Tomorrow I fly to San Diego for Jester's 40th birthday party.
The odd thing is that the weather in Southern California is going to be overcast, cool, and rainy... whereas here in Central Washington it's clear, warm, and sunny skies.
I am having to dig out my coat, which is something I haven't had to wear here for weeks.
I am also updating my 11-inch MacBook Air, which is the best travel companion ever. Small, fast, light... if only my electric mixer was this easy to travel with.
Boy do I miss blogs.
I have an ongoing promise to myself that I won't go into work on the weekends until noon. Rarely do I keep that promise, because I'd rather intrude on my precious personal time than have to work until midnight on a a weekend.
This morning I actually managed to keep my promise to myself. And it's all Jack Fischl's fault. JACK is the reason that I didn't drag my sorry ass to work until 1:30...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back when blogging was a thing, I read a lot of blogs. Like seriously many. As in hundreds. At one point I was reading 362 blogs, 256 of which were personal blogs of interesting people with interesting things to say. I know this because I once mentioned it in a video...
A surprising number of these bloggers became friends that I still keep in contact with today... even though they have long-since given up on blogging. A few of them I manage to visit in person as I travel the earth. Most of them, however, I only manage to keep up with because of Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
It's not the same.
Twitter gives you 140 characters in which to express yourself. That's great for simple thoughts ("I went to the grocery store today"), but total shit for actual communication ("I went to the grocery store today and was attacked by a grizzly bear"). Wait, what? With blogging you'd probably get the whole grizzly bear story right down to the last detail. Now you get the bare minimum of details that always leave you hanging. If you're lucky, there might be a photo attached, but that's about it.
Facebook isn't much better. Sure you have more space to write, but most people don't use it. Twitter and text messaging has destroyed real personal storytelling forever. Instead you get meaningless updates about winning a trivia game or automated data dumps of how far somebody ran today or random links to random stuff... anything but the story of somebody's life.
Am I the only one who misses that?
Anyway...
This morning I was trying to come up with travel ideas that were off the beaten path yet affordable. Looking at my travel map, I noticed once again how Central and South America have barely been touched. This annoys me greatly, so I started poking around the internet for unique travel experiences in those regions. Eventually I landed on a site called Keteka, "Your gateway to authentic tours and activities in Latin America." And indeed they do have a variety of interesting "off the beaten path" tours that are reasonably priced.
After exploring the site for a bit, I happened to notice a section called "Stories from the Road" at the bottom of the page. The first link was "Jack's Blog."
And there went three hours of my life.
What a fascinating guy. He started a blog as a way to document his adventures in Panama with the Peace Corps, and his every entry is fantastic stuff. Entertaining stories about everything from daily life in the rainforest to battling bat poop. Suddenly I was sucked back into the world of blogs again, remembering how great it was to be an observer into somebody's life that's different from my own.
And that's the thing that makes blogging so wonderful... everybody has a life that's different from mine. Which means everybody's life is interesting to me, even though they may find it mundane.
Boy do I miss blogs.
Such a pity that telling your story and inviting people into your life is an artform that's dying out in favor of snippets of 140 characters or less.
Such is progress.
I guess.
So, if you want an awesome read from the glory days of blogging, Jack Fischl is your guy.
I recommend starting at the last page, which is the first page chronologically. Then on each subsequent page, you have to scroll to the bottom and read entries in reverse in order to keep moving forward. Confusing, I know, but it's worth the effort.
Here's the last (first) page of Jack's Blog.
And don't hate me for making you miss blogging. I still do this crap every day.
It suddenly occurs to me...
...every day is hump day at the Giza Plateau!
Happy Wednesday.
Home for a month.
Hopefully two.
I've started taking a couple months off during the winter because I really hate travel this time of year. I've spent the past two decades being trapped in airports because of snow and ice, and I'm just done with it. At least that's the plan.
Which is subject to change at any moment.
Unfortunately.
An early morning flight from Minneapolis back to Seattle.
Where Delta was kind enough to upgrade me to first class... so I guess today is the day the perks die, not last Wednesday after all. Still... again... it was good while it lasted.
After several delays out of Seattle, my flight finally boarded... but on a Weather Advisory... which means there's a chance we won't get to land, but will instead have to turn around and head back to Seattle if the weather is too bad.
Fortunately that never happened and I made it home just fine.
I guess that means the last trip of 2014 was a success. Plus I get to update my "States Visited Map"...
South Dakota and Nebraska make 49.
North Dakota is the only state I haven't visited yet.
I'll try to get that taken care of next year.
This morning I woke up early because I had stuff to accomplish.
I wasn't going to visit Eastern South Dakota without seeing The Corn Palace... and I wasn't going to visit Sioux Falls without seeing the replica of Michelangelo's David.
But first? Breakfast. Which was going to be the TWIN BING candy bar that I bought at the Sioux City Museum yesterday!
I say "was" because it turns out the "BING" in a TWIN BING bar is for BING CHERRY! Cherry being a flavor that I loathe. So... no breakfast for me!
The hour drive back to Sioux Falls was uneventful... except for the roadside billboards that keep popping up. Unlike Washington State which has banned billboards, in South Dakota they are very much alive. Half of them are telling people to visit the famous Wall Drug Store, which is odd because it's located five hours away. The other half? Well... anything you can think of, really.
One of the best billboards I saw was the one that said "EAT BEEF!" and had a photo of a steak on it with nothing more. Direct and to the point.
But my favorite billboard? The one that said "Eat Steak. Wear Furs. Keep Your Guns. The American Way." My biggest regret this trip is that I didn't pull over and take a photo of it. Lucky for me, a YouTuber caught it...
Still from a video by Dumbface Tour... you can watch their video here.
Stuff like this is hysterical in its idiocy. For me, the "American Way" is having the freedom to NOT eat steak... to NOT wear furs... to NOT have a gun. The American Way is not having to conform to some redneck's moronic ideal of what it means to be an "American." But whatever. Expression of stupid shit is also The American Way.
After blowing past Sioux Falls, I headed west on I-90 towards Mitchell, South Dakota... home of THE CORN PALACE!! I've wanted to visit this place after I first learned about it years ago. I mean, come on, it's a sports venue COVERED IN CORN! Every year the corn murals are different, but they all kind of look like this...
Photo from WikiMedia Commons by User Parkerdr
Unfortunately...
The Corn Palace is undergoing rennovations just now, so what I saw was this...
The building may be a mess, but the murals are still intact...
The inside is just as good...
And of course I crossed the street to visit the gift shop and meet Cornelius, the Corn Palace mascot...
Hopefully I'll get back one day when everything is put back together.
There was just enough time to head back to Sioux Falls and hunt down David before I had to be to the airport, so off I went.
Fortunately, he was pretty easy to find...
And off I go...
And so today I flew into Sioux Falls so I could rent a car and drive down to Sioux City... home to the latest US Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. It's nothing overly-fancy, but it does have some nice pieces of memorabilia and pretty good theming throughout.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...
As you can tell in that last photo, the hotel part and the casino part are two separate buildings. The hotel was the former Simmons Hardware Company Warehouse (which you can read about here)... then they plastered the casino building right up next to it. You can see that they used the original exterior wall as the new interior dividing wall when you use the rear entrance...
The lobby is beautiful and decorated nicely for the holidays...
Interestingly enough, the reception desk has a full bar behind it. I don't know that I've ever seen that before!
The rooms are great, but not terribly "Hard Rock." With the exception of a guitar painting and a strip of photos next to the toilet, there's just not much to distinguish this from a "regular" hotel room... albeit a very nice one...
Hallways are pretty mundane and memorabilia-free, except for the carpet and door art...
Memorabilia is fairly good once you get to the casino portion. Not so much on the casino floor, but all the way around it...
A shirt worn by Elvis Presley!
Not wanting to spend all my time in a casino (I'm not much of a gambler), I decided to head out into the city and see what museums could be found in walking distance from the Hard Rock. The first I ran across was the Sioux City Art Center... which is not an actual museum, but they do have a small collection. The building itself is one of their best works of art, however...
Much to their credit, they had a beautiful Dale Chihuly seaform vase in their collection...
And a series of paintings focusing on cornfields. I couldn't really tell if they were painted to be faded and tough to make out... or if they were badly faded from sun damage or something. Still interesting. Though I found it impossible to photograph them well...
Much to my surprise, they also have a Jackson Pollock on loan...
Not one of my favorites by him, but Polock's works are alway great to see in person... the way the paint layers up is an interesting effect that gets lost in photos.
From there I walked to the Sioux City Museum, which focuses on the history of (you guessed it) Sioux City...
There's a lot of history in a relatively small space... almost too much at times, because it gets so cluttered you don't know where to look...
A nice museum, really... and totally free (though you can make a donation).
After a while I decided to head back to the hotel... disappointed that both cities I visited bearing the name of the Great Sioux Nation didn't actually have a museum dedicated to the Native Americans which inhabited (and continue to inhabit) the region. A teepee and a few crafts in the City Museum were about it. Perhaps one of the Indian reservations would have a museum, but they're so scattered I wouldn't know where to begin looking. I've done some cursory Google searches and came up empty. Guess I need to find a book.
Oh... and I found this cool shot along the way...
Dinner was an interesting side journey.
Three days ago, Blogography reader "Omaha Carl" left this comment...
As always, just LOVE it when you share your travels.
If you ever get to fly-over country. i.e. the Omaha region, consider me for a guide, or at least for suggestions.
Carl Mann
(NOT the country singer from the 50s and 60s)
Smartass that I am, I replied with this...
I’ll be in flyover country day after tomorrow… see you then! :-)
It was a joke... but then I got to thinking about how Omaha couldn't be more than an hour-and-a-half south of Sioux City. So I Googled it and, sure enough, an hour and thirty-four minutes...
So... a couple emails later and I was off to Omaha for a terrific dinner with Carl...
If you're ever in Omaha, Anthony's makes a mean bowl of pasta (and it's way more than I could eat!). I'm just sad that I didn't have room to eat a salad with some Dorothy Lynch dressing (which is apparently a very Omaha thing to do given that it was invented in the city of St. Paul, due East of the city).
Thanks so much to Omaha Carl for the great evening!
Don't say it's over... because Bullet Sunday on Monday starts... now...
• 161! This evening I net up with two local bloggity internet friends, Chris & Kyle, for a visit to the Hard Rock Cafe Mall of America... which has been built into the middle of the USA's largest shopping complex. For a "new school" property, it's not bad. Certainly not as great as the former Minneapolis Hard Rock since it's a douchey hipster-lounge "new school" property... but at least there's some decent memorabilia to be found...
Oh... and the location is pretty good. Right next to the LEGO Store...
And that's Hard Rock property no. 161.
• SPACESHIP!
Thanks, Benny!
• Pub Night! After drinks at the Hard Rock, we headed to Ward 6 in St. Paul for dinner. I had the fried egg sammy (sans the bacon) and loved it. They actually put TWO fried eggs on there, which makes for an especially gooey delicious mess. Fantastic fries to boot. As if that wasn't enough, it was PUB QUIZ NIGHT! Our table was #1 for three of the four rounds, so we probably would have devastated the rest of the players... but we left before round 4 because it was taking really long to get through the questions. Still, great place for food if you're in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
• Thomas! This guy is genius...
While funny, am I the only one who thinks that this will one day lead to his death?
• UPS! This is too adorable...
Now I can't help but wonder if this kid will grow up to become an actual UPS driver.
• THANKS, OBAMA! Love him or hate him, this was pretty dang funny...
Cue the asshole brigade with cries of "Shouldn't he be running the country? And by 'running' I mean 'ruining"?!?"
And... tomorrow I'm in the air yet again, so I bid you goodnight!
The Plan was to fly out today since my work ended yesterday so I could have more time on my upcoming Hard Rock adventure. But to follow The Plan would cost four times the money than a hotel stay, so I'm instead flying out tomorrow morning. Early.
The rest of this entry should be prefaced with the understanding that cold Maine is cold. Very cold. Biting cold. Cold with a side of cold and a scoop of cold on top.
It's really f'in cold.
And it's Sunday in the off-season, so there's not much to do in Portland, Maine. Thus my incentive to go outside is not very high. So I didn't until the hotel kicked me out at noon. At which time I checked into my airport hotel, returned my rental car, then took a taxi back into the city because pizza and apple crumble was calling at Flatbread Company...
To say I love this restaurant is a gross understatement. The location is great. The atmosphere is great. The service is great. The beer selection is great. The food? Beyond great. Especially the desserts, which are worth a trip to Portland all by themselves.
Did I mention it's cold?
Yet I went wandering downtown anyway like the fool I am. Despite wearing a T-shirt, thermal henley, hoodie sweatshirt, and a coat, I was still freezing. But I wanted to get a shot of the fence with locks on it in daylight, so off I went...
To profess their undying, never-ending love, a couple will write their names on a lock, attach it to the fence, then throw away the key. I have no idea if you come back with a bolt-cutter if things don't work out, but it's a nice idea.
I decided to explore somewhere new this time around, and left the Old Port area for downtown. That's when I saw... MAINE LOBSTERMAN!
Sculpted for the New York 1939 World's Fair, this piece has an interesting history (which you can read about here). At first I thought that the guy was giving first aid to a lobster with a hurt claw, but that's apparently not the case at all...
He's actually "pegging" the poor thing... which is to say he's shoving a wooden peg in the claw joint so it can't be opened (so he can't pinch anybody). This practice has mostly been abandoned, and now they just wrap a plastic band around the claw. Still a bit cruel, but I'm guessing it's not as painful to the lobster. At least until he gets boiled alive.
As I was walking, I saw a really cool painting on the side of a building that was meant to mimic a giant blueprint being laid over the structure...
Just across the street is a giant postcard painting that's also pretty cool...
If you look closely, the "lighthouse" is actually a spray-can...
At this point I was so cold that I could barely move, so I called a taxi while taking a few last photos as the sun set...
And that was that.
Back to my airport hotel room where I can (hopefully) get a few hours sleep before my early morning flight.
I left Auburn at noon and was back in Portland by 1:00... just in time for lunch.
But first I had to spend a half hour scraping snow and ice off my rental car. This included the tires, which had frozen to the ground...
The Ford Focus I rented is a pile of crap for many reasons. Primary of which is the horrendous gas mileage. Driving the 80 miles to Auburn and back killed... I shit you not... A HALF-TANK OF GAS! As if this wasn't bad enough, the car is just awful design-wise. Massive, glaring blind spots. A driver console that has no place to put your mobile phone. Uncomfortable seats. Utterly shitty "Sync by Microsoft" computer system that's as intuitive as a nuclear reactor to control. And then you get to the outside where you have this fucking huge gap between the hood and the windshield that is so cavernous and deep that it's extremely difficult to dig all the snow out of it. Even if you have a brush, there are ridges in there that makes it much more trouble than it's worth...
No wonder everybody wants a foreign car... their designers actually think about shit like this.
But anyway...
For reasons completely unknown, Portland, Maine has some really excellent pizza restaurants. This is nice because it takes the edge off the misery you experience when visiting in the cold, snowy, wet, days of Winter. A place I had wanted to visit but never got around to last time I was here was OTTO Pizza...
They are kinda famous for their Butternut Squash, Ricotta & Cranberry pie...
Sounds weird, I know. But it is pretty wonderful. Creamy with subtle flavors that taste amazing together...
It's important to eat it while it's hot though. As soon as it gets cold the texture gets kind of rubbery and weird.
OTTO's itself is a nice enough place. Kind of eclectic in a rustic way. Service is pretty good too. The only thing I hated is that somewhere in the restaurant there's a piano that kids are, apparently, welcome to bang all over. This makes an ungodly racket that completely ruins the experience of eating here. And I cannot fathom why in the hell they allow it. They must know that it's irritating as fuck to listen to that shit... so why put your customers through the agony? Stupid.
After some various errands, it was my plan to get some sleep.
Or not.
I made the foolish mistake of checking my email only to find a problem that required me to head back out into the cold, snowy, raining, wet misery I had just escaped from. At least I was smart enough to bring my camera along with me. I didn't have it on my previous trip, and really wanted to take a shot of the Harbor Fish Market (which proved impossible with my iPhone). It's a beautiful building with amazing lighting that has a steady flow of customers pulling up all day...
From there I wandered around for a while to see if I could find anything else interesting to shoot...
I finished up my evening at my favorite restaurant in the city... Flatbread Company. I was still stuffed with OTTO pizza, so dinner was out of the question. But Flatbread Company makes some of the best desserts I've ever had, so I decided to try their Apple Crisp...
Not as jaw-dropping amazing as their wild blueberry desserts (which are out of season, darnit!), but still fantastic. Fortunately their chef is smart enough to know that RAISINS HAVE NO PLACE IN APPLE CRISP EVER!!! I frickin' hate it when somebody ruins a good apple crisp by dumping raisins in it. BLECH!
And now, at long last, that sleep I've been trying to chase down all day...
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