Tag Archives: travel

Travelers Tip: Don’t Use Raffeisen Bank

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I am still struggling to recover from having my bank card eaten by an ATM at the bank closest to my house. In fact, this is the second time it’s eaten my card, but the first time I had a backup. As my tale of woe spreads, I’ve learned that several of my friends have had their cards eaten by the hungry bankomat machines of Raffeisen.

My theory on the matter is that Raffeisen is more sensitive to fraud than other banks, so if the slightest thing goes wrong on the transaction (say there’s a glitch in transatlantic communication, or, as is the case with my bank, one of the card-processing networks that serves them goes down), that’s it – card eaten. For locals this is an inconovenience, for travelers it is a major pain in the butt.

So, while before I thought it was bad luck that my first card got eaten, now I know that there is a difference in banks, and I will never use a Raffeisen bankomat again. I encourage you to do the same.

Meanwhile the emergency delivery of a replacement card has been far less than swift. First told I could even have a card the next day, now it’s been a week and I’ve been riding a ridiculous merry-go-round between San Diego County Credit Union and Visa Emergency Services. My nerves got a bit frayed on the phone last night, as the credit union seemed to have gotten confused somewhere along the way about a check card I never activated and in fact don’t have. Sure wish I did. Or that I’d applied for a Paypal card. Or anything.

“I’m getting hungry,” I tell them over the phone. (Thank the gods of telecommunication for Skype.) Now I’m waiting while (once more) Visa Emergency Services seeks permission from my bank to issue a new card.

So, lessons learned: First, don’t use Raffeisen Bank. Never. Second, don’t don’t count on two organizations to work well together. Hound them relentlessly until things are fixed. Third, don’t tell your landlord you’ll have the money on a certain day. I never thought I’d be the one tip-toeing past the landlord’s door. That’s out of a sit-com, right? Except that was me today. And just like in a sit-com, I got to the bottom of he stairs, realized I’d forgotten something, and tip-toed back up and down again. High comedy.

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Things I Need to do Before I Leave Prague

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With my departure date approaching quickly, I’ve started to think about all the stuff I need to do before I go, the things I can’t do elsewhere or things that are especially Prague-oriented. The list in my head is getting longer so I thought I’d best write it down. Then I thought that even better, I could share it with you all and you can watch as items are checked off, and even make suggestions about things that should be on the list. Here goes!

  • take a 1.5 liter bottle and get it filled up at a wine store
  • take a 3-liter bottle down to a vinyard in Moravia and get it filled up
  • DONE! – go up in the telecom tower
  • go to black light theater
  • DONE! – go to a hokej game
  • DONE! – get Bili Tigri hockey jersey (and maybe vomiting slug jersey)
  • Have a beer at the BBC health club bar
  • DONE! – Drink Kofola
  • Go to a Svejk bar

Good thing I started writing this stuff down, because already I can’t remember most of them. I will add to this list as I think of things.

Thanks!

Why I’m Here

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“I miss you,” I tell That Girl. “I can’t wait to be with you.”

The thing is, I have been waiting. There’s really nothing stopping me from getting on a plane tomorrow, landing in San Jose and wrapping up with That Girl in a gooey ball of love. But here I am. That Girl did not ask what the holdup is, though she wondered. For a while I wasn’t sure myself, but I knew there was something I still had to do here. Over the last few weeks, I figured it out. Today, I met with fuego and we started to hash out how we would make something. It’s important to me that I leave here with something that is concrete, born from my head, and done in collaboration with my brother.

The plan right now is to make a film version of “Moonlight Sonata”. Tomorrow we start scouting locations. Soup Boy is in Australia, but I hope he will be in on the enterprise. I’m calling in everyone. zlato will be with us tomorrow.

This is going to be cool. I plan to chronicle the making in great detail here on these pages. Stay tuned; it should be a good ride.

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Well, that was Norway

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I’m sitting right now in a bar in the Oslo airport, enjoying 0.6 liters of Carlsberg. It’s the morning, but I’m leaving Norway and in my entire time here — more than a week — I did not go to a single bar. This may count as an effort to artificially inflate the Bars of the World Tour statistics, but there you have it.

As I sit here let me add that there are worse places on the planet for people-watching. Here in the international section of the airport there are weary travelers moving slowly while the odd breed called “morning people” weaves among them. Airport personnel have large scooters, including cargo scooters with a platform for carrying goods up and down the concourse.

There are, of course, some fine examples of the female of our species, for which Norway is justifiably famous. There is a softness to their curves that makes them appealing in a way unlike the czech women I will be appraising in just a few hours.

It is raining outside, and as I sit here in shorts, an aloha shirt and a baseball cap, long-haired and bearded, enjoying a morning beer, I seem to be just as interesting to the people passing by as they are to me.

I had a good time here, if not a particularly blogable one. I

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And that’s where my battery died. Should have gone ahead and bought a new one while in the states. Right after that two girls jogged past, late for their flight – a sight to warm even the darkest heart. Then came the guy who walked like a chicken. Like I said before, good people watching.

So, then onto the plane (Czech airlines, which still serves free beer and snacks; in this case in some sort of cooperation with Korean Air. It was a fight much like any other.

As you know by now, I’ve been skating rather tenuously around the new tourist visa regulations enforces across much of Europe. One of the reasons for my side trip to Norway was to cross a legal threshold. Still, my last trip I had stayed past the legal limit, and I didn’t know if that would lead to trouble. I didn’t think the Czechs would mind, but now they have to follow the same regulations as their rather more officious neighbors to the west. The two main terminals in the Prague airport are now configured so that one handles flights from within the Shengen zone, while Terminal 1 handles the flights from outside. Mostly.

Norway is not part of the Shengen zone, so I was a bit surprised when the plane turned off the taxiway by terminal 2. Huh. I got off the plane, walked through an empty hall that had once had passport control, and there I was. Not only was I not hassled about my previous overstay, but they don’t know I’m here. Since all the rules are based on the date of entry into the zone, it’s going to be difficult for them to hassle me.

So, I’ve got that going for me. I’m sitting in the Little Café near home, sipping my first czech beer (Staropramen, unfortunately). Franta bought me some Fernet. Others are coming later, but I don’t plan to stay long. It’s going to be nice just relaxing the quiet of my little apartment tonight. Also, I don’t have much of the local currency.

Here I am, back in Prague for a long stay for perhaps the last time, sitting at LCNH (the weather is near-ideal, but I’ll drink outdoors tomorrow). There’s a new bartender, of course, there always is when I come back from traveling. The joy with which Franta welcomed me suitably established my regularness, I think.

For those keeping score at home, my transport today went: car, train, airplane, bus, metro, tram, and a little bit of walking.

Thanks!

Plan D

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As I write this I’m sitting on the patio of a rural Norwegian home, looking down on a deep blue fjord, sipping a Tuborg, and reflecting once more on just how good my life is. Off in the woods there is a soft clanking sound — the sheep all seem to be bellwethers here. It is peaceful here, quiet. My host is, I think, a bit worried that I will get bored, but in fact I thrive in an environment like this.

My host is known across the Internet as Dr. Pants, who stumbled across this humble blog many years ago, left a comment, and is now stuck with me. Funny how life works, sometimes.

The journey from London to Oslo went smoothly, right up until I got off the plane. I had my instructions: call Dr. Pants and get on the train to Drammen. Piece of cake, right? I found the automatic ticket dispenser and worked my way through the ticket selection process without trouble. The price came up and I inserted my credit card. “Enter PIN” it said.

What? A PIN for a credit card? Needless to say, if I have a number for my card, I don’t know what it is. No problem; there’s always plan B. I went over to the ticket counter. A sign told me that I would have to pay extra to have a human issue my ticket, but I was OK with that. “Drammen, please,” I said. “I can’t sell you that ticket,” the guy said. “I can only sell you one to [some town that started with A].”

Hm. That was inconvenient. Time for plan C. The ticket guy directed me to a bank machine. I put in my card, pushed buttons, and the machine instantly told me “Transaction refused by your bank.” Plan C2: find a different bank machine. Same result. Fortunately, next to the second bank machine was Plan D: automated currency converter. I had (by pure luck) some English money handy. In went pounds, out came Norwegian kroner, and I was golden. Thank goodness for Plan D.

I went down to the train platform and while I waited for the train I typed up a message to Dr. Pants. I hit send, and a few minutes later that the message had not gone through. I was out of credit on my Czech phone account. With a sigh I considered plan B.

Remember a while back when I was complaining about AT&T’s “more bars in more places” ad? After that I realized that all the ads were focussing on AT&T’s coverage in Europe. Problem solved! I still had a bit of time left on my AT&T chip, so while I scooted through the Norse darkness and scattered showers I switched chips and fired up the phone. No bars. I left the chip in for a while, to see if perhaps we were just in a dead zone. No luck. (It turns out this was the time Dr. Pants chose to try calling me, but of course I had the wrong chip in the phone.)

Time for plan C. Drammen was the last stop for the train, and when I got off the station itself was closed. At least it wasn’t raining. Out front were a pair of pay phones, but if they functioned at all I never found the secret to their operation. No other phones in sight. Hm… plan D? The town was dark and quiet, and I knew that hotels are more than just pricey here.

There was one other person in sight; the conductor from the train had stopped for a smoke before moving on. I asked her, timidly, if I could borrow her phone. She agreed and I made it through to Dr. Pants, and shortly afterward I was in his car and on the way.

Plan D, not once but twice within the space of two hours. I didn’t even know I had plan D’s. But here I am, and all is well. I’ll save the details of that for another episode.

Thanks!

A Day of Many Airports

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Sometimes plans made far in the future turn out to be flawed. Some of you might wonder how I even know this, as planning is not regarded as something I’m inclined to do that often. I did, however, make one decision long ago that I’m still recovering from. I chose months ago when I would fly back to Europe, and where I would fly from. It seemed a reasonable plan at the time, but events (and my own laziness) conspired to make it rather inconvenient.

So it was that at 4:30 am I boarded a shuttle bound for Albuquerque International Airport. There I would catch a flight that would take me San Jose, California, where I would catch my flight home.

Well, almost. To be precise, I was catching a plane to Phoenix, where I would get on another plane to San Jose, where I would get on another plane bound for Houston, Texas, where I would finally board a plane to London Heathrow. Five airports, and still not home. From Heathrow airport I would catch a bus to Luton Airport, where I would board yet another aircraft and end my long journey in Prague. Naturally, because I’m me, there were a couple of variables in play, which made things a bit more complicated. A bit. You might be interested to learn, for instance, that I am not in Prague as I write this.

The first leg of my journey was uneventful; the only hitch was that I had to transfer a few pounds of stuff from my checked bag to my carry-on luggage. My suitcase was pretty darn heavy, filled with books and notes from the writing workshop. The plane didn’t impress me much. It seemed… just a little bit run-down. The fluorescent cabin lights flickered annoyingly, all of them in synch, and occasionally they would flash very bright. Iffy wiring is annoying, but on a plane it makes me nervous. It was difficult to read, so I turned on my little reading light which shone directly on the shoulder of the large man next to me. Let’s just say that US Air failed to impress me. They also charge for tea, and I had no cash.

So it was that as we took off I was acutely aware that I was on an older aircraft and maintenance was not as diligent as I would like. We all arrived in Phoenix safe and sound, however, and I got off the plane and checked the monitor to see where to go for the next leg of my journey. Right back on the same plane. I scored caffeine in the terminal and away we went.

The clouds formed a solid blanket over San Jose, with the hills that surround the city poking up, acting as a rim to hold them there. We descended into the murk, and I considered idly that there was a time when the pilot would have been going on little more than faith. Indeed, the airport would likely have been closed. Yet here we were, and the pilot knew exactly where we were going, exactly where the ground was. As I considered this I watched the flaps on the wings retract, the engines changes pitch slightly, and we began to climb.

Once out of the clouds the plane began a long turn to loop around and make another run. The captain came on the speaker and said that planes had gotten too close together for safety. When I’m suspended a thousand feet over the ground in a metal cylinder with tanks of kerosene attached, I don’t mind a bit of caution.

We approached again, passed over That Girl’s parents’ house again, passed what I think was That Girl’s sister’s apartment, and set down. That Girl didn’t live very far away, but I would not be seeing her; instead I would be collecting my bag and taking it to another person to give it away again, then I would be doing the Homeland Security hokey-pokey and hopping on another plane for the next leg in my long journey. It all went smoothly, but I was acutely aware of That Girl’s nearness, even though it may as well have been 10,000 miles.

Continental was much more comfortable — more leg room, free tea, and a much fresher-feeling aircraft. There was exactly one empty seat on the plane, and it was next to me. The guy in the aisle seat was friendly, and my passage to Houston went smoothly.

I had a fairly short turnaround in Houston Bush Airport, but it went smoothly (except, janitorial crews please note: Do not close consecutive men’s rooms for cleaning). Away I went, London-bound. Ten hours is a long time to sit in a seat, but time passed. I read, watched a movie, and even dozed a bit. The guy in the seat next to mine was nice enough, even if his respect for personal space was a bit soft. He was heading for a 5-week stint on an offshore drilling platform. There’s a job I would not want.

Right, then. London Heathrow Airport. There is a big tax on airplanes that land there, so the cheap airlines use other options. Sky Europe is one of those lines, and I had a seat on one of their planes, bought far in advance and practically free. (They have a few seats on each flight they sell for esentially nothing beyond taxes and fees.) The bus ride from Heathrow to Luton cost more. That all went smoothly, but then there was the variable.

You see, right now I might be in violation of the immigration laws for the Shengen zone (your spelling may vary), which aggregates most of Europe into a single region with no passports required to move about between countries. It’s a good idea overall, but there’s always a catch. Now that the Czech Republic has joined, they are not as able to ignore their own immigration rules. Whereas before they would allow people from wealthy nations in with a shrug and a look in the other direction, now they are integrated with the same data system the Germans use. What I was counting on was that airlines, which have a vested interest in not transporting people who will be refused (forcing the airlines to take them back), can check the status of a given passport. I have personally experienced this on many occasions. My plan was to make sure that I would be allowed into the Czech Republic before I boarded the plane.

So there I was in my sixth airport of the trip, having slept almost none in the last 48 hours, and I learned that my airline didn’t check immigration status. That wasn’t a big surprise, but then I learned that they couldn’t. “It’s a US passport,” the woman said. “It’s fine.”

But is it fine? in a few more days my status will be much clearer, as my time away hits the magic 90-day mark. Why didn’t I just time my trip for 90 days? Hmm… it seems like there was a reason back then… I think I assumed that I would have papers in hand and an appointment at an embassy. Should have done something about that during the previous three months.

So, if I got on the plane and then was turned away at the border, what would happen? Would I be detained? If I bought a ticket back out of the zone some time in the future would that placate them? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. There would be cheap flights (though not as cheap) tomorrow. I lost my nerve. Sleep, that’s what I needed. Sweet, sweet, sleep. I walked from the airport to a nearby hotel, paid extra for spotty Internet access, and fought off the raging slumber gods long enough to have a beer.

Very early the next morning I reviewed my options: fly to prague, take a train or a bus to France (getting turned back would be less of a hassle, and on a bus the check might not be rigorous), or visit a non-Shengen country for a few days until my legal status is less unclear.

My days as a resident of Europe are winding down, and there are many places I haven’t got around to visiting. Two sprang to mind: Estonia, where a friend lived (you may remember Brutus), and Norway, where resides Dr. Pants, a guy I’ve never met but who long ago was a regular commenter on this blog. I sent some emails. My Estonian connection is back in the states, but Dr. Pants came through, and I started checking flights to Oslo. (I also stumbled on very low fares to Jersey, but I wasn’t sure what I would do when I got there.)

I write this in a bar at Gatwick, the eighth airport of my journey, and not my last. Norway beckons; I just wish I had more socks.

Thanks!

The Good Life

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It is sunset, or getting on that way; the sky is still light, but starting to show pink over toward the ocean. The koi are splashing happily in their pond (or at least they seem happy from here) and the sound of the waterfall is soothing.

That paragraph took about ten minutes to write; I thought I was out of the traffic lanes but several family members stopped by to say hello. I am at a family reunion, a gathering of friendly folk who have quite a bit if DNA in common — and the people who went and got married to them. There are a lot of Seegers here, and a lot of Jerrys, but I am the only Jerry Seeger.

The kids and the koi have developed a working relationship — the kids bring bread and the glorified carp eat it. It’s a relationship that brings satisfaction to both parties.

Only, as I typed the above, the elder of the younger set informed me, “we’re going to try to annoy the fish.” Which makes me wonder: Is the ability to be annoyed a measure of intelligence? Angry’s pretty easy, but it seems like annoyance might require a little more imagination. He’s going to do it again, I just know it. Oh! There! He did it again! I knew it! Damn that pisses me off!

The youngest of the young ones just showed me her stick. “Nice and sharp!” she informed me. Oh, to be young again.

What was I going to write about again?

Thanks!

More Road

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I write this in Kingman, AZ. When I set out this morning I asserted that today was about miles, gobbling up highway and not getting distracted by the little blue lines on the map. I even drove with the top up much of the day. To call the drive a success, however, I really should still be on the road, chewing up a few more miles. Tomorrow will be a long drive.

With the top up, it is still possible to have Road Trip Moments, and often music will play a larger role, due to reduced wind noise. As I hit the ramp from I-25 to I-40 the Who was playinig “Going Mobile”, and the Mountain Dew purchased at Santo Domingo was kicking in. Hell, yeah, baby, the po-lice and the tax man won’t catch me, I’m mobile.

Still, the freeway is a marvel of engineering designed to make travel boring, and it did its job admirably.

Somewhere around Gallup I was in the slow lane (being a fine, upright, law-abiding citizen), and I saw a white dog standing right in the middle of the fast lane, fairly well camouflaged. I was already aware of the BMW and the semi truck side-by-side behind me; things looked very bad for the dog. My plan: ease over closer to the dog and honk the horn, startling him into the median. Still not ideal, but better than where he was.

My plan had one major flaw: by the time I came up with it, I was well past the dog, and watching the drama unfold in my rear-view mirror. I didn’t really want to see a dog get smushed, but I couldn’t not look, either. The BMW driver didn’t see the dog until the last moment, and swerved toward the median to avoid it. The dog got a clue at last, and skipped away from the hurtling sport sedan — almost, but not quite, into the path of the truck. The last I saw, the dog was standing, straddling the white stripes as the truck blew past it. I do not know the end of that story.

I could have sworn there was a gas station just past Winslow that was relatively cheap. There isn’t. Yours truly was getting a little worried for a while. I turned off the Air Conditioning to improve mileage, and buy the time I found fuel I was One Sweaty Dude. I put the top down when I refueled, and turned off the music. It was having a tendency to drag me out of the story I have been playing with in my head.

Other than that, there’s not much to report from today’s travels. I now return to Mad Dog’s Dog House for dinner. I wonder if they’ll remember me from last winter.

Thanks!

A Long Ramble

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Note: When you spend a long time driving, you have a lot of time to think of stuff. I pulled a few paragraphs out of this episode and put them in one of their own, but this is still one hell of a muddled ramble. Even without the Theology and sociology, we’ve got us some philosophy, a (somewhat disguised) treatise on storytelling, thoughts on agricultural practices, lovely, curvaceous roads, and lunch. Not in that order.

I slept rather late this morning, in a awkward position it would seem as my entire left arm was numb when I finally stirred. I lifted it and flexed it, enjoying the curious feeling while it lasted. How nice it is to be easily amused.

Awake, showered, ponytailed and behatted, coated liberally with PABA, I got the hell out of Dodge. One more life ambition checked off. I headed in the direction of Garden City. All around me food was being made. Big round fields of it stretched across the landscape, the radius of the circles defined by the length of the irrigation pipe. I heard the grumbling engines working to draw the water from the depths and pump it out to the thirsty plants. Sometimes I passed other factories dedicated to turning the vegetable food into meat food. The only exception to the single-minded devotion to food production was an occasional oil well. One way or another, it was all about energy.

I was well past Garden City when I started to wonder if that was the way I really should be going. Not so much, it turns out. At Lakin I made a course correction, crossing the Arkansas River and heading due south on Sunflower 25. The Arkansas was bone dry. As I went south the land became more sere, the spaces between the verdant circles greater and the uncultivated areas scrubbier. It occurred to me that, like the oil, the water would run out some day as well.

The highway was not crowded, and I was gradually catching up to an SUV. I thought I smelled burning rubber, and soon after a cloud of blue smoke came from the left side of the SUV. Only after a few more seconds did the driver hit his brakes and begin to move to the side of the road, the smoke getting thicker all the while. At first it was difficult to tell in the mirage of the hot pavement, but it seemed like something was separating from the truck. The something resolved itself into a tire, or at least the tread of a tire, a big rubber donut bounding across the road and into the ditch on the other side. The SUV pulled over, its naked, shiny chrome rim shooting sparks as it dragged across the pavement. The truck had super-low-profile tires on expensive wheels, and one of the tires had lost its sidewalls and gone off on its own. Important note to people who buy fancy tires like that: Check the pressure often. Those tiny sidewalls don’t give you any room for error.

Hugoton is an attractive little farm town, and I decided it would be a good place to break my fast. I stopped at Dominoes, which was doing a fair lunch business when I walked in. It may surprise you to learn that I was the only long-haired male in the place wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sandals. As any Czech will tell you, however, a friendly hello to the people in charge will almost always be returned in kind, and I found I had stumbled into a very friendly place. By Czech standards. The men in their blue jeans and shirts with snaps discussed offshore drilling and the price of oil (down nine cents), along with farm topics, and the waitress spent her time trying to drown me with iced tea. Ah, America! When I paid, she asked, “do you want some ice tea to go?”

I joined highway 56 in its dogged pursuit of WSW, across the Oklahoma panhandle. It’s the sort of road that people joke isn’t 100 miles but the same mile 100 times. One mile was different, however. At the side of the road was a cross, elaborately decorated. Someone had died there, presumably as the result of an automobile accident. I had to wonder, why there? Sometimes when you see a roadside memorial you can piece together what happened. A sudden curve or the end of a passing lane. You can see the threat the driver faced and understand it. Other times, like this time, there are no such clues, no such reason. It could have been any place along that road. But it happened there, at that mile, and that is where the story ends (or begins?), and that mile is forever changed.

I imagine there were people who asked, why him? after the accident. Perhaps there were clues, the driver’s own personal dangerous curves — drugs or alcohol or fatigue or cell phone. Perhaps not. Perhaps, just like that unlikely mile, there was nothing to mark that person for death. Someone else ran him off the road. He had a blowout. In that case, why him is just as meaningless as why there. There’s really now answer at all, no reason it might not be me next time.

Fuel in Clayton, and a decision to take the Cimarron-Taos scenic route. Not a difficult choice, really. I found myself on the sort of road small sports cars are made for, on the sort of day that convertibles are made for. (Note to drivers of big-ass pickup trucks creeping along at twenty miles per hour: If you see a bunch of cars behind you, just pull over for a moment. It’s obvious you’re not in a hurry anyway.)

How is it that Taos, NM, has near-perpetual traffic problems?

Now I am at the folk’s house, windows open, the temperature comfortably cool, thinking that I’ve spent way too much time blogging tonight (as I’m sure many of you will agree), especially since I have a story I thought up out there on the road that I want to start working on. That’s the thing about the road — you just can’t stop thinking of stuff.

Thanks!

Civilization, God, and Stuff

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On the night stand by my head a bible rests, open and cradling the TV remote. It occurred to me that the specific page the bible was open to was likely not an accident. It was a message from the very friendly proprietor of Thunderbird Motel, words he thought might most help a wandering soul passing through. The bible was open to 2nd Chronicles chapter 6. It’s a fairly literary chapter, opening with King Solomon giving a sort of State of the Union address as he dedicates their new temple, the very first one Israel has ever built. The short version of that speech could be, “now we are civilized.” From wanderers with no strong central authority they had turned into city-dwellers, answering to a king.

The message then seems a good one for someone passing through a hotel room. Accept the Lord and have a place where you belong. Give up your directionless life. Become civilized. While I declined the offer, it was nice of the hotel people to remind that it was on the table.

My definition of civilization is, “the set of rules and behaviors that allows lots of people to live in the same place.” This differs somewhat from the dictionary definition, but I think my definition is more useful, since it deals with both the origins and consequences of civilization. When we are around others, we must be civil. For the past few days I’ve been wondering what comes after civilization. What happens when the benefits of a civil culture — security, getting big projects done, and so forth — are no longer needed? When I put it that way, it doesn’t seem likely to be a question we need to answer any time soon, but that hasn’t stopped me from contemplating it. I can imagine ways technology could replace any benefit of a civil culture. I’m working on a story in a place like that. Not Utopia so much, that just seems like civil culture taken to its greatest extreme. Something else. I’ll figure it out.

Thanks!

Dodge City (and don’t you forget it!)

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This morning I awoke feeling surprisingly fresh, considering “3 a.m.” and “Scotch Whiskey” were the two most notable factors when I went to bed last night. This morning was the last event in the Campbell conference — a get-together between the writers who won awards and (primarily) the writers from the workshops. It was very interesting hearing what the awardees had to say about how they got noticed, how they approached their work, and a variety of other topics. One thing I learned: It is very difficult to get a story into F&SF.

Interestingly, I have had a story in F&SF. Furthermore, it was revealed that Gordon van Gelder, the editor, almost never says that if a story is fixed he might reconsider publishing it. I made a note to self: Make the changes he suggested and resubmit “The Importance of Being Paranoid.” So, that made me feel good, to have cracked a market that other, better-known writers had yet to break into. I managed to keep my yap shut during the discussion; it would have come off as boasting to mention my success.

Another thing I learned: Even successful writers rarely make enough money to support themselves. I’m going to have to get more serious about turing Jer’s Software Hut into a business, I’m afraid. So it goes.

There were a few other tidbits, some good humor, and an overall friendly atmosphere. There were references to many names I didn’t recognize. Then it was over, and lunch ensued. Remember how I modestly did not bring up my good fortune with F&SF during the meeting? As we gathered for one last lunch together, I managed to drop my previous success into every conversation, even as a little voice in my head gently suggested that I shut the hell up. So much for modesty. And now I’ve told you. I’d probably tell the waiter at the family restaurant I’m in right now, but he’d only pretend to care.

Finally it was time for me to beat feet. I lingered long enough to not be actually rude about taking off without appropriate goodbye-gestures, then I slathered on the sunscreen, turned up the tunes, and pointed the car west and south, back the way I had come.

After artfully dodging the toll road between Lawrence and Topeka, I found myself on a stretch of I-70, notable for having quite a lot less truck traffic than my old friend Interstate 40. I let the radio spin in search of electric guitars, and a song came on that took me back, the way a special song will, to another time. I relived the time I first heard the song while carving the sun-dappled curves of a tiny road in the Santa Cruz mountains. Those were the days.

I prefer small roads, and I regretted missing the chance to get the hell out of Dodge on the way out to the workshops. Who knows how long until such an opportunity arises again? I left the freeway behind. Dodgeward ho!

The drive was unremarkable, the rolling topography of eastern Kansas gradually losing amplitude. Just outside of Dodge City there was a point just high enough to allow for an overlook at the side of the road, providing a sweeping vista of a vast feed lot filled with filthy cows. You really know which way the wind is blowing around here.

Now I am in Dodge, cheap lodging secured for the night (free WiFi but the people in charge don’t know the password — they’re working on it). Dodge city is proudly living in the past; everywhere you look are reminders of the wild and wooly cowboy days. The brick streets of the old downtown are nice, but the place is pretty quiet on a Sunday evening. Much of the town is quite shameless in its catering to tourists.

After a fruitless search for a local place to get a burger and a beer (there was one tourist-trap looking place with a packed parking lot that I chose to drive past), I am in the climate over-controlled splendor of Applebee’s (rhymes with saltees). Maybe it’s regional, but every meal I’ve had in this corner of Kansas (both of them) have been so loaded with salt that the meal was almost ruined. Hey! Kansas! If I want to bury the meal in salt, I’ll add it myself! There’s a shaker right on the table! Although maybe all Applebee’s are this way. Bleah.

It’s not really fair to say after such a short exposure, but overall I’d say Dodge city is well worth getting the hell out of. Tomorrow will be a success after only a few miles.

Thanks!

We’re Not In Oz Anymore

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I am in Kansas now, in a friendly town called Garden City. Man, I’m glad I decided to make the drive from Chama to Lawrence in two days. I’m tired. Cumbres pass seems like a long time ago.

Because I was making the trip in two days, I didn’t worry about getting an early start. Eventually I made my way down the dirt road to the highway, paused to slather on sunscreen, and turned the car north. Chama was quiet (no surprise there) and the mile markers ticked away the short life of New Mexico road 17. As I slipped across the border into Colorado the native american radio station was playing the blues. I reached the station at Cumbres Pass just as the train pulled in with a final chuff, pausing to rest and make sure the brakes were in good shape before the long descent into Antonito. I had no such worries myself and carried on without hesitation.

I made my way through the high passes, happy to see patches of snow, and then down through drifting cottonwood fuzz. In a villiage whose name I didn’t catch, I passed a small church, roofless, windowless, the two towers flanking the door echoing the architecture of old spanish missions. Within, people were gathering, setting up folding chairs for a noontime mass. I imagine that God had a particularly good view of the pious folk gathering below.

Once past Antonito the terrain became less interesting, and I had time to wonder if the cumulus clouds building on the horizon were going to be relevant to me. I wasn’t too worried, the thunderstorms build up their energy over the mountains, and roads prefer to go between the peaks. Eventually the storms would break free of their terrestrial moorings and wander over the plain, but it was early yet for that sort of shenanigans.

I approached the bank of boiling clouds, and sure enough the road found a gap between them — almost. Suddenly the air turned chill and a few big drops smacked against the windshield. There was certainly no need to stop and put the top up, however, that would have allowed rain to come in. I carried on and was soon clear of the storm. The thunderhead gave chase, but there was no way it was going to catch me.

Highway 10 between Hollister and La Junta is the sort of road where you entertain yourself by measuring how many miles the road goes without turning (ten miles, twice, but no truly spectacular straightnesses). La Junta was all I expected it to be. I wondered as I drove into town, whether one of the farms I passed was where my buddy John grew up. There was no plaque or roadside monument that I saw, so there was no telling.

Note to La Junta signage people: Take all the signs that say highway 50 that are on roads other than highway 50, and put them on highway 50 instead. When you put up a sign that says “to highway 50” you might want to follow that up with the next turn that is also necessary to reach the promised road. I’m just saying is all.

Beyond La Junta I passed through scattered farming communities, including Hasty, CO (speed laws strictly enforced). Then, Kansas. The ranch land gradually gave way to better soil and farms, and by the time I reached Holcomb the rolling hills were gone and one could reasonably measure the curvature of the earth by observing distant grain silos. I had plenty of daylight, but no interest in driving further; not long after came Garden City and the promise of hotel rooms with Internet access.

I checked in and the friendly desk attendant showed me where to go for a burger and a beer, marking my course on a map. I followed the (quite simple) directions and drove directly to a great big church. An error on the clerk’s part, or a hint? Only God and clerk know, but after some searching I found the promised bar, and here I sit at Jax Sports Grille (A winning place!), tired, annoyed by a salty baked potato (though the burger wasn’t bad), checking over which parts of my body I missed with the sunscreen (back of left hand, inside of left elbow, small spot on right temple) and which parts could have used more (almost everywhere else). Sometimes the key to a good drive is knowing when to stop.

Thanks!

7-Mile-High Blues

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Flying out of Las Vegas the plane made a long, slow turn to the east, for Albuquerque. I sat in 2A, a window seat on the left side, and watched as the ground gradually fell away, the works of man changing scale and becoming more abstract, the white lines of dirt roads like geometric scars on the desert surface. Hoover Dam slipped past, the sprawling lake it held back a deep blue against the naked rock that surrounded it.

The Grand Canyon followed, about the time the captain came on the intercom and in the chatty fashion that pilots have these days told us we were at our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet. A long way to go up, just to come down again an hour later. I studied the contours of the canyon, fractally serpentine, and thought of the rocks found at the bottom, a billion years old. A long time, no matter how you figure it. I started to get that feeling. The writer feeling.

It’s a peculiar sort of melancholy, hardly a sadness at all, that comes sometimes as a herald of change, a reminder that the world is in motion and so are we. It’s a feeling everyone knows, perhaps when you close the door and you’re alone in your new apartment for the first time, or when you say goodbye to a friend who’s moving out of town, or when you can’t sleep at night and the sound of the neighborhood turns mysterious, and the wind is whispering secrets of the past and future.

Saturday That Girl and I had a particularly good day, sharing a part of her life in a way neither of us had known before, and here it was Sunday and I was seven miles up, heading away from her at hundreds of miles an hour. Heading toward… heading toward an uncertain future, a future as a writer, a professional, part of a community of writers dedicated to working together to improve our craft. In just a few days I’ll be in Kansas, surrounded by the successful and the un-, talking shop and perhaps making connections and decisions that will affect the rest of my life.

It’s about time, after all.

Thanks!

Escape from Oz, part 2: The Longest Day

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Here I am, another airport, more waiting. I must say that Heathrow Terminal 4 is not my favorite air travel experience. Despite quite a few innovations and a host of people dedicated to getting people previewed, checked in, screened, double-checked, then through security, the outer departures area was a zoo of milling, confused humanity. One simple thing they could add: A sign indicating which airlines could be found in which check-in zones. At any rate, I’m through all that now, waiting at gate 5 to get on flight 5 to take me over the ocean to Houston.

Right now there are carts driving past with beepers beeping, there’s an alarm beeper of some sort going off, there’s an announcement that has no hope of being understood over the din. I am in a loud place, my first tea of the morning still cooling to a consumable temperature, echoes of trains still rattling in my head. Ah, for the lovely quiet morning of yesterday!

—-

Hours have passed, miles are a memory now and I’m in Houston, Texas. Well, I’m in an airport, and there are signs here and there that tell me that the airport is in Houston. No way to tell, otherwise, except some of the shops have a distinctively Texas flavor. (Pro Bass Shop, for instance, so you can stock up on huntin’ and fishin’ gear before you get on your plane. I was about to scoff at that store until I saw a gaggle of Japanese businessmen venture in. Then it all made sense.) It occurs to me that I really should have brought my Rice University baseball cap.

The flight from London was, while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it pleasant — it’s not like I was sorry to get off the plane — was remarkably non-unpleasant. The Continental Airlines 777 had more leg room than I’ve come to expect, and that little bit of extra space can make a big difference. There were some bumpy intervals, but overall the flight was nicer than I’ve come to expect. So thumbs up to Continental for taking out a couple rows of seats and giving their passengers a little room to breathe.

Getting through passport control and customs was as simple as it’s ever been, and going back through security went smoothly. But despite the swiftly moving lines, there was a general tension that is always present during this process. Strange that with all the other lines and bureaucratic silliness that travelers go through, that for this one step tension is high and people get really bent out of shape. In London Heathrow, there are signs that say (more or less) “Please do not assault the security personnel”. I think it could be that there is such emphasis on getting people though quickly at all costs that what results is inherently stressful for security employees and travelers alike. What could they do differently so that all parties concerned could just relax a little?

First thing – more space before and after to take all your luggage apart and more space on the other side to put it all back together again. There’s a big human pile-up on both sides of security as people try to comply with whatever the daily regulations are.

The Prague airport is actually a little more relaxed; individual gates have their own security, so you don’t have a chokepoint with thousands of people all trying to get through. And since everyone in the security line is catching the same plane, there are fewer worries about getting left behind.

Anyway, didn’t mean to go off on that tangent, but that’s why we call it Muddled Ramblings.

Here I sit in a shopping mall that planes park next to, enjoying a beer and a Buffalo Chicken sandwich. I sort of expected something that was related to Buffalo hot wings, but no. Oh, well. I will sign the credit card receipt with my eyes closed.

And hey! I’m getting a very weak, but free Wi-Fi signal here! We’ll see if I can stay connected and the battery lives long enough for me to post…

Thanks!

Blogger’s Dilemma

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Back there a couple of episodes, I thought I hit a classic old-school muddled ramble. The vibe of a traveler, an observer, a humble host for your vicarious adventures. Almost immediately I came up with two more minor episodes that, while they do manage to summarize the human condition in a few magical words and therefore just might change someone’s life, are not as fun as the bit about my voyage from Prague to London.

But could I hold those episodes back, to keep the (relatively) good one at the top for a bit? No. The media empire is impatient that way.

It feels good, though, being on the road, seeing things faster than I can record them, a sense of newness and discovery permeating everything. London! Dang! Language aside, this place is more foreign to me than Prague.

Thanks!