Tag Archives: travel

Incense and Sensibility

This post is part of a series about living in Dublin and winding up in a brothel in Dubai.

Eddie’s house was so tiny I expected a hobbit to jump out of a closet. The floors were slanted, the stove looked like a toy, and the door hung crookedly off the bath so it wouldn’t be any trouble for him to keep an eye on me in there. I hadn’t been attracted to Eddie in a dark smoky pub, and seeing him in daylight didn’t change anything. He painted a picture of the house sharing arrangements. “I go out every night, and when I come home in the early morning I blast me music and drink a few more pints. It’s my house, so I’ll smoke in it. If you’d like to cook for us, that’d fine with me.”

I observed myself doing mental gymnastics to convince myself this would all be fine. I wanted out of the hostel. The serenity and confidence I had banked in England was gone. The fact that it was gone made me feel like a weakling. I had become a female Woody Allen, worrying, analyzing, fearful, neurotic. I was so afraid of being ripped off that I hid my watch—a Movado—in a zipped pants pocket, then promptly forgot about it and threw the pants in the wash. The watch had been given to me by a jerk boyfriend but was the one beautiful piece of jewelry I owned, and it came out in bits. Stress does funny things to the mind.

I listened to meditations on my MP3 player: “Sense a soft shower of shimmering light …” said the soothing voice, as the woman in the bunk below me hacked a tubercular-sounding cough. I attended meditations at the Sri Chinmoy Centre and went to Alanon. But I just couldn’t shake the anxiety.

Eddie kept saying things which indicated he knew sharing the house would be a disaster, such as “I’d probably end up hangin’ meself when yerself didn’t love me.” Like many men in the British Isles, asking a woman out on a date was not in his playbook, and he wasn’t yet drunk enough to just grab me and snog me. He must have sensed I would have reacted negatively to either approach. We sat at his wobbly kitchen table and he slowly drew me a map of Dublin and advised where else I could look for flats, stalling for time.

I admired his engineer’s pencil sharpener, which he gave me and which makes a great eyeliner sharpener.

—

After two weeks I landed a room in a spacious maisonette. It had a living area and kitchen on the first floor (in America, the second floor), and three bedrooms and a bath on the third. I shared it with a French guy who was building a website to help football fans find pubs in real time to watch specific games. He only emerged from his room when his girlfriend, a Canadian, came over. The other flat mate was an English guy who worked for Google. I only saw him once or twice, but several times a week I would come down to breakfast to find a young woman hanging about—someone he had slept with and was done with, but who wasn’t done with him. “So what time does Paul usually get up?” they would ask. Or, “How does Paul like his tea?” I would grumble, “I dunno,” until they took the hint and left.

It took a while with my arm in a sling, but the flat was very nice once I scrubbed it from top to bottom and painted my room, which overlooked some sort of friary.

There was a methadone clinic on the other side; the flat had been burgled recently by an addict who kicked in the door. There was a primary school on the other side of the flat, and Christchurch Cathedral was nearby, so I heard children playing and bells ringing throughout the day.

Things were looking up. I met a Canadian woman at a travel agency who was game to go anywhere. Because, once my anxiety ebbed away, it was time to travel.

To be continued …

Down and Out In Dublin

Leave a reply

In my last post I wrote about the river of “what ifs” going through my head about my upcoming trip. After writing it, I thought back on the worst things that have ever happened to me in my life. All of them have happened at home. The worst things that have happened to me while traveling? Well, they’ve didn’t turn out so bad in the end.

For instance, I accidentally wound up in a brothel in Dubai.

But the story starts in “the other DUB city,” Dublin, where I was working for Oxfam Great Britain on contract for the summer.

Everyone thinks Ireland would be a great place to live, and that’s what I had expected. But I hated it.

This was at the height of the inflationary period they called the Celtic Tiger—right before the Great Recession hit—and everything was colossally expensive.

I stayed in a 12-bed dorm in the Four Courts Hostel until I could find a flat. The other 11 beds were occupied by immigrants from Poland and the Czech Republic who were almost out of money and facing the prospect of going back home as failures. One woman was so depressed she stayed in bed all day with the blanket pulled over her head; I never actually saw her. The only good thing about The Four Courts was the talking elevator that announced, “Turd Floor” in an Irish accent when it reached our floor.

I could go to the Oxfam Ireland office to work, but they didn’t really have space for me, so I worked out of the hostel dining hall while everyone else was out hustling during the day—except for the woman under the covers.

The streets were full of drunks, Irish and otherwise. Lots of Brits and Dutch and Germans came to Dublin for their stag parties. One morning I literally stepped over a drunken man vomiting in the gutter. I don’t know how they afforded it, because a pint of unremarkable beer in a pub cost $8. And maybe because Ireland’s economy was roaring, it seemed like the Irish were over being friendly to travelers. The only friendly overture I had from an Irish person in my first few weeks was a shopkeeper telling me to “Have yourself some crack, now!” That freaked me out until I realized he meant craic—which means “a good time” in Gaelic.

I had pictured myself working away in a cozy pub and making all sorts of new Irish friends, but I was bored and lonely.

—

In the UK and Ireland, it is much more common for people to share a flat or a house than it is in the US. Having roommates is not just for young or poor people. I would go to look at a flat and there would be a dozen desperate potential renters crowded around the front door. When the landlord deigned to let us in, we would find a dingy, dirty, little hole with a bedroom featuring a sagging twin bed and a window looking out on a brick wall. The rent for that bedroom and sharing everything else with two or three strangers was $500 a month each, easy.

Every night I climbed up to my top bunk and hunched over with my head against the moldy ceiling to read, hoping this would be my last night at the Four Courts. Oh, did I mention I had broken my collar bone in a bike accident in Oxford a week before, and my arm was in a sling?

Everyone used a website called Gumtree to look for flats and jobs and probably to sell their bodies to pay rent. I arranged to meet a potential landlord in a pub rather than go to his house alone. It was love at first sight, for him. Eddie was a good 10 years younger than me and at least a foot taller. His teeth were brown from smoking and crooked from not being an American. I wasn’t attracted to him and I knew it would be a bad idea to move in to the room he had for rent, but I agreed to come and see the place the next day.

To be continued …

Fears of Flying

1 Reply

Here is a photo that summarizes my trip-planning progress:

I depart in 15 days. I am in full-blown “What if?” mode.

What if I get pickpocketed in Rome (not a far-fetched scenario—my nephew’s wallet was stolen in Rome last year). What if I’m packing too much into this itinerary and I won’t be able to appreciate it all? What if I miss a flight/train/bus? What if people feel sorry for me, a woman traveling alone? What if I forget my phone charger? What if I show up at a hotel and they have no record of my reservation and no rooms? What if I rent a car in Spain, and I forget to ask them to give me an English-language GPS, and my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to follow the directions? What if my son doesn’t water my plants while I’m gone and they all die? What if I fail to blog along the way, which means I’ll have schlepped my laptop all over for no reason? What if I trip and fall into a cistern at Pompeii and it gets dark and no one knows I’m there and … are there wild jackals in Italy?

So you see, I have been busy. I really should have pursued a career in disaster planning. I would have been a natural at it.

I laugh kindly at myself as I observe the endless chain of what ifs come and go. I will prepare as well as I can. I will resist the urge to over prepare, because that would allow no space for spontaneity. I will deal with anything unexpected as it arises.

—

On Friday night my sister joined me and some friends for happy hour. Long-time readers of this blog will remember that while my son was in prison, there was plenty of additional excitement in my life. It’s never just one thing, is it? There was a plumbing problem in my apartment which caused me to have no kitchen for six weeks. I tripped and sprained a knee ligament and was on crutches for about the same six weeks. My mother was her third major car accident, which caused micro fractures in her spine and led to her giving up driving.

And then … my sister was battling Stage 4 colon cancer. She went through hell. She’s been cancer free for a year and a half but she’s still dealing with the lingering effects of it all—the surgeries, chemo, radiation, and all the other aspects of life that are affected by a life-threatening illness—finances, keeping up with a house and yard, two teenage kids, getting her strength back. The list goes on.

How is this connected to traveling? Because at happy hour we talked about the phrase “You’re so strong.” My sister hears it a lot. I used to hear it a lot when I was a single mom pulling myself up by the proverbial boot straps. Other friends had been through trials and had heard it too.

We all agreed that we hate the phrase.

“What choice did I have?” my sister asked. Right. I had thought the same thing many times when people had said “You’re so brave!” What choice did I have? I admit I had occasional fantasies about dropping my son off at my mom’s and running away to Florida. I know there are people who abandon their kids, and people who avoid getting treatment for serious illnesses because they’re in denial or afraid. But the vast majority of us just do what needs to be done because the alternative would be hurtful to ourselves or others.

“Being strong is when you are afraid of something,” said a member of our group, a psychotherapist who is also a cancer survivor. “And you do it anyway, even though you could choose not to and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”

And that’s how this relates to travel, especially for someone like me who travels solo a lot. I do have anxious thoughts about getting lost, being swindled, being disappointed. But I go anyway. The fear of regretting that I never saw the Amalfi Coast is stronger than the what ifs.

Red (and White) Flags

Leave a reply

In one month I’ll be in Malta, a tiny country most people have never heard of.

Here is a representative sampling of travel books available in the library for the three countries I’ll be visiting: Italy, Spain, and Malta. There was a whole shelf of books about Italy, a half shelf for Spain, and one slim volume about Malta. This should have told me something about what a hot (not) tourist destination Malta is. But once I get something fired up in my imagination, there’s usually no turning back.

Of course Vatican City is technically a country—the smallest in the world. I’ll be visiting the Basilica of St. Peter and the Vatican Museum and I’m sure there are entire books about them, but I don’t need books to tell me I’ll be seeing a lot of paintings of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.

Someone at work laughed about me going to Malta and suggested that since I would also be visiting Vatican City, I could make this a grand tour of tiny countries. You know, the ones that send one athlete to the Olympics—an athlete who doesn’t stand a chance? I could have gone to San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy; and Monaco, which is on my bucket list. Liechtenstein would be a bit further north in Europe, but not as far as the other five that round out the Top 10 List of tiny countries, which are all tropical islands: Nauru, Tuvalu, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, and Grenada.

—

The lack of interest in Malta may have something to do with how difficult it is to get there. I will be leaving from Sorrento, where I will have spent three days seeing Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, and Capri. You would think, from reading the one book about Malta, that you could just hop a train to Naples and fly right to Malta. Boom—easy! But alas, this was the same book that told me I must see the underground, 5,000-year-old catacombs on Malta, the ones that are closed for renovation until 2017. The book also said it would be “easy” to take a ferry from Italy to Malta. However I need to get to Madrid afterwards and it would take two days to get to the coast of Spain by ferry.

All the flights from Naples left at either 6:00 in the morning or 4:00 in the afternoon. They all connected somewhere else, which meant that reasonable-sounding 4:00 p.m. flight would get me into Malta at 11:30 at night. And the 6:00 a.m. flights were much faster; I seriously considered one that had a 6-hour layover in Paris. Finally, I decided to fly from Rome. This will require me to get up early—but not quite as early as the 6:00 a.m. flight—catch a train to Naples, then connect to Rome, then catch the express to the Rome airport, then fly at 11:00 a.m. to Catania—which is on Sicily, then finally arrive on Malta at 3:30 in the afternoon. That is, if nothing goes wrong on any of the five legs of the journey.

—

Another puzzle has to do with baggage. The flights to and from Malta are cheap—if I am willing to travel with only a carry-on bag weighing no more than 22 pounds. I spend some time researching ultra light bags; I could get a nice one for $70. Or I could just pay RyanAir $75 for the privilege of bringing a real suitcase with me.

I toy with the idea of traveling light. It would be easier to get on and off all the trains and buses and planes. I’d be less conspicuous, since my regular suitcase is purple. It could be kind of a cool challenge to wear only two outfits for a month, to say “no” to buying clothes in Italy, and eschewing souvenirs. Plus I would be doing my small part to save the planet!

Nah. I’ll bring my purple monster. I like to have options.

—

I contemplate these “problems” knowing that countless refugees are attempting the crossing to Italy in rubber rafts before the sea gets too rough in November.

Malted

Leave a reply

I go through three stages of planning a big trip.

First, a caveat: I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have any of the following “problems”—first-world problems, as they say.

First I pore over maps, getting more and more excited but less and less focused. “If I go all the way to Thailand, I might as well go to Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, right? And Burma! That’s not touristy yet. Japan wouldn’t be that far away. It’s only a few thousand miles more. Then there’s Australia; I’ve always wanted to go there, and New Zealand is so close ….”

At this point I am looking at a $20,000, three-month vacation. But it’s fun to dream.

The second stage is getting real and picking something. In the current case, my friend Lynn suggested meeting in Spain and traveling around the sunny south. I said yes. Since I have been stockpiling my vacation time, I thought I’d go early—to Rome, then Malta, then on to Spain.

I spent a couple weeks reading guidebooks and researching plane fares and hotel rooms. I had to wait for some big expenses, like a new refrigerator, to work their way through my finances like a capybara in a boa constrictor. Finally, the day came when I had the spare dosh to buy my ticket. The fares had gone up by $300. I tried all the tricks, like waiting until Tuesday at 3pm Eastern time, and burning the effigy of a 747 under the full moon, but in the end the budget boa had to swallow another very large expense.

But on to stage three: Nailing down the small flights, hotel reservations, and tickets to popular sites.

I must say, RyanAir makes Delta look like a paragon of transparency. RyanAir came up as the cheapest flight from Rome to Malta, and really it was so cheap I wondered how they can stay in business. That becomes clear when you actually book the ticket. Would you like to bring a bag? That’ll be €18 for a carry-on sized bag and €35 for an actual suitcase. You know, those things tourists take on planes?

How about a seat upgrade for more leg room? Only €15. No thanks, but there’s an unavoidable €8 charge just to choose a seat—any seat. Being an obstinate person, and since the flight is only a couple hours, I chose not to choose a seat. I will probably regret it. I will probably get a middle seat between a snorer and a crying baby.

Thank goodness I don’t have an infant of my own, because the infant fee is €20. I’m not kidding. Then there are fees for musical instruments, golf clubs, bikes, and therapeutic oxygen (€50), which you need after running the gauntlet of the RyanAir website.

Finally, I went to check out. There was a €2 fee for paying. RyanAir really puts the ire in Ireland. This charge for using a credit or debit card makes me want to fly to Ireland, march into RyanAir’s HQ, and try to pay for my ticket in cash. They would probably charge me €3 for that.

Next, I went to book my carefully-researched hotels in Rome and Malta. Yes, they were both fully booked for the times I wanted. I will therefore be staying in a convent in Rome and at a hostel in Malta. That’s okay. It’s an adventure, right?

The convent beds have those super-cheap bed spreads that appear to be made out of plastic that you see in Latin America and third-rate motels in the US. Ick. This tells me that the sheets will also be threadbare—if they are even made of thread. Maybe I can fit a nice cotton sheet into my suitcase, and leave it behind when I fly to Malta so I don’t have to pay a fee for the extra 2 ounces of weight.

Well. The convent is dirt cheap.

Next, booking tickets to the Hal Soflieni Hypogeum, the 2,500 B.C. catacombs the 2016 Malta guidebook raves about and which is kind of my Holy Grail on this trip.

Noooooo! It is “Closed for Renovation until 2017.”

Justice, Sweet and Sour

Leave a reply

Summer is over, and so is my break from blogging. In my last post, I listed all the things I was going to do with my extra time: sit outside in the morning with my coffee and listen to the birds, plan a fall trip, and figure out how to publish the first year of the blog as an e-book. Oh—and write a novel.

I sat outside with my coffee once. I am planning a fall trip to Italy, Malta, and Spain. I didn’t write a novel, but Vince and I have started working with an editor on the e-book.

Mostly, I’ve tried to live in the moment. Summer is so brief. There were fun moments. At a family weekend at a cabin, someone brought a Donald Trump piñata (Made in Mexico, appropriately). I fostered a litter of seven kittens which drew visits from friends and family. Vince and I went to the State Fair where, at the FabBrow booth, he insisted he wanted a uni-brow. The makeup artists got back at him by making him look like a community theater actor.

I spent a lot of time outdoors. There were hikes and bike rides, and one day a friend and I spend hours making jewelry down at the river. Other times I packed a book and a beverage and biked to some quiet spot at a lake or the river.

—

The big local news this summer was of the killing of Philando Castille by a cop. Castille was black. The cop, Jeronimo Yanez, was Latino. Castille was pulled over for a broken taillight. He had a gun in his glove compartment, and believed that the proper procedure when interacting with a cop was to inform: “I’ve got a gun, and I’ve got a permit to carry it.”

I suppose Yanez didn’t hear anything after Castille said “I’ve got a gun.” Blam! Shot point blank five times and left to bleed to death. Castille’s girlfriend live streamed his last moments on Facebook. I have not watched that video, but hundreds of thousands of people have.

I live within walking distance of the Governor’s mansion in St. Paul, where the inevitable protests took place. Traffic was blocked off by the police for a month and I was kept awake a couple nights by helicopter noise. The protestors blocked off the nearby interstate and either police were patrolling with helicopters or it was news media copters, but they were loud. Not that I’m comparing my minor inconvenience to the Castille’s family’s loss.

—

This week marked one year since Vince was released from prison. He is doing so well. He just started a new job in catering, and he’s excited. In a month he will go off intensive supervised release, which means he’ll be able to stay out past 10:30 or go to Wisconsin to visit cousins. Best of all, he won’t have ISR agents showing up day and night asking him for urine samples.

—

Another event prompted me to write this post.

In 1989, an 11-year-old boy named Jacob Wetterling was abducted by a stranger at gun point in a small town in Minnesota. He was never found.

Vince was the same age as Jacob. Vince became a Bar Mitzvah, got his first job, moved out, turned 20, had a serious girlfriend, had serious drug and alcohol problems, went to jail, got clean, relapsed, turned 30, moved to Lanesboro, went to prison, got out, and has two years of sobriety. In a few months he’ll be 38.

This week, a man confessed to abducting, sexually assaulting, and executing Jacob Wetterling by shooting him in the head, then burying him—and returning a year later to move the remains. Lying handcuffed in the last moments of his life, Jacob asked the man, “What did I do wrong?”

Vince was sentenced to over four years in prison for drug possession. Because the statute of limitations has expired, Jacob’s killer will get 20 years on a child porn charge. He’ll be a cho-mo—the most loathed prisoner among prisoners. According to Vince, they are also considered a “protected class,” by officials, perhaps to prevent prison vigilantes from meting out real justice.

As the Wheel Turns

Leave a reply

Sunday was Father’s Day in the U.S. Vince texted me at 8:00 am and asked if he could stop by. He had already invited me for brunch, in recognition that I was/am both a mother and father to him. But when he showed up he had a Roku stick for my T.V., and even better, he set it up for me!

And so I was able to watch the new season of Orange is the New Black on my T.V. How ironic, that a year ago he was in prison, and now I am watching a show about prison thanks to him. This coming weekend he will mark two years of sobriety with a barbecue.

So people can be redeemed and restored to sanity. No situation is ever hopeless. Never lose hope, even when it’s all you’ve got.

—

I’m going to take a break from blogging for a while. I’ve been posting 700 words every other day since September 2014. The first year, half of the posts were written by Vince, although I did spend a fair amount of time typing and actually posting them.

Now I devote every Saturday and Sunday morning to writing, and each post takes about an hour and a half from blank page to Pending Publication.

Writing, editing, finding photos, researching things like the State of Missouri’s motto—I get into the zone, aka, in the now, and that’s great.

But it’s summer! I’d really like to sit out on my deck with a cup of coffee, read the (real) newspaper, and listen to the birds.

And since I am terrible at just sitting and doing “nothing,” here’s my to-do list of projects I’ve got queued up. I’d like to publish the first year of this blog—the posts focused on Vince’s and my prison experience—as an e-book. That feels like it could be a contribution to reform of mass incarceration, or at least a good read. That’ll take some time. If anyone out there has any advice for me, I’m all ears.

Then, and this may sound grandiose, but I’d like to try my hand at writing a novel. The big, sprawling, character-packed type like Dickens or Tolstoy. Not that I’m comparing myself to them or would even expect to get published. I don’t have a master’s in Creative Writing from Yale, I’ve never been to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, I don’t live on the east coast and I don’t have any connections in the publishing world.

But I think it would be fun. About a year and a half ago, my uncle died. He was a retired English professor and I carted home some bags of classic novels and have been ploughing through them. They’re like crossword puzzles composed of intersecting people and events. These are the old style books that people would collect and display proudly on their living room bookshelf. They are “lavishly illustrated” and have beautiful leather bindings that are, sadly, disintegrating.

So I’ll just publish and e-book and write a novel this summer. Ha ha! Then there’s travel. I’ve been stockpiling my paid time off, and I could take as much as five weeks off at the end of the year. It also looks like I’ll be going to east Africa for work. So where could I go from, say—Ethiopia? India? South Africa? Japan, Myanmar, Australia…so many choices! Trips take a lot of planning, so I need time for that too.

I don’t know how long my break from blogging will be, but the next post may be a report from afar. Have a wonderful summer, or winter, depending on which hemisphere you’re in.

On Our Last Leg

Leave a reply

This is the last post in a series of 32 posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Why are there so many anti-Abortion billboards in Minnesota? I don’t know. On this road trip we passed through nine states, including Minnesota. Some states had a sprinkling of anti-abortion billboards, but mainly they had billboards for adult superstores.

“Southern X Posure.” Get it? Do you get it? I love the euphemism “Gentlemen’s Club.” Really, no actual gentleman would step foot in one, right? But seeing these every couple of miles makes you wonder if there are any gentlemen left.

Why was it okay to advertise porn in Tennessee, one of the most conservative states, while in Minnesota—one of the most liberal states, we were bombarded with anti-abortion billboards? Maybe the social conservatives who live here feel outnumbered, and therefore that they must fight harder than if they lived in Tennessee.

—

The route from Albert Lea, Minnesota to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport wasn’t very interesting, just a straight shot up Interstate 35. We passed more towns with old world names, like Geneva, Manchester, Kilkenny, and Dundas. There was the sadly-named Hope, Minnesota. Had the founders, in their denim overalls, chin beards, and gingham frocks, engaged in some magical thinking? “If we name our settlement Hope, surely the Good Lord will cause us to flourish!”

Here is Hope’s claim to fame: “Hope had a depot on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. A post office called Hope has been in operation since 1916.” Hope is an unincorporated township, which means the U.S. Census doesn’t bother listing its population, so I can’t tell you whether it is tiny, miniscule, or sub-atomic.

—

We crossed the Minnesota River as we approached the airport. The Minnesota originates in Big Stone Lake, near the South Dakota border, and flows east until it merges into the Mississippi. I let Lynn believe we were crossing the Mississippi one more time—after gazing out over it in Memphis, New Orleans, and Hannibal.

In 11 days, we had driven 2,660 miles (4,280 kilometers). If we had followed the Mississippi, we would have driven 4,640 miles because it meanders. Some day I would like to take a meandering road trip.

Don’t get me wrong, we saw a lot and had a great time. We saw cranberry fields and went to a Native American pow wow in Wisconsin. In Chicago, we saw the world’s largest Tiffany glass dome and one of the iconic painting, American Gothic. We were moved to tears in the American Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. We spent five days in New Orleans with friends, heard lots of music, and ate lots of Cajun and creole food. Lynn and I spent six days in a Mini Cooper and were still speaking to each other. We had the chance to try pickled pigs lips. Instead, we ate at a Cracker Barrel.

We did go off piste a few times, but it would be great to take a road trip with no time limits.

Instead, I dropped Lynn off at the airport at 7:00pm to catch her 9:00pm flight, and drove home.

—

It was good to be home but it also felt weird. I had bought this condo so my son would have a supportive place to live when he was released from prison. I had told myself that I was buying a condo because it made financial sense, and maybe it did, but underlying the decision was my desire to give him a fighting chance of making it once he was released. (My apartment landlord wouldn’t have allowed him to live with me.)

And Vince was making it. He had a job, he was sober, and after seven months he had moved out to his own place—the day before Lynn arrived. So now I stood in the doorway of the empty bedroom. I felt a little sentimental, but I was mainly happy for Vince and for me that we both had our own space.

The next day I went back to work and got down to writing proposals to fund torture rehabilitation—and banking more paid time off for the next holiday.

Endless Iowa

Leave a reply

This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

There was no time to visit any of the Mark Twain historic sites, so Lynn and I rolled out of Hannibal and headed north. Even though Minnesota borders Iowa to the north, and Vince lived in southern Minnesota for years, I had never crossed the state line into Iowa. All I had ever heard about it was that it was flat and full of corn fields and pigs. That you could actually smell pigs on a breezy day. That did not appeal to my sense of adventure.

But there was no other way to get from Missouri to Minnesota, so I lost my Iowa virginity. How bad could it be? I prefer landscapes of woods and water, but fields must have their own beauty.

Here is what I imagined:

Here is what we saw for five hours:

It was early spring and everything was still brown. And flat, flat, flat.

Desra had given me some very good advice. “Iowa has half the population of Missouri, so there aren’t as many towns. If you think you’re going to need gas, don’t wait until your tank is almost empty.” She was right. In the hundred miles between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, the two largest cities we passed, there was only one exit of note, to a place aptly called Center Point Travel Plaza. The other exits led off into corn fields.

I’m sure Iowa is beautiful in the spring, when the bright green corn shoots up from the black earth. I’m sure there are many fine people in Iowa, and it’s a great place to raise kids. That’s what people say when a place is boring, “It’s a great place to raise kids.”

It’s not like I live in some mega city like New York or Shanghai or London. Most people outside of the U.S. have never heard of Minnesota. Most people on the coasts sneer at the Midwest, which includes Minnesota and Iowa. We are derisively referred to as “fly over country.” But I’m never bored in Minnesota. I think I would kill myself if I had to live in Center Point, Iowa.

Why do people think places like Iowa are good places to raise children? Because they’re safe, probably. But children are also able to create their own adventures wherever they are. In fact, the less there is to do, the more inventive they become. Winters are long on the prairie. They force people to create entertainments and art out whatever is at hand, like fabric scraps and seeds:

I’m afraid kids raised with screens won’t have the patience to create great works of art like these.

—

And so we crossed Iowa, and I began to feel like I was in a trance because there was nothing to look at and no variation of the landscape. There weren’t even any billboards, probably because there wasn’t enough traffic to entice advertisers. I could see how people dozed off and ended up in a corn field.

We stopped to get gas and bought snacks to tide us over instead of having a meal. I got my standard road trip meal—teriyaki beef jerky and a Diet Pepsi. I whined about how boring Iowa was the whole way, to help me stay awake. Lynn must have found that pretty boring.

We killed an hour talking about some sort of test she uses to assess what roles people play in work meetings. Obviously no one fits neatly into one role every time. There are the obvious ones like the Leader, the Compromiser, the Ideas Person; and the unhelpful roles like the Avoider and the Clown. I consider myself a leader with ideas, and I think others are stupid if they don’t immediately see the brilliance of my ideas. Hmmm…that may actually make me a Show Off or an Autocrat.

Finally we crossed the border into Minnesota. I had imagined it would be dramatically different—Minnesota would be gently rolling wooded hills dotted with sky blue lakes.

But no, for at least an hour it was the same as Iowa, with the addition of anti-abortion billboards.

Wayside Waylay

Leave a reply

This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Our last day, and it would be a long one. Eight and a half hours of driving, not counting stops. Lynn’s flight left at 9pm, and we had been hearing how long the lines at the airports were. It seemed like a good idea to not push our luck by dawdling along the way.

I did want to stop in Hannibal, Missouri, which my mom and her husband had described as quaint and which was the boyhood home of Mark Twain. But that was at least two hours out of St. Louis and we hadn’t eaten breakfast. I stopped at a wayside rest to get some advice on where to eat.

If you’ve never done a road trip in the U.S., wayside rests are located about every 100 miles and have their own freeway exits. They vary from just a gravel parking lot with a pit latrine to a gleaming air conditioned building with vending machines. But there are no museums or gift shops or restaurants. I like them because you can get in and out in five minutes without getting distracted. Usually.

This one in Missouri was the rare wayside rest with an information desk. The woman was very friendly and a font of information. Well, more like a slow-motion geyser. She spoke with a slow southern drawl. “Ya’ll could drive along the river, it’s very picturesque.” She handed me a map of the Scenic River Road. We didn’t have time, sadly, for the scenic route. She highly recommended we take some extra time and go to a small town whose name I can’t remember. She handed me five maps and brochures. Looking at the map now, which town was it? It couldn’t have been Mexico, Paris, or Florida—I would have remembered those.

“It’s a historic town with an absolutely darling downtown and a famous restaurant that serves throwed rolls.” She handed me another brochure and tried to explain what throwed rolls were but I couldn’t get the concept. “It’s only 20 minutes off the interstate. Ya’ll can get cheese grits, and buttered corn bread, and….” Mmmmmm.

People think that providing lots of choices is a good thing, but after 11 days on the road I was done making decisions, even about where to eat.

“We’re kind of in a hurry, I’m afraid, so it’ll have to be somewhere right off the highway.”

She handed me more maps and brochures for restaurants and scenic attractions. She must get mostly retired people who had all the time in the world. Lynn had abandoned me. “I’d better check on my friend,” I lied. “She gets upset if I keep her waiting.”

The info lady looked disappointed. “Just a few more suggestions,” she pleaded. More brochures, more maps. It must get lonely working in a highway wayside rest.

“My friend has to catch a flight to London,” I said, backing away as if the flight was imminent.

—

Meanwhile, I kept getting texts from Air B&B and the Quality Inn urging me to “Write a review of your stay!”

“Do your own marketing,” I muttered. I am definitely happier when I get breakfast.

—

Lynn insisted she wasn’t hungry, so rather than look like a whining hungry weakling, I drove straight through to Hannibal.

This is a postcard depicting Hannibal:

This is what Hannibal really looked like:

Dilapidated houses, block after block after block. Was this a result of the Great Recession, or a longer term decline? There was no signage directing visitors to a historic district, but by just following the streets downhill, I eventually hit the river front, where a couple natives out for a walk pointed the way.

The downtown was quaint. It consisted of about four blocks of antique stores, a boarded up theater, a couple restaurants, and half a dozen Mark Twain historic sites.

We settled in at Becky Thatcher’s Diner, and the food was fantastic. Really fantastic, not just because I was starving. Lynn had corned beef hash for the first time and I had a huge omelet with potatoes. Neither of us talked much, unless you count “Mmmm” as a word.

Breaking Free

Living Well, Despite what Life Throws at You

Tag Archives: travel

Incense and Sensibility

Down and Out In Dublin

Fears of Flying

Red (and White) Flags

Malted

As the Wheel Turns

On Our Last Leg

Endless Iowa

Wayside Waylay