I Travel
Sorry not to have written lately. I spent much of last weekend flying over this rather large country of ours (and then dealing with all sorts of work and family-related business upon my return). My brother got hitched (yes!) to a terrific lady, so I flew out to the Bay Area on Friday night, participated in their elegant wedding and awesome afterparty at this inn (on top of a mountain overlooking the Bay) on Saturday night, and flew back to JFK on Sunday night for work Monday morning. My head's still spinning and I caught a cold, but it was worth it!
Haven't flown much since 9/11, so it was cool to find a channel on the telly on the back of the seat in front of me that tracked the location of the plane on a map, as well as its altitude, and air speed. It made me feel less anxious about being crammed into a tin can, thousands of feet in the air, in a contraption that seems all too heavy to even lift off the ground, let alone fly...
When I was a kid, my parents drove us all over the US. It was cheap (my parents' obsession), and we had lots of friends and relatives to stay with (mooch off of) along the way. (At some point, we added up all the States that I'd been too and the number was in the high 40s...) My parents also liked to camp, so much so that I can't stand the thought of camping with my kids when they're older.
I've always had too active an imagination to be out in the dark in the wilderness...and I'll always remember my first camping trip with the cub scouts. To set us on edge from the outset, one of the kids in our den puked out the window on the car ride up (spewing all over the fake wood siding of the boat-like Chevy wagon); there was a stream literally right outside of our tent and, as a result, the ground all around was mucky; at the campfire that night with some of the boy scouts, one of the scoutmasters told us this cock-and-bull story about aliens having landed in a park near where I lived--and then one of the scouts swings into the midst of us on a rope all Tarzan-like with an alien mask on and screaming his head off, scaring the living crap out of all of us 9 and 10 year-olds (we all wanted our mommies that night). Needless to say, I didn't sleep much, when the only thing separating me from whatever was lurking in the dark was a thin layer of nylon...and for years later I was always worried about being abducted by aliens whenever our family went camping (I'd also seen my fair share of creepy, made-for-TeeVee alien abduction movies and too many episodes of "In Search of..."). Good times. Really.
I also remember being fascinated that my dad could find his way, no matter where the hell we were in some backwoods part of America, with the aid of a map (and when I was young, it blew my mind that there were maps of every road in our country). And I learned to read a map from him (most likely so I could figure out how much longer we had to be in the car until we reached our destination), as well as plot out a route to take one from point A to B. A lost art, I'm sure, in the age of Mapquest and on-board GPS navigation systems...
* * * *
"I Travel" is from Simple Minds' "Empires and Dance" album.
Haven't flown much since 9/11, so it was cool to find a channel on the telly on the back of the seat in front of me that tracked the location of the plane on a map, as well as its altitude, and air speed. It made me feel less anxious about being crammed into a tin can, thousands of feet in the air, in a contraption that seems all too heavy to even lift off the ground, let alone fly...
When I was a kid, my parents drove us all over the US. It was cheap (my parents' obsession), and we had lots of friends and relatives to stay with (mooch off of) along the way. (At some point, we added up all the States that I'd been too and the number was in the high 40s...) My parents also liked to camp, so much so that I can't stand the thought of camping with my kids when they're older.
I've always had too active an imagination to be out in the dark in the wilderness...and I'll always remember my first camping trip with the cub scouts. To set us on edge from the outset, one of the kids in our den puked out the window on the car ride up (spewing all over the fake wood siding of the boat-like Chevy wagon); there was a stream literally right outside of our tent and, as a result, the ground all around was mucky; at the campfire that night with some of the boy scouts, one of the scoutmasters told us this cock-and-bull story about aliens having landed in a park near where I lived--and then one of the scouts swings into the midst of us on a rope all Tarzan-like with an alien mask on and screaming his head off, scaring the living crap out of all of us 9 and 10 year-olds (we all wanted our mommies that night). Needless to say, I didn't sleep much, when the only thing separating me from whatever was lurking in the dark was a thin layer of nylon...and for years later I was always worried about being abducted by aliens whenever our family went camping (I'd also seen my fair share of creepy, made-for-TeeVee alien abduction movies and too many episodes of "In Search of..."). Good times. Really.
I also remember being fascinated that my dad could find his way, no matter where the hell we were in some backwoods part of America, with the aid of a map (and when I was young, it blew my mind that there were maps of every road in our country). And I learned to read a map from him (most likely so I could figure out how much longer we had to be in the car until we reached our destination), as well as plot out a route to take one from point A to B. A lost art, I'm sure, in the age of Mapquest and on-board GPS navigation systems...
* * * *
"I Travel" is from Simple Minds' "Empires and Dance" album.
posted by Steve from Moon | 4:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home