Mount Etna, Taormina, and the Aeolian Islands

While Marty and Andrea climbed Mount Etna (the largest active volcano in Europe) I stayed in the B&B to focus on the Slackerboy vacation trinity; icing shin splints, eating Italian pastry, and watching movies on Marty’s PC. Snow is still on parts of the volcanic cone, but somehow my travelling companions were able to avoid getting blown off the craters despite high winds and flying obsidian chips.

Soon after this, we zipped up north to the Greek theatre at Taormina. After circling the town for 45 min while simultaneously praying (unsuccessfully) to Zeus for a miracle parking space, we knuckled under and left the car at the designated tourist garage with the rest of the cattle. Taormina’s views over the sea are impressive – matinee players of antiquity no doubt had trouble directing patron’s views to the stage and away from the coastline.

2 hours later we were on a hydrofoil and heading to the Aeolian Islands, and fortunate to make a quick stop at the Mecca of all things geek; Vulcano – the birthplace of Spock. After exchanging the time-honored “live long and prosper” hand signs with the natives, we motioned to the captain of our vessel to continue island hopping, ending with an overnight stop in Lipari. Sleepy villages, rocky beaches (ouch!), fabulous views from our balcony, and chilly swims in the sea… that cold water is almost as good as ice for treating shin splints.

Shin splints were a natural outcome of bringing old shoes on vacation and overtraining – but they’re less interesting than my other current injury; a black eye! No, Andrea has not been slugging it out with me; here’s the backstory: During our last day at Club Med Kamarina, I walked down to the beach at 14h30 aiming to win the week’s catamaran regatta with my pal Fawn. Strong and gusty winds led management to cancel the regatta for “safety reasons” (wimps), which of course only encouraged Fawn (born at the helm and former chief of sailing for years at a number of Club Med villages) and I (who taught sailing in itty bitty Lasers during 3 wind-free weeks on the Sea of Cortez) to take a boat out; nobody sails a Catsy like my homie!

With a security boat on our tail, Fawn on the tiller, and myself yelping in a harness on the trapeze – it was fast and verrry bumpy on the way out. About 4K from shore we tried to tack, with both rudders conveniently popping out of the water at every try. After half-a-dozen attempts with the loose trap swinging, I caught one of the trap handles near my eye. This didn’t hurt a bit so we kept sailing – great conditions to practice our jibe skills.

Two days later, my eye has turned a lovely shade of purple. On the plus side, it still doesn’t hurt and I’m getting a lot more respect from the Sicilian locals since it looks like I’m some sort of Thai kick boxer on vacation (too bad I didn’t pack those sweet silk shorts Apiruk gave me – note my name embroidered in Thai letters on the front). injury like this also makes it easy to get ice from the natives; point to the eye and say “ghiaccio.” Ice is

good for making cocktails back at the room and also great treatment for shin splints – unlike the black eye, my left shin looks fine but feels awful. This delightful combination of injuries has created an opportunity for us to appear even weirder to the locals. In the evening, we select a restaurant, sit down for dinner, I take off my sunglasses, point to the eye and say “ghiaccio.” Then when the ice comes, I start rubbing it on my shin… is it any wonder Europeans find Americans so hard to understand?