Category: Hiking & Travel

Caveat: Chupe de Pescado

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Hiking & Travel

I went to Costa Mesa and ate lunch at Inka Grill restaurant today.  I met an old friend Mary there, since she lives in Orange County, that was convenient. 

I have been craving chupe de pescado a lot.  I used to eat it there when I was working in Newport Beach (an office park near the Costa Mesa city line).  I was glad it was still there.

And I spent a lot of time driving around LA freeways.  They're so familiar.  A strange sort of frustration/comfort sets in.

Now I'm at LAX.  I'm going back to Korea.  I will experience no January 6, 2010, because of the date line.  Maybe I should post something very strange and otherworldly for that date, because of this?

Caveat: United Airlines Is Still the Worst Airline in the Known Universe

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

So, I missed my flight, this morning.  Why?  Because I arrived at the airport only 1 hour and 20 minutes before my flight.  This was a mistake.   And, I admit my mistake. 

I made the mistake because on 12/28, when I flew from LA to MSP, was to all appearances an equally busy travel day, and I had zero problems and everything went very smoothly and very quickly.   I made the erroneous assumption that I'd see the same situation today, since the security situation should have, if anything, improved (given the additional time lapsed since the Christmas mess).    So I didn't check the news to see if the airport was going to clogged up, I didn't worry too much about it… I just gave myself about an hour and a half, and showed up.  I've been traveling so much, and it's all gone so smoothly, that I've become a bit cavalier.  I admit that.  I share some of the blame, yes…

But the Minneapolis airport seems profoundly mismanaged.  And United Airlines, specifically, continues to be the most horribly sucky airline I have ever dealt with. So, I will also blame United.

I got in line to check in and check my bags at 4:45.  I waited in line for 45 minutes.  None of the other airlines at the airport had such long, slow-moving lines, as far as I could tell.  There was a long line at American Airlines, but US Airways seemed almost lineless, and Northwest (AKA Delta) has so many counters that it all seemed very much under control.

Anyway, the time shown on when they actually issued my boarding pass was 5:29.   And that was after they let me cut in line because of my departure time.   But this still ended up meaning that the 45 minute wait at TSA (security check) left me too late at the gate for my 6:00 flight.

Actually, United always seems understaffed at their check-in counters, relative to my experience with other airlines (my flight out from Burbank to Minneapolis was with US Airways, and despite it being 12/28, three days after the horrible almost-disaster on Christmas day, everything went very quickly and very smoothly).

In fact, I can state unequivocally that I have NEVER had a pleasant travel experience with United Airlines, in nearly 3 decades of fairly extensive air travel, whereas my experiences with other airlines is at least 50/50 (good/bad), and there are some real winners, such that I have almost never had a bad experience with, e.g., US Airways and Korean Airlines.

There had been a time, about half a decade ago, when I was very conscientiously boycotting United because of past bad experiences, but I guess my commitment to that boycott recently wavered in the light of my last-minute need for a cheap ticket on this current trip.   But the fact of my need to boycott United Airlines has been confirmed by this morning's experience, although obviously I need to concede that my current unpleasant experience has been exacerbated by both the Minneapolis airport's apparent gross mismanagement of the holiday crowds, compared to the other airports I've been in recently, as well as the current security mess surrounding the recent terrorist attempt at Detroit.

Regardless, I am convinced that had my return flight also been with US Airways (whose check-in line was moving in a relatively breezy fashion as I gazed at it longingly this morning from my spot stuck in the United line), I would have made my flight easily this morning.  And thus, I must conclude, United Airlines is the still the worst airline in the known universe.

OK, enough of my rant.

I calmed down by sitting crosslegged on the floor, shutting my eyes, and practicing my recently acquired anapana skill.   Then I broke down, paid Boingo (another sucky company) their $7.95, and came online.  I'm on standby, now, waiting for a flight.  Who knows when I'll get to L.A.  Ah, the risks of last-minute cheap tickets.

In other news… today is a palindrome:  01022010 (or, depending how you like to write your dates, 20100102).  Cool, huh?

More later.

Caveat: Korean Food in Eagan

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

I went out to lunch at a Korean restaurant in a strip mall along highway 13 in Eagan, with a bunch of friends: Bob and Sarah and Henry, and Mark and Amy and Charlie and Martin, and Tayo (Bob’s nephew) was along too.

Our expectations were low. And… I’ve not eaten Korean since coming back from Korea. Surprising? A little, maybe, but I figure I’ll be getting plenty of Korean soon enough, when I go back. Still, we decided to try it out — it’s basically across the highway from where my storage unit is, so it’s conveniently located.

It turned out to be very good. Authentic feeling, and excellent food. I highly recommend Hoban Restaurant to anyone living in or passing through Minnesota and craving a “real” Korean dining experience. I had some kimchi dolsotbap which was excellent.

With Bob and Mark both there, it’s been a bit of an “1808 Portland” reunion — 1808 Portland Avenue in St Paul is the duplex house that Bob, Mark and I shared as housemates (along with some others) back in the 1980’s, at the time I was attending the University of Minnesota. I drove by that place the other day, and took a picture, for old-time’s sake — I have such fond memories of my time living there (over 2 years, I think):

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Caveat: Minneapolis

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

After driving from Denver to L.A. over the weekend, I left my truck there (where I’m selling it to my dad) and flew back to Minneapolis, to take care of the last-minute things that I need to do before returning to Korea. Landing in Minneapolis, getting my rental car and driving out into the bright sunshine: 23 F (-5 C), piles of dirty snow… I really do love it here. Of my many homes, this is my “truest” home, I suppose.

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Caveat: The end of driving

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Since landing in Minneapolis upon my return from Korea on September 24, I have put over 14,000 miles (that's around 22,500 km) on my little truck.  I have visited 26 states (and 1 Canadian province).  And now I'm tired of driving.  I'm selling my truck.  I'm in Los Angeles.

I'll fly back to Minneapolis tomorrow, where I'll rent a car for around-town type errands.  But I'm done with road-trips.  At least, for the time being.  And I return to Los Angeles next weekend, and I'm going back to Korea soon after that.  This vast crazy North American tour is almost over.  I'm looking forward to being back in Korea, although my job situation is more up-in-the-air than I'd been intending.  But it will work out… and even if it doesn't, I'm confident things will be fine.

Caveat: Utah, Unedited. [The Herbaliser – The Next Spot]

Background Noise / Hiking & Travel / My Videos

I drove across Utah.  It was covered in snow.   Here is the most boring video imaginable:  driving, real-time, no editing.  This is part of one of the longest stretches of interstate with no gas station that I know of: I-70 west of the Green River crossing.

So… it's a 7 mile snapshot of my 14,000 mile cross-country experience, second-by-second.  Unedited.  Mostly, it was an excuse to post a cool soundtrack: The Herbaliser – The Next Spot.

Caveat: Back on the road for the shortest day of the year

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

After that long break, I’m driving again. I went from my friend’s in southeastern Wisconsin as far as Kansas City today — I’m going to Denver for Christmas, and although the southern route (via Missouri and Kansas) is a few hours longer than the northern route (via Iowa and Nebraska), because of the winter storms on the satelite, I made the choice of taking the southern route.  Plus, I always have a special feeling for Kansas City, even though I rarely stop there. I had a lot of relatives there at one time, though most of them have redistributed over the years — it’s my mother’s birthplace, and her mother’s too, I think. So it’s a kind of maternal-line homeland. Plus, I just think it’s an interesting and attractive city.
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Caveat: Pretty Good Continent

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Quotable

I visited my "friends-from-Korea" Joe and Christine this evening, in Bloomington, Indiana, after driving across from Philadelphia and staying in a motel last night south of Pittsburgh.

Joe said something funny:  "I keep following your blog, waiting for you to stop moving, but you keep moving."   I've been traveling a lot, definitely.   North America seems like a pretty good continent.

More later.

Caveat: Michelle’s Ghost

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life is a Dream / My Photos

I stopped and had dinner with my friend Basil last night, in Morgantown, where he’s enrolled in a graduate program in TESOL. It was weird seeing someone from my “life in Korea” while driving around the US, but he’s a very cool guy and in some ways he was my best friend during my time in Korea.

Today, I stopped in Quakertown. It was snowing hard, and eastern Pennsylvania is very beautiful. But there are personal ghosts of a difficult past, resident in the names of highways and towns, in the vistas of rivers and in the office parks alongside freeways. I’m trying to make peace with some of these ghosts, and the ghost of ghosts is Michelle’s ghost. I went to the house where she took her own life, in June of 2000. I wasn’t there — we were already separated, although divorce wasn’t something we were talking about seriously, at that point.  But we’d been talking on the phone about once a week, all that spring and early summer. So I knew “where she was at” and I knew things weren’t going well.  When I got the call from her mom that she had died, I had already bought the airplane ticket to Philadelphia — I had intuited something terrible was happening, perhaps.

I flew out, and it was chaotic, nightmarish. I spent long hours in that house in Quakertown, where I’d never actually lived, since she and Jeffrey had moved in there after I’d gone to Los Angeles to stay with my father. All my “stuff” was there, along with hers.  I had to sort it all out, without offending the debt-lawyers who wanted to liquidate assets.

So, today I visited that house in Quakertown. I sometimes have had a strong feeling that Michelle’s ghost is following me around in the world. But other times, I’ve thought that if she has a ghost, it’s more likely tied down at that house. Stranded.

I parked my truck and got out and walked around. I talked to Michelle’s ghost, telling her that I wanted to come visit, to tell her how Jeffrey was doing, what I’d been doing.  I opened the passenger door to my truck, and I invited her to join me in my travels. I don’t know that she came along. I don’t know that she was there. I’m not really a believer in ghosts, but I do believe in powerful psychological symbolisms. I guess.

Here is a picture of the house in Quakertown.

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Caveat: Somewhere in Ohio

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

My extremely disorganized, whirlwind tour to the East is well underway.   I'm basically driving to Philly for the weekend, with side trips to New Jersey, West Virginia and Indiana squeezed in where they best fit the itinerary.   It snowed continuously all across Wisconsin, driving down last night, but Chicago was clear at midnight and beautiful.  And now I'm in Ohio, near Oberlin, which makes me remember my year in politics, 1984, when I worked for the Mondale campaign and ended up at some conference/rally in Oberlin during one hectic long weekend.   That was a long time ago, eh?

Caveat: Kafka Teaching at Hagwon

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life is a Dream

I woke from a vivid, angry dream. Was it from all that exertion, yesterday, moving my stuff? Is it because I’m stressing over the fact that I haven’t heard back from Curt about the job?  Not sure…

I dreamed that I was starting my teaching at some new hagwon. In the dream, it’s Curt’s, but it doesn’t look like Curt’s (which I’ve visited and know very well what it looks like). The place is VERY disorganized, and resembles a theme-park more than an Ilsan hagwon. On my first day, they hand me only a class schedule, not even any books. I’m late to my first class, because I don’t hear any bell. And all the classes after that are in a row, with no breaks, and I can’t find them. I walk into random classrooms, and ask, “is this…?” to find out if it’s the correct class.

The kids are recalcitrant, and then they begin to lie. They answer “No” when it should be “yes” to my question. And then, I lose the piece of paper with the schedule I’d been given. I go back to the staff office, and no one there is willing to admit they work there. No one will give me a new schedule. There’s some guy cleaning the floors, but when I start to talk to him, he runs away.

I’m climbing ladders and going down seemingly hidden passages to find classrooms, only to find they’re empty, or already with another teacher.  One teacher asks me, “why are you teaching here?” There’s a group of kids sitting in what looks like a sidewalk cafe, but they’re clearly supposed to be in class. I begin to yell at them, and they just laugh. I go back to the office to try to find out what class they are — are they mine? By the time I get back to the sidewalk cafe, they’re all gone.

Very strange dream. Shows a lot of anxiety over the teaching thing, huh?

I woke to find snow on the ground, outside. After yesterday’s efforts, I’m majorly unmotivated. Snow is beautiful, but inconvenient to run errands in.

Here’s the truck, in Mark & Amy’s driveway, covered with a dusting of fresh snow:

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Caveat: Bored in Las Vegas

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

I know there are some ways that I am quite strange.  One thing that happens, when I’m traveling alone, is that I will go off on long walks for no good reason, or as an alternative to some much more convenient means of transportation.  So this morning, I walked from my hotel on the Las Vegas Strip to the airport, even though a taxi would have probably been less than 8 dollars.
Las Vegas doesn’t really interest me much.  It’s not that I don’t like kitch — I love it.  And it’s pure americana, in some respects.  But it’s very hard for me to find stuff to DO in Las Vegas:  I don’t gamble, I despise dining out alone, and going to shows or movies alone can be kind of depressing too.  I guess all of this could be summarized by stating that Las Vegas might be a fun town, WITH someone, but it’s stunningly dull for someone who’s alone.
I went on a long walk along the strip last night, looking at lights and signs and people-watching.  And I slept a lot, in my pyramid-shaped hotel that I got for an incredibly low rate (because they expect you to spend your money gambling and watching the shows, of course).  And I got up this morning and strapped on my luggages and walked to the airport.
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Here is a last look at Zion, taken yesterday upon departure:
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Caveat: “입을 다스리는 글”

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / Hiking & Travel / My Photos / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

“입을 다스리는 글” is a title to a proverb (or prayer) that was on a piece of cloth that I gave as a gift to my friends Juli and Keith in Oregon.
I have been feeling somewhat embarrassed because I had not conveyed to them very accurately the true meaning of the saying. Here is an updated and hopefully correct translation for all the world to see (and thanks to my friend Jinhee for her help translating). My friends Juli and Keith may not want to have it on their wall given the new meaning, or they may decide they like it. I spent some time thinking deeply about it today, and decided I like it, after all.
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입을 다스리는 글
말해야 할 때 말하고 말해서는 안될 때 말하지 말라 말해야 할 때 참묵해도 안되고 말해서는 안될 말해서도 안되고 입아, 입아 그렇게만 하여라
A note on controlling one’s tongue.

One should speak when necessary, and not speak when one should not. One shouldn’t stay silent when one should be speaking, and one should not speak what one should not say. O tongue, my tongue, I pray you do just that.

I think silence is very important. That’s my vaguely quaker upbringing, shining through, perhaps.
We went hiking this morning up into a “slot canyon” in the eastern part of Zion National Park this morning. There were six of us, walking and tromping and scrambling and climbing and tossing rocks into pools to make fording them possible, and talking. Lots of talking. Finally, we were relaxing on the face of rock above the canyon, and Jay wanted to have a prayer. And I butted in and said, how about a Quaker-meeting minute-of-silence. This was approved, and at last, we were seated, gazing at the sky and rock and trees, and it was silent for about 5 or so minutes. It was very beautiful.
So keeping one’s mouth shut can be nice. There are definitely times for that.
Here are some pictures from this morning.
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[this is a “back-post” written 2009-11-30]
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Caveat: Bryce Canyon

Hiking & Travel / My Photos

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We drove up to Bryce canyon today. We saw lots of things, including many rocks and trees and a blizzard. Above, you see the clouds carrying a lot of snow, rolling in over a stunning landscape. Below, that’s me standing in the snow, a few hours later as we prepared to leave.
More later.
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[this is a “back-post” written 2009-11-29]
[added pictures 2009-12-03:]
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Caveat: The Narrows

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

The most notable feature at Zion National Park is the canyon of the Virgin River.  Above the core area of the park (where the lodges and building and RVs can be found), the canyon shrinks down to only a few meters wide but several hundred deep, as the river snakes through the red rock of the Utah desert.  This river canyon can be hiked, but only by wading in the river bed itself in many locations.  In the summer, a pair of hiking boots that you don’t mind getting soaked, along with shorts, is perfectly workable, as I’m sure the cold river water is refreshing.  But at this time of year, that would lead quickly to hypothermia.  What you can do is rent “dry pants” that have gaskets at the ankles and go up to your torso, and rent some amphibious hiking shoes and wet-suit-type-material insulating socks.  That’s what we did.

We went up The Narrows:  an all day hike.

I’m making a video, which I’ll post here later [Update, 2011 – I never made this video, did I?].

[this is a “back-post” written 2009-11-30]

Caveat: Thanksgiving Moonlit Rocks

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I didn't really sleep, Wednesday night.  I've ended up on a night owl schedule staying with my friends Mark and Amy, and I had to get up very early to catch my flight, so I did what I often do when I'm facing the possibility of only a few hours of sleep:  I just stayed up.  Mark did too, and then he drove me to the airport at 520 am.

I flew via O'Hare, because I saved a lot of money on my last-minute ticket, that way.  I arrived at Las Vegas around 11:45 in the morning.  My friend Jay and his accomanying group were running late due to traffic out of L.A., so I killed about an hour in the Las Vegas airport.  They picked me up at about 1 pm. 

I met Shah and Kong again, two of Jay's friends with whom I've traveled to Zion before.  In fact, when I came to Zion in 2006, Shah and I were the only ones, as that was the year that Jay was sick.  Also joining us this year were Cameron and Kameron.  Really.  I learned a bit later that their nicknames were Old School (Cameron) and New School (Kameron), because the later was 16 and the former was 40's.  I guess New School has been a kind of adoptive son (maybe a big-brother mentoring thing) for Old School, over the last several years, through their church.

So we all piled in and drove the last 3 hours up to Zion, after getting lost in the hellhole known as North Las Vegas looking for a fast food joint to eat lunch.

We arrived in Zion, with a few short stops, at exactly 6 pm.  We checked in to the motel and made our dinner reservation at the Zion Park Lodge at 7 pm, exactly on schedule.  The food's pretty good, especially the chicken bean southwesternish soup, the cranberry stuff for the turkey, the chocolate cake. 

There was lots of interesting converastion:  one thing that intrigued me was when Cameron was talking about a "World Banquet" (I guess a sort of charity event held by his church) wherein the guests would draw a world locale (e.g. U.S.A., China, Gambia, etc.) and then they would be seated a table and could eat what was served for that locale.  All sounds very clever and interesting, but here's the catch:  obviously, a lot of locales, the average diet is both boring and insufficient.  So imagine sitting down at the Bangladesh table and being served only a small bowl of rice; while those at the USA table get many, many courses of meat, carbs, and fruits and vegetables from all over the world.   See?

So, We ate and talked, and then we went on a 3 mile night-hike, up to a place called Watchtower.

We didn't practice very good trail etiquette, as we left Old School down at the vehicle parking area and didn't realize he wasn't along until 20 minutes up the hill.  So Shah went back down and fetched him up.  But hiking in the dark, by the three-quarters moon, was awesome.  I always feel like I'm living out Tolkien's Silmarilion's "first age" when hiking in moonlight (Tolkien's "first age" was the age between the creation of the moon and the creation of the sun, and the elves had whole civilizations rise and fall in the moonlight of Middle Earth). 

Unfortunately, it's hard to take pictures that capture the night-hike experience.  But it was awesome.

And after that long, long day, I slept soundly.

[this is a "back-post" written 2009-11-30]

Caveat: Zion

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

When I lived in L.A., my friend Jay had a custom of going up to Zion National Park for Thanksgiving, each year, and one hear he invited me along.  It became a sort of tradition for me to go to Zion each Thanksgiving.  We would drive up there Thanksgiving morning, have a big dinner at the park's lodge, and do lots of hiking over the next several days, driving back on the Sunday after.

So, living in Korea, I haven't been joining Jay for Thanksgiving, but since I was back in the US, I decided for old-times' sake to join him and his other friends this year.  Originally, I was going to time my around-the-country road-trip so that I could hit southern Utah at Thanksgiving, but that schedule got all messed up, somehow.   And I'm too burned out on driving to go rushing out there by car, now.  So tomorrow morning I'm flying to Las Vegas (which is the closest major airport to Zion) and Jay will pick me up on his way through from L.A. up to Zion.  I'll spend the long weekend there, and fly back to Minneapolis on Monday.  I'm excited to be going.

I'm still debating on whether to take my computer.  Even if I do, I think I'll declare a 4-day "internet holiday."  So there will be a few days without blog postings or answers to emails.  That will be a nice change, too.

I'll post some thoughts and comments and pictures when I get back to Minneapolis, next Monday.

Caveat: Hangeul on the Prairie

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

It was a few days early, but I was feeling very thankful last night. I had dinner with Jeffrey, his parents Randy and Barb and their daughters (his half-sisters). What’s my relation to them? It’s complicated: Jeffrey is my stepson, by my marriage to Michelle. So Randy was Michelle’s first husband, before she and I got married, and Barb is his second wife. And although we’re as different as people can be, we have a certain family-like relationship, that came about in the wake of Michelle’s death.
I feel very thankful that after Michelle died, Randy and Barb stepped up so completely to provide a healthy and relatively stress-free home for Jeffrey, as that was a very hard time for him. Of course, when Michelle and I were together, she had very little positive to say about Randy and Barb, and their relationship as “exes,” with arguments over things like visitation for Jeffrey, etc., were fraught. This is typical of such relationships, of course. The fact that when Michelle died, everyone involved (barring, perhaps, Michelle’s parents) were able to set aside those earlier acrimonies and do what was “right” for Jeffrey has always struck me as a minor miracle of human interaction. And as such, I’m very thankful.
We met for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Maple Grove that the girls (Jeffrey’s sisters, Ashley and Tiffany) like. I best recall them as around 3 or 4 years old, but now they’re 10 and 11. After dinner, we made a little parade driving in the rain and fog back up to Albertville, where they live currently, and spent some time just hanging out. The girls, especially Tiffany, asked me, spontaneously, to write their names in Korean. This was the first time I’d interacted with American kids who seemed genuinely interested in Korean culture, and as an unrepentant language geek, I was pleased to try to sound out their names and write them in the Korean alphabet, Hangeul.
The girls were fascinated, and soon had me writing the names of everyone in the room, then their friends and teachers, on scraps of paper. Tiffany’s face lit up as she suddenly realized the phonetic principles behind the Hangeul writing system, and with no timidity, she began trying to “guess” how to write various names she could think of. I was stunned and amazed – you always hear Koreans (and rarely, Westerners) talking about the simplicity of the Korean writing system, but watching a midwestern 10 year old grasp all its essential principles in under 30 minutes in a casual exchange was amazing.
Finally, I taught them a few simple phrase, such as 고맙습니다 (go-map-seum-ni-da = thank you), and Tiffany did a perfect-looking Korean-style bow and uttered it repeatedly. The whole experience felt like a charming reversal of my normal role and job in Korea, but it was additionally pleasing because Americans normally are so uninterested in foreign languages and cultures, yet here was this unassuming midwestern kid, with whom I have a “relative-type” connection (how else to explain it?) showing true interest and excitement for Korean.
Well, anyway, that was my Tuesday evening out on the prairie in the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis.
Here’s a picture of the clan – Randy, Barb, Jeffrey, Ashley, Tiffany:
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Here’s a picture of Tiffany, and you can see quite clearly she’s writing her teacher’s name, Miller, sounded out in Korean letters (밀러):
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Caveat: Flatland

Hiking & Travel / My Photos

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The Red River Valley is the about the flatest place that I know of. Parts of California (like around Sacramento) are just as flat, but the mountains are always visible in the distance. Likewise, I remember southern Louisiana being very flat, but the plethora of canals and small bodies of water, on the one hand, and the trees and dikes, on the hand, make it seem less flat somehow.
The Agassiz plain of northwestern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and south central Manitoba is just plain ol’ flat. And to me, it’s spectacularly beautiful in a weird, expansive, desolate sort of way. More beautiful than the rugged Pacific coast or the mountains or desert. But very hard to capture on film.
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Caveat: Immigration Risk

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I crossed the border into Canada, today. Barely.
I spent two hours being intensively interviewed by a Canadian border official. It turned out that they had decided I was an “immigration risk.” Yes, that was the term used.
I was meticulously honest about my life. I prefer to operate that way, with officialdom. But I could offer “no fixed US address,” I had a passport full of exotic stamps, no “proof of current employment,” a truck full of “junk” (things I’ve been carrying around with me to sort through along with some books I collected in Arcata), and, probably most alarmingly, a bumper sticker reading “migration is a human right” (yes, I really believe this, and I’ve written about it before in my blog).
The potentially offending sentiment:
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I really didn’t think about these things. I’ve entered Canada so many times, in life, and they’ve almost always hassled me about one thing or another (always very politely, as that’s the Canadian way), but in the past it was always because they were worried about drugs or some kind of customs-related thing. Or who knows.
In fact, I’ve probably crossed at the I-29/MB75 crossing at least six times. And I’ve done my recent travels in Asia and to Australia last year utterly effortlessly, when it came to border crossings. Japan to Korea by boat was easier than England to France – they asked me no questions, despite the fact that I’d prepared a complicated explanation for returning as a tourist only 10 days after the expiration of my work visa, which I was worried would raise alarm bells.
Well, so… anyway. The Canadians didn’t want me to immigrate. The man was very nice, but very firm, and I was deferential and scrupulously honest. He wrote it all down – I’m thinking of going back and offering him a job as my ghost writer for my autobiography, because he really got quite detailed. “You have to see it from my point of view,” he said, and I nodded sagely.
I offered to go online and show them receipts from my storage unit in Minneapolis, the ticket back to Korea that I’d recently paid for, this blog, even, where they could spend time reading about my vacillations about future plans over the past year or so, but could clearly discover that immigrating to Canada was NOT one of the many options I’d been contemplating.
But they strongly resisted the idea that I lived my life “online,” and they couldn’t seem to understand that I didn’t carry paper copies of these things. I finally sighed, and said, “well, I guess it’s not that important to visit my friend in Winnipeg, it was a kind of spontaneous, impulsive decision, anyway. How about I just turn around and go back into the US?”
The friendly Canadian went off to have a “little meeting” with some of his coworkers, or supervisor, or something. Or maybe he googled me – that’s what I would have done, maybe. To try to check me out.
I sat and pondered what would end up happening if I turned around and then had to pass through US border controls. The US people are always hard-asses anyway, and much less polite than the Canadians, and I began to visualize trying to explain to them that the Canadians had rejected me. That would, of course, set off alarm bells with the Americans. I started developing a little scenario where I lived out some weeks or months in my little truck, parked in the no-man’s land between the Canadian and US border control stations on the Manitoba / North Dakota border, because neither country would let me in.
And then the big, burly, boy-scout-freckled Canadian waved me over and said, very seriously, “we’ve decided we trust you. I’m giving you a one month visa.” And he stamped my passport. And then proceeded to try to convince me to stay more than just one night in Winnipeg, which is what I’d told him my plans were, because, after all, he said, “there’s a lot of fun things to do in Winnipeg.” Really. He said this.
And then, like a latter-day Colombo (70’s TV police drama), he held up a finger and said, “Just one more question.”
I smiled, “Sure, anything.”
“Why was it, again, that you said you had all this stuff in your truck?”
Here we go again, I thought. I began to give, with more detail than before, the story of how I had landed at Minneapolis, and preliminary to driving to California, I had collected some boxes of stuff to “sort through” on my travels.  He said OK, but nodded skeptically.
I shook his hand, went back out to my truck, and drove away from the setting prairie sun, toward Winnipeg.
My friend Gerry said that, on the contrary, it wasn’t the bumper sticker that freaked them out;  it was the laundry basket! “People don’t travel with laundry baskets. Only people who are moving carry laundry baskets.” Hmm… is this a Canadian proverb?
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Caveat: Doctor of Interstate Commerce

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

When I take long road trips, I often return to my youthful fantasies of becoming a truck driver. I used to imagine “finishing my PhD” and then, rather than going off into academia, instead going out and becoming a truck driver. I liked to imagine hanging the little degree in its frame like professors and professionals do in their offices, but hanging it up in the little sleeper cabin attached to my big rig. Really! I thought like this, sometimes, right through college. As much as I’ve always enjoyed road-tripping, truck driving always seemed like something that would make a good career for me.
pictureWell, I never finished the PhD. And I never became a truck driver, unless you want to count some months as a primary tow truck driver for my support battalion on Korea in 1991, and some cross-Korea convoys we participated in during weeks-long field exercises, from Geumchon north of Seoul over to Wonju and down to Daegu. Yes, I was one of those US GI trucks cruising on the Korean backroads dodging “kimchi wagons,” way back when.
But driving across the country as I have been, I return sometimes to those truck driver fantasies. That’s a job that, if all else fell apart, I could manage, I’m certain.
Drive, drive, drive.
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Caveat: Montana, Montana and more Montana

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

Montana is a very long state, to drive through. I think I-90 is about 700 miles.
It’s especially long under wintery highway conditions. Toward the end of my day, in the early evening dark, I was going 25-35 mph through blowing snow over very icy interstate eastward from Bozeman.
I saw overturned trucks, jackknifed trailers, cars in ditches. So I stayed slow. And as much as I generally find driving about as close to a meditative state as I can attain, driving through that can be kind of stressful. I’m tired.
Here are two pictures from earlier in the day.
A freeway rest area:
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A stop at a “ranch exit” (i.e. there’s no town at the freeway exit) around sunset:
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Caveat: into winter

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

After a week of very little driving, hanging out in nostalgic spots of the Pacific Northwest, I'm back on the road again.  I landed in a motel in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, this evening.  Normally when I'm on one of these typical clockwise semi-continental tours, I do the leg from Portland to Spokane via the Columbia River valley, but I decided to go up I-5 through metro Seattle this time, even though it adds about an hour of driving time, just to vary the routine.  I don't think I've driven through western Washington state since 1996, when Michelle, Jeffrey and I went to my sister's wedding in Olympia from Minneapolis.

It was cool driving up over the Snoqualmie pass east of Seattle.  Snow appeared and thickened on the ground and trees, and from there all the way across Washington, there were varying amounts of snow and ice all around.  I have arrived in winter.  It's beautiful.  I love winter.

I've decided to make a detour to visit with a friend near Winnipeg, which is not really "on the way" to Minneapolis, but I just decided to go for it, as I may not be that close to that part of the world again for a long time.  So that's my next destination.  I'm going to try to make that side trip and be in Minneapolis by around Wednesday or Thursday.

Caveat: SLOW

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

After doing so much, traveling, keeping so busy… I kind of came to a stop, today. Resting at Juli & Keith’s house here on the Oregon hillside, kind of having a lazy day. I did however make a small, important step. I sent off the email confirming my intention to return to Korea today. So that kind of represents a commitment.
Here’s a picture from Patrick’s Point, a few miles north of Arcata, taken in late afternoon on Tuesday:
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Caveat: Small Town

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos

Arcata is a small town.  I took about 5 long walks through and around the town during my 3 day visit there.  Yesterday afternoon, I walked down to where my middle school was, in SunnyBrae.  Then I walked up Shirley Blvd (a very steep winding hill) to Fickle Hill Road and back down to the house.  I went into Redwood Park (which is the name of Arcata’s city park, about 2 blocks up the hill from the house where I grew up).  Here is a picture from a path inside the park:
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Caveat: 깊고 간절한 마음은 닿지 못하는 곳이 잆다네

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life is a Dream / My Photos / Quotable

“A deep and sincere heart has no unreachable place.” I had bought a small textile wall hanging with the Korean phrase on it, at a “temple shop” near a Buddhist temple in Seoul. I had that one, and several others. I presented this one to my friends Peggy and Latif who live in my former home in Arcata. They are generous and kind, and the saying suits them very well.
Here is the “A Street House,” where I lived my first 18 years (with a few short periods away from it, in Eureka, Oklahoma City, summers in Washington or Idaho or Boston, etc.):
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This is the same house, from a slightly different angle, in 1965 (with my dad’s Model A Ford parked in front):
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Here is the back yard, looking from the Kitchen window.  That’s the “pump house” that functions as a kind of detached, outdoor bedroom.  It was my bedroom during my high school years:
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This is the same old pumphouse, in 1967:
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This is Peggy’s smiling buddha, under the cherry tree that was just a tiny sapling when I was a kid.
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