Travels with Owen

Travel by Tram

Albuquerque has spectacular views from its extremely safe Sandia tramway. According to the tramway, “it ascends from a base elevation of 6,559 feet (1,999 m) to a top elevation of 10,378 feet (3,163 m).”

More great views from a trail near the tram

The leaves are starting to turn at the top of the mountaim

Many folks ride the tram up and hike, ski, or bicycle down.

This heavy equipment looked like it was balanced on a sinkhole

A new restaurant is being built to replace the old one on top of the tramway

My brother and his husband seemed to enjoy the views

Afterwards, we stopped for food and drinks at the delightful Sandiago Grill at the base of the tram. In addition to fabulous views from inside and outside seating, their menu offerings have been jazzed up. The prices seemed a little higher than the last time I was there but are reasonable for the quality. My fish tacos were delicious. Unfortunately, this picture was taken after I’d messed up their plating. Forgive me, I was hungry!

Soba Students

The materials ready to make soba noodles (buckwheat)

As you might imagine, our noodles weren’t done as quickly or as evenly as the instructor’s. It was a easy-sounding process in theory: lean the knife into the dough, cut, repeat. In reality, not so easy.

Finished soba noodle soup and accompanying tempura

The soup can be served hot or cold. In this case it was cold. While I much prefer it hot, cold soba soup and eels are considered cooling dishes for hot days.

Wow! Chainsaw Magic

I’m still putting up Japan pictures but my brother and his husband are visiting us in Albuquerque, NM so I thought I’d take a couple of side trips on my blog.

Onw of my favorite places to sit and sketch here is the woodcutters’ park at Pueblo Montaño. If you’ve ever watched chainsaw artists at work, youll realize how amazing these sculptures are.

The front of this one has a ghostly female image

The back has a fully fleshed out female visage

Love the little turtles on the back of this one

Different angles and lighting reveal new surprises

Pottery Play

Here we’re heading into our pottery boot camp. I am an experienced handbuilder with clay but hadn’t done so well at my last attempt at wheel throwing. So I’m terrified.

Here are our group members successfully making bowls and cups, with a little help from the staff. No wobbly pots here.

Our pottery studio has a long history. All our pottery will dry, be glazed, and fired behind the scenes. Then they will be shipped by boat to our homes. So we won’t see them for several months. This was fun, but not having a product in hand or finishing the project ourselves made it slightly less rewarding than other experiences. Still, it was a great hands on experiment and I don’t see how else the production could have been handled. Very professional staff made sure our creations were attractive and usable.

Travel Time and Sanity Savers

I love to travel but I also get tired and cranky about the details from time to time. So these are some tips and apps that really help.

Often on foreign soil

If you do a lot of international travel, the Global entry program is definitely worth the money. For $100 for 5 years, a bit of paperwork, and a personal interview, you can breeze through US customs, and simplify security at lots of airports. You also have the option of expanding your pass. U.S. Citizens enrolled in Global Entry may use the Smartgate system when entering Australia without registration. With a little more work, U.S. Citizens may apply for the Dutch FLUX program, the Korean SES program, Panama’s Global Pass or the Mexican Viajero Confiable program for expedited entry into those countries. Additional fees and enrollment interviews will apply.

Usually a domestic traveler

Run, don’t walk, to get TSA Precheck certification. For just $85 for 5 years, you will minimize your security line hassles and time. You will have to go to a local TSA office for fingerprinting, but if you fly even 1 or 2 times a year, it’s worth it for the much shorter and simpler TSA Pre lines. You whiz through security without taking off your shoes, removing electronics or liquids bags from suitcases. It’s heaven. I’m notoriously cheap and this is a service I will continue to renew for eternity.

One caveat. If you fly a lot, you may occasionally randomly be selected to go through regular security. You’ll know, as your boarding pass won’t say TSA Pre. It will remind you of why you want to stay in this program. Also, some airlines don’t participate in the program. I flew American Airlines/Japan airlines in a code share to and from Japan. Since American was a TSA partner, I had Precheck for my American Airlines flight to Tokyo but did not have it for my return flights on a Japan Airlines plane. This was annoying, as Dallas/Fort Worth airport makes you go through security again after exiting customs to take your domestic flight. No TSA Pre might mean you don’t make your connection. Fortunately, we had plenty of time but we had to go through an extensive check of the sake we had purchased at duty free.

Not quite enough for Global Entry

If you don’t travel enough internationally to justify applying for Global Entry, you’ll definitely want yo download the Mobile Passport app. It will whiz you through US customs faster than you thought possible. I still think you should just commit to traveling abroad more, and get Global Entry, but this is a good stopgap.

Phone solution

As you probably already know, most US carriers charge an arm, a leg, and more for coverage in most foreign countries. There are several options to bypass that. 1) if your card uses a SIM card, you can buy a prepaid SIM card for your destination 2) rent or buy a cheap burner phone with data for your destination (downside: your information won’t be on the new phone unless you use Google and log in on the new device) or 3) my personal favorite – rent a Wi-Fi to go option. In Japan, you could reserve a Pocket Wi-Fi to be picked up at your Japanese arrival airport and returned as you departed. The fees were reasonable and it gave you great coverage in rural areas. Combined with leaving your regular phone on airport mode but turning on free Wi-Fi in hotels, metros, etc. it was a reasonable solution. Use Wi-Fi calling for phone calls and you’re all set.

Maps and more

When it’s available and not in beta, citymapper is my favorite app for getting around big cities. Here are the covered cities, but they are always adding more. It does a superlative job of combining all forms of travel: bus, train, subway, on foot, taxi, rental bike, and ferry.

For other places, like Japan, Google maps/navigator is a good bet. These tips will help you get more out of Google maps. And if you’re driving, you might check whether the Waze app has good coverage in your area. The social media input can be invaluable in a strange city.

Photos and social media

Usually, I carry a really good camera (a big bulky canon with several lenses.) This trip had such tight packing requirements that I opted to just use my smartphone (an LG G6 with really excellent camera optics.) I also opened up this blog, so I could share this adventure with friends and family who want to go to Japan but cant go right now. The smartphone was ideal for blogging on the way, and I was thrilled with the surprisingly good photos and videos it created.

When I want to play with the photos before posting, the Pixlr app is easy to use and has amazing options. Honestly, I didn’t use it as often as I should because we were always on the go and somewhat sleep deprived.

Another app, PicsArt, gives the option of creating collages with your photos. The few times I used this option, I really liked it.

Filmora Go was my video editing app of choice. And if you are starting a blog, WordPress is the blogger’s tool of choice for good reasons.

Travel light

I hope these tips help. The other key tips will be covered in future posts. Always travel light, and take a mini pharmacy along especially for countries with unusual alphabets (Greece, China, Japan, Morocco, etc.) But more on that later. For now, Bon Voyage!

Sake Splendors

Guest blogger Ray Shortridge

Rice is the basic element in Japanese cuisine, but it is also the principal substrate in brewing sake. An official of the ExcelHuman sake company guided us on a tour of their brewery and described the brewing process. For many centuries, sake has been a favorite alcoholic drink in Japan, and images on the walls depicted the pre-modern brewing process.

The brewery produced more than a dozen varieties of sake, and we tasted a few. Brenda preferred one with a slight taste of apple, pictured in the center of the right hand column.

The brewery’s high end variety, Donkura, was priced at 13,960 yen, approximately $120.

The apple flavored sake was far less. Hooray!

Paper Gods’ Shrine and Paper Adventure.

In Echizan, Japan, they honor the paper gods as it is a revered paper making village. Unfortunately, many of the talented papermakers are aging out of the business without young apprentices to teach the art. The Japanese government is funding stipends to encourage young artisans to move to the rural areas where the crafts are situated. They are also funding cross cultural programs with other countries to bring artisans to these areas. This is a U.S./Japan cultural exchange, for example.

The horse represents the area. clan and helps protect the shrine.

The horse plays an important role in Japanese culture and history, and hence also the history of papermaking.

We had a papermaking experience of our own in the papyrus papermaking studio in Echizan. We each made 4 postcards using tubs of prepared mulberry pulp and decorative natural elements.

The prepared paper pulp, with a color station in the background.

We could also “dye” the paper with watercolor paints. The lid fell off one if the colors I used, so it got more dye than I intended, but it still created a nice effect.

We also went to a great museum and papermaking studio where masters of the papermaking craft still work.

Making the large thin sheets of paper the area is known for.

Super fine, thin paper being manipulated

A collect the stamp program to encourage young people’s interest in paper

Japanese Food as Art

Half the time I didn’t know what I was eating, but food was always presented beautifully. We did get a lot of seaweed and raw fish which was sometimes challenging. (I like variety in food everywhere except breakfast!) Still, even those meals were beautiful and usually delicious once I got over my cultural dissonance. Here are some of my beautiful meals.