We're on the road again, spending the night in Hippieville en route to Posh Beach Resort where I will soon be learning all about the newest new ideas in the world of academic administration while Curious Girl and Politica play on the beach (although I foresee several beach afternoons in my own future both before and after the conference).
We got caught in a traffic jam today and turned off the highway, threading our way through residental neighborhoods as we searched for a restaurant. We passed businesses with great names--The Organic Mechanic, The Lazy Susan--and ended up eating a lovely meal in a vegetarian restaurant. One house we stopped in front of had a panda in a tree in the front yard. Upon closer inspection, the tree proved to have three pandas. There were stuffed pandas, wooden pandas, painted pandas. Pandas on the lawn, pandas on a bench, pandas hanging from the shutters. "Maybe it's Panda World!" Curious Girl cried.
I like getting glimpses into the weirdness of everyday life when I travel. The Posh Beach Resort is not the sort of place we usually travel to (its website advises that we can arrange a luxury package which will get us the use of a Lexus while we are there!). Here in Hippieville, things seem more familiar, echoes of my college days. We saw a man in a skirt dancing with joy, waving a big tie-dyed cloth, while the drumming circle played in a public amphitheatre. Children danced, grownups swayed, fireflies came out. The mountain air smells sweet, and I'm going to fall asleep very happily (even if part of the happy is drug-induced: I managed to get poison ivy before we left town, and benadr*l is making me sleepy).
It's dark here, atop a small mountain. I wonder what's going on at Panda World now. Here, the Granola family is sleepy. 'night, all!
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4 comments:
I googled it, but am still completely mystified. Is there a real Panda World or did CG make up the idea after seeing the house?
Sorry to be so utterly clueless.
Curious Girl named the house "Panda World" and thus the pseudonym was born. We did take a picutre but I'm not so organized to upload photos from the road. It appeared to be a private home, occupied by someone who had a real fondness for pandas.
I love this: I like getting glimpses into the weirdness of everyday life when I travel. - I think that's the best of traveling, and day to day life for that matter. Have fun on the beach!
The weirdness of everyday life is one of my favourite things about life! It's always exciting to stumble across a little piece of crazy... especially the benign panda-loving kind.
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