Travel tips

I wish I had figured these out sooner, so I’ll share some things we’ve learned.

24 hours of driving is the best drug on Earth.  By the 23rd hour you will start to hallucinate, especially if it’s at night.  Like all great drugs, this is both fun and potentially lethal.  Caffeine might seem to be your best friend at this point, but you’d be best not to undervalue the wisdom of coupling it with some modicum of food intake, even if that’s just some chips, or even better, trail mix.

You can download classic Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell episodes as podcasts in iTunes.  Nothing is better than driving at night and listening to a dude talk nonstop for two hours about topics as diverse as time travel, astronomy, and parallel dimensions, somehow always using lobsters in his analogies.

At nearly every rest stop in America, you will find a free coupon catalog called the Roomsaver.  Nothing beats going into a hotel lobby and asking for their best rate, and presenting a coupon for twenty dollars less.  If you are traveling with dogs, Red Roof Inn doesn’t charge you extra.  Go for the two double bed room.  One for you, and one for your dogs.

Drive a Japanese made car and save yourself some headache.

Always buy your smokes outside of a major metropolitan area, or be willing to pay twice as much.

Always try something you’ve never tried before, unless that thing is White Castle “Hamburgers”.  Actually, I guess even that is worth trying, just to say you survived it.  Those sliders are like skydiving, and by skydiving I mean disgusting and diarrhea inducing.

Every major metropolitan area has it’s own signature food that you can’t get anywhere else.  Some are harder to seek out than others, but it is nearly always worth the effort.

Bloomington, IN

Wiped out and weary from our time in Chicago, we headed southward to Bloomington, IN, where our friend Alexis and her big old brain were just finishing up a conference at the University of Indiana.

California kid convergence in the Heartland!

That first night the girls went out to check out Bloomington, and I more or less passed out as soon as I hit the bed.  Travel takes a lot out of you.  Eventually all the lost hours of sleep add up and you can no longer ignore them.  You need to stop and recharge your batteries.  Even Wendy was feeling it.

Next morning, feeling rested and fresh, we headed to the outskirts of town.  Veronica was on a mission…  Find some salamanders.  Identify them.  Declare them cute.

 

My little science nerd wife was in seventh heaven.

After some food and walking around town, including the beautiful campus of the University and more pictures of me posing conversing with bronze statuary, we ended up back at the hotel bar.  Both fortunately and unfortunately, they had some amazing drink specials.  Not to mention a busboy who looked uncannily like Antonio Banderas with a Moe from the Three Stooges haircut.  It was a bad scene after Veronica brought this to my attention, because every time he passed by, I would burst out laughing.

So we did that till the point came where I had to go back to the room and put myself to sleep.  Veronica and Alexis stayed out and got a ride with the bartender into town, and apparently had a swell time.

Next day we checked out, dropped Alexis off at her airport shuttle, and headed down the road.  The Rust Belt was up ahead, due Northeast.

Rust Belt

What the hell is wrong with this country, where decisions are made by a few people who for some sick reason want it ALL pull the rug out from under good modest people who play by the rules and don’t ask for anything more than simple dignity and fairness?  How did we get here?  How much is enough, how much money can one percent of people accumulate based on the honest work of others before they can afford to buy some scruples, some morality?

We’ve abandoned entire regions, regions made of families, human beings.

The plywood business is thriving throughout this country.  Homes sit empty, boarded up to deteriorate while people freeze in alleyways.

It’s all going to get worse, way worse.

And the poor people of America get out in the streets and rally behind the rich, they demand we don’t raise the taxes of the top one percent, that we don’t provide the poor with the dignity of access to healthcare that isn’t doled out by ruthless heartless soul-crushing corporate swine.  It’s a trick that even the devil himself would envy.

This sick slick version of capitalism that results in the already insanely wealthy getting ever more rich at the expense of nearly everyone is inevitable.  People with scruples and modesty can’t compete with people without scruples and endless hubris.

It’s all in Adam and Eve.  The archetypal original people were given paradise, but decided they could do better.

All I want, all every poor person wants, is to have dignity in their poverty.  To be valued for what they can contribute.  To have the slightest semblance of stability in their circumstances.  But apparently we can’t have that, because the bastards that run the show can’t make due with everything.

All I really want is to contribute some good to the world, to do something of value without having to take anything from anyone else, and if I’m to believe in what this society tells me, that makes me a sucker.  A loser.

***

I still hope we can find our way, our place, amidst this cancer that has seeped into the marrow of America.  But I’m beginning to fear that in order to do so I’m going to have to write my name on a contract drafted by a bank that is designed to ruin me.  Because even though I know better, I still want more than anything to play by the rules.  But that’s a fatal mistake, because the people who define the rules aren’t bound by them.

Make no mistake.  This here, much more than the monuments, the landscapes, and the rhetoric is what defines America.  It’s a bummer, but I’d be lying if I didn’t mention it.

Chicago, IL – Pt. 2

It feels like forever ago, which means it’s high time to commit this city to the journal.

Driving in to Chicago was a bit surreal for a couple of small town California kids.  It’s a gigantic metropolis, factories and high rises and freeways sprawling over miles of fog covered concrete and stone.  I wasn’t expecting to be able to park very easily once we got to our destination, but getting off the freeway the reality confronted me that this particular city was actually just a network of neighborhoods with individual character.  There were trees and grass.  My intimidation ended then, and the fun began immediately when Patrick greeted us in front of his apartment complex.

Patrick is one of the best, Veronica’s old boss at the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange, and the drummer in my first and only band, the Gimmick?.  We seriously love the guy.  So when we saw him in the context of his home of three years, in the midst of Chicago instead of at one of our houses in Santa Cruz, it hit me how lucky we were to be out here in unknown territory with someone we love so much to show us the way.

Patrick had done some preparation for us by finding a place to board our brood, so after a walk around his decidedly Polish neighborhood, we took the dogs to what was to be their digs for the next few days.  It was a little weird for Vern and I, I admit, but we did it and it worked out great.

So what do we do first?  We go to a heavy metal themed burger joint, of course.  The music was loud, the burgers were all named after different metal bands, and they were absolutely delicious.  Mine had a danged fried egg on it.  Crazy!

Afterward, we headed to Patrick’s neighborhood bar, a very rustic spot where the proprietors spoke Polish and a dog and a cat laid around.  Patrick’s awesome girlfriend Leah came to meet us. An old Polish lady bought us all a shot from the old country that tasted like cherry cough syrup.  It was gross and delicious at the same time.  The bartender wore black leather and had a haircut like a feminine version of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

And it was damn cold.  I finally got to wear my down jacket.  Because, as I mentioned, it was Damn Cold.

Now with the fact that our camera ran out of juice, coupled with the intake of many frosty mugs of a beer called Old Style, my timeline is a little mixed up.  So I guess I should stipulate that the following all happened, but I can’t guarantee that the order is 100% accurate.

We went to Cole’s Bar, a place owned by Leah’s roommate where both Patrick and Leah work.  And we met lots of nice people and partied a bit.

In the day’s that followed:

Sites – Chicago Public Library, an incredibly ornate architectural wonder decorated from floor to ceiling with Tiffany glass mosaics, leaded glass domes and flawless white marble.  The site of the Haymarket affair, a flashpoint in America’s long and ugly history of labor versus capitalism.  Chicago’s lakefront, with an incredible view of the skyline, and a beautiful public space.  Millennium Park, featuring “the Bean”, a huge mirrored distorted sphere.  The gay district.  Etc.

Food – Vienna Beef hot dog factory and cafeteria, where we ate the amazing Chicago style hot dog at a table next to dude’s in hard hats and hairnets on their break from making tube shaped meats.  An ancient Italian deli where we ate absolutely incredible sandwiches.  Thin crust AND deep dish style pizza.  Hiburrito’s (sp?), a sandwich where plantain cakes were used instead of bread, to delightful results.Beers – Plenty

Our last night we went to Cole’s Bar again, as Patrick had arranged for he and I to play some tunes for old times sake.  I don’t really know if it went over well or not, as I drifted up into the air with no real connection to the room or anything but the music we were making, but it was a great exclamation point to put at the end of a great stay in one of the world’s most exciting cities with some of my favorite people.

After we finished up our short set, the DJ’s did their thing, and Patrick, Veronica, Leah and I danced the night away.  Vern and I met a dude named Sean, who was celebrating his birthday.  We bought him a drink and he told us some grisly stories about growing up in Chicago’s housing projects.  He was there with a gothic kid that was his “cousin” who claimed he was an actual vampire.  They were the strangest, most mismatched pair of people I’ve ever met.  But, as Veronica would say… “That’s Chicago!”

Chicago, IL – Pt. 1

Oh, dear lord.  How to do this city justice in pictures and words?  How do you capture a magical three days in one of the greatest cities on Earth with some of the best people in all of human history on a frickin’ blog?

Damn.  I don’t think I’m ready for this post yet.

Indianapolis, IN

Time change?  Weird red stain on our hotel room floor that the dogs wouldn’t go near?  Denny’s?

A lovely drive through Kentucky

N - “Kentucky… Unbridled spirit?  What a lame slogan!”

V - “Holy smokes!  A Nazi Indian statue!”

N - “Hey, cool!  Abe Lincoln’s birthplace!  Let’s check it out.  It’s only… about an hour out of the way.”

V - “It’s closed.  Fenced off.  Bummer.  Oh well, let’s get back on the road.”

N - “Better get some gas, though.  And I gotta use the bathroom.  You want anything?”

V – “No thanks.”

So I walk into the bathroom.  Start doing my deal.  Glance over at the wall.

***

Getting back in the car.  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Bubba in a camo thermal is giving us some weird looks from the gas pumps, talking to his pasty and tiny bespeckled compadre.

V - “Why, what’s up?”

N - “Just some graffiti I saw in there.”

I drive… away… fast.

And that, my friends, was our encounter with white supremacist bathroom graffiti.

Way to go, Nowheresville, Kentucky.  I’m sure Lincoln would be real proud of his boyhood home.