When I was a kid being an Astronaut was a big deal. Rocket launches were a big deal. It was easy to believe that all those Science Fiction stories about living on the moon and exploring the universe were going to become reality. And not in some distant future, in the here and now. NASA in the here and how is kind of a joke. I love Space Center Houston, but at the same time, I hate that they rent themselves out for Corporate Events and Birthday Parties like they are a branch of Disney. I know that Space Center…
Category: travel
NaBloPoMo-Doh
Well, I ended up in a one horse town last night with no internet connection-so I missed a day on my NaBloPoMo-drat. Oh, well, there’s always next month. I was out in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma and it was bleeding cold and wet and I have had a bit of a cold myself and the work was not great. Is there a National Whiner Month out there? I’m sure I could do that with no problem. On the plus side I saw a Bald Eagle today, sitting up a tree and looking all regal. I don’t see a lot…
World’s Tallest Totem Pole-Oklahoma
I have seen many wonders and marvels as I have traveled the country, among them The World’s Largest Lighthouse-collectibles store, The World’s Largest Chair-there are several of these, and the Giant Ball of String, not to be confused with the Giant Ball of Yarn, or The Giant Ball of Twine. But there is a little spot off Route 66 in a northern corner of Oklahoma which has The World’s Tallest Totem Pole-there are several World’s Tallest Totem Poles as well, but this is the only one I have seen in person. Now I thought the World’s Largest Totem Pole should…
Oklahoma City Memorial
My trip to the Oklahoma City Memorial is surrounded by twenty minutes of driving around in circles trying to find someplace to park. Parking, it seems, was not even considered when it came to the design of the Oklahoma City Memorial. Not that it should have been-the destruction of the Murray Federal Building and the creation of a National Park in its place was not planned. But once it was decided to build a memorial and presumably allow people to visit it-it seems a bit odd that many of the parking lots surround the Oklahoma City Memorial have all kinds…
Hotels
In the past ten years or so I have done a bit of travel and stayed in my share of hotels. Some have been Choice Hotels, and some have been hotels that have seen there better days. Since I was working on most of these trips, I spent some time in extended stay hotels. Some of the hotels were not meant to be extended stay hotels, but we just ended up spending a couple of months there anyway. That happened at Pittsburgh hotel, and we kept saying, yeah, we’ll move somewhere else this week-but then never did. I liked Pittsburgh,…
The Travel Channel Academy
The Travel Channel Academy, from what I have seen on the commercials, is a school where you go to learn the ins and outs of making travel shows. The tag line is Learn, Shoot, Earn-implying that this is the pathway to fame and fortune as one of the perpetually cheerful hosts of a travel show. Which kind of sounds like my kind of thing. If your work meets Travel Channel standards and we elect to use it, we will pay you for it. Sounds like a pretty big ‘if’-but then they are training you, so you should be able to…
Let’s have a Mojito in Dubai
You get a new red car and suddenly you notice that there are a lot of red cars. And not just any red car, but red cars like the one you just bought. So many red cars like the one you bought that you walk up to the wrong car in the Wal-Mart parking lot and try to get inside. Now, I have not bought either a Mojito or a trip to Dubai. But they have captured my attention as I seem to hear them mentioned a hell of a lot. A Mojito is a mixed drink. Dubai is a…
Travel To and Travel From
I’ve done a bit of traveling over the past few years and have plans to do a good deal more. Travel, for most people, is easier to remember than the normal day to day life. It has a beginning, and middle, and an end. Like little movies in our minds. That seems to be the way we want to recall them. But after a while, the beginnings and the ends and middles and get muddled.I remember the first time I visited Galveston Island with my family, but it is only bits and pieces, little snatches of the trip that have…
It’s not the destination. . .
For the last ten years or so I have been traveling around Texas, and a good deal of the rest of the country. But mainly Texas. As with anything familiar, it has lost much of its interest for me. It is a big state and there are a lot of cool things to see and do. And yet I seem to end up in the places which, are well, not so cool. Most small towns look, feel and taste the same-they all have Sonics and Subways and Rednecks, for lack of better term. They tend to call themselves Good Ol…