After a very long day of travel, we're in our cute little hotel in Quito. Flights all went fine, despite being an hour late arriving in Atlanta. Giving every passenger their own personal entertainment center on the seat back in front of you certainly calms the masses and makes long hours in a seat more bearable - hey, I finally got to see Avatar. The most harrowing part of the day was the 10 minute cab ride from the airport here - yikes.
We're thankful for safe travel, a nice bed, and the adventures ahead! Thanks for reading.
Chris and Kelly have slightly different approaches to packing for international travel.
Kelly is an experienced international traveler, which means that she will probably casually throw a few things in a bag as we walk out the door to go to the airport. Somehow everything will just fit fine in her luggage and everything she needs will be there or will be magically brought to her by travel fairies along the way.
I, on the other hand, haven't traveled much outside the country in a while, and that in combination with my general engineering approach to life's challenges means that I've been planning my packing for a while in advance of this trip. Like, weeks and months. Like, I have a room in my house dedicated to the arrangement and assembly of my trip stuff.
If you've visited Richmond, Indiana via interstate 70 recently, it's likely you've seen a new addition to our most prominent landmarks: a 110-foot vinyl-sided cross right next to the highway exit on our east side. The cross was erected at a cost of US$150,000 by New Creations Chapel, Inc., which has a website dedicated to the project's history and progress. Their hope is that it "will give hope, direction, light from above, and encouragement to all those people traveling Interstate 70 and passing New Creations Chapel."
Richmond already has a number of issues with public perception when it comes to tourism and first impressions. All discussions of religion and symbology aside, I think this new fixture probably doesn't help with that. But the main question that came up in the casual discussions I've had with people about it is "how does such a thing go up without the community having any input on it?" To answer that question I contacted Scott Zimmerman, who works as a City Planner with the City of Richmond.
Last night I got to experience Richmond as a kind of tourist, and I really enjoyed it. I was hosting cross-country cyclist Ben Lyon at my house through a Warmshowers.org connection, and he came into town ready to hang out and see some sights. We ended up gathered with Aaron, Mark and Thomas on my front porch to hear about Ben's trip so far, and then set out on our bikes for dinner. Continue reading "Velotraverse"→
This past week I had my first experience hosting some cross-country cyclists for a night. Quinn, Ken and Andy are biking from Portland, OR to New York, NY and came through Indiana, riding into Richmond on US-40. I recently became the sole human occupant of a house with great space for hosting guests, and so I figured the least I could do is sign up for some opportunities to help out folks who find themselves on interesting journeys through the area.
WarmShowers.org is a resource for facilitating just that for cyclists, and it's a great way to find or offer lodging. You can provide as much or as little information about your location and "amenities" as you want, and you're under no obligation to host anyone at any particular time. It's similar to other resources like CouchSurfing.org or even Mennonite Your Way.
At a recent training I attended, some foofaraw was made about the fact that the facilitators had come all the way from Boulder, Colorado to Indiana to share their knowledge and expertise with us. Those facilitators in turn made some note of the fact that their knowledge and expertise was derived from their own trip to meet with others at a training in the UK, and from some other journeys that they'd taken involving significant travel.
Around the same time I noted a historical reference to a 1959 headline in the Earlhamite, "Southern religious leader visits Earlham." It was about a then only mildly well known Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting the College and speaking at the Meetinghouse there. Being a religious leader from the South surely had different connotations then than it does now, but I was still struck by the headline's focus on the origin and destination of the speaker, less on his message or credentials.
Ever since, I've been thinking about the role that travel plays in establishing credibility and expertise for someone when they come to speak or teach on a given topic.
Today I learned that the back seats of Ohio State Trooper cruisers are not at all designed for people like me with long legs. In fact, to fit in it at all so that the officer could close the door to lock me in and take my statement, I had to sit nearly sideways! You'd think that if someone is already being put in the back of a cop car, there's enough difficult stuff going on in their lives such that a little bit of leg room is in order.
About 45 minutes before I found myself in this situation, we were traveling down I-70 East in the heavily falling wet snow, gusting wind, and crowded highway lanes. It was the kind of weather that should probably have kept us off the road, but if there's one thing that car culture teaches you, it's that nothing should stand in between you and your vehicle's destination, so there we were.
About six cars up, I saw headlights, and they were in my lane. "Oh no," I thought, "not another one of these high speed car chases." As I slowed us down, I watched the car spin out of control, cross over the median into the westbound lanes, cross back over the median and do two full spinning rotations, and then come to a stop. We passed a split second later, and the driver appeared to be slumped over in her seat. Continue reading "Another highway adventure"→
Sometimes you see those weather stories on the evening news where they show a few seconds of airline passengers stranded in some airport looking like hell as they try to figure out how to cope with canceled or delayed flights, and usually you just feel a little bad for them and then move on. At the moment I'm feeling some appreciation for the misery that's displayed in those brief clips, having had a bit of a travel adventure myself:
It started with Mark and I barreling through the snow on I-70 toward the Dayton airport, wondering if planes would even be taking off at all today. But, my handy dandy text message updates from Delta.com declared the flight was on time, so we pressed on.
I should have known we were in for a special time when the guy at the ticket check-in counter (which has largely been replaced by self check-in kiosks) was delighted to point out how much cost cutting Delta has done. Me: "Do you have one of those little folders for these boarding passes?" Him: "No, they did away with those some time ago. Heck, all we've got left now are the airplanes! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Right.
I have long resisted the use of GPS technology for any serious or sustained navigating. This is partly because I don't like the notion of depending on an array of satellites managed by the US Air Force just to get where I'm going - to whatever degree I have any simplicity left in my life, it's one more way to add complexity and hidden costs to basic everyday tasks. I've also resisted GPS because I like the idea of being able to navigate with basic tools, instinct, and luck.
After a very long day of travel, we're in our cute little hotel in Quito. Flights all went fine, despite being an hour late arriving in Atlanta. Giving every passenger their own personal entertainment center on the seat back in front of you certainly calms the masses and makes long hours in a seat more bearable - hey, I finally got to see Avatar. The most harrowing part of the day was the 10 minute cab ride from the airport here - yikes.
