It’s an old saying, but it’s so true. After 2100 miles of driving and various hotel beds and sofa beds, it’s great to be back home in my own easy chair with my cats and a glass of wine. I look forward to hanging around tomorrow and maybe doing the lawn and stripping a gazillion bug carcasses off my car.

We picked Saturday and Sunday as travel days figuring everyone would be where they were going for the weekend and we weren’t disappointed. The highways were mostly empty. All in all it was a relatively easy drive. I just wish Americans would learn to use multi-lane roads as they were meant to be used. The big difference between American highways with their ridiculously low speed limits and the German autobahns which have no speed limits is driver discipline. Germans understand the proper use of multi-lane roads. I doubt it will ever change here in the US, though. Pity.

We spent this past weekend in DC at Book Expo. As with all cities, there are some very good points and some very bad ones. We were able to indulge in the various ethnic food restaurants around our hotel every night. We ate Chinese, Ethiopian, and Lebanese. The Chinese was so-so, but the others were great. The Lebanese dinner was with some of Sarah’s friends. Afterward we walked to a really nice coffee bar for dessert. Therein lies one major advantage to living in or around a big city, great dining choices. There is also no shortage of things to do in cities, plenty of shopping and cultural stuff, lots of places to walk, etc.

The most common downside to cities is always the traffic and DC is certainly no exception. Public transportation in this country is still below par when compared to the systems in Europe. I lived in Germany, just south of Nurnberg, for a number of years and for a while I commuted daily to the north side of Nurnberg. There was a bus stop within easy walking distance from my house and the commuter rails and subways all linked and all used the same monthly pass system, which was cheap. And it’s that way anywhere in Germany. The Germans make full use of their public transportation for two very good reasons. It’s efficient, and it’s way cheaper than their gasoline. It’s also very clean and very safe. Something that can’t be said for many US systems.

I was reading in today’s Boston Globe that Massachusetts is having a hard time recovering workers who left the state during the 2001 recession because the housing costs are still ridiculously high. Yet another downside to cities. Out our way you can buy some beautiful homes for around $200k. In DC you’d be looking at a small condo or a very small house in a not-so-nice neighborhood. In the Boston area you’d be stuck with condos. When professionals like Sarah and myself can live very well in the midwest or live like paupers out east, guess where we’ll choose to live.

So for now I guess we’ll stay in the midwest and continue to travel as often as possible. I’ve really become accustomed to the lack of traffic and the decent weather in our area. And despite my occassional rants about noisy neighbors, overall it’s very quiet where we live and that point gets driven home every time we visit a city.

During my second tour in Korea I was in a Recon unit, part of the 4th Sqdn, 7th US Cavalry (Air). We were a bunch of teenagers with toys. Good fun then. One of the coolest things we did was STABO extraction, where you tied yourself off to a rope hung from a Huey and flew off. We did some serious rappelling, too. Always face-first. I don’t know why, but they call it “Australian style.”

Images here.

Stellarium is a free and very cool program which will show you your sky for any given time and label planets, stars, and constellations. You can set it to “fast forward” through the day and night and watch how the heavens change. Great for amateur star gazers and gadget freaks like me. 😉

Some great images can be seen at Hazecams. Each individual image can be viewed at very high resolution, resulting in ample opportunities to crop and save some really spectacular pictures. Here’s a nice evening in Burlington, VT.

I travel backroads quite often. There are virtually no cops or traffic, and the scenery is almost always better than that seen from an interstate. This past October we were driving around Cadillac, MI and decided to hunt down an old cemetery for some genealogy research. The route took us on some serious backroads. I’m talking no-pavement-lotsa-dirt backroads here. I had just acquired a Bluetooth GPS receiver, so I was game for some “let’s get lost” backroad fun. We found the cemetery easily, but what was more amazing was the incredible scenery. The foliage was almost at peak and the cornfields had yet to be harvested. Here’s the result.

So next time you’re out and about, get off the interstate and check out some backroads. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you may find.

Ask a hundred people what their idea of a classic, ageless car design is and you’ll likely get a variety of unique answers, most of which would make perfect sense. The early Mustangs and Corvettes would certainly qualify, as would the ‘57 Chevy and T-Bird, the Jaguar XKE, and any of a dozen other great cars. But if you ask me, the greatest car design of all time is the BMW E24 6 Series. This car just has all the right stuff. It looks aggressive, yet sophisticated. It’s instantly recognizable and its appearance was changed very little from the start of its 14 year run in 1976 until the last model rolled off the line in 1989. Having owned a 633 CSi while stationed in Germany, I can attest to the incredible power and agility of this car. Its nickname was “Autobahn airplane” for good reason; driving it felt like flying a jet fighter. At its top speed of 149 MPH, this car was as stable as granite. It could stop on a dime and change directions without hesitation. And always it turned heads. But don’t take it from me. Judge for yourself. Is this a beautiful machine, or what? I just wish it were mine.

I’m a big fan of Wine Spectator, both the magazine and the web site. I enjoy wine immensely and I enjoy reading about famous restaurants and the various cutting edge meals being prepared in them. I’ve been to a few really good restaurants in my time and have had some outstanding meals. But the stature of a restaurant needn’t always be rated by stars in a guide book or the pedigree of the chefs. Case in point, Gunner Buc’s in Mattoon, Illinois. By anyone’s standard it would be considered a “hole in the wall.” It’s a sports bar with the atmosphere of a tool shed. It sits along a main road surrounded by soybean fields and natural gas pumps. You order your meal at the grill and then find a seat. You must order something to drink with dinner, be it a soda or a beer.  You can hardly look in any direction without seeing sports on a TV, unless you’re looking at the bar or the wall of slot machines. But, atmosphere aside, Gunner Buc’s makes the best damn hamburgers you’ve ever eaten. I’ve had burgers all over the world, and none can match the burgers at Gunner Buc’s. Just goes to prove that you don’t need to look in a high-end cuisine guide to find memorable food. Sometimes you just need to head down to the corner bar.

Germans really know how to have fun. Until you’ve been to a beerfest, you just can’t fathom how much fun they are. Even if you don’t like beer, the atmosphere is contagious. You cannot help but have fun. 🙂