Where's My Luggage?

Vanished Into Thin Air

Hate me if you must, but no airline has ever lost my luggage.  When I drop off my bags at the entrance to the airport, they miraculously appear at my final destination.  Even the time I flew five flights in a single day (see “Swimming in Alphabet Soup” from February 2012), my suitcase showed up on the baggage carousel.  Granted, more often than not I carry on everything I need, and rely on the USPS to deliver a box of pre-shipped extras to my hotel in advance of my arrival so my odds of a successful reunion with my belongings garner higher returns.  Regardless, I pack frugally and travel similarly, so the contents of my baggage are critical, and having everything with me when I arrive allows my expeditions to begin immediately upon arrival.

Of course there was the one time my son left a book in the seat pocket.  He didn’t deplane, he just changed seats on the flight to help a family traveling together.  After takeoff when he went back to retrieve his book, the family had given it to the flight attendant.  The flight attendant gave it to the gate in Chicago before closing the doors, thinking it belonged to the previous flight’s passenger.  And from there, the book vanished.  The logical chain of events would be that the book went from the Chicago gate to a main location in Midway International Airport, then on to a central location for the airline.  Yet once the book left the plane, it dematerialized.  How exactly does that happen?

Did You Look In Alabama?

After visiting friends in Birmingham we decide to swing by a little store in Scottsboro, Alabama, featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Bill Geist profiled the little specialty shop where shoppers can find just about anything from swimming trunks to a wedding dress, with a wide selection of cameras, CDs, and a complete, all-weather wardrobe.  The Unclaimed Baggage Center sells just about everything the airlines have tired of possessing.  Vast lots of homeless suitcases with tragically abandoned, and occasionally outdated, clothing and assorted personal effects become thrift-shop fodder for us and we wander through the bizarre warehouse with no particular purpose.

Son #1 purchases his first thirty-five millimeter camera at the expense of its original sad owner who most likely has moved on to a digital version of his or her previous model.  Son #2 selects a brown, felt fedora appropriately labeled with the name of the movie character whose likeness often dons similar apparel.  As for me, I am content to bring home a few compact discs that have long since disappeared from music stores of soundtracks from movies that have long since disappeared from theaters.  Maybe one day when passing northward near Chattanooga, Tennessee, we again will dip into the plenty of abandoned possessions and begin a new chapter for otherwise homeless objects.  Perhaps we will find a missing biography of John Paul Jones last seen in the Windy City at gate A11.

Moonlight in Minnesota

Ghost Tours Should Come With Adult Refreshments

Convinced I should stroll the streets of St. Augustine with a band of tipsy Floridians and wide-eyed tourists, I found myself with a friend on a ghost tour of America’s oldest European settlement.  The stone walkways below us and the period costumes ahead of us made the nighttime walk seem only moderately more interesting than any other evening constitutional.  Nevertheless, like dozens of mid-size, moderately historic towns in the United States, “ghost tours” entice sightseers, both doubters and believers, to giggle or gasp at the stories tied to a community’s parks, plazas, and promenades.  Ghost tours in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, are most likely tales of military death and woe.  Ghost tours in New Orleans tell the tale of the haunted history of the Big Easy and the mademoiselle who still roams the French Quarter.  In each locale, unsuspecting, unresolved souls stumble into an ambling storyteller bewitching their followers with cryptic tales of foolish passers-by unknowingly relieved of their wits and wages.  Sounds like someone I know intimately.

I begin the evening adventure as dusk transitions into darkness and as my evening buzz fades along with the final remnants of sunlight.  I giggle, I roll my eyes, and I wonder how much longer until we reach a saloon where I might find a brew to keep me happily unconcerned that I am, in fact, bored out of my skull.  Nothing about the occult charms me.  While I do believe some people have a connection to the nether world, I believe mediums have powers I cannot understand and allow them to communicate with the dearly departed.  Yet I believe neither me, nor the costumed tour guide earning $10.82 an hour for her evening gig, facilitate a connection to the other side on this warm night in north Florida.  I believe this tour needs adult refreshment to make it remotely interesting.

Gravestones Should Come With Baseballs

Most people who visit Rochester, Minnesota, seek the medical recommendations of the renowned Mayo Clinic, but not me.  Sure, I may have planned to pop in on family members, but the cover story in the human-interest section of the local paper caught my pop culture eye and took me to a small, two-acre plot.  W.P. Kinsella’s novel, Shoeless Joe, led to Kevin Costner plowing under his corn fields on the big screen, and the tiniest bit of trivia from the American pastime impacted the novel, the movie, and the history of the Rochester area.  And it made my trip unique and remarkable.

 

Now buried in a plot next to his wife, Alecia, Archibald Graham spent nearly nine decades serving his family and town rather than continuing to play baseball beyond the single inning of professional stardom that he savored and discarded.  Kinsella found Graham's simple stat when writing his novel, and on a summer afternoon, I find his simple headstone after strolling through the graveyard referenced in the daily news.  In the light of day, without a tour guide, or a hint of intoxication, or an over-inflated story, I reach out to the other side to thank “Moonlight” Graham for his contribution to American film lore and my expedition to the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.  And laying next to his granite slab, a perfectly-placed leather sphere with its signature red stitching marks the appreciation of another fan like myself who had taken the same self-guided tour.

360° Around Lake Tahoe (Part 2)

360° Around Lake Tahoe (Part 1)

Circumnavigation

Telling Time

Everyone vacations differently.  For the past several years, a friend of mine has planned his big summer outing with his entire family (yes, some in-laws, a handful of cousins, etc.) by the edge of a lovely lake in North Carolina.  For his family, this outing marks the pinnacle of family time and he returns feeling refreshed and relaxed.  I marvel at the concept, as the one time I spent two nights with extended family at the Lake of the Ozarks, I noted the experience would be my last family reunion in a shared cabin.  More than a decade later, I stand by those guideline.  Besides, I’d like to see more of the lake than a single, shore-side view.

In the heart of Florida, Lake Okeechobee marks the crossing point between the drifting headwaters and the full-blown Everglades.  On a variety of mini voyages, I have seen vantage points from the southwest around to the south; specifically, I have driven around the entire lake from eight o’clock to six o’clock if one were to view the lake as a clock face.  Likewise, I have enjoyed a two-hundred, seventy degree view of Lake Huron, from six progressing around to three, also in multiple road trips.  And despite having even explored the inside of its clock face on Antelope Island, the  Great Salt Lake from eleven to five o’clock offered me only half of the full waterside experience.

Counter Clockwise

Even before beginning to plan my excursion to Lake Tahoe, I knew I wanted to drive the full distance around its shores.  Starting at the traffic-clogged southern tip, I break from the construction traffic to grab a bite of lunch (see “Where’s Jack?” from March 2013) at the six o’clock point before beginning my full-face assault.  I skirt the water’s edge counter-clockwise (on my vacations, I am allowed to break the rules of time travel) into Nevada and am bombarded by casinos – no need for a “Welcome to Nevada” sign here – the abundantly clear transition lets me know.  I continue to climb up to the rocky tunnel towards the three o’clock marker, and then just beyond to the crystal-clear pool of boulders.  As much as the full circle beckons, the below rocks, sitting blissfully in the   

cool mountain pool deserve their own moment of reflection.  The clock momentarily stops here.

At twelve o’clock high, I drive into California for the second time today.  The summer crowds have departed and the skiers are still waiting for the more substantial snows – not the dusting from a few days ago – so the roads are as clear as the skies.  I continue around to eight while the sun still lingers, and pause for a rest in my own little cabin just out of the sight of the water.  And shortly after the sun peeks from its slumber, I resume the final two hours on the lake’s clock face.  Somewhere around seven o’clock geographically I pull over for a final view of the American Alpine lagoon.  For years I wanted to be at this spot, at all of these spots, to make this three-hundred and sixty degree loop, and to see one small piece of America from every angle.  Back at six o’clock, I turn right and mark the time I circumnavigate Lake Tahoe.

An Ocean View Spoiled

Adding to the Adventure

More than once I have traveled for a medical procedure.  Not as extreme or distant as discounted heart surgery abroad, but often finding the right physiological provider did require a flight to a doctor’s destination (and once included a bump up to first class – how simply awful for me).  And as is common with most of my travel, I insert sightseeing into my itineraries.  Whether it is for business, joining a family reunion, completing my degree work (see “An Education at Gettysburg,” March 2013), or for a medical procedure, I stop at a historical marker, I voyage via a unique mode of transportation, or I take in a baseball game to add a little spice to my travel.  It’s what makes a routine trip a memorable outing.

Once I cruised Hollywood Boulevard after a two-day workshop in Southern California and happened upon a press-lined red carpet for a movie premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  I dined on the waterfront after a meeting in Annapolis when I took with a side trip to Chesapeake Bay (see “The Ice Machine in the River,” July 2012).  I squeezed in a landmark outing in the City of Brotherly Love (see “The Vet,” November 2011), and I added a full day’s drive to the northern tier when I had just planned an overnight outing to Omaha (see “North Dakota on a Napkin,” November 2011).  My travel always has multiple purposes and selfish sightseeing.

Missed Sunsets

I land on Monday night and reach the hotel after sunset, sadly, since my hotel stands near the beach in practically perfect Santa Monica.  I barely close the door to my room and receive a call from the front desk updating me on the score from the Tampa Bay Rays game (why, yes, they did sweep the Red Sox).  Clearly this hotel will exceed my expectations if they can keep me apprised of the early-season series.  Hued in tans, browns, and white, with highlights of trendy green, this hotel may not ooze medical motif, but it certainly brightens my visit’s purpose.  I may not get to enjoy the fancy first-floor nightclub, but just being in Santa Monica will be a treat.

Morning begins with my trying to complete my homework in advance of finals week.  But certainly I will get a chance to get out to the beach or down to the pier.  By midday I am on my way to appointment one of two, followed by a social call from friends checking on me.  When adding in a little recuperation time, another sunset comes and goes without me.  Day two takes a similar course, substituting work on my final term paper for the conversational pop-in.  And by the time I lie down, I have caught only a snippet of the sun’s departure and none of the ambiance of the ocean.  The coastal taxi ride back to LAX affords me my only scenic pleasure during an excursion-less escape.  The sun metaphorically set on Santa Monica.

Georgia Agritourism

I Saw The Signs

Plenty of highway signs dot the road sides to get us where we are going.  Obviously the highway department in any given state provides multiple notifications before an exit because sometimes drivers miss one or two as they cruise along the road.  The green ones tell us where we are headed and what is coming up next.  The blue ones provide us with services and the brown ones share with us the cultural and historic sites along the way.  The yellow ones caution us, the white ones remind us the rules of the road.  Highway markers for interstates, US highways, state roads, county roads, and cross roads direct us as we move from place to place.  But is it really possible to see them all?

When traveling solo, I often read as many of these signs as possible, seeing them as friendly faces along the way greeting me, speaking to me and teaching me as I drive.  And I certainly learned a new term as I drove through Georgia: Agritourism.  When I first saw the word on a small blue sign, I spent several miles tossing the idea around in my brain; the mix of southern agriculture and tourism seemed comical – wouldn’t that just be a summer trip to an extended family’s farm?  Do plants really produce a vacation industry?  I like pineapples and pistachios, but they fall pretty low on the list of reasons to travel to Hawaii.  Nevertheless, the word continued to generate steam in my gray matter the farther I drove.

Georgia On My Mind

The Peach State always reminds me of the old South, of cotton plantations and giant oak trees, and a few of these sprawling estates still stand to provide a glimpse of the state’s history.  The peaches and the cotton, and the way of life that has long since ended transitioning into a modern agriculture boom that ingrains itself in the state.  Giant groves of pecan trees (pronounced pē’-can, of course) add to the charm of the new south and the sweetest of pies.  Its native son, first its governor and then US President Jimmy Carter, brought Georgia peanuts into the limelight.  And who doesn’t cry at the site of Vandalia onions when slicing and chopping them?

 

Perhaps the sign, small in comparison to others, represents the twenty-first century

South – a South that’s growing and alive, that has variety and vitality and flavor and fluidity, that’s tasty and tempting and touristy.  While I still don’t think I am motivated to travel to Georgia to savor its bounty, I certainly like having it at my disposal.  And in tribute to the full range of Agritourism Georgia provides, I stop on my way out of the state at a southern winery where I sample and purchase my own bottle of vintage Agritourism at its finest.