the big road trip (2012)

This evening we (Aimee, myself, Emery and Sofia (Hannah is staying and taking a college summer school class)) are leaving on a 14 1/2 day, almost 5,000 mile adventure. We’ll be traveling across the country to get to places that don’t feel or look like home. We’ll get 4-5 days at the ocean and 4 days in the mountains. We’ll also be painfully close to (relatively speaking), but won’t get to visit, two of our very favorite places on Earth — Yosemite N.P. and Olympic N.P. But, another time, I hope.

Go Tigers, beat Parkway North!

I’m off the grid.

move

One of three awesome short films by Rick Mereki, Tim White and Andrew Lees (“Move”, “Eat” and “Learn”). Click on the other two after you watch “Move”, they’re all really fun.

Allo Allo {Deux Américains à Paris}

Allo Allo {Deux Américains à Paris}, a film by Robert Kolodny and Bennett Elliott, via The Kid Should See This. My son, Emery, and I want to go soooooooo badly.

dreams of summer – Lake Josephine, GNP

Lake Josephine, Glacier National Park, taken last summer (2011)

I don’t know for sure where we’re headed this summer — maybe Northern California and Southern Oregon. Wherever it is, if it’s not Glacier, I’ll have a little tinge of sadness. It takes only a second or so for me to conjure up in my mind the day of that photo and the week we spent in GNP last summer.

Venice in a Day — beautiful video by Joerg Niggli

This video has me dreaming of Italy. (from Vimeo)

Japan — a poem by Billy Collins

Chicago Botanic Garden (2009)

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

— Billy Collins

on the one ton temple bell
a moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits still.

— Taniguchi Buson (1716-84)

HHGTTG

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.


from HHGTTG by Douglas Adams

Chicago

Elwood: This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive! If my estimations are correct, we should be very close to the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza!
Jake: That’s where they got that Picasso.
Elwood: Yep.

Lurie Garden

rattlesnake master and Chicago skyline

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Chicago to deliver my daughter and her boyfriend to Lollapalooza and back. For my part, I got a day free of responsibility in one of my favorite places.

The highlights (for me (I didn’t get to hear Coldplay like they did)):

Oysy Sushi — great sushi in a relaxed atmosphere. My favorite.

Intelligentsia coffee — Best latte ever

Lurie Garden at Millenium Park– The template for beautiful, modern and sustainable gardening in the midwest. This garden is amazingly at its peak in the middle of August. Everywhere you look you see some clever and wonderful combination of plants.

Art Institute of Chicago — The Modern Wing is amazing.

Walks up (and up) Michigan and State Streets. World-class horticulture in the middle of the city. You simply don’t see a planting anywhere that doesn’t look perfect.

Room and Board — I could fill four houses with their furniture.

Overheard in the Lurie Garden — An eighty-ish year-old woman asks a 15-ish year-old boy “what band is that playing?” at Lollapalooza.

D’Amato’s for pizza and cannoli. The coolest place and amazing food.

Sore feet. Always a sign of a good trip to Chicago.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, home.

National Parks — beautiful time-lapse video

Far and Wide :: Timelapse Cut from Fr. Johannes M Schwarz on Vimeo.

I really like this video shot and edited by Fr. Johannes M Schwarz of National Parks and Monuments between California and Minnesota. In addition to the beautiful images, it does a nice job of illustrating the (relatively) unchanging earth, the stately procession of the clouds across the sky, and the frantic, even spastic, movements of the humans in the landscape.

For these ten minutes, I was able to mentally visit these beautiful places (many of which I have been fortunate to experience in person).

Locations in the video (listed by Fr. Schwarz)
Mono Lake
Eureka Dunes
Death Valley (NP)
Bryce Canyon (NP)
Grand Canyon (NP)– North and South Rim
Navajo Bridge
Horse Shoe Bend
Monument Valley
Arches (NP)
Wyoming
Grand Teton (NP)
Yellowstone (NP)
Rockies
South Dakota Badlands (NP)

via Huffington Post and AOL Travel

observations/realizations about/from vacation/travel

I don’t like drinking coffee through oval holes in plastic lids.

I love waking up and going outside in July and wishing I had a jacket.

Really good small towns have to be at least 50 miles from a city.

I become an Apollo 13 astronaut at the slightest hint of car trouble.

The further away from “civilization” one gets, the more civil people become.

Home is just the place you live until you spend some time at “not home;” then, you start to understand some things about it.

Weather, time of day, and presence or absence of crowds profoundly change my impressions of a place.

Hotel beds suck.