Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

• Tonight is our last night in the USA, and so we packed all  the sightseeing we could handle into one day.  After taking the rental car back, which went much quicker than I thought, and buying new glasses at the dollar store (if there were any typos in last night’s blog, it’s because my glasses went missing), we had breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts and then took the bus across the bridge into  the city.
• The plan was  to  go to the base of the  High Line and start walking, and we more or less stuck to that, but Dean counldn’t resist showing us some stuff on the way, such as the Chelsea Market, which is an excellent example of what you can do with an ugly, old, abandoned brick factory and a bit of imagination.  I especially liked the door frame of fragmented bricks, as if The Incredible Hulk had just run through the wall, and a waterfall which was just water pouring out of a huge hose hung up along the ceiling.
• The High Line is a wonderful example of how to recycle a neighborhood.  It was an elevated rail line, which was built specifically to serve the meat packing industry, and had become obsolete.  Now it is an urban garden/art  museum/floating island of tranquillity above the mean streets of the city.  It runs from 12th street up to 34th, but somewhere in  the 20s it takes a sharp left and then it gets a much better view of the Hudson and New Jersey, but I felt they got a bit slack on the gardens and statuary after that point as well, so it was a bit of a trade off.
• Then we went to the Empire State Building but stopped at Five Guys for lunch.  They gave us so many fries we wound up giving a big cupful of  them to a homeless guy.  After the ESB (we just went into the lobby, it costs money to go to the top – a lot of it), everybody except me wanted to do shopping so Sam went into a shoe store while Helena and Isabel went into another store, and I sat and waited and enjoyed watching the people of New York, a lot of whom, I’m sure, were no  more from New York than we are.  Then we went into Macy’s.  It’s really big.
• Then we started our walk downtown and they were stopping into shops every few blocks until we got to the Flat Iron building, which was another tick off Sam’s list.  Then one more attempt to  buy phones, but they really are not a better deal hear than  in Prague, so that one is not going to happen.
• Then, after a very confusing (and hot – why are the subways so damned hot?) subway ride, we met Dean and Maria T. for a Los Lobos concert at Battery City Park.  It was a fun concert, although I think it was better for us old farts than the  kids.   A 70s band playing 70s music for 70s people.
• Took the bus home through the Lincoln Tunnel.  Walking home, saw a skunk, just standing there as innocent as a cat in somebody’s front yard.  We crossed the  street.
• Tomorrow night at 9:15 p.m. we take off for Prague, non-stop.

Like General Washington in days of yore, we have returned to Ft. Lee, New Jersey.  We got up and on the road by about 7:30.  The whole family agreed that the Ramada Inn’s breakfast didn’t measure up to the Sleep Inn’s, but it was just as good in other aspects, and the breakfast was adequate.  Two men at a nearby table were practically a caricature of modern America; old, overweight, wearing camo (one’s T- shirt said ‘Army Strong’) and talking, loudly, about guns.

We cruised across the farmlands of Indiana and Ohio without incident, making occasional stops but steady progress, and through the beautiful green mountains of Pennsylvania, where the bridges span high gorges where rivers with exotic Indian names flow.  Even western New Jersey is much more wooded and pretty than anyone thinks when they say the words “New Jersey.”

But, as we approached the New York urban area, the traffic got thicker and a little bit crazier, the exits and entrances proliferated, often with more than one freeway running parallel, and it got dark.  Between Sam’s overly casual approach to navigation, Helena’s paranoia that we were going to get shunted onto the George Washington bridge, and my dictatorial tendencies, the situation was becoming somewhat stressful.

We exited a bit earlier than optimum, just to  make sure we didn’t wind up crossing the Hudson, which would have cost $15 each way in tolls, an extra half hour at least in time, and an outrageous amount of stress.

Then, there was a surrealistic scenario where we took an exit ramp, exactly where the nice talking lady who  is the personification of  our GPS system told us to, and wound up in the middle of a fleet of road construction equipment, and when I say fleet I  am not exaggerating, it looked like the staging area for the invasion of a 3rd world country.

But, we are here, we arrived just 15 minutes later than we said we would, and all is right with the world.

I’m not going to write about  the 4th  of July.  I don’t care about the 4th of July.  Of course, it’s a holiday like all holidays, a day off work for many, and any day off work is a good day.  I don’t mind fireworks, although I’m not a particular fan, and cooking outdoors is a fun activity.  I’ve nothing against drinking, either, although I don’t do it any more.  I don’t even object to a little bit of patriotism, it’s good to be proud of one’s country and celebrate the positive aspects of its history.  The thing that bothers me about the 4th, and about America in general, and that’s one  of the reasons I chose to live abroad, is the aggressive, we can beat up every other country and that makes us the best type of patriotism.  Heard a lot of that on the country music stations we were picking up all day today on our drive from New Virginia, Iowa, to Indianapolis.

It had its interesting moments.  We stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Des Moines for breakfast, something we’ve been trying to do since we were in Missouri, 4 days ago.  Had lunch at a KFC in Illinois, and that family bucket was larger  than we expected.  We had chicken to go.
Then the sky opened up and it poured down – dangerously.  We were doing less than 40 on the freeway and any more would have been reckless.  Some cars pulled over to the shoulder and we considered  the same but gutted it out and it was soon over.

Got to Indianapolis with plenty of  light left so  toured the statuary park around the art museum, home of the ‘funky bones’ featured in John Greene’s ‘Fault in Our Stars.’  It was a very cool park and I mentioned to Sam that it was much better than Clark’s tower in Winterset, which we visited yesterday, and he was glad to be credited with a point.

Tomorrow we’ll get up early and try to get back to New Jersey  before it’s too late.

We got another late start today.  Don and Venessa were already out when we got up and then we got a call that they were having serious car trouble so we should fend for ourselves.

So, our plan was to get breakfast and then go see the covered bridges of Madison County (Helena’s idea, I swear), but there were not a lot of choices in my birth town of Winterset, Iowa, so breakfast was lunch at Rudy’s restaurant, where the one waitress was of an age that she should have been retired, and she was well overworked, the place was quite busy.  Almost everybody was old, some positively ancient, and there were a lot of coveralls and farmer hats, mixed in with a few country and western get-ups and I felt a mix of local pride, this is where I’m from, and relief that I live so far away from it all.

Then we went to the gas station, and the guy in front of me at the cashier, who the girls obviously knew, it’s a small town, was old and so shakey he had a special stamp because it was hard for him to sign a check, but then he went out to drive.

Then we went to the first covered bridge, which was in a city park, so that didn’t really cut it, and then we walked up to Clarks’ Tower, which was a lovely walk through the woods but it was really hot, and sweaty, and we went through our bottle of water very quickly, and Isabel said she felt sick but sometimes I’m not sure that’s just an excuse.

The next covered bridge we found was the one that had burned, which is a shame, I hope they have the good sense to rebuild it exactly as it was, and then the third was the one, a proper covered bridge in its natural environment.

Then, we headed to Lake Ahquabi, scene of many memories of my  youth.  The raft was gone but that was O.K., we had a nice time in the water and then rented a paddle boat but Sam was being Sam and decided to wait for us on shore, but I shouldn’t  complain, he was reading a book.

Grilled, flavored bratwursts for dinner, it’s an Iowas thing.  Tomorrow, we’re headed for Indianapolis, 1st stage in a two day drive to New York.

Today was the day  we went into Des Moines and contacted a few of my old friends. (anybody I missed, sorry, time was short)  We also did a tour of downtown Des Moines, which has changed a lot since the last time I was here, which was 20 years ago, and even more since I actually lived here, which is probably almost 40 years ago.

First, we stopped at Randy’s house, which  I think I think is the same place he’s been living for years, and he gave us good directions, but I lost an argument with  the GPS system, and we wound up lost in the streets of Southwest Des Moines (when we should have been in the Southeast).  But, we got there and had a good talk.  He’s someone I’ve known since sandbox days, so we had a lot to reminisce about and he remembered some things I’d forgotten about, like the time my parents were out of town and I took the old Ford Econoline without permission, and I was still very new to the whole driving thing and had trouble getting up a hill.
Then, after lunch at Taco Bell, we looked up Russ, and he took us on a walking tour of downtown Des Moines, we walked across a couple of the new pedestrian bridges over the river and enjoyed the river walk and the Asian Gardens, and then through  the East Village, which was not a thing when I lived there, it was just ‘that area on the East Side below the Capitol building where most of the buildings are kind of derelict’ but now it’s the new, cool place and we stopped at Molly’s cupcakes, where the barstools are swings, and the cupcakes were awesome and Sam said the ice cream was, too.

We eventually got hold of Val and he said ‘I’ll be right there’ and jumped on his Harley and met us in front of the Science Center (which was a new thing) and then we all went to a restaurant called Hessen Haus, which was supposedly German but it was just a trendy place with a German theme (Bavarian Nachos…never mind, they were great nachos) and had a sampler of appetizers…the nachos, fried pickles, and Armadillo Eggs, which were not eggs, had nothing to do with armadillos, but were delicious, and contained jalapeno peppers, which is always good.

It was great to see them all  and they all reminded me of incidents I’d forgotten about.  It was a blast, and it was from the past, and there you have it.