In light of our departure tomorrow (already!?) for New York City, an excerpt from a recent travel chat between Chase and I:
Chase: so the bus departs @ 7:30. it takes 2.5 to get [to Washington D.C.], then we need to find parking, call cab, get to the bus stop. I think we should leave by 4. we'd get to DC proper at 6:30 (if no traffic problems) -- and it would leave 45 minutes to call cab, get to stop (usually 20-25 minutes). It'll still be too close for comfort, but i think 4 is the latest we should leave
Tony: One thing: where's the bus stop?
Chase: downtown
Tony: because GMaps says the fastest way to DC is 2 hours and 50 minutes ... not 2.5.
Chase: oh shit
Tony: AHEM
Chase: hmmm...i always feel like it's just an hour and a half
Tony: I know you assume it's about 45 minutes to DC, but ...
"The storm is over" -- written on a truck in Nassau, Bahamas
In November, Katie and I went cruising for the first time, thanks to my cousin's choice of a destination wedding in Key West. We sailed on the Carnival Fantasy. Just more than a month later, I'm still looking to share 3 things connected to the trip -- the photos above (more on Facebook), some "cruise journal" excerpts, and the actual cruise journal itself, which was a custom made little book that I decided to use for the cruise and ended up having a lot of fun filling with little scraps and maps. More on that below. First, though, we go to the "fun ship" journal:
3:20 a.m. 11/12/10
Nassau Woke before the alarm, donned pants to receive the room service. Morning stretch. Prep for land.
Nassau is a schizophrenic little island. Pure touristy ham and cheese on many streets, but funky bustling little city just a block or two away. We dodged the hawkers of cab rides and braids to embark on a New York Times-inspired historical walking tour. We saw a church, government buildings (pink), the jail-turned-library, a fort, and a water tower. The trashy cars and lack of sidewalks defined our travels on foot.
I took many neat photos and enjoyed the "little things." Like the lettering of old signs and hand-painted signs and the red school children uniforms. I liked the wonky cars and the friendly waves between merchants that seemed to show that Bahamians really do love everyone.
12:08 a.m. 11/13/10
Freeport Our health is deteriorating after a night of little sleep and only sporadic naps to compensate. Our alcohol supply is diminished. My scruff is scruffier. We were off the boat by 10 a.m.
Freeport presents a tourist's nightmare of industrial overtones and a cruise ship pier far flung from island attractions. We probably enjoyed the container ships and oil refineries more than most.
2:20 a.m. 11/14/10
Key West Our best day off the boat and an even better one for newlyweds Chris and Joy. Fort Zachary Taylor State Park was an excellent beach wedding venue with a scenic vista and easy access to some clear, warm ocean water. I was happy to hike up my dress pants. We also shot two cool Polaroids with the rich blue backdrop. The wedding went off without a hitch. The reception lunch kept up the fantastic day on "Bone Island," as everything from the chips to the fritters and red snapper to key lime pie were superb.
10:56 p.m. 11/15/10
Home We're home now but still wobbling around as "cruise lag" continues to stump our brains. Our last fun day at sea was a lurching affair.
At dinner we ordered escargot, which Juan enjoyed and Dad tolerated. But it required a second round (chocolate-covered, we joked) to get Mom to try the little snail dudes. She said she'd be OK if they were like buttery sausage (Jaun's description) but balked quite a bit. Then she chewed and chewed on 'em.
My "Geek Book" One of our favorite bookmakers is erinzam, from whom we've bought a handful of creative little repurposed books and such, including one in which she used a 1955 Bowman baseball card for covers.
I decided last-minute to take along a geek book for the cruise, and it proved perfect for my pocket and easy to wrap up. Once back at home, I went wild one night trimming down our maps and receipts and business cards and doodles and notes so they'd also fit, and now the little book is bulging. This little project has me thinking of other things to be keeping in notebooks.
Philadelphia is the only major East Coast city I have yet to visit.
This past weekend I went to New York to visit with good friend Lauren Chester. Two days later, I huffed it up to Boston to spend a couple of days with Drew Allison.
My journey started after I boarded a Megabus from Washington D.C. to Manhattan. Six long hours, one of which was spent in the Lincoln Tunnel.
Lauren lives in Brooklyn in a cool little community seemingly populated by mid-sized dogs eager for pets. Getting off the subway and climbing the steps into the street was a shock. Parts of the neighborhood sit in total silence.
We ate Thai and people watched for the first night.
It was amazing. And, admittedly, I was swimming in Friedlander for the rest of the weekend. The photo exhibit really got me pulling my camera out a lot. I started noticing more reflections and really began to anticipate possible cool shots as people strolled down the street.
From there, Lauren and I made our way from the Upper East Side into Strand, a city bookstore that claims to have 18 miles of books inside. I found some cool stuff, but opted to save my money for a trip through SoHo and finally, Indian food at my favorite place to eat in New York, Panna II.
The best was yet to come.
As a special treat, Lauren and I went to a warehouse party in Sunset Park. Dubbed "Stranded in the Forbidden City", the party was packed with well over 1,200 creative types looking for ridiculous fun. Eight beers and one mixed drink into the night found both of us dancing with hundreds of others...excited about the silliness of it all.
Also at the party: sumo wrestling, a private circus, a jail, juggling, fire eating, fortune telling, tattoos (please read the comic behind us), tours and odd games.
We stumbled (literally) back to her place around 4 a.m. -- people were still streaming into the party. We were told it would go well into the morning.
The next day: Boston.
Drew and his girlfriend, Amy, were amazing hosts. Having moved recently from Cambridge to Brighton, I was the inaugural house guest. The setup of their place was great...and their record collection super impressive.
We crashed early that night, but only after an incredible dinner at The Publick House where I discovered I can actually like an IPA, so long as it's Belgian. Good stuff.
Amy and I ordered burgers. Drew got expensive mac 'n cheese. It was delicious.
We started at 11:42 a.m. in Cambridge at Boardwalk Cafe with a margarita and delicious plates of Mexican food(click the hand-drawn map for a larger version of the trip).
The next stop, perhaps the most refreshing, was at Charlie's Beer Garden (still in Cambridge) where we had Hoegaardens. You can find that on our list, along with other documents we kept for the journey.
We stopped in music venues, Chinatown, Little Italy and tourist central. We saw live statues, sailboats, more reflections and ate $1 hot dogs.
I think we actually became officially drunk once we reached Uniform. With a Golden Monkey and a Prima Pils in our stomachs, we moved on to the next spot: The Pour House for Newcastles and The Lower Depths for Stellas.
We met Amy and went to a bar near Fenway Park to eat chicken wings and finish out the bars with more Stellas.
Drew and I fell asleep on the train ride back to Brighton...and after one more Newcastle we crashed.
I woke up tipsy for my flight home.
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Since getting back, the week has been perfect. Really.
Tony and I worked on our third story in the saga of Kim Romero, an American woman who married an undocumented Mexican immigrant and then struggled to get him back into the country legally. Her story is pretty amazing. Check out the story and the video.
Finally, Tony and I went to Charlottesville last night and saw Dungen, who 'rocked our faces off.' The band, simply put, has complete control over their music. And between the old and new songs we heard I think we were pretty blown away. I really want the new album.
After a week of moving and shaking around, it'll be nice to settle in and chill out for a bit.
I was lucky enough to get the window seat on all my flights.
Some people close their window shades on the airplane, a phenomenon I've never quite understood. Leaving mine open, I caught a glimpse of the Mississippi River on the way to Phoenix and back. I saw barges, cattle, rectangular countryside, sand and the blinking red light on the wing of the plane at night.
Landing into the Phoenix airport (Sky Harbor (awesome)), it amazed me again to see just how much space the city encompasses. It takes about three-and-a-half hours to drive around its circumference. Stretch across a gridded canvas, the city streets reach far enough in the cardinal directions you lose sight of their ends in the haze.
I stayed with a (newly) Phoenician friend my first night and spent all of the next day talking with editors at the city's main newspaper.
Mark came to the city to pick me up and drive me down to Tucson (roughly two hours southeast), but before our trip we polished off some In-n-Out Burger – one of the great pillars of "out West."
It was my very first paid vacation, a concept I still have trouble wrapping my head around. I used the time wisely -- lounging, drinking, watching copious amounts of 30 Rock, eating omelets and desert driving.
I reconnected with editors (of whom I've grown quite fond), met some new ones and talked with Silliman for more than an hour via phone. I made a journalism decision that may greatly alter where my career goes next.
Mark and I left Tucson for Phoenix Friday evening. We listened to Wolf Parade and The Arcade Fire:
There's something about leaving a small place and plopping down in the middle of cosmopolitania. Just the change in pace -- hearing people all around you all the time -- it makes a major difference. I like it a lot.
Phoenix was different this time around. Younger, energized, hotter and more eye-catching. It's a real city, too young for its space and still growing into itself.
I landed in the Shenandoah Valley, back in Virginia, without regrets and ready to get back into my routine. On the drive home I blasted The Hives.
Thanks to a lightning strike, the six-story "King of Kings" statue (nicknamed "Touchdown" or "Butter" Jesus) visible from Interstate 75 is no more. The plastic foam and fiberglass structure burned the ground last night, leaving nothing but the steel frame.
Chase and I once enjoyed a McDonald's picnic on a bench next to the pool while returning to Hillsdale from Louisville in 2007, as members flocked to an evening service at Solid Rock Church. The pastor has said the church intends to resurrect the structure, which was erected in 2004 at a cost of $250,000.
UPDATE: Our alma mater's new Abraham Lincoln statue also weighed in with a $250,000 price tag. "Actual size" seems like a ripoff for that kind of money, so here's my suggestion: Touchtown Reagan emerging from Lake Winona, visible from Muddy Waters field. Any takers?
One of the best teachers who ever taught me -- still a friend to this day -- also introduced me to the idea, however well established, of the "cosmic triplet."
That new words or strange occurrences come in threes.
It's no great revelation, but I'm always on the lookout for such triplets and it always makes me think of that teacher.
So two weeks back the Shoebox Tour visited Charlottesville. World-traveling juggler Jay Gilligan, who I see about once a year, is a great resource for all things Sweden and Finland. That I knew.
But when I (we) asked where we should visit if we only get one trip to the Nordic region, he answered Iceland! without hesitation. Jay said it's the only place he's ever been that really feels like you're "somewhere else."
Icebergs and volcanoes and moss, he said.
He also described the Iceland ring road, which vaulted itself into my must-visit list. The 832-mile route circles the island and helps bring folks to many bizarre sites: a remote hut where a man made cement sculptures, a fjord where a disgruntled ship captain crashed the country's last iron ship, and the airplane house (I think that's it).
Jay also used a drinking straw to illustrate the typical rope barrier left on the ground at the side of cliffs to (barely) warn tourists of potential danger. "They probably put it there thinking some dumb German tourist could get hurt," he said, describing the rawness of Iceland.
Jay also shared thoughts on the fashions and America-hungry culture of Iceland. He said the country likes to whore itself out as well, which also surprised me. Apparently they have a habit of freezing a glacial lagoon so tools like James Bond can make films.
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of babies: God damn it, you've got to be kind. - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
We carried 'HELLO' in the left and 'BABIES' in the right; learned a new lingo and laid the good word of Vonnegut in a type with bite.
Mary Mashburn and Steve St. Angelo of Typecast Press in Baltimore helped me create an 11 x 17 letterpressed poster Saturday -- a birthday gift (with a trip) from Chase.
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"I'm upish," went my text message to Chase at 7:15 Saturday morning. He responded, I readied, and by 8 we were rolling for Baltimore -- bound for type and blight as we left blue ridges behind.
Interstate 95 carried us to the harbor town, where smokestacks and stadiums made for our first impressions. We flowed through the heart of downtown -- my navigation of course leading us onto a street of sin (oddly(?) located on the well-traveled namesake street of the city: E. Baltimore Street).
Residential streets meant row after row of rowhouses, differentiated across the city by brick and brightness, by broken windows and embellishments. Block after block, Chase squeezed us through streets piled high with snow. Dozens of chairs -- folding, rolling, plastic, and cracked -- saved shoveled parking spots.
We visited Atomic Books near the happenin' Hampden district (although we didn't know that 36th was the shit. Yet.)
Our first big-ticket destination was an exotic salvage warehouse on the city's southwest side. To get there, we lived out our Wire fantasy by rolling along North Avenue and Monroe Street in the Western District, where tacked teddy bears marked murders and second-floor windows were mostly broken if not already boarded. Hundreds of homes later -- and we're talking dense rowhouses -- the blight had barely subsided. It shocked me. Detroit? Charming place, next to Baltimore.
The booty at the end of our rundown rainbow was Housewerks, which behind gleaming barbed wire, greeted us with one of the largest mirrors ... ever left outdoors in the winter. A teeter totter later, we were inside one of the most arrestingly cool stockup spots we've ever seen. Beside the pirate ship-sized rope was a 40-foot freakshow banner. Stained-glass windows hang from the rafters, old metal letters above a fireplace mantel. A million-pound (or so) money safe lolled its door open. We bought the smallest items possible: a blue "walk" sign from a traffic signal, and a slew of small woodcut images for ink pads.
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Serendipity pushed our wandering toward South Baltimore, where we found at least one location recognizable from The Wire, season two: the mill where the stevedores worry about condominium revitalization. We looped through Locust Point, ate crab at LP Steamers, and watched the unloading of a Domino sugar ship.
Book Thing of Baltimore yielded 12 terrific books that might go toward Katie's projects. The great thing about Book Thing is you can take up to 180,000 books out for free per trip.
The crescendo of our travels came at Typecast Press, where despite a spongy 'K' and an 'N' a bit nicked, our frolicking among printing methods from days gone by led to an exceptional broadsheet.
Five hours can fly by when surrounded by nearly a dozen printing presses and drawers teeming with type. We could have spent days just marveling at the studio space. Instead, we worked diligently to set type, one letter at a time, while Mary shared stories of old pressmen and unbridled geeklove for the language of letterpress.
I've long dealt in picas and kerning, but never knew how literal "leading" could be. Strips of lead are used to separate lines of text. More lead means more space between lines. "Uppercase" and "lowercase" make more sense now too -- the words indicate where your hands should roam to pluck particular letters out of the large "case" that holds them. And I knew it before, but felt it firsthand Saturday when I literally was out of "sorts" (the lowercase 't,' in particular).
We hit it off really well with Mary and Steve -- fellow journalists -- who got the vibe that we are "young journalists who are still into it." We are. And we're into their type thing. We really enjoyed hearing Mary talk about newspapers and letterpress as an art of words.
By 10 p.m. we'd learned about furniture and Scrabble-boosting terms like "quoine key," "reglet," and "tympan" that play into securing our blocks of text into a Vandercook press. We'd also corrected a few backward apostrophes en route to rolling out our limited-edition series of Vonnegut posters.
I think we kept it simple and sincere.
One remains in Baltimore. Ours are signed and framed. And the last is bound for a better place.
Our low opinion of Richmond -- based on a rainy trip and a snowy visit -- turned 180 degrees this week.
We started with the Design Sponge city guide for Richmond (they have many other great guides) and got ourselves to a great vegan lunch spot, some superb art galleries and a few cool shops.
I could see us living in Richmond.
Among our adventures I probably most enjoyed Page Bond Gallery (some favorites: images 1 and 9). A close second was our lunch at Ipanema.
Like Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Detroit, the city has its share of industrial might and blight, which I like, and its specialty shops are special.
People seem to say goodbye in one of three ways. If they meet a person with whom they have almost no connection, they might wave only. If they meet an acquaintance, they'll shake hands. But if they say goodbye to someone meaningful, they generally hug.
Of the three, I like the hand shake least.
The longest (and best) goodbye I ever received from a friend was in the form of a hug. It lasted maybe 37 seconds (though I wasn't counting at the time), and it meant a lot.
I'm finished now with my four years of undergraduate work. My family came to graduation. A friend drove up from the south. I said my fair share of goodbyes...and I gave one distinguishable hug to a friend I've grown up with for the past 10 years.
Now I have a lot of time on my hands. I couldn't be more pleased.
Here's what I'm up to:
- Listening to a lot of Daniel Johnston. So much that everything I notice has lyrics (Tony mentioned this in his last post). - The Meat Puppets new album, Sewn Together. - My brother learning guitar rifts (Modest Mouse, Cake, "Thunderstruck," etc.) - The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, still. - Google Reader. - Reading Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut. - Picking up Roberto Bolano's2666 soon, a Silliman suggestion. - Mapping my move to Arizona - Finishing a playlist for the drive west...another flung-together list. - Going to juggling club in Louisville. - Getting MLB audio. - Unpacking and re-packing to figure out what I really want to keep.
So on May 31 I'll start my drive to the Southwest United States. Here is the basic map of the journey.
DAY 1: Leave home. Arrive at Jack's apartment. Chill. Sleep. DAY 2: Leave Jack's apartment. Drive. Arrive in Amarillo. DAY 3: Chill in Amarillo with my friend, Brad. DAY 4: Leave Amarillo for Phoenix. Drive. Drive. Drive. Arrive.
Three days later I start working.
The best thing I hear about Arizona, are the wild pigs that run around willy nilly in the streets. I bet someone could make a cool song about them.
