Recently in Circumnavigations Category

The context of where I found the following quote isn't terribly important -- although if you care, it came from an ongoing discussion of the popular Angry Birds video game on a political blog I like to follow -- I just thought it was an interesting idea. And, I think, a very true one. It originates from the autobiography Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby:

A critical faculty is a terrible thing. When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films that I didn't want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussels sprouts and cabbage, and there were no bad books - everything I read was great. Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassidy was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on earth would my English teacher think that The History of Mr Polly was better than Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie? And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality.

I'd like to say more about this idea, but I'm afraid I'm leaving in the morning for a bit of a walkabout, and it's already long past the time I ought to be in bed. So I'll just leave it for my Loyal Readers to mull over -- consider in particular how this relates to the furor over the Star Wars prequels -- and I'll catch you all in a week!

Sorry, kids, I must've been channeling Shatner there for a second when I wrote that headline. It happens sometimes. More often than you might think, actually.

So, how is everyone? In case you didn't catch the subtle hint in the previous entry -- you know, all that stuff about the romance of the open road and such... okay, don't feel bad, it was very subtle -- The Girlfriend and I were on vacation last week, and what with The Man getting even with me for taking time off and various other things going on since we've been home, I just haven't been able to find time for this little ol' blog. Yeah, yeah, Bennion, but where did you go, you're asking. Why, Las Vegas, I'm replying. More specifically, we drove down to Vegas on Monday, came home Thursday, then headed out again on Friday to catch my man Rick Springfield in Wendover, then finally home for good Saturday afternoon.

I hate to say it, but I've had better vacations.

Don't misunderstand, we had plenty of fun, and I don't at all regret going. We were able to see some old friends and meet some new ones, and we partied hardy with our current social circle. (To explain, Anne and I weren't traveling alone; we met up with a bunch of people in Vegas to celebrate a wedding, and our friends Jack and Natalie accompanied us to see Rick.) But we also had a lot of irritating random mishaps; it was one of those "one damn thing after another" situations from the moment we left. First, the couple we had planned to convoy with on the way to Vegas got held up for a couple of hours because of an emergency doctor's visit to check out a spider bite. Then I had a savage allergy attack on the drive down -- my eyes looked like they were about to shoot laser beams out of them, X-Men-style, and the skin around them was puffy and tender for two days. Then Anne did something to her knee and had to spend an evening in the hotel room with an ice pack. I went out with our friends while she did that and got pulled over by the cops on Las Vegas Boulevard because -- get this -- the officer couldn't see my license plate clearly enough. (I have a plastic cover over the plate that has yellowed with age, and the little light bulb that illuminates the plate had burned out.) I got off with a verbal warning, but it's pretty damn embarrassing to get busted on the Strip with friends in the car.

The jinx continued on the way home, too: my car developed some kind of problem as we were going over the canyon between Mesquite, Nevada, and St. George, Utah. I decided it was just crappy gasoline from a Vegas 7-Eleven, and sure enough, topping off the tank and adding some STP in St, George seemed to cure it, but I was on edge waiting for something to go wrong again all the way home.

Oh, and then, just to cap it all off, Jack and Natalie and Anne and I experienced quite possibly the worst service in the history of the restaurant business out in Wendover. Our waiter was a nice enough kid -- and I do mean kid; he didn't look old enough to drive, let alone work in a casino environment -- but he didn't quite grasp the basic concepts of his work. I guess hiring standards are lower when you're in an isolated desert outpost and its 100 miles in any direction to find more qualified candidates.

Comments returning in three... two... one...

Blogging to resume after I do some laundry and pick up some bread that doesn't have green fur growing on it. See you all soon.

Well, The Girlfriend are off on another adventure in the morning... we're going to Cleveland!

Seriously, we're flying to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we'll rent a car and then drive for a week through southwestern PA and into Ohio, finishing up in Cleveland and flying home from there. It seems like a strange vacation itinerary, I'll admit, but maybe it will make more sense if I explain how it came about.

One of the gifts I received for Christmas last year was a DVD compilation of performances from the induction ceremonies for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 25 years of awesome jam sessions in which all the greats of the genre -- The Rolling Stones, U2, Tina Turner, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Roy Orbison, and on and on and on -- play each other's music together. It's a great set if you like classic rock music, just insanely entertaining. Anyway, the DVD includes a brief featurette about the actual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the museum itself, which is located in Cleveland, OH. One night, after watching this little five-minute feature, I turned to Anne and remarked that we ought to pick a weekend and go see that place. She wasn't opposed to the idea, but thought it was a little silly to spend two days on airplanes just for a single afternoon at a museum, so we started looking into what else was in the area.

At some point during our research, Anne mentioned how she'd envied me seeing Gettysburg with my buddy Robert a couple years ago, and I remembered from that trip that the Lincoln Highway, the precursor to Route 66 and very first nationwide highway, ran through the area, so now our museum weekend was a road trip with Gettysburg on one end and the Rock Hall on the other. In short order, we learned that Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater was nearby, and most of the sites where one of our favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, was filmed, and there was a lot of nifty stuff in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. And suddenly it all came together, the Great Pennsylvania-Ohio Lincoln Highway Road Trip of 2010. And, as an added bonus, we're going to be there right in the middle of the fall colors. We didn't plan it that way, but we're really looking forward to seeing it, especially as fall can be sort of a mixed bag here in Utah. Some years are gorgeous, others rather drab. This year is trending toward drab, unless you're up at the top of one of the canyons.

Anyhow, we have an early flight tomorrow morning so I'd better wrap this up and get to bed. One quick administrative note: I've recently been deleting something on the order of 20 pages of spam comments per day, so rather than deal with an entire week's worth of accumulated garbage, I'm just going to shut off the commenting feature while we're gone. If you have something really important to tell me that can't wait until after the 16th, feel free to send an email to jason(at)jasonbennion.com.

Finally, credit where credit is due: that excellent graphic up there at the top comes from a t-shirt I ran across a while back; you can view and purchase it here, if you've a mind to. I thought seriously about getting myself one for this trip, but Anne and several other people discouraged it, and I reluctantly agreed it was probably just borrowing trouble to wear something like that to the airport. Man, would I love to do it, though! All the intrusive, inconvenient, and ultimately pointless nonsense we have to go through now just to go to fly to Cleveland, and the fact that we're all so thoroughly cowed by a bunch of minimum-wage-earning TSA rent-a-cops that we self-censor our t-shirts, utterly disgusts me. In a very real sense, the terrorists have won, and I don't say that to be a smart-ass or a self-loathing, America-hatin' liberal. I really mean it. We've changed our behavior, as a society, because of them. We're less free because of them. And isn't that what they were after all along?

I'll see you all in a week. Be excellent to each other while I'm gone...

Well, this sucks: it seems the Orient Express, the famed Paris-to-Istanbul train that's been the setting of so many fictional mysteries and thrillers, will cease operation as of this Monday. Like so many other relics of a more elegant age, it's been made obsolete by faster and more convenient alternatives. I don't question its obsolescence -- as I recently commented on someone else's blog, who has two days to go anywhere on a train when you can catch a plane and be there in a few hours? -- but as a history buff, a romantic, and someone who wishes he had the kind of leisure time that makes train travel practical, I mourn its passing.

The Orient Express has long held a place on my "probably will never happen" goal list (as opposed to the list of goals that are within reason for a middle-aged guy of moderate income and limited vacation time). Like a lot of other people, I suppose, I was drawn to the glamour and promise of adventure that lived in the train's very name. "Orient Express." It's wonderfully evocative, isn't it? I realize, of course, that these qualities stem more from the pages of Agatha Christie than the vehicle itself, but then I understand Concorde wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either, and I still wanted to take a flight aboard her. But now the irresistible forward march of progress has taken both options off the table. Ah, well... there's still an African safari and a trip to Antarctica to consider. Assuming that global warming doesn't destroy both continents before I manage to secure my fortunes and quit that pesky day job...

Incidentally, and just to avoid confusion, there is another European train service called the Orient Express. That one is a luxury (i.e., very expensive) tourist experience aboard refurbished 1930s-vintage railcars running (mostly) between London and Venice. Think of it as a cruise-by-rail, I guess. That Orient Express isn't affected by this news; the train that's shutting down is the original, historic Orient Express, the one on which Sean Connery "honeymooned" with Daniela Bianchi in From Russia, With Love (still my favorite of all the Bond movies).

My longtime Loyal Readers will probably recognize the significance of Indy's Clipper ship up there. It means I'm headed off on another adventure. Once again, my friend Cranky Robert has invited me to tag along on one of his business trips, as he did when we toured Pittsburgh and Gettysburg last year. This time, the destination is Washington, DC. I would've mentioned it sooner, but it's come about at the last minute and of course I've had a difficult time lately blogging as much as I would like.

I've never been to our nation's capitol before, so I'm pretty excited. As if there wasn't enough to see there, I've also got plans in the works to visit an old high school and college friend who lives in the area. It ought to be a good trip, if a bit too short. I fly out at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning, and I'm back Sunday night. And, as is my usual pattern, I've waited until the last second to pack, so I'd better run along and do other things now.

See you all soon...

I guess the vacation is finally over when you've used the last of the little soaps and shampoos you nicked from the hotel.

Incidentally, if you're going to San Francisco anytime soon, I highly recommend the Parc 55. Its lemongrass-scented soaps are really delightful...

Hello? Is this thing on?

It's kind of weird to be back online after a week away from this whole scene. I'll be honest, I'm having a little trouble getting motivated to start blogging again. I find myself uncharacteristically (and rather disturbingly, at least for me) at a loss for words. But I'll try, for the sake of my three loyal readers who've been so brave in my absence...

The Girlfriend and I arrived home late Saturday night, safe and sound, and we were back in our respective offices on Monday morning. From this, we've learned a valuable lesson: in the future, always plan on at least two buffer days before returning to work. We pretty much dithered away all of Sunday and now here it is three days since we got back and I've still got un-put-away luggage and souvenirs strewn all over the living room.

I hope to find the time over the next few days to write a nice long travelogue entry, but for now it'll have to wait. It's the usual story, work and mundane chores crowding out the good parts of life, and anyway I've got to sort out a few things in my head. At the moment, the previous week is just one big blur of remembered sensations: the caramel flavor of a strong Irish coffee, the dingity-ding-ding of cable-car bells in the street below our hotel room, the smell of baking sourdough, the dazzling blue skies the day we walked out onto the Golden Gate, the clammy embrace of the fog the night we toured Alcatraz.

When we got home Saturday night, Anne remarked that the air in Salt Lake felt heavier. I told her it's actually much, much thinner way up here in the mountains; it feels heavy because we have to work harder to breathe than we did down in sea-level Frisco. There's some kind of metaphor there, I think...

Anyway, net crap on the way for Cranky Robert, hopefully some decent content to follow.

Well, kids, I'm sorry, but you're going to be on your own this week. The Girlfriend and I are leaving in the morning for a much-needed vacation. We're going to the City by the Bay, San Francisco. For me, it's a long-overdue return to the first place I ever traveled as a grown-up, seventeen long years ago, but it'll be Anne's first visit to one of America's most cosmopolitan urban areas. We've both had a long, hard summer, we're both tired and eager to be gone from our usual surroundings, and we can't wait to get down there and find ourselves some adventure...

Play nice while we're gone, and I'll see you all in a few days!