Homo Viator (Westward Expanse) - Travel Hungover, Part 3: Minneapolis

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine -- they are the life, the soul of reading... -Laurence Stern, Tristram Shandy


There are better places for a layover (than Des Moines, IA) -Anita Ross

About 4 miles from the Iowa Minnesota border.

The bus left Kansas City mostly empty and stayed that way for the entire trip. And it was a longish bus trip, too. Leaving out of KC at around 2:45 in the afternoon, I didn't disembark in Minneapolis, Minnesota until 10:30 that night.

There were plenty of stops, of course, including a half hour layover in Des Moines, Iowa. And while we lost people and gained people as the bus -- a Jefferson Bus Lines Rocket Rider -- made its way through the Midwestern afternoon, evening and night.

Most people who don't know any better tend to lump the Ohio Valley in with the Midwest. These are, of course, the some of the same people who insist on lumping Appalachia in with the South and who continue to believe that Barack Obama is Muslim. But it's important to take an opportunity, Dear Readers, to embrace educational moments and point out that southern Ohio -- the land that spawned me -- is about as Midwestern as Michelle Bachmann is a reasonable, intelligent human being.

Medically proven cure for erections lasting more than 4 hours.

I'm assuming here that everyone has played that childhood game Which Of These Is Not Like The Others... which is related to another game, sometimes called The Memory Game. This last game, however, is not often played, even in Sunday School classes, since it's clear that memory is something most people (tragically) lack in this country.

While there are some similar characteristics... a rampant sort of stoicism that, like memory, is fading into globby goopy puddles of pig sweat and desperation... this has more to do with an agricultural backbone than geography. I grew up in the aftermath of a fading agricultural heritage in The Rust Belt,where family farms were split up and sold, parceled into half acre lots for concentric houses sprouting like rotten lettuce on the landscape. 

America's Breadbasket -- long a misnomer since the replacement of agriculture with agribusiness,  with no bread being made. No; it's all corn syrup  and cattle feed and legally patented genetically modified corn seeds that are quickly undoing the slow evolutionary process that made corn such a hearty crop. No, it's not that stoic farmer that makes the Midwest unique... though that stoicism is something unique in all and of itself. 

What makes the Midwest so different from every other place is the land itself, and the story it tells. 

I was hoping to make it through the central part of the country: Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado. Time and situation have turned me northward, so that when I leave Minnesota, I will be heading west through South Dakota, then Montana.  People tell me Kansas is flat and Wyoming is unending. But that's part of what makes the Midwest so... well... Midwestern. The large, seemingly endless tracts of flat land punctuated by mountains, by hills, by rivers. The tall grass, the rocks, the riverbeds, all contain stories and songs. The feet that have walked on them add to that story. And so do the tires. And the roads. 

Whether we like to admit it or not, our roots, as a species, are in movement.

Our ancestors, traced all the way back to the wide African plains, were nomadic. In that movement we added to the story, already being written and already in progress. We add ourselves. We build up, we fall, we persist. We exist as a country because people wanted to strike out. 

And no... not that bullshit about religious freedom we were taught as children, that myth of Manifest Destiny that haunts our civilization and makes us doers of terrible things. That was an interpretation that was added later. (Keep in mind, Dear Readers and those suffering from The Painfully Short Memory, that the Puritans DID NOT come to this continent looking for "religious freedom." They were running to avoid political and religious persecution... of a kind that they, themselves, committed against anyone who wasn't like them. Think about Oliver Cromwell. 

After the layover in Des Moines... a bus depot that wouldn't sell me a bottle of water because I only had my PayPal Debit card (tied to the Travel Fund, gawd bless those of you who have donated, are thinking of donating, or will donate in the future.) and no cold hard cash. And NO, Dear Ones, there wasn't even an ATM machine that attached an exorbitant extortionist fee to each transaction. 

But we did switch drivers in Des Moines, and, still with a more or less empty manifest, we made our way west out of corn country. There's nothing quite like twilight in the Midwest -- (not a badly written series of Mormon allegories thinly disguised as vampire fantasy fiction.) That time right before sunset when all the colors of the sun seem to unravel and spread out across the open sky in preparation for sunset. All the flatness can make you feel... for lack of a better word... exposed. There are no rolling hills to hide behind, no mountains for the clouds to perch a top of.  Some people I know from Eastern Kentucky tell me the Midwest makes them uncomfortable because of that sense of exposure. I don't blame them for feeling that way. And I suppose I can understand how a less poetic eye can look at the wide open space and see nothing... 

people have said as much about traveling on the ocean. I never have, but I've been around large enough bodies of water to know better.

Sunset in rural Minnesota is beautiful. There really is nothing like it anywhere else... smoldering sun, spectrums of orange and red and pink and blue and purple smoldering into a deep dark night.

Nearing the Minneapolis, I shifted in my seat, anticipating being able to get off the bus. When I did, I caught a smell that I thought, at first, was maybe 3 week old dead skunk. Then I caught another whiff. Then I remembered I hadn't showered since before leaving Louisville.

No wonder people had been avoiding me. On the other hand, it's good security, and I thought of T.J., a bum I met years ago on the Riverwalk in New Orleans. He stunk to high heaven and assured me that he had the best security for his knapsack.

Whenever he set it down, he puked around it in a single circle. He showed it to me by way of proof. Apparently, other than making tourists feel bad for having money, his other life skill was puking on demand.

Yep, the universe is a funny thing. Sometimes you're given just what you need.

By the time I made it Minneapolis, it was dark, and my friends Dave and Jamie were at the bus station to greet me.  

Of course, before I would hug them too closely, I insisted on a shower. I noticed, they didn't argue.

Homo Viator (Westward Expanse) -Travel Hungover, Part 2: Kansas City

We know that all is impermanent; we know that everything wears out. Although we can buy this truth intellectually, emotionally we have a deep-rooted aversion to it. - Pema Chodron

A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night. - 

Marilyn Monroe

Getting a few hours of sleep on that nearly deserted bus to Kansas City was almost as good as sex. (Almost.) I was so tired from the St. Louis Station that I didn't realize how tired I was. By the time the sun came up and the bus pulled into the station, I felt a little good enough that I wanted a cup of coffee and something to eat. 

The Kansas City Station was much smaller than St. Louis. There was a central waiting room, a restaurant, and the ticket counter. The interior was all white tile and blue highlights. There were a few people milling around, waiting for buses. The first thing I did was take a piss. The next thing I did was make a bee line for the restaurant for a cup of coffee and hoping to find something to eat that wasn't an overly expensive gastrointestinal nightmare.

Good Mood Food?  Finger Lickin' Good? You decide!

There's a fine line when you're eating on the road and on the cheap. And there are a few things to consider, beyond the obvious aversion to taking a dump in a rolling porta-potty. The first (and most obvious) thing to remember is that bus station food is overpriced. The second (and still probably most obvious) thing to remember is that if it's not cooked to order, it's probably been sitting for awhile.... especially the tuna and egg salad sandwiches.  The third thing ... which, if you're paying attention at all to what you eat, will be obvious... is that if it IS cooked to order, whatever food you're eating started the day in a freezer. And you probably don't want to think about what petri dish it began it's life in. 

But there's also the last, immutable fact of life on the road. At some point, to keep your strength and wits about you, you have to eat, since staying hydrated will only get you so far. So by all means, be aware of what you eat. But at some point, eat something.

The coffee was infinitely more important and the food merely an afterthought. Luckily, bus station shit slingers HAVE learned that some people feel much safer with fruit. My choice... nestled between the pre-made lunch meat and tuna salad sandwiches (each of which had a sticker indicating that they were prepared on Wednesday... which happened to be the day of the week... I thought. But there was no indication that it was THIS PARTICULAR Wednesday...) and the single serving bottles of whole, chocolate, and strawberry flavored milk, were some diminutive apples and shrunken oranges. An orange sounded good... Vitamin C, one of the great healers from Mother Nature's Kitchen, seemed like a good idea, even if the orange wasn't all that much to look at. They weren't rotting, and cost less than a dollar each. 

SOLD

That orange and a large black coffee cost me just over $3.00. Standing in line to pay for my meal, I watched the older, tired, rotund black woman snap the heads off two customers who tried to pay with $20 bills; apparently she was low on change. One patron... who it seemed like was entirely too familiar with the bus station (It's true... you start to recognize your own after a while) tried to pay for a cup of coffee with a wrinkled up double-sawbuck. When she opened up a Tyler Perry style retribution on her (Yes. Really.) he then offered to buy a toy truck in order to increase the amount of the sale. She dismissed the toy and waved him off, not mentioning the coffee. 

(He later tried to tell her she took his money and never gave it back. But neither he nor the woman behind the counter were convinced and he stopped mid-con and wandered away.)

When I got to the register I paid for my small meal with $5... which garnered me a smile... and from the look of the smile, she apparently did not contort her mouth into that shape very often.

I took my time eating the orange. One, because peeling it took a bit of time and the skin was a little thicker than I would have liked. But I also made a point to eat the orange slowly because I wanted to enjoy it. Some pleasures are fast ones. Some are slow, and should be enjoyed thoroughly. An orange. A cup of coffee. 

Simple things. Not perfect. But in the context, not bad at all.

My next order of business was to find a place to charge my phone. As it turned out, the Kansas City Station planned for such an emergency and had installed a cell phone charging station... a tiled counter at the edge of the waiting area lined with electric outlets. And unlike the so-called "courtesy stations" at the St. Louis Depot, the outlets were actually good outlets. 

None of that hollowed out loosey-goosey plug feel that I have come to associate strongly with St. Louis.

After a while my phone was charged enough to use, so I checked my mail and messages. While I was doing that, a guy wearing a camo print hat and t-shirt asked if he could borrow my plug to charge his phone. He said he'd lost his. I let him, primarily because there's nothing worse than needing to get a call out and being unable to. His name was Mark.

Mark was from Minnesota... he assured me a rural part of the state, far from the hectic city life around Minneapolis/ St. Paul... and was on his way to St. Louis. He'd bought a ticket and was ready to board a bus several hours before; but his ticket was a standby ticket and the bus was full. He needed to call his friend... a buddy from home he was on his way to see.  Mark told me he traveled from the tundra in search of work. He was an out of work carpenter. He asked me what I was doing and where I was headed. I told him, quite honestly, that I wasn't entirely sure and that I  simply wanted to get out of St. Louis. This made him naturally leery, I think, because after his phone was charged enough for a call and after I didn't have any cigarettes to sell him, he wandered off.

While I was continuing to charge my phone, I looked at the chart outlining bus departure times and destinations. South to Dallas (NOOOOOO!) was an option. West to Minneapolis was also an option. Eastbound, back through St. Louis (HELL NO) was a consideration. 

The next bus to Minneapolis was scheduled to leave at 3:00pm. According to my watch, it was around 10:30 am. I had friends in Minneapolis... friends I had intended to visit on my return swing from Oregon. I considered piecing together a path to Phoenix, which, would have included... UGH.... Texas. I also considered maybe trying to get to Salt Lake City. (I've had a powerful urge to creep out some Mormons lately. I can only assume that it's some reaction to Mitt Romney's hair.) I messaged my friends, Dave and Jamie, to see if I could bump up my visit to that night without putting them out. 

As I waited, I was approached by another man, who asked if I could watch his cell phone charge while stepped outside to smoke. Again, I accommodated. His named turned out to be Joe. Joe was on his way back to St. Louis. He'd come to Kansas City after splitting from his wife. He couldn't find work, which, from what he said, seemed to be the primary reason for the fighting. He had hoped that KC would provide more opportunities for work and a fresh start from a broken relationship; of course, neither worked out, and he was slinking back (not his words) in order to "work things out... you know... for the kids." 

He too asked me where I was heading and what I did for a living. It's the sort of generic demographic information that people ask when they travel in order to see if there are any essentials in common. After all, it's not outside the realm of possibility that you can meet someone from the same state as you when traveling. And when there's a common mode of transportation, there's a better than average chance that there maybe some career similarities. Or, at least sympathies.

When talking to friends, or to you, Dear Readers, I refer to myself as hobo. A bum. A pilgrim. A traveler. All of these are, in some technical way, true. And they take up all of my time.

But they are not, strictly speaking, considered career paths, anymore than being a poet is considered a viable occupation. (Viable -- code for tax paying, debt accruing, time wasting, soul killing filler of time between assumed adulthood and death.) I told Joe wasn't sure where I was headed, and that I didn't do anything in particular. 

He too, quickly moved off.

Eventually my phone was more or less completely charged, and I remembered that the restaurant sold a brand of cigarillos I sometimes smoke. And I still had time until the bus to Minneapolis was going to leave, plus I hadn't heard whether my arrival was propitious. So I bought a cigar and went outside to the smoking area, sat on a bench and enjoyed the breeze.

The smoking area was in back and partially under the large awning that made up the bus bay. I'd managed enough rest that I felt good, had enough coffee and nourishment that I felt refreshed, and was smoking a cigar that, while not my favorite, was one I liked, for the money. A cigarillo (not to be confused with a little cigar... trust me.) is a rare gentile pleasure. I have pipe, that's true, and some decent cheap shag. I also still have a few pinches of the good tobacco left from the shop in Cincinnati. But a cigarillo is a sweet respite, a calming balm, especially when you can sit out in a light warm breeze and enjoy it without having to be rushed,. without having to feel desperate for time or space or feel guilty about annoying the smokeless minions that would deny me nicotine and drive Hummers... rather than smoke a cigarette after enjoying a particularly enjoyable hummer.

One of the things I've noticed as I've been traveling, is the quiet desperation that people continue to live under. The news tells us the recession is over. I, for one, don't believe it. Because I see it everywhere I go. People roaming around, looking for work. Mark and Joe are only two examples from one stop. I run into people all the time who are trying to find some place in the world, some identity. Because we do tend to associate identity with occupation (AKA = the shit we do to earn money in the hopes of buying shit we don't need) ...in this country at least, and certainly in any culture that prizes occupation above happiness, that insists we take on obligations that are neither natural nor necessary for living or happiness, and that judges us accordingly for seeming to lack ambition. 

And the more of this I see, the more I am convinced that I am far luckier and far richer than anyone who can answer one of those generic demographic questions in a more predictable fashion.

I got word from Dave that my arrival would be fine, that there was a spare bed and that I was welcome to it as long as I needed it. Encouraged, thusly, I finished my cigarillo, walked back inside and  up to the ticket counter. The woman behind the counter looked stressed... fairly common among those employed in any customer service industry. She was younger than me by a couple of years, auburn hair tied back, blue eyes, pale skin. Attractive really. So I smiled, asked about the 3pm bus to Minneapolis. She was polite, smiled a little, and told me the bus really left at 2:45 and asked if I needed a ticket. 

I told her I didn't, because of my Discovery Pass; but, hoping maybe to improve her mood, or at least make her feel better about her job, I told her about The Mystery Box in St. Louis and asked if she didn't think that was odd. The story seemed to make her smile... or it could've been my hat, the oil cloth hat does inspire smiles from some people... and she told me that it probably wasn't strange for St. Louis. I agreed. 

"Yeah," she said. "There's probably not a lot that's strange for St. Louis." Then she told me... probably some latent reinforced job training... that if I saw anything strange like that there to please say something. I promised I would, and found a place to sit and wait for the bus.

As I walked away, she was still smiling.

Homo Viator (Westward Expanse) – Travel Hungover: Leaving St. Louis

Detachment is enlightenment because it negates appearances. - Bodhidharma, The Wake Up Sermon

When I started this leg of the trip a few weeks back, my plan... in as much as I actually had one... was to head southwest, with an eye on avoiding Texas. The problem, as I discovered, was that because of the way the major bus routes are structured, it's next to impossible to do so without taking several indirect routes. In deciding how best to leave St. Louis... and believe me, I was more than ready; after two full days, I was beginning to feel more like a resident than an itinerant traveler.

The first night was long and a bit lonely... which was something I hadn't really felt in quite a while. I didn't feel all that lonely on my east coast leg, even when I was between the welcome solace of couches and spare beds of dear friends. Loneliness is one of those sensations that digs into your bones and lingers like the cold; it's a very different sort of feeling than being alone. Being alone is a state of being; being lonely is a state of mind. And as I explained to my Dear Sweet Ma in a recent phone call, I am well acquainted with being alone. To tell the truth, I've been alone most of my life. I spent hours alone when I was young, riding my bicycle on the back roads around where I grew up, sometimes parking and walking into the nearby woods or through undisturbed pastures. This is, I suspect, part of the künstlerroman* : something integral to the growth and development of a writer. 
. 

Now, it's true that we're not all lonely sad sacks; in fact, the case could be made... and it has, I'm sure, though I won't bother to look up the citations to prove my point... that a lot of writing that happens in this day and age happens in public, as a part... or an attempt to be a part... of some community or another. On a  pragmatic level, since leaving Pumpkin Hill in late January, you could argue that I've done most of my writing ... this blog, and the associated poetry... in public. In coffee shop, in bus and train stations, on buses, on trains, in friends' living rooms. And since I am doing what I do all for you, Dear Readers (and in the hope that, if you like it at all, that you'll a temporally and geographically fluid creature of the road on the move with occasional donations to the travel fund... much thanks and gawd bless)  there's an element of you all in all that I do.

Yes... there's more of some of you than others. But don't quibble I love you all. And NO, I don't think that's creepy at all.

My initial plan for leaving St. Louis was to take the Los Angeles bound bus. That would take down through the southwest, New Mexico, Arizona, and into Phoenix, where I also have friends, one or two who have offered to let me crash when and if I happen to make it back out to Valley of the Sun. The initial problem, of course, was that it would also take me through Texas... which, no offense to the city of Austin (which I understand is quite nice), I would prefer to avoid. And if I got on the west coast bus I would end up having to spend quite a bit of time in Texas: Pecos and Amarillo to be sure, as well as El Paso. I know this because it's the exact same route I took on my move to Phoenix and eventually my move to Northwest Illinois... which I wrote about in my kindle edition essay, The Greyhound Quartos. Other than wanting to avoid the sketchy bus station in Amarillo, I was also concerned that I was taking a trip I had already been on; in other words, there was nothing new, other than my situation, about traveling by bus from St. Louis to Phoenix.

Most of the other buses out of St. Louis were going east, or south. I wasn't ready to go south, and I had just come east. The only other bus was one going to Kansas City. It left an hour and forty-five later than the L.A.bus, which wasn't going to pull out until one in the morning. And while my intention is to end up, before the end of the summer, in Eugene, Oregon on the doorstep of friend, writer, and Grindbone Brother Noah S. Kaplowitz  before I head back east for some peace and respite in Kentucky and some future planning for a Southern Fried Leg and next year's European Ennui Extension, my initial plan was to loop UP to Eugene after going through California and seeing the Pacific Ocean... not to mention a visit to San Fran and City Light Books (a literary mecca, and home base of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of my few living literary heroes). 

After some thought and some careful consultations... since the lack of sleep and the weight of worry over The Mysterious Box were starting to impact my ability to think semi-lucid thoughts... I decided, finally, to leave my path up to fate and the whim of the great magnet:

If the line of passengers going to the west coast was too long, I'd take my chances on the Kansas City bus at 2:45 am.

So I waited. And I watched Gate 4. The line started to grow around midnight, and by 15 minutes to boarding, it was sufficiently long enough for me to decide that the great magnet wanted me to go to Kansas City.

It was impossible for me to sleep at that point; if I could get comfortable enough and if I did close my eyes... scratch that. I could've slept leaning against a wall full of hot irons at that point. But if I DID, chances were better than average that I would wake up, Still in St. Louis, becoming even more of a resident among the throng of potential passengers, waiting family and friends, custodians, cops, and trepidatious sedentarily challenged souls like myself who, when I took off my boots to simply stretch my toes, cleared out 20 foot radius of space thanks to the righteous stank of my poor old doggies. 

Never mind the fact that, other than a change of underwear, a splash of water, and a fresh application of Old Spice, I hadn't had a shower since Louisville. And I had spent one of those days in between walking around Hannibal looking for the spinning ghost of Sam Clemens. 

Luckily, the Kansas City bus was light on passengers so  that I could stretch out, and empty enough that I could stretch out without having to worry... too much... about offending anyone too much. And since the trip was a good 5 or 6 hours through the dark, I would have some quiet time to sleep.

Which, Dear Readers, I did. Finally.

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As I make my way west, most likely through the Blackhills and into Montana, drop me a line and give me heads up about cheap/free accommodations, shelters, houses of hospitality, etc. Also, if there are any open mics anywhere, either on my way through or on my way back at the end of summer, let me know. I'll recount stories and songs and poems from the road for loose change, coffee, or soup. Really. I'll even shower. Maybe....]

Homo Viator: The Westward Expanse -- Hannibal, MO (Also Titled, The Mysterious Box)

Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect, and I was "raised" there. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then to really hurt the place. -- Mark Twain, private letter (1867)



 But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it.  I been there before.  -- 

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

The Mysterious Box

The one bus to that goes Hannibal -- on a regular route that ends at, of all places, Burlington, Iowa -- left St. Louis at 7:30 this morning. I was punchy tired from lack of sleep, having given up trying to pretend to get any rest sometime around 3 in the morning when it became clear that not only was the entire management of the St. Louis Depot bound and determined that I NOT sleep ... for reasons beyond human reckoning the powers that be in the corporate igloo at Greyhound Bus Lines have determined that benches in bus station waiting rooms are made to make you think the bus seats are entirely more comfortable and better for your ass than they actually are... and I said NOT ONLY THAT, Dear Readers, but the intrusion of

THE MYSTERIOUS BOX*

kept me enraptured for the biggest part of the night. 

Now, because Greyhound also does a sideline on shipping... how they've managed to succeed, I have no idea, since they're expensive and have the same weight restrictions as the USPS... there are always boxes. And people do pack boxes to travel. So it's not the mere presence of a box that bothers me.

What bothers me is that in some other, more affluent context... if it was even sitting by an Amtrak Gate... an abandoned box would garner more attention. If it was at an airport, they'd call out the bomb squad, the squat team. The Department of Homeland Security would be involved, and maybe the FBI. News trucks would crowding in as close as possible, cameras angled to catch the low on the totem pole talking heads AND the box in the same shot so the audience can get a palpable sense of What Is Really Happening.

But this Mysterious Box, left between Gate 2 and Gate 3 at the St. Louis Greyhound Bus Depot, gets none of that. At one point last night, a custodian stood next to the box and leaned on her push broom to watch some talentless hack yodel on The Voice. And then she swept AROUND the box and moved on.

Really.

And can I just say... I hate musicals. Really. Rogers and Hammerstein, if there's a hell, belong in it for the abomination that is Oklahoma! If that doesn't convince you, The Sound of Music sure as hell should. The hills are alive my ass. The Hills Have Eyes, and they turn yodeling nuns into meth hookers like THAT (snap.)

But I left The Mysterious Box and the fairly insulated climate of the bus depot in order to go to Hannibal, the boyhood home of one Samuel Clemens... who later wrote himself in Mark Twain.

Now, I realize that there's a cottage industry taking license and making money on his pen name and image. In fact, one of the pictures I DIDN'T take was of the new Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce Building at the corner of Main and Broadway. Not only did they have his image and signature etched into the large window glass, they had dolls... full sized mannequins... of children dressed like Tom Sawyer and Becky. [CREEPY SHIT. Even for a disorganized body like a Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce.]

So I avoided the museum, the hotel, and the tour of his childhood home. I didn't want to go see the version of Mark Twain they were buying and selling... even more than he, in the end, bought and sold himself. I wanted to see if I could catch a glimpse of what it was he saw. Foolish, I know, since Hannibal, like every other small town in America, is trying to figure out how to survive. 

If you want to find the heart and soul of a small town, you need to get away from the interstate by-pass as quickly as possible. The buildings along the by-pass is the stuff they want strangers to see. 

And if the town happens to be a river town, then you need to go in search of the river, since that's where the place began. All river towns... Hannibal, Missouri, Savanna, Illinois, Maysville, Kentucky, all of them... crawled out of river commerce. Businesses brought houses,  bars, brothels, deep shadows. Most river towns try and hide this part of themselves... tourists aren't nearly as impressed by the easy access to meth and hookers as they are to restored steamboats turned into restaurants and old timey musak being piped onto the streets. (No, Hannibal isn't doing that. Yet.)

The bus dropped me off at the Hardees on James Street, near the interstate. I looked around for signs of where the river might be and headed in that direction, figuring that either  the landscape or the buildings would tell me. I walked through a lot of residential neighborhood between the businesses close to the by-pass and center of town. Except for a family style pizza and sub restaurant, there was no hint of a bar until I was past the Marion County Administration Building. I was glad to see more than a few hole in the wall bars, and regretful that I had neither the money nor the time ... okay, I didn't have the money... to sit down and drink a beer.

I have no idea what this gloriously dilapidated house on Broadway and Sixth used to be. But there's a bar in the basement, the Down Under Lounge. Today was Taco Tuesday. I didn't stop.

In addition to selling the soul of Mark Twain for the sake of a greasy buck -- which is, I realize, no more than he did to himself -- Hannibal does venerate other important citizens. Like a lawyer:

No really. He's a lawyer. He did something else, according to the plaque, created some Office of Some Thing or Another at the federal level. So not only was he a lawyer, he was a bureaucrat.

Perfect.

It's difficult to get a sense of the place as it was, since
any mention of the Hannibal that Clemens might known is filtered through the cheese cloth of nostalgia. The new Chamber of Commerce building is proof of that. I know I'm talking about it and not posting pictures. But I was afraid one of them might see me and take it as some encouragement to continue. I don't know if the kids Twain had in mind really dressed that way or if it was some flight of fancy by the original illustrator that put Tom Sawyer in bib overalls and a corn straw hat... an ensemble that looks more in place in a Norman Rockwell painting than a what is essentially a murder mystery. (Read Tom Sawyer.  Not now. Later. But read it. The same with Huck Finn.)

When I finally made it to the river... which meant crossing a set of railroad tracks... I felt a certain amount of ease. True, it's not the place Sam Clemens knew growing up. There's no real sense of how he ended up becoming Mark Twain in any of the landscape. So when I say, he wrote himself INTO Mark Twain, that's what I mean. We're a voyeur culture. That's why his boyhood home is such a economic nugget. Our culture likes to lay people open and dissect them, generally misinterpreting them in the process. In this, we're a bloody and efficient culture that has learned to reduce everyone... writers, artists, computer technicians... to a niche. Categorize and dismiss. Mark Twain is a grouch with white hair and mustache who wrote quaint books no one reads and everyone finds offensive. A bureaucrat deserves a statue, a plaque, and an addtional sign (yes) that repeats what the plaque says. The Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce deserves a prominent building in the newer part of town, but downtown, an empty store front window can read

 BUILDING FOR SALE, LEASE, OR TRADE.

But that's just commerce, right? The way the ball bounces. And to be fair, Mark Twain had no issue with commerce... merely the greed that tends to accompany it.  

The best part of Hannibal was sitting down at the river, staring at the water, and thinking about the face that just over on the other side of that river, there are people I care about very much, and who are amazingly supportive my need to wander, even if they don't understand. I'm not sure I understand. There's a lot going on with me that I don't quite understand. But I like that I don't. The only reason I picked Hannibal, Missouri to visit was because I love Mark Twain -- the older, darker, slightly annoyed that no one ever got the joke Mark Twain -- and because I had never been there before. I never had any intention of doing the tours, even if I had the money.  Because that is a different trip than this one. 

And while I have lonely moments, I never feel alone. The people I care about and who care about me know (I hope) that I carry them with me like I carry my blue rucksack. I think of them daily. I don't expect them to think of me, but I know some of them do...which is a nice feeling. Warm and fuzzy and full of a deep longing to see them again, to tell them about my traveling, and to make them feel like they're with me. 

Yes, I have my sentimental moments. Lately I've rediscovered that not only do I like honest gushing mushiness, but that it's good for the soul. So suck on my left nut and deal with it.

People often cite Huck Finn as one of those idyllic characters from a nostalgic time. So much more innocent than we... the pinnacle that we imagine ourselves. Huck, who, like Twain, grew up in a world desensitized to human misery and degradation. Huck, though, unlike Tom Sawyer, had no intention of being anything other than himself. He is at once a parody, a paragon, and a prototype. One that we ought to be paying more attention to.

[THANKS FOR READING. Remember, if you like what you read...

1. Share the link
2. Contribute to the Travel Fund (I'll thank you on the blog)
3. Share the link

ALSO: In my bum rush to get out of Louisville in some dignified manner... which, admittedly, didn't work... I forgot to thank Amanda and Shawn and Heather for putting up with me. I had a blast and was able to renew a friendship that is very important to me. A good time all the way around. :)  ]

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*At the time of publication, The Mysterious Box remains unmoved, unexplained, and unopened.

Homo Viator: The Westward Expanse - St. Louis

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love. -- Rumi


Dear Readers, I FINALLY broke the barrier, somehow sneaking across the Mississippi and making it safe and sound to St. Louis.

Now, it's true: I wasn't all that thrilled about the prospect of wandering, once again, through the often described Gateway to the West. It's entirely possible that my stubbornness related to my desire to avoid St. Louis... simply because I wanted to breach the western lands at a different location... is part of the reason why I always seemed to get smacked back from crossing the river in the first place.


It's also entirely possible that the universe really IS out to get me; or, at the very least, out to push me in ways I'd rather not go. But rather than feed THAT paranoid little thought...

When I got here I was in no real hurry to jump back onto another bus. After all, I want leisurely travel, I want to be able to not have to rush around a whole lot, unless there's no option.

(There's almost always an option.)

So I considered my options.. after eating a chicken sandwich and drinking a much needed cup of coffee.

Now, the coffee wasn't great. But it was of slightly higher quality than the grainy vending machine coffee at the Louisville station. And, without caffeine... specifically without COFFEE... I sleep or turn into a giant puddle. It was perfectly fine to sleep on the bus, since driving from Nashville, through Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois held very little appeal for me. 

But once off the bus, I had to think. 

Initially, I was under the impression that there was no direct Greyhound Bus route from St. Louis to Hannibal... even though it's only a couple of hours away. Frustrating, but not surprising. I mean, it's only the boyhood home of one of America's most venerated writers.  And it's not as if anyone reads, outside of class or requirement... except, dear readers, you dear and sacred few. 

So I looked through the schedule and found  a loophole. 

I could hop a bus to Kansas City and backtrack; but that would add almost two hole days of travel time, and the 60 days on my Discovery Pass are ticking. Then I looked and saw that I could do the same thing, only go to Columbia, Missouri, which was closer, and would only add a day. 

I verified to bus schedule with the ticket counter. After that, I noticed my phone needed charging, so went in search of a plug, finding one in the large hall heading towards the bus gates, near the floor. So I dropped my stuff, popped a squat on the floor, and plugged in my phone. 

Not long after that, however, a member of the cleaning service came by and told me I wasn't allowed to charge my phone there. She barked the words more than spoke them, like she had barked them a lot. Before I had a chance to ask WHERE I might charge my all too necessary cellular phone device, she asked whether I was on the bus or the train.

"On the bus," I said.

"There are courtesy cell charging stations near the bus gates," she said, waving a latex gloved hand towards the bus gates behind her and rushing off. Not wanting to be a problem, I unplugged, unpopped my squat, picked up my blue bag and my coat, and walked over to the bus gates, where  had come in through only an hour or so before.

A note about Courtesy Stations: Nice idea, bad follow through. The plugs are always stripped and sometimes you have to go through several to find one that carries an electrical current. If you're lucky, though, where there is a courtesy charging station, there's a hidden wall plug that's in good shape. Usually behind a fake tree or a a bench. Just look. It can't hurt.

While I was charging my phone, however, I looked up from where I was sitting and noticed this:

That's right, Dear Readers.  Greyhound doesn't have a direct route to the land that spawned Samuel Clemens. But Burlington Trailways does. I dug my netbook out and looked them up. There was only one bus, and it left at 7:30 in the morning.  (I later confirmed this again at the ticket window.)There were no other schedules; but it was a two hour trip with no stops. Then I looked up to make sure that Burlington Trailways is one of the bus lines that accepts my Discovery Pass... and moreover, upon asking, I learned that I didn't even need a boarding pass.

So even though I'm once again spending the night in a bus depot, I'm not losing any time in my trip to Hannibal, where I'll spend the day tomorrow and hopefully hop another bus, headed either to the Ozarks or some other point west.

Sleep well, Dear Readers. And  with one eye open.

Homo Viator: The Westward Expanse: Nashville, TN

You can never count on time. -- Me, Untitled Poem Draft.

That's right, faithful readers. Nashville.

The least I can say is that I have, at least, made some westbound progress, and in an hour and a half -- if all goes well -- I'll be making more, getting as far as St. Louis, Missouri.

No. That was NOT the entry point into the west that I had planned. But, when traveling, it's important to be flexible. Especially when you only have a loose idea of where you want to end up to being with.

Ok... to catch up. I spent Derby week in Louisville with college chum Amanda Connor, her husband Shawn, and their housemate, Heather. We managed to make it to the Steamboat races (pictures by Amanda Hay Connor forthcoming), and I went out with them to a club called The Irish Exit in New Albany Indiana where Shawn (aka Sdot) has a regular DJ gig.

The club on the second floor wasn't really my scene... especially AFTER some very burly security kicked us out of the VIP Lounge, which had very comfortable couches, dim lights, and the slim chance of hot drunken women with low self-esteem... but I spent a wonderful few hours in the Irish Pub downstairs with Amanda catching up and drinking cheap well bourbon and coke.

Taken as an anthropological exercise, however, my brief time spent in the upstairs club reminded me of a couple of things:

1. Why I don't go to clubs
2. And the truth behind certain relationship dynamics.

For example: by the end of the night it was obvious who was going home alone, who had come alone but was leaving with someone who in all likelihood is using a made-up name, those who arrived with one but is leaving with someone completely different, and the rare long game play on the dance floor -- kids who arrive together, grind until they've done everything BUT fuck, and then leave together hoping to actually fuck. The good news is that most everyone finds someone to love, even for a few hours until sunrise... even if the cops are called, inevitably delaying nearly everyone's departure.

Everyone except your humble narrator and college chum Amanda. We managed to sneak out without attracting attention... in spite of me attracting the attention of a door bouncer and a midget bartender, both of whom snarled at me for NO REASON AT ALL.

But I digress.

Derby Day was spent, not at a party, but on the very secluded and shaded back porch at the Connor house, drinking bourbon and sweating it out in the warm summer weather. Although this had none of the seeming glamour of your standard Derby Party, we -- meaning Amanda and I -- gave bourbon consumption the ol'college try. We were successful enough that Shawn had to go out on a bourbon run... no small feat on Derby Day.

The goodness of the day was compounded by the fact that Amanda's dad, Jerry, who has been undergoing dialysis for the last two years, was notified that a potential donor kidney had become available. (He is now recovering quite well and may even be home by the end of this week...though it could be some time before they know where the transplant will really take,) Amanda, needless to say, was more than very much relieved.

I was planning in leaving Louisville late Sunday... the last bus possible, with a destination of Hannibal, MO. But with her dad in the hospital and plans having to be made to make the Hay homestead a good environment for him to recover (transplant surgeries are tough on the immune system...so no animals, no plants, no kids, for the next 6 months. The cat, Rodburn ... really Amanda's cat, but who has trouble living with most any other living creature including Merlot... and  a fig tree are new additions to Amanda and Shawn's house. There are bets running as to whether the cat, which is old and snarly, or the fig tree, will be the first to die.) I thought it best to make an earlier exit.

Amanda dropped me off at the station on Muhammad Ali Avenue and Seventh Street, I picked up my Discovery Pass, and waited. And waited. At one point, I was actually LOCKED IN at the bus station... which, apparently, closes twice a day for 3 hours at a time. The only reason I wasn't booted was because my Discovery Pass gave me an excuse to be there.

Of course, the ticket agent told me I needed a ticket anyway... contrary to the information on the site, but not surprising. What I didn't notice, though is that he gave me a ticket for midnight Monday, not Sunday.

My initial option was to spend another day in Louisville, which, while it would have been nice to spend more time with Amanda retelling MSU stories and clearing out the bourbon in the liquor cabinet, was not really an option since she would have to work in addition to being near her dad. Also, I was feeling the need to move forward... whatever that means.

After some haranguing and a bit of arguing, I managed to squeeze onto a bus headed for Nashville, where I was told there MIGHT be a connection to Hannibal.  Upon arriving, however, a ticket agent with a very precise hunt and peck typing method informed there was on ONE bus with a destination of Hannibal... which wouldn't leave until midnight. It was, at the time, 2:30 Central Time. 

Now, don't get me wrong. Nashville is probably a great town and riding in I saw any number of not-too-questionable adult venues that, if I had the money, I could've at least spent time. Though, if I had money for that, I could just as easily rent car and drive my ass west.

I opted for the next bus to St. Louis... which, if my adherence to Central Time is correct, leaves just under an hour.

More from the road, dear readers. Though I was waylaid, I remain ndaunted. Though the Mighty Mississippi has managed to bat me back yet again... which it has done consistently since I started traveling... I am going to breach the barrier... even if it means I have to endure another go round in the St. Louis Greyhound Station.

Bluegrass Slingshot, Ashland, KY: Disappearing Geography

 Brutal! Savage! Beyond Perversion!  - Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)


Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. -Daniel Boone

Kentucky is one of those places I have a deep and abiding affection for in spite of  not having any real roots here. As I've mentioned before, my daughter, who was born here and hasn't lived here since she was 5 has more of a claim on the place than I do according to conventional wisdom. Stella could return to Morehead, Kentucky at any point in her life and call herself a local because she was born there. On the other hand, I've actually lived in Kentucky and spent more time here than she has; but because I was born on the OTHER side of the Ohio River I will never be counted among the Kentucky's sons.

But, as I've also noted in the past, people from Kentucky -- particularly Eastern Kentucky -- have such a strong connection to the geography that even if I tried to claim Kentucky as a home, I lack a fundamental oneness with the dirt... the mountains, the clay, the rocks.

My dirt, apparently, is elsewhere.

But even the dirt that I can claim is not dirt that I feel any connection to. That, maybe more than the change in my living situation, may explain more why I'm compulsed to go go go. How did Kerouac say it? 

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

Not that my traveling has much in common with Kerouac, though people have made mention of On The Road more than several times. I can only assume that because I'm a writer, that I claim the Beats as a literary influence, and that I'm traveling, that they assume I got the idea from reading the book. (In case anyone's wondering, I didn't. And actually, I think Desolation Angels is a better book.)

You can't be a writer at this time and NOT claim the Beats... even if you're writing against the influence of writers like dear Jean-Louis, Ginsberg, Corso, and di Prima. I can't stand anything written by Dreiser. But to say he hasn't had in impact on what I do would be naive and short-sighted. As a matter of fact, I wonder sometimes if writers aren't more influenced by the writing they hate rather than the writing they love.

In spite my lack of connectedness with the geography here, though, it's always nice to be back. And it's always nice to revisit friends. I stayed with Mike and Elizabeth on my last trip through a few months back, and it's always a kick to see them. I was also able to spend some time with friend and fellow writer Misty Skaggs, whose blog is here, and who's worth checking out.

Got in around 5pm Friday after a 9 hour drive from the coast... the idea being that My Dear Sweet Ma would drop me off in Ashland on the way back to Porkopolis. I suspect, however, that we would have gotten to my end destination much more quickly without the help of the on-board GPS giving me directions in an oh so polite slightly British woman's vernacular.

It was actually worse on the trip out to Virginia Beach... tried to take us as far out of the way as possible, but somehow still had no idea where we were when we were on Highway 35 in Eastern Ohio.

When I had a car I always kept a road atlas somewhere handy.  I may not be able to stand in a wide open field on a cloudy day and tell you what direction I'm facing, but I know how to read a map... which is one of those things that I suspect is being lost in the age of digital travel and permanent GPS tracking. One of the things I noticed -- especially on the way out to Virginia Beach -- is that even when you program your travel preferences in... longest route, shortest route, avoid toll roads, etc.. it still sticks primarily to interstate routes whenever possible. If, while driving, you ignore the dumb bitch (because computers are DUMB. They don't KNOW things. They're programmed. You know. Like members of the Tea Party) the voice will either harangue you into making a u-turn or... if you wait it out... it will eventually "recalculate." Even then, though, there are large pockets of the country that are being lost. And since people rarely travel for its own sake, and have lost a lot of that natural curiosity Daniel Boone seems to have credited us with (maybe it's The Travel Channel's fault?) in addition to not being able to read a map, people are learning to live their lives  corralled by the interstate system,  hyperbarically and hermetically sealed within electronically connected bubbles of their own design.

I have learned, however, that when it comes to travel, I would rather get lost on my own terms than depend on some umbilical connection to a global positioning satellite.

The Traveler's Tourist Plight, Virginia Beach, Intermezzo: The Norwegian Lady

Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful. - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot


I won't leave you drifting down, but it makes me wild,
With thirty years upon my head to have you call me child. - The Grateful Dead, Ship of Fools

This respite, this visit back to Virginia, is an out of sequence slingshot back into territory I've been to recently. But given that I didn't get to spend much time with her when I was here before, and that My Dear Sweet Ma was going to drive out here anyway, and given that other than making sure I catch the right bus, I'm on my own time anyway

I decided, what the hell. 

And, I told myself, Virginia Beach isn't Norfolk.

More importantly, however, I wanted to spend a bit more time with The Kid before I spend some time out west. Now, this slingshot has been on the touristy side... trying to find things to do that keep us all entertained is more challenging than you might think. I'm an aficionado of dive bars, the Kid likes Kid-like stuff and fine food (she wants to be a chef) and My Dear Sweet Ma does what Dear Sweet Ma wants to do... whether it's pedaling a surrey up and down the boardwalk, mini-golfing like  Senior Tour Pro, or sitting around doing nothing. The good news is that I'm fairly reasonable as long as dancing isn't involved, and Stella will do most anything that's legal / moral / ethical to avoid being bored.

She's young. But she is my daughter. It's probably just a matter of time. Or she's become an accomplished liar. I'm opting for the former, since I've seen her try and lie. Let's just say she'll never be a professional gambler

Which is a good thing.

Among the usual touristy bric-a-brac around here to occupy people when the water's too cold and the clubs are too crowded, there are some random statues. One of them is The Norwegian Lady, located at 25th and Oceanfront. The statue stands, facing the ocean, fist held to mouth in mourning ... or defiance.

There's actually two of them... one here at Virginia Beach (pictured above with The Kid standing next to it) an one in Moss, Norway... in honor of the lives lost on Good Friday 1891, when the Norwegian ship Dictator sunk in Chesapeake Bay. The Captain was washed ashore, semi-conscious. His pregnant wife, their four year old son, and seven of the 15 crew members died. The statues were made after the Dictator's female figurehead. The plaque reads:

"I am the Norwegian Lady. I stand here, as my sister before me, to wish all men of the sea safe return home."

It's all very solemn, the statue, the thought behind it. Much of these little tragedies, often forgotten in the larger waves and breakers of history.

When people think about the latter years of the 19th century and sinking ships, they MAY think about the U.S.S Maine and The Spanish-American War. I add the small qualification because the Spanish-American War, it's causes -- the real ones --, as well as it's long term effects are rarely discussed except as a footnote in the myth of American Manifest Destiny.

That image of the waiting lady is one that haunts nautical cities. Another one is the Fisherman's Wives Memorial at Cape Ann in  Gloucester Maine.

There's a haunting romance to the image... that idea that mothers, wives, and daughters will wait on us to return. There's some inherent misogyny too... as if a woman's entire being will evaporate if the man she loves disappears. With respect to both the romantics and the feminists, though, the truth is probably closer to a little of both. What was it Hemingway said? The world breaks everybody?

Well, it does.


And To be fair, though, America didn't invent the trope of the waiting woman. Here's one in Vietnam, called Hòn Vọng Phu (Statue of Husband Waiting). No one knows exactly how the statue got there, but it was often used by locals to tell stories and teach moral lessons to their children.

The haunting romanticism, the lessons in endurance, the example of dedication, however, falls apart at some point. Life moves on. Daughters grow up. Wives learn to live in the absence of their beloved. Some of them get remarried. Mothers learn to let go of their children. Daughters grow up and leave. Sons sometimes don't come back.

And there are always reasons. And there are also good reasons.

When I had the chance to come back and visit Stella, even for a little bit, even though being a tourist drives me a little crazy, it was because I know she's not waiting. Time is moving forward and she's growing up and I'm getting older. A year from now she'll be preparing to graduate from high school. She's already thinking about her future.

For most of Stella's life, I've been haunted by a vision I had of the future when she was around 4 years old. Her mother was living in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. I was living in Lexington. At the time, I was seeing her one night a week and every other weekend... one of those standard divorce decree visitation schedules that screws the non-custodial parent out of real and meaningful time... as if the marriage not working out was somehow a mark against the whole of me instead of just against one role that I have apparently never played very well.

I picked her up, like I always did. We went to Burger King, where she was allowed to get as many ketchup cups as years she was old. The weather was nice that evening, so I took her to the of the parks, her favorite, near the hospital. There was a giant wooden jungle gym there that looked like a castle. She loved it. I had to park on the street, a little bit down from the jungle gym. I got her out of her car seat and set her down on the grass. There was a slight hill that ran down into the park, towards a merry-go-round... the kind that are difficult to find now because the safety fanatics decided they weren't safe.

The minute her feet hit the grass, she started running towards the merry-go-round, laughing. I was scared that she'd get her feet twisted and fall and started going after her. She made it down the hill and to the merry-go-round without falling, wanting me to hurry up so I could spin the merry-go-round for her.

She was still laughing.

Sometimes that image her at four years old flashes through my mind and I get a taste of that old fear... that she will run too fast and fall and that I won't be there in time to catch her. That she will run too fast and I will chase after and not be able to catch her.

But if life has taught me anything --  it's that parents always wait. Always. Whether it makes sense or not. Whether the kids know it or not. Whether it does any good or not. Waiting is the at the core of what defines parenthood. You start out waiting for them to be born. Then you wait for them to crawl, talk, walk. We mark off the inches they grow and we mark the mental checklist of things they need to learn. We wait. We wait for them to learn how to drive. Then we wait for them to come home. We wait to meet their boyfriends or girlfriends. We wait. And wait.

Then at some point, we may notice that we've been waiting so long that they're gone. And the only thing we can do is wait.

A Traveler's Tourist Plight: Virginia Beach, Day 3

The future belongs to crowds. --Don DeLillo

Youth doesn't need friends - it only needs crowds. -- 

Zelda Fitzgerald

So I woke up to what was, weather-wise, the most beautiful part of the day today: about a half hour just past sunrise. While yesterday's weather was sunny and warmish, but windy, a cooler weather system blew in over night... making today, according to my daughter, a "hoodie day."


My Dear Sweet Ma just said it was cold.  To be fair, though, anything under 70 degrees is cooler than she'd like the temperature to be.

After all of us were awake, we went out to breakfast and discussed our plans for the day. We were close to both the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center, and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. The Kid expressed a lack of interest in Contemporary Art, and said that she hadn't been to the Aquarium in long time. And so we decided on the Aquarium.

Aquariums and zoos have long struck me as odd. In the best of of them, you go and see critters in unnatural environments meant to enhance the experience of the humans poking fingers into the cages rather than improve the life of the fish and animals -- some of which were captured, some of which were born in captivity. In the worst of them, it's a dominionist's dream, designed to show the pre-ordained ascendancy of Mankind above all other critters. That most zoos and aquariums have embraced a more educational identity -- or that some try and save endangered species -- doesn't change the fact that it's always very clear which monkey is on the inside of the of the cage and which is on the outside.

Getting there took some doing. Even though between us we had three different GPS driven directional devices, a far more gravitational power held sway. Two people (My Dear Sweet Ma and me) who

1. Suffer from a tragic lack of any sense of direction, and
2. Don't really know their way around to begin with

can counteract the best GPS in the world by a degree of 1000 to the 10th power. It's as sure as a drought in the desert. As predictable as Tiger Woods nailing a bombshell blonde. As real as the fact that the city of Norfolk, Virginia was originally built on a swamp that itself must have been cursed. (Sorry. Curse-ed.)

We used the map function on my phone to find directions. It seemed easy enough. The directions took us back onto I-264, which I figured was just a way to circumvent stoplight traffic on Virginia Beach Blvd. Not to mention the fact that Virginia Beach Blvd is a long and windy street, much like Vine Street in Cincinnati. It made sense. And we had unshakable geographical certainties on our side. The Atlantic was to the east. We couldn't go too far without driving into the ocean. At some point if we drove to far west, we'd have to go through a tunnel and drive into Norfolk. 

That and turn by turn directions should have been enough; which means, of course they weren't.

We ended up doing a big circle and coming back around to the hotel... at which point we decided to go back upstairs and figure out just where in the hell we were going... during which time the Kid decided to take a nap.

Later, when we finally made ti to the aquarium -- it was only 2 MILES away from the hotel -- it became obvious very quickly that we were not the only ones to think of going to there. Vultures* were preying on potentially soon to be empty parking spots. There was a line just to get in. And once inside, there was an even longer line to get to one of the 5 or 6 overworked and over-stressed Admissions workers. There were people everywhere.

Once we had our tickets, though, we decided to go through and see the exhibits. And I was still reasonable optimistic. Maybe I'd get to see some cool fish.

All I managed to see was the Exhibit of People. It was beyond capacity crowded, mostly with people troweling in groups, mostly with small children, at least half of whom had no interest in anything at the Aquarium. But people stood in front of the displays and tanks, pointing and snapping pictures -- of the critter(s) in question and making the kids sit, stand, or kneel in front of the display or tank to take the prerequisite family vacation photo that will be posted on Facebook to prove to everyone that a good time really was had by all. 

I don't like crowds. I do like people watching... but that's not the same thing. Crowds make it hard for me to breathe and to move. I come by this honestly. My Dear Sweet Ma is exactly the same way... and while my daughter isn't really that way -- she generally can find better things to than have to listen to the inevitably present cadre of crying babies.

It was all we could do to get through the crowd and back out again. I still couldn't tell you anything I saw because I didn't really see anything. Once out, we had to go wait in line for an IMAX movie... which, had we seen it, would have been as close to anything fish related I had seen that didn't include my previous night's dinner. But it became abundantly clear very quickly that none of the three of us had any interest in waiting in another crowded line.

So we left and drove straight for Murphy's Irish Pub -- a not too bad looking place, though priced for the tourist trade. They did have Guinness on tap, though. And Maker's Mark on the shelf.

The day became instantly much improved.

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*vultures: those drivers in crowded parking lots that sit and wait for you to pull out of a spot rather than driving around and seeing if there's one not being used. These are the same sort of people who go to funerals in order to make sure the guest of honor is dead and not simply trying to get out of paying taxes.

A Traveler's Tourist Plight: Virginia Beach, Day 2

I've got a bike 

You can ride it if you like 

It's got a basket 

A bell that rings 

And things to make it look good 

I'd give it to you if I could 

But I borrowed it 

                               -Pink Floyd

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry 

When I take you out in the surrey,

When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top!

                             - Rodgers and Hammerstein 

The day ended on the early side with a wonderful meal and an awesome cocktail -- the one I was denied last night. 

In order to get there, however, one of the things I did first was to ride up and down the boardwalk in a surrey.

Unlike the surrey in the song lyrics above, (from a horrible musical by the bane of my past theater existence, Rodgers and Hammerstein... don't get me started, but my ire is rooted in an extreme over-exposure to The Sound of Music. Those bastards could kill happiness. I think they probably did... with saccharine sweetness, too.) THIS surrey was not pulled by horses, white or any other color.  It was essentially a four-seated bicycle.

Theoretically, each passenger pedals. The two riders in front steer, and -- because it's an American surrey -- the left-side steering wheel has the brake. 

Now, I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. At least, that was what my dear sweet Ma said on Monday evening when we were walking back from dinner at the curse-ed seafood buffet where the carnival float drink from yesterday's post came from. She saw some other tourists pedal by on the boardwalk... and that was that. She even found a coupon that would give us the SECOND HOUR FREE if we payed for the first hour.

On a break: My Dear Sweet Ma and the Demon Contraption

Yay.

I was able to drop to sleep last night around 1:30 or 2, and I woke up this morning about 8:30. By the time I futzed around with the coffee pot, took a shower, and got dressed, Mom and Stella were well past ready for breakfast.

We wandered off the boardwalk for breakfast, and when we got back, decided to go a-riding to work off the meal we'd just eaten. Several of the hotels rent bicycles and surreys. Ours isn't one of them. But we found one close, walked down, rented the contraption -- for only an hour, which we would later be grateful for. 

The boardwalk is wide and flat and covers a lot of territory. The problem was, according to the signage... and the signage was prominent -- we weren't supposed to take the hobby horse onto the boardwalk. We were, instead, restricted to the bike path that runs parallel to the boardwalk. And unlike the boardwalk, the bike path is NOT wide and flat. It is windy and narrow, with slight curves and even slighter hills that you don't really notice until you're one of three people pedaling a four person surrey.

You also don't notice that just because it's just like riding a bike that riding a bike requires a certain level of physical fitness. The kid, who participates in some competitive cheer-leading thing, and who actually still has leg muscles, decided to wear a skirt... which limited her movement. Mom is a retired school teacher with an occasionally hinky lower back, but to her credit won't let it slow her down too much.

And then there's me. The out of shape pudgy Irish-German Mug. But I'm still smiling through my pain.

Neptune, God of the Sea. And  a turtle.

No, really. I am.

Actually, it wasn't painful, and against my best inclinations, I had fun.

This trip back out to visit Stella is a great end to a nice break before I go back out on the road.  The meal I ate tonight is one I'll be able to think about for the next few months... especially during those times when a solid meal may be itself a distant dream. 

While I'm not entirely comfortable with being a tourist -- because that's more or less what I am at the moment -- I would be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the respite. The ocean sound is soothing, even with the sounds of the kids on Spring break discovering the wonder of words like areola.

That's right. Walking up and down the beach chanting "Areola!" like a protest of mass virgins.

And where are the parents?  Probably touring around on surreys.