Driving on the dark side
It’s not the first time I’ve driven on the other side of the road. The first time was in Caen, in Normandy, in 2006, in a little grey Opel. A manual car, and I hadn’t driven a manual transmission for about thirty years. I not only had a new car to learn, but a new [...]
Rushin’ Blue
The BCinDC 10th Birthday BookCrossing convention was superb in every way. Apart from the weather, and on the Saturday it was damp, to say the least. Look at Sherlockfan in her gossamer raincoat there. Saturday’s morning experience, amongst a great many roll-yer-own adventures, was for me the Museum teaser tour. A rush along the Mall, [...]
Looking for couth and coffee
The Midwest was not the home of high style. The roadhouses had whole aisles devoted to beef jerky, some places you could assemble your own hot dog or taco, and although the pour-your-own coffee sections often had cappuccino machines, they had several spouts, labelled “Vanilla Capuccino”, “Caramel Capuccino” or “Chocolate Capuccino”. I began to suspect [...]
Joplin’
The talk was of tornadoes that day in Joplin. A massive outbreak had hit the US over the preceding few days, and here we were in tornado territory. We were back on Route 66 after taking a few days off to see friends in Kansas City and to attend a Sister Hazel concert in Columbia, [...]
Over the Miss
A city and a river. Surely not New Orleans already? I raised my eyebrows at DD. “Baton Rouge”, she replied. I shrugged. Another hour to go. FutureCat looked around from the front passenger seat. “The Mississippi!” she exulted. I smiled. It was exciting. The first time I crossed the Mighty Miss, I did it three [...]
The first leg of our footloose freedom
Canberra’s new airport terminal is world-class. It’s light, airy, spacious, transparent. And half-complete. When the second building, a mirror-image of the first, rises over the rubble of the old shed, it will be a welcome worthy of the nation’s capital. A glass atrium will end the u-shaped two-level drop-off and pick-up rank, allowing arriving passengers [...]
Two in a tank
I guess the story can now be told, of how Discoverylover and I tooled around the Midwest in a big ole Yank Tank, meeting BookCrossers, driving route 66, eating unbelievable meals and just having a fun time.
Odd
Blowed if I know what’s going on. The site and general layout isn’t secret. Entry is restricted and the airspace is closed to about six kilometres up – we were way above that – but there are good images online. Maybe it’s general curiosity, maybe it’s terrorists planning an attack, but people come and look at my photo all the time.
Texas With a Twist
Watch this space! Corn! It was impossible to escape the corney hokum of this little piece of Texas, carefully cornserved for the tourists. Longhorns, cowboys, marshalls, steaks that overflowed the serving plate, over-the-top bumper stickers, whimsical store names. Armadillos. Catfish and jalapeno. I had an absolute ball. My eyes were opening to the world, I [...]
Faking It? Absolutely!
Winning the holiday of a lifetime – stays in a dozen of the Leading Hotels of the World – with economy class airfare and enough spending money for a pizza now and then made for an entertaining trip. The holiday of a lifetime was certainly that, but perhaps not in the way originally envisaged!