Get in the Bus

End of the Road

2008-12-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

Nothing lasts. Not a sunset. Not a party. Not a road trip. It is the way of the world, of course, for one generation to supplant the next, for history to repeat itself, and for all things to end. This is the meaning of life.

And so, at long last, Diane and I find ourselves home again. Talk about a trade-up in square-footage!

As expected, the rooms in our house are exactly where we left them. The lawn still beckons for a mow. The neighbors continue to perform their daily routines without deviation. And after almost a year on the road, now back again among the excruciatingly familiar, I feel nothing but gratitude.

We have safely traveled 28,620 miles in our good old bus and between home and home again, we have had the great fortune to behold the Redwood Forest…

… and to take pause in fields of poppy…

… to tour America’s cities, both great…

… and small.

We have crested the backbone of our great land…

… and descended to follow the crooked back roads and the good weather…

...to savor the sweet breath of spring...

… to bask in the gentle breeze that stirs the gulf stream waters.

We have stepped into the presence of the things that makes America great…

… and we have lingered in the company of otherwise-lost family and friends.

Indeed, our American Road Trip is unique in that it can never be repeated exactly. This is a good thing. We wouldn’t have it any other way. For, without doubt, our road trip is merely a replication of a previous road trip, and a trip before that, and so on back through the generations…

We take great comfort in our place within this vast continuity, for we have discovered that ours is a world of grand vistas and tiny miracles…

… of shop keepers and rebels…

… of today’s sunworshipers and yesterday’s utopianists…

…and of proud artisans and their creations.

Perhaps I got it all wrong when I said that nothing lasts and all things end. Thinking back on our travels, it occurs to me that ours is also a world where everything is new and nothing ever really ends; and the living memory of our road trip is just another way to describe the meaning of life.

So now it is your turn. All you have to do is say Yes. Say Yes to committing to traveling this great land of ours. Say Yes to retiring any debts you may have. Say Yes to putting money in the bank. Say Yes to guide books and regional dishes and local color. Say Yes to blue highways that lead to no place in particular, except perhaps the warm hearths and homes of friends and family. Say Yes to standing on the hallowed ground of our forefathers, for no matter the breadth of paths they blazed or the depth and dazzle of their star power, they were created of the same materials as you and I, equally.

Their time was then, yours is now, and we are travelers all.

Just say Yes.

Giving of Thanks

2008-12-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

Some places and events are so right and true that they are spared the ravages wrought by time. Fourteen years ago, Diane gently took me by the hand and led me to Palo Cedro, CA, and into the warm embrace of her family's annual Thanksgiving festival. As it was then, so it has been every year thereafter.

As for this year, from Eugene we rolled south into northern California for an all-too brief stop over at my brother's place. My brother and his family now live in Arcata, CA in the March Commons Cohousing development--a housing concept that Diane's brother and sister-in-law, Chuck & Katie, brought to the United States! It's a small world after all, and family is family, no matter its contrivances. From Arcata, we drove boldly through Bigfoot Cuntry and arrived at Mike & Sally's place in Palo Cedro, CA. Whatever the magic the mechanics in Eugene had performed on the bus was working strong and true.

The Durrett Family Thanksgiving festival is like their family tree--a tall and stout and deep-rooted thing of many branches.

It is a celebration of bounty...

... and part costume party.

It is a gathering that champions gamesmanship...

... and fellowship.

For these few days it is a place where all can live in the moment, where want and need are intertwined. For these few days it is a place were life is lived simply but not primitively. These few days are the closest thing to paradise that I know.

And though some members of the Durrett family are no longer with us, we are blessed to have known them, we are blessed to remember them, and we give thanks to break bread with all who step through that front door.

Get in the Bus

2008-11-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos. What's going down up in your neck of the woods? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but we've been driving in the fast lane, running on empty, and looking for an off-ramp. First off, we drove back up to Eugene, Oregon after the family wedding in Sacramento, CA and the big Election Day party in Nevada City, CA.

Next day, we were on the road early eating up the miles and blasting some tasty tunes. Sure, we were going back to Eugene. Sure we'd seen all these roads before. But after a year of seeing nothing but unfamiliar places, driving familiar roads was sort of nice. The nice didn't last long, though. No sooner did we pull into town when the bus went all haywire.

The other morning we got in the bus to do some errands. The sun was bright and warm. The sky was blue, not a single cloud in the sky. The bus started just fine and we drove all around town doing our thing. That is until our last stop. When I went to start the bus, I discovered that I couldn't twist the ignition key. With a lot of jiggling and a little sleight of hand I got it to work. But then we got home and I shut it off. And here, amigos, is where our troubles began.

Now old Van Man here ain't an expert mechanic or anything but he does know his way around a monkey wrench, and he does know when something is wrong. If you can't turn the ignition key you can't turn on your bus. And if you can't start your bus you aren't going anywhere. So I pulled out my trusty VW bus manual and read through the chapter dealing with ignition stuff. Then I got online and found even more info. And then I got to work and called an expert. In this case, the expert was a friend of a friend who rides around town on his bicycle with a tow-trailer making housecalls on sick old VWs. Welcome to Eugene.

After some fussing and sussing and power tool rustling, my traveling mechanic had the lock guts out. I could start the bus, hotwire style, no key needed. Now, this old bus of ours may be a highly-modified contraption. It has its eccentricities. But it is also a thing of elegant utility. So I did the right thing and drove to a full-serivce VW mechanic and had a keyed ignition reinstalled.

At this point, the Van Man is feeling pretty good about himself. We've been all over America in our bus. We've driven over 25,000 miles so far. Sure, we've had a few problems--but if you want a '71 VW microbus to treat you good, you got to treat it good. We might have been knocked down, but hadn't been knocked out.

Then came the famous rains of the Pacific Northwest. And with the rains came a flat tire. For the record this is the third flat we've had this trip. We were in a giant parking lot, so we didn't have to deal with dodging traffic or panic stopping or any of that. I calmly busted out the jack and swapped out the spare. No problemo. But when I went around town, looking for a fix, I spied this giant rainbow-colored trail following behind me wherever I went. Normally, a rainbow following a microbus around Eugene, Oregon is no big deal. But this kind of rainbow--the oily kind, all spewing and spattering; the kind that's so big and dirty that everyone shoots you dirty looks--was some serious trouble.

Back at the mechanic's garage I got the bad news--blown gaskets and seals. Sometimes a problem is as simple as that. And sometimes you got to figure things happen for a reason. Here we were, in our home town--a town where there's a microbus parked on almost every corner; the only town in America where I know these mechanics and they know me and this bus. If it hadn't been for the rains I might never have known the size of the oil leaks until it was too late. A few days later, those old nagging oil leaks were fixed.

I've got to be honest with you. I took one look at the repair bill and almost fainted. Then I remembered driving through the wild wastelands of the desert southwest--Indian country at that--totally alone. Nothing but sand and rocks and sun and a never-ending ribbon of road ahead of us and behind us. Then, I imagined the oil pressure light starting to blink... And I paid right up.

But the problems didn't end there. I was driving around the next day and discovered that I had a hard time shifing gears. It quickly went from hard to horrible. It got so bad that I had to shut off the engine--using my new ignition key--at stoplights to shift into first. I tell you, it's hard to treat your bus good when it's treating you bad. I managed to nurse the bus home and I immedately called Big R., the only mechianc I really trust (besides Miles at the No Name Garage, that is). Like Rasputin to the Romanovs, he diagnosed the problem by wire and told me the clutch was burning out. I didn't want to believe him, but the very next time Diane and I got back in the bus and my clutch foot shot down to the floor and nothing happened, I believed.

Stuck in second gear and driving without a clutch, Diane and I somehow managed to beeline it back to the garage without stopping.

And there it sits. Big R. was right, the clutch indeed had burned out.

It's tough to write a travel blog when you can't travel anywhere. After a new clutch disk and pressure plate, that'll change. And just because we don't have our trusty yellow microbus to push us around right now doesn't mean our style's been cramped in any way. We've been getting around just fine. All we had to do was get into another sort of bus.

And we'll drink to that...

... because we know there's nothing else that can possibly go wrong with our bus now.

Family Wedding Party

2008-11-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

A wedding party is an act of love. It takes the bounty of two families and mixes it with the groom’s heart and bride’s soul. What’s more, throwing this sort of party and inviting family members and friends to participate is a simple pleasure that all can enjoy. And what about the fancy clothes? They are functional (given the circumstances), and they make this old road-weary microbus-truckin’ man feel ... special. Plus I can carry my wallet in a jacket pocket. Classy.

I’d like to thank and congratulate Jamie and Joaquin Rodriguez. Jamie is one of Diane’s nieces; and now "Keen" is her newest nephew. We made plans to attend Jamie and Keen’s wedding about the time we hit the road way back in March. But that was the extent of our planning. We just had to be in Sacramento, CA on November, 1, 2008, dressed and ready. And so we were. From Eugene, OR it was a straight shot down trusty I-5. It's not much of a drive, and it's not fast: 8 hours in a modern vehicle, 10 hours by microbus. But we managed to get to town the day before the wedding--just in time for a costume drama of an entirely different color...

Halloween! Oh, the horror!

Ironman, a.k.a., Kyle and Transformer Bumblebee, a.k.a. Ryan are the sons of Skeletor, a.k.a. Carl. I'm proud to say that both Ironman and Bumblebee call us Aunt Diane and Uncle Mike.

But these weren't the only members of Diane's family we saw before the Big Event. I could write about each of these families separately, but this is a family gathering. Diane's family is family to me. They are distinct individuals all but, just as importantly, are all together, too. So allow me to introduce the family:

Jack and Donna

Carl and Margo

Chuck and Katie

Yours and Yours Truly

The Meyers family -- Haley, Eric, Jonna *
*Missing in action are Mike and Alex... they were braving the rain to fetch the family car.

... and now, Jamie and Keen.
And what about the Big Event itself? First off, it was big...

... and the families hosted an event that was as fun and as generous as they are.

We loved it!

Thank you Jamie and Keen for a wonderful evening. We were so glad you invited us to share it with you. Diane and I would also like to thank Jack and Donna for their warm hospitality and their big guest bedroom. Thanks also to Carl and Margo for the giant cowboy breakfast the next morning (and for the many nights we've stayed over in years' past).

And, finally, we must also thank Chuck and Katie and Jessie for so generously opening up their home to us, long after the party was over.

Yes we can.

Home at Tony's Place

2008-11-03T07:25:00.001-08:00

After skedaddling down the northern Oregon coast, we looped east and landed in the inland empire of the Willamette Valley and our adoptive hometown of Eugene, OR. But we didn’t return to Eugene to go home—this trip is not yet from finished. Rather, we returned to Eugene for another reason altogether. We had returned to visit Tony.

After almost a year on the road in this great land, Diane and I have ranged far and wide. We have seen marvels of nature. We have enjoyed the vibe of America’s greatest cities. We have been grateful guests of gracious hosts. And though just the two of us ride in the bus, we’ve actually had a third traveler with us the entire way: Diane’s son, Tony.

Tony is Diane’s only child. Tony is never far from Diane’s thoughts. He is her truest love and the love of her life--they talk on the phone nearly every day. You cannot know Diane without knowing Tony; and you cannot love Diane without also loving Tony. I have known Tony since he was twelve years old, and over these many years I have had the great fortune and profound pleasure to watch and help him grow up. And as I love Diane and have grown to love her more—for love is an ever-changing experience that grows and matures—so I also love Tony.

Tony is a rare individual. He was born completely blind. Through several operations as a baby he gained some vision, though he remains legally blind. This limitation might not be obvious to you the first time you meet him. To understand how he sees, imagine seeing the world with a crinkled piece of wax paper placed over eyes. Imagine looking through this wax paper using only one eye, while looking over the bridge of your nose. Not only will you have a difficult time seeing anything, but you won’t have any depth perception. Imagine getting around your home, preparing dinner or doing laundry or mowing the lawn. Imagine trying to find your bus stop, going to church and school and work. Imagine yourself traveling the world. Finally, imagine yourself surrounded by friends and family—people who love you. Imagine these things successfully and you have a sense of what it means to walk in Tony’s shoes.

Tony currently works as a courtesy clerk for a large grocery chain. He is on his feet all day, sometimes outside for hours in the cold Oregon rain, and though he comes home tired he does not complain. He simply gets the job done, day in and day out. He is also ambitious, and he tries his best to get through night school classes and to earn promotions at work. He expects and desires more for himself than what he has today; and I admire his industry, his determination, and his uncommonly gracious personal touch.

Suffice it to say that the days we spent at Tony’s place were among the most enjoyable of this road trip. Days of work were followed with nights of family dinners, both at home and out and about at some of our favorite eating places around town. It was the sort of family homecoming that all road-weary travelers dream about.

But, like I said, this road trip is far from finished. We had a family wedding to attend in Sacramento, CA. So we loaded up and hit the road for what would be a solid 10-hour drive. We didn’t bid Tony a farewell so much as we bid him a hearty "see-you-later"—we would see him soon enough when we picked him up at the Sacramento airport the next day.

And as we drove south, with the beauty of Oregon in its fall glory all around, it occurred to me that all of us amount to more than an assemblage of our physical attributes and limitations. If a boy is a person who is motivated by self-interest who needs constant supervision, then a man is the measure of the quality of his own desires and the manner in which he makes them manifest. And over the time we’ve been gone, where we left behind a boy we returned to find a man.

Oregon Trail Mix

2008-10-25T10:12:00.001-07:00

Back in 1841, a Jesuit priest named Father de Smet traveled the great Oregon Trail. Upon seeing his first tornado he remarked, "Once as the storm was raging near us, we witnessed a sublime sight. A spiral abyss seemed to be suddenly formed in the air ...

"... The winds came down in a perpendicular direction, and in the twinkling of an eye the trees were torn and uprooted, and their boughs scattered in every direction. But what is violent does not last. After a few minutes the storm dissolved almost as quickly as it had been formed. Soon after, the sun re-appeared: all as calm and we pursued our journey."

What was true then is true today. The blizzard that stopped us cold in southern Montana blew itself out. The power lines were righted. The roads were cleared. And, after a little coaxing, we fired up our good old bus and continued our trek westward.

Once the clouds cleared off, the blue sky of Montana revealed itself to us. If infinity has a color it must be this shade of blue. It is a color that defies measurement and challenges rational thought. Infinity just is. Powder blue just is. Like contemplating your own mortality, it's a feeling that's difficult to describe with words.

While the Montana skies seemed infinite above us, as it turned out mortality was just around every corner. By this I mean ghost towns! Good old fashioned deader-n-a-doornail gold rush gone bust ghost towns. The very best kind!

Though, I hasten to add, no where else but a Montana ghost town will you find citizens frozen mid-shave...

... and forever On Hold.

It's a strange place. But it's also proof positive that the 1800s were, indeed, slower times. Not slow like a '71 microbus, of course. Because soon enough we were shooting the line, going for broke, in a single screaming bus...

... and once again our little one-horse convoy jumped into the worn ruts of the old Oregon Trail. Or at least the ruts of Goodale's Cutoff, which skirts the craters of the moon...

... Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve, that is.

It's the sort of place that makes you feel as though you're on top of the world. Or is that the Moon?

Regardless, once we got back to earth we paused to catch our breath in Ketchum, ID. It's a nifty little ski town, famous for its famous seasonal visitors and what remains of its most famous permanent resident. He was easy enough to track down.

Six feet under, Papa Hemingway has said all he's ever going to say on the subjects of life, death, and traveling. So allow me. We bid a farewell to Hemingway and north we went, through Sawtooth National Forest. It's a place of rare and brooding beauty.

Then we again turned west, through Boise (a great big little town), and joined a wagon train bound for Oregon.

We may not have been driving the biggest wagon, but by no means were we driving the slowest.

To be fair, we saw the exact same sights our pioneer forerunners saw about 150 years ago. Farewell Bend of the Snake river...

... Mt. Hood, as seen from the Columbia George....

... and the Spruce Goose!

Okay. The pioneers of the Oregon Trail never saw the Spruce Goose. But the pioneers of aviation sure did. And you can, too. Just go to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Speaking of Oregon... Did I say Oregon? I did. Beautiful Oregon! ....

Wonderful Oregon! ...

And if we're in Oregon it also means we are home. But this doesn't mean we've stopped traveling. This doesn't mean this road trip is over. Far from it. We have many wonders yet to see. We have many miles yet to drive. We have many people yet to visit. And we can't wait.

Postcards from Yellowstone

2008-10-22T13:03:00.001-07:00

We've been traveling so many miles through Wyoming and Montana that we've barely had time to sleep, much less write post cards. But thanks to an unseasonably heavy snowstorm, that has changed. While the storm blew itself out, we took refuge in a hotel just north of Yellowstone National Park where we caught up on our sleep, postcard writing, and TV watching.

In case you haven't received your postcard yet, keep watching that mailbox. In the meantime, here's what you've been missing:

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Wyoming at Close Range

2008-10-14T17:58:00.001-07:00

"Want to see the elk?" Martin asked me. He was a small man somewhere on the long side of sixty, his dark and scraggly beard bristling with shots of white and gray. I nodded. He nodded. He slung a towel over his shoulder, adjusted his hearing aid, and motioned for me to follow him across the parking lot outside of the mineral pools at the Thermopolis Hot Springs State Park.

While Diane lingered in the hot mineral springs, I followed Martin to a giant white pickup truck. A knot of his hunting buddies, who I had already met, were busy stowing away their bathing gear. While soaking in the pool, Diane and I had struck up a conversation with these hunters. They wanted to know all about our bus; and as soon as I found out they had just finished a week-long elk hunt, I wanted to know all about that.

"He wants to see the elk," Martin cawed. Paul, a lanky man with more scalp than hair on his pate, fished out a set of keys and set about unlocking the topper of the pickup truck. Paul looked like he'd be more comfortable behind the manager's desk of a petroleum services company than out bivouacking through the inhospitable wilds of the Wyoming back range.

"It's a nice elk to look at alright," Paul allowed with a deadpan grin as he opened the hatch. "That is, if you like looking at dead elk."

And so I looked. Decorum prevented me from snapping pictures. But it was a fine dead elk, and I said as much. The field-dressed carcass had been expertly butchered into quarters. There was no hint of blood. The head was detached, and its snout brushed the inside of the tailgate. Face-to-face with their elk, I saw that the antler rack spread wide and tall such that the tips almost touched the roof and walls of the topper.

As we talked about their hunt, it was clear that none of them took any real pleasure in making their kills, nor did they show particular pride in their hunting prowess and their trophy. "It takes us a few days to hike into the back country," said Paul. "It's hard country. It's hard work, where we go. Up and down. Those hills are steep. But then you're out there. The bull elks are still rutting and bugling. It's something to see..." His voice trailed off with the wistful tone of a love-sick admirer.

Paul shrugged as he buttoned up the truck's topper. "You know, I don't particularly like to kill animals. But I figure that as long as I'm going to eat meat, I'd rather hunt for it myself. It's that or buy a side a beef from a yard that crams its cows into a feedlot and shoots them full of chemicals."

He's right, of course. We are what we eat. And as the hunters and I parted ways, it occurred to me that there are two Wyomings.

The first Wyoming is the most obvious--the place itself. Diane and I had been threading our way west across the northern part of the state from the Black Hills to the Tetons and Yellowstone, and the scenery was a delight to behold. What's more, we were in the fold between seasons when the autumn chill is blunted by a bright and warm sun. Every morning when I got out of the bus, I nestled into jacket and gazed to the horizon.

Sometimes, I found myself under tight stands of Aspens that ripple with a golden glow against a pale blue sky that goes on forever.

Other times, a deep valley spread out before me with a emerald glow, its limits defined by a roll of crinkled hills that reach for the heavens, a tattered blanket of pines smothering the steep slopes.

And then there are places like Wind River Canyon that exhales an air so sweet as to defy my poor attempts to describe it with words.

The second Wyoming is more elusive--namely, its residents (this is, after all, the least populated state in the Union). There are the hardscrabble miners in the east...

...the wild cowgirls in the west...

... and the mild-mannered hunters in-between.

Bright Days in the Black Hills

2008-10-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

After jumping off the Oregon Trail, Diane and I moseyed south-bound to Colorado for a stop at my mother's home. This was our second visit to Mom & Linda's place on this trip, and our stay was just as wonderful this time as it was the last. But before the week was out, we were again on the road, racing northward to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Thanks, Linda! Thanks, Mom!

The term "Black Hills" is a translation from the Lakota. The term refers to the appearance of these tree-covered hills from a distance. But looks from a distance are deceiving. The Black Hills have a long and storied history. It is a story of long-evaporated seas, long-receded glaciers, long-extinct beasts, long-exhaused gold veins, and long-retired weapons of war.

For where else but here can you visit a small town's municipal park, play some volleyball, take a dip in the city pool, and throw down a picnic blanket under the shadow of a mothballed ICBM?

But the Black Hills is more than a museum. It is also a place of monuments to a not-so distant past. Take the monument to Crazy Horse, a work-in-progress where visitors are emplored to, "Never Forget Your Dreams."

And there are seemingly-completed Memorials where it is possible to meet some of the greatest leaders of generations' past, both close-up...

... and personal.

Diane thinks I have a certain sort of, how shall I say this?... Presidential demeanor. Not to look up at Jefferon's nose, but I can't say that I disagree. Diane says, however, that I need a mustache, pince-nez, and a few rough rides to seal the deal. It's her kind way of saying that I have a lot of work to do before making a run in '12.

Political aspirations aside, the Black Hills are home to monuments where Man's Hand is nowhere in evidence, other than that of Protector and Ticket-Taker. I speak, of course, about Devil's Tower.

Unlike the monuments of Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore, the creation of Devil's Tower is a debatable subject.

Geologists say that about 50 million years ago, molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and as it cooled underground it contracted and fractured into columns. Then, over millions of years, erosion of the sedimentary rock exposed Devil's Tower.

Maybe...

Or Maybe, as the Kiowa people theorize, "Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified; they ran and the bear chased after them. They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It bade the sisters to climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. The bear reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper."

The Kiowa's theory is no crazier a creation-myth than, say, the one about the man who saw some divine visions and then led a rag-tag band of Chosen People to a promised land of otherworldly salvation.

Thus, the debate rages on.

But that's the thing about the Black Hills. Anything is possible. Anything can happen. Why, a threadbare pauper could even strike it rich--because there's gold in them thar hills! Black Hills Gold!

And where there's gold, there are gold miners. And where there are gold miners there are towns...

... rough and tumble towns. Sportin' towns, where the stakes are as high as the hills. These are towns that know how so show a fella a-rootin and a-tootin' good old time. In the 1870s, Deadwood, SD was a classic gold rush town, where a man could get rich in the mines or at the poker tables.

Today, about 130 years later, the dirty streets of Deadwood have been paved with brick and the rough-cut wooden buildings have been replaced with stone...

... though beneath this glitter still beats a heart of gold fever, albeit one of a more refined nature.

But a man's still got to watch hisself in these parts. Why, a feller might just find hisself at an olde tyme dance hall where the prettiest girl in town might even say "yes" to a neighborly polka dance. All you got to do is ask...

But before you start a-askin', you'd better make sure that another feller ain't already gone sweet on this pretty fillie. If so, you better be fixed to fight. This place ain't called Deadwood for nothin'.

Of course, and as you've seen, the Black Bills is more than grub stakin', gamblin', and gunslingin'. All you have to do is giddyup onto the open road and ask yourself these three simple questions:

Where is?...
Why is?...
What is?...
... and you'll soon find yerself tied off at America's most shameless tourist trap!

Once inside, you'll be find incredible curios. You'll wonder how you ever got through life without them in your possession.

I tried to convince Diane to go out with me at night with a flashlight and gunny sack to bag our own jackalope, but she would have none of it. Hence, the only jackalopes we saw were already stuffed and mounted. But we did see many other Black Hills beasts in broad daylight. We encountered:

Lone bull bison, as big as a truck...

...tame herds of fenced-in Wyld Stallyns...

...and a thriving town of barking prairie dogs. Only two-percent of North America's prairie dog habitat remains, mostly on protected sites below the likes of Devil's Tower.

Which means these dogs see people all the time, and they were not in the least intimidated by the likes of me. Not that I could catch them. Not that I wanted to. But this familiarity did allow the dogs and I to have a grand time playing, "peek-a-boo-I-see-you."

But in the Black Hills we saw more than squeaking dogs, stuffed bunnies, and cloven-hoofed beasts. We walked the edges of an ancient sinkhole where Ice Age mammoths, bears, and wolves have been trapped for over 25,000 years!

It's a sad tale of suffering and woe for the beasts that slid into this 60-foot deep sinkhole and perished. But it makes for great paleontology. And even greater gawking.

I can personally attest that these beasts are just as impressive since before the Dawn of Time...

...as they are delicious today.

We covered a lot of ground in order to visit these Black Hills attractions--monuments (man-made and otherwise), tourist traps (definitely man-made), and animal habitats (man-preserved). But separating these attractions, sustaining the wild beasts, and supporting the sold-rock monuments to the greatest mortals among us, is the land itself. Everywhere you look in the Black Hills you see scenery.

I could commence a scientific discourse in regard to the natural forces that shaped these lands. I could spin terrifying tales about desperate mammoths and raging short-faced bears. Or I could gracefully cede the stage. For, as N. Scott Momaday wrote:

"A dark mist lay over the Black Hills, and the land was like iron...

At the top of the ridge I caught sight of Devil's Tower upthrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of the world was begun..."

"There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man..."

O Pioneers!

2008-10-10T13:32:00.001-07:00

Historians say that the journey west on the Oregon Trail (from the years 1843-1869) was an exceptionally difficult travel experience, especially by today's standards. Historians would concur if they have traveled by microbus.

The similarities, but mostly the differences, are as humbling as they are remarkable. One-in-ten emigrants died along the way due to enemies like cholera, fatigue, accident, exposure, starvation, and each other--not to mention the ever-present threat of savage Indians*. What's more, most walked the entire two-thousand miles**; and many were barefoot. By contrast, in our little bus, we make do without air conditioning.

The pioneers of the 19th century began their journey at any one of several small towns along the Missouri river, which they called "jumping off" places. One of the most popular was Independence, MO (today a suburb of Kansas City). It was here where many emigrants left their old lives behind. And so it is from here where we began our journey back west to Oregon.

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DAY 1

We arose long after sunrise in the parking lot of a giant Wal-Mart on the edges of Independence, MO. Even after a full night's sleep we feel a bit wrung out--a semi truck belched and snored beside us throughout the night. Nonetheless, we are in good spirits. After a breakfast of hot grits and even hotter coffee, we will "jump off" into Kansas to see what scraps remain of the famed Oregon Trail. The sun is bright and full. With luck we should make the Nebraska border by late afternoon.

-Van Man, 9:30 AM, September 24, 2008

Here we are … in a beautiful encampment on the Wakarusa River, all in the enjoyment of excellent health and a fine flow of spirits…. Life on the plains surpasses my expectations; there is a freedom and nobleness about it that tend to bring forth the full manhood… Today we have fresh strawberries upon the prairies—we eat them with cream too, at that.

-George Curry, May, 1846

It's a slow-going 120 miles from our jumping off place to Manhattan, KS. Scraggly farm towns impede our progress: Williamstown, Newman, Rossville. These are towns taken in with one large eyefull and just as quickly forgotten. Just west of Belevue, we stop at a historical marker along the banks of the Red Vermillion river. What took us a few hours to reach, our pioneer forerunners reached in about a week of labor. In May 1849, cholera struck hard at this crossing. More than 50 individuals died within a week at this very spot. People that were healthy in the morning were dead by mid-afternoon.

-Van Man, 12:20 PM, September 24, 2008

The last wagon did not get over the river till nine o’clock. It stuck in the mud, and when two drivers with eleven yoke of oxen failed to move it, some more hands went down from camp, and they “whipped out,” a teamster’s term meaning they fell to work with their whip handles and beat the poor oxen, whooping and yelling all the time, till one is almost induced to believe their throats will split.

-Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846

North of Manhattan, the flat land gives way to rolling hills as far as the eye can see. After zooming past a number of roadside fruit stands, we stop at the next one we come across. A gnarl-handed woman in a faded blue dress wheels out in an electric wheelchair to greet us. She's nice enough but her prices are steep. What's more, her okras are a bit old and mushy. Back on the road, I find a channel on our satellite radio I quite like--it plays nothing but alternative hits from the '80s. Maybe I never did leave high school. We pass by Alcove Spring, a popular campsite on the emigrant's trail.

-Van Man, 2:20 PM, September 24, 2008

About 80 miles north of Manhattan, KS we cross into Nebraska. Kansas, Nebraska... what's the difference? 20 miles later, we find our campground: the "Rock Creek Station State Historical Park." It's plopped down in the middle of a cornfield. It's brimming with other campers. Strange. As Diane cooks up dinner and I scuttle about setting up camp, I think about the pioneers of the 1840s. To get to this point, still about 100 miles south of the Platte, they would have been on the trail for a good three weeks already. This, for them, was also Indian Country.

-Van Man, 6:25 PM, September 24, 2008

A Potawatomi Indian, accompanied by a half-breed who spoke English correctly, came to our camp early this morning. The Potawatomi was a tall, athletic young man of symmetrical feature, and rode a fat and handsome Indian pony, which several of our party made overtures to purchase, but they were not successful. He was dressed in a calico shirt, with buckskin pantaloons, gaiters, and moccasins. He brought with him several pairs of moccasins, some of them second-hand, which he wished to trade for meat. He soon sold out his small stock of wares and left us.

-Edwin Bryant, May, 1846

DAY 2

We've been on the trail all morning. If the farm towns in east-central Kansas were forgettable, then the farm towns that dot the southern border of Nebraska are already forgotten. We aim to be in Hastings, NE by this afternoon. According to our AAA guidebook Hastings has a museum that we should not miss.

-Van Man, 11:30 AM, September 25, 2008

Without a doubt, the Hastings Museum of Natural & Cultural History is among the strangest we've ever visited. Giant stuffed polar bears and wolves roar beside installations dedicated to television, antique cars, machine guns, glassware, sod houses, fossils, saddles, geology, Kool-Aid, American money--and a thousand other subjects. We spent hours poking about. While we were in the cool of the museum, the midday heat outside turned into a latent swelter. Since we burned up so much of the day at the museum, we decide to drive up to Grand Island, NE to find an air-conditioned motel room and a refreshing shower. We will continue our Oregon Trail adventures tomorrow.

-Van Man, 4:30 PM, September 25, 2008

Opposite Grand Island one night, our cattle being corralled close, took a stampede, and the horses staked close by; all broke loose and of all the running and bellowing and rattling of bells I never before heard the like. We supposed the Pawnees were upon us, and one man was so certain of it he fired a rifle into the midst of the fuss. Men were running in every direction to catch their horses.

-John Brow, June, 1846

DAY 3

From Grand Island, NE the Oregon Trail turns west along the Platte River--a wide, shallow, languid stretch of water that runs from here all the way to Wyoming. The day is dry and hot and dusty and so are the lost little towns we pass through. We've been on the trail for two days and already we're a bit weary of it. While this is a dull stretch for us, for our pioneers the games have only just begun.

-Van Man, 10:00 AM, September 26, 2008

As we wended our way up the valley of the Platte one could look back for miles on a line of wagons … with varied colored wagon covers, resembling a great serpent crawling and wriggling up the valley.

-William Thompson, 1851

We saw them [the buffalo] in frightful droves as far as the eye could reach; appearing at a distance as if the ground itself was moving like a sea.

-John Wyeth, 1851

Welcome to the drowsy metropolis of North Platte, NE. The fork in the road. The confluence of South Platte and the North Platte rivers. We stop for a fine cheeseburger lunch at a custom meat shop and chat Nebraska football and microbuses with the owner. We have a long way to go and the day is already more than half gone. The heat is relentless. The crosswinds are a handful on the steering wheel.

-Van Man, 2:30 AM, September 26, 2008

Passed a great many newly made graves today, and find a great deal of sickness among the emigrants, almost in every company we pass. Diarrhea running into cholera are the prevailing complaints. One poor woman is badly situated, having lost her husband and two children, she is forced to drive herself, and one little girl drives the cows.

-James Williams, June 15, 1849

Up along the North Platte, the countryside opens up in a most unexpected way. It's a place of big skies and rolling hills that run to an unreachable horizon. The towns are few and far between here, not that they offer any compelling cause to stop. According to our map, the famed sights of Courthouse Rock and Castle Rock are an hour or so away.

-Van Man, 4:00 PM, September 26, 2008

This evening the axletree of another wagon broke, and after a consultation it was abandoned on the prairie, the load taken out and divided. This is the fifth or sixth wagon that has been left on the road by companies in advance of us. Camped tonight in the vicinity of Courthouse Rock. This is an immense rock in the shape of a building standing alone on the prairie, about four miles to the left of the road… Chimney Rock now in sight.

-James Wilkins, June, 1849

From our vantage point, Jailhouse and Courthouse rock are distinct blurs in the distance. The nearby grain elevator classes up the spectacle considerably. We can already see Chimney Rock from here, all of ten miles down the road. It's a sight for sore eyes and I'm pleased to behold it.

-Van Man, 5:20 PM, September 26, 2008

DAY 4

After a pleasant night's snooze in Scottsbluff, NE (and the hands-down best Mexican food breakfast we've had since we were in New Mexico), we drove south a few miles to the Scotts Bluff National Monument. Scotts Bluff was, as it is today, a dramatic series of clay and sandstone highlands that served chiefly as a landmark on the Oregon Trail. Emigrants encountered Scotts Bluff after a six to eight week trek across the monotonous grasslands of Kansas and Nebraska. Between the years 1841 and 1869, more than 250,000 men, women, and children passed within sight of these bluffs. While the emigrants still had two-thirds of their journey yet ahead of them this will be our last stop on the Oregon Trail, at least for now.

-Van Man, 10:40 AM, September 27, 2008

Scotts Bluff—this singular formation is one of the great landmarks, about 700 miles west of the Mississippi. At a distance as we approached it, the appearance was that of an immense fortification with bastions, towers, battlements, and embrasures…

-Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837

The clomping, scraping, and grinding of thousands of hooves and wagon wheels over this ground wore deep ruts into the soft sandstone. Today, little more than 150 years later, traces of these ruts are all that remain of this bygone era. But they remain, nonetheless.

-Van Man, 12:10 AM, September 27, 2008

*The first section of the Oregon Trail bisected the territories of two major Indian tribes--the Cheyenne to the north and the Pawnee to the south. The emigrants obsessed about being attacked by both, though the expected attacks rarely occurred. In fact, there were many instances of Indian kindness--helping pull out stuck wagons; rescuing drowning emigrants; even rounding up lost cattle. But then came the gold rush. Starting in 1849, a migratory stampede of get-rich-quick emigrants overgrazed the prairie grasses, burned all the available firewood, and depleted the buffalo herds. Thus impoverished, the aforementioned tribes (among others) took exception to this invasion. And so began the Indian Wars of the Great Plains.

**Emigrants typically carried a large supply of provisions--enough to safely see them through the journey and to survive their first winter in a foreign land. A family of four was thought to need over a thousand pounds of food to sustain them on the two thousand mile journey to Oregon. Because most emigrants grossly overloaded their wagons, its owners could not ride inside. So most people walked. Nearly all the emigrants realized they had more than they could actually haul. The trail was soon littered with thrown out debris: flour, bacon, furniture--even cast iron stoves.

Show Me... The Show-Me State!

2008-10-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

It was not difficult for us to find the city of St. Louis, MO. From Springfield, IL we simply aimed the bus south and nudged it westward until we ran into a bulge in the mighty Mississippi. From St. Louis we headed west, traversing the entire state. From the banks of the muddy Miss to the sand bars of the shallow Missouri, we have a lot of sights to show you. This is, after all, the Show-Me State.

Show Me... The Gateway Arch!

Officially known as the Jefferson National Westward Expansion Memorial* (no kidding), this stainless steel marvel dominates the city’s skyline despite the disrespectful crowd of nearby office towers. It is a must-see, upclose from the outside…

And even closer from within…

One of a kind monuments are one thing, but what about the citizens who live under its shadow? What about their neighborhoods?

Show Me… the spirit of St. Louis!

At its heart, St. Louis is a compact collection of neighborhoods that live in easy harmony. Though today St. Louis is a bit frayed around the collar, this big, hard-working city feels like a small town. That is, if your small town is filled with self-proclaimed zombie hunters...

...balloon races...

... and a classic Italian-American neighborhood, complete with bocce ball courts, old-world bakeries, and fantastic mom-n-pop restaurants nestled among the cozy homes that crowd the streets.12 the hillNo one leaves St. Louis without cruising old Route 66. And so we did. And quickly we found ourselves in the rolling farm country of central Missouri.

Show Me… The hinterlands!

The Missouri back country life is as slow and deliberate as the farmers who drive its roads. Of course, not all Missouri farm towns are hives of free-wheeling commerce. And that's just the way they like it.

Show me… Diane’s ancestral homeland!

Diane's grandfather, grandmother and father were all born at the far western edge of Missouri, in Butler. Back in the 1930s, in a fit of gold fever the family packed up and moved west to Oregon, and they didn't go back. It's not a bad place to visit, though in that indefatigable pioneering spirit it is a good place to be from.

After a bit of hunting around, we found what remains of Diane's family in Butler. She doesn't know this branch of her family, but at least she now knows where the roots are buried. 2223
Show me… Kansas City, home of the world’s best barbecue!

We had no choice but to eat the whole thing. It's that good. It's so good in fact that a certain John McCain and Sara Palin recently had a lunch date there. We missed them, but we didn’t miss their messy photo-op.

Show me… The actual gateway to the West!

Welcome to Westport, MO (now a part of Kansas City). This town, along with Independence, MO was one of the key jumping off points for white pioneers from 1836 through the Gold Rush and a bit beyond. Keep in mind that 150 years ago, crossing this river meant leaving “The States” behind. Crossing this river meant that all laws suddenly ceased to apply and all rules immediately fell away. It is here where civilization abruptly ends and the wilderness begins.
It goes without saying that we intend to cross this very river and enter this wilderness. Check back soon. We'll let you know how it goes.

* Founded by French fur trappers in 1764, St. Louis was, for its first 100 years, a prosperous outpost of “civilization” on the frontier to the Wild West. It was the starting point for Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition, whose spirit of exploration is with us to this day.

Lincoln Land

2008-10-01T12:57:00.001-07:00

Long ago, a very wise man in a very tall hat said,"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt."

Anyone who reads this blog knows the truth of that statement. And so, with foolish certainty, allow me to introduce you to this very wise man.

He was Abe, honest Abe, in the morning walking on his way to work, standing six foot ten in a stovepipe hat. He was Abraham in rough homespun, splitting rails at the woodpile. He was A. Lincoln in the courtroom. He was Mr. President in the White House. And in our nation's darkest hour, he was our brightest hope.

It seems to me that everything that can be said about A. Lincoln has been said. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the study of his works which he fought so nobly to advance. It is rather for us to follow the long strides of this man of six foot ten, and endeavor to earn ourselves a little of his wisdom.

As it turns out, getting to the land of Lincoln is as pleasant as being there. From the great state of Wisconsin we strode southward through fields in full harvest flush.

The American Midwest is a place I know well. It was home to me some 15 years ago. Over 150 years ago, however, this was a land that Lincoln himself called home. As a youth in the 1830s, Abraham resided in the hamlet of New Salem, IL.

For him, it was a place of first jobs and life-long friendships. It was a place of failed business enterprises and failed first loves. For us, it is a place to follow the path of greatness in the making. After all, to know history is to read and think about past events; but to understand historical events one must stand beside the poor players upon their own stage.

In New Salem, Mr. Lincoln took on many a practical vocation suitable for a man on the edges of the American frontier. During those years he was a militiaman (who never fired a shot) in the Black Hawk War, a common laborer, and a land surveyor.

Later, he became both shopkeeper and fresh-faced state legislator. We easily found A. Lincoln's retail store. It sits right on the town's main street, the one and only street in town.

Here Abe sold some dry goods. But mostly he talked politics, told bawdy jokes, and goofed around with his friends. It was a good life, but one with dim horizon. In 1834, he won election to the Illinois state legislature, and, after coming across a book entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England, began to teach himself law. Three years later he was admitted into the Illinois bar moved himself to comparatively-booming metropolis Springfield, IL.

We, of course, followed Mr. Lincoln to Springfield. We discovered that even after all these years, he's still the most fussed-over man in town.

In Springfield, Mr. Lincoln earned his keep as a lawyer who, for years, ceaselessly traveled his local circuit court. We had the good fortune to visit one of the public houses* (elsewhere on this road trip of ours), where Mr. Lincoln earned a reputation as as an able and successful lawyer.

By all accounts he was a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and eloquent speaker in his closing arguments. Both lawyer and legislator, A. Lincoln made a lot of friends and allies and soon became the leader of the Illinois Whig party (which operated from 1834-1856). Meanwhile, he established a successful law partnership...

...took a four-term seat** in the state legislature...

... got married, fathered a brood of children, and bought the first and only house he would ever own. He and his family lived on this corner for about 18 years...

... eventually trading it only for the most public house in the land--The White House in Washington, DC.

Of course, his tenure in the White House had its share of private tragedies and public controversies, all of which are well documented.

And while Mr. Lincoln won most of his personal battles and eventually won his very public war, the price he paid could not have been higher.

Indeed it is a sad tale. It is also the inspiring tale of a simple man made great through hard work, personal attributes, and national events. Mr. Lincoln could handle what came his way--not everyone can--and this is why we so revere him. As the wise old man himself famously said: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

I don't know. Perhaps character is revealed through the details of a person's history. Perhaps character, hence greatness, is revealed through the exercise of power. Or perhaps greatness of character is revealed by everyday acts of common human compassion. I could explore this topic in greater detail. But I would be a fool to do so.

*This public house, moved board-and-brick, is on permanent display in Detroit, MI at Henry Ford's "Greenfield Village" historical fantasyland. Among other important structures on display at Greenfield Village are the Wright Bros. bicycle shop (moved from Ohio), T. Edison's research laboratory (moved from New Jersey), and Our Ford's own boyhood home.

**Look carefully and you'll see a stovepipe hat on a desk. This hat marks A. Lincoln's actual congressional seat.

At Home With My Truest Friend

2008-09-30T11:33:00.001-07:00

Who could forget the fall of 1988? In case you have forgotten, you're more than welcome to borrow my memories.

Picture yourself as a 22 year bicycle racer, jet-lagged and dead broke, stumbling off of a dank greyhound bus and into the dismal midwest drizzle of Iowa City, IA. A day or so ago you were in The Netherlands, and already it is a burned-out memory of slick cobblestones, blaring car horns, hard labor, strange new faces, and culture shock. You rode well enough to earn a spot on a big Dutch trade team for the next season. You think that your sports career is finally, sort-of, taking off. To the dismay and bewilderment of your Dutch sponsors, you turned down a winter job in a tire factory on the outskirts of Amsterdam. You chose instead to go back to the States. You chose to go home. Trouble is, you have no permanent address. So then, what is home exactly? You figure that home is a place where you know every building. Home is a place where you know every street name. Home is a place where your truest friend lives.

You haul a giant red duffel bag out of the guts of the bus. Then you grab a mashed cardboard box with a bicycle jammed inside, a pair of wheels, and a battered five-string guitar. Since you can't afford cab fare, you load your worldly possessions onto your back, grip the bike box by its rotten handle, and begin the long drag across town through cold and grimy mud puddles. Within a block your feet are cold, wet, and squishy. But you don't care. You know exactly where you're going. You know exactly how to get there. You are going to Dogbait's house.

Dogbait has offered you a no-strings flop under the Elvis Shrine. Your bed will be on "The Asthma Couch"--so named because it is so hopelessly impregnated with dust and dander that after a night's sleep on it you wake up with a wheeze--until you can get an off-season job and move into your own place. And for the first time in about a year you are happy.

Who is Dogbait? Tweny years ago, as I drag-assed through town, I thought about this. Dogbait--a.k.a Big R.; a.k.a Randy Dickson--was a fellow cyclist and world traveler. The first time I met Randy, I thought he was a mad pirate on two wheels. He wore an eyepatch (that kept changing eyes), to correct a lazy eye on the mend after a horrific cycling accident. He challenged me to speak up, speak my mind, stand my ground, and be entertaining in the process. He wowed me with the most outrageous personal adventure stories I'd ever heard. He drove a rodded-out British sports car that he built-up himself. He wore a leather jacket festooned with death-skulls. He played the bass. He was Sid Vicious with a college education. He was intimidating. He was funny. He was cool.

But, in the fall of 1988, as I staggered across a footbridge over the Iowa River, I knew this is not why Randy is, and will always be, one of my best friends. Back in the spring of 1986, while out for a ride, I suffered a traumatic, life-threatening head injury. I endured three-odd days of touch-n-go in an ICU, a few more days in a hospital bed, and nine days without eating. I couldn't walk without leaning against a wall. I couldn't read. I couldn't think for the headaches. Yet somehow I survived and completely recovered. Who visited me in the hospital? Who helped me in my time of need? Who saved my life? My only family: My brother, my mother, my father. And my truest friends, with Randy leading the pack.

And now, a full 20 years later, I find myself behind the wheel of an old microbus headed for Sturgeon Bay, WI, thinking about the good old days and looking forward to seeing my old friend. The Asthma Couch and Elvis Shrine may now exist only in memory, but the invitation to flop at Randy's place still stands.

Randy is a man who can handle any number of roles and a mountain of activities with ease and aplomb. He is a devoted father and husband, a hardworking and successful entrepreneur/profesional archaeologist, home owner, carpenter, British sports car enthusiast, epicurean, vintage guns aficionado, and diehard Hawkeye fan.

It goes without saying that Diane and I thoroughly enjoyed a fine long weekend with Randy and his family--his absolutely fantastic wife, Amy, and their thoroughly charming daughter, Claire.

These were the sorts of days I dream about on a long road trip. Early-morning breakfasts in the kitchen with true friends that become late-morning brewfests and monkey wrenching sessions in the garage...

...followed up with afternoons of fun and games on the shooting range...

... that are capped with long and lingering dinners, either beside the backyard grill or out at a favorite restaurant. Dear readers, do not doubt what you are about to behold. This indeed is Randy, insiting on paying the dinner tab--for five--including the tip!

Thank you, Randy. Thank you, Amy. And thank you, too, Claire. Our home is your home, no matter where it might be, any time and always.

Instant Yooper

2008-09-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

The people who live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (or the U.P.) are called "Yoopers." And they're proud of it. The people who live to the south, under the Mackinac Bridge, are called "Trolls." Since they don't know they're called trolls, they don't mind.

Lots of trolls dream about moving to the U.P., but every Yooper will tell you that there's no work to be found in the U.P. This means trolls like us only get visit the U.P., where we relax, enjoy, spend our cash, then move along. But while in the U.P. every troll is a Yooper. Just add beer.

Where is Yooperland? It balances atop the the fingertip of Michigan's lower peninsula, connected by the Mackinac Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in the world.

How do you get to Yooperland? First you shake off the beatnick heel of Motown and weave your horseless carriage northward. In our case, we passed through Grand Rapids, MI, my sort-of ancestral home*. Though most of my Michigan family has passed along, we were able to see my uncle Mark, my father's youngest brother.

It was a brief but immensily enjoyable visit. We wished we had more time to visit, but we were just passing through and Uncle Mark had to hurry back to work (he has a very large family of his own to support**). On a road trip like ours, we are obliged to everyone who shares their time with us, and we're happy for what we can get.

Out of booming Grand Rapids metro area, the rolling farmlands open up along with the roadside fruit stands. It's not Yooper country, but it's the next sweetest place.

But then we crossed over the Mackinack Bridge and entered into a land of wonderful wilderness, the edge of the world hanging out there like a rawhide flap of the old frontier, outposted from the swirl of mainstream America.

We strolled on the beaches of the greatest lakes in the world...

... picnicked in small towns nested beside pristine bays, where the difference between the buses and the boats are more a matter of style than sunstance.

Hey yah there, sure you betcha. The U.P. is one of those kind of places...

And we wondered what those Yoopers do up here, all year 'round? We asked around and learned that in the winter they shovel snow and in the summer they swat mosquitoes. During the spring and fall they rest up for swatting and shoveling.

This begs the question: What do Yooper-Trolls do up there? In the winter they stay down south where it's warm and in the summer they travel somewhere that's airconditioned. During the spring and fall they travel to the U.P and sit around and don't at all think about swatting and shoveling...

In fact, they don't think about much of anything at all.

*This is a long and shaggy story that only members of my family would enjoy reading. And since my family already knows all of the shaggy details, the story is not one that bears repeating here.

**This is an even longer and truly inspiring story that bears telling. I will leave it for my Uncle Mark to tell his own story. If he cares to write up the story of his family and send it to me, I'll post it on this blog.

On the Road to the Motor City

2008-09-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

It was an ordinary part of our bus trip with hot sun and countryfolk in their minivans lined up in one fast food drive at one rust belt town after another, till we got on the rim of Lake Erie up by Cleveland. We pulled into town and crawled past crumbling mansions that had, a hundred years ago, been home to the managers of the now-closed mills and factories. Thin black men hobbled along weedy sidewalks, pushing wobbly shopping carts loaded with junk, their sorry faces gaunt in the broken glass of the dusty corner barber shops and check cashing stations that hadn’t seen a big payday since the flush a generation back.

But then we crossed the tracks and swung into the shady graces of the University of Cleveland, its neoclassical buildings bright and shiny and new with squeaky clean doctors in residence stepping lively across the green campus, the still mighty towers of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in command of the distant skyline.

We were glad it was lunchtime because that meant we could stop driving for a while and eat. We had heard of this restaurant called Slyman’s. It was near the train tracks, just east of downtown. The place was all clattering plates and shouted short orders and popping bags and a line of regulars out the nothing-to-look at storefront. Diane and I dodged the line and grabbed stools at the low bar and shared a plate of their specialty, corned beef on rye.

It was the biggest sandwich we had ever seen and we ate every bit of it. We knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course and we would have had another, but we had to get going and stop moaning, so we paid the tab, said so long to the waitress manning the cash register and made for the bus.

It was slow going out of Cleveland, but no sooner did we clear the downtown than the wide blue lake peeked out again, this time from beside the never-ending ranks of stately stone houses that are home to the managers of check cashing companies and temporary employment bureaus. After a half hour of watching groundsmen mow lawns and clip elaborate hedges, we rode past the city limits and made time around the gentle southwestern sweep of Lake Erie and the Michigan border.

We arrived in the Motor City quite early in the morning. Tacking through the wind from Lake Erie with a bop over an overpass we saw smokestacks, smoke, railyards, red-brick buildings, and the distant downtown gray-stone buildings, and here we were in Detroit, the great roaring furnace of Michigan industry that still belched fire from its nostrils, its big rank smell like the raw body of America itself, and I felt as if its red river face was daring us to reconsider our trespass.

But we slipped the old troll and were soon enough cruising down the long walk of Michigan Ave., a street that hustled hope to injured souls and broken bodies despite its defaced character.

Though from block to block this stone block jungle cast a suspicious gaze on our cruising car, for no other car was on this potted road but us in this early hour, and in this small light the tallest buildings reared back and revealed to us how strong their old bones were, though in truth their stately visage was streaked with tears from a thousand broken eyes.

And as we drove by listening to that tearful sound of the light which this city has come to represent for all of us, I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something frantic and rushing about, because wherever they were they were not in downtown Detroit. Nobody was. Except us. And a few other hopeful fools.

Even so, the day was warm and beautiful and we had a meal of franks and beans in American Coney Island, a downtown institution since century’s turn a hundred years back, then extracted ourselves from the impossible tangle of downtown streets and aimed the bus at the DIA, a.k.a., the Detroit Institute of Art. We gained entry to the temple and stood in silent reverie before the epochs: the North American ancients and their totem poles that told of terrible beasts and soaring eagles and untold bounties long since forgotten; we heard the hoarse whispers of grotesque African masks, all stretched and thorny and bleeding evil blessings like sweat-stained skin; we pondered the pictures from an Old World, a time when the mercantile class in Europe was amassing great fortunes and willingly tossed their money onto a oily canvas to prove it; we saw the tangled mess of the modern mind—air-conditioned shards of broken glass on green finger-like carpets tacked to tall walls, a white-noise nonsense of repeating neon that slyly winked at us as within this holy temple of endowments.

We heard tell that Diego Rivera was still kicking around. He had arrived in the 1930s and some say he never left. I was excited to lay eyes on that dirty old Mexican so I beat feet to a large reception hall and found him hanging around, just like I thought he’d be. His language was melodious and slow. He was patient. He wore old clothes that had been turned black by the soot of railroads and the dirt of boxcars and sleeping on the ground. He fixed his face with a sardonic and insinuating smile, and though he had a lot to say about our lord Henry Ford and the terrible machine that feeds on the sweat of human labor, he said not a word and instead spoke to all who dared listen in a room filled with nothing but cartoons.

It was agonizing stuff and I pictured Diane and I and The Ford Himself in a Detroit bar that night, all the gang on stage, and in their eyes we would see something strange and ragged, filled with Wonder, like prophets of War who long ago walked across the land to bring the dark world its bright beat. And before we knew it, Diane and I were at the doorstep of Hitsville, USA.

We entered the dead rooms inside, and though the walls had long ago ceased to talk we could feel the spirits of those sounds still noisily clinging to the thin air.

In its time, the early ‘60s, Motown was going like mad all over America. The fellows at Hitsville blew with a wild air—Stevie and the Funk Brothers, Diana Ross and her Supremes—because Motown was somewhere between the glory rock that began with King Elvis and ended with the booty roll of Queen Disco.

Today it’s the early ‘00s and the Studio A is a museum of sorts, but they still let you into the sacred chamber and blow your horn and sing your song, standing tall and leaning up into the hot mics just like the greatest hit makers once did when they too were young and rushing about in beat sweaters and baggy pants and had nothing more to their names than a toothbrush and handkerchiefs and high heels and horns, their senses sharp with the kindest form of human love and friendship.

The sun was still high but falling by the time we left Studio A. And though I had a song of love in my heart, once I got back in the bus my head became fogged again with a torrent of Diego’s pastel cartoons I had witnessed earlier that morning. Unable to disperse these dark clouds, I resolved to pay a visit to our lord Henry Ford as soon as it was possible, and once I had made that decision I told Diane about it and she agreed. She told me the ghost of old Ford himself could be found in Dearborn, at a place called Greenfield Village, and once that was settled we headed across town to look up the old man.

The Motor City seemed empty somehow as we roared through its rough intersections and mean streets, surging past the burned up husks of once fine houses and startlingly green weedy lots and closed up shops that still promised the sweet heart of love forever in the pink, I was overtaken with the strangest feeling.

For once in my life I didn't know who I was. Diane and I were far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, and I heard the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of a mean hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked through that scratched old windshield and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. We were halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of a dying Old World and the West of the future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, in that strange high sunset.

But then we arrived at The Henry Ford, and in an instant we were transported back to the time of small town steam engines and railroad tracks, and shacks all smelling of sawdust in the dry summer haze of a midwest afternoon.

We stumbled along with the most wicked grin of joy in the world, among the old cars and beat engines of Main Street, the lonely brick walls destined to be illuminated by one lamp, with the prairie brooding at the end of each little street and the smell of the corn like dew in the night. All the townsfolk seemed to be going home from work or preparing for an evening’s pleasure ride, wearing railroad hats, baseball hats, all kinds of hats, just like after work in any town anywhere.

The only cars that came by were antique cars; they gave us friendly waves as they clanked along, the cows were coming home. It was beautiful there. But soon enough the sun turned red as it snuggled down into the its bed on the western horizon and before it disappear into nothing, Diane and I climbed back into the bus and roared off onto the open road, the openness of the Michigan pastures looming ahead of us like the Promised Land, way out there beneath the stars, and I thought about the glories of Diego’s mad dreams and The Old Ford’s mad machines and we aimed the bus northward toward the roof of America and the very edge of the Great Lake Superior where the wild land blooms with giant bears and roaming wolf packs and ahead and I saw the thin outlines of jackpines in the silver moon, and saw the dirty ghosts of worn out factory workers, and heard the still-young voices of Motown, and wondered about them all. And this was really the way that our whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.

White Gowns and Waterfalls

2008-09-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

Summer is the season when life thunders in the rush of wild abandon. It is a time when the blossoms of newly minted promises gleam on fields of virgin white. It is the season of waterfalls and white gowns.

This summer we’ve logged about 9,000 miles in the bus (and have hiked or biked hundreds more), and at every turn in the road, at every clearing on a forest's path, the moment we spot the plume of falling water or the puff of a wedding gown, we grab for the camera and record the moment. It isn’t a weakness. We simply can’t help ourselves.

Of course, we’re not the only ones who swoon at the sight of white flowing things.

The waterfall, above, trickles through the rugged wilds of the Great Smokey Mountains. To get to this tiny falls, you have to labor many steep miles uphill (driving and hiking) away from the easy splendors of Gatlinburg, TN. This is saying something. This is also to say that no matter how big or small, how elaborate or ordinary, the spectacle of a white gown or a waterfall is utterly alluring. People will sweat, swear, and even put their “off-road” vehicles in harm’s way to see them up close.

And why not? For only in the great white north of Nova Scotia, Canada will you behold the breathtaking tableau of sea and sky and land and brides and bridegrooms.

And only at the western edge of New Brunswick, Canada, can you gawk at the largest waterfall (by volume) east of Niagara Falls.

Indeed, travel deep into French-speaking territories of Quebec, the hilltop towns above the St. John’s River induce a sort of white-knuckled vertigo.

These are lovely sights. But the beautiful treachery of a dizzying falls is nothing when compared to the dastardly knots tied upon the tracks of eternity…

… or the dazzle of competing princesses…

… and the pearly gleam of awaiting carriages…

… and white-suited suitors…

… and sometimes a little of everything.

It seems to me that we don't really care if a given waterfall is the biggest, the tallest, or carries the most volume. It’s just that the bigger the falls, the more people can see it at once. Behold, Niagara Falls.

Likewise, we truly don't care if a gown is elaborate or simple. We love them all with equal adoration. And I think I know why.

Though waterfalls may seem permanent, they are, in truth, rushing through time and space. Though a woman may spend a lifetime planning for her white gown party, in truth a bride shines for one short day. And because this beauty is of a fleeting sort, because they have the permanence of mist and air and light, because this glory dazzles in the flash of the whetted eye, every white gown and waterfall is splendid in its own way for the moment we behold it...

... and we are powerless to resist their every charm.

Low Bridge, Everybody Down

2008-09-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

It happened over 30 years ago. And it happened again, just the other week.

30 years ago, my second grade class was huddled in the school’s music room. We sat in a many rowed semi-circle. I clutched a flimsy and well-thumbed illustrated song book where two-tone line drawings of happy kids danced about. The dancing kids were just like us except that their clothes had been out of fashion for at least a generation. My best friend since first grade, Perry Nelson, sat beside me and squinted at the open page. In front of me and to the right sat Amy Knoedel. Amy was far and away the cutest girl in class. (Many years later she would ascend the Prom Queen’s throne. I knew her when.) The entire class sang with atonal gusto, a battered upright piano jangling out the tune. I don’t recall the song’s title nor do I remember any of the stanzas. But I have never forgotten the chorus, and it goes exactly like this:

Low bridge, everybody down,
Low bridge, ‘cause we're coming to a town!
You can always tell your neighbor,
And you’ll always know your pal,
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal

Just the other week in Lockport , NY , Diane and I boarded a boat called Lockport V. While Captain Mike took the helm, we passengers went topside to soak in the sun and take in the view of the Erie Canal.

Captain Mike’s voice boomed over the P.A. and his patter was as entertaining as it was practiced and informative. I balanced my notebook on the rail, tried to follow along, and snapped a few pictures.

The Erie Canal an actual living legacy of a bygone era. Proposed in 1808 and completed in 1825, the Erie Canal links the waters of Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east.

An engineering marvel when it was built (using only muscle power and surplus powder left over from The War of 1812), the Erie Canal runs 363 miles, dropping one foot per mile, from Buffalo, NY to Albany, NY. It was built to open the country west of the Appalachian Mountains to settlers, and to offer a cheap and safe way to carry produce to a market. More people traveled to the west on the Erie Canal than later went through Ellis Island .

Originally, 83 locks were used to raise and lower the boats. Lockport , NY is the location of the famous “Flight of Five” double locks that allow Buffalo-bound boats to travel up one set of locks while Albany-bound boats travel down the other.

In order to keep pace with the growing demands of traffic, the Erie Canal was enlarged between 1836 and 1862; and again in the early 1900s. The "Enlarged Erie" is 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, and can handle boats carrying 240 tons.

Today, Locks 34 and 35 in Lockport, NY still allow boats to be raised and lowered 49 feet to overcome the elevation of the Niagara Escarpment, the same rock formation that forms Niagara Falls.

The Erie Canal has long since ceased to carry commercial traffic. The slow moving traffic on the canal (single barges pulled by beasts of burden), was overtaken by the economic realities of the faster-moving trains of the steam age, trucks of the motorized era, and the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the Great Lakes. During winter, water is drained from parts of the Erie Canal for maintenance. The day we visited a lone canoe and our tourist boat were the only visitors.

As we puttered up the Erie Canal a mile or so, then back down through Locks 35 and 35, I felt a sort of pity for this once magnificent canal and the crumbling towns along its route.

I feel no wistful longing for the glory days of cities like Lockport, Buffalo, and Albany—these are places I do not really know and eras I can never experience. But I do feel a touch of sadness for these once great engines of American prosperity.

After all, the world’s greatest artists, leaders, and thinkers once called this region home. While these people are long gone, the artifacts that testify to their greatness are everywhere.

Teddy Roosevelt not only slept in this now-peeling estate house in the now-weary heart of Buffalo, NY, he was inaugurated here following President McKinley’s assassination in September, 1901.

Shuffle down the road in Buffalo and this humble home tumbles into view. This photo, taken in the early 1900s, is of the Martin House Complex—considered to be one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most important projects from his Prairie School era.

It has been argued that this house is “…the most important house design of the first half of Wright’s career, matched only by Fallingwater over 30 years later.”

This house is currently undergoing a restoration that promises a return to its original state of glory. The facade of greatness, it would seem, does not change.

I’m speaking, of course, about the wings from the Anchor Bar—though not with my mouth full.

Which is to say, Buffalo Wings were invented in Buffalo (October, 1964 to be exact), by the owners of the Anchor Bar. This is history you can sink your teeth into and savor with fiery conviction. There are none better.

A bold statement, I know. Likewise, some vestiges of our past are salvaged and even worshiped to the extent that even the smallest detail is preserved, while others are ignored even as they fall into decrepitude. These choices seem to be arbitrary to the point of decadent (speaking of, try the “Suicidal Wing Sauce” at the Anchor Bar). Which is to say, the same city that plays host to the great Erie Canal, one of the greatest works by one of

America

’s greatest architects, and without doubt the world’s greatest party food, is also the home to this:

Let’s be honest. We Americans, as a society, allowed our captains of industry to ship our means of production beyond our borders to reduce costs while we, citizen shoppers and consumers all, took the bait in the form of lower prices, every day. This, in turn, has masked the fact that our real wage earning has dropped. (… another gripe for another time, perhaps.)

So we’re stuck with these rusting temples to a defunct industry, museum-like relics that once stood proudly as a family’s residence, and entire cities that are no longer gateways through which American prosperity flourishes. I’m not overstating this. This leaves us with an interesting set of choices. We can choose to embrace our rust bucket cities and do our best to make them livable (I’m not saying that these places are going to come back to their former glory, but we can make them ready for future generations to reconfigure). Or we can turn our backs and enter into a utopia of plausible denial.

Just down the road from Buffalo, NY is the lovely lakeside town of Chautauqua, NY, home to the world-famous Chautauqua Institution. Founded in 1874 as a Methodist educational experiment in out-of-school, vacation learning (i.e., summer school), it now plays host to a wide variety of summer events that draw in some 150,000 people over the course of its nine week summer season. Thomas Edison summered here, as did Henry Ford, President U.S. Grant, and other luminaries of their respective eras. The trend continues to this day, and it shows.

Today, the Chautauqua Institution lays claim to being “a community renowned as a center for the performing arts and a resource for the discussion of the important issues of our time.” In truth, this place is little more than an upscale lakeside retirement community with a jam-packed summer arts and lecture calendar (this summer one such lecturer was former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor). High minded and noble intentions aside, the Chautauqua Institution lies far off the beaten path and, behind its lily-white gates, offers the best enlightenment money can buy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

These notions of rhetorical enlightenment, like an oxbow river, bring me back to Captain Mike’s voice booming over the P.A. system of the Lockport V. His patter finished, Captain Mike serenaded us with grainy recordings of folk songs from a bygone era. As you might imagine, one tune in particular had an all-too familiar ring. I put aside my notebook as we approached a creaking drawbridge that spanned the Erie Canal. Over the music, Captain Mike said, “low bridge, everybody down.” I thought he was joking. But he really meant it.

As we crouched, I couldn’t help but feel a touch of nostalgia for an otherwise-forgotten elementary class in a small Midwestern town I will not likely visit again, and a song I learned some 30 years ago about an era long since past.

And it occurred to me (there in the cool shade under that low bridge, music playing, everybody down), that perhaps when the great roaring engines of American enterprise fall quiet and are replaced again with the neighborly force of muscle power, then maybe, just maybe, working artifacts like the Erie Canal will again breathe with life and the once-great cities along its route will regain their place at the hub of the American experience. The Erie Canal still exists. The locks still hold fast. The bridges still draw up. And the water still flows unimpeded for 363 miles, from Albany to Buffalo.

Upstate New York State of Mind

2008-09-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Adirondack Park occupies about two thirds of update New York. That’s about 6,000,000 acres of private and public lands, nearly half of it wilderness. Drive straight south from Montreal and you simply can’t miss it. As we discovered, it is a place of rugged mountains and sheer cliffs; of rolling uplands, beaver meadows, grassy plains; of rustic cabins and crystal clear lakes.

This untamed yet peaceful reserve is also a recreation paradise where even the wildest bear is friendly to the most citified outdoorsman…

… and the good eatin’ fish practically jump into your canoe.

This latter statement is especially true when you bring the fish along in your backpack. Already smoked. In a vacuum-sealed package. With cream cheese, crackers, and a bottle of wine.

We loved the Adirondacks. But after a week we found ourselves getting a little lonely. Maybe lonely isn’t the right word. We were in need of some culture, culture illuminated with the bright lights of class and the divine brush of genius. So we descended from the hardy comforts of the backwoods and high-tailed it to Syracuse, NY. Bastion of learning. Citadel of sophistication. Hometown of the New York State Fair!

Ah, the State Fair. Celebration of the bounty gathered under the harvest moon.

Showcase of American ingenuity, invention, and innovation.

High flying spectacle of death-defying amusements and subversive oddities.

All in one place. For a short time only. If I was asked to show a first-time visitor to America one thing, one place that captured the essence of America, I would take them to a State Fair. For where else but a State Fair can you, in one easy stroll, observe all of God’s creatures, great and small, in their many states of grace?

Or should I say graceful colors?

I should mention that the cracked-voiced 4H boys who showed us these birds swore up and down that these colors are for real. They spit into their palms and laid hands on the Good Book with promises that no dyes were used. They took oaths against the health and welfare of their families that these birds did not lay ready-made Easter eggs. They assured us in writing that these animals were not some weird freaks of nature.

Which, of course, was too bad. I would have paid cash money to see a coop full of freaky Easter egg laying chickens. So we elbowed our way down the midway, money belt clutched tight, having to content ourselves with seeing the farm-fresh hams of Christmas future…

… and one of the biggest nitrate-sodden canned hams of summers’ past…

Eddy Money!

Truth be told, we were pretty far back in the crowd—so far back that the only ham we got to see up close was already sizzling with another sort of greatness.

You can be sure we took some home that night, though by the next morning things did not feel alright.

No matter, onward we drove. Over hill, through dale…

… until we found ourselves marooned on the northern shores of the great Finger Lakes. American Indian folklore holds that the Finger Lakes were formed when the Great Spirit placed His handprint on the firmament, leaving behind the most beautiful hills and lakes ever created.

The hand of the Great Spirit apparently has 11 fingers, for the region is comprised of 11 finger-shaped lakes. It makes a mere mortal like myself, poor imitation of the Great Spirit that I am, wonder why mankind is in possession of five fingers per hand for total of ten. No matter. It’s a lovely sentiment. Besides, you could strand yourself in worse places other than in the handprint of the divine. There are, however, a few better places. Case in point is The Red Door Inn, a soon-to-open bed & breakfast located in Canandaigua, NY.

Though The Red Door Inn is yet to officially open, its owners Kevin and Kathryn nonetheless took us in. Maybe it was the roadtripping ring around our collars that made them take pity on us. Or maybe they just dug the microbus … and took pity on us. Or maybe they took us in because Kevin and Kathryn are some of the most agreeable, friendly, considerate and kind-hearted people you’d ever hope to meet.

Stepping over power tools and other construction materials, Kevin gave us the grand tour of their rambling but cozy and astonishingly well-appointed house. Our bed was big enough for a king’s court. The bathtub was even bigger. We stayed for two whole days—days that revolved around fine home cooked meals and lively conversations that lasted all day and well into the night.

We were sad to bid Kevin, Kathryn and the Red Door Inn a farewell. But they’ll be officially open by the time this year is out and we’ll be back someday soon. After all, it’s only a scant 12 months between now and the opening day of the 2009 New York State Fair!

Les Flaneurs

2008-09-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Canadian public radio, we learned a new French word that has no exact translation into English. The word is flaneur. Unlike a voyeur (a person who takes pleasure in observing the secret lives of others), a flaneur is a person who actively enjoys a city for what it is.

Since we were traveling out of Nova Scotia (English and Gaelic speaking), through New Brunswick (English and French speaking), and into the province of Quebec (French-speaking only), we decided to adopt the spirit of this French word, toss aside our know-it-all guide books, and simply take in the sights as they came, no questions asked.

So. How about a view of the longest covered bridge in the world?

It runs 1,282 feet. In the metric system, which they still use in Canada, that’s less than a kilometer but more than a decameter.

Or how about some roadside legumes sans produit chimique?

If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. Neither do we. And we stopped. But we didn’t stop for long, because we wanted to make it to Quebec City, the very heart of French-speaking Canada, before nightfall.

Once there, we discovered it to be an old fortified city. Purportedly it is the only walled city on the North American continent, unless you include Mexico. Who are we to argue?

What’s more, it’s filled with flaneurs like ourselves…

… plus charming row houses …

… grand guns from a more elegant era…

... and the requisite horde of busy-body tourists.

We also discovered, completely through the good graces of luck and the happy circumstances of accident, that Quebec City was enjoying its 400^th year of cityhood.

The celebrations were as non-stop as they were random. While we missed the Russian Military Opera, we did happen to catch a rousing set of marches courtesy of The Royal Dutch Rifle Brigade and Grenadiers.

But that was just the primer for this party extraordinaire. After leaving the tourist section of town, we found ourselves trapped in a mega traffic jam. It was as though part of the city had been shut down. Instead of trying to beat them, we joined them. Bon oui!

And we’re glad we did. For, if you look closely…

… you can just make out the megawatt figurine of international recording superstar Celine Dion!

A song of love in our hearts—for our hearts will go on—it was all we could do to get back to the microbus without incident.

Despite our best efforts otherwise, we not only managed to get back in the bus, but even eased on down the road to Montreal.

If Quebec was filled with flaneurs, Montreal was positively overflowing with them...

… us included.

And though we felt right at home, after a few days in Montreal and a few weeks in Canada it was time to go home. Or at least come back to America. All we had to do was get in the bus, get on down the road, and get in line...

Off the Map

2008-09-04T15:08:00.001-07:00

“Where would you go to listen to music tonight?” Diane asked. The bonnie lass behind the counter of the seaside hamburger stand had no idea. She was just visiting from the wilds of Alberta, she told us, and had only been in the small town of Inverness, Nova Scotia for a few months. She called back into the kitchen for her boyfriend. A few moments later a rangy dude appeared, dirty grill-rag over his shoulder, a mop of hair surging out from under his baseball hat. Diane repeated her question and his lean face broadened into a smile.

“Music? Good question.” He flipped through a thin newspaper that was draped over a pile of well thumbed fashion magazines. He looked up. “The Red Shoe.”

“The red shoe?”

“Yah. The Red Shoe Inn. It’s just down the road in Mabou. They’ve got a fiddler tonight. This one plays traditional Gaelic tunes. The Red Shoe Inn, it’s on the main road. You can’t miss it.” Our faces must have been the very picture of wary disbelief because he immediately tried to reassure us. “It’s a good place. You’ll like it.”

The sun was bright and warm, though well past its apex. It had already been a long driving day. I was weary. Diane was crabby. Nonetheless, we dutifully climbed back into the bus and drove on. Since arriving in Nova Scotia a week back we had yet to see what Diane considered to be good music. And this was precisely the problem.

During the drive to The Red Shoe Inn, I considered our travels on the back roads of Nova Scotia, and thus far we had found little to write home about. The roads had been narrow and rough. The bus was developing a troubling new repertoire of squeaks in its suspension system. And the big sights had been remarkably unremarkable—we felt as though we had driven a long way to gaze at the rocks and trees and water of the Oregon coast.

Of course, the problem wasn’t with Nova Scotia. The problem was us. And the problem with us was simple: We were outsiders. It’s not that we wanted to (or even could) shed our “outsiderness” until we became Nova Scotians, rather we wanted to experience something in this far-flung corner of the world not found elsewhere. We wanted a true understanding of the place. So Diane hit upon the notion of music. She wanted to see live music. Local music. Authentic local music. She wanted a musical experience that one could only find in Nova Scotia.

This in mind, our week had started on a promising note. On our first full day in Nova Scotia, taking a southern swing toward the Bay of Fundy, we passed through the home town of world-renowned ‘70s singing sensation Anne Murray.

Ms Murray wasn’t in town and we didn’t stop. It was just as well, since in these parts time seems to have done just that. Stop.

Truth be told, the clocks here aren’t set to the 17^th century. But they haven’t exactly leapt into the 21^st, either.

Then again, some things in Nova Scotia are timeless. The tidal waters in the Bay of Fundy, like clockwork, rise and fall some 40 feet twice daily…

…which means even a not-so daring man can walk to this distant island during low tide.

But I digress. Other than the fading star of Anne Murray and the bright lights of Top 40 radio, the music scene in this part of Nova Scotia is non-existent. So we took aim for Cape Breton, the northern-most island of Nova Scotia. Diane was told that Cape Breton was famed for its Celtic music. The roads were rough, the sights muted under wet and cloudy skies, and within a few days we were officially off the map.

Cape Breton is a rugged place. It was primarily settled by the Scots, and the living vestiges of these Gaelic roots are everywhere.

We stopped at a tourist information office for a lead on the local music scene and left with a few maps, a slick calendar of events, and knowing advice in regard to a show called, The Spirit of the Isles. “It’s managed by a fella who went back home to retire,” the lady in the tourist office told us. “He worked many years on Broadway doing The Lion King. By all accounts it’s an excellent show. Music, drama, dance, a bit of comedy.” We weren’t sure which show she meant—The Lion King or Spirit of the Isles. We would have to get to the little seaside village of Louisbourg before nightfall if we wanted to find out.

Louisbourg turned out to be a sleepy fishing village and home to a once-great French colonial fort. The fishing isn’t what it used to be, the town is little more than a huddle of houses and trinket shops along a long strip of pavement called Main Street, and the fort is a relic from a bygone era. But the people are friendly enough. Over seafood chowder in a seaside diner, the long-faced but chirpy waitress told us that we could not have picked a better night to visit Louisbourg. “It’s been rainy and foggy all week,” she lamented. “Today’s the first sun we’ve seen in ages. Good thing, too. They’ve fireworks planned this evening and a free concert after.”

Much encouraged, we asked her about The Spirit of the Isles. “Aye. Tommy came here to retire. Poor lad. He’s done nothing but work since. He was ten-odd years on Broadway, you know. Phantom of the Opera. Cats. It’s very good.”

Did she mean Cats or Spirits of the Isles? It was impossible to say. We bought tickets anyway, and soon after the lights dimmed we knew the answer. In the spotlight, twice a day, five days a week, all summer long the spirits saw out Celtic crowd-pleasers from afar…

… and inflict off-off-off Broadway slapstick up close.

Which is to say it was better than Cats. By the time the spirits relinquished the stage, the skies were dark. A full moon was on the rise. And the music of fireworks was in the air.

And that was the problem. Music was in the air.

Loud music. Rock-n-roll music. The very best of the ‘70s. Smoke on the Water, Cocaine, Momma’s Got a Squeeze Box (Daddy Never Sleeps at Night). Yep, we heard them all. What’s more, the beer even came in cans.

Strangely enough, the next morning Diane wasn’t satisfied with our local live music experience. We had taken in two music shows in a single night and still she wanted something more. So we continued northward in search of authentic local music, this time taking care to avoid all tourist information offices along the way. Not that we came across many offices to avoid.

By nightfall, through weather that rolled around from sour to sunny to warm to sour again, we arrived in the no-stoplight hamlet of Ingonish and a clean little hotel tavern. It was a Saturday night, a wedding party had commandeered the place, and a man by the name of Cyril was scheduled to play.

So Cyril played. The place filled up with wedding drunks, squeaky-clean backpackers, weekend sightseers, and cyclo-tourists. To Cyril’s credit, by the second set everyone was heartily singing along. With ironic interpretations of American hits like Hotel California, Cyril sank the crowd deep into their beers; and with lusty Nova Scotian sea shanties he brought them back to the high ground of their beloved island. Cyril played the crowd and we loved him for it.

In the light of the next morning, I was satisfied that we had seen the essence of Nova Scotian music. Diane begged to differ. We had missed the high season by a month and she was convinced that we had missed the best that Cape Breton had to offer. She was inconsolable.

Agreeing to disagree, we drove up the far eastern side of Cape Breton, made the turn, and rolled south down the western side. Along the way, we took comfort in the road-side distractions common to the pursuits of travel. In these parts, distractions take the form of whale watching…

… high stepping with the local kids…

…commiserating with some old friends while waiting for a turn to dance with the pretty girl…

… and taking in some harness racing, trackside.

Which brings us back to Inverness, a seaside hamburger stand, the road to the Red Shoe Inn, and the prospect of some local fiddler squealing out the likes of Life in the Fast Lane followed with a sing-along of Taking Care of Business. We had no illusions.

The Red Shoe Inn proved easy enough to find, located as it is on Mabou’s one and only main street. Inside, we discovered a bustling little pub that prides itself on serving up local fare and, in a rare twist, championing local music.

The music was lively, raw, and fast. The tunes were long reels of notes that looped around and around in a dancy, improvised pattern that harkened back to an era when fishermen mended nets fireside through dark winter days while their womenfolk wove coarse wool into thick quilts. This was not a tourist show in a large auditorium. This was not a weepy sing-along in a hotel pub. This was not a cover band rock-out. This was the live music experience Diane had been searching for.

Between sets, we struck up a conversation with the pub’s convivial manager, Angie. Once she found out about our experiences with Nova Scotian music, Angie revealed to us a local secret, something not mentioned in any tourist brochure. If we would layover for a day, we could invite ourselves to a local square dance the following evening. During the summer, she told us, a square dance is held every night of the week. The dance is held in a different town each night, and each dance night brings something different to the floor. Some nights are for families. Some are for adults only. Some are formal. Some are more relaxed. Regardless, they always start at 10 p.m. sharp and run until 1 a.m. The dance she had in mind for us would be both fun and relaxed. Using the local vernacular, she assured us that we would be received with céad míle fáilte - one thousand welcomes.

At the bar, the wait staff gave us advice for some local hikes. As well, we made a new friend in an American man named Mayhew, a utilities consultant, urban organic farmer, motorcycle enthusiast, and philosopher. He had traveled from his home in Boston specifically to catch the local music scene. Mabou, he told us, is considered to be the epicenter for Celtic music in Cape Breton. Who knew? Suffice it to say that the choice to stay over was an easy one to make.

Of course, the next day’s hike offered unparalleled vistas…

… the nostalgic colors of hearth and home…

… and up close wildlife sightings the likes of which we had never before seen.

As for the dance later that night? We drove 10 miles down a dark and winding country road. We had no idea where we were until we came upon wide spot in the road, a sea of parked cars, and a brightly-lit community center.

Once inside, we discovered old timers mixing freely with young adults who were barely old enough to legally open their first beer. We also discovered that the dance party was already underway. Unfortunately, we had no idea of what was going on. We had been promised a square dance, but this was unlike any square dance we had ever seen.

The stage had room for two musicians—a fiddler and a keyboard player. No caller was present to lead the crowd. Simply, the music started up and the dancers haphazardly trickled onto the floor in pairs. The leisurely pace of the dancers was strikingly at odds when set against the frenetic tempo of the music.

The dancing itself began when enough couples were on the floor to form a small circle. They joined hands, male and female altering, and like an accordion, stepped in to squeeze the circle then out to let it breathe. Eventually another small group formed. And another, and another. Then, without warning one of the circles broke, couples united, and began to spin. Fast. Then another circle broke. Then another. Until the dance floor was a sea of spinning couples. Every move was well practiced, and no one missed a cue.

Then, according to its own rhythm, each circle reformed, its members dancing in and out as if breathing, then again broke into spinning couples. This patterned repeated to the loop of the music. Then, after a few cycles, one circle of dancers simply ceased to dance. Then another stopped. Then another, until all of the dancers stood around in casual clumps of chatting individuals. At some point the music stopped, too. No one left the dance floor.

It was all very strange. A few minutes later, without warning, the music began anew. The same small circles reformed and the dancing continued, though this time their steps increased in difficulty, the breathing circle transformed into an allemande weave, and the pairs spun off into a wild, blurred spin. Once again the circle reformed. Once again the patterns repeated, and after a few loops through the sequence, the dancing petered out on its own. The music stopped and the dance of circles became stands of chatting friends.

After a few minutes, the band struck up yet again, the dancers reformed their circles, the steps yet more complicated, and as the circles spun into couples and spun back into circles again, the small groups somehow combined into one giant, high-stepping reel. The individuals had become couples, the couples had become small circles, and the small circles had become a one large community.

After a few runs through this pattern, the music stopped, the dancing stopped, and the floor cleared. The set was complete. Maybe twenty minutes had elapsed.

The dance sets went on, unabated and unchanged, until 1 a.m. A few of the braver men accosted Diane and lead her on a spin around the dance floor.

No one asked me to dance, of course. But after a few hours of watching, after drawing courage from Diane’s practiced steps, I sussed out a firm sense of the patterns and bravely took my best girl out for a whirl.

I’d like to thank Mayhew for the pictures. As you can see we really did dance. Likewise, you can see that we weren’t any good. In fact, we were terrible. We made countless rookie mistakes that caused many a disruption to the shopworn patterns. But we were corrected quickly enough, usually with a friendly smile, and somehow, by the good graces of a playful god, we made it through a complete three-dance set.

It was none too soon. For about this time the house lights came up. It was time to call the night a success. But the party held one last and most curious surprise. Before the band broke down their instruments, they dug into a furious jig. The crowd pulled back to form a large semi-circle. But nothing happened. For a long time, nothing happened. And then one brave soul stepped into the glare and danced.

He wasn’t the only one to dance. He was just the first of many. The crowd laughed and clapped and joked and cheered. The dancers jumped in, tapped and stepped, each according to his or her abilities, each in his or her own way - something of the form of Riverdance.

After a few more dancers took the floor (and just as easily relinquished it), we realized that this wasn’t a competition to see who could dance the most gracefully. Likewise, it wasn’t a contest for a prize. Simply, it was a celebration of community in the guise of dance. We had never seen anything quite like it.

On the bus ride back to Mabou, we knew we had experienced something rare, if not extraordinary. Yes, we had done nothing more than attend a simple square dance. But we had also witnessed how one local community reaffirms its identity, from generation to generation, through the language of music and dance. And, in our own small and insignificant way we had even been welcomed into it, if only for one dance. We had found the music we were looking for - and so much more.

Borderline

2008-08-26T15:40:00.003-07:00

From Maine Diane and I traveled northward until we reached the border of a great unknown vastness. The locals call it home. Some Americans call it the fifty-first state. All call it

Canada

On this trip across America we have gotten used to being strangers in our native land. Even so, we find that this fifty-first state is unlike any of the others. We don’t know what to make of it. Take the cities, for instance. From a distance they look like big American cities. This is St. John, New Brunswick.

But up close they’re much smaller. To my trained eye, St. John’s could pass for a mini San Francisco, CA.

Except that the men are more brave, the beasts are more ferocious…

… and the rivers run backwards.

Yup. We’ve seen it with our own eyes.

And now so have you. So it must be true.

Which is to say that Canada is a strange place that overflows with possibilities. Anything can happen. It’s a scary and yet freeing sort of sensation. It’s as if this place invites to completely reinvent ourselves. A hands-on visit to a Museum of Industry allowed us to try a few new personas on for size.

Diane got on the Ball as a hard-working gal in a chocolate factory…

… while I cast myself in the dual role of loud mouthed know-it-all union boss…

…and artless dodger.

Not that I have an experience with unionized labor or anything.

Regardless, this much is certain: The farther we go into the unknown wilds of this great white north, the more drastic we will change. There’s no telling who we will become; and there’s no telling how.

Maybe we won’t stop until we reach the top of Nova Scotia. Just looking at the map we can tell that’s a long way from here. All there's left for us to do is get in the bus and go.

LobsterQuest

2008-08-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

Neither Diane and I are obsessed with food. We like food. And we really like good food.

The question then, is, what makes food good. Is it the anticipation—planning the menu, devising the seating chart, acquiring new tableware? Is it the pursuit of ingredients—the hunting trip, the fishing expedition, the gardening safari, the shopping trip? Is it the preparation—the refuge of the kitchen, the pleasure of helpful companionship, the heat of the labor itself? Is it the dining experience—before a campfire on a windswept mountain top, in a microbus beside a city park, by candle light with a view of the Eiffel Tower? Is it the quality of the food itself—the flavors, the textures, the presentation? Or is it the aftermath—the satisfaction of fullness, the afterglow of good company, the glory of accolades received?

Of course, good food is all of these. But because Diane and I are traveling through Maine, the palate narrows considerably until it is a taste that trips down the tongue to tap two counts on the teeth. Lob-ster. Sweet, sweet lobster. It is a common crustacean at two pounds even on the ocean floor. It is money in the trap. It is red-hot screaming in the steamer. But on my table it is always Lobster.

Lobster. The most splendid offering among Maine’s many wonders…

…the red-shelled treasure that shines brightly in a sea of yellow drawn butter. You can always count on a Maine writer for a fancy prose style.

Which is to say, it wasn’t just any sort of lobster we were after. After all, you can find lobster everywhere. In Maine, it waves at you from the roadside, credit cards accepted.

It’s pooped out in a McStyrofoam pile under golden arches…

…it’s even churned into a frozen treat.

I know, I know. It’s all lobster. Indeed it is. But it isn’t necessarily good lobster. Please understand that our LobsterQuest was not about sitting down to a simple tourist meal. Please understand we were after something to remember long after the lobster itself was gone. Please believe me when I say we are not obsessed with food.

The quest began in Portland, ME. It’s a sizeable city on the state’s southern coast. It features a fine European-style downtown, replete with cruise ship docks and all of the usual tourist trades.

We had a fine time in Portland, ME. But it didn’t have the sort of lobster we were looking for. So over the backroads we traveled, zig-zagging our way northward along the jagged coastline. The daily board of fare consisted of upscale seaside tourist towns, competed with rustic resorts…

…strange blueberry farms…

…and even stranger engineering wonders.

This bridge’s split granite cribwork is designed to allow the swift tidal waters to flow in and out of the bay year round. It is held together only by gravity and the graces of good fortune, and is said to be the only one of its kind in the world—I think for good reason.

Once safely beyond these troubled waters, we finally encountered a bonafide back roads lobster shack phenom.

But upon closer inspection Red’s did not have the lobster we were looking for. The specialty here is the Lobster Roll—a fold of toasted white bread stuffed with a lobster-mayo salad. This concoction is a Maine institution. For those among us who travel with the herd, by all means, step right up. For those rugged few who blaze their own trail, it’s best just to move along.

It wasn’t long before we found a bayside campground. At the ranger station, we learned that a local fisherman would deliver live lobster directly to our campsite. It was a tempting offer, but we passed on it. Not only were our kitchen pots too small, but the experience would just like getting a pizza delivered to our doorstep.

In an attempt to distract me, Diane navigated us to the fabulous tourist town of Bar Harbor, ME. And make no mistake, in high season distractions abound. But they’re good distractions.

Diane took me for a sail on a four-mast schooner, this despite the fact I have been known to get motion sickness from time-to-time, but only when traveling by car, plane, boat, train, tram, trolley, bus, rollercoaster, merry-go-round, swing set, surfboard, or bicycle.

But don’t let my expression fool you—I loved the sail. I even made it through with my innards intact.

What’s more, we even got our hands on the lines help heave-ho the sails.

But once back on dry land, reminders of the object of my desire were everywhere.

Tired out, wrung out, spun out, worked out, we again took to the open road. It was clear that this little lobster quest of mine was a folly from the start. I scanned the road side for any old lobster pound. Lobster is lobster. It doesn’t matter where you get it and it doesn’t matter how.

But before we sold out, before the fog bell tolled, Diane spied a little sign of no particular consequence.

I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t care to stop. But Diane insisted, so stop we did. No one came out to greet us…

… at least not right away…

This is Robert. He is a salty fisherman and skier turned seafood distributor. He told us about the difference between new shell and old shell lobster (he prefers new shell). We told him about traveling from Oregon to Maine by microbus. He told us about the seaweed trade to the equine industry—apparently discerning race horses prefer kelp for breakfast. We talked about family and skiing in Lake Tahoe and the icy winters of Maine. He showed us how to choose a lobster by size and weight.

We told him that we didn’t have a pot big enough to steam the lobster; he offered to steam this most worthy lobster for us…

… right up in his office.

A fine lobster meal turns out to be a rather simple affair. You don’t need a trap full of food. You don’t need a fancy prose style. All you need to do is find a pot. Add some water. Apply some heat. Get a few sheets of yesterday’s fishwrap. Put yourself in good company. Find a suitable seaside spot. Do it right, and the result is destined to be delicious.

Even if it makes you a little bit crazy.

A Day in the Life

2008-08-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

The question most people ask us is this: “What is your typical day like?” They usually come at it in three different ways:

“How do you plan your time?”
Our answer: We don’t.

“Where are you staying tonight?”
Our answer: We won’t know until tonight.

“Where are you going next?”
Our answer: Good question. Do you have any suggestions?

We don’t mean to be flippant. We’re answering truthfully. After all, we live in a microbus, live cheaply, and mostly leave our travels to chance. What follows is a typical day. You’ve been warned.

7:30 A.M. Rochester, NH. – Sidestreet
We wake up inside the bus. We’re parked on a now-quiet street across from a municipal baseball park. It’s an overcast morning. It might rain. It might not. A huge hedgerow separates us from the neighboring houses. Because we got here after dark last night, we couldn’t tell really tell what sort of spot it was. It turned out to be a good one that hid us in plain sight—one of our favorite locations. A group of league softball players drank and shouted at each other from the bleachers late into the night. But once they left, the neighborhood quieted down. We’re lucky there’s no little league games this morning, as I’m pretty sure it’s Saturday. The lady sweeping the sidewalk in front of her place gives us a wary look as we depart.

8:20 A.M. Rochester, NH - Downtown
Because of where we parked, we didn’t have the luxury of making coffee in the bus (we live by the backcountry hiker credo: Leave No Trace). We drive around town looking for a coffee house. Our choices come down to a Dunkin’ Doughnuts and a local bakery that, inexplicably, won’t open until 9. We choose the local bakery. From our parking spot, we watch a heavy set couple wheel about in their wheelchairs. We look at them. They look at us. The streets are otherwise empty. I understand now why the bakery opens late and I wonder why Diane and I need to have coffee every morning. The skies look like they might clear off completely.

9:15 A.M. Rochester, NH – Le Petite Bakery
The coffee’s pretty good and the apple tart is terrific. I jot down a few ideas in my notebook about the Shaker museum-farm we saw yesterday. I’m still not sure what to make of it. I know I’m going to say more than a few passing words, though what I want to say, and how, is unclear. I write: Mike & Diane as Shakers in dramatic play, re: Henry Miller? I circle this. We decide to go to the beach in New Hampshire. According to our Rand-McNally road map, the only park with camp sites is the Hampton Beach State Park. It’s on the southernmost point of New Hampshire, so that’s where we’ll go. We decide on the back roads we’ll take. This map has only been wrong once, and that was way back somewhere in California.

10:00 A.M. South of Rochester, NH – Napa Auto Parts
The bus is exceedingly reliable. It starts every morning. It runs all day. And it leaks motor oil. This problem is the bane of my existence. For now, the best fix I’ve got is to add a bottle of stop-leak every 1,000 miles or so. I see an auto parts store and make an impromptu stop. I buy the stop-leak, pour it into the crankcase, add a half quart of oil, and cross my fingers. It’s either this or an engine overhaul, and we’re a long way from home.

10:40 A.M. Highway 125, Southbound.
Even on the back roads west of Dover, NH the traffic feels heavy. It must be Saturday, in August. I wonder what the beach traffic is going to be like. Then again, after the relative empty back roads of NH and VT, maybe what I take as heavy traffic isn’t all that heavy. We see a McDonald’s and stop for a bathroom break. A pack of Boy Scouts troop past as we park. One of the Scout Leaders stops to ask me questions about the bus. I really have to take a leak, but I hold it and grind through my patter with a smile.

11:05 A.M. Seabrook, NH
It’s not just me. It’s Saturday and the traffic is heavy. The signage that should point us to the beach is non-existent. The locals who drive the back roads must not need road signs, but we do. We stop for gas and to ask for directions. While I’m filling up, Diane asks directions from an unreasonably tanned dude on the other side of the pumps. I can’t hear what he says, but he points us in the opposite way we were headed. He wears the logo of the Gloucester, MA fire dept. on his t-shirt and he seems absolutely certain of himself. Going against our better judgment, we drop back into traffic and drive in the opposite direction that our map seems to indicate. We’re looking for Hwy 88, which we’ll take right to the ocean. We can’t miss it.

11:15 A.M. Seabrook, NH
It’s five blighted lanes of corporate chain stores, stoplights, and traffic. After miles of this, we have yet to lay eyes on the fabled Hwy 88. Then, inexplicably and unexpectedly, we cross into Massachusetts. We pull over onto a wide shoulder. Traffic surges past. I think we missed the turn. Diane doesn’t think we did. We engage in a spirited discussion. We decide to keep going.

11:18 A.M. New Hampshire / Massachusetts State Line
We drive no more than 50 yards, round a blind corner, and come to the Hwy 88 intersection. GloucesterMan was right, we couldn’t miss it. He just neglected to mention having to cross into Massachusetts first. We get on Hwy 88, our spirits brightening. The sun is out. The air is warm and we have the windows down. I begin to jabber about how many lobsters we ought to have for dinner. Diane, weary of my schemes, reminds me of the cod fillets we have in the cooler.

11:40 A.M. Hampton Beach, NH
We enter into a blustery, full-sun sort of sandy beach community. The water looks hard and cold. Condos crowd the beachside of the main road, seafood shacks and trinket shops line the other side. We cross a bridge and immediately find the State Park. We can see the entire park in one eyefull since it only consists of one giant grassy campground and an ocean beach. It’s bounded by condos to the north, shops to the west, and a swift-moving ship channel to the south. Giant RVs are everywhere. All of the hook-up spaces appear to be taken, but I see empty picnic tables and plenty of open spaces in the grass. It looks like we’ll be paying good money to do little more than park on grass near a beach. But we’ll be within walking distance to a number of lobster shacks. I tell Diane that I really want to stay at this park.

11:55 A.M. Hampton Beach State Park, NH
We pull up behind a late 1980s VW bus with Quebec plates. Glad to be at the end of the day’s drive, Diane and I make our way into park office. Inside, we find a pudgy French-speaking Canadian and a thin, wrinkled face Park Lady locked in argument. He speaks in French and she speaks in English. Another man, maybe another camper, acts as a translator. We finally gather that, for some reason, the Canadian isn’t going to get a spot he reserved months in advance. I think that maybe we’ll get a hook-up spot after all. The bewildered Canadian departs and we take our place before the counter, all smiles. The Park Lady behind the counter droops, glad to be rid of her French-speaking problem. It’s clear she wants a cigarette. Diane brightly inquires about a camping spot. The Park Lady grimaces and tells us that even though it’s Saturday, some non-hookup spots are still available. We claim one of these spots. Everything goes well enough as she checks us in. Then she asks me: “What sort of vehicle are you driving?”

“A ’71 VW microbus,” I reply proudly, fully expecting her to swoon at such a glorious revelation.

Her face immediately pinches into the sourest of looks. It is as if she just caught a whiff of the world’s smelliest hippy. Then she laughs in disbelief and, without a word, begins to delete our information from her computer program. “You can’t stay here,” she says flatly. “That last man, that Canadian, was in a VW bus, too. He can’t stay here, either. And he had reservations.”

The Park Lady then proceeds to tell us how, because our VW bus doesn’t have a built-in toilet and tank, we aren’t allowed to stay in New Hampshire state parks. As far as the state of New Hampshire is concerned we are a biohazard.

But all is not lost. The Park Lady give us directions to a state park just across the border in Massachusetts. She is pretty sure they will take us.

12:45 P.M. Hampton Beach, NH
We drive south along the coast. Once in Massachusetts, the clear skies and lobster shacks give way to crummy row houses, crumbling streets, and a tangle of overhead power lines. I give up my lobster obsession. The town eventually peters out, the power lines disappear, and we find the park. Or at least we find the park entrance.

We wait in line for about a half hour. The line never moves. Not even one car length. A new RV arrives every few minutes. We think this scene is bad until we imagine what the campground is going to be like. Though clouds are gathering on the western horizon, the skies above are clear. The air is warm. The day is still young. We decide that the beach is the place to be. So we do the only sensible thing: We force our way out of line, turn around, and drive back to into New Hampshire.

1:45 P.M. Hampton Beach, NH
Past the Hampton Beach State Park, we plunge into summer beach resort chaos. The air is cooked with the stale burn of old fry grease. People swarm the sidewalks. They spill out of restaurants. They stagger out onto the sandy asphalt streets. They sprawl on the porches of ticky-tacky rental houses that are crammed right up to the saltgrass that marks the beginning of the beach. The energy level is wicked-good and the vibe is festive. We love it. However, not a single parking spot is to be found. So we make room for one that sort of hangs the nose of the bus out into an intersection. We’re less than two blocks from the beach. We gather up our beach wear and get within a block of the beach when we notice that the crowds are hurrying away from the beach.

We don’t know what to make of it. Then we hear the wail of sirens. We look skyward. Off to the southwest, the high white and fluffy clouds have turned black and cold. In fact, they are coalescing into a single angry mass and descending. We debate whether or not to go to the beach anyway—we’ll have it all to ourselves until the rain hits. Then Diane says the magic word, “traffic.” We hightail it back to the bus. If we don’t get out now, we’ll be locked in a traffic jam for hours.

2:00 P.M. Hampton Beach, NH
Traffic is already bad by the time we squeeze our way onto the road. But everything moves along in its own way.

2:45 P.M. Hampton, NH – Hwy 1, Northbound
We make it out of Hampton Beach as the skies let loose with thunderous fury. Lightening bolts crash directly overhead. I slow the bus in order to see the road more clearly. As best as we can tell, we’re not only tracking in the direction of the storm but we’re moving at the same speed of its leading edge. We can’t safely turn around, there’s no good place to pull over, so we just keep going.

3:45 P.M. Portsmouth, NH.
Not knowing what to expect, we roll into the only town that matters in these parts. We’ve never been here and we’ve never considered it as a destination. It seems like a fine place, one that we might like to see when the weather clears, if it ever does.

Because of the weather and time of day, we decide that we can either ride out the storm in the bus, languish in a coffee shop, or go to a movie. We decide on the latter, though we have no idea where a movie theatre might be. We roll up to the first Stop-n-Rob we see to ask directions.

4:10 P.M. Portsmouth, NH. – Stop-n-Rob
I keep the bus idling (to keep the heater on) while Diane goes inside. Through the foggy windows I watch her talk to a heavy-set man or woman—I can’t tell exactly. It’s all smiles and good humor. Diane is amazing that way. After what seems like forever, Diane comes out and gets back in the bus. She holds a small sheet of paper, the front and back crammed with the tiniest scrawl I’ve ever seen. These are our directions.

4:30 P.M. Portsmouth, NH. – Backstreets
We wind through the unfamiliar back streets of Portsmouth. The movie theaters are attached to some sort of mega mall on the outskirts of town. At first the directions hold together perfectly. Then what should have been a traffic circle is instead a three-way intersection. Pressed by traffic, I quickly choose what I think is the correct turn. Diane disagrees. Our discussion is spirited. Traffic moves swiftly. And before we know it we’re at a T-intersection and have lost the bead. The rain is hammering down. I pull into the parking lot of a grocery store so we can look at the city map in our AAA book. Out of nowhere, an early 1980s microbus pulls up along beside us, the window already down. A dude leans out as far as the rain allows.

“Can I help you?” he asks, thinking that we’ve broken down.

Not believing our luck I gesture to the map splayed out on the steering wheel in front of me. “We’re just trying to find the movie theatre.”

“Oh,” he says, clearly disappointed he can’t really help us. “That’s just up the main road there, a half mile at most. It’s at the mall. You can’t miss it.”

Famous last words.

4:40 P.M. Portsmouth, NH. – the Mall
He was right, we couldn’t miss it. The meganess of this mall is astonishing. It just goes on and on and on. What’s even more incredible, the parking lot is packed. The closest spot we can find to the theater is another lot over, and that’s saying something. The rain has let up some, but that’s not saying anything. As we race to the box office, we pass a security guard hunkered down in his little jeep, marker lights on and the windows a bit foggy. It’s obvious that no criminal or cop in their right mind is out in this weather. I have a good idea what this says about us. A quick scan of the marquee tells us that the only show available to us is “Mamma Mia!” We’ve come too far not to buy tickets.

7:00 P.M. Portsmouth, NH. – the Mall
The parking lot has emptied out some. But more importantly, and more amazingly, the skies have cleared. And it’s still early. As for the movie, what’s there not to love about a love story as told by ABBA love songs and lovingly sung by the likes of Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnon and set on a lovely Greek island? The best part of the movie, for me, was the Greek island itself—Diane and I actually lived on the very island for two months in 2004 where this movie was shot. It was fun to recognize the set locations. It was kind of like being there again, except with a pop music soundtrack.

7:35 P.M. Portsmouth, NH. – The Island
With clear skies comes clear sailing and clear thinking. Since it’s dinner time, we hunt around town for a suitable spot. We take aim for the waterfront, as often times we’ll find city parks there; and where there are city parks there are picnic tables and trash cans. Portsmouth does not disappoint, and in fact it exceeds our expectations. Instead of a waterfront park we are presented with island that’s been designated as a city park. Though we don’t find any picnic tables, we do get the best view in town.

We decide that this place is better than any Greek island. It makes me want to dance.

After the show, Diane makes dinner as she always does. It isn’t lobster, but it is a three course extravaganza of corn on the cob, collard greens infused with bacon, and pan-seared cod with red baby potatoes. How Diane creates dinners like this, day-in day-out, on a single burner Coleman stove kit in a microbus kitchen is beyond me. Maybe that’s why she’s the cook. I just know that I’m a lucky man. I tell her this. Repeatedly.

8:40 P.M. Portsmouth, NH.
With dinner over, dishes cleaned, and the sun down, it’s time for our evening stroll. We discover it to be a typical waterfront, filled with the usual suspects – fishing boats, old sloops, and assorted pleasure craft.

Shoreside, we stumble onto a grassy park and, inexplicably, an elaborate stage play already underway. We settle in with the family crowd to behold “The Beauty and the Beast.”

After the show, we two-step through the colonial old town streets of Portsmouth, swapping ABBA song-bites with a dash of showtune pizzazz, my beastly tenor propped up by Diane’s beautiful soprano. As it turns out, love triumphs and good prevails. Always.

Shaking Toward Utopia

2008-08-16T07:50:00.001-07:00

Canterbury, New Hampshire has never been much of a town. It’s actually more farm than town, and it isn’t what it used to be. Though from the outside this place remains essentially unchanged.

"At its peak in the mid 1800s, Canterbury was a bustling settlement of more than 300 souls and a farm of over 4,000 acres," said docent Sarah Dunham. "Its gardens grew medicinal herbs for commercial markets. It housed workshops that crafted furniture, brooms, and baskets. Its residents enjoyed indoor running water--hot and cold." And it hosted such incredibly strange religious services that citizens from around the area gathered in droves to witness them firsthand.

Welcome to the home of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, a Protestant religious sect more commonly known as the Shakers*. "The sect was founded in 1747 by Mother Ann Lee, an English lady of some means," explained Dunham. "She was the mother of four children who all died young. And when she crossed paths with an exiled French Huguenot prophet she was taken with possession by the spirit.” Mother Ann Lee became a rabble rouser. She was tossed into a London prison. She had a divine revelation to take her new-found religion to America…

To make this very long story very, very short, all-told the Shakers built 19 communal settlements in America and attracted some 200,000 converts. The religion they practiced was also a lifestyle**. Its members lived in gender segregated, dormitory-like housing, worked in gender segregated trades, but came together to dine and worship. They believed in personal communication with a God who was both male and female. Their property was held communally. They were pacifists. They took in orphans and the downtrodden. They were strictly celibate. They were technophiles and even took out a number of useful patents. And they hung on into the 20th century until their practice of celibacy took its toll, and their numbers dwindled to near extinction.

Today, Canterbury is a national historic landmark and museum where modern-day pilgrims can get a feeling for life in a Shaker community. Sort of.

You begin your tour with a visit to the meeting house. Men enter on one side, women on the other--which was typical for the churchgoing crowds of the day.

Then it’s on to the workshops.

Women worked almost exclusively indoors—cooking, sewing, cleaning and washing …

… whereas men worked in the fields or shops.

After labor comes rest and reflection with a stroll through the gardens…

... and a brief pause in the old schoolhouse.

Now refreshed in mind and spirit, visitors make their way to the dormitories, mess hall, and visitor’s center.

The Canterbury Shaker Village today is very staid and quaint. This is New England, after all. Even after a quick tour of the grounds it’s clear that, like any other monastic movement, a Shaker’s life was dedicated to the pursuit of perfection. And since perfection can never be achieved in this world, the Shakers dedicated themselves to industry, the continuous confessing of sins, and an attempt to stop sinning. But unlike other movements, the Shakers took these notions to the extreme; and this is what makes the Shaker movement so interesting.

Though the Shakers shared the same dormitory buildings, men and women used different staircases and doorways: Everything here comes in matched pairs. Though they ate meals together, they sat on opposite sides of the hall. Men and women were not allowed to touch each other. They were not allowed to talk to one another, save for supervised meetings, brokered by an elder and held in a bedroom. But they were allowed to look at each other. And to dance.

It’s clear that the devil of Temptation was in plain sight and always a hairsbreadth away. Like the popular romance novels of the day, errant glances must have held profound meanings and the accidental touch must have been a source of both wicked pleasure and delicious torment. No doubt this pent-up frustration compelled many a man to turn many a table leg and many a woman to bake many a loaf of bread. It is no accident that the Shakers produced some of the most elegant, though uncomfortable, furniture ever made.

The conscientious visitor will find no fault with the Shakers and what they tried to do and how they failed at doing it. Their desire to shun the outside world, while being very much a part of it, is freedom's most profound form of expression.

The Shakers made their own rules and held fast to them (celibacy, pacifism, labor), even if it meant dooming their society. This is what makes them worthy of our attention.

The Shakers did not create a sexy cult. They were tradesmen-farmers who championed gender equality, practiced thrift, worked hard, and fixed their eyes upon God and the promise of the life hereafter. Though their society has faded into a curiosity in a history museum, even the most casual visitor will be fascinated with their quest for earthly utopia. For perhaps when we are profoundly sad and lost and hurt (like their founder, Mother Ann Lee) we find refuge from our personal tragedies by seeking goodness, joy, and glory in something bigger and stronger than ourselves.

* The name "Shakers," originally pejorative, was derived from the term "Shaking Quakers" and was applied as a mocking description of their rituals of trembling, shouting, dancing, shaking, singing, and glossolalia (a strange word that means speaking in strange and unknown languages). Apparently, the shaking and trembling were caused by the power of the Holy Spirit as He purged sin from the body of the worshipper. The Shakers, ever industrious, wholly adopted the term as their own.

** The Shakers were but one of many radical religious utopian societies that emerged in the 18th century. Included in this so-called “Awakening” are movements like the Mormons, Oneida (as in the silverware), Amana, Millerites, and many others.

Yankee Grab Bag

2008-08-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s me, but somehow this travel blog has turned into a series of vignettes that try to capture the spirit of the places we go and the people we meet. Because of this, as often as not pieces and parts of our travels get left on the cutting room floor. This is a good thing. Without this little bit of quality control, I might just as well keep a travel diary while you do something productive with your time, like, say, get back to work.

But since you're here I may as well waste a little bit more of your valuable time. Which is to say, what follows are orphaned pieces and parts that I’ve withheld but think are worthy. Witness:

A family and their mule teams harvesting hay in the Amish country...

... followed with a hand-shocked field.

May I present America's most unwelcoming public space (courtesy of a small town police station) ...

... and America's most vital pit stop, courtesy of a retail shop run by Hemming's Motor News.

A snapshot of America's most patriotic fence post...

And a photo-op with the Roosevelts at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY.

The FDR Library is on the grounds of the Roosevelt's family estate, though at times you'd never know it.

A stop into what could be New England's most charming mercantile...

... where they sell just about everything you can imagine...

... and some things you could never imagine.

To be honest, I still have no idea what to make of the Yodelling Pickle. Likewise, I have no idea what to do with these following snapshots. Some pics are a just too creepy to post. So here they are:

Diane says the real creep is the person behind the camera. I don't know. She might be right.

With that my fellow creeps, I bid you to climb into your own little dream machine and ride off into the great American sunset, filled to overflowing with the promise that tomorrow will come.

Thanks for riding along with us this far.

Perfectland

2008-08-08T07:58:00.001-07:00

Fifteen years ago, Diane didn’t believe in fireflies. Being a California girl and never having seen an actual firefly, she didn’t believe me when I told her about a curious summertime bug that floats through the lazy stillness of dusk and randomly pops off with shots of dazzling yellow. What’s more, these bugs fly so low and so slow and congregate in such large numbers that even the youngest child can easily catch one, coax it into a mason jar and say, with a straight face, that he has put lightning in a bottle. “I should know,” I told Diane fifteen years ago, “I did this myself as a kid.”

Still trying to convince her, I went on to tell her that untold acres of drowsy Iowa corn fields are shot through with their silent lightning, that the emerald lawns of small town America are punctuated with these yellow points of light, that nightly every wooded hollow dances with a thousand splendid suns while elves and fairies frolic in the moonlight. OK, I made that last part up. Elves and fairies don’t dance in moonlit Iowa cornfields. You’ll have to step into the bright lights of a big city to see that.

After leaving New York City, we drove up the Hudson River Valley, then cut east along the far western borders of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and (finally) New Hampshire. As we drove, it occurred to me that, in retrospect, Diane had no reason to believe me when I told her about the marvel of fireflies—I have been known to shade the truth on occasion and even embellish a detail or two from time to time. But I did enjoy an idyllic small town Iowa upbringing. And Santa Claus did live next door.

OK. Even if Santa didn’t live next door to us, fireflies nonetheless dot the emerald lawns of small town America. Diane has since seen this herself, and she now believes. So when I tell you about the perfect little hamlets that dot the back roads of New England, you should believe me, too. Better yet, why not come along for the ride? The entrance to Perfectland is here.

Once through to the other side, the towns are picture perfect, outside...

... and in.

... because in these parts communities are built on the bedrock of simple faith, grandly expressed...

... and humbly preserved.

Perhaps it is no surprise that Norman Rockwell set up his studio in these parts (Stockbridge, MA to be exact). Maybe Rockwell embellished a little when he created his illustrations of small town life in New England...

... but then again, maybe he didn't.

Being the world-wary travelers we are, we did not trust the substance of what we saw. Or maybe we simply disbelieved that this sort of perfection was possible. So we looked hard to find a seething underbelly of discontentment. However, we found not a single disagreeable sign.

Even the local kids seemed to be regular enough, maybe.

Such is the way of life in this perfect land, where Dartmouth Ivy grows thick and fragrant on the campus Green...

... and fireflies swoon in the warm fields of this American Dream.

The Producer

2008-08-05T19:47:00.001-07:00

Diane and I have become addicted to fame. Why anyone wouldn’t want to be famous I’ll never know. It must be some sort of personality flaw.

This isn’t to say that Diane and I are famous. Rather the star of our road show is a little yellow-and-white dream machine we call home.

Every day, many times a day, in every imaginable location, pedestrians and other motorists flash us the peace sign or give us the thumbs up. They take pictures. They honk and shout. When parked, we are approached by star-struck fans. Maybe this someone is just a curious autophile. Maybe this someone is reminded of someone they once knew (and maybe that someone was them). Maybe this someone is reminded of a road trip they have always dreamed about. They are young and old, they usually have big beaming smiles, and they are always genuinely glad to meet us. Well, not us exactly. It’s the bus they really want to meet, and they already know all the lingo.

We have learned never to predict when someone new will walk into our lives. Exhausted after a long day’s drive? Too bad. It’s time to talk “year, make, and model.” Furiously trying to update a blog entry before the battery of your laptop runs out of juice? Not so fast. It’s time to kick the tires and listen appreciatively to tales of an otherwise-forgotten road trip.

But then, drawing energy from the encounter, I invariably set aside the laptop and steal the spotlight. I love to meet new people. I love to show off our groovy little bus. I yammer on and on about the engine conversion, the sleeping quarters, the pump sink, the hidden toilet. Soon enough I can see my new friend’s eyes begin to glaze over. But I can’t help myself. This fame stuff, I tell you, is quite a drug.

So it was with great relief (for us and our fans), that we escaped into the anonymity of the world’s greatest metropolis—New York City. We safely parked our little bus on the tree-shaded streets of Brooklyn, locked it up, and for three glorious days played the role of street-savvy New Yorkers. We only dared to do so because we had the good fortune to stay with a long-time friend, former co-worker, world traveler, food critic, Internet entrepreneur, and independent movie producer, Mr. Andy Deemer.

He welcomed us with open arms and the keys to his apartment. We could have not been made to feel more at home. So what does a native New Yorker do over a weekend? We didn’t know either until we jumped into the fray. We spent the first night in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. $3 got us admission to a showing of Powaqqatsi, an experimental documentary film in the 1980s by Godfrey Reggio. I know. One day in New York and we’re already art film snobs.

We got there early - and it's a good thing because it was a full house. Mr. Reggio was on hand. And Phillip Glass (one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century), performed the soundtrack to this movie—accompanied by a full orchestra, the Brooklyn Youth Choir, and a bonafide Muezzin. It was like going to a silent picture show, except the live performers were the very people who created the original soundtrack. Sweet.

It was a tough crowd. Which means your show had better be good—you can’t “wow” these locals with flashy pyrotechnics. These are New Yorkers. They’ve seen it all already. You just have to be good. And the show was more than good. Did I mention the price of admission was $3? Did I mention we were in New York?

The next day, Andy took us on a field trip through the neighborhoods, pausing at a super-trendy super-secret ethnic food hotspot, where the burritos are spicy and Spanish is the spoken word. The bus stayed parked. No one paid us the slightest bit of attention. It was fantastic.

Drawing energy from the city’s vibe, we had no need for rest. And before the sun had set, Andy’s friend Megan arrived on the scene and we were off to a Brooklyn rooftop birthday party.

It was a birthday party like any other. Except the food was big-city terrific (Diane made a pizza to bring and Andy made burgers), and the Manhattan skyline was in the background. Did I mention we were in New York?

Diane also proved herself to be a formidable mixologist...

... who wowed the locals. We were all very impressed.

The next morning was a decidedly more sober experience, which was just as well. Andy had to get back to work (the Saturday he spent with us was his first day off in about a year), and we had to hit the road.

We weren’t ready to go. Or I should say we didn't want to go. In fact, we connived throughout the afternoon how to extend our stay. Maybe we’d sell the house in Oregon. Certainly we’d sell the bus. We loved the big city energy. We relished our anonymity. We talked about how much we loved our stay, all the while marveling at our good fortune to have a friend such as Andy. We talked about how much we enjoyed meeting Megan (thanks again for the sack of audio books, Megan!). We talked about how much we love New York.

But as we talked, we kept on driving northward, the city lights fading from sight, and by nightfall we were camped in the forested quiet of a state park in upstate New York. Save for the crackling camp fire, the night air was cool and quiet beside the Hudson River. I was tired from the drive. I was still recovering from Diane’s vicious rooftop concoctions. I was blissfully zoning out to my gentrified New York dreams when a voice shot out from the dark:

“Hey! Nice bus! What year is it - a '72?”

I turned in my camp chair. A tall dude in flip-flops and a tattered t-shirt beamed a hopeful and somehow expectant smile in my direction. I grimaced as I creaked out of my chair to meet him. “No,” I said, trying my best to warm up to the old familiar routine. “It’s a ’71.”

“Well, it looks great! I remember when…”

Amish Country

2008-07-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

You've probably never heard of Belleville, PA. If you have, by all means skip ahead a few paragraphs. I won't be offended. Really. Everyone else, let me tell you about a wide, fertile valley wedged into a broad ripple in the Allegheny Mountains.

Let me tell you about a most marvelous place, home to a contingent of Amish* farmers who made their way to this broad valley between the Stone and Jacks Mountains in the late 18th century. Let me tell you about a people who have managed to hold fast to their Old Order ways and today, seemingly cloistered from the outside world, live in a place that feels unsullied by crass commercialism and busloads of tourists that plague their more famous brethern to the southeast in Lancaster County.

Mennonite farmers (an Amish-light sect who own "worldly" 20th-century motorized devices) and a smattering of "English" (everybody else), share this valley with the Amish. The sleepy little farm town of Belleville features some houses, a Gas-n-Go, a Mennonite Heritage Center, and a broken down glue nag harnessed to a rotten old buggy. Steady old fella...

And that's pretty much the extent of it. There's not much else to see here, other than the scenery. Except on Wednesdays. Because on Wednesdays the town of Belleville becomes a hive of activity thanks to the Belleville Livestock Auction and Flea Market.

Town residents angle their pickups in hot competition for parking spots, and high-gloss buggies vye for hitching spaces.

We learned that the colors of the buggy tops give some clue as to which major group the owner belongs. Buggy tops come in white, yellow, and black. Apparently, white tops indicate that its owner is of the most traditional sect.

Then again, maybe not.

Because schisms are a constant in this land of Luddites where seemingly everyone is named Yoder (individuals are distinguished by the initials of their given names: I. E. Yoder; E.G. Yoder; and so on), issues of how to dress, how a barn should be built or painted, and who knows what else have splintered this one Amish community into more than a dozen sects.

But to the casual observer at the Belleville Livestock Auction and Flea Market, none of this family bickering is evident. The kids are mindful and respectful to their elders. The adults, though terse, are friendly enough to outsiders and even jovial among their own.

So why not join us and step into the low-slung concrete building where the Amish women sell their homemade specialties...

... while the auctioneer bids up homemade pies by the tin and garden-fresh beans by the package, starting at $1.50 each.

It is a place where even the least among them has a job to do, without complaint...

... because when the hard work is over, there is a just reward waiting for the entire family.

We loved this place. We loved the prices. We loved the scene...

... and we loved the food.

It was one of those rare places where complete outsiders like us could witness the people of another culture, unlike our own yet somehow familiar, as they conducted their normal business--be it kicking the udder on a new milker...

... or weighing the relative merits of a load of hay before it went up for auction.

It seemed to us to be a veritable heaven on earth. And it may very well be just that, especially because we had to travel at the speed of a bygone era that is somehow very much alive.

*The Amish trace their origins to the Anabaptist movement that swept Europe in the 16th century. One group of Anabaptists who sheered off to follow the teachings of Menno Simons, a Dutch elder, became the Mennonites. Disagreements in the Mennonite community flared, and another group broke away under the leadership of Jakob Ammann--the Amish.

Three Days in July

2008-07-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

After dipping our toes in the Jersey Shore, we headed west for the hills of southern Pennsylvania. We brought the bus to a whoa-ful stop just outside of Lancaster, PA, in a vibrant little town called Gettysburg.

We weren’t there for the colonial architecture so much as to tour the Civil War battlefield on the south side of town. In real and symbolic terms this battle was the high water mark of the Confederacy, and armies of researchers and historians have created libraries of material that study, ponder, and rehash those three fateful days in July,1863. While you can read all about it, I recommend you simply get yourself to Gettysburg National Battlefield. Once there, it's worth your while to stroll through the absolutely excellent on-site museum and finish out your day by touring the sites themselves.

Thusly primed, you can take aim at the Union forces from the front lines of Pickett’s Charge.

(The three little clumps trees along the right side of the horizon mark the exact spot where the Union armies held the high ground. Imagine marching across that mile of open field under heavy fire. The Confederate forces tried it and almost won the day.)

Then detour through the back roads of history and listen to the echoes among the rocks.

I could go on and on... But I have to admit that I've become a bit weary of battlefields. So instead of me prattling on and on about this place, I’m going to let someone else say a few words. He wasn’t at the battle either, but he delivered an address at Gettysburg way back in October, 1863.

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Friends

2008-07-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

If you’re lucky in this world, you’ll make a few lifelong friends. If you’re really fortunate, you will see them often. This makes me, by my own definitions, a lucky man who isn’t as fortunate as he’d like to be. However, this extended cross-country road trip is going a long way toward improving my lot in life. Which is to say we were able to see two of my oldest friends, in two very different cities, in the span of just a few days.

After descending the Ivory Tower of Jefferson’s Monticello, we pointed our good old bus north and bravely waded into the shark-infested swamps of Washington, DC. We did not travel there to fight for justice for the common man.

Nor did we go to speak our peace.

But we did go to DC to for a just and noble cause. We went to see one of my lifelong friends, Chris Munday, and his family—Tilden, his wife and Tayen, their son.

Chris is also an Iowa City, Iowa boy. We were both bike riders back in the 1980s, which means we spent a lot of time riding side-by-side on the backroads of Iowa’s farmlands, driving around the country to bike races, and otherwise making the scene with a shifty cast of road-wise bike bums: Dogbait, Dumpy, Sluggo, Bananas, Gomez, Blockhead, Mongo, Curly-Bite-Ball, Buzzsaw, Rat, Skin, Dirty Dick, Worthless, and many, many others. If you think this has makings of a fraternity to rival the Animal House, you wouldn’t be mistaken.

Who is to say why people become friends in the first place and remain friends? The reasons are likely as varied as the circumstances. It seems to me that Chris and I became friends long ago because, I think, we have common and complimentary interests that extend well beyond the normal dumb-athlete repertoire*. Chris is a master carpenter; I have held an actual saw in my hand. Chris is an expert on colonial era furniture; I like sitting in chairs. Chris is an attentive student of art and art history; I enjoy looking at colorful pictures. See what I mean?

Since Chris and Tilden currently live a scant few blocks from Capitol Hill**, the very best that DC has to offer was within easy walking distance—be it a groovy restaurant, coffee shop, or the many faces of the Smithsonian. As this was my first visit to DC, I insisted on seeing as much of it as I could. (Many heartfelt thanks to Diane, Chris and Tilden for so heartily indulging me.)

First up was Capitol Hill and the People’s House. Note the sharpshooter lurking on the balcony, above my pointy head. He’s there to keep us people out.

Then it was down the Hill to the botanical gardens, home to the world’s most far-out flower gardens…

By "far-out" I mean far out. This was as close as we could get to the actual White House gardens. Apparently George W. was playing t-ball on the East Lawn and couldn’t be disturbed (true!).

Undeterred, we took to the Capitol Mall, where Frisbee football games, clueless tourists, and protest movements freely intermingle…

… and where the marquee museums of the Smithsonian are located. No where else but in Washington, DC can you, in a single day, gaze at the actual death mask of Honest Abe...

… then lean over and touch an actual Nazi terror machine hand-built by slave labor.

What’s more, you can share an intimate moment with an actual stewardess…

… get cozy with two Ohio bike mechanics who had their right hands on the first flying machine…

… behold the world’s original space monkey…

(Yes, this is the real thing - he died four days after he came back to earth then was stuffed and mounted; and yes, this is how the little shaver was suited up for his blast into outer space.)

… then take a break and watch the other tourists Gogh by.

Of course we cased the White House from afar, paid our respects at the Ford Theatre, and reflected about the nature of Washington while on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

But mostly Diane and I simply hung loose with the Munday clan. We were only in DC for a few days, but these days were filled with excursions to the nearby farmer’s market, insightful neighborhood walks (Tilden grew up in DC and is a most excellent tour guide), and polished off heaping plates of late night dinners. We had a great time and we missed these fine friends of ours as soon as we left.

However, we were on deadline—a rare event on this microbus roadtrip—for if we wanted to visit another worthy old bike-bum friend of mine, Scott Dickson, we had to hurry. You see, Scott was a day away from flying to Iowa in order to make the start of the rolling circus commonly known as “Ragbrai.” (If you don’t know what Ragbrai is, I recommend you both Google it and then make plans to go.)

Feeling pretty good about driving a whole 110 miles from DC to the pastoral little college town of Norfolk, DE in a single afternoon, we arrived at Scott’s place a bit on the late side. Turns out Scott had just beat us there. He had covered about 80 miles that afternoon, too. On a bicycle.

But that’s Scott. He’s been riding and racing bikes longer than anyone I’ll ever know (since the 1960s) and sports many national championship cycling medals in his showcase to prove it. He also holds a Ph.D. in hydrology and assumes the role of adjunct professor when the circumstances are suitable. He’s an interesting and funny guy with many a mischievous tale to tell. Marsha, his wife, tells a good story, too.

So we had a great evening with Scott, Marsha—herself a reformed bike rider and professor at the University of Delaware (she studies apparel industry sweatshops in the developing world and advocates for better working conditions), and Marsha’s mother, Madge, who just happened to be visiting at the same time we did. Suffice it to say that the good old days are very, very good indeed when camped out on the Dickson’s back deck with a plate of garden-fresh food before you.

The morning came all to quickly, as it always does when you are in the company of old and true friends. We would have liked to stay longer, of course. But Scott was headed for the friendly skies and Marsha had a day of appointments at her office. So we again hit the road.

Next time we’ll stay longer. And, if I am fortunate, next time the span between visits will be measured in months, not years.

*Dumb-athlete areas of interest will be familiar to anyone who has played any sort of sport for any length of time. Specific areas of interest depend on the nature of the sport itself, of course, though the themes remain constant. In the world of men’s cycling, the dumb-athlete areas of interest are: Bike Racing, Cars, and Girls; Girls, Bike Racing, and Cars; and Cars, Girls, and Bike Racing. Heated discussions in regard to favorite bands and music genres have also been known to occur from time to time, particularly during cramped, cross-country road trips.

** Chris and Tilden want to leave DC for greener pastures, and their current plans could have them hitting the Oregon Trail and winding up somewhere near, if not in, our beloved Willamette Valley. Without doubt, if this were to happen then I would be a very, very fortunate man indeed.