Adventure of the month

Imagine hearing that you are going to spend a week in Manhattan and Ontario. That's great news! Springtime in NYC is like no other. Anytime spent in Canada with it's friendly people, hot Prime Minister and abundance of vegetarian restaurants (even the hot dog cart vendors always have veggie dogs!) is always a pleasure. Hell yeah! Now imagine you take a closer look at the fine print and things are not as they seem. You are actually going to Manhattan, Kansas and Ontario, California. Not so great. This was my life.  I was on a tour of places named after much cooler places.  To quote a friend "Where next? Paris, Texas?" I tried to make the best of the situation. I found out that the next town over from Manhattan, Wamego, had a Wizard of Oz museum and winery . Even better, there was a silo that the military had build for missile testing which had gone on to become the site of the country's preeminent LSD manufacturing lab and now accepted visitors. Score, score ...

I did not know that Spring Training was a thing. I mean I have always understood that baseball teams go to warm places and practice before the season begins. It is not like I thought that they just all met up on opening day, chose positions and hoped for the best. I just was unaware that it was something that people, other than those contractually obligated to be there, would care about.  I certainly never imagined that it was such a thing that it would fill up all the hotels in the greater Phoenix area.  But apparently it is as I just found out when my usual hotel in Tempe, along with all its neighbors, was booked up and I was relocated to an office park somewhere on the north side of the city. Someone mentioned that our new location was close to Old Town Scottsdale. I looked it up, liked what I saw and decided that this was how I would spend my free day in Phoenix. Then I got to the Middle of Nowhere Motel 8, opened up Google Maps and discovered that I was nowhere close ...

I won't lie. I was not exactly thrilled to have a recent day off in Detroit. It's cold, it's not particularly pretty and my fuzzy recollection of 8 Mile informs me that it's a dangerous place, especially if you are a white man of limited talent trying to become a rapper. Also, did I mention it was a bitter 20-ish degree cold? Yet, this was my reality last Friday. I could either risk freezing and/or getting shiv'ed for referring to myself as Slim Berti or I could sit in a hotel room all day. We all know which one I chose. I rented a car, called a friend and told him I had a great day planned for us. That may have been a slight exaggeration but I'm pretty sure that I did reveal- in a mumble and under my breath- that we were going to the hood. That is probably something that he'd want to know. But I had a good reason, nay a great reason, to visit this particular economically depressed neighborhood. I wanted to see Tyree Guyton's work before it was all r...

It really could have gone wither way.  Back in 2010, I flew to Seattle, drove 3 hrs to Anacortes and took a 2 hour ferry to the San Juan islands, all with the goal of kayaking with orcas .  It is a beautiful part of the world and I'm so glad I got to see it and would go so far as to call the trip a rousing success but for one noteworthy fact. We saw zero orcas. Not a one- ok, well, maybe one if you count the one we saw on the ferry back to Anacortes but that was not the point.  Afterwards, I continued to exchange emails with the owner of Seaquest, the kayaking outfit we used and eventually learned that ours was the only trip all season that saw no orcas. My fortunes improved the next year when I flew to Cancun, drove 3 hours to Chiquila and took a 30 minute ferry to Holbox in the hope of swimming with whale sharks . This one was a slam dunk. I was able to swim with 3 whale sharks, saw countless others from the boat and enjoyed three days of stress-free island livi...

Look up the TripAdvisor reviews for the Palace of Knossos and three themes prevail. 1) Fascinating archeological site. A must see. 2) Phooey, not authentic enough. Arthur Evans used concrete in his restoration and we hate him. 3)Sweet baby Zeus, why are there so many people here?! So very many people! To be fair, the majority of the assessments fell squarely into the first category and rightfully so. The complex, located 8km outside of Heraklion, is what remains of Europe's oldest city and is pretty darned impressive. Of course, I can say this as someone who had the chance to visit on a cool sunny day in February, when we encountered  maybe a half dozen other visitors, tops. If I were to attempt the same thing on a sweltering summer day while 3 cruise ships are in port and a mob of sun worshippers from the nearby resorts are itching to get cultural, I might not find the experience quite so magical. I suspect that if I had to stand five people deep to get a better look at the t...

Last month, I was in Chania with plans to visit nearby Rethymnon and Heraklion. It was the lowest of the low season and I figured it was a good time to take advantage of the sparsely crowded streets before the tourists returned. Sure, the skies were a bit gray and the temperature was hovering in the 40's but the idea of potentially having the ruins at Knossos to myself more than made up for it. And then I woke up. Like literally. I had set an alarm to catch an early bus but as soon as I shut it off, my phone mocked me with the day's weather forecast. All I saw before pulling the blankets over my head and going right back to sleep were the words "snow and sleet".  Forget that noise. I wanted some Greek history, not an Arctic expedition. Now it was February and I was back in Chania. The sky was blue, the temperature had inched up into the 50's and that highly unwelcome snow (the first since 2004) was a distant memory. I finally hopped on  that bus to Rethymnon. Or...

I began this blog as a way of documenting my wanderings and sharing with friends my experiences traveling around this wonderful globe. As such, this was never intended as a place to discuss politics or current affairs. However. The country where I was born, whose passport I must show when entering foreign lands has gone ahead and elected a boorish, mentally unsound geriatric prone to childish temper tantrums. Or let me clarify, a bunch of racist self-defeating fools who happen to live in states whose "electoral votes" are grievously over-represented voted in this global nightmare. (Note: For me the line between racists and those who don't identify as racists but were wholly undisturbed by the racist statements that defined his campaign is too fine to matter. They are racists just the same). The majority of us, nearly 66 million voters, did not vote for this dumbass. I am disgusted. I am outraged. With every passing day and every small-minded tweet, I am more embarrass...