I’ve been sharing video this week from the Toad the Wet Sprocket, Gin Blossoms, Barenaked Ladies show we saw last Friday night. As I mentioned here, this is making up for a 2020 show. We bought these tickets in 2019. It was supposed to happen again in 2021, but, finally, here wer were last Friday.
I’d never seen Toad the Wet Sprocket, somehow, but always wanted to. Gin Blossoms I hadn’t seen since college. BNL we saw in 2018, and last week was the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen them.
And then they came out for a one-song encore, an ensemble of all three bands, Something of a supergroup covering The Supergroup. There are 18 platinum, nine gold and one diamond records and something like 30 million total sales and 20 top 10 singles between them. I bet the Wilbury step-brothers would approve of this.
It came as a surprise to me how much I enjoyed that, how happy that song would sound, how happy it’d make me feel.
We left the venue saying it was a great show, saying it was all worth the wait.
Did a little showroom floor shopping today. That’s twice I’ve done that in the last month, not counting quick grocery store visits. I don’t blame the pandemic for this. I blame the small amount of shopping I do, and also the internet. I walked around Target recently looking for shorts thinking This is easier on the website. And, today, we started the sofa-shopping process. I’m sure it will be a process.
Today’s process involved going to one store and sitting on seven sofas, a few of them more than once.
There is, of course, a sale. There is always a sale at a furniture store. Some of the gimmicks more thoughtful than others. But the woman we met today explained, in some tedious and plodding detail, the renovation sale they were undertaking. One half of the store is being reworked. And later this month they’ll flip it. And in the fall the whole store will be open again. But! For now! Everything is too crowded and it all must go at these low, low, toe-stubbing prices!
There is always a sale. Always a gimmick. And the drop cloths were a nice touch, but I am skeptical. The furniture store in my hometown held a going out of business sale for at least five years.
Anyway, we might have found one. We’ll think about it. There’s an even bigger sale next Thursday.
There is always a sale.
We made it over to the amphitheater, with easy parking, just in time for a concert. Opening the show was Toad the Wet Sprocket. It took 30 actual years, including a two-year Covid postponement, but I finally got to see this set live.
The Gin Blossoms are still happily using their 1996 “Congratulations I’m Sorry” aesthetic. It’s just perfect. Robin Wilson sounds good. Jesse Valenzuela is still pretty amazing.
(I haven’t seen them since 1996-97 or so, sadly.)
And, of course, the headliner, if you’ve been around this space in the last two days, was Barenaked Ladies. Canadian Music hall of famers Barenaked Ladies.
We walked in while Toad the Wet Sprocket was playing “Crazy Life,” which was a personal treat. At the end of the show Toad the Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms came out to join BNL in a cover of Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care.” I had no idea how much I wanted to hear that song, how … singular a moment that would be.
It was exceptional. The whole show was terrific fun; well worth the two-year wait.
And then we hopped in the car and drove to Nashville to see friends tomorrow.
The whole day has felt like getting away with something. Shopping! Eating in the car! A concert! An overnight trip!
Two pictures of moving about. This one from a run!
And this one from a walk!
So it is a light end to a few busy weeks here. Next week might be light, too, who really knows? It’s the pace of summertime, and I hope yours is off to a lovely start.
Come back Monday, we’ll get a long overdue update on the kitties!
For this Friday post we’re looking back at our trip two weeks ago today. Enjoy the photos that tell the tale of this amazing adventure, which brought our wonderful vacation, sadly, to a close …
Don’t tell anyone, it is a secret, but we found our next house.
To be honest, we weren’t on the market, not really, but they say when you know, you know. You know? So come get to know Schadau Castle. It sits on the south side of the Aare, a tributary of the High Rhine, and just off Lake Thun. It is on the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance as it was built between 1846 and 1854 according to the plans of Pierre-Charles Dusillon in the Gothic Revival style, for the banker Abraham Denis Alfred de Rougemont.
Inside there’s a restaurant and the Swiss Gastronomy Museum, but those might be moved under the new ownership. And sure, this might seem a little rash to you, but we saw this sign, and we were inspired by Mach.
We’ve completely glossed over the word “was.”
Anyway, outside the Schadau Castle the views are terrific. This is Lake Thun.
And, in the background, you can see Stockhorn, which is in the Bernese Alps. From The Stockhorn’s summit at 7,190 feet you can dine, hike, and see many of the surrounding Alps and the valley of the Aare River and, of course, this lake.
This one is either Niesen or Morgenberghorn. (You’ll have to forgive me I’m doing this from maps and as a lifelong resident of foothills, coastal plains and … it is apparently called lowland hills where we live now … I am not an expert at mountain ID or distance estimation of Very Large Things.)
Let’s assume it is Morgenberghorn for a moment. The Swiss tourism site tells us the summit is at 4,068 feet, it’s a 6.2 mile route “for ambitious hikers.” And it’ll take you about six hours to get to the top, but you get great views when you’re there. I found an accomplished adventure hiker’s review of Morgenberghorn. He said “This route is a little tricky and there are a number of parts where you need to use your hands to climb. Chains are installed in most sections of the trail where you need to use your hands. I never felt unsafe or exposed … I’d only go for this hike if you are up for a bit of a challenge. In addition to the chains and rocky path, it is also 1300m of incline over 7km so you are doing some considerable incline to reach the summit … Solid day on the legs.” I think that’s probably Morgenberghorn.
But let’s assume, just for a moment, that the above is Niesen, because I just learned about something amazing there. Niesen tops out at 7,749 feet. This mountain boasts the longest stairway in the world, with 11,674 steps. It is only open to the public one day a year, for a stair run event. We missed this by a week!
The age group podium for the women was a 43-year-old who won in 1:15:20. Her chief rival, a 50-year-old was just 34 seconds back. We are presently enthralled by Doris Oester, the third place woman in the older age division (they seem to draw the line around the 42-year-old range). That more mature age group beat all of the younger women, so the third place woman third of all the women. And her time puts her at 30th in the overall.
Also, Doris Oester is 70 years-old.
She won this race in 2011. In 2016 she finished second. (She was two-and-a-half minutes faster this year than in 2016.) We are big Doris Oester fans.
For the men’s age group, a 42-year-old got up all 11,674 steps in 1:06:24. A 43-year-old was 1:33 back from the winner. And a 49-year-old man took third place with a time of 1:08:39.
But I digress.
Look who’s considering dipping her toes in Lake Thun.
… Still thinking about it …
… Considering running up all those stairs next year …
One foot in. She says it is cold. I’d be stunned if it wasn’t.
And wading out to her hemline.
Excellent use of the selfie stick there, as I stayed on the shore, warm and dry, to take these photos.
We discovered the surfers at Flusswelle Thun. There were six surfers out there on this Friday. When it was your turn you grabbed that ski rope and worked your way over to the spot where you see the guy surfing here. If you made it into that pocket it seemed that you could stay until you got bored, or made a silly mistake. This guy was actually standing on his board, gesturing and talking with people passing by on the bridge.
In the late afternoon we caught another train to visit Interlaken one more time. There were a few chocolate stores to visit. Here are a few of the sites from Interlaken, and the train ride back to Zurich.
This train ride took us back to Zurich. You probably don’t think of a train ride as an activity — I wouldn’t, ordinarily — but these views.
I came all the way to Switzerland for this photograph, I just didn’t know it until it flashed by.
Yes, that will be in the rotating banners on the top of the site soon.
Lake Brienz seems like a great place to go sailing, or to take a walk.
Mountains coming right down to a body of water will never not be impressive.
One more image for those sailors-at-heart.
And for those preferring a more pastoral foreground, with twin mountains in the background, here you go.
Switzerland is a beautiful place. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to visit. And I thank you for your indulgence in letting me stretch out vacation photos for two weeks here. Next week, we’ll start getting back into the normal routine on the site, much of it consisting of trying to answer the question “Where are we going next? And when should I start packing?”
This was written for a Friday, two weeks ago. That’s the way of it around here for a bit as we go over our amazing travels. So, if you’d be so kind as to cast your mind back two weeks (and also 78 years ago) …
Like many panoramas, this one lives at the intersection between beautiful and enlightening and distorting. Like all panoramas on this site, if you click it, you can see the larger version. We were there two weeks ago.
We caught a morning train out of Paris to head west to Bayeux.
And in Bayeux we rented e-bikes to ride all over the beautiful countryside of Normandy. It is beautiful. We rode all over the countryside. And not all of it on roads. The Yankee suggested Normandy, and I said I wanted to go here, if we could, and after a lot of pedaling, this was our first stop for the day. (Note that upright stone just on the left margin.
If you stood at that stone and look left, you would see Utah Beach just beyond that point.
And if you stood at that sone and looked to your right, beyond the other point, you would see Omaha Beach.
And if you stood at that stone memorial, you’d be wear Ronald Reagan delivered one of the truly great speeches of his presidency.
Peggy Noonan had found his voice by then, and it didn’t hurt that the topic was such a dramatic moment, and the audience included some of the heroes he was talking about.
I remember reading about this anniversary, the 40th, in the second grade, before any of this made any sense to me. I remember a quote from one of the Rangers who was at that event. They’d taken them to the shore line and they looked up the cliff face in wonder. How in the world did we do that? That quote is now 38 years old, and as much as anything, I owe my awe to the moment to that awe of the men who did it.
The guns were located so that they could cover both Utah and Omaha. They could do terrible damage to the troops coming ashore, or to the vessels waiting off the coast. So they sent in the Army Rangers.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff planning Operation OVERLORD assigned the Rangers of the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder and organized into the Provisional Ranger Group, the mission of destroying the enemy positions on the cliff top. Unbeknownst to Allied planners, the Germans failed to believe that U.S. military command would consider the cliff top accessible by sea. The Americans, however, considered it an accessible assault point and reasoned that with a well-trained force, soldiers could land on the narrow beaches below at low tide and ascend the cliffs with the assistance of ropes and ladders. When Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley told Rudder of the assignment, the Ranger officer could not believe what he had heard, but he understood the importance of the mission at hand. In his memoir, A Soldier’s Story, Bradley wrote, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the thirty-four-year-old Commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.”
The original ornate plans were ruined by rough seas, which put the entire Pointe du Hoc timetable well behind schedule. They were forced to improvise.
The delay gave the Germans enough time to recuperate, reposition their defenses, and lay heavy gunfire on the incoming Rangers from companies D, E, and F. The Rangers, no longer able to follow Rudder’s original plan, were now instructed to land all companies to the east of Pointe du Hoc on a strip of beach about 500 yards long and thirty yards wide. They came under heavy fire from the Germans while coming ashore. As the soldiers at the front exited the landing craft, the Rangers toward the rear laid down covering fire as their comrades ran to shore and took shelter in a small cave at the base of the cliff or in craters along the narrow beach.
[…]
The Rangers experienced much difficulty climbing up the cliffs that day. Many of the ropes that caught hold of the cliffs that morning were completely covered by enemy fire, making the number available for climbing severely limited. The wet ropes were slippery and soldiers were weighed down by damp uniforms and mud clinging to their clothes, boots and equipment. German bullets and “potato masher” grenades rained down from above. Nevertheless, the Rangers climbed to the top of Pointe du Hoc while under enemy fire. Several German soldiers were killed and others driven off from the cliff edges when Rangers opened fire on them with Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs).
The guns they were sent to capture, their primary objective, weren’t there. The Germans had moved them back from what they’d thought was an impregnable position. A two-man Ranger patrol later found five of the six pieces of heavy artillery and they were subsequently.
After scaling the 110-foot cliff face against brutal German fire, gaining the top and then fighting the enemy for two dys fewer than 75 of the original 225 who came ashore at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day were fit for duty. It’s a testament to bravery and grit, and courage and honor. We were fortunate to have been able to visit it for a brief time.
From there we rode our rental bikes to the Normandy American Cemetery. We weaved through traffic, passing gobs of cars (it was oh so satisfying) stuck in traffic in time to see the evening’s flag lowering.
The World War II cemetery in Colleville-sur-Met, Normandy, France covers 172.5 acres and contains 9,388 burials. In the gardens are the engraved names of 1,557 servicemen declared missing in action in Normandy.
In that building you’ll see massive maps describing the planning and the D-Day assault itself, and also the push all the way to the Elbe River.
None of this was a certainty when D-Day began. And it took about two months of hard, deadly fighting, before the Allies could claim Normandy as under their control. Great losses were absorbed and delivered to get off that beachhead.
On the cemetery’s chapel there is a carving in the marble of part of John 10:28, “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.”
The cemetery looks over a bluff onto Omaha Beach. There are 304 unknown soldiers at rest in the grounds of the cemetery.
It also contains the graves of 45 pairs of brothers (30 are side-by-side), a father and son, an uncle and nephew, two pairs of cousins, four chaplains, four civilians, three generals and three Medal of Honor recipients.
We were about 30 miles into our lovely afternoon bike ride, and we were starting to eye the clock. The bike shop we rented from closed at 7, and our train was coming at about 8:30. So we had to race back. (Nice bikes, would rent again. Would check to make sure my back brake worked before I set out next time, though. I had to feather off the front brake for the entire day!) We made it just in time, which was the shocking theme for the whole day. Just caught the morning train. Arrived with our bikes ready, got lost twice and still made it to the cemetery just in time to see the flags lowered. Lingered around that hallowed place a while, giving us just enough time to get back to the bike shop, which left us enough time to get a bite to eat at a place next to the train station. Which put us safely on the train.
It was an important day in important places. I’m glad we did it, and that it all worked out as it did, which was to say, perfectly.
She planned another great trip, and we’re just getting started.
We still have two days in Paris, where our adventures will continue.
