july 1 2009 : beaune, france, europe
Today was mainly one of those chores days that we need to have every once in a while to keep a happy non-malodorous home. I crawled under the bus and attempted to fix the oil seal on the reduction gear box for I believe the fourth or fifth time. Then changed the oil and adjusted the valves. Actually not one of the eight valves needed any tweaking. That’s a first for the bus and I have to attribute it to the perfectly smooth roads we’ve been driving now for the past three thousand miles.

While I was doing this Ali was busy with laundry. We had two huge laundry lines run across our campsite and very nearly every article of clothing we own hanging from them. When I crawled out from under the bus with oil all over me and Ali wiped the sweat from her brow we knew that we had become the campground bums. We were the people that all campground owners must fear having move in to their property. Tomorrow we’re going to try and pay for one more day and I’m a bit concerned that they might just say, “No, I think it’s time for you two to move on.”

We got an email from a guy who lives up near Captain Cook State Park in Alaska where Ali and I saw the two brown bear cubs last year playing on the beach without their mother. Apparently the mom never appeared and everybody feared the babies wouldn’t make it through the winter on their own. Well this guy forwarded us a newspaper article saying that the cubs are back. Everyone up there is pretty excited that they made it and we thought it was pretty cool to hear about it too. He also confirmed for us that last summer was officially the coldest, wettest summer in recorded history. There’s something to tell the grandkids.

july 2 2009 : beaune
We’re really enjoying ourselves here in Beaune. It’s a small town mainly known for a very old hospital and wine tasting tours. We’ve partaken in neither, but have still enjoyed wandering the cobbled streets with the three story wood shutter windowed buildings. Tall ceilings and air flow make up for the lack of air conditioning here. Baguettes and croissants in the park for breakfast and the ever present (and inexpensive) doner kebab shops for lunner.

We’ve been surprised to find that so many French speak English as well. They nearly always answer our, Parlez-vous anglais? with, “A little.” But they then go on to do just fine. And best of all, and smashing all French stereotypes to bits, they haven’t been the least bit rude about it either. Nothing but helpfulness and smiles. So far we really like France. European land of the free. Free public toilets, free campground showers, and free WiFi. All the little necessities of life. And the blue skies and eighty degree temperatures don’t hurt a bit.

july 4 2009 : spotorno, italy, europe
It’s been a bit of a trek but we’ve finally hit ocean again. From Beaune we drove to Annecy, France at the edge of the Alps. The city sat on a pretty lake with mountains all around it, but it was heavily built up and wasn’t really to our liking. So today we continued on into the Alps.

Along the way we were thinking, “Hmm, not quite as big as I would have thought.” Then we came around a corner and found white capped peaks that seemed to hover right above us. We stopped in Chamonix to eat and then drove on through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Seven miles and forty dollars later we were spit out in Italy. A sign at the entrance had warned that because of the G8 Summit being held in Italy that immigration checks would be enacted once again. But when we reached immigration all we saw was one stereotypical fat cop smoking a big cigar and waving everyone through. Right up until we came along anyway. Somehow we always bring these lines to a screeching halt. For the next couple of minutes we all waited while he smoked his cigar and occasionally glanced at our passports. When he’d finished smoking he handed back our documents and waved us, and everybody behind us, on.

At this point we’d planned to drive along a winding road our map showed going far up into the mountains. But we managed to miss the turnoff and were then stuck in about twenty miles of tunnels leading to the bottom of the valley with absolutely nowhere to turn off or turn around. By the time we reached the bottom we figured we’d just carry on to the coast.

As soon as we reached the Italian coast road along the Gulf of Genova we began looking for a spot to camp. The road was crazy. Cars lined both sides as far as we could see and people were everywhere. We saw a bunch of RVs in one parking lot and pulled in. We were ushered into a space and quoted a very low price. I then asked about the bathrooms and showers. The guy looked at me like I must be crazy. This was nothing but a parking lot, on the beach, with two hundred RVs huddled two feet away from one another. We continued down the road. A little bit further on we found signs for dozens of campgrounds. These places are like none we’ve ever seen before. Space is so tight that I’m nervous driving the bus through, but somehow they have packed RVs and campers into every available bit of real estate. Despite the cramped surroundings we enjoyed watching and listening to these huge Italian families cook up feasts and sit around a boisterous table for dinner. In fact we would have given anything for one of them to invite us over for pasta. For tomorrow we’ve got nothing but pizza and beach on our minds.

july 5 2009 : spotorno
I know I just talked about a place that was heavily built up and not to our liking, but sometimes a place can be heavily built up and be exactly to our liking. Spotorno is one of those. The town is sort of a Florida retiree feeling place, with hundreds of fifty-year-old (some probably more like one or two hundred) one bedroom apartment looking buildings set from one to four blocks back from the beach. Between the small hotels on the beach and the apartments is a pedestrian road lined with pizza restaurants, bars, bakeries, shops specializing in focaccia, or pasta, or gelato, and plenty of sun screen sellers.

The beach itself is a solid line of umbrellas. From one end to the other as far as you can see. Each little area is privately owned and is set up sort of like a country club, with a bar, changing rooms, a games area, et cetera. We chose a place at random, purchased our chairs and umbrella for the day and settled in for some Italian holidaymaker people watching; one of our favorite pastimes.

Sometimes I have to wonder at the choices we make. We came to Europe six weeks ago and have spent that entire time in cold, dreary gray weather, when right here, just a couple of days drive away is the epitome of perfection. Eighty degrees, sunny, warm water, sand between our toes, and delicious food, what could be better than this?

To throw a kink in my illusion of perfection during one of my swims today I got tangled up with a jellyfish. I’ve been stung dozens of times by jellyfish in the past, but it has always just been a tentacle or two slapped across my back or arms. Stings a little, but not enough to get out of the water. Today I got a small sting on my back and thinking it was a piece of garbage or something in the water that had hit me I swung around to swat it away. That’s when I got zapped on the chest, then the chin, then the arm, then the leg. These weren’t the little stings I was used to either, these were paralyzing painful attacks. When I got out of the water my skin immediately began to blister up. I sat down and for fifteen minutes it felt like somebody was pouring a steady stream of boiling water on my skin. It wasn’t letting up at all so I went to ask the bartender for some ice. As soon as he saw me he grabbed some sort of cream and started slathering it on. It helped a little, but for at least an hour the burning was constant and was probably the most painful thing I’ve ever felt in my life. Two hours later the huge red blotches were more or less gone and only the blisters remained.

Bouncing back from that we really enjoyed the day at the beach and then afterwards went out for pizza. God bless the Italians. Where would the world be without their food? We ordered up two ‘zas for under five bucks each and were served these gigantic platters bigger than any pizzas we’ve ever had. I was ashamed of myself for leaving a hunk behind when we finally left. Ali left behind half. Ali loved everything about Italy on our first visit a couple of years back and this was just another of its absolutely perfect days.

july 8 2009 : avignon, france, europe
From Spotorno we ventured a whopping forty miles down the coast to Diano Marina where we settled into one of the most ridiculously overcrowded campgrounds ever. But at ten euros and three hundred meters from the beach they were packing them in. Us included.

On the beach we got a true taste of the difference between us Americans and our European cousins. Our views on personal space are so vastly different that they hardly warrant the same definition. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say to have a look at the picture below. That’s the beach, looking toward the water from our chairs. And that picture of the campground, yeah, that’s our spot for the night. With our doors open we could just about touch the neighbors. It’s sort of fun, and good for a laugh, but if we had to deal with this sort of confinement our entire lives I don’t know that we’d be able to deal with it. They really seem to think nothing of it though. Looking back at our camping pictures throughout the Americas we now see why Bum friends from Europe were so amazed. That sort of space is just unheard of.

We had a good time though. The lady in the RV in front of us spoke Italian to us in long bursts despite knowing that we had no clue what she was saying. Actually she spoke to me, Ali was inside the bus laughing at me. The beach was fun too. To get a taste of local Italian life there is no better way than to plop down in the middle of one of these beaches. And then of course at the end of the day we were able to walk across the street, eat another huge prosciutto pizza, and follow it up with chocolate and banana gelato. These Italians know the secret to happiness.

The next day we proceeded down the coast, crossing back into France. A Bum friend had emailed us a story about the best driving roads in Europe and one of them was right along the way. So we turned up the road north of Monaco into the French Alps once again. The road turned into a narrow one lane track with hundreds of one-eighties to negotiate on the way from sea level to about five thousand feet. It was a nice drive, but at the top we started to realize just how jaded we’ve become. All we could think was that in Peru we’d only be about a third of the way up the mountain at this point. Hell, we hadn’t even reached the snow yet, much less been deprived of oxygen. So from there we turned back down and headed into Nice.

In Nice the traffic became unruly. For hours we trudged along just out of sight of the coast stuck in the midst of miles of cars and sweating profusely. We crawled through Nice and Cannes, realizing along the way just how much France, like Los Angeles in America, is one of those places that we all know, before we’ve even been there. Name any city in France and you’ve heard of it. It’s popular culture. Just like Sunset, Hollywood, and Malibu.

The traffic eventually thinned out and we found our way to the actual coast hugging road. And that’s when it became obvious why the stars flock here. It was gorgeous. The Mediterranean was spotless, the snow capped Alps loomed in the distance, and the red rock cliffs looked like Arizona had been dropped right into the water. Not to mention the homes. Given unlimited funds I could see living here.

Today we turned back inland. We’re sort of tied to a time schedule at the moment, trying to make it to Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls before it ends in a week. We drove into Avignon which is a beautiful city in the heart of Provence. They’ve got a month long performing arts festival that began today and the town was absolutely packed with artsy stage actor types. The town also houses the worlds largest gothic palace, which sits right smack dab in the middle of five kilometers of stone walls guarding the city. It was a great place to walk around for the day.

july 9 2009 : carcassonne, france
We’re going to have a baby! Really, it was bound to happen wasn’t it? With a pimped out fifty-year-old hippie bus, a good looking chic, and an eager and willing husband, there was just no other way for this trip to end. Baby is on the way and we couldn’t possibly be more ecstatic about it. I could go on and on, but I’ve already done so in a separate diary, so here is what’s been happening in our lives the past couple of months.

April 30th on the cargo ship : We think Ali might be pregnant! I almost said we might be pregnant, but then caught myself. Guys always say that as if they are carrying half a baby around in their stomachs. We’re super excited but are still hesitant to celebrate since we’re not sure. Ali’s late and we are on a ship with no access to a home pregnancy test, so until we know more we’re both sort of skirting around the subject. This is something we’ve both wanted for a long time, but we’ve made the decision year after year to do other things first. Now the time feels right.

We get a lot of email, and have always found it a little disconcerting the number of them containing this sentence, word for word, “I’ve always wanted to do something similar, but then I had kids.” Or, “Seven more years until my youngest is gone and I can finally do what I want.” Or, “Good for you, do it now, because once you have kids those days are over.”

God I hope not. My dream these past few years was to be able to raise our kids as a part of our lives. I especially want to spend my children’s first years with them all the time. My dream I guess is to spend my days playing with my kids on the beach teaching them to swim, to build sand castles, to speak Spanish. There are a hundred places I want to share with our kids and at the moment as I write this it all seems so doable. Hell, I even told Ali that I thought maybe it was time we get ourselves a dog too. I know we can have it all. I’ve always known that we could have it all. It’s just up to us. It’s perfect.

May 6th on the cargo ship : Ali and I went ashore today in Rio de Janeiro where we bought a home pregnancy test. I am as nervous as a six-year-old on his first day of school. I am actually scared now that it might tell us that no, she is not pregnant.

Unfortunately when we returned to the ship we discovered that our bus had been broken into. That put us in a pretty sour mood, so now we’re waiting until tomorrow. Lying in bed now all I think about is the day I have my baby napping on my chest.

Ali is sure that she is pregnant now. She says we have to be.

May 7th on the cargo ship : It’s official! We knew the test would be positive, but I still felt sick at the thought that maybe we were wrong and we’d gotten all excited over nothing.

Ali disappeared into the bathroom with a plastic cup and test stick, and came out immediately to set it on the desk and wait the two minutes. But in those first ten seconds she’d already snuck a peek at it and saw the big plus sign. Her grin gave her away and we celebrated before the time was up.

The most telling sign that Ali has been pregnant the past couple of weeks (April 15th we are guessing) has been her total disgust at the thought of coffee. She loves her coffee and isn’t truly happy without three cups in the morning, but since we got on the ship she hasn’t had any, and suddenly thinks it sounds gross. Also, almost no food sounds good to her. She’s been subsisting pretty much on fruit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eat an orange before and now she’s ripping one open at every meal. She doesn’t want to go out in the sun much and thinks our room is freezing at all times. She is going to be a handful these next nine months.

May 11th on the cargo ship : I have to say, Ali is not really enjoying the ship life all that much at the moment. She’s been pretty well holed up in the room the past few days and it takes a little coaxing to get her outside for even a few minutes. Her body doesn’t want to do much but lie on the bed. At meals people are starting to stare. Tonight at dinner she had a potato with gravy, ate about half of it, and then had a piece of bread with jelly. Nothing seems to appeal to her at the moment. I had no idea that pregnancy changes would come on so quickly.

May 18th on the cargo ship : “Do you think that tube thing is going into its belly button right now?” I asked with my ear to Ali’s stomach.
“Yeah, it has to to be able to breathe.”
“So you think it already has a belly button?”
“Well, no, I don’t think so. Sort of maybe. I don’t know,” she finally admitted.
“I wonder if the whole baby just grows right out of a belly button.”

We have absolutely no idea how the human body works. No idea what the hell is going on in Ali’s belly. And no idea what to do with a baby. Ali just keeps saying that we have to get The Book. Apparently all the mysterious answers are in some sort of book that every pregnant lady throughout time has read and that we can buy at any English language bookstore. I hope she’s right.

May 21st Bremen, Germany : We got on the internet today and immediately googled Pregnancy. Wow is there a lot out there. We started with the week by week breakdown and were pretty well floored by all that needs to be done and especially by just how far along our little baby is already inside Ali’s belly.

It seems that maybe coming over to Europe was a bit of a mistake since I don’t think now that we’ll be staying over here more than three or four months. But every day things change. We just can’t decide what to do or where to go to have our baby.

June 9th Vienna, Austria : Ali is craving Skittles and Taco Bell. We found one bag of Skittles, but Taco Bell is going to have to wait. She’s been complaining about her torpedoes, as they are now called, but overall the pregnancy doesn’t seem to be bothering her much. She never had a day of morning sickness, even with being on a ship crossing an ocean for four weeks. She’s tough. Life has been a bit different for us lately, browsing through towns and stopping in cafés where she drinks ice cream drinks instead of pitchers of beer with me.

We’ve also been talking non-stop about the future. We both wish we could fast forward six or seven months and have our baby. At the moment we feel like we are just killing time. This is how we feel every time we have an appointment or some kind of plan in place for our future. Everything leading up to it becomes a nuisance, something we wish we could just get through so we could enjoy the next adventure. In this case the adventure is having a baby. Europe now feels like a diversion; and an expensive non-adventurous one at that.

June 14th Frauenfeld, Switzerland : We just spent the weekend at a VW car show meeting new Bum friends. Since we aren’t telling people yet that Ali is pregnant there are occasional odd moments. These come whenever there is alcohol around. In Germany we met new friends and Ali simply said no thanks whenever she was offered a beer or wine. But it felt too obvious to us. They must have figured it out. So at the show this weekend after I finished a beer we rinsed the can out and filled it with water which Ali then drank from for the rest of the night. I’m sure nobody had a clue. But I’m putting it on the record now for all the people who will now find out that she was pregnant and will think she was pounding beer all night when she was ten weeks along.

Ali wants to get big and pregnant now. The first few months are no fun since nobody even knows you’re walking around with a baby.

July 1st Beaune, France : Today was an exciting day. We’ve been waiting to tell our families our news until we got to a doctor to confirm everything is going well. We thought after the Germany VW show we’d head straight for England, but instead decided to head for southern France for a bit of sun. Then today we both woke up and decided we couldn’t wait any longer to talk to a doctor. We both know Ali is pregnant; she has giant boobs, has missed three periods in a row, and has a firm little paunch of a belly, but still, it just doesn’t seem real somehow.

So anyway, we woke up this morning and decided it was time to head out and get confirmation. The initial plan was to take the train to Paris to try and find an English speaking doctor. If that failed we figured we could just pop over to England. However, first we decided to stop in at the tourist information building here in Beaune and see if they might have an idea for us.

The lady there spoke good English and told us that our best bet would be to try the Emergency room of the hospital in town. So we walked over there, met a friendly French nurse who tracked down a doctor for us. The doctor understood us for the most part, but said since it wasn’t an emergency she couldn’t help us. She asked Ali all the questions about pain, blood, et cetera, and it would have been easy to say yes to any of them which would have gotten us in to see the doctor but we couldn’t do it. In the end she pointed us to a Radiology clinic in town.

At the clinic we asked, “Parlez-vous anglais?” and were met by a quizzical look and, “A little.” We explained as best we could that we were traveling and thought that Ali was about three months pregnant. We really wanted confirmation that our baby was healthy. And knowing a due date would be nice too. “An echographie?” she asked. Yes! We mimed the babies heartbeat, and asked her, “December, January, February?” Yes, yes, of course.

So now tomorrow we hope to hear our baby’s heart beating for the first time. We are more excited than you can imagine. That moment will make it all real. Honestly I’ve never been more anxious about anything in my life. I can’t imagine sleeping tonight.

July 2nd Beaune, France : I can’t even explain what an awesome day we’ve just had. We’ve been sort of living with this absurd fear that maybe we were somehow imagining all of this baby stuff, so today was the day to put our minds to rest.

We arrived at the clinic and spoke with a new lady at the desk who spoke no English. Fortunately we’re experts at making ourselves understood without language. And the fact that French and Spanish share a lot in common helped out to. Before long we were in an exam room and met the doctor who had one hand on a remote control and another on the television. This was the scanner.

Almost immediately he found our little baby. The first thing was to hear the heart beating. Incredible. The feeling that rushed through me at that moment was greater than anything I’ve ever felt. Ali looked like the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders. Our baby was in there and was doing good. They measured the head (average), the legs (long), and all the other important baby bits. We made it clear we didn’t want to know the sex and he assured us he couldn’t tell us even if we did. The doctor took a bunch of pictures and then the computer spit out our due date. January 1st, 2010. A New Year’s Baby. Meaning that Ali is fifteen weeks along, a full three to four weeks further than either of us thought.

At this moment we feel more love for each other and for our tiny baby than we have ever felt before. This day is going to be hard to beat. It was such a fun experience all around. Finding out our baby is doing good, and doing so in France, of all places. I can’t wait to tell this kid where he/she has been.

Oh yes, we also found out the date of conception. Narrowed down to a three day span which Ali and I, because of the website, were immediately able to nail down to an exact moment. Yeah, this probably tips over the line into too much information territory, but I think it’s great. Remember back in March when we were driving around Chile and ended up taking that ferry to nowhere? The one that dropped us off in an area with no outlet roads? We ended up spending the night alone on a small beach alongside a lake where we didn’t see another person. Yeah, that was the night. Yeah, in the back of our 1958 VW Bus. And yeah, our child is going to hate us for telling that story.

So that’s it. We’re having a baby! Everybody’s next question is what’s next? Well we’ve bounced at least twenty good ideas around these past months and think we’ve finally settled on one. We’re on our way to the UK now where the love bus will be sold. From there we’ll fly to the States for a few weeks to visit the families and eat Taco Bell. Then we’re moving to Mexico for a while.

We love everything about Mexico and can’t wait to get back there. We’ve even begun making up and singing songs about it. Remember we’ve got no stereo in the bus. The weather, the people, the beaches, the food; I don’t think most Americans realize just how good we’ve got it having such an amazing neighbor. We’re going to drive our Porsche down and rent a place in Mexico City while we have the baby. Yes, they have first rate hospitals and even Harvard educated doctors there. Somebody has to treat all those terrible Mexican drug lords when they get shot up, right? Anyway, in their down time they even deliver babies. Beyond that we still don’t really know where life will take us. Well, that’s not entirely true, but we aren’t giving all of our secrets away in one go.

Over the next few months I’m sure bumfuzzle.com will go through a lot of changes. We’ve still got traveling to do and you can expect our usual incredibly insightful commentary on the world there. I plan to have in depth discussions on the different tacos available throughout Mexico City. But you’re also going to have to bear with me as I discuss things like Ali’s belly button. For instance, she’s always had a coin slot style belly button. Not round at all. Now suddenly it’s the size of a manhole cover and it appears that a creature is on the inside trying to press the whole thing out. It’s creepy. Yes, she’s going to have to bear with me as well. Man this is going to be fun.

Let’s see. In an effort to head off the emails about it. Yes, we know people travel in VWs with babies. No, we have no desire to do so. Two years of living in a space the size of a twin bed is probably enough for a while. And no we don’t want to keep the bus for sentimental reasons either. If you haven’t guessed by now we aren’t very sentimental people when it comes to belongings. We have a standing policy in our lives that if something hasn’t been used in six months we get rid of it. The only exception is the Porsche. This is why everything we own fits in a tiny closet under the stairs of Ali’s parent’s house and we can take off for anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat. And actually, come to think of it, we’ve got a few things in there that we are going to get rid of next time through. Hopefully by the time we head to Mexico our entire lives will fit in the Porsche. All three of us and our junk.

july 10 2009 : oloron sainte marie, france
Okay, couple quick baby things. First off, thanks for all the kind words. We heard from a lot of people in just the first day, and a surprising amount of first time writers. It feels great to know so many of you are happy for us and pulling for us on this next chapter of our lives.

Next, Ali is feeling fantastic. She’s tough as nails so I never really expected her to complain much, and despite a little laziness on the ship she has been a hundred percent herself. I actually half expect her to go into the maternity ward with an attitude and come out five minutes later saying, “Right, so let’s get the baby cleaned up and go home.” At sixteen weeks she really hasn’t had a down day yet.

Quite a few people also seemed to think that we’re settling down to live in Mexico City. I should say that our plans extend only as far as the baby’s two month birthday. We like Mexico City and think we’ll enjoy four months or so there before moving on to whatever may be next for us, whether that be beaches, boats, or buses, we just don’t know at this point.

So after leaving Avignon we drove to Carcassonne. This is a famously touristy city and we probably should have known better than to go there, but it was the right driving distance for the day and it had camping right in town. The reason it’s famous is that the entire place is a huge, perfect, 12th century old walled city. The only problem for us was that the only original part was a few bottom rows of stone wall. Now it’s been rebuilt, and quite stunningly so, as it would have looked back then. It’s great as a movie set and as a place for kids to battle each other with plastic swords in the streets, but aside from that it sort of felt like something Walt Disney would have built. The coolest thing about the town was that there was a music festival going on and that night Lenny Kravitz was playing. The show was sold out, however, though we’re not really up to late night concerts at the moment anyway.

When we arrived at the campground I went to check us in. As the girl was giving me the rundown of the place she said, “I know this is going to sound funny to you, but there are no shorts in the swimming pool.” At first I was sure she meant it was a nudist place, and I guess my childish smirk tipped her off to this fact, because she then pointed to a little drawing of a man in a speedo and a pair of swim trunks with a line through it. Not sure what exactly the significance of that rule is, but they were not messing around.

Today we continued on uneventfully into the Pyrenees Mountains. Assuming the mountain passes aren’t too gnarly we should be in Pamplona tomorrow. Just in time to get run down by an angry bull.

Ali and I have gotten ourselves an angry little stalker again. It happens occasionally, but usually they give up after a short while. However Manfred, or as we like to call him, our little Man-Fred, just won’t give up. This is the guy from MafraTours that we booked our Atlantic ship with. He was the mastermind behind the surprise party that nobody mentioned to us. Despite having had no idea we were supposed to be there he has taken great offense and has been after us for weeks now. We asked him nicely to stop writing to us at which point he started using a different email address and not signing his name. The funny thing is that he sends all his angry letters to an email address that we use solely for business correspondence. So every couple of days we get an “anonymous” note with a German address sent to that email address. What a hopeless twit. This is the kind of guy that would hold up the convenience store next door to his house with a brown bag over his head and forget to cut out eye holes. Anyway, we’ve asked nice enough, now I’m calling him out in public. Hopefully that’ll be the end of it.

july 12 2009 : pamplona, spain, europe
We drove into Pamplona, Spain yesterday. Crossing into Spain from France we were delighted to find the cheapest gas on the continent so far at just $5.00 a gallon. Yeah, that’s cheap here. We were also delighted to speak Spanish again. It felt good to be able to converse solely in our host country’s language, even if it was just the gas station attendant.

Along our drive we stopped off at a pretty overlook in the mountains and I asked Ali to show me her belly for a, I’m Sixteen Weeks Pregnant, picture. She obliged, lifted up her shirt a notch, and we both looked at it like, “Where the hell is it?” Just the night before we’d been saying how much it was showing and now suddenly her bump was gone. We agreed that whatever was in there must have just settled into place differently, but secretly we were both a little anxious about it. How does a baby lump just disappear? Anyway, a few hours later we were both relieved to have a look and see her bulging out nicely again. I don’t even want to know what is going on inside there.

Pamplona wasn’t at all what we expected. Somehow we’d envisioned some dusty small town that was brought alive once a year for the Sanfermines festival, the Running of the Bulls. Instead we found a sprawling city with shopping malls, apartment blocks, and all the rest. We drove through downtown where there were thousands of people still frolicking in the streets despite the fact that the bulls had run eight hours earlier in the day. Since we were once again able to ask for and understand the response, we got directions to the nearest campground in town and headed over.

When we got there the guard told us no way. Music was blasting out of the park and hundreds of drunks filled the parking lot. The Saturday party was in full swing and there was no chance of a camping spot opening up. We continued up the road figuring there must be more camping near the city. It took thirty more miles of driving but we found it and spent the afternoon doing laundry again. There’s something we really miss about the Americas; dropping laundry off and having it done for a pittance.

At five a.m. we made our way back to Pamplona. The city was in shambles. The festival runs from the 6th to the 14th each year and it appears that Saturday night was the big one. Bandstands were set up all over town and the parks were piled two feet high with beer cups. Amidst the beer cups were hundreds of passed out kids. Thousands and thousands more were still carrying the party on at seven.

It took us a while to figure out where the actual old town area where the bulls would be running was located. By the time we did it was obvious that our original plan was not going to work. I had planned to try and run along but we were both feeling a little uncomfortable with the huge drunken crowds. Everybody was acting cool, but it just felt like a bad idea for us to split up. We could see that if we did there was no way Ali would see a thing, and even if I did make it into the bull running streets she wouldn’t have been able to share in the excitement. So with just twenty minutes left to the start we made our way to the stadium, bought a couple of tickets from a scalper, and crowded inside to watch the end of the run.

Inside the stadium had the same sort of intensity and excitement that the Superclásico did in Buenos Aires. Except here there was no opposing team, beer and sangría was flowing, and hard drugs seemed to be the norm instead of the exception. At eight o’clock on the nose a rocket was fired off just a few blocks from the stadium and the stampede began. We watched the action on the big screen in the fully packed stadium. Almost immediately a couple of hundred runners came down the runway into the stadium. They were roundly booed and pelted by anything that could be thrown at them. The crowd chanted, “Puntos!” and they all scampered quickly to the sides. These were the runners who never even saw the bulls.

The run only takes three minutes and before we knew it a couple of hundred runners piled in just ahead of seven bulls. These bulls ran straight through the stadium and out the other end. Harmless. But up on the screen there was one bull left on the street. He seemed to have lost the pack and was disoriented and didn’t seem to know where to go. Then right as he was about to enter the runway into the stadium he caught a runner. The guy seemed to take a horn directly to the head and was instantly covered in blood. Down on the ground the bull gored him again. Then again, ripping off his pants and tossing him in the air. It was absolutely crazy. Eventually others in the crowd dragged the guy off and got the bulls attention back to the runway where he ran straight down and through the crowd out the other side.

After these 1400 pound bulls were done they released one at a time into the throng of people still out on the stadium floor a small bull with his horns capped off. This is when the whole spectacle became hard to stomach. These bulls were taunted relentlessly for about five minutes, goring and tossing people around, but harmlessly as they were pretty small and their horns had, like I said, been capped off. The bulls were scared, disoriented, and just wanted to get the hell away from there.

Overall it was another one of those things in this world that just has to be seen at some point in life and we were glad we went. Though for animal lovers it is pretty tough. Ali felt terrible during the end and we left before it was over. Morally it just doesn’t feel right and maybe we were wrong to contribute to it. I don’t know what the answer is. The Spanish sure do love it though.

july 14 2009 : essarts, france, europe
After the bulls we drove straight up the road to Biarritz, a popular French beach resort area. By noon we were settled into a campground right on the beach. And thirty minutes after that we were lying in the sand trying not to stare at all the nakedness around us. It was a gorgeous stretch of beach and a great place to relax for the rest of the day.

We had thought we’d spend a couple of days there but we’ve both realized that the bus trip is coming to an end for us. Instead of being sad about it we’re both so excited by the next chapter that we just can’t really get into the rest and relaxation traveling groove anymore. The next afternoon we were already on the move again.

We stopped off in Arcachon, another popular French holiday area. This one was big on the camping scene, though we found both campgrounds we checked out to be crappy, grungy type places. The big draw was the huge sand dune that hovered over us. We hiked to the top where there was a pretty view out over the ocean inlet. Hundreds upon hundreds of boats were out on the water. We hung out a while at the top of the dune having the wind fill our ears with sand and then jumped all the way to the bottom. Well Ali walked carefully down while I attempted to see how far I could jump down the fifty degree slope. Good fun for a couple of hours but we couldn’t really imagine the draw for an entire holiday. So off we went again this morning on an utterly uneventful drive north.

july 17 2009 : utah beach, france (367 nights in the bus : 58,910 miles)
We reached northwestern France, but along the way ran into a bit of a problem. The RGB oil seal exploded on us again. We bought more oil and topped it off in the store parking lot before continuing down the road to the Utah Beach campground where I figured I’d open it up and “fix” it again.

This time though, when I opened it up, there was metal in the oil. I popped off the cover and found that a bearing had disintegrated inside. The bearings track was where the metal shavings had come from and fortunately that was all the damage, not gears and all the rest of the stuff. Problem is, we didn’t have a spare bearing. Yes, everybody told us to get an extra set, but to me that’s like purchasing Reduction Gear Box insurance. No, at the time back in Peru I figured we were headed to Europe where all the spare VW parts I wanted would be mine for the taking.

So first thing the next morning I called up a shop in England, ordered the parts, and paid a small fortune to have them overnighted. Ali and I then went out for a wander down the beach. It felt pretty awesome to stand on the grassy hill overlooking this wide flat expanse of beach and think about what the Allies and especially the Americans accomplished there. It’s amazing to think of the courage the soldiers would have had to summon up to storm across this beach on D-Day. It’s also a place now that makes you proud to be an American. As many American flags fly on this beach as French. A testament to what the U.S. soldiers did that day.

Today we woke to horrendous weather. Rain, cold, and thirty mile an hour winds. By one o’clock our parts still hadn’t arrived so we went up to the restaurant to watch the front gate and will a DHL truck to pull in. At quarter to two we asked for menus. Ten minutes later the waitress came by again and we placed our pizza orders. Three minutes later she walked over to us and informed us that the kitchen closed at two and we were out of luck. It was 1:58 on their clock and at quarter to she hadn’t thought to maybe warn us about this. Ahh well, it’s now four o’clock, we still have no parts, and we won’t eat today until at least seven. You might say that Ali is slightly less than pleased. Man, this would be so much easier if we were somewhere like Pisco, Peru.

july 20 2009 : paris, france
Turns out our parts were held up by customs here in France. Anybody can just drive right across the border with a bus full of anything but just try and get a one pound envelope marked AUTO SPARE PARTS by them. Fortunately during our fourth day on Utah Beach the package arrived. It didn’t take long to get things back together as we’ve been through the process enough times now.

Yesterday we drove down to Bayeux where we left the bus in a cheap campground and hopped on the train to Paris. Somehow that turned out to be our worst train ride ever. We bought our tickets four hours in advance but the girl failed to mention anything about seating assignments. We assumed that since our tickets didn’t have any that the train must just have general seating. When the train came we climbed on and sat down. At the next stop a million people climbed on and we were promptly kicked out of our seats. The train did in fact have reserved seating, we just didn’t have any. At this point the train was completely overloaded, people were sitting in any available space and the last bit of floor space we could find was to stand next to the toilets for two hours. For that we paid eighty dollars. Not a great start to our Paris outing.

For our Paris stay we decided we had to splurge. We housed ourselves in our fanciest digs since Bangkok years earlier and upon entering the room our toilet train was forgotten. Up early this morning we hit the tourist trail. First stop? Where else but the Eiffel Tower. Gorgeous. Thousands of people were in line to go up the tower in an elevator which seemed sort of silly to us since it seemed that the appeal of the place is in viewing the tower itself. We instead grabbed a spot on the lawn at the park with the rest of the lovers and snap happy tourists. What could be more Paris than that? We had a great time.

From there we began to walk. We walked and we walked and we walked. First to the Arc de Triomphe, then along the Champs-Elysées to possibly the busiest Macca’s ever along the way to the Louvre. We didn’t go into the Louve today, knowing we didn’t have time to scratch it, but the buildings and the parks around it were enough anyway. This is classic Parisian beauty. Everything in the area exuded grandeur. From there we walked along the Seine to Notre Dame, the 800 year-old home to the Hunchback. We wandered around the Latin district for a while which for some reason was chock full of falafel, schwarma, and pizza restaurants. By this point the whole day had passed and we’d walked countless miles. Exhausted we finally grabbed a train back to the hotel. After just one day we are enamored of Paris. What an awesome city.

july 21 2009 : paris, france
We really wanted to check out the view of Paris from atop Notre Dame so this morning we headed straight for it. So did a couple hundred other tourists. Rumors of Paris being overrun by us tourists in the summer are not overstated. Locals in the city must actually look forward to winters when they can have a little peace and quiet on the streets again. The views from the bell tower were worth the wait though as below us all of Paris unfolded.

Unfortunately our two hour wait had soured us on any other lines for the entire day. That meant no more tourist stops. Just wandering the city streets is enough here however. You get a different taste of the city down each and every street. Despite all the tourists it is definitely still a city for the locals.

july 23 2009 : st. helens, england, uk
Covered a lot of ground the past couple of days. We left Paris, took the train back to the campground in Bayeux, then left early this morning for Cherbourg where we drove onto the ferry for England. We arrived in Poole and drove halfway across England to Manchester. We’re meeting a couple tomorrow who have already put a deposit down on the bus and we’re extremely hopeful now that the deal goes through.

Driving in the UK. You can’t come here in a car and not talk about it. We’re sort of used to driving on the wrong side of the road. We did it for months in New Zealand as well as when renting cars in the Bahamas and Australia. But those were always right-hand drive cars which made it feel natural right off the bat. Coming in and driving a left-hand drive on the left side of the road took a bit more getting used to. Ali, sitting on the inside of the road, is sure that she’s going to die now.

july 26 2009 : warrington, england
Really not a whole lot happening lately. We met the couple about the bus, went out for the classic English meal of curry, and struck a deal on the bus sale. In a few more days we should have the money in hand and be hitting the skies. In the meantime we’re trying to enjoy our short time here in England, but the weather is making that really hard to do. Rain, rain, and more rain is coming down and continuing to be forecast. It’s so bad that after spending last night at a campground in the Lakes District we decided to spend tonight in the luxury of a Comfort Inn. We’re getting soft.

We were thrilled to spot a Borders bookstore today where we could hole up for a few rainy hours. Ali, being preggers, had been excited to finally have reason to buy the book What To Expect When You’re Expecting. It’s just what pregnant women do. Of course being a cheapskate, after a couple of hours of treating Borders like a library, reading all the good bits about kitty litter (lesson: wear gloves when handling), having sex with a big belly (lesson: the baby won’t get poked), and eating bananas (lesson: eat them and the baby will like them), she decided there was no longer any reason to buy it. She’s got this baby thing all figured out.

july 28 2009 : ashbourne, england
The bus sale is at a standstill. Ali and I absolutely hate this part of our lives. What for us is often a ten minute decision, buying a vehicle, seems to be the most dramatic thing in the world for other people. We’ll get this thing sold, but every day that goes by feels like a month to us right now.

Being the weekend we left to go camping. Two days later our potential buyers emailed to tell us that they’d spoken to a VW “expert” that informed them that they shouldn’t buy the bus without an MOT. An MOT is like a vehicle check-up. Ever the obliging sellers Ali and I drove all over town and had an MOT test done. It showed exactly what we expected it would show; our left turn signal didn’t work and our parking brake would not double as an emergency brake. Total nonsense.

As for that MOT, what an incredible scam. Every car over three years old has to have an MOT done every year in order to be licensed. It costs about seventy bucks and, surprise, surprise, after they fail your car the MOT shops will do the repair work for you. If they do then they’ll retest you for free. It truly amazes me the sort of government controls people will put up with over here. I only pray the States never gets this bad. Here are the things our fifty-one year old bus failed over. One, our turn signal doesn’t work. Great, that should be fixed, they’re right. Two, our parking brake won’t stop the bus at thirty miles an hour. How many people’s lives have been saved by having one that would? Three, a fifteen cent rubber grommet that helps hold our steel brake line in place is cracked. Four, a metal tab wasn’t pressed down over two of the gear box bolts.

Numbers three and four could have been fixed by the tester in roughly thirty seconds, but instead they mark it failed and try to get you to have the shop fix them, which would surely charge thirty minutes worth of labor to any unsuspecting woman who had the misfortune of needing this done to pass her test. Yeah, that’s a sexist comment, I know.

Talking to the tester afterwards about the difference in the States, namely that we don’t do any of this crap, he commented, “But isn’t that unsafe? A guy could be driving down the road with bald tires.” I’d love to see the statistics showing how many road deaths were caused by bald tires or somebody’s parking brake not working compared to how much money the 12,000 English MOT testing stations were pulling in to fix them. Yeah, twelve thousand shops.

Okay, it’s clear that I absolutely hate this sort of government intervention, now here is why. I had to hand over my car keys to some monkey who had never driven a bus before. Then after the test I found that this clown had managed to make three pen marks on my front seat by shifting with a pen in his hand. And lastly I realized today that he was so intent on making the parking brake stop the bus by pulling on it so hard he had snapped one of the cables and rendered it completely useless for parking my car. Monkeys. I could never in a million years live in a place with as many rules as this.

On a much different subject, having a baby has been on our minds for years now. Seven years ago when we were “in the chips” as my grandpa Peachey would have said, we opened an investment account, named it Baby Fund, and stuck a big chunk of money in it. How’s that for forward thinking? We earmarked it for baby expenses and college. At the time we were in Chicago and receiving daily Pottery Barn catalogs. We were sure then that we would just have to have one of those perfect baby rooms. It’s funny how much things have changed since then. Now we don’t have a stick of furniture to our name, much less a house to put it in. Our poor kid is going to have to do without the $4000 hand carved maple changing table after all. Maybe I’ll buy them a cool car to drive to college instead.

While in Paris we were in a park where at least a dozen nannies were sitting around watching their charges play in the sandbox. Ali and I were astonished by how elaborate strollers have become. They’re huge. Some have four-wheel drive tires on them, most have a separate umbrella attachment, all have mobiles dangling above them, and four point harnesses hold the kids in place and prevent whiplash in case of a rear end collision at the playground. It got us thinking back to the simpler life led south of the border back home. In all of Central and South America we never saw a stroller. Kids are worn in fabric slings on their mother’s back or tight against mom’s chest. Besides, strollers, even these four-by-four strollers, couldn’t handle the roads and total lack of smooth sidewalks down there. Ali and I say that we’re going to try going the fabric sling route. We talk about these types of things all the time now. I’ll keep writing down these thoughts and plans so we can compare them a year or two down the line and see if we stuck to any of them.

Another one? Birthdays. We think birthdays would be far more memorable if they weren’t all about presents. I can’t recall a single birthday present I ever received. Instead we’re going to make birthdays sort of a family day where the birthday boy or girl gets to pick something fun for the whole family to do. You don’t even want to hear our thoughts on Christmas, though it shouldn’t be hard to figure them out. At this point in our lives we are so anti-“stuff” that this kid is really going to be in trouble. “No, you don’t really want that toy do you? I mean come on, which of your other three toys are you planning to throw away to make room for it?”

july 30 2009 : warrington, england
The past few days have dragged along. The weather is utter crap here. But fortunately for us the waiting around hasn’t been for nothing as the bus sale has become official. The money hit our account today and tomorrow we fly out.

So today after 28 countries, 59,734 miles, 525 days on the road, and 371 nights spent in the bus we essentially said goodbye to our home, emptying it out, throwing away a whole bunch of stuff, and packing up the few things that we’ve collected along the way. Ali and I never really get choked up about these sorts of things. The bus has been fantastic. We truly feel that it was the best vehicle for the adventure.