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Our return to Buenos Aires did not disappoint in the barrel-of-laughs department!

It started with Delta canceling our Thursday flight to Buenos Aires a few days prior to our departure. We hastily had to rearrange all of our plans so that we could decamp 24 hours later than we anticipated, leaving us with some seat shuffling that would need to be completed at the airport on the day of travel.

We flew uneventfully from Portland to Atlanta, even touching down 5 minutes early. Unfortunately, there was nary a gate at which we could park. So we hung out on the tarmac for awhile, causing us to be rather late. (This is foreshadowing, in case you were wondering.)

We sprinted off the plane and took the airport tram to the international gates (farthest away from where we landed, of course) and made it to our gate with just enough time to buy an enormous bag of junk food before we had to board. (Whew!)

I went up to the ticket counter to deal with the aforementioned seat shuffle and encountered a very rude gate agent who wouldn’t listen to our tale of woe and informed us that she couldn’t possibly be of assistance. In response, I asked for her full name and to talk to her supervisor. She then refused to give me her pen so that I could record her name and turned her name tag from me so that I couldn’t see it. The final nail was when she called me, “nuts.” Our reasonable mien in the face of her incredible rudeness eventually prevailed after we talked to a nice supervisor who apologized profusely and shuffled our seats around so that we had 5 seats for 4 people. An extra seat on a 9 1/2 hour flight is a lovely thing!

Upon landing, Zelda’s stomach felt queasy, so we had to wade against the traffic of disembarking passengers to make it to a bathroom. Thankfully, she didn’t throw up. As we made our way forward though, she changed her mind and blew pink chunks all over the floor in front of the first class lavatory.

When it was over she said, “I feel much better now…I’m hungry.” *Sigh*

Because of the upchucking, we were literally the last four people to make it through immigration and into the baggage claim area, where we were greeted by the happy news that NONE of our five bags had made it to Buenos Aires.

On a positive note, many other people’s bags didn’t make their tight connections in Atlanta either. Delta was very professional and had all of our maletas tracked and located, smothering us with assurance that the luggage would be delivered to our apartment tomorrow, thereby saving us from the task of figuring out how we would possibly pack all of our suitcases into Fred’s car.

The glass is half full. The glass is half full. The glass is half full!

You know the couple in your life that seems to have the perfect marriage with the perfect matching careers and the perfect children who live in the perfect house? The ones that you secretly think, “Hey, if I spent 24 hours with them, I would see the chinks in their perfect armor?” Well, for us, that couple is Brian and Melody, with whom we stayed on Saturday.

I am afraid that I have to report that after spending the night, we continue to think that Melody and Brian may be the nicest damn people we’ve ever met. Compared to them, Tom and I feel positively dark! Oh, and they don’t disappoint on the little people front either — the Zs had a wonderful time with the incredible kids of the house: Iris and Lilly. The four of them ranged through the nearby woods, swinging from ivy vines and rolling around in the dirt like frolicking elephants.

And what a house! If we ever have the means, we’ll be begging Brian and Melody for some dwelling design. In the meantime, I do believe that Tom and I could sit eternally on a warm summer evening enjoying their upstairs balcony, mesmerized by the flickering lights of Portland winking through the trees.

Our favorite Oregon fair to attend is the Tillamook County Fair. We love this event because 1) the weather is usually blissfully cool; 2) the proceedings involve the whole community with livestock and 4-H exhibits; and, 3) they are the only fair in the world with Pig N Ford Races!!

“What is a Pig N Ford Race?” you ask. Good question. First, you take four Model T Ford chassis that need to be hand cranked at the front of the car in order to be started. Next, you place these automobiles on a horse track next to four pens, each of which holds three pigs.

The drivers of these Ford cars must grab a pig, start their Model T with the hand crank while holding their squirmy swine, and complete a lap of the track with said unhappy pig in their lap. When a competitor completes a loop, they must stop and turn off their car and then return the first pig to the pen. After that, they get to do the whole thing again, two more times. The first one to complete three individual porcine laps, wins (you complete a lap when the pig in hand is returned to its pen).

You can see a car in the Pig N Ford Race from Thursday in the first photo below.

The Zs also got to hold a python on stage, eat elephant ears, scramble their brains on lots of rides with their friends, pet some tortoises, hang out with the pigs, goats, chickens, cows, bunnies, and sheep, and gaze at large farm equipment. It’s good to be a kid.

The girls have found yet another family they would rather live with than their own! This time, they wanted to stay with Robert and Lucy, old friends that recently moved to Portland, who graciously housed us for the last few days.

And really, why wouldn’t our children want to desert us after our stay?

At the Lucy and Robert B&B, the wee ones got to swim in a neighborhood pool (25 cent donation suggested), drink steamed milk with a hint of chocolate, eat massive amounts of cherries and blueberries, visit and hold a neighbor’s pet chickens (named Chloe, Daphne and Pete — but they’re all girls), attend the Hollywood Farmer’s Market (where they inhaled a fresh peach/raspberry crepe with whipped cream), lay (and squirm) in the house hammock, watch Mamma Mia!, and work on their juggling with lavender-filled stress balls.

Pictured above are the beautiful flowers that we picked up from the farmer’s market and Lucy’s lovely rocking horse, one of many wonderful pieces of her art which besprinkle their new home.

Departure checklist from Sin City:

• Room service breakfast. Check.

• Cab. Check.

• Go to Siena Deli and buy fabulous Italian sandwich to eat on the plane. Check. (This is an old-school Italian deli, grocery, and restaurant which has been a hub for the Vegas Italian-American community for years. This restaurant is the real deal with homemade bread and rolls enveloping imported meats resulting in a sandwich the likes of which you generally can’t find on the West Coast.)

• Hear horrible bankruptcy story from cab driver. Check. (He made six figures a year as a bellman at the MGM Grand, bought a big house, got laid off last year, can’t make house payments, can’t find a job, drives a taxi and effectively makes less than minimum wage since there are few fares and lots of cabs…tough. We bought him a Siena sandwich and gave him a big tip.)

• Make it to the airport really early. Check. (The joys of traveling with Tom!)

• Eat yummy Siena sandwiches on the plane and generate extreme envy amongst our fellow lunchless passengers. Check.

• Land safely in Portland, where it is still nearly as hot as Las Vegas. Check.

I have learned something new on our little foray to Vegas — Cirque du Soleil acrobats and dancers are really sexy until you put them in a burlesque show with costumes that feature cut outs for women’s breasts. Then, we just found ourselves distracted by tiny boobs and didn’t really get the context of the acrobatic routines.

For the ladies out there, the show sports lots of hunky men with padded packages, often with a zipper running over the crotch of their outfits. Sadly, feeling like we were watching a Thunder from Down Under show really subtracted from the traditional Cirque experience as well.

The show’s saving graces were the comedians, who were very funny, and the male contortionist, who grossed out the crowd, much to everyone’s delight. If you’re going to see this spectacle, and you don’t enjoy being the center of attention, avoid the first few rows in the front of the theater! Poor Tom, this was a lesson he learned the hard way, as we were interviewed (which means put on the spot) by the transvestite mistress of ceremonies and the opening act comedian (who gave us the autographed post card you see above).

All in all, the sexy Cirque show — not so erotic. Our favorite is still Ka, which is a must see if you are ever in Sin City.

“What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” You can’t escape that tag line. So rather than fight ‘em, we decided to join ‘em and are now losing money in this neon lit inferno of a city! (Don’t worry, we didn’t bring the kids, we left them at home with my awesome parents — thanks for watching them Mom and Dad.)

We are staying at the Encore, which is the smaller cloned version of the Wynn hotel. (They were offering a very nice deal on a suite with some resort credit you could use on food or spa treatments.)

The room is kind of a trip…in a good way. Pictured below is but one of the many mothballed construction projects we can view from our 53rd floor windows to the north on Las Vegas Boulevard. I also love our rotating television, which is shown below as well. When sitting on the bed, the TV is framed by the backdrop of the city, and you can swing that flat screen around 180 degrees so that when you are in the living room/office, you can watch the TV as well.

The suite also comes with a TV in the bathroom, separate shower and bath, A/C that works in 109 degree weather, a roomy safe, the crazy expensive sensored mini bar that charges you if you remove anything for 60 seconds, and teeny tiny bathrobes. (I think they all must be modeled on Steve Wynn himself, who is not strapping, by any means.) Misc. thoughts on the Encore: fabulous service, they make you pay for wireless Internet access, the casino has natural light (very disorienting), the casino doesn’t smell like an ashtray, the casino is totally dead (may be why it isn’t smokey), the hotel charges extra if you want to use the gym, and their room service is awesome.

On the latter, we ordered the following, with a straight face, on our first night: grilled asparagus, pork pot stickers, chicken satay, a greek salad with chicken, and two root beer floats! Everything was quite good — pictured below.

As I’ve tweeted a zillion times, which, yes, is a reflection of my excitement, I upgraded my flight home using miles because of my back and rib injuries. I mention this, not because of the aforementioned delight, but because the lounges for zee upper class passengers in Buenos Aires and Atlanta were the first places that I experienced a real cultural shift.

At the EZE airport, the upper class waiting area featured a ton of families, complete with kids running around, TVs blaring soccer…frankly, it was a bit raucous. (One American woman stomped out in a snit because it wasn’t to her liking.) What is interesting though, is that the prevailing attitude of the Porteños waiting for their flights was one of cultivated leisure. In Atlanta, on the other hand, the inhabitants were nearly all businessmen, with very few families, and most were trying to pose with a sense of importance and imperative.

Which made me realize, in Argentina, one really doesn’t witness people rushing about with an urgent awareness that they have to be somewhere.

More culture shock came upon emerging from immigration/security and the bowels of the airport tram in Atlanta. Where did the escalator deposit me? Straight into a food court, complete with the requisite long line of people at Dunkin Donuts for their morning coffee.

Nothing says “Back in America Baby” like a good old fashioned food court stuffed with fat Americans.

My flight was processed through security and immigration concurrently with a planeload of colorfully garbed families from India. While trying to make my way through the police-state measures now instituted to gain entry into my insane country, I found myself in the midst of a sea of Indian women with permanently affixed metal bracelets and rings attempting to pass through the metal detectors together with their cute smiling Indian babies crawling underfoot through secure TSA areas as authorities screamed “PICK UP THE BABY, PICK UP THE BABY.” All was chaos about me, but I had a wonderful tranquil feeling of relief that I wasn’t the one in a foreign land causing the hold up because I was screwing up unknown bureaucratic procedures.

When I arrived in Portland, I was greeted by mom-made Rice Krispy Treats (I’m so spoiled) and had a huge bowl of cherries waiting for me as well (which my intestinal system is not too happy about this morning as I over-indulged, which I am wont to do with cherries). Anyhow, as I went to toss out a few cherry stems and pits yesterday, I had to stifle a gasp when I opened the cabinet under the sink.

“My God, that kitchen garbage can is huge!” I wanted to say. But I tamped it down because I had some sense of awareness that the statement would be weird. It’s the little things, I guess — like paper towels that are huge and don’t fall apart when introduced to liquid — that make me realize I’m not in Kansas anymore. (Wizard of Oz reference for you non-Americans.)

Well, the little things and the fact that everyone in this city wants to eat at 6:30 pm too! (I went out with a friend (Thanks Steve!) on my first night home and the establishment in question had a waiting list for the evening meal at merienda (tea time)…talk about weird!

I’m used to being the only person among tens of millions that wants to eat dinner at 6:30 pm.

I love Argentina.

Where else would you find a guy from Long Island named Fred, who has gone to the trouble of importing a Lincoln Town Car into the country (when we all know that bringing anything into Argentina is never easy), all with the express intention of becoming the best native English speaking driver for hire in BA?

I used Fred’s services to get to the airport today and can recommend him highly. He was 15 minutes early (something to remark upon in Buenos Aires), he had drinks in a small cooler (water and a soda), the car was wonderful, and I didn’t feel that I was participating in a Grand Prix while trying to get out of the country! Also, if you are traveling with a big family, everyone fits. He even called Tom after we arrived to let him know I got here okay.

His Web site features a nifty online interface for reserving his services.

Quick BA Airport Notes For people flying out of Buenos Aires this winter, know that the airport is really hot because they overheat everything in the winter here. Wear layers so you can strip down! It took 21 minutes and 37 seconds to get through security and immigration for a night flight (8:30 pm scheduled departure) on a Sunday.

I depart on a long trip to The North tomorrow. What last minute rituals am I completing?

Well, first I had to watch a video of casting on for my next scarf knitting project, which you can see pictured here. (I don’t knit often enough to remember how to cast on, how lame is that!) Everyone cross your fingers that they don’t abscond with my lovely wooden knitting needles at security. (I’ve traveled successfully with them thus far, but one never knows.)

Next, I had to download some trash novels to my Kindle to temper my Infinite Jest reading, which is taxing, to say the least.

Then, there was the joy of finishing two presentations for the Mayor’s Institute on City Design in the midst of a complete break down of the ever-sucky Windows operating system, which was running on a virtual machine on my Mac, and resulted in my being unable to print, and limped along when I was working with PowerPoint…well, let’s just say that was a nightmare.

Arranged transportation to airport. Check. Trying out Fred at Silver Star Car! Will report my findings after what I hope is a smooth ride.

The travel socks, crap, I can’t forget the travel socks! I am going all old lady and will be bringing a pair of cotton compression socks with me for the flight that are supposed to improve circulation and therefore comfort on long hauls. (Tom and I both bought a pair and will report back as well!)

My God, between the knitting and the socks, I’ll have to order some hot water with lemon and I’ll be set — granny all the way.

And now, they are saying my flight is going to be leaving 2 hours late, but I still have to get to the airport at the original time, even though they changed my connection in Atlanta to reflect the later departure. *BIG SIGH*

I feel weird leaving before Tom and the girls — I am going to miss them! (I’m going back a few days early for the conference.)