[jdviole2]

As I have mentioned before we went to two Worlds Fairs. One was in New Orleans and one in Vancouver BC. The fairs themselves were what you might call typical. Pavilions from many countries and states. Lots of cultural items. In New Orleans we did get to see the space shuttle Enterprise. That was pretty neat. In an earlier post there is a picture of Helena with the Enterprise. While we were there in New Orleans though the top thing for Helena was a visit to the Cafe Du Monde to get some beignets (square fried dough covered in powdered sugar). The beignets are served hot and even though I don't like coffee it was worth the stop. I wasn't sure if I would get Helena to leave the cafe or not. As I remember we skipped lunch that day since we were still filled up with beignets. We also visited some of the classic sights in the city (cemetaries, French Quarter). In addition we stopped several places on the way down and back to see things. It was our first long driving vacation and we had a great time. For the fair in Vancouver we flew. Jets on the way up. On the return trip from Vancouver to Seattle we flew a small turboprop airplane (seated 8) that made stops at several fishing camps on the way down. It was Helena's first flight in a small aircraft (and with a young woman pilot, no less) and she really loved that. We didn't have time to see much of Vancouver itself but had a really good time at the fair. The night before we first visited the fair we saw an interview on TV with the head of the fair. He catching a lot of flac because the fair wasn't making the kind of money people thought it should. During the interview he mentioned that the one thing that really bothered him was how the people were leaving trash everywhere and not cleaning up after themselves. So the next day we were having lunch in this dining area when I looked up and saw him coming down the aisle. I heard Helena say under her breath "trash". She quickly put all our lunch garbage in a pile in front of her. I called out how much we were enjoying the fair. He stopped seeing the trash ready for us to dispose of. He asked us where we were from and then asked what we had planned for the evening. When we said just the fair and the fireworks he asked if we would like tickets to the nights show. (Full disclosure the show was Liberace. We were not fans but more than willing to see a free show.) He gave us the tickets and went on his way. That night we showed up at the venue for the show. We showed our tickets to an usher and she led us down to the front center and seated us in a VIP box seat. It was pretty cool that night but we didn't have to worry the box was heated. It was fun watching people trying to guess just who the hell we were and why we deserved that sort of treatment. We never expected such great seats as a freebie. Helena maintained that it was her clearing up of the trash that cinched it for us. I couldn't argue that. After the show we rode on some of the rides. They had a parachute jump ride and we got there just before it closed. The ride lifted you up in a seat and then dropped you from the top with a fake parachute letting you float back down. We had been married for over 10 years by this time but still knew how to use the darkness and solitude of an amusement park ride. We made out. You got lifted twice for your ticket. We finished the two lifts and were still in a lip lock when we hit the bottom the second time. There was no one else waiting to ride so the operator grinned at us and sent us up again. We got two more rides before it was time to leave. My lips were a little sore by the time we started for the place we were staying. One other funny thing happened that Helena used to talk about. I have an ear for dialects. If I am around someone for a day or so I start to speak using their accent and manner of speech. (When I was in italy I toured around Europe and was talking to a man in Switzerland one day and he told me that he knew I was from Naples because of my accent.) So we were at a bus stop waiting for the bus back to the house we rented and three 20 something people from Vancouver sat down. They were going on about how they hated the Americans that were flooding into "their" town for the fair. They were disturbingly against Americans. The turned and asked us if we didn't agree. Helena didn't say a word but I adopted their point of view (hey at 3 to 1 against I wasn't going to start a fight). They talked to us for about 5 minutes before our bus came. We were back in the house before Helena told me that I sounded just like the three of them. Without thinking about it I copied their speech patterns and accents. They never caught on that we were from America. So that was the "fair" story. Here are todays pictures. The first picture is Helena at rest on the way to Blue Lake her favorite hike in the Rocky Mountains. The hike starts a 10,000 feet so before long you are above the tree line and into the tundra. The next picture is Helena ready for the weather. As I mentioned in an earlier post sometimes we encountered snow. She didn't let that stop her though. She never let anything stop her. The third picture is Helena raking leaves outside of our first house. Number four shows how Helena would do her best to try to improve the parks we visited. Here she is propping up a rock that was trying to fall on the trail. The next picture is similar to one already posted of Helena feeding a duck. Though she didn't like birds much this duck was so nice that she relented and spent some time feeding him. The last shot is Helena going up the front steps at her parents house. This was in 1975, we had been married less than a year when this was taken. She is wearing one of my favorite of her outfits.