Views from the Slow Lane

If relationships with countries were like relationships with people, I would be in several relationships right now, not capable of monogamy, afraid of commitment, flirty, and kind of slutty.

I would be married to Santa Fe and we had some really good years in the beginning, but now we are starting to fight. Some days it is great, some days a big horrible fight. This has been going on for a few years and something is going to happen.

Italy and I dated very seriously for years, considered marriage, but then I totally freaked out at the reality of it. We kept going on for a few more years, but then he just got overwhelming and now I need some time away from him. We are having a trial separation. I am dating other countries (although I always dated other countries anyway), but now I am dating them seriously. After a few years apart, it may all start up again, or maybe the relationship has changed and we will just be friends.

Switzerland is the wonderful old lover you have been with forever. You only see each other once a year, but it is always perfect and you always wish it could last forever. Switzerland is who I run to when Italy gets too much for me.

England is the country I am courting now, but part of me thinks maybe France is the one for me. He seems more exotic, more sunny, warmer. But England is a better match. We suit each other perfectly. He is the country that would be best for me in my later years. We could grow old together.

Hawaii is a once a year fling. Wonderful while I am there, forgotten once I leave.

New York City is my passion, but is best longed for from afar.

Canada is an old husband, divorced, forgotten, and never thought of again. But he was there for the first half of my life.

Steve and I came up with this idea for a contest to celebrate the 3 year anniversary of the message board (June 15) and I thought it would be great fun, and not involve much work. Wrong. The prizes have flooded in and I am realizing how much work it will be organizing the judging, doing the judging and making sure the prizes get awarded correctly. Not to mention posting all the wonderful new content that is coming in (that is how people will win prizes).

The best thing about the contest is how prizes are going to be awarded. It is part contest and part raffle. You have to "win" the contest to be part of the raffle. This makes it less competitive and more fun. Plus, when we do the raffle, we give each person a number (as their name is pulled from the hat), and that is the order they select their prizes. So people will get to choose a prize that suits them.

The prizes are excellent. Have a look!!

I lost an entire week to Movable Type, but then was so darned pleased with myself figuring out how it works, redoing all the templates to make the blog pages look like part of Slow Travel. And today they announced that the commercial version of the software for the new release is way more expensive (I paid $150, now it will be more like $500) and you run a limited number of blogs!! I was planning to bring lots of Slow Travelers blogs online!! I guess I will have to go back to Blogger for the majority of blogs. I was in a snit all day today because of this. So are lots of other bloggers.

I am working on Alice's train section. This current bit is fiddly, but will be excellent when I get done. She has written a detailed description for each type of train ticket, making graphics showing each part of the ticket and how to read it. Trains in Italy will be fully documented when we are done, and will no longer be a mystery to anyone.

I have been doing more of my own writing for the site, but need to do more. It feels like I have been working for months on What is Slow Travel? I keep messing with the style sheets, when what I really need is to schedule two weeks to redo the style sheets for the whole site, instead of picking at it one section at a time. I am just getting confused.

I also need to schedule two weeks or maybe a month to convert the whole site from FrontPage to Dreamweaver. The FrontPage extensions have screwed me for the last time - now I am mad!! The classifieds were down for a whole day because FrontPage extensions were reinstalled and the permissions throughout the site got messed up.

We are going to New York City for a big SlowTrav part June 10. All the moderators, except Maureen who will be in Italy and Cristina who lives in Italy, will be there. Three of us will be staying at the same hotel (me, Colleen, Chris). I am pretty excited about this trip. I still have to buy the plane tickets - we are thinking of adding on a few days back east and can't decide where and how long.

And I still have not booked our first week in September for our England trip. If I don't do that soon, it will no longer be possible.

But it is Saturday night and we are watching the first season of Upstairs, Downstairs on DVD!!!

I live in a backwater - Santa Fe, New Mexico - and most times I like living in a backwater. Not much traffic, low property taxes, no factories, no airport with its toxic fumes.

In 2000, we got DSL in Santa Fe, but only for the downtown area. Luckily our house is close enough to the main juntion box or whatever - so we have had DSL since then. Not fast DSL, but DSL. Now, in 2007, most people in Santa Fe can get broadband through DSL or the cable company. Since 2000, we have been on Earthlink DSL. This month, after too many frustrating calls with Earthlink (always a two hour call with someone in India where they make us take apart our whole network before they will believe that we are not getting a connection), we switched to Qwest DSL. When I talked to Qwest they told us we would get 7 Mbps (megabits per second) speed at our house - more than twice what Earthlink told us we could get and more than three times what we actually got. This, of course, was "bait and switch". After we signed up they told us our neighborhood only gets 3 Mbps. Okay. Still faster than we we actually got with Earthlink (1.5 Mbps).

We switched, but our connection kept going off and on, like it had with Earthlink, but Qwest at least sends guys out to the house. We connect to the Internet by old wires, strung from an old house, through a big Russian Olive tree, across the yard, across the dirt road we live on, to a pole. The pole is 400 feet from the junction box, but the tech who was out here yesterday said our connection is going over 10,000 feet, jumping from pole to pole, out and back, all around the neighborhood, to get to the junction box. They are sending the "bucket truck" on Monday to fix this.