Month: October 2022

On bicycles and cycling

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For as long as I can remember I have been riding bicycles. I can count having had over ten bicycles through my life, some of which got a lot of miles on them, a couple of them were stolen from my front door!

But I do not want to bore you with my history of bicycles and bicycle riding, of riding around Switzerland as a teenager, of riding in different countries, and so on. I just want to motivate you to get on a bike and ride! Pedal as hard as you can, feel the wind in your face, you are creating that speed, it is all you!

Although some people obsess over their rides, I have to agree with the once great Lance Armstrong and say that

“It’s not about the bike.”

Lance Armstrong

In fact, I still ride an Orbea mountain bike I bought in 1990 (it’s the one on the photo). Just get out there and ride.

Not only are bicycles fun to ride, but they are also very practical. I used to ride to work in Boston and Madrid, long, long before it became the hipster thing to do. I still ride to chores around the village in the Summer. Unfortunately, I have not gotten around to getting a bicycle in Florida. One of these days…

So, if you do not have a bicycle get one, there are great used ones on Craigslist or Wallapop, then get going!

PS: The Camino: For the record, I am against doing the Camino de Santiago on a bike. This might be difficult to understand, but on a bicycle, you are going too fast to focus on your journey, on the spirituality of what you are doing, you are mostly focusing on not cracking your head open and on staying on your bike. I see folks on amazing electric bicycles and what they are really doing is a great excursion on the path of the Camino, but they are not doing the Camino. I do respect folks on vintage bikes or on plain vanilla bikes, not the hi-tech stuff!!

Pros and cons of teaching in different sized schools

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I am blessed to have a very varied teaching experience. I have taught in public and private high schools (and middle schools), I have taught in big and small (and tiny) universities, even in a lower school! Today let’s focus on universities.

Of course, big universities have all the prestige and apparent endless budgets. You are spoilt for choice: dozens of libraries to study in with every resource imaginable, Nobel prize winning professors, infinite dining options, excellent gyms and recreation facilities, et cetera, et cetera. Having said that, there is also a dark side: thousands of students make it much harder to make connections, much higher bureaucracy, and the politics make Washington DC look like a children’s playground.

On the other hand, smaller schools although limited in budget and infrastructure offer a massive human plus. Things get done faster, smaller classes, more chances to connect with colleagues, staff, and students, and in my case, the opportunity to coach the soccer team! Something impossible in a big school.

St. Vincent de Paul has only around 120 students and 20 something teachers, so the community is much tighter, everybody knows everybody and this makes for more and mostly better relationships.

If you are deciding, at the end of the day, as usual, it is up to how much you are willing to invest in the people around you: your colleagues, your students, your staff. Then it does not matter so much where you teach, what is important is how willing you are to make connections!

Hispanic Heritage celebration at the Norton

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The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach is such an oasis of culture for me that I have already written about it five times in this blog. Well, here is the sixth:

Understanding the importance of Hispanic Heritage and Hispanic Heritage month, the Norton organized an open house “Nuestra Cultura” day in celebration. I took advantage of the opportunity and took some students from my classes. We had a blast!

We skipped the piñata making table, the Latin dance lessons, and the food stalls. We checked out the mercado set up in the garden, and what we really dug our teeth into was the actual museum. Although the collection is small, it contains top notch art. We walked around discussing different pieces and paintings.

We had a wonderful time, and I enjoyed (finally) being able to share the Norton with my students!

If life were a city…it would be Madrid

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Madrid is home (neo-mudejar background)

This is not my sentence; it belongs to the Madrid Tourism Board (or whatever it is called). A dear friend, old college classmate, and travel consultant extraordinaire Jen Donati passed it along after she met with the aforementioned Madrid Tourism Board recently in NYC.

The video as you can see is a bit cheesy, it uses all the current topics and techniques that end up making it a totally unremarkable video: a cute font, quickly changing shots (we have so much to show you, so little time! and we want this to be a dynamic video), a multigenerational and inclusive cast (perfect), hip and trendy folks in hip and trendy restaurants, hotels, and streets, a catchy American song in the background, even some hints of humor, ha-ha!

So, despite the video having everything required to be the perfect promotional video, it does not pull at your heartstrings, it does not really want to make me pack my bags and jump on the first flight to Madrid. Why? What is it lacking? Passion. This was a clip obviously made by committee.

“Wait” you will ask, “who cares about a promo video for a city?” Well, I do. I do because it is my city, because I am a tour guide there when I am home (check out my website), because I am passionate about cities, especially Madrid.

By contrast here is a remarkably similar clip to promote the 2017 Festival Flamenco Madrid. The music and the dance accomplish everything the other clip could not. Even being a minute longer (which could be a handicap in our ADD, Tik Tok world), the clip grabs you and does not let go. The settings, streets, plazas, venues are the same, but he music and movement are the key here, even, I am willing to venture, with a fraction of the budget.

At the end of the day, what have you got? Well, in my case an urge to go walk around my city that I miss so much.