Ultra Light Engineering

I've always been a solution finder.  So when the mosquitoes(zanzara) started in on us at Megan's house I had to find a solution.  My solution?  $11 ultralight curtain and $1 of wire from the local hardware store.  Here is my ultralight mosquitoes net solution that packs down to a almost flat solution

Tamara ended up getting the bites that night! :)  If conditions don't improve she will be making one for herself.



We are in Naples for the next day or two and then we are going over to Bari on the east side of Italy.

Siesta Snafoos

As we've been travelling around Italy, one of the things which we often run afoul of is siesta. In Italian culture, siesta is a beautiful concept - it is the period of the day where people can relax, digest after lunch (lunch is often about 1pm here), and catch a quick nap. Siesta begins about 1:30-2 pm and ends at 3:30 or 4 pm, sometimes as late as 4:30pm. Generally, most shops close so that the owner can go home to have lunch and a nap. As the summertimes can be brutally hot here, it's also a chance to escape the heat. After siesta ends, shops reopen and stay open much later than in the US, until 7pm or later.

This major church in Napoli was closed for siesta when
we visited. We arrived at 3pm, but it was closed until 4pm.

But, what does the siesta mean for the foreign traveller? Mainly, lots of problems. Arriving in a small town at siesta time means that nothing will be open; we have sat in cafes literally waiting for two hours until things open up again. Or, it means not being able to get groceries - for Thanksgiving, we tried to head to the supermarket to get wine and chocolate, and we smacked up against siesta yet again; it was 3:30pm and all the supermarkets were closed until 4:30. (Luckily, a tiny store nearby was open and had good wine prices - but no chocolate).

It also means problems for touring a city; we like to go out touring all day, but with siesta, this can mean that large churches can be closed when we want to visit, or smaller museums may close down for thist time period. As siesta doesn't exist in the US, we often forget about it and are constantly surprised when we run up against it. It's a common sigh we utter when it causes problems: "Ah, damn, it's siesta time."

Even in larger cities like Napoli, it is quite common for many of the shops to close down. Add to siesta the fact that Sundays are basically a dead period (practically everything is closed, there are fewer trains, and buses may be nonexistent) and travel can be a bit difficult. We try to plan our major travel for non-weekends, but siesta is a commonly re-occurring issue.

As I am writing, siesta is on my mind as I'm waiting for it to be 5pm - the time when the little neighborhood grocery store will open after siesta ends. My stomach is growling. Siesta is good for naps, but bad for food shopping! 10 minutes and counting until siesta is done...

Thanksgiving in Italy

Our Thanksgiving in Italy, with American friends

A Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family back home! We are thinking of you. :) Of the things we are grateful for, tonight we were very grateful to be hosted at a Thanksgiving dinner made by some friends of our American couchsurfing host.

It was a fabulous meal, and to top it all off, the dinner was on a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean sea. Bellissima! It's quite an extraordinary thing, to be able to celebrate a US holiday in a foreign country. Our friends here are all navy or military-based, so they are able to get otherwise hard-to-find ingredients. In an Italian supermarket, cranberries, whole turkeys, and cheddar cheese are generally impossible to get. :) We were very lucky to be there tonight!

We hope everyone at home has a wonderful dinner - we are grateful for all of you, and we miss you. Hugs from Europe!

The sunset!

Napoli's Hype

Herculaneum

Napoli (Naples in English) is a major city south of Rome. For many tourists, it is the furthest south they will consider traveling in Italy - Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius are here. Napoli has a bad rep for tourists - we hear about muggings, camera snatchings, the mafia, etc. Our guidebook advised us to be careful.

Even the northern Italians believe the hype. Three separate people, all living in Italy, told us to be very vigilant when visiting Napoli. They said: don't stand out, hide the valuables (don't even wear earrings), and watch out for tall people standing behind you (they might try to grab something). I had already read all of this, but when three people repeat it to you, almost verbatim, it starts to get spooky.
Needless to say, we arrived in Naples ready to do battle with the hordes of muggers. We latched our bags down tight, hid the electronics deep inside, and wiped any trace of friendliness (hard for us west coasters) off of our faces. Scowls in place (or semi-grimaces) we quick-marched to get from Napoli's central train station to our Couchsurfer's place.

Napoli on a busy Sunday

The local train getting there was jam-packed; we literally had to take off our bags to fit in the doorway (or we would have smashed the people around us, as our backpacks are large). But, we had no issues. And, we have had no issues since.
Granted, Napli is a grungier, dirtier city than many in northern Italy. And the people are more enthusiastic and louder - but I have not experienced any "in your face" Italian-ness which we heard so much about. And no real danger. Sure, tourists are always faced with the normal big-city stuff - guys trying to sell you umbrellas, taxi rides, tours, iphones, etc... but it's not that hard to wave them away. If an expensive camera is around your neck, and you are not protecting it, then that is a risk you are responsible for. No exception, whether it's Paris, Napoli, New York, etc.

The pizza!

My message - don't believe the hype on Napoli. We've been here 5 nights now, and it's a good place to visit. It is dirty, but Pompeii and Herculaneum were amazing. And the pizza, the pizza... you can find decent (and when I say decent, it beats 98% of everything in the States) pizza at least twice on every block. Even the delivery pizza is awesome. Huuuuge carb overloads. So, to those wondering if Napoli will be "too intense" to go visit - don't believe it. :)

Heroes Quest!

Computer games are in my opinion an essential part of learning complex techniques for surviving in this world. Role Playing Games offer us a way to build a complex set of tools for problem solving. However, most of us don't always apply our computer games in literal terms to our life.

To all heroes out there, Take Heed!

What all true heroes need on their quest first is a "meat sac of holding", as my ex roommate called it.  A bag to carry your weapons and armor in.  These are commonly called "backpacks"  in laymen terminology.   These have a few basic properties, the important one is inventory size, how much weapons and armor can you carry with you.  As any true hero knows, having a big enough inventory to carry around with you. There exists a trade off between the amount of stuff, the size of it, and it's weight.
BEWARE - To much weight and you risk becoming immobile.

There are 4 basic categories of you carry around with you.  Weapons, Armor, Tonics, and treasure/loot.

Weapons -
In this day and age, you can find weapons anywhere, and in any form.  Some of them can be bought/traded for, others you have to quest to gain the knowledge to carry around with you.  Here is a basic list of weapons that we carry thus far.
-Computer,Smart Phone, Internet, Leatherman Juice(multi-tool), lots of scrolls of knowledge on our area, a map with blue blinking dot of where you are at.

Armor-
Armor is essential in protecting you from the enemies of the area.  Here, that is mostly the weather god.  He commonly spits fire and thunder at you, rain, and sun. You must be prepared for it!  Some armor is not used all the time, but is readily needed should the enemy present itself.

You need to protect yourself from:
-The Tears of the gods(rain), with a waterproof jacket and pants, and heavy boots.
-The Thunder of the gods, with noise protection so you can sleep when the thunder comes.
-The Light of the gods, with good light weight clothing to cover your body and/or godscreen to lather on you to stay safe.
-The Temper of the gods (hot and cold), with proper clothing of both light and heavy kinds.

Tonics-
Tonics can be found most everywhere, but the true hero knows how to find the hidden cave with cheaper goods.  Tonics are important to ones health and keeping his stamina up.  They come in liquid and solid forms, a healthy balance of both is needed.  Local tonics are special because they can be extra tasty, but are never found again.  BEWARE, if you run out of tonics on your journey you must immediately seek out the nearest cave and replenish them.

Loot-
Loot is very important to us heroes.  It gives us much pleasure, especially if we have earned it, or pick it up faster than the other hero standing next to us. :)  However with all loot, one must eventually find a treasure box to hold it.  For us, they come in international flat rate shipping boxes.  Each medium sized treasure box costs around $50 to safely get back to our lair.   
BEWARE - Ship  only expensive loot, as shipping cheap loot can result in more money spent on shipping than the loot is worth.

With every quest, us heroes are continuously finding better armor and weapons and crafting higher and higher leveled gear to carry around.  This is true in real life as well.  You learn what is essential, and discard/sell older gear that isn't useful anymore.

Questing-
Every hero knows that the amount of time a quest will take is unknown, and may entail mini quests or side quests.  Each side quest must be done in order to get to the main quest completion.  For example, we quests out this morning to get to Naples. Our quest had a couple mini quests.  First, get from the house to town via our feet.  Second, to catch a bus leaving for the next bigger town with enough time to get to the train to get to the next bigger town, and so forth.  Scheduling these mini quests and allowing enough time to complete them is tricky.  If you cut it too close, you risk missing a mini quest, and have to go back and start the quest chain again(take the next bus you find, and jump on the next train heading south).  IF you leave to much time to complete the mini quests, you are left standing around twiddling  your thumbs.
BEWARE - always leave yourself options.  If you miss the bus, do you have enough time to walk to the town?  DO you have enough money to bribe a transport wagon to take you?

For all us heroes out there questing, good luck and stay safe and flexible.

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Finished - In the nick of time!

Wow,

So we finished up Saturday Morning with the olives for a deadline with the oil pressers at 11am.  We drove 15 "cassettes" or crates over which took 2 trips in her tiny car.  We weighed in at ~250Kilos, or ~551 lbs.  Here is the pic.

The full gallery is here: Here

It ended up taking about 2 hours to get in and out with the oil.  We brought home the 45liters or so of oil back in 2 canisters and set them up to settle.  The process was very fun to watch.  My favorite was the water/oil separators, there was a 2 stage process with 2 separators setup to extract the oil from the water. We ended up with 17% oil from the base weight, which is pretty good.  Last year, they got 20%, but some people, like the person right ahead of us only got 13%.

This process they have here in Parrano is one of the only truly cold presses around.  People come all the way from Firenze (Florence about an hour away, which is a long drive in Europe!).  They patented this unique process several years ago here.  By the way, for all you cold pressed olive connoisseurs, be aware, we learned that not all cold pressed oil is equal.  Most cold pressed is still heated, but they move the thermometer around to cooler places in the oil process away from the heat so they can call it cold pressed! The settling process takes ~15 days to clarify the oil.  It's a wonderful color like nothing out of a bottle, and the aroma is fantastic.

Luckily for us, we finished just in time.  For today all day it's been raining and stormy and now the lightning strikes and thunder fill the air.   Our work here with the olives is fineto(finished), but our work here is not done.  Tomorrow we set out to find a wet sander to sand her marble sink so it won't have standing water in it, as well as other tools for other projects around the house.

Buona Notte!

--------

La Lingua-
Buona Notte (Good Night, as in good night I/We going to bed)
Buona Serata (Good Night as in have a good rest of your evening, and I won't be seeing you again today, but not good night!)
Buona Sera (Good Evening, as in have a good evening, we might see each other later so we won't say goodbye for now)

Food!!!

We have started another thread of our blog for just food.  It's on the right hand side called TnDs Food.  and there is a link on that site to bring you back here.  We are back tracking right now and getting it caught up, have fun and enjoy our new findings.  we will be putting them into categories, so you can quickly find recipies for new and exciting foods.

La Raccolta delle Olive - The Olive Harvest!

Looking over the olive orchard

Today we began the olive harvest - la raccolta delle olive! We have been preparing for it since we arrived - Devlin has been diligently cutting the grass around the trees, we have been fixing holes in the nets (and the parachute!), pruning, and cleaning out blackberries. The weather has finally become good - we had to wait at least 2 days to let the olives dry out from the recent rain. Too much rain and too soon to harvest, and you will be pressing water, not oil!

We have our deadline: by Saturday at 3pm, the olives must go to the processing mill. Before then we have 50 trees to harvest. Although it is an "off" year - there are very few olives this year compared to last, there is still plenty to be done.

The parachute positioned under the first tree

How do you harvest an olive tree?

Step 1: position the parachute/net (we used the parachute only today) around the base of the tree. There is often more than one trunk! Olive trees can have 3 or 4 main trunks from the ground. Make sure the parachute covers this gap - it's easy to lose olives there. Overlap the edges of the parachute on one radius from the trunks.

Step 2: begin to harvest! Either use your hand to pick the olives individually, which we do when a tree has very few olives, or use a special plastic comb to pull the olives off the tree. Mostly, the leaves slide through the comb, but you do get some other debris (sticks, some leaves) that fall as well. We harvest every olive (a few missed ones get left "for the birds"): Devlin was up on the ladder most of the day, while Giovanna and I used combs on poles to reach the higher branches.

Step 3: go inside the tree to double check for missed olives. A ripe olive is black, a green one is unripe. But, some varieties of olives stay mostly green! It depends on the variety of olive (and there are a zillion!) We pick both the green and black: a good variety of olives will result in a richer oil. (Giovanna says that some people say a few sticks and leaves also add flavor, but I think that is just from laziness!) 

Step 4: once all the olives have been picked, carefully begin to gather up one side of the parachute, letting the olives roll down and accumulate. About midway, switch and go to the other edge, and repeat. Once all the olives are in one pile, pull out extra sticks/debris. At the mill, there is a machine to blow off the light debris, like leaves, but sticks are often too heavy and get left. (They also weigh your olives, so fewer sticks/leaves is better for that reason also). 

Step 5: gather up the olives in the parachute and place in special green plastic bins. Everyone seems to use the exact same type of bin here.

Step 6: pull the parachute to the next tree, and repeat.

During the olive harvest, it's important to keep working throughout the day, using as much of the daylight as possible. If you wait too long to finish the harvest, and let some olives sit, they can mold and turn bad. Normally, when not harvesting olives, we work from 8:30 to 1pm, have lunch, and then we can have the rest of the day off. At harvest time, we break for lunch, but then go back to it until the light fails.

By 3:30pm today, the low-slanting western light began to make the olives difficult to see. Green and black began to fade together, and we squinted against the harsh light. But, we pushed through to finish a row of olives which is mostly in the shade in the morning. (Today, we started late - we had to wait until 10am for the grass to be dry enough to harvest. Too much wet grass, and you get wet olives, which = mold.)

The day's harvest!

Tomorrow we begin again!
Pull out the parachute... :)

Transported to an alternate reality

Dropped shipped into the middle of nowhere, you wake up and nobody speaks your language.  They look the same, and act similar, and speak, but you can't understand them.

They signal to you to come for a film at the theater.  You get in the car and jump onto a toll highway where you get a ticket when you get on, and pay when you get off.  Along the way they play some musica that you understand, Loreena McKennitt, all the while he is speaking to you in a strange language.  You get to what looks like a theater with adverts on the outside and head on in.  Inside at the ticket booth you manage to ask for 2 tickets for Skyfall (the new james bond movie) which you know they don't have subtitles for and is in Italiano.  Here is the Ticket:

The first thing you see is what look to you like row number and a seat number.  You aren't sure as you don't know what fila and posto mean.  Strange you think to yourself, why is that on there.  Comparing the two tickets you see that both are in the same row, but have different seat numbers.

Upon entering the main booth area, a man takes your ticket and rips off the bottom, meanwhile the man your with is ushering you onward with a little haste.  He can't tell you that if you don't arrive before the film, they lock the doors and you can't get in.  You start walking down the hallways looking for #2 Zaffiso, which you guess is theater #2 with the name zaffiso?  You find it and walk in.  Inside you see a stadium seating arrangement for about 16 rows down to the floor.  Unlike the theaters in the US where the seats go to about 12 feet from the screen, you see a vast space of nothing but floor for 50-60 feet from screen to the first row.  Sure enough you find your row, and seat number and sit down.  there are very few people in the room.  you guess maybe 10% of the seats are full.  Everyone sits in their assigned seat, even if that means kicking 10 people down 2 seats so they can sit in theirs.WTF crosses your mind, it's almost completely empty and these people "have" to sit in their seat?  As the film starts everything sets in place and you begin to watch a crappy film in another tongue.  About half way through, right in the middle of the film, it stops.  A screen with "Intervallo" appears and the lights come on.  Huh?  Intermission lasts for about 4 min, and then strangely people sit back down and the film starts again.  It finishes and you get up and leave the theater like normale.

Everything seems very similar all the time, and yet you feel like everything around you is always not quite the same as you know.  You have to use all your brain to understand peoples intentions and physical movements to get a sense of understanding.  You have to wait for the people around you to act first, so you can re-learn how to act and behave.  You watch with intensity the interactions around you to get some baring on how you "should" act.  And above all you have to have patients and be flexible.  For you have joined for a moment in time an alternate reality where you and you alone have to relearn to be yourself in this new and similar world.

Wine, work, and the dolce festival

What a great day.  I engineered a brand new water trench in the cellar next door to direct the water leakage safely outside.  Here is a picture of it (a destra - to the right).  I engineered a new trench design for next to the driveway and it's on it's way to being done.








We found wine in bulk at the local wine shop.  Only in the country where wine is soo good and so cheap can you buy it by the liter, 3 liters at a time to be precise.  Here is the picture (a sinistra - to the left) of the jug that you can refill as many times as you want.  Full jug costs ~4.20 Euro or about $5.41!  That is 4 bottles of wine for less than an hour of work at minimum wage.

Work is going very well.  Settling down in one place has allowed me to really focus well.  There aren't distractions here.

Tonight we were able to go into town and take part in a sweets festival - La Festa di Dolci.  For 2.50 euro entrance we could walk around and eat all the locally made treats.  Our favorite was a riso(rice) fried nugget of yummyness.  It's a 3 day festival, so we will be back to see what is going on tomorrow.

We are really enjoying the language; Tamara is picking it up really well, I suck but am trying.

Each day brings new promise of things of old, present, and future. I really miss the life I had at the beginning of this year and the friends in my life.  I am always looking forward to new opportunities as they present themselves.