cars – Life In A Word

Dreamy Las Vegas

DID YOU HEAR? The price of Super Bowl tickets dropped this week! That’s right, you and me will pay less for seats today than those jump-the-gun fans who got theirs ten days ago. The game’s in three days so we’ve got no time to lose! Let’s make our travel plans!

I’m gonna surprise my wife. I mean, I’m the bigger football fan, yes, but she’ll be so proud of me for getting our game tickets for less! And to celebrate “all things her” I figure, why not splurge on the rest of the trip since I’m saving money on the game? Once in a lifetime, I’m telling myself. Heck, by the time the Super Bowl comes to Vegas a second time she and I could be dead!

FIRST, new luggage. I want the two of us to be those people, where just a glance at their bags has you thinking, “Whoa, who are they?”. So, a quick trip to Tumi for a couple of their hard-shell packing cases ($1,500 per) and matching carry-on’s ($750). Getting the gold finish too, because you’ve got to look the part if you’re going to Vegas.

SECOND, airfare. I got me an itinerary lickety-split on Expedia, flying American. Leave Thursday, return Tuesday. Turns out we can’t get there direct since we live in the middle of nowhere but at least we can fly first class, for just $6,826, with only $600 in taxes and fees. Score!

THIRD, transportation to the hotel. I’m not about to show up at the front doors with Tumi luggage in a rental car so it’s limo service for us! My choice: a modest SUV for two (well, three, including our private driver). I know, I know, I could’ve gone with the BMW stretch limo that seats twenty-five, but what are my wife and I gonna do – run laps around the inside of it? Besides, the SUV is described as “… for the VIP who prefers discretion” and that’s a great way to describe my wife. Round-trip: $375, with $75 in tips.

NOW THEN, the hotel. Gotta be big and flashy, right? Can’t be going to Vegas and the big game and staying at a Motel 6. Let’s go with the Bellagio. I don’t need a suite but I’d sure like a view of those lovely fountains. The hotel website quotes five nights for a “1 King Bed Fountain View” at $10,113, including $3,144 in resort fees. Yeah, I winced a bit with the five-figure quote but then the website flashed, Jackpot! This is today’s low rate! so I felt much better. The website also added a ten-minute timer on the rate but no worries – I booked it in less than five! Makes the $300 room service dinners seem like nothing, doesn’t it?

In the days leading up to the game I’ll pamper my wife a little. In fact, since I love the view of those Bellagio fountains so much, guess what? I can order up a couples massage right there in the room! Only $650 for the two of us, including $110 of gratitude to the masseuses. Then we’ll be nice and relaxed for a dinner at, say, the Eiffel Tower Restaurant at the Paris Hotel (and another view of those fountains). We’ll start with Casco Bay scallops ($32), followed by mixed greens ($38) and the “Queen’s Cut Beef Tenderloin Filet Mignon” ($138), with a plate of accompaniments and sauces ($42). We’ll finish up with a couple of the house special “Eiffel Tower soufflés” ($44), and wash it all down with a nice enough bottle of red ($80). Another $110 in tax and tips calls it a night.

Now wait a sec’. Since when does anyone in Vegas “call it a night” after dinner? So I thought about taking my wife to a big-name concert at the new Sphere but then it hit me. ‘O’ by Cirque du Soliel is right there in the Bellagio hotel! Two orchestra-center seats: $657, and only $93 tax/fees!

FINALLY… what I’ve been building to for hundreds of words now – Super Bowl XVIII. I’ve never been to Allegiant Stadium before and this’ll probably be my only visit, so… No, I didn’t go completely off the rails (like seats on the fifty or a sky box) but I do want to see the plays up close and personal so it’s got to be lower bowl, at least the 20-yard line. Oh man, what a relief! I found the last pair of tickets in Section C137 for $29,000 out the door (only $5,000 in service fees!) A flame emoji and a blinking “selling fast” sign had me sweating but I managed to get ’em before the next guy! Don’t forget, these same tickets would’ve cost me even more just a week ago. Can I find a bargain or what?

(Yawn… stretch…)

Oh, uh… hey… it’s Dave, your, uh, “weekly blogger”. Holy cow, let me tell you, I just woke up from the craziest dream. I was headed to the Super Bowl last-minute, see, and everything about the trip was the best Vegas had to offer. Hotel, dinner, show, game tickets – the works. Now that I’m awake, I’m wondering what all that fun would’ve cost me. $53,598 comes to mind for some reason but I’m sure I didn’t “spend” anywhere near that amount. Just a crazy dream. Anyway, sorry to write and run but I’ve got to return a call to my bank, asking about unusual activity on my credit card.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Super Bowl ticket prices have dropped but they still cost a fortune”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Not-So-Thruways

We live on a long, straight-run residential street, with the option to exit at either end to access the outside world. Close by, a cluster of our neighbors live on a short, stubby lane, where you won’t get very far before having to turn around and go back the way you came. A sign posted at their street’s entrance declares, “Not A Through Street”. It’s what the French – and we Americans – call a cul-de-sac.

In a rather desperate effort to come up with something Halloween-related this week, I landed weakly on “dead-end streets”. Of course, these tiny avenues are often very much alive. Cul-de-sac’s host a quaint gathering of houses, with a few on the straight run and even fewer around the end circle. The setup allows these neighbors to get to know each other easier. And with so little traffic, the end circle encourages kids to do what their parents normally nix: play in the street.

But maybe I shouldn’t paint/assume such a rosy picture (especially with Halloween right around the corner). What if your neighbor living right next door on that little end circle is someone you’d sooner see in a horror movie? Or what if the statistics are true: even more people are struck by cars on a cul-de-sac because of the assumed safety of a quiet street? Finally, consider the double-hyphenated phrase staring you right in the face. Cul-de-sac – French translation – “bottom of bag”. Suddenly your house feels like one of those throwaway candies you find deep down in your trick-or-treat sack.

I didn’t know “cul-de-sac” had such a negative connotation. I found it rather quaint because it’s double-hyphenated (and French). Curious, I went in search of other double-hyphenated words to see if I could find something more positive. Know-it-all. Word-of-mouth (which is often gossip). Son-in-law. Okay, that last one has potential. I mean, he’s only been married to my daughter for year now, so…

Here’s a really nasty double-hyphenated for you. Fer-de-lance. It means “head of spear”, which isn’t so nasty until you realize it’s the name of a snake; an extremely poisonous viper who lives in the tropics. The fer-de-lance was the killer (literally) in a 1974 movie by the same name. A movie I never should’ve watched at the fairly innocent age of twelve. Fer-De-Lance was the original Snakes on a Plane, only the plane was a submarine carrying a crate full of deadly creepy-crawlies. How’s that for Halloween-scary?

Like Fer-De-Lance, Cul-De-Sac was also a movie (1966), about “a hermit living with his wife in a large dank castle on an island… terrorized by two escaped prisoners.” Not exactly a romantic comedy, and no explanation of the film’s title, other than maybe this couple finding themselves at their ultimate dead-end.

Let’s circle back to the suburban version of the cul-de-sac (please!) Two addresses ago we actually lived on one. There were two houses on each side of the straight-run and four houses on the end-circle. We lived on the circle. Were we tight with our neighbors? No! Each of our driveways were long and steep so our houses were actually pretty far apart. I still remember how we’d greet our neighbors faithfully only one day out of the year. What day? Halloween, when we’d accompany our kids to their front doors.

We need to end this more-Halloween-than-I thought post on a positive note, so I don’t have you thinking about poisonous snakes and escaped prisoners. Cul-de-Sac is a locale on the beautiful Caribbean island of Saint Martin. It was also the name of a 1990s alternative rock band. And Cul-de-Sac was the title of “a light-hearted comic strip centered around a four-year-old and her suburban life experiences.” Okay, now we’re talking.

Some advice before I close. If you live on a cul-de-sac, I suggest you double-stock the candy this Halloween. After all, trick-or-treaters who make it to your dead-end street may find themselves going round and round the end circle without realizing what they’re doing. Keep an eye out for repeat customers.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Living On The Edge

The state line between South Carolina (SC) and Georgia (GA) follows the twists and turns of the Savannah River. You know you’re heading into one state or the other whenever you cross the water. Driving from our part of South Carolina into nearby Augusta, GA is interesting. The interstate loops Augusta by starting in SC, touches a bit of GA, goes back to SC for a few miles, then continues into GA again as it follows the river. It’s an example of my life on the edge.

Growing up on the coast of California, it never occurred to me the geography of my younger days was limited to only three of the four cardinal directions. If I headed north I’d leave the urban stretches of Los Angeles for the more rural towns of the the central coast. Head south and I’d parallel the beaches all the way to San Diego. The only thing east of the city seemed to be the endless Mojave Desert. As for the last of the four directions? Not an option, at least not without a boat, plane, or a whole lot of swimming. Horace Greeley would’ve never told me to “Go West, young man”.

South Bend sits where the yellow and red come together at the very top of Indiana.

In my college years in South Bend, IN, I was a fifteen-minute drive from the line where the Central and Eastern time zones meet. Back then you didn’t touch your clock for Daylight Savings, so half the year you were the same time as Detroit while the other half you were Chicago. It was confusing, but not as confusing as someone who lived on one side of the line and worked on the other. Imagine leaving the house at 8:00am, driving an hour, and arriving at the office at… 8:00am? It’s a neat trick, pulled off by a lot of those who live on the edge of a time zone.

Raising our kids in Colorado Springs, we always knew which direction we were heading because the line of the Rocky Mountains lay immediately to the west. Those peaks rose up like the Great Wall of China, just daring you to push through. Sure, we drove the interstates into the Rockies for skiing, hiking, and such, but day-to-day we were down at the base, literally living on the edge. Like California, we had one less cardinal direction at our disposal.

Grays Peak, on Colorado’s Continental Divide

The Rockies conceal another important edge, known as the Continental Divide. The Divide is elevated terrain separating neighboring drainage basins. Plain English? The north-south line from which water flows either west to the Pacific Ocean or east to the Atlantic. I always wanted to stop somewhere flat on the Divide and pour out a bottle of water. Let’s see if it really flows both ways from the line, right? It’s an experiment that to this day remains unconducted.

Football, one of my favorite spectator sports, is all about lines and edges. One team faces the other, on an imaginary line defined by where the referee places the ball. Cross that line before the ball is snapped and you’ll be flagged with a penalty. Advance the ball ten yards past that line – to another imaginary line – and your team is awarded more play. The sidelines of the field might as well drop off to a bottomless void. Catching a pass outside of that edge is not allowed. Running the ball outside of that edge brings the game to a halt. But catching or running across the lines at end of the field? That rewards you with a score.

$50 gets you a spot on “The Edge” sky deck

For all this living and playing on thresholds, maybe I should visit one of New York City’s newest high-rise attractions. One hundred floors above the sidewalk, The Edge is billed as “the highest outdoor sky deck in the Western Hemisphere”. Jutting out from its host building, The Edge allows unparalleled views of the city below, because the surrounding walls are solid glass, as is a portion of the deck floor itself (yikes!) If Spider-Man is your thing, you can go even higher by scaling the outside of the remaining floors of the skyscraper. I have to say, this sort of thing draws a “fine line” between entertainment and, well, insanity.

I won’t be going to The Edge… ever. I’m not good with heights, so anything above a pedestrian Ferris Wheel just isn’t my cup of tea. Nope, leave me behind, comfortably grounded, where crossing the Savannah River from one state to another is plenty adventurous. That’s my definition of life on the edge.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tuesday’s Child

Passing through another anniversary of the events of 9/11 this week, I was touched by a YouTube short of U.S. Marines demonstrating the proper method of folding the American flag. The video includes gentle background music but no words, lending reverence to the ceremony. Folding the Stars and Stripes the right way is not only a nod of respect to our nation’s banner, but also an example of (flag) etiquette.

One of my favorite memories of my late mother was her ability to gently but effectively prod her sons to behave properly. She would sometimes say quietly, “Mind your manners”, which meant two things. One, something in our current behavior wasn’t in sync with how she raised us; and two, we would get a talking to later. “Please” and “thank you” barely scratched the surface of how my brothers and I were expected to carry ourselves back then.

I’ve always thought of manners and etiquette as one in the same, but the former is a subset of the latter. Etiquette is “the set of norms of personal behavior in polite society”, while manners are simply behaviors deemed “good” or “bad”. An example of both is the way we drive our cars. We’re taught the rules of the road, also known as “driving etiquette”. But when we blatantly ignore those rules by, say, refusing to let a car merge onto the interstate in front of us, we’re letting bad manners get the better of etiquette.

Manners always remind me of a book my grandparents encouraged us to read whenever we visited: Gelette Burgess’ 1903 classic The Goops (and How To Be Them). Here’s an example of Goop behavior in Burgess’ poetry, simply titled “In Table”:

Why is it Goops must always wish

To touch each apple on the dish?

Why do they never neatly fold

Their napkins until they are told?

Why do they play with food, and bite

Such awful mouthfuls? Is it right?

Why do they tilt back in their chairs?

Because they’re Goops! So no one cares!

My mother probably labeled us Goops at one time or another, because my brothers and I were all about fingering our food or talking with food in our mouths or rocking back in our chairs. It’s a wonder we developed any manners at all. Maybe it’s because our mother’s parenting was fueled by a finishing school of sorts: her college sorority, where a premium was placed on etiquette.

Finishing schools, designed to “teach young women social graces as preparation for entry into society”, are something of an outdated concept now, at least in America. You can still find a few “charm schools” in Europe, such as Switzerland’s prestigious Institut Alpin Videmanette – (whose teenage graduates included Lady Diana Spencer). The Institut teaches young women to cook, make dresses, speak French, and even ski, but at its core, the curriculum is an education in etiquette.

The undisputed authority on etiquette, Emily Post, wrote several books and newspaper columns on the topic. In the America of her lifetime (1872-1960) Post’s first etiquette book became a bestseller because it catered to “the country’s exotic mix of immigrants… eager to fit in with the establishment”. I suggest most of Post’s etiquette is as relevant today as it was back then… and a lot of us could use an extensive refresher.

Besides the Goops, etiquette reminds me of an old poem teaching children the days of the week. “Monday’s Child” goes like this:

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child works hard for a living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day, Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Google tells me I was born on a Monday. Darn it, so close. If I was Tuesday’s Child I’d be defined as “… agreeable, refined, and polite in manner or behavior.” In other words, demonstrating a solid understanding of etiquette.

The next time you’re standing on an escalator, step to the right to let those in a hurry pass by. The next time you play golf, stay out of the line of sight when your opponent putts. The next time you’re at the movies, don’t utter a word until the final credits roll. And the next time you fold the flag, do it the way the Marines do. After all, you’d rather be credited with following the rules of etiquette than perceived as having bad manners.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Hail, Caesium!

I acquired a taste for Caesar salad later in life. After decades of boring lettuce/tomato and franchise salad bars, I learned to branch out a little. Caesar, with its romaine, croutons, Parmesan, and distinctive dressing, has become my go-to at restaurants. But I always double-check my “hold the anchovies, please” because even a thimbleful would put a damper on things. Kind of like caesium-137.

You probably don’t know much about caesium. Pronounce it just like the salad (or like “seize” in Seize the day!). Caesium-137 is a nasty little byproduct of nuclear fission, deadly enough to turn your life into a… uh, half-life with just a brief introduction. So here’s the story of the little caesium capsule – a.k.a. Little Caesar – that could get away, and did.

It’s a simple enough task, really. Transport an item from Point A to Point B, like the new washing machine we just had delivered from Home Depot. But let’s make the job a little more challenging, shall we? The distance you have to travel shall be almost 900 miles. The journey itself shall be on the oft-barren Great Northern Highway of Western Australia, which isn’t always the smoothest of rides. Finally, transport a potentially lethal substance… without dropping it.

You’d think radioactive caesium-137 – no matter how small an amount – would be literally welded into the delivery truck it rides in. Instead, the pill-sized capsule – already parked inside the density gauge equipment it was a part of, was placed in a “package”, then attached to the truck with four mounting bolts.

Now then, imagine you’ve just completed the long and boring four-day drive to the nuclear waste treatment facility in Perth. You hop off the truck, walk around to the back, open the doors, and discover not only a broken gauge and a missing mounting bolt, but no caesium-137 capsule. In fact, the delivery truck wasn’t even inspected until nine days after arrival.

This scenario raises a half-life of questions for me. First, just how bumpy was that Great Northern Highway? Second, even if the gauge broke open and the capsule got loose, how the heck did it escape, not only out of the package but out of the entire truck? Finally, we’re talking about lethal goods here. Wouldn’t some sort of alarm go off if Little Caesar skipped town? I’m guessing someone is answering these kinds of questions as we speak, and his/her seat is a little warm.

imagine being a member of the ad hoc search-and-rescue crew. Not only are you looking for something that can kill you just by being in close proximity, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack, only the needle is the size of a paper clip and the haystack is a highway longer than the coast of California. No matter, you’re handed a radiation detection device, the keys to a truck with flashing hazard lights, and off you go. Oh, and by the way, you can’t go faster than 30 mph or your detector can’t do its job.

This isn’t the first unintended release of Little Caesar. He escaped in much larger quantities from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011. You can read about nine other incidents involving “LC” here, including one in Seattle four years ago and one in Thailand in March.

At the time I saved this story in January, Little Caesar was still at large. Worst-case scenarios were running rampant. What if LC bounced to freedom on a populated area of the highway? What if a hiker happened upon the capsule and threw it into his or her backpack before returning home? Or, God forbid, what if a bird snatched the capsule in its beak and transported it to its nest in the middle of downtown Perth?

Three months later (this week), I caught up with this story. The run-of-the-mill conclusion is that Little Caesar was found just six days after his escape, off the highway in a remote area not far from the truck’s point of departure. The radiation detection equipment sounded the alarm and led the search team right to our little friend.

As for what happened once LC was found? A 20-meter “hot zone” was set up around him to fend off the inevitable lookie-loos. He was given a thick casing of lead in case he was feeling “radiant”. Finally, Little Caesar was scheduled to be transported to the county health facility for further examination. Yes, I said “transported”. No word on whether or not he made it to his final destination.

Some content sourced from the ABC News article “Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Games of the Travel Gods

Blondie is the trend-setting American rock band from the 1970’s. A blondie is also a rich vanilla dessert bar. But just for today, Blondie is the newspaper comic strip that, remarkably, still runs after 92 years. Blondie is the female lead and Dagwood is her food-loving husband. Which brings me to today’s topic. A Dagwood is a tall, multi-layered sandwich… the perfect image for my travel nightmare from last Friday.

It all started with a bridge. Make that seventeen bridges. As my wife and I were motoring mid-morning towards the Charlotte airport, en route to my niece’s wedding in Los Angeles, the Maps app colored the interstate yellow here and there. No big deal; traffic slowed, then quickly started up again. All of a sudden, middle of nowhere, we came to a complete stop. Five minutes passed without movement. Ten. When I finally looked down at the Map app twenty minuets later, our section of the interstate was colored black. Wait, black? Never seen that color before.

My car is somewhere beyond the vanishing point

For future reference, Map app black means “not an option” (or better still, “you’re dead”). Five miles of the upcoming interstate were closed off for nine days to repair all those bridges. We didn’t “eye-spy” so much as a detour sign before we joined the monstrous backup. When cars began leaking into the grass median and making U-turns, I sensed the presence of the travel gods, selecting a dawdling pawn for their vicious game.

Heading back the way we came, the first detour we encountered was the same idea as a hundred other drivers. The off-ramp was backed up forever. Instead, we continued miles further, finally exiting onto a two-lane highway to what can only be described as a drive through the backwoods of the back country of America’s uh… backside. Tight little curvy roads sprouting driveways to nowhere, bars with bars on the windows, churches with desperate Easter pleas like “It’s not about the Bunny, it’s about the Lamb”, and one-stop-sign towns you really don’t want to stop in. Eventually we emerged unscathed (physically, not mentally), flung back to a point on the interstate that wasn’t colored Map app black.

The travel clock ticks faster now. When the travel gods remind you bags must be checked forty-five minutes before departure, beads of sweat start to pop. The Dagwood sandwich gains another layer.

Our daughter (who I now refer to as “GPS Goddess”) expertly phone-guided us all the way into the Charlotte Airport hourly parking garage ($24 USD/day), where she offered a not-so-confident “you’ll make it” before hanging up. And so we dashed, from one end of the garage to the other, down the elevator, across the lanes of buses and taxis, through the under-construction section of the terminal sidewalk, finally bursting through the sliding doors to the American Airlines self check-in kiosks to declare our victory. Which was premature.

Just like the black of the Map app, I’ve never seen a self check-in kiosk dispense a piece of paper saying “See Counter Agent”. Uh-oh. Sure enough, we missed the deadline to check luggage. Our bags were also too big to gate check or they would’ve pushed us through. I thought we were done.

But at the ticket counter, I deflected phrases like “You can’t travel without your luggage, sir” or “We’re not finding any other flight options, sir” with “I have faith in you, American Airlines!” and “You can do this!”, and darned it they didn’t find an itinerary to get this “sir” (and his “ma’am”) to Los Angeles. Through Boston. Uh, sorry miss, isn’t Boston taking us in the wrong direction? She told me not to argue. Add another layer to the sandwich.

Cut to the Charlotte boarding gate. Flight to Boston delayed. Then again. Then again. In a phrase that sounds comical (just not at the time), the gate agent calmly informed passengers “the control tower can’t seem to locate our flight crew”. But then they did, then we boarded, and suddenly we’re flying to Boston… knowing we have, oh, ten minutes to catch our connection once we land.

For the record, you can make a connecting flight in Boston in ten minutes. You need five of those minutes to let the achingly slow passengers in front of you deplane. You need the other five minutes to hustle down the concourse (ignoring the bathrooms that beckon for good reason), cursing the loudspeaker blasting your name with “Flight XXX to Los Angeles, this is your final call. We’re about to close the doors”.

Which is exactly what the gate agents did, right behind us as we sprinted down the jetway, but not before shouting, “Don’t worry, your baggage has a much better chance of making the connection than you do!” [Wrong. Turns out only one of our bags made the flight. The other would arrive (mercifully) the next morning, just in time to change into wrinkled formalwear before the wedding.]

Hoping I looked more like the guy on the left

On the Boston-Los Angeles flight, sitting in the very last row (where you meet/greet every single passenger headed to the bathroom) I let out a slow breath and assessed the good and bad of our whirlwind journey. The good: we’d make the wedding after facing a dozen trip-blocks. The bad: the Boston-LA flight ended up having to go wide-right over Canada to avoid some nasty weather in the Midwest. Add an hour to an already long, seriously turbulent flight. We could’ve headed the other direction and made it to Ireland in less time.

In total, the travel gods played their game for twenty-one hours, leaving us bleary-eyed by the time we walked into the wedding venue the next afternoon. (Hey, at least they got married. After all, the wedding was on April Fools’ Day. A no-show at the altar would’ve been just another layer on the sandwich.)

Here’s a little Blondie trivia. Dagwood was the heir to the Bumstead locomotive fortune, but when he married Blondie the deal was off. I didn’t know that. I only knew about his namesake – the tall, multi-layered sandwich. Otherwise I might’ve thought to take the train to Los Angeles instead.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Advert Converts

Texting while driving has quickly become the norm, at least in U.S. states where it continues to be legal. Not a day goes by where I’m not witness to a slow or erratic driver, the annoying behavior the direct result of a smartphone. My car horn gets a regular punch, reminding drivers, “HEY… the light just turned green!” All of which makes the notion of billboards as a driving distraction almost obsolete.

Like most things, billboards had their young and innocent days. They popped up on interstates and major thoroughfares almost as soon as cars themselves did; bright, colorful advertisements meant to plant seeds in driver brains for future purchases. At last count there were over 350,000 billboards in America alone.

Unlike smartphones however, billboards earn nothing but a passing glance as you speed by. Their images and words are simple by design so you “get the picture” in an instant. A few scientific studies went to great lengths to prove billboards increased the potential for accidents. Others showed they really had no impact at all. Whichever is true, billboards stubbornly continue a part of the urban landscape.

But no matter how I spin this topic, we’re just talking about a straightforward means of advertising. What’s so interesting about that, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

Consider the lifespan of a billboard. The artwork is created on a smaller scale, reproduced to billboard size (previously by hand, now by computer), mounted up high on a roadside frame, and then allowed to distract drivers for months. But eventually the billboard comes back down and you’re left with 700 square feet of heavy-duty used vinyl. What now – off to the dump?

Not if you’re Rareform. This company converts adverts into bags, totes, and duffles. You can purchase anything from a travel surfboard bag to a soft-sided cooler, all fashioned from billboard vinyl. You can even buy a cross-body bag for your laptop, with a cushy interior made of recycled water bottles. Talk about “walking advertisements”, eh?

I really admire people who think outside of the box (because I find it so much more comfortable inside). Rareform thinks outside of the board. They brokered deals with advertising agencies for the used vinyl, hired cleaners, designers, sewers, and photographers to produce their one-of-a-kind products, and then created a website to bring it all to you. As Rareform’s founders put it, “We’re in the business of change… and we believe billboards deserve a second chance.” Considering they stock over 50,000 unique re-creations in their warehouse, I’d say they’re on to something.

A billboard can be a cooler if it wants to be

Billboards never really caught my eye until now. Sure, I enjoy their creative advertising tactics, like using several billboards spread out over a mile or two, each one containing part of a message about a business you’ll find off the next off-ramp. Or how about the ones like Chick-fil-A’s, with three-dimensional characters in front of the boards? In 2010 in North Carolina, you could find a billboard of a giant, juicy steak with a big fork sticking out of it, emitting the scent of black pepper and charcoal. Ready to grill?

Today’s billboards, of course, have gone digital. You can pack a rotation of advertisements into the same space where there used to be one. On broadcasts of Major League Baseball, you’ll see advertisements on the walls behind home plate as the camera shows the pitcher’s view of the batter. Those advertisements aren’t really in the ballpark; they’ve just been digitally applied back in the television studio.

None of these billboard tricks impress me like the one Rareform conjured up. I mean, what kind of brain looks at a billboard and goes “Hey, that could be a fashionable bag one day!” Not my brain. Rareform not only diverts tons of vinyl from landfills, it then puts it to practical re-use. Makes me want to dumpster-dive my garbage can out back to see if I can come up with a trash rehash of my own.

Some content sourced from the Rareform website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Terminal Trans-formation

In the United States, you have what are known as the Big Four airlines: American, Southwest, Delta, and United. According to Statistica, these carriers account for two-thirds of America’s commercial flights. Not so long ago, the Big Four were American, Eastern, Trans World (TWA), and United. Eastern folded its wings in 1991; TWA a decade later. But TWA left an iconic legacy structure behind. Welcome to JFK International’s Terminal 5.

JFK International Airport’s “Terminal 5”

If you’re flying to New York City, LaGuardia Airport is just a hop, skip, and a landing from Manhattan. For my money I prefer JFK International, ten miles to the south, if only for the chance to visit Terminal 5. “T5”, as it’s known today, embraces one of the most unique airport buildings in the world – the TWA Flight Center. We’re lucky it’s still standing.

Go back to the first photo of T5. Doesn’t it look like a giant, white B-2 Stealth Bomber draped over the rest of the building? That part of the structure – or the “head house” as it’s called – was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen as the TWA Flight Center. Would you have guessed it was constructed in the 1960s? I think it looks decidedly more modern.

You can tell how dramatic the interiors of the Flight Center are without even stepping inside. Those window walls at both ends are two stories tall. The soaring “bomber” thin-shell concrete roof is shouldered at its corners by massive Y-shaped piers, allowing for the uninterrupted gathering space within. The Flight Center was the first terminal to introduce concourses and jetways to airport design, allowing passengers to board an airplane without having to drop down to ground level first.

Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport

Saarinen’s most famous designs feature similar swoops and curves. He gave the main terminal at Dulles International Airport the same look. He served on the advisory board for the design of the Opera House in Sydney, Australia. But his best-known work towers over St. Louis (coincidentally, TWA’s headquarters city): the Gateway Arch. Sadly, Saarinen saw none of these structures to completion, passing away in 1961 at the age of 51.

So if TWA is long gone, why is the Flight Center still around? Because it’s been transformed into a wholly different animal. Yes, you’ll find the typical mix of concourses, gates, and restaurants you see at most airports – the so-called “T5” aspect of the building. But the Flight Center itself – the head-house – has been converted into a kitschy hotel, with hundreds of rooms, a central lounge between the window walls, and a cocktail bar inside a restored Lockheed Constellation airliner. Brass light fixtures, rotary phones, and bright red carpet evoke the heyday of TWA. They’ve even retained the mechanical split-flap display board used to advertise arriving and departing flights.

Architecture is an important part of a culture, a museum of pieces placed here and there in the landscape. Preserving those pieces takes time, money, and sometimes, the gamble to repurpose. The TWA Flight Center may now be referred to as the TWA Hotel, but it’ll always be Eero Saarinen’s masterpiece.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #5 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

Today we spent landscaping “outdoors” around the foundation of the house. 40 pages (or 44%, or 136 minutes) into the build, this is what we have:

The fourteen trees on the Fallingwater model property are each nothing more than one small green LEGO cube snapped on top of another one. Compare this basic look to LEGO’s more recent take on growees, as in blogger Andrew’s View of the Week’s LEGO Flower. Slightly more realistic, wouldn’t you say?

At least we’re seeing a portion of the house itself begin to emerge. We’ve built a bridge over the stream (back right), and we’re starting construction on one wing of the house – the piece you see in front of the model.

Tune in next Thursday as construction continues! Now for another nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

R. W. Lindholm Oil Company Service Station

No commission is to big or too small for an architect, which is why Wright put his signature on a gas station, very close to the time he was designing Fallingwater.

The Lindholm Service Station was part of Wright’s vision of Broadacre City, a utopian community planned for a four-square-mile property in Cloquet, MN. The Service Station fueled automobiles, yes, but also encouraged residents to gather in its upper space for what Wright envisioned as “… neighborhood distribution center, meeting place, restaurant… or whatever else is needed.” The cantilevered copper roof and band of glass windows is vintage Wright. The angular end of the roof canopy points to the St. Louis River as a symbolic nod to river transport.

The Lindholm Service Station is the only part of Broadacre City ever constructed, is included on the National Register of Historic Places, and is open to the public… to fill up your car, of course.

Some content sourced from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Too Much on My Plate

In the latest spin on subscription services, BMW will – for a small fee – heat the seats in your car. Maybe you saw this headline already and thought, “Fake News”. Afraid not. Rather than simply pushing the heat-the-seat button on your 3 Series sedan you must contact BMW first, who will remotely unlock the feature and charge you by the month. A separate soon-to-be-offered subscription gets you a heated steering wheel. I shouldn’t be surprised by this latest cash grab at the expense of driving comfort. After all, we’re also about to enter the era of electronic license plates.

I find U.S. license plates to be mini-artworks, don’t you? They’re colorful, often including an image or slogan to proudly advertise the state itself. The letters and numbers raise from the rest of the aluminum rectangle, giving the fingers a pleasing sensation when you brush over them. Drivers who choose “vanity plates” offer the rest of us on the road a puzzle, to figure out what phrase the chosen letters/numbers represent (and never getting the chance to ask). The U.S. Mint should take a cue from colorful license plates and print American dollars with the same pizzazz. After all, “greenbacks” are anything but mini-artworks.

But I digress. Today we’re talking about license plates, displaying numbers and letters in pixels instead of raised metal. My first thought when I read about electronic license plates? Fraud. I mean, seriously, how easy will it be to hack into the software and alter the numbers and letters, effectively rendering the vehicle impossible to track? Or worse, what if the software hiccups and the plate displays nothing at all? It’s kind of like when Colorado legalized recreational marijuana several years ago. Our state didn’t think that one through either and now we’re dealing with all sorts of hitches in the giddyup. Electronic license plates are bound to be an imperfect technology.

And yet, just like heated seat subscriptions “digital display plates” have their advantages. They’ll emit a signal for tracking and monitoring (which some will surely drive to the Supreme Court as an invasion of privacy). They can flash an easy-to-see message if the vehicle is not properly registered or insured. They can interface with parking meters and toll systems for automated payments. Finally, inevitably, they’ll offer advertisements to the captive audience in the car directly behind them, switching from letters/numbers to digital commercials when the car is stopped.

Colorado has joined four other U.S. states who already offer electronic license plates. Like BMW’s services, the plates will be offered on a monthly subscription. At $20-$25/mo. they’re a whole lot pricier than standard or even vanity plates. But you just know there are plenty of drivers who want the latest/greatest technology, even with the inevitable drawbacks of a first-generation product.

[Trivia Break! Recent demand in several U.S. states moved the license plate character count from six to seven. Guess how many unique plates you can make from a combination of three numbers and four letters alone? Sixteen million. It’s fair to say we won’t be needing an eighth license plate character anytime soon.]

I admit I’m slow to adopt new inventions, even though I spent the last twenty years of my career in tech. The laptop I’m typing on is five years old and doing just fine. The SUV I drive will last fifteen years since the one I had before it did as well. And the fitness band I wear gives me a dozen angles on my health yet I’m more interested in the time of day.

Electronic license plates may be overcomplicating the issue. The metal variety sits there quietly, displaying letters and numbers like it’s supposed to. The electronic variety aims to be anything but a license plate. Amber Alerts. Insurance/registration violations. Product advertisements. Or – God forbid – electronic bumper stickers, where the owner can publicly express the kinds of opinions to drive the rest of us to road rage.

Say what you will about BMW, but the automaker is simply climbing onboard the subscription bandwagon. Who can blame them for finding new ways to make (our) money? On the other hand, drivers may wake up one day and wonder why we ever caved to electronic license plates. We just have to glance at our roadside billboards to know we had it coming.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Adding Fire to the Fuel

When I step up to the counter at Starbucks for my favorites (hot: Grande Flat White, cold: Grande Cold Brew w/ a splash of cream), I find it interesting how accepting I am of the high price of my purchase. By nature I’m a penny-pincher, monitoring the family budget with a fully-focused microscope. But the scan-and-go Starbucks app makes it easy to overlook the five dollars for a single cup of coffee. On the other hand, a gallon of gasoline for the same price is literally headline news.

I don’t wonder if you’re just like me at the gas station these days because you are. When you pull up to the pump you try to ignore the unbelievable digits on the station sign and on the pump itself. The tank in your vehicle is probably closer to “E” than usual (though my wife still refuses to go below the quarter mark). You may even shop around now before choosing your station. Finally, the price of your favorite octane has you considering a cheaper option, even though none of them are really “cheap”. Just like the Starbucks menu, purchasing gas is no longer the mindless decision it used to be.

$5.00/gallon. Ten days ago the U.S. hit that preposterous average for the first time in its history. Just two months ago the average was $4.00; two years before that, less than $2.00. Forecasters say we’ll see a nationwide average of $6.00 before the end of the summer. No wonder our fiery conversations are all about fuel these days.

When my car’s “low fuel” light pops on (with an annoying “DING!”) I know it’s going to take eighteen gallons to get the needle pointing back to “F”. That’s $90 in June 2022 math. When a stop at the gas station sets you back almost $100, you start to think about what else you could buy with the money. Four or five dinners out. Ten months of Netflix. Twenty Starbucks Flat Whites.

If it’s any consolation, at least we’re talking about self-service gasoline here. Some of you are too young to remember when a “gas station” was a “service station”. Prior to 1980, it was all about full service. I can still hear the ding-ding as the wheels of my parents’ car passed over black hoses, triggering the bell to let the attendant know they needed a fill-‘er-up. Then he (yes “he” because I never remember a “she” working at service stations back then) would run over to the pump, ask what octane and how many gallons, and start the filling. He’d also ask you to “pop the hood” so he could have a quick look at the oil, washer fluid, and engine. Finally, he’d give your front windshield a wash, take payment (in cash, of course), and off you’d go. For all that service, you simply rolled down the driver’s-side window and paid the man.

Full-service is still a thing of course but it’s a lot harder to find these days. Unless you live in Oregon or New Jersey. In those states, self-service is rarely an option. Attendants are still the norm. It sounds like an alternate reality for 2022 (or the scene from Back to the Future below) but two out of the fifty states stubbornly refuse to allow self-service. They stand by the well-worn concerns: fire hazards, difficulties for the elderly or disabled, and loss of station attendant jobs. They also charge a few pennies more per gallon because they can’t make a profit the way they used to – by offering services beyond the gas itself. For the most part, those under-the-hood services moved to car dealerships a long time ago.

Just this week our politicians proposed a three-month “holiday” on gas taxes (and taxes on gasoline should be the subject of its own blog post). The holiday won’t happen, though. Our politicians won’t allow the sacrifices made by not collecting those taxes. Or activists will wonder if gas companies will maintain the high prices and generate additional profit. And if gas is on its way to $6/gallon anyway, it’s kind of like adding a new lane to the highway, where by the time it’s finished the traffic has increased too much to notice any difference.

Not speaking for other countries but Americans won’t be driving less in the next several months. The travel forecast calls for more vehicle miles than even in the summers before COVID. Our lack of efficient mass transit and our woes at the airport (can you say, “canceled flight”?) will, uh, drive us to drive. In other words, we’ll pay $5, $6, maybe even $7 before we’ll pull back on our stubborn habits. Just like I will, admittedly, at Starbucks.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Why New Jersey and Oregon still don’t let you pump your own gas”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.