Category Archives: traveling

On the good old days

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Today, nostalgia is an industry–books, movies, theme parks, television–anything that will evoke a time gone by when we thought everything was golden, that everything was better. Of course, our memories play tricks on us. Those “good old days” where perhaps only good because we were all so young, and it seemed like we could do anything–climb mountains, swim oceans, slay dragons, solve differential equations, resolve the enigma of the Sphinx. We were thin and energetic, full of vim, vigor, and vitriol, and we could eat anything and not put on a pound.Yet we were also inexperienced, foolish, and innocent. I remember my trip to Mallorca almost thirty-four years ago as if it were yesterday, but when I look at that picture of that guy who I used to be, I haven’t the slightest clue as to who he really was. Those days were good because we were not yet cynical and sad, disillusioned or unhappy. We had plans, a future. Life, however, seldom cooperates and gets in the way of the best laid plans a person can make. How is it possible that all of that time has passed in the blinking of an eye? Life is life, and we live it a day at a time, working, studying, eating, cleaning, picking up, exploring, singing, planning, loving, traveling, arriving, and then we start all over again, and so on. Life will not be better when the week is over, or when we get our next promotion, or when we get married, or when we get a new job. Life is happening every day whether you care to notice or not. Philosopher, poets, artists, have been telling us this with every new thing they create, but we fall victim to our own distractions and worry about when our lives are really going to start, or we obsess about a past that never existed in the first place. Perhaps the best thing to do with the past is remember it, but not idealize it. The past is an unknown landscape that exists only as a construction of our imaginations and our desire to be happy once more. If you go there too often, you will eventually crash in the present, bitter and tired. I prefer to remember the good old days as just that, the good old days, and some of it was very, very good.

On the good old days

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Today, nostalgia is an industry–books, movies, theme parks, television–anything that will evoke a time gone by when we thought everything was golden, that everything was better. Of course, our memories play tricks on us. Those “good old days” where perhaps only good because we were all so young, and it seemed like we could do anything–climb mountains, swim oceans, slay dragons, solve differential equations, resolve the enigma of the Sphinx. We were thin and energetic, full of vim, vigor, and vitriol, and we could eat anything and not put on a pound.Yet we were also inexperienced, foolish, and innocent. I remember my trip to Mallorca almost thirty-four years ago as if it were yesterday, but when I look at that picture of that guy who I used to be, I haven’t the slightest clue as to who he really was. Those days were good because we were not yet cynical and sad, disillusioned or unhappy. We had plans, a future. Life, however, seldom cooperates and gets in the way of the best laid plans a person can make. How is it possible that all of that time has passed in the blinking of an eye? Life is life, and we live it a day at a time, working, studying, eating, cleaning, picking up, exploring, singing, planning, loving, traveling, arriving, and then we start all over again, and so on. Life will not be better when the week is over, or when we get our next promotion, or when we get married, or when we get a new job. Life is happening every day whether you care to notice or not. Philosopher, poets, artists, have been telling us this with every new thing they create, but we fall victim to our own distractions and worry about when our lives are really going to start, or we obsess about a past that never existed in the first place. Perhaps the best thing to do with the past is remember it, but not idealize it. The past is an unknown landscape that exists only as a construction of our imaginations and our desire to be happy once more. If you go there too often, you will eventually crash in the present, bitter and tired. I prefer to remember the good old days as just that, the good old days, and some of it was very, very good.

On the padiddle

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Officially, a padiddle is a car, truck, or bug with only one headlight or one taillight. Urban lore has it that the spotter of the padiddle gets to kiss a member of the opposite sex, or some such nonsense that is dreamed up in the hormone addled brain of a teenager. I suspect that this is why teenagers love to drive around so much in the company of the opposite sex, praying, hoping that the maintenance schedule for most cars on the road does not include a yearly inspection of the lights, neither fore nor aft. All of which is very silly because teenagers don’t need a reason for kissing, but an ulterior, arbitrary occurrence of a padiddle is a wonderful ice-breaker for nervous, shy teens who don’t have a lot of experience getting the kissing business going. If you have read this far, you are probably smirking at your own first forays into good love. Urban lore, urban legend are the stuff dreams are built on. The dark intimacy of the back seat of a car can provide a wonderful opportunity for those first tentative experiences of a young adult who is neither child nor adult, occupying a liminal space after childhood, but before adulthood. Getting comfortable with one’s own sexuality and the accompanying physicality is a difficult, if not impossible, task, filled with bumps in the road, setbacks, detours, and the like. Rejection is a horrible, painful experience, but one cannot hide from their own identity. A slave to our own bodies and looks, we cannot control the avatars and caprices of the physical, social, pop world which would deem us handsome or ugly, attractive or repulsive. Perhaps the padiddle is Lady Fortune’s hand reaching out with a little help to the shy introverts of the world.

On the padiddle

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Officially, a padiddle is a car, truck, or bug with only one headlight or one taillight. Urban lore has it that the spotter of the padiddle gets to kiss a member of the opposite sex, or some such nonsense that is dreamed up in the hormone addled brain of a teenager. I suspect that this is why teenagers love to drive around so much in the company of the opposite sex, praying, hoping that the maintenance schedule for most cars on the road does not include a yearly inspection of the lights, neither fore nor aft. All of which is very silly because teenagers don’t need a reason for kissing, but an ulterior, arbitrary occurrence of a padiddle is a wonderful ice-breaker for nervous, shy teens who don’t have a lot of experience getting the kissing business going. If you have read this far, you are probably smirking at your own first forays into good love. Urban lore, urban legend are the stuff dreams are built on. The dark intimacy of the back seat of a car can provide a wonderful opportunity for those first tentative experiences of a young adult who is neither child nor adult, occupying a liminal space after childhood, but before adulthood. Getting comfortable with one’s own sexuality and the accompanying physicality is a difficult, if not impossible, task, filled with bumps in the road, setbacks, detours, and the like. Rejection is a horrible, painful experience, but one cannot hide from their own identity. A slave to our own bodies and looks, we cannot control the avatars and caprices of the physical, social, pop world which would deem us handsome or ugly, attractive or repulsive. Perhaps the padiddle is Lady Fortune’s hand reaching out with a little help to the shy introverts of the world.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On detours

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Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On detours

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Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On the phantom traffic jam

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Today I was victim of a phantom traffic jam on interstate highway 35. By phantom I mean there were no wrecks, no single lane road construction detours, no weather hazards, no breakdowns, nothing. Nothing, yet south of Salado all three lanes of traffic came to a dead stop. The reason, of course, was the shear volume of traffic, the loss of a lane in Salado, and the narrowing of the final two lanes through an area of construction where some lane shifting occurred. It only takes one driver who slows down just a bit, maybe 2 or 3 miles an hour, which causes a wave to form in the following traffic. This ripple effect, which is characterized by stronger and stronger breaking by cars coming up from behind. The final result of this wave is that the traffic will eventual crawl to halt, and it can’t start up again until the cars that are stopped, start up again and allow a bit of space between themselves and the cars they are following. Overly aggressive driving and random lane changing only aggravate an already horrible situation. I was stuck in about ten miles of stop and go traffic that never got above five miles an hour until it left was just outside of Temple, Texas. After that, there were several slow downs at the traffic passed other construction areas, had to climb hills, cross bridges or navigate curves. All of these obstacles create hazards in the minds of drivers even when the lanes do not narrow and climatic conditions remain the same. Drivers perceive hazards even when there are none which causes them to slow down just ever so slightly, which is how a slow-down wave begins, ending in stopped traffic when the volume of cars is high enough. Traffic on a four-lane highway flows in a similar fashion to an actual fluid, so the backwards wave acts as interference in the flow of traffic, backing traffic up until it stops dead in its tracks. Today, Labor Day, was a bit of a perfect storm with everyone out on the road today, returning home, to school, or back to work on Tuesday. Part of the problem with I35 is that there is no other fast north-south artery between San Antonio and Dallas. The secondary roads are slow, filled with little towns, and plagued by a number of speed traps. If you are traveling north and south through central Texas, you will probably be on I35. Ergo, the volume today was very high, too high for the highway to handle in any serious way. Today’s traffic jam, which had nothing phantom to it at all, was very real and another symptom of an overused route that needs an alternative. The state keeps rebuilding and adding lanes, but today all of that construction was actually a part of why it became so dangerous and slow to all involved. The construction covers miles of highway, and all of it goes forward at a snail’s pace because in Texas you can work all year around–you aren’t trying to beat old Man Winter to the punch. The state of Texas will never be able to build enough highways to carry all of the traffic in central Texas, one of the fastest growing population centers in the entire United States. I don’t see planning, only patching. What barely carries the traffic today will be completely inadequate ten years from now, and phantom traffic jams won’t be a holiday weekend phenomenon, but an every day sort of thing, which means driving in central Texas will be exponentially that much more difficult.

On the phantom traffic jam

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Today I was victim of a phantom traffic jam on interstate highway 35. By phantom I mean there were no wrecks, no single lane road construction detours, no weather hazards, no breakdowns, nothing. Nothing, yet south of Salado all three lanes of traffic came to a dead stop. The reason, of course, was the shear volume of traffic, the loss of a lane in Salado, and the narrowing of the final two lanes through an area of construction where some lane shifting occurred. It only takes one driver who slows down just a bit, maybe 2 or 3 miles an hour, which causes a wave to form in the following traffic. This ripple effect, which is characterized by stronger and stronger breaking by cars coming up from behind. The final result of this wave is that the traffic will eventual crawl to halt, and it can’t start up again until the cars that are stopped, start up again and allow a bit of space between themselves and the cars they are following. Overly aggressive driving and random lane changing only aggravate an already horrible situation. I was stuck in about ten miles of stop and go traffic that never got above five miles an hour until it left was just outside of Temple, Texas. After that, there were several slow downs at the traffic passed other construction areas, had to climb hills, cross bridges or navigate curves. All of these obstacles create hazards in the minds of drivers even when the lanes do not narrow and climatic conditions remain the same. Drivers perceive hazards even when there are none which causes them to slow down just ever so slightly, which is how a slow-down wave begins, ending in stopped traffic when the volume of cars is high enough. Traffic on a four-lane highway flows in a similar fashion to an actual fluid, so the backwards wave acts as interference in the flow of traffic, backing traffic up until it stops dead in its tracks. Today, Labor Day, was a bit of a perfect storm with everyone out on the road today, returning home, to school, or back to work on Tuesday. Part of the problem with I35 is that there is no other fast north-south artery between San Antonio and Dallas. The secondary roads are slow, filled with little towns, and plagued by a number of speed traps. If you are traveling north and south through central Texas, you will probably be on I35. Ergo, the volume today was very high, too high for the highway to handle in any serious way. Today’s traffic jam, which had nothing phantom to it at all, was very real and another symptom of an overused route that needs an alternative. The state keeps rebuilding and adding lanes, but today all of that construction was actually a part of why it became so dangerous and slow to all involved. The construction covers miles of highway, and all of it goes forward at a snail’s pace because in Texas you can work all year around–you aren’t trying to beat old Man Winter to the punch. The state of Texas will never be able to build enough highways to carry all of the traffic in central Texas, one of the fastest growing population centers in the entire United States. I don’t see planning, only patching. What barely carries the traffic today will be completely inadequate ten years from now, and phantom traffic jams won’t be a holiday weekend phenomenon, but an every day sort of thing, which means driving in central Texas will be exponentially that much more difficult.