travel – Page 2 – Life In A Word

Swimming Upstream

I can think of a dozen name brands I gotten hooked on for years, only to see them suddenly disappear from the shelves, never to return. Breakfast cereals. Hair spray. Cars. And what do we do when this happens? Simply find another brand and get used to it – easy-peasy. But when your streaming television service drops an essential channel, you can’t just jump to the next provider. Try that and you’ll hit your head on the cage they have you securely locked into.

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’re probably tuned into my topic today. YouTube TV – which provides me the five channels of streaming television I care about (and 95 forgettable others), dropped ESPN from its lineup. It wasn’t like they warned us months ago they were renegotiating with Disney (ESPN’s parent), and that these talks weren’t going so well. Instead they alerted us last Thursday just before midnight – with an email coyly titled “An update on our partnership with Disney”. Then, the following morning, ESPN was gone. On Halloween. How fitting.

Without going into the weeds on why ESPN was dropped, let’s just call it the proverbial contract dispute. Disney wants one number. YouTube TV wants another. A stalemate akin to what we’re seeing in Washington right now. Yes, what D.C. is blocking is so much more important than a television sports channel. But when you’re a die-hard college football fan you can relate to losing an “essential service”.

Getting my ESPN back is not like choosing another breakfast cereal. If only it were that easy. Instead, we have to shift to an entirely different grocery aisle. Make that an entirely different supermarket. As soon as YouTube TV dropped ESPN, Disney was only too happy to promote its own streaming service. Sign up for Disney+, including ESPN and Hulu!!! Only $29.95 per month – a savings of $5/month!!! Only twelve months of subscription required!!!

All those exclamation points are a ruse, as if this is a service I can’t live without. Disney Channel? Not my thing. Hulu? I’m already getting enough entertainment on Netflix. I just want ESPN please. And apparently I should be happy to pay a minimum of $360 for it, in addition to my monthly $80 for YouTube TV.

Bless our tech-savvy children. We turn to them for all things electronic. I checked in with one of my sons – who is every bit the college football fanatic I am – and he came to my rescue. Fubo – a streaming service looking like a twin to YouTube TV – offers a free one-week trial that includes ESPN. It’s kind of like Congress signing a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open. Now I have another seven days to figure out what to do.

YouTube TV promises a credit if the lack of negotiations with Disney continues long enough (sorry, the same does not apply to our government). But I can’t necessarily wait for that credit. In one week I’ve got to decide if I’m a YouTube TV guy or a Fubo one. Can’t have both (at least, according to my budget).

Of course, it feels almost inevitable that Fubo will run into a contract dispute with Disney as well. So even if I go that route I could lose ESPN again. Maybe I’m getting forced into a Disney+ subscription after all? But another $360/year? No way. I’d sooner get on a plane and go watch my college football games in person. Er, assuming the FAA doesn’t cancel my flights. Swimming upstream indeed. Sigh…

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #3

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

We resumed our fountain build this week with more confidence than the last, accompanied by the merriment of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Bags 6 and 7 – of 15 bags of pieces – were filled with tiny, tiny finger-numbing LEGOs, and at times I wondered just what the heck I was putting together. Didn’t look like the makings of a fountain to me.

According to LEGO, water is white and blue. I suppose the white is meant to be rushing water (as in “waterfall”) while the blue is calm water (as in “pool”). We shall see. But check out the look of the fountain in the final photo. Anyone else see a monster’s mouth with white teeth?

Since this is my fifth LEGO model, it’s high time I make the following proclamation: LEGO never leaves out a piece. Never. I still have moments where I’m searching through a pile of pieces in vain for the one I need. I almost get to the feeling of “it’s not here”. But suddenly there the little guy is, staring up at me as if to say, “What took you so long?” Some day I’d love to see how LEGO pulls this off. Thousands of pieces in every box, not a single one of them left out. That’s some logistical magic going on there.

I’m proud to say I made zero mistakes on the build this time around, a dramatic improvement from a week ago. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. I left a piece off the back of the fountain, but immediately discovered my error when I added a section and realized there was nothing to support it. Fixed in a jiffy, but the merry instruments on Paganini’s violin concerto sounded even more gleeful as they saw my confidence take a hit.

Running build time: 2 hrs. 27 min.

Total leftover pieces: 13

Chain (Saw) Reaction

When your kids celebrate you on Mother’s Day, you get flowers and chocolates; maybe even a homemade breakfast. When your kids celebrate you on Father’s Day, you get a gift card to Home Depot or Lowe’s, which is awesome. My kids are perceptive enough to know there’s always something I need for the workshop, so that little plastic rectangle of credit always brings a smile. But what I need is always trumped by what I want. Like power tools.

A polesaw is one of the cooler power tools out there (especially if you have a use for it). A polesaw is essentially a chain saw mounted on top of twelve feet of plastic pipe. At the bottom is the trigger. It’s like the world’s longest rifle, only you’re spinning chain saw blades instead of firing bullets. Picture the head and neck of a very thin giraffe. Or something out of a horror movie you’d watch this Halloween.

Polesaws are perfect for cutting down those overhead tree branches you cannot reach. You avoid the whole fall-off-the-ladder thing, which is fine with me since I’ve done it before. And with today’s super-batteries, you’re not tethered to a cord or a gas tank. Which brings me to my real story.

After purchasing my brand new Craftsman polesaw at Lowe’s – and barely fitting it into the back of my SUV – I headed on home eager to try it out. Charge up the battery, unsheathe the chain saw blade, and get to chopping down branches. When I did get home however, I realized my most basic of blunders: I had no battery. Right there on the box in plain English: TOOL ONLY. BATTERY AND CHARGER SOLD SEPARATELY. Talk about “buzz kill”.

A few days later I made it back to Lowe’s. Found the battery (the last one!), as well as an employee to escort me to check-out to make sure I paid. I get it – those batteries are expensive – more than the pole saw itself in fact. Okay, so now I have my pole saw and my battery. When I got home again however, I discovered my next blunder. It’s just a battery. It’s not a battery and a charger. Without a charger, a battery is just a bunch of chemicals housed in a case. Good grief, Charlie Brown! (with a whack on the forehead)

The next time I went to Lowe’s – where they now know me on a first-name basis – I found the charger. But here’s the problem. The charger comes with a battery, versus being sold all on its own. In other words, I have to buy a battery I don’t need. Okay, so I’ll return the first one. But after another employee escort to check-out and a little thought, I realized my biggest blunder of them all. I’d already unpacked and installed the first battery on the polesaw. Now I have a polesaw, a battery, a charger… and another battery I can no longer return. Needless to say, I’m well past the amount of my Father’s Day gift card by now.

I like to end every story with good news. The polesaw advertises “325 cuts per battery charge”. In other words, I’m never gonna need that second battery. Sure looks lonely sitting there on the workbench. Guess I just found me an excuse to buy another Craftsman power tool!

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #1

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Our LEGO Trevi Fountain already feels like it’s flowing after just 3 bags – of 15 bags of pieces. You know this is going to be quick construction when I’m showing evidence of “brick wall” and “waterfall” just twenty percent into the build.

The rust on my LEGO skills was apparent from the first bag. I assembled the first two pieces incorrectly, thought I was missing a piece (which you always find later), and questioned why I ended up with an extra piece (which is LEGO’s way of saying, “in case you lose one”). Bag 2 had similar challenges. And Bag 3 was a little more difficult because you get lost in all those dreamy shades of blue. There was a moment when I placed an entire section of the fountain too far forward, corrected it, and thought, “Wow, Travertine is hard to move!”

For my fountain-building accompaniment, I thought it would be appropriate to listen the to the works of classical Italian composers. For today’s portion, I went with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”. Bag 1 took me through “Spring” while Bag 2 took me through “Summer”. Bag 3 required the other two seasons. But as you can see, I already have a four-seasons pool I could throw coins into!

Running build time: 1 hr. 5 min.

Total leftover pieces: 2

Brick Wall Waterfall

If you were to spend an entire year in Rome, you could visit five churches every day and still miss out on some of the more than 1,600 within the city limits. You could also visit five piazzas (public squares) and never see all 2,000. If monuments are your thing, Rome has so many that instead of an actual count they simply say “more than any other city in the world”. And then we have Rome’s fountains. You could dip your hand in five a day and never see them all in a year. So here’s a better idea. Just spend a few hours at the Trevi and assume all of the others are second best.

I wouldn’t decree “best fountain in all of Rome” if I hadn’t been there and seen it for myself. I spent a college year in the Eternal City studying architecture, and you can’t help noticing the other elements of the city while you’re at it. Like fountains on every street corner. The Trevi Fountain was walking distance from the hotel/dorm we Americans lived in, so you can bet I stood before the Trevi’s gushing waterfalls many a day. Even a few nights.

Most people assume “Trevi” is an Italian word. It’s actually two words mashed into one. Tre = three, vie = ways. The Trevi is located at the intersection of three streets. It’s also the terminus for an aqueduct from ancient times. Water is picked up from a source outside of the city, carried over fourteen miles through the aqueduct, and deposited “with a splash” at the Trevi, to be further dispersed to the city underground.

Here’s a little more trivia on the Trevi. It was designed and built in the 1700s, on the back wall of a palace. It’s primary material is travertine stone (pricey!) quarried from nearby Tivoli. Besides the columns, arches, and niches along the wall, you have quite the trove of imagery going on over the water, with mythological creatures like tritons and hippocamps. I have no idea who the sculpted figures gazing down from either side are, but the big guy front and center is Oceanus, a pre-Olympian god.

If you’re a top-five tourist attraction in Rome, you must be pretty darned attractive for a city with countless places to visit. Maybe it’s the coin thing. Why do tourists stand with their backs to the fountain and toss three coins over their shoulder into the water (right hand, left shoulder)? Because legend says they’ll return to Rome some day if they do. “Legend” is really just Hollywood, from the movie Three Coins in the Fountain. But if you really know your Trevi trivia, you say the tossed coins follow the ancient tradition of honoring the gods of the waters, granting you safe passage home.

I’ve talked about the Trevi before, in Too Many Roads Lead to Rome. The fountain has become so popular you now need a ticket and a specific time to stand in front of it. But what I haven’t done before is build the Trevi. Last spring, the “architects” at LEGO immortalized the fountain in a 731-piece model, which I will construct over the next several blog posts. I haven’t put my hands on a piece of LEGO since Notre-Dame du Paris last January (which still beckons me to add its lighting kit). I might be a little rusty at this. The fountain might leak a little. But I’m up for a dip in this brick wall waterfall if you are.

Author’s Note: The title of this post was inspired by the strange-but-sweet Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. The movie included a little ditty my thirty-one year old daughter can still recite to this day: “Brick wall, waterfall, Dickie thinks he got it all but he don’t, and I do, so BOOM with that attitude. Peace punch, Cap’n Crunch, I’ve got something you can’t touch. Bang-bang choo-choo train, wind me up I do my thing. No Reese’s Pieces, 7-Up, you mess with me, I’ll mess you up.”

Some content sourced from the TripAdvisor.com article, “Everything you need to know about the Trevi Fountain coins”; IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”; and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Horses on Circular Courses

In 1972, Billy Preston topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the catchy “Will It Go Round In Circles”. A year later, The Spinners spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard’s R&B chart with “I’ll Be Around”. More recently, Kacey Musgraves’ debut single “Merry Go ‘Round” won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song. All of which is to say, if I’m asked to celebrate “National Carousel Day” I have a great choice of theme songs for the occasion… played on endless loop, of course.

National Merry-Go-Round Day (I prefer “Carousel”) was this past July 25th, as it has been every year since 2014. Did you skip it like I did? The holiday claims to “celebrate the carousel’s history and joy, particularly marking the first U.S. patent by William Schneider in 1871.” And to celebrate, we’re meant to visit a local carousel, go for a spin, and post pictures of ourselves doing so online. So we drop everything we’re doing on July 25th and climb on a wooden horse? National M-G-R Day doesn’t even rate as a Hallmark holiday (and don’t waste your time trying to find a card to prove me wrong).

Contrary to my opinion about M-G-R Day, I think carousels are charming and a bit of innocent fun (other than those brass rings, which we’ll get to in a second). Carousels inspired memorable scenes in Mary Poppins and Big. Carousel was the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that Time magazine deemed “the best of the 20th century”. The “Carousel of Progress” was (and still is) one of the more unique attractions at Disneyland. And of course, carousels led to those pipe and metal spinners we all played on at the park when we were kids.

Carousel is derived from the French word for “little battle”, which hints at why we’re riding them at all today. In 17th century Europe, equestrian tournaments included “ring jousting”, where the rider attempts to spear a ring-on-a-string with his joust as he flies by. To practice this sport without wearing out the horses, a clever soul invented the carousel, complete with wooden horses on poles and a real horse to pull the device in circles. Eventually carousels made their way into carnivals, and then to the prominent locations where you find them today.

Now you also understand why early carousels had ring dispensers. They were a nod to ring jousting! The dispensers were filled with iron rings along with a few brass ones. If you were lucky enough to ride an outside horse and grab a brass ring (which is harder than it sounds as your horse goes up and down), you could exchange the ring for a prize or another loop on the carousel. For good reasons – safety being one – ring dispensers have been removed from most carousels today.

The people who came up with National M-G-R Day should’ve probably gone with “International”, because many of the world’s most distinguished carousels spin outside of the United States. The Carousel El Dorado in Tokyo, Japan, built in 1907, is the oldest amusement park ride still in operation in the country. The Lakeside Park Carousel in Ontario, Canada (1905) includes a self-playing organ that uses rolled sheets of music, rewinding one while playing the next. The Letná Carousel in Prague, Czechia (1892!) is one of the oldest in Europe, remodeled in 2022 but still housed in its original wooden pavilion.

America has its share of prominent “gallopers” as well. The Looff Carousel in Santa Cruz, CA is one of the few remaining with a ring dispenser, and entertains with the music of three organs. The Over-The-Jumps Carousel in Little Rock, AR (1924) simulates the natural movement of a horse instead of just going up and down on a pole. And the Flying Horse Carousel in Westerly, Rhode Island (1876!) is exactly as advertised. The horses are attached to the center spindle instead of the wooden platform, creating a better sensation of flying through the air.

Okay, I have a confession. I had the perfect opportunity to celebrate National M-G-R Day just days after it happened this year. My wife and I traveled to San Diego with our children and grandchildren for a beach vacation and found ourselves in Balboa Park, home of the Dorothea Laub Carousel (brass ring dispenser!) If we hadn’t already worn out the little ones on a long walk through the Japanese Friendship Garden we might’ve made it to the wooden horses. But I’m not losing sleep about it. After all, National M-G-R Day will come ’round again next year.

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

Ellen Makes Her Move

When we moved into our current house (and even the one before it), we made the classic mistake of saying, “We’re never moving again”. After all, picking up and going from one place to the next can be a real pain in the you-know-what, especially with pets and vehicles to relocate on top of the furniture and clothes. But at least we’re only talking about moving houses. What if you had to move an entire town?

If you live in an RV or a tiny home, you’d think nothing of pulling up stakes and going somewhere else. You have the wheels or the flatbed to make it happen. But moving an entire town means a population of people and a collection of structures. it sounds like something that could only happen on a Hollywood movie set. Unless you’re the U.S. government with its sights set on Ellenton, South Carolina.

Ellenton first appeared on a map the way a lot of small towns did back in the day. The railroad was interested in running new tracks through the farms of the area and a deal was made to acquire the land, including a plot for the train station. In Ellenton’s case, the railroad developer was smitten with the primary landowner’s daughter (Ellen). The relationship never blossomed but he did name the budding town after her. Thus we have “Ellen’s Town”, shortened to “Ellenton”.

Ellenton grew quickly in the late 1800s, from a host of agricultural productions to a working, living community of 600 residents. Eventually you’d find churches, schools, a post office, a general store, a dairy, and even a milling company and a cotton gin. But what nobody saw coming was the potential of the area for the construction of a massive facility know as the Savannah River Site (SRS). In the 1950’s in Cold War America, the U.S. government decided Ellenton and its surrounds were the perfect riverside location for plutonium and tritium production, for the development of the hydrogen bomb. Ellenton “won the lottery” over a hundred other locations.

I can’t imagine sitting in Ellenton’s town hall back when the announcement was made. Someone who drew a very short straw had to stand in front of the residents and say, “Sorry folks, we’re going to tear down your town so we need you to find somewhere else to live”. Then the government wrote checks for the properties and businesses and simply walked away. Eminent domain in capital letters.

I’ll admit I thought the government really did move Ellenton to another location. I pictured a cartoon image of the world’s largest spatula, sliding under Ellenton’s streets and buildings like an entire sheet cake, then dropping the whole mess several miles away. But I really thought the government moved Ellenton because we live right down the street from a town called New Ellenton. Turns out, New Ellenton is simply where a good chunk of the original residents chose to call home. The government had nothing to do with it.

Maybe the government didn’t move the living but the law required they move the dead. By the time Ellenton and several other small towns were acquired and shut down, the SRS property encompassed 310 square miles. That meant the relocation of 130 cemeteries, amounting to over 6,000 grave sites. They didn’t get every last one, so it’s fair to say old Ellenton still has a few residents.

The black-and-white photos I share here – from the Ellenton website – give the town a charming, old-timey feel. The few residents alive today hold reunions to share the memories of a place they can no longer see or even visit. Some of Ellenton’s stories make it sound very cozy. I wish I could say the same about New Ellenton, which is nothing more than a couple miles of highway with gas stations and bars scattered on either side. Frankly, the only reason you drive through New Ellenton is because you’re on your way to somewhere else.

I wouldn’t be nostalgic for Ellenton if the government didn’t make it disappear. Kind of reminds me of Brigadoon, the Scottish village that magically appeared out of the mist every hundred years. Maybe Ellenton will appear out of a nuclear winter on the hundredth anniversary of it’s own demise. In the meantime, a songwriter captured the story of the town in a rather sad ballad. “The Death of Ellenton” was never a big hit, but the town it celebrates sure took one.

Some content sourced from the WJBF website article, “Hometown History: The Forgotten Town of Ellenton”; the Ellenton SC website (including all photographs); and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

(Not So) Gently Down the Stream

The small gym I belong to has a fairly set routine with its instructor-led classes. You spend a half-hour on the treadmill and another half on the weight floor, effectively giving the heart and muscles equal attention. The runner in me prefers the treadmill but the brain in me knows – at my age – the weights are the more critical component. Now if only they didn’t throw in the rower every now and then.

If you belong to a gym yourself, I’d be curious to know what piece of equipment (or kind of workout) appeals to you most. Some people get lost in a treadmill run by following a virtual trail or listening to a really good playlist. Others stomp endlessly on the stair-stepper like they’re climbing the Empire State Building. Fans of the elliptical machine look like cross-country skiers going back-and-forth to nowhere. But where-oh-where are the rowing machines? Oh, they’re parked way over in the corner, just begging somebody to jump on.

I can’t remember when I first I tried the rower but I do remember thinking, there is nothing appealing whatsoever about this exercise. A straight back is critical to avoid injury (something I learned years later), and your arms and legs get a heckuva workout. But unlike say, planks, the workout on your abs is not as obvious. Not until later the same day at least, when you can’t sit or stand without midriff pain.

The topic of rowing makes it into my blog because of a recent and ridiculous world record. Three brothers – Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan Maclean (how’s that for Scottish?) – just finished a row from Peru (the country) to Australia (also the country) in 139 days. That’s 9,000 miles for those of you who didn’t scurry over to Google Maps to find out.

As if 9,000 miles isn’t impressive enough, the Macleans row-row-rowed their boat continuously, which is to say they never stopped. Two brothers rowed while one brother slept. Their food supply was fresh fish (of course) or the occasional freeze-dried meal. The brothers endured everything you’d expect the Pacific Ocean to throw at them: seasickness, tropical storms, a shrinking food supply, and so on. One of the brothers even went man-overboard one night when a rogue wave came out of nowhere.

“World record” implies someone gave this crazy journey a shot before the Macleans did. Yep, a Russian made the same trip in 2014, only he did it solo. Don’t these crazies know they can get their rowing fill at a nearby gym?

Maybe your image if rowing is a little more romantic, as in crew, where teams of athletes scull long, narrow boats down rivers in races against each other. Crew really is elegance in motion whether “eights” or “singles”, the long oars moving back and forth in perfect synchronization to generate the glide, with hardly a disturbance to the water below. Crew is Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. Crew is outdoors on a picturesque, tree-lined river. Crew is anything but synonymous with the pursuit of a world record on the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking of racing, my little gym often injects “challenges” into our workouts by timing performance against a set distance. On the rower, the longest go is 2,000 meters, which most of us do in say, 8-10 minutes. I’ll admit, the competitor in me tolerates rowing just a sliver more when I’m on the clock. I close my eyes and pretend I’m in the Olympics, going for the gold. Okay no, I don’t do that at all. I just stare in the mirror in front of me with agony written all over my face instead.

My 2,000m gym row equates to about a mile and a quarter. Great. My online calculator says I only need another 7,200 rounds to make it to 9,000 miles. But hey, if I can maintain my pace and never sleep, I’ll go the distance in 50 days! Shatters the Maclean world record! Yeah, no. Not only am I putting down my rowing machine “oars”, I’m heading back to the treadmill with hopes of putting this torture device completely out of my mind.

Some content sourced from the CNN World article, “Scottish brothers complete record 139-day row across Pacific…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Where The Buffalo Roam

In southwestern Alberta, Canada, there’s a historical landmark curiously named “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump”. It’s the former location of a vast communal bison trap. Thousands of years ago native hunters would drive herds of the roaming animals over the plains and then right over the adjacent cliffs, in what is described as “the single greatest food-gathering method ever developed in human history.” The buffalo aren’t running in this part of Canada anymore. They’re no longer running in Boulder, Colorado either.

In case you missed it, the American college football season kicked off last Saturday… in Dublin, Ireland. Kansas State played Iowa State in a converted rugby stadium in front of a sell-out Guinness-filled crowd. A roving reporter took to the streets to ask locals what they knew about the American game and the answers were wonderfully ignorant. How many points is a touchdown? (“4?”) Name any American college football team (“Yankees?” “Dodgers?”) And then my favorite: What is Kansas State’s mascot? (“A tractor?”) Not a bad answer if you ask me. I’d guess there are more tractors than wildcats in Kansas.

Speaking of wild things, let’s get back to Boulder. The University of Colorado (CU) boasts one of the few live animal mascots in college football: a full-grown snortin’ stompin’ buffalo named Ralphie. Before each half of the home games Ralphie is released from her trailer on the sidelines (yes, Ralphie is a “her”) to run a horseshoe lap around the field at full speed, before her five handlers corral her back into the trailer. It’s the stuff of rodeos, and more than a few handlers have eaten dirt in the process (but at least they earn a varsity letter for their efforts).

Ralphie is actually the sixth live buffalo to represent CU since the mascot was selected in 1934. But Ralphie VI – aka “Ember” – has a singular distinction. She’s just not into the run. Whereas her five predecessors ran for at least ten seasons each, Ember decided to call it quits after just three. The University officially called it “indifference to running” and cut Ember from the team so she could spend the rest of her days roaming in pastures. Maybe Ember’s thinking she’s going to go over a cliff every time she runs. Can you blame her for hanging it up? No word on whether Ralphie VII is up for the task.

At least CU has a ferocious mascot, one a fan would associate with the Colorado surrounds. Like Texas’s Longhorn or Florida’s ‘Gator, you want a mascot that speaks to your particular locale and does so with a confident puff of the chest. But instead, a lot of America’s college football mascots have you thinking either lightweight or what the heck is THAT?

Cases in point. If I pull up this year’s top college football teams, I guarantee I’ll find several to underscore my point. And I am right. Ohio State’s mascot is a buckeye (which is a tree, and not a very ferocious one at that). Georgia’s is a bulldog, described as “loyal, gentle, and affectionate”. Oregon’s is a duck (A duck!) Alabama is known as “the Crimson Tide”, which was a reporter’s colorful spin on a long-ago game played in the mud (and not a mascot at all). Finally, Arizona State’s is a Sun Devil, which better belongs on Saturday morning cartoons than Saturday afternoon football fields.

On the other hand, you have the Penn State Nittany (Mountain) Lions, the Michigan Wolverines (don’t mess with wolverines), the South Carolina Gamecocks (don’t mess with those either), and the Miami Hurricanes (not an animal, but points for ferociousness and local flavor). Any one of those deserves to stand side-by-side with a live buffalo.

As much as I’d like leave this topic with Ember the Buffalo and her chest-thumping buddies, I sheepishly include one more: my beloved alma mater Notre Dame. We at Notre Dame are the Fightin’ Irish, because our football teams (at least those from the early 1900s) showed “the grit, determination, and tenacity characteristic of Irish immigrants”) That all sounds great until you see our mascot: a leprechaun who looks like he’s taking a break from the Lucky Charms cereal box. Is there anything less ferocious and less “state of Indiana” than that?

If it were up to me, Notre Dame’s mascot would be an open-wheeled, open-cockpit IndyCar (VROOM! VROOM!), the kind they race every year at the Indianapolis 500 just four hours south of campus. An IndyCar toughs out a jigging leprechaun by a mile, not to mention an indifferent buffalo who’d rather roam than run. I still say, good on you for choosing to head out to pasture, Ember. I wish the Notre Dame leprechaun would tag along.

Some content sourced from the Athabasca University Press article, “Imagining Head-Smashed-In”, the CUBuffs.com article, “Ralphie VI retires”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tripping on Trips

I should pay more attention to the actual cost of things. A movie ticket is fifteen dollars… until you add in concessions, preferred seating, and online processing. A dinner out can be reasonable… until you add in the taxes and tip. And rental car companies add so many fees to the base rate it’s like you’ve just been bumped to a new tax bracket. With that in mind let’s visit the airport today, or more specifically, getting to the airport.

Flying is expensive; always has been. But it’s easy to overlook the cost of the airport itself. Maybe you already know, a portion of the ticket you just bought goes to a landing fee (LF) – what the airline pays the airport for the privilege of pulling up to the gate. Maybe you also know another portion goes to a passenger facility charge (PFC), which supposedly goes to improvement projects in the name of airport safety and security.

I don’t trust PFCs. I think they really go to things like art exhibits, children’s play areas, pet relief areas, and smoking lounges. I mean really, how much less would that plane ticket be if all you had for an airport was a ticket counter, some security and restrooms, and a gate to board your plane?

The airport needs more than LF’s and PFC’s to pay its bills, of course. It’s the reason you pay so much for parking. I mean, think about it. Once the parking garage is built it requires little to operate. Mechanical systems and a few employee salaries yes, but certainly nothing in the neighborhood of say, $30/car/day. Which brings me to my current conundrum.

Most of you don’t have the following challenge. When you fly, you’re close enough to the airport to where you can get a ride from a friend or take mass transit. Me? I have a choice of three major airports here in the South… but each of them is a two to three hour drive from my house. Which begs the question, how does Dave get from his house to the airport and back for the least amount of money?

Simple but Expensive. Dave drives his car to the airport, parks, and drives his car back to his house after he gets back. Works for short trips but what if I’m gone for three weeks (starting next Saturday)? Parking at Atlanta-Hartsfield is $30/day (and that’s long-term). Throw in a tank of gas for the car and I’m north of $700 just for the airport to/from.
Simpler but Even More Expensive. This idea unexpectedly sent me in the wrong direction (financial, not travel). I put in for a quote for car and driver from a service right here in our little town. They got back to me almost immediately. Little did I know my car is a limo and my driver wears a tuxedo. My wife and I can “sit back and enjoy their ride” for $520 each way. Gratuity not included.
Slightly Less Expensive. Here’s a fun option/comparison. Drive to nearby (tiny) Augusta Regional Airport and fly to Atlanta. The two round trip tickets plus parking? Less than the cost of the drive and parking at Atlanta. If flights out of Augusta were ever on time I might actually consider it.
Clever But… Drive to nearby (tiny) Augusta Regional Airport, rent a car, drive to Atlanta, and return the car. Repeat the procedure in reverse when I return. No. The rental car companies want $300+ for Augusta to Atlanta. Multiply that by two to get back home.
By shuttle? “Cozy”
Less Expensive but More Cozy. We have shuttle services nearby; van companies where you share the ride to the airport with strangers. $200 gets us the trip to Atlanta and back. Okay, but now we’re driving our car just to get driven by a van just to get flown in a plane. Seems like a lot. And you leave when the shuttle service says you leave; not when you really want to.

Five solutions in and I still haven’t made it to Atlanta with any sense of fiscal satisfaction. I’m starting to think I should just skip the airplane and drive all the way to our destination. Or ride my bike with a pile of luggage on my back. But wait! There’s always 6. Entirely Less Expensive. Convince local son-in-law to drive us to Atlanta (and back). He can’t charge me more than the options I presented here, can he? Er, not if he doesn’t read this blog post first. I better call him… stat.

Licking My Lips

I wouldn’t normally be drawn to a company whose products target women. I’m pretty well stocked when it comes to lip balms, lotions, and shaving cream. But here comes EOS (“Evolution of Smooth”), a newish company using organic ingredients and bright, colorful packaging to entice its buyers. Now I’m enticed too because EOS just came out with an orange product. Or should I say, a product in an orange. You could say it’s something that only comes ’round once in a blue moon.

Evolution of Smooth may be trying to target men as well. Why else would they concoct a lip balm that tastes like Blue Moon? If you haven’t had so much as a sniff of beer, Blue Moon is an everyday man’s brew produced by the Canadian-American conglomerate Molson Coors. It’s a Belgian-style wheat beer: high on the wheat but not so much on the malted barley. And now it’s a flavor of EOS lip balm inside of a plastic orange.

If you order a Blue Moon off the menu, the bottle or glass should arrive garnished with an orange slice. It’s a nod to the orange peel component of the beer; an ingredient giving the witbier its subtle citrus flavor. I should know because I’ve had more Blue Moons than any other beer out there. When you live in Colorado as long as I did (almost 30 years) sooner or later you’ll tour the Molson Coors facility in Golden, just west of Denver. They bus you around town first (a quaint holdover from the era of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush) before depositing you at the doors of the rather industrial-looking facility.

When you get down to touring – walking through the massive brewery, seeing the step-by-step production process, and sort-of-but-not-really believing the beer’s water content flows straight from the nearby Colorado Rockies – you’ll get a better appreciation of just how much effort goes into a single bottle. But like most breweries a beer fan anticipates the final stop – the tasting room – where you’re offered brands and flavors not yet released to the public. It was here I discovered Blue Moon, back in 1995 when it was just a concept beer.

Fancy homes boast of well-stocked, temp-regulated walk-in wine cellars with dozens of the finest bottles on display. I boast of a 24″x 24″x 36″ below-counter drink cooler, purchased on sale at The Home Depot for $225. I may not have dozens of the finest bottles on display, but in my house you’ll always find a half-dozen bottles of Blue Moon at the ready.

To be clear, I’m any occasional beer drinker at best. I can make a six-pack last a month. The only time a beer really appeals to me is after an afternoon of hard, sweaty, gnat-filled yard work. I’ll come back into the house after hours of that kind of fun and Blue Moon beckons. And even if I consumed more than a half-dozen bottles a month I certainly wouldn’t be put off by the price. A six runs you $11.99 at Target.

I do know how good a beer can really taste. Make your way to Dublin, Ireland sometime, tour the downtown Guinness Storehouse brewery (which trumps the Molson Coors experience in every way imaginable), and have a fresh pint in the top floor tasting room as you gaze out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the fairy-tale surroundings below. You’ll never want to leave. You’ll also realize that Guinness you’ve been having in America doesn’t measure up to the one you can have on Irish soil.

Any beer connoisseur reading this post is laughing at my reverence to Blue Moon. It’s a product whose color, strength, and lack of history bears little resemblance to the storied lagers of the world. It’s like the cosmopolitan offerings among the “real” alcoholic drinks on the bar menu. Light on ingredients and better meant for women.

No, Blue Moon isn’t necessarily meant for women (I hope), but maybe EOS’ latest lip balm is a clever way to get them interested. It certainly got my attention, and the thought of the taste of Blue Moon on my lips the entire time I’m working outside sounds amazing. No bottle or glass to juggle while I run the lawn mower. No garnish of an orange slice necessary. $4.99 instead of $11.99. Good call, EOS. I’m in.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Blue Moon… is being turned into a lip balm”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Up, Up and Away Birthday

One of my favorite lines from the science-fiction classic “Contact” (starring a young Jodie Foster and and even younger Matthew McConoughey) comes from one of the lesser-known characters. Foster’s Dr. Arroway discovers a communication stream from beyond Earth, while an anonymous millionaire funds the spaceship capable of traveling to the source of the signal. The donor then turns to Foster’s character with a smirk and says, “What do you say, Dr. Arroway… wanna take a ride?” This year, the same question was posed by the (good) people at Goodyear.

In a nod to my advancing age, the Goodyear Blimp turned 100 on Tuesday (or I should say, one of the Goodyear Blimps). “Pilgrim”, Goodyear’s dirigible based in Akron, Ohio, took it’s first flight on June 3, 1925. Now Goodyear can claim a hundred years of lighter-than-air travel, even if this noteworthy form of transportation never made it to the masses.

To be clear, Goodyear started with rubber, and then tires. They manufactured tires for bicycles and carriages back in the day as well as horseshoe pads and poker chips, before Pilgrim first took to the skies. Sure, you’ll find their products on vehicles everywhere but what comes to mind when I say “Goodyear”; tires or blimps?

I choose blimps. I grew up just thirty minutes from Goodyear’s blimp airbase in Carson, CA. The blimp I saw back in the ’60’s and ’70’s was named something like “Puritan” or “Reliance” or “Defender”, because Goodyear honored the sailboat winners of the America’s Cup. Not today. Thanks to a public naming contest the blimp down the street from my childhood neighborhood is named “Wingfoot Two”. (I prefer the America’s Cup names instead.)

Maybe you also choose blimps because you drive on Michelins or Firestones. More likely it’s because you’ve seen a blimp buoyant over the Super Bowl or other sporting event. And speaking of football, if the Goodyear Blimp sets down on the field it covers 80% of the yardage. That’s one big balloon.

Goodyear’s flying machines of my childhood were literally balloons filled with helium, without any of the technology of today to make them easier to steer. Coincident with middle-school history class, whenever I’d see the blimp I’d think of Germany’s Hindenburg, the Nazi propaganda passenger dirigible that, like the Titanic, is best known for its final flame-filled disaster, on approach to Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey in 1937. Perhaps we should be thankful Goodyear never promoted its blimps as a form of mass transportation.

Also in my childhood, blimps offered a far more romantic image in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where a colorful zeppelin traveled here and there over the fictional country of Vulgaria, carrying the villainous Baron Bomburst and his crew. (And here’s my opportunity to distinguish between terms. A zeppelin has more of a cylindrical shape, while a blimp looks more like a sausage. A dirigible? Just a general term for an airship.)

Speaking of sausage, it was inevitable someone would open a sub sandwich shop named after the aircraft. The Blimpie franchise (“America’s Sub Shop”) began in the 1960s, spread to locations around the world, and enjoyed a good fifty years of success. Today most of the helium has left their balloon. There are only about 25 Blimpie stores left in the U.S. (compared with almost 20,000 Subways). IMHO Blimpie’s was the better product, at least the version I remember from the 1990s.

Oh how I wish I could’ve concluded this post with another wanna take a ride? You and I missed the boat, er, airship on that opportunity. Goodyear held a contest at the start of 2025 and leading up to Pilgrim’s birthday, where three lucky passengers won a blimp ride. I say “lucky”, when in fact my fear of heights takes away any personal appeal to float up, up, and away. No worries, because now I’m thoroughly distracted by hunger pangs. Think I’ll hunt me down a “blimp sandwich”.

Some content sourced from IMDb, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.