Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Tucson Trip: The Drive To

Despite knowing that it would be a long drive, we didn’t push for too early of a start. As a result, we did not get out of the house until 8am. It would be a very long day ahead of us.

We had four audio books in the car. Erik got those from the library and had been listening to some of them. One was a Mandarin Lesson; one was on China history; and two were on American history. All except the Mandarin lesson would have been nice to listen to, but right before we got out of the house, we opened a Christmas present Erik’s sister sent us. It was a book, The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition. Although both of us had read/listened to this book before, neither of us could remember the details; however, we both remembered it was a great book. I couldn’t help opening the first page, but I also couldn’t keep the pleasure of reading that book to myself, so I read it out aloud. I did it on the entire 16 hour drive and the subsequent nights before we went to sleep.

We took a break when we drove through LA. We met up with my friend Vivian from college when we stopped for lunch. She took great interests in Erik’s braces because she was going through some serious debates (with herself) about that. It was good to see her again. Now I can say, I read Erik bed time stories. Actually, when we get back, I will try to find other good books so we can read them together. It’s really fun this way.

When we pulled in the drive way at the rental house in Tucson, it was near midnight. Our friend Tom who arrived a day early was still up and about. Our vacation had officially started.

One Response

  1. # Alison Chaikenon 24 Dec 2009 at 8:38 am

    I’ve always enjoyed reading about the polar adventurers. Barry Lopez’s _Arctic Dreams_ is well worth a look if you haven’t encountered it. I also liked William Vollman’s _The Ice-Shirt_. What’s really stayed with me all these years though is the description of Frankenstein’s monster roaming endlessly about the Pole. And consider the John Franklin expedition’s realization one August that the ice was not going to melt and their ship would be frozen in a second winter: yikes! I saw some of the artifacts from the Franklin expedition at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, U.K. My trip to Iceland in June 2007 was motivated largely by reading all these stirring books. Iceland did not disappoint: you and Erik would enjoy visiting there.