davethegrinch.net

Dave says:
Call it blasé, call it naive. Perhaps it’s experience but more likely I’m just lazy. Which ever way you look at it, being an hour outside Luang Prabang and only now picking up the trusty Lonely Planet is possibly a little insane. But then traveling all this distance for a two week vacation is equally so. Sarah, dear Sarah, who just a few short years ago, didn’t even own a passport has organized this whole trip with efficiency and an esprit d’corps that comes only with experience. And now I have nothing left to do but cram the country as presented to me in the culture, history, environment and food& drink section of the ever present travelers bible. I am not ashamed to admit that it’s that last section I study the hardest; the others, I am ashamed to admit, make me sound more knowledgable than I truly am for the benefit of  these digital correspondences back home.
Speaking of which, I apologize in advance if I’m blasé/naive/lazy or just out of practice in this regard too. It’s been many months since I last busted out the travel writing chops but I’m sure, any second now, my long perambulations, pretentious use of arcane vocabulary and overuse of the humble comma will re-emerge into the style you know, love or barely tolerate.

I digress (of course I do). My tardiness in the guide  book reading department is compounded by the sheer amount of missed opportunity I’ve had in the last 32 hours. Door to door, four flights across a good portion of the globe – 32 hours in transit.  I feel like an astronaut. Around the clock I have dined on the finest individually portioned facsimile of gourmet food my ticket class deserves and then performed my ablutions in a three foot square plastic Boeing porta-potty.  I maybe getting too old for this. Ironically, I’ve just finished my last airplane meal on this leg and it was surprisingly good. US airlines have seriously lost the plot because the meal I just enjoyed on a two hour flight in a propeller driven airplane to one of poorest countries in world was so much better than the complimentary bag of pretzels you get on a seven hour flight on a 757 across the richest country in the world. Shame on them and shame on us for putting up with their capitalistic approach to something as basic as a halfway decent meal whilst they insist on continuing the aires of high standards of service.

Oh, right. The facts not the hyperbole. I’m sorry. Seattle to San Fran : 1.5 hours / 4 hour layover. San Fran to Hong Kong: 14 hours / 2 hour layover. Hong Kong to Bangkok: 2.5 hours / 2 hour layover then finally, and not a moment too soon, on to Luang Prabang in just under 2 hours but really, at this point it’s all rather irrelevant and somewhat ridiculous. I would argue that the prospect of such a journey is worse than the actuality but my ass really hurts so I know that’s not the truth. I’m not entirely sure how Cathay Pacific can legally get away with the plastic seats they’ve installed in their 747s. The cushion was micro-thin and the seat reclined by sliding forward rather than the backrest raking backwards. This allows them to condense even more traveler per square foot. Now, at the risk of stereotyping, most the passengers were Chinese and they can do that village squat thing for ages – maybe it was fine for them  but my skinny white occidental ass needs to be pushin’ a little more cushin’ if you know what I’m saying.

Hong Kong is the gateway to the east and especially the airport. Witness the Asians with their matching Burberry luggage and woolen scarves (it’s seventy five degrees outside) and amuse yourself with the westeners heading into Asia in all their newly purchased adventure clothed glory. It’s the modern equivalent of pith helmets and safari suits and sends the imperialistic message that western technology can overcome eastern traditions or climate (both assumptions are incorrect). My favorites however are westeners heading home, released from shackles of gore-tex and bedecked in their touristy, tie died hemp freedom. Me? Well I’m wearing the same beat-up and faded travel clothes I wore everyday for two years. They been laundered against rocks and repaired with big stitches of mismatched cotton. I love them and when I put them on I feel like Indiana Jones pulling on that leather jacket and donning the famous hat – another adventure has begun.

I love it. I love it all. Wouldn’t you?

Dave Says,

Here are ten random meditations on Sydney.

1)   The shops open at 9am. Have you ever been in a department store at 9am? It’s quite a displacing sensation. It feels as if you got up to go to the shops rather than getting up and deciding to go to the shops. It’s not right. There are other things that don’t feel right when you’ve just arisen from your nightly slumber such as seeing a jazz band, wearing black tie or eating oysters.

(more…)

Dave says:

And so, first, an apology. What a way to leave our loyal readers. After all we’ve been through together, the ups and downs, highs and lows, ins and outs and I (we) leave you hanging somewhere in New Jersey lamenting dead relatives. That was not the way we intended to honor you and for that we beg your forgiveness. There is/was a method to the madness however. I wanted the last entry in this travel collective to be the denouement, drawing together the sights and smells of our adventures into a neat little package with a pretty bow on top. But this task caused great consternation and ultimately frustrated failure. Perhaps you could draw your own conclusions but, apart from that being disrespectful to you, we just didn’t think you could do it. It’s not that we underestimate your capacity for understanding and reason, it is that we have come to note that our travels are just too big for encapsulation. We have not come to terms with the shear width and breadth of them ourselves yet, so to expect our family, friends and casual voyeurs to formulate a precis of our voyages goes beyond the reasonable. Nevertheless, we live in a summarized society so, with apologies proffered but no retractions offered, here is the superlative list we all crave: (more…)

Sarah says: 

My paternal grandfather was a huge Hungarian man whose skin turned a deep leather red in the summer. He had a deep, bellowing laugh and was the life and fun of every party. He would yell out “Buffongoola” and called his mates “Mongolian porkchops” – whatever any of that meant. Everyone knew and loved Al, he was extremely popular in the Hungarian and eastern European communities of New Brunswick, New Jersey and was one of the boys in clubs like the Eagles and Knights of Columbus. He was an extremely hard worker, was smart with his money and provided well for his family. My grandparents had a little bungalow on the Jersey shore where I spent all my summers growing up. Their back patio was the best patio of all because the party was always happening there. Beers were always in the cooler, something was always on the grill and at the center of it all was my grandfather. (more…)

Dave says:

Consider this: the United States of America is a giant restaurant bill. You know, the piece of paper the server puts face down on your table at the end of your meal, and as she does so she performs that neat little trick where she puts a crease along the middle of the bill so it has a handy little ridge by which to pick it up. Am making any sense here? (more…)

Dave Says:
The Great Plains run from the north of Wyoming to the south of Texas, some 500 miles wide and 2000 miles long. The majestic and vast arid prairies and steppe were once home to over 30 million buffalo and were the legendary hunting grounds of the nomadic American Indians – they are the stuff of American legends. As we left the corn belt of Iowa, drove through the Badlands and crested the Black Hills of South Dakota the prospect of actually seeing the Great Plains with my own eyes became ever more real and ever more essential in understanding what it is to be American. For my whole life they were nothing more than a movie set or a Boys Own comic book strip, cowboys and Indians, good versus bad – pioneering Americans in a time and a place that never seemed real. As I grew older my understanding of this part of American history mirrored the shift in popular culture as fanciful soap operas such as Gunsmoke and Bonanza had to give way to the harsh realities of Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven and A Man Called Horse. The Great Plains serve as both the backdrop and stage to the greatest of the American morality plays, even greater than the Civil rights movement. As we looked over the last peak of the Black Hills, some 2000 feet below across this vastness of the American West, I realized that I was looking at the freedom promised by the Bill of Rights, freedoms granted, freedoms taken away and the freedoms we have today. (more…)

Dave Says:

If I were a twenty year old rock’n'roll star who was about to die in a tragic airplane crash somewhere in the middle of a corn field, I think I would choose Iowa in which to do it. Clear Lake, Iowa is famous more for a tragic day in February 1959 than it is anything else including the lake regardless of how clear it happens to be. I’m a bit of a Buddy Holly nut. I’m not sure why, I’m not sure it even matters why. I just am. You can ask two of my friends: Amber and Amy. Amber was born in Iowa and not too far from Clear Lake and Amy comes from Lubbock, Texas, the birthplace of the great bespectacled one. Within seconds of befriending them both nearly (and separately) eleven years ago I pounced on them with questions and trivia about their prodigal son. And so, with great enthusiasm, we met with our good pals Amber and Chadwick in Minneapolis with the idea to head south, to Iowa, to Amber’s family farm and, most importantly, via Clear Lake and the Surf Ballroom. (more…)