Seeing chalk clapped out of grips, feeling the sweat on my palms while a gymnast flips above the beam, hearing that horrible floor music again... nostalgia has hit me flat on, that every fourth year disease that taunts me to get off my bum and attempt flips and aerials, splits and somersaults despite my non-Olympic age.

I'm 43, I really shouldn't be doing aerials; I could break something, pull something, land on my head. Yet there I was last Tuesday, on an empty dance floor at the gym, practicing aerials.

There's some sort of gravitational pull, like those tides that bring in the grunion on full moon nights, that sweeps me back to the days of Olympic dreams—the days of dreams that were never realized. Strange to think that I never competed in the Olympics. Strange to think that I really didn't even get all that close, what with my torn tendons and ten casts and a penchant for falling off the beam more often than not. When I was a competitor the Olympics never really felt that far off, yet anything short of being there is as far away as the moon.

But I suppose it's better to dream than not to. So many of mine have become reality, and I'm thankful for those casts being in the past and having moved on to writing—a non-injury occupation. But I still think it would be fun to do an aerial again.

I remember how I learned the first time. We had just moved to the house on San Vicente Blvd and it had a long runway of a family room. I'd start at the sliding glass doors and speed across the room, then fling a cartwheel into the air, my arms tucked tightly to my chest and simply hope for the best. I remember my knees scrubbed red from the carpet because I was too stubborn to put a hand down. I had just started taking gymnastics at the time, so didn't really know the word \"technique\": my technique was speed, hope and a disdain for injury. That's the kind of gymnast I was—crazy. But eventually, that carpeted runway was my aerial heaven. I'm sure I showed that trick to all the neighbors and more.

I must still be. Crazy. Since I really want to re-live this trick—even if it's a measly one that you learn in gymnastics 101. Handstands get so boring. So I'll keep you posted and let you know my aerial progress. Here's where I'm at today.

• Can still do a nice cartwheel, and that's important; it's the foundation of a side aerial. (A side aerial is a cartwheel without hands...)
• Need a bit more middle-split flexibility, so will work on that...
• Fairly weak left thigh muscle, so will be doing some major legwork for propulsion—and if I'm smart, I won't only work on my left thigh...
• Am really only about half way there. Sort of pathetic. But I am 43. Willing to keep dreaming. By the way, did you see the 33 year-old gymnast who is still vaulting with the best of them? Ah, but that's a whole different post altogether!

Having just returned from a month-long excursion abroad, I'm full of thoughts about what specific experiences worked for me while on the road, and what I could have done better. I've written several books after traveling, some trips planned specifically for research and other writing projects springing spontaneously from time away from home. Even though I've traveled quite a lot over the years, there are always new lessons to learn—here are some that have to do with being a writer on the road...

• 1. Experience. Instead of visiting a city and all its sites, I always try to get into the local flow, and experience life first hand. It's tough to incorporate bits on the Swiss Alps into a book if you only see them from the window of a car. While passing a mountain pasture, get out of the car, sit on a wall, breathe the air. Better yet, make inquiries before you leave, trying to find local people to meet—or be gregarious and sit in the village square or café and make friends. The best story stuff comes from walking in the shoes of a local. This last trip our family helped in the annual making of mountain hay. We spent two days cutting fields, turning the grasses, bailing hay and stacking it. We got to feel the wooden rakes in our hands, the sun on our back. We smelled the flowers mixed in with the grasses and saw the variety of plants that those lucky cows get to eat. In between work we ate with the families: fontina; polenta; sausages; wine... all of it homemade, with the smells and tastes and chatter that accompanies food. You can bet I'll find a way to get these folks and their mountain slopes into a book...


• 2. Become an Extrovert. To find out what life is really like outside of your home town it helps to be curious. Being more prone to hide away and write than to chatter with folks on the front step, I have to work extra hard while I'm away when it comes to talking. But the extra effort always pays off. Finding out the details for your stories is essential. Why are the grasses cut in the morning? How many cows does this field feed? What time of year is the fontina made? May I see the cellar where you make it? May I swing the scythe? Do you have any band-aids for this blister?! It's fine to do research from a book, or by interviewing others, but books and interviews don't give you blisters...


• 3. Journaling. This is a top priority while away. I always buy a brand new journal with lots of pages and keep copious notes. I've found that you simply can not write too much. Even though I format my journal day by day, recounting events, I do my best to write about as many small details as possible. Here's a bit from our time in the Italian Alps. When I walked into the pub in Valpelline, I smelled port and noticed that the group of 12 or so men were drinking from small stemmed, elegant glasses. Their gruff mountain hands contrasted so sharply with those small glasses. Outside it drizzled; though it was June, winter was still pestering the mountains and people griped about it non-stop, in every conversation. When we left more than two hours later, those same men had finished their drinks and had started lively games of cards taking up several tables. It now smelled of men, not port—of sweat and strong breath; and though I'm a typical American who doesn't like bodily odors, somehow the smells all fit the scene and felt comforting...


• 4. Photography. Just like journaling helps me to reenter a place when I want to write about it—so do pictures. But note this—it's the unlikely photos that usually help the most. Vast panoramas may help to give an overall view of the place—or of a specific scene you want to capture, but it's the photos of woodpiles, of the woman and her stash of bee houses in the corner of her yard, that help the most when writing. These aren't photos that you tend to share with family when you return, but they help when trying to recreate a scene in words. Photography is dangerous, however; you have to be careful not to become too attached to the camera, hence becoming the eternal onlooker. That lens gets in the way from experiencing the real thing, so solicit help from those you're traveling with, if possible.


• 5. Buy a New Pen! Ha! I don't think I'm alone here. Being a writer brings with it the sometimes absurd love of pens and paper. Though I can hardly afford to purchase some of the pens that I slobber over in specialty shops I do try to look for inexpensive but unusual pens, ink, or paper that I can play with. I believe having as much fun as I can with my craft helps me to be a better writer. So if that new orange fountain pen might help my brain turn some particularly lovely phrases, then it's worth the investment! This trip I found a new, inexpensive brand in Rome: Campo Marzio, and I purchased five pens: three as gifts; one for myself; and one reserve for something or someone yet undetermined.


• 6. Get Writing. I find it's good to mull over my experiences and process them before I really allow them to become a part of a story, but I try to get back to the craft of writing as soon as possible. Even if I'm simply continuing my journal entries—adding bits of certain experiences that were left out but still fresh in my mind. In fact, I think writing every day, despite my creative impulses, is important in order to remain a fruitful and long-term writer. I don't always abide by my own advice and I see the difference it makes when it's time to conjure the muse. So please excuse me, time's up, gotta get back to that story!

We were in London, and that day we were celebrating my daughter’s eleventh birthday. We had just visited the Globe Theatre, and followed it up by having a fabulous lunch near the Thames. Next stop: Herrods, to buy seven dollar sour jelly beans (all we could afford!). As we crossed through the side yard of St. Paul's Cathedral heading toward a tube stop, we spotted the child actor Skandar Keynes; he plays Edward in the Chronicles of Narnia movies, dressed in typical English schoolboy garb, chatting with friends. I felt my blood pulse and just knew I had to get a picture of him with my daughter as a birthday memento.

Backstory. I grew up in LA—the west side of LA, where actors are like palm trees, at least one on every block, sometimes whole strings of them, swaying in the wind, trying to attract more attention than the tree next door. My brother was a child actor, starring in more than sixty commercials. My grandfather was a prop master. I went to school with Charlie Sheen, Dean Cain, and Rob Lowe. Even I couldn’t escape Hollywood’s grasp. I was a stunt double in an MTV music video-a good/bad experience that convinced me of my distaste for most things Hollywood.

All my life I have ignored those celebrities who are not acquaintances. They're everywhere and they really don't need to be bothered by anyone's fussing. Let them drink their latte's and chew their panini’s in peace.

So what got into me in London when Skandar Keynes crossed our path?

We were having a fabulous day--every decision made to promote happiness for our birthday girl. When I saw young master Keynes all I thought about was getting a photo of him with my daughter-how we had just seen Prince Caspian the week before, and that it would make for a fun memory in the scrapbook. But by the time I'd determined to ask him, and my daughter had said that she could handle the embarrassment, he was on the move, across the street, heading somewhere fast. Armed with my camera, I ran to the street corner, but the traffic light turned on me and cars flew past. I sprinted the other way, my middle-aged skirt flapping around my legs, looking for a bridge, an underground tunnel, some secret, miraculous way to cross. My family was yelling for me, \"Mom!\"

I was star struck. My first time ever, by a skinny brown-haired boy... I zoomed in and snapped a series of photos across the wide street before he disappeared from view. Oh my. I slunk back to my family, defeated, feeling utterly silly. A papparazza in the making. My heart was still racing. I took a look at the photos and then tucked the camera deep into my bag. My daughter didn’t seem half as disappointed as I was. Hmmm...

We're home again now and I believe I've returned to normal. John Cleese and Oprah and the gang will be roaming the streets, and you know what? I think I'll make some plum jam.

Then maybe send a jar of it to Skandar...

What shoe are you? Are you a hiking boot, an espadrille, or a stiletto? Are you a sneaker or a riding boot? Is your shoe a certain color—maybe red? Or is it a particular brand? Or perhaps you’re a combination shoe, or an all-of-the-above, plus more shoe? An I-want-every-shoe, shoe?

I’m like that last one--with bags. And have to practice the virtue of self control often.

I live in Southern California, and I’m a sandal. I have six pair: one dressy, three beachy, one strappy and Greek, and one pair built for walking. I wear sandals just about every day. With skirts, with jeans, on the way to the gym, to church, and out to dinner. The only worthy exception to my sandal is saved for those truly wet and chilly days. Days when I sip tea in the afternoons, and dream of writing longer than I have time for, days when I pester my husband till he lights a fire in the grate. On those days, those infrequent days in my part of the world, I long for wool socks—and wool socks don’t do well in sandals. So I pull out and polish a pair of leather boots from the right hand side of my sandal pile, and they clomp me around town, keeping my toesies warm and dry.

I was thinking about my life with sandals just the other day when I realized that on my upcoming trip to Northern England and Scotland, the sandals will have to hibernate inside my bag until we arrive in Rome. Most likely my toesies will be having wool-longing fits, and unfortunately, those boots I have ain’t made for long days of walking.

I’m not a shopper. Even though bag shopping might get me excited, we don’t have the money or the space for purses galore, so what’s the point? So, buying a new pair of shoes became yet another chore on my to-do list. I put it at the bottom, where I tend to place those errands that are easily carried from one list to the other. Copied over and over again for days until the days become weeks, and I finally get so irritated with myself that I make a proclamation of sorts to my husband: \"I need you to watch the baby—I’m going to buy a pair of shoes!\" I say this, as if not wearing sandals for a ten-day period of time in England is truly torture...

Heading straight to a small local shoe store that I had been avoiding, I spend half an hour walking in circles, in my sandals, around the store. There, with the good help of Boris, I find a pair of good leather walking shoes that will play double duty with both pant and skirt. The deed was done. I got out my list and made a bold slash through my cryptic, \"buy shoes.\"

Ah, but then I realize upon my return, as I try on my various traveling clothes, that, gasp!, shopping is once again imminent... I no longer own the right socks, to accompany the shoes with pants. I no longer own stockings, to accompany the shoes with skirts. I am living in a very small shoe world, indeed.

So, being a sandal, what else might that say about me? If my shoe world has become so narrow, if I am living without socks and stockings, what else about me has been squeezed as well? And is this a good thing—to be so specialized? Does it show a becoming—a honing--of who I’m really meant to be—or does it simply reveal a stubborn nature that sticks to me despite my age. I really have no answers to these (seemingly!) profound questions, and maybe this upcoming trip to places where sandals are only brief summer dreams will help answer them for me. Maybe this new adventure will open up worlds bigger than my feet—maybe these new shoes will take me places that sandals simply are not able to enter.

In any case, if I’m a sandal, a silly sandal who loves to ramble on about anything including feet, I’d still love to know what shoe you’ve come to be... Write to me and we’ll talk shoes. Anything’s better than shopping for them!