Here and There; This and That: Finding Adventure at Other Places and in Our Own Backyard

By Gib Check

Author Gib Check takes readers on an armchair tour of the world, providing personal touches as he and his wife, Ruth, unearth - for better or for worse - the many curiosities of cities and countrysides both near and far. In this collected volume of his published newspaper columns, Gib and Ruth:
>>Discover new friendships in Tuscany
>>Dig for diamonds in an Arkansas field
>>Hike into the Grand Canyon
>>Face off bison on a South Dakota highway
>>Spend a night with museum dinosaurs

There's no end to the adventures, fun, and insights Gib and Ruth find in their many travels!

Retired from house-painting and now strictly a writer, Gib Check's travel pieces and humor columns have appeared in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune and the Adams-Friendship Times-Reporter. In 2004, he graduated from UW-Stevens Point in with a Bachelor of Science degree in General Studies at the age of 62. These days, he resides with his wife Ruthie on a lake in north-central Wisconsin. Keep up with Gib and Ruthie's adventures at Rocheacriwriting.blogspot.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gib Check
• Release date: Mar 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9780692389324

Book preview

Introduction

Since most of us aren’t much for long introductions, I’ll keep this one short. This book is simply an invitation for you readers to join wife Ruthie and me on our travel adventures with exploring new places, mingling with the interesting and often colorful people who live there, and meeting other travelers doing the same.

Since we share the same enjoyment (most of the time) with what goes on in our own back yard, I’ve also included short pieces labeled T & T (This and That), which poke fun at how she and I cope (or don’t) with everyday situations both at home and in our town.

Finally, many thanks to Nancy Sorenson who first published some of these articles in our local Adams-Friendship Times Reporter. Much appreciation also goes to Mystique Macomber, Features editor for the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, for doing like-wise later on. Last and in no way least, thanks to editor Rob Bignell for helping so much to put this book together.

And that’s it. See, I told you it was short. Enjoy.

Tuscany: Our First Overseas Adventure

Proclaimed for its scenic beauty, its countless historical treasures, and the sunny hospitality of its people, Italy’s province of Tuscany is one of the world’s favorite travel destinations. Always up for seeing new places, wife Ruthie and I practically live in the travel sections of major bookstores. Having heard about Tuscany, we were curious, so we picked up a current best seller, Beneath the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. Ruthie read it first and once started she never put it down.

We were sitting in the den when she finished. Totally smitten by the author’s colorful descriptions of the place and its people, she held up the book and waved it at me. Dear, why don’t we go?

While having done our share of traveling in the United States, we had never been outside of it. A bit hesitant, I hedged, Sweetie, Tuscany is awfully far-off for a vacation.

She gave me a vigorous headshake. No-no-no, it wouldn’t be that! Dear, we’re talking about a real adventure here!

Her magic word got us up and running. Soon we had maps of Italy spread out on the dining room table and notecards with commonly-used Italian phrases taped up all over the place. In what was already our bible, Rick Steves’ guidebook on Tuscany was highlighted cover to cover with yellow marker.

The travel arrangements came at last and in keeping with being adventuresome, we booked no guided tours nor made any advance reservations except at our first stop in Florence. From then on, we would make our way to other places strictly on our own with basic essentials crammed into our daypacks and one small suitcase each.

As nervous but eager over-seas newcomers we took a red-eye flight from Chicago’s O’Hare IAP to Florence, Italy. But then at the luggage pick-up area we learned that Ruthie’s suitcase had been left behind at our lay-over in Munich.

I said to her, Uh-oh! Sweetie, this isn’t one of our better starts!

In a breezy manner to which we’d soon grow accustomed, the Italian luggage attendant laughed and threw up his hands. Don’t-a worry! When it is here we will deliver it to your hotel room!

Ruthie sighed, At least that won’t get lost.

We hoped. Jittery about the missing suitcase, we took a taxi to the hotel where we were pre-registered. To our relief the clerk told us our room was ready and waiting. Even more reassuringly, we found it well-furnished and spotlessly clean. After getting settled in, which took two minutes with just one suitcase we went to the hotel dining room. The menu was in Italian. Afraid to take a chance, we chose…spaghetti, what else?

Bolstered by full stomachs, we decided to venture out into our immediate neighborhood to see what went on and how we’d do with it.

Ruthie looked down at her clothes. But I’m not going anywhere in these. I’ve had them on across half the United States, the whole Atlantic Ocean, and most of today!

Making the best of it without her suitcase (it caught up with us the next day), she borrowed my extra shirt and pants, and we headed out.

Walking along one of the city’s busiest main boulevards was daunting at first. Everyone around us spoke Italian, little of which we understood, and heavy traffic was honking and zooming past on streets whose names we could barely pronounce. We were glad we had opted ahead of time to skip rental cars and use public transportation.

Unlike back in the States, it was unusual, too, as each and every passer-by wished us and one-another, Buon giorno! (Good day!). Practicing our note cards had helped, but our responses in kind were shaky at best. The good news, we learned right away that what our guidebook said was true, that unlike in other countries Italians are forgiving of foreigners stumbling with speaking their language. Stopping at a drugstore for some incidentals, we used our kindergarten Italian to make small talk with the clerk. Sure enough, though smiling at our fumbling attempts, she appreciated our efforts and said so…in perfect English.

You’re from America, are you not?

Ruthie laughed, You can tell?

She smiled back, I always can with so many of you coming here! Which is good, because we like you, too!

This was the way it went from then on with everyone we met. They either spoke our language fluently, or we all mixed in bits and pieces of one another’s and got along just fine. When finally back in our room our initial disorientation had worn off and it had sunk in that we were really here in Italy. Already calling Florence Firenze! like the locals, we wore new T-shirts with the name written boldly across the front. They would peg us for what we were, totally un-hip tourists with being overseas, but we’d made it here alive and well, and so what? Tomorrow morning we’d hitch up our packs, pocket some Euros from an ATM, and do what we came here for; to visit the medieval heart of the city.

Jet lag and going without sleep for a day and a half finally hit us. Too bushed to watch much on TV, we found that Italy’s programs, some with English translations, were much like our own. But we would be so busy seeing the sights that we would barely bother turning it on.

Tuscany: Roaming the Old Part

of Florence

Our first full day of adventuring began the next morning when we boarded a bus to the ancient heart of the city. But it was obvious to our fellow passengers that we foreigners were pretty screwed up with their public transportation system. One was a little old lady we’d been trying to talk to. When the bus stopped at a station we thought was ours, we bid her Arrivederci! (Goodbye) and started to get off.

Waving her arms and using very broken English, she yelled it so loud that everyone on the bus probably heard her. No-no-not here! Old Fierenzi two more stops! When we got there, she pointed at the number for our bus. Always take this same one for he you be okay! For the rest of our trip, we’d have plenty of help getting on and off the right buses and trains at the right stations.

The end of the line was an easy walk to the original heart of Florence. Paved with deep red cobblestones, the entire perimeter of the great piazza (town square) was taken up by busy vendor’s stalls and picturesque outdoor cafes. High above us and dominating the whole scene was the Duomo, an immense cathedral domed with bright orange tiles. Awed, we began snapping the first of hundreds of photos we’d be weeks sorting through once back home.

After roaming the piazza taking in whatever we could, we explored the connecting streets. Intriguingly winding and narrow, they led us past quaint old shops whose fronts had been decoratively sculpted hundreds of years ago. It amazed us to see such an ancient city industrially working smack in the middle of such a modern one.

Famished after a few hours of wandering the streets, we headed for the nearest outdoor café. In a manner typical of wherever we dined, they offered well-prepared and artfully presented cuisine of meats, poultry, and seafood, fresh-picked fruits and vegetables, and every pasta dish imaginable. The little hard-crust bread loaves served on the side were so tasty, we learned how to make them later at home. An incredibly large variety of wines were available from wineries centuries old and for which Tuscany is famous.

All foods and beverages were served on ceramic plates and in glass containers; no plastic or Styrofoam was ever used. We steered clear of their drinking water, some emergency trips to the john the night before having already taught us to stay strictly with the bottled kind.

The most pleasurable surprise was gelato, their version of ice cream. We told the vendor we had never tried it.

Passing over two cups of it with tiny spoons, he promised, Your mouths will taste lovely little explosions of flavor!

Richly tasty beyond words, it put our American varieties to shame. For every day left to us, we would make sure to plunk down somewhere to enjoy our little gelato explosions.

Tuscany: To Fiesole and Back to Florence

The next morning we got off the bus at Fiesole, a small town outside of Florence and famous for its 3,000 year-old Etruscan ruins and artifacts. This was also our only rain day during the whole trip, but we were so thrilled with this first venture from Florence that getting wet was peanuts.

Our map showed a state park located atop a small mountain at the edge of town. Sloshing through puddles in what was hopefully the right direction, we followed a street rising steeply from the piazza. It was so narrow we had to put our backs against the buildings to avoid passing cars, but this only added to our sense of adventure.

No doubt concerned for what he saw as a pair of soaked and utterly lost tourists (which we were), a passing driver slid his car to a stop with a spray of water. Dressed in a business suit and heedless of being pelted by rain, the guy jumped out and asked if we needed help.

When we told him our destination in fumbling Italian, he gave us directions in equally halting English. Eagerly pointing us up hill, he yelled, Sinistra! Sinistra! (Go left! Go left!).

Getting as wet as us, the guy stayed put until certain we’d understood. When we nodded we did, he hopped back in the car and sped off.

After finding the park entrance where he said it was, we followed a trail winding upward through a forest of tall hardwoods until reaching a clearing at the peak. All around us stood ancient, partially tumbled-down Etruscan block buildings and walls. Atop a rocky cliff was a bronze plaque explaining how Leonardo De Vinci had used one of his imaginative flying machines to take flight from this very spot. A careful peek over the edge plunging straight down told us this Renaissance man had been part genius and part dare-devil.

The continuing rain took nothing away from our enthusiasm as we made our way back down to the town’s museum. Drying a bit while touring the galleries, we admired what these people had devised so long ago – the innovative stone cutters and pulleys, tools for measuring and surveying, and methods of transporting the marble blocks down from the peak and building with them. Most striking were vases, whose brilliantly colored mosaics and elegant shapes would be copied by ancient Greece a thousand years later.

We exited the back of the museum and walked through the excavated ruins, these including a large amphitheater, brick-walled bath houses, and statues of ancient gods and goddesses atop their pedestals. Directly in front of us was a row of tall, fluted columns.

Wrapping her arms around one of them, Ruthie grinned with pure delight. Just think! I’m hugging it, and three-thousand years ago someone else was, too!

And right she was, this connecting us to those ancient people and we came away with a deeper sense of history with this place.

We wrapped it up with a hearty and well deserved lunch of rigatoni, tomatoes, and pesto at an outdoor café in Fiesole’s central piazza. The sound of raindrops spattering the canopy overhead and our much-welcomed hot espressos made our little table one cozy place to be.

Back in Florence’s old section on our last day here we visited Di Storia Della, a science museum at the edge of the Arno River. On exhibit were scientific instruments fashioned during the Renaissance and the high quality workmanship of the various telescopes, calculating machines, and geometrically designed figures was amazing.

Looking over at a pedestal displaying a large jar with something in it, Ruth jerked up. Good grief! Is that what I think it is!?

It was. Inside the sealed glass jar on its little display platform was Galileo’s finger! This, we learned, was one of the ways people honored their most famous back then, by preserving some of their…parts.

Our shopping was limited to buying items not too pricey and small enough to stuff into our backpacks. We made one of these purchases while strolling on a wide boulevard where crafters and artists displayed their wares. What caught our eye was an offering of small oil paintings every bit as colorful the curbside artist himself. Wearing a paint-spattered smock and a piratical black patch over one eye, he introduced himself as Carlos. The painting we liked showed a bicycle leaned against an old weathered door marked with tiny letters in Italian.

When we asked what they meant, he laughed. It doesn’t say, ‘Beware of the dog!’ I made it ‘Beware of the Human!’

He inscribed this in English on the back along with his autograph. Being handed personal touches like these was something we would see a lot of in Tuscany.

Tuscany: Vernazza on the Med

The following day we took a train out of Florence to Cinque Terra, the next place we hoped to stay. Cinque Terra is comprised of five small fishing villages strung in a ten mile arc along the Mediterranean coast. Built into the rocky cliffs overlooking the sea, the towns are connected by a small rail line tunneling through the cliffs and also by hiking trails we aimed to take on during our three-day visit.

After getting off the train at our chosen village, Vernazza, we first needed a place to stay. Starting downhill toward the heart of town, we kept our eyes peeled for signs that said Camera (Room).

Suddenly a tiny elderly woman suddenly stepped up to single us out of the crowd. Introducing herself in rapid-fire Italian as Mrs. Nerino, she pointed at our suitcases and nodded to say, more or less, that she had a room available. We shrugged. Why not?

She first took us through a dark arched passageway between the buildings. I remembered the sign at the station warning tourists