So Obama's picked Martha's Vineyard for a week vacation, and regardless of how much his weekly rental costs during the recession, it's an excellent place to relax and fulfill his main goal: 'spend time with my daughters.' The home -- the $20 million Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark -- is away from most towns -- and should help minimize extra summer traffic blocks by the Obama entourage, and it puts them nearer to some great lesser-seen parts of the island (West Tisbury's Farmer's Market on Wednesday and Saturday is a sure bet, I'm guessing).
I just came back from the island, and pulled together my 22 (of maybe 122) reasons why Obama was right. And why anyone would win if they visited the Vineyard. It's diverse. It's not just yacht clubs, Nantucket reds and Kennedys. Pittsburgh expat/historian David McCullough describes the island as a 'microcosm of America.' Oak Bluffs is famed for its African American roots. There are many Portuguese Americans, plus college students (and kids!) working on farms. Notably too are the Wampanoag -- New England's first federally recognized tribe (1987!) -- who own the western tip at Gays Head/Aquinnah (a recent pageant told the traditional tales of Moshup creating the island by dragging his toe; above).
You get what you want out of it. The sea, fresh tomatoes, beaches, fishing, kayaking, sailing, reading (great bookstores and local authors), 'mudslide' cocktails with chocolate syrup, whirlwind of events (from plays to puppets to chamber orchestras), hikes, architectural history, clams, more reggae per capita than anywhere in the US but Burlington, Vermont.
Menemsha bike ferry. James Taylor's brother owns a $5 bike ferry 'up island' (ie the western half of the island, more or less) that makes the tiny trip across the Menemsha Pond -- great for bikers wanting to head up Lobsterville Beach without the trek uphill to the pond's south shore. What's better is the guy running it -- a (possibly one-eyed) guy named for an Ohioan city and apparently with some history with a bong.
Old salts. You find them anywhere, the stiff-legged bearded salts casting an uneasy eye to the see -- to sail, to fish. Best are Gannon & Benjamin, who make sailboats for the rich at Vinyard Haven and open their messy, fascinating workshop to anyone wanting to look.
Here's the guys, and their beards, talking about what the Vineyard mean to them:
Bike paths. If you don't like the sea, screw it. Rent a bike for $20 a day and hit 37 miles of bike paths, plus many more options on 'ancient ways' -- back-country paths that crisscross the island.
Farms. If you don't like the sea, screw it (again). Farms fill the interior of the island, best accessed at the West Tisbury farmer's market at Grange Hall on Wednesday and Saturday -- first tent features giant, authentic Vietnamese egg rolls.
Friendliness (& outright chattiness). Those conditioned on Hamptons' coolness (even the New York Times finger-pointed Long Island's playland recently) will be shocked by the easygoing approach of locals. Show an interest, and you'll get an earful. At a detailed tour of Edgartown's Vincent House, I learned about how many generations the people behind a fundraiser to relocate the house to its present spot 15 years before had been on the island. That was 10 minutes right there. The tour started after another 10 minutes of fascinating tangents. A great visit.
Ice cream. Mad Martha's dominates the ice cream circuit (and polls) -- with options, and colorful flavors, in Oak Bluffs (a town of colorful gingerbread houses, no less), Vineyard Haven and Edgartown (a town of more prim-and-proper white-paint-please housing). Mad Martha's famed cones are good, but Edgartown's quiet Scoops' creamy options are actually better.
That apostrophe in Martha's Vineyard. You don't see places get the apostrophe often -- and, thanks to recent legislation, you wont see any streets in Birmingham, England sporting it -- all of which makes the island that could have been called The Vineyard Belonging to Martha so special.
--> If you're as curious as I am, apparently four other places in the US have clearance for an apostrophe per strict rules by the United States Board of Geographic Names (Ike's Point, NJ; John E's Pond, RI; Carlos Elmer's Joshua View, AZ; and Clark's Mountain, OR).
Really nice beaches. Some, like the nudie one at Lucy Vincent Beach, are private unless you have property or staying at local inns with key access. No need. There are many superb ones. Oak Bluff's State Beach and Inkwell Beach is nice, but Long Point is particularly nice, with a long stretch of gold sand you can (technically) walk in the wet part of the sand down to Robert McNamara's old place where the Clintons once stayed. The water's often rough, but there's a couple freshwater ponds with sandy beaches to swim in, and kayak tours. Helping keep numbers down, the parking lot is small, filling usually by 11am.
There is no right way to grab brass rings at Oak Bluffs' Flying Horses Carousel. It's the oldest carousel in America -- with underrated all-wood horses spinning around a corridor at $1.50 a spin. But that's not the point. It's to catch as many brass rings in a spring-action ring holder. And islanders ARGUE over which way to do -- the quick finger curl vs the tilting reach forward/back. Personally combining both makes the most sense (it got three rings in one pass). 'That's nothing,' the ticket seller told me. 'My son got nine.' I think he cheated.
Eating sandwiches & watching biplanes land on grass. On the road between Edgartown and South Beach (aka Katama Beach), you can stop at Right Fork Diner on the grass landing strip of Katama Airfield -- food's great and little biplanes land and take off nearby.
'No! We DON'T have a stoplight.' Locals are hilarious over this one, linking a possibility of a stoplight to a nuclear power plant. Between Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, there's a 'blinking light' (actually three at one corner, but who's counting), and there are indeed a couple stoplights at the Vineyard Haven drawbridge that rises a couple times a day. 'But that's NOT a stoplight though. It's for the bridge,' one local quickly protested when I suggested otherwise. 'Not on this island.' Never mind the five-way intersection in Vineyard Havens may be the most bizarre, confusing traffic point I've ever seen.
'Chappy.' I'm sorry, no matter how many times I say the abbreviation for Chappaquiddick, or see it on a t-shirt, it never ceases to be funny. Good thing that the beaches --- particularly the one at East Beach, past the infamous Dike Bridge -- are super, and the overlooked Mytoi botanical garden (free and empty when I visited) is a great spot to sit, write poems of clam attacks or contemplate growing a beard.
Plus, you have to take a 70-second ferry to get over to Chappy from Edgartown. One 17-year-old ferry worker loves her job. 'I get to talk all day. See what's going on.' Anyone ever fall in the water? 'Yeah, there was one drunk lady who did last winter.'
Swimming holes. Locals know where to go to swim -- at inland, fresh-water swimming holes, like the Ice House Pond in West Tisbury, off Lamberts Cove Rd. One catch, per one local, 'You can't do anything there but swim. No sunbathing, no picnics.' Good thing that was the goal anyway.
The fun bus. No need for a car on the island. The well-organized Martha's Vineyard Transit Authority spins a web of routes around the island, and pick up/drop off anywhere along the way. Sometimes it requires a timetable study to figure out connections to reach Aquinnah; otherwise just ask. The drivers are a chatty bunch. One lectured me, 'You know you're traveling when you go to places without postcards.' (The Vineyard doesn't qualify, alas.)
The ongoing fiery MV Times vs MV Gazette debate. Locals are quick to point out which side of the local media line they reside -- the Times is a bit 'trashier' to Gazette fans; the Gazette (around since 1846) is a rare brooooadsheet and with undeniably high quality stories. Both are better than most places with a year-round population of 15,000 would expect. (And I read them both.)
Outdoor showers. Many many homes have outdoor showers. And if you stay at one, it's expected you'll use it.
Jumping off 'the bridge.' On State Beach, between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, everyone stops to jump off the rather small 'Big Bridge' (aka American Legion Memorial Bridge). It's not high up, but you have to know when to go. One 12-year-old swore you could jump only at high tide. 'Otherwise you'll be killed.' Nevertheless, I saw belly flops (successful, if painful) at most hours. Once in, you're on your own though. And, yes, Jaws was filmed off this beach.
Bad transport links. That's right, bad, awkward transport actually helps keep the island from being overwhelmed with MV lovers. It recently took me over 12 hours to return to New York City (door to door) on the ferry to New Bedford then Peter Pan bus. This came after going to Oak Bluffs on New England Fast Ferry's new direct ferry from Wall Street to Oak Bluffs -- though some passengers learned why it's nicknamed the 'vomit comet.' (Wasn't that bad.)
Net Result's secret picnic area. Everyone around Vineyard Haven knows that Net Result is the spot to pick up fresh seafood or ready-made lobster rolls. But most eat at the picnic tables by the parking lot. Breeze right by them. Across the parking lot is a grassy picnic area with empty tables facing the Lagoon (a popular kayak spot). 'No one realizes it's public,' a local told me.
The Aquinnah Cultural Center. Housed in a 19th-century homestead by the Gay Head Cliffs (shown at top of post) just debuted a 40-minute loop of interviews with elder Wampanoags over the past 30 years -- lots of fascinating details of Wampanoag life over the years to take in. Also, the energized staff sometimes put out fresh lemonade and cookies.
Rule: ANY museum with free cookies is worth a visit. Obama should go.
This weekend, I spoke about cat meat, motorbikes, Graham Greene, DIY travel, and finding the 'definitive experience of Vietnam' on Portland, Oregon's KPAM radio.
HOW NOT TO MAKE TRAVEL BROCHURES Romania is a wonderful country to visit -- I might call it Europe's most fascinating, considering its mountains, traditional life, and its horse carts rolling over highways and onto ancient paths as if the new age had never come. But there are somethings about it that is a bit unnerving.
Then there's the Dracula thing, which manifests itself in hokey 'Dracula hotels' and restaurants and at least one castle where Vlad Tepes -- the real life Dracula -- may or may not have dropped by and defecated on a lone overnighter in the 15th century.
None of this can rival the horrors found in even a random sample of Romanian tourist brochures, each peppered with unexpected collage techniques, models in painful positions, actual torture, blurry borders on aged photos, scary guys with beards.
Of course, Romania is not alone in poorly conceived travel brochures, so I've thumbed through a stack and come up with TEN TIPS on how you can make your own travel brochures.
--> ACTION POINT: If you've come across questionably planned travel brochures, REPORT THEM. Please scan and post at the new 'Regretable Travel Brochures' group on LonelyPlanet.com.
Us '80s-Tulsans grew up with a huge, decade-long sigh of satisfaction. We didn't have mountains, oceans or particularly good taffy, but we knew what we did have:
a) We weren't Oklahoma City. Meaning, we did have some hills, green grass, trees and (due to all the left-over oil money kicking around) art-house films. OKC may have the Flaming Lips, but we had the Hanson Brothers. b) We had a pro soccer team -- NASL's glorious Roughnecks -- that won the national championship the year they went bankrupt. c) We got MTV before anyone else (as test-market city). Even New York City, guy. We know MTV way before Thriller came out. So there.
These days, OKC has improved, soccer's gone and MTV sucks. But there are still some great things to do:
Go to Oral Roberts' Jetsons-meets-Jesus, futuristic-in-a-clearly-retro-way campus. Pose in front of the praying hands statue below the array of international flags. Walk straight to the Prayer Tower (shown above) and take the elevator to the top. You don't have to pray. You don't have to talk about el Bible. No one will bother you. And you can have nice views of the very unusual campus set up by a man who once locked himself in there to raise millions to save his life. Go see the greatest shirtless statue you've never heard of, the Golden Driller. No, he's not gold -- more of a dry-river-bed brown -- but he stands with his derrick for photo opps. And you can sit on his foot if you like.
Go play the silly frisbee (aka 'disc') golf course on the river walk. The Arkansas River winds through Tulsa -- and as of late actually has some water in it. River-side parks stretch 26 miles. The golf course has been there for 25 years. And it's really not a horrible thing to do.
Go to the Gilcrease Museum and look at cowboy art. Don't like cowboy art? Yes you do. You just haven't seen much. Exaggerated or not, it's our most authentic images of Plains Indians, mean US military attacks and guys roping steers. A window to an 1800s America long lost. And it's a lot more fun than it should be -- and easier to decipher than those rained-on works by the Impressionists over at Philbrook Museum.
Go see the Admiral Drive In. You know from the scene in The Outsiders where Ponyboy (C Thomas Howell) tries to pick up Cherry (Diane Lane), in a time when greasers and socs were united by knife fights and watching sunsets. Author SE Hinton is Tulsan, and sometimes lazy.
Go to a show, if one's on, at Cain's Ballroom. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys used to control the stage in the glory days centuries past, and it's become the vintage stage to see shows on in this corner of Oklahoma. The Sex Pistols' ironic tour of the south blazed through the stage, and Johnny Rotten apparently hid in the office out of fear.
Go to India Palace. Eat the buffet -- far better than your average Indian buffet -- then walk straight back into the kitchen, purposefully, without asking, and thank the chef personally. My family has done this for years. You will be rewarded with a sizzling 'fire/oil show' on the frying pans. And if you bring a tot back in, that tot will be held by the cooks.
Go up the 'Tulsa hill.' Driving from 61st St & Memorial, head west towards Sheridan, a mile away. The road rises -- a tennis center to the left, apartments to the right. About three-quarters the way to Sheridan you peak atop an unnamed hill -- 'Tulsa Hill' might work -- and can see the whole city scape. When a visiting cousin from (flat) Burleson, Texas, saw it a few years ago, she shot out: 'Wow. That's something. Burleson just looks like a fat guy sat on it.'
Go play Lafortune's three-par course at night. Screw Southern Hills country club, where Tiger Woods comes occasionally and then mocks the city ('boring'). Lafortune's little 18-hole job is the best thing to do in summer. Just don't do what me, Mark and Jay did -- walk on the course for free (or follow Jay's lead by shooting balls intentionally towards traffic on Yale Ave).
Go eat breakfast at Brookside by Day. It's in Brookside, a faintly hip area with biker bars and vintage clothing. Breakfast is as good as it gets.
--> When you leave, and you'll probably want to after a day or so, try to take Route 66 west to Oklahoma City. It's one of the longest stretches of the Mother Road not to be claimed by the interstate system. It saves you the $3.50 toll, you can try buffalo burgers and great cobbler at the Rock Cafe in Stroud, stop in antique stores in Chandler, and see a big round red barn in Arcadia.
SEEING AN UNSEEN NEW YORK Bikes and me haven't been the same since my 15-1/2th birthday, when I got a learner's permit to drive a car. I've had a few over the years -- most seem to get stolen -- and enjoyed a day or two on a rickety $1 rental in places like Vietnam. But mostly I go by all other means: foot, bus, subway, tram, ox cart, car.
But I feel a U-turn coming. Last week, on an impulse, I bought a 25-year-old red Schwinn frame refurbished with everything else all-new. And yesterday morning I had my first bike-bonding moment. I coasted towards a red light at a busy intersection of 4th Ave in Brooklyn and found myself waiting in the company of nine other bikers. All types. A pudgy gray-haired guy with a backpack, young guy with silk shirt and flip flops, a kid on a BMX, a woman with unshaved legs. I had noticed bikers, but not like this -- and I was part of it. It felt exciting.
I was on my way to more moments. I joined up my friends -- writers Mike Barish (@mikebarish) and David Farley (@davidfarley) -- for an attempt to ride around Manhattan. None of us are pro bikers. Farley -- no one calls him David -- just got his bike too, and Mike -- no one calls him Barish -- pleaded incompetence.
Most New York City bike shops carry the free NYC Cycling Map 2009 detailing the 650 or so miles of bike lanes and paths (also available online), but we didn't refer to it often. Our plan was to go the easy way, more or less, the bike path running up Manhattan's west side -- use it as a starting point, pedal leisurely, and detour often. At Murray St in Lower Manhattan, we joined the smooth, flat, paved bike path, which eventually ends around 200th St. After a few blocks, Farley, who spent recent years chasing Jesus' foreskin in Italy for his new book An Irreverent Curiosity, led us off the path to W 11th St to see director Julian Schnabel's pink, Italian-style Palazzo Chupi on 11th St. Across the street, a hefty door man, with a smile (and scar) on his face, told us that Richard Gere bought an apartment -- most go for $20 or so million -- hoping to flip it, but 'no one's buying.' He added, 'Our building doesn't have as much character. Maybe we should put up a Tahitian hut on top.'
We drove north a few blocks to W 16th St for a quick look at the High Line-- the new, elevated city park made from an abandoned freight train line -- then, back to the bike path, where we stopped at the four-year-old Clinton Cove Park, with kayaking and Malcolm Cochran's wine-bottle sculpture called Private Passage with stainless steel interiors replicating the Queen Mary's. Shortly after Mike -- who runs theWrightstache.com to campaign for New York Met David Wright to grow a hairy lip ornament -- cheerfully summed up how biking New York 'reminds you that Manhattan is actually surrounded by water,' a bicyclist called us all a collective 'dude' by objecting to our stopping place, behind a barrier next to the path.
Heading north, we somehow lost the path entirely and had a string of interesting diversions. We rode a couple blocks into Morningside Heights via 107th St and stopped at the first cafe with an 'Entourage' poster in the window: Oren's Daily Roast -- next to the Tom's Restaurant the Seinfeld guys always met up at. I asked the bearded coffee attendant about the poster. 'I don't know why it's there. I think we once kept some of their stuff.' Hear that Kev Dillon? Your missing Nell DVD is at 112th & Broadway.
Heading back towards the river to re-locate the path, two guys waved us over by the Riverside Church for free food samples (carrot cake, chicken-and-waffle bites -- Mike has a great shot of it here) for their new cafe inside the church. Across the street at the surprisingly stunning Grant's Tomb (the country's biggest mausoleum), a 'park ranger' told us that the old saying 'who's buried in Grant's Tomb' is just 'an old Groucho Marx joke. It's like saying, what color was Washington's white horse.' But actually, he said, the correct answer is either 'no one' or 'Grant and his wife Julia,' who's also in there. 'They're not buried there. They're emtombed.'
Farley's bike pedal was acting up and he turned back (it'd fall off 20 blocks south), and Mike and I continued north, returned the path on the other side of the West Side Hwy via the elevator at Riverside State Park (a rare park built atop a waste refinery), and pedaled past fishers at the riverbank edge and Little Leaguers playing ball in tucked-away fudge-green parks.
Under the George Washington Bridge we found something else you can't see by car: the Little Red Lighthouse. Moved here from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 1921, it nearly was demolished after the 'great gray bridge' above was built, but the fame from a popular children's book of the two unlikely buddies saved it.
We walked the bikes up a steep bit of the path just beyond, and into a real-live batch of woods, before exiting around 200th St and getting lost trying to find the Cloisters . (It's best to exit the path at 181st St to cross the Henry Hudson Parkway.) We backtracked, thanks to maps pulled up on Mike's iPhone, along Broadway to 187th St, then carried our bikes up a tall set of stairs to Fort Washington Ave as two work-out buddies zoomed past us, over and over, in sweat-soaked shirts.
The Cloisters is one of New York's great museums, built from disassembled 500-year-old European monasteries and housing some of the Met's finest medieval art works. We were there for lunch. After a mostly turkey-less turkey wrap, and a short conversation with a moustached Floridan in overalls in the garden, we peeked at the exhibits. Walking by a proud photographer noting how one shot would 'be good for Facebook,' Mike and I zeroed in on the museum's best room: of 15th-century tapestries detailing the life and death of a unicorn. One showed a deviant with '70s rock hair and candy-cane pants thrusting a spear into the unicorn's chest.
We were only half way around the island, but it was 4pm, and my day on a bike was over. I hopped onto an A train to Brooklyn and -- energized by a day seeing a new slice of New York -- did the unthinkable: started a conversation with my subway neighbor, Darren. We spoke for nearly 40 minutes. He's a construction worker that we had passed earlier the day on the path. 'Biking,' he said. 'That's about the best thing you can do.'
Learning a new way how to see your home as a destination is another.
IF YOU BIKE IN NYC New York City has 650 or so miles of bike paths and lanes (painted lines on busy streets where you ride between passing and parked cars). Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park have nice rides -- particularly when cars are prohibited on weekends. Also the city's just released a 'Queens Around the World' bike map, which is available free at the City Planning Bookstore.
Some bike shops rent bikes. A staff member at Gotham (see link) told me, 'More and more visitors are renting bikes. We're usually out of rentals by 11am.'
Next time, I'll take in the Harlem River Drive (which hugs the East River from roughly 200th St to 155th St). I hear it's the city's best.
Twenty years ago, I was a quarter way through my first Eurail check-the-country-off-the-list trip across Europe -- London to Rome in 20 days. I don't regret it, but sometimes I think twice about how I spent that July 14 -- the 200th anniversary of Paris' Bastille Day. I was time-killing a day a few hours north in Bruges, leisurely walking by canals, sitting in quaint parks, getting ice cream in waffle cones from heart-melting blondes with long eyelashes and no apparent knee-jerk distaste for Americans, then boarding a train for Amsterdam, shrugging off Paris for future trips.
A regret? Or just plain dumb?*
Here are a few more that just might qualify for my list of things I might have done differently given a second chance:
1. Not accepting the invitation from the Hungarian film crew to camp at a gulag eight hours north of Magadan, Russia. 2. Living a year-and-a-half in London and taking all my trips (on budget airlines) to Germany and Italy, never seeing things like my namesake's birthplace, Scotland. 3. In 1989, skipping Berlin. 'Two cities in one? Big deal.' A few months later the wall came tumbling down like a John Cougar Mellencamp song.** 4. After James Brown died, there was a huge celebration of JB's life outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a 30-minute subway ride away. I watched it on TV. 5. Worn out in Bulgaria, I spent the airline's $200 change fee to fly back one day early. Really? 6. I trusted the 'where you from?' from a grisly guy with a huge fake smile in a Guadalajara bus station. While I answered cheerfully, his pal took a backpack from under my feet behind me. They didn't get much: just my camera, $200 and my passport. 7. Putting my passport in a backpack in Guadalajara. 8. Five years of living in San Francisco = not once going onto the bay. Not Alcatraz, not a ferry to Sausalito, where Chevy Chase lived in the immortal film Foul Play.***
9. On a study trip to Russia in 1992, yelling at the lady tour guide on a night St Petersburg bus tour to 'put the Stones tape in' after my unsuccessful debut with vodka. (I was successful getting the Stones tape in though.) Sorry Natasha! 10. Speaking of St Petersburg, I spent six weeks there. Time spent in the Hermitage? About 45 minutes. 11. In other museum underachievements, after 11 years or so living in New York City, total time in the Met? About 80 minutes. 12. Never going to Laos. 13. Or Cuba. 14. After driving purposely way out of my way to see Manitoba, spending only four wakeful hours in Winnipeg. (Though managing to see Louis Riel's grave -- and eat some bad Italian food.) 15. Not getting a photo with the Detroit Red Wings staying in the same hotel in Pittsburgh (while competing for the Stanley Cup) in June 2009. 16. Not spending longer than 10 minutes at a sprawling gypsy horse fair outside Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania. 17. Spending a week in Punjab, India, and visited the Sikh's Golden Palace in Armitsar -- a short bus ride from Lahore, but never even considering going crossing into Pakistan. May not have that chance again. 18. Not going up the CN Tower in Toronto because it IS too expensive (from C$22). (See it apparently get hit by a rebuking lightning a couple times, following.)
19. Eating one too many street barbecue beef skewers on a stick in Yangon, and spending two days vomiting. 20. Turning down the offer to stay a night on a floating house outside Chau Doc, Vietnam. 21. Driving into a thunderstorm during a tornado warning because I really didn't want to wait another day for my first glimpse of Nebraska. Had plenty of time to mull that one over, parked under a dentist's car park down-wind, while watching half the town pouring into a Wal Mart to huddle in sales sections away from windows. 22. Letting the film development shop in Tulsa throw away my photos from a trip to Rome after I complained (rightfully) that they didn't do a good job. 23. Turning down an invitation to hang with Civil War re-enactors camping by a basketball court at a forgotten battle event in southeastern Iowa. (See photo at top of post of completely different re-enactment.) 24. Skipping Mesa Verde during a five-day trip to Durango, Colorado. 25. Going whale-watching on an August trip to touristy Bar Harbor, Maine. Didn't see a minnow. 26. Going to Bar Harbor, Maine -- at least in August. 27. Obeying my parents who wouldn't let me, at age 16, to drive on a school night nine hours to Memphis with a free backstage pass for a REM show. (On the Fablestour!) 28. Not traveling more in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1992, especially. 29. Only driving through Albuquerque. (At least AC/DC's 'TNT' was on the radio.) 30. Summer 1991: Too much time in Vienna, not enough time in Czechoslovakia. 31. Having laundry done in places like Khabarovsk, Russia, where dry-cleaning-prices-plus cost more than buying new clothes. 32. Driving across Western Kansas and skipping Mt Sunflower. Children, don't do what I've done!
33. Russia 1991 study trip: throwing vegetables at trams from our hotel window, tossing penny soccer games out of skyscrapers. Mostly it was Pete the minor league baseball player's fault. 34. Not keeping much of a journal while living 18 months in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in the mid '90s. 35. Not spending the night, or more time, much much more time, in Kavarna, Bulgaria - the heavy metal capital of the world. 36. Another Bulgaria burp (there are many): Not climbing through the smashed ground-level windows of this building to see the towering commie mosaics inside: Admittedly the place, with its front steps smeared in a LOT of cow dung, freaked me out.
37. Not going to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, when I had a chance in 1991, a few months before the war broke out. 38. Never going to Spain or Ireland, particularly when they were cheap. 39. After my trip, only once calling the lovely Grewals, the Sikh family who hosted a week-long stay in Chandigargh, India in 1997. Then losing their contact info. 40. Leaving my passport in my $8 room in Valladolid, Mexico, having to get off the bus on the highway, hitch-hike back to retrieve it. 41. Losing my photograph with Chris Jagger -- brother of Mick -- who wore a Tibetan hat after a regrettably bad cajun gig. (Watching live cajun/zydeco music by unfamous British brothers of famous British rock stars is another huge regret of mine. I can't seem to help myself.) 42. Losing my photographs of a great great day riding on the back of a local's bike and getting an airbrushed sign made in Batambang, Cambodia. 43. Staying with a Mexico City family in 1990, I bought some fake feces at Chapultepec and played a trick on kids way too young for the humor (maybe two years old?). Lesson: Save the fake feces for pranks back home. 44. A few hours to spare in touristy Deadwood, South Dakota with my dad, talked about dressing up as 19th-century gold prospectors for a hokey photo, but not doing it. This is easily outweighed by having my only just-dad-and-me trip and hearing his unguarded 'oh!' at first glimpse of Mt Rushmore, less than a year before he died. But I do have a photo with him at the taco truck outside Lonely Planet's Oakland offices: 45. On a two-date 'Indiana tour' (both in Greencastle) while playing guitar for the 'parted hair hardcore' band Tall Tales in college, we couldn't convince Mitch to call in sick and stop in at Six Flags Mid America in St Louis. Big-time regret, here. 46. Wetting my pants at my debut visit of Tulsa's legendary Woodland Hills Mall. Not sure if it was excitement or just plain nerves. Either way, my baseball uniform? Soaked from the waist down. 47. Not sending more post cards.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * Actually I think skipping a huge event like that isn't always a bad idea. Missing a walled-up Berlin is another matter. ** Please make the time to rewatch the John Cougar Mellencamp video to help me answer two key questions: At 2:32 mark is that really him sliding down tall ladder? And, at 2:48 mark, is that Mellencamper doing the moonwalk? *** Anyone remember when Chevy Chase was funny? Vacation is to blame for the decline. It's good, but didn't play to his strengths. In Vacation, Chevy was clumsy and dumb. He's at his best, particularly in Fletch, when he's clumsy and smart. Probably his agent's fault.
So Obama's picked Martha's Vineyard for a week vacation, and regardless of how much his weekly rental costs during the recession, it's an excellent place to relax and fulfill his main goal: 'spend time with my daughters.' The home -- the $20 million Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark -- is away from most towns -- and should help minimize extra summer traffic blocks by the Obama entourage, and it puts them nearer to some great lesser-seen parts of the island (West Tisbury's Farmer's Market on Wednesday and Saturday is a sure bet, I'm guessing).
It's diverse. It's not just yacht clubs, Nantucket reds and Kennedys. Pittsburgh expat/historian David McCullough describes the island as a 'microcosm of America.' Oak Bluffs is famed for its African American roots. There are many Portuguese Americans, plus college students (and kids!) working on farms. Notably too are the Wampanoag -- New England's first federally recognized tribe (1987!) -- who own the western tip at Gays Head/Aquinnah (a recent pageant told the traditional tales of Moshup creating the island by dragging his toe; above).
Jumping off 'the bridge.' On State Beach, between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, everyone stops to jump off the rather small 'Big Bridge' (aka American Legion Memorial Bridge). It's not high up, but you have to know when to go. One 12-year-old swore you could jump only at high tide. 'Otherwise you'll be killed.' Nevertheless, I saw belly flops (successful, if painful) at most hours. Once in, you're on your own though. And, yes, Jaws was filmed off this beach.
Go see the greatest shirtless statue you've never heard of, the Golden Driller. No, he's not gold -- more of a dry-river-bed brown -- but he stands with his derrick for photo opps. And you can sit on his foot if you like.
Go see the Admiral Drive In. You know from the scene in The Outsiders where Ponyboy (C Thomas Howell) tries to pick up Cherry (Diane Lane), in a time when greasers and socs were united by knife fights and watching sunsets. Author SE Hinton is Tulsan, and sometimes lazy.
Go to a show, if one's on, at Cain's Ballroom. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys used to control the stage in the glory days centuries past, and it's become the vintage stage to see shows on in this corner of Oklahoma. The Sex Pistols' ironic tour of the south blazed through the stage, and Johnny Rotten apparently hid in the office out of fear.
But I feel a U-turn coming. Last week, on an impulse, I bought a 25-year-old red Schwinn frame refurbished with everything else all-new. And yesterday morning I had my first bike-bonding moment. I coasted towards a red light at a busy intersection of 4th Ave in Brooklyn and found myself waiting in the company of nine other bikers. All types. A pudgy gray-haired guy with a backpack, young guy with silk shirt and flip flops, a kid on a BMX, a woman with unshaved legs. I had noticed bikers, but not like this -- and I was part of it. It felt exciting.
Most New York City bike shops carry the free NYC Cycling Map 2009 detailing the 650 or so miles of bike lanes and paths (also available online), but we didn't refer to it often. Our plan was to go the easy way, more or less, the bike path running up Manhattan's west side -- use it as a starting point, pedal leisurely, and detour often. At Murray St in Lower Manhattan, we joined the smooth, flat, paved bike path, which eventually ends around 200th St. After a few blocks, Farley, who spent recent years chasing Jesus' foreskin in Italy for his new book An Irreverent Curiosity, led us off the path to W 11th St to see director Julian Schnabel's pink, Italian-style Palazzo Chupi on 11th St. Across the street, a hefty door man, with a smile (and scar) on his face, told us that Richard Gere bought an apartment -- most go for $20 or so million -- hoping to flip it, but 'no one's buying.' He added, 'Our building doesn't have as much character. Maybe we should put up a Tahitian hut on top.'
We drove north a few blocks to W 16th St for a quick look at the High Line -- the new, elevated city park made from an abandoned freight train line -- then, back to the bike path, where we stopped at the four-year-old Clinton Cove Park, with kayaking and Malcolm Cochran's wine-bottle sculpture called Private Passage with stainless steel interiors replicating the Queen Mary's. Shortly after Mike -- who runs theWrightstache.com to campaign for New York Met David Wright to grow a hairy lip ornament -- cheerfully summed up how biking New York 'reminds you that Manhattan is actually surrounded by water,' a bicyclist called us all a collective 'dude' by objecting to our stopping place, behind a barrier next to the path.
Heading north, we somehow lost the path entirely and had a string of interesting diversions. We rode a couple blocks into Morningside Heights via 107th St and stopped at the first cafe with an 'Entourage' poster in the window: Oren's Daily Roast -- next to the Tom's Restaurant the Seinfeld guys always met up at. I asked the bearded coffee attendant about the poster. 'I don't know why it's there. I think we once kept some of their stuff.' Hear that Kev Dillon? Your missing Nell DVD is at 112th & Broadway.
Heading back towards the river to re-locate the path, two guys waved us over by the Riverside Church for free food samples (carrot cake, chicken-and-waffle bites -- Mike has a great shot of it here) for their new cafe inside the church. Across the street at the surprisingly stunning Grant's Tomb (the country's biggest mausoleum), a 'park ranger' told us that the old saying 'who's buried in Grant's Tomb' is just 'an old Groucho Marx joke. It's like saying, what color was Washington's white horse.' But actually, he said, the correct answer is either 'no one' or 'Grant and his wife Julia,' who's also in there. 'They're not buried there. They're emtombed.'
Farley's bike pedal was acting up and he turned back (it'd fall off 20 blocks south), and Mike and I continued north, returned the path on the other side of the West Side Hwy via the elevator at Riverside State Park (a rare park built atop a waste refinery), and pedaled past fishers at the riverbank edge and Little Leaguers playing ball in tucked-away fudge-green parks.
We walked the bikes up a steep bit of the path just beyond, and into a real-live batch of woods, before exiting around 200th St and getting lost trying to find the Cloisters . (It's best to exit the path at 181st St to cross the Henry Hudson Parkway.) We backtracked, thanks to maps pulled up on Mike's 
The Cloisters is one of New York's great museums, built from disassembled 500-year-old European monasteries and housing some of the Met's finest medieval art works. We were there for lunch. After a mostly turkey-less turkey wrap, and a short conversation with a moustached Floridan in overalls in the garden, we peeked at the exhibits. Walking by a proud photographer noting how one shot would 'be good for Facebook,' Mike and I zeroed in on the museum's best room: of 15th-century tapestries detailing the life and death of a unicorn. One showed a deviant with '70s rock hair and candy-cane pants thrusting a spear into the unicorn's chest.
3. In 1989, skipping Berlin. 'Two cities in one? Big deal.' A few months later the wall came tumbling down like a John Cougar Mellencamp song.**
14. After driving purposely way out of my way to see Manitoba, spending only four wakeful hours in Winnipeg. (Though managing to see Louis Riel's grave -- and eat some bad Italian food.)
