Category Archives: Bars of the World Tour

Island Bar and Grill

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Well, what can I say? I’ve driven more than a thousand miles and now I’m in a ritzy part of Seattle. I’ve come here because a guy I traveled with for a while in Spain reputedly throws a heck of a St. Pat’s bash, and he’s a good guy to boot. It’ll be good to say hello. The only thing is, I’m not really feeling that social right now — certainly not social enough to go to a party where I only know the host.

Sure, sure, I know it’ll be fun once I get there. I’ll meet new people and start each sentence with “In the Czech Republic…” and people will be at least mildly interested in my adventures. Really there’s no down side. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

*   *   *

The sun set, the sun rose, and I’m still in the hotel room. I got very, very close to the party, right in the neighborhood even, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Part of it was that I had just gotten back on track with my main project and the scene was building well. The other part was an image of me sitting around as an observer but without the usual antisocial shield of a laptop or a book. I just wasn’t up for it.

Instead I slinked (slunk?) back to the hotel and holed up. I still didn’t get much done, as I was too busy being angry at myself for being a loser and bailing on the party. I think it’s time to drive somewhere.

Thanks!

Pokey in Portland

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My hotel in Yreka was a bit pricey, but other than that I enjoyed my stay there. I made the mistake of turning on the television in my room, and it sucked in my brain and turned it into a little pool of foul-smelling liquid. I’ve never had immunity, but now it’s ridiculous. I reflected, as I flushed my late-night productivity down the electric plumbing, that people who watch TV every night have no right to call themselves busy. Seriously. You think you’re busy? Turn off the damn tube for a month. Now you’re busy, doing cool stuff, and I bet you’ll be more relaxed as well. You’ll even have found more satisfying ways to veg out. Stacking rocks, maybe.

I could have spent another day investigating the little downtown, but probably not much more than that. At any rate, I had places to go. Caffeine, food, gasoline, road. North. I find Gatorade to be a good traveling companion, offsetting some of the effects of exposure to wind and sun, but it’s getting ever-riskier to buy the stuff. It seems there are new flavors on the shelves every time I walk into the quickie-mart, and most of them are vile. I got lucky this morning, there was no plain ol’ Gatorade to be found, so I took a chance on something that was roughly the same color. Cool Rain or something like that. It was drinkable.

Road. North. Portland. Traffic. This is likely an extreme case, but Portland was traffic hell. There is a limited number of bridges across the river, and it seems that part of Interstate 5 was closed, shifting all its traffic to I-205. Things might still have been tolerable, but a truck broke down on the I-205 bridge, which already had to carry more traffic than usual.

After the first ten miles or so of stop-and-go traffic, I decided I’d better fill up the tank. I dove for the exit ramp and pulled up to the pump at the first station I found. What followed was a very confusing encounter. Here is an abridged version.

Gas station guy walks over to my car as I pull up and turn off the motor.

Jerry (scanning the markings on and around the pump): Is this full service?
Gas Station Guy: What’s that? I mean, I can clean your windshield…
J: Never mind. Before your time.
Jerry gets out of the car.
GSG: So… do you want gas?
Jerry moves toward the pump, but GSG is in the way.
J: Uh, yeah, I want gas.
GSG: You want me to fill it?
J: So this is full service?
GSG: What?
J: Huh?
GSG: You want gas, right?
J: should I pull up to a different pump?
GSG: …
J: Oooohhhh! This is Oregon!

The actual exchange was much longer and far more confusing. For those not familiar with the ins and outs of buying gasoline in the United States, there are filling stations that offer the service of pumping your gas for you, but the fuel is much more expensive. Yours truly is truly a cheap bastard, and would never pay extra for someone to stick a hose in his car. When I found someone attempting to perform this act, I thought I’d pulled up to the pump labeled “ream the lazy drivers.” I was not about to let him pump my gas if I could move to another pump and save several dollars.

But this was Oregon. In this little section of the Pacific Northwest, it is illegal for individuals to pump their own gas. So, while I was perplexed by guy who wanted to pump my gas but didn’t know what “full service” meant, he was equally confused by my questions and because I got out of my car. It was a cultural disconnect, just as deep as any I’ve had in the Czech Republic, exacerbated by our ability to communicate.

Tank full, I got back on the road, and after another few miles of creeping along (during which time a bicyclist passed me going uphill — as I watched him approach in my rear-view mirror I tried to think of something to shout at him that we both would have found funny, but I decided that there was no such thing) I got around the broken-down truck and was on my way.

Some time before or after that I was passing through an area where deciduous trees dominated the softwoods. Must be oak, I thought, as I passed a town called Oakland. Later I drove past the turnoff for Oak Ridge. The thing was, all the oaks were dead, nothing more than moss-covered skeletons. Some sort of nasty thing from somewhere else got loose, and the result is a lot less variety in the forest. Here and there some smaller, slightly shrubby trees were alight with pale white blossoms, quite pretty, and I wondered if they were the heirs to the spots the oaks used to occupy.

One thing the ads don’t mention when they try to sell you a convertible: the smells. Pine, grass, flowers, fertilizer, the good and the bad. You’re out there.

Now I am at Denny’s in Columbia, Washington, sipping Red Hook ESB. Foreigner is on the juke box. This Denny’s is better than most, although the menu is if anything more horrifying than ever. I chose the New! Jalapeño burger, and completely forgot to ask them to hold the goo. The menu called it tangy ranch sauce or something like that, but I knew without looking that it was goo. Then I was tweaking the last bit to a story when she came by and I ordered, and only when the burger arrived did I remember that it came with goo. Without goo it might have been all right. With the goo, it was… not.

Goo and Television. Al Qaida doesn’t need to attack, they just need to wait until we all have coronaries.

In good news, I finally, finally, finished the first draft of the short story that’s been keeping me from the things I really should be writing. Now I can get back to work… um… real soon now.

Thanks!

Miner Street Pub, Yreka, California

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It was a good day to have the top down. I am now in Yreka (rhymes with he-wrecka, if I’m not mistaken*), windblown, a bit sunburned in spots, and tired. It was the traditional long night over beers and unusual jazz last night, so it wasn’t exactly the crack of dawn when I pulled onto Glenwood Drive and headed north.

I have a deadline right now, a place I need to be at a certain time. That fundamentally changes the nature of a road trip, and I spent most of the day on the Interstate highways, instead of the more enjoyable little, winding roads. Once north of Reading, however, even I-5 is scenic, working its way around the skirts of Mt. Shasta, the snow-clad cinder cone reaching high into the deep blue sky. Shasta’s sisters have on occasion exploded; I wondered when this volcano was due for a cataclysm. Traffic was light and the drive was routine. I could have gone farther, but I wanted to give myself some time to do some writing this evening. I saw billboards for hotels with free wireless Internet, and that was all I needed.

Yreka wasn’t much to look at from the freeway, and I almost changed my mind about stopping. The center of town is all right though, and the neighborhood just past the cneter looks pretty nice as well. Yreka is a mining town, though I don’t know if it was part of one of the gold rushes or if it was another mineral that folks were digging up here; I’ll drop by the chamber of commerce tomorrow and see what sort of executive summary of the town’s history I can dig up.

As I was settling in here at the pub, a guy came in with his dog, a standard poodle (the full-sized kind), well-groomed but not in the best of health, I suspect. The dog’s name, apparently is Pookie. Pookie the Poodle. He is now guarding the door, making sure no other dogs pass by unchallenged. I am sipping a Stone IPA, one of my favorites, and a bit of a surprise this far north.

The bartender and the dog owner are now the only other people in here; they are playing a dice game of some sort. College basketball is on the TV; moments ago Virginia Commonwealth upset Duke. Other than that it is quiet in here, but it looks like this place can be loud when it needs to be. There is a little sound booth to the side of a large open space obviously for bands and those who dance to bands. behind the open area is a small stage, but it is pretty much filled by a pair of low sofas. As I typed that the bar’s owner (rhymes with Joe) came in and removed the brass pole that had been at the focus of the couches. The crack of a pool break just reverberated down the stair.

Other than that, there’s not much to report. The volcanos were quiet, the traffic was manageable, and the sun shone brightly. And here I am.

* Apparently I was mistaken. A local was kind enough to provide a different pronunciation in the comments. A better rhyme would have been “I-reeka”.

Thanks!

Ready to Roll

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Beef jerky… check.
Tunes… check.
Clean socks… check.
Drivers license… check. (Law enforcement officials, please disregard all references to driving before today. I’m a writer. It was all metaphorical.)
Sunscreen… check.
Twitchy eager need for the open road… check and double-check.

Let’s Roll!

Thanks!

Life on the Back Porch

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The house where I am staying is a nice one, nestled among towering redwoods just north of Santa Cruz, California. I am in Scotts Valley, the place where the Suicide Squirrel Death Cult was first exposed, almost three years ago. (Three years!)

When I arrived home from a fruitless but enjoyable day of driving around, my hosts were both unavailable to entertain me, and the dogs had been exiled to the back. I set up my laptop on the dining table but soon felt the hopeful gazes of the hopeful dogs tunneling into the back of my head. The writing wasn’t going anywhere anyway, so I pulled a beer from the fridge and went out to join the banished canines.

It was a pleasant evening. I played with the dogs for a while and then leaned against the porch railing, appreciating the quiet. Quiet is different than silence, much different, and tonight’s quiet was filled with gentle sound. There is a stream that marks the back boundary of their property (as well as eating away at the property), and the still air carried the chatter of small birds. Sometimes things would rustle in the foliage back in the forest, and the dogs and I would both scan the dense brush for any sign of what might be out there.

The air, while clear, was not empty; countless winged creatures filled the canyon, darting through the sunbeams. One of those insects will appear in a story of mine someday, I suspect. While the multitude darted about in their brownian randomness, there was one, slightly larger flyer whose motion seemed to carry much greater purpose. The bug flew straight up, then after rising a few feet would freeze, wings outstretched red-gold in the slanting sun, and drift straight back down again. Up, down, up, down, the yo-yo bug continued, steering with a long tail to always be in the sunbeams. Hunting? I assumed so. Perhaps while it is drifting its prey cannot hear it coming. It was a very pretty killer.

I looked back in the window to see a cat silhouetted against my laptop screen. One of the feline residents here has an affinity for electronics. I wondered what the cat might be adding to the short story I was working on. (Later I discovered that the cat has actually removed a chunk of the story which it apparently found to be of substandard quality. Hey, it’s only a rough draft! Luckily the four-footed editor did not save her revisions, as I did not agree with all of the changes.

While the smaller dog grew impatient with me just standing there, the larger was content to hang out with me. There was much scratching of backs and rubbbing of bellies. The younger dog sent up clouds of winter fur, which drifted to form a layer, snow-like, on the deck. The birds sang, the creek babbled (happy to have someone listening for once), the land turned it’s back on the sun once again, and all was well.

1

Thanks!

Deer Creek Bar and Grill

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The Miata, almost exactly where I left it at the end of the homeless tour.

On the way over the hill to collect the Miata, John pointed to a place we had eaten at some unknown time ago. “Nobody seems to be able to keep that place open,” he lamented. We discussed why that might be, my theory being that although it is on a busy highway, it’s not near anything. When you’re on you way to somewhere, you don’t want to stop half-way, no matter how picturesque the destination. The place needs to be a destination in its own right to succeed here.

We discussed various gravity-enabled entertainment options – I started with a water slide but then figured that would be difficult in the current water-aware political environment. John suggested other lubricants for the slide (glycerine and KY). We went through some other ideas to make the place successful. When I suggested a bar with an attached hotel that forces patrons to spend the night if they drink too much (at an exorbitant rate), John wondered out loud just why it was we weren’t rich yet.

Looks nice out there, but I’m inside.

After one minor navigational snafette (In czech, snafuček) and a bit of an electrical infusion the Miata was purring like a 500-lb kitten, the top was down, and I was ready to drive. The first stop was supposed to be the DMV, but I wanted to run the alternator a little more before shutting things down. I’ll take care of that driver’s license thing later. I drove back south, up the winding road that connects San Jose with Santa Cruz, enjoying the light traffic, revving things a little higher than necessary to turn the alternator a bit faster. At the top I figured there must be enough electricity in the battery for one start, so I pulled out at the restaurant that always fails for a little lunch.

This is a nice place. I am indoors, with a good view of the patio where I would like to be on such a beautiful day, and the wooded hillsides beyond. There are no tables out there, however. Service is friendly and efficient without being oppressive. I am taking advantage of that peculiar North American tradition of free refills on ice tea, and the caffeine is starting to hit my system. My chicken sandwich was tasty. Soon, though, it will be time to go out and see if the car starts. It’s going to be very inconvenient if it doesn’t.

Thanks!

The New Mini

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I was discussing my plans with John the other day. I said I was going to go up to the Seattle area, then perhaps a couple of days in Colville (rhymes with Smallville), then working my way back down and ending up in San Diego before crossing the desert to New Mexico. All that in three weeks! I called it a “mini road trip”. He laughed.

I’m getting a little antsy, though, as I still don’t have a car. The guy with the keys has not gotten back to me. The guy who might know another way to contact the guy with the keys hasn’t answered my last email, either. I like it here, don’t get me wrong, but the road is out there.

Thanks!

Britannia Arms, Aptos, California

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I’m back in America. Yep, there’s no denying it. It’s good to be here. I like Czech Beer, don’t get me wrong, but man I miss the good ol’ American overhopped Pale Ales. if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, that’s the American way.

Right now, however, I’m sitting in a British-like pub, and I just finished off the best steak and kidney pie I’ve had in several years. That’s not saying much, as it’s the only steak and kidney pie I’ve had in several years, but that doesn’t change the fact that is was quite good grub. Flaky pastry, rich gravy, good steak and good kidney. Served with peas, of course.

On the TV to the right of the bar is non-stop coverage of football (rhymes with soccer) from around the world. It looks like Pakistan lost big this week. On the TV to the left of the bar is NASCAR. Neither of those is terribly distracting to me. What is intruding on my fragile concentration is the conversation at the table next to mine. There was a time when I was immune to this sort of thing, but spending most of my time in places where I can’t understand the conversation anyway has diminished my ability to tune out the world around me. It’s still a novelty that I can understand what people are saying.

Still, I’d best get the nose to the grindstone. J. K. Rowling is a billionaire, now. I’ve gotta keep up.

Thanks!

Worst Nightmare

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For those of you who believe in karma, jinxes, and the like, you might find corroboration as you read about my trip from Dallas to Denver. Hours ago, while sitting at the terminal in Frankfurt, I wrote about how air travel is generally pretty routine these days. It took the Hand of Fate a little time to find me, but somewhere over Greenland the pilot made an announcement that at the time seemed completely irrelevant: Our plane would be arriving in Dallas early. Since I had a very long layover in Dallas anyway, getting there early just meant waiting in an airport rather than sitting on a plane.

By the time we got there, I was very enthusiastic about the prospect of getting off the plane. I was sitting next to a toothless old guy from Bombay, which could definitely have been a lot worse. (For the record, Lufthansa’s veggie meals smelled pretty good, and Hindus can drink beer.) The infant two seats over was crying during boarding, but then clammed up for the entire flight. Still, ten hours is a long time to spend in any chair. Off the plane and through immigration quickly and over to the next terminal (with the help of one security guy who went way out of his way to direct me to Frontier checkin), I was in time to hop on an earlier flight from Dallas to Denver. It meant a longer layover in Denver, but it’s always better to grab the earlier flight if you can. As the guy checking me in said, “You never know.”

No, you never do. I settled into 16F, and it looked like I’d have the row to myself. Excellent! Room to spread out!

Just before departure time, a happy-go-lucky guy came bumping down the aisle and asked the attendant, “where’s 16A?” The blonde in 16B looked up in disappointment; she was already spreading out in her row. I got the feeling she was an airline employee of some sort. Much to her relief, he did not sit in 16A, but chose 16D, on my side of the aisle instead. He sat heavily and I realized just how drunk he was. He looked over at me and said, “Dude, I’m just going to fuckin’ apologize right now. I’m fuckin’ wasted. Am I saying fuck too much? This is like your worst fuckiin’ nightmare, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t… yet.

He talked at me for a bit. It turns out he’s a rancher from Wyoming who supplies horses to rodeos. His problem these days, he says, is that his horses are too mean for the new generation of cowboys. He paused at one point to say, “Are we off the ground yet? Good. I can’t get arrested and thrown off the plane. I’m just this side of alcohol poisoning.” Throughout our discussion (he was just as interested in me as he was in telling me about himself), he said, “Just remember the code word. ‘shut the fuck up motherfucker.’ I can’t believe you haven’t used it yet.” The thing was, I was a bit curious about raising horses for rodeo. Eventually, however, I did invoke the code word and a he lapsed into silence. The attendant comped him free access to the directTV broadcast on the screen in front of him, and he lapsed into semi-consciousness.

We were on the ground here in Denver, taxiing to the gate, when he puked. He pulled out the air sick bag in front of him and filled it, and then some. Then he had trouble sealing it up. The blonde across the aisle and I offered supplemental barf bags at the same time. “Double-bag it,” the blonde said helpfully, but our cowboy just didn’t have the motor skills. He looked over at me.

“Almost made it,” I said, as the fasten seat belts sign turned off.

“Almost,” he agreed, then rose from his seat and fled in shame.

Thanks!

So very, very tired

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Air travel is pretty routine these days, despite the best efforts of the security folks to make us feel safer by inconveniencing us more and more. (It was Buggy who pointed out to me that if a terrorist wanted to end all air traffic and cripple the economy of the developed nations, all he would need to do is smuggle a bomb up his butt and get caught. The resulting security checks would end all passenger traffic.) So, while standing in line to get patted down and have a metal detector run over my body in the Frankfurt airport I thought of ways to get dangerous substances past. It still strikes me as frightfully easy.

But other than that air travel is an easy process — you wait around in large building, when instructed you join a few hundred of your (now) closest friends in an aluminum cylinder,

*** We interrupt this blog entry to stand in a new line for a while, to be allowed to come back and sit where I was before, with an extra form to fill out. The United States government promises that the form will be destroyed upon the arrival of my flight in the US. ***

… aluminum cylinder, where we sit for a period of time. There is some noise and some motion; those with windows can see things change outside, and then the noise goes away and we all file out of the cylinder (“deplane” — when we got on, were we “planing?”) and we discover that we are in a building much like the first, but the advertising is in a different language. That, in a nutshell, is modern air travel.

The waiting area I’m in right now is more comfortable than most, and the TV appears to be showing the news right now. There are pictures of a passenger airliner in flames; the tail sticking up from the surrounding burning foliage is the only indication of what it used to be. No one around me seems to connect that flaming aluminum cylinder with the one we will be packing into soon. Then again, I don’t appear to, either.

This is the time of hope and fear, as we all size each other up, and wonder who’s going to get stuck next to the crazy lady whose eyes point different directions and who wants to talk to everyone (about what is not entirely clear), or who’s going to have the seat in front of the hyperactive five-year-old and feel the thump-thum-thump of his little sneakers for ten hours, even while trying to tune out his over-loud complaining. Then there is the pretty girl in the purple sweater. Will she be seated in 20B? The vast majority of passengers, however, are like me, just interchangeable faces, people who are in Frankfurt and would rather be in Dallas. At least, I hope I’m in that group.

What does any of this have to do with the title for this episode? Well, not much. But I am tired. It’s my defining characteristic right now. The leg of my trip from Prague to Frankfurt was typical in every way, but there was a point where I rose out of deep snooze to some bouncing and jouncing. “Sweet,” I thought. “Already landing.” No such luck; we were taking off.

Thanks!

Meddling fool… a retraction

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I just got the message. I have a ride to the airport. Disregard my previous post.

Thanks!

Meddling Fool of an American!

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I leave in a few hours. My procrastination skills have designated tonight an all-nighter.

Public transport from here to the airport is reliable, but not especially swift. Tonight I was sitting with MaK and she offered to drive me to the airport in the morning. I gratefully accepted. I said more than once, “you’re OK with showing up at that time?” She said that while she didn’t look forward to it, she was willing to do it. I was willing to incur the karmic debt.

Enter my brother. What had been a simple one-person-doing-another-person-a-favor transaction suddenly became complicated. Complicated to the point that I will not be getting a ride later this morning. He didn’t say they weren’t giving me a ride, he just revoked the commitment and said, “when do you need to know if we will be picking you up?”

Well, of course, given the relative speeds of the transportation involved, the difference is about an hour. What that means is that now in order to give me a ride to the airport MaK has to get up forty-five minutes earlier than she would have, just to tell me she’s coming. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. pL rewrote the rules to make it almost impossible for me to catch a ride.

Jerk.

Thanks!

Jilted at the Altar!

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I was a little fuzzy-headed yesterday morning; the night before was a long one. I hadn’t planned it that way, of course, but sometimes those things happen. I was hanging out at my brother’s place, and his buddy was over to discuss buying a restaurant. Nights can get long when Jardo is around, but he and his girlfriend left at a reasonable hour. All might have ended early if it weren’t for Šarka (rhymes with shark-ah) being there also. She lives out of town, and MaK likes to keep her around as long as possible when the opportunity presents itself.

Šarka is also a massage therapist. That is an admirable quality in any human being, but when I said (quite sincerely) that I would forgive almost any sin in my next girlfriend if she gave good massages, MaK’s matchmaking instincts kicked into full. She was by no means obnoxious about it, mainly just doing her best to keep both of us there as long as possible, something that fits with her natural hosting instincts anyway. One of her techniques is to make sure a guest never has an empty glass. (Although when she almost-tearfully told Šarka that she was welcome in the family, that might have tipped her hand a bit.)

Šarka stayed very late, and I sure as heck wasn’t going anywhere when there are massages from attractive women happening. Which they were. I must say that although my head was fuzzy on Sunday, my back and shoulder felt better than they have in a while.

Somewhere during the massages I proposed marriage. She said OK. That was supposed to happen yesterday, but we never specified a time or place, and as the day wore to a close I didn’t hear from her. I didn’t press the matter — I had managed to get her consent for marriage, but not her phone number. Obviously I could have got that from MaK but I wasn’t at my best anyway. It is rare that I actually sparkle, but yesterday I was solidly entrenched at the far end of the personality spectrum. And maybe — just maybe — she didn’t take the proposal seriously. That I was laughing when I proposed probably didn’t help. Now she’s back in Moravia, and I won’t see her for at least a month because of my own travels. Ah, fickle gods of strong hands and soft hearts! Why do you torment me so?

Although we did make tentative plans for an Alaska road trip…

Thanks!

Miss America is Not the Problem

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I am sitting at the Budvar Bar, basking in the glow of writing what might be a really good story. It might not be — a review and edit a few days from now will determine that — but right now I feel good about it. I’m not supposed to be working on short stories right now, but there are going to be days like this.

On the television is the Czech version of Miss America. The Czechs, still being old school, have no problem with the fact that being sexy is an important qualification. They know that people are tuning in to see hot women in small clothes. With that in mind, I considered the Miss America pageant. Its television ratings, apparently, are plummeting, and the event is caught in a hard place where they used to sell it with sex but they’re not allowed to do that anymore. Judging women by their physical appearance is now only done shamefully, in secret. By everyone.

It occurred to me that while the Miss America contest is getting less and less sexy, the US Congress is getting better looking every election. So while we cringe at giving some woman an ultimately meaningless title on the basis of her looks, we will not give a man or woman the power to declare war on another nation unless they look like a professional athlete or a model. It’s not that I care much about the idea of Miss America, I just wish we’d apply that same queasy skepticism where it really mattered.

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Thanks!

Café Mia

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I find myself in a very small place right now, a new (for me) little kavarna in fuego’s neighborhood. It is a nice place, warm, with four tables and three barstools. While it doesn’t have a fireplace, it does have a gas space heater that would probably be very pleasant to sit in front of in the event that winter were to make another attempt.

I am at the smallest table, with my laptop in my lap to leave room for beer on the table. (The tea was excellent, but I am starting to twitch.) In the wicker chair opposite mine, the bartender also has a notebook open in her lap. The only other customers are a pair of the bartender’s girlfriends; the very tall brunette is drinking espresso while the blonde sips her dark beer.

That’s it. Me, three pretty girls, and beer. This is a very good place to be.

Thanks!