tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25079237036799422892024-03-05T00:05:26.827-08:00Cobras In AlaskaScotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-11502025342730149252015-11-01T17:39:00.000-08:002015-11-01T17:39:04.165-08:00The Power of the Vote
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“So. What do you want to do today?”</div>
<br />
We were back from Europe, but not back
to work. Visiting family in western New York, C and I found
ourselves alone one day with a rental car and time to explore.<br />
<br />
“I don't know. Here is a place," pointing to the website for Letchworth State Park, "that was voted
best state park in the... country?”<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Whoa. That must be some park.</i>
We packed the car and hit the road.</div>
<br />
Letchworth is not shy about advertising
its accolades. “Voted best in the nation” is the first thing you
see on the <a href="http://nysparks.com/parks/79/details.aspx" target="_blank">park's website</a>. The electorate? The
readers of U.S. Today, surely a discerning bunch of park
connoisseurs. They had, apparently, when faced with the entirety of
parks to be found across our fifty states, decided that Letchworth
was the hands down best. The “Grand Canyon of the East!” We
wondered: had we left ourselves enough time? Should we have looked
into changing our plane tickets, maybe re-jiggered our schedule to
allow a full-day? Two-days? A week to explore?<br />
<br />
We pulled into the park, paid our
day-use fee, and admired the trees. We came to a pull-off and
admired the view (a peak into a pretty typical eastern V-shaped
valley, a river running through it as rivers do). We drove the park
road, and admired the drive. Eventually, we parked, and walked on a
WPA era trail along the canyon rim to admire views of two waterfalls.<br />
<br />
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<br />
It was pretty, don't get me wrong, and
a pleasant way to spend a few hours. But best in the country?
Consider, for example, just those other state parks C and I visited
just between when we left New York and when we, regrettably, went
back to work. I submit to the readers of U.S. Today, for example,
Chugach State Park, right here in our back yard.<br />
<br />
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(C, running on the South Fork Eagle River trail, in one of the country's lesser state parks.)<br />
</div>
<br />
Or Snow Creek Canyon State Park where
we spent a few nights watching bats hunt bugs by dusk, listening to
owls and gazing at stars by night, and hiking across the Navajo
Sandstone by day.<br />
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(View from the campground in one of the country's inferior state parks.)</div>
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(Out for hike, thinking, "This place sucks. Where are the waterfalls?")<br />
</div>
Or Cathedral Gorge State Park in
Nevada, a surprise to us and, I imagine, most of the dozen or so
other visitors it gets a year.<br />
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(A morning run in one of the state park's that the readers of U.S. Today did not think worthy of attention.)</div>
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(C in the slot canyons of Cathedral Gorge State Park, thinking, "Well, it's nice, but it's no Letchworth.")</div>
<br />
And those are just the state parks we
saw in September this year. Really, readers of U.S. Today, what were
you thinking? The whole thing leaves me a little concerned, given we have a presidential election coming up next year.
<br />
<br />
[In the readers' defense, a <a href="http://www.10best.com/awards/travel/best-state-park/" target="_blank">closer look</a>
suggests that the readers were voting from a list of only 20 parks
that had been pre-selected by a panel of “experts.” To be fair, I suppose I
should be asking the experts what <u>they</u><span style="text-decoration: none;">
were thinking.]</span><br />
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-10551043969548377492015-10-31T16:48:00.002-07:002015-10-31T16:48:39.628-07:00Reading in the Lounge
Taking a three month leave of absence
is an extravagance. So we decided to pile extravagance atop
extravagance, cash in airline miles, and return to the States in
first class. I'm not going to write up the flight itself; if you are
really interested, you can find hundreds of hours of YouTube videos
documenting international first class on any airline you can imagine
(and some you had no idea existed). I will, however, note that the
experience taught me some things about the reading habits of the
international moneyed class.<br />
<br />
We were flying British Airways, which
granted us access to BA's first class lounge in Heathrow while
waiting for our connection. The lounge, as lounges do, stocked
newspapers and magazines to keep its guests entertained. I figured I
could find some kind of bike, ski, or outdoor magazine to flip
through, learn what the British are up to in the mountains. Or maybe
I'd pick up the Economist or Foreign Affairs, which would let me both
catch up on current events and put on airs for the benefit of the
other first class passengers.<br />
<br />
I ambled over to the magazines and took
a look around. Let's see... Baku Sport? The Polo Magazine? Who is
reading this stuff? Just who makes up the subscriber base for The
Caribbean Property Investor? I left the magazines where they lay,
deciding that wine flights at the bar sounded more fun.<br />
<br />
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-58470647863221201662015-10-10T12:54:00.000-07:002015-10-10T12:54:02.148-07:00Prague: Come for the Mont Blanc Pens, Stay for the Crowds
The world is full of “you should have
been here yesterday” destinations. Who wouldn't want to have
visited Arches National Park when the only infrastructure
was Edward Abbey's trailer and a dirt road? Run through Yosemite
Valley yelling at storms with John Muir? Had the opportunity to be
stabbed or beaten with a length of chain outside of CBGB
in the late seventies or early eighties? Near the top of this list
is Prague. The “yesterday” implied is soon after the velvet
revolution, after the fall of communism but before you could find Prada or a Mont Blanc pen for sale on every
corner, next to the postcards and t-shirts. No question but that Prague is chock-a-block with all that
travelers find romantic about Europe: winding cobblestone streets no
more than an arm-length in width that don't lead where you think they
ought—don't even head in the right direction—but that still
manage to drop you in a convivial cellar pub under arched ceilings
dating from the Crusades; the opportunity to see Mozart's Don Giovani
performed in the same theater where the opera premiered with Mozart
conducting (at the premier—I understand he couldn't make it to the
performance we saw); castles and churches; good beer. But these days
Prague also offers crowds: world-class crowds.<br />
<br />
We arrived at the train station and
took a series of trams to our Air B&B in the Mala Strana
neighborhood. The Air B&B is its own story... suffice to say we
survived and C never filed for divorce. We dropped our bags and
headed out for an introductory walk, turning uphill, no destination
in mind but pointed towards the castle complex which promised views
across the city. We were quickly stopped by a mother and daughter
pair.<br />
<br />
“Excuse me. Do you speak English?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, we do.”<br />
<br />
“Do you know where to find the Golden
Lane?”<br />
<br />
At this point, we hadn't really done
any research on Prague and did not have any sense of its tourist
draws. We had never heard of the Golden Lane, much less know
anything about its whereabouts.<br />
<br />
“No. We just got here and don't
really know our way around yet. Sorry.”<br />
<br />
“Ugh,” the mother muttered, before
turning to continue uphill. “Prague. Filled with everyone but
Czechs.”<br />
<br />
Her observation was not technically
true. In our search for a grocery store we later found neighborhoods
with what appeared to be actual locals. At least our cashier did
not automatically default to English when asking if we wanted our
receipt (which we did not), and in fact may have only spoken Czech. But at that moment, on our way to the
castle, it would have been hard to rebut her.<br />
<br />
We didn't go to the grocery store to
verify that real people with real daily needs actually lived in
Prague. We went to buy food. Despite our best efforts, we never
found a restaurant in Prague worth the trouble of showing up and
ordering, although we did find one that smelled strongly of the
sewer. Eating picnic style was ok, though, because the Czech grocery
stores were filled with delicious breads that became the foundation
for most of our meals. The Czech Republic is under ratted
as a bread baking country.
<br />
<br />
The stores were also filled with beer,
giving us the real suspicion that the Czechs might collectively have
a drinking problem. I was at first impressed that the Czechs deemed
it appropriate to sell beer in two-liter bottles. But does anyone
really need two-liter bottles by the six-pack? Apparently, yes. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita" target="_blank">Later research</a> confirmed that, indeed, the Czech Republic drinks the
most beer per capita of any other country by a significant margin.
I suppose it makes sense given the quality of the beer. And its
price. That six pack of two-liter bottles? It cost $10. But you
really should have been here back in 1990 when you could have taken
the whole package home for $2.<br />
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(Truly, only a small snapshot of the beer aisle.)</div>
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(These two proved there are two strategies for seeing the Charles Bridge without the crowds. First, set an alarm and get there for sunrise. Second, stay up all night drinking.)</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-7886450750821099352015-09-27T21:45:00.001-07:002015-09-27T21:45:39.520-07:00On the Lam.
Travel writing quickly becomes fiction.
Time passes, memory fades, but the pressure to publish and bring the
saga of my and C's three-month sabbatical to an end remains. Which
brings us to today, back in the United States, back in Anchorage
even, a little over a month out of the Czech Republic, and only now
filling in the blanks after Ceske Budejovice. To do so, I'll dig
into memory to tell the tale. I did not keep contemporaneous notes,
so I might have lost some of the details, but what follows is how I
remember it happening<br />
<br />
My arch-nemesis, Baron von
Kleidentragger, somehow discovered our presence in Ceske Budejovice
and dispatched an elite squadron of what he terms
Stormtroopers—likely named in reference to the Third Reich and not
the Star Wars trilogy—to find and capture C and I. Meanwhile, C
and I were ensconced deep within Budvarka Pivnice, having spent the
better part of four days drinking unfiltered Budweiser nonstop, when
we spotted the first pair of the Baron's soldiers marching past the
open door to the bar. The soldiers were on their way to our hotel
room, which we had not actually been back to after checking in,
having slept each night in pools of spilled beer and one random
gutter. The soldiers would not find us there.<br />
<br />
Relying on my years of training as an
elite espionage agent for Albemarle County, I willed all of the
accumulated alcohol out of my system, then willed all of the alcohol
out of C's system too. We needed all of our reflexes to react.
Clear headed, we assessed the situation, decided there were too many
of the Baron's troops to battle, and decided to flee. Chased by
Stormtroopers, it is only fitting we headed to Chateau Zbiroh.<br />
<br />
If you have heard of Chateau Zbiroh at
all you are probably either: a) Czech; or b) travelers like us who
were looking for somewhere to spend a day or two between Ceske
Budejoive and Prague and found a listing for the Chateau on
booking.com. The rooms cost a little more than we wanted to pay, but
how often do you get to stay in a Chateau? Besides, the website
advertised an underground swimming pool, and we had packed swim suits
all over Europe. It was time to put them to use.<br />
<br />
Chateau Zbiroh sits on the hill over
the town of Zbiroh, close to the train but only if you have a car.
Luckily the hotel sent a driver to pick us up at an additional
charge. We checked in and made our way to our room, which in an
earlier age probably housed a scullery maid. At our rate, we did not
get the grand rooms advertised on the website; we were stuck into the
servant quarters.
<br />
<br />
We took a tour of the Chateau (at an
extra charge), and tried to follow the tour narrative in an English
packet we were handed. The translation was not great, and it was
hard to follow. The place has a long history stretching back to
1193, and housed at least three emperors. There was also some strong
connection with the Knights Templar, but I never really understood
the details, if there were any. The Chateau keeps a bunch of Templar
artifacts in its museum, though, which made the whole thing feel like
a Dan Brown novel. Mucha lived in the museum for a number of years,
painting his Slav Epic in what is now the Mucha ballroom. He also
made the Chateau a seat for the Masons: more Dan Brown. Curiously,
we learned that the Masons (and Mucha) were instrumental in the
creation of Czechoslovakia as a nation.<br />
<br />
The Nazis occupied the Chateau during
the Second World War. Tour materials claimed that a large quartz
deposit (jasper) under the Chateau made it possible for Nazi
intelligence to intercept radio signals from all around the globe.
I'm vaguely familiar with the concept of quartz radios, but I have my
doubts about the technical accuracy of the story. As the Nazis were
departing the Chateau, probably in a hurry as Soviet armies moved in,
they dumped documents, weapons, and the bric-a-brac of military life
into the deepest well in Europe, conveniently located at the Chateau.
Some of those artifacts are on display as part of the Chateau
tour—rusty pistols mostly—and I suspect anything really
interesting was carted off.<br />
<br />
The well is also home to legend, as it
apparently has some kind of false floor or side wall that is wired
with explosives. People (which people, specifically, I'm not sure)
now speculate that the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” the Lost
Amber Room, is hidden behind these explosives. Our English tour
documents claimed that “even the American Discovery Channel”
could not figure out how to access whatever lies behind the false
floor. Is the Discovery Channel really the world expert here? Am I
really to believe that modern remote sensing or drilling technology
can't determine whether there is or isn't something of significance
to be unearthed? I suspect that the legend is more valuable to the
hotel as a continuing mystery than as a busted myth. We never got to
see the well itself. It is part of the outdoor tour, which was
canceled due to rain, and would have cost extra in any case.<br />
<br />
The hotel itself was fine, but
nickled-and-dimed its guests. That pool for instance? It cost $20
an hour. Tripadvisor reviews kept bringing up chained birds, and
indeed the hotel kept large birds of prey tethered on short leashes
to roosts out front for our entertainment. We could hear them crying
in the night. At least it sounded like crying to me. To the extent
the Chateau wants to seek international guests, many of whom, like
me, haven't seen animals kept like this since that sad zoo in
Alamogordo, New Mexico circa 1980, the Chateau may want to rethink
this attraction.<br />
<br />
Because we did not know what else to do
with out time, we took the hike into town for lunch and toured the
local museum. On the way back, we walked deeper into the woods. We
stopped at a barbed wire fence, blocking the entrance to a cement
bunker. It looked... institutional. Or maybe militarized. A crash
sounded in the woods behind us. C screamed. It turned our to be a
tree branch that let loose, falling to the ground. But clearly the
place had us on edge. It was not much of a stretch to think Nazi zombies were crashing through the woods. Time to move on. One step ahead of the Baron as
always.<br />
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(In the hall of the scullery maids.)</div>
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(The Zbiroh woods.)</div>
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(A picture of a picture of the Chateau.)</div>
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(View from the Chateau.)</div>
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(Entrance to the hotel. Ok, it is grander than the Motel 6.)</div>
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(So, if you saw this sign on a staircase, what would you do?)</div>
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(We followed this stairwell into darkness. Really. Then turned around and came back up. Wonder what was down there?)</div>
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(On the train, leaving Zbiroh.)</div>
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-14247566216516679402015-09-02T06:24:00.000-07:002015-09-02T06:24:14.042-07:00The King of Locks
C and I packed and prepared to leave
our hotel-that-was-not-entirely-sure-it-was-ready-to-be-a-hotel in
Ceske Budejovice a little after 8:00, early perhaps but well within
the usual ambit of business hours in the hospitality business. We
shouldered our bags, locked our room, went down two flights of stairs
and through a glass door that locked automatically on closing,
providing, I suppose, an extra measure of security for us, the only
guests. One last long and wide flight of wooden stairs, worn concave
in the center, took us to the ground floor, a covered hall separated
from the street by a wooden door, an interior courtyard by a
full-length and locked wrought iron gate, and the cafe/bar that
doubled as reception by a locked door with a piece of paper
suggesting—if we deciphered the Czech correctly—that the cafe was
closed. Not really a problem, though; we had prepaid for the room
and felt free to leave.<br />
<br />
“What should we do with the key?”<br />
<br />
“I don't know. Just leave it in the
room. I'm sure they'll find it.”<br />
<br />
“Ok.” I left my bags in the hall
and made the climb back upstairs for the last time. I put the keys
in the lock and left them there. No one was going to pass by to take
them, and the staff would find them soon enough. I headed back
downstairs. C and I again hefted the bags and headed to the street.<br />
<br />
The door heading outside was the sort
of thing that we, as tourists, find charming about the Old World:
weathered wood planks held together by iron bands, all secured to a
stone arch by six-inch hinges that would be at home in a Tolkein
novel. It is the sort of touch I might expect to find at a Disney
castle but that carries an aura of authenticity here where, well,
that is just what doors look like. C gave the handle a turn and a
tug, then looked down at the modern and solid looking deadbolt, an
apparent retrofit.<br />
<br />
“It's locked.”<br />
<br />
I turned to look back up at the
automatically locking glass door and thought about the set of keys I
had just left on the other side.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
We had pulled into Ceske Budejovice a
few days earlier after several hours on two trains, first traveling
with crowds through Austria, then traveling in a nearly empty train
through the woods, hills, and farms of the Czech Republic. After our
prior touch-and-go attempt to find lodging in Munich on the fly, we
had booked a room in advance. We had an address in hand and a map
thanks to our phones and an international data plan. The door on the
street under the right number appeared to lead to a cafe, and at the
time of our arrival six men and women were crowding the door trying
to muscle a four-foot tall safe of prodigious weight either into or
out of the building. We stood in front holding our bags and
whispering back and forth.<br />
<br />
“Is this it?”<br />
<br />
“I don't know. I guess so.”<br />
<br />
You might think if you were trying to
run a hotel and two befuddled foreigners speaking a foreign language
showed up with luggage, you might—assume? hope?—they were here
to part with some money and do their small part to make your business
viable. Perhaps you would smile and make sweeping motions with your
arms to show, regardless of the language barrier, that the strangers
should please enter the door and become customers. Not the case
here. After what felt like minutes but may have only been seconds of
standing around and feeling we were somehow in the way, we
interrupted to ask, “Hotel? Pension? Ano?”<br />
<br />
We got an affirmative sign, and decided
it was ok to walk up the plywood ramp that had appeared in order to
help in some undefined manner with moving the safe. We made our way
into the cafe where a young woman stood behind the counter.<br />
<br />
“Dobry den. Do you speak English?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, a very little.”<br />
<br />
“We have a reservation?” This we
phrased as much as a question as a statement of fact. It still was
not clear we were in the right place. But yes, we did have a
reservation, and yes, she was expecting us. The young woman read
from a small hand-written script in English that someone had left for
her (or that she had prepared in advance), explaining that payment
was due, describing how to get to the room, and noting that the key
she handed to us would open all three doors. Three doors. Got it.<br />
<br />
After unlocking two doors we settled
into our room and then took a walk to get our bearings. We climbed
the black tower for an overview of the town square. A bit unsure
after Bratislava of how to tell if a restaurant served food or bar
snacks, and tired from a day of travel, we took the safe but still
tasty option of sitting down for a pizza on the same square. And we
ordered our first pints of Budweiser.<br />
<br />
To the extent Ceske Budejovice has an
international reputation, it is known for its beer, which has been
brewed in the area since the 13<sup>th</sup> century. Two different
breweries have brewed and exported beer under the name Budweiser from
Ceske Budejovice, and both have been involved in a three-way trade
mark dispute with Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser here in the
United States. I have no idea what has become of the older Czech
brewery using the Budweiser name, but the more recent (since 1895,
almost 20 years later than Anheuser-Busch started using the Budweiser
name) has a strong presence throughout the Czech Republic. As a
result of the trade mark disputes, the American Budweiser can only be
sold in the European Union as “Bud,” and Czech Budweiser is
marketed as Czechvar in the U.S. The claims have, I think, all been
resolved or dismissed, and as I understand it agreements were at one
time reached whereby Anheuser-Busch (or, rather, its parent InBev)
agreed to market the Czech beer in the U.S. Presumably the parties
have kissed and made up, though the Czech brewery still asks “King
of beers?” with a smirk, confident with good reason that its beer
would win any blind tasting.<br />
<br />
As all tourists in Ceske Budejovice
must, we toured the brewery. A cute, young girl led our tour in
English. She had a heavy Slavic accent that (strictly as a matter
of insensitive cultural stereotype) was completely out of character
with her being a cute, young girl (but that was surely in character
with her being Czech). She made multiple references to the number of
“hectacres” of beer brewed (do they really measure beer by area
in the Czech Republic?), sounding like <a href="http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Crazy_Vaclav" target="_blank">Crazy Vaclav</a> and making C and
I snicker every time. Perhaps this is why Americans have a bad
reputation overseas.
<br />
<br />
Equating Ceske Budejovice solely with
its brewery tour, though, is selling the place short. We would have
liked to stay longer to further enjoy quiet nights on the square,
sample some wines in addition to the beers, and, perhaps most of all,
take day trips on foot and by bike on the trails in the region. But,
once again thanks to Munich, we had booked ahead in a town further
north and it was time to move on. Which is why we are up and packed
at 8:00, sitting on the worn steps in the entry hall to our hotel,
wondering when the cafe will open. Staring at the third door.<br />
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-63092196301483288022015-09-01T18:54:00.001-07:002015-09-01T18:54:45.113-07:00They Have a Different Word for Everything
And just like that, I have no idea what
is going on. Austrians may be impossible to understand, but at least
I can read their signs. But the Slovaks? They use our same
alphabet, but have decided on a whole different way of organizing the
letters. As a result, C and I found ourselves in Bratislava, hungry,
sitting down for a lunch of . . . braided cheese? A little research
after the fact suggests we decided on a bar for lunch with a menu of
“snacks to eat with beer.” I assume it is the equivalent of
traveling to New Jersey, deciding you feel peckish, and walking into an old-man-bar to
order a nice bowl of beer nuts for what is often in Europe the
largest meal of the day. But it was not a complete loss. The bar
had a large screen TV playing a video survey of the most important
women in pop music today, so I was totally brought up to speed on . .
. twerking? Or was that last year? Maybe I'm not as up to speed as
I'd hoped. I suppose the subtle flavors of braided cheese distracted
me from the many global cultural lessons being televised to a room
empty but for C and I.<br />
<br />
Bratislava was certainly a step further
east than Vienna. Like pretty much anywhere listed in a guide book,
the town came replete with old buildings, cobbled streets, and
postcard vendors. But here we for the first time intersected the web
of global backpacking routes, finding ourselves at the Tourist
Information office with someone shouldering a didgeridoo and someone
else traveling the world with juggling pins strapped to his Deuter,
perhaps how I would have packed for a trip some 30 years ago. We
were all scratching our heads, trying to get a lay on what there was
to do in the border regions of Slovakia.<br />
<br />
In our case we opted to visit the
Eastern European Center for Photography. Who would have thought we
would have to travel to Slovakia to be introduced to the work of the
Korean <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6euu3P7LyU" target="_blank">Dancing Photographer</a>? Sometimes I think I have an
understanding of and appreciation for what it means to be art. Then
I run across something like the Dancing Photographer and have to
throw all preconceptions out of the window: the defenestration of
understanding.<br />
<br />
“I work in contradictions. For
example, I named this piece 'The Skinny Pig.' Pigs are not skinny.
They are fat. So it should have been called 'The Fat Pig.' But I
did not call it 'The Fat Pig.' I called it 'The Skinny Pig.'”<br />
<br />
And therein lies the art.<br />
<br />
We are heading next to the Czech
Republic, where I am told they have found yet a third way to organize
and derive meaning from the letters in the Roman alphabet. I am also
told the Czechs know a thing or two about beer. So here is to hoping
that we learn how to read “cheese” and “beer snack” on any
menu we are handed.<br />
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(C looking dubious about lunch. She has the braided cheese. I've got blue cheese in a jar of pickled onions.)</div>
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(Bratislava street.)</div>
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(We needed to mail post cards. So was this place a post office or a bank? We weren't sure up until the moment that the clerk put stamps on and hand cancelled our mail.)</div>
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(Bratislava church.)</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-30678442196918806512015-08-22T08:10:00.000-07:002015-08-22T08:40:54.050-07:00Waltzing for CakeSo. Vienna. What have you taught us?
The importance of air conditioning (temperatures hovered just shy of
100 while we were there)? That an eissp<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ä</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">nner
and Sacher torte from some random cafe on Goldegg Road can cure all
ills, even those caused by route deviations, enormous crowds, and the
aforementioned heat? That Luciano Pavarotti holds the record for
number of curtain calls—165—a record set at the Vienna Opera
House? A little of all of the above?</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">We
spent four nights in Vienna, leaving the small town comforts of the
Bavarian Alps behind. On the way from Lenngries we had to connect
trains in Salzburg, so we decided to take a little walk through town,
dodging Sound of Music tours all the while. As tourists we did what
all tourists ultimately do in Salzburg: buy iced coffees at
Starbucks. There is no tradition of iced drinks in this part of the
world, much less iced coffees, unless you want your espresso poured over ice cream. Let's
face it, as delicious as that may be, sometimes you just want coffee.
And when it has been above 90 degrees for as long as you can
remember, sometimes you just want your coffee cold. So, Starbucks.
And churches. We also looked at churches.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">C
and I got to Vienna and were delighted—deeee lighted—to find
powerful and functional air conditioning in our hotel room. Our days
thereafter were spent alternately reviving under its soft caress and
pushing the limits of crowd and heat exhaustion in the outside world.
It turns out we were not the only people visiting Vienna in August.
This point was driven home with some force by the line to enter
Belvedere Palace, the lesser of Vienna's two major palace
attractions. Rather than gape at Hapsburg opulence, we turned tail
and ate cake and drank coffee instead. As cake and coffee are also
considered Viennese institutions, I figure it still counts. </span>Some
of the Hapsburg opulence was also on display at the Kunsthistorisches
Museum Wien, a museum where the structure itself could have been a
museum and still draw crowds even absent the D<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ürer,
Rembrandt, and Rubens. So we didn't miss out entirely.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We also got to do laundry, because sometimes you still have to do chores even in Austria. We packed our bags and headed to a laundromat near our hotel. Contrary to our expectations, there were no vending machines selling small packets of detergent. Many years ago, I was required to memorize a piece of dialogue for my high school German class, an exchange that was purportedly an advertisement for Blanco brand detergent. It was a stirring piece of a theatre: "Hi! How are you? You're looking good! But your laundry... that is a different story. It is gray and staying gray. You should try washing next time with Blanco. No washing detergent washes any whiter than Blanco!" Stirring enough that it has stuck with me for over 30 years. So I knew exactly how to say "detergent" in German. Because Austrians all understand German (even though speak with some crazy dialect that I can't decipher), I approached a woman to ask, "Is there a store nearby where we can buy detergent?"</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Detergent? You don't need detergent. It is in the machine."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
"The soap is in the machine?" I tried to clarify with some degree of disbelief.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Yes, it is all automatic."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sure we looked like some kind of yokel straight out of the closest hollow, mesmerized by big city technology, staring at the washer and elbowing each other in the ribs: "Hey! There's soap in them there machines!" But at least we didn't need to buy detergent. The washing machines actually weighed your clothes and used the correct amount of both water and soap depending on the weight. Pretty cool, actually. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I liked Vienna. But saying that feels a little like saying "I like chocolate." It is kind of a given, right? I just wish the Austrians spoke German in a manner I could understand.</div>
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(Salzburg church.)</div>
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(Salzburg window.)</div>
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(Salzburg iced coffee.)</div>
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(Vienna church.)</div>
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(View from our hotel window. These two were out there for hours every morning.)</div>
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(Vienna cake and coffee.)</div>
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(Vienna museum.)</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-44165871449086047202015-08-14T13:49:00.000-07:002015-08-14T13:49:59.188-07:00Check, please!
Nothing makes a United States citizen
abroad more anxious than uncertainty over how or when the check will
arrive after eating out in a restaurant. We as a country have come
to expect that soon after our plates are clear—or maybe before—the
bill will appear with a curt “Take your time,” an invitation that
is rarely made in earnest. We pony up, burp loudly, and move rapidly
home so as to not miss the season finale of the Bachelor.<br />
<br />
Not so elsewhere, where the expectation
seems to be that, as a diner, you will want to linger, converse,
digest, and perhaps if the mood strikes order a coffee or glass of
schnapps. How then, do you actually go about bringing the meal to an
end and settling the business of exchanging money for goods and
service received? Most of the time, it involves catching the
waiter's eye and simply asking for the check, although the whole
getting the waiter's attention piece of the dance can sometimes be a
challenge. I am convinced that at some places we have eaten, the
staff is involved in a bit of side action with money riding on who
can keep his or her customers seated the longest.<br />
<br />
I have always liked Mexico, where, as
here in Europe, it is required that you ask for the check, done in
Spanish with a brief, “La quinta, por favor.” In my experience,
without exception, this is greeted with a pause, a slight inward
gaze, an internal calculation, the tossing of hands in the air, and
the exclamation: “Ah! La quinta! Si, senor.” Unspoken, but
carried in subtext, is: “The check! What a great idea! I never
would have considered that, but now that you mention it I can think
of no better way to bring our time here together to a close. When I
return home tonight, I shall light a small candle to the Virgin of
Guadalupe in honor of your vision and courage! The check will arrive
momentarily, and I thank you for your wisdom!” Soon thereafter,
the bill arrives, I pony up, burp loudly, and move rapidly to my
hotel to catch whatever tele-novela is on that night.<br />
<br />
In Germany, I initially also asked for
the bill--”Die Rechnung, bitte”--but have started following the
lead of those around me and just saying we want to pay--”Wir wollen
bezahlen, bitte.” So I did recently at a beer garden in Lenngries,
a small resort town in the Bavarian Alps. The proprietor came over
with the ubiquitous leather wallet, used to make change in every
place with table service I have ever seen in Germany, settled the
bill, and then asked, “Where are you from.”<br />
<br />
“Alaska.”<br />
<br />
Tell someone you are from Alaska, and
you generally get one of two reactions. The first, and more common,
includes a widening of the eyes, a slow whistle, and a shake of the
head, all intended to let you know that you are crazy for living
somewhere so cold, notwithstanding that anywhere north of the Alps
probably gets as cold or colder than Anchorage over the course of a
winter. The second reaction also includes wide eyes and a slow
whistle, this time with a slight nod and various statements about how
badly the person speaking wants to go see the place. But the man in
Lenggries went off script.<br />
<br />
“Alaska? Really! You see my nephew
over there? The boy in the blue shirt?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.” Indeed, his nephew had just
earlier brought me a second beer.<br />
<br />
“He thought for sure you were French.
Hey! They aren't French! They're from Alaska!”<br />
<br />
The nephew walked over. “Really?
But the way you ordered a beer: 'May I have another beer, please.'
It sounded so French. Alaska, eh? What the hell are you doing in
Lenngries?”<br />
<br />
Now that was a good question.<br />
<br />
We had actually intended to be in
another town altogether. Once in Munich, a friend had sent a number
of tips for the Bavarian Alps, most involving stays at alpine huts
for which we couldn't quite figure out the logistics. But he also
sent a link to a hotel on a mountain lake that looked lovely,
particularly in contrast to the heat of Munich. C started looking
online, followed some links, declared the price south of
reasonable, and we decided it was time to head into the mountains. C
booked us into a room for a few nights—at a non-refundable rate.<br />
<br />
I started looking at train tickets,
which is when we started to realize that C had followed the wrong
link and booked us into a completely different hotel in a town we had
never heard of. As it turned out, though, the place we booked was
only a valley or two over, and the original hotel was priced
well north or reasonable and not a valid option after all. So, win-win. To Lenggries we
went.<br />
<br />
Lenngries is at the base of a ski hill,
that I gather is a rather large and popular winter destination, but
they also boasted summer fun, with, among other things, ski lifts to
alpine hikes. And, as luck would have it, Lenngries was hosting a
week-long traditional Bavarian alpine festival that started the day
we arrived. The festival appeared to draw crowds from neighboring
towns, but only a handful of other tourists. The tourists were all
immediately recognizable as the ones without lederhosen or dirndl
dresses. It turns out that traditional clothing isn't all kitsch in
these parts, but still gets worn by young and old when the occasion
calls for it. Brass bands played, the locals went on parade, and a
giant beer tent welcomed all.<br />
<br />
None of which, though, did I tell the
nephew. I just said it got hot in Munich and we decided to come to
the mountains for a few days. Then I burped, and C and I went back
to our hotel to watch Freiburg play in the Second Bundesliga match on
TV.<br />
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(Just, you know, out walking the dog and the kid in my lederhosen. That's just how we do here in Bavaria.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVivNfN6E00WSfo_mWpA_zbEpUUF7sl1jeW58q2cKXvReTxLrM8efzX-XIo0M0eW60TzcIx1oLUAEhvl6R526pX-Co_XRqSCugs3WRyFlY7EhWIEjYXE04LhbwhZUa_3l3emTLI2HX8CA/s1600/DSC_6912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVivNfN6E00WSfo_mWpA_zbEpUUF7sl1jeW58q2cKXvReTxLrM8efzX-XIo0M0eW60TzcIx1oLUAEhvl6R526pX-Co_XRqSCugs3WRyFlY7EhWIEjYXE04LhbwhZUa_3l3emTLI2HX8CA/s320/DSC_6912.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Follow the horses on parade at your own risk.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjExixOTknNfIRVFxCgMSXyOq7F1XkQuBfa-sp7JTlSeJLu0edcp2AoxVyQtx3CpmnXxafMLhVgXSldJ0qBAqWpr-kMUs2tQGJtJDpiXikJoVRDqFMu4KxP8VV0exco5GAdG311dfWwOUs/s1600/DSC_6952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjExixOTknNfIRVFxCgMSXyOq7F1XkQuBfa-sp7JTlSeJLu0edcp2AoxVyQtx3CpmnXxafMLhVgXSldJ0qBAqWpr-kMUs2tQGJtJDpiXikJoVRDqFMu4KxP8VV0exco5GAdG311dfWwOUs/s320/DSC_6952.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78ykvUy3X4S0FJ7BNbIZa8BMgGUJOhCVq7f2ZxvWfHp6b7tDmI6OzJITskzpw9LiHYhqwu4tGpAjX-HgfWdtctu3S1olQlqJl8RJbpNQKZG4Jy7AjAeBpOfXyZSaAbSn_6ik22x84iq8/s1600/DSC_7082.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78ykvUy3X4S0FJ7BNbIZa8BMgGUJOhCVq7f2ZxvWfHp6b7tDmI6OzJITskzpw9LiHYhqwu4tGpAjX-HgfWdtctu3S1olQlqJl8RJbpNQKZG4Jy7AjAeBpOfXyZSaAbSn_6ik22x84iq8/s320/DSC_7082.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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(Let us take a moment to recognize the real heroes of the Alpine Fest.)</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-74722137239540067422015-08-12T12:54:00.001-07:002015-08-12T12:54:27.960-07:00Orbital Cycles
A sure sign that you are over-nighting
with a scientist is that the evening's entertainment consists of a
glass of wine on the balcony, watching the International Space
Station interactive location map. We were waiting for the ISS to appear on
the horizon and pass in an arc across the sky only to disappear with a
promise to reappear in another 90 minutes or so. Frankly, the night
suited us well. But we nevertheless got pulled into the station's orbital wake and were
yanked from the quiet of Reutlingen and tossed to Munich.<br />
<br />
Our arrival into Munich was
inauspicious. We had not known when—or even if—we would be going
to Munich, so had not made any housing arrangements. We disembarked
at the hauptbahnhof, and wandered to the Tourist Info center to book
a room for the coming days, a strategy that had worked well for us in
the past in other cities. This being peak vacation time in southern Germany, the
lines were long, and we cued at the back. More people filtered in
behind. We could overhear conversations up at the counter.<br />
<br />
“Every room in our system is booked.”<br />
<br />
“But where will I stay?”<br />
<br />
“You can take this list of hotels in
Munich and try to call them, but there is nothing on our system and
nothing I can do.”<br />
<br />
C and I looked at one another and
decided there was no point in standing in line any longer. The man at the counter looked shell-shocked. We
stepped out of the TI office and into a Le Crobag at the train
station that had WiFi, deciding it would be more efficient to do some
searches online than take the TI's collection of phone numbers. It
was hot in Munich, way hotter than it had any right to be, and the Le
Crobag (like all of Munich) had no air conditioning. Across from us
a couple of (suspected) junkies nodded off to sleep, snapping awake
from time to time to scan the room with eyes that never seemed to
track one-another. Next to us sat two girls from Japan texting,
crowded by a man from Spain talking loudly on the phone who had, for
some reason, decided to forego the numerous empty seats for a seat at
the same table as the girls. It looked like their shoulders touched. The man
started to get agitated, speaking louder and unintelligibly into the
phone. At least he was unintelligible to me. Presumably, the
caller on the other end could make it out. But maybe not, which may
have led to the agitation in the first place. The girls got up and
left, but not as quickly as I would have expected. A pigeon wandered
in to join the fun, and I'm pretty sure one of the junkies tried to
score from it. We did not research hotels long and hard. There's a
hostel with space? Take it and let's get the hell out of here.<br />
<br />
Once in the hostel, we arranged an Air
B&B stay for the remaining nights in Munich, settled in, and
wondered what to do next. A guide book we are carrying in electronic
form—convenient for its weight but not particularly functional if
you actually want a guide—stated that Munich is a city of art and
beer, and I cannot really argue with that description. There was
plenty of both on offer. There was also stifling heat raining from
the skies in a relentless siege on all that is good and right on this
Earth. As such, we spent most of the time trying to keep C alive by
browsing shopping centers, the only buildings in all of Europe
(apparently) that were constructed or remodeled recently enough to
have included AC as part of the design. I looked at women's clothes.
I looked at kitchen wares. I saw shoes and scarves enough to fill a
lifetime. All in the name off keeping cool.<br />
<br />
Between sale racks, we learned a little
about Munich's history and its rise to wealth and prominence,
including its role in the rise of the Third Reich. We saw Satan's
footprint, preserved under the onion domes the Frauenkirche. We saw
a small fraction of the art available city-wide for viewing. And,
yes, we drank an even smaller fraction of the beer available for
consumption. But most importantly, we stopped to pay homage to a
great historical figure who changed the world with his message of
peace and declaration that Billie Jean was not, in fact, his lover,
spending the better part of two days in quiet meditation at the
Michael Jackson memorial.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6n_Oxs0WWxR8K8IITN-yj6QoRik4CV5gqeqLhnaRAcyyVH0xhnvsVnQ9BIHcbzTkodTkATJRFGk_3SLp2RPEeS2HVDBqkXQo7ySHD3lA3nGwgkbptgddWxpetkT430hj6Gq3352d2m00/s1600/DSC_6622.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6n_Oxs0WWxR8K8IITN-yj6QoRik4CV5gqeqLhnaRAcyyVH0xhnvsVnQ9BIHcbzTkodTkATJRFGk_3SLp2RPEeS2HVDBqkXQo7ySHD3lA3nGwgkbptgddWxpetkT430hj6Gq3352d2m00/s320/DSC_6622.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
Munich hovers near the top of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_liveable_cities" target="_blank">lists ofthe world's most liveable cities</a>.
It may be, but it is hard to judge under the twin oppressions of
crowds and heat. We only scratched the surface of the city's
museums, and could not fall into the city's rhythm on the tourist
trail. Rather than admire a high quality of life, we seemed to spend
our time trying to hydrate, cool down, and dodge rental luxury
vehicles driven by the monied visitors who seem to have come for the
high-end shopping on Maximillian Strasse rather than the collection
of ancient Greek sculpture in the Glyptothek. As such, we again cued
the ISS interactive map and grabbed hold on its next pass, letting it
pull us out of the urban and into the (hopefully) cooler Bavarian
alps.<br />
<br />
Some photos from Munich:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXZzxxQ7g4nIYNDqrgmK8xpGEvOZxhyAPvr7LezOuywi59B6cje50YG9MyDtHNtLsrevIW6EuD2ZLWfcA2n5VFTkWzsdEsLBoXjYBQiKktI83TccVszVSsJri8psPLdfRYP21wC6suLCc/s1600/DSC_6602-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXZzxxQ7g4nIYNDqrgmK8xpGEvOZxhyAPvr7LezOuywi59B6cje50YG9MyDtHNtLsrevIW6EuD2ZLWfcA2n5VFTkWzsdEsLBoXjYBQiKktI83TccVszVSsJri8psPLdfRYP21wC6suLCc/s320/DSC_6602-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(It is still called the "New" Town Hall, even though it was built in 1867. How does your town hall measure up?) </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQ-Odno6nMl9phUTaWiBaw0CBSusAM0xXWtp32wJl7pfXLN9qCdjL-T-56wSqCntnHuKVJ1iQMCgK365UyPP_ListZ3G4Eqn8nLdu4jqmd8MkqRKqb1MX55WYGdFtUlS_bQjrzU3b8F8/s1600/DSC_6606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQ-Odno6nMl9phUTaWiBaw0CBSusAM0xXWtp32wJl7pfXLN9qCdjL-T-56wSqCntnHuKVJ1iQMCgK365UyPP_ListZ3G4Eqn8nLdu4jqmd8MkqRKqb1MX55WYGdFtUlS_bQjrzU3b8F8/s320/DSC_6606.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(C... and crowds)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzE-LWWuaRdPqwkPQKX5qHDalalrMFOXK-HQiGF-sFhhi7YZO6FBp9c4MmczhFKFBZgKM-7F4Y7fwLAEZi3a2SGXtPe8TsFMkKFD15StntYo70fcVwYAthdFCO4Wh6YfBvlY3_lj3jPiQ/s1600/DSC_6616-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzE-LWWuaRdPqwkPQKX5qHDalalrMFOXK-HQiGF-sFhhi7YZO6FBp9c4MmczhFKFBZgKM-7F4Y7fwLAEZi3a2SGXtPe8TsFMkKFD15StntYo70fcVwYAthdFCO4Wh6YfBvlY3_lj3jPiQ/s320/DSC_6616-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Beer garden, quiet before the storm.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdb_bXYYnCIHtZ_EcoR8U4OqUrhKGBNt96GR34jh1q1o7kdoWs-JgzmIopF72YdN_2-BF1eiLkjyPrTKjsOUWwL55hNxLpEkPVCnn3ujrptenV9rDKn1cA7HU-jya5uGrhGZRX6zMgK8/s1600/DSC_6689-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdb_bXYYnCIHtZ_EcoR8U4OqUrhKGBNt96GR34jh1q1o7kdoWs-JgzmIopF72YdN_2-BF1eiLkjyPrTKjsOUWwL55hNxLpEkPVCnn3ujrptenV9rDKn1cA7HU-jya5uGrhGZRX6zMgK8/s320/DSC_6689-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(<u>The</u> iconic view of Munich, available on every post card.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9UuXvwxvaVqmNXJSpZFfVJ4E2IJL4Rk-RRjF2EZWv5Ub-U9osU3tbnObdhQNTn69Es6TxfBThwNCtBiZuIuuXh6Co6_3SjmZWePFJsDMr2fyCuRX-GiPfmuBGuyaDbHYkORvlbEGync/s1600/DSC_6710-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9UuXvwxvaVqmNXJSpZFfVJ4E2IJL4Rk-RRjF2EZWv5Ub-U9osU3tbnObdhQNTn69Es6TxfBThwNCtBiZuIuuXh6Co6_3SjmZWePFJsDMr2fyCuRX-GiPfmuBGuyaDbHYkORvlbEGync/s320/DSC_6710-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(The junkies we saw in the Le Crobag? Some picture I took after too many house in the heat? Our Air B&B host watching our every move from the shadows?)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqAZauZGytB2w34hENJO_mFvwohHUmP0NUsZU5YsrRTNuX5pHcVeRfM_oKslDcIgVtJVKTPXgWT6nR8CqIpU25guF2-Ok4mnOQXsRs63t0z2fFDpANBeL3RZ5kHBQ4hpWpIl_WPWCEQc/s1600/DSC_6725.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqAZauZGytB2w34hENJO_mFvwohHUmP0NUsZU5YsrRTNuX5pHcVeRfM_oKslDcIgVtJVKTPXgWT6nR8CqIpU25guF2-Ok4mnOQXsRs63t0z2fFDpANBeL3RZ5kHBQ4hpWpIl_WPWCEQc/s320/DSC_6725.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Munich has a surf scene. Really.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOzNoQtlHm4yLgUwR0wcLHf5TkXl1VmwNZES9igUEFnFCWQ5kOWa1IzG_s7FZvmcvmwh8UsTSK7Ac7Py5Ofrs6xdypF6gIW0vBUNfHqgwi2cC3QqQo4KWkuxeoX-8W92-SDVoj_yldNdY/s1600/DSC_6783.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOzNoQtlHm4yLgUwR0wcLHf5TkXl1VmwNZES9igUEFnFCWQ5kOWa1IzG_s7FZvmcvmwh8UsTSK7Ac7Py5Ofrs6xdypF6gIW0vBUNfHqgwi2cC3QqQo4KWkuxeoX-8W92-SDVoj_yldNdY/s320/DSC_6783.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Beating the heat.)</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-61663091525256335692015-08-06T12:45:00.000-07:002015-08-06T12:45:03.011-07:00Don't Start Asking Questions
You could do worse as a 15 and 17 year
old boy than to choose an all girls school in Germany to attend as an
exchange student. Of course, I never actually made the choice. That
decision was made by virtue of the school my high school, Albermarle
High School, partnered with as part of the German-American
Partnership Program, St. Ursula's School for Girls in Freiburg,
Germany. But still, all girls. So of course I went on exchange twice, both times for approximately a
month, staying with different families each time. Unfortunately, I
was an ill mannered youth who failed to keep in touch with his
hosts, which is too bad because we just passed through Freiburg and
it would have been fun to have friends on the ground.<br />
<br />
I did find the school, although it did
not look at all like I remember it. It wasn't even where I pictured
it relative to the rest of the city. There are two possibilities: 1)
the school has been renovated and/or moved; or 2) my memory is shit.
I'll leave it to you to guess which is the more likely.<br />
<br />
C and I met our good friend Tina in Freiburg, who had travelled over from France, and immediately went to the doctor's office. That is what
you do in a new town, right? To get to know the people? And the
culture? No? Well, it is what we did, but mostly because Tina's arm
was starting to blister and swell from an insect bite. The doctor
wrapped her up good and prescribed a steroid. So fortified, we
explored the town for two nights and one day before heading into the
countryside to stay with the family of a mutual friend from
Fairbanks.<br />
<br />
As we continue to make our way through
Germany, we've been puzzled by the volume of bottled water we (and
everyone else) consumes. Unlike other countries—the U.K.,
France—you cannot get tap water in restaurants. It is only served
sometimes (I've seen it twice) as a very small glass on request to
accompany espresso. I've seen no drinking fountains. Although the
water is safe to drink, everyone relies on bottles at home. No doubt
the bottled water tastes good, but all of the packaging and
transportation comes at an energy cost, even if the Germans reuse or
recycle all of the bottles. And in every other facet of life, the
Germans are fanatics about sustainability. It doesn't add up.<br />
<br />
I asked Margret, our friend in the
rural Black Forest, for her take, but I'm not sure she understood my point and I
didn't press the issue. Because the bottled water—from
springs—tastes better, has not been treated chemically, and has
minerals that are believed to be healthful, she equated drinking
bottled water as an extension of sustainability. Clean living =
clean environment. While there may be the perception of purity with
spring water, that seems to me independent of any question as to the energy costs of transportation. I wonder if the added energy costs are worth the
benefits.<br />
<br />
I raised the same question with another
friend we stayed with in Reutlingen, Olaf, a professor of ice physics
who I first met in Fairbanks. He understood my point, but didn't
have a good answer. He pointed out that most of the water is
transported a short distance—towns and regions have a “local”
water of choice. Germany has plenty of water. And, again, there is
the perception that the spring water is much better for you than tap.
At the end of the day, it seemed tradition trumped sustainability,
at least in this instance. Probably for the best. If you start
looking too hard at sustainability you start to question beer. I've
read that anywhere between 8 and 24 gallons of water is required per
<u>pint</u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> of beer once you
take into account water used to grow the ingredients, etc. And any
analysis that questions the reasonableness of beer, particularly as
we move east to Munich, is an analysis best swept under the rug.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzP5B54E2kno3ciWOsJHt1TIp2xfem4pk4Vvw42DM5yb9aHq5CzsgM9-Vf_nIBzoQpmDU-HCWu-Shlrl1Dxhz7Z2BzwhU6mcwNe4CNLi6x1SCNWD1joyWpXK4kdon3PscC2o4CSk1pkY/s1600/DSC_6383.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzP5B54E2kno3ciWOsJHt1TIp2xfem4pk4Vvw42DM5yb9aHq5CzsgM9-Vf_nIBzoQpmDU-HCWu-Shlrl1Dxhz7Z2BzwhU6mcwNe4CNLi6x1SCNWD1joyWpXK4kdon3PscC2o4CSk1pkY/s320/DSC_6383.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Seen in a shop in Freiburg, the REAL reason we come to Europe at all.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8ATCTnhso1JG3_KDl2XW43CQgmKeZGh7PsKQD1Dcy5Vn4m5UvTrGnPjo58EcFAp_okv6y6A7_hriCVuv2DJBIP8iOn5IARzOgmXtMFCM8zlr03K1ytAMia6gZqcJEW-fNus02oTkXQg/s1600/DSC_6439-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8ATCTnhso1JG3_KDl2XW43CQgmKeZGh7PsKQD1Dcy5Vn4m5UvTrGnPjo58EcFAp_okv6y6A7_hriCVuv2DJBIP8iOn5IARzOgmXtMFCM8zlr03K1ytAMia6gZqcJEW-fNus02oTkXQg/s320/DSC_6439-Edit.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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(Freiburg Munster.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF95nIwQWMaPc5tqUIZmsv8r8VCFvthUMdonALNPNaKxoxiIgKS2x-uyiGhXCU0xplW33j0rBpKtLkQSQY6mdY99kZvJ4p9pRwdRuSDNyPlKdV0nRkibCNflqyK5LVTVpGwajURUsrdY/s1600/DSC_6452-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF95nIwQWMaPc5tqUIZmsv8r8VCFvthUMdonALNPNaKxoxiIgKS2x-uyiGhXCU0xplW33j0rBpKtLkQSQY6mdY99kZvJ4p9pRwdRuSDNyPlKdV0nRkibCNflqyK5LVTVpGwajURUsrdY/s320/DSC_6452-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Wall detail, Freiburg.)</div>
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(Wine detail, Freiburg.)</div>
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(Blogger detail, Freiburg.)</div>
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(Path through the Black Forest.)</div>
<span style="text-decoration: none;"></span><br />
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-31893360991288055722015-08-05T10:11:00.000-07:002015-08-06T11:35:28.221-07:00A Short Walk in the Vines (Mosel River, Part 2)When you travel with two sisters, you
never lack for interesting and topical conversation. I suppose it is
the shared experiences of youth coupled with shared genetics—no
need to bet a dollar on nature versus nurture when both are at play—that
allows sisters to talk for hours on all subjects with nuance and
eloquence.<br />
<br />
“Amaretto is almond. That drink was
hazelnut, so not amaretto.”<br />
<br />
“Right. Amaretto is almond
flavored.”<br />
<br />
“But you called it amaretto and not
hazelnut.”<br />
<br />
“Did not. You brought up amaretto,
not me.”<br />
<br />
“Did not.”<br />
<br />
“Did too.”<br />
<br />
And so on. Luckily we were on the
Mosel, and I had the landscape to suddenly distract me from the need
to weigh in on the amaretto or hazelnut debate (a debate that was
tabled by agreement).<br />
<br />
We choose the Mosel as a good place to
start the non-London European leg of our trip for a number of reason. We found
reasonable and affordable lodging for three. The towns looked rich
with half-timbered buildings and narrow alleyways that the locals
called “roads” and on which drivers still assumed they might fit
their cars as if by right, notwithstanding that the village predated
the internal combustion engine by some 1,000 years. And access to
hiking trails.<br />
<br />
A quick search online shows that the
Mosel is popular as a bike-touring destination, with bike trails
tracing the contours of the river on both banks. People ride from
town to town, camping or staying in hotels along the way. [As an
aside, camping on the Mosel appears to have little to do with what I
think of as camping, and much to do with large RV parks on which
people set up elaborate homes for the season.] Less discussed, at
least in English, are the hiking trails that dissect the hills. It
looked very easy to pick a town, walk until tired, then catch a train
or a bus and return to your starting destination. To facilitate, we
picked Cochem as a central location, a tourist town in the heart of
what most people characterize as the most beautiful segment of the
river.<br />
<br />
The plan worked well, although five
days was too short to really start to explore, particularly where we
also needed time to visit castles and sample wines. But we hiked to
Eller, up out of the river valley and through the region's
agriculture, coming to rest in a biergarten where we practiced the
fine German art of consuming coffee and cake and, for good measure,
beer. We hiked through vineyards and across shale slopes with signs
warning hikers of the need for good footwear and sure footedness. We
went up steep climbs and down loose descents, which we again finished
with a cup of coffee and cake on the deck of a guest house with a
Mosel river view. We hiked into a winemaker's garage, and drank a
glass of cold Riesling on a hot summer day, shaded by grape vines and
followed by runs through an impromptu water park constructed by
village kids with a faucet, a hose, and something with which to poke
holes in the hose. The Mosel was everything we hoped.<br />
<br />
Thereafter we shuttled to Frankfurt for
the sole purpose of putting C's sister on a plane. Her trip
through Europe came to an end a few days ago, and we miss her
guidance already. Unfortunately, though, the amaretto or hazelnut
debate never reached closure, and I now expect to hear about it at
family get-togethers for years to come.<br />
<br />
Some pictures from hiking on the Mosel:<br />
<br />
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<br />Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-7924225920388586482015-07-28T06:26:00.001-07:002015-07-28T06:26:51.929-07:00Always Room for Cake (Mosel River, Part 1)
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I noted last post that London was
something of a way point, a convenient entry to Europe thanks to
mileage ticket availability. It was also something of a
soft-landing, offering an easy transition to other cultures. I do
not say that because of the language, although a (mostly) shared set
of vocabulary and shared grammatical structure do ease the stress of
travel. Rather, I say it because of the bedding.</div>
<br />
A sure indication that you have arrived
in “real” Europe is the prevalence in bed rooms of triple-folded
feather comforters in lieu of sheets. I'm not sure what Germans have
against the simple bed sheet, but I have yet to find one in use. I
was first introduced to the comforter as an exchange student in 1987,
when I was shown my room and left to stare and wonder whether I was
supposed to sleep on, under, or in the damn thing. I climbed
underneath, afraid to unfold it to cover the full length of bed or
body, and as a result slept cold and fretful. I've since grown
bolder and decided that the blanket should be unfolded for use. I
now sleep with more than 2/3 body coverage, but such a heavy blanket
is of no use on warm nights when I would, nevertheless, appreciate a
thin sheet. I'm sure there is a reason to shun the sheet—Germans
are, after all, a practical people—but I have no idea what it might
be.<br />
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A second indication that we have left
the United Kingdom and landed on the Continent is the reintroduction
of the cigarette, something I've managed to all but forget about in
the normal course of my life. I cannot speak for the U.K. as a
whole, but tolerance for smoking in London seems to be on par with
that of the States. Public buildings, including pubs, are smoke
free, which is why, I suppose, there were always groups of bankers
huddled out front of the bars rather than inside. Germany, in
contrast, appears to abide smoking to a much greater degree. Our
hotel here in Cochem, for instance, bans smoking in the guest rooms,
but allows it in the lobby, permitting smoke to drift in thick clouds
up and into our room. This was not a problem until a group of
prolific smokers checked in. Their actual number is something close
to six, but the passion with which they practice their habit gives
the impression of a great host numbering in the thousands. We have
also been struck by the number of cigarette vending machines lining
the streets, date or production circa 1950. Somewhere Phillip Morris
is sitting back and smiling.</div>
<br />
Cochem is a small town on the Mosel
River, a tributary to the Rhein and a region renowned for an
altogether different vice than smoking. The Mosel has been a wine
producing region since the Romans introduced grapes in... Roman
times. Every little town seems to take a turn hosting a wine
festival throughout the pre-, mid-, and post-harvest season, and
Poltersdorf, a town 10 km upriver from Cochem, came up in the cue
during our visit. We rented bikes to go take in the scene.<br />
<br />
Wine at a wine festival is a
no-brainer, but cake? Poltersdorf offered cake in spades. The Brits
can keep their tea time, what with the funny sandwiches and fine
china. I'll take the German kaffee and kuchen any time. Poltersdorf
approached the German coffee and cake ritual like the Queen herself
was about to forego tea for hardier German fare, with cake after
cake, all made in neighborhood homes, presented in a buffet of
staggering depth and beauty. How do you choose? I found it best to
just guess, point, and to try and flirt with the Grandmothers of
Poltersdorf to the best of my limited German in order to try and eek
out an extra large slice.<br />
<br />
“I have no idea what that is, but I
would like a slice.”<br />
<br />
“The raspberry torte?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, it looks delicious.”<br />
<br />
“I made it myself.”<br />
<br />
“Well, then, I have no doubt but that
it is delicious.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, I hope, I hope!”<br />
<br />
Like an addict forced to chase uppers
with downers to maintain some kind of even-keel, we countered the
sugar and caffeine with wine. The wine choices, like the cake
before, were staggering too, and all sourced from the hills above
town, cheap, and delicious. But all things come at a price, and here
the toll was extracted by way of long-winded speeches from the
festival dignitaries—the mayor, the wine queen, Bacchus God of
Wine, visitors to the region being honored for 35- and 40-years of
continuous vacationing, people who may have just randomly picked up
the microphone. The Germans make a good cake, for sure, but also
make a drawn out speech.<br />
<br />
C's sister, M, who is traveling with us
during this part of our trip, recently had the misfortune of banging
her head to the point of drawing blood against Reno's bureaucracy in
her attempt to permit a series of local food events in her home town.
Among other things, she was required to submit a waste management
plan with details for size and number of trash containers. She was
therefore surprised to look around and find only a single trash can
at the Poltersdorf festival to handle all of the waste for the entire
festival crowd. But then a quick look at our table showed minimal
waste despite the gluttony we were demonstrating. Cake and coffee
were all served on tableware from people's homes, collected to be
washed and reused. All drinks came in returnable glass. All wine
was similarly served in glassware. In the U.S., the fest would have
been billed as a green triumph, with marketing proclaiming as much on
anything that would accept print. Here, it is simply the way things
are done. The Germans take sustainability seriously. At the end of
the day, we threw away a couple of napkins and screw tops, biked back
to Cochem in the rain, and settled under confusing comforters to
sleep, bringing to an end a successful day on the river.<br />
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(Looking down river at Cochem with its castle.)</div>
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(First stop at the Poltersdorf Weinfest: coffee and cake.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0pp5yP3Ya9xoWOnN9D9fLcOLP8jthW91wxMPW8gE5tPZCYWCJzbgKcIU7EfxtFCGvo1P2ZqlvRfjR1d_ym9b4fqqtMMAP4C74FcUzeXUl1Sh7XVIkiPwHYMzZRm43iw41jz5DQbcbFo/s1600/DSC_6092.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0pp5yP3Ya9xoWOnN9D9fLcOLP8jthW91wxMPW8gE5tPZCYWCJzbgKcIU7EfxtFCGvo1P2ZqlvRfjR1d_ym9b4fqqtMMAP4C74FcUzeXUl1Sh7XVIkiPwHYMzZRm43iw41jz5DQbcbFo/s320/DSC_6092.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Five short minutes later, we had devoured the cake, downed the coffee, and replaced the lot with sausages and wine.)</div>
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(Bacchus, on arrival and moments before he started his speech.) </div>
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-33177048502532130942015-07-25T07:37:00.003-07:002015-07-25T07:37:55.826-07:00A Soft Landing in London
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpR80G31TdPsZcLiNYNbUCmTb252L1dedvBc-qM55kN9RMauUL3LNZhxa1vKziKJ-3nIEAlO2o9TG4mEqzSaIMLbe2amzz_9JL7WTE2RJv_DL0oUEsn8vXbZtvCNwECHjlRuoNgChBcFA/s1600/DSC_3950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpR80G31TdPsZcLiNYNbUCmTb252L1dedvBc-qM55kN9RMauUL3LNZhxa1vKziKJ-3nIEAlO2o9TG4mEqzSaIMLbe2amzz_9JL7WTE2RJv_DL0oUEsn8vXbZtvCNwECHjlRuoNgChBcFA/s320/DSC_3950.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
After spending time lost in the warren
of tunnels that underlie Reno, Nevada, eating cave crickets and
subsisting on what ever water we could collect dripping from the
ceiling, we finally found an exit and emerged back into daylight.
C's family, delighted to once again breathe deep of fresh air and
satisfied that we would, in fact, all survive, insisted on joining
hands. Afraid that we would once again take a wrong turn and return
to the underground maze, C and I headed immediately to the airport to
seek safer ground in London. We brought C's sister with us for good
measure, and wished C's parents good luck.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
London was for us just a way point, not
a destination. It was a place with mileage ticket availability. But
you could do worse for arrival cities, and we took advantage by
staying three nights. Last time we were in London, I was on a work
trip with lodging provided. We stayed in Mayfair, in the heart of
some of the most expensive real estate in the world. This time, on
our own dime, we found lodging in the suburbs. It was less
convenient to the city, but much gentler on the budget. We stayed in
West Ealing, former home to a thriving film industry and current home
to a clutch of quality Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants.</div>
<br />
Our hotel is owned and operated by the
Fuller brewery, and accordingly came with ready access to a pub,
meaning we had available the finest view in all of London: a row of
tap handles.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB6q3BafI5ASstZFI71c8-lS1GV_DoLCd5YsGQRopkRZssplvLw-6RfTBN1_4uz_0bTB5dwit0uf0Ia9Mfq_x8MwrKc54PIbfAGO0foABZXF-Zxfh0Vu3zMm20NT1PcbT85oWlvqWXLvY/s1600/DSC_5814.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB6q3BafI5ASstZFI71c8-lS1GV_DoLCd5YsGQRopkRZssplvLw-6RfTBN1_4uz_0bTB5dwit0uf0Ia9Mfq_x8MwrKc54PIbfAGO0foABZXF-Zxfh0Vu3zMm20NT1PcbT85oWlvqWXLvY/s320/DSC_5814.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Somehow, though, C managed to pull me
away from the bar and we immersed ourselves in the tides of history.
No better place to do so than the British Museum, where the plunders
of colonial rule are on display. It turns out, we were not the only
people to visit the British Museum that day. The Egyptian galleries
were particularly popular.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9nIKEe8VU81GeXElmRcG6Fy7RIrmQ-0IR-yiBzjXqhhmjNni5NDsu0uVyjvwfXM4SzBTiHRZcVcedguH3-dOBdJc0I_yO-XTWVnNSK72XN1HiVpA8cW8clHxzZjMIOhFlbFl4yIaJvcY/s1600/DSC_5834.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9nIKEe8VU81GeXElmRcG6Fy7RIrmQ-0IR-yiBzjXqhhmjNni5NDsu0uVyjvwfXM4SzBTiHRZcVcedguH3-dOBdJc0I_yO-XTWVnNSK72XN1HiVpA8cW8clHxzZjMIOhFlbFl4yIaJvcY/s320/DSC_5834.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I lost track of many of the details,
but I'm pretty sure we also saw statues of British royalty, including
these nude depictions of King Henry VIII and Hamlet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinyZpaxtQX-8YgVD_Nx0utaM_Y9nXPPLdxkmkrmv63WywKW8L3jWK_EEFUuR6khjICmT6e_aUsDRQMIphIr40A2-eH1039nM-5lc2XmmsSnlgR_jHUgdhWONq_ZZgO1PWCzSe08N-G5ic/s1600/DSC_5851-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinyZpaxtQX-8YgVD_Nx0utaM_Y9nXPPLdxkmkrmv63WywKW8L3jWK_EEFUuR6khjICmT6e_aUsDRQMIphIr40A2-eH1039nM-5lc2XmmsSnlgR_jHUgdhWONq_ZZgO1PWCzSe08N-G5ic/s320/DSC_5851-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8l8t9XAQXTmDDz2tdhKkazza-Dk-haOmVIm_rbem3Q4J4oPyYPHuAXscO5gq7ugASXfN3f46sR_QoGWbCCsioeKuEPKeU3tT6hObjflRyjw5j8fXwUMP7jpKaVwiuzIhNVkDKft0iUyE/s1600/DSC_5852-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8l8t9XAQXTmDDz2tdhKkazza-Dk-haOmVIm_rbem3Q4J4oPyYPHuAXscO5gq7ugASXfN3f46sR_QoGWbCCsioeKuEPKeU3tT6hObjflRyjw5j8fXwUMP7jpKaVwiuzIhNVkDKft0iUyE/s320/DSC_5852-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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What's that you say? Henry VIII was
not renowned for his athletic physique or prowess with the discuss ? And Hamlet was Danish? And
fictional? Well, as noted, the details escape me. Suffice to say,
we saw many a fine butt cheek preserved in marble.
<br />
<br />
I won't say that we had had our fill of
bare butts. In fact, I'm not sure that such a limit exists. But our
time in London had nevertheless come to an end. Much like Reno hides danger in its many and varied subterranean tunnels, London threatens all with unpredictable giant marbles that tend to flatten anyone unlucky enough to be in their path. Having seen one too many small child lost, we decided it was time to leave, lest we fall victim too. Next stop: Cochem,
Germany, by way of four trains.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu3dVqOv66-JiXCkdRaOYI52IO-LIH2Z2f_M96LcT6ObSoX8g_1xAJn1rTxtxQ06RuI6rdpSWkVDO5LT9LoeWhyphenhyphen4VrCwp4EIdWn-xZ-5Npqi4Wxz9mGIPUZ7PD9Ig0WtwLP7h7D92KwZ4/s1600/DSC_5911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu3dVqOv66-JiXCkdRaOYI52IO-LIH2Z2f_M96LcT6ObSoX8g_1xAJn1rTxtxQ06RuI6rdpSWkVDO5LT9LoeWhyphenhyphen4VrCwp4EIdWn-xZ-5Npqi4Wxz9mGIPUZ7PD9Ig0WtwLP7h7D92KwZ4/s320/DSC_5911.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A few additional photos:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg539ExdED4EF1Ia7NOQP9EcpCo_7ZsWkkbKUKZ6CKDdqquPk8Luggmoffftp2bs01Rz6hdrUYTYMyW-hOrv38bRMd9qcT-oRY8et3hmFKuDiA5k31R_lIzFJFCiMSAEC6P5CXZv1fXThw/s1600/DSC_5803.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg539ExdED4EF1Ia7NOQP9EcpCo_7ZsWkkbKUKZ6CKDdqquPk8Luggmoffftp2bs01Rz6hdrUYTYMyW-hOrv38bRMd9qcT-oRY8et3hmFKuDiA5k31R_lIzFJFCiMSAEC6P5CXZv1fXThw/s320/DSC_5803.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhOy6W3F5nLBH0aZ4BLihnF-JwEWNSX-LXsjxZAUWWowwLuCpQXRgpEqDJQng3RZHE-_u0TypD1pno7sNtmiLjvgN5Q_Lpwel_nAx-PG48vaFbY7mtw_NHH1p5CZq-Z5DQ0sU53SGR_w/s1600/DSC_5853-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhOy6W3F5nLBH0aZ4BLihnF-JwEWNSX-LXsjxZAUWWowwLuCpQXRgpEqDJQng3RZHE-_u0TypD1pno7sNtmiLjvgN5Q_Lpwel_nAx-PG48vaFbY7mtw_NHH1p5CZq-Z5DQ0sU53SGR_w/s320/DSC_5853-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLTuejGkEKwuXpmeoNgOErxP72YhbHfTE0Uo3AMiUZFG8SEiRi6-snMCQJIOm1lKK8bqr_RCm7RunHatpIke8lY71EBq5W3xLyz0bHjYxt9rcc4U4U6i5exd2kSdfbzLS1LcQ-rJsOJc/s1600/DSC_5880-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLTuejGkEKwuXpmeoNgOErxP72YhbHfTE0Uo3AMiUZFG8SEiRi6-snMCQJIOm1lKK8bqr_RCm7RunHatpIke8lY71EBq5W3xLyz0bHjYxt9rcc4U4U6i5exd2kSdfbzLS1LcQ-rJsOJc/s320/DSC_5880-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNizYOBlTnfIdhq6TopzVRbukbCAllT4EfjZyT4Xi58oBM2TM1wcRnLdu9pEF1W81Jvq9Nkdr54zXK2YBWZtC-jsg_mEaa9uE7gCYRPoB-RHoZrNC_U0qqJzYrFzRgA_KYrqRBs_U7aEs/s1600/DSC_5892-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNizYOBlTnfIdhq6TopzVRbukbCAllT4EfjZyT4Xi58oBM2TM1wcRnLdu9pEF1W81Jvq9Nkdr54zXK2YBWZtC-jsg_mEaa9uE7gCYRPoB-RHoZrNC_U0qqJzYrFzRgA_KYrqRBs_U7aEs/s320/DSC_5892-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-30938116017611320952015-07-19T13:30:00.000-07:002015-07-19T13:30:00.253-07:00They Promised Me Cheese!
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In what appears to be becoming an
annual tradition, I once again signed up for and attended the Trail
Runner Magazine photo camp. Really, the decision to return as a
repeat offender was easy once I heard the camp this year was in Ouray, Colorado. After all, Ouray is the self-proclaimed “Switzerland of
America.” Clearly the camp would include cheese. And chocolate. And
cow bells. I'll travel any distance for cheese. I won't travel any
distance for chocolate or cow bells, but still considered both a
bonus.</div>
<br />
I should not have been surprised to
roll into Ouray and find neither cheese nor chocolate waiting, and
nary a cow to be seen. After all, a quick internet search shows that
both southeast Tennessee and the Black Hills of South Dakota have, at
various times, also been proclaimed the “Switzerland of America.”
Maybe the title doesn't carry as much weight as I thought.<br />
<br />
So while the camp did not offer
Alpenkase, the good people at Trail Runner did, once again, offer the
opportunity to shoot some world class athletes in a world class
setting. This year Adidas sent its sponsored athletes and shirts,
shoes, and other assorted schwag. As a result, I have become a
walking billboard for Adidas, which was, I suppose, the intent. Who
knew Adidas even had an ultra team or outdoors division? Maybe no
one, which again, may be why Adidas sponsored the camp.<br />
<br />
One of the campers, Jenn, was herself a
sponsored athlete, albeit sponsored by Patagonia. Hiking into Yankee
Boy Basin on the second morning to get shots in the alpine at
12,000', she remarked on the Adidas team camaraderie.<br />
<br />
“Holy shit, these guys look like they
actually like each other. They're nice to one another.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean.”<br />
<br />
“Like I was on a trip with a bunch of
the Patagonia climbers and they spent the whole trip trying to pee on
each other's tents."<br />
<br />
Well, then. Indeed, I did not see the
athletes pee at all, much less on anyone else's bedding. Which is
probably for the best as I'm not sure the magazine is looking for
pictures of athletes urinating.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I assume instead that the magazine is
looking for pictures of people running on trails, hence the title
banner that runs across the top of each issue. And we got trail
running pictures in spades. Twelve students attended this year, a
number of whom had and/or were developing careers as professionals.
I saw some incredible shots on people's laptops and projected during
after dinner critique sessions. To the extent you appreciate pretty
pictures, it will behoove you to seek out the photo camp issue,
scheduled, I think, for October. [And by “you”, I mean, of
course, “my Mom,” the sole continuing reader of this blog.]</div>
<br />
But three days came to an end, much too
fast in my opinion. I borrowed (and now covet) more high end glass. I
had the opportunity to experiment with off camera lighting. I got to
further practice and try to refine the art and science of capturing
motion. And once the scheduled shoots were wrapped and the athletes
gone, I packed my bags and prepared to leave as well. But not before
peeing on Jenn's van, just to make her feel at home.
<br />
<br />
[As with last year, you may note the absence of photos, which is odd for a blog post about a photo camp. But you'll just have to wait until the magazine comes out to get the goods. In the meantime, a teaser photo of Yankee Boy Basin follows. Just try to picture it with a runner in the foreground.]<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgumDrkah_0EgAn0zovc8eQaWhBKWm8cOsc9lE78sb2WlOSAA3rPjMZ_Kzc5hKwDAYjDPObu6QKu2A6FboN8Q_2B4QMLjAccKkNaVUr6h46ETtk3HWA-UJfwPd3mJyyg1T6jJSrxbYdz0c/s1600/Scott-4878.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgumDrkah_0EgAn0zovc8eQaWhBKWm8cOsc9lE78sb2WlOSAA3rPjMZ_Kzc5hKwDAYjDPObu6QKu2A6FboN8Q_2B4QMLjAccKkNaVUr6h46ETtk3HWA-UJfwPd3mJyyg1T6jJSrxbYdz0c/s320/Scott-4878.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplrbqlqca6-BqVWIinfaMFqFev2ffkYHivllg9PzR2IGy_TPU9Wnfn0OvXetJmCDWH5PGrDZVa94pdY5PI8JbqTd-AhtCc9F2WMDELHaRDJ_r77cWVEQ0ZJIXDKf5evYJgo33mYyIooA/s1600/Scott-4879.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplrbqlqca6-BqVWIinfaMFqFev2ffkYHivllg9PzR2IGy_TPU9Wnfn0OvXetJmCDWH5PGrDZVa94pdY5PI8JbqTd-AhtCc9F2WMDELHaRDJ_r77cWVEQ0ZJIXDKf5evYJgo33mYyIooA/s320/Scott-4879.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-59205854669933413222015-07-06T15:58:00.001-07:002015-07-06T15:58:14.343-07:00
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We recently came across a a cheap beer
made from adjuncts masquerading as a craft beer. Tired, hot, and
hungry, we had burritos in the car, a motel room where we planned to
eat them, and a drug store open across the parking lot. In the
coolers, a $3 six-pack of Big Flats beckoned. At that price, who did
Big Flats think it was fooling? But I still bought it. And the
taste? Think Schaefer, Black Label, Rainier. It was cold, though,
and went fine with take out Mexican following <a href="http://cobrasinalaska.blogspot.com/2015/06/melting-in-sun.html" target="_blank">a hike with the cactus</a>.
Everything has its place, even cheap beer.</div>
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<br />
C and I are starting our own
masquerade. We're pretending to be a man and woman of leisure. It
started last week, when we walked out of work, vowing never to
return, or, rather, not to return until three months had passed. We
went home and drank champagne. And then I went back to the office
the next day and put in another full day of work trying to tie up
loose ends.<br />
<br />
So, it was a slow start. But we filled
the day after that with chores at home, bread and wine at Crush, and
a flight out of state. Now we're decompressing in Reno, Nevada,
because any leave of absence should start in the Biggest Little City.
Later we leave for Europe. Sometime after that we come back from
Europe. Eventually, we return to the lives we left last week.<br />
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<br />
A Yosemite climber once recognized that
“<a href="http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=187908&tn=20" target="_blank">at either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class</a>.” I'm not sure which end we are aiming for, but
definitely hoping for leisure. We should have periodic updates here. In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes out for some Big Flats here in Reno. It should balance the champagne out, averaging us out somewhere in the middle of the social spectrum.<br />
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-22021342757186920832015-06-04T21:43:00.000-07:002015-06-04T21:43:01.454-07:00Melting in the Sun
<br />
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We get precious little real heat in
Anchorage. As a child from the desert, I sometimes miss it. So I
was pleased when, on a recent hike through Arizona's dirt, rock, and
cactus, the sun finally broke free from the dull gray clouds, typical
perhaps of Seattle but out of place here, and started to beat down
with the full intensity of noon. I performed a little ritual of
sun-worship, at least in my mind, that involved small offerings of
blood and sweat, and the deep drinking of sunshine through every
exposed pore. C, meanwhile, is a child of the subarctic. While I,
energized, surged, she flushed and felt faint. Somehow we both
forget that, on these occasional trips to the desert, C flirts with
death with each step whenever we leave the shade.</div>
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But it all worked out. We made it back
to the rental car and its air conditioning, and before long we were
wondering when we could do it again.</div>
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Its been awful quiet around here
lately. Things should pick up starting in July.</div>
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-43123133737285642722015-01-03T11:55:00.000-08:002015-01-03T11:55:53.890-08:00Nobody Walks in L.A.I have long harbored a classic outsider's understanding of Los Angeles, namely that the city includes the vast humanity packed between San Diego to the south and San Francisco to the north (without any particular consideration given to where the borders are drawn in between). Santa Monica? Malibu? Pasadena? Its all Los Angeles to me. Hell, I'd probably be willing to throw Santa Cruz into the mix. Maybe even San Jose. San Francisco has, after all, carved a more distinct and delineated identity into my psyche, extending only so far south as... Oakland? Over the years I've spent time in the greater Los Angeles area—family trips to visit friends in Torrance and Long Beach, lavish Indian dinners in Artesia and Pasadena, exploring the great heights of frozen daiquiri bars in Santa Monica, a wedding (my own) back in Long Beach—but I have spent little time in Los Angeles proper. Last December, with 14 hours on the ground at LAX, I decided it was time to get a taste of tinsel.<br /><br />Los Angeles (and here I mean both the literal Los Angeles and the broader collection of surrounding cities), while justifiably famous for its freeways and car-centered culture, has taken big leaps in public transportation infrastructure. It is pretty easy these days to find a “Los Angeles Without Wheels” article, coaching the tourist in use of the light rail system. At the advice of a long-time friend in Pasadena, I ignored these many transportation advances and took the bus anyway.<br /><br />I hit the tarmac at LAX shortly after 5:00 am., made my way to ground transportation, found the Fly Away bus, and settled in. That early on a Saturday, I did not settle for long. Some 30 minutes later, we pulled off the freeway, passed the neon glow of a strip club in what looked to be an otherwise desolate warehouse district, turned a corner and pulled up to Union Station, my destination. I may have been taking the bus, but my gateway to the city would still be the train station. First stop: tacos.<br /><br />Olvera Street probably bustles at peak hours, but is shuttered tight at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. Or mostly shuttered. Luckily one of the food vendors was open with steam rising from pots of broth and meat. Latinos are now the ethnic majority in Los Angeles, and my breakfast exchange was not so different from any exchange on past trips to Mexico: some pointing, my fumbling attempts at Spanish, a few smiles and nods, and before long the guy at the grill presents me with food and a cup of coffee. Perfect. Fuel for the walk.<br />
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The sun came up as I left Olvera Street with no destination in mind. I passed some of the landmarks—City Hall and the Gehry designed Disney Concert Hall—taking pictures and stopping to look at the L.A. Philharmonic concert schedule. Anyone up for the world premier of Gorecki's fourth symphony on the weekend on January 16? I ended up at the uphill station of the Angel's Flight funicular, a narrow gauge railway covering a city block and maybe 200 feet of vertical. The system was originally built in 1901, closed in 1969, and moved half a block south to its current location in1996. It is now closed again following a derailment in 2013. Luckily, a stairway paralleled the tracks, and dropped me down to the Grand Central Market and my second breakfast.<br />
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The Grand Central Market is a shrine to the hipster artisan foodie. An operating market since 1917, the space “has always reflected the changing population of downtown,” according to its website. Clearly the population of this portion of downtown has evolved then to include modern twenty-somethings intensely focused on all things artisanal. If it means that the good folks at Belcampo are willing to serve me tongue and eggs for my second breakfast, I'm all for it. The counter was not busy, and my server was chatty.<br /><br />“You live downtown?”<br /><br />“No, I'm pretty far from downtown. I just got in from Anchorage.”<br /><br />We cover the obvious follow-up, what brings you to town? what do you do? I respond with the facts, and, maybe because I am unlikely to ask the same in return—after all, I know what she does, she works at Belcampo—she continues unprompted. “I'm a dancer. I'm studying voice and dancing. I just do this,” sweeping her arm to indicate waitressing at a counter serving beef tongue, “you know, to pay the bills.”<br /><br />Ha! In town for a few short hours and I've already run across the stereotype Angeleno, an artist waiting tables. I learned she had an earlier life as a real estate broker doing commercial deals but was now following her muse. I wished her luck and moved on to an estate cold-brewed coffee from neighboring G&B Coffee to bring the meal to an end. I have no idea what arts my barista was pursuing on the side, but the safe money is always on acting in this town.<br />
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<br />I had planned to meet my friend at Unique L.A., a Christmas crafts market that is a bit more upscale—more style than craft—than the Christmas markets in Anchorage, but I had time to kill in the interim. I continued my walk, down Broadway and into the fashion district. The shop keepers all looked Egyptian, the signs advertised Italian suits, and the windows offered the best in toddler mariachi wear. A few blocks over and I was on the fringes of skid row. The good people leading the Underground Seattle tours will tell you the term originated in the Pacific Northwest, referring to roads originally used to skid logs and the camps that sprung up around them, but L.A.'s skid row is the visual archetype. L.A.'s homeless have created cities on these streets. I was a little uncomfortable, not so much in concern for my safety, but more so because it felt like being there by choice (albeit accidentally) subjected other's addictions, mental illnesses, and bad luck to zoo-like display. So I headed back to the fashion district before meeting my friend and exploring a very different slice of life at the Christmas market.<br />
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We later went to his house in Pasadena, leaving Los Angeles behind. And I ultimately did take L.A.'s light rail, making my way back to Union Station in order to again catch the bus to LAX. Traffic was worse later in the day, and the return trip—rail trip from Pasadena included—took 1:40. It makes the 15 minute ride to the airport in Anchorage seem enviable by comparison. We may not have Gorecki symphony premiers or tongue for breakfast (and I acknowledge that there are those who might not consider that a plus), but we do have quick access to flight, the kind of access that makes a day-trip to L.A. sound like a good idea. We'll have to wait, though, to see if I learned anything as a result of the trip. Let's hope next time someone tells me he is from Huntington Beach I don't respond by saying, “Oh, that's in L.A. right?”<br />
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<br />Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-26610181608954893072014-12-27T17:47:00.000-08:002014-12-27T17:47:17.998-08:00Top Ten Nude Celebrities of 2014Some of you may recall that I wrapped up 2013 with Cobras in Alaska's <a href="http://cobrasinalaska.blogspot.com/2013_12_01_archive.html" target="_blank">first annual top-ten list</a>. That post was a resounding success by any measure. Subjectively, it was quite easy to write. And objectively, it has proven to be a real driver of readership. For one, unlike most other posts, the 2013 top-ten list generated a comment (with a riveting film recommendation). And second, by titling the post the “The Top Ten Nude Celebrities of 2013,” I actually pulled in traffic. I've noted before that Google (our benevolent keepers here at Blogspot) provide analytics on the back-end, <a href="http://cobrasinalaska.blogspot.com/2014/05/top-tips-for-successful-blogging-career.html" target="_blank">though I have reason to doubt their accuracy</a>. Among other things, the analytics provide a list of search terms visitors to the site use to get here. That list is usually populated (if at all) by “cobrasinalaska,” suggesting that the only people navigating here through the popular search engine are doing so deliberately. But just this last month, the following showed up in the list: “topten nude blogspot.” Fantastic! I'm finally learning the important lessons of search engine optimization!<br /><br />So, building on last year's success, I am proud to present the second annual Cobras in Alaska year end top ten list, which once again has nothing to do with nude celebrities. I once again hope the list proves helpful to each of you as you either map out the details of the coming year or prepare to let chance again dictate your fate.<br />
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<ol>
<li>Szechuan peppercorns.</li>
<li>Dayton, Ohio.</li>
<li>Reality TV shows based on musk-ox.</li>
<li>Celebrating the pinnacle of modern pop-music by hosting a “Hits of 1984” dance party.</li>
<li>Columbus, Ohio.</li>
<li>Tibetan throat singers.</li>
<li>Voodoo.</li>
<li>Celebrating the pinnacle of modern film-making by hosting a “Hits of 1984” movie party.</li>
<li>Popcorn.</li>
<li>Clean teeth.</li>
</ol>
Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-19031680948603640782014-12-14T14:12:00.000-08:002014-12-14T14:12:33.140-08:00Mele KalikimakaHawaii has a good PR department. Really, though, how hard is it to sell the place? Tropical weather and beaches, volcanic geomorphology, sunrises with coffee, sunsets with Mai-tais... it is not hard to find a positive spin. I would guess that the Hawaii travel bureau writers have one of the world's easier jobs. But do you know what you don't read much about? The public showers at Ala Moana State Park.<br />
<br />We spent Thanksgiving with a motley collection of family, sharing a house in Kailua, Oahu, living easy. Nothing much to report, just food, drink, good company, warm weather, and salt water. But due to a change in our flight schedule, C and I ended up with an extra day to kill at the tail end of the trip. Homeless for the day, we made our way to Honolulu, ultimately claiming space on the sand at the Ala Moana State Park beach because, well, you have to get your fill of heat and sun and salt while you can. A day at the beach, however, means sand stuck to sunscreen and sweat, a grim combination when staring down the barrel of a red-eyed flight back home. But no worries, we thought, public showers offered a chance to legitimately bathe, change, and fly home in comfort.<br /><br />Satiated on the sand, we ambled to the showers with shampoo and soap. The space had a bench for changing, cinder block walls, stagnant water with other fluids floating (source best left unconsidered), ants, band-aids, hairballs, and two hooks offering space to hang your possessions, hoping against hope that you could keep your towel and clothes off of the floor. There were two shower heads, one at regular height, the other—designed for pets? for feet?--stuck out at thigh level. Guess which one was taken when I walked in?<br /><br />No problem, though. Disrobing without touching the ground required a complicated choreography, a dance that took some time to bring to completion, plenty of time for the other gentleman to finish. Or rather what should have been plenty of time. But this may have been his first shower this year. He was going to town with the scrubbing. Naked I had the choice of standing awkwardly watching the orgy of soap or turning to the ankle washer. Lesser of two evils, I tried to lather my hair and soap my body, scooping water in cupped hands to toss over my shoulders and head as needed. Half-bathed, I scurried back to my towel. There was no slow down of activity under the other shower-head, and he was re-lathering as I left.<br /><br />But at least he didn't talk to me. Next door, C wandered into a similar physical space. Both showers were open, but another woman was at the bench. C stepped up, starting getting out of her two-piece. The other lady exploded.<br /><br />“I would appreciate some privacy!”<br /><br />Privacy in a public shower in Hawaii's largest city? Unsure how to respond, C stammered. “I, um, will just be a minute.”<br /><br />“Don't look at me! This,” referring to her body, “is disgusting!”<br /><br />C, flustered, only half out of her bathing suit, scooted silently to the shower and rinsed. A quick pat-dry, then get the hell out of there. Best not to try and reason with the other woman.<br /><br />We walked back to the rental car, past the out-door showers on the beach which, in hind-sight, may have been the better option.<br /><br />A few pictures from the trip (but none of the showers):<br />
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Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-73320846215953934992014-11-05T21:37:00.001-08:002014-11-05T21:37:39.651-08:00ClubhouseWelcome to the Cobras in Alaska post-mid-term election analysis edition of the blog. The mid-terms are always exciting because no one shows up at the polls. Anything can happen once the votes are counted. I thought I would take this opportunity to run through the highlights in Alaska, like Representative Don Young proving, again, that you can insult an auditorium of high school students and still get swept back into office by a significant majority. Young effectively blamed the entire student body for the recent suicide of a classmate and “<a href="http://www.adn.com/article/20141021/young-rattles-wasilla-high-students-hurtful-remark-about-suicide" target="_blank">used profanity and started talking about bull sex when confronted with a question about same-sex marriage</a>.” It will take more than that for the good people of Alaska to turn him out of office. I suppose proving yourself immune to <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/pages/don-young-alaska-crew-most-corrupt-members-of-congress-2013" target="_blank">corruption investigations</a> gives a guy a certain amount of confidence when the vote count starts coming in. <br />
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Luckily, Alaska went on and made marijuana legal. Presumably the voters anticipated another Young term and thought it wise to provide legal access to a wider range of self-medication options. After hearing that the legalize it measure had passed, I decided to pull into the grocery store on the way home today from work. I wandered around the produce section looking for a selection of pot strains. It turns out that the grocery store isn't stocking weed, nor will they. What was the point of passing that measure again? <br />
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It looks like I missed posting in October, which suggests I should have lots to summarize. But sitting here now, I can't think of a thing. Except that I found the Hells Angels' club house. C was out of town, what was it? Late September? I ran a 10k, had a reasonably respectable result, and celebrated by going for a long walk through mid-town. Out on some side street, I walked by this:<br />
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I thought about taking some pictures, but something about the pole mounted surveillance cameras made me think that doing so would trigger the release of burly guys in denim intent on smashing my Nikon... or worse. So I just kept walking, finding the above picture on Google maps. Curious, I later conducted a search of the interwebs, learning that the building is “<a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/24/149988/alaska-militia-case-informant.html" target="_blank">fortified</a>” and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has been the safe house for drug deliveries. I guess it is just as well that I didn't knock and try to make friends. Think legal marijuana will cut into their profits? Hope they can continue to make rent. Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-79438133827267022792014-09-14T13:29:00.000-07:002014-09-14T13:31:36.021-07:00What Happens When Nothing HappensThis post is brought to you by two failures. First, a failure to get out of the house, and second a failure to find a narrative thread. As to the first failure, I expected to have some blog-fodder from the Alyeska Climbathon, an event that took place yesterday where participants have ten hours to ascend the North Face trail at Alyeska ski resort, a trail covering approximately 2,000 vertical feet over a little more than two miles. Racers climb the trail as many times as they can in the allotted time, taking the tram back to the base between each lap. I was signed up, and thought it sounded like a fun way to spend a day. But I woke up yesterday to steady rain and a forecast in Girdwood of more of the same. Driving 40 minutes south and slogging through run and mud all day sounded, well, less fun. So I stayed home.<br />
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At home, I took a stab at drafting a blog post on a trip we took to Nome, Alaska earlier this summer. But that just gave rise to the second failure. After typing for awhile, I thought I had a decent lede, though perhaps a bit long for a blog post:<br />
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<span style="color: blue;">A group of us had settled into the living room, although it was a separate room in name only, sharing floor space with the kitchen, dining room, and hall of a small house in Council, Alaska. Our host was in the kitchen, putting together lunch for the unexpected crowd. We were at the end of one of the three roads that spill out from Nome, Alaska, getting ready to eat thanks to L, an old colleague and friend of my father-in-law D. L was raised in Nome and, though she now lived elsewhere, was coincidently in the area over the same weekend as our trip. She had dinner plans in Council, some 70 miles outside of Nome, but, rural Alaska being what it is, felt free to invite us along. Our hosts, expecting three for dinner, came to have five extra bodies to feed. Of course, rural Alaska again being what it is, our host was another D's old friends and colleagues. And so we found ourselves in the midst of a reunion. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">With lunch preparations underway and the initial batch of memories calibrated for truth, we had settled alternately into couches, chairs, and on to the floor. L's reminiscences moved further back to growing up on Norton Sound in far west Alaska. “Oh, man! We ate fish every which way you can think. Baked fish, boiled fish, fried fish, dry smoked fish, wet smoked fish, stink fish, . . .”</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">“Wait. Stink fish?”</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">“Oh yea. Stink fish. It is where you put the fish head in a jar, bury it, and come back after it's gone rotten.”</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">I looked over my shoulder with some concern into the kitchen. Luckily the woman taking the reigns on lunch appeared to be slapping ground beef into patties. She had lived in Nome and Council for many years, but was originally from Nevada. At a glance, she looked to come from cultural stock likely to show up at a potluck with potato salad or deviled eggs. The risk of finding rotten fish on my plate appeared minimal. Relaxed again, I turned back to the group to find Lorena had moved on to fish eyeballs. “Pop 'um out of the fish and pop 'um into your mouth.” Those burgers were starting to smell pretty good.</span><br />
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But at the end of the day, I couldn't find a story to tell to tie together the disparate tales from the trip. So I scrapped the whole thing. Well, except for the bit above, which I copied here to make this whole post appear longer than it really is.<br />
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So, without sore legs and muddy shoes and without a story to tell about western Alaska, I'll rely on the old standby of posting pictures.<br />
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Nome:<br />
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<br />Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-8602126584313374072014-08-24T16:43:00.001-07:002014-08-24T16:43:11.307-07:00When the Lights Go Out on the EightiesI'm pretty sure the pop duo Hall & Oates is stalking me. They were stalking everyone in the early eighties, with hits spilling from any speaker loosely connected to a radio station. When the fickle fame cycle had run its course and pitched Hall & Oates into the void, I would have thought I was done with them for good. Then a few years ago I saw a ski-film clip featuring John Oates. He had parlayed all those gold-records into a house in Aspen with a recording studio in the basement and had become a ripping tele-skier. (I can't find the clip anywhere on the internet, but <a href="http://www.skinet.com/skiing/2008/11/haulin-oates-a-rock-star-starts-shredding" target="_blank">this 2008 article</a> talks about his skiing.) It looked like the guy spent his days skiing and nights playing music. <i>Huh. That dude made some good choices in life,</i> I thought, and assumed I was once again done with Hall & Oates.<br />
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Then I ran across the Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJiCUdLBxuI" target="_blank">van session cover</a> of “I can't go for that." The van sessions stuck me as a pretty clever way to market a band in the new digital world, and the Hall & Oates tune was good. I ran across Fitz and the Tantrums doing their song “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXVURtoAhsc" target="_blank">Money Grabber</a>” with Daryl Hall, which sort of clued me in that the whole Fitz sound was just an extension of the Hall & Oates Philly soul thing. I read about and found Daryl Hall's “Live from Daryl's House” show, where he basically just invites artists over to jam with a great backing band. The songs performed, which include a healthy sprinkling of old Hall & Oates tunes, are good. The Fitz clip above came from one of the Live from Daryl's House shows, though I didn't catch that at the time. Were the light-rock and r&b stylings of a long-forgotten band suddenly becoming relevant to me? And if they were, did that mean that I was losing all credibility as a punk and metal fan? And why were Hall & Oates suddenly everywhere?<br />
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And by everywhere, I really mean Anchorage, because on Thursday the paper reported that John Oates was performing a benefit show (raising money for the American Cancer Society) the following Saturday. This had gotten out of hand, and I figured the only way to put the Hall & Oates revival to bed was to go to the show. There were only three-hundred tickets available, but the show was not sold out when I checked. So, last night, C and I went to Chilkoot Charlie's to see what would happen.<br />
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What happened, it turned out, is that before John Oates came on stage Koots evacuated us from the building. A staff member appeared on stage and started talking with some animation into a dead mike. We ignored him. He moved to a live mike.<br />
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“Um, I need everyone to leave. Really. Through this exit.” Two emergency exit doors leading to the front parking lot were now open and daylight—still fifteen hours of daylight up here—penetrated the dark corners of the bar. “Technical difficulties and we need you to evacuate.”<br />
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People continued to ignore him.<br />
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“This needs to happen now. Start moving.” Nothing. “You can take your drinks with you.” Ah, there was the trigger. The room emptied.<br />
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I have no idea why we were evacuated in the first place, but when they let us back in all of the power was off. The facility started lighting candles, and so long as you had cash kept selling drinks. The woman next to us, two empty shot glasses and a full beer in front of her on the bar, was doing her part to keep the place in business. She wasn't too pleased with the turn of events. “I paid $100 [remember, this was a benefit] for this?!” she slurred to anyone in ear-shot. Everyone else seemed to be having a good time. <br />
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Eventually Koots fired up a generator to power some small PA and the amps, and put a lantern on the stage. John Oates and his band came out and started to play. Old songs and new. The guy was an entertainer straight through, telling stories between ripping guitar lines like ski lines in that film I saw many years ago. But I guess you don't make a multi-decade career out of music if you can't perform when called to. After the show, they auctioned off a couple of guitars to raise more money, the lights came back on as if on cue, and we came home.<br />
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Now, in the cold-light of day, I'm puttering around our place and humming "Maneater." It looks like the Hall & Oates haunting will continue after all.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-36647583866729679462014-07-28T21:24:00.000-07:002014-07-29T22:38:39.000-07:00Revisiting Recent Posts - Sounds, Reviews, and a Rigorous Quirk AnalysisLong time (or, frankly, brand new) readers may recall that C and I went to New Orleans last month. Or they may not. I forget most sentences I read before I reach the period, which makes comprehending a paragraph something of a struggle, and is why I pepper conversations about current events, literature, grocery lists, or anything else built upon the written word with a lot of strategic guess work. Which is to say I would not blame you for forgetting that I recently wrote at length on the Crescent City. In fact, I hardly remember doing so myself. But to jog your memory, I have two (maybe three) follow up items to cover related to that trip.<br />
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The first requires me to really stretch the capabilities of the internet and enter the brave new world of multimedia. Did you know you the internet is capable of transmitting sounds? Yeah, me neither, but it turns out that it is. I think it works a little like a record player, though I have yet to find the grooves. But in any case, this allows me to stretch my interests in <a href="http://cobrasinalaska.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-tale-of-two-cities.html" target="_blank">comparative urbanism</a> by offering a sonic comparison of the Louisiana urban and rural environments. To wit:<br />
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<u>Exhibit A</u>: Sounds, Royal Street, French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana.<br />
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<u>Exhibit B</u>: Sounds, field , Loyd Hall Plantation, middle of nowhere, Louisiana</div>
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Make of it what you will.<br />
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The second involves the power of user reviews. We stayed at a B&B in New Orleans and would not hesitate to return in the event we ever go back to the city. At our departure, the innkeeper came "hat in hand" (as he characterized it) and asked, if we were so inclined, if we would post a review of his establishment on one of the many internet sites dedicated to such things. As a small business relying in no small part on the tourist trade, it would seem their success ebbs and flows with their rankings. Sure, no problem. As stated, we enjoyed our stay, wished the inn great success, and were more than happy to do so.<br />
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Back home I drafted a review which C and I posted to both Trip Advisor and Yelp. I also posted a review for a restaurant in Natchez, Mississippi that I thought was fantastic--creative and well executed cocktails, delicious food, historic setting. However, I just checked and my Yelp reviews do not show up. Neither business has many reviews on Yelp (just seven total each), so it is not like my review has been lost in the crowd. Perhaps an algorithm quarantined them. A new user claiming to be based in Anchorage shows up and posts two 5-star reviews of places on the Mississippi, then disappears back into the river mists. Yelp probably thinks I'm a shill. For whatever reason, the reviews are invisible. So, I've decided to provide links here and my recommendation for good eats and good sleeps in the south:<br />
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<a href="http://www.labelleesplanade.com/" target="_blank">La Belle Esplanade</a>, (New Orleans B&B)<br />
<a href="http://kingstavernnatchez.com/" target="_blank">King's Tavern</a> (Natchez restaurant)<br />
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The value of my doing so is negligible; the vast majority of my blog readership was with me on the trip and already has a pretty good idea about the places. But I can't let Yelp keep me down.<br />
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The third item that will (finally) bring this now extended update to an end, wraps in Portland as well. I described in earlier blog posts observations in both cities: a devil--red suit, horns, palatable desire to doom souls to an eternity of damnation--biking the streets of New Orleans and waving with some vigor as he passed a church; and Darth Vader in a kilt, on a unicycle, playing the Star Wars theme on the bagpipes in Portland. But in the great quirkiness competition, I give the nod to New Orleans. In Portland, you get the sense that the weird is a bit affected. Darth Vader probably spent the last year learning the bag pipes and working on his unicycle balance for the sole purpose of taking it to the streets in order to out-quirk his neighbor. In New Orleans, you got the sense that the devil was just headed to work and may not have even known what he was wearing. Maybe it is the weight of all that sediment flushing out the Mississippi, but it seems the weird runs deep at the river's mouth.</div>
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<br />Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-84209475928517559672014-07-24T22:02:00.000-07:002014-07-24T22:06:45.792-07:00First the Wine, then the World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“Excuse me. Do you know where the food trucks are? The ones that were on the TV?” The woman—maybe in her seventies and put together for travel, all function and no fuss—stopped in front of me and C on the corner of Salmon and Park in downtown Portland, her head turning back and forth to stare down the cross streets, hoping to see a kimchi taco beacon guiding the way. The whole food truck thing was clearly getting out of hand. We knew where there were some trucks, a full city block full in fact, and were headed there ourselves, though I have no idea if they had ever been on the TV. We pointed her a few blocks further on, and then set off ourselves for bowls of meat and mole.<br />
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We lived in Portland eight years ago. Being on a student and minimum wage budget at the time, food trucks were a common enough dining option. There were a handful clustered on Third Avenue, a few with a permanent spot on Pioneer Square, and solitary operations that had staked territory on random corners. Now, there are thriving neighborhoods made up entirely of portable food, old parking lots entirely given over to kitchen-equipped panel vans, and tourists seemingly visiting the city for the sole purpose of eating from a paper plate while huddling underneath a tree. But then the proliferation of food trucks was not the only thing that had changed.<br />
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In the years since we have been gone, downtown has filled in a bit, developers have put up new buildings, the city has picked up new energy. It was still “Keep Portland Weird” weird—where else are you going to find Darth Vader in a kilt and on a unicycle playing the Star Wars theme song on bagpipes? But in between the unicycle and street punks, there were also hour-long waits for doughnuts and a whisky bar that calls itself a library and requires a membership to get in. And get this: memberships, which just give you access to the place so you can spend money on booze, start at $500 and are at capacity with a waiting list to join. I'm not sure that is a business model that would have succeeded in Portland eight years ago. But now there is more of everything: more money (apparently), more restaurants, more coffee, more stores, more visitors, and more public spaces devouring parking lots (which I support). So less parking, but more of everything else.<br />
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There were also thousands of people attending something called the World Domination Summit. When asked, a woman serving our coffee one morning explained that it was a conference for people to exchange strategies for dominating the world with their next BIG IDEA. I'm no expert, but it seems if you want to dominate the world the first step would be to not tell thousands of other people how to do it too. Rather than rub elbows with our soon-to-be overlords, we instead fled to the hills. <br />
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If you ask anyone from Portland what they like about the place, every time—absolutely every time—he or she will say that what makes Portland great is that it is one hour from the beach and one hour from the mountains. And it is. Mt. Hood towers over the city and tails south into the Oregon cascades, with world class wilderness escapes at the ready. The Oregon coast beckons to the west with sea stacks looming in the fog. But we opted instead to explore Oregon's agricultural assets, and found ourselves in the vineyards.<br />
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With wine in belly, we made our way back to town and to the
airport, a flight to catch. It was a quick trip, just a weekend tacked
onto a day of work, but long enough to make me first remember and then
miss some of the many benefits of Portland. Trail runs in Forest Park.
The Saturday Farmer's Market. Two-dollar hamburgers at Jake's. Ready
access to cheese. And, of course, that whole one-hour to the beach,
one-hour to the mountains thing. Downtown still smells like piss. But
then I suppose you have to have something to excite the senses of lost
tourists as they try to find those food trucks from the TV. Consider it
a street-level amuse bouche.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2507923703679942289.post-65318821115602382942014-06-22T22:15:00.001-07:002014-06-25T19:56:00.609-07:00New Orleans"Oh, we went to California once. We slept with the windows open. Can you imagine?" The woman paused, lost in the memory, staring out the window of the Canal Street streetcar as it rattled past faded businesses in the one-time commercial heart of the south. "Down here I seal the air conditioning in. I don't want to lose a drop of it."<br />
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I can't blame her. We were in New Orleans in late June, still weeks away from the smothering embrace of summer. But it was hot and no fooling. And indeed, part of our orientation at the bed and breakfast that was to be our home for five nights included the express instruction to leave doors and windows closed lest the proprietors find they are pumping cold air out to Esplanade Avenue, presumably at considerable expense. So we too slept with the windows shut. But we relished the heat at other times, let it slow us down and force a languid rhythm to the day, a rhythm perhaps common to the tropics but a bit foreign to us in Alaska.<br />
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We were in New Orleans with no agenda, meeting my parents for a chance to visit and catch up while seeing a new-to-us part of the world. We spent the first four nights in the city, then set off for a two-day road trip around the lower Mississippi river, poking about isolated sugar cane in Louisiana and antebellum homes in Natchez, Mississippi before returning to New Orleans for one more night. It was my first time in the area, and I'm wondering now how it took me so long to get there? And when do I get to go back?<br />
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If the quality of a place is measured by the number of "good mornings" heard, or passing conversations about the weather had, on any walk taken further than the bathroom, then the deep south wins. These people do friendly right. Likewise if the unit of measure is brass bands. New Orleans falls off the map entirely if the important factor is the quality of sidewalk repair and upkeep, but I'm not so sure that that matters to me. What does matter is food, and this place takes food seriously and does food well. Better than most. And as near as I can tell, food is the single most important factor in the average resident's day. After learning you are visiting, do the strangers you meet want to know what you did in their city? No, they want to know what you ate. "You had a po'boy yet? Where at? Parkway? Yeah? Now you liked you that po'boy." The final pronouncement made as fact. After all, there can be no question but you liked you a po'boy from Parkway. Our cab driver on the ride to the airport summed it up nicely: "Going home? Oh, you're going to miss the food!"<br />
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I'll miss the brass bands too. And Spanish moss. And the stories about union soldiers haunting homes to this day, standing guard over stains of their own blood that have worked into wooden flooring and cannot be removed. We saw the stains at a plantation near Cheneyville, Louisiana, though I couldn't tell you if they were really blood. We never saw doors open on their own or hear foot steps crossing empty rooms. But why muddy southern Gothic romance with observation?<br />
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New Orleans doesn't feel like any place else. It is the kind of town where you can look up to see a devil, red face paint and horns providing the finishing touch to a body suit and cape, commuting by bike, waving with vigor at three gentlemen exiting a church. I assume he was touring New Orleans' many houses of worship, but he may have just been on his way to dinner. We couldn't find a Starbucks (though we didn't really look). Unlike Anchorage, I can't imagine the city getting excited about news that an Olive Garden is coming to town. It was a refreshing change of pace.<br />
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And the pace is likely dictated by the heat. I'll miss the heat. And maybe I'll miss the fact that we were on vacation, which is always more fun than going to work. But definitely the heat. Because sometimes you need the sensation of skin crawling away from the sun's relentless push, wiping sweat off of your face, welcoming a sudden breeze and a shade-draped sidewalk providing unexpected relief. After all, we sleep with the windows sealed shut at home too, though it has nothing to do with air conditioning.<br />
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Some pictures and captions follow.<br />
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We hit the tourist high-points in New Orleans, like riding the St. Charles streetcar:<br />
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And visiting Jackson Square:<br />
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And having beignets at Café Du Monde:<br />
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And finding all of those neighborhoods that haven't succumbed to gentrification:<br />
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We watched the moon rise above the French Quarter:<br />
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And we drank absinthe, which apparently put me and C in a reflective state of mind:<br />
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Outside the city, we went exploring beyond the levies on the way to Loyd Hall Plantation and found a community built on 40 foot stilts and a rotting paddle wheel boat:<br />
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And we admired the Big Muddy in both Natchez and New Orleans:<br />
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But mostly we drank coffee and sat in our rooms admiring the art work:<br />
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Until next time.<br />
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<br />Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13178293630764129252noreply@blogger.com0