Gobble, Gulp and Go

Dearest Rachel –

A week or so ago, I finished transcribing my notes from our first trip here back in 2014. I had meant to use them to compare what we’d seen and heard then versus now, but also as filler, under the assumption that I wouldn’t be likely to be able to write full letters to you every day. Of course, that couldn’t have turned out to be farther from the truth, but at the cost of having to stay up until 10 or 11 at night to put everything into a coherent, topical story (and even then, some of them still look a bit rough, but they’re considerably more put-together than those notes from eight years back). More on that in a bit, too.

Anyway, there was a phrase that popped up several times throughout the trip, usually in the mornings: “gobble, gulp and go.” It’s not actually a phrase of my own invention; I think I got it from your parents’ book about “The Good Old Days: They Were Horrible!” It referred to traveling on the railroad in the American West in the nineteenth century, when the train would pull into a station, and passengers would disembark, attempt to grab a quick bite to eat, and plow through it within twenty or so minutes before the whistle blew and they had to be on the train or miss it. It was a rushed and miserable process, rattling to the nerves and punishing to the digestion.

But then, what did the old-time traveler expect? It was a grueling experience, going from place to place in those days. It’s why our word ‘travel’ comes from the word for ‘work,’ as you (being a student of the French language once upon a time, would remind me); traveling was work. There was nothing particularly relaxing about it.

And it’s not like we weren’t informed likewise when we were setting out on this. “It’s a tour, not a vacation,” Junior emphasized over and over beforehand. There’s a lot to see here, and we’re not given a lot of time to take it all in. Even given the ten days we are, we still have to hit at least three different sights a day, and that’s particularly challenging when there isn’t as much daylight to work with in the near-winter months like these. All of this is perfectly understandable.

But all the same…

You’re not giving a whole lot of time, between a 6:30 wake up call, and a 7:45 departure time, to wake up, get dressed, shower (or do whatever you have to do in order to wake up), get breakfast, and get out the door. But it’s what you’re expected to be able to do. And woe be unto you if you’re not, and wind up on the bus that many minutes late. After all, you’re wasting everyone else’s time that way.

I try to mitigate this by setting my alarm that much earlier than our wake-up call. You may have thought of me as a morning person, and compared to you, I suppose I was, but it doesn’t come naturally. Organically, I’m lucky to be truly awake before seven on any given day. I have to shower, not to get myself clean so much as to just get my eyes open in the morning. This was a necessity back when I had to get myself to work; now that I’m retired, that’s no longer an issue, and I find myself sleeping in a lot more. Here, that’s not an option.

So, I have my alarm set for twenty minutes to six, in order to accomplish my morning ‘routine.’ The funny thing is, since Daniel fell asleep barely an hour after getting back to the hotel, he was already up by five. I won’t say that he woke me up, but I was aware of him being up well before my alarm was set to ring. Still, all the better for me to do what I needed to do to start the day.

Indeed, I managed to get myself cleaned up, and packed up, before my alarm was set to go off. And, of course, Daniel was wide awake, so I talked him into getting himself put together, since today we leave this hotel for good. with all that taken care of, we thought we might be able to circumvent the whole ‘gobble, gulp and go’ routine, and head downstairs for a slightly more leisurely breakfast.

So, we found ourselves returning to our room to await our wake-up call, and make sure everything is packed and ready to go. There is a thing or two I can’t locate, but the room is empty, so it must be with us somewhere.

So, here we go. Keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck; we’re going to need it.