travel – Page 18 – Life In A Word

Wait For It

Let’s wager a guess over something that happened to you in the past few days. It probably happened several times in the past few days. It wasn’t by choice, nor were you alone. It might even be happening right now. What is this recurring, oft-maddening event in your daily world (and mine)? Somewhere, for some good reason, in person or in the car, deliberately or unintentionally, you found yourself waiting in line.

Call it a common courtesy or call it the primary by-product of consumer demand. Waiting in line is a timeless (or time-wasting) necessary evil with no satisfactory alternative. While the world behaves efficiently with smartphones, computers and even data-consuming “IoT” appliances, those snaking, switch-backing, several-option, several-category lines of humans seem to grow ever longer. Including traffic on the highways – another version of waiting – you’ll spend one to two years of your life in line.

Consider some of the common reasons why we wait in line:
– store cashiers
– airport security
– phone calls (on hold)
– amusement parks
– voting
– public restrooms

If I wrote this post fifty years ago, I would’ve listed the very same reasons why we wait in line. We have options now, but let’s face it; those options are waiting-in-line in disguise. Store cashiers now work side-by-side with an area of self-check-out machines (which draws its own line). Airports promote pay-for lines like TSA Pre and CLEAR. Telephone on-hold mechanisms offer callbacks instead of waiting (“for an additional $0.75”). Disneyland installed “FastPass” lines; again, for a fee. Voting can be done by mail (forcing your ballot to wait in line instead of you). And public restrooms? Okay, there’s no option to waiting for the potty. Maybe reconsider that second beer.

The Brits refer to a line of people as a queue. I like that (and not just because we need more words beginning with the letter “q”). Leave it to those on the far side of the pond to class up the most mundane activity imaginable. At least we have our phones as distractions when we “queue”. But the old-fashioned distractions still work. It’s why they put candy bars by the cashiers, magazines in the waiting room, mirrors by the elevators, and televisions in the airport. Anything to help you forget you’re waiting in line.

You’d think waiting in line is mindless – no-brainer science really – but I have experienced flaws in the system. Recently in Lowe’s, waiting patiently in a single, central line at the self-check-out area, I was confronted by the person behind me, who demanded I “choose one side or the other” (as if logic demanded a separate line for each row of self-check-out machines). My response to him was not one of my finer moments. Another example – at the airport – my wife and I waited at the curb with a dozen others for the parking lot shuttle, only to discover the “front of the line” was a variable determined by the point on the curb where the driver chooses to stop his vehicle. If you want to see what not waiting in line looks like, try to catch a parking lot shuttle at the airport.

In today’s world, we have new reasons why we wait in line:
– to purchase the latest iPhone
– at restaurants, with pagers (clever disguise for waiting in line)
– on-line (i.e. for concert tickets or sports tickets at a specified time)
– Black Friday sales

Finally, we will always stand in line for our kids, whether to see Santa Claus at the mall or to buy something they simply must have. Years ago, I remember taking my kids to the local bookstore for the latest “Harry Potter” (which they started and finished before the next sunrise). It was the only time I’ve stood in line for the right to stand in line again. The bookstore insisted on selling a limited number of tickets at noon, to be exchanged for the book later that same day, when the publisher allowed its release.

I believe the longest I’ve ever waited in line is five hours – to see the first Star Wars movie in 1977. With no electronic devices to keep my friends and I company back then, five hours was even longer than it sounds, especially knowing two consecutive showings of the movie would run before I even entered the theater. Then again, the truly morbid among us believe we are all simply waiting to die. If that’s the case, let’s hope we’re in a really, really long line.

Bad Check

Last week I flew to Indiana for a conference, connecting briefly through Chicago O’Hare. After finally touching down and exiting the tiny plane, I noticed a cluster of passengers right there in the jet bridge, waiting for luggage to be brought up the stairs. I headed to the baggage claim area instead, where the rest of us watched the carousel lumber round and round. The minutes passed interminably as the belt continued its relentless rotation; passengers leaving one-by-one with their bags. Suddenly everything came to a grinding halt, and the carousel let out its big, mechanical sigh. I found myself in the quiet and solitary confinement of an empty claim area. My luggage? Nowhere to be found.

The airlines advertise a ton of performance statistics, but here’s a new one on me: rate of mishandled bags. For every passenger who files a lost-luggage report, the carrier gets a ding. That ding is well-deserved, representing the stress of lost luggage, the hassle of filing a report in one of those stuffy little offices, and the inevitable delay reuniting with your bag. Not that it happens very often. According to the following chart – part of a Wall Street Journal article – American Airlines reports a mere 2.8 incidents of lost luggage per 1,000 passengers. But hold the phone, folks – there’s more to the losing than meets the eye. Turns out American (and most other airlines) avoid a lost-luggage ding if they alert you to the “mishandled” bag. Today’s smart tags make it easy to track the bag (even if it’s heading in a different direction than you are). So that bit of information – proactively communicated in a text or email – avoids a bad stat. And that’s why the chart below shows a dramatic improvement in August. American Airlines started its proactive notification process the month prior.

I don’t choose my airline according to “rate of mishandled bags” (or any other statistic for that matter – it’s all about the ticket price), but I have observed the adjusted behavior of others. Carry-on baggage is all the rage now, in brand-new shapes and sizes. Look around next time you board a plane and count how many passengers violate the airline’s carry-on policy. The person with the roll-y suitcase and oversized backpack is probably one bag over the limit. The person with the valise slightly larger than the space “under the seat in front of you” probably should’ve checked it. But chances are the flight attendant won’t make a fuss, at the risk of negative publicity.

Speaking of backpacks, the oversized versions seem to be all the rage these days; far surpassing the number of “wheelies” and “over-the-shoulder’s” so common with past generations. It’s like everyone’s back in high school again.

Here’s another trend. Passengers carry-on instead of checking, knowing there isn’t enough room in the overhead bins. Once the bins are full, they surrender their bags at the end of the jet bridge instead, for attendants to tromp down the stairs and into the belly of the plane. After landing, the process works in reverse (thus the cluster of passengers on my recent flight). But credit to these travel warriors; they avoid $50 of baggage fees, as well as smashing bags into overhead bins (which always brings to mind square pegs and round holes).

One more trend. Airlines are shifting the baggage-check process into the hands of travelers. At self-check-in, the kiosk now dispenses a bag tag along with the boarding pass. You attach the tag to the bag. You haul the bag to the belt, where – in some cases – you place the bag on the belt. Congratulations – you’re an airline employee working free of charge. You might even be helping the airline avoid a mishandled bag stat.

My own lost-luggage story had a happier-than-expected ending. At the baggage service office, the attendant took my tag into the back, reappearing moments later with my bag. Turns out my suitcase flew on another plane, arriving at my same destination before I did (explain that bit of magic, please). Crisis averted, but instead I lost my excuse to go purchase a suitcase of new clothes.

Land of Flying Cars

My wife and I live in a rural area of Colorado known as the Black Forest. The high density of Ponderosa Pines in our small geography gives us our name. Remarkably, there’s only one other notable place on the planet named “Black Forest”: the region near Bavaria in southwest Germany. As it turns out, I have personal ties to both places, though I’ve never been to the south of Germany. Follow along as I connect the Forests.

Fill in the blank, “Best Childhood Movie: ________”. Most of you would respond with an offering from Disney. Including “Snow White…”, “Mary Poppins”, and “The Little Mermaid”, you’ve already covered sixty years of film-making, with countless other Disney classics in between. I don’t think I missed a single Disney growing up in the sixties and seventies, yet – go figure – my favorite childhood movie doesn’t come from the Mouse. It doesn’t even come from my home country. My childhood choice? The UK’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, based on the 1964 novel by Ian Fleming.

“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” – the captivating musical about the inventor and his kids who lived in a windmill cottage; about those wonderful-though-not-always-perfect inventions (my favorite: the eggs-toast-sausage breakfast machine); about the candy-maker and the toy-maker and the captivating castle world of Vulgaria; and most importantly about the magical flying motorcar itself – created figments of my imagination like no other movie. The lyrics to the title song (“…Bang Bang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, our fine four-fendered friend…”) were burned into my brain. Someday I vowed to visit the lands of Caractacus Potts and Baron Bomburst.

As it turns out, the Potts’ windmill cottage really does exist (and not on a movie set) – as the “Cobstone Windmill” in Buckinghamshire, England. The mansion where “Truly Scrumptious” lived is in the same area of the country. And the Scrumptious Sweets Company was a working factory in Middlesex (today a steam-engine museum). But it was the castle and village in Vulgaria I really wanted to see. Not long after seeing the movie of course, I learned “Vulgaria” was a fictitious country. Baron Bomburst didn’t actually lord over the land, nor did he ever keep all those children as slaves beneath his castle. But the castle and the village are based on actual places. The village is Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria. The castle is Castle Neuschwanstein, also in Bavaria. And how ironic; both locations were inspirations for Disney as well: Rothenburg for the village in “Pinocchio”, and Neuschwanstein for the Cinderella castles in the theme parks.

To bring my journey full-circle, Rothenburg, Castle Neuschwanstein, and Bavaria sit in southwest Germany, adjacent to… the Black Forest. Germany’s version of the Forest is a mountainous land of picturesque villages, castles, vineyards and spas. This is the region that brought the world Black Forest Ham and “truly scrumptious” Black Forest Cake. This is the land of glass-making and cuckoo clocks. From the photos above, it looks every bit as charming as “Vulgaria”.

Colorado’s Black Forest barely amounts to a dot on Google Maps. Within our pines, the “town” is a hodge-podge of nondescript businesses clustered around a couple of traffic signals, with nothing more alluring than a Subway, a post office, and a couple of coffee shops. The terrain is fairly flat, with no windmill cottages or mountaintop castles or cuckoo clocks. But it’s a great place to live, with its own unique charm. And every now and then, when I’m deep in the pines, I’ll start humming that forever-familiar Chitty-Chitty tune, as I gaze up to the skies in search of a flying motorcar.

The Euphoria of Joe

Today I’m perched at one of my favorite Colorado coffeehouses, sipping the local version of a cafe latte. The air is rich with the bitter aroma from the nearby roaster. I’m surrounded by chatty patrons, each with their own coffee-based delight-in-a-cup. If I had a handful of the crunchy chocolate-covered espresso beans they sell, I could say coffee’s hitting all five of my senses today (instead, I have a delicious apple fritter). These days, coffee is as infused into American culture as baseball and Apple (pie). And how far we’ve come from the cups of Joe former generations would brew with store-bought cans of Folgers.

How far have we come (besides the requisite latte foam-art)? Consider this: my coffeehouse does not allow to-go orders. You read that right: if you get your coffee here you’re drinking in-house. According to the resident “roastmaster”, paper cups alter the flavor of the coffee and thus they won’t sell it to-go. Hard for me to swallow (the cup thing, not the coffee), as my palate has never been very discerning. Yet here I am, paying top dollar to drink real-cup coffee “in the house”.

It wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago all you had on the menu was a “cup of coffee”. Take it black or take it with sugar/cream, but that’s where your options ended. And the reference to “Joe”? That comes from a 1914 ban of alcohol on U.S. Navy ships by then Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Joe” Daniels. The strongest alternative to a “real” drink on-board was black coffee.

Today’s kids get their first taste of coffee at Starbucks. My own first taste took place in Italy, during the college year I lived there in the 1980’s. Italians take their coffee very seriously. Walk into an Italiano café, belly up to the bar, and order an espresso shot and sweet roll. That’s your standard-brand Italian breakfast, and you take it standing up. You’re in, you’re out, and you’re on your way again in less than a minute, sufficiently caffeinated. Not many are baptized on straight espresso, but that was my experience.

My coffee journey continued after college, but it was quite a stumble. I graduated from Italian espresso and regressed to the standard-brand Bunn coffeemakers of corporate America. Starbucks and its kin would not arrive for another 5-10 years. Office coffee was a mindless, characterless, tasteless experience. A Styrofoam cup of black nothingness, with a few unbrewed grounds thrown in for texture. It was like descending from the Golden Age of the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages.

Thankfully, my coffee habits persisted until coffeehouses became an American staple in the late 1980’s. The houses themselves still aren’t the vision of Starbucks’ Howard Schultz: “comfortable, social gathering places away from home and work”, but at least we’re getting past the Frappuccino-this and macchiato-that, evolving back to straight coffee.

My one dedicated-cash phone app is for coffee. I literally wake up and smell the coffee thanks to my Keurig; then structure my waking hours with the possibility of a drive-through cup of Joe later on. To get really serious I could spend $200 on a Ninja’s home coffee bar, which claims to be a coffee system (“Variety of brew types and sizes!” “Built-in frother!” “Tons of delicious coffee recipes!) Their tagline: “See what all the coffee buzz is about”.

Coffee buzz is no joke, as patrons of America’s 33,000 coffee shops will tell you. The euphoria we desire – the blissful effects drawn from caffeine – actually has a name: “margaha”. For that reason, whether your preference is a nitrogen-infused cold brew, a coconut-milk mocha Macchiato, or a take-it-straight cup of Joe, it’s safe to say coffee is here to stay.

Pan-Pacific Keepsake

A year ago I wrote a piece called Athens of the South, a reference to the city of Nashville and its remarkable full-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon in downtown Centennial Park. The Nashville Parthenon is a leftover from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. If you ever visit the ruins of the real Parthenon, you might want to add Nashville to the itinerary to see how the structure looked in its full splendor.

Shortly after my trip to Nashville, I traveled to San Francisco for my niece’s wedding. She chose a remarkable venue for her ceremony – outdoors under the dome of the elegant Palace of Fine Arts, near the Golden Gate Bridge in the Marina District. The Palace, as it turns out, has much in common with the Nashville Parthenon. Despite more popular attractions, both structures belong on the “must-see” lists of their respective cities.

The Palace of Fine Arts, like the Nashville Parthenon, is one of the few remaining structures from its World’s Fair; in this case San Francisco’s 1915 Pan[ama]-Pacific International Exposition. Typical of a World’s Fair, the Pan-Pacific showcased products, inventions, and cultures of the day, and remained open to the public for almost a year. The 600+ acres of San Francisco’s Marina District (where I rented my first post-college apartment) served as the Exposition’s central footprint, with the Palace on the west end and “The Zone” of amusements and concessions on the east (near Fort Mason). Even though the Pan-Pacific’s structures were designed from plaster and burlap – to literally fall to pieces after a year, a few have been preserved to this day. The Civic (Bill Graham) Auditorium is a Pan-Pacific structure in its original location. The Japanese Tea House was loaded onto a barge and shipped down the bay to the town of Belmont, where it still stands today as a restaurant. Two of the Exposition’s state pavilions (Wisconsin, Virginia) were relocated to nearby Marin County.

The Pan-Pacific Exposition – like the Tennessee Centennial – brimmed with remarkable structures, including ten exhibition “palaces” and the 435-ft. tall Tower of Jewels. Surely none of these were more elegant than the Palace of Fine Arts. My first visit to the Palace was back in the 1970’s, when it housed the Exploratorium, a kid’s-dream hands-on maze of exhibits showcasing the wonders of mechanics, physics, and chemistry. The Exploratorium filled the Palace’s Exhibition Hall for 44 years before moving to its current location in the Embarcadero. The Exhibition Hall was all about art for the Pan-Pacific, but it’s had several creative uses since, including tennis courts, storage of military trucks and jeeps, and a temporary fire department.

Let’s be honest though – the Exhibition Hall is not why you visit the Palace of Fine Arts; at least not anymore. You’ll be captivated by the glorious Roman/Greek-inspired structure of dome, rotunda, and adjoining pergolas instead. Take a walk between the colonnades to get a sense of its monumental scale. Have a picnic on the grassy shores of the lagoon. The Palace’s best photo opp: on the east side of the water under the Australian eucalyptus trees. Your view is uninterrupted, and mirrored in the water’s reflection. It’s a popular spot for wedding photos, as my wife and I discovered thirty years ago:

Personal connections or not, I like to think of the Palace of Fine Arts as a large-scale keepsake; a reminder of those simpler-yet-somehow-more-elegant days and generations gone by. Perhaps the Palace gazes forlornly to the east, seeking the grandeur and crowds of the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exhibition. Perhaps she’s content to just watch over the parade of newlyweds on the far side of the lagoon. Either way, I’m glad she’s still around. Like the Nashville Parthenon, the Palace of Fine Arts is fine art.

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

Refuge and Reassurance

When the world goes off the rails like it did this week in Las Vegas, the very human reaction is fight or flight. Fight as in help to those who were impacted. Flight as in shelter; consolation from an incomprehensible tragedy. My own flight, in extreme instances like this one, sometimes takes the form of fond memories of a journey my wife and I made five years ago, to a remote village on the west coast of Ireland called Clifden.

For those who travel to Ireland, Clifden is rarely on the itinerary. It’s a four-hour cross-country drive from Dublin, and the final ninety minutes meander along a two-lane road through the forested expanse of Connemara National Park. Clifden has a modest history for all of its two hundred years on the map. The town evolved from farmers and fishermen who lived in the region, its commerce bolstered by the heir of a nearby castle. Like most towns in Ireland, Clifden suffered the blight of the potato famine and the onslaughts of rebels from the north. Its only claim to fame is the location of Marconi’s first wireless telegraphy station to the near south, broadcasting messages across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia in 1905. Today Clifden has 2,000 inhabitants, still looking the part of “two churches, two hotels, three schools, and 23 pubs” it boasted in the early 1800’s.

As my wife and I discovered, Clifden is the very definition of “off the beaten path”. We stumbled upon its welcoming neighborhood very much by chance. Our intended stop was Galway that day, but once in the city-center (and having survived a five-lane roundabout), we yearned for something smaller and less urban. Heading north along the coast and with dusk turning to dark, we experienced the thrill of the uncertainty of locating our as-yet-unknown destination.

After a middle-of-the-road stop for a funeral procession (popular guy, judging from the dozens of people descending upon the nearby church), and then passing by the dignified Kylemore Abbey, little Clifden emerged from the coastal fog. We stopped into the first bed-and-breakfast we could find, but there were no rooms at such a late hour. Instead, we were directed to the larger/older Foyle’s Hotel a couple of streets away. What a blessing in disguise. Foyle’s was the perfect introduction to the charms of Clifden. A turn-of-the-century grand dame with wide hallways, creaking stairs, and no elevator, we felt like we’d stepped back in time a century or more. Dinner was served in an elegant main-level salon just off the reception area, soft music playing in the background. Our spacious room looked down on the center of town from one of the second-floor windows you see here.

The next morning, we took to Clifden on foot, wandering its quaint, narrow, up-and-down streets. We stopped in at Walsh’s Bakery for breakfast, walking away with a few of the more tempting choices from the case. We then stopped in at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, one of the two spires accenting Clifden’s modest skyline. We climbed to the higher part of town for a look down to the lazy harbor activity along the quay. More than any sight or sound, we simply embraced Clifden for what it was; a quiet seaside village; is inhabitants contentedly going about their business. In contrast to bright and busy Dublin, Clifden summoned a much-needed deep breath and a moment of halcyon reflection.

Perhaps our travels will bring us back to Clifden someday. But the more I consider the idea the less inclined I am to make it happen. Our idyllic experience was predicated on the chance decisions making our visit happen in the first place, the wandering road leading us to its cobblestone streets, and the saving grace of vacancy at the Foyle’s Hotel.

In Gaelic, Clifden means “stepping stones”. That’s a nice coincidence, since my fond memories seem to guide me back to a more content frame of mind. I keep the following illustration in my home office. With just a glance I can find reassuring refuge once again.

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

Carefree Highways

Here’s a connect-the-dots challenge, tapping what’s left of your road-trip driving fever from Labor Day weekend. Pull up Google Maps, pick two towns on opposite edges of the continental United States, and see if you can discover the longest driving trip. The only rules: you must start and end with U.S. cities, and your answer must be the blue line (not the grey line alternatives).

My first guess on Google Maps (above) is effectively the longest drive between the borders of Mexico and Canada. San Ysidro in California wouldn’t exist if not for the busy border crossing just to the south. Van Buren in Maine wouldn’t exist if not for a small group of Nova Scotia citizens exiled from Canada in 1785. As you can see, my southwest to northeast traverse gets me 3,291 miles of driving and takes more than two days (including a wealth of bathroom stops). In the process, I pass through ten U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. Label this trip a long-distance segue from “Ole!” to “Eh?”

My second guess chooses a sun-starved soul north of Seattle, seeking some beach time in the Florida Keys (though someone named Irma would object right about now). Our friend finishes his oyster stew in tiny Blaine, WA; points his car to the southeast, and arrives in Key West, FL two-and-a-half days later, just in time for a twilight margarita with Jimmy Buffett. His drive also passes through ten states (like my first guess) but lasts 3,559 miles. If our friend finished in Miami he’d drive the same distance as my first guess, but Highway 1 – further south through the Florida Keys – buys him a 160-mile tiebreaker.

A recent Wall Street Journal article asserts we Americans are endlessly romanced by the allure of the open road (a “four-wheeled traipse” if you will), and the Labor Day holiday conveniently marks the end of the summer travel season. Thus, you get a lot of drivers on the first weekend in September – 600,000 in Colorado alone, or 11% of the state’s population. That translates to over 3.5 million road-trippers across the entire United States. Traffic jam, anyone?

In the prehistoric times of street-corner pay phones and folding road maps (read: 1970’s), the American Automobile Association (AAA) offered a service called “Triptik”. Go to an AAA office, tell ’em where you want to go, and they’d hand you a step-by-step book of maps “prepared expressly for you”. My parents gave me a Triptik – and all the station wagon gas I needed – as a high-school graduation present. My buddy and I created a Western States round-trip starting in Los Angeles, driving as far north as Montana, as far east as South Dakota, and returning through the Southwestern states. Our aim was to hit as many national parks as possible. We spent a few nights in motels (on our own dime), but most nights in sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon. No agenda, no worries – just a couple of teenagers making a ton of memories on the open road.

On the topic of road trips, I owe a nod to America’s beloved “Main Street” – U.S. Route 66. Though nowhere close to the longest road trip in the U.S., Route 66 is certainly the most renowned. Built in 1926, the “Mother Road” ran from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles – fully 2,448 miles. Early 1900’s migration to the Western U.S. owes some of its success to 66, and all those road-trippers “got their kicks” at the hundreds of restaurants and motels born along the highway. It wasn’t until 1985 – sixty years later – the last remnants of Route 66 were replaced by newer segments of the U.S. Interstate Highway System.

Now then; time to solve the Google Maps challenge (with a twist). The winner of the point-to-point American road trip is some nearby version of my second guess above: Washington to Florida. However, for my money I’d much prefer the drive from Oregon to Massachusetts (above). The twist? You can do it all on one ridiculously long highway! U.S. Route 20 – “The Big Daddy” – starts in little Newport, Oregon (pop. 10,000) and ends in Boston (pop. 673,000). You’ll cover 12 states and 3,154 miles before you hit the checkered flag. It’ll take you almost two days without stopping, but please stop. Along the way you’ll find the Idaho Potato Museum, Yellowstone National Park, “Carhenge” (a Stonehenge homage made entirely of autos!), Iowa’s Field of Dreams, Hall of Fame’s for RV’s/motor-homes, rock & roll, and baseball; and most importantly, the Jell-O Gallery Museum, your one-stop-shop + tribute to the jiggly dessert. C’mon, how you gonna top that road trip (with a dollop of whipped cream?)

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

Flying in the Face of Reason

If you’ve traveled across the United States more than a handful of times, chances are you’ve passed through Denver International Airport (DIA). There aren’t many connecting airports in the Rocky Mountain states, so DIA gets most of the east-west air traffic. The sharp peaks of the main terminal roof fabric serve as the signature design element, symbolic of the nearby snow-capped mountains (and Native American teepees from Colorado’s history). DIA’s land mass of 52.6 square miles is twice the size of Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), making it far and away the largest airport in the country. A “cutting-edge” automated baggage system became an infamous failure back when DIA opened, causing a 16-month delay and ballooning the budget by $2 billion.

But enough about the facts. I’d rather focus on the conspiracy theories attached to DIA; the conjecture to make your airport experience a little more entertaining. Clearly, there’s more going on at Denver International than just takeoffs and landings.

Let’s start with DIA’s biggest conspiracy of all. Remember the movie The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks; the wild-goose chase across Western Europe in search of the Holy Grail? Tom should’ve included DIA in his travels because the newest Illuminati headquarters is located several stories beneath the airport. The DIA dedication capstone inside the main terminal (and several cryptic words inscribed in the terminal floor) serve as hints, referring to funding from the “New World Airport Commission” (NWAC), a wholly fictitious organization (Google NWAC – you won’t find anything). As is the case with conspiracy theories, NWAC somehow associated to the Illuminati, including their efforts to establish a single all-powerful global government. Controlling America’s largest airport certainly helps. That $2 billion of budget overrun apparently built the headquarters – a complete working underground city.

NWAC also associates to NWO – or New World Order – a more believable conspiracy theory tied to world domination. NWO is said to be a resurgent Nazi group, so perhaps the Third Reich financed DIA as its future headquarters. At least you’ll find symbolism on the map: DIA’s runways are laid out in the shape of a swastika. (DIA prefers “pinwheel” as the more politically correct term.) So, if not the Illuminati, the Nazis are amassing under DIA. What say the rest of the world’s leaders? Crickets. They’re sitting back and letting the Nazis foot the bill. They see DIA’s “underground bunker” as a refuge for their own safety during the next apocalypse (a conspiracy theory of its own). They’ll pounce on the Nazi facility if/when they need to.

DIA contains a lot of artwork too, but the large murals in the baggage claim area are particularly disturbing. Titled In Peace and Harmony With Nature and The Children of the World Dream of Peace, some interpret them as anything but “peaceful”. The imagery suggests apocalyptic bio-warfare leading to mass chaos; step one of the NWO plan of world domination. Even if that’s not your interpretation, you won’t overlook the image of the ghostly Nazi soldier, or the epitaph from a child who perished at Auschwitz.

Here’s one more conspiracy theory. DIA has “Blue Mustang”, the 32-foot tall 9,000 lb. rearing horse as you approach the main terminal by car. “Blucifer” is solid blue with creepy red eyes, glowing day and night. Ask Luis Jimenez – the artist – why he chose blue and red, but he won’t reply to your email. He was killed during the statue’s construction when a piece fell on him and severed an artery in his leg. For this reason (and the bizarre colors), Blucifer is said to represent the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, from the biblical book of Revelations. So, take comfort; Death awaits you at the door of DIA (or at least in the morgue supposedly hidden somewhere inside the facility).

For more details on Denver International’s conspiracy theories, check out the entertaining Buzzfeed article here, or the Business Insider article here. My favorite part of the Buzzfeed article: the comments that follow, where several way-too-serious types debate the legitimacy of the claims. To them I say, life’s too short. Let the conspiracy theories bloom, if for no other reason than we might grin a little more as we bear our oft-nightmarish airport experience.

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

Go For a Drive

Imagine the conversation you’re having with your grandson several years from now, where you’re waxing nostalgic about a favorite car you used to own. You’re smiling into the details, remembering how your stylish sedan hugged the open highway curves at a crisp 75 mph; how the in-dash digital receiver cranked favorite tunes via smartphone; how the feel of the steering wheel leather gave you the perfect combination of comfort and control. Only then, your grandson interrupts you and says, “what’s a steering wheel“?

This week, the Wall Street Journal published a make-you-pause article titled “Your Next Car May Be a Living Room on Wheels”. The subject matter is the technological luxuries in a vehicle where “driving” is no longer necessary. Forward-facing seats rotate to face each other, perhaps around a central console. Touchscreens – to control the vehicle; cameras – to enlarge the outside views; movie screens – simply for entertainment; each of these appear on the window glass with simple voice commands. Microwaves, refrigerators and ice chests hide nearby for always-available snacking. In other words, the very definition of “car” gets turned on its ear. Your grandson won’t even know what a “dashboard” is.

Your grandson won’t remember “The Jetsons” either – the Hanna-Barbera animated sitcom from the early 1960’s. In a mere twenty-four episodes, “The Jetsons” gave us a peek into a fascinatingly advanced world of the future. George Jetson and his family enjoyed luxuries only present in a 1960’s imagination, like robot housekeepers or in-home treadmills. The Jetsons lived in a high-rise apartment building floating in space. My favorite concept: the “aerocar”. There were no roads in George’s world, so he and his family bopped around in a airborne car. Per the illustration above, the aerocar is effectively a flying saucer with a transparent bubble top. I still hear the sound of its little engine.

At least George still drives, which is the premise of this post. No matter how advanced the mode of transportation, I want the option to navigate whenever my heart desires. If my family and I are heading out for a Sunday jaunt, I want to be able to steer us wherever the wind blows. Maybe that’s the provider in me, or maybe that’s just driving for the sheer enjoyment of it. We need our steering wheels.

Flying cars are closer to reality than you might think. Airbus, Uber and a handful of other companies have created concept “cars” that take-off and land vertically – no wings. No rotors either, like you’d see on a helicopter. Yet some models – like Airbus’s “Vahana” – are designed to be pilot-less. What fun is that? Who’s at the controls? Sounds like going for a ride in an oversized drone. Regardless, even with perfect technology the real hurdles with flying cars lie in regulating airborne travel. There must be rules. You’d better believe the environmentalists will have a seat at the table too.

In my childhood days at Disneyland, I was led to believe monorails were the future mode of transportation. I pictured vast elevated networks of elegantly formed concrete spreading out across the country, with graceful trains slithering along topside at impressive speeds. Alas, Disney’s monorail in Florida – at 14.7 miles – remains one of the longest of its kind. Only two others, in Japan and China, claim more riders. Monorails just never took.

Maglev (magnetic levitation) replaced monorails as the potential mass-transit solution of modern times. Magnets are super-efficient, providing both lift and propulsion towards a high-speed, low-friction, no-moving-parts solution. Assuming an aesthetically-pleasing design, even the environmentalists would be on board with zero-emissions engines. But there’s always a negative. In this case, costs of maglev are projected at $50-$100 million per mile. No wonder the few installations around the world travel very short distances.

Even if we mapped America with arteries of monorails or maglev, I’d still find dissatisfaction in the notion no one’s driving the bus. More to the point, I am not driving the bus. But at least we’re talking about mass-transit here; an option I chose willingly over my own car. If I’m not “licensed to drive” I’m happy to leave the controls to someone else.

Living rooms on wheels will be tough for me to swallow. The focus has shifted from enjoyment of the drive to enjoyment of the ride. Maybe I should’ve seen this coming when automatic transmissions became an option to stick-shift. Certainly it hit me over the head when Uber debuted its self-driving fleet. Sir, please step away from the controls.

Here is my futile plea for now: don’t take away my steering wheel. Let me have the option to play pilot. At the very least, give me a set of handlebars and a little weight-shift control.

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

North Pole Vault

One of these days I’m going to visit Norway. The allure of Arctic glaciers, fjords, and waterfalls beckons me to snowshoe north of the Baltic Sea. My wife and I toured Denmark and Sweden a few years back, but if I were to choose only one of the Scandinavian countries it would be Norway. I must have a little Viking blood in me. In fact, my AncestryDNA results say I have about 14%.

Besides its spectacular natural environs, Norway is known for hearty wooden structures that dot the land. Stave churches – quaint, timber-framed buildings from medieval times – can still be found in many of the villages. One of the most famous is likely the most recognizable structure in Norway – the Urnes church in Songnefjorden (above photo), built back in 1130 and still standing today.

Here’s an even bolder proposition for my Norway expedition. After I make the pilgrimage to the Urnes church, I could hop a plane four hours to the north, to the island of Spitsbergen in the remote archipelago of Svalbard. I’m still in Norway but I’m a whole lot closer to the North Pole. And it is here, 430 feet above sea level, I would find what may become the future most recognizable structure in Norway: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The Svalbard Seed Vault is exactly what it sounds like – a place to store seeds. Why would a country spend more than $9 million to build a seed vault? Because bad things happen in this world, putting our food supply at risk. After reading about Svalbard I learned there’s an entire network of seed vaults around the globe (including one right here in Colorado). These vaults contain food crop seed samples in the event the world “runs out” someday. But even the vaults themselves have no guarantees. The national seed bank of the Philippines was destroyed by fire, and the seed banks in Afghanistan and Iraq were lost to the ravages of war. That’s where Svalbard comes to the rescue.

Svalbard is the “seed vault for the seed vaults”. Think of it as a library. If one of the world’s vaults needs a replenishment of seeds (or some global crisis destroys the vault entirely), they “borrow” packets from Svalbard. Once more seeds are generated, a portion of them are returned to Svalbard to restore the library. Almost 900,000 food crop varietals are represented in Svalbard – by half a billion seeds. The facility is the size of a football field and all those seeds don’t even make it to the fifty-yard line. Plenty of room left for more.

Svalbard is likely the most secure seed vault on the planet because it’s buried four hundred feet inside a sandstone mountain, encased in the Arctic’s permafrost. Svalbard recently made the news when the vault flooded from snow melt and early season rain (that’s not supposed to happen – global warming anyone?) But the water didn’t make it any further than the vault’s entrance tunnel before it froze again. Sounds like all those seeds will be cold, dry, and undisturbed for a long time – just as the vault intends them to be.

Here’s another reason to like Norway. Government-constructed projects exceeding a certain cost must include artwork. Svalbard was expensive enough, so the seed vault entrance is decorated with stainless steel, mirrors, and prisms, reflecting the polar light of the summer months. In the winter, the entrance is illuminated with greens and turquoises and whites through fiber-optic cables. With this installation we get to appreciate the “importance and qualities of Arctic light”. Pretty cool.

Sadly, if my Norway sojourn ever included the Svalbard Seed Vault, I wouldn’t get past the entrance. There’s no receptionist (nor any other staff members 0n-site). Instead the facility is monitored from a remote location around the clock. You have to pass through five levels of security to get to the seeds themselves. Tourists like me have no shot.

I won’t be getting to the Arctic anytime soon after all. As for Norway, I’ll have to be content with a visit to a Stave church or two. But I’m grateful for the Svalbard vault all the same. On that note, I think I’ll head over to Home Depot and buy a few seed packets for my summer garden.

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