Category: Travel

Maui

by Ashley filed under Bits + Pieces, Travel

To anyone who looks at these photos with any amount of jealousy, allow me to be frank: traveling with young children sucks. That’s not to say the water wasn’t warm, the sunsets beautiful, or the pineapples ripe because the water was glorious, the sunsets long and lingering, and the pineapple so ripe and sweet you’d wake up with mouth sores the next morning. Damn those mouth sores.  
But getting there required two long hours on a six hour plane ride with both kids screaming. And when the flight attendant offered Willy two bottles of Jack Daniels for free (because, hey, any parent dealing with two screaming toddlers damn well deserves a drink on the house), I swear the joke was on us when Van proceeded to spill it all over Willy’s lap. It was one of those plane rides. You know, the one where your child insists on bringing his beloved tennis ball on the plane only to have it rolling out of reach from one end of the plane to the other so then you turn to your grab bag of tricks and pull out a bag full of trail mix that you’re certain will entertain them for at least five minutes only the next thing you know the ground below you is sprinkled with trail mix like the steps outside a church are sprinkled with rice after a wedding. Needless to say, we got off the plane with our clothes smelling like liquor only to learn that Willy’s luggage was somehow lost. It was “found” hours later, because – you know – everyone there is on “Maui – aka lets all get stoned – time”.  
In any event, we spent the windy days exploring, the hot days on the beach, and every evening on the patio – drinks in hand – watching the sun go down with a mix of locals and vacationers alike doing the same.
Motherhood will always be a beautiful disaster. I’ll refrain from using the word vacation until the kids are grown and instead refer to trips like this as an adventure.  
What has your experience with traveling with kids been like? Do you consider it worth it?

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Ojai

by Ashley filed under Bits + Pieces, Travel

I spent the weekend, a couple of weekends ago, in Ojai with my sister and her best friend in celebration of my sister getting married in the very near future. Some may call it a bachelorette party, but it was a far cry (It reminded me more of my own pre-wedding celebration when Janet and I took off for Joshua Tree and drank and played pool with the locals at the Joshua Tree Saloon). We ate until we could eat no more, drank wine and whatever it was that that manager from that one restaurant served us, listened to live music, got massages, walked through the local Farmer’s Market (which had the best tangerines) and hit up some of the local thrift stores (I scored a gorgeous skirt and some other knick knacks for the house). We stayed at the Ojai Rancho Inn, which was very unassuming and easily missed when coming up the road. It was quaint and cozy, with lovely character and a horse next door that we had the pleasure of watching from our bathroom

window. I hope to return again soon with Willy and the boys in tow.

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Bits + Pieces, from Arizona

by Ashley filed under Bits + Pieces, Travel

We arrived at Willy’s parent’s house in Arizona beaten down from the physical and emotional stress of moving and saddened after losing Sarah just a few days prior. We always brought her along on our trips to AZ, so there was that sobering reminder when we didn’t have to push her off my lap and into the back seat like we usually do.
To make matters worse, our truck broke down early on and as if luck were teasing us by slapping us one minute and then kissing us the next, we happened to be a few miles from my sister’s house where our second car sat until we returned. So we swapped cars, repacked all our stuff, switched the car seats out for the umpteenth time, and made it to Joshua Tree just in time for a family session I had booked prior. So ya know, the take home message is that it all works out. One way or another.
With no further bumps in the road, we arrived in AZ. We enjoyed warm days and cool nights, Lucky and Moocher (the new pet goats), the Renaissance festival, a wild cat that just gave birth to kittens, an Irish band that did a Bob Dylan cover that felt like it was just for me, a trip to an old gold mining ghost town, some thrifting that landed an old peacock chair in the back

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of our car and some other treasures for the new home, and enough laughter with family and friends to fill our empty tanks.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Jaipur, India, 2006
The Dali Lama said something to the extent of this: small problems, hardships, or inconveniences should be but mere ripples in the sea, floating just over the surface. If you were to let the small things turn into waves, you’d only be knocked down more often than not. This notion is the key to survival, especially in India. India’s relentless. Just when you think it’s as hot as it could possibly get, it gets hotter. Just when you thought you couldn’t be any dirtier, you get pushed to the side of the road by a rickshaw, or cow, and step into a puddle of water (insert question mark) and look up in frustration just in time for the rickshaw’s exhaust to blow right in your face. The streets alone are relentless. Walking through them requires the same strategy as a video game and produces the same quantity of outcomes. It’s a wonder to me how my toes have escaped being rolled over. They’ve curled themselves under in deep fear of their lives. Horns are honked so often, I’ve come to believe the horn itself must be India’s native musical instrument. The people are also relentless.

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understanding of “no thank you” or the more blunt response of “I don’t like it, I don’t want it” and “please, it’s not expensive, it’s very inexpensive” is suddenly the only english they know. Some will even follow you down the street, dropping the price of the one thing they think you have have glanced at, and the price drops with every step you take until a cow slowly intervenes and passes between you – or it doesn’t – and you have to turn around with attitude and say, “LOOK, I will NEVER come back to India EVER again if you don’t stop following us”. The latter of course being the less desirable of the two.

But it’s all ripples, really. No big waves have dropped on us. The frustrations or inconveniences have only made the colors brighter and the Himalayans bigger and between the two – the good and the bad – there’s no competition, not even a discussion of such nonsense.
And just like that… it’s off to Egypt…

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Agra, India, 2006
India’s dirty. There’s no two ways about it. The majority of it stems from the fact there’s no irrigation system. Shit flows in the “canals” linking the streets. It rains and the streets flood and people walk right through it and kids play like ti’s the public swimming pool they never had. Secondly, no matter the direction your eyes turn, you’ll inevitably see some Indian man – either standing or squatting – pissing in the street. In Jaipur, we even saw two boys shitting together on the side of the street like it was something they met up for each say, “Same time, same place tomorrow?”, I imagined one saying to the other. And lastly, everyone litters. Hidden treasures lie all over the place – old matchboxes, candy wrappers, corn husks… J keeps referring to it as “art”. I haven’t gon so far just yet, but it’s probably the rancid smell of piss that’s taking away from the museum feel.
But that’s India and certainly not all India has to offer. It’s a country of extremes, really. Polar opposites. I say this because it’s also one of the most, if not THE most colorful countries. India’s also home to one of merely seven world wonders. The Taj speaks for itself. But Agra, home to the Taj is quite it’s polar opposite. Walking down the polluted road that leads to it is like walking through the gates of hell only to end up before the gates of heaven. It’s hot, for starters. Sweat drips off your body and clings to your clothes and then you pass through the entrance and turn a corner and before you lies this “dream of marble” you yourself had only dreamed of during class, flipping through the history book pages in search of that one picture that could hold your attention and conquer the urge to close your eyes. Part of myself had already been there.
India is also part owner of the great Himalayan mountain range. And once again, you have to tolerate hell to appreciate heaven. Take a 25 hour bus ride with no toilet, dirty seats, dusty floors, no air con, busted fans, dirt and bug infested, baby crying, brakes squeaking on a winding road with cows crossing and Pakistani army men lining the street and one may have a portion of the truth I speak of. Be it what it may, but it’s not about how you get there but rather where you arrive at that’s important. The Himalayas stand in the distance and it’s like God dropped a huge backdrop and made your life his movie. I’d do it again, even if I had to ride a bike there.
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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel

Srinagar, Very Northern India, 2006
We’ve been alone on our houseboat, without the arrival of any other travelers, for some time now. Combined with a shortage of money, we’ve become slaves to boredom’s spells. I feel like a six year old, hiding out in my fort, peeking out my box cut window I draped lace over to see who is entering and if they’re earned their entrance through testimony of the secret password.
What is there to do with boredom? We’ve fished by means of a hanger and earring, to no avail. We’ve played both charades and ring a bangle around a glass. We’ve finished the list of who would you this and what would you that? We’ve spied on our neighbors and have shared long moments of silence always polished off by immense laughter. I’ve watched Janet’s handstands progress and rolled in laughter when she fell. We’ve picked boyfriends from magazine clippings, we’ve walked laps around our common area and we’ve snuck up on each other unexpectedly, we’ve bitch slapped mosquitoes and flies to their graves and followed mice to their corners. We even jimmied wires together to charge my camera battery.
Boredom. It’s almost nauseating how fast paced our American lives are that it can almost make one crazy when there’s nothing to be done. How we’ve longed for it and we long to leave it all baffles me.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Srinagar, Very Northern India, 2006
Tonight, the truth came to me and it came through the hospitality of a local. Sharing time with another family, in another country, of another religion. They changed the entire vibe surrounding Srinagar. They accepted us, fed us, and proved that indeed, you must get into a book before you draw any conclusions after only reading the introduction. And thus, we decided not to leave Srinagar just yet.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Srinagar, Very Northern India, 2006
After a grungy, loose screws on the wheels, it’ll-make-your-fillings-fall-out bumpy 25 hour bus ride, we’ve been dropped off amongst the beauty, wonder, and awe of the Himalayas in a Muslim town where some look at us with curiosity and others simply look at us like they want to kill us. We are surrounded by a huge military presence, staying on a houseboat where we are being held prisoner by none other than ourselves. The view from the front of the boat is friendly; a beautiful lake I would have considered swimming in had I not recognized the dead duck, the floating condom, or the pipe that connects the lake directly to our toilet. Nonetheless, beautiful to look, not touch. Beautiful reflections, beautiful canoes, beautiful trees, mountains, and air. So we’re dealing with it the same way you ought to deal with every situation – taking the good with the bad, the beauty with the ugly, the high with the low or what have you, and we’re making the best of it. Taking the time to enjoy nothing more than time itself. The sound of oars meeting the water, of cows mooing, of Muslims chanting from seemingly far away places, of birds chirping and ducks paddling, and the sound of footsteps stomping down our wooden hallway bring breakfast, lunch, and dinner… all harmoniously combine to make our “prison” stay not so dreadful after all.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Delhi, India, 2006
We’re different and everyone knows it. They stare like we’re something special, they open doors like we’re famous, they observe us like we’re another species, they wave like we’re the first ones of our kind they’ve seen and may ever see again. And we do the same. We stare because we’ve never seen this culture amongst their own and we observe because we’ve never seen cows wander the streets alongside traffic worse than you’d find on the 405 freeway. What’s new to them is old to us and what’s new to us is merely tradition to them. When all is said and done, I think we fancy each other.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Bangkok, Thailand, 2006
Bargaining is an art. Bangkok has taught me that. Love, too – like bargaining – is also an art. I’ve taught myself that. There’s rules to follow and strategy in the planning. First, you have to know what you want. Second, you need to decide where you want to get it from. Third – and perhaps most important – is knowing what you’ll settle for. And lastly comes the decision to take it – even if you’re getting the deal you want, or leave it – because sometimes you get what you pay for.
As far as the sellers are concerned, they too must follow rules and produce strategy. My best advice to them is to let the buyer come to them. People know what they want and they’ll seek it out until they find it. The more you push someone to buy a product, the more the buyer considers the true necessity of what they’re being pushed to buy, the more bothered they become and the more motivated they are to walk than take a tuk tuk or taxi and give them money.
It’s business, it’s strategy, it’s love and it’s all the same.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2006
The great part about traveling is the memory of

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looking back on it all; returning to your “normal” habitual life and recalling the days you spent on the other side of the world… so free you hardly even recognized it because it just felt so natural — so connected to the Earth.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
Kho Pha Ngan, Thailand, 2006
Getting to the very essence of life is more challenging than anything else. Making sense of it. It’s interesting to consider how long we’ve fought and worked for the things we have today; technology (plasma TV’s, cell phones, fast cars) and capitalism (because bigger is better and excess is wealth), yet it seems these things we’ve taken so long to obtain are the very same things we need to rid ourselves of to feed our hungry souls. It’s only when I’m taken away from these things that my soul is fed. It leads me to believe that the bigger challenge is freeing yourself and feeding your soul in the midst of all the chaos we have created.
You can check out other posts in this series by clicking here.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
San Fernando Valley, 2006
“Stand on the peak of the mountain and contemplate the long ranges of hills, observe the courses of rivers and all the glories offered to your view, and what feeling seizes you? It is a calm prayer, you lose yourself in unbounded space, your whole being undergoes a clarification and purification, your ego disappears, you are nothing.”
-Carl Gustav Carus
As the future nears the present, and the present grows increasingly closer to the past it becomes clear – again – as to why I’m here… back at my parents, back with my best friend. The journey is peeking it’s head out from around the corner. We’ve been playing a game of hide and seek. It’s chasing me at the moment. Been trying my best to distract myself from

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the one thing I can’t do anymore than wait for — travel. I can feel my senses awakening. I sense my view of the world on the brink of change. I crave it – can’t wait to get away.

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The Long Way Home

by Ashley filed under The Long Way Home, Travel
I’ve been wanting to share some of my travel tales on here for some time, for a lot of reasons. For one, I want my words to live somewhere other than the bursting-at-the-seams journal I have them in now. More than that though, these tales are the foundation of who I am; they mark a point in my life when I was wild and free and my mind ever-expanding. It all started when I was lost and, by the end, I was found. These tales are my personal journey, before I was a wife, before I was a mother. I’ll be posting these every Monday, I hope you enjoy.
San Francisco, 2006
“…And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’…”
-Bob Dylan
One charge gives birth to another. Now isn’t that the truth and pattern of life? Reproduction. Cycles. It all comes in waves; waves of furry, waves of peace. One wave continuously follows another.
Been giving change some thought. Ready for new challenges and maybe searching for new

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scenery. Been dreaming big dreams of far away places. Ready to break out the box we all trap ourselves in. Been thinking about my future. Ready to close old doors and open new ones.

Yes, indeed, change is in the air.
This year, the tide has changed. I’m smarter and stronger. Amazing who you become when suddenly it seems you’re all you got.

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New Friends

by Ashley filed under Bits + Pieces, Travel

The internet is a funny thing, isn’t it? Well, I guess social media in general. I swear I could have a philosophical conversation with you about how instagram has made a better photographer. But I guess that’s a separate post.
I started this blog nearly two years ago and it amazes me how many connections I’ve made because of it. The fact that anyone other than my family even takes the time to read what I write still makes me scratch my head. It’s been an incredibly humbling experience thus far.
Back to the connections.
We met up with Sisilia and her adorable family a little while back (I’m always behind on posting, grrrrr) and to say we all hit it off would be a gross understatement. We had plans to hang out for an evening, take some family photos, and maybe grab a bite to eat. Instead we hung out, took some photos, hung out at the restaurant until the waitress actually left for the evening before us and then the bartender kicked us out so we moved the party to the parking lot where it too got broken up by four sets of tired eyes looking at us wondering why it was nearly 11pm and they weren’t in bed. How’s that for a run on sentence? Willy and I drove away ranting and raving about Sisilia and Joshua and got a text a few minutes later that they decided to book a room at the Ace as well and wanted to hang out again the next day.
So we met up again, swam in the pool, met for dinner, and had breakfast the next morning before we said our goodbyes and reluctantly went our separate ways.
The desert heat, the cicadas buzzing all around, the cold beer, the endless flow of conversation, the boys and their cars, the quietest little baby girl, the occassional click of a camera… it was magical.
There’s a lot to be said about new friendships. I’ll be sharing some of the family shots I took of them tomorrow.
*The pool photo was taken by Sisilia and several of these are from my instagram feed. You can check out more of Sisilia’s work by clicking here.
Side note: I’ll be announcing the winner to the Broken Tricycle giveaway on Wednesday. There’s still a couple of days left to enter!!

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Joshua Tree

by Ashley filed under Bits + Pieces, Travel

Janet and I have been to Joshua Tree loads of times. There was that one time we went on a whim, just before we were set to board a plane for Thailand, because our feet were so itchy we just couldn’t wait for an adventure. We stopped again, I believe, on the way back from Louisiana. I’m totally being dramatic now, aren’t I? There were obviously a few other stops along the

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way. Then there was the time we went, just the two of us, and called it my bachelorette party just before I got married.

We spent the evening there, enjoying the cooler weather (It was 98 degrees there, as opposed to the 120 in Palm Springs) and listening to music in the back of the pick-up truck. We climbed some rocks,

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played around with my new handy dandy camera remote, and shot the shit until the sun went down and the dark sky invited us to make our way back to Palm Springs.

On the way out, I spotted a lovely couple on top of a rock. I pulled over, hopped out, yelled for them to stand up, and snapped that last picture because I’m so daring like that now (I’m being facetious. There are a thousand pictures I regret not taking. I kick myself often for that. Trying to grow hair on my nuts is always on my to do list).

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