Sylvia's Journal

It was my first time flying since the Hudson River trip and my surgery. I left my sling in the car; it would take up too much room in the tiny cockpit. I took the left seat on our outbound flight with Bill making his left arm and hand available to do work that required right arm strength, such as putting in flaps. Since Bill also put in the frequencies (another right hand activity) and wrote down our journey’s progress, my only right hand/arm activity was handling the throttle which does not need much attention except to settle at cruising altitude and when coming in to land. In the left seat (when flying with Bill) the left arm is the one that works hardest.

The conditions for flying were perfect: no wind, little (air) traffic and clear skies especially over Maine. We followed the coast, cutting across islands here and there as we went further and further east. We landed at Bar Harbor airport for a brief break. Ground control asked every incoming plane how long people planned to stay and everyone said ‘till Monday’ – except us, we barely stayed half an hour and because of that were parked between two jets. For us the plane is not a method of transportation but a vehicle to enjoy the beauty of northeastern USA and a way to keep our brains finely tuned.

Bill flew back and gave me his fancy camera to click away. I must have made nearly 100 pictures. My tiny old PowerShot makes poor snapshots in comparison. Clouds had come in from the south and we flew back below them. I watched the pattern of light and dark on the ground reflect the movement of the clouds above, quite beautiful.

Instead of swimming in the full cove, Axel had decided that it was time to organize his thoughts about Afghanistan on his website. Wherever he goes people express strong opinions about what we (the US) should or should not be doing over there. So now he has added his own opinion to this cacophony. I liked his piece.

Anne and Chuck showed up later afternoon with bags of mussels. We used to be self sufficient and pick our own. I could not imagine going to a store and buying them when they were available for free in our back yard. Before our accident the cove was endowed with a enormous mussel bed; last summer we noticed it was gone. Maybe the owners of seafood-serving restaurants who would show up now and then and cart mussels away by the bucket are responsible for our empty cove; more likely it was one or more winter storms at low tide that scraped the cove clean. Sigh.

We had a mussel fest preparing each batch with a different sauce: first Isabelle’s sauce with plenty of cream, wine, shallots and mustard which, like a thick and slow stream of lava, adheres to the shells inside and out as well as the mussels. Eating mussels this way is a slow process that requires much licking and bread to soak up the good stuff.

The next batch was prepared by Anne who poured liberal amounts of honey-dijon cooking sauce over the mussels, which left a good amount of liquid at the bottom, also requiring much bread; and there was more but I can’t remember as we ate plate after plate after plate.

We concluded the evening by sitting in front of our new fireplace and hearth – we have it on every night now, to make up for the nights of the coming winter when we will be sitting in our Kabul rooms in front of smoky old diesel-fueled bukhari stoves.