Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • It’s Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)

      The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is located in Cleveland, Ohio. As a music fan I’ve wanted to check this out for years, but I was rarely in Cleveland and when I was the HOF was inconveniently closed. It seems the HOF keeps banker’s hours, which is ironic given the lifestyles of the inductees. But there was hope: Wednesday’s they stay open until 9 PM, making it possible to visit for people who have day jobs!

      I stayed in a hotel downtown and walked down to the HOF. Cold wind off the lake reminded me of where I was and I zipped the last inch of collar up. As you walk closer rock music is playing on stacks of speakers that serve as sculpture while doubling as a magnet for something more. As you get closer the glass pyramid of the HOF rises up before you out of a sea of concrete. Big, bold red letters beg, Long Live Rock and I know I’ve arrived.

      Inside, you’re met by greeters who direct you down to the lowest level, the base of the pyramid, to purchase a ticket and dive right in. And suddenly you’re in it. The base is the foundation, and you see the blues and country artists who built rock & roll, but also the cities that played such a huge part in its spread and growth. Motown, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Liverpool… and yes, Cleveland. The museum is immersive, and you can spend a lot of time in each section or breeze through it. The experience is there for you if you want it.

      If you’ve been to a Hard Rock Café you’ve experienced a bit of the HOF’s vibe. Music plays as you look at a guitar that John Lennon played, or Eric Clapton played… or Jimi Hendrix played. There are plenty of musical instruments on display and I found them interesting, but the magic was in the outfits they wore, and the videos of the artists explaining how they created a song or rif while you’re looking at the instrument they created it on right in front of you. If most artists were smaller than you’d expect, Jimi Hendrix was a big dude. His outfits indicate his size, and you know he must have been even more powerful live onstage than the old videos show.

      As you climb the pyramid there are places to play instruments, places to reflect on the names of the inductees, and hidden surprises as you work your way up the pyramid. So what’s at the top? More rock & roll, more instruments and a surprising amount of elbow room. Sure, it was a Wednesday night in January, not a time you’d expect throngs of Rock & roll fans to pour into the Hall of Fame, but a lot more room to wander than I expected.

      One thing that didn’t surprise me; the exit leads you right through the gift shop. But what a gift shop! It was sprawling, featuring the usual assortment of clothing, collectibles and shot glasses, and something more, an actual record store where you could buy vinyl records or compact disks. And that’s where it all began for me back as a kid, sifting through records, looking at the covers and wondering what magic was inside. That’s the rock and roll experience that started it for me, and the experience that capped off my visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

    • Flight Path

      The roar starts around 5:30 and continues on for as long as the wind direction dictates.  There’s no mistaking when you’re staying in the flight path of a major airport, as the roar continues every couple of minutes until the rush of morning flights slows.  This is the world we live in; connected to all corners by dotted rhumb lines 30,000 feet in the air.  That connectedness is most apparent when your hotel is directly under the flight path of planes taking off.

      My room preferences follow me around the world.  Whenever I stay in a Hilton or Marriott property, there’s a note in the system reminding the person checking me in to stick this guy in a room at the end of the hall, away from the ice machine and elevators.  In most ways I’m not particularly fussy, but when it comes to sleep I’m not a fan of the late night hallway conversations and beer cooler fill-ups.  You do you, I’ll do me, we’ll both find a way to coexist.  As long as I don’t have to listen to you at 2 AM anyway.

      So with this kind of preference for quiet, why would I book a hotel in the flight path of a major airport?  Convenience, that’s why.  I’m an early riser and don’t care about the roar at 5:30 AM the way I’d care about it at midnight.  If I’m working on a laptop I probably have noise cancelling headphones on anyway, listening to music that they don’t perform on the Grammy’s anymore.  Funny how old you feel when the music industry passes you by…  but then again I’ve never been at the epicenter of pop music anyway.

      Today I pack up my bags and leave the flight path for the highway – Another source of the background roar of life on this planet.  Stand near a major highway and listen to the constant roar of cars and trucks flying by.  It’s not the same volume of roar as jets taking off but it’s more relentless.  I take full advantage of the infrastructure of rapid travel and convenience, but I don’t embrace it.  Like the hotel room, I prefer the quiet corners of the world, away from the very noise that I’m adding to in my business travel.  The irony isn’t lost on me, but as long as I’m participating in the world economy I need to dance with the roar.  Until I can cancel it out again anyway.

    • Dining at the Complimentary Buffet

      One of the curiosities of travel is the complimentary buffet at the hotel.  If I have a travel rule, it’s to stay in places that offer at minimum a decent breakfast.  This is becoming increasingly common in most mid-priced hotel chains, probably because people like me turn our nose up at continental breakfasts of toast and mini muffins in favor of hot breakfast options.  Lump the $5 you lay out to feed me into my hotel bill, but don’t expect me to dance in the lobby for white bread and grape jelly. Microwave eggs? That’s not hot breakfast where I come from.

      But I can look the other way on a few things with breakfast. Robust coffee cures a lot of affronts to the senses. Dinner is a different animal.  Candidly I try to go out for dinner whenever I travel, but sometimes you’re stuck at the hotel making the most of what they offer you.  A full kitchen in these circumstances is highly desirable, but for value there’s something to be said for the complimentary dinner buffet too.  Some days it’s not bad at all, with Italian or Szechuan food that seems anything but “free”, it’s actually “good”! But for every delightful international spin at the buffet table, you’re subjected to the uninspired cheapest option they can serve you that they can get away with. Like last night’s lukewarm ham and bean soup and wilted salad. After experiencing that combo I promptly walked down the street for a fast food chain’s chicken sandwich. It takes a lot for me to make that kind of leap.

      I found myself in this fine dining hotel for two nights in a row, and tonight featured two kinds of pasta and a salad bar. It wasn’t all that bad, with the Alfredo option full of fresh (to me) vegetables and a light cheese sauce that didn’t overpower the dish. Two nights, same kitchen, two very different experiences. Hit or miss, to be sure, but what do you want for nothing? I don’t make a habit of grazing at the complimentary buffet, but now and then you hit it just right.

    • Seeing the World for the First (?) Time

      “Our awareness has been stretched wider than ever in history, but often at the cost of taking away a lifetime of experiences.” – Seth Godin

      “We were the first humans who would never see something for the first time.” – Gillian Flynn

      Both of these appeared in my feed within minutes of each other this morning, in turn each pointing out the world we live in being smaller than ever before, and casting a neon glow on a topic I should explore before the muse carries it on to the next writer. Candidly I’m itching to return to writing more local history, but it’ll have to wait a bit longer. I’d be a fool to turn a cold shoulder on the muse, wouldn’t I?

      Godin laments the cost of awareness in our world of YouTube, Instagram, streaming media and, yes, travel blogging. We tend to know about things just by casually dipping our ladle into the stream of information flying past us in all directions. But sipping from the ladle isn’t immersive exploration of new places and ideas. It’s the Cliff Notes, not War and Peace. As Godin writes, there’s no excuse for being uninformed, but there’s also no good reason for being inexperienced.

      Flynn laments that media often offers a better picture of the world than going there and seeing it does. I’d say she’s partially right in that we cheat ourselves of the wonder of the new having seen it before we get there. But I disagree that the experience is better through media or that we don’t experience something substantively better being there versus seeing it on a screen. I can look out the window and see snow, or I can walk outside and understand snow.

      The crew of Fayaway are in Saba at the moment. It was nothing for me to pull up a video of people hiking up the mountain they hiked up, see the massive leaves they saw and the same view out to St. Kitts that they sent me in a text message. But a YouTube video is a very small sample of the experience they had of talking to locals, feeling the heat, getting out of breath climbing to the summit, and the exhilaration of reaching the summit and catching a first glimpse of the panoramic vista. That is their experience of a lifetime, while I’m simply aware of what it generally looked like for them after watching a YouTube video.

      The world is smaller than ever, and we’re blessed to experience the wonders of it without the cost of earning it in money, risk, sweat equity and sacrifice. But experience on a screen isn’t experiencing life, it just eliminates the surprise of knowing what’s around the corner when you can Google street view so much of this world. Surprise can be good, and surprise can be very bad. Maybe the answer is to use all this technology to mitigate the impact of the bad while minimizing the reduction of the other.

      Maybe VR will bring us closer than we’d ever imagine in the next few years. There’s enormous value in practicing on the flight simulator to get it right before you fly the Boeing 777 overseas, but you still need to get experience on the real thing after that before they load passengers on with you. Likewise, seeing what the Google street view was prior to pulling out of Edinburgh in a rental car made me more comfortable when I did it. It didn’t simulate the tactile oddness of the left hand shift instead of the right or the adrenaline rush of the first roundabout going the opposite way, but it eliminated sensory overload having seen a bit of it already.

      Humans are meant to move, and to interact and react to the world around them. Media is getting exponentially better at recreating this experience, but that doesn’t make it experience. The answer is to get out and be a part of the world, not just watch it through someone else’s lens.

    • Walking the Line

      Walking this morning on Cape Cod I saw turkey tracks in the snow. The funny thing about turkey tracks is they look like arrows, pointing this way and that, as if to tell you to Go here! No, go there! Turkey walk in circles looking for food, and their tracks point you, if you tried to follow the “arrows”, towards the same madness. It’s a wonder of confusion and I smiled at the sight of it.

      I’m glad I walked early, because overnight snow didn’t stand a chance on the edge of Buzzards Bay, where the ocean moderates temperatures as easily as it moderates moods. Looking at the temperatures in New Hampshire, there was a 21 degree difference between the hills up north and Cape Cod. 100 miles and 200 feet of elevation make a big difference between order and chaos when you’re talking snow.

      If turkey tracks are scattered madness, the surf line offers a measure of predictability, for even on its own erratic path it still runs roughly parallel. The surf line finds its own path, curving and cutting this way and that based on the push of the swell, the contour of the sand and the strength of the breeze. The funny thing about the surf line is that it looks similar whether you’re up close on a quiet pre-dawn beach on Buzzards Bay or flying 1000 feet above the New Hampshire coast in a Piper Cub. Up close very different. Add the right distance and the mind tricks you.

      We’re incredibly lucky now, with these great leaps across time and space. Anything is possible, really, in our timelines in this time. Yesterday I woke up in Ithaca, New York, watched a college basketball game in Rhode Island, and went to sleep on Cape Cod. This morning I walked on the beach and this afternoon I was shoveling snow back in the hills of New Hampshire. I could easily be in London or California or some other place for breakfast tomorrow morning if time, money and responsibilities allowed. Quick leaps between here and there are possible, which makes the world a magical place.

      I run into a lot of people who march along a pretty straight line in their lives, not straying far from home, going to the same job every day, taking the same vacation to the same place for a week or two every year. I’ve tried that line, and it’s not me. Granted, you don’t want to be a turkey moving about in circles with no rhyme or reason to where you’re going. But what’s the fun in traveling a straight path from here to there? Don’t be a turkey, play along the surf line! Follow your own path as it meanders along, but with an eye towards the destination. You’ll still get from here to there, but the path will be a lot more interesting.

    • Coffeehouse Self

      The commute started early this morning, with an early meeting conspiring with noise in my head about getting on the other side of the rush hour traffic that would surely build with every minute. Nothing stresses my commuter self more than being late for an appointment with miles of traffic ahead of me. I don’t like commuter self all that much, and avoid his company when I can.

      Traffic going into Boston is a wonder, but not wonderful; starting much earlier than you’d think possible, lingers past when you’d expect it to end, then reverses direction almost immediately to wreak havoc on your soul when you head home. You either skate your lane, distract yourself with music and podcasts or you let it get to you. I’ve gotten better at letting it go, but it’s a weakness in my character and I feel commuter self creep back into the car more than I’d like. So I play the active avoidance game when I can, and podcast the heck out of the worst of it. I once turned down a great job with a big promotion and raise because I didn’t want to crush my soul with the two hour 40 mile commute. I don’t regret the decision.

      This morning I time-travelled to Boston, found a café and sit writing this blog while others are stop-and-going on the highways I just left. Coffeehouse music is playing, counteracting the effect of the caffeine and the adrenaline of hundreds of cars and trucks I spent the last hour with. My coffee sits steaming on a distressed wood table and The Lumineers and Jason Mraz are playing just loud enough that I can barely hear the diesel engines and honking horns out there. The regulars talk amongst themselves but the place is still full of empty. There was no logical reason to leave as early as I did, with 90 minutes of time to spare. But I like the company of coffeehouse self more than commuter self, and that was enough for me.

    • A Decade Of Music

      The last ten years have flown by (as decades tend to do), and looking back on the music that made the biggest impact on me from 2010 to 2019 is certainly challenging.  If there was a theme to the last decade for me, it was travel to faraway places.  And  when you travel you need a great soundtrack.  Here are ten songs that made my decade of long drives, flights and walks a lot better:

      Dawes – When My Time Comes
      Wilco – You And I
      Head And The Heart – Down in the Valley
      Jason Mraz – 93 Million Miles
      The Avett Brothers – No Hard Feelings
      Bruce Springsteen – Land of Hope and Dreams
      U2 – The Little Things That Give You Away
      Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
      Lord Huron – Ends of the Earth
      Muse – Madness

      A nod to The Lumineers, Michael Kiwanuka, Adele, Half.Alive, Twenty One Pilots, Cold War Kids, Portugal, the Man, The Zac Brown Band, Ray Lamontagne and Blind Pilot.  In a different mood I might have chosen a song by any of you.  But that’s music for you.

    • What’s Up? The View From The Top Of Two Monuments

      One of the fun things about travel is seeing new things. Or more specifically seeing old things that are new to you. Climbing tight spiral staircases to see the view from the top isn’t high on many people’s lists, but an adventurous few make the climb to see what’s up there.  I had this experience twice while I was in the United Kingdom this year, once in London and the other time in Scotland.  Both offer similar experiences and yet are completely different.  I recommend doing each climb if you’re fit and aren’t afraid of heights.

      The Great Fire destroyed over 13,000 homes and 87 churches in London in 1666, leaving upwards of 130,000 people homeless.  The re-build of the city was based on the design of Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren.  These two men designed a monument commemorating the Great Fire, which was built of Portland Stone in the shape of a doric column with a spiral staircase inside running to an observation deck on top, and crowned with a gilded urn of fire.  I climbed up the 311 first thing in the morning on one of my last days in London, appreciating the stunning views of the city from up there.  The spiral staircase is easy to navigate, but you’ll feel it as you climb up.  I managed to get to the top without taking a break, but my heart rate was elevated when I finally reached the viewing platform.

      Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Monument is that it was completed in 1677, a century before America declared independence from Great Britain.  Think about the generations of people who have made the climb up those same stairs!  If you take a low number, maybe ten per day, multiplied by the number of days The Monument has been open for the public, you arrive at 1.2 million people who have made the climb to the top.  More realistic is a number topping 3-5 million.  All climbing a staircase ’round and ’round to the top; an adventure shared across generations.  Imagine the stories in that collection of people.  And now my daughter and I are on that list, with our own stories.

      Meanwhile, in Scotland at the head of Loch Shiel, there’s another monument that’s been standing stoically for generations.  The Glenfinnan Monument, built in 1815, commemorates the 1745 Jacobite Rising.  It’s topped with a statue of a lone Jacobite soldier looking north towards the Highlands.  This climb wasn’t as high as The Monument – it’s 18 meters, or about 60 feet tall, but it has it’s own challenges.  The spiral staircase is more like a tight and twisting ladder spinning you to the top step-by-step.  I’m 6′-4″ tall and felt like I was in a gun barrel spinning about to the top, where I emerged to see this moss and lichen covered Jacobite ignoring me as he’s ignored countless climbers before me.

      Where London has grown up above The Monument, squeezing it on all sides and shrinking the panoramic view, the Glenfinnan Monument offers the same view today as it did in 1815.  Stunning views of Loch Shiel, Sgùrr Ghiubhsachain and other surrounding mountains.  Turning your gaze towards where our friend the Jacobite is focused on, you see the Glenfinnan Viaduct, made famous by the Harry Potter movies, making its elegant sweeping curve.  This was a lovely view indeed, even with a bit of rain and fog playing games.  Aside from the paved road, the Glenfinnan Visitor Center, a few new buildings scattered about and the Viaduct, this view hasn’t changed since this monument was erected.  It offers its own whispers to the past, and was worth the climb.

    • Better For Having Done So

      2019 was a year of change for all of us, as every year is, but it felt more profound this year. That has everything to do with writing about it. I know people who made changes on a massive scale, and others minor, but change happens whether we choose it or not. In the spirit of self-improvement as we enter the New Year, here are some small changes in routine that offered a profound return on time invested:

      Coffee consumption doesn’t seem like a big thing, but ever since I switched to the AeroPress I’ve reduced my daily coffee consumption, favoring one or two amazing cups to savor over multiple cups of average coffee from a Kurig or drip coffee maker.  I’ve reduced my personal plastic waste significantly as well.  I’d estimate that I’ve subtracted about 500 used K-cups from the landfill just making the switch.  I wish I’d done this years before, both for the reduction in waste and for the exceptional coffee the AeroPress makes.  On a side note, since the London and Scotland trip I’ve increased my tea consumption, switching coffee about half the time for tea, and find it a nice enhancement for my daily steaming hot beverage.

      Reading every morning, beginning with a quick read of The Daily Stoic for a jump start and moving to whatever book I was chewing on at the time, has built a routine and habit streak that has greatly enhanced my personal philosophy, helped me to know more about the history of the place I live and places I traveled to, opened my mind to spirituality and changed my perspective on a few things. I’ve read more and better books in 2019 and chewed through a few brilliant books that mocked me for years sitting on my bookshelf.  Nothing improves the mind like active participation in The Great Conversation.

      Educated travel in 2019 was enhanced by the reading, as you might imagine, but became a mission in itself.  Major trips to London, Scotland and Chicago were enhanced with educating myself about the places I was going, adding things I would have missed and subtracting things that may have been good but replaced with things that were amazing.  But this really became powerful for me in local travel.  Local travel took on new meaning for me with quick side trips to see the Saratoga Battlefield while I was in the Capital Region in New York and Fort Niagara in Buffalo, New York and Fort Western in Augusta, Maine.  I’ve hiked the trails in Ithaca, New York to see the stunning waterfalls in winter and spring, stopped at lonely graveyards to see the tombstone of Revolutionary War heroes and walked in dress shoes on soggy battleground sites deep in the off-season.  Educated travel offers a greater sense of place, and I’m better for having made the time to learn about and then visit these places.

      Writing every day has changed me completely.  The daily cadence, the skills acquired, and the deliberate action in the previous two habits to enhance the daily writing offered far more to me than any other daily routine.  We’ll see where it takes me in 2020, but wherever it goes, you’ll read about it on this blog.

      Walking has always been a part of my life.  I used to walk home from school four miles instead of taking the bus just to get away from the noise and secondhand smoke that was a part of bussing teenagers home back in those days.  When my dog Bodhi got older and passed away in 2019 the walks had decreased in length, and I found myself missing the nightly routine of walking for an hour with him looking at stars.  So I started walking again to get that minimum 10,000 steps, but also to come alive again.  Doing those steps on the beach or the rail trail or walking around the block at a random hotel somewhere became a mission.  I’m currently on a 19 day streak of 10,000 steps per day, managing to get my steps in through the holidays and hopefully for a long time to come.  I know I won’t always have the time to do it with work, but then again, what’s more important than maintaining a base level of fitness?  Walking is easy, and hasn’t caused nagging injuries like the burpees did for me.  When I can’t walk outside I’ll read on the treadmill, magnifying the font to crazy sizes so I maintain good posture.  But I double down on two habits and feel better for having done so.  So I’ll keep moving, and add other activity to enhance my fitness whenever possible.

      Looking at 2020, I’m not looking at resolutions as much as what can I add to my daily routine that will pay off over time?  And the answer for me is language acquisition.  Being bilingual or multilingual is nothing unusual in the rest of the world, but in American we tend to stick with English.  I think I’ve got my head wrapped around that one already.  Nothing improves travel like knowing the local language, and nothing challenges the brain like learning to speak it, so it’s time to get back on track.  I’ve dabbled in French, Spanish and Portuguese over the years, and it’s time to double down on learning two of them.  French and Spanish are the leading candidates, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Portuguese and may explore the language a bit as well.  Let’s see where this takes me.

    • I Must Get Back To The Sea

      “The sea 
         isn’t a place
           but a fact, and
             a mystery”
      – Mary Oliver, The Waves

      It’s been less than two weeks since I’ve visited the ocean, and it feels like forever.  We’re deep into the holidays now, and the end of the quarter, the end of the year and the end of the decade.  There’s no time for the ocean right now, but on the other hand there’s no better time for the ocean.  I’m planning at least two trips to the ocean in the next week, for exercise and sanity and a bit of winter beach solitude.  I’m close enough to salt water that it’s not going to break either the time or financial banks.

      I noticed a lot of fresh water experiences in 2019, Lake Michigan, Lake Ontario and exploring a double-digit number of waterfalls in New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Scotland. I’m hoping 2020 brings even more opportunities to ponder the mysteries of the ocean.  I know I have a good head start teed up for New Year’s Day.  For today, I’m using this Mary Oliver quote as inspiration for a four of my favorite moments with salt water in 2019.  

      Camusdarach Beach: My bucket list beach, and I’m grateful I had the chance to check this box in 2019. Sure, it was a rainy November day, but it was still as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be. I’m already plotting a return.

      Plum Island: My go-to winter beach, close to home and blissfully isolated on a cold weekday. My lunchtime walk was my favorite long walk on a beach this year.

      Sailing on Fayaway: I shake my head thinking I only went sailing once this year, which was the fewest number of times on a sailboat I’ve had in years. I’m grateful for the crew of Fayaway for giving me the opportunity to sail with them. I’ll get out more in 2020, I promise myself.

      Buzzards Bay: Home away from home. The sunsets are stunning, but I’m partial to the sunrises. Swimming in Buzzards Bay doesn’t offer surf action, but it makes up for it with warm, salty water you can float in forever. At least I wish sometimes it were forever. The last swim of the year is always bittersweet, and, like sailing, I always hope for more next year.

      We only have so many days, where do you prioritize the time you have? If I’ve learned anything in reviewing the year, it’s that I need to double down on my time with salt water. On the beach, on an oceanside trail, on a boat, or swimming in it, I must get back to the sea.