Horsefeathers!

I'm sure you've already heard, but Erica from America (the horse) didn't do so well at the races on Sunday. As I previously posted here, a racing horse named after this very blog made his racing debut this past weekend, and the end result was more anti-climactic than I had anticipated.

Erica from America ended up coming in second to last, and you can read the final stats here.

It seems my horse couldn't be bothered to keep up with the other guys, and was content to keep to a relaxing gallop as he took in his surroundings on the racetrack. As my stepfather told me afterward: "Maybe she was reading a book."

Yes, my stepfather said she. As you'll remember from my last post on the subject, I explained that Erica from America is a male horse with a girl's name. Which sometimes happens in horse racing. However, both my mother and stepfather now believe the horse is a girl. We have yet to come to a decisive conclusion on this. My stepfather's dad, the owner of the horse, will surely be able to sum this up, and I'll write back shortly as soon as we have final word.

My first horse experience took place in London, when I tried to understand the sport of polo and ended up flat on my back in the mud instead. Read more about that here. That was my first time on a horse, and I could have never predicted that two years later I would be so invested in the horse racing industry.

For now, I'll say I'm still content with the efforts of the androgynous Erica from America. That's a weird sentence for me to write. I'm sure he/she did his/her best, and I'm sure we'll see good things from him/her in the future. Until then, here's a video of Hal's Hope, the most successful horse to come out of my step-grandfather's stable so far. In 2000, he won the Florida Derby, and here's his moment of glory:

Giddy Up!

Can you guess what this is a picture of?

No, it's not just a shot of a blurry pony (he looks in focus in real life, promise). Meet Erica from America...the racing horse, not the person or blog title. Ta da! I'm lucky enough to have family who likes to breed horses then name them after relatives.

My step-grandfather is in the horse racing business and gives his new ponies charming names related to various family members. Case in point, my sister's favorite doll growing up was named Favorite Baby. Creative, no? We all get a real kick out of hearing the macho racing announcers yell out through their microphones "Number six is gaining, he's rounding the corner now...and it's Favorite Baby for the win!"

Erica from America (the horse) is two years old now and ready to make his racing debut, this Sunday at Calder Race Track. Erica from America (the person) is very excited by this. I'm hoping there's a lustrous racing career in store for the handsome guy above. Yes, he's a male horse named Erica. Horse naming is a wonky business, but at least they didn't go with their second choice...Sue.

Lustrous career might not be too much of a stretch, by the way. One of my step-grandfather's horses, Hal's Hope, made quite a name for himself a few years back. Hal's Hope won the Florida Derby in 2000 (read more about that here) and ran in the Kentucky Derby that same year. Sadly, he didn't win the Kentucky roses, but I think this story is a good indicator that there are positive things ahead for Erica from America (both the horse and the person).

Of course he could go the way of the horse named after my sister, Emma's Hope, who always refused to leave her gate after the horn was sounded. She was quickly retired to the pasture and now lives a happy life eating hay and giving birth to ponies. Or, the horse named after my step-grandmother, Anita's Hope, who hung herself in her stable before her first race. I think the pressure got to her.

Whatever his future, it's exciting to finally see my guy's name on an official racing sheet. Check him out at the number three spot:

The race is May 22 at 3:43. Apparently, horses are very time specific creatures. The race can be watched on HRTV...ten points if you guessed that it stands for Horse Racing TV. If Comcast doesn't provide the station for your viewing pleasure, you can catch it online at http://www.tvg.com/. Or, just check back here...I'll be sure to post news on how he does!

I know my family and I will be making more than a few bets on my four legged friend this weekend. Reading Erica from America's stat sheet (found here), it seems his minimum bet is fifty cents. I believe, friends, that is what they call a longshot. Which is fine by me. I'm perfectly happy for my name to be synonymous with that label. It just means when we win, we'll win big. I think there's a life lesson in there somewhere.

To tide us all over until the race, here's a video of my sister feeding Erica from America (the hor...oh, you get the point). She likes to go with her grandpa on the weekends to play with all the horses, but Emma did tell me afterward that she gave my horse "extra cookies."


PS: How exciting is it that my namesake is a dark horse?
PPS: How cute is my sister?
PPPS: If you look closely, you'll notice my sister is wearing an Orlando Magic hat. I love her anyway.

Oh Beautiful, For Spacious Skies

When I first started this blog in 2009, I was living in London and writing a weekly column at the Jewish News. That column, Erica from America, chronicled my attempt to complete 52 quintessentially British tasks in one year (read more about that here). Now, two years later, my 52 adventures are complete and have all been posted about, and I thought perhaps this meant the blog would become obsolete. But I just couldn’t let my baby die. It would be sad and, really, unnecessary. Because while I’ve been blogging about my List of 52 online, I’ve been having other traveling adventures out here in the real world.

I’ve decided to continue writing about my various travels and invite you to come along. If you’ve been keeping up with this blog (or if your name is Becky, Rebecca or Lauren) you know I like to go places. I have a very long list of spots to see before I die. Since returning to the states I’ve traveled to a nice amount of new places and I’ll write about some of that here to catch readers up. Meanwhile, I’ll also be blogging about where I’m currently visiting, so make sure to check back!

When I tried to come up with what my first blog post would be about for this new direction, I decided to start with where I am right now: Washington, DC. I’ve been living here for the past year and sometimes I take for granted that it’s also an amazing spot to visit. Probably my favorite thing about DC is it takes the best parts of New York and London and combines them to make a city that is very metropolitan but still charming, with clean streets and lots of greenery. Plus, there’s plenty of really old stuff, which I like.

I live off of Dupont Circle, which is a pretty well known area in the District. (“American President” fans out there, it’s the circle that Sydney Ellen Wade always said she couldn’t drive on…which I now understand perfectly.)

Here's a prettier shot of the interior of the Circle:

When it's warm out, people swarm this area. And if you're really lucky, those people will be the cast of "Mama Mia."

I spend a lot of time in Dupont Circle (duh, I live there). There are great restaurants, cafes and shops in this area, and all I have to do is walk behind my house to get there. If I'm not hanging out in Dupont Circle, though, I'm in Georgetown. I LOVE Georgetown. It's like a little English village. There's a cottage there called The Old Stone House, which is the oldest home in DC. If you visit the House gift shop, you can try on neat hats.

There's also an area in Georgetown where you can hang out on the Potomac and have a drink near the water. My favorite time to visit is sunset, you get a great view! My relatives Amy and Denise visited and I took them to the spot...it was a hit!

I also played host to my Dad, who visited last month to take advantage of cherry blossom season.

Notice how he's all bundled up? His Florida skin didn't appreciate the DC version of spring. I admit, it can sometimes get cold here. But it is a treat to wake up one morning and be surprised by this:

It may be cold, but snow is pretty. Plus, it's a good excuse to make snow caterpillars, a joy I first discovered in London (as posted here).

Whatever the temperature, though, it's pretty neat to be strolling your neighborhood and pass this:


What about you? I'd love to hear what you all think about the place you call home...

Goodbye Is the Hardest Word

No. 52: Invade the colony

The day before my departure I spent the morning packing then headed off to the office for final goodbyes. Justin went easy on me and only gave me a few pages to read.

“Should we go down to the pub now?” Lauren K asked just before five pm. We all gathered our things and headed toward the door, when Andrew handed me the plastic skull I’d used during my dramatic debut at the Globe.

“Surely you’re not leaving Bonesy behind?” he asked.

“I can’t take him! His home is here.”

Andrew seemed to agree and set Bonesy back in his spot at the center of the editorial table. I walked over to my skeletal mate and placed the cowboy hat I had worn on Halloween atop his head, forgetting now how the hat had made its way into the office in the first place.

“Farewell good friend, you served me well.”

At the pub, I was toasted with rounds by Lauren and Andrew; Johnny Aziz; Sarah with the Mossad husband; Tess who gave me chocolates for my birthday once; and Justin and Zeddy.

Then one by one my friends left, and there were more people to say goodbye to than just the Scarecrow. Andrew promised to send me some sports stories to read when I get to New York, and Lauren was going to e-mail me the names of any single Jewish guys she knew in the states. Soon though, it was just Zeddy, Justin and I standing outside the pub, holding our jackets closed against the chilly summer evening.

“I have something for you,” Justin said.

“Is it Prince William’s phone number?”

“No, I’m saving that for Hanukkah...”

Yes, I Know My Way Around Here

No. 51: Be a London tour guide

When I found out my Dad would be visiting me for a week during my final month in London, I created a mental storyline of how it would go. I would take him for tea and crumpets in the Orangery across from Kensington Palace. We would visit the British Library to see Paul McCartney’s handwritten notes when he was penning Yesterday. I would show him Leyton. I didn’t plan, however, on taking the wrong direction on the Piccadilly line only his second day there.

“Erica, are you sure we shouldn’t be going the other way?”

I looked up from the hoard of rush hour commuters crowding the platform to see a giant Tube map on the tiled wall of the subway tunnel. I glanced at the list of stops the line would be calling at to discover that yes, we should be going the other way.

We turned against the crowd and rushed up and over to the other side of the dim platform. A great gush of wind from the train pulling in swept wads of balled up newspaper past our feet. We jumped onto the train just as the red doors shut gently behind us.

“Well that was exciting,” Dad said, catching his breath.

“I usually know where I’m going. I guess I got turned around.”

“I love these seats,” he said, plopping down on one of the blue upholstered chairs along the side of the train. He sat between a small bird-like woman clutching her purse in her lap and a younger guy with legs that stretched out almost to the other side of the car. The guy was listening to headphones, and I could faintly hear the sounds of Nora Jones.

“Where are we going again?” Dad asked. He inspected the sign above his head and I watched his eyes move over station names like Hounslow and Cockfosters. As the train pulled into its next stop we clung to the red subway poles, leaning heavily to one side while the wheels jerked us to a stop.

“China Town. I found the best Chinese restaurant there. And we’re going to have crispy duck on pancakes.”

“Duck and pancakes?”

“It’s not really pancakes, that’s just what they call it. You’ll like it.”

I was making it my mission to show my father that, whatever Glenn Beck may have to say about it, England had wonderful food. I was also taking this visit as an opportunity to prove to him the country had lovely climates, friendly people and entertaining television. I was a goodwill ambassador with less political know how.

“This is our stop.”

We hopped off the train and climbed up the stairs to emerge in the bustling sunlight of Leicester Square. At least I knew I could find my way around here. We walked down a side street decorated with red paper lanterns and Chinese writing, and entered a wider walkway hidden behind the facades of Shaftsbury Avenue. A row of Chinese restaurants greeted us, each with cheerful spinning ducks in the windows.

I found our restaurant and almost immediately spied Zeddy, his tall figure sticking out over the small group of Asian wait staff trying to seat him.

“You found it!” he greeted as I ushered my Dad in behind me.

“I see you know my daughter..."


...And now, a bunch of gratuitous photos of me and Dad doing neat things in London...

English Tudor

No. 50: Become a Tudor

"Oh don't look so dismal," Zeddy said as he leaned on his car horn. The trip back from Hampton was taking longer than expected, and Zeddy urged the congestion of cars in front of him to move. "We call this traffic. Do you have it in America?"

We were on our way to meet Justin for pizza in Golders Green following a visit to Hampton Court. It's a major point of interest for Henry VIII fans like myself and a place I had been meaning to get to the entire time I was in London. Officially my final Sunday before going back to the states, I'd spent the last few weeks tying up as many loose ends as possible. Which meant lots and lots of last minute sight seeing.

"I haven't even been to Leeds!" I moaned as we walked in Pizza Express.

“That’s awful. You should just stay.”

“I’m being serious!”

“Well you don’t sound it,” Zeddy said. “Who wants to go to Leeds?”

I did. I wanted to go to Leeds, and to Ireland to kiss the Blarney Stone. I wanted to go to Brighton, if for no other reason than to discover why Jane Austen’s Lydia wanted to get there so badly in the first place. There was a great long list of things I had been meaning to do, and now the time had outrun me.It felt as if I’d forgotten to do something, like turn off the coffee pot or have kids before thirty-five.

Locating Justin at a table in the back of the restaurant, we said our hellos and sat down to order. Waiting for my mushroom pie to come, I showed Justin the fluffy quill pen I had picked up from Hampton Court.

“And what will you do with it?”

“Write on parchment.”

“Of course, how silly of me."

Straight on Till Morning

No. 49: Find Neverland

I prefer rain to sun, which I know is peculiar for someone raised in the sunshine state. There’s something maudlin about rain that makes me feel anything could happen, like Fitzwilliam Darcy walking across my threshold. Which is why, standing in the middle of a British thunderstorm while running through Kensington Garden, I was looking less put out than Cory.

“Don’t you have an umbrella?” he yelled over the din of the rain, grasping my arm and pulling me behind him as we raced to a cluster of trees at the gate of the park. We were looking for an oversized tent where Peter Pan was being performed as part of the area’s annual theater in the park program.

“No! Real Brits don’t use umbrellas!”

“What do they do then?”

“Suffer!” We stopped under the relative shelter of a few tree branches as the gray clouds took out their anger on the city below it. Puddles the size of ponds were everywhere and my clothes were soaked through.

“What now?” Cory asked. I looked side to side, tossing wet locks of hair against my cheeks, searching for something that resembled a classical stage production. A young man a few yards from us had lost hold of his umbrella and was tripping after it in the rain.

“I don’t know, I don’t see anything!”

This wasn’t exactly the picture of perfect tour-guiding I had envisioned for myself. Cory and I had spent the day eating Indian food and walking with no direction around Trafalgar Square. We had not, however, seen even one five-hundred-year-old portrait of an ancient English barrister. And now we were standing in the center of Kensington Garden, unable to find a tent that was supposed to be in the center of Kensington Garden.

“I’m falling down on my job,” I said. Cory took off his jacket and held it over our heads in a futile attempt to keep us dry.

“We have an hour until the show. Why don’t we go somewhere for dinner and maybe the restaurant will know where we’re trying to go?”

“But where?” I asked helplessly.

“Over there.” Cory nodded to a Greek restaurant sitting among a row of Victorian townhouses just outside the gate of the park. It was as anachronistic as the fishing line I knew would help Peter and Wendy fly later that night.

Rushing toward the place we pushed through the doors in haste, startling the waitress who stood at the front of the mostly empty restaurant.

“Nothing was going to keep us from making it here,” Cory told the lady while I doubled over in laughter, dripping water onto the room’s carpet. The waitress looked more confused than amused, but obligingly led us to a table near the window. We had a charming view of the rain hitting the glass, with the greenery from the park looming behind the splatters.

“Is it always like this?” Cory asked as I begin dabbing at my wet arms with a napkin.

“No,” I said. “Sometimes it snows.”