Thoughts from the Road- Signs

Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: Anti-Flag, The W.T.O. Kills Farmers

I'm starting to have a few general topics from my road trips that are coming into focus that I just want to write a little bit about. The first is about signs and waste. I'm wondering how much wealth is wasted in putting up useless signs all over the place, not to mention how much waste results from cleaning up the consequences of drivers distracted by such useless signage.

Some examples:

1. Signs approaching toll booths all over the midwest and New York were awful. They packed a lot of information onto each sign which was hard for the uninformed traveler (i.e. myself) to decipher without diverting significant attention from my driving. This is compounded by the fact that lanes disappeared at many toll booths leaving drivers in a free-for-all scramble for the shortest line. That was fine with me, but it would certainly have been better if I didn't have my attention divided between trying to get in a toll lane and trying to figure out from the very busy signs how much I was supposed to pay and whether or not my 60 cents had to be exact change.

2. Idaho bathrooms at gas stations had signs stuck on the mirrors informing the reader that it is not only Idaho state law for employees to wash their hands after using the restroom and before returning to work, but they must also pay special attention to washing between the fingers and under the nails.

3. Near Ogden Utah, there were a number of signs cautioning drivers moving at highway speeds that there were low-hanging power lines that should be avoided. However, all of the warnings were posted almost directly below said power lines leaving drivers no time at all to avoid the hazard if need be.

Between my two trips, I picked up a neighborhood newsletter wherein the guy writing it these days complains about people speeding through here and wanting more 25 mph signs put up as if the problem is merely one of ignorance of the speed limit.

I used to know a guy who would complain about billboards by the side of the road- you know, the useful signs that tell you things like where to eat and sleep and what neat things there are to see and do when you are in unfamiliar territory. But I never heard him complain about one of these truly idiotic signs corrupting his view of pristine landscape. More likely, he's the sort who would be on the Put Up More Signs to Save the Masses from Themselves bandwagon.

Here is a very useful sign (seen in Fredonia, AZ) I did like:

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 11

Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: Van Morrison, Tupelo Honey

Day 11 was a long day of driving. I think we left Indiana around 7:00 am and got to our hotel in Brattleboro, VT at about 4:00 am. We loaded up the car, determined that the coffee maker was putting out suspect quality coffee, and wound up leaving without coffee. Our first stop was at a gas station, though, and TM thought that was an okay place to get his morning poison.

We started out with PK driving, me in the front passenger seat, and TM in the back. We had only a slightly longer distance to travel than Mapquest's shortest route with the toll-free route that PK had worked out for us. A few days earlier by e-mail, she and I had worked out an alternate route that would take us close enough to Pint of Stout for a lunch or dinner meeting, but it turned out that he wasn't able to meet on the days we'd be going through his area. We wound up avoiding the New York State Throughway on our way to New Hampshire. I think we took I-86 from Pennsylvania to I-390 or I-88 or something like that and linked back up with I-90 around Schenectady. We had to make fun of our navigatress' pronunciation of that word, and we ended up renaming that city "Shenectedaddy."

TM and PK are most definitely breakfast eaters so we knew we'd be stopping for breakfast no more than a couple of hours after we hit the road. We also knew that there was NO WAY IN HELL WE WERE GOING TO GIVE THE OHIO STATE GOVERNMENT ONE FUCKING RED CENT AFTER THE SHIT THEY PULLED ON HUNTER!!!!!! We also knew that we'd have 300+ miles of Ohio to drive through and we would most definitely NOT be exceeding the speed limit by any noticeable amount. Therefore, we concluded that we must have breakfast in Indiana.

I am sorry to report that the potential trauma of finding a restaurant from the road acceptable to three people including one picky eater person with particular standards won out over the report from my sister the night I was driving to Chicago that Cracker Barrel (a) had recently had a meat recall, (b) has a history of discrimination based on race and sexual orientation that may or may not have ended by now. Yes, damn it, we ate at Cracker Barrel! Worse yet- I LIKED IT! One Mr. Joel "the Storyteller" Simon once said that bacon is, quite possibly, the world's most perfect food, and I can find nothing to quibble with there. We went to Cracker Barrel at least twice, and possibly more than that on this trip, and I am certain I had bacon at every meal. Mmmm... Cracker Barrel.

BUT NOT IN OHIO! We got gas very near the Indiana/Ohio border and then stopped in Ohio ONLY for bathroom/smoke breaks. That's right- the only thing we gave the Ohio State government was a little more wear on its roads, a little more particulate in its air, and some effluent to clean up. Ha! So there. We have not forgotten.

Because we were traveling very near the speed limit and that speed limit was 55 mph in a lot of places due to construction, PK got excellent gas mileage for us during her driving shift. I have the data on the receipts in my car, and I will post that later when I run the numbers. I think it is possible that she was getting us close to 30 mpg at one point, but I have to check my mental math. I think Ohio is where we started noticing EXTREMELY HEAVY police presence on the highway, and started counting cop cars. It was the day before Memorial Day so we thought that had something to do with it. However, the number wasn't remarkably smaller on our return trip through Ohio the following Wednesday so maybe they just like showing off their jackbooted thugs to the out-of-towners.

Once we got out of the Police State of Ohio, we were more than ready for lunch. We passed a place called Quaker Steak and Lube and got off the freeway a couple of exits later to get gas. We decided to break the cardinal rule of travel that Thou Shalt Not Go Back If Thou Hast Missed Thine Exit or If Thou Hast Changed Thine Mind About Wanting to Stop Somewhere That Though Hast Already Past, and we went back to the restaurant. The Flying Spaghetti Monster punished us for our wickedness by giving us the world's worst waiter. Lunch took a really long time- I think it may have been around 2 hours or possibly a little more- which contributed to our unholy late arrival hour in Vermont. And one of the things we ordered was a basket of Buffalo wings which PK and TM and I were going to split until our waiter told us that we'd have to get a bucket instead of a basket if we wanted to have more than one flavor. It wound up that TM and I were going to split one hot flavor, but we were never entirely sure what flavors we ended up with in our basket. We think we may have gotten two flavors even though we were told that wasn't allowed.

When we finally got back on the road, it was my turn to drive. I ended up driving the rest of the way to Vermont. It wasn't pretty- especially there at the end with the windy roads and construction zones and me being really sleepy- but we lived. TM was at the ready to take the third driving shift at any moment, but I kept thinking we couldn't be more than an hour away. We finally got to Vermont, had to get gas, and then rolled into the parking lot of a nice, cheap motel found for us by PK for something like $50/night including breakfast. I went into the office to check in and the desk clerk was already starting to set up the breakfast room since breakfast started at 5 or 6 am. I got our keys and we hauled our stuff up to our room. PK may have set the alarm clock- I can't remember- but we all knew we'd be sleeping in. We didn't have to be anywhere until 1:00 pm the next day (or rather 1:00 pm later that same day).

Oh, also we saw a UFO across the street from a rest stop in New York. I don't think we were probed, though. PK? TM? Do you think we were probed?

I have maybe one page of pictures for Day 11 which I'll put up later tonight or tomorrow.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 10

Posting from: Tucson, AZ

Day 10 was the day of our first formally organized meetup. We were meeting at Mill Race Park in Columbus, IN where I had reserved a picnic shelter ahead of time in anticipation of a busy park over Memorial Day Weekend (even though we'd be there on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend). We said we'd be there around 1:00 pm, but let everyone else know the shelter was reserved starting at 9:00 am.

I slept well but woke up not too many hours after I got to sleep because (a) I was in a strange place, (b) it was light outside, and (c) a cat was urging me to rise. PK and TM were up shortly thereafter. There were morning goings on in some order I don't remember- breakfast, shower, possibly an unsuccessful attempt to make coffee in a coffeemaker we weren't sure was clean, etc...

Then we started getting the car organized. We were taking Penny (my Honda Element) so some cleaning and organizing was in order. I got most of the junk out plus some things we didn't really need. PK made macaroni-and-cheese and bread and scones to take with us so there was a fair bit of time that morning spent cooking. TM was kind enough to fix the driver's side visor in my car. One of the screws kept vibrating loose, and I had some Loc-Tite in the car to fix it with but hadn't yet taken the time to do so. I'm pleased to report that it has been solid ever since. (Thanks!)

Then we started loading stuff into the car and making a shopping list. We pulled an ice cream recipe off the web to use to make ice cream in the ice cream ball I had brought with me. We printed out our map and directions to the park. Then we sat around for a few minutes waiting for the macaroni and cheese to finish cooking. When it was done, PK pulled it out of the oven and we spent some time figuring out how we were going to transport a large dish of hot and gooey macaroni and cheese. I think it ended up getting wrapped extremely well in aluminum foil and then the entire dish went into a cardboard box. We put the box on my sweatshirt in the back seat so that the whole thing could sit flat, and then we seatbelted the whole thing.

Once we had all the food in the car, we went to the grocery store where we picked up ice cream fixings, hamburger and hotdog fixings, plates, paper towels, ice, beer, and that sort of thing. After that we were off on a fairly long drive to the park. We ended up arriving about 1:30 pm, and everyone else was already there. I think we had a total of seven TCFers from four different states plus three of their family members attend the meetup. We had way too much food, all of it delicious, and I did my best to remedy that situation.

There was a lot of chitchat, and I learned a lot about chickens that I did not know before by listening to the wife of one TCFer. She's sort of an honorary TCFer because she has contributed advice to the board even though (as far as I know) she is not formally registered there. I also got to pay off a bet I'd lost by fetching three beers for one of the attendees.

While we were eating, I brought out the ice cream ball, packed the outside with ice and salt, and dumped in the ingredients. Then I gave it to the two kids who were there thinking they'd send it back and forth between themselves for a bit, and then the rest of us would be eating effort-free ice cream in about twenty minutes. It turned out not to be that simple. Sure the ice cream ball website shows little kids happily playing with it, but don't believe it! It turns out that the ridges on this ball make it difficult to roll around. The kids weren't very interested, and I think the adults spent more time rolling it around than the kids. Tossing it around much was out of the question since it was a really hard plastic and dropping it was likely to crack it, not to mention that it would hurt like hell to get hit by that thing. Finally, someone had the bright idea to take the ball up a nearby hill and roll it down a few times to get things going. That seemed to do the trick. When they brought it back, we dished out a marginally respectable soft serve ice cream for everyone to sample. Cute idea, that ice cream ball, but really not very practical. I think it was PK who pointed out that it would be fine if there was some kind of thing you could set it up on to crank it without having to roll it around.

In addition to messing around with the ice cream ball, a few of the adults and one of the kids made some unsuccessful attempts to get a miniature kite up and flying. At some point, I put together some gift bags and handed them out to everyone, too. We never resorted to playing any of the board games I had brought along, though.

After a few hours of meeting, greeting, and eating, the first person to leave said her good-byes. It wasn't too long after that when the rest of us started cleaning up and packing it in to go home. I'm not sure how long we were there, but it was light out still when we left the park. That doesn't mean a heck of a lot, though, since Indiana is on Eastern Standard Daylight time which means it is still light at some weirdass hour of the night in the summer. I got a couple of pictures of the lake and an ugly sculpture at the entrance to the park. My main regret is that I forgot to check out the Observation Tower before we left the park.

Back at home, we started looking at maps to decide on a route to New Hampshire for which we were leaving the next day. PK found us a route that avoided all toll roads. I printed out maps and our hotel reservation. PK and TM put away leftover food from the meetup and packed up some things from the picnic that we wanted to take in the car with us plus some of their things. I think we got as much stuff into the car that night as we could.

This may have also been the point at which the cat bit me. I was given fair warning that he could get fed up with my petting at any time, but he lulled me into complacency by accepting it affectionately. Then he suddenly struck. I was kind of surprised, and my feelings were hurt. I don't think I petted him again after that.

Anyone remember anything that I forgot on Day 10? Post it in the comments and I'll add it up here.

More Pictures!

Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: Joe Rush, Play and Play and Play

Eight exciting new pages of my vacation for your viewing pleasure are located here! About five people have told me in the last week that they're enjoying these and I have three people at work getting one picture a day from me by e-mail. I thought looking at other people's vacation pictures had a bad reputation somewhere between eating liver and having a root canal, but at least you're not forced to sit through hours of them shown by slide projector!

The Gift Bags

Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: David Wilcox, Waffle House

I have long believed that one of the biggest keys to regaining political freedom is to opt as much as possible out of the government-polluted economy and opt as much as possible into alternative economic choices that are not controlled or interfered with by government. One way to do that is to do our best to give our business and charitable support to people in The Family (that just doesn't sound as friendly as I mean it since I've seen The Godfather).

I've noticed over the years that a lot of people offering goods and services either are just plain not interested in or not good at marketing their offerings, or they are unaware of an audience/market for their goods and services that I am aware of, or they are otherwise not meeting their sales or distribution potential for whatever reason. I've also noticed from a consumer standpoint that often I have no idea that someone in The Family is offering a product or service that I would take advantage of if I knew about it. It can be very frustrating that all of this information isn't organized neatly in one spot, but whenever I think about how to gather and organize all that information it becomes a nightmarish project in my mind that I have no desire to undertake.

I have also long felt that my freedom movement experience has been rather depressing, and I have noticed that among some of my fellow members of The Family as well. How do I turn someone else on to freedom with a dour look on my face, a pervasive sense of doom overtaking my thoughts, and resentment and anger in my heart? That doesn't seem like a good strategy to me. I decided I needed to connect more with what I find inspiring and highlight that more in my life and interactions with other people.

The need for something uplifting led me to put together an audio CD project which turned into 2 audio CDs of individualist- and freedom-related material- songs, stories, speeches, that sort of thing- that I found personally inspiring. I'm passing them around sort of like bootleg CDs except that all of the material on them is either from publicly available sources or is used with explicit permission of the originator. I arranged all the selections and made CD covers with liner notes. The idea of handing out these CDs to people as I traveled around then led me to the idea of the gift bags which include the CDs I made plus neat stuff I've collected from various other sources.

So what finally ended up in the bag included:
-Embracing Liberty 2-Disc Sampler CD Set

---Disc One
-----Freedom Flying by Ekoostik Hookah
-----Wildflower Man, a short story by Warren Bluhm
-----Lost Voice of Radio Beijing
-----Justice Day, lyrics by Claire Wolfe/performed by scarmig
-----Talk by Claire Wolfe at the 2004 Freedom Summit
-----Our Country, Right or Wrong, written by Samuel Clemens/read by Robert Anthony Peters

---Disc Two:
-----Winning the War on Drugs by the Asylum Street Spankers
-----Cry Freedom sung by Bear and Bird at the 2006 Rainbow Gathering
-----Talk by Sunni Maravillosa at the 2005 Freedom Summit
-----Lawyers, Guns, and Money by Warren Zevon
-----The Legend of Shorty Dawkins by Caleb Johnson
-----What Goes Up by Vanna Bonta

-Set of 3 Thank You notes printed by Victory Graphics (thanks to lewlew and lew)

-Candy and spiced nuts samples plus a flyer from Sunni's Caramels (thanks to Sunni)

-Flyer for Dull'Hawk's Cafe Press store and other items for sale plus a desk-sized Time's Up flag (thanks to Dull'Hawk)

-Business card from Restored Spirit Arts (thanks to Dare2BFree)

-Fully Informed Jury Association pamphlet and bumper sticker (thanks to iloilo)

-Bill of Rights Security Edition

-Buttons and magnets from Bureaucrash

I will have more of these gift bags with me at the Montana meetup this Independence Day. If you have something you'd like to contribute, please post a comment or e-mail me, and we can discuss it.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 9

Posting from: Tucson, AZ

Day 9 was another driving day. The day before, Dave and I messed around trying to get the stop motion movie software and my new camera to cooperate. It turns out that the camera I bought was not compatible (it wasn't on the list, but the sales guy thought it might work and told me I could return it if not), but fortunately Dave had an iSight camera and firewire cable that he loaned me which let us get the thing working. I packed up the car and Dave helped me get the camera set up bungee-corded to my passenger side visor looking out the front. I captured a few frames of him waving through the windshield before I pulled out of his driveway and headed for coffee and the freeway. I wound up without coffee because I passed the coffee place accidentally and didn't want to turn around and try to navigate back to it. This was probably a good plan as I would find out on the last day of my Minneapolis on the way back home.

Once I got a little way out of town, I called Sunni who I was going to try to meet up with on my way from Minneapolis to Indiana around lunchtime. She gave me directions to a park where she said she and her kids would meet me. It was pretty much just driving until then. When I got to the park, I found her sitting at a picnic table watching her kids playing. The four of us left the playground area and took a little walk along a riverside trail and talked for a little bit before we turned around. It was a nice leg-stretching break. The Element is pretty good for me for road trips, but I wish the driver's seat could slide back a few more inches.

After our short walk, we hopped in our cars and drove to a Chinese buffet for lunch. It was great! I was in dire need of some vegetables so I went a little heavy on the green beans and broccoli when I went through the line. During lunch we chatted some more, and Sunni showed me an alternate route to my final destination that we both thought might be quicker. Then afterwards we went out to our cars to exchange some items. She gave me a rather large stash of sample items including spiced nuts and candies to include in some gift bags I'd planned to assemble and hand out at each of the meetups I was attending, and I put together one of these gift bags for her to take home.

The rest of my drive to my final destination in Indiana was mostly just driving and stopping for gas, bathroom breaks, and food. I had to call PK for directions to where I was meeting her and TM. I did't get in until some ungodly hour of the morning, and we were going to attend a meetup later that day so there was a little bit of chitchat with the two of them when I arrived and then I just crashed on the floor with my blanket and pillow instead of setting up my air mattress.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 8

Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: the air conditioner hum

Day 8 was my one full day in Minneapolis before I headed out for some TCF meetups in Indiana and New Hampshire. Dave was up early as is his usual habit, but he let me sleep in. Once I was up and moving, we put on our jackets (it was a beautiful rainy day) and walked to the bus stop where we caught a bus downtown.

We went inside some building and navigated through the second-floor skyway maze (which was new and exciting for me!) to Caribou Coffee which is to Minnesota sort of like what Tully's is to Seattle- a regional coffee chain second place (I'm guessing on that) to Starbuck's (although Dave Polaschek tells me that outside of the metropolitan areas, Starbuck's doesn't think it's worth it to take over those parts of the world). I had a drink I can't remember the name of which isn't on their menu- it was a special feature called something like a Heath Bar Cooler. Basically it was a blended, toffee-flavored mocha with Heath Bar crumbles mixed in and whipped cream and Heath Bar crumbles on top.

After that we went downstairs and out a door to our first touristy stop- the Mary Tyler Moore statue! She is located out front of the former Dayton's, now Macy's where she tossed her hat in the show (except she's on the sidewalk and not in the crosswalk). I got a picture of her, and I got Dave to take a picture of me alongside her fake-flinging my hat and swinging my lunchbox purse behind me just as she is posed.

After that we went back inside and headed through the skyway maze to Target to shop for a digital camera. I had installed on my computer some software with which I planned to make a stop motion movie of my trip. However, I did not have a camera that was compatible with it. We had earlier printed out the list of compatible cameras so I could buy one, and we stopped in at Target to find something cheap but functional. The main highlight of Target for me, though, was that it was a two-story store and there was a neat little escalator just for the shopping carts.

I think after that we walked through downtown and across a bridge to Kramarczuk's for lunch where we split a sausage spinach roll and an Andouille sausage. The Andouille sausage was okay, but I was a bigger fan of the sausage spinach roll. I see now browsing their website that they have alligator sausages which, unfortunately, do not appear on the restaurant menu at the moment. I have to try an alligator sausage. For dessert, I selected on Grand Marnier truffle from their pastry/candy case which was not at all Grand Marnier-ish but was good because it was deeply, deeply chocolatey. We briefly browsed the adjacent Baltic gifts store also owned by the family who owns the restaurant and retail store, but I didn't buy anything there. After Kramarczuk's, we walked a little ways to Taraccino Coffee where I had a black forest mocha and we sat around chatting some more.

I think we took the bus home from Taraccino. At Dave's place, we dumped our stuff and made our plan for the evening. Dave called up the Mill City Museum and made reservations for us to take their evening Washburn A Mill Tour. We decided to drive down there and have dinner at a Thai restaurant called Sawatdee beforehand.

At Sawatdee, I had the shrimp pad thai which was tasty but too much for me to finish. Then we walked over to the Mill City Museum- the most explosive museum in the world. Before the tour, Dave browsed the museum a little bit while successfully browsed the gift shop without buying anything even though it was tough. It was a really good museum store. We met back at the gift shop for the tour. Okay, this was just THE COOLEST MUSEUM TOUR I HAVE EVER BEEN ON!!! Thanks, Dave! It was brilliant. The museum is housed within the ruins of the Washburn A Mill. The story of the Washburn A Mill, in a nutshell, is roughly as follows.

For a while Minneapolis was the Flour Milling Capital of the World, and at its peak the Washburn A Mill was the baddest badass of all the flour mills in the world. Four years after it opened, there was a flour dust explosion in the Washburn A Mill due to poor ventilation. This explosion set off explosions in each of its neighboring mills plus fires in three mills down the hill from it. In about a half hour, our tour guide told us, six mills were decimated.

The owner of the Washburn A Mill rebuilt it. When he rebuilt, he made some upgrades. At the time, Hungary was the flour-milling capital of the world. The owner sent a representative to Hungary to investigate the technology that gave Hungary a leg up when it came to milling. His representative was unable to get anyone to disclose the technology so he offered to pay for it. No deal, he was told. So he wound up taking a job sweeping floors in one of the mills where he spent a couple of weeks taking measurements and making notes secretly while he cleaned up. Then he returned to Minneapolis with his notes where the process and equipment were then reconstructed successfully at the Washburn A Mill whereupon it assumed a dominant position in the industry and was the most technologically advanced and largest mill in the world for nearly fifty years. It declined after World War I and finally closed in 1965.

After a brief introduction, the tour guide led us to the various levels of the mill to see its inner workings. We worked our way up to the top floor where, from an observation deck, we had an incredible view of St. Anthony Falls, the lock and dam, the Mississippi River, Mill Ruins Park, and some of the city. Then we wound up our tour by going back downstairs for a live demo of a flour explosion.

Jason Kottke has a wonderful write-up of his Mill City Museum experience and some pictures here. I will post my pictures from the museum soon.

After the museum tour, it was still light outside so we went for a walk through Mill Ruins Park, an interpretive historical park where the ruins of other mills are being excavated. We walked along the river and took lots of pictures. It was nice to get outside and walk around and breathe moist air and hear moving water and get a little excercise.

We went home and that was more or less the end of my first visit with Dave. I'd be leaving the following morning for Indiana and then New Hampshire after that and then I'd be back in Minneapolis in about a week.

Made It

Posting from: Tucson, AZ

Long day- more than 17 hours of driving. But I made it home and am now sitting in front of a vent with the air conditioning on until my house is a more reasonable temperature than the 89 degrees it was when I got home after having had the air conditioner off for over two weeks.

Boy, is it hot here. It's not even cool outside and it's almost midnight... :-(

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 7

Posting from: Minneapolis, MN

Day 7 was my last morning in Chicago followed by a day of traveling. My sister and I got up pretty early to get out of the house on time, but we were still running a few minutes late. I had to park a few blocks away from her house since there is no parking lot for her apartment, so I brought my things down to the first floor of her building and retrieved the car while she finished getting ready for work. I parked in the middle of the street and put my hazard lights on so we could load the car, and then we made up time and got her to the train on time by me driving her to her stop. Then I made my way back to the Museum Campus to visit the Shedd Aquarium before getting out of town.

It took me a while to get to the museum campus by car. I think I would have done better if I'd not gotten off an in-city highway as early as I did, but I eventually made it. I circled around the campus a couple of times before I decided which was the closest garage, parked, and then walked over to the aquarium.

I went to the desk and paid my admission in cash. The lady taking my money asked for my zip code to which I replied, not meanly or crankily, "That's none of your business." She stopped and looked at me like I'd slapped her and said, "WHAT did you just say to me???" I replied again,"I said that's none of your business." This got her martyr complex in a ruckus and she started going off. "You do not need to speak to me in that manner. You could simply tell me that you do not know. But that's okay because God loves you so have a nice day." She sat there with a pile of one dollar bills in her register drawer untouched while counting out my change in quarters all the while proclaiming that Jesus and God love me in spite of the terrible wrong I did her by not considering my zip code to be any of her business. As she gave me my change, she told me again that Jesus loves me and to have a nice day. I returned the sentiment by telling her that the Flying Spaghetti Monster loves her and wished her a nice day as well. Never in my life have I wished I had a tract to leave her so much as I did at that moment.

I took a quick spin around the aquarium after that, the pictures of which are now posted (see my last post for the link), and watched a little bit of the show in the big auditorium. It was basically what you get at SeaWorld, except not funny. They show you how to train a dolphin by using food. I bugged out after just a minute or two, collected a bunch of squished pennies which was no problem thanks to the Christian lady who saw fit to pay me all my change in quarters, and bugged out.

I went back to my car to try to pay up and get out. On my way I stopped at a hotdog stand for a Chicago style hotdog. There was no cashier on duty, so you had to pay a machine either by feeding bills and coins into it or by inserting a credit card. It was $15 to park, and I had $14 plus some change (again, thanks to the Christian lady at the museum), so I should have been good to go. I got $14 into the machine and then tried with the quarters, but it would not take them. I pressed the button for assistance and the voice on the other end told me that the machine does not take coins. I pointed out that there is a coin slot and no sign on the machine saying it is broken and that I didn't have any more bills. The voice told me just to pay the cashier on the way out. I told her a couple of times that there was no cashier on duty, but she was no longer responding. I tried to get a receipt for the $14 I'd already put in the machine, but it wouldn't give me a receipt until I paid the full amount so I took a picture of the screen showing what I'd paid, went back to my car, and drove around to the exit. Sure enough, there was no cashier on duty, so I buzzed again for assistance and the owner of the voice came running out from an office with a receipt for me and I handed her my four quarters. Where was the rest, she wanted to know. I told her it was still in the machine, and she sent someone running off to retrieve it before it got stolen. Apparently, I hadn't seen some cancel button that was on the machine that was just waiting to spit my money out to the next person who happened by. Well, I personally didn't care because $1 was all she was going to get out of me regardless since she didn't tell me I was supposed to get my money back and stopped responding to me when I was still at that machine. I shut off the car right in the exit lane, and sat there eating my hotdog. Fortunately, the guy got to the machine before the money was gone, so it didn't have to get ugly.

Then I was off to get gas, paid the most I would pay for gas on the entire trip ($3.799/gallon), and then headed out of town for Minnesota. I kept getting sleepy on the road and was stopping roughly every two hours either for gas or a bathroom break or food. One nice stop I made in the middle of the day was a slight detour to a place called Ten Chimneys. Ten Chimneys is the estate of two famous actors I'd never heard of named Alfred Lundt and Lynn Fontanne. I didn't go on either of the tours, but I did walk around the open portions of the house (mainly a stage which I have a panorama of to post later) and browsed the gift shop. Once I woke up, I headed out again.

I ended up getting to Dave Polaschek's house somewhat late. We went over to his neighborhood bar ("the Sporty") for buck burgers and then went to bed because I was really tired.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- More Pictures!

Posting from: Minneapolis, MN

See here for new pictures on pages 15-19. Page 15 has a panorama of the Chicago skyline stitched together by the great and powerful Dave Polaschek using Adobe Photoshop. To the left is the show arena of the Shedd Aquarium, and to the right is part of Navy Pier. The rest of Navy Pier is cut off because Photoshop wasn't able to stitch it together with the other photos due to large amounts of water and sky and practically nothing else in the picture. Pages 16-19 are from my visit to the Shedd Aquarium on Day 7.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 6

Posting from: Minneapolis, MN
Listening to: Weird Al Yankovic, Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota

My sister had to work on Day 6, a Tuesday, and the night before she put together the instructions for me the night before for getting to either the Art Institute or the Museum Campus by mass transit. I chickened out- mass transit is just too stressful for me. Instead, I sat around the house for a while in the morning doing various crap and then took my laptop to a coffee shop which was toward the lake.

It was a pretty good coffee shop. I had lunch and a couple of mochas which were all decent and did some blogging and reading and getting crap in order for the next leg of my trip. My sister called me to let me know she was coming home since we only had one key between us and I had it. I walked home and got there a little before she did. I unfortunately met her asshat landlord, followed her blind neighbor she didn't know she had into her building, and went upstairs to wait for her.

She arrived and buzzed me to let her come up. We hadn't formally gone over the workings of the intercom and gate system, but eventually I figured out to just hit the button that opens the gate and she got in. We went out for dinner to a neat little lefty, hippie health food restaurant/general store/theater/radio station/bar/etc... I had a sorta healthy meal plus a rootbeer float with chocolate ice cream, and we visited the general store before going home where I got an anarchist magazine and possibly something else.

Then we watched a Dr. Who episode (that was kind of interesting) first so I wouldn't fall asleep and then Jaynestown after. I got as much of my shit together as possible and we made a plan to get us both out of the house on time the next morning since she only had one key and needed to catch the train at a certain time.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 5

Posting from: Minneapolis, MN

Today is actually Day 8, and I am sitting here at the home of one Mr. Dave Polaschek while he tries to figure out how to get a camera set up with iStopMotion for me so I can make a stop motion movie of part of this trip. While he's doing that I'll try to catch up a little bit starting at Day 5.

Day 5 would have been Monday. My sister took the day off work, and we started out by picking up some atrocious coffee and hot chocolate at a newly opened coffee shop in her neighborhood called The Common Cup. They had only been open for a day or two. They apparently aren't very good at making either mochas or hot chocolate yet. Then we rode the Metra to the Museum Campus in hopes of blazing through the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium. We only got to the Field Museum because there was a lot of good stuff there and we ran out of time.

First we had lunch at their restaurant (a Corner Bakery). Then we went out to see Sue, the 90% complete T. Rex in the main hall. They bought Sue at auction at Sotheby's for $8 million and change some years back. Its head actually is in a case upstairs because it's too heavy to mount with the rest of the skeleton.

After seeing Sue, we went through a very annoying native American exhibit where I spent most of my time making fun of how condescendingly the exhibit commentary referred to native Americans and also bitching about--

Okay, had to save that to draft and now it's Day 10. Fortunateley, I remember where I left off.

and also bitching about the crappy job the exhibits did of explaining what the things in them contained. For example, things would be labeled "Saddle Cover" or "Boy's Fur Cap" or something like that which didn't tell us anything about why we should give a crap about what we were looking at. One politically correct exhibit from which nothing appeared to be missing had a sign on it informing the viewer that certain items had been determined by certain Native American authorities not to be appropriate for public display and were removed. There was also a smoke detector in the ancient pueblo housing we toured which was funny. The Egypt exhibit was a lot better.

Okay, it is now Day 18, and I'm finally getting back on track. The Egypt exhibit was a lot better because there was more text giving context for the things we were being shown. Why is this dead body unwrapped, why are there broken bones in the x-ray of the body in that container, etc... Cheesey bits of the Egypt exhibit included the sarcophagus being used as a trash can/wishing well by people stuffing their crap in the ends under the plexiglass lid, the cheapo "empty tomb" exhibit which a sign claimed to have been robbed by tomb raiders before we arrived, and the kids area afterward with cartoons of Egyptians getting drunk and whatnot.

Somewhere in there we also saw a shoe exhibit which claimed to tie the entire world together through our common concern for protecting our feet. If it was about protecting our feet, though, why was there a pair of Manolo Blahniks on display? It was interesting to see them, though. All I kept thinking was how I would have otherwise had no idea that they weren't generic shoes from Payless or Walmart. Why are these so expensive?

After Egypt we went back upstairs to see Sue's head and also found some spare parts from Sue. They don't know where they go so they are in a display case for what pretty much looks like the indefinite future. The Hall of Dinosaurs was also upstairs and I took pictures with one set after another of batteries crapping out on me.

After that we wrapped up with an exhibit I thought was going to be the grand finale. Treasures of the Titans! the sign said. The jewelry of Sophia Loren, Princess Grace of Monaco, and Elvis himself! the museum guide told us. Elvis' jewels? Hell yeah! Let's go! Well, it was a lot less exciting than I thought it would be. It turned out that Elvis' contribution didn't actually have any jewels and it was pretty tiny- it was merely a gold cigarette lighter. Woopdeedoo. The rest wasn't terribly exciting either. I will say this- Lillian Vernon is not a "titan" and putting her jewels in an exhibit labeled "Treasures of the Titans" won't make her one.

We wound up downstairs for a restroom break and to collect some souvenir squished pennies. A security guard was busy hitting on my sister while I was in the bathroom. I tried to rescue her, but I also didn't want to get too close and get sucked into his inane conversation and then have to be rude. Eventually she broke away, and this pretty much wrapped up our Field Museum visit.

We walked around the Museum Campus a little bit and sat by the lake for a while. The snack bars were all closed by the time we got out, and we didn't think we'd have time for the aquarium so we went home after that. I think this was the evening that we ordered pizza in, and I learned the secret of a deep dish pizza crust not getting soggy involves putting the sauce on the top of the pizza instead of directly onto the crust. We ate pizza and drank Cherry Coke (blessings and peace be upon it and all who consume it) and watched the Firefly episode known as Shindig followed by a Buffy episode that I fell asleep in the middle of. I think that may have been it for Day 5.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour Update

Posting from: Indiana

I'm not dead, haven't been in an accident, haven't been killed by my carmates for annoying the hell out of them, haven't been disappeared, etc. I've been on the road and without web access for several days and have been very busy meeting and visiting with people as well. Right now I am eating lunch and working out my route back to Minnesota for the last leg of my trip before I head home. Hopefully, I will get a chance to catch up in a few days. I have a lot of pictures to post.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour Pictures!

Posting from: Chicago, IL
Listening to: Bloodthirsty Vegetarians Episode #93

I sat my ass down for several hours today to relax in a coffee shop instead of running around all over the place to museums today and worry about getting lost or molested on Chicago's mass transit system. I spent that time putting up fourteen pages worth of pictures located here. Enjoy!

I still have more to go, but I'm getting tired of uploading. I think I'm going to head a few blocks east to the beach in a little while and see if my camera batteries work or not.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 4

Posting from: Chicago, IL

Day four was Sunday and the first thing I did was get back in the car and drive another couple hours west out to the Kane County Fairgrounds for the Chicago Drum Show. It actually reminded me a lot of a gun show except smaller and with drums instead of guns.

As I walked in and got my wristband, the guy at the table said there was an incredible drummer giving a clinic over in the room to the left and the exhibit tables were in the room to the right. I took a quick spin around the tables. Just as with a gun show, it was interesting to look at but I didn't know enough to really appreciate what I was seeing. Then I headed over to the other room to see the clinic.

The clinician was this guy- Johnny Rabb. Wow. He was really good. He did a lot of interesting things with his sticks. One set of sticks he had was textured and he used that by scraping the sticks against each other and the rims of his drums to make some interesting washboard-like sounds. He had a cymbal that he just set on a drum head and played that way. He would change the sounds of his drums as he played them by putting pressure on them with a hand or a stick in various places. He did this interesting seesaw like thing where he'd rock his hand back and hit the rim and the head at once and then rock his hand forward and only hit the head and do this over and over. It was pretty amazing. One piece of advice he had was that drummers should listen to all different styles of drumming even if they don't dig them so that they can get knew ideas and skills.

After that I took another spin through the exhibit hall, and stopped at the Beatnik Rhythmic Analyzer booth to say hi. I talked to a fellow named Mark and told him that their two-time/current World's Most Accurate Drummer is my drum teacher, Erik Truelove. We chatted for a little bit about Erik (Mark said, "He's REALLY GOOD!"), and then I headed back to Chicago.

I needed to be back by 5:30 pm so that we could get to the Briar Street Theater for a Blue Man Group show. Unfortunately, the toll roads in Illinois confounded me. I accidentally got on the toll road going the wrong way and had to go about 25 miles out of my way to DeKalb County before I coudl turn around and go back. Fortunately, I made it home in time. I parked, got into the apartment, and then we turned around and went right back out to the CTA station to catch the train to the show.

It was a really fun show. I didn't realize how much drumming was part of their schtick. Fortunately, I had my earplugs with me which I used more than once during the show. I won't get into the details because when I say things like, "There was this one part where all they were eating Twinkies and the lady from the audience had to take all the wrappers off for them," the show just sounds kind of dumb. It was really good, though.

Afterward we stopped in at a diner on our way back to the CTA train where we had dinner. The food was good, but the service was atrocious. I can't remember the name of the place. Anyway, then we took the train back home and went to bed. This time I kept the window closed and piled on more blankets. I was warmer but still cold by morning.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour- Day 3

Posting from: Chicago, IL

Day three was Saturday, and it involved a lot more driving. I started out the day driving from Joplin to Springfield, Missouri where I stopped for coffee, breakfast, and an e-mail check.

I pretty much just drove the whole day except when stopping for food or gas. I finally got into the Chicago area around midnight local time, I think, and then it took me about an hour to navigate to my sister's house. I encountered a lot of scary drivers in Chicago. Driving in the middle of the night on a Saturday in Chicago was worse than driving during rush hour in Tucson.

When I got to my sister's apartment building, I drove right by it the first time even though she was down in front. I turned around at the end of the block and went back the other way whereupon which time she pointed out that I was now driving the wrong way down a one-way street. I fixed that and she drove around with me looking for a parking spot. We ended up a few blocks away and we had to carry all my crap back to her apartment.

I got my air mattress set up. I was hot so we opened the window and put my mattress right by it before I went to sleep. By morning I was freezing cold. There is this season here that we don't have in Tucson. I think they call it "Spring". Must be a crazy Chicago thing.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour 2007- Day 2

Posting from: Springfield, MO
Listening to: Ekoostik Hookah, Freedom Flying

Hours of driving are good for me- it kind of helps me defrag my mind. I know that when I start thinking of inane and vacuous things like what Michael Jackson's toes might look like or whether or not the song Amarillo by Morning will finally stop playing in my head when I reach Amarillo, I'm on the verge of some good quality thinking. Creativity and clarity need room to flow freely up there in the old noggin and my mind has been way cluttered lately. It feels good to be able to think again.

After I left Albuquerque, I stopped in Tucumcari to visit the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum where I got my first squished penny of the trip. This museum was different in a couple of ways from other dinosaur museums. First, there was a lot of dinosaur art- really cool paintings of what things might have been like back in the day. I got some pictures of those which I will post probably tomorrow or Monday or for sure Tuesday at the latest. Second, there were a LOT of bronze castings of actual dinosaur parts which you could touch. It's really cool to be able to feel the teeth marks of one dinosaur gnawed into another dinosaur's bone. This museum has the world's largest collection of these bronze castings and replicas- they are pretty expensive to make so you don't usually see a lot of them. This brings me to different thing #3- all throughout the museum are plaques detailing the financial contributions that have been made which help, in part, to fund this collection. They are obviously getting a lot of private support.

After Tucumcari, I think my next stop was Amarillo which was not nearly as stinky as I remember. I stumbled upon a cute little coffee place called Roosters Coffee and Tea. They made me a fabulous iced mocha. I wish I'd watched how they did it because when I drank it, I realized it was ice cold but there was no ice in it. This was very handy as it didn't get watered down with melting ice.

My next stop was at exit 112 on I-40 in Texas where I visited the largest freestanding cross in the western hemisphere. At 190 feet, I was a little worried that the Texans would incite the wrath of God. However, upon consulting Wikipedia, I found that that the Tower of Babel supposedly reached 5433 cubits and 2 palms tall which winds up to be over 8100 feet so it looks like the Texans are well under the limit for inciting God's disfavor.

I only made it to Joplin, MO yesterday, so I'm going to have to catch the Chicago Drum Show tomorrow instead of today.

Enjoy Every Sandwich Meetup Tour 2007- Day 1

Posting from: Albuquerque, NM
Listening to: Neil Young, Harvest Moon on Santa Fe's independent, locally-owned station that is on the verge of being sold to a cookie cutter conglomerate Indie 101.5 but until then you can listen online to some good music they're playing

Possibly I have neglected to mention that I was going on another road trip. Well, I did.

I got out of Tucson around noon yesterday after having breakfast with friends I haven't seen in over a year who got into town late Tuesday night and then running a few pre-road trip errands. I'd stayed up until 2:00 am the night before, then couldn't fall asleep for a while, and then got up at 6:00 am so I decided to take it easy on my first day of driving and wound up overnight in Albuquerque.

Major stops of yesterday included a visitor center in, I think, Lordsburg (Gateway to the West!), NM (Land of Enchantment!) and then a gas station and gift shop in Hatch (Home of The World's Best Chile Pepper!), NM (Land of Enchantment!). Previously, I hated New Mexico. I've had some bad experiences here, particularly in Albuquerque where my first car was busy falling apart on one of my earliest road trips a little more than a decade ago. (Fortunately, I am not the family member who can lay claim to our family's worst Albuquerque experience- my sister Megan was propositioned by a truck driver in Albuquerque, I think after a car someone else loaned her was falling apart on her, and she was by herself.) Also, I was under the impression that this state was terribly ugly and orange.

Well, it turns out that was not true. Instead of approaching Albuquerque from west I-40, this time I came up I-25 and it turns out there are some really pretty areas, particularly around Socorro. However, nothing I've seen so far lives up to the promise plastered onto billboards all over the state that New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment! All I'm willing to give it so far is Land of Interesting Things That Aren't Where I Live.

While driving through this area, my sister Megan (the favorite!) was kind enough to act as my travel agent booking me a great hotel room on priceline.com on the cheap in Albuquerque. We also chatted for a while. It went something like this:

Kirsten: So it turns out that this entire state isn't ugly. I'm driving through an area that's actually kinda pretty.

Megan: What? I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.

K: I said, so it turns out that-

M: I'm sorry. What? I can't hear you.

*long pause*

K: (quickly before Megan can cut me off) Fuck you! Hehehe...

M: Fuck you, I can accept. New Mexico is nice, I cannot accept. The last time I was there, I was propositioned by a truck driver.

K: Yeah, and remember when we were on that road trip with (two of our other sisters) M. and L., and we had to sleep in the freezing cold car in the parking lot of an Applebee's because there wasn't a single hotel room to be found in the entire city of Albuquerque and then later my car was making a horrible clacking noise which got fixed by a piece falling off when we were driving around the parking lot?

M: I don't remember it being cold. I just remember I kept falling asleep in the car while I was supposed to be on watch and you got mad at me and then didn't speak to me for five years after that.

K: I'd forgotten about that. I just remember being mad at you about your driving. Remember how one time you changed lanes really slowly and took forever and then the next time when I told you to change lanes faster and you went way too fast?

M: Or maybe you were mad at me because I was really whiny on that trip?

K: I don't remember that either. Just the lane change thing.

M: You wouldn't speak to me for five years because I wasn't a good driver after six hours of driving lessons?

K: Um... Apparently...

Seriously, though, I don't think I was officially not speaking to her for five years. It's just that we didn't really know each other or have anything in common at that point which may have had something to do with our age difference. Five years younger is a bigger deal when you're 22 than when you're 34.

This morning I am sitting in a fraudulent coffee shop called Satellite Coffee. Why is it fraudulent? It claims to be a COFFEE place- not just any coffee place but a SERIOUS COFFEE place. I walk in and under the logo proclaiming that this is a SERIOUS COFFEE place, I see a menu labeled "Caffeine" which contains a coffee drink, another coffee drink, another coffee drink, something called a Caramel Dulce, another coffee drink, another coffee drink, something called a Mint Breeze, something labeled Brew for your Crew, another coffee drink, another coffee drink, and another coffee drink. I order the Mint Breeze assuming that it is a COFFEE drink because NOTHING ON THIS MENU INDICATES THAT IT IS NOT A COFFEE DRINK.

I have been sitting here for more than a half hour thinking this is the worst coffee drink ever- it tastes like mildly minty and slightly creamy warm water. I'm going to throw it away on my way out. I only just discovered by looking at their drink page to try and figure out why this place that is supposed to be about SERIOUS COFFEE makes such a terrible coffee drink that this is a terrible coffee drink because it is actually a tea drink- specifically, a blend of peppermint & vanilla teas steamed into sweetened milk. WTF? Premium leaf tea is listed over on a separate menu called "Warm Up" so why is this tea drink mixed into the middle of what otherwise appears to be a coffee menu with absolutely no indication that it is NOT a coffee drink?

Okay, enough for now. Pictures will start appearing this weekend, and now I'm off to go get directions to a dinosaur museum in Tucumcari, NM.