There’s a new bartender at the Little Café near nome. I first saw her a couple of days ago. The place was empty when I got there, and I sat at my customary table (lowered back to a more dog-friendly level), plugged in, and set to typing. (Some days it’s writing, others, typing.)

As I worked the place began to fill up, and a few of the arrivals were faces I recognized but had not seen in two months. Happy greetings were exchanged and I went back to work. That didn’t last long, however, as the place was getting crowded and I was getting very, very tired. It was time to go home before I fell asleep in the café.

When I paid, the new bartender said, almost shyly, “May I ask? You are Jerry?”

Hey! I’m famous! I assured her that everything she had heard was nothing but a pack of lies, paid my tab, and left. Forty meters up the street I realized I had not asked her what her name was. I was too wrapped up in being spoken of. ONE person has heard of me and already I have the superstar’s inflated head.

Last night I was back at LCNH watching hockey and writing during the intermissions. There was a rambunctous table full of hockey fans, and the vibe of the place was good for watching sports. The bartender was not so much a hockey fan, but we did occasionally exchange smiles over the antics of the more rabid viewers. Then other friends showed up, writing was done, and fun was had by all.

As I left I apologized for not asking previously and got the bartender’s name.

If only I could remember what it was.

Sweet!

Thanks!

Dear Mr. Bauer:

I wish to lodge a complaint about a piece of luggage I recently purchased, which proudly bears your signature. The bag is, I am afraid, a testament to the times in which we live, long on promise yet somewhat wanting in execution.

There is no denying that we live in a miraculous age, an era of personal mobility undreampt of only a century ago. That I can, between the time I awaken and the time I go to sleep, find myself a third of the way around the world is nothing short of astonishing.

We are also in a materialistic age, a time when we are owned by our possessions rather than the reverse. In such a time as this not only are we mobile, but our belongings must be as well. It is odd, upon reflection, that we put wheels on entire houses before we put them on suitcases, but whoever thought of the roller bag has earned a special place in my heart.

Recently I was nine time zones from home and I experienced a dramatic surge in the amount of stuff I needed to carry. I’m sure you’ve been through a similar dilemma more than once: My faithful backpack, my partner for tens of thousands of miles, just wasn’t up to the task. It was time to find a new bag, one with wheels, that was capable of managing all the material I had accumulated.

Far from home but still in the moderately civilized country of California, land of my birth, I made my way to Target. There in the luggage aisle I was confronted by a variety of choices in many colors and styles. My eye was drawn almost immediately to your product. As a man who has been here and there in his time, I was impressed by the design of the thing, with a rigid lower section and a softer upper. Perfect! Protection for more delicate items, and smushable on top. Lots of pockets (some of them of rather odd sizes, like the one useful perhaps for a fishing rod or a pool cue but not much else), plenty of straps, and nice large wheels. I hesitated when I saw the price, but I figured that a bag like that would come in handy more than once.

Thus enters into our little drama ‘perceived value’, the assumption we as consumers have drilled into us that a higher price implies higher quality. We are left with little else to go on, as we stand in the department-store aisle, bombarded on all sides with sometimes ridiculous claims of durability or innovative construction. Your product was no stranger to this propaganda, and I of course paid it little heed, but what is left? I purchased the bag based on its features and a hope that paying more would get me more.

I packed up all my stuff, discovered room to spare, and was quite happy. The bag was a stable roller, stood up straight, and the multi-layer design did a remarkable job of limiting cargo shifting during transport. I had, I told myself, made a good choice.

Now, of course, in retrospect, I know a little more about roller bag dynamics, and I will be able to spot the deficiencies in the next roller bag I buy. Unfortunately, that purchase will be occurring much sooner than I would like.

When I noticed the fabric already showing wear in areas where it covered some of the rigid frame of the bag, I was a little annoyed. This was far too soon for that sort of failure under normal use. Still, it wasn’t the end of the world, and the bag was otherwise performing well.

Let me interject here that my definition of ‘normal use’ in a bag that size includes the ability to pull it up a curb. In a real-world, encumbered situation, no one is going to stop, juggle belongings, hoist a large bag up six inches, reconfigure all their stuff, and carry on. A bag that size, with nice big wheels rated for highway speeds, is going to encounter some bumps and must be able to handle them gracefully. Some (but by no means all) of the abovementioned wear is due to the lack of a skid plate covering the lower inches of the bag. I know now to look for such a feature, but as I was at the time transitioning from a backpack, it was not a feature I knew to look for at the time I purchased your luggage.

It was not long after that, less than an hour of my arrival back in Prague, that the “lug” was officially put into “luggage”. I was pulling the bag up a three-inch step when, with a snap, one of the wheels came off. In a moment the bag went from being a fairly nice roller bag to a major pain in the ass. I have not had the opportunity to check yet, but I imagine that much of your competition includes plastic protectors that prevent the edge of a step or a curb from getting up behind the wheel where it can exert undue transverse force. (If they haven’t, you can use that idea for free. You’ll leave your competition cold in your tracks.) Another thing on my “don’t buy a roller bag unless it has this feature” list.

I am considering a trip to the hardware store, to bolt the wheel back on and add the missing features. This is made a bit difficult by the distance between me and my tools, but for all that the materials and durability of the bag are wanting, the design of the cargo space is really quite nice. It is clear that your designers were more interested in the “showroom experience” of the bag while neglecting crucial real-world elements of the user experience. As a result you succeeded in getting my money, but failed utterly in gaining my loyalty as a customer.

Instead you have become a metaphor, an example of the forces at work making the world just a little more shoddy each day, an example of a good idea undermined by corners cut, then thrust onto the market and sold with the power of a name. But what will happen when that name loses its power? Just like my bag, the name Eddie Bauer itself could get frayed around the edges, and eventually lose a wheel. Another name will rise to replace it, maybe better, probably not, but it will not be your name. Someone else’s signature will grace the next bag I purchase, and I doubt I am alone.

I am not asking for any sort of redress; I bought a bag, it turned out to suck, I’m swallowing my medicine and looking for a better product in the future. Returning the luggage would require hauling it back over the Atlantic Ocean, which will be difficult since it only has one wheel. I just thought it would be worthwhile to let you know about the situation.

Also, I’m glad you don’t make airplanes.

Yours,
Jerry Seeger

P.S. Please note that I have also posted this letter to my Web site. I will happily publish any response you give as well, so my tens of loyal readers can read your thoughts on the world economy, the quality of products, travel, the importance of protecting brand names, or whatever else it might strike your fancy to discuss.

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Sweet!

Thanks!

Episodes in which I comment on the routine nature of air travel are themselves becoming routine, and now I am looking out on a sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, with aircraft puttering around out on the tarmac. From here the taxiing airplanes seem oddly purposeless, like sheep drifting around in a pasture.

I’m traveling heavy this time, laden with electronics of various descriptions. My carryon includes two laptops, a very large camera, a wide-angle lens, and an external hard drive (complete with pirates). In my checked bag is another hard drive, various electronic gizmos used in the movie industry, cables and AC adapters. The brand-new MacBook Pro (never even started up) is pretty obviously a tax dodge, but luckily Czech customs cares not at all about things like that. (Watch this be the one time they do care.)

There was exactly one screaming baby on the flight from there to here, and that baby was seated directly behind me. She didn’t just cry, she wailed for thousands of miles, only to fall asleep just before the plane touched down. Fortunately my movie on demand thingie started working, and there was an option with subtitles. Pan’s labyrinth was pretty good.

There’s something about the breakfast snack served on airplanes that unfailingly gives me heartburn. The dinners I cope with all right, but whatever the mystery ingredient is in those breakfasts, it kills me, every time, on every airline.

And that’s about it.

Sweet!

Thanks!

I am sitting now, in the wee small hours, upstairs in the lounge car of a train plunging through the night. There will be no recounting the collision of feckless vagabonds, angry locals, young canadians, disaffected writers, beer, vodka and tequila, salted with a skeptical but attractive token female presence. I will not speak of the arm wrestling, of the violated pickle, or of the face graffiti. Stories of knives and vomit will have to wait for a more fictionlike vehicle.

But what does that leave? It all started innocently enough, when I quite accidentally sat in the only seat on the whole (accessible) train with an electrical outlet. Around this modern-day watering hole a variety of species came to taste of the current, but ultimately it was the proximity of the bar that made the Netherlounge the place to be. The cars on this train have two levels. Most of the seating is on the top, and the best seats for watching the world go by are on the top of the lounge car. Windows don’t matter much at night, however, and the lower floor of the lounge car is the source of alcohol.

The bar closes at a humane hour, but the Netherlounge remains the place where there is no possible way you can disturb other passengers. I was having a decent conversation with Jesus and, um… Franklin (not a good guess) and Shawn and another guy when the canadians arrived, token female in tow. Not-Franklin didn’t last long after that, he was hoping the train would be late enough to delay his deployment to Iraq for a week, but he wasn’t interested in being stupid.

The rest of us, it was demonstrated, were. The Canadians brought a jug of their Russian friend, Smirnov, along with his little buddy Sauza.

I identified myself as a writer. I’ve simply run out of other things to call myself. This put me in an odd sort of spotlight, as the Canadians had copious paper and pen just so they could jot down the stray word or two. Writing games ensued, and more than once I found myself sitting at a table, staring at the ruled and impatient sheet, the only requirement that I Be A Writer, while the happy earnest folks waited. I read the nimble thoughts the others jotted, while turgid phrases oozed through my mushy synapses. Not my finest hour. I am, I must acknowledge, not a man of swift wit. It would have been worse but a random word from the sole female bailed me out at a critical moment.

The sole female I impressed almost less than the guy hitting on her. She was sober. The guy hitting on her was not. It will never happen, but should one member of the male of our species ever mutate the ability to say, “you know, I’m not at my best right now, I’ll save my hitting on this girl I like for another day,” that self-restraint gene would easily out-compete the rest of us. A man who did not regularly make an ass of himself at the most critical moments would pretty much have his choice of reproductive partners (not counting competition with assholes). That it hasn’t already happened just shows that such an aberration is incompatible with the Y-chromosome.

But those are just side stories. Puppet shows and poorly-done shadow figures in the flashlight beam on a canvas tent wall. On the main stage there was drink and danger, dynamite and zippo lighters with perhaps a bit of kerosene and enriched uranium (the Canadians jotted down a quote from me to that effect, my sole moment of sparkle). Now it is a time-zone boosted 3:40 in the morning, and I am really, really tired.

But you know, it was all right, tonight. It’s why you ride the train.

Addendum: tonight there will be no sleep. While I sat in the lounge car watching the world slide laterally by and pecking out this episode, the big guy in the seat next to mine quite naturally annexed the Sudetenland, as it were. Comparisons to aquatic mammals aside, it seemed a shame to disturb him.

Sweet!

Thanks!

I’m at Central Connection Café in Albuquerque right now, with about an hour to kill before I need to be at the train station. Thanks to the train being a wee bit late I have time to enjoy an fine beer. That’s not really news, but the fact I was carded was fun. (For those keeping score, people are drinking who weren’t even born when I came of age.)

I forgot to check Trip A on the Miata odometer as my voyage began a new phase today; but the little machine’s role in the adventure is at an end. The next few hundred miles will be by rail; I’ll see if I can make up find out the mileage for this part.

I haven’t been on a train ride in this country for a long time; I’m looking forward to a relaxing overnight trip with time to get some writing done. We’ll see how reality deals with my expectations.

Sweet!

Thanks!

Yep, the mini road trip just crossed the 5,000 mile mark. I’m sitting in the High Country Lounge in Chama, New Mexico. The Saloon side was closed, although it seems open from where I’m sitting now on the restaurant side of the operation. Next door is an internet business with broadband, but they are closed on Sundays. Luckily for me they did not turn off their WiFi thingie while they were out. I sat in the parking lot and double-checked that I had indeed uploaded the latest Jer’s Novel Writer for the kids at Apple to evaluate. So, hopefully everything’s cool now.

The waitress is stretched a little thin right now; the first customers have arrived over there and she’s in charge of both sides. She sounds like she’s from Wisconsin as she greets regulars warmly. “It’s not music without Bob Marley,” she just said, which sounds pleasantly odd when spoken in a Wisconsin accent.

Other than that, not much to report. It was nice to see all the rock stacks still standing in the morning sunshine; I got a few more pictures that maybe will show them better. I’ll try to get a photo episode up soon.

Addendum: I am on the Saloon side now, a place I’ve always enjoyed being. The place manages to be rustic without crossing the line into kitsch — just how they do this is not clear. They have the old bits of western paraphernalia on the walls, wagon wheels in the divider between the sittin’ area and the bar, and all that. It just doesn’t seem contrived in a place like this. There is a fire crackling merrily in the corner (even sunny days in spring can be chilly up here), and that’s always a plus. Add a juke box with Bob Marley and Pink Floyd (turned up to respectable levels), a reasonable beer selection, and friendly conversation flowing through the spokes of the wagon wheel, and you’ve got yourself a nice place to hang. If you’re in the area, do yourself a favor and drop by the High Country.

Sweet!

Thanks!