vermont heat

is it always this hot in Vermont? not even ten in the morning and the sun is already hard at work. i wonder how i will deal with moving to a desert African country. I've been reading this Namibian Novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, which seems to be 300 page of people waiting for the hot heat to pass by.



there's too much that we want to see in this state, though, to spend our time sleeping in siesta. in the morning we drove out to Stowe and biked along the scenic rec path which winds around Mountain Road and the West Branch River. It's an exciting bike route, taking you so deep into the dark quiet woods that you think you've found refuge from the high noon sun, and then suddenly it spits you out into a wide open cornfield under a blue blue sky, the mountains filling in the skyline behind. You find yourself whipping past bustling farmers markets, lacrosse games, lemonade stands manned by entrepreneurial six year olds. at one point, the bike path crosses a horse trail, which was unexpected for us, but it was really something to see a cowboy and his big majestic horse step out suddenly in front of the bike path and into the river to cool off. it seemed like a good idea, so my sister and i took our shoes off and waded in the river to cool off. we weren't the only ones with that plan; it seemed like around every river bend there were kids splashing in the shallow parts of the West Branch River.



random kids in the river


random horse in the river


it smells like home. home smells like cow manure.

We stopped off at the Stowe Farmers' Market for lunch where i got myself some Afghanistan-style food - obviously quite native to Vermont cuisine. It was delicious but didn't really help me deal with the summer heat, especially after a twenty kilometre bike ride. LUCKILY VERMONT IS HOME TO THE BEN AND JERRY'S FACTORY.



Even though we visited the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory on the weekend when there was no production going on, it was still clearly a magical place, even without any oompah-loompahs in sight. a magical place full of so many wittily named flavours of calorific happiness, teeming with children with wide eyes, adults with wide eyes, and babies with crying eyes, although i'm not sure what they could possibly be crying about, since they're at BEN AND JERRY'S. how could unhappiness even survive in a place like this? we tried the Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, which was full of liberal-biased goodness and tasted like waffles and freedom. I feel as though, however, I will regret for the rest of my life (or at least until my next trip to the grocery store) not having tried the Phish flavour of ice cream.


i am thirty-two flavours and then some


happiness in 1000 calories

After gorging on ice cream, my dad decided we should drive over to Montpelier, the state capital, population roughly 8000. it's nestled deeply in the green mountains and miles of nothingness from which suddenly emerges the startlingly grand, gold-roofed State Capitol building. it's quite the unnerving sight. also unusual is the high concentration of lawyers and law offices. it's just not right.


seriously that is one out of place building in the mountains

Montpelier is a quiet capital city that is even quieter on a lazy Sunday afternoon. for some reason, it's unsettling. my sister, who was too young to remember living in the hamlet of Highland (population 5000), is freaked out by the small town feel and demands to know what is going on. why are the streets so empty. why are strangers looking at me. why are they talking to me. i try to explain that it's probably more small town friendliness rather than covert attempts at purse snatching; that the strangers are just ordinary folks curious about the tourists, and not homeless wanderers, but she remains suspicious. we stroll around the block and get back to the car to head back to the hotel. you never think about Ottawa being a big city, but once you think about how our city sensibilities (lock your doors, don't talk to strangers, watch out for cars in the streets) don't match the pace of smaller towns, you begin to recognize that Ottawa is indeed a city, and that there is a whole other way of living life.




we had dinner at the Vermont Pub and Brewery, which features home-brewed beers and shockingly cheap pub fare. i ordered a tray of sampler beers (Forbidden Fruit, Curacao Wit, Grand Slam Baseball Beer, and the gold medal winner of the 2006 Great International Beer Competition, Burly Irish Ale). all of the samples are $1 each. i decide that i absolutely must make it to the Vermont Brewers Festival next year. i could never live in Burlington. I would grow a beer gut so fast.


like a beautiful rainbow of beers

we ended our day strolling down the boardwalk at the lakefront. the sun was just setting, finally leaving a cool air, and the yachts had all been docked and teenagers had assembled on the swings, drinking beers out of paper bags, nodding politely to the cops passing by. we commented about how this reminded us of Kingston, of Vancouver, of Victoria, basically any city by the water that wasn't Ottawa. Why doesn't Ottawa have a boardwalk like this? with swings?

Burlington beer

view of the Lake Champlain shoreline from the burlington bikeway

I've been finding that Vermont folks are incredibly friendly. Cars will actually stop for you if you look like you want to jaywalk, as opposed to in Toronto where they'll start speeding up as though they're playing Grant Theft Auto and hope to get points for hitting pedestrians. 

Also, I feel like Vermont folks really love dogs.

Our hotel is located near the cosy campus of University of Vermont, which confirms my theory that every campus is nicer than York University. On the other side of campus is the compact downtown area. On our first night, we strolled down the surprisingly lively Church Street pedestrian walk, which my sister commented looked a bit like Sparks Street but seemed a heck of a lot more fun at night. It was lined with lots of bars, bistros, boutiques, record stores, lovers and sidewalk poets selling their poems for fifty cents.

 We popped into the Church Street Tavern to try a glass of their local Church Street ale. We'd forgotten how cheap beer can be in Americaland. Sis had the Long Trail Ale, also brewed in the state. Mom drank the Church Street Root beer.
 We slept well.

Dad woke us up in the morning with IT'S EIGHT O'CLOCK WHY ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING LET'S EAT BREAKFAST

That's vacationing with my family.

In the morning we biked along the coast of Lake Champlain on the Island line of the Burlington Bikeway. Vermont is a very bike-friendly region and we know a lot of people who have made the trek down here by bike. The path has a beautiful view that almost rivals the Ottawa Parkway, taking bicyclists along the pretty beaches and incredibly luxurious lakeside properties. The weather was just perfect.


mom and dad decided to get a tandem bike, because they are totally cute pre-hipsters


mom and dad, totally having no problems whatsoever with the tandem bike...

For lunch we found ourselves back on Church Street, dining at the Three Tomatoes Trattoria, one of those restaurants part of the Slow Food movement that's been becoming popular these days, to try their locally brewed Three Tomatoes Ale. I also ha a glass of Vermont's Switchback Ale. I have only been in Vermont for just over twenty four hours but I feel like I've developed a really solid appreciation for Vermont-brewed amber ales, especially in this summer heat.

This was especially confirmed through our afternoon tour of the Magic Hat Brewery,  a converted lumber factory that also hosts many band practices and parties, with some of the best interior design i've ever seen in a brewery.  The Magic Hat is one of the many small breweries that don't advertise but only spread through word of mouth. I enjoyed their sampling station, as you might imagine.




In the afternoon, we checked out the Farmers' Market in City Hall Park which was full of yummy foods (look maple syrup! Wait, we have maple syrup) and ingenious crafts that were far too tempting, like a mini-version of the Young Designer's Market in Manhattan. I particularly enjoyed the buskers as well as this one deejay spinning some awesome afternoon tunes in an empty alley beside the Red Square establishment. Downtown seemed totally alive and everyone was out enjoying themselves with their multiple dogs.

We also shopped at the disproportionate numbers of trendy boutiques and vintage stores downtown.  Burlington surprisingly has a strong hippie aesthetic, with all these stores advertising an emphasis on the organic or the local. Obviously you can imagine I loved that, although admittedly I scored the most retail deals at a discount store in the less busy University Mall where the owner was really excited to see us and told us about all the times he has had Chinese tourists come into his store.

By evening we were tired from our busy day and full from feasting and sampling brewskies all day, so we stopped off at the mall food court where I met a Congolese man running a shawarma stand who sold me yummy "African food made from Vermont ingredients".  I have my doubts as to whether the mango from the Shawarmaman mango juice came from Vermont, but my dinner made me super excited that in a few months I was going to discover a whole new continent of food.


Church Street at night

The road to Vermont

Well, my family's now arrived in Burlington, Vermont, a destination we went to for no reason other than the fact that it's only a few hours from Ottawa and we've never been there before.

It was a fun adventure getting here. We stopped off for dinner at  a Ponderosa Steakhouse, which unfortunately turned out to be nothing like the Ponderosa restaurants that we remembered from living in New York some twenty years ago. Maybe it's a different chain? Maybe they've re-vamped the chain? Maybe we're getting old and our memories are faulty?

After dinner, it began to ran, and we drove through the  heart of Akwesasne Mohawk territory, amused at the alternating signs inviting people to gamble at the casino and signs urging people not to gamble.

  The route we chose was not, I suspect, the most direct route but it was certainly scenic. The landscape was dotted with trees, houses, and the occasional giant wind turbines. I have, by the way, an irrational distrust of wind turbines. 

We took a small ferry across the long lake that makes up the Champlain.  I have an irrational distrust of small ferries. But luckily despite the fast pace of the boat, it barely felt like we were moving, except for the wind blowing through the sun roof, which felt great because it was still humid after the rain. 



Finally we arrived in the quaint city of Burlington, where even the smallest most ordinary looking houses have grand white columns adorning the entrances. Whenever I mention Vermont, I'm usually told that it isn't very densely populated but it is a beautiful state. Kind of like Namibia, I guess. When I mention Burlington, the biggest city in the state, all I'm ever told is:

1. You'll be the only Asian there you ever see.

2. Phish is from Burlington.

3. Seriously, it's a really white.

It's true. Everyone's very friendly though, and my parents could probably stand to abstain from Asian food for a few days.


but then again, there are the dumpling stands on Church Street