Purging some thoughts before filling up with Friday Fish Fry

This trip through the Upper Midwest has given me ample doses of everything I sought this time around. New information from sources I know I'll engage with going forward. A chance to reconnect with people and stories I continue to research. Hours on the road to reflect upon what I'm trying to pull together for a big book on a subject no one seems to have searched for previously. Unexpected pleasures and pains in both unfamiliar surroundings and while tracking down some old favorites. Like so many of the trips I've taken this past year, this is what I've come to see as simply life on the road in America. Today is my chance to reflect and transcribe while visiting a town not far from where I grew up. This is a place where we would come for summertime waterskiing shows and the occasional movie or run to the Dairy Queen. Unlike so much of America, this town and the others around it have changed little from the 70s and 80s. Maybe it even goes back farther. But the ubiquity of coffeeshops with free WiFi and decent espresso even to be found in places like Tomahawk offer a chance to connect the dots with some of the places I've seen along the way.

As I often do, I've collected a mental list of places worth mentioning for others to keep an eye out for when they're similarly out there navigating the vast landscape of America. Whether I'm being a highly selective filter or just a traveler looking for an upside wherever my feet hit the ground, I'll mention a few. With one crushing bummer to show that all's not uniformly inspiring out there on the road.

• I was lucky to arrive on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska just as their minor league baseball team (the Omaha Storm Chasers - the Royals's AAA squad) took the field against the Nashville Sounds (the Brewers's AAA squad).  Just outside the ticket office, a Little League coach was handing out free extra tickets - I grabbed one with a smile. Hot dogs were on special inside the stadium for a buck. Then the Sounds lit up the Omaha starter for 6 runs in the top of the second inning (on their way to a 9-1 victory). Baseball purists might look down their nose at what showed up on the field that night. But I was blissfully entertained after a day on the road.
• For the second time - the prior being smack dab in the middle of winter - I made my way to the "Field of Dreams" movie site just outside Dyersville, Iowa. It was textbook example summer afternoon, with the outfield corn standing 9-feet-high (no drought conditions around a tourist attraction). Two pairs of Iowans asked me to take their pictures. Even if I'd had an anxious team looking to start practice, I couldn't have stayed longer. Just a run around the bases and a passel of pictures taken were more than special enough.
• After visiting the Fort McHenry museum in Baltimore earlier this month, I'd had my interest piqued thanks to a reference to the solitary battle in these parts. So I planned for a stop in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin along the Mississippi River. The history part of town was a widely mixed bag, but there were many delights to be found. I even stayed at the Brisbois Motor Inn because of the epic kitsch quality of their signage around town. The motel was full of railroad workers and what I assumed to be a sizable number of drug mules. I didn't get even a little bit murdered. If you've got the time and itinerary to head through, also stop in at a coffeehouse on Blackhawk Avenue named Simply. It was all that and so much more.
• When unpacking the usual Madison cliches, there should always still be a nod delivered for the shared energy that comes from State Street on a summer evening. But my favorite stretch while in there for little more than a day was to get a falafel platter from a stellar food truck (Banzo) and head out back of Memorial Union and to share the Badger familial energy. I followed that up with a visit to the Wisconsin Historical Society's Library on campus, stumbling into their "Wisconsin After the War of 1812" exhibit. I didn't go to school in Madison. I am a different cut of college-aged rodent (Gopher blood courses through these veins). But a lucky, happy sojourn like mine yesterday made me realize yet again how nice that would have been.
• It's not all happy and inspired out there in America, obviously. The browned and sad fields of drought-stricken corn throughout Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin are just devastating to see. We'll be seeing the ripple effect of that sad sight in the grocery stores for the next few years.

There's more on my plate for the next few days before sticking a fork in this year's research travels. Up next I'm stoked for a Friday Fish Fry at the bar on picturesque Little Spirit Lake just two doors down from the house I lived in until I was 10-years-old. Because if you come to northern Sconnie without eating your weight in deep fried fish, you surely will be arrested. Not the cardiac kind, I hope. Here's hoping you get the walleye tonight, too.

On the road again - DC edition

I'm back on the research road - flying high above this quite large nation on my way to our Nation's capital. I'll spend a number of days on the ground there, pursuing a plethora of new angles. I arrive on a day I hope will not feature the Postal Service defaulting on the first of their sizable financial commitments. But that souffle may already be cooked, given that Congress hasn't acted on much of anything other than anti-abortion legislation as of late (unsuccessfully, it should be added). And what of the Ag Bill still hanging in limbo as the Nation struggles with a terrible drought? Not much happening there, either. What to do, you might ask, if there's so little goshdarn legislating being done in the required home of such activity? My schedule will be tight, but I am planning to mix it up with some frenzied museum time. Yes, I do indeed know how to party. For those keeping score at home, I have a wish list that includes the following:

• Fort McHenry in Baltimore is a place I know little about other than the basics - think War of 1812, the origins of "The Star Spangled Banner", and probably a fair amount of other stuff. It requires a trek. For those paying attention, however, I do dig being this sort of trekkie.
• Continuing along those Bicentennial themes, the National Portrait Gallery has a War of 1812 exhibit in place. I'd read a review a few months back that intrigued me. Prior to that, I only recall Stephen Colbert's hilarious pursuit of inclusion in the museum's holdings. Put this one at the top of my museum geek wish list for this visit.
• To finish the short list the nerd-poriums I'm hoping to bag, a secret plan to visit the Spy Museum has always stuck in the back of my neck like a poison-tipped dart. In a good way. So add that little divulged secret to the ledger.

I do have other plans. I'll keep y'all updated, if you'll be so good as to check back. But we're heading into Memphis - wow, now that's a sunrise worth tweeting about. As in what a bird should be doing - there's another word lost forever to modernity.

Snaps for Canada. And Cassadaga.

I've spent the past 8 days traveling through Ontario, Quebec and New York State. I'm happy to say that the harvest of stories from sources proved way beyond worth the trip. So I'm heading toward the airport to continue on for another week away from my family back home in Seattle. First, I'll offer this. It's easy when playing my hand so close to the vest to lapse into generalities. But to protect the value of what capturing for the book I'm writing, generalities will have to do for right now. Here's a fattie - I dig Canada. I know I've been rarely but indeed guilty of that tired American cliche` where we make fun of what we know of them - acting like an oafish bully joking about the obvious when confronted with that soft-spoken, unassuming bloke. Now I plan to embark upon an unofficial pro-Canada campaign. Speaking as a nonetheless proud American, I think much of the problem is we just don't know what's gone on or is going on up here. When I got back into Toronto last night after a few days in New York State, I felt sincere pleasure in the returning to a place I barely know. Yet. I merrily got up this morning after only a few hours sleep at the prospect of one last run along the downtown Waterfront. Beyond Toronto, the history I saw thanks to intended stops in Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal offered just a taste of how much is and always was bubbling up here.  Now that's not to say that I didn't get entirely jazzed by the many hundreds of miles of a side trip I took between the border crossing at Plattsburgh, NY through all the way to the Peace Bridge outside Buffalo. Along that route I drank deeply from the sights offered by the Adirondacks (not the best day for vistas, but Highways 28 and 30 rawk). I spent a night in Lake Placid - its just-shy-of-tacky pridefulness and the fact almost every worker appears to be in world-beating shape are just two footnotes to a larger awesomeness. However, if there was a quiz about what was my far-and-beyond favorite stop, I'd tag as this trip's tip top stop the area in and around the teeny town of Cassadaga in Chautauqua County (in far western New York bordering that little notchy part of Pennsylvania along Lake Erie). I spent just one night there, above the Whiskey Hill Saloon. Long story. Totally worth it, though. It's situated at the one stop light in town. There's rich history all over the area. And I went there with a reason. I'll hold back that card, because it's an especially good one which I can't wait to play someday. If you're a Spiritualist  on the way to catch up with a dead pet or Houdini seeking out the mediums in the area (or maybe you're a documentary filmmaker working on a sequel for HBO), stop in at Whiskey Hill Saloon - get the "garbage wings", ask about the "lodging" and tell the owner, Kim, that I sent you. 

And so onto New York City, with a briefcase full of notes and quotes and readiness to roll on, totes magotes. But not before telling Canada and Cassadaga the equivalent of "I love you, man."

Taking a measure of Toronto, before new road work.

I've spent the last few days in Toronto, cruising through a heavy schedule of interviews with sources both old and new. And the writing fills in most of what's left around that. So my time trolling this largest of all Canadian cities hasn't been as leisurely as I'd hoped. I still get out for runs in the morning - opting for along the waterfront of Lake Ontario and through the large-ish and beautiful-ish urban oasis that is High Park. My downtown exploration thus has been limited to the so-called "Mink Mile" along Bloor Street (high end designer stores anchored by the massive Holt Renfrew where employees seemingly wouldn't even look up from their folding if you were engulfed in flames). I went searching for the ghost of Harold Innis at the University of Toronto. I ventured out to what had been a small town (Richmond Hill) in search of a hidden homestead from the mid-19th Century. Not much to find there, now that the "town" has grown into a city of 188,000 hockey fans. Truth be told, my location specific jaunt up to Richmond Hill ended at a mixed-use sports complex from which I can only report that club soccer and league softball also suck to watch on this side of the border unless you're out on the field. I'll do one more day here - with neighborhood exploration plans and some creative thoughts about where the links to what I'm researching might lie. Tomorrow I head toward Ottawa and Montreal, with stops planned in both. More time on the road after that. Which I welcome. I'm a lover of cities and Toronto could supply a varied diet of urban delights for quite a while. But I'm trying to think about how to connect what I've seen here in terms of book-related content with stories from some pretty distant, yet still related, places. For that sort of thing, hours on the highway - or preferably the winding roads cut from the same cloth as those romanticized recently in the NYTimes - means time to process bigger thoughts. Plus no matter what I encounter along the road it can't suck nearly as much as Toronto's summertime highway construction. If there is a hell, the passage in and out is managed by the same people organizing the closure schedules for the highways around this otherwise mannerly city.

Shuffling my roadtrip playlist

For those who might be interested in my Spring Break roadtrip, I cranked through another biggish distance yesterday. I started in Pullman (for those unaware - right up next to the Idaho border) and then drove through the gorgeous undulating hills of that part of Washington on toward Walla Walla. I'll hold my fire when it comes to the DoubleWalla (anyone call it that? I surely want to). Aside from saying the old timey Fort there was the most unintentionally hilarious stop spread over the 900 miles of Washington and Oregon I've thus far covered. It surely goes without saying if you've already seen it, but the Columbia River features jaw dropping sights all along the way. Before darkness fell, the Columbia was my most interesting companion. Aside from Rachel Maddow. The audio version of her clever and well-researched book Drift (which she reads herself) gets my highest recommendation. Along with the atmospheric and multi-faceted new album I kept looping all of Monday - Kill For Love by Chromatics. So as I prep to leave Astoria (my successful targeted location last night and subject of this morning's research), here's hoping I find a suitable accompaniment to today's views along the Oregon Coast. But I'm happy to have batted a big 2 for 2 thus far when it comes to this roadtrip's soundtrack. May we all be so lucky, from time to time.

Sampling a tasty chunk of Washington

I've lived in Washington for long enough to be somewhat sheepish about admitting how many huge swaths of the state I've just never been through. Yesterday gave me the chance to get out there - from west to east with enough north to south to really stir the pot. I beat the snow accumulating at Stevens Pass just as my worries about leaving the chains for the car back in Seattle reached a fever pitch. I saw the fruit trees especially around the vicinity of Wenatchee exploding with blossoms. I took huge visual gulps from the Columbia River, as our paths crossed and crossed again a few times based on my itinerary. I was all alone on the road more often than a car was anywhere within sight. I stopped and asked directions from a dingy convenience store within downstream sight of the Grand Coulee Dam - not really worth the trip, but the locals are fabulous even when you let it slip that you're from Seattle. I actually fueled up and chatted up some of the friendliest people I've met in years all along the way. My northern trajectory peaked well into Stevens County - past the Spokane Indian Reservation, but not yet within spitting distance of British Columbia (not that I would ever do such a thing). Then I backtracked and hit the two-laned glide path through the green fields (alfalfa? jeez, I should know such things...) of eastern Washington all the way down to Pullman. The summary takeaway? A sincerely awestruck double-header - 1. Road trips still connect me with America and I expect to always be romantically yet inexorably tied to that heavy carbon footprinting, and 2. Washington, whether big, hairy and wild or in the smaller town bites, holds its own very ably with any state across the nation in terms of awesomeness. No pollyanna cheese is required to say that. I mean it - drop dead gorgeous and inspired, from the Coast through the mountains to the flattest of flatlands. If you can say that after clocking nearly 500 miles all within the borders of a place, it surely was a good way to kick off a week on the road. There's more of it ahead for me today, but I at least wanted to get that off my chest before I head out to chat up some folks. Rock on.

Sightseeing in the offseason

Yesterday featured a long drive - across the full girth of Iowa, skirting along the southern edge of Wisconsin, and ending just a stone's throw into Illinois. Great hotel this time, with a hidden roadside sign adding an extra sense of accomplishment when I actually settled in for the night. I had lots of time to reflect and hatch grand plans. With one poetic moment disguised as a stop to stretch my legs and recharge before pushing on Eastward. I stopped at the "Field of Dreams" cornfield baseball diamond outside of Dyersville, Iowa - about 20 miles West of Dubuque. I'm a bit of a sap when it comes to that movie. My recent trips to Iowa have coincided with the news coverage of that site's sale and proposed re-purposing. Interesting, maybe. But the field itself is a tiny bit of fabulous, even covered in snow and with what should be the magic hour of light just around sunset being somewhat obscured by clouds on the Western horizon. It didn't matter. If you've got an extra hour on your way to Waterloo, I can think of nothing better to recommend. Straight up sentimental cheese - I loved it. Here's some proof of my visit, for any doubters out there lurking.

Finding my priorities on the road

I'm on the road this week, doing first-hand research. Which means a wide array of cool things - new places, new people, long stretches in the car with the iPod on Shuffle and life's random playlist timing itself to the vast landscape of 'Merica. Another thing that this sort of road trip means to me is sketchy hotels and motels. The cheaper and more poetically located, the better. I stayed at a tip top version last night here in western Iowa. Without boring anyone with the details, I rolled into the parking lot just in time to head up to my room for the GOP Candidates' debate in Florida. I thought I'd timed it perfectly after a long day on the road. I opened my assigned room's door with barely a minute to spare. What I found bore the indistinct feel of a recently cleared crash scene. A vague sense of recent death might even have still lingered in the air. Or I'll just paint with the picture with that and ask you to skip over the details. Save one thing - my damn TV didn't work. It was, in fact, upon close, antic inspection missing most of the buttons. Cue the scene of me dashing to the front desk, where I exclaimed that "I need a new TV or a new room or could someone please help me because the Debate was starting?" Don't believe it when you hear that everyone in Iowa takes the nomination process seriously, because the slow walk back upstairs to test the TV ("oh, that doesn't look good" was the prognosis) and shuffle to the next room took what seemed like four of five insults worth of prime debate clock. But I'm pleased to report that the replacement room was, well...better. Not quite lovely. Certainly less murder-y. I caught the lion's share of the debate (even a junkie feels good after a fix). Recharged overnight. Woke up to single-digit temps. Which is better than what was forecast. And after a morning of getting what I hoped for on the interview circuit, I'm heading back East. Maybe I'll be in another hotel room tonight for the President's State of the Union. Here's hoping it will be just as random and delightful in the way it offers safe harbor. Or at least an equally entertaining snapshot of a completely different State, with a similar state of mind.

A time ripe for new coinage - Opportunify Now

One of the well-traveled memes surrounding the various "Occupy (insert location here)" movements around the Nation concerns how social networks are being used. That's the shortest of lazy shorthand - I'm as guilty as the next feller for bringing it up. But I'm nonetheless thinking - and seeing in action - how things like Twitter, Facebook and network updates on YouTube offer a bulletin board for everyone to stick up their "I need a ride to..." and "Looking for a bassist..." equivalent announcements. What might have happened back in the 90s if specific groups of activists had such tools at their disposal? Not just to get people to join whatever action, but to publicize whatever happened after the fact. Just so that there's no confusion given the above and prior mentions of committed people and actions they take - I'm talking in very narrow terms about a very specific cause that was gathering steam in the 90s which I've seen echoes of recently. It should also be noted that these networking tools have a serious double-edge to them. Non-movement individuals can monitor and maybe even claim that they know what's going on. So my questions go to what might be called the off-center or tertiary movements that just may be recently rejuvenated. Not the anti-"Wall Street" or "besmirch the damned influential" movements. For this mental and physical exercise in finding the protest, you must take it a step further. I'm looking at those taking what I've always seen as a class-based argument to a very distended place. Those folks who are now, in effect, saying that they've had a bone to pick for years and this is the time to bring it up again. Opportunify (insert location here), if you will.

With that platform somewhat set, I'm prepping to head to Iowa with these and other questions in the quiver. Iowa, you ask? Believe it or not, the Great State that gave us the fictional Corporal Radar O'Reilly and the setting for the extended Dockers ad that was "Field of Dreams" is indeed an environment rich with material for what I'm researching. Expect many more clues to that end supplied here in the week-plus ahead - both prior to and during my visit. Please check back (or sign up for the email updates using the form in the right hand column to do so). As always, thanks for reading.