Seeking Alfa
Position: 51°10’50.6″N 1°15’43.6″W Date: May 08, 2008 When I arrived at Heathrow Airport yesterday, Hertz had set aside a Ford Mondeo estate for me. (I hope I don’t have to translate ‘estate’ to ‘station wagon’, do I?) It smelled of …
Category: Memoir
The Advantages of Being Foreign
Position: DRUG-INDUCED AMBULATORY COMA I have been a foreigner for much of my life. It has its advantages. Let me clarify. By the time my dad landed a decent job with tenure at the University of Chicago, he had dragged …
April Fools
Position: HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE I’m going to tell you a story about the most brilliant April Fool’s prank I ever played. I promise it’s a good one. Especially if you grew up in a household with a telephone wired …
Talking With Strangers – Now
Position: 39°12’09.3″N 76°40’59.4″W Travelling for business ain’t what it used to be. At least not when you’re working for yourself and every penny spent on airfares and car rentals is one less penny in the sailing fund. Even in America …
Talking With Strangers – Then
Position: 54°26’33.6″N 1°40’11.3″W Talking with strangers isn’t something that came to me naturally. As an awkward teenage boy with eczema and a 1970s-style dysfunctional home life (see Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm), I graduated high school with what seemed like …
Commuting Sentences
Position: 39°18’10.3″N 77°01’10.6″W “On the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted” That slogan is from 1995. A vintage similar to a 30-year-old bottle of Macallan’s Single Malt Whiskey. A bottle of which will set …
Time and Tides
Position: 48°50’08.4″N 3°05’05.6″W I’m late this week. I’m often late putting fingers to keyboard ahead of this blog’s self-imposed deadline. I almost said ‘capricious’ deadline, but the deadline serves a purpose. After all, one must have some discipline, however crapulous. …
Motorcycle Diaries: Three Days in Eastern Oregon
Position: 45° 31’23.03”N 122° 40’35.34”W What does it take to be a great adventurer? Bear Grylls is a great adventurer. You know the type: fearless, multi-talented, outdoorsman, skins snakes alive, never sleeps by the same river twice, dashing and completely …
The Cupcake Years
Communications Dogs don’t speak human. Therefore, to have a healthy relationship, humans have to learn to speak dog. That’s just the way it is. I was lucky. I had a great teacher in Banjo, our late Border Collie/Australian Shepherd rescue. …