davethegrinch.net

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.

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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?

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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.

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Dave Says:

We promised ourselves that if we were going to spend time, and therefore considerable expense, touring the USA then we must work hard to treat it with the same bug-eyed wonderment we did with the rest of the world. Well, promises are made to be broken and although this one is relatively intact at the time of writing, it will soon enough succumb to the return of the familiar, erosion of the novelty and ridiculousness’ death march towards the norm. So, before I am sucked back into the vortex of the US here’s a quick stream of observation and, of course, gross generalization of 300 million people.

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Dave says:

The Atlantic Ocean is pretty darn big. We’re two days in and have just left the coast of Ireland. But then, we are going only about 25 miles per hour. As I look out the window it seems faster but who cares ‘cos we’ve stepped back to a time when most things didn’t go much faster than 25mph anyway. The airplane is a flash-in-the-pan novelty and the train, although essential, has become a tedium and best suited for the lower classes. It is impossible for one to drive a newfangled automobile across the Atlantic so an ocean liner is the only reasonable and, let’s face it, civilized way to reach New York.

I’m writing this whilst comfortably ensconced in the aptly named Chart Room, toasting the return of the decent Gin and Tonic and listening to the string quartet do a fair rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. So please, join me as I throw journalistic balance overboard, and tell you about the more quirky side of this most civilized nautical pastime.

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Sarah says:

I always felt that in order to maintain any shred of backpacker credibility, I was obliged to apologize for our having purchased passage aboard the Queen Mary 2. Our laundry list of justifications were all, in fact, true statements. We did, over a year ago, make an earnest effort to book passage across the Atlantic on a freighter. All freighters that make the iconic route, Southampton to New York (a necessity for many symbolic reasons) were already booked even back then and much to our astonishment, freighter fare would have been nearly double what we would pay for the worst cabin aboard the QM2. In order to keep our overland dream alive, we begrudgingly booked the cabin. At the time, it sincerely did not fill us with joy and we certainly never considered paying the nominal upgrade fee for the 2nd to worst cabin on the boat much less a window cabin. We were backpackers through and through and wanted our circum-ambulation of the globe to be bohemian, in the spirit of Jack Karouac. Jack would never have crossed on the QM2, probably even if he had had the money, and we felt as though we were committing some sort of betrayal.

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