Rizzology

9 to 5er

2010-04-09T15:25:00.001-04:00

Trapped in The Pit
We stare at a light on the wall
They must drone on
Monotone, redundant, hurts all
Our souls have died

***

Dear Daniel Gill****, father of two
Becca and Ann would quit if only they knew
That as TMA’s chief guru
You don’t know a GODDAMN thing!

***

Herded off to the conference room
Database meeting, the presenter’s a nitwit
Shit! Here comes the executive officer
He rules the meeting to prove no one is bossier
This is our tomb

***

Poor Lori Carpenter
PD’s head marketer
Cut her wrists in a meeting
On the floor she lies bleeding
Oh no she got blood on the Monitor!

night of october 6, 2009

2009-10-07T21:49:00.001-04:00

The characters present in last night’s dream surprised me; people who have not entered my thoughts in months, or those who walked in uninvited for mere seconds the day before.

Much of the dream’s initial details have been forever lost in the abyss of my subconscious. I recall a brief scene among an expanse of beaten grass; the greens and browns appear faint and melt together, like what might be found along the National Mall.

Lying on the grass, I wrap my arm around X as X2 stands in front of us, her face glowing red with anger. As she storms off into the distance…

The red blur slowly defined itself as the display on my clock. 4:46 am. A wave of heat seethed through me. Enraged. But for what reason? I closed my eyes and concentrated on calming my nerves. I focused on nothing, emptying my mind...

I stand in the kitchen of a two story house. The best reference my mind can produce is 334, yet this house is different. On the second floor, a balcony faces the front yard, covering the first-floor porch. Warped floorboards creak with each step. The wood railings are soft with years of saturated rain. Outside the grass lies without care and patches of earth are scattered about. Weeds have taken up residence alongside the porch and between the two graveled ruts of the driveway. A waist-high wrought iron fence surrounds the property and the gate is rusted open.

A nondescript cake sits on the kitchen table. A birthday party. Several former marching band members are present including NS, CD, and EU (the few I remember). I move to the balcony to further socialize and notice a car pull into the driveway. By the time I walk outside to greet the new guests, they are sitting on the front lawn. I recognize the newcomers as the New Moon cast, though Kristen Stewart* is the only face representing a real-life cast member.

Kristen is leaning back against the porch wearing dark skinny jeans and a black hoodie. As I approach, she looks up and says, “Hey.”

“What’s up Kristen?"

“Nothing, we just wanted to stop by and say hi.”

Our conversation continues, but in my head it is an incoherent murmur. I feel the urge to continue being a good host so I invite them in for drinks and return to the party. For an instant I think: I should find Kate.** However, I realize Kate left some time ago to run errands. A party guest suggests that Kate might also be with CH. I grow anxious because I feel it is necessary to apologize to CH for my earlier behavior with CB.

Time passes and I move about the party, but the details are a blur. I walk outside to visit with Kristen again, but she is in a car and about to leave. I run up to the red Ford Focus and lean into the driver’s side window where she is sitting with her hands on the steering wheel.

“Kristen, wait. My friend Kate really wants to talk to you, but she’s not here right now. Do you mind if I call her and you just say hi over the phone?”

“Yeah, sure.” I dial Kate’s number and she answers in typical fashion; a light and inquisitive hello reserved for people she is familiar with.

“Kate, Kristen Stewart is here and about to leave, where are you?”

“What?! Shit! I’m on my way, but it will be several minutes.”

“Too late, I’ll put you on the phone with her.” I hand the phone to Kristen.

“Hi Kate, what’s up?” Silence follows and Kristen turns to me and mouths, “She doesn’t think it’s really me.”

Kristen continues to listen before handing the phone back to me. “Sorry, she doesn’t believe it.”

And as her car leaves the house, a piercing noise erupts in my dream, beeping in quick intervals…

Time for work.

* I am by no means a fan of the Twilight Saga; however, my former roommate is an avid fan of the individual actors. Thus I am exposed to all related propaganda.
** My former roommate. Her existence is KS-centric.

creating the illusion

2009-09-22T23:40:00.002-04:00

[Editor’s note: I composed this a few weeks ago after a conversation with a friend* and struggled to tie the three parts together in a pleasing manner. After several revisions, I’m still not entirely satisfied, but what fun is reading if you don’t have to think to draw out the themes? Read it, think about it, and if you believe you have figured it out, email me.]

The rain began to fall in buckets yet I stayed on the bench as people rushed for cover beneath the carousel roof. She waved as her horse glided past. My clothes were soaked and a chill sank in, but it did not matter. I was so damn happy just watching her go around and around. I can’t explain why. She looked so nice in her blue coat and with a smile on her face. God, if only you had been there.**

The first time I remember experiencing loneliness was the summer before
third grade. We had moved from a comfortable house near a park in Dearborn to a new colonial-style home in Ann Arbor. The neighborhood was still under development, and a dirt road led to single acre lots surrounded by forest. It was, as far as I was concerned, the middle of nowhere.***

But neither Ann Arbor, nor the remoteness of the house brought about my despair. Instead, I had convinced myself that leaving my friends in Dearborn was somehow my fault, and as punishment, friendship would forever escape me.

I overreacted, but grief was the only way my young and naive mind could cope with the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty that begets loneliness. I did not understand then, but that year was the first time I felt the world was a cruel and unfair place.

John Steinbeck believed that love for others came only through understanding. If you listen to and appreciate the feelings and motives of another, many of the justifications for hate, envy, and murder would cease to exist. This theme is prevalent in his fiction, particularly East of Eden, and is the reason we endear ourselves to fictional characters. We love characters whose thoughts and actions we sympathize with (e.g., Adam Trask), whereas we despise those we either do not understand or with whom we share shameful traits (e.g., Cathy Ames).****

I am not covering new ground, but it amuses me how such a basic concept can be overlooked by the majority of the human race. I suppose it is our individualist nature, the need to satisfy the self first, that blinds us to the similarities present between us all. So in a perverse way one of the most powerful emotions, that which is associated with loneliness, happens to be a universally shared feeling.

Who of us has not experienced the loneliness felt when a heart is broken for the first time and love becomes a stupid emotion that you fear and hate, yet desperately reach for. When a loved one passes away and you are inconsolable in your grief and incapable of receiving the empathy of others. And even the moment when, in the face of death, you realize how alone you truly are.

* *

He had escaped death twice. Both instances occurred among the white-tipped peaks of the Sierra-Nevada range. Two years ago he found a solid hold that saved him from sliding off a cliff. Last year, he approached the edge of a 75-degree slope. It was mid-morning and the sun had chased away the chill of night. The warm rays softened the snow blanketing the slope he looked upon. He began to descend while his climbing partner rested on a nearby rock. Twenty feet later he slipped. In the first few seconds the ice axe was torn from his hands. Within five seconds he was careening down the side of a mountain where, 2,000 feet below, the snow gave way to a field of boulders.

He knew that life was rapidly drawing to a close, but there was no moment of
rapture, nothing flashed before his eyes. He turned onto his stomach and began
punching and kicking the snow in an attempt to slow down. His mind had never
been so singularly focused as it continued to repeat, “Fuck. Fuck. I have to stop myself.”

Everything but his heart slowed when his fists sank deep into a thick patch of snow. Then he came to a stop. If not for a small but dense snow pack untouched by the morning sun, the last moments of his life would have been brutal and terrifying, and they would have been experienced alone.

A near-death experience changes your perspective in profound ways. When he
returned home, the world moved in slow motion. The demands and condescending remarks from his boss were tuned out. There was little pleasure to be found in trivial arguments. He looked for humor in everything. The wilderness had ceased to exist as a place to regain one’s innocence as Christopher McCandless tried to do, and was now nature in its purest form, a beautiful, but treacherous and unforgiving world. But more than ever, he felt alone, unable to relate with friends whose lives had not skipped a beat.

* *

I waited as Robert scanned and bagged my groceries. Behind me a young girl shuffled her feet. Infancy lingered in her pudgy cheeks and in the curiosity that glimmered in her eyes. She looked up and pointed to the headphones I was wearing. I removed the buds from my ears and asked if she wanted to listen. She looked at me hesitantly, but with great interest, and turned toward her mother who nodded in approval.

“Te gusta la musica?”

“Si mama.”

The mother gently reminded her daughter to say “gracias,” and as the girl
handed the headphones back she said, “Thank you mister.” I said, “De nada.”

In an instant a smile broke upon her face and she turned to her mother,
“Mama, he knows espanol!” I flashed a quick smile, took up my bags, and left
the store.

Her smile reflected an untainted happiness only a child knows. That smile showed me a glimpse of a world free of disappointment, fear, loneliness, and death; a world in which a stranger can draw comfort from the purity of an anonymous child. In that fleeting moment, I was back in Dearborn.

*You are probably thinking: what kind of depressing conversations do you have with your friends?

**This is a quote only in that I wrote it. 1,000 cocktails to you if you know what I am referencing.

***A fact I soon began to embrace as my explorations through the woods developed into daring adventures to search for frogs, scale barbed-wire fences, and wander through a field littered with ancient televisions and rusting cars. It has all been flattened by a subdivision named Walnut Ridge that boasts unoriginal and identical houses that start in the 500s.

****Adam and Cathy represent extremes of good and evil.

the next chapter begins

2009-08-27T21:28:00.004-04:00

Forever lost. There is a way out.

When I signed off in June with a pensive final entry, word traveled and people began asking friends and family about my mental well-being. In such moments you understand the annoyances and comforts of blogging for a small audience. Placing opinion in a public forum whose members lie in anonymity encourages “gossip” on a scale you may never know. Conversely, you identify individuals who have a genuine interest in your life and happiness. Rest assured all is OK; however, the tumultuous period of two months ago has now taken a different form.

I am in the midst of a move and a heightened sense of anxiety clouds my thoughts. The apartment I called home for the better part of three years has now been abandoned. In three days I move from Arlington, VA to Washington, DC. Right now, my belongings, my life, are in transition in the corner and on the couch of a friend’s apartment. Sleep and exercise have escaped me. In the absence of a refrigerator my diet has been sidelined by beer and peanut butter sandwiches. I am amused that the exhaustion I feel has taken me faster and more completely than weeks of driving and sleepless nights in tents, hostels, and cars. I am even more amused that this has all occurred in less than a week. My response? Relax? No. Start writing. And reflect upon the direction of this blog (as if it ever did follow a script).

On occasion I read my earlier work. I want to know if the writing has improved, if a style is beginning to take form, if I can feel emotion in the words as though I was writing them for the first time. In some instances, and this is especially true for my published work, I am disgusted by the simplicity, the Dan Brown-like vagaries, and the egregious and completely unnecessary overuse of flowery adjectives and space-filling adverbs found in Stephenie Meyer’s work.*

Aside from my travelogue, the posts on Rizzology were meaningless. The thought-pieces on the economy, politics, and outdoorsy subjects bored me. They were trite. So I deleted them. Well, not really. I do not condone the destruction of any written material. Instead, I banished it to my first blog, Zealously Moderate, which is now behind a wall that only an adept hacker can penetrate (go ahead, click the link for futility's sake). To compensate, I brought my favorite work from ZM under the Rizzology banner.

Another administrative change you may notice is the addition of the bolded Roadtrip Archive link on the sidebar. For those wishing to re-live my roadtrip, sans the painstaking process of tracking backward through the blog, the archive links every entry in chronological order and provides a gateway to the pictures.

Going forward, this space will take the form of my early work on ZM: infrequent, but more meaningful posts; obscurities and symbolism; less focus on current events, and more notes and thoughts on, well, who knows for sure.

Comments and criticism are welcome. And, as always, Twitter and Facebook will be there to provide updates on the madness that is my world.

*Get it?

time out

2009-06-30T17:31:00.001-04:00

Due to administrative- and life-related reasons, I need to shift focus away from the blog and toward other ventures. At this point I am unsure as to when I will start writing again; however, you’ll know because of the oh-so-reliable updates on Facebook and Twitter. Until then, I’ll leave you with a little inspiration I composed following a discussion with some friends…

It’s no secret that I’m a subscriber to and preacher of the “you only live once” philosophy. This mantra has had such an effect on some people that they, almost immediately, began doing new and crazy things. In fact, when I recently passed on an event, someone said, “C’mon Erik, you only live once!” I gave in.

Last week, a friend was in town while en route to a new home. Him, another friend and myself went out on the town for some drinks, and many beers later we were immersed in a discussion of sentiments (in the manliest way possible, of course…no tears or “woe is me,” just stern looks and hand on the chin contemplative poses; “yes, I think I see what you’re saying.”). No specific situations or people came up, but one friend, having recently been at the wrong end of a relationship that never really started (a very interesting story), posited that if there is something or someone out there you feel will make your short, and at times seemingly useless, existence on this planet better, you would be stupid to not try and reach for it. And if, despite your best efforts, you can’t grab it, well, you may be left with a void for the rest of your life (and in my case, great inspiration for writing), but at least you can say you tried.

too much rain over virginia

2009-06-18T12:09:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, a friend from NYC bused here for what had originally been planned as a two day hiking excursion in southern Virginia. Alas, the weather gods would not let it be; a sixty degree, all-consuming front of precipitation moved in from the west and rooted itself on the eastern seaboard. However, we refused to admit defeat and decided to try our luck in Shenandoah NP.

A light rain rebounded off the windows as I explained our backpacking itinerary to the park ranger. Descend some hollow*, summit a few peaks, find a mostly, not totally, sopping wet campsite, make a futile attempt to dry off, sleep and pack-out in the morning. No ten minute conversation has ever produced such varying looks of incredulity, but the ranger registered my car and issued a backcountry camping permit. Ultimately, the permit would be useless.

The Vibe ascended SNP’s thoroughfare, Skyline Drive, and the clouds came down to greet us. Forty miles of driving rain and zero visibility later, I hesitantly suggested we adjust the plan. When I leaned over the railing at an overlook and saw nothing but gray and at twenty feet the Vibe disappeared in a fog thick enough to be manipulated with my hands, the plan changed.

We decided upon a much shorter, eight mile hike into a canyon featuring several waterfalls.

The whole experience was rather surreal. In the rain, the park regains some of the dignity years of human interference has stripped away. The wildlife emerge from hiding as jean-clad tourists and their raucous children retreat to the city. The only sounds are that of rain pattering the canopy above, the occasional breath of air, and streams raging through the hollows and canyons with a renewed sense of purpose. And the foliage, wet with rain, is overwhelmingly vivid.

As we hiked, the rain created an melancholy atmosphere that encouraged silence and introspection. When words were exchanged, the conversation centered on the direction of one’s life and the analysis of relationships, past and present. Each time the trail approached a cliff’s edge, the trees parted for a view of nothing but gray mist. The contrast felt as though we had found a narrow plane of existence and beyond the thin layer of green on either side of us was a cold nothingness. We had stumbled upon purgatory.

After the hike, and our figurative and literal cleansing, the question was whether to camp or not. There was no mountain to climb or weeklong expedition to continue, so we saw little point in further dirtying ourselves (and the still-clean equipment) for the sake of camping. However, with the aid of Taco Bell and The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, we again refused to accept defeat…

An Appalachian term for a broad riverine valley, essentially a wider and less steep ravine.

the end is the beginning is the end

2009-03-16T21:47:00.012-04:00

Last week my trip came to an end. I've spent the past three weeks trying to write a conclusion. On Saturday I reached a mental cliff and literally wrote "nothing" over and over again until my mind hit the bottom about ten minutes later. Safely down, I came to the realization that what I had just written was garbage and, consequently, it was banished to the folder of unfinished works. Let's try again.

When I first began my journey I had not created any grand objectives. I have long viewed the solo cross-country road trip as a kind of medieval chivalric romance where the distressed damsels and horses are replaced with the voices in my head and catalytic converters. I embarked on this quest not to "discover myself," as the tiresome cliche for the uninspired goes. Instead, while I knew some amount of acute self-awareness was inevitable, I simply wanted to experience America without a script and see where my mind dropped me off at the end.

I logged 12,554 miles on the road and visited 36 states (plus Canada so that I could avoid driving through Ohio). I reached as far north as Seattle, as far south as Daytona Beach, and touched both oceans. My car has seen the east and west termini of both Interstate 90 (Boston/Seattle) and 10 (Jacksonville/Los Angeles). I've seen mountains and canyons, deserts and swamps, and even squeezed in a trip to Jerusalem just as Jesus was about to die. Talk about great timing.

I'm repeatedly asked what my favorite part of the trip was. I don't know. I knew in advance that that question would be the most frequently asked and I still don't have an answer. Sorry. Imagine something you've always wanted to see or do. Now what happens when you see and experience said thing and that same process repeats multiple times during the course of one trip? What if each experience elicits a different reaction or emotion? How do you compare and rate a hike through the Grand Canyon on a perfect day to snowshoeing around Crater Lake during a blizzard to spending a weekend in the company of good friends?

So in the end what do I walk away with? The road was the source of both my greatest emotional highs and lows. Driving is one our greatest expressions of freedom. Every morning I would get in the car and head somewhere new, somewhere I decided to go. If the sun is out and a good song is on the radio, nothing matches the feeling of being on the open road and knowing I'm by myself doing exactly what I want to do. Conversely, there were times I faced crushing loneliness and depression. When the only meaningful social interaction you have in a week includes asking gas station attendants if you can get a receipt for pump three, you begin to drown in your thoughts. In those moments of desperation, your mind grasps for air and begins flirting with the idea of turning around and heading home. So if I stop now, I'll save money, I'll lower the chances of getting hurt, I can start looking for a job sooner...Arrgg!! Or you can do something different with your life...Keeping driving!

My other take away? Perspective. Thanks in large part to my blog and all of my notes, every moment of the trip is a fixture in my mind and on paper. However, a factor as simple as a different weather pattern could have had a dramatic impact on what was written in any of my blog entries. Bill Bryson hated Yosemite National Park, I loved it. The difference? Spring and fall separated by about twenty years. The old man in Wyoming had a different take on the economy as compared with most rational people. Tomorrow morning someone could leave Washington and follow in my exact footsteps and they would have a different experience. Heck, if I take the same trip in twenty years, my perspective will change demonstrably.

Was it worth it? Yes.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog over the past several weeks. Hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it (for the most part). I'm sure this site will continue in some fashion as a personal blog, I just haven't begun to think about the details yet.

wicked pissah!!

2009-03-12T22:51:00.012-04:00

I've been told on dozens of occasions that Massachusetts drivers are among the worst in the world. I can say, without hesitation, that is categorically false. They cannot hold a candle to drivers in Egypt, it's not even close. And after fighting through traffic in several metropolitan areas, all of which claim the worst drivers in the history of the automobile, I can tell you that Massachusetts drivers are not even the most despicable in the country.

I think people have a twisted pseudo-masochistic relationship with the traffic and drivers that populate the cities they live in. No matter what major city I am in, people complain about traffic to such a degree I almost sense an air of pride. And you always hear about how everyone else is crazy as though your friend is the only reputable driver around.

Los Angeles is pretty awful and is undeniably the worst place in the country to be stuck in traffic. However, when a thousand highways go in a thousand different directions and merge together every three miles nothing can end well.

Freeways simply don't exist within San Francisco’s city limits, which means the only way to get downtown is via side streets or the God-awful mass transit system. Interstate 5 is only road connecting the entire Seattle-Olympia thoroughfare, ergo a disaster waiting to happen. One initially thinks Chicago drivers are terrible until you see the potholes stretching off into the horizon, potholes whose only purpose in life is to: 1) wreck your car; or 2) wreck two cars when you swerve into your neighbor's lane trying to avoid a pothole. Boston drivers refuse to abandon the left lane no matter how fast they are driving, which is a constant 70 mph on freeways and dirt roads alike. Washington, DC is the extreme of passiveness. People would much rather stop in the middle of the road than engage in risky, overly aggressive behavior such as merging or changing lanes.

Where was I going with this? Ah yes, I didn't find drivers in Boston to be particularly intimidating. I did, however, find many of the people to be a tad aggressive. I had a great time wandering through downtown Boston for a day. I walked along the Freedom Trail, took in a reenactment of the Boston Massacre, and stuffed myself with many local delicacies (Chowda and Boston Scrod to name a few). Just to give you an idea of how seriously Bostonians take their history, the reenactment was put on by the Boston Massacre Historical Society. An entire group was formed and money was spent in honor of an event that lasted maybe ten minutes.

The sheer number of young men who appeared to be on some type of steroid, wore Red Sox caps backwards and were just itching for a fight caught me off guard. On multiple occasions a group of guys would purposefully make eye contact with me, no doubt hoping I would commit some heinous act worthy of a beating. It's no wonder the British sent troops to quell the citizens in 1768. Two hundred and fifty years later Bostonians half expect lobster-backed limeys to show up and over-tax their Venti Mocha Lattes from Starbucks.

Bostonians could just be jealous of New Yorkers. While the city possesses hardly any sports teams worth paying money to see, New York City boasts infinitely more of everything, including the worst drivers in the country. I am an aggressive-defensive driver hybrid who is rarely frightened by lunatics on the road; however, the brazen disregard for the law and the safety of pedestrians exhibited by New Yorkers sometimes surprise me.

I stopped in New York City for an evening to visit with friends and play beer roulette and trivial pursuit. It was relaxing and a fitting conclusion to my trip. After weeks on the road and countless sights, people, and sleepless nights, I arrived in New York City, the city that never sleeps, and spent the night on a couch playing board games.

I suppose all that's left now is a conclusion.

ann's arbor

2009-03-10T23:22:00.012-04:00

Ann Arbor is the college town's college town. Even my USA travel book states that if you want to experience the quintessential American college town, Ann Arbor is the place to be. Madison, Wisconsin is a close second.

I have lived most of my life in Ann Arbor, yet I never really appreciated or cared much about the city until my first days at the University of Michigan. I attribute much of that aloofness to four years of private high school thirty miles away in Detroit. However, Michigan athletics is the elixir to cure all apathy. And for all you Michigan haters out there, no, I don't plan to wax philosophical and use awful cliches to idolize the city or depict my journey from naive high schooler to reservist and then God of the Michigan Marching Band. I'll save that for my memoirs which I am currently co-writing with Miley Cyrus.

My parents have lived in the same house in Ann Arbor since what seems like the beginning of time. Actually I think I was in third grade, but same difference. Even though I moved out of that blue colonial-style residence when I left for college in 1999, I find myself reverting back to childhood tendencies whenever I am in town for a couple of days. There are the typical complaints such as: "Mom! What's for dinner?" and "Why is there never any food in this house?" Then there are the more quirky habits, one of which I just noticed this past week when my travels took me to Ann Arbor.

Growing up, the bathroom I shared with my siblings never had a lock on the door (until my dad installed one at the behest of my sister, AFTER the boys had already left for college). There were a set of drawers next to the door that, when opened, would effectively block the door, rendering useless any mischievous attempts to break in. For years these drawers were our bathroom lock.

This past week, every time I went to take a shower, I found myself opening the drawer to block the door. Keep in mind neither my brother nor sister were even home. And I didn't even bother to use the lock. Some habits die hard.

The few days I spent in Ann Arbor were relaxing, a break from the whirlwind of Park City and Chicago. I mostly just slept, wrote, read and had dinner with my parents. The one exception was Thursday night when I met a friend at a restaurant in town for a few beers and delicious curry fries.

On Friday, I got back in the car. I had planned to stop in New York City, but at the last minute I changed my plans and continued north to Boston.

the bucket list

2009-03-09T23:12:00.011-04:00

The following is the final product of some musing that began before my trip did. I'll have an update on my status tomorrow.

No one has ever heard of Alain de Botton with the exception of his mother and the few newspaper book reviewers whose quotes adorn the back of his books. If you know who he is I’m wildly impressed. De Botton was raised a spoiled rich kid in Britain, but dropped out of a Ph.D program at Harvard to pursue his passion: the writing, fiction and non-fiction, on the philosophy of everyday life.

A South African fellow introduced me to de Botton’s The Art of Travel while I was stumbling along the Inca Trail in Peru with an even clumsier friend--who happens to be a surgical resident. The book is a fascinating and nontraditional look at the psychology of travel and uses the lives and works of artists and writers to examine five ideas: 1) departure and the overlooked beauty found waiting at the airport watching planes take off, or taking a cab through a shanty town en route to a five-star resort; 2) motive and why we seek to go places other than our own backyard; 3) a comparison of cityscapes and countryscapes; 4) art and how it captures beauty and opens one’s eyes to landscapes viewed through another’s perspective; and 5) return, an interesting perspective on Frenchman Xavier de Maistre’s extensive travels in his own bedroom. Needless to say, de Botton's travelogue provided me with some of the self-insight I needed to realize what I was missing through my travels.

I am constantly looking to improve my lot upon this planet and that includes my approach to travel. In years past I've found that instead of truly enjoying and capturing the beauty and culture of places I visited, I was merely taking pictures and checking names off of a bucket list. My trips that produced the most vivid memories involved an emotional high, whether it was physical pain or laughter: an experience that pseudo-traumatizes the subconscious. For example, hiking down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or sitting around drinking beer and playing cards with some locals in a backwater town in Peru. One can easily take a car or plane to every worthwhile destination on the map, but the most rewarding experiences come when you get of your car and leave the comfort of the known. Pack up your stuff and hike alone into the wilderness or strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.

All too often people view travel as the proverbial notch-on-the-bedpost. We must go to as many places as possible just so we can brag to friends about our travels by updating a world map on Facebook or posting gaggles of pictures on Flickr. American culture propagates this absurdity by publishing books on the 50 Places You Must See Before You Die or the 1001 Beautiful Cities/Canyons/Churches You’re Freakin’ Crazy Not to Visit. Before you know it, a generation of kids is traveling the globe without ever developing any type of relationship with the places they rush to visit.

Novelists create characters that represent an amalgam of people they know. During my summer abroad in Egypt, our group was often graced with the presence of a girl whose character perfectly embodies everything that is wrong with travel culture. Everyday I got to hear: “Ok, so last year I went to Turkey and it was like so beautiful and this year I’m going to Jordan and then two days later my parents are chartering a plane to fly me to Peru because the little girls in their native dresses are like soooo cute!” That might not be so terrible in and of itself, but her posse of girls would only eat only at the Euro Café, a hipster joint for Egyptian college kids who need wi-fi and croissants to avoid eating local cuisine with their fellow poverty-stricken countrymen. As if!

She also thought it a terrible idea to try and learn a few words of Arabic since we were only going to be in Egypt for two months. She is the reason foreigners think Americans are assholes.

I understand it’s easy to throw some of that back in my face. Yes, I ate at the Euro Café once, and during the past month I’ve not had time to enjoy some places as much as I would have liked. Now this is partially due to my blog, but at every stop I take time to examine my thoughts for what each place means to me. Descriptions and metaphors, yes, but I also search for peculiar flaws in seemingly invincible rock, the perfect angle to capture an image, or I try to walk in the shoes of people whose experiences long predate my own. I eat the house special at restaurants recommended by locals and try to get the latest gossip from the waitresses. Sometimes I just sit on the ground among a grove of trees listening to and feeling the breeze as the dense pines mute the faraway beckoning of civilization.

I owe many of the ideas for destinations on this trip to stories I’ve read by John Steinbeck and Bill Bryson, but de Botton’s work fundamentally changed my philosophy towards travel. Instead of simply taking pictures I try to immerse myself in and become a part of the landscape and cultures I’ve seen, even if it’s as a white Catholic guy in the middle of southern Egypt.

this is sparta!! ha-ooh!! ha-ooh!!

2009-03-05T16:37:00.017-05:00

*You need the latest version of QuickTime to watch the above video

Last weekend I was in Chicago and, sigh, I left the city exhausted. In fact, I had so much fun I almost developed a fever Monday night. Admittedly, my body's weakness was probably a combination of Park City and Chicago, the two of which were only three days apart.

I crashed with a college friend who is very tall, very Greek, and in law school. He only drinks Ouzo and uses big words like Galaktoboureko. My understanding of Greek is limited to shouting a quick series of letters, alpha-theta-omega-phi-psi-beta, and hoping I stumble across the spelling of a real word. He also has an attractive younger sister who we make the source of incessant shenanigans that lead to his six foot seven frame pounding us into a pulp. It's all in good fun.

While we took a walk in sub-zero temperatures to Navy Pier to see how desolate it is in the winter, we avoided the tourists spots since I have seen them all before. Instead we toured nearly every restaurant and bar in the city, including a deep dish pizzeria.

We were joined by another of my friends from school who described himself best Sunday morning after meeting a girl on the subway: "I was sitting on the subway drunk at three in the morning with two McDonald's double cheeseburgers in hand when she asked me what I did. I replied, 'I'm a doctor.'"

The three of us were together for the better part of four days in the city and the most interesting night was undoubtedly Friday. After an embarrassing game of pool--on my part at least--the bar we were in closed and we had to progress across the street. Somehow we got to playing Truth or Dare with several of my friend's law school classmates and he dared me to make out with the girl sitting behind me. I thought that was a ridiculous dare because she was a total stranger. However, never one to turn down a challenge, I tapped the girl on the shoulder, explained the situation and said that even though it was wildly inappropriate to make out, would a kiss on the cheek suffice? She said yes so the game moved on and my friend was shocked at my brazenness.

About an hour later, last call was announced and I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see the girl standing there. She proceeded to grab my head and go in for the kill. I was too stunned to really do anything except reciprocate. Everyone practically fell out of their chairs in surprise. I suppose the night ended on a good note.

On Sunday we met up with two more people on the way to a Greek restaurant. One is a friend from school who now teaches high school English in the area. I can't quite put a finger on it, but her understanding of the written word and appreciation for real literature is extremely intimidating, particularly for someone who writes prolifically. I mean like seriously, she uses Taylor Swift's Love Story as an example of how the Romeo and Juliet story so DID NOT happen. But it's such a good song!

The other is a law school classmate of my friend who, for some reason, loves Ohio State and couldn't provide me with a decent enough excuse. She also is the first female World of Warcraft player I've ever met. She obviously figured out the real way to a man's heart--well, at least the hearts of men who grew up among the video game generation.

Dinner was fantastic, but why would it not be? When you travel with a Greek giant, palate nirvana is first and foremost on their mind. The Greeks have a leg up on most ethnicities when it comes to food and crashing oil tankers into reefs while drunk. If you think about it, much of the cuisine in Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and other Mediterranean countries have roots in Greece. I would assume that is due to Greek domination over much of the known world until they were beaten into submission by the Romans, then the Turks and finally the Nazis. Things have really gone downhill since Gerard Butler and Colin Ferrell fought for and ruled the region.

The next day I left for Ann Arbor along with one of my friends who was catching a ride back to visit family as well.

people listening

2009-03-05T11:27:00.012-05:00

You may have noticed that I neglected to include any commentary on my time in Park City. The reason for such an exclusion? Park City is an anomaly as far as my trip is concerned. I had a great time and I got the impression everyone else did as well. The skiing was amazing, particularly considering I have never skied west of Boyne, Michigan. However, I didn't act as an observer like I have through the rest of the trip. There were no sights to see, no true adventures to be had and, quite frankly, I wanted to spend a few days not piecing stories together in my head. Further, I wouldn't want to utilize the eternity that is the Internet and tarnish any of my friends' sterling reputations. Just imagine nine friends from college on a ski trip in possession of nothing but a deck of cards and a lot of beer; you can write your own story.

Inevitably I did spend time musing about my role as a pseudo-journalist/storyteller on this trip. And while none of my thoughts were particularly interesting or worth describing here, they have made me much more aware of the people around me.

In every city, hostel, coffee shop, and National Park visitor center I happened upon, my ears were like a sponge. I tried to decipher foreign languages and looked for subjectivity within the monotonous scripted speech of a tour guide. I listened to scolding parents come within inches of strangling their children and the illiterate teenagers of the text message generation wonder out loud if Native Americans were the same as people from India since they are both referred to as Indians. And I tried not to look completely appalled as a very nice grandfather in Salt Lake City explained to me that the original settlers of North America were white and their skin was turned red after years of sin (Don't know what I'm talking about? See South Park for a history lesson).

In Nephi, Utah, I sat in a booth next to a clean cut couple who spent, at least, twenty minutes ordering food. No, it was not because they ordered everything on the menu. Instead, the wife kept asking the waitress if one item was better than the next. "Which is better, the chicken parmigiana or roast beef au jus? Or what about the cheeseburger and the Caesar salad? Which one is better? And is the draft beer better or should I get a pink lemonade?" At one point the words blurred in my head and all I could hear was my optometrist saying: "Which one is better, A or B? How about 1 or 2? Now 3 or 4?"

The guys who sat on the other side of me were the opposite extreme. Both men looked as though they had just spent the day carrying large amounts of weight through a mud pit. My back was to the filthier more tired-looking man and even though I was closer to him than his colleague across the table I couldn't understand one word he said. It was "urrg" this and "ungh" that. As far as I could tell, I was sitting next to some real, in the flesh Neanderthals. The waitress was very cute and I was worried that they were planning to club her and drag her off to their pickup truck. I planned to warn her until she forgot my hot chocolate. Tough break I guess.

Just remember, if you're at a restaurant and there is a solitary guy sitting by you who looks like a bum yet is wearing designer duds, he's probably on a cross-country road trip and hoping you'll give him some writing material.

the kings of corn

2009-03-04T17:08:00.025-05:00

Before the invention of handheld video games and car DVD players, kids had to find other ways to pass time during long family road trips. Some of us had a pack of cards, others had car (miniature) versions of games like Connect Four. You could try to make a dent in your school's summer reading list, but motion sickness would inevitably end that endeavor. Many of us would simply stare mindlessly out the window with no regard to the passing sights; the only thing that kept our brains from just giving up and dying were the passionate wishes that the trip end soon.

And when, no matter how fast your dad drove, you finally resigned to the fact that you would be surrounded by cornfields forever, a billboard in the distance caught your eye: MYSTERY SPOT NEXT EXIT! WORLD'S LARGEST HORSE TURD EXIT NOW!! LAND OF GIANT LIZARDS TAKE EXIT 146 FOR A THOUSAND MILES THEN TURN LEFT!!!

For a kid bored senseless, nothing is more alluring than a billboard advertising Auntie Em's Farm of Lawn Gnomes. Consequently, lost in the excitement of possibly leaving the car for a few minutes, we would beg and plead for dad to take the next exit. While we already know what our father's response will be, we continue to pray for intercession by God and all the patron saints of useless crap until the exit has passed and we quickly return to a vegetable state. Every few hundred miles the process repeats until we either reach our destination or, miraculously, the cornfields give way to a more exciting landscape, e.g. anything.

On my way to Chicago, I passed a billboard near Mitchell, South Dakota that instructed me to exit and see one of the great wonders of the world: The Corn Palace. In an instant I was intrigued and dismissive. I knew the Corn Palace would be among the most utterly lame experiences of my life. On the other hand, the childish need to finally obey a roadside billboard led me to exit the interstate.

The Corn Palace is astonishingly amazing and equally ridiculous. The building serves primarily as an arena and facility for community events. However, the main attraction is the outside facade which is made of corn and other grains. Each year the extensive corn murals are removed and replaced by a local artist. This year, a mural of the Lincoln Memorial overlooking the National Mall, among others, greeted my arrival.

I chose not to go inside, primarily because there was an admission fee, but also because I began to feel foolish just standing outside THE CORN PALACE, so I got in my car and left. A childhood fantasy shattered in mere minutes.

Nowadays any inquisitive mind can see the Corn Palace on its live webcam.

Updated pictures here.

my lands are where my dead lie buried

2009-03-01T20:19:00.008-05:00

In the summer of 1876, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane sauntered into Deadwood, South Dakota. Among the first characters immortalized in frontier dime novels, Hickok and Jane both served stints as scouts for Custer and met while on a wagon train to Deadwood as the leader of the 7th Cavalry rode off into infamy. A few weeks later Wild Bill was shot playing poker in Saloon No. 10, the same saloon I now played blackjack in.

The Wild West conjures images of dusty one street towns in the Arizona desert, the Utah and eastern California settings of many John Wayne movies, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (If I remember correctly, Doc Holliday looked a lot like Val Kilmer). However, there are no tumbleweeds in Deadwood; no buildings and faces sculpted by years of the sun's abuse. The city rests in a gulch lost among the Black Hills, distinguished only by the dead Ponderosa Pines lining the surrounding hills. Yet Deadwood is the quintessential Wild West town, inspiring even the creation of a HBO miniseries.

Deadwood was originally an illegal camp on Lakota Indian territory during the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1874. And while gambling is still the number one recreational activity, the city now caters to a less delinquent crowd: tourists and local retired folk looking to make some easy cash. I arrived the day after the yearly Mardi Gras party so the streets were mostly quiet and the bar staff greatly outnumbered the patrons.

Despite its reputation as a tourist trap, the restored 19th century Main Street, the swinging saloon doors, and the sawdust covered floors all found themselves quite to my liking. In my mind, sitting at the blackjack table with a drink in hand and chatting with some of the locals is as close as I'll get to an authentic Wild West experience. Then again I was a little drunk, which certainly is conducive to unwarranted nostalgia in places contrived to arose such feelings.

The next day I left Deadwood and drove deeper into the Black Hills. My first destination was the Crazy Horse Memorial, a literally mountain-sized monument being built in honor of the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski began working on the monument in 1948 and, if completed, the sculpture will be the world's largest at 563 feet. To put things into perspective, all four heads of Mount Rushmore could fit into Crazy Horse's head.

Even with countless decades of work remaining, the sculpture is remarkable if not a bit absurd and has generated an enormous amount of controversy. The Lakota Indians view the Black Hills as sacred and many believe the creation of this monument is akin to carving up Mount Zion in the shape of a biblical character. What's more, Crazy Horse refused to be photographed and was buried where his body could never be found; surely he would not have supported the construction of such an enormity.

I headed next to Mount Rushmore in the hopes of seeing Nicholas Cage fall out of George Washington's nose. Alas, no such luck. Even Mount Rushmore lies incomplete, but it did give me a scale with which to measure how the Crazy Horse Memorial will look if finished. To be honest, Mount Rushmore is an absurdity itself and was created merely in an effort to increase tourism in the Black Hills. Don't get me wrong, the monument is impressive and sculptor Gutzon Borglum did a remarkable job with the likenesses of the four presidents, even giving the impression that Teddy Roosevelt is wearing glasses. However, it's saddening to think Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, despite having good intentions, probably commissioned the Crazy Horse Monument in retaliation to the U.S. Government's own disregard for the purity of natural resources. The Black Hills are an oasis of rolling hills and Ponderosa Pines among the flat nothingness of the Great Plains, blemished by our desire to make money and to make statement.

a treatise on the state of american manufacturing

2009-02-25T00:02:00.012-05:00

I have seen many spectacular, humbling, creepy and idiotic sights over the past few weeks, yet some of my favorite experiences have been with the people I've encountered along the way. While the Vibe was getting an oil change in Wyoming, I sat around chatting with a few locals who were there for the early bird oil change special as well. In fact, when I walked into the lobby and began looking for a magazine to read, a grizzled old man a few feet away remarked, "The least they could do is give ya some fucking cups. Amateurs." Apparently there was coffee but no cups, a world-ending predicament for a retired miner at eight in the morning. When he saw the Vibe we got to talking about the economy and the state of the American manufacturing sector. And if you hadn't figured out by now, this man makes Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau seem like BFFs.

Through our profanity-laced conversation I learned that the auto industry is on the ropes because we keep buying cars made by "Those damn Chinamen." I corrected him. "I think the Japanese are more of a problem than the Chinese." "Fucking-A," he countered. "All of those Chinamen are stealing our jobs and shipping car parts over here to be built. We can't compete with no damn Chinaman who works for nothing. We gotta start charging huge tariffs on them parts when they get shipped here on them damn boats."

A slightly younger man sitting next to the old man also happened to be retired and was just chuckling the entire time. When asked his opinion he replied, "I used to own my own business and..." "You're a capitalist dog, a corporate raider!" the old man interrupted.

By now I was resigned to nodding and laughing at the continuous stream of nonsense coming from the old man's mouth. When I said I live on the East Coast he asked, "Which part of Greenwich Village?" I was actually a little offended he associated me with a bunch of latte sipping, rabidly liberal hipsters from New York City. I thought my unshaven and unclean appearance would disguise my obvious suburban roots.

When my car was ready, the other man pulled me aside and said not all Wyomingites have dreadful personalities and that I would be welcome back at any time. I laughed and told him I frequently deal with unsophisticated brutes in the allegedly more civilized Washington DC. The only difference is that in DC we pepper our speech with large multi-syllabic words in order to prove we got our money's worth from years of education. I rather enjoy the rugged landscape and people in Wyoming; it makes me feel like I'm truly out West. With that I shook his hand, said farewell, and was back on the road.

come on you wolverines!

2009-02-23T20:14:00.013-05:00

Before leaving Park City, I told my friends that I was heading to Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park. I lied. Improved weather and my desire to escape mountains and snow led me to try my luck and head north. Much to my delight, the snow receded and the midday temperatures rose into the 40s when I reached Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

I have had a secret interest in the Battle of the Little Bighorn since I first read the story back in elementary school. It is one of those snippets of history that schools teach as a one-sided rah rah American tale of heroism, not unlike Catholic schools and their depiction of the Crusades as a conflict against the Muslim heathens. To this day I can still conjure the image of a picture in my history book depicting Custer's "Last Stand." The painting illustrates a horde of Lakota-Cheyenne riders closing in on the U.S. 7th Calvary as dismounted Indians bludgeon U.S. soldiers with war clubs and tear off scalps. In the middle of the scene, Custer, wearing his distinctive white buckskin coat, stands defiantly with his sword in the air, having just opened the chest of a nearby attacker.

Custer, a Michigander famous for leading the Wolverines of the Michigan Brigade during the Civil War, was immortalized by the American media as a martyr following his demise at the hands of some two thousand Native Americans led by Sitting Bull. I have always thought Custer was an arrogant opportunist who deserved his fate because of foolish military strategy. I also cheered the victory of the Lakota and Cheyenne, a final chance for honor and a slap to face of a expanding United States before being forced onto reservations.

I have criticized battlefields before in this blog, but Little Bighorn was different. A winding tour road marks spots of historical significance, but there is an added touch of realism. Following the battle, the dead soldiers were quickly buried in shallow graves marked by simple wooden poles. Weather forced the government to exhume the remains and bury them in a mass grave while headstones were placed on the spot where each man fell. You can actually imagine the battle raging as you walk the bluffs and see the marble stones scattered about.

Many parts of Montana are beautiful, but the hills around the Little Bighorn River are desolate and a miserable place to die. Aside from a few trees, the only color is that of dead grass, and because the conditions do not favor agriculture, the earth is beaten and chewed by range animals.

As I drove through Montana, I kept trying to figure out what is meant by Big Sky Country. I crossed the border into Montana twice and each time I half expected the horizons to expand, see blues turn bluer or hear myself spontaneously blurt out, "Damn, that's a big sky!" The sky in Montana is vast and beautiful, but it's just as vast and beautiful as the sky in Wyoming, Nebraska, or any place where there is a lot of flat nothingness. The only difference would be Washington State or Michigan during the winter where there is no sky, just clouds.

Southern Wyoming, on the other hand, is a wasteland of epic proportions. Middling mesas stretch on for hundreds of miles and everything looks like someone just mixed dirt in with cement when they painted the landscape. I figure Nature was taking her first shot at designing canyons, realized she created a calamitous disaster and left the land to rot while she designed masterpiece after masterpiece a few hundred miles to the southwest. And, not surprisingly, humans agreed with Nature's assessment; there is not one settlement for a hundred miles with the exception of some obviously insane person who lives in a one room shack just off the expressway and has fifty cars parked on his front lawn.

I continued on to Devils Tower, a dramatic "monolithic igneous intrusion" that rises above the Black Hills in eastern Wyoming. The Lakota Indians believe the tower and the Black Hills were created during an ancient race as stampeding buffalo and other animals pounded the surrounding earth lower. Conveniently, the Magpie, who was racing in the stead of the slower human, won the race allowing the Indians to forever hunt the buffalo. I think the tower is a beacon for the extraterrestrials who built the pyramids, earthen mounds and the crystal skulls that drive men crazy. In fact, my theory was proven correct when aliens, led by a being that could take the shape of humans and was called Steven Spielberg, made contact with us at the tower in 1977. That same being, along with its life partner, George Lucas, proceeded to stay on this planet and ruin a great many of the franchise films we know and love.

Actually Devils Tower is an impressive piece of rock that explodes out of the landscape. I spent a couple of hours just wandering around the base of the tower absolutely dumbfounded at how erosion could create such a monument. On a side note, I have learned more about geology in the past few weeks than I have in the last 27 years.

As the sun began to wane, I lingered a while longer before driving through Sundance (A tiny town whose only claim to fame is Harry Longabaugh, also known as the Sundance Kid) on my way to Deadwood, South Dakota.

there's just too much to say

2009-02-18T13:30:00.013-05:00

Road Warrior Report
Days on the Road: 23
Miles Driven: 8789
States Visited: CA, OR, WA, ID, UT, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TN, AR, OK, TX, NM, AZ, NV

The United States interstate system is highly convenient and completely anonymous. On one hand, freeways are generally in good condition, and are built in the flattest places which allow one to get from point A to point B in a relatively short period of time. However, by racing along miles of concrete at eighty miles an hour, you miss out on everything that is fascinating and unique about America. With a few exceptions (e.g., I-84 in Oregon that slices through the Columbia Gorge), it doesn't matter if you are on I-40 in Arizona, Texas, Tennessee or wherever, the landscape that zooms by all begins to melt together and you can barely tell which state you are in. The secondary roads that blanket the country like a cracks on a broken window lead to places you might not have discovered otherwise, like Arco.

Arco is one of those towns with less than a thousand people that make you wonder how people can find a living hundreds of miles from the nearest major population center. Other than the gas station, the motel, the grocery store and the school, what jobs could possibly exist? Arco also has the distinction of being the first community in the world to have been powered by nuclear energy, a fact not ignored by the locals. A local diner features several Cold War options such as the Atomic Burger and the Black Russian sandwich.

I am also dumbfounded by the rugged beauty of the landscape and the poverty of the community. Many of the town's residents live in houses or trailers that lie in various states of disrepair, but walk out the front door and you can see mountains as far as the eye can see. I've noticed this trend while driving through the Cascades in Washington, canyon country in southern Utah and pretty much anywhere in the Appalachians. And while many of America's poorest communities are in the most beautiful places, the people with money choose to live in gaudy McMansions bunched together in places called Walnut Ridge, Forest Glen, or any two word combination of a tree type and geologic feature. Instead of seeing a breathtaking mountain vista every morning, the guy who lives in the suburbs "to escape the city and own some land" looks out his back porch, across his half an acre, and sees his neighbor looking right back at him from an identical house whose enormity takes up the whole half acre he paid half a million bucks for.

In any case, I traveled to Arco because of its proximity to Craters of the Moon National Monument. A fascinatingly random lava field in the middle of the Snake River Valley, Craters of the Moon is a desolate landscape highlighted by volcanic cinder cones, lava tubes, and the absence of tourists. Several feet of snow covered the monument making for poor pictures and visibility, but excellent snow shoeing. I spent the better part of the day climbing the cones and trying to avoid ruining the precious cross-country ski trails. Actually, I sloshed through the trails, a habit I've developed in honor of a man that my friends and I met while hiking through the Adirondacks last month. An avid skier, obnoxious local, and clearly convinced we were a bunch of juvenile delinquents, he spent twenty minutes explaining why we needed to go out of our way, whether it be jumping off cliffs or swinging from trees, in order to avoid the oh so perfectly-groomed ski trails. Apparently, the relationship between cross-country skiers and showshoers is similar to that of skiers and snowboarders, the later is simply sub-human.

Following a delicious Atomic Burger at the local diner in Arco, I headed south to Utah and even more snow. Counting yesterday, I have driven through either rain or snow every day for the past two weeks. Awesome.

Driving through Utah, it's not hard to see why the Mormons decided to stop their westward exodus and build Zion next to the Great Salt Lake; there is not a single eyesore or unpleasant view in the entire state.

To me the mountains and valleys of Utah are a bit worldlier; an endless playground for the adult boy who has not, and probably will never, shake his restless spirit. From the top of vermilion-colored mesas to the all-consuming darkness of slot canyons you can barely walk through sideways, one could spend a lifetime exploring the wild Utah backcountry. I was there for five days. Consequently, the wilderness of canyon country is where I walked away with the biggest disappointment of my trip thus far.

About eight bazillion years ago, tectonic plate shifts and earthquakes forced a 130,000 square mile piece of Earth up and created what is called the Colorado Plateau. Millions of years of erosion through rain, ice, and coursing rivers have whittled the plateau into what is called the Grand Staircase. The top step of the staircase rises over 11,000 feet above sea level and consists of the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains. With each downward step, erosion turns varying rock types into distinct canyons with unique formations and colors. All of this beauty is within a span of two hundred miles. The lowest step is the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River’s final and greatest masterpiece on its journey to the Pacific Ocean. One step higher is Zion Canyon, the home of the Virgin River, one of the United States’ last free-flowing rivers, and Utah’s most popular national park.

When Mormon settlers first stumbled upon Zion Canyon, they declared it to be “Zion.” Upon his arrival, Brigham Young was quick to remark that the canyon, while beautiful, was certainly not Zion. For years, until efforts began to create Zion National Park, people actually referred to the area as “not Zion.” Today the park enjoys a reputation for ambitious hiking trails and accessible canyons for both amateur and expert canyoneers.

During the winter the north rim of the canyon is impassable due to snow and ice and since I wanted to hike into the backcountry my only real option was the southwest desert. Not to be outdone by the towering canyon walls with imposing names like the Patriarchs and the Tower of Sinawava, the southwest desert is a series of washes covered in spruces that hide an ancient petrified forest among their roots.

I hiked about six miles into the backcountry and camped along the lower ridge of a mesa with a view overlooking the entire desert and valley leading up to the entrance of Zion Canyon. Unfortunately, I don’t sleep well in tents and combined with a heightened sense of paranoia because I was alone and miles away from civilization, I suffered through a fitful night of sleep.

The next morning I broke camp at first light because the forecast called for rain and I wanted to be well on my way before then. Naturally, the unpredictable nature of the weather I have encountered dictated that blue skies prevailed when I arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park.

Bryce Canyon is the next step up in the Grand Staircase and could not be any more different than the Grand Canyon or Zion. Bryce is defined by its “Hoodoos,” orange-colored rock spires that belong on another planet. I hiked down the Queen’s Garden trail which switchbacks down to the floor of the Bryce Amphitheater, weaves between the hoodoos and climbs back up to the rim via a steep and narrow canyon called Wall Street.

I only spent a few hours at Bryce because the weather—again—was supposed to deteriorate and I wanted to make sure I was in Escalante before the snow hit. You’d think that at this point I would stop paying attention to the doom and gloom meteorologists, but the thought of driving up and down canyons and mesas in the middle of a blizzard was not that appealing.

I was the only person at the diner in Escalante when I stopped for dinner which meant that no one, other than the waitress, would see me devour a decadent cheeseburger covered in bacon, mushrooms, onions, and to top it all off, polish sausage. It was fantastic. I drifted off to sleep in my motel room looking forward to a day in the wilderness of the Grand Staircase Monument.

Much to my chagrin, I awoke to see five inches of fresh snow on the ground. What did that mean? No hiking in the Grand Staircase because the unpaved access roads were impassable and awful driving conditions as I continued on to Capitol Reef National Park. I was pissed, especially because the Grand Staircase was all off-trail backcountry hiking among hidden canyons, narrow washes and dinosaur tracks. Yes, dinosaur tracks.

Capitol Reef National Park was a pleasant surprise and certainly eased the pain of missing out on the Grand Staircase. Around the time the Colorado Plateau formed, the Earth’s crust folded to create the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile stretch of rock that has eroded away to form the park’s namesake. The upper reaches of the fold contain rocks that look like white marble, very similar to the color of the Capitol in Washington, DC.

The park also has a rich cultural history to complement its natural beauty. Over a thousand years ago, the native peoples who lived in the area carved numerous petroglyphs in the canyon walls that are still visible today. In the 19th century, Mormon settlers came to the area and flourished. Many of their buildings and orchards have been preserved in the park and during the summer, visitors may pick fruit from the many trees scattered throughout the park. Capitol Reef was also one of the Utah hideouts for the infamous robber Butch Cassidy and his gang. I followed the reef’s ridge for several miles to stand on the massive arch that immortalizes Cassidy’s name and stands guard over the wash he once used to traverse the reef.

On the way back to my car, I decided to turn the hike into a loop--versus a circuit--and walked alongside the park's main vehicle thoroughfare. I was offered a ride by a park ranger, the quintessential national park experience that, while seemingly harmless, is a rare treasure afforded mostly to hikers traveling alone. Don't ask me to expand, I can't right now. The consequence of not having much time to write is that ideas in my head don't ferment as well as they should. Nor do I spend nearly as much time editing. Guess that means I should write a book.

Now I'm in Park City for some skiing. I spent yesterday touring various Mormon sights in Salt Lake City and I'll have something to say about that later.

Pictures here.

a long time in the making

2009-02-18T13:18:00.022-05:00

Where do I begin? It has been nearly a week since my last update, I have a million things to say, and the 60 minutes of Internet time the kind people at the Salt Lake City Library have bestowed upon me has dwindled to a mere 25. I'll give a brief update, with no pictures, and write more when I find reliable Internet access either tonight or tomorrow.

Since leaving Washington, I've made stops in Arco, Idaho (yes, you've never heard of it), and have spent several days traipsing around canyon country in southern Utah. It has snowed for at least a few minutes everyday, yet the daytime temperatures have generally been in the high 40s. I spent a night in the backcountry of Zion National Park and soloed some slot canyon routes that were borderline class 5 and would have my rock climbing brother aghast at my brazen disregard for safety. And for a large percentage of the time I was convinced that an attack was imminent, either by a mountain lion, or a crazed group of Mormon settlers who still thought it was the 19th century.

In any case, I survived and am now waiting for some friends to arrive so we can head out to Park City and begin a four day ski trip. I'll have plenty of time to upload pictures and write so expect a flood of entries (or just one really enormous entry) over the next couple of days. Time for some lunch.

happy birthday abe lincoln

2009-02-12T17:21:00.009-05:00

Pictures here.

There are twenty-eight breweries within the city of Portland making it the microbrewery capital of the United States. There is also an array of bookstores, one of which we visited during an evening in the city.

Powell's is the bookstore's bookstore. A 77,000-square foot monstrosity that spans an entire city block with nine color-coded rooms and four floors, it also houses approximately four million new and used books. One could easily spend days lost among the endless bookshelves, unfortunately we only had a couple of hours. However, I did walk away with a couple of new books to add to the exponentially growing unread collection.

Afterwards we wandered downtown Portland searching for some grub and stumbled upon the Lotus Bar & Cardroom. A prohibition-era speakeasy, the Lotus has a terrifically interesting history that dates back to 1902 and includes alcohol, prostitution and gambling in smoky back rooms of the bar. The actual bar--where you set drinks--was built in the 19th century by a English company and was discovered and shipped to Portland before the Panama Canal was built (A rather long voyage). Today it's a tad less exciting and illicit, but the food was good and the beer was even better. On to Washington!

The next morning we drove to Mount Rainier National Park and prayed the Vibe would make it up the snow covered mountain roads. Just a few days before all roads through the park, and even to some of the small towns outside the park, were closed due to record levels of snowfall. Fortunately, the Park Service does a superb job of plowing and the road to Paradise, and the visitor center, was mostly clear. The visitor center and lodge were closed, but the sky was blue and the massive volcano loomed in front of us, hibernating underneath an equally enormous amount of snow. In an instant I was reminded of memories from my ascent and summit of Mt. Rainier in 2005: slogging over seemingly endless glaciers, hopping over bottomless crevasses, the woman who went blind from altitude sickness, and leaning against the side of the mountain, exhausted and convinced I couldn't climb the final hundred feet to the summit. I desperately wanted to pack the gear in my car, say adios to my friend, and attempt a winter summit.

Instead we left and had lunch at the restaurant that was my reason for coming to the park: The Copper Creek Inn. My father and I ate at the inn, probably a hundred times, when we climbed Mt. Rainier in 2005. Our fixation revolved equal parts around the fantastic food and the phenomenally attractive waitress who served us. The inn is known for its blackberry-based products. Blackberry butter, blackberry vinaigrette, blackberry syrup and blackberry pie to name a few.

This time around we had a full three course meal, including pie for dessert, and I can say without reservation that the Copper Creek Inn is the best restaurant I have ever dined at. Alas, the waitress was not there.

With our stomachs full and eternally grateful, we headed to Seattle where my friend and I parted ways and I rode to the top of the Seattle Space Needle. The view was incredible and Mt. Rainier could be seen in the distance. However, I soon realized it was almost four and that rush hour would begin any second. I promptly left only to sit in an interstate parking lot fifteen minutes later.

One of my college friends lives and works in Olympia, the state capital, and my plan was to spend the night with him. He lives with his twin brother and the only significant difference between the two is that one is the faster runner and the other is the faster drinker. While his brother was out running, my friend and I went to a local bar where they served beer by the quart--Awesome!

And if you were not aware, I misplaced my glasses at the hostel in Charleston over two weeks ago. After days of phone tag, I finally got the manager to ship the glass here to Olympia. Since they did not arrive yesterday, I am spending the day here hoping the glasses show up this afternoon. Either tonight or tomorrow I will be heading to Idaho and then to Utah for a week's worth of camping before a ski trip in Park City. I'm not to optimistic about computer access over the next week and it will be a miracle if I post anything.

only vehicles with chains may continue

2009-02-12T14:04:00.006-05:00

That was a warning displayed with increasing frequency as the Vibe climbed into the higher reaches of the Cascades. I have neither chains nor four wheel drive, but aside from a few fish tails and miles of white-knuckle driving, I made it through the first inclement weather of the trip without any hiccups.

Crater Lake is a caldera lake that has the distinction of being the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest lake in the world (1,949 feet). Situated in the Oregon Cascades at about 6,100 feet, the lake formed after centuries of snow melt filled a massive caldera left by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama about 7,700 years ago. The lake's most distinctive feature, Wizard Island, is one of many volcanic cinder cones within the lake and the only one to have risen above the water's surface.

When we arrived at the parking lot near the south rim of the caldera, a thick layer of clouds sat over the lake making it impossible to see a thing. The snow banks were over ten feet high and I was forced to strap on snow shoes in order to approach the rim for a magnificent view of nothing but a gray featureless abyss. For a brief moment, the clouds over the lake cleared, the sun bored a small hole in the foreboding storm clouds overhead and the entire lake was visible. The scene was painted in shades of gray, but even the doleful artist, whose perspective created this picture, managed to capture the beauty that was mostly hidden on this dreary day.

The clouds returned to fill the caldera and I decided to keep on the snow shoes and trek to Discovery Point. During the summer, Discovery Point is a drive-up vista that marks where the first European saw the lake. In the winter it is a 1.3 mile one-way hike through what had now become a white-out. As I trudged through the blistering winds and stinging snow, my friend stayed in the cafe, which, considering my current situation, can only be described as toasty warm.

I reached Discovery Point in thirty minutes and it was a ghostly scene. I had been hiking over mountains of snow and suddenly part of the road was uncovered and a plaque commemorating the site lay half buried in snow. To my right was the gray abyss that hid the lake and a dense forest was to my left. I glanced behind to see my lone set of snow shoe tracks trail off into the storm and for a moment I thought I was the last person on Earth wandering through a nuclear winter.

I was also standing near the spot where, a few days earlier, two guys from the air force base in Klamath Falls had been hiking. Somehow managing to make the hike without snow shoes, their luck ran out when one of the guys, in an attempt to find a dropped camera, slipped and fell a hundred feet down the side of caldera. He stopped a mere ten feet from the edge of a 500-foot drop into the lake and it took rescuers four hours to bring him up to safety and treat him for mild hypothermia. Winter hiking isn't for the faint of heart.

After a hot lunch in the cafe, the Vibe and I fought through the driving snow until reaching 3,000 feet where the snow promptly began rain, the roads cleared and it was smooth sailing, relatively speaking, to Portland.

Updated pictures here.

very superstitious, writing's on the wall

2009-02-10T01:07:00.012-05:00

If you are a superstitious person, the past day would have sent you running for cover. After two straight days of rain--in California of all places--there was a light drizzle when we left Berkley this morning.

I try to avoid using CDs or MP3 players during road trips so that I can listen to local radio stations. A great testament to the power of the Internet and domestic globalization, nearly every radio station is identical to the next from Britney Spears' latest single to the same low-budget commercials advertising Joe's Shop for Whatever. And when I'm tired of hearing about when Katy Perry kissed a girl and liked it, or when the bloviating Rush Limbaugh denounces President Obama as the Antichrist, I switch to NPR for a solid dose of pinko communist propaganda.

This morning NPR had a segment on tonight's full moon that included some obscure trivia on how the Earth is, at any one moment, half covered in light and half covered in shadow. I'm glad the producers at NPR dispatched brilliant scientific minds to uncover this mystery of the stars. What they failed to mention, however, was that a full moon is known to induce strange behavior in both humans and nature.

We drove up the north coast of California to Redwood National Park and the rain subsided. The redwood groves that stretch from San Francisco to the Oregon border are the only old-growth forests left in the United States and the last remaining redwoods in the world. Further, these forests contain plant species that have outlasted the dinosaurs. Wandering among the 300-foot redwoods and pushing aside the descendants of pre-historic ferns is the closest one can get to experiencing what life was like while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. I half expected to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex come crashing through the undergrowth.

As we fast-fowarded to the present and began to weave through the Cascade Mountains towards Oregon, the rain returned and quickly became snow. From that point on, the weather seemed to change by the mile. The snow gave way to rain until blue skies parted the clouds for a instant before disappearing behind clouds and more rain. Fifty miles outside of Klamath Falls, the highway climbed up into the Cascades, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees and a drizzle became a blizzard. The road was quickly vanishing beneath the snow, but there were barely visible tracks and what appeared to be salt and sand preventing slippery conditions. Twenty miles later we caught up with the salt truck that had been providing the Vibe with so much traction. We followed the truck for another ten miles until the snow suddenly subsided and the roads cleared and were even dry. It was as if we had walked through a door separating a storm system and clear skies.

The sky was eerily beautiful and the brilliance of the full moon illuminated the landscape in a fluorescent light. Occasionally thin clouds would dissipate some of the light, but when the moon emerged the snow on the hillsides would light up like a white T-shirt underneath a black light. And if the day hadn't been strange enough, we pulled into Klamath Falls around eight and decided to eat at a BBQ joint that received rave reviews from the locals. While I was a little hesitant to accept BBQ in the Pacific Northwest, the food was great, better than most BBQ places in DC.

Now I'm pondering a jump in the heated pool here at the hotel. Tomorrow morning we are heading up to Crater Lake.

I only took a couple of pictures today and will update on Wednesday.

how the west was won

2009-02-08T22:43:00.014-05:00

Pictures have been updated and are here.

The road to Las Vegas passes through the Lake Meade Recreation Area and over the Hoover Dam. A Depression-era engineering feat, the Hoover Dam is best known for housing Megatron until his escape and demise at the hands of Shia Labeouf in the streets of Los Angeles. Standing on the dam looking down towards the Colorado River more than 700 feet below, the first thought in your head is a breathtaking, "Holy shit," followed shortly by, "How the heck was such an incredible piece of engineering built back in 1935?"

The Hoover Dam also marks the border between Arizona and Nevada. This change is noted, not by a change in scenery, but by the casino located about a mile from the dam. This establishment is placed strategically in case you cannot wait to flush money away in Las Vegas. If you can avoid the urge to gamble for thirty minutes, your patience is rewarded with a sweeping view of Vegas as the mountains fade into the desert.

Las Vegas was once the nation's fastest growing city; now it has one of the highest foreclosure rates. Nevertheless, the Strip at night is electrifying and overflowing with hundred thousand dollar cars, gambling addicts and illegal immigrants who are paid to hand out advertisements for strip clubs and escort services. Even if your idea of a good time is not losing exorbitant amounts of money in mere seconds, it's impossible to not be excited by the flashing lights and the whirring of slot machines.

I met up with some friends who were staying at the Venetian on business and after a few drinks in the hotel, we hit up the casinos. I threw down $50 at the blackjack table and was out after eight hands. My friend lost $400. With only $1 left--that I was willing to spend--I sat down at the penny slots and walked away 24 cents richer. I proceeded to lose the entire $1.24 playing video poker while waiting for a drink at the bar. After all that excitement, we wandered around Caesar's Palace until we realized it was two in the morning and my friends needed to be up for work in three hours. It was off to bed for a quick nap and a drive to Los Angeles the next day.

While watching the Weather Channel the next day, I noticed the forecast called for clear skies across the country and rain throughout the entire state of California. Four hours and a few hundred miles later we were sitting on I-10 in Los Angeles, stuck in rush hour traffic and the only day of rain the city will see all year. Another hour and ten miles later, we had parked and were sitting in the Broadway Deli, a great restaurant on the Santa Monica promenade. Afterwards, I met up with my brother and some of his friends at a bar near his office.

My brother and his friends work in Hollywood and, consequently, are the only people I really enjoy hearing talk shop. They never fail to have the inside scoop on celebrities or movies that you can't get on any entertainment blog. When we left LA to begin driving up the Pacific coast I was up-to-date on all the latest Hollywood gossip.

We spent the night in a small town north of Santa Barbara and woke up to more gray skies and pounding rain. I planned to spend the day cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway and rain was certainly not an integral part of that plan. Fortunately, whether by luck or divine providence, the rain slowed to a drizzle and when we hit the coast the clouds parted and the sun broke through.

Driving along the PCH is like every experience in the west: dramatic. The highway snakes around cliffs that fall hundreds of feet into the Pacific Ocean. We stopped in Big Sur and hiked down to one of the many beaches where writers such as Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac found peace, beauty and inspiration.

You really haven't seen a coastline until you've visited Big Sur. The isolation, the pristine beaches, the jagged rocks and cliffs all contribute to a landscape that can only be described as epic. I spent half an hour sitting on the beach staring at the surf and breathing the sea air wondering why the American West was gifted with such incredible beauty. I also wondered why anyone would live on the East Coast when the West has so much more to offer. I live in the East and couldn't give myself an adequate answer.

The sunshine and perfect 65 degree temperature made leaving an arduous task. It was time to press on to San Francisco where we would be spending the next two nights in Berkeley.

I have never been to San Francisco and the city exceeded my expectations in many ways. First off, the city was much bigger than I had ever imagined. My previous knowledge of San Francisco revolved around Grand Theft Auto III and a couple of racing video games where you speed up and down the hilly streets in a Corvette. Two of my friends were in the city this weekend (one actually lives in LA) and they took us on an extensive driving tour that covered nearly every major sight in the city. We went from Coit Tower to the famous switchbacking Lombard Street to Golden Gate Park to the Haight where the hippie movement and the Grateful Dead were born in the 60s.

Again the weather was miserable and a thick fog covered most of the city. However, luck was on our side as we arrived at Golden Gate Park. As we turned a corner for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the fog lifted, the sun emerged and the bay was bathed in sunlight. Shortly thereafter the clouds reclaimed the sky and the rain returned, but not before we saw the Golden Gate Bridge underneath blue skies.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Redwood National Park on the way to Seattle. I would expect the next update by Wednesday night at the latest.

the sun sets in the west; in arizona actually

2009-02-06T13:33:00.012-05:00

Road Warrior Report
Days on the Road: 10
Miles Driven: 4774
States Visited: VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TN, AR, OK, TX, NM, AZ, NV

In a Calvin and Hobbes comic, Calvin asks his dad where the sun goes when it sets. Calvin's father, the consummate sarcastic ass, replies, "The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff. That's why the rocks there are so red."

The rocks in Flagstaff are not actually red. In fact, most of them were covered in snow when I drove through the city en route to the Grand Canyon.

I arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon just after eight in the morning. If anyone recalls, shortly after my trip to Peru last year, I declared that the Grand Canyon was a puddle of mud compared to Peru's Colca Canyon. I was terribly wrong. While the Colca Canyon is unmatched in terms of depth and sheerness of the canyon walls, the Grand Canyon is one of nature's greatest accomplishments. The canyon lies among an elite group of naturescapes--including Yosemite--that are impossible to properly describe with any adjective in the English language.

Originally I had planned to hike the eighteen miles down to Phantom Ranch on the canyon floor. However, I was heading to Las Vegas that evening and the park ranger warned me that it was pure insanity to attempt that hike in one day. Instead I decided to make my way down the Bright Angel Trail and see how far I could get by noon. To be honest, I was a little concerned the icy conditions and the eventual hike up would make me wish I had just stayed at the top.

The first quarter mile was pretty dicey due to a thick layer of ice covering the trail. A hiker I passed remarked that I had pretty good traction and I replied, "Yeah, I've got great boots, but I shouldn't say that because I'll end up slipping and falling off the cliff in five minutes." I didn't tumble off the cliff, but five minutes later I slipped and fell on my behind.

The best time of year to visit the Grand Canyon is late winter/early spring. There were probably ten other people in the park besides myself, and the daytime temperature on the canyon floor was only seventy degrees. Snow and ice are present on the rim and the first five hundred feet into the canyon, but get a little further down and the trails are impeccable.

After an hour of hiking I was at Indian Gardens, 4.6 miles and 3060 vertical feet from the rim. Emboldened by the speed of my descent I hiked on to Plateau Point, another 1.5 miles and undoubtedly one of the best decisions I've ever made. While the trail to Phantom Ranch continues to dive towards the bottom, the Point trail winds across a plateau that extends into the middle of the canyon and abruptly ends with a 2000 foot drop into the Colorado River. It's an unbelievable experience to be strolling along this plateau with a uninterrupted panoramic view of the entire canyon. Further, I was the only person on the plateau for nearly an hour, other than the condor that was nested about twenty feet away.

The hike up was surprisingly easy. I left the plateau a little before noon and was standing on the rim at two. That's 6.1 miles and about 3150 feet in just over two hours. The Park Service has a billboard at the trailhead that is full of warnings like: "Make sure you bring this, this and this or you will DIE! Or worse, we'll have to come rescue your dumb ass." The billboard also had a list of the time estimates for hiking the trail. I got out my camera to take a picture for future reference and a woman came up behind me and said, "Taking a picture to prove you were here?" "No," I replied. "I'm taking a picture because this billboard says it would take 8-12 hours to hike the trail I just came off of and I did it in five." Apparently when the Park Service performs trail estimates they assume everyone hiking either has a walker or is in a wheel chair.

After sitting on the rim and staring off into the distance for an hour or so, I got in the car and left for Las Vegas.

Lack of pictures is unavoidable due to slow computers and not enough time.

the hills have eyes, and undercover cops

2009-02-05T21:52:00.013-05:00

For anyone who thought I was joking about actually quiting, noticed I haven't posted in three days and might have, just a little, worried I was serious, I apologize. After leaving Memphis, I drove for thirteen hours and over 1,000 miles to Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a day in the wilderness outside of Los Alamos followed by a day at the Grand Canyon, I am now sitting in a hotel room at the Venetian in Las Vegas. But before I continue, let's get to the details.

When you embark on a thirteen hour drive, there is a certain adrenaline rush because you are really on the road now, no more amateurish six or nine hour drives. That rush lasts about twenty seconds when you realize you are really on the road. In retrospect, such a long drive from Tennessee to New Mexico was worth it because, honestly, what is there to see in Arkansas, northern Texas, or any of Oklahoma?

The first hour passed uneventfully because my mind was preoccupied with the frustration of going to both Graceland and the National Civil Rights Museum only to find they were closed on Tuesdays. In no time at all, the rolling Arkansas landscape morphed into the pancake flat Oklahoma and then the even more flat Texas panhandle, and I desperately struggled to find ways to avoid, what seemed at the time, to be imminent insanity.

I stared at the clouds and tried to describe them using similes. I picked out constellations among the splattered insects on my windshield. I realized the girls at the gas station in Arkansas had accents that made them sound like Goofy: "Uhuh golly mister, here's yer receipt!" I considered whether the agony involved in continuing my drive would be worse than the aftermath of speeding up to 100 mph and letting go of the wheel. It was close.

Somewhere in the middle of Texas, I was pulled over for doing well over the speed limit. My first thought was not, "Crap, I just got pulled over." Instead an episode of Seinfeld came to mind, only I didn't have a beautiful woman with me to sweet talk the officer. When the officer asked me the requisite, "Do you know how fast you were going?" I replied, "Pretty darn fast!" He asked me where was I going in such a hurry and I told him I just wanted to get to Santa Fe as fast as possible. Apparently, the officer valued honesty and he let me off with a warning. I got lucky. Rest assured I've been driving [close] to the speed limit ever since.

When I crossed the border into New Mexico the sun had set, but the moon and millions of stars illuminated the landscape. The last time I had seen New Mexico was in the movie The Hills Have Eyes. If you haven't seen it and you like gratuitous violence and radiated mutants living in the New Mexico desert, I strongly recommend it. After turning off the interstate onto a state route that would take me to Santa Fe, all my mind could do was conjure images from the movie. I kept looking for a shadowy figure to roll tire spikes onto the road causing me to careen into a ditch whereupon a cadre of mutants would drag me into a nearby cave. Much to my relief nothing of interest occurred, though I swear I saw a UFO.

The next morning I drove to Bandelier National Monument. Near the base of the Jemez Mountains, the Frijoles Canyon hides the remnants of a pre-Columbian Pueblo settlement. The park is a real gem that most people have never heard of and apparently receives less than 300,000 visitors a year, according to the park ranger. Carlsbad Caverns, which is the only "National Park" in New Mexico, garners infinitely more attention--a sore spot among many in the Park Service.

I spent the morning wandering among the cliff dwellings in awe at what the ancestral Pueblos had accomplished. The Spanish never found this settlement because many years before, a combination of drought and the depletion of resources forced the Pueblo to abandon the canyon and settle along the nearby Rio Grande River. The Spanish then found and proceeded to slaughter and enslave the Pueblo until the U.S. Government forced them onto reservations.

Ladders provided by the Park Service made several of the dwellings accessible and, unlike at Jamestown, I definitely could have lived in those caves. Tucked away in a small canyon, surrounded by pine trees and a small river, it was a picture perfect setting. The canyon itself was fascinating. One side was a steep slope covered in brush and melting snow. On the other, a sheer cliff with holes that looked like a very large man had lost his temper and began driving his fist through the dusty red rock.

On the way back to Santa Fe, I stopped in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Formally the mysterious P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos is now open to the public and has a number of museums detailing the history of the town.

Santa Fe was beyond disappointing. People always describe Santa Fe as a charming little dream come true for starving artists and Georgia O'Keeffe fanatics. The city sprawls across the New Mexico desert and I failed to find any charm. The historic downtown area is a poor, Americanized attempt at the Spanish Plaza de Armas. The adobe buildings were tacky and the city's "cathedral" was covered in scaffolding. On one side of the plaza, a group of Pueblo Indians were huddled in a open market trying to sell homemade goods to their white overlords, retired New Yorkers with cowboy hats and other gaudy accessories worn by rich easterners trying to connect with their--nonexistent--western roots. At that moment, I felt so thrilled to be an American, I longed to complete the experience by chowing down on some authentic American food. Unfortunately, McDonald's wasn't an option so I settled for Subway. I promptly left for Arizona and the Grand Canyon.

Pictures to come later.

love me tender, love me true

2009-02-02T21:50:00.015-05:00

I received such a positive response from my post on the Holy Land Experience that I've decided to retire. I'm quiting while ahead and just driving back home.

Today involved a great deal of driving and very little not driving. Following a weather-induced departure from New Orleans, I drove to Moundville, Alabama, to see the remains of what was once the largest city in pre-Columbian North America.

The Mississippian culture had this habit of building giant mounds of dirt and placing important buildings on them. In fact, some archaeologists believe the cumulative works of the mound builders make the Egyptians look like a bunch of amateurs. All that is left today are the mounds which are not entirely impressive to look at, but are a remarkable achievement for North America's greatest pre-Columbian civilization.

The entire visit took less than an hour, but there was an informative movie on the site and the Mississippian culture and you can scale any of the mounds, including the 58-foot Mound B, the mother of all the mounds.

Because it was only thirty minutes from Moundville, I drove to Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama. Two days earlier, I took a detour through Gainesville to see where the Messiah, Tim Tebow, performs his football miracles every Saturday and was unimpressed. Tuscaloosa, on the other hand, is a great college town. The campus is beautiful and there is a block of bars and restaurants next to campus called "The Strip," which is where I assume the students go to party. The gates to Bryant-Denny Stadium were open so I walked in to see where the Great Satan, Nick Saban, lives and leads his men to the top of the polls before embarrassing losses against teams like Utah. I suppose I should mention what my beef with Saban is.

Nick Saban used to coach Michigan State until bailing before a bowl game to make more money at LSU. He bailed LSU for the NFL where he promptly sucked and took a bazillion dollars to coach Alabama, exceed the NCAA limits for signing for recruits and be a general ass. Secretly, part of me wanted Tuscaloosa to be a terrible place so I could justify my dislike for Saban and the UA football team. It was not meant to be. Tuscaloosa would be an awesome place to watch a football game. Roll Tide!!

Next on the list was Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Elvis' dad built the 500 square foot, two room house with his father in 1934. Elvis and his parents only lived in the house for the first three years of his life, but it had such an impact on his life that he eventually bought the house and gave it to the city for preservation. A little park has been built around the house along with a museum and a visitor center and it's all very well done. I can imagine the place is a zoo during the tourist season.

I am finishing the day at a hotel in Memphis. I just got back from dinner at Marlowe's, a BBQ joint that was a gastronomical delight. Food is one of the reasons I stopped in places like Charleston, New Orleans and Memphis, and it has yet to disappoint. Tomorrow morning I am going to Graceland and then heading out west, not stopping until I get to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Admittedly I am a tad melancholy about leaving the south. This trip was my first adventure in the Deep South and it exceeded my expectations. I didn't see any chain gangs or slaves singing spirituals while picking cotton, but everyone was extremely friendly and the only time I had trouble understanding thick accent was in Tupelo. The woman was so nice that I didn't even care. Even in the middle of nowhere, where country music and psychotic evangelical talk shows reign supreme, I could always find a radio station playing "normal" music. I've heard Taylor Swift so many times I think I'm developing a liking for country music...HA! My friends will say I've always been a tad dismissive of the south, but it will always have two things us northerners will never be able to match: good food and southern hospitality.

Time to head out west and seek my fortune looking for gold.

the big easy

2009-02-02T20:45:00.007-05:00

Sunday night I partied in the city that, sadly, suffered the wrath of the Bush administration's biggest failure: New Orleans.

Driving west on I-10 you reach a bridge that stretches across Lake Pontchartrain. The bridge goes as far as you can see and off in the distance the skyline of New Orleans rises above the horizon. It is still another ten miles to the Mississippi River and downtown, but the wreckage from Hurricane Katrina is immediately apparent. At first the interstate splits the rich neighborhoods where all of the houses and apartment buildings are brand new, and the poor neighborhoods where all of the houses are missing roofs and walls. Nevertheless kids play in the front yards of buildings that should be condemned and I even saw a birthday party at a house with boarded-up windows, but they sure as Hell had a Dora the Explorer moonwalk on the front lawn.

New Orleans itself is a study in contrasts. I stayed in the Garden District where many of the houses are considered historic buildings. However, if you make a wrong turn and walk one block north instead of south, your chances of getting mugged go from 0% to almost 100%. Pick a street to look down and you can see a group of loitering white kids and across the street is a group of black kids. In any case, after dropping my bags off, I immediately took the trolley down to the French Quarter.

The French Quarter is the reason everyone loves New Orleans and it's obvious why. I felt like I was strolling the streets of Paris, just with Daiquiri shops and flashing neon lights everywhere. Not a good place for epileptics. I stopped at the famous Cafe du Monde for some beignets and had dinner at Coop's, a place known for its mean seafood gumbo--not to mention a fantastic Jambalaya. For the past three days I had been staring at the word "beignet" in my guidebook trying to figure out the correct pronunciation. When I was third in line at Cafe du Monde, I decided upon "big-nay" over "big-net." Yes I know, I'm an idiot. Fortunately, a 9-year-old girl in front of me asked her mom if she could have a "bin-yay" and I was saved from sure embarrassment.

After wandering the French Quarter for about thirty minutes, I ventured to Bourbon Street. The main drag of the French Quarter is an experience unlike any other. Even in the off-season the streets smell like booze and vomit, I can't imagine how terrible it is during Mardi Gras. The French-style buildings with their iconic baIconies house only two types of establishments: bars and strip clubs. Walk down the street and it's bar, bar, bar, strip club, bar, strip club, strip club...European coffee house? I settled on the bar Bourbon Cowboy, which featured a mechanical bull, a 3 for 1 drink special, and was just busy enough that I wouldn't be drinking alone. By the way, what a great game!

During halftime, a couple of shot girls jumped on the bar and started dancing, blocking my view of the halftime show. I politely asked them to move from my line of sight and they were so shocked I preferred the Boss over dancing girls that they came over after halftime to try and force me to buy shots.

The whole concept of shot girls is a giant scam perpetrated by bars in order to steal as much of your money while simultaneously keeping their liquor. The shot girls walk around with pretty colored shots that are always $1-2 cheaper than a normal shot. The idea is that you think, "Hey! This shot is cheaper and a hot girl is offering it to me, what a great deal!" The catch is that there is only a drop of alcohol mixed with some excessively fruity syrup. And it's not like you even have a chance with the girl selling it to you. Just say no.

I didn't buy a shot from the girls, but we did get to talking and I discovered they were the "talent" at one of the million strip clubs on Bourbon Street. The first girl's stage name was "Starbuck" which is a reference to the TV show Battlestar Galactica, a very smart drama that only five people including myself watch. Needless to say, it was awesome to meet a stripper who used a name from an obscure TV show that no one watches. The other girl actually graduated from Michigan and used to work at Deja Vu in Ypsilanti. Apparently, moving from a club in Ypsi to one in New Orleans means your career is going in the right direction.

The girls really wanted me to buy a shot and I didn't want one so they made a deal with me: They would give a me free shot if I let the second girl wear my Michigan hat during their next round through the bar. How could I resist? The best part, they charged the next couple of guys a few extra bucks to make up for the money they lost comping my drink.

The next morning I planned to walked around the city and get some pictures, but after five minutes, the sky opened and it began to rain. I wonder if the trauma from Katrina causes everyone in the city to collectively wince whenever it rains? Disheartened and just a little paranoid that the city might sink, I got in the car and left. Consequently, I only have a few pictures of historic homes that I will post on Picasa later.

religulous

2009-01-31T21:33:00.012-05:00

Disclaimer: If you take religion way too seriously and think unicorns don't exist because they were arrogant and refused to get on the ark, turn back now!

Think of the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen. No seriously, think of something. Got it? Now multiple that by ten. At this point you are not even close to how terrible the Holy Land Experience is. About one mile from Universal Studios sits a "re-creation" of various biblical sites and the biggest sham of religion in a country that does a remarkable job of taking religion to the extreme. My sister summed it up best: "The dumbest thing I have ever seen."

The con artists who thought up this whole enterprise must be laughing on their giant piles of money right now. Building this atrocity not only suckers money away from honestly religious people, it also gets people like me who come to laugh at the people who take it seriously.

We arrived just in time to catch a reenactment of the Passion. For those not so religiously-inclined, it's when Jesus goes to meet his maker, though technically Jesus is also his maker if you believe in the Trinity. The entire production was over the top, though my favorite part was when they flogged Jesus with a miniature version of the foam noodles we played with at the beach as kids. The Roman soldiers took turns so the one not hitting could reapply fake blood to his noodle. When they raised Jesus on the cross you could see the metal rings he was holding--obviously they wouldn't actually nail his hands to the cross--and, if you remember your bible well enough, he forgave two fellow crucifixees that weren't actually there. At one point, right when Jesus was about to expire, they were playing the theme song from Gladiator over the loudspeakers. Wasn't that a little after his time?

I almost felt bad when I started laughing and looked to my left and saw a woman crying. But when I looked to my right and saw my sister laughing, I couldn't contain myself.

When they placed the body in the tomb, smoke began rising from within and suddenly Jesus appeared on the hilltop and told everyone to chill, he was OK. Afterward I saw that Jesus' tomb not only had a smoke machine, it also had a back door. So that's how he got out! The bible leaves out many of these little details.

The rest of the park was extraordinarily lame. There was the world's "largest indoor model of Jerusalem" that looked like a classroom of 3rd graders had spent an afternoon working with papier mache and toy figurines. You could also walk into a whale's mouth and see Jonah suspended in its stomach. What is the moral of that story? That the digestive juices of a whale aren't enough to kill a man?

Also there was Moses in the midst of parting the Red Sea which you walked through as sharks and fish stared out at you from the water wondering, "WTF?!" That reminded me of when I saw a descendant of the burning bush in Egypt and I asked my sister what she thought the real story was. According to her, Moses had been doing a little too much acid with his buddies and when he wandered off into the desert they decided to mess with him. One guy got behind a bush and lit it on fire while the other guy climbed up to a cliff with a megaphone shouting "Moses! Lead your people out of Egypt!"

I personally appreciated the statue of Jesus walking on water with his hand out. There was a step so you could hold his hand and walk on water with him. Rest assured, pictures were taken and hilarity ensued. At the time I thought I had just wasted $35, but just sitting here writing this has made the whole experience worth much more than the pittance we paid.

As always more picture here.

flo-rida

2009-01-31T19:19:00.010-05:00

My friends and I have been conditioned to hate Florida. Too much humidity, too many old people, and isn't Walt Disney World reason enough? Yet after months of not seeing the sun and hiding indoors to avoid freezing temperatures, the blue skies and blue water spread happiness like an infectious disease. My primary reason for visiting Florida is to see Charlie, my sister's dog. My secondary reason, to see the Holy Land Experience, which I will dedicate an entire entry to. My tertiary reason, to visit my sister. And if you have yet to figure out I'm an irreverent smart ass, well, good luck reading.

My brother may argue that California is the land of extremes, but I beg to differ. Florida is essentially one giant strip mall. In my sister's apartment complex, the top floor units are cheaper than the ground floor ones because old people can't climb stairs. Florida also contains some of the most rabidly conservative people on the planet. Rush Limbaugh is based in this state. At a party my sister recently attended, a couple told her that it's terrible the United States has elected a black president and that that day should never have come. Apparently when people reach the age where they don't care anymore about making racist comments in public and no longer need factual evidence to back up their statements (Because I said so!), it's time to move to Florida and allow the rest of the country to keep on truckin'.

free at last! free at last! thank god almighty we are free at last!

2009-01-31T18:30:00.009-05:00

Yesterday morning I was in Atlanta with two objectives in mind. I wanted to see the Coca-Cola Experience, which people at the hostel were raving about, and Auburn Ave. where Martin Luther King Jr. was born and gave his first sermons. Quite the polar opposites right?

I began by walking down Auburn Ave. through a neighborhood I wouldn't characterize as very safe. On three occasions I ran into corner boys who were clearly selling something I wasn't interested in buying. I would not recommend this stroll to people by themselves.

When I arrived at the visitor center, a whole two blocks are run by the Park Service, the ranger recommended I watch a video about King's life before wandering through the museum. Wait, let me first give a disclaimer. For the majority of the childhood that I remember, our family lived in what could loosely be defined as the suburbs, right outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Part of the reason my parents moved to Ann Arbor was because the city was lauded as a diverse place to raise your kids. In my lifetime I have never really been a witness to racism. Sadly, I know people who are probably racist, but I have never seen the aggression and hate in person before. I don't ever remember asking why people were certain colors or not being able to play with a friend because they were Black, Asian, or whatever. It's just something that has not been a powerful driving force in my life.

The Park Service's video on King's life was moving enough to bring me to tears. From the point I walked out of the theater until I walked away from the tomb of King and his wife Coretta Scott I was a wreck. I can't even possibly begin to imagine what this place would mean to a black person who grew up in the south while King was alive. I find it so unbelievable that one group of people could be so harmful to another simply because of the color of their skin. And that King was able to affect so much change through peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience; there are no words I am capable of using to express how incredible that is. Seeing everything on Auburn Ave. really helped bring more perspective to what this nation has accomplished by electing Barack Obama as president.

Quite frankly, it's almost inappropriate to follow such an emotional experience with a trip to the Coca-Cola Experience, but caffeine is a pick-me-up. The "Experience" as it is called, is what you might think, a giant advertisement for Coke. However, it is very interesting to walk through and see how Coke started, how it has changed over the years and how it is made and bottled. Apparently a bottle of Coke cost five cents for seventy years until the company realized they could charge more and get away with it. Capitalism at its best. The best part of the whole tour is at the end when you can try over seventy Coke brands from across the world. Afterwards I was on such a sugar high I thought I was going to be sick. On to Florida!

Pictures

southern hospitality

2009-01-31T08:50:00.013-05:00

I think I'm officially too old for hostels, or at least American hostels. Let's imagine your house, a 2500 square foot home perhaps. Proceed to jam every bedroom with at least three pairs of bunk beds, add some non-matching furniture that you picked up from someone's lawn because it was being thrown away, and don't clean the bathroom for a good five years. Needless to say, I look forward to getting out west and staying in cockroach motels with mattresses that sink a foot in the middle and boast color television as their top amenity.

Actually, the hostel in Charleston was not too bad, but I say that because late January is not tourist season and I had an eight bed room to myself.

Charleston, on the other hand, was an extremely charming city. You could easily get lost downtown just wandering the streets looking at historic homes and the many parks. The finely restored antebellum architecture was fascinating in and of itself, but what caught my eye was the lushness of the landscaping. Trees, flowers and shrubbery were everywhere: on the sidewalks, in the alleys, even parking lots looked like garden paradises. Everything was a dark shade of green which was a beautiful contrast with the surrounding architecture.

Despite the foreboding skies, I thoroughly enjoyed my morning strolling the cobblestone streets. Small parks would invite you in with a sort of dark intimacy created by dense vegetation and trees whose branches weaved a roof of leaves, nearly blocking out the sky. The cemeteries were just as welcoming, small clusters of headstones surrounded on three sides by buildings whose walls would rise up only inches away from the outer graves. And if, for a minute, you thought the city couldn't be more charming, nearly every restaurant and hotel had little gas lamps adorning the walls. If there is a Utopian city, Charleston is about as close as you get. It didn't matter that I am a twenty-something from Michigan, I had a strong feeling of nostalgia for pre-war southern life.

I traveled next to Magnolia Plantation, established in 1676 by the Drayton family and said to be the oldest plantation in the south (It has remained in the Drayton family for 15 generations). The site is primarily known for its gardens, which Reverend John Drayton created after he inherited the property in 1840. Following the Confederacy's defeat and the burning of his house by freed slaves, a bankrupt Reverend was forced to open the plantation to tourists, allegedly making it the first man-made tourist attraction in the United States.

The property is beautiful and its most defining feature is the exquisite garden surrounded by Oak trees covered in Spanish Moss. Unfortunately, the dark skies and winter conspired to make all my pictures give the impression I was in a desolate place far from any civilization.

While the sheer variety of fauna in the gardens was incredible, I found the whole experience a little haunting and slightly detached from reality. Less than seventy years ago, the gardens were tended by the descendants of slaves and before that, hundreds of slaves toiled in the rice fields. Following a day standing in the footsteps of people who, despite all odds, contributed to the success of this country, I was now walking through fields once occupied by the men and women upon whose backs the country was built. Today the primary gardeners are white men with mullets and camouflage cargo pants who stand up as they ride ATVs around the plantation. A tour of the property certainly didn't add to the perception I already had that the south may never get over its' history rooted in slavery.

The plantation grounds house approximately fifty alligators, a fact pointed out nearly a dozen times by the tour guide. I was hoping to get some history of the place--because the brochures offered squat--but we must have spent thirty minutes talking about alligators and stopping to let the other tourists take pictures of alligator after alligator. How many pictures of inanimate alligators can you take before they all look the same? When you're retired with a camera and nothing else better to do the answer is a million. In any case, after a lengthy discussion of the eating habits of alligators we headed towards the cabins where the slaves used to live. We were on a tram and as we turned the corner and came into view of the cabins, the guide actually sped up and quickly said, "AndHereAreWhereSlavesLivedUntil1940...Who wants to see more alligators!" Everyone let up a cheer and we zoomed by the cabins. Not one person took a picture. And with that I left and began the short drive to Savannah.

Savannah was everything Charleston was not: boring and uninspiring. The visitor center claimed that Savannah was the first "planned" city and the past few years have been spent restoring a square-mile historic district. Granted, many of the squares containing statues to Southern Civil War heroes were nice places to sit and avoid the commotion of the city streets. However, similar squares exist in a million other cities and nothing about Savannah really endeared it in my mind as unique. Even the famed Riverfront, while better than Detroit's equal, looked out upon factories coughing up black smoke and barges moving supplies up the Savannah River. I promptly left for Atlanta.

More pictures here.

airplane

2009-01-30T21:03:00.011-05:00

After a solid dose of colonial history, I drove south to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. From the stories my friends have told me, I was expecting the Outer Banks to be one charming little beach town after another, similar in some respects to Cape Cod. Nope. The town of Kitty Hawk was indistinguishable from any other suburban commercial zone in the middle of Anywhere except that the Atlantic Ocean was across the street. Kitchsy tourist shops and fast food joints were at every corner. There was a store that boasted the largest hammock in the world and proudly advertised itself with a billboard that read: No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem! Even the houses were unsightly. They all looked like giant pre-fabs that came in only three designs, but the builders figured, "Hey, just place'em every other, paint'em pastel colors and no one will know the difference."

I came to Kitty Hawk to see where powered flight first began. The memorial site was simple, but informative and marked the start of the four powered flights with rock markers signaling where each flight terminated. There was also a large memorial on the top of Kill Devil Hill, the biggest of the sand dunes where the first gliders were launched. It's really too bad the Wright Brothers were probably Buckeye fans.

The Outer Banks reminded me of Key West only because of the endless number of bridges that are only two feet above the water and seem to drag on for miles. The wind, which drew the Wright Brothers to this location, was so strong at times I thought the car might get swept right in to the Atlantic. Fortunately the wind gave way to much worse weather.

As I was getting closer to Fayatteville, the radio stations were interrupted by an emergency broadcast. A announcer came on and said, "Be advised, there is a severe thunderstorm warning...uh, better make that a hurricane warning in effect until 6:30 in all coastal Carolina counties. Please stay away from glass, good luck!"

Just after the broadcast I drove through torrents of rain and 60 mph winds. Shortly thereafter I arrived in Fayatteville where I stopped for gas. Thank God that's all I stopped for. I knew I was in Fayatteville even before arriving because a friend texted me asking if I had found strip club row [ed.] yet, and every other billboard I passed advertised "We are bare and we don't care" and "Of course we're topless, why else would you come?" Obviously Fayatteville is the strip club capital of the world, or at least North Carolina.

Like before, all pictures can be found here.

for glory, god and gold, and the virginia company

2009-01-30T18:21:00.014-05:00

What's worse than waking up the day before your month-long road trip and seeing three inches of snow on your car? Waking up the day of the trip and seeing your car encased in ice. Following a solid twenty minutes of breaking and scrapping ice from the windows, I finally got underway.

Thirty or so minutes later, everyone ahead of me on the freeway coordinated an attack as all of the large ice sheets on their hoods and roofs cracked off and hurtled through the air towards me. It all happened in slow motion and was like trying to fly through the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back. The smaller blocks would shatter on my windshield while I swerved to avoid the enormous blocks that threatened to pulverize the poor Vibe.

The rising temperatures and melting ice gave way to a thick fog that limited my sight range to about fifty yards. It was no problem, however, because Jill Garmin would always tell me when to turn. Around this time I had to make a decision: pay $30+ to see Colonial Williamsburg and risk being overrun by tourists, or pay $19 to see both a replica of the Jamestown settlement and the Yorktown Battlefield. I chose the later.

I arrived at the Jamestown settlement right when it opened and was the first person there. In fact, if the retired couple from California hadn't shown up at the last minute I would have had tour guide Cindy, who dressed like Pocahontas, all to myself. There were several other actors, including Cindy, who appeared to be in their early 20s and I wondered: "How did these kids get hooked up with a gig like this? Did they graduate college with a degree in 17th Century Period Acting?"

The whole experience from the museum to the replicas of Jamestown, the English ships, and a Powhatan village were well done and not too touristy--and we got to see a demonstration of a matchlock musket. The fog really helped to add an air of authenticity as well. The placement of the replicas were all based upon archaeological evidence and eye witness accounts. The one exception was the Powhatan village whose original site now lies underneath a golf course. Isn't this country great?

At first glance, the settlers appeared to have pretty good digs. The men occupied houses that were roomier and less drafty than the some of the apartments my friends live in. I thought, "Hell, I could survive a winter out here."

The Virginia Department of Education runs the replica site while the National Park Service runs the actual archaeological site. That means two entrance fees and a additional five minute drive to see the original Jamestown site. When I saw what was left of the palisades and felt the brisk wind coming off the river, my first thoughts were, "Why would anyone be crazy enough to set up shop here? There is no way I could survive a winter here!"

On the bank of the river lay a large copper statue of John Smith whose legacy has always amused me. Here's a guy who was allegedly a stubborn braggart and managed to get himself captured, wounded, arrested and almost killed on several occasions. Minor details like saving the colony from the brink of annihilation and penning the most extensive account we have of life in Jamestown are not important; what matters is that he never married Pocahontas like the revisionists at Disney would lead you to believe.

In any case, I proceeded to drive to the Yorktown Battlefield where British General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, effectively ending the Revolutionary War. The site was very...boring. I've never been a fan of battlefields. Give me any field in the country, a few antique cannons and a couple of wood fences and I can make you a battlefield.

I looked out over the barren field trying to envision the American and French troops shelling a crumbling British force. I couldn't. A part of me wanted to see bodies still strewn across the field. It would have been a macabre display, but infinitely more exciting.

I found the most fascinating part of the battlefield to be the Moore House, the small nondescript farm house where Cornwallis and Washington met to formally end hostilities. The one major condition of British surrender was to prohibit them from leaving with battle honors. What this means is the Brits were not permitted to wave their flags and play their flutes, an honor the British deprived the Americans of following the American defeat at Charleston. There is a sense of pride and patriotism that arises in me when I see places like the Moore House as opposed to a battlefield. Independence Hall in Philadelphia is another place I feel honored to be standing where our Founding Fathers stood a few centuries ago.

The house itself was very quaint and even comfortably warm. I wondered out loud: "Has insulation improved that much since the drafty houses in Jamestown during the 17th century?" It was then that I saw the perfectly preserved 18th century radiators scattered throughout the house. But of course!

The rest of the pictures, along with captions, can be found here.

trouble in paradise

2009-01-29T19:09:00.004-05:00

I apologize for the lack of posts over the past day. The hostel I stayed at in Charleston last night had internet, but the computers must have built around the same time as the hostel, the turn of the 20th century. Since it took 20 minutes alone to start the computer, I moved on.

The annoyances continue, however. After a disappointing trip to Savannah, I drove to Atlanta and checked into a hostel there. The internet here is quite fast, but costs $2/minute to use. Ergo, I will have to delay any lengthy posts with pictures until tomorrow when I get to my sister's place in Daytona. I have pages and pages written, just no time to get them electronic. Be sure to check in tomorrow night. Now I'm off to find some food and booze.

do we have any salt trucks around here?

2009-01-27T15:55:00.010-05:00

This morning I woke up to a blizzard. I went downstairs to run last minute errands and pack up the car and this is what I see.

It has not really snowed in DC since January 2007 and suddenly three inches appear the day before my trip? The roads were fine, but everyone was driving like the pavement was covered in three feet of ice. Schools closed early because they are lame, and apparently the only method of snow removal available for the parking lot of my apartment building is a maintenance guy with a snow shovel and a small salt cart that one simply pushes around. These are the moments you appreciate coming from a climate where snow is present five months out of the year and driving on slick roads is nerve-wracking yet perversely exciting because your teenage years were spent doing donuts in the unplowed parking lot of the local Mejier.

Actually, Southeast Michigan doesn't get that much snow. Take a look at these shots from my recent trip to the Adirondacks (Yes, those are skis you see us carrying).

Imagine hailing from the Upper Peninsula or Up-Upstate New York. Those people are tough as nails. A great metaphor for Northerners and Virginians is the relationship between the vampires and humans in the Twilight book series. I can see someone from the Keweenaw Peninsula snowmobile up to a well-dressed, self-important lawyer from Northern Virginia, reach out to shake his hand and watch the lawyer wither away when their hands touch.

in search of america

2009-01-25T21:49:00.007-05:00

On Wednesday, January 28, I will embark on what will be my most ambitious adventure to date. Over the next month and a half, I will log thousands of miles as my car and I wind across the country to visit friends and see every corner of what makes the United States an amazing place to live. The trip will begin and end in Washington, DC, and include destinations such as Daytona Beach, Las Vegas, Seattle, the middle of nowhere Montana, and my hometown in Michigan. This blog will follow my travels with stories from the road, pictures, and the general musings that one has when spending days with nothing to do but think. This will be my Travels with Charley.

ahwahnee adventures

2008-10-06T19:03:00.027-04:00

Centuries ago, small bands of people lived sprinkled throughout the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Sierra Miwok were traditional hunter-gatherers with a temperament like the placid, meandering foothills of the western Sierra Nevada. The Mono Paiute, the aggressive neighbors of the Miwok, inhabited the Sierra high country and its rugged eastern escarpment. Years of warfare led renegades from both groups to settle in a valley among the mountains. Protected by an edifice of granite, this new tribe subsisted primarily on acorns and practiced controlled fire techniques to maintain healthy forest growth and protect meadows. The tribe referred to their home as Ahwahnee (place like a gaping mouth) and themselves as Ahwahnechee (dwellers of Ahwahnee). The Ahwahnechee's reputation for violence, however, earned them a name that in Southern Miwok translates to "they are killers": Yohhe'meti.

In the mid-19th century, the Ahwahnechee, led by Chief Tenaya, engaged in bloody territorial disputes with the Miwoks and white settlers who were drawn west by the California Gold Rush. Conflict with miners reached a climax in 1851 when the Mariposa Battalion, led by Major Jim Savage, chased the Ahwahnechee up the Merced River. Upon reaching the western entrance of the valley where the Ahwahnechee sought refuge, a member of the battalion, Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, wrote:

The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley--light as gossamer--and by the clouds which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.

*What the Mariposa Battalion saw in 1851*

In "honor" of the Ahwahnechee, who were about to be captured and driven from their home, Dr. Bunnell decided to call this place "Yosemite" (which had been mistaken as "grizzly bear" during translation).

More than 150 years later, my modest existence briefly coincided with that of an epic landscape sculpted by erosion and the words of men.

Beginning in Los Angeles, the South Entrance of Yosemite National Park can be reached in just under four hours (assuming no traffic and a cruise control set to 80 mph). I arrived at the ranger station around five, just as the sun's power began to dissipate.

Whether climbing the slopes of Mount Whitney along the Mountaineer's Route or gazing upon the gentle inclines of Little Lakes Valley from my high camp on the rocky shore of Dade Lake, I am familiar with and find comfort in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The initial drive from the entrance, characterized by towering evergreens and the fresh smell of a pine forest, brought to mind images of the campgrounds at the Whitney Portal. Yet when I drove around a corner and saw Yosemite Valley, I could easily have been in a different world.

In the waning light the valley was resplendent. Waves of green lapped against sheer granite cliffs that rose 3,000 feet above the valley floor before abruptly giving way to a vast expanse of blue unblemished by clouds. In the distance, Half Dome rested at the tip of the valley like a king whose subjects knelt in homage before him.

I felt as though I had been taken from the real world and placed within one of the fantastical landscapes I had read about in fantasy novels as a child. I half expected to see dragons battling in the skies above as I journeyed to some legendary valley to complete my quest.

If there is a point at which superlatives lose the ability to convey additional meaning and simply become tiresome, Yosemite refuses to acknowledge such a meddlesome constraint.

My daydreaming was rudely interrupted by the need to continue driving and avoid taking myself, and any other drivers, off a cliff. I arrived in Curry Village just before dark and checked in.

Curry Village is essentially a motel comprised of canvas tents, each with two cots, a bear box and a locking screen door. I found the village to be quite charming, though I hear that during the high season the crowds render the area intolerable. The amenities I've grown accustomed to on camping trips include wag bags and contaminated mountain streams, so restrooms, running water and electricity are a four-star luxury. I was also very impressed by a dining facility with not one, but three restaurants: a cafe, a pizza shop, and an all-you-can-eat buffet for $12.

Following a carb-packed dinner at the buffet, I promptly hit the sack. The next morning I planned to day hike Half Dome and I needed to get an early start. I'll post the the remainder of the trip report later.

great falls national park

2008-08-16T21:01:00.008-04:00

Editor's note: I am going to take a different approach to this trip report. The idea is to present a shorter description, but with more details on logistics and trail suggestions, as opposed to my earlier post on Old Rag which was a pseudo-article. After reading the following post, take a moment to read Part I and Part II of my Old Rag trip report. I am curious as to which style you prefer (maybe a toss-up of the two, or maybe I should just stop writing).

*Great Falls (click for bigger image)*

Weekend escapes: Great Falls National Park
Great Falls NP is an 800-acre park encompassing a section of the Potomac River that advertises both jarring waterfalls and the river's deepest gorge, all within 15 miles of Washington, DC. Great Falls Park actually straddles the Potomac, splitting the park into both a Virginia side and a Maryland side (each state argues its side is the best). Regardless, either side allows access to rugged banks and rapids you would never expect from a relatively calm river that winds its way from West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay.

After paying the $5 entrance fee, it's best to make a quick stop at the visitor center for a map and some history. Great Falls, along with other parks along the Potomac, is a historical site of colonial commerce. The Patowmack Canal, the remains of which are visible throughout the park, has the distinction of being the nation's first canal to use locks. In the early 20th century, an amusement park run by the W&OD Railway established picnic grounds on the Virginia side that are still used today.

The actual falls can be accessed near the visitor center. While several outlooks provide excellent picture opportunities, the only way to really experience the falls is to climb down to the riverbank for a close-up (do so with caution, an average of seven drownings occur per year).

The park is nestled in the country's eighth largest metropolitan area, which is reflected by the number of visitors. On the weekends, large groups with coolers, coals and meat, producing the sweet smell of BBQ, frequent the picnic grounds. Fortunately, the crowds can be left behind once on the trail. The River Trail is easily the most scenic and most popular of the approximately 15 miles of hiking trails within the park. The 3.3-mile (round trip) trail hugs the cliffs of Mather Gorge and offers magnificent views and excellent side trips down the cliffs to the river.

For those who seek a little more adventure than simply walking, Great Falls will not disappoint. Many of the trails permit mountain bikers looking for some action within riding distance of Washington. Kayaking is also very popular on the class 5-6 rapids at the falls and the class 2-3 rapids in Mather Gorge. And if that isn't enough, there are hundreds of routes along the gorge for rock climbing. Most of the climbs are about 50 feet and range in difficulty between 5.8 and 5.12 (the majority are 5.10 and higher). However, be ready to top-rope because trad climbing is not permitted for environmental reasons. In any case, many of the cliffs are relatively smooth and require crack climbing, always a fun way to spend the afternoon.

old and ragged (part II)

2008-08-08T00:14:00.004-04:00

Editor's Note: I intended to post the rest of my Old Rag trip report this past weekend; however, I got distracted and nothing went according to plan, including a trip out to the mountains. I place the blame entirely on video games and a surprisingly delicious combination of pomegranate-flavored yogurt and vodka (no complaints here!). In any case, if you have not read part one and need some context, you can do so here. Otherwise, enjoy part two below.

The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the Appalachians, but lie just east of the bulk of the larger mountain chain. Bordered on the east by the Piedmont and the Great Valley on the west, the Blue Ridge contains the tallest mountains in eastern North America, the highest point being Mount Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet. The Blue Ridge itself is defined by two physiographic sections, Southern and Northern. Each section contains a National Park and is connected by the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway: Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the south and Shenandoah National Park in the north.

*The Blue Ridge Mountains*

The defining feature of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and consequently its namesake, is the bluish hue when seen from a distance. The blue glow of the gently rolling mountains, caused by the release of hydrocarbons, is a calming contrast to the sheerness of the eastern Sierra's escarpment or the breathtaking (literally) and deadly upper reaches of the Himalayas.

About two miles from the Old Rag parking lot, a discreet, obviously un-maintained trail casually breaks from the Old Rag Fire Road and disappears into the thick forest of Corbin Hollow. The Robertson Mountain Trail briefly parallels the Brokenback River before the river gradually ascends Corbin Hollow and the trail begins a rapid climb up the Eastern ridge of Robertson Mountain, one of Shenandoah's best kept secrets.

At 3,296 feet, Robertson Mountain is five feet higher than Old Rag and, fortunately, is devoid of hikers due to its more popular southern neighbor. While the summit can be reached from Skyline Drive on the west, the eastern trail is a worthwhile challenge: 1,700 feet of elevation gain in only a mile and a half. After three hours of hiking in hot, humid weather, a climb I normally would have sprinted became an exercise in dragging feet and taking quick breaks to catch my breath.

*View from Robertson Mountain Summit*

I reached the summit following a solid hour of hiking. Much to my dismay, the summit was covered in evergreens and every view was partially blocked by foliage. Not to be denied an overlook, I traipsed around the summit and found a small clearing that featured a rock outcropping looking over Weakley Hollow and Robinson River towards the south. Quite content with this find, I spent the next hour temporarily liberated from the chains of the real world, lying on the rocks and taking in the awesome expanse before me.

old and ragged (part I)

2008-07-17T20:31:00.012-04:00

Editor's Note: This past weekend a group of friends and I climbed Old Rag out in Shenandoah National Park. The climb was relatively uneventful (other than 90-degree temperatures and suffocating humidity), but in the spirit of kicking things off, below I have included the first part of a trip report I wrote for Old Rag back in April.

*Old Rag on the approach*

Sitting atop a lone rock outcropping amid an otherwise tree-covered summit, I notice the remnants of white chalk, a sort of territorial marker for climbers. Glancing over the side of the nearly 60-foot drop in an attempt to find any leftover “bootie” (gear left behind by a climbing party), the only information I can discern is that climbers were here between now and the last time it rained. Otherwise I am alone on Robertson Mountain, a nondescript peak tucked into a small slice of Appalachia. Solitude is my only companion, as I have not seen a human since leaving the fire road an hour earlier and 1,700 feet closer to sea level. Returning my gaze towards Robinson River meandering slowly through the valley below me, I am amazed by how such sheer beauty and complete privacy may be found a mere 75 miles from Washington, D.C.

Shenandoah National Park (SNP) is Virginia’s most notable federally protected wilderness, if not one of the most popular national parks in the East (aside from Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Authorized in 1926, SNP owes its fame to the spectacular vistas seen along Skyline Drive. The 105-mile New Deal-built road stretches from the town of Front Royal in the north to Waynesboro in the south, snaking across ridges, overlooking canyons and vast expanses of farmland in the Shenandoah Valley. On any given summer weekend, Skyline Drive crawls with tourist-packed cars searching for the most scenic overlook, the largest cascading waterfall, or any other superlative-laden nature-inspired object. While the popular trails are easily accessible from the road and feature hemlock forests, crumbling frontier-era home sites and even former President Herbert Hoover’s summer home, Rapidan Camp, the trail traveled most frequently bags the summit of Old Rag Mountain.

As you approach the Old Rag trailhead from the east, the mountain looms at the vanguard of the Blue Ridge mountains, its boulder-strewn summit stands in rugged contrast to the smooth waves of green that characterize the Appalachians. The bald (exposed) summit and Northeastern ridge are Old Rag’s defining features. Covered in large granite boulders, Old Rag might belong in California’s Sierra Nevadas, if only Nature’s scythe had not reduced towering peaks and spires into a humble 3,291-foot mountain. On an unseasonably warm day in April, the well-worn Old Rag ridge trail is the first leg of my hike.

While an excellent trail in its own right, the similarities make Old Rag an adequate Eastern training ground for more advanced climbs in the West. The trail begins with a series of switchbacks through typical mid-Atlantic woodland. After a couple of miles, the forest slowly fades among boulders that make the final stretch of the ridge climb an exciting, and sometimes exposed, rock scramble. Several chutes with few solid holds add to the challenge, and the reward at the end. The biggest drawback to the scramble is made apparent when amateur hikers are bewildered by the moderate difficulty involved in navigating the boulders. It is not unusual to see a queue of hikers—up to twenty deep—waiting to move through some of the spicier spots.

This particular weekend, school buses full of hikers were swarming up the ridge trail (I wish this were an exaggeration, but there were actually several school buses in the parking lot). Throughout nearly a dozen summit hikes I have discovered alternative routes that avoid a majority of the crowds. Unfortunately, the last serious obstacle confounded me; a 15-foot chute interrupted by an enormous boulder wedged halfway up, forcing one to squeeze through a small gap with no obvious holds other than one rock to serve as a foothold. On busy days the chute never ceases to cause traffic jams. You would think people were waiting to climb the Hillary Step on Everest.

*Summit, looking out over SNP*

Growing increasingly frustrated by the seemingly endless sea of people ahead of me (at least thirty), I anxiously looked about, searching for a way to quickly bypass the chute. An older man, who appeared to be the leader of a Boy Scout troop, invited me to pass because I was a solo hiker. Gladly accepting his offer, I jumped ahead only to see a dozen people hardly moving in the middle of the chute, signaling an immediate stop to my ascent. I noticed a steep slab of granite to the left of the chute, offering a more direct route to the top, but also a 100-foot drop should I slip. Hoping my boots would stick on the very smooth, precipitous slab, I asked one of the Boy Scouts to give me a boost.

My left boot slipped an inch or two before I caught myself and quickly friction climbed to the top. It took approximately twenty seconds to pass the chute and the traffic jam, opening a clear trail to the summit. Upon reaching the summit, I dropped my pack for a short break; this was only my first summit of the day. After some Gatorade and a Clif Bar, I started down the trail towards the Old Rag fire road and the second leg of my hike, Robertson Mountain.

Zero Sum Games

2007-06-10T17:19:00.000-04:00

Paul Rubin's article on human evolutionary opposition to immigration and trade is another piece of absurd logic proving economics professors are insulated by academia. His argument is based upon the idea that our brains have evolved according to a "zero sum" mentality; resources gained for one community means those same resources are denied to a separate community. The development of this type of evolutionary thinking makes perfect sense. For example, two villages live by one well. If my village’s boundaries include the well, your village no longer has any water. Your village now faces two pragmatic choices: wage a war against my village in an attempt to take the well, or trade some commodity for water.

Now, hair-brained economic purists would gleefully declare that the optimum level of efficiency would require your village to trade for water. In a perfect trade or immigration model – given two goods – the country with the lower opportunity costs in the production of one good will trade with the country that has lower production costs in the other good. According to most economists this is a logical, rational argument to which I respond, bullshit.

I understand many forms of trade are uneven. The U.S. has free trade agreements with a number of countries, yet we still provide subsidies to farmers, and our aerospace industry, in addition to import quotas on various Chinese goods. I cannot think of one case in which trade ceases to be a zero sum game. When jobs in this country are sent abroad, those jobs cease to exist here in the U.S. The only way these now unemployed workers will improve their lot is through training programs, or by developing new skills. Seeing as the unemployed are no longer receiving incomes, the government has to step in by either providing unemployment checks, or funding re-training programs. Is this an example of efficiency in trade?

Life as we know is a zero sum game on all levels. As life is created, life ends. In Mr. Rubin’s perfect trade world, everyone pays the exact price that matches his or her level of utility. What happens when one wants to pay a steep discount, or better yet, nothing at all? The whole system falls apart at the seams. Call me a pessimist, but “rising above” evolutionary thinking is illogical (Maybe even proving his point). We are pre-programmed to look after our communities and ourselves. Unless we evolve to become altruistic peaceniks, life will always remain a zero sum game. And the idea that America has risen to this challenge and lowered its barriers to outsiders is pure hilarity.

The Silent Majority

2007-02-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

“…Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil, which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.”

- A line from the movie, the Boondock Saints

A cult favorite that never saw wide release, the Boondock Saints portrays two working class brothers who receive a call from God, inspiring them to execute criminals, prostitutes and other degenerates. The Bostonians become known as saints for their work in “cleaning” up the city. The brothers are a quintessential example of what I term zealous moderation. They represent the average American: blue collar, hardworking, and religious men who are fed up with infringement of the Russia mob in the heart of Irish Boston. Yet, unlike many of us, who limit our criticism of current culture to mere words, they take matters into their own hands and exact justice on criminals. The brothers are rebelling against the current mores in society, which permit perverse and immoral behavior. The screenwriter, Troy Duffy, was inspired to create this film after he had seen a dead woman wheeled out of a drug dealer’s apartment across from his.

I do not believe in capital punishment, nor do I believe vigilante justice belongs in a culture built by the rule of law. However, the quote is a stinging critique of contemporary society. The majority of people in this country could be labeled as moderate or “good men”. Our primary concerns involve making ends meet, caring for our families and maintaining a comfortable lifestyle. Most of the empty promises hurled at us by politicians are ignored. The issues really on our minds are those that directly affect our lives: taxes, health care, and sustained employment. We are a group the late President Nixon referred to as the “silent majority”.

Yet whose voices do we hear the most? The players in deep left or right field that promote agendas in sharp opposition to what may be considered rational thought. Listen to Sean Hannity or the raving ideologue at the Daily Kos and you almost want to throw your hands into the air and jump. Their contributions to political discourse are valuable, as we should respect all viewpoints. However, the venom and seething hate emanating from much of their material only has a polarizing effect. Friends and families are divided by labels and pigeonholed into stereotypes of how a liberal, conservative, Marxist or libertarian should think. So, if one believes capitalism is flawed or that abortion is wrong, are they assumed to be a socialist or a misogynist trying to deny a woman of her rights? No.

Personally, the most accurate description of my beliefs is utilitarianism. An ideology first developed by John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism defines the moral worth of an action to be derived entirely from its contribution to overall utility. In short, the objective of a society should be to increase the overall welfare of its members. Unfortunately, labor movements and international trade have ensured welfare improvements are asymmetrical. Job outsourcing, while negatively affecting the lives of people in a particular industry, allow for cheaper products to be produced, benefiting the entire population. I think where we have gone terribly wrong in this country is our intense focus on the individual instead of the community. Why is there no real incentive to fix social security, scrap farm subsidies, or establish a universal health care system? Because self-interest prevents our government from doing what is best for the country, as a whole. Though I agree with Adam Smith and his theory that self-interest drives markets and growth, it is not a catchall system (which is a topic I will pick up on at another time).

Regardless of your adherence to a religion or set of values, we do live in communities and must abide by the laws society has set forth. Considering the welfare, and ideas of our neighbors is a pursuit we seem to have forgotten. Rational, moderate people in this country, including myself, need to stand up for logical, intelligent thought, and against vitriolic backstabbing and squabbling.

Life, the Universe and Everything

2007-01-26T00:04:00.000-05:00

What is the meaning/purpose of life?

The million-dollar question, and in most cases, a query inevitably leading one to a brief existential crisis. For anyone who has read and remembers Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, (which actually was five volumes) the answer is quite obvious. After seven and a half million years of calculations, the super computer Deep Thought arrives at the answer, 42. In what would appear to be the ultimate form of irony, the question humans have been asking since the beginning of existence may be summed up in a simple two digit numeric answer.

Humor aside, the subject does beg serious thought. Anyone asking the “life” question begins to understand how the absence of an answer simply gnaws at your very soul. Religious figures and philosophers from Saint Augustine to Nietzsche have dedicated countless years and many a written word in an attempt to understand and offer an explanation to the masses. Unfortunately, the typical sorority girl who cries about her inability to discover her identity and purpose in between shopping sprees and sessions of beer pong probably has not read Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Making matters worse, according to our current scientific knowledge, humans appear to be the only species carrying this curse. Not only can we not arrive at a conclusion amongst ourselves, but we also cannot look to man’s best friend or even our closest animal relatives for support.

The idea for this entry began almost a year ago as I struggled with the conscience whiplash I received while taking an economic development course. Unfortunately, I had neither the motivation nor the presence of mind to arrive at an acceptable conclusion. Throughout the past year I have mulled over possible solutions and have had many discussions, which were derived from the question. I spent a summer in Egypt, witnessed extreme poverty and the utter lack of compassion in the West towards this poverty. Needless to say, I was discouraged. It began to dawn on me how perverse our society is and how pop culture has poisoned our minds with a marketer’s view of how we should live our lives: more power, more money, more fame…more, more, more.

I started a new temp job this week as a data entry extraordinaire in the finance department of a large trade association. As I sat there for hours entering meaningless numbers and faceless names into a database, I felt as though my soul was dying. If any one job on earth required absolutely no stimulation of the mind, data entry is that job. If any job worth doing is worth doing well, then data entry is not worth doing well. The moment the digital clock on the taskbar read 5:00 pm, I was out the door. Upon my arrival at the apartment, I began an Internet search for anyone else sharing a strong disdain for data entry. With countless other people in the same position as myself, the odds were high another harbored similar feelings. I attempted to describe my experience to my father later that evening. An experience another writer expressed much more eloquently than I: “8 hours of data entry sucks out your eyeballs and burns them up, then starts in on your soul.”

Now, you are thinking either one of two things: 1) How does the previous paragraph fit into this dialogue in any way? 2) This is the “light bulb” moment; the perfect point when one may ask what the hell the meaning of life is. Obviously, the second option came to my mind and I began to write.

The reasons people use in justifying a purposeful life frequently blow my mind. Many religious people claim the meaning of life is to follow God’s way or preach the bible or whatever. How can you base your entire life on a premise that has no basis in reality? Nothing has disproved the existence of a higher being, but then again, no evidence exists to the contrary. That is a digression for another day. Furthermore, living life to help other people fails to account for your own needs, just as exclusively indulging yourself alienates everyone else.

So what is the answer? Drum roll please. Prepare for the anti-climax.

The meaning of life is entirely in your hands. In other words, exercising your ability to choose (free will). You decide whether another’s words or the weather will affect your mood, why not take control over how you want to live your life. Stop wondering why we are here and start living. Do not let peers or current clothing trends craft your decisions and choose your journey. Of course, if you would rather be near death and desperately trying to justify your life as a mindless zombie of the pop culture horde, you might as well jump with everyone else. There will always be war, suffering, and cruel people who exploit others. And there will always be those who look towards the heavens asking, “What is the point?” The meaning of life is not a universally applicable idea. How you want to spend your time on this planet becomes your own personal purpose.

Ironically, my thesis comes full circle seeing as free will leads people into decisions such as living with faith or choosing to let celebrities lead one into self-image depression. And my father would respond, “What stops one from deciding their meaning in life is to commit murder or theft?” By choosing to live in a society, we choose to live within its boundaries. Anyone who decides to start killing their fellow citizens will quickly come into conflict with the rest of the community and be forced to face the consequences. However, this quandary of mores is closer to the topic of morality, one saved for another day.

Real World Fairy Tales

2006-03-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

I took a 12-hour break writing this latest entry. While writing earlier this morning, I came across a roadblock and could not for the life of me think of a decent conclusion. I ran some errands, and read one of my books on globalization, all in the hopes of getting past this obstacle. However, a friend mentioned I should not worry about reaching a conclusion because some situations in life do not always have clear and tidy endings. Initially the idea seemed like unadulterated insanity (I do not mean it as harshly as it is written), but since our conversation the idea has grown on me. Maybe I cannot conclude an idea in my head now, but perhaps I will later or with the help of someone else’s ideas.

The next paragraph is a bit of a departure from the first…I am warning you now.

In 1990, the United Nations published the Millennium Declaration, a “compact among nations” in an attempt to advance development by, in part, halving poverty and world hunger by 2015. I will not spend time throwing out statistics, you can read all about it in the UNDP’s 2003 Human Development Report (Unless you’re really interested…don’t bother). Making a long story short, progress towards these Millennium Goals has been negligible and in many parts of the world, the number of people living under a dollar per day and without access to clean drinking water has increased (Sub-Saharan Africa being the worst). Now I do have a point and am not writing in an attempt to pull on people’s heartstrings or raise awareness towards those who are appallingly worse off than we are here in this country.

In the pursuit of my Masters, I am taking a development course and we spend hours reading the flowery language of international politicians and bureaucrats. Yet the more I read, the more frustrated I become with the failure of these development policies the UN and other development agencies have created. When rich nations stumble across a new idea for development there is usually a 10-15 year time lag before the ineptitude of the policies really sinks in. Many of the policies so strictly adhered to in the seventies and eighties by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have only recently been acknowledged as incompetent, and extremely detrimental to many of the nations they were forced upon, affecting billions of lives. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no development expert, but I feel like these international organizations would be better suited to taking a scholarly or research-based approach towards development. Research poverty and brainstorm policy by living in a developing nation versus reading statistics in your comfy DC office about a country you hardly knew existed. Very little work is done on the ground actually examining the root causes of poverty. Most of the work occurs in towering glass and steel buildings in New York or Washington DC, in furnished offices with leather chairs. Yes, many strides have been made. The eradication of smallpox in 1980, and the dramatically increasing incomes of people in Southeast Asia throughout the nineties are examples. At the same time, poverty is skyrocketing in Sub-Saharan Africa and population growth rates are so high, more and more people are being born into abject poverty. It is a twisted paradox. Hold conferences and proclaim to the world you want to make a difference yet successfully manage to screw things up even more.

Now I will admit I can be a tad cynical at times. I spoke with my professor last week regarding this whole paradox and to my surprise he felt the exact same way while he was an economics student. He related to me how disillusioned he was with the international community especially considering he was a student at a time when the Millennium Goals did not exist and efforts at poverty reduction were a bit of a joke. In his mind, these conferences and reports were more of a way for the rich nation’s big shots to get together, write these reports and then pat each other on the back for all the hard work. As one might expect, politics plays an enormous role in preventing the policies in these reports from becoming a reality.

All of this got me thinking, is the eradication of poverty or ending world hunger even a remote possibility? All of the numbers tell a story of how easy it could be to improve the lives the billions of people yet nothing ever happens. And can this be applied to our lives? We hold our own “conferences” and invent our own utopia. Real world fairy tales to help us feel better about our own existence, justified by our ability to now say: “Well at least we’re trying to do something about it.” However, instead of working towards this perfect place, we spend our lives simmering in a dystopia, damned to mediocrity by the bureaucracy of our mind.

While on this contemplative streak, I am brought to another point. I have had countless discussions with people about how the world needs to relax and stop being so judgmental. We should not stress about what we have no control over and will not try to take control of. However, I find that when I stop worrying so much about the stupid things I argue about with other people, something else equally as dim-witted invades my consciousness. As soon as you feel you have reached a turning point, something comes out of your mouth contradicting everything you’ve just said. Like riding a carousel, I get off the horse and move to the tiger and then to the elephant, but I am still going in circles. May I please get off?

Intermezzo

2006-03-06T00:57:00.000-05:00

Another idea was provided complimentary passage to the Island of Misfit Blogs tonight. For a brief moment I had a great rhythm and idea flow taking me into the dark world of human interaction in the form of relationships. A very difficult topic to tackle well and, understandably, one I failed to convert into written form (for now at least). However, dumping the entry got me thinking about some of my earlier “Misfit Blogs”. I pulled one out from underneath the cobwebs and was planning on pasting it below this paragraph. It was a raw, uncut prequel to my Out of Context entry, though only by coincidence. As I was about to press the publish button, I had second thoughts and decided against its publication. Some of my writing is a little too uncut and inappropriate for viewing in a public forum. A number of these blogs could be polished for the Internet, but others should remain unseen. I am in the process of writing my next entry, which should be ready within a few days.

Are You Listening to Me?!?!

2006-03-01T22:26:00.000-05:00

Some have described me as opinionated: ask me a question and I will have an immediate response. Normally we are not talking about an Ann Coulter or Al Franken response, one typically tilted viciously in one direction or another (though it has been known to happen before). Occasionally, my opinion is merely indifference or zealous moderation. I loathe the politicos on Capitol Hill; puppets whose opinions rarely oppose the party line with little regard to their constituencies or the welfare of the country. I also struggle to understand right-wing evangelicals and leftist quacks clinging so tightly to their special interests they convince themselves of the righteousness of their own opinions and the illegitimacy of any who disagree. Progressive? Following the path of Christ? Open-minded? Should I answer any of these questions or simply respond with nauseating sarcasm or perhaps with the irony of everything I have just said.

I spent the past weekend skiing in Northern Michigan, which up until a week ago had no snow and fifty degree weather. Now a pleasant two feet of soft powder covers the slopes, perfect for skiing. And great skiing it was. On the first day I practiced my own techniques since two rookies had traveled with the group. I showed them the ropes along with tips on how to avoid killing themselves, an experience far removed and gentler than the first time I ever went tumbling down a snowy mountain in Canada. Getting even further off my main point, I borrowed my brother’s snowboarding helmet for the first time and, amazingly, there was a dramatic transformation in my attitude. Normally I have been a little hesitant of the more difficult slopes (black diamonds), but now I was rocketing down every hill I could find, never passing up the opportunity to ski glades and terrain parks. It felt good to see a significant improvement in my skiing.

The second night we were there, the group played a game titled Hear Me Out! The premise of this game is to move your piece across a board by trying to guess what other people are thinking or by giving your opinion on Rorschach pictures and hypothetical situations. At first I thought this game would be a riot and a great incentive to consume alcohol. I quickly realized this game was most certainly not created for people like me. When you give an opinion on a hypothetical situation or try to interpret a picture, the remaining players are required to give you the thumbs up or down on your interpretation. Now unfortunately, it is not a requirement to provide a justification for which thumb you gave. And when I got booed, I started to get a tad bit frustrated.

I think this frustration was caused by two primary factors: my over-the-top competitive spirit (I cannot stand losing to people in general, but especially those I feel are not as qualified or up to my level of skill…I am not inferring my friends are worse than I, in fact, the opposite is more likely), and having to be subjected to opinions without competent justification.

During my tenure in D.C., I was unwillingly forced into a disagreement with one of my co-workers on a political issue. According to my co-worker, I was unable to present a valid argument because I was on the “wrong” side of the issue. When I tried to get a word in, he would cut me off while making whining noises like a child. I finally told him to bugger off and left the room in a fit of rage. I love engaging in meaningful discourse, but why must people resort to ignorant name-calling and petty insults as a means of defending their point of view? If you cannot support your opinion in an intelligent and thoughtful manner, then shut the hell up (or in the case of many television pundits, get louder and more belligerent).

I feel as though I am just ending my thought in an awkward place yet I have nothing meaningful to add as a conclusion to this piece. Instead I will end with this excuse not to write further.

Self-Stimulating Intelligence

2006-02-27T16:23:00.000-05:00

When I look back at my previous posts, the few that exist, I am fascinated. I try and remember what was going on in my life that might inspire what I managed to upload into the ether of the Internet. However, I don’t want to dwell on my analysis of my own writing, the act of which seems very self-aggrandizing and makes me uncomfortable.

The other day I was asked the question: “Did you ever think about the fact that some of the most intelligent conversations you'll ever have are not necessarily with another person?” This was in reference to one my earlier blogs regarding Intelligent Conversations. This friend was implying most of the intelligence occurs within your own head and not among your group of friends chugging watered-down pitchers for $2.50 at your local watering hole. Answering the question without thinking, I would assume one might say yes. My statement is justified by a typical conversation one might hear on the street about clothes, money, or “that girl is a real bitch and I can’t stand her!” I will admit, I have engaged in all of those at some point.

A little more thought reveals a drastically different point of view. I agree I sometimes feel I’m the only sane person left on Earth – a leading cause of isolationism – but the train of thought in my head is constantly derailing on tracks that were placed abysmally out of order. I find myself chasing my tail repeatedly until I figuratively hit my head against the wall, and either make a decision or completely leave the thought process. I would much rather share my ideas with someone and listen to their opinion versus keeping everything bottled up. When you confide in another person, you allow for other views to expand your horizon of thought and possibly lead the train down tracks you never knew existed. I can be very cynical and love playing Devil’s Advocate, but I still encourage people to throw ideas off me and tell me what is going through their head. I try to remove myself from any bias and objectively analyze a situation. It fosters healthy social interaction and opens the mind to new frontiers. Obviously the majority of discussions I have with my friends are simply “shooting the shit”, but I think the most intelligent conversations are held with people you know and respect, who are capable of building upon your own ideas in a constructive manner.

Out of Context

2006-02-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

I don’t want to start this off giving the impression I am chronically depressed and think life is futile, which is not true. However, as you may know, life is not always cupcakes, and writing is my way of venting (HINT: That is why the topics here are not about sunshine and frolicking in fields of daisies). I become very pensive while I write, which creates a tone of seriousness. The creation of a blog entry actually requires quite a process. My mind generally has to have been obsessing about something more so than usual and I am forced to write it down to try and make sense of it. However, once I start writing, it becomes difficult to put my thoughts in the appropriate order and fully explain what I am trying to relate. Because of this, I have a number of unfinished entries lying around collecting dust. My hard drive is like the Island of Misfit Blog Ideas, ideas with great promise yet abandoned when I lose my inspiration or train of thought.

I find it eerily ironic how this issue has come to the forefront in my mind in the season of Mardi Gras. A friend who has read this blog once told me how much she appreciates the unabashed honesty I convey in my writing. We all wear masks around other people because we are always trying to make an impression. When I write, I don’t feel like I have to impress anyone or maintain a certain reputation. All of my walls come down and I can write how I really feel. It is my way of escaping the superficiality and hypocrisy of life through brief moments of keyboard honesty, something many of us find nearly impossible to do in everyday life. We feverishly toil on the maintenance of these “masks”, or lies we tell people everyday, both in the words we say, and the actions we take. Not the type of lie you say to keep yourself out of trouble, e.g. my dog ate my homework or I have a job as a foreign exchange arbitrager, yet in reality I am a bum living off of my parents, but the lie you perpetuate so people will maintain some opinion of you that you have created. The lies you create to protect yourself and your insecurities, your vulnerabilities, and aspects of your personality you are terrified of the world ever discovering. How many people do you think go through life, meet new people, get married, and have families while never compromising or eliminating the lies they have created around themselves? How many times have you been so honest with someone that you have lost control of your emotions and simply broken down into tears? And how many of us will never do that because we refuse to be that vulnerable around anyone?

But I am digressing from the reason I began writing this in the first place. I’m sure at some point you have felt misrepresented, perhaps by your own fault or by the faulty judgment of other people. People at their very core are extremely judgmental and our actions are no help in whether public opinion views you as too shy, too stupid, or too much of an asshole. So what happens when you have realized this facade, or these lies have festered a perverse misrepresentation of who you feel you truly are? That you’ve spent all this time developing a certain image only to finally realize its destructive behavior to yourself and the people you care about. Thinking this image is a ski lift taking you to new heights and the top of a mountain, only to be deposited not on fresh powder, but off a towering cliff. To feel like you cannot accept kind gestures and compliments from someone because you don’t deserve it after the way you have treated other people. And that for the rest of your life, certain people will judge you according to this behavior, people with whom you will never be given the opportunity to change their mind or are completely unaware of the little things you have done or are doing to try and become a better person.

To describe this entry as depressing might be an understatement. With my entries I usually try to include a resolution, which in this particular instance has been exceedingly difficult, though I will try. As I have said in an earlier blog, you cannot force people to change their opinions of you or other people. At the same time, you must not live in the past and continue to harp on what has already happened that you cannot change (advice I have stood by). Even when you want to become more honest, you cannot expect it to happen overnight, it may take years. All you can do is distance yourself from those who cannot see you in another light and try the best you can now and in the future to change for your own piece of mind, while hoping a few people realize and appreciate it, because to hope everyone will is a fantasy.

A Brokeback Moment

2006-02-06T15:35:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I saw Brokeback Mountain, the new film directed by Ang Lee that is taking the country by storm. If you have not heard anything about it, you surely are living in a cave, perhaps in Afghanistan, perhaps with Osama bin Laden, and perhaps you should inform the authorities. However, the movie, set in 1960’s Wyoming, is the story of two cowboys who develop a relationship while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain and the ensuing years of their struggle to hide this relationship from their friends and families. The movie has become quite a cultural phenomenon with everyone from TV personalities to my friends using it in their day-to-day vocabulary: “Another Brokeback Moment brought to you by Bud Light!”

The movie had a profound effect on me, not for the groundbreaking homosexual themes that have incredibly transcended all ideologies and phobias in this country, but for the overarching theme of the movie. As homosexuality is greatly frowned upon in the cowboy/ranching community they try, ultimately unsuccessfully, to keep their relationship a secret for over twenty years. Their fear of the consequences: destroying their families, and becoming pariahs lead them to discreetly meet twice a year back on Brokeback Mountain. While they continue normal lives, they long for a life together that in reality will never exist. Thus leading to the question:

Has there ever been a point(s) in life when you have been too afraid to take action when you should have or tell someone how you really feel?

Friend or Schmuck, Part Deux

2006-01-04T00:03:00.000-05:00

I now realize I may have been a tad bitter in my last post, more so than necessary. After a couple days more of logical thought, I feel I've reached a succinct and rational conclusion. We all know certain decisions and events lie under our realm of control and the rest do not. How other people treat each other is something I have no control over. However, I do control the way I treat people and it is my responsibility to do so with respect and dignity, while having the sense of humor to poke fun as well. To hell with how other people want to act, I am going to take control of my behavior, and worry less about how other people think of me [insert sarcastic "Girl Power!" remark here].

"I control how I feel, not the environment or people around me."

Friend or Schmuck

2006-01-02T02:09:00.000-05:00

The holiday break provided me ample time to think about life and such. Occasionally one has to wonder whether all this thinking really serves any purpose. Sometimes I feel my thoughts and logic are all cyclical and quite frankly it is very frustrating. I spend countless hours pondering, and in the end does it really get me anywhere or am I just chasing my tail? Always seeking self-improvement, my train of thought led me to the frontier of actually writing my thoughts, hence the existence of this blog. We frequently lose our place in the arguments we create in our heads and by physically recording my mind I can effectively use a mental bookmark, helping me to establish what ground has been covered, and how I might proceed if at all.

A group I belonged to has a sort of pseudo-digest written a couple of times a year. This “publication” generally uses sarcasm and insensitivity to poke fun at everyone else in the group. As mentioned, I no longer participate in this group, but I do enjoy spending time with current members I met and became friends with during my tenure.

I had the so-called privilege of reading the publication the other night, though I may have wished otherwise. The dripping irony of this entire story would be Seinfeld-esque if only it was amusing. I was celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday at the time, something I take seriously because this is arguably the most important age in American society. You want to be there for your friends on dates important to them, considering life happens only once and you never get a second chance.

On a lighter note, we played the most dysfunctional game of quarters I have ever been involved in, and no one rivals the way one of my friends played several guys out of their money and drinks. I think the birthday girl landed her quarters on the first try with the same consistency as the sun rising every morning.

However, let’s return to the reason I am writing. There were numerous references to my group of friends, more specifically as the older guys who are useless and a waste of space. Apparently, since we are not yet wildly successful or millionaires, we aren’t welcome in their revered presence, the epitome of the holier than thou attitude (you first have to know, where I come from is defined by arrogance and populated with spoiled, selfish brats). I understand the whole intention of the publication is jest, but there was a thinly veiled dagger hiding beneath the photocopied sheets.

After I finished reading, I began thinking and evaluating my relationships/friendships. I realized just how manipulative and two-faced some of the people I associate with are. Now I do not want to appear to be passing judgments and casting stones because I am perfect, I am not. It also dawned on me how those same adjectives may be applied to myself just as easily. Rarely do I find flaws in people around me without quickly seeing those same flaws in myself. The human race is fickle and hypocritical in its whole to begin with. We claim to be altruistic and empathetic, yet when your back is turned we embezzle your money, life and dignity. How many times have I turned my tongue against someone when they weren’t in the room? How many times have I exploited another’s weakness and insecurity for my own personal gain?

We refer to a person as our friend and then vilify them. We drink with them, allow them to confide secrets in us and then we turn around and call them a raging bitch. And do we realize that through this gossip we expose ourselves? Do we expect the people we degrade to always be blissfully unaware of our actions or the ones WE confide in will not turn around, return the favor and stab us in the back?

At this point you wonder: do I really have any true friends or is everyone just in it for themselves? My brother spoke about the camp he is a counselor at and how everyone acts as if you are their best bud, but when shit hits the fan, no one is there get your back. In the end, the ends justify the means as long as I’m the one enjoying the good end, right? The society we live in is a festering pool polluted by violence, greed, apathy, and the almighty individual. The many people who work for a better world (and they do exist) always appear to be fighting a losing battle to the “me, me, me” in everyone. Throughout this continual struggle, we are losing the foundation of friendship: loyalty. Friends are not merely someone you hang out with, they are supposed to be there for you when life is intolerable, and they fight for you when no one else will. Where is the loyalty? What do you have when your “friends” talk shit about you behind your back? You have empty, meaningless relationships based upon superficial premises. We treat our friends as these people we associate with until we find someone else, someone we can better manipulate to further ourselves.

There is a point to this entry and I will write my conclusion tomorrow when my brain is not as tired.

On quick note, we always say the grass is greener on the other side and when we get there it’s not always as green as we once thought. Just remember, you only think it is greener, the reality is rarely true.

Drawing A Blank

2005-07-28T11:47:00.000-04:00

I created my first blog with the intention of maintaining a strong political slant, but devoid of a clear mainstream ideology; specifically, my interpretations of world news. After focusing on newspapers, magazines and other blogs with such intensity, my work quickly morphed into a regurgitation of the news with little evidence of my personal analysis. I continued to develop and transitioned from general events in the news to international news with a strong focus on Middle Eastern politics. Still, I wanted to get away from the monotony and redundancy of simply writing articles and using the ubiquitous hyperlink as the Internet version of a bibliography. I wanted to bring the blog to a more personal level, so I could better relate with myself and others.

The past summer has left me, on many occasions, confounded and full of “philosophical” questions about life. Questions asked by nearly everyone yet rarely answered by anyone to any degree of satisfaction. The majority of people on this planet will never answer life’s most profound questions or even bother to try. Many chose uncompromising ignorance, while others, in an equally uninformed fashion, accept what they are taught. Be careful in your interpretation, by no means am I implying one cannot accept an idea with which they agree. Acceptance should follow the questioning and analysis of another’s ideas.

“Ignorance is bliss,” is one of the greatest truths in human history. Every time I explore a new corner of the World, expand my knowledge or experience an emotion, more questions arise and the mind suffers just a bit more. Given my inquisitive nature and inability to accept what I am told, I am driven to seek answers. Earlier this summer, I was inspired to start jotting notes in a “journal”. The journal’s purpose was not to recap events in the traditional sense, but to write and visualize questions I had and the thoughts circling overhead like vultures. Ideas in my head come and go as quickly as the mind’s nerve impulses dart from one synapse to another, hence the priceless art of writing. I write not only for the pictures drawn in the imagination, but for the history they keep. Twenty years from now I can look back and think: “Boy I was young and naïve, but I worked things through in my mind and I am a better person today because of it.” Or perhaps, “I can’t believe I was such a terrible writer! I must have been asleep in English class.”

To my dismay, the ideas racing through my head are generally too disjointed for the smooth flow of a blog entry. Rereading some of the material in my journal is a chore in of itself. One that, to be read coherently, requires several hours of polish. The level of effort involved is a damper on the frequency of posts.

I love writing and currently have two posts in the works. I am heading to NYC for the weekend which will inevitably provide me with ideas. Of course, I am certainly open to ideas if someone would like to offer a suggestion.

Intelligent Conversations

2005-07-20T15:51:00.000-04:00

My world was slightly shaken this past weekend. We were barhopping around Adams Morgan Friday night with the air so thick you felt as though you were walking through a sauna with some asshole continuously throwing water on the rocks. I have never understood the appeal of the Adams Morgan night scene to a group of mid-twenties professionals. Adams Morgan is a neighborhood watering hole in Northwest DC for the college frat boy and sorostitute, and a locale I absolutely cannot stand: a quarter mile of bars and restaurants offering the same fare, atmosphere and ridiculous prices. The exception is the Jumbo Slice pizza parlor, offering the largest slice of pizza you will ever see. The scene every Friday and Saturday night rarely diverges from the norm. Guys wear the obligatory Polo with the collared popped and have spent more time on their hair than any girl walking by. The girls all wear heels, spaghetti strap tops and some pair of pants that rarely matches and just screams, “I am preppy trash who needs you to take me out and fuck me, so I can use your money to buy nicer clothes and chase richer men.”

The majority of my friends here in the District share my displeasure for Adams Morgan, yet when the weekend rolls around, my lawyer friend called: “I’m meeting this girl and her friends in one of your favorite places…Adams Morgan, do you want to come along?” Adams Morgan! Are you kidding me? Without even meeting this girl I already knew everything about her. But I digress.

As the morning clock reached two, we made our way to the exit and the nearest Metro station. As we swam through the humidity, one of my friends discovered a fleece coat on the sidewalk whose owner probably discarded it thinking, “Why the hell am I wearing this in 90 degree weather!” My friend, drunk and high, grabbed the 4XL coat and donned it for the remainder of our walk to the Metro.

Waiting for the train, I frantically searched for the slightest bit of cool air, and my chem. friend began talking about intelligent conversations. The subject was brought up as a delayed reaction to an argument we had been having earlier about America’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Over the past couple years I, with some difficulty, convinced myself I must “get smarter” and hold intelligent conversations with intelligent people who had intelligent ideas. A month ago I actually missed the last train while debating early WWII air power and the possibility of a cross-channel invasion of Britain. I thought the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht missed a perfect opportunity at Dunkirk to invade Britain while my lawyer friend argued it was in no way possible.

Well, my chem. friend continued and said most people do not relate with Washingtonians and their obsessions: Karl Rove, Supreme Court nominations, etc. She even went so far as to describe my lawyer friend as exceedingly boring and it surprised her girls actually talk to him for more than 15 minutes. I was taken aback for a moment – I had been drinking and my head is already a jumbled mess of nonsense. More surprising than what she said was that I never realized it myself. I’ve even been in assholes anonymous for the past several months and have been trying to avoid beltwayitis like our government avoids responsibility. It’s unbelievable how insulated we are in the shadow of I-495. Reminds me of West Virginia, but with Banana Republics, ten dollar martinis and suits to give the impression of a civilized society.

If I break down the premise of intelligent conversations, I’m left with serious tone. Having an intelligent conversation generally implies that you are seriously discussing weighty matters. Keep in mind, the theory does not work in reverse. Sharing a latte and having a discussion about the new line from Louis Vuitton is not intelligent. Affairs of state, the meaning of the universe, why Danica Patrick is a horrible racer, those are conversations of necessity.

Her words really resonated and after a couple of flashbacks I came to my own quasi-epiphany: I really don’t have as many intelligent conversations as I think I do. In fact, this entry may degrade in literary quality as I continue to write it! Of course I can talk politics with the best of them, while equally doing my best to avoid association with the Kool-Aid guzzling ideologues on Capitol Hill and in the White House. For the most part, I focus on fascinating topics including, but not limited to, clothes, “rug burn”, how I exhibit gay tendencies, why one of my friends is completely un-dateable (her words not mine) and nothing in general.

Perhaps I am not a lost cause after all or perhaps I’ll live in a state of self-delusion (which for many people is life). Maybe instead of barreling at a hundred miles an hour down the road towards seriousness and my father, I’ll slow down, get off at the exits, and take the scenic routes.

SummitPost

2005-07-20T13:28:00.000-04:00

My favorite web site, SummitPost.org, had a great poll asking people to choose: "What trait do you look for most in a climbing partner?" The obvious winner with 36% percent of the votes was: "Safe to climb with," but third place and my choice was: "Is very attractive, single, and the opposite sex."

...That's actually three traits, right?

In the beginning

2005-07-20T08:34:00.000-04:00

And so it begins...again! I have revived my once defunct blog. However, this time around I want to take a different approach. Instead of simply reporting the news, I am going to offer more commentary on whatever tickles me that day. It is the resurrection of my online persona, now with more life and literary experience.

Roadtrip Archive

2005-01-01T10:36:00.017-05:00

Blogs are infuriating when trying to relate a story in proper chronological order (old to new). Consequently, I have been asked to compile the writing from my roadtrip in a more readable fashion. So, drum roll please, below are pictures and links to my posts from beginning to end.

In Search of America

Do We Have Any Salt Trucks Around Here?

Trouble in Paradise

For Glory, God, and Gold, and the Virginia Company

Airplane

Southern Hospitality

Free at Last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty We are Free at Last!

Flo Rida

Religulous*

The Big Easy

Love Me Tender, Love Me True

The Hills Have Eyes, and Undercover Cops

The Sun Sets in the West; In Arizona Actually

How the West Was Won

Very Supertitious, Writing's on the Wall

Only Vehicles With Chains May Continue

Happy Birthday Abe Lincoln

A Long Time in the Making

There is Just too Much to Say

Come on You Wolverines!

A Treatise on the State of American Manufacturing

My Lands are Where My Dead Lay Buried

The Kings of Corn

People Listening

This is Sparta!! Ha-ooh!! Ha-ooh!!

The Bucket List

Ann's Arbor

Wicked Pissah!!

The End is the Beginning is the End

*Received critical acclaim from readers