The eleventh in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. It’s seven in the morning and it’s toasty inside The Rainbow Cafe in Pendleton, Oregon. Outside it’s, as my daddy used to say, colder than a well digger’s ass. That is, the temp is somewhere south of 30 degrees. I’ve never …
Anyone born before 1996 most certainly knows where they were and what they were doing 22 years ago, this day. My wife and I were getting dressed for work. I was at the bathroom sink when my wife called me over to the television. On weekday mornings we kept the little TV in the bedroom …
The tenth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Antelope, Oregon marks the terminus of State Route 293 and the junction with State Route 218, which takes me back to U.S. 97 and the one time, “Wool Capital of the World.” Route 218 is just as isolated as 293 which …
My good friend Marc David is a journalist, author, avid runner (he has an outlandish, blows my mind, years long streak of consecutive running days without a day off), cross-country coach, teacher’s aid and traveler. When he learned that The New York Times killed its venerable sports section and shipped the body parts to its …
The boy turned 13. Thirteen begs a question. Is he still a boy? For a time, back when he was two or three, he would insist that he was a boy. Whenever Cora or I presented him with the proposition that he was a person he responded with a reasoning, “I’m not a person, I’m …
“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall. The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. …
Cora posed the question sometime during Thanksgiving weekend. It was the never before posed query that put normalcy into doubt. “Are we getting a tree this year?” She might just as well have asked if we planned on breathing. I’d actually been asking myself the same question since the holiday season began, sometime back in …
Parke County, Indiana. Looking for the Mill Creek Covered Bridge, I turned left when I should’ve turned right. The road winds through some cornfields until the cornfields end and the road dips into a dark, woody hollow. It’s a foreboding place. A twinge of anxiety in my gut. Just about to the bottom of the …
This week’s Lens-Artists challenge is hosted by Donna, who’s site is Wind Kisses. The challenge? Over The Hill. What’s our take? My take starts across the bay, about a half hour away, in San Francisco. Tony Bennet immortalized the hills of The City. To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Continued from the post, Route 66: Diners, Twin Arrows And Trading Posts, (link here). The van rocks and bumps as it grinds out of the dirt lot near Twin Arrows, Arizona. Lexi, my canine backseat driver is standing behind me, peering …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from, Flying to Omaha Without Babette and Yeti. “Flyover country.” It’s the pejorative heaped on anyplace that isn’t within a day’s drive of America’s two coastlines. As someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, I …
Banner photo. Dad having a cold one. North Africa? Italy? Hey dad. When you were a youth, did you ever wonder what kind of father you might be? You were at loose ends during most of your twenties. Did you even entertain the prospect of fatherhood? You had a lot of time to run those …
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment. Probably the most contentious twenty-seven words in the entire Constitution. I don’t hate The Second Amendment, but I don’t like it either. I don’t own …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. “Plans should be ephemeral, so be prepared to move away from them.” ~ Anthony Bourdain. Nine o’clock on a weekday morning is never a good time to get on the road in a major metropolitan area. But, instead …
The COVID Chronicles is a series of posts relating my experiences and observations during the pandemic. I hope that this will be the final post in the series. March 12, 2022. My wife Cora and I are having lunch at Caffe Sport in San Francisco’s North Beach, the City’s Little Italy. Caffe Sport is a …
The side fence blew down last month, December 15th to be exact. That’s when an atmospheric river washed over California. An atmospheric river. That’s the term that the weather boys and girls have been using when we get a lot of rain and wind off the Pacific. It’s only been a couple of years that …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Once you post it on social media, you own it. Doesn’t really matter what it is. It could be something as sweet as an approbation or as vile as a slur. Like it or not, it’s yours to …
Warning: Some sections of this post are rated R It’s three days before Christmas. A section of the parking lot at the local supermarket is covered in crunchy, dry pine needles. The Christmas trees that had been there earlier in the day are gone. Headed for the chipper and then the compost pile. Eventually the …
“Well, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.” ~ Thelma & Louise It seemed that way sometimes, those times when we got a little bit lost and found ourselves on a long stretch of a desolate county road. It’s on those roads when you haven’t seen a passing …
“My dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately he didn’t teach me everything he knows.” ~ Al Unser. “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had …