling mountains surrounding Guanajuato, along with the exploration of several villages that time has left behind. We were enchanted by the villages of Santa Rosa, Calderones (where thousands of butterflies reside) and Cubo (where the boys charmed the old ladies...and Liam gave a big kiss to a ninety year old senora).
After the El Dia de Muertos (The Day of the Dead), a couple of days on the beach around Ixtapa, and a visit to our friends Lawrence and Megan (and wee Cooper) in Mexico City, we will fly to Quito, Ecuador, and set up for a week in an Eco-lodge, and make arrangements to head to the Galapagos Islands.
We hope everyone is well...and will update soon.
Jamie, Jennifer, Liam and Marcus.
posted by Jamie at 10:30 AM
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