Travel

A long time ago, I made the choice to remain single. I really did not want to deal with relationships and I was genuinely happy to take life’s journey on my own. Little did I know that the Universe had a completely different plan for me. I met my (now) husband on September 12, 2012 at a wine tasting in Beverly Hills. Fast forward a year, and he proposed on September 12, 2013. Keep going… we got married April 12, 2014. Why does this matter? Well, it leads me into this restaurant… Boragó.

My husband and I have always had South America on top of our lists for travel. So when we planned our wedding, we planned it specifically to coincide with the wine harvest in South America. (If you’re a wine-o and you know it, clap your hands!) So April was an easy choice. Before we went on our honeymoon, we did our research and made sure we hit up the top restaurants. So begins the story of Boragó… a progressive restaurant in Santiago, Chile that collects its ingredients only from a 150 km radius of the restaurant.

I have been a news junkie since I was a child, probably because we only had one TV with rabbit ears. Every night after supper, I sat with my dad and watched the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

The earliest memories I have of news stories are about Watergate, Patty Hearst and Princess Grace. I remember the debates and controversy about the first two, but the stories about Princess Grace were  just enchanting. She gave hope to little girls and women of all ages that you could grow up as a normal girl in Pennsylvania, move to Hollywood, become a movie star and marry a Prince.

People who love barbecue really love barbecue, and will go to great lengths to find the perfect ribs. I’m one of those, so I was thrilled to be invited to judge The Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-Off in Sparks, Nevada.

For die-hard barbecue lovers and novices alike, this kind of cook-off is a slice of pork heaven.

Instead of driving around the country to sample regional styles of barbecue, all I had to do was take a three-block stroll down Victorian Avenue in front of the Nugget for some of the best ribs in the country.

Pit masters competed from all over the country, cooking up slab after slab of pork ribs in pick up-sized smokers and finishing them off on 10-foot-long wood-fired grills. Some hailed from legendary barbecue states like Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas. But many, many others came from states that folks rarely associate with this style of cooking—we’re talking all the way from California to Minnesota, Pennsylvania and, yes, even New Jersey.

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The tremors began on the couch.

Shannon and I were leisurely thumbing our way through an Hawaiian tour book, making lists of potential activities for the trip we had just booked.

“Swimming with dolphins sounds like fun.”  We wrote it down.

“Let’s go to the volcano!” More notes.

“How about skydiving?”

Palpitations.

Dry mouth.

Quaking.

I clasped my hands together so that he would not see them shake violently.

“Sure.” I replied, nodding robotically.  “Sure.  Sure.”

“You okay honey?  You look a little pale.”  Shannon got up to get me a glass of water and I tried to calm myself down.

I think skydiving is one of those things that everyone considers for at least a moment or two.  It’s a thrill that you might feel 100% capable of or interested in when you’re sitting, say, at a bar or a restaurant in the middle of New York City in the dark depth of winter.  But here it was on the table for real.