Dancing

Dancing is an important part of the festival

Feast at the Festival

A panorama view of crowded room of the festival

Radio Shows and Dirty Dogs

As some may know we had our radio debuts over here on our Greek island. We were invited to be guest on a two hour web radio show hosted by two guys living on the island. One of the guys started the radio station as part of a life dream. After joining the Coast Guard and being stationed on our small island one our hosts hatched the plan. He had heard about an American who had stated a web radio in the middle of a South American jungle. He thought well why not start one here and he did. It is only web radio now but they have big plans. Our hosts were all musicians and the show mostly revolved around music. Between songs we answered questions talking about our trip, how we knew each other, our hopes and dreams, you know interview things. We laughed and talked about music and how our answers had been translated while off air. It was fun, unfortunately if you didn't tune in live you might never hear it. We were even given station shirts, which were a nice addition to our lacking wardrobes. Em, Gen and Georgia, all needed t-shirts.

While drivig back up the hill with one of our hosts we saw a passing dog. This dog was familiar to us and we called out to it by the name we had given it, Dready dog. Our hosts chuckled "you know this dog?" yay of course we all responded. "this dog is the dirtiest dog on the island.". We all laughed. This brings me to my next story, dirty dogs, I will introduce the animals we have seemed to collect.

Dready Dog or Mr. Dreads: He (I am not actually sure) is a black dog with curly long black hair that has dreaded completely on the back half caked with dirt turning the black fur brown. Dready is a cheerful dog that comes by every so often and sits outside our door soaking up the sun.

Skid: a.k.a. Skidlit skidykins. She, even though we often still call her he is our permeant dog fixture. Skid is a medium brown dog with short tan fur, skinny face. With our recent in take of Harry Potter we equate her to Winky the house elf. Skid is very skittish and that is where her name comes. She often lounges on our front stoop biting at her fleas. When we find our selves extremely bored we watch as the fleas jump away from the gnawing teeth. Skid will often follow us up and down on our walks to town.

Carl Marx: the white cat. Carl's name come because together Skid and Carl become Skid Marx. Hehe. Anyway Carl rarely leaves us alone. He or she is a purely white cat, but the built up grime and visible fleas make it look like black tipped ears and random black marks. White cats on this island are deaf. Carl makes up for this my meowing, and meowing all the time. Carl is so loud s/he can wake a sleeping person or simply scare the living day lights out of someone if they happen to be around the house alone. Marx does not give up.

There is also the pair of dogs, one which looks like an old squat Irish setter and the other a small black fluffy puppy. The pair perches at the top of a set of stairs we pass on our walk down town. They always bark, yap yap, rwaw rawr. When the off chance they don't bark we feel like we fit in.

There is also Louie the cafe cat. He lounges about on the bar stools at the cafe we frequent to use Internet, drink coffee and listen to good music.

Gen and Em at the radio show

The Gang

Carl Marx comes to interrogate

Dirty Dogs

Miss Skid and Dready Dog at our door

Hail Storm

It's been a bit, but we've been busy, sort of. Having read, read and laid around far too long we decided one day we would take a bike ride. What a novel idea, ride our lovely bikes that we usually have weighed down with all our belongings. Gen, Emma, and I had ridden our bikes a couple miles but nothing serious. We hadn't been all out together on our bikes. We planned on taking a quick spin out to the other side of the island, a place we could only see from our hill top house and also where the only paved road led.
Large billowing clouds floated slowly over the mountain tops as we departed. The sun shown brightly, with light winds, perfect riding weather. We raced each other liberated from the lack of weight down the hills, along the cliff sides, awed at the bright blues and greens of the ocean lapping at the rocks bellow. By the time we had peddled the 4km out of town and reached the fork in the road, the weather had flipped. We collected on the side of the road with nothing but blue skies, open roads and empty hillsides ahead it looked silly to turn around, but in the opposite direction dark rain clouds moved fast over the mountains and horizon. Should we turn back or head on? I lingered until a large thunder clap motivated my feet to turn around and follow the others.
Peddling quickly we traveled up and down the cliffside roads , sprinkled with rain and battered with wind. In and out of the valleys we traveled, the temperature plummeting as we went. As we reached the outside of town with one final uphill push the rain really starred dumping. The wind pushed us sideways, upwards, downwards, basically always it blew we strained hard to avoid it pushing us over, that was unless it helped us. Rain fell so strongly I was blinded and could barley see, but we were so close to home that we didn't want to stop. I was freezing in my bike shorts and wicking shirt soaked to the bone. Then the rain started to hurt. I biked slowly next to Emma asking her
if she though this could be freezing rain, "no way" she replied " it's in the 60s" she shouted over the wind. "not up there I yelled," gasping up at the sky. We continued on and within seconds the clear rain turned to white sheets, "now this is hail," Emma yelled. Onward I thought. Emma and I reached town first, I though we might wait out the storm but Emma peddled on, up the steep streets. "I don't think this is a good idea Em," I warned as she disappeared around a corner. The streets had turned into small rivers and and debris flowed down the street as we slowly peddled up stream. Exhausted from the uphill push our last task was to carry our bikes up two flights of steep stairs. Frozen and wet we waited, Em and I had forgotten Gen had the key. Georgia and Gen arrived minuets later and by the time we were stripping off our wet cloths the sun was out to dry them. So much for our bike ride.

Here is a picture of a different day, but similar quick rainstorm over the mountains at sunset.

Food Exposé

Here we are making our way towards Athens, via a less inhabited island.

    So what do we eat?  Lets just say whatever we want.  Gens a vegetarian so her meals lack the meat Emma's, Georgia's,  and mine do.  Since we have been on our island with a kitchen we have been able to cook extravagant foods, like fijitas and ratatouille (see more below).  When biking it is give or take.  We consume a large amount of yogurt and gronala for breakfast.  For lunches sandwiches and wraps were common in Italy where bread, cheese, meat (salami and prosuto) and a varriety of toppings, pesto, capers (for lox), roasted peppers, balsamic vinegar, were all available in one stop shopping.  Often leftovers for lunch were eaten for dinner. When camping since it was often cold we ate soup.  However we are very capable camp cooks and have big plans for when the weather warms and spending time not in your tent it fun.  We eat also a lot of chocolate or sweats, and things with salt like chips. Don't worry moms we also eat our vegetables and fruits, apples, orange, carrots and cucumbers.  We drink mostly water but the occasional soda is enjoyed at lunch for refreshing energy boost.  

     Once we got to Greece we discovered that in smaller towns goods are split into specialty stores and the on the go sandwich was harder to prepare.  We did discover however the delights of the Greek bakeries.  Pastries both sweet and savory, filled with cheese, cheese and meat, or spinach.  The perfect replacement for the Italian sandwich.   When staying in hotels we make sure to fill up on continental breakfasts eating until we don't actually want to ride our bikes and perhaps not even eat lunch that day.  For dinners we often find a grocery store or small kebab shop.  We went out a couple times in Italy eating first course (pasta) and being forced to order second (meat), Gen would augment with cheese pizza.  We have yet to have a full Greek experience, however after our radio debut tonight we plan on feasting on soulvaki. I'll let you all know how it goes.