Venice Stories

Stories from the road
September 28, 2018
Venice

As soon as I saw them I knew we had to talk. Carrying bike bags and Patagonia packs, dressed in Scarpa boots and outdoor tees, they were brethren from an earlier time in my life. Indeed, they were!

As the Vaporetto pulled from the dock, I asked them where they were headed. The married couple were going on an organized mountain biking trip in Croatia and then biking on their own in Austria. They lived in Crested Butte, Colorado where they had met. The woman in the couple grew up in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, a small town about ten miles from the little town where I had a vacation house for many years. She had gone to a local private school and was a high-level skier. My brother has been on the board of that school for many years.

There was more I wanted to talk about when Vicki asked me where my pack was. I realized I had left it in the place we stopped for an espresso, and so I bid our friends goodbye as we hopped off the boat and started walking back to Rialto Bridge.

After retrieving the pack, we watched the hearings. Dr. Ford was credible. Judge Kavanaugh seemed to be displaying the same kind of behavior people said he demonstrated as a youth. He was angry, entitled, controlling, and overbearing. He didn’t appear to take responsibility for behavior he himself had outlined in his yearbook while at a Jesuit High School. His idea that he was being given a hard time as payback for the Clinton investigations was far-fetched. Was he not aware of what has been going on in our country?

Last night we ate at a very good restaurant near our hotel. My fish was excellent as was Vicki’s eggplant. Today we will go by boat to the train station where we will travel to Bologna.