Nights on road: 46
Miles driven (approx): 9,900
Maximum altitude (ft): 10,600
Maximum depth (ft): 1,120
Pictures snapped: 867
Hot girls cuddled with: 2
Distinct cities slept in: 29
Distinct states and provinces passed through: 24
Distinct countries visited: 3, counting the West Coast
Cars ridden in: 7
Mechanical breakdowns overcome: 0
Emotional breakdowns overcome: a few
Cats petted: 7
Birds hoisted: 6
Foxes bought: 1
Hotels stayed at: 15
Bank account impact: none of your business
iPod usage (hrs, approx): 100
Audiobooks consumed: 4
Blog entries through July: 102
Word count through July: 55,536
Cost of a book self-published through Lulu.com: $5.76
Old friends seen: 14
New friends made: 11
Cities I can see myself living in: 6
Cities I would never go back to: 0
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Nagareru mama, sekai wo hashiru
I'm ho-ome!
And it's an extraordinarily complex feeling. One of the most textured I've experienced. It doesn't quite fit into the rubric of happy or sad, relieved or disappointed, though all of those are facets of the feeling. A few things I want to write down before I shower, because showers are second only to good nights' sleeps in tempering our emotions, and I don't want to temper this one before I record it.
I'm relieved, of course. I've lived in this house all my life; I grew up in the room where I'm typing this post. This is not a hotel or someone else's house. I don't have to set up my laptop and fiddle with wireless networks. I don't have to find out whether the water is potable. I don't have to appraise the bathtub or curtains for adequacy. I don't have to fold out a bed or toss out the sleeping bag, nor test the mattress to see if it's safe to fall onto. I don't have to find an unobtrusive corner to empty my pockets on. I don't have to figure out where "gratitude" lies on the continuum from passive to active with respect to my current host. (Well, maybe a little.) The space I'm in is made for me to live in, and that is a relief.
I'm baffled, because although I spent forty-six nights on the road -- which felt like twice as long, three times, to the point where I can hardly remember what I was doing the last time I was in Fort Myers and look around my room with perplexity at what all these things are doing here -- the memory of the journey is already fading away like a dream. This old familiar place, so dense with memories itself, is drawing me back into that life and away from this one. Could it really have happened? Can I really have driven from here to Vancouver and back? It seems more likely I made it all up and spent the last forty-six nights zoning out on the Internet like usual. And with that thought comes a sense of great loss which I hope washes away in the shower, because it's so important to me not to forget what I did and all it meant.
I'm disgruntled, because my parents are both exhausted and couldn't give me the king's welcome that on some level I wanted. Mom is recovering from acute appendicitis and the ensuing surgery; she just got home from the hospital yesterday and is hardly walking, much less jumping up and down with excitement. Dad has been doing all the legwork involved in ferrying Mom and Grandma (who developed a carcinoma on her nose) to and from various doctors and doing all the chores that the ladies couldn't attend to, all on a bum foot with a six-month case of tendinitis and an artificial hip that needs replacing. For them, my being home is one more in a series of stressful events; they took it pretty much in stride, because they didn't have the energy to do anything else. And the whole place feels somehow bleached, like it was left in the sun too long and faded away into dotage while I was gone. I'm not sure the person I was yesterday fits into the place I'm in today. See also: Heraclitus, river of.
And perhaps above all I'm wondering where my closure is. You would think that finishing a journey would leave you with a sense of accomplishment, a tome to close and file in your mind's library. But no, I still feel like I might have to leave for another town tomorrow. Maybe it's just force of habit at this point, thinking "where next?" and "what now?" as I have most nights for the last month and a half. But I have the sinking feeling that it's not that: that I'm not feeling closure because I haven't left the trip closed. The roads may have come full circle, but the journey is not over and never will be until, perhaps, I die or go mad. There is so much left to do. I have an appointment with my shrink tomorrow; I need to get Blackbird's oil changed; my suitcases need unpacking; I need to call about our stove being broken; and I have a list of people banging down my door for tutoring now that I'm back in town, which will lead to further journeys, these down roads I've already wandered and am not really looking forward to treading yet again. I'm coming to the conclusion that no matter how many times one asks "Am I done yet?", the answer is always "No." Sometimes I'm in the mood to find that beautiful.
And it's an extraordinarily complex feeling. One of the most textured I've experienced. It doesn't quite fit into the rubric of happy or sad, relieved or disappointed, though all of those are facets of the feeling. A few things I want to write down before I shower, because showers are second only to good nights' sleeps in tempering our emotions, and I don't want to temper this one before I record it.
I'm relieved, of course. I've lived in this house all my life; I grew up in the room where I'm typing this post. This is not a hotel or someone else's house. I don't have to set up my laptop and fiddle with wireless networks. I don't have to find out whether the water is potable. I don't have to appraise the bathtub or curtains for adequacy. I don't have to fold out a bed or toss out the sleeping bag, nor test the mattress to see if it's safe to fall onto. I don't have to find an unobtrusive corner to empty my pockets on. I don't have to figure out where "gratitude" lies on the continuum from passive to active with respect to my current host. (Well, maybe a little.) The space I'm in is made for me to live in, and that is a relief.
I'm baffled, because although I spent forty-six nights on the road -- which felt like twice as long, three times, to the point where I can hardly remember what I was doing the last time I was in Fort Myers and look around my room with perplexity at what all these things are doing here -- the memory of the journey is already fading away like a dream. This old familiar place, so dense with memories itself, is drawing me back into that life and away from this one. Could it really have happened? Can I really have driven from here to Vancouver and back? It seems more likely I made it all up and spent the last forty-six nights zoning out on the Internet like usual. And with that thought comes a sense of great loss which I hope washes away in the shower, because it's so important to me not to forget what I did and all it meant.
I'm disgruntled, because my parents are both exhausted and couldn't give me the king's welcome that on some level I wanted. Mom is recovering from acute appendicitis and the ensuing surgery; she just got home from the hospital yesterday and is hardly walking, much less jumping up and down with excitement. Dad has been doing all the legwork involved in ferrying Mom and Grandma (who developed a carcinoma on her nose) to and from various doctors and doing all the chores that the ladies couldn't attend to, all on a bum foot with a six-month case of tendinitis and an artificial hip that needs replacing. For them, my being home is one more in a series of stressful events; they took it pretty much in stride, because they didn't have the energy to do anything else. And the whole place feels somehow bleached, like it was left in the sun too long and faded away into dotage while I was gone. I'm not sure the person I was yesterday fits into the place I'm in today. See also: Heraclitus, river of.
And perhaps above all I'm wondering where my closure is. You would think that finishing a journey would leave you with a sense of accomplishment, a tome to close and file in your mind's library. But no, I still feel like I might have to leave for another town tomorrow. Maybe it's just force of habit at this point, thinking "where next?" and "what now?" as I have most nights for the last month and a half. But I have the sinking feeling that it's not that: that I'm not feeling closure because I haven't left the trip closed. The roads may have come full circle, but the journey is not over and never will be until, perhaps, I die or go mad. There is so much left to do. I have an appointment with my shrink tomorrow; I need to get Blackbird's oil changed; my suitcases need unpacking; I need to call about our stove being broken; and I have a list of people banging down my door for tutoring now that I'm back in town, which will lead to further journeys, these down roads I've already wandered and am not really looking forward to treading yet again. I'm coming to the conclusion that no matter how many times one asks "Am I done yet?", the answer is always "No." Sometimes I'm in the mood to find that beautiful.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
A last hurrah
My drive today took me back to Eustis, north of Orlando. For only the second time this trip, I revisited a town -- the first was Seattle -- and for the second time I spent the evening hanging out with Alex (my Floridian friend from the Utena forum, who again is not to be confused with my brother Alex in Charlotte, my college friend Alexis in Seattle, or my new friend Aleksa in Chicago).
The drive, as so often happens, was not very interesting. It was marked by my final admission of defeat in the struggle to keep Zhuge Liang attached to the dashboard. (For those of you who read only periodically, Zhuge Liang is my GPS; I am not keeping an actual Chinese tactician attached to my dashboard. Or anything else, for that matter, but I'm getting to that.) The sticky disc the GPS came with gave out way back at Lake Tahoe. I'd been using double-sided tape to keep it mounted, replacing the tape periodically as the sun's heat melted the adhesive, but as both the GPS and the dash became increasingly marked up, the tape became less and less useful. Finally, I believe in Indianapolis, I decided to try Velcro. This turned out not to be such a great idea; the Velcro did not stick any better than the tape had, but its residue is much harder to remove. So with only a couple days to go, I threw up my hands and have been riding with Zhuge Liang perched in the front seat with my foxes. Sometimes you have to know when to say when.
Anyway, as I was trying to say, interstate driving is boring, especially in the South, where the road is flanked by generic trees and you can tell this is not an actual forest: you're not seeing landscape, just landscaping. So I listened to some NPR, cued up my favorite traveling songs, and sang along to lunch in Jacksonville and at last to Alex's house in Eustis. Here, after other nocturnal activities -- the 1984 edition of Trivial Pursuit at Olivia's Cafe (where it turns out Edgar Cayce is the right answer to every question), dinner at the Mason Jar, and watching Perfect Blue, to name a few -- we went out on Alex's porch to look for lacewings. We didn't find any, but we did discover the praying mantis. I mean that in the same sense that Columbus discovered America -- it may not have been new to other people, but it was new to him -- and the emotional content was the same as if we had never known such a thing existed. We oohed and aahed as she showed off her spindly, frightening arms as if posing for a textbook photo (which Alex's mother indeed tried to take). Eventually she marched off into the bushes, wagging her butt at us, leaving us to look instead for the large toads and tree frogs that densely populate Alex's yard and, apparently, her grill.
Tomorrow the two of us will drive into Orlando to meet Andrea, another forum friend. We'll tour some gardens and go to some kind of tea and coffee market that Andrea says is brilliant, and then, at around 3:00 in the afternoon, I will get in the car one last time and point it towards home. Tonight's is my 100th post to Lover's Lanes. In the spirit of adventure and shooting for beyond the horizon, my post from home concluding this long journey will be #101!
The drive, as so often happens, was not very interesting. It was marked by my final admission of defeat in the struggle to keep Zhuge Liang attached to the dashboard. (For those of you who read only periodically, Zhuge Liang is my GPS; I am not keeping an actual Chinese tactician attached to my dashboard. Or anything else, for that matter, but I'm getting to that.) The sticky disc the GPS came with gave out way back at Lake Tahoe. I'd been using double-sided tape to keep it mounted, replacing the tape periodically as the sun's heat melted the adhesive, but as both the GPS and the dash became increasingly marked up, the tape became less and less useful. Finally, I believe in Indianapolis, I decided to try Velcro. This turned out not to be such a great idea; the Velcro did not stick any better than the tape had, but its residue is much harder to remove. So with only a couple days to go, I threw up my hands and have been riding with Zhuge Liang perched in the front seat with my foxes. Sometimes you have to know when to say when.
Anyway, as I was trying to say, interstate driving is boring, especially in the South, where the road is flanked by generic trees and you can tell this is not an actual forest: you're not seeing landscape, just landscaping. So I listened to some NPR, cued up my favorite traveling songs, and sang along to lunch in Jacksonville and at last to Alex's house in Eustis. Here, after other nocturnal activities -- the 1984 edition of Trivial Pursuit at Olivia's Cafe (where it turns out Edgar Cayce is the right answer to every question), dinner at the Mason Jar, and watching Perfect Blue, to name a few -- we went out on Alex's porch to look for lacewings. We didn't find any, but we did discover the praying mantis. I mean that in the same sense that Columbus discovered America -- it may not have been new to other people, but it was new to him -- and the emotional content was the same as if we had never known such a thing existed. We oohed and aahed as she showed off her spindly, frightening arms as if posing for a textbook photo (which Alex's mother indeed tried to take). Eventually she marched off into the bushes, wagging her butt at us, leaving us to look instead for the large toads and tree frogs that densely populate Alex's yard and, apparently, her grill.
Tomorrow the two of us will drive into Orlando to meet Andrea, another forum friend. We'll tour some gardens and go to some kind of tea and coffee market that Andrea says is brilliant, and then, at around 3:00 in the afternoon, I will get in the car one last time and point it towards home. Tonight's is my 100th post to Lover's Lanes. In the spirit of adventure and shooting for beyond the horizon, my post from home concluding this long journey will be #101!
Monday, July 27, 2009
Through the monsoon
Woke up, finished Haruhi, said goodbye to Alex -- who I hope very much to see again soon -- and left Charlotte for Savannah at about noon today. The drive was uneventful. I could not have guessed what was going to happen that evening.
I checked in at Savannah just after four and went exploring. I wanted to know how this town became famous for its beauty. I quickly found my own answer: it's the proliferation of Spanish moss hanging from every tree like Christmas streamers. Driving down a main boulevard is like taking a walk in the woods. After a stop at a used bookstore, I continued my sojourns with a trip east on US-80. You see, all this time I've been telling a fib. I've been calling this a coast-to-coast journey, and since I started on the Gulf Coast that is technically true, but that's not what people usually mean when they say "coast-to-coast." To really earn that title I had to see the Atlantic Ocean. I resolved that Savannah would be the place, and I chose right. To find the ocean I took the highway all the way out to Tybee Island, across bridges spanning the less solid parts of the swamp. Looking out over the railings of those bridges, I saw dark clouds gathering, and in the stormwrought half-twilight the bright grass and dark water clashed joyously. My heart beat faster.
My visit to the Tybee Island beach was quick and professional. I took pictures of the seagulls swarming a woman who was feeding them bread, then strode to the water to sample it. I can report that the Atlantic at Savannah is less salty than the Pacific at San Francisco and much less salty than the Great Salt Lake, and has a thinner consistency than either. These tasks done, my journey had spanned all the coasts. I turned around to go back to town...
...and ran smack into some Weather. In the hour I'd been gone, Savannah had begun taking what might loosely be called an urban bath, if you drop hairdryers into the bathtub a lot. I've driven through slightly worse rain on the interstates, but never through flash floods, and never through a storm so vicious and full of crackling electricity. The lightning was nonstop and deafening even from inside the car. One bolt struck a transformer on the opposite side of the road, which exploded like a shotgun and spat sparks into the air. My emergency flashers flaring a few feet into the evening, plumes of water overwhelming my tires and windshield, lightning crashing for moments on end into some unlucky tree not very far away, I thought: This is going to make a fantastic blog post.
If I asked you to guess what sort of restaurant I went to, you would be unable to match the truth for aptness. My eatery was the Pirates' House, a tavern which grew up around a shack built by James Oglethorpe's men in 1734 when Georgia was first colonized; by 1753 it was a functioning seafarers' inn. What I'm trying to say here is that this restaurant comes by its piracy motif legitimately, and that I am not the first to seek shelter from a storm within its walls. I chatted with the waitress (no, this is not usual weather for Savannah; yes, the cornbread is fantastic) and asked for the house specialty, fried chicken. The fried chicken was not only tender and delicious, but also -- bear with me, guys -- covered with a thick sauce of honey and pecans. I ate half a chicken as the thunder rattled the walls and nearby couples complained about the roof leaking.
By the time I had finished the storm had abated some, and the night had gone from invisible to pearly and luminous. Marveling at the astonishing light, I fought the storm one more time on my way back to the hotel. I believe I came all this way to be blinded by the sun's reflection in the Savannah pavement as it conquered the clouds, its inverse twin casting my shadow on the dashboard. And fuck me if, pulling into the Microtel at the end of this brief but eventful evening, I didn't see a double rainbow -- for the second time in my life, and the second time in the last two months -- arcing across the opalescent clouds, from one pot of gold to another.
I checked in at Savannah just after four and went exploring. I wanted to know how this town became famous for its beauty. I quickly found my own answer: it's the proliferation of Spanish moss hanging from every tree like Christmas streamers. Driving down a main boulevard is like taking a walk in the woods. After a stop at a used bookstore, I continued my sojourns with a trip east on US-80. You see, all this time I've been telling a fib. I've been calling this a coast-to-coast journey, and since I started on the Gulf Coast that is technically true, but that's not what people usually mean when they say "coast-to-coast." To really earn that title I had to see the Atlantic Ocean. I resolved that Savannah would be the place, and I chose right. To find the ocean I took the highway all the way out to Tybee Island, across bridges spanning the less solid parts of the swamp. Looking out over the railings of those bridges, I saw dark clouds gathering, and in the stormwrought half-twilight the bright grass and dark water clashed joyously. My heart beat faster.
My visit to the Tybee Island beach was quick and professional. I took pictures of the seagulls swarming a woman who was feeding them bread, then strode to the water to sample it. I can report that the Atlantic at Savannah is less salty than the Pacific at San Francisco and much less salty than the Great Salt Lake, and has a thinner consistency than either. These tasks done, my journey had spanned all the coasts. I turned around to go back to town...
...and ran smack into some Weather. In the hour I'd been gone, Savannah had begun taking what might loosely be called an urban bath, if you drop hairdryers into the bathtub a lot. I've driven through slightly worse rain on the interstates, but never through flash floods, and never through a storm so vicious and full of crackling electricity. The lightning was nonstop and deafening even from inside the car. One bolt struck a transformer on the opposite side of the road, which exploded like a shotgun and spat sparks into the air. My emergency flashers flaring a few feet into the evening, plumes of water overwhelming my tires and windshield, lightning crashing for moments on end into some unlucky tree not very far away, I thought: This is going to make a fantastic blog post.
If I asked you to guess what sort of restaurant I went to, you would be unable to match the truth for aptness. My eatery was the Pirates' House, a tavern which grew up around a shack built by James Oglethorpe's men in 1734 when Georgia was first colonized; by 1753 it was a functioning seafarers' inn. What I'm trying to say here is that this restaurant comes by its piracy motif legitimately, and that I am not the first to seek shelter from a storm within its walls. I chatted with the waitress (no, this is not usual weather for Savannah; yes, the cornbread is fantastic) and asked for the house specialty, fried chicken. The fried chicken was not only tender and delicious, but also -- bear with me, guys -- covered with a thick sauce of honey and pecans. I ate half a chicken as the thunder rattled the walls and nearby couples complained about the roof leaking.
By the time I had finished the storm had abated some, and the night had gone from invisible to pearly and luminous. Marveling at the astonishing light, I fought the storm one more time on my way back to the hotel. I believe I came all this way to be blinded by the sun's reflection in the Savannah pavement as it conquered the clouds, its inverse twin casting my shadow on the dashboard. And fuck me if, pulling into the Microtel at the end of this brief but eventful evening, I didn't see a double rainbow -- for the second time in my life, and the second time in the last two months -- arcing across the opalescent clouds, from one pot of gold to another.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Pics and it happened
Charlotte has been a nice, cozy dream. I've been holed up with Alex playing D&D and watching anime and doing other things that don't photograph well. So this seems like the moment for another photo post!
Among my first views of Yellowstone National Park!
Mule deer like this buck are everywhere in Yellowstone. This particular specimen was grazing right next to the visitors' center. Attention whore!
Ground squirrels!!! They're a lot like the normal kind, but without the tails. These two live near the petrified tree, which makes me wonder if they eat petrified acorns.
But what of sweeping Yellowstone geological panoramas, you ask? Well, this is a start! It's hard to capture scenic beauty, because I've come to the conclusion that "scenic" means "uninteractive and remote," but this is one of the better landscapes that came out of that expedition.
Caterpillars or worms of some sort, crawling all over the handrail of a boardwalk in west Yellowstone. The other tourists were all grossed the fuck out. I was just wondering what they metamorphose into.
BUFFALO! This bison came close enough to the pullout that I could have touched him. I didn't. He looks very sad in this picture, but in real life he looks like a decaying zombie bison.
Yellowstone is of course known for its thermal springs. Here's one of them, practically unmarked, beside the road.
And here is a more famous geothermal feature: Old Faithful in mid-eruption! I have a picture of the geyser at full mast, but it's on its side and this picture does a better job showing what the geyser actually looks like.
Last Yellowstone picture. See the horizontal line in the center of the photo? That's where incinerated forest ends and live forest begins. The transition is that stark. Controlled burns, I guess?
Obligatory Mount Rushmore photo! TR looks left out back there.
And on the way back from Mount Rushmore, I stopped at the Reptile Gardens, which host an impressive collection of gross creatures. These are death's-head cockroaches.
This snake's name has been lost because I was careless about snapping the nameplates, but isn't he pretty? Don't you just want to give him a big hug?
The Reptile Gardens had a bird exhibition, too. Action Wildlife Photographer makes his return in this startling picture of a bald eagle striving for liberty against its oppressive and probably British captor!
The Reptile Gardens cost rather a lot to run.
The Badlands were to my mind much more dramatic than Yellowstone, but they were equally hard to photograph. They're like a mountain range in miniature!
The Badlands are not at all uniform in height, shape, or composition. Every turnout offers a different view!
A pic from the Sioux Falls butterfly garden. These two were kind enough to let me get close. One butterfly landed on me and gave me a kiss!
And in other insectoid news, here is the sculpture that welcomes you to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. Made entirely out of scrap metal, this waspish monstrosity is a sight to see.
And here is the Forevertron itself! Towering over visitors in its steampunk glory and studded with strange machines and decrepit spiral staircases, it begs to be climbed on! But you're not allowed! >.<
A velociraptor menaces visitors to the dinosaur exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo in La Grange, outside Chicago. His head, arms, and tail move periodically to startle tourists. I can't imagine why these things needed to hunt in packs.
Aleksa was terrified and fascinated by the dinosaurs. She spent that walk clinging to me and cringing whenever an animatronic reptile looked at her the wrong way. But she enjoyed herself, and I did too, partly vicariously thanks to Aleksa!
Polar bear!!! Wait, polar bear? Yes, Brookfield has two polar bears. This one was one of the more active animals at the zoo; he showboated for us a little, lumbering around the front of his cage. His back is dyed green because of the chlorine in his wading pool. I have mixed feelings about that.
And at the other temperature extreme, camels! Two humps means these guys are Bactrian camels. I'm not sure whether you sit on a hump or straddle the space between them.
At Indiana University at Bloomington, the Lilly Library collection of rare books displays this lock of Sylvia Plath's hair alongside a couple poems she wrote. Who got a hold of a lock of Sylvia Plath's hair, why, and at what point did they decide it should be put on display for the edification of the public?
John James Jingleheimer Audubon's illustrated book of birds is as large as a toddler's mattress when opened, though because not many original copies remain I don't suggest you actually use it as such. Every week they turn the page, and this week was grackles!
The proper orientation of this photo of Ogle Lake, east of Bloomington, is left as an exercise to the reader.
And at last, here I am ensconced with Ruth and Robert in Indianapolis after a Haruhi Suzumiya marathon. I'm on the right. It's late in the evening and we're all a little tired, but an Utena forum member threatened to perform certain acts on us that don't bear repetition in a family blog if we didn't post pics, so here we are! Stay away from my butt!
I haven't taken many photos since Indianapolis, and I haven't uploaded the ones I have. I may get to make one more photo post before drawing this blog to a close. Tomorrow night, God willing, I'll be in Savannah, the next night in Orlando, and the following night... well, I'll be back in a place I've been away from for both too long and just the right amount of time.
Among my first views of Yellowstone National Park!
Mule deer like this buck are everywhere in Yellowstone. This particular specimen was grazing right next to the visitors' center. Attention whore!
Ground squirrels!!! They're a lot like the normal kind, but without the tails. These two live near the petrified tree, which makes me wonder if they eat petrified acorns.
But what of sweeping Yellowstone geological panoramas, you ask? Well, this is a start! It's hard to capture scenic beauty, because I've come to the conclusion that "scenic" means "uninteractive and remote," but this is one of the better landscapes that came out of that expedition.
Caterpillars or worms of some sort, crawling all over the handrail of a boardwalk in west Yellowstone. The other tourists were all grossed the fuck out. I was just wondering what they metamorphose into.
BUFFALO! This bison came close enough to the pullout that I could have touched him. I didn't. He looks very sad in this picture, but in real life he looks like a decaying zombie bison.
Yellowstone is of course known for its thermal springs. Here's one of them, practically unmarked, beside the road.
And here is a more famous geothermal feature: Old Faithful in mid-eruption! I have a picture of the geyser at full mast, but it's on its side and this picture does a better job showing what the geyser actually looks like.
Last Yellowstone picture. See the horizontal line in the center of the photo? That's where incinerated forest ends and live forest begins. The transition is that stark. Controlled burns, I guess?
Obligatory Mount Rushmore photo! TR looks left out back there.
And on the way back from Mount Rushmore, I stopped at the Reptile Gardens, which host an impressive collection of gross creatures. These are death's-head cockroaches.
This snake's name has been lost because I was careless about snapping the nameplates, but isn't he pretty? Don't you just want to give him a big hug?
The Reptile Gardens had a bird exhibition, too. Action Wildlife Photographer makes his return in this startling picture of a bald eagle striving for liberty against its oppressive and probably British captor!
The Reptile Gardens cost rather a lot to run.
The Badlands were to my mind much more dramatic than Yellowstone, but they were equally hard to photograph. They're like a mountain range in miniature!
The Badlands are not at all uniform in height, shape, or composition. Every turnout offers a different view!
A pic from the Sioux Falls butterfly garden. These two were kind enough to let me get close. One butterfly landed on me and gave me a kiss!
And in other insectoid news, here is the sculpture that welcomes you to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. Made entirely out of scrap metal, this waspish monstrosity is a sight to see.
And here is the Forevertron itself! Towering over visitors in its steampunk glory and studded with strange machines and decrepit spiral staircases, it begs to be climbed on! But you're not allowed! >.<
A velociraptor menaces visitors to the dinosaur exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo in La Grange, outside Chicago. His head, arms, and tail move periodically to startle tourists. I can't imagine why these things needed to hunt in packs.
Aleksa was terrified and fascinated by the dinosaurs. She spent that walk clinging to me and cringing whenever an animatronic reptile looked at her the wrong way. But she enjoyed herself, and I did too, partly vicariously thanks to Aleksa!
Polar bear!!! Wait, polar bear? Yes, Brookfield has two polar bears. This one was one of the more active animals at the zoo; he showboated for us a little, lumbering around the front of his cage. His back is dyed green because of the chlorine in his wading pool. I have mixed feelings about that.
And at the other temperature extreme, camels! Two humps means these guys are Bactrian camels. I'm not sure whether you sit on a hump or straddle the space between them.
At Indiana University at Bloomington, the Lilly Library collection of rare books displays this lock of Sylvia Plath's hair alongside a couple poems she wrote. Who got a hold of a lock of Sylvia Plath's hair, why, and at what point did they decide it should be put on display for the edification of the public?
John James Jingleheimer Audubon's illustrated book of birds is as large as a toddler's mattress when opened, though because not many original copies remain I don't suggest you actually use it as such. Every week they turn the page, and this week was grackles!
The proper orientation of this photo of Ogle Lake, east of Bloomington, is left as an exercise to the reader.
And at last, here I am ensconced with Ruth and Robert in Indianapolis after a Haruhi Suzumiya marathon. I'm on the right. It's late in the evening and we're all a little tired, but an Utena forum member threatened to perform certain acts on us that don't bear repetition in a family blog if we didn't post pics, so here we are! Stay away from my butt!
I haven't taken many photos since Indianapolis, and I haven't uploaded the ones I have. I may get to make one more photo post before drawing this blog to a close. Tomorrow night, God willing, I'll be in Savannah, the next night in Orlando, and the following night... well, I'll be back in a place I've been away from for both too long and just the right amount of time.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Winning the Charlottery
I've spent the last two nights with my brother Alex here in Charlotte -- not to be confused with my hostess Alex in Eustis, nor my hostess Alexis in Seattle -- and we have had multifarious Fun Thymes! Fortunately for the length of this entry, most of these Fun Thymes have been of a catching-up and sharing-cool-things nature that don't really need recapitulation here, except to say that I have infected Alex with the Haruhi Suzumiya meme I got from Ruth and Robert. I am an anime proliferation vector! But we've done other things, too. Most novel: rock climbing! I've never been rock climbing before, but on Wednesday I scaled a 25-foot wall and on Thursday a 30-foot wall at the National Whitewater Center. Guys, rock climbing is hard! My fingertips have muscles I didn't know about, and they hurt!
What struck me about rock climbing, which I think of as a dangerous sport, is how safe it is as practiced at the places I went. You can scale walls at four years old. It's all because of the belaying: a person or mechanism is gripping a rope run through a pulley at the top of the rock down to a secure (and package-flattering) harness strapped to your waist. If you fall off, which you will, the belayer controls the rate of your descent, and you land like a feather. For the same reason, you don't have to climb down, which would be perilous because you can't see what you're doing; once you've reached the top you just let go. As a result, what could be a terrifying activity is actually exhilarating, fun -- and very difficult for those of us who aren't especially flexible. Getting from one finger- or toehold to the next requires a certain amount of yoga and stern control of one's center of gravity. Otherwise, well, you get a free ride down the rope.
I also got to catch up with a college friend, Laura, who I haven't seen for five years over lunch this afternoon. She's living here in Charlotte working as a substitute teacher, having spent two years with Teach for America and another two in area high schools. But she's like me: education isn't a calling for her, not a career, just a job. Which is not to say she's not good at it!!! -- and anyone who works with inner-city middle schoolers has my respect -- but she and I are both holding out hope that we'll find something else out there. We also talked about creative writing; I shared a writing exercise I invented and Laura told me about a short-story she's writing and her problems coming to grips with how to write a monster convincingly. It was fun chatting like old times, though I was sorry I couldn't ask if she wanted to go to Edwardo's for dinner. I may get to see her again this evening, unless Alex and I end up playing D&D. And then there's a forum friend I'm hoping to link up with while I'm here! So much fun to have, so little time!
What struck me about rock climbing, which I think of as a dangerous sport, is how safe it is as practiced at the places I went. You can scale walls at four years old. It's all because of the belaying: a person or mechanism is gripping a rope run through a pulley at the top of the rock down to a secure (and package-flattering) harness strapped to your waist. If you fall off, which you will, the belayer controls the rate of your descent, and you land like a feather. For the same reason, you don't have to climb down, which would be perilous because you can't see what you're doing; once you've reached the top you just let go. As a result, what could be a terrifying activity is actually exhilarating, fun -- and very difficult for those of us who aren't especially flexible. Getting from one finger- or toehold to the next requires a certain amount of yoga and stern control of one's center of gravity. Otherwise, well, you get a free ride down the rope.
I also got to catch up with a college friend, Laura, who I haven't seen for five years over lunch this afternoon. She's living here in Charlotte working as a substitute teacher, having spent two years with Teach for America and another two in area high schools. But she's like me: education isn't a calling for her, not a career, just a job. Which is not to say she's not good at it!!! -- and anyone who works with inner-city middle schoolers has my respect -- but she and I are both holding out hope that we'll find something else out there. We also talked about creative writing; I shared a writing exercise I invented and Laura told me about a short-story she's writing and her problems coming to grips with how to write a monster convincingly. It was fun chatting like old times, though I was sorry I couldn't ask if she wanted to go to Edwardo's for dinner. I may get to see her again this evening, unless Alex and I end up playing D&D. And then there's a forum friend I'm hoping to link up with while I'm here! So much fun to have, so little time!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Bullet train
Another missed post means more bullet points!
- Indianapolis activity 1: puzzles at the Lilly Library! This library, which houses UI's rare manuscripts and such, had an exhibition on mechanical puzzles ranging from tangrams to Rubik's Cubes to twisted pieces of metal you had to figure out how to separate. I accidentally spent two hours there playing with the puzzles! Also there: a gigantic edition of Audubon's guide to birds. They turn the page every week. This week was grackles, which seemed appropriate for the blackbird theme of the trip.
- Indy activity 2: hiking in Brown County! The sign said "Ogle Lake," so I did.
- Indy activity 3: watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya with Robert and Ruth! I'd never seen the show before, and now I've seen the first five or six episodes (in broadcast order, not chronological; this is important). Now I too can participate in the fan-wankery over this show! It is a lot of fun, at least as far as this particular normal human being is concerned.
- Missing: cottonwood seeds. They'd been drifting across all the non-coastal interstates since Denver and I'd gotten to like them. Now I'm either too far east or outside of cottonwood seed season, and either way there's no more cotton drifting around. Also missing: Rene, Al, Aleksa, Ruth, and Robert. There's nothing like making new friends! -- and then having to drive away a couple days later. >.<
- Passed: a guy driving a beige car with a U.S. Marines bumper sticker. Thought: Hey, mister tan Marine man, play a song for me.
- Currently residing in: the Red Roof Inn in southern Knoxville, Tennessee. Entertainment: nature! Their Nature Center here has a parking lot eerily reminiscent of the Calusa Nature Center back home. Their trails, though, are more convoluted and easier to get lost in, which I did, to my delight! There was forest and rock and the Tennessee River and lots and LOTS of bright blue damselflies. Also attempted: McKay Used Books, a warehouse of a used bookstore that turned out to have the same isolating feel as Wal-Mart. I did not know a used bookstore could feel like that.
- Next stop: Charlotte!
- Indianapolis activity 1: puzzles at the Lilly Library! This library, which houses UI's rare manuscripts and such, had an exhibition on mechanical puzzles ranging from tangrams to Rubik's Cubes to twisted pieces of metal you had to figure out how to separate. I accidentally spent two hours there playing with the puzzles! Also there: a gigantic edition of Audubon's guide to birds. They turn the page every week. This week was grackles, which seemed appropriate for the blackbird theme of the trip.
- Indy activity 2: hiking in Brown County! The sign said "Ogle Lake," so I did.
- Indy activity 3: watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya with Robert and Ruth! I'd never seen the show before, and now I've seen the first five or six episodes (in broadcast order, not chronological; this is important). Now I too can participate in the fan-wankery over this show! It is a lot of fun, at least as far as this particular normal human being is concerned.
- Missing: cottonwood seeds. They'd been drifting across all the non-coastal interstates since Denver and I'd gotten to like them. Now I'm either too far east or outside of cottonwood seed season, and either way there's no more cotton drifting around. Also missing: Rene, Al, Aleksa, Ruth, and Robert. There's nothing like making new friends! -- and then having to drive away a couple days later. >.<
- Passed: a guy driving a beige car with a U.S. Marines bumper sticker. Thought: Hey, mister tan Marine man, play a song for me.
- Currently residing in: the Red Roof Inn in southern Knoxville, Tennessee. Entertainment: nature! Their Nature Center here has a parking lot eerily reminiscent of the Calusa Nature Center back home. Their trails, though, are more convoluted and easier to get lost in, which I did, to my delight! There was forest and rock and the Tennessee River and lots and LOTS of bright blue damselflies. Also attempted: McKay Used Books, a warehouse of a used bookstore that turned out to have the same isolating feel as Wal-Mart. I did not know a used bookstore could feel like that.
- Next stop: Charlotte!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
I woke up in a car
A "usual" day on this trip, if there is such a thing, is that I have a hotel on one end, a hotel or friend on the other, and some driving in between. Today was unusual in that I had friends on both ends! I spent this morning in Chicago helping Aleksa claim the last two Power Stars in Super Mario Galaxy; she has now unlocked Luigi and thinks I'm a video game deity (which, one gets the impression, is pretty high up there as deities go). But in order to have happy welcomings one first must have sad partings, and I said goodbye to Al, Rene, and Aleksa at around 10:30. As planned, I stopped at the Parthenon for lunch -- their slogan should be "nothing is ever as good as you remember it, except the Parthenon's saganaki" -- and then made for Indianapolis to stay with Ruth and Robert, aka Mylene and Paradox from the Utena forum.
I'd woken up early, at eight, to have time to play with Aleksa before leaving. (She slept in till 8:30 by accident, and yelled at her mom for not waking her up sooner.) As a result, on the way to Indy I encountered a problem: I kept nearly nodding off. That's no way to make a road trip, so I pulled over at a Mobil station and took a half-hour nap in the driver's seat. The reason this event was significant enough to mention in this space is that I'm pretty sure if I'd been making this drive a month ago, I'd have tried to soldier through the fatigue, thinking "well, I can't exactly pull over at a gas station and take a nap, can I?" It turns out that yes -- yes, I can -- and it feels good. I drove the rest of the way to Indianapolis full of energy and ready to meet two new friends!
And it turns out that Ruth and Robert are both swell people! Ruth's a public librarian, Robert a code monkey for the VA. They met on the Internet because of Sailor Moon, explored their shared geekeries on online forums, role-plays, and chat, and ended up going to school together at Purdue. They got married in 2003. This trip isn't about collecting love stories anymore, but if it were, this one would be a heartwarming tale about love persevering across distances (Robert is Texan, Ruth Indiananinian) and through economic hardship.
Yes, they're a sweet couple. They're also both wonderfully nerdy, so we spent much of the evening, including my first-ever dinner at a Japanese hibachi place rather similar to having a Mongolian barbecue right at your table, chatting easily about anime and video games and the Internet. You'd be surprised watching us to learn we were meeting for the first time! Shared subculture is a great social loosener, and of course it helps that we've been reading each other's forum posts for a couple years. In fact, things have gone well enough that I'm staying another night! I'll spend tomorrow exploring upstate Indiana -- there's a puzzle exhibition at a library in Bloomington, conveniently near some hiking trails that Robert and Ruth assure me are beautiful -- and then, time permitting, make the obligatory visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There's a race this weekend, so it might be an interesting time to visit! Unfortunately, I'll be making these trips alone, since my hosts have this "work" shit they have to do, but we'll be able to spend the evening together!
To avoid road naps tomorrow I'll go abed now. Until the morrow!
I'd woken up early, at eight, to have time to play with Aleksa before leaving. (She slept in till 8:30 by accident, and yelled at her mom for not waking her up sooner.) As a result, on the way to Indy I encountered a problem: I kept nearly nodding off. That's no way to make a road trip, so I pulled over at a Mobil station and took a half-hour nap in the driver's seat. The reason this event was significant enough to mention in this space is that I'm pretty sure if I'd been making this drive a month ago, I'd have tried to soldier through the fatigue, thinking "well, I can't exactly pull over at a gas station and take a nap, can I?" It turns out that yes -- yes, I can -- and it feels good. I drove the rest of the way to Indianapolis full of energy and ready to meet two new friends!
And it turns out that Ruth and Robert are both swell people! Ruth's a public librarian, Robert a code monkey for the VA. They met on the Internet because of Sailor Moon, explored their shared geekeries on online forums, role-plays, and chat, and ended up going to school together at Purdue. They got married in 2003. This trip isn't about collecting love stories anymore, but if it were, this one would be a heartwarming tale about love persevering across distances (Robert is Texan, Ruth Indiananinian) and through economic hardship.
Yes, they're a sweet couple. They're also both wonderfully nerdy, so we spent much of the evening, including my first-ever dinner at a Japanese hibachi place rather similar to having a Mongolian barbecue right at your table, chatting easily about anime and video games and the Internet. You'd be surprised watching us to learn we were meeting for the first time! Shared subculture is a great social loosener, and of course it helps that we've been reading each other's forum posts for a couple years. In fact, things have gone well enough that I'm staying another night! I'll spend tomorrow exploring upstate Indiana -- there's a puzzle exhibition at a library in Bloomington, conveniently near some hiking trails that Robert and Ruth assure me are beautiful -- and then, time permitting, make the obligatory visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There's a race this weekend, so it might be an interesting time to visit! Unfortunately, I'll be making these trips alone, since my hosts have this "work" shit they have to do, but we'll be able to spend the evening together!
To avoid road naps tomorrow I'll go abed now. Until the morrow!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Most true of all the true, say we
I missed an update yesterday for the first time in -- well, a while! That's because I'm having a blast in Chicago. This is the city where I went to college with many of the friends I've been staying with, including Wiley in Aurora, Sushu and Jono (the bride and groom) in San Francisco, and Alexis in Seattle. Here in Chicago, I'm staying with Jono's family: his mother and father Rene [sic] and Al, and his nine-year-old sister Aleksa. They are fantastic hosts! Aleksa and I have been playing a lot of Super Mario Galaxy. She got 100 stars by herself and we're trying to crack the last 20 before I leave tomorrow. These are some of the hardest stars in the game, which means they're stars I've attempted dozens of times at home, which in turn means that I've gotten disproportionately good at them; Aleksa is very deeply impressed and says she wishes I could stay here forever. :D Rene and Al have also been extremely welcoming, and took me to two fine eateries for dinner yesterday and today.
All this couldn't be better suited for the breather I needed Chicago to be. Video games and nice meals are a little taste of home here in the Windy City. I've managed to get out of the house as well, though: today I drove down to the university, where I took a deeply nostalgic walking tour of campus. I have memories attached to almost all of those buildings, and I remembered a few stories I'd forgotten just by walking by the places where they happened. There's also some new alongside the old: the street-crossing lights are the countdown kind now, and oh, right, there's a frigging enormous new dorm being built right behind my old digs in Burton-Judson. Everything was closed, of course, this being a Saturday in summer, but the feeling you get walking around your old college, a mix of nostalgia and mastery and regret, is powerful, an aesthetic experience in itself.
And then I went to Edwardo's, my once and future favorite pizzeria of all time anywhere ever. They tried to serve me a "mini-pizza," since I was alone, but I know their wiles: the mini-pizza is prefabricated and not half as good as a freshly baked pie. I got the delectable, made-from-scratch deep dish and downed it while thinking of all the times I'd been to that restaurant before, who I was with and what I was literally and figuratively carrying.
When I got back to the house, Rene took Aleksa and me to the Brookfield Zoo! It was full of the exotic fauna that most Americans only get to see in zoos. The giraffes were especially funny: the way one of them spread his front legs and stooped to get water, the way another spent ten minutes licking a tree trunk with her blue tongue. I also loved the monkey house, which is a spacious series of chambers that create a huge three-dimensional habitat for its simian inhabitants. Rene and Aleksa wouldn't go in with me because it smelled bad. In fact, it smelled like monkeys, that's all. My favorite exhibit in the monkey house was a gap in the wall inscribed with the text "Look through here to see primates behaving socially;" the gap looked back on the tourist path, and through it you could see all the zoo visitors chatting and gawking.
Social behavior, after a week of near-solitude, has been a fun challenge for me as well! It's complicated by the fact that both Al and Aleksa are hard of hearing; Aleksa in fact was born with a vestigial right ear with no canal and needs an unusual hearing aid for her left. Seating at restaurants and walking on paths always has to take into account who can hear out of which ear(s). Combine that with my own challenges understanding conversation, particularly in noisy and crowded places like zoos and restaurants, and you have all you need for some memorable interactions!
But these two halcyon nights in recollective and unseasonably cool Chicago are at an end with tonight's stay. Tomorrow I'll rustle up a lunch of flaming saganaki at the restaurant that invented it, another of my favorites from college, then make the drive to Indianapolis to stay with Ruth and Robert: two of my peeps from the Utena forum who I know only through their posts. Where I'll stay after that is still an open question; will I dart to Lexington to make Charlotte in two days, or take my time through Louisville and Knoxville? Either way, I'm slowly but surely heading southeast, back to where I began...
All this couldn't be better suited for the breather I needed Chicago to be. Video games and nice meals are a little taste of home here in the Windy City. I've managed to get out of the house as well, though: today I drove down to the university, where I took a deeply nostalgic walking tour of campus. I have memories attached to almost all of those buildings, and I remembered a few stories I'd forgotten just by walking by the places where they happened. There's also some new alongside the old: the street-crossing lights are the countdown kind now, and oh, right, there's a frigging enormous new dorm being built right behind my old digs in Burton-Judson. Everything was closed, of course, this being a Saturday in summer, but the feeling you get walking around your old college, a mix of nostalgia and mastery and regret, is powerful, an aesthetic experience in itself.
And then I went to Edwardo's, my once and future favorite pizzeria of all time anywhere ever. They tried to serve me a "mini-pizza," since I was alone, but I know their wiles: the mini-pizza is prefabricated and not half as good as a freshly baked pie. I got the delectable, made-from-scratch deep dish and downed it while thinking of all the times I'd been to that restaurant before, who I was with and what I was literally and figuratively carrying.
When I got back to the house, Rene took Aleksa and me to the Brookfield Zoo! It was full of the exotic fauna that most Americans only get to see in zoos. The giraffes were especially funny: the way one of them spread his front legs and stooped to get water, the way another spent ten minutes licking a tree trunk with her blue tongue. I also loved the monkey house, which is a spacious series of chambers that create a huge three-dimensional habitat for its simian inhabitants. Rene and Aleksa wouldn't go in with me because it smelled bad. In fact, it smelled like monkeys, that's all. My favorite exhibit in the monkey house was a gap in the wall inscribed with the text "Look through here to see primates behaving socially;" the gap looked back on the tourist path, and through it you could see all the zoo visitors chatting and gawking.
Social behavior, after a week of near-solitude, has been a fun challenge for me as well! It's complicated by the fact that both Al and Aleksa are hard of hearing; Aleksa in fact was born with a vestigial right ear with no canal and needs an unusual hearing aid for her left. Seating at restaurants and walking on paths always has to take into account who can hear out of which ear(s). Combine that with my own challenges understanding conversation, particularly in noisy and crowded places like zoos and restaurants, and you have all you need for some memorable interactions!
But these two halcyon nights in recollective and unseasonably cool Chicago are at an end with tonight's stay. Tomorrow I'll rustle up a lunch of flaming saganaki at the restaurant that invented it, another of my favorites from college, then make the drive to Indianapolis to stay with Ruth and Robert: two of my peeps from the Utena forum who I know only through their posts. Where I'll stay after that is still an open question; will I dart to Lexington to make Charlotte in two days, or take my time through Louisville and Knoxville? Either way, I'm slowly but surely heading southeast, back to where I began...
Friday, July 17, 2009
Various forms of steam
As of this day, I have achieved the Grand Isthmic Bifecta: I have visited every major United States city that is built on an isthmus! That is, both Seattle and Madison! Congratulations to me!
Today I rode on a train as a result of asking a question I already knew the answer to. Here is how that happened. Last night I was looking for something to do between St. Paul and Madison, and in my Googling I came across something called Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. In an alternate universe, the Forevertron is a device designed to propel Dr. Evermor [sic] into space on magnetic lightning bolts or something; I didn't quite follow that part. In this universe, the Forevertron is the world's largest sculpture made entirely out of scrap metal. It looks awesome. It is every steampunk novel or RPG you have ever seen, done, or eaten, like Jules Verne and Ludwig von Beethoven collaborated on a lunar rover. It is also surrounded by other scrap metal sculptures, from gigantic to tiny, of insects and birds and little tiny protestors and such. These sculptures are clearly the life's work of the couple responsible for them, and there will be ample pics eventually.
But that's not what I was trying to tell you about. I was trying to tell you about this train ride. The thing about the Forevertron is that it's located in a junkyard with no physical address in the deep rural wilds of North Freedom, Wisconsin. Nonetheless, I had managed to pull directions off Google Maps and had written them down. You'd think I'd have been happy with that, but when I stopped for lunch on my way to North Freedom I happened to pass a tourist bureau, and on a whim I decided to stop in and ask if they knew how to get to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. This question had gotten me weird looks at the restaurant, and it got me a weird look at the tourist bureau, too. The lady working there had never heard of it but was otherwise very helpful, and I mean that sincerely; once she realized I hadn't just made up a tourist spot she was all over Google and Wikipedia trying to get me an address. I stopped her, since I'd done the same already to no effect, but not before she told me that North Freedom is really known for its railroad museum with hour-long train rides on refurbished cars from the 1910s. A train ride, you say?!? I rushed to North Freedom and arrived just in time for the last railroad expedition of the day. It was fun letting the engineer drive for a change! I also learned that -- at least in those days, no idea if it's still true -- locomotives have both forward and reverse gears. So in theory the locomotive could have pulled us forwards to the quartzite gravel quarry that was our endpoint, then pushed us backwards to bring us back to our starting place. But that's not how you actually do it, because then the engineer couldn't see where he was going on the return trip. Instead, the engineer de-couples the locomotive from the rest of the train, runs the locomotive alone backwards along a set of parallel tracks, passing the cars, then runs it forward on the original track and couples it to the caboose. Then he pulls the cars back to the starting point in reverse gear. At no point does the locomotive make a U-turn -- you can't do that on a train track; the locomotive faces forward the entire trip, even though it's pulling backward for half of it. It's designed so that the engineer has line of sight in the direction of motion either way. This is probably something some of you knew when you were six, but for this suburban boy it was a revelation. So that's how they do it!
Not much to speak of this evening. Had a quiet dinner and ice cream at the University of Madison campus; still need to plot my evil deeds tomorrow morning and hopefully see something else that makes Madison cool before I go join Jono's parents for Thai food and subsequent hospitality in La Grange, a surburb of Chicago. (Spelling matters. If you type in Lagrange, Google Maps will send you upstate.) Sadly, the Forevertron trip left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, because I talked to a woman there, a local tourist if there is such a thing, who perceived that I was in a hurry, and I am indeed worried about being in too much of a hurry. I mean, just one day in the Twin Cities? You could spend a week there and just scratch the surface. I tell myself you pass through a lot of towns on a cross-country road trip and (without a ton of time and money) you can't delve into all of them. The trip's already taken longer than I expected it to. But in some sense I am hurrying, and I don't like that, because who knows how long it will be until I'm in North Freedom, Wisconsin again, you know? It's like speed dating. You're just getting to know the town, and then whoosh, it's gone, time for the next one. Fortunately, Chicago is a city that I already know at least a little bit from my four years in college there. I know some of the good restaurants and intend to reacquaint myself with them, while also enjoying the companionship of semi-familiar faces for the first time since Seattle. Two nights in a city I already sort of know means less hurrying. Onward, upward, and southeastward -- but not too quickly!
Today I rode on a train as a result of asking a question I already knew the answer to. Here is how that happened. Last night I was looking for something to do between St. Paul and Madison, and in my Googling I came across something called Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. In an alternate universe, the Forevertron is a device designed to propel Dr. Evermor [sic] into space on magnetic lightning bolts or something; I didn't quite follow that part. In this universe, the Forevertron is the world's largest sculpture made entirely out of scrap metal. It looks awesome. It is every steampunk novel or RPG you have ever seen, done, or eaten, like Jules Verne and Ludwig von Beethoven collaborated on a lunar rover. It is also surrounded by other scrap metal sculptures, from gigantic to tiny, of insects and birds and little tiny protestors and such. These sculptures are clearly the life's work of the couple responsible for them, and there will be ample pics eventually.
But that's not what I was trying to tell you about. I was trying to tell you about this train ride. The thing about the Forevertron is that it's located in a junkyard with no physical address in the deep rural wilds of North Freedom, Wisconsin. Nonetheless, I had managed to pull directions off Google Maps and had written them down. You'd think I'd have been happy with that, but when I stopped for lunch on my way to North Freedom I happened to pass a tourist bureau, and on a whim I decided to stop in and ask if they knew how to get to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. This question had gotten me weird looks at the restaurant, and it got me a weird look at the tourist bureau, too. The lady working there had never heard of it but was otherwise very helpful, and I mean that sincerely; once she realized I hadn't just made up a tourist spot she was all over Google and Wikipedia trying to get me an address. I stopped her, since I'd done the same already to no effect, but not before she told me that North Freedom is really known for its railroad museum with hour-long train rides on refurbished cars from the 1910s. A train ride, you say?!? I rushed to North Freedom and arrived just in time for the last railroad expedition of the day. It was fun letting the engineer drive for a change! I also learned that -- at least in those days, no idea if it's still true -- locomotives have both forward and reverse gears. So in theory the locomotive could have pulled us forwards to the quartzite gravel quarry that was our endpoint, then pushed us backwards to bring us back to our starting place. But that's not how you actually do it, because then the engineer couldn't see where he was going on the return trip. Instead, the engineer de-couples the locomotive from the rest of the train, runs the locomotive alone backwards along a set of parallel tracks, passing the cars, then runs it forward on the original track and couples it to the caboose. Then he pulls the cars back to the starting point in reverse gear. At no point does the locomotive make a U-turn -- you can't do that on a train track; the locomotive faces forward the entire trip, even though it's pulling backward for half of it. It's designed so that the engineer has line of sight in the direction of motion either way. This is probably something some of you knew when you were six, but for this suburban boy it was a revelation. So that's how they do it!
Not much to speak of this evening. Had a quiet dinner and ice cream at the University of Madison campus; still need to plot my evil deeds tomorrow morning and hopefully see something else that makes Madison cool before I go join Jono's parents for Thai food and subsequent hospitality in La Grange, a surburb of Chicago. (Spelling matters. If you type in Lagrange, Google Maps will send you upstate.) Sadly, the Forevertron trip left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, because I talked to a woman there, a local tourist if there is such a thing, who perceived that I was in a hurry, and I am indeed worried about being in too much of a hurry. I mean, just one day in the Twin Cities? You could spend a week there and just scratch the surface. I tell myself you pass through a lot of towns on a cross-country road trip and (without a ton of time and money) you can't delve into all of them. The trip's already taken longer than I expected it to. But in some sense I am hurrying, and I don't like that, because who knows how long it will be until I'm in North Freedom, Wisconsin again, you know? It's like speed dating. You're just getting to know the town, and then whoosh, it's gone, time for the next one. Fortunately, Chicago is a city that I already know at least a little bit from my four years in college there. I know some of the good restaurants and intend to reacquaint myself with them, while also enjoying the companionship of semi-familiar faces for the first time since Seattle. Two nights in a city I already sort of know means less hurrying. Onward, upward, and southeastward -- but not too quickly!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Emo but in a good way
Bullet points today because of time management issues in connection with the slowth of Holiday Inn's Internet combined with my own slate of activities!
- I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota tonight. The drive from Sioux Falls was not arduous and doesn't want to stick in my memory. Driving is like dreaming. Sometimes you think of neat creative ideas, or you notice something and say "I want to remember that," but when you wake up it's gone. I should make more careful use of Kino for moments like that.
- Before leaving Sioux Falls I visited their butterfly garden! Hundreds of tropical butterflies flapping everywhere, absolutely beautiful, like flying flowers. They only live a couple of weeks, so the greenhouse is constantly importing more of them. My camera's batteries gave out, so I didn't get as many pictures as I might have liked, but fortunately I brought a cigarette lighter/AC adapter and charged the camera in the car.
- Before checking in at St. Paul I drove through Minneapolis. Gorgeous skyline! I stopped in at the Smitten Kitten, a somewhat netfamous adult toy store notable for their friendliness, professionalism, and sponsorship of the Sex Is Fun podcast. It's nice to be planning a visit to a city and have an "aha!" moment when you remember a place there that you never expected to be able to actually visit. The store's much smaller than I imagined, but the staff lived up to their reputation! And it turned out I even got 10% off the book I bought by mentioning the podcast.
- Later I returned to Minneapolis to the Acme Comedy Club for an hour and a half of fun times. This was at my brother's suggestion; he said he vaguely remembered going to a comedy club in Minneapolis, and that sounded like a fantastic idea to me. Some gems of jokes in there. Their headliner was very much an SMBC-style comedian, for those who know what SMBC is; basically, very good at saying something mundane to rather funny, and then saying something else that casts what he previously said in a completely new and utterly hilarious light. Simple example: "I hit a blue jay with my car yesterday. [Cue "awww" from audience.] Yeah, it's very sad. He may never play baseball again." His name was Emo Philips, and apparently I should have heard of him; he could have been George Carlin. Just now in the process of writing I Wikied him and was shocked to discover that he is a well-known comedian who actually is 53, as he claimed; he looked to me like a very talented thirty-year-old in a gray wig who was using a "slightly senile old man" persona as part of his schtick. Actually, he said he'd let his hair go gray for a movie. He wanted to get in cheaper.
Well, past my bedtime! Tomorrow I expect to be in Madison, Wisconsin; I was hoping to stay with my cousin Susan, but sadly on this day of all days she's going to be in Chicago, where I'm going to be the following night. D'oh! So Days Inn it is...
- I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota tonight. The drive from Sioux Falls was not arduous and doesn't want to stick in my memory. Driving is like dreaming. Sometimes you think of neat creative ideas, or you notice something and say "I want to remember that," but when you wake up it's gone. I should make more careful use of Kino for moments like that.
- Before leaving Sioux Falls I visited their butterfly garden! Hundreds of tropical butterflies flapping everywhere, absolutely beautiful, like flying flowers. They only live a couple of weeks, so the greenhouse is constantly importing more of them. My camera's batteries gave out, so I didn't get as many pictures as I might have liked, but fortunately I brought a cigarette lighter/AC adapter and charged the camera in the car.
- Before checking in at St. Paul I drove through Minneapolis. Gorgeous skyline! I stopped in at the Smitten Kitten, a somewhat netfamous adult toy store notable for their friendliness, professionalism, and sponsorship of the Sex Is Fun podcast. It's nice to be planning a visit to a city and have an "aha!" moment when you remember a place there that you never expected to be able to actually visit. The store's much smaller than I imagined, but the staff lived up to their reputation! And it turned out I even got 10% off the book I bought by mentioning the podcast.
- Later I returned to Minneapolis to the Acme Comedy Club for an hour and a half of fun times. This was at my brother's suggestion; he said he vaguely remembered going to a comedy club in Minneapolis, and that sounded like a fantastic idea to me. Some gems of jokes in there. Their headliner was very much an SMBC-style comedian, for those who know what SMBC is; basically, very good at saying something mundane to rather funny, and then saying something else that casts what he previously said in a completely new and utterly hilarious light. Simple example: "I hit a blue jay with my car yesterday. [Cue "awww" from audience.] Yeah, it's very sad. He may never play baseball again." His name was Emo Philips, and apparently I should have heard of him; he could have been George Carlin. Just now in the process of writing I Wikied him and was shocked to discover that he is a well-known comedian who actually is 53, as he claimed; he looked to me like a very talented thirty-year-old in a gray wig who was using a "slightly senile old man" persona as part of his schtick. Actually, he said he'd let his hair go gray for a movie. He wanted to get in cheaper.
Well, past my bedtime! Tomorrow I expect to be in Madison, Wisconsin; I was hoping to stay with my cousin Susan, but sadly on this day of all days she's going to be in Chicago, where I'm going to be the following night. D'oh! So Days Inn it is...
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
South Dakota, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
I survived last night's thunderstorms! No one seems to have been hurt by tornadoes, so it was a false alarm. Probably happens pretty often up here. Still, the memory of the hail and the shaking street lights is sort of unsettling.
To catch up with yesterday, I neglected to mention dinner, which I ate at a firehouse that had been converted into a microbrewery. (This provides some nice symbolic unity with my first stop of the trip, where I visited a firehouse that had been converted into a museum.) I had a microbrewed root beer! It was nice -- about halfway between grocery-store root beer and the dark, rather bitter stuff at the Fort Myers microbrewery restaurant, and better to drink than either one. I've mostly been avoiding soda this trip, but I make exceptions for unusual stuff. No other culinary adventures yesterday or today, though; getting enough calories at the right intervals in interesting restaurants has been a little problematic in Wyoming and South Dakota, so when I find a place to eat I tend to order something I know I'll like.
Also left over from yesterday are two odd phenomena about South Dakota. One is that some restaurants have smoking sections. I was taken aback to be asked "smoking or non?" when I asked for a table! The other is that in South Dakota, not only is gas very cheap compared to other states I've been to, but mid-grade "plus" gas is cheaper than low-grade gas. This bizarre inversion is present at every gas station I've seen in the state. I'm told it's because they put 10% ethanol in the mid-grade gas and get big tax breaks for it that allow them to lower the price, but then why don't they put ethanol in the low- and high-grade gas as well? An enigma the gas station attendant was not equipped to answer.
Today was mostly driving end-to-end through South Dakota. The big adventure of the day was the Badlands. For context, let me explain that South Dakota is basically four hundred miles of open prairie with one town (Rapid City) in the west and another (Sioux Falls) in the east, and today I drove from the former to the latter across all that prairie. I'm emphasizing the prairie here because the Badlands is utterly shocking, terrible and eye-boggling primarily because of the contrast it makes with the grass and scrub. The Badlands look like this:
Two hundred years from now, some mad scientist invents a tractor beam and a time machine. He travels back in time to millions of years ago, where he uses the tractor beam to capture several large asteroids full of ravines and ridges and odd jutting contours like nothing on Earth. In an attempt to destroy the world, he crashes the asteroids into what will become South Dakota; this causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroids, however, do not destroy the world as planned. Instead, the above-ground parts of the asteroids loom ominously over the Dakota prairie, emitting their odd chemicals into the soil and fouling the land and water. The grass tries to reclaim the land from the asteroids, hardy weeds cropping from the rock where they can find a foothold, but in the end this feeble growth only makes the asteroids look more unearthly.
The Badlands, of course, are not actually asteroids, but they should be. You look at them flabbergasted and say "how on Earth could that have happened?" (The answer is almost invariably "erosion," so it's better not to ask.) I liked them better than Yellowstone. Less wildlife, to be sure -- only a few brave species are well-adapted for life in the South Dakota Badlands, such as the critically endangered black-footed ferret -- but the terrain was truly different, while Yellowstone was just "things you've already seen this trip packed into a smaller space." Of course, I'm prejudiced by the sheer fun I had climbing over the ridges of the Badlands. You can pull over at any number of turnouts and trek as far as you care to into that country, every step treacherous, the dirt and clay loose under your feet. I climbed the north side of one ridge and got it into my head that I had to go down the south side, which was steeper. I went step by step as far as I could, but in the end I had no alternative but to crouch and slide down the side on my sneakers, ripping at the earth with my palms to keep from somersaulting down the rocky slope -- sneakerboarding, if you will. This could have torn my hands open but didn't, so it was a good day. Afterwards I chatted with a woman from Atlanta returning from her own West Coast road trip. She had wisely stayed on the boardwalk and suggested gloves if I should try that sort of thing again in the future. One thing I didn't think to pack...
Speaking of which, I haven't been doing badly on talking to strangers recently. I've swapped stories with this woman from Atlanta, a guy from Quebec, a Texan, a New Yorker, and some others. From our chats, I'm astonished how un-unique my journey is -- how many people share an experience like this one. My Atlantan traveled the Trans-Canada Highway, which is by some metrics the longest single road in the world, end-to-end and had a fantastic time. It seems almost everyone has driven coast-to-coast, though not too many have done it solo. Of course, my sample is biased -- I'm surveying only people I'm coming across in my own coast-to-coast trip full of places tourists go -- but it's interesting to reconcile my experience of Lover's Lanes as a personal and irreproducible journey with the ubiquity of the transcontinental road trip in the American collective consciousness.
To catch up with yesterday, I neglected to mention dinner, which I ate at a firehouse that had been converted into a microbrewery. (This provides some nice symbolic unity with my first stop of the trip, where I visited a firehouse that had been converted into a museum.) I had a microbrewed root beer! It was nice -- about halfway between grocery-store root beer and the dark, rather bitter stuff at the Fort Myers microbrewery restaurant, and better to drink than either one. I've mostly been avoiding soda this trip, but I make exceptions for unusual stuff. No other culinary adventures yesterday or today, though; getting enough calories at the right intervals in interesting restaurants has been a little problematic in Wyoming and South Dakota, so when I find a place to eat I tend to order something I know I'll like.
Also left over from yesterday are two odd phenomena about South Dakota. One is that some restaurants have smoking sections. I was taken aback to be asked "smoking or non?" when I asked for a table! The other is that in South Dakota, not only is gas very cheap compared to other states I've been to, but mid-grade "plus" gas is cheaper than low-grade gas. This bizarre inversion is present at every gas station I've seen in the state. I'm told it's because they put 10% ethanol in the mid-grade gas and get big tax breaks for it that allow them to lower the price, but then why don't they put ethanol in the low- and high-grade gas as well? An enigma the gas station attendant was not equipped to answer.
Today was mostly driving end-to-end through South Dakota. The big adventure of the day was the Badlands. For context, let me explain that South Dakota is basically four hundred miles of open prairie with one town (Rapid City) in the west and another (Sioux Falls) in the east, and today I drove from the former to the latter across all that prairie. I'm emphasizing the prairie here because the Badlands is utterly shocking, terrible and eye-boggling primarily because of the contrast it makes with the grass and scrub. The Badlands look like this:
Two hundred years from now, some mad scientist invents a tractor beam and a time machine. He travels back in time to millions of years ago, where he uses the tractor beam to capture several large asteroids full of ravines and ridges and odd jutting contours like nothing on Earth. In an attempt to destroy the world, he crashes the asteroids into what will become South Dakota; this causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroids, however, do not destroy the world as planned. Instead, the above-ground parts of the asteroids loom ominously over the Dakota prairie, emitting their odd chemicals into the soil and fouling the land and water. The grass tries to reclaim the land from the asteroids, hardy weeds cropping from the rock where they can find a foothold, but in the end this feeble growth only makes the asteroids look more unearthly.
The Badlands, of course, are not actually asteroids, but they should be. You look at them flabbergasted and say "how on Earth could that have happened?" (The answer is almost invariably "erosion," so it's better not to ask.) I liked them better than Yellowstone. Less wildlife, to be sure -- only a few brave species are well-adapted for life in the South Dakota Badlands, such as the critically endangered black-footed ferret -- but the terrain was truly different, while Yellowstone was just "things you've already seen this trip packed into a smaller space." Of course, I'm prejudiced by the sheer fun I had climbing over the ridges of the Badlands. You can pull over at any number of turnouts and trek as far as you care to into that country, every step treacherous, the dirt and clay loose under your feet. I climbed the north side of one ridge and got it into my head that I had to go down the south side, which was steeper. I went step by step as far as I could, but in the end I had no alternative but to crouch and slide down the side on my sneakers, ripping at the earth with my palms to keep from somersaulting down the rocky slope -- sneakerboarding, if you will. This could have torn my hands open but didn't, so it was a good day. Afterwards I chatted with a woman from Atlanta returning from her own West Coast road trip. She had wisely stayed on the boardwalk and suggested gloves if I should try that sort of thing again in the future. One thing I didn't think to pack...
Speaking of which, I haven't been doing badly on talking to strangers recently. I've swapped stories with this woman from Atlanta, a guy from Quebec, a Texan, a New Yorker, and some others. From our chats, I'm astonished how un-unique my journey is -- how many people share an experience like this one. My Atlantan traveled the Trans-Canada Highway, which is by some metrics the longest single road in the world, end-to-end and had a fantastic time. It seems almost everyone has driven coast-to-coast, though not too many have done it solo. Of course, my sample is biased -- I'm surveying only people I'm coming across in my own coast-to-coast trip full of places tourists go -- but it's interesting to reconcile my experience of Lover's Lanes as a personal and irreproducible journey with the ubiquity of the transcontinental road trip in the American collective consciousness.
Monday, July 13, 2009
A holy place
In American Gods, the novel generally considered Neil Gaiman's best work in conventional prose, it turns out that America's holy places are the kitschy roadside stops that travelers flock to without ever being quite sure why. Pulling over to stare at the world's biggest ball of twine or whatever is a form of worship, according to Gaiman's mythos, and so when gods in America want to have a meeting, they hold it at a tourist trap that has been sanctified by the gawking of people like me.
By this metric, Mount Rushmore is possibly the holiest place in America.
It's just a bunch of presidents carved into a mountain. It's not even an especially impressive mountain by local standards, and the statuary is inconsistent; Washington's face is well articulated, while Lincoln looks like the artist forgot that people's heads have backs. But it's a symbol of America we rank just behind the Statue of Liberty and the bald eagle. And you know what, it is pretty awesome to round the corner and discover, wtf, there are presidents on that rock! And we've lavished so much attention on it that by reason of its popularity alone it has actually become a symbol of America up there with Lady Liberty.
I snapped a few shots, the same shots every tourist snaps, put in my worship, and went into the gift store to see if they sold the Constitution, as I thought they should, since the gentlemen on the mountain were among the luminaries who wrote it, fought for it, died for it. To my delight, a nicely bound Constitution was just $10! I picked it up -- a Mount Rushmore Constitution -- along with a similarly small volume containing the three poems Abraham Lincoln is known to have written and which I have never read. I'll let you know if he's any good.
I also need to write about the Reptile Gardens -- but first, oh my gosh, guys, the sky out there is getting dark! They're saying a terrible thunderstorm is heading towards where I'm staying in Rapid City, and there's a tornado warning out. It would be the day I'm doing my laundry. (The Days Inn has facilities.) So if you're not reading this, it may mean I'm being absorbed by a tornado and need your help right away!
Where was I? Right, the Reptile Gardens. The path to Mount Rushmore is like Carnival -- the parts that aren't federally protected, anyway -- lined with lesser holy places trying to pick up some of the mountain's powerful tourist radiation. I picked the Reptile Gardens to investigate, and it turns out the park's collection of reptiles is among the most comprehensive in America! They had at least half a dozen snakes of varieties that you literally can't see anywhere else in the country. I think it was the enormous animals that made the biggest impressions on me, though: the crocodile and the Komodo dragon...
Holy shit, the street lamps are shaking back and forth outside. I'm going to abbreviate this post.
P.S. Editing this entry to say I'm still not dead twenty minutes later, but I wanted to mark that today is the one-month anniversary of my departure. It staggers me to think I've actually taken care of myself okay for thirty days and nights, usually not sleeping in the same place two nights in a row, and have crossed America one and a half times in that span. (I'm definitely clear of the Rockies now, though the foothills persist; those mountains never end, they just roll away.) I'm both bolstered and sobered by what I've achieved. Now I just need some luck with the funnel clouds and I may even make it home in one piece!
P.P.S. It's hailing out. In mid-July. 70-mph wind gusts. The guy on TV says it's going to get worse.
By this metric, Mount Rushmore is possibly the holiest place in America.
It's just a bunch of presidents carved into a mountain. It's not even an especially impressive mountain by local standards, and the statuary is inconsistent; Washington's face is well articulated, while Lincoln looks like the artist forgot that people's heads have backs. But it's a symbol of America we rank just behind the Statue of Liberty and the bald eagle. And you know what, it is pretty awesome to round the corner and discover, wtf, there are presidents on that rock! And we've lavished so much attention on it that by reason of its popularity alone it has actually become a symbol of America up there with Lady Liberty.
I snapped a few shots, the same shots every tourist snaps, put in my worship, and went into the gift store to see if they sold the Constitution, as I thought they should, since the gentlemen on the mountain were among the luminaries who wrote it, fought for it, died for it. To my delight, a nicely bound Constitution was just $10! I picked it up -- a Mount Rushmore Constitution -- along with a similarly small volume containing the three poems Abraham Lincoln is known to have written and which I have never read. I'll let you know if he's any good.
I also need to write about the Reptile Gardens -- but first, oh my gosh, guys, the sky out there is getting dark! They're saying a terrible thunderstorm is heading towards where I'm staying in Rapid City, and there's a tornado warning out. It would be the day I'm doing my laundry. (The Days Inn has facilities.) So if you're not reading this, it may mean I'm being absorbed by a tornado and need your help right away!
Where was I? Right, the Reptile Gardens. The path to Mount Rushmore is like Carnival -- the parts that aren't federally protected, anyway -- lined with lesser holy places trying to pick up some of the mountain's powerful tourist radiation. I picked the Reptile Gardens to investigate, and it turns out the park's collection of reptiles is among the most comprehensive in America! They had at least half a dozen snakes of varieties that you literally can't see anywhere else in the country. I think it was the enormous animals that made the biggest impressions on me, though: the crocodile and the Komodo dragon...
Holy shit, the street lamps are shaking back and forth outside. I'm going to abbreviate this post.
P.S. Editing this entry to say I'm still not dead twenty minutes later, but I wanted to mark that today is the one-month anniversary of my departure. It staggers me to think I've actually taken care of myself okay for thirty days and nights, usually not sleeping in the same place two nights in a row, and have crossed America one and a half times in that span. (I'm definitely clear of the Rockies now, though the foothills persist; those mountains never end, they just roll away.) I'm both bolstered and sobered by what I've achieved. Now I just need some luck with the funnel clouds and I may even make it home in one piece!
P.P.S. It's hailing out. In mid-July. 70-mph wind gusts. The guy on TV says it's going to get worse.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The middle of nowhere
I had a very lucky morning today, in the following way.
I'd made plans to take a long route through Yellowstone, but an hour into my explorations I realized I had forgotten my stuffed fox Kazuko at the hotel. I toss and turn a little in my sleep, and she must have fallen onto the floor and escaped my notice as I was packing. I panicked. It was already past check-out time, and I had no idea what the Super 8 does with stuff its guests leave behind in their rooms. I sped back to the hotel, going well over the restrictive Yellowstone speed limits (while still driving safely, I thought). And wouldn't you know it, I got pulled over for speeding for the first time in my life.
Here is where the luck comes in. As luck would have it, the officer who pulled me over had not had his radar gun turned on, and as a result couldn't issue me a ticket. He sent me off with a stern warning that if I was pulled over again in the next three days I would get an automatic ticket; the whole encounter took less than a minute. I was soon back at the hotel, where I discovered housekeeping had not gotten to my room yet and Kazuko was right where I'd left her. I restored her to my car with apologies, and I actually cried quite a bit. I'd been so scared I was going to lose her.
Which of course is rather odd. Over a stuffed fox I got myself pulled over and worked myself into a small emotional meltdown. I guess I can't attribute it to anything other than needing the familiarity that Kazuko -- the only other pair of eyes that's gone with me in every phase of this journey -- represents. I feel isolated and far from home. Maybe that's also why I found myself oddly unmoved by splendid Yellowstone, its peaks and canyons and steaming springs so different from Florida terrain. I didn't feel emotionally up to a hike, and apart from hiking all there is to do in Yellowstone is drive around staring at pretty things, all of which look pretty much the same. Thus it came to pass that I actually found myself bored in a national park famous for a breathtaking view around every corner.
Old Faithful I liked. The geyser's eruption itself was pretty aesthetically astonishing even to my jaded eyes, but I found the mathematics even more astonishing: the reason Old Faithful reaches the 150-foot height it does is that eight thousand gallons of water pass through a four-inch opening in about three minutes. What's more, the eruption was predictable down to the minute (2:07 PM), which I learned is more complicated than I thought; Old Faithful has long and short eruptions (defined as whether the eruption lasts more or less than two and a half minutes), and the interval after a long eruption, 90 minutes, is different from the interval after a short one, 65 minutes. There is nothing in between. There are no medium-length eruptions that produce intermediate intervals. The rangers didn't seem to have much of an idea why you get these two lengths and no others, though they were very helpful in explaining that the reason Old Faithful is so faithful is that it doesn't share its water source with any other geysers in the park, so there are few variables that could affect its timing.
The most moving thing in the park, though, was the color of the sky above Yellowstone Lake, a deep, pure sapphire blue that I've never seen in midafternoon east of the Mississippi (but saw once in Oregon), and which the lake reflected back a shade deeper and purer. That and the massive burnt forest, tree after tree barren like abandoned frameworks in a housing project almost as far as the eye can see, to my mind outdid the geyser for beauty.
Also beautiful: the green waters of Buffalo Bill Reservoir, somewhat east of the park, smooth and unruffled, with small grooved hills gently rolling out of them as though patting the reservoir on the head. In fact, I thought Wyoming got more beautiful once I'd left Yellowstone, the buttes more interesting, the gorges more -- well -- gorgeous. And at length the prairie set in, just grass and grass to the horizon, often flat, and that reminded me of home. There's a joke that since I've never been to Wyoming and I don't know anyone who has been, the state probably doesn't actually exist and cartographers just made it up to fill the space. Well, now I'm here, and I stand by it. This is the middle of nowhere. And I sort of like it.
I am also a fan of the little town I'm in tonight, Greybull. From these few hours' observation, Greybull is desperately trying to be the Wild West. The local steakhouse I went to tonight was all done up with adobe pots and rugs knit with the traditional Southwestern motifs, every other guy is wearing a cowboy hat, and even the blanket on my bed at the Greybull Motel is cowboy-themed. I half expected to see artificial tumbleweed made from Easter grass blowing across the road. I thought about why this was funny and realized that in a way, Greybull is the Wild West. Tiny town, built around mining (bentonite), everything falling down around the edges, most everyone just passing through... even the modern aluminum warehouses, dented and with piles of rubble everywhere alongside them, feel like they could be from Buffalo Bill's time. If you wanted to write a novel set in the modern Wild West, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Greybull.
Tomorrow I'm making for Rapid City, South Dakota. Depending on how I do on time, I may be able to tell you about Mount Rushmore and/or the Badlands tomorrow night!
I'd made plans to take a long route through Yellowstone, but an hour into my explorations I realized I had forgotten my stuffed fox Kazuko at the hotel. I toss and turn a little in my sleep, and she must have fallen onto the floor and escaped my notice as I was packing. I panicked. It was already past check-out time, and I had no idea what the Super 8 does with stuff its guests leave behind in their rooms. I sped back to the hotel, going well over the restrictive Yellowstone speed limits (while still driving safely, I thought). And wouldn't you know it, I got pulled over for speeding for the first time in my life.
Here is where the luck comes in. As luck would have it, the officer who pulled me over had not had his radar gun turned on, and as a result couldn't issue me a ticket. He sent me off with a stern warning that if I was pulled over again in the next three days I would get an automatic ticket; the whole encounter took less than a minute. I was soon back at the hotel, where I discovered housekeeping had not gotten to my room yet and Kazuko was right where I'd left her. I restored her to my car with apologies, and I actually cried quite a bit. I'd been so scared I was going to lose her.
Which of course is rather odd. Over a stuffed fox I got myself pulled over and worked myself into a small emotional meltdown. I guess I can't attribute it to anything other than needing the familiarity that Kazuko -- the only other pair of eyes that's gone with me in every phase of this journey -- represents. I feel isolated and far from home. Maybe that's also why I found myself oddly unmoved by splendid Yellowstone, its peaks and canyons and steaming springs so different from Florida terrain. I didn't feel emotionally up to a hike, and apart from hiking all there is to do in Yellowstone is drive around staring at pretty things, all of which look pretty much the same. Thus it came to pass that I actually found myself bored in a national park famous for a breathtaking view around every corner.
Old Faithful I liked. The geyser's eruption itself was pretty aesthetically astonishing even to my jaded eyes, but I found the mathematics even more astonishing: the reason Old Faithful reaches the 150-foot height it does is that eight thousand gallons of water pass through a four-inch opening in about three minutes. What's more, the eruption was predictable down to the minute (2:07 PM), which I learned is more complicated than I thought; Old Faithful has long and short eruptions (defined as whether the eruption lasts more or less than two and a half minutes), and the interval after a long eruption, 90 minutes, is different from the interval after a short one, 65 minutes. There is nothing in between. There are no medium-length eruptions that produce intermediate intervals. The rangers didn't seem to have much of an idea why you get these two lengths and no others, though they were very helpful in explaining that the reason Old Faithful is so faithful is that it doesn't share its water source with any other geysers in the park, so there are few variables that could affect its timing.
The most moving thing in the park, though, was the color of the sky above Yellowstone Lake, a deep, pure sapphire blue that I've never seen in midafternoon east of the Mississippi (but saw once in Oregon), and which the lake reflected back a shade deeper and purer. That and the massive burnt forest, tree after tree barren like abandoned frameworks in a housing project almost as far as the eye can see, to my mind outdid the geyser for beauty.
Also beautiful: the green waters of Buffalo Bill Reservoir, somewhat east of the park, smooth and unruffled, with small grooved hills gently rolling out of them as though patting the reservoir on the head. In fact, I thought Wyoming got more beautiful once I'd left Yellowstone, the buttes more interesting, the gorges more -- well -- gorgeous. And at length the prairie set in, just grass and grass to the horizon, often flat, and that reminded me of home. There's a joke that since I've never been to Wyoming and I don't know anyone who has been, the state probably doesn't actually exist and cartographers just made it up to fill the space. Well, now I'm here, and I stand by it. This is the middle of nowhere. And I sort of like it.
I am also a fan of the little town I'm in tonight, Greybull. From these few hours' observation, Greybull is desperately trying to be the Wild West. The local steakhouse I went to tonight was all done up with adobe pots and rugs knit with the traditional Southwestern motifs, every other guy is wearing a cowboy hat, and even the blanket on my bed at the Greybull Motel is cowboy-themed. I half expected to see artificial tumbleweed made from Easter grass blowing across the road. I thought about why this was funny and realized that in a way, Greybull is the Wild West. Tiny town, built around mining (bentonite), everything falling down around the edges, most everyone just passing through... even the modern aluminum warehouses, dented and with piles of rubble everywhere alongside them, feel like they could be from Buffalo Bill's time. If you wanted to write a novel set in the modern Wild West, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Greybull.
Tomorrow I'm making for Rapid City, South Dakota. Depending on how I do on time, I may be able to tell you about Mount Rushmore and/or the Badlands tomorrow night!
More of a Boo-Boo than a Yogi
Brief one today because it's late and I'm tired. I'm posting this from Gardiner, Montana, a tiny town in the south of the state that exists solely to serve as the northwest gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Originally I planned to spend two nights here, the better to see more of Yellowstone, but a combination of several things -- the price of the hotel, my eagerness to return east, and my early arrival at the park today, to name a few -- made me decide otherwise. Today I explored the northern reaches of Yellowstone end to end. This was not entirely planned. I had meant to go to Tower Falls, in the central north part of the park, and then go back. But coming out I managed to make a wrong turn that resulted in me driving all the way to the northeast corner of the park, actually reaching the exit before realizing I'd made a wrong turn. This was even more remarkable because the scenery was rather different than it had been on the way in, and everything had different names, yet apparently I noticed nothing wrong. I think the angel of adventure was steering at that moment.
But all went well. If I hadn't made that wrong turn, I wouldn't have seen the herd of easily over a hundred wild bison grazing on the mountainous plains. I wouldn't have seen a few curious bison up close, standing right next to (and in one case, on) the road, inspecting the traffic as if posing for photographs. Wild bison are ugly sons of bitches, with mats of fur and big dead black eyes. I would have preferred to see more of the small black bear, who flashed once between trees, visible only for a moment but in the center of my vision. He caused a traffic jam. I'd read about "bear jams" at Yellowstone, but I'd somehow thought they were caused by bears standing on the road; I now think they're mostly caused by tourists trying to photograph bears standing beside the road. In addition to these megafauna and some tame mule deer who live near the Mammoth Hot Springs, I made the acquaintance of some odd rodents who look like squirrels but have almost no tails, or like large chipmunks but with no markings, and also two species of insect I haven't come across before. One in particular, which emits a loud flapping buzz as it flies, is paranoid and extremely well camouflaged, lost against the scenery the moment it alights and impossible to photograph.
Of course the scenery is beautiful, but other than that it is unremarkable.
At several points during the day, such as when I glimpsed a hawk perching atop a nearby rock in a picturesque fashion as I drove past, I wished I'd had the presence of mind or reflexes to take a snapshot (as I did of many other scenes today). I caught myself slipping into the "pics or it didn't happen" mentality that is why I distrust cameras in the first place. So I want to state right now that there was a hawk, he was perching on a rock, and he was very handsome, and although I would like to share the moment with you, it happened whether you can see him or not. I remember.
Tomorrow? Cody, Wyoming, if the park ensnares me as I take the long loop through it past Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake; or Greybull, Wyoming, if I am less captivated. The angel of adventure is pulling for Cody.
But all went well. If I hadn't made that wrong turn, I wouldn't have seen the herd of easily over a hundred wild bison grazing on the mountainous plains. I wouldn't have seen a few curious bison up close, standing right next to (and in one case, on) the road, inspecting the traffic as if posing for photographs. Wild bison are ugly sons of bitches, with mats of fur and big dead black eyes. I would have preferred to see more of the small black bear, who flashed once between trees, visible only for a moment but in the center of my vision. He caused a traffic jam. I'd read about "bear jams" at Yellowstone, but I'd somehow thought they were caused by bears standing on the road; I now think they're mostly caused by tourists trying to photograph bears standing beside the road. In addition to these megafauna and some tame mule deer who live near the Mammoth Hot Springs, I made the acquaintance of some odd rodents who look like squirrels but have almost no tails, or like large chipmunks but with no markings, and also two species of insect I haven't come across before. One in particular, which emits a loud flapping buzz as it flies, is paranoid and extremely well camouflaged, lost against the scenery the moment it alights and impossible to photograph.
Of course the scenery is beautiful, but other than that it is unremarkable.
At several points during the day, such as when I glimpsed a hawk perching atop a nearby rock in a picturesque fashion as I drove past, I wished I'd had the presence of mind or reflexes to take a snapshot (as I did of many other scenes today). I caught myself slipping into the "pics or it didn't happen" mentality that is why I distrust cameras in the first place. So I want to state right now that there was a hawk, he was perching on a rock, and he was very handsome, and although I would like to share the moment with you, it happened whether you can see him or not. I remember.
Tomorrow? Cody, Wyoming, if the park ensnares me as I take the long loop through it past Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake; or Greybull, Wyoming, if I am less captivated. The angel of adventure is pulling for Cody.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Angelus rampant
Woke up, got dressed, drove to Missoula. That was my day, mostly. It takes about seven hours to get to this mid-sized university town in Montana from Seattle. I was eager to get off to a strong start on my way back to the east coast, and seven hours in the driver's seat -- taking me through all of Washington, the Idaho "panhandle," and western Montana -- qualifies. On the drive I listened to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (my second to last audiobook -- must practice conservation!) and watched the forests transform into high plains in hilly and occasionally dramatic fashion. One hillside had lots of trees but no brush whatsoever, creating a ghost town effect. While I gained some altitude today, I've hardly begun to re-penetrate the Rockies. Those mountains are not something you drive across in a day, though you can get across the wicked part in a day. Today was canoeing down the Hudson River; the wicked part is canoeing down Niagara Falls.
Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.
We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.
The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.
Now to the pictures!
Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.
Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.
Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?
Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.
Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.
And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.
Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.
One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.
And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?
I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.
Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).
Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.
And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.
There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D
Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.
We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.
The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.
Now to the pictures!
Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.
Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.
Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?
Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.
Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.
And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.
Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.
One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.
And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?
I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.
Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).
Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.
And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.
There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D
Repatriating
I spent the morning and early afternoon exploring Grouse Mountain, which, like everywhere else in Vancouver, was under heavy construction that blocked off some of the paths I'd really wanted to walk, but which, also like everywhere else in Vancouver, was a pleasure to walk around. Grouse Mountain is sort of a small mountain Disneyland. You take a skyride -- a hundred-person gondola -- to get up, gazing out the windows at breathtaking vistas of the entire Vancouver metro area, which the mountain overlooks. Or at fog, if it's this morning. There were places where the fog was so thick you could only see two trees at a time in the dense alpine forest outside the carriage. The lack of a view was disappointing, but I was cheered by the prospect that I was going to explore a park located inside a cloud, which would have gone into my wedding story if it had happened earlier in the trip.
The highlight of my time at Grouse Mountain was the chair lift. I got there at a time no one else was there, and took the fifteen-minute lift to the mountain peak without seeing another soul... through the fog... in near-perfect silence. You could be moved without even trying. There was nothing to do at the top for those of us who don't want to spend $70 to ride a zip line, but you could ride the chair lift down again, which was just as fun as riding up. The lift plus the lumberjack show -- watching a couple extremely talented saw operators ham it up for the two-hundred-strong crowd, racing to chop logs and throwing axes at bullseyes thirty feet away with deadly accuracy -- was probably just about worth the price of admission. One of them used a chainsaw to carve a baby chair out of a log in under a minute, and gave it away to a mother in the crowd. Good times in spite of the mist, and when I went back down the skyride some of the fog had burned off and I got some great pictures after all.
And then I drove back to Seattle. Vancouver was a good time! I have to say, though, that it didn't feel very different from a town in America. Apart from the different currency and the unpatriotically starless and nearly stripeless flags, there was nothing quintessentially Canadian about it, nothing that screamed "YOU ARE IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY." Indeed, I caught myself thinking about Vancouver in terms of Seattle geography twice. I didn't hear the word "aboot" once, nor see the glory of socialized medicine in action (though I did get to hear a rant about what a mess the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made of crossing the border and the ensuing economic downturn), nor see a lot of French signs once I was out of the federally maintained border area. So Vancouver was basically another typical Pacific Northwest city, only with flashing green lights that don't change for cross traffic but do change for pedestrians. Nice enough, but I don't feel that my soul is forever captive to that skyline or that country. I'd go back, though.
I was hoping to post photos tonight, but the Internet is being slow and reluctant, and Blogger's picture uploading tool is sluggish at the best of times. I've been staring at the "uploading" screen for twenty minutes. Photobucket is likewise uncooperative. For my own reference, though, the pictures I want to post are numbered 193, 255, 267, 277, 322, 334, 340, 346, 362, 367, 380, 391, 416, and 428 -- whew, that's a mouthful! One of them will be subtitled "Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo." (I don't know if the bird in question is actually a cockatoo. Maybe one of you can help me!) Perhaps tomorrow I will post the pictures, if I have time? -- when, God willing, this blog will come to you from Missoula, Montana, en route to Yellowstone!
The highlight of my time at Grouse Mountain was the chair lift. I got there at a time no one else was there, and took the fifteen-minute lift to the mountain peak without seeing another soul... through the fog... in near-perfect silence. You could be moved without even trying. There was nothing to do at the top for those of us who don't want to spend $70 to ride a zip line, but you could ride the chair lift down again, which was just as fun as riding up. The lift plus the lumberjack show -- watching a couple extremely talented saw operators ham it up for the two-hundred-strong crowd, racing to chop logs and throwing axes at bullseyes thirty feet away with deadly accuracy -- was probably just about worth the price of admission. One of them used a chainsaw to carve a baby chair out of a log in under a minute, and gave it away to a mother in the crowd. Good times in spite of the mist, and when I went back down the skyride some of the fog had burned off and I got some great pictures after all.
And then I drove back to Seattle. Vancouver was a good time! I have to say, though, that it didn't feel very different from a town in America. Apart from the different currency and the unpatriotically starless and nearly stripeless flags, there was nothing quintessentially Canadian about it, nothing that screamed "YOU ARE IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY." Indeed, I caught myself thinking about Vancouver in terms of Seattle geography twice. I didn't hear the word "aboot" once, nor see the glory of socialized medicine in action (though I did get to hear a rant about what a mess the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made of crossing the border and the ensuing economic downturn), nor see a lot of French signs once I was out of the federally maintained border area. So Vancouver was basically another typical Pacific Northwest city, only with flashing green lights that don't change for cross traffic but do change for pedestrians. Nice enough, but I don't feel that my soul is forever captive to that skyline or that country. I'd go back, though.
I was hoping to post photos tonight, but the Internet is being slow and reluctant, and Blogger's picture uploading tool is sluggish at the best of times. I've been staring at the "uploading" screen for twenty minutes. Photobucket is likewise uncooperative. For my own reference, though, the pictures I want to post are numbered 193, 255, 267, 277, 322, 334, 340, 346, 362, 367, 380, 391, 416, and 428 -- whew, that's a mouthful! One of them will be subtitled "Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo." (I don't know if the bird in question is actually a cockatoo. Maybe one of you can help me!) Perhaps tomorrow I will post the pictures, if I have time? -- when, God willing, this blog will come to you from Missoula, Montana, en route to Yellowstone!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Kingsway
I drove to Granville Island first today -- peninsular in truth -- an oddity, at once for tourists and Vancouverites, where toy stores flank the artists' spare boudoirs. I saw a fleet of private yachts for sale, so many that the bay they rode were parched. I dined there at an overpriced cafe (organic free-range eco-chicken breast -- they'd call it vegetarian if they could) and walked the rather overcrowded ways. I almost bought a plush toy fennec fox, but didn't like the roughness of its locks.
I forged ahead to see the space museum, a disappointing place that seemed as though it came from when Atari was high-tech and people were impressed by flashing lights. They spent their budget, every silver cent, on simulated-motion rides to Mars and one enormous planetarium; the rest was photos you've already seen. The writing and the acting both were canned, but I'll admit their starry sky was grand.
Vancouver's half Chinese, and I've been told their dim sum is the continent's most lush. It falls to someone else, alas, to praise such fare firsthand, for I could not discern the way to lay one's hand upon those buns: I tried three places, failed to eat three times. My Western expectations led me wrong; I wasn't seated, told to seat myself, or shown a counter whence to order food, but entered indistinguishable space. I couldn't tell the patrons from the hosts, and no one stood to say hello to me. As I don't know a word of Mandarin, I ended up with more pan-Asian fare, a chicken moo shu at a nearby place where printed menus put the English first. Authentic it was not, but to be fair, it tasted more substantial than thin air.
The day's redemption came at Shakespeare's hands: I'd made a reservation for a show at 8 PM beneath a circus tent, a yearly celebration of the Bard. I came at six to snag a better seat (the waiting's part of this tradition's lore). I passed the time conversing with a guy from forty minutes north, a frequent guest who told me all the things I should have done instead of the museum and the park. Some I will do tomorrow, some I can't; we live and learn and hope to rule ourselves. At eight the kings and earls began their rounds -- corruption, wisdom, treachery, and woe, all written to become a grand cliche. Richard II is an awesome play.
But I'm exhausted, sore, and still without a clear plan for the morrow's parting joys. As Calvin said, it's hard work having fun, and right now what I need's a bath and sleep. For them, then, I will quit my pen and ink. Blank verse is somewhat harder than you think.
I forged ahead to see the space museum, a disappointing place that seemed as though it came from when Atari was high-tech and people were impressed by flashing lights. They spent their budget, every silver cent, on simulated-motion rides to Mars and one enormous planetarium; the rest was photos you've already seen. The writing and the acting both were canned, but I'll admit their starry sky was grand.
Vancouver's half Chinese, and I've been told their dim sum is the continent's most lush. It falls to someone else, alas, to praise such fare firsthand, for I could not discern the way to lay one's hand upon those buns: I tried three places, failed to eat three times. My Western expectations led me wrong; I wasn't seated, told to seat myself, or shown a counter whence to order food, but entered indistinguishable space. I couldn't tell the patrons from the hosts, and no one stood to say hello to me. As I don't know a word of Mandarin, I ended up with more pan-Asian fare, a chicken moo shu at a nearby place where printed menus put the English first. Authentic it was not, but to be fair, it tasted more substantial than thin air.
The day's redemption came at Shakespeare's hands: I'd made a reservation for a show at 8 PM beneath a circus tent, a yearly celebration of the Bard. I came at six to snag a better seat (the waiting's part of this tradition's lore). I passed the time conversing with a guy from forty minutes north, a frequent guest who told me all the things I should have done instead of the museum and the park. Some I will do tomorrow, some I can't; we live and learn and hope to rule ourselves. At eight the kings and earls began their rounds -- corruption, wisdom, treachery, and woe, all written to become a grand cliche. Richard II is an awesome play.
But I'm exhausted, sore, and still without a clear plan for the morrow's parting joys. As Calvin said, it's hard work having fun, and right now what I need's a bath and sleep. For them, then, I will quit my pen and ink. Blank verse is somewhat harder than you think.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
