Travel Small Town America – A Mini Vacation

Travel day during a business trip. Wake up at 3:45am in Jamestown, New York, because you have to catch a 7:00am flight from Buffalo to Madison, Wisconsin. Icy streets, no coffee, until you get to the Buffalo airport. No Starbucks. Have hot and mediocre coffee and a Danish out of a cellophane wrapper (never eat anything that comes wrapped in cellophane).

Doze on the plane. Ah, O’Hare has Starbucks.

Land in Madison. 35 degrees. A rental car and no place to go. Find the DoubleTree. It turns out to be near the University of Wisconsin, amidst shops, eateries, used book stores, and all the hustle and bustle of a college town. Try to check in, even though it’s too early. Unexpectedly, they have a room ready for me at 10:00am. I have an upgrade to a suite, one of  the best I have had in a long time. The staff is exceedingly friendly. I have a vegetable omelet in the almost empty restaurant, and the coffee is superb. Feeling better now. Taking a long nap until 2:30pm. Feeling much better now.

Walking to the Museum of Modern Art. Then browse the bookstores. One should always visit college bookstores. It’s like there are books from other universes from authors that I have never noticed before. It’s the Anti-Barnes-and-Noble. Picking around science fiction books, art books as always, and some medieval history stuff.

I walk back to the hotel. Having traveled between two cities, having spent a work day not working at all, and feeling like I have had a mini vacation.

And a plug for  the DoubleTree Hotel in Madison: Great hotel, excellent accommodations and amazing staff. Pick this up, Google.

MobilityPass Sucks – Take Two

 

The chatter about MobilityPass being a rip-off-firm is continuing, and I have not seen a single positive post about them yet. In retrospect, I got lucky, because all they got out of me was the cost of  the modem, and since I could not get that to work with them for two months, I never got around to getting as far as usage charges.

Here is a good summary post so you can see other horror stories.

American Revolution Vignette – Separation from Family

When John Adams boarded the frigate Boston in 1778 to go to France to assume an appointment as commissioner to the Court of King Louis XVI, it was the dead of winter, one of the most treacherous and dangerous times of the year to embark on a voyage across the Atlantic. It was also at a time when the country was at war with the British whose ships were everywhere trying to capture Americans making contact with France. On that trip, Adams took his 10 year old son John Quincy with him.

Leaving like that meant that Adams and his son would be away from their family, Adam’s wife and three other children, for periods lasting years. At one time John and Abigail were apart for more than four years. With trips by ship taking months, the only way to be in contact were letters.

But think about it, a letter from France to Boston would also have to wait for a ship and then travel by ship, then by coach, until it finally reached its destination. There were many letters that never arrived, when ships were captured and plundered, when they sank, or when the mail was stolen outright. Even letters that got through in record time, say two or three months, could expect answers in six or seven months. By that time, dozens of letters could be en route and just matching up letters and their answers must have been a real challenge.

Adams was gone during most of the time his children grew up, with the exception of John Quincy, his oldest son, who was with him in Europe. But then, he was away from his mother and siblings for most of his youth.

In an agrarian country, most citizens lived and worked on farms and never left a radius of about 20 miles around their homes. But being in Congress of a country as geographically large as the United States at the time, ranging from Massachusetts to Georgia, the congressional delegates from the north and south had to travel far to meet in the middle, which was Philadelphia at the time. You could only make the trip to a session of Congress once per season. Congress stayed in session over the winter for about half a year, and then in the spring, for recess, everyone traveled home.

The sacrifices that the people that created our government and founded our country made at the time, in the service of their country, was enormous, considering that their pay was inadequate to compensate them even for the immense expenses associated with that style of living.

And not only they had to sacrifice. Their families and children grew up mostly without them. They most likely paid the highest price of all.

American Revolution Vignette – Travels

I had never realized in such vivid detail the challenges of  travels two hundred years ago. In the paragraph above, Adams leaves for the meeting of the Congress in Philadelphia, then the largest city in America, with about 30,000 inhabitants. It was the middle of winter in New England. I have been in Boston in winter, and just going from the hotel door to the rental car is brutal. For him and his companion rider to travel to Philadelphia, there were only three ways to go: walking, on horseback or in a coach. The middle class traveled on horseback. Philadelphia is 400 miles from Boston. If you can travel ten miles a day on horseback, and you travel every day, the trip will take 40 days. You also have the expense of staying in lodges, hotels, taverns and boarding houses every night, the food, feeding and boarding the horses and all the incidentals. I flew home from Baltimore to San Diego nonstop on a Southwest flight. It took 5 hours and 40 minutes, and I complained about having to sit still in a cramped airline seat, being served drinks, being warm and sheltered, on comfortable leather seats, eating the snack I brought along and reading McCullough’s book.

So folks in those days didn’t travel very often, and if they did, they stayed away months, sometimes years.

In America, traveling on the road was supposedly pretty safe. By comparison, in England, one had to constantly worry about being assaulted by robbers. The term “highway robbery” comes to mind. So not only was a long trip treacherous from an endurance standpoint, expensive since living expenses were incurred, but also dangerous. In a world without electronic payments and credit cards, you needed to carry cash with you to stay in taverns, and robbers knew that. 

So far, we have talked about travels within the country. To travel to Europe, which John Adams did several times between 1776 and 1785, he had to board a ship, of course. Ships didn’t leave on a schedule. You might show up at the dock on the first of May, to find that inclement weather delayed departure, and you again had to find a boarding house to wait, days, sometimes weeks, before you could be underway. Once at sea, the trip to Europe took at the very best about a month, very often, if there were storms, or calms, much, much longer. A passage to Europe by ship could take three or four months, and you didn’t always end up at the destination you expected, but some other city or country and then you still had to connect to where you actually needed to go.

Leaving for Europe meant leaving your family and loved ones for years at a time.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

I visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport in Virginia.

The main Air and Space museum is on the Washington Mall. I have been there many times. But this was different, amazing, and the three hours I had available were nowhere near enough.

There are literally hundreds of aircraft there, and after being there, I understand why this had to be built at an airport. How else would you get an aircraft the size of a Concorde into a building? You obviously have to fly it there.

I am sure there is much that I missed, but here are the highlights I remember, in no particular order:

• The Enola Gay is the very aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945. It sits there, close enough that you can look into the cockpit and see the seats and the controls.
• The space shuttle Enterprise was the initial flying prototype. It never flew in space, but rather it was built for flight tests in the atmosphere. As a result, it’s a full scale model of the shuttle, with the only difference being that the heat tiles and the main engines are simulated. I will never get close enough to a space shuttle to see its size and scale. Here I as able to stand under it and look up at its immensity. It is larger than I had envisioned.
• The quarantine module that the Apollo 11 astronauts were in after their return from the moon. I have seen pictures and television clips of Nixon speaking to the astronauts through the front window. Today I stood where Nixon stood, looking into the window. I could picture Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins inside, some 40 years ago.
• One of the Air France Concorde planes, after they retired the fleet, was given to the Smithsonian in 2003. The plane is there. You can stand directly under it. I was fascinated by the size of it. The engine intakes look surprisingly beat up and appear boxy and not aerodynamic.
• During the last flight of the SR-71, the fastest airplane in the world, from Los Angeles to Dulles in 1990, the pilots set a speed record of 1 hour and 4 minutes. After landing at Dulles, they handed it over to the Smithsonian. This is also a surprisingly large aircraft when you get up close to it. It is rumored that when it travels at Mach 3 or so, its surface gets so hot, you can fry an egg on it. I have seen SR-71 planes at Balboa Park in San Diego as well as at the airport in Richmond, Virginia. There seem to be a lot of them parked around the country.
• The Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer set a record of flying around the world.
• The European Spacelab module that was brought back by the shuttle.
• A replica of the Wright Brothers flyer.
• A Japanese Kamikaze plane. Surprisingly small, with no wheels and little controls. The things look just like bombs with a cockpit, which is what they really are. There are no wheels, since they are not intended to land. Some 5,000 Japanese pilots climbed into those cockpits knowing that they would die. I am amazed that actually happened. What a waste of human life. What a waste war is.

And tons more, experimental planes, rotorcraft, German and Japanese war planes, flying wings, bombers, fighters, gliders, satellites, missiles, engines, hang gliders, kites and balloon gondolas.

I need to go back to see the IMAX films, ride in the flight simulators, and spend more time on the exhibits. I only scratched the surface.

The museum is free, but surprisingly, there is a $15 charge to park, even though there is a huge amount of parking available. That was the only drawback, however. And after being there is still didn’t know who Steven F. Udvar-Hazy is, and I know I won’t remember his name.  Looking him up, I found he owns more aircraft than anyone in the United States, and he is number 305 on the Forbes 400 list. He donated $65 million to the Smithsonian, hence the name.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Yesterday we visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I must confess, this is the first presidential library I have ever visited, but now I know it is not the last.

I didn’t know what exactly to expect from a presidential library. It’s a museum, laid out and run like any other specialty museum. Reagan’s is very well done.

Located on a hilltop in Simi Valley, overlooking a great panorama of rugged Southern California mountains, it is definitely a memorable place of reflection. The main building has the feeling of a Mission. The large open courtyard has a fountain in the center, and the surrounding buildings are lined with covered walks and columns.

Once in the museum, we got to walk through many exhibits chronicling Reagan’s long life and many careers. Reagan was a born leader, starting out in sports, playing football and other sports in high school and college. Later he was a sportscaster, then an actor, and finally a politician, first Governor of California, then the President of the United States. Whenever he belonged to a club, its seems he became its president, or in sports the team captain.

As we walked the various exhibits we saw real memorabilia of Reagan’s life at the various stages. The most interesting two exhibits are the Air Force One and the Oval Office.

An exact replica of the Oval Office as it was during Reagan’s second term, 1984 to 1988, is represented. I found it fascinating to be standing in the Oval Office, seeing the furniture arrangements, the pictures on the walls, the decorations on the counters, and the desk. The desk is a replica of the “Hayes” desk, built in the 1870s and first used by President Hayes, and later by many other presidents, including Kennedy and Reagan. The original desk is currently used by Obama. There is no practical way for any ordinary citizen to get into the real Oval Office, so seeing a replica is the next best thing.

The tour guide had some anecdotes about the Oval Office, of course, and at one point talked about Reagan never going into the Oval Office without a suit coat. We have heard this before, and then echoed by George W. when he touted early in his presidency that he would reintroduce decorum and respect to the Oval Office, after the purported indiscretions of Clinton.

Well, right after walking out of the Oval Office, I came upon a picture wall showing Reagan in a number of situations with the public, and right there he was, in the Oval Office with a number of people, sitting behind his desk in a jogging suit jacket.

So much for the mystique about the suit and tie.

The Oval Office is such a famous locale and institution of our government, it carries with it a mystique that is almost unparalleled, except, perhaps by Air Force One.

The decommissioned Boeing 707 with the call sign 27000 is on exhibit in the Air Force One Pavillion. Now this was worth the visit. This plane was brought into service in 1973 and was first used by Nixon. The last president to travel on it was George W. Bush. You get to walk through the entire plane. You see the president’s office and the various other sections. Every one of them is instantly recognizable from movies and news reports, of course. I remember seeing Nixon stand outside the doors raising of both arms in his famous last farewell. I stood right there at that door. The president’s desk is much smaller than it looks on TV. The “secure phones” look archaic. The little “communications nook” looks like something out of a fifties movie. The whole thing is surprisingly low-tech. Of course, they didn’t have laptops then and when Reagan answered mail, he wrote on a legal pad by hand, so it could be typed later.

I was overwhelmed by history walking through this plane, used by Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. But of the more than one million miles logged by the plane during its service, Reagan clocked  over 600,000 of them. He alone took more than 220 trips using this aircraft during his years.

Many years hence perhaps we can see one of the new 747 Air Force One planes in a presidential library, and we will then marvel about Clinton and Bush and Obama and the trips they took. But with the years of service still left on those planes, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see that.

After this experience, I have resolved that I will seek out other presidential libraries. Next will be Nixon’s, which is within driving distance from our home, and then others as I travel to the various places. I’ll just need to take extra time on my trips to make it possible.

American Airlines – Ludicrous Reservation System

I need to travel to Tallahassee, Florida from Southern California. When I didn’t find a decent connection from San Diego, I tried Ontario, an airport conveniently located for us as an alternate. Here is what it came up with:

1292 07:55 AM ONT 12:53 PM DFW	$854	$1458	$2997	$2422	$4000
2459   04:50 PM DFW 05:55 PM LAX
1254   09:15 PM LAX 05:18 AM MIA
4516   07:20 AM MIA 08:40 AM TLH

I get to fly out of Ontario at 7:55 in the morning, go to Dallas, spend 5 hours at the airport,  only to fly back to LAX so I can leave again from LAX, 100 miles west of Ontario, to go to Miami on the red eye. Heck, I could drive to LAX in the evening and park my car there and get there a day faster.

And if I were to book a first class ticket, it would cost $4,000 for the privilege of being caught in airline hell for a full 24 hours.

Here is an example of an automated system going completely amuck.

Gerry’s Cabin in East Aurora

Yesterday I had the honor of visiting “Gerry’s Cabin” in the woods about half an hour south of Buffalo, not far at all from Griffis Sculpture Park, actually, which I had not realized  before. Gerry was Trisha’s dear uncle who passed away at the age of 80, after an unexpected massive heart attack. This was a family reunion in his honor at one of his favorite places.

It’s a rustic cabin in the woods. No neighbors in sight. There is a steep ravine right in the back, down to a creek. The cabin itself has everything you need, bedroom, bathroom, shower, kitchen, dining area, large fireplace in the middle, a nice living and sitting area. It is filled with 40 years of bringing stuff there and never taking anything away.

He bought it sometime in the 60ies and spent most of his summers there. When he was retired, he divided his time between his condo in Phoenix and his cabin in New York.

While the others set up for the party up front, I sat alone on the back balcony looking out over nothing but woods and down into the ravine. It was quiet there; even the sounds of people in the front didn’t seem to make it to the back. I could feel that just sitting there some time every day I could find the inner peace, self and calm that I need to be – well – happy. It does not take money, or cars, or vacations, or clothes, or fame to be happy. It takes woods.

And right there I understood how Gerry had become Gerry, a man so loved and respected and finally missed.

A Walk Through History in Boston

Built around 1680, the Paul Revere House is the oldest building in downtown Boston.

I walked over there, to the North End, past many Italian restaurants and early evening nightlife. I stood in front of this house and breathed in the history.

Then back to Quincy Market, watching a few street performers juggle, escape from straightjackets, and do balancing tricks, before getting a Tandori dish at the food court.

Full, and happy, I walked past Faneuil Hall, up to the Old State House, where the fathers of the Constitution met and haggled out the terms of independence. I glanced up at the small balcony where they read the Declaration of Independence for the first time. I looked over to where the barracks were, the location of the Boston Massacre.

So many events occurred, so much thinking was done, so many risks were taken, right here, minutes of walking from the hotel where I am writing these lines. And  the names were Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and many others who through their initiative, conviction and courage made a difference that eventually changed the world.

Boston

In all the years of traveling, I have never been to downtown Boston. I have had a few layovers at Logan airport, and I have been to Cambridge / Harvard several times.

Today I arrived at the Hilton in the financial district, right downtown, and I loved the place. Of course, it’s the middle of May and spring is in the air. It’s warm and sunny. The cafes have the outside tables set up, ready for summer. Next weekend is Memorial Day. It’s a good time of the year to be in Boston.

The old world shadows hang heavy in the air here. It’s a cosmopolitan place and you hear many exotic languages. Walking the streets is a bit like walking downtown Manhattan in the Wall Street area. Small, curvy cobblestone streets, all one way, not built for cars. Old buildings, new building, not arranged in any grid, just jutting about everywhere. The harbor not far off, the smell of the water everywhere, and seagulls gliding between concrete and glass.

I walked over to the Quincy Market, a revitalized area now basically a shopping mall. In the main building is what has got to be the worlds greatest food court. I am a food court guy when I travel. This one has at least 50 shops offering all manner of exotic foods. There is no single mall chain here, no brand you would recognize, except for the Starbucks at the very end. I had a bread bowl and clam chowder and I ate every crumb of the bowl.

I will be here for the rest of the week, through Saturday, and guess where I’ll be taking all my meals?