Zoriana and I enjoy the time together as Oksana and Eddie head for the mountains

Eddie’s friend Yarema invited Eddie to join him at his summer camp in Yaremche, a Carpathian Mountains resort three quarters of the way from Lviv to the Romanian border. His family relocated to a nearby village when the war broke out and he hasn’t seen Eddie since.

Inasmuch as he signed up late, there was a lot of confusion about how he would get there. As late as Thursday, his day of departure, there was no room on the train with the counselors so it look like Oksana would have to go with him on the 16 hour trip. But at the last minute a seat opened up, so she dropped him off Thursday morning.

This came as a great disappointment to Sasha, Yarema’s mother, who wanted to see Oksana. So Oksana took the same train herself Friday, leaving me with Grandma, Grandpa and the two girls until she returns tomorrow morning. By my reckoning she is already on the train.

Marianna freed her up just a couple weeks ago. She started to refuse the breast, weaning herself. She is quite an independent-minded little girl for under two years of age. She is far the earliest of the three to figure out the business with the potty. Saturday morning, following Oksana’s instructions, I took her diaper off and pointed her to the potty. Darned if she didn’t poop by herself, then throw it into the toilet. I praised her very highly.

Zoriana has been begging for quite a while to go to Toastmasters with Eddie and me. This seemed like the right moment, so she came along. She was an absolute angel, minding her own business for the whole two hour meeting. That was a good thing too – it was a small meeting and I had several things to do. As usual, I was the photographer. I also had a role as the evaluator of the impromptu speaking – table topics. And, when it turned out that there were only two speakers scheduled and one of them couldn’t make it, I volunteered to give an impromptu speech.

My title was “No two Alike,” the same as my beloved Judith Rich Harris book. I expect it was interesting for an audience most of whom have no kids to hear a father of six offer his learning and opinions about why they are so different.

This morning I offered to lead a party to the zoo.  That could have been Grandma and the two girls, two girls without Grandma, or just Zoriana and me. Grandma decided, and just the two of us suited Zoriana absolutely fine. It is the longest zoo visit I can remember. We saw absolutely the whole thing in 2 ½ hours.

Kyiv’s zoo is pretty good all things considered, though it is not up to the standards of Western Europe. The surprise is that it is going at all. It is.  They have largely finished the two year renovation project. Some animals are gone – the ostriches for instance. Some are not on display. There is a sign saying that Tony the gorilla has a limited schedule due to advancing age. But on the other hand, we saw a hippopotamus for the first time since the incumbent died of old age about three years ago at 56.

Animal photography is better done by others. It is also better done in a natural setting than a zoo. This report is quite people centered.

On account of the war the bus runs only once an hour, down from three times. We were there at 9 o’clock just as Zhennya was opening the mom-and-pop store right across the street.

The marshrutka bus is kind of Third World. It is reminiscent of the country bus that the title character Gordo drove in the San Francisco Chronicle comic strip in my childhood.  From out vantage right behind the driver we saw this in the copilot seat.  A bunch of change lying there – everybody pays cash, up now to about 40¢.  A hand just throwing the fare down.  It is a very honest society.  Lunch, water – what the driver needs. 

The buses are old – this one has less rust than the one sitting idle on account of the reduced schedule – but it is far from new.  Maintenance is good.  In ten years I cannot remember suffering a breakdown, and the diesels never emit smoke.  The drivers all know us.

Next we boarded the metro.  Here is Zoriana clowning around on the stairs, and here’s a picture of the interior of the car. Notice the composition of the ridership – almost all Ukrainians. It is rare to hear a foreign language or to see a nonwhite face. It is safe and predictable. There are no turnstile jumpers and the passengers never threaten one another.

We got off at the Polytechnical University station and rode the long escalator up.

The flower vendors got a good inspection. I don’t know the business reason why all of them are in the same place, but here there is a cluster at this Metro station, just like there is a cluster in the market where we usually shop. Finally arriving at the zoo, Zoriana has to play outside on the statues before we go in.

Inside the zoo, after spending a long time watching the siamang gibbons cavort in a huge outdoor enclosure – the pride of the remodeled zoo – Zoriana admired the koi in the fishpond. These fish also have it pretty good, although fish probably don’t appreciate the difference is much as the gibbons. We saw one given in a more typical cage. Had it been me I would’ve felt very deprived.

A high point is a petting zoo where they have all kinds of goats. I don’t know what happened to their donkey. This one was pretty aggressive – Zoriana had a hard time keeping him from eating all of the animal feed we bought. She’s a tough girl – she doesn’t let the goats bully her.

After seeing the big animals – elephants, hippos and giraffes – then the lions, tigers and other carnivores, and the aquarium we went over to the unrenovated eastern side of the zoo where they have the birds and monkeys. I don’t envy the animals in these Soviet era cages. Some of them might have enjoyed it if they knew what was going on in the world. There were a couple of new monkeys whom the sign said have been rescued from the “Russian hoard” as it overran a village in the east.  I like the modern idea of zoos better, with fewer animals having more freedom to move. Nonetheless there is something to be said for the large variety on display.

Our last zoo picture is of Zoriana on a statue of a monkey. Next is Zoriana making a monkey face as had a very Ukrainian lunch of shaurma and kvas.  The first is a flat-bread wrap, known elsewhere as shawarma.  Kvas (hers is hiding behind a yogurt bottle filled with water) is totally Ukrainian – a grain-based sweet nonalcoholic summer drink.

I looked at my watch when Zoriana asked for ice cream and told her no way, we had to make tracks if we were going to catch the hourly bus. We were lucky to reach the Metro just as the train was arriving, but we still got to our stop two minutes late. Fortunately there is an hourly regional electric train that leaves just 10 minutes later.  I promised her the biggest ice cream in the shop if we made it to the train, and we did, just in time.

The ice cream lasted her all the way home. As she dawdled in front of a house along the lane leading home, the grandmother who owns it came out to say hello. She is a friendly lady we have seen before. She invited us in for Zoriana to take a look at her lawn ornaments. While we were talking I noticed that I was almost trampling some dill weed. Coincidentally, Grandma Nadia had asked me to buy some on the way home but we hadn’t had time. I asked politely and got a whole handful.

Returning home, I got on the exercise bike. I wrote recently that I had been feeling a bit weak.  Don’t know how, but today I set a new personal record for this two-year-old machine. Even though this is identical to the one I had been using for 10 years, the resistance is different. I have new measurements. Anyhow, I got up to 65 RPM whereas earlier in the week I had to push to get 61. This also puts my mind to ease on the weight loss issue. I am below my high school weight, but since I am still able to put the same effort into my workout I suppose I shouldn’t worry.

I recently had my bicycle tuned up and at the same time noticed that I was comfortably pedaling in a higher gear. It got me thinking about gear ratios. If I count the teeth on the front and rear sprockets of my bicycle, since I know the circumference of the tire I should be able to translate pedaling RPM into speed. I wondered if I could look up the teeth count for Shimano crank sets on the Internet.

Not a chance. The bicycle is 10 years old and Shimano has made hundreds of different kinds. I was surprised to learn that the top-end derailer now has 12 sprockets instead of the eighth that my bike has, and that battery-powered electric shifters are the new standard. Further musing in this direction led me to realize that this is July and I had not heard a thing about the Tour de France. Why not? I found out that it was all over and that there were virtually no Americans in it. That fact, combined with Covid and war, probably accounts for the lack of news.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good-looking woman has chosen just the right amount of time to be gone. We miss her, but we are able to do things that wouldn’t get done if she were here.

Graham