Happy Cog now share office space with spectacular and inspiring views. Looking between Jeffrey’s and Jason’s iMacs you can just make out the East River across the rooftops of lower buildings, some of which have their own rooftop garden oases. From their shared meeting room you can even look up at the top of the Empire State Building.
Jeffrey showed me around, including a peek into their half of the library that looks to be mostly full of translations of Jeffrey’s book, Designing With Web Standards. Jason’s books are (apparently) still at home and there is a couple of feet of empty shelf space waiting for him to fill it.
I hijacked their wifi for a short while, posed for a picture and then Jeffrey, Rob and I walked a few blocks for a Thai lunch. It was a shame that Jason was too bloody miserable busy with work to join us, but I’ll be seeing him and Jeffrey again, God willing, in Chicago in October.
Knowing that we’d soon be needing to make our way to John F. Kennedy International Airport for our 6:05pm flight to Manchester, I reluctantly hugged Jeffrey goodbye (and shook Rob’s hand in a manly way as he had kindly paid for lunch), then took the fifteen minute cab ride uptown to our hotel. Before long, we were all collected and so were our bags and we were in a cab again towards the airport and our overnight flight home.
This part of our journey in New York City has not been one of our most favourite parts of traveling between two oceans. Manhattan is crowded, hot and noisy with tourists at this time of year, but it was made a special ending to our trip because of our friends who live there.
Thanks to Jeffrey, Carrie, Ava, Rob and Jason, you made New York City the perfect ending to the perfect journey.
]]>Traveling though Brooklyn, it was interesting to see a part of New York that I haven’t been through before except on the highway to and from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Brooklyn has a different look and feel to Manhattan, a little run down but with a wonderfully eclectic mix of urban architecture. I’m not sure how or why it happens but on subway trains I always seem to end up sitting near someone who is a few crumbs short of a bagel. Our carriage was virtually empty, but that didn’t stop the singing old lady from choosing the closest seat to us. She was, I’m sure, perfectly harmless, but she did make us feel a little uncomfortable, so under the premise of needing to scrutinize the subway map, we moved to the other end of the carriage and left the lady singing to herself.
The weather report that morning had warned of thunder storms, but the skies stayed clear for a while as we walked the short distance to the beach for our Between Two Oceans ceremony. Alex drew a line in the sand a few feet from the waves and just as we had done in San Francisco, we all jumped across it to mark our journey’s furthest point east. We’d been carrying a small. plastic bag of sand with us all the way and Alex took out a scoop of Pacific sand and made a small pile. We watched as the Atlantic claimed it and our trip seemed really to be over.
Coney Island is a faded, but still charming resort. Despite the impending storm and some nasty looking rip tide currents, some people were braving the water while others were lathering on the sun cream and stretching out on the sand in-between what looked to be about a million wire rubbish bins. I have never been on a beach where there are so many rubbish bins, but despite their number they didn’t seem to have succeeded very well in stopping people from littering the beach.
We walked back across the beach to the boardwalk and towards the Coney Island rides. I’m not a huge roller-coaster thrill-seeker and the antique wooden coaster wasn’t going to tempt me to ride its curves, so we opted instead for a gentler ride on the Wonder Wheel so that we could get a better view of Coney Island from higher up. The Wonder Wheel has two types of cars, one that stays fixed as you go twice around and another that rocks. We chose the fixed type and from the top of the wheel there is a great view of the ocean in one direction and Brooklyn across to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge in the other.
No trip to Coney Island would be complete without eating hotdogs. We waited in line at Nathan’s, home of the World Hot Dog Eating Championships and just off the boardwalk and ordered regular dogs with onions, a chili cheese dog and a corn dog to dip in ketchup. We sat and ate them while the weather took a turn for the worse and the thunder rumbled. Having no desire to get wet we walked back across the street to Stilson Avenue subway station and caught the next D-train back to the city. This time our singing lady companion wasn’t joining us.
With our last day almost over, we talked a lot about what our journey between two oceans had meant to us all and we all decided that it wasn’t the destinations, so much as the getting there that had been important. I think that there are huge lessons for life in there too. So many times I’ve lived humdrum days in the hope of achieving something at the end of that week, month or year. But I had forgotten that it is perhaps even more important to enjoy the days themselves and not let them pass me by in a blur. Perhaps I might not even get where I set out to go, but if I make sure that I enjoy every day along the way then the journey, just like this one, will have been well worth it.
]]>This was my fifth visit to this city and as we’ve all seen most of the tourist spots on previous trips, we had no inclination to visit Liberty Island, the Empire State Building or New York’s other main attractions again. Instead, after breakfast we took the D-train downtown to Soho and headed first to Prince Street, home of New York’s latest and biggest Apple Store.
We weren’t in a buying mood, but while Alex soaked up Apple’s bandwidth collecting his email, I checked in on work and watched the swarm of people buzzing around the dozen iPhone 3Gs on display. I was amazed that even several weeks after the iPhone 3G’s release, handling one of these new miracles still involves standing in line for several hours before being allowed inside the roped off iPhone temple.
Several doors around the corner from Apple’s Soho flagship was Paul Smith‘s New York emporium. There was a sale on, but with our suitcases and my personal credit card already bursting at their seams, I think that both were slightly relieved when I left Paul Smith empty-handed.
The weather in New York was very warm and humid and our feet were already starting to complain about carrying our weight before we reached Greenwich Village. It had seemed like a good idea to spend the afternoon at the cinema, taking in the latest Batman movie, but with all the showings sold out until later in the day, instead we ate lunch in Max Brenner and then caught the (wrong) subway back uptown, getting off near Bloomingdale’s. From there we walked back towards Central Park and sat on the grass under the trees for a while to cool off, before braving the crowds at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. This time I was in a buying mood and picked up a 1Tb Time Capsule, a 160Gb iPod (my first black iPod) and a Snowball USB microphone.
As we walked across the street, back towards our hotel, a group of break-dancers were about to start their street performance. So we leaned against a tree and watched them perform their moves for a while. As we stood, my US cellphone buzzed in my pocket and Jeffrey was calling with the time and address of our dinner date. We had only forty-five minutes until we were were due to meet and as I had an Apple bag of goodies and no money left, we needed to quickly walk the three blocks back to our hotel, drop stuff, pick up cash and head downtown in a cab to Penelope’s on 30th and Lexington Avenue.
It was a lovely evening of great food and conversation with Jeffrey, Carrie and Ava who is becoming a wonderful personality all her own. She had us in stitches while she licked bright blue icing off a cupcake and told us how she’s going to be an independent woman.
As the evening was a little cooler for walking around the city, we decided to walk back to our hotel, past Grand Central Station and up on Broadway through Times Square. It was a good opportunity to try to capture the bright lights of Broadway on camera, but the heaving, hot masses of tourists were a little off-putting. Before long we had strolled the last few blocks and were soon heads-down on our fluffy Hilton pillows.
]]>Transcript
We've here in Minneapolis, Minnesota at our last campground and it's time to say a very fond goodbye to our tumbleweed that we picked up all the way at our first campground in Phoenix, Arizona.
So goodbye tumbleweed, it's been a pleasure knowing you and you've been a good traveling companion, but now it's time for you to tumble.
(Blow)
Goodbye tumbleweed.
]]>The storm that we had been warned about hadn’t appeared, but our last night was not the best for sleeping. Maybe I was had the end of our journey on my my mind? The air was warm and very still, so in the wee small hours I gave up my place on the coach-bed and moved to the floor in the RV’s kitchen area. This was close to the open door and occasionally a soft breeze would blow through, making breathing and sleeping a little easier.
For our short hop to St. Paul and my final spot behind the wheel, the traffic around Minneapolis stayed light although the promised rain did make a short appearance. It’s funny how it always seems to rain on the final day of a holiday, almost as if that is a signal that we are on our way home.
The Cruise America rental office was not hard to find, and with little fuss, we handed back our set of keys, completed the return paperwork and calculated how many miles we’ve covered. We’d driven our mobile home for over 3179 miles. I’ve been really surprised how much I’ve enjoyed this part of the journey. I’ve learned to love living and traveling in a motor-home and it’s going to be hard to leave it behind.
We took a short, fifteen minute taxi ride to Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport and arrived in plenty of time for coffee and a wander around the shops. Our plane was on-time from gate F14 and despite the best efforts of three shouting, screaming toddlers sitting three rows behind us, I was asleep in my seat before our North West flight made it into the air on our way to New York City.
]]>The cooking facilities were not the best in the world although we (Mum) managed and we didn’t have to put up with hot bread instead of toast for long. It wasn’t overly easy finding food that I can eat but due to the wonders of The Whole Food Stores I managed not to starve.
The cupboards could have been larger but we managed to fit everything in and even the fridge held most of what needed to be kept cool, the rest went in an ice box in the shower.
I think I may even miss the famous poopy pipe, not because of what he was was or what he did but because of what he symbolised: The freedom to travel.
So long RV, you’ve been a perfect companion on our journey Between Two Oceans.
]]>This episode is brought to you by Maximum Waste Digester
Transcript to follow
]]>We’ve not had to take on-board such advice anywhere else on this trip and personally I’m hoping that if the siren does sound, it will be well after we’re in the air on our way to New York City tomorrow.
]]>I watched the show as regularly as I could, but then something terrible happened. Mary Ingalls (the pretty, older daughter) went blind while I was away on a family holiday and I missed it. Somehow the show wasn’t the same after that, or perhaps Logan’s Run or The Incredible Hulk or Battlestar Galactica grabbed my attention, I can’t remember exactly.
Years later when I was at art school and having my own rented flat, when Little House on the Prairie came around on another re-run, I watched it again. A guilty pleasure, but then something terrible happened. Mary Ingalls (the pretty, older daughter) went blind while I was away on holiday and I missed it. And to this day I have never found out why or how this calamity happened. As I missed it both times, it might have even been my fault. How can I ever forgive myself.
Why all this talk about Little House on the Prairie? Because today as we sped along Interstate 90 on the last short stretch east of Sioux Falls, we could have detoured north a little to De Smet, South Dakota, the real setting for Laura Ingalls Wilder‘ Little House on the Prairie books. If we had stopped, maybe I would have discovered the reason for poor Mary’s blindness, but we didn’t.
Then knock me over with a covered wagon, we could also have moseyed north to Walnut Grove, Minnesota and paid a visit to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum too to shed even more light on the matter. Maybe some other time. Until then there is always re-runs, DVDs and Wikipedia.
]]>Our next stop was Sioux Falls, several hours drive along Interstate 90 and across what had become largely featureless arable land. It’s strange, but the more that we saw the effects of humans on the landscape, the less interesting it became.
Around halfway we detoured off the Interstate, by now reduced largely to a single lane bound by orange traffic cones, into Mitchell, South Dakota for more coffee and a short stop outside Mitchell’s Corn Palace. The Corn Palace has been famous since 1892 for annually being covered in corn. This alone seems to lure thousands of tourists like us off the interstate and into this otherwise unremarkable town.
I watched several Amish men and women eating ice-cream (apparently Rocky Road is a particular favourite) while I drank my double-shot vanilla latte and then we headed back onto the interstate so that I could attempt to keep my (almost) unbroken record of only demolishing three traffic cones on our way to Sioux Falls.
Tonight we’re at another functional, but otherwise charmless KOA campground (I refuse to spell campground with a k, no matter what their brand guidelines might state). Here we began to pack away our things in readiness for our last night in our RV tomorrow.
I’m very sad thinking we’ll leave our home on wheels in two days and that our journey is coming to its end, but I have learned some huge lessons on this trip. First, that traffic cones have feelings too and its wrong to knock them. Second, that home is anywhere you choose it to be and with the people that you choose to share it with.
We’ve read few of the books we brought along, played few of the games and watched hardly any of the movies that we loaded onto our firewire drive. We’ve worn few of the clothes that we packed and eaten most, but not all of the food we bought. What we did do is chatter, sing along to music and watch the world go by as we drove. I could live my whole life like this. What else matters?
Inspired by the shoot-out we had seen on the streets of Deadwood, we pulled out our guns and headed for the nearest bank. Unfortunately I’m not meant for a life of crime, so we holstered our pistols and reached instead for a cash-point card. The bank must have been robbed only the previous day as we left with only a hundred dollars.
On our last leg of the journey we’ll see South Dakota mainly from the straight Interstate 90. As we headed past Rapid City we left the Black Hills behind us and the landscape flattened so much that the horizon seemed like it was a hundred miles in front of us. We passed The Badlands to our right, but with the afternoon fast disappearing we could not afford the time to drive the Scenic Loop around Badlands National Park to see them up close.
Cruise control set to sixty, we headed east towards Wall where we stopped for three cups of five cent a cup coffee plus donuts to energize us for the next few hours. We had been watching the frequency of the roadside Wall Drug signs increase and no drive along this part of I90 would be complete without stopping at this temple to the power of free iced water. Wall Drug sells every type of tourist tat you can imagine and I was almost parting with a hundred and sixty dollars for a round-top Stetson hat, the sort you might imagine on the head of a mad 1880’s western preacher, when Alex let me know fair-and-square that I would look like a complete prat wearing it in Wales.
Although I90 is now home to thousands of traffic cones, we didn’t bump into a single one. We did though bump into two fellow Deadwood tour bus riders who were driving through the night all the way to Minnesota, a mere ten hours away east. To them the six-hundred miles was in no way daunting, but it did make me realize the distance that we would have to cover in just three days.
South Dakota is a huge state and I’m sure that I underestimated the hours at the wheel that it will take us to drive horizontally east across it. Just after dark we pulled off the interstate and into our stop for the night on the banks of the Missouri River near Chamberlain. By torchlight we searched for our number thirty-eight spot and with what looked like rain clouds closing in fast, I was glad that we were sleeping in an RV and not under flimsy canvas like the lady and her daughter in the next spot.
We were looking forward to an early night and to waking up and eating breakfast on the banks of the river. Unfortunately two huge thunder storms had other ideas and before dawn we were woken by thunder, lightning and rain that beat down on the roof of our RV making sleep and breakfast in the great outdoors impossible. Our host at the Cedar Shore RV Resort was only slightly surprised that the three inches of overnight rain hadn’t washed us into the Missouri.
]]>Instead of allowing their town to lie bleeding in the dirt, Deadwood’s residents played their eights and aces dead man’s hand and brought limited gambling back to the town.
I say limited
, limited I said
, because most of Deadwood’s Main Street shops have made way for casinos, bars and souvenir gift shops that sell everything from tacky but wonderful fifties Americana to replica six-shooters and sheriff’s badges. I couldn’t resist picking up a lovely model pickup truck, the kind that we saw rusting in yards and fields all through Wyoming, plus a Marshal Of Deadwood badge for my friend Steve who was very jealous that we would be walking the streets of Deadwood.
Rather than figure out what to see in Deadwood for ourselves, we paid a few dollars and hopped onto one of Kevin Costner‘s Original Deadwood Organised Bus Tours. Kevin wasn’t driving the bus as he was too busy cooking lunches in Diamond Lil’s, but the tour guide was one of the funniest I have ever heard. His commentary was a constant stream of one-liners and the cost of the fare was worth it just for this and for access to the cemetery where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried.
Horse Hoarse from laughing, we hopped off our saddles tour bus and with a fistful of dollars 20% off discount vouchers in our dead man’s hands we sat down in Diamond Lil’s for one of Kevin Costner’s best Dances With Wolves buffalo burgers (mine with spicy fries). Kevin didn’t put in an appearance but he does own the joint and its walls are lined with photos and costumes from his movies.
I’d forgotten about some of Costner’s movies, Field Of Dreams always makes me weep buckets as it reminds me of my father, and some including Waterworld are best forgotten. But he has starred in some great movies and Costner himself has to be commended in his part in regenerating Deadwood. Sure, some of its parts are tacky, but it’s great to see that the town is taking its renewal and conservation so seriously.
I’m sure that Seth Bullock, Al Swearengen and Ian McShane would be proud.
Custer is only a small town and our only other visible option was to call the local Chevy dealer. But to no avail, as they only accepted business from people holding United States or Canadian driving licenses. We all looked and felt a little down in the mouth, our expressions not too dissimilar from the stuffed bison heads that seem to line so many walls in this part of South Dakota. That was until there was a knock on our RV door.
Ray, one of our hosts at Custer’s Gulch RV Park and Campground, made us an offer that we couldn’t refuse. His idea was for us to take our RV around the Custer State Park wildlife loop in the morning and then in the afternoon he would personally drive us in his car to those hard to reach places. If his hands weren’t behind his back we’d have probably bitten them off.
The wildlife loop is a great deal for anyone coming to this area, only twelve dollars for three people for a week pass and with roads wide enough even for an RV driving Englishman to navigate. Along this loop road we were promised deer, wild donkeys and a herd of about 1500 buffalo. The deer were certainly in evidence and we did encounter one wild begging burro who was hanging around a viewing spot, but 1499 buffalo must either have been hiding in the shade or have had something better to do.
After a nasty hot-dog and a few big drops of rain, we were back at Custer’s Gulch and before you could say Where the hell were all the buffalo?
our personal guide and driver had appeared and we were on our way, first to Iron Mountain Road and then back via Needles Highway.
The drive through some of the most beautiful scenery we have seen so far was peppered by Ray’s commentary and by his amazing ability to negotiate 180 degree mountain bends while holding a map with both hands, neither of which were on the steering wheel. We chatted the whole way round about almost everything from helicopters in the Vietnam War (Ray took one tour of duty), Robin Hood and how far you can drive in the UK without having to turn around and come back again. Along the way we got up-close to a few more, always hungry burros and two more buffalo; one of which was making a noise as if to say Go on, get out of the car. I dare ya!
It would certainly have been impossible for me to drive our RV along these roads, where some of the narrow tunnels had only four inches of headroom clearance and one on Needles Highway was two feet narrower than our RV. Of course we could have easily have negotiated these tunnels and turns ourselves in a rental car, but somehow having Ray’s company made seeing the sights along the way all that more special. In the end I think that we all had a better day than we could possibly have had if we were left to our own devices.
Thanks Ray, you really did make our day.
]]>The four American Presidents carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore were chosen by the sculptor to commemorate the founding, growth, preservation and development of the United States. They symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom on which the nation was founded. George Washington signifies the struggle for independence and the birth of the Republic; Thomas Jefferson the territorial expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln the permanent union of the States, and equality for all citizens, and Theodore Rooseevelt, the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs and the rights of the common man.
Frankly I'm surprised that nobody has thought of it before: A British Mount Rushmore, perhaps somewhere deep in the Derbyshire Peak District. But whose faces to carve?
Maybe the BBC could conduct a Great Britons style telephone vote? Of course you could go the obvious route and plump for great British figures from history. I bet millions of Brits would vote for Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare and Lord Nelson. If you asked our British versions of in-bred rednecks, they might also add Margaret Thatcher to that list.
I'm not sure that there are too many modern people of power who deserve their faces carved into the Derbyshire hills for the rest of eternity, certainly not Tony Blair. So who? It's a tricky one.
Now if you asked me, I would choose figures from popular culture, particularly those with interesting faces to carve. Keith Richards' craggy visage would be a good choice. Perhaps Rowan Atkinson too? So my line up? Well here goes:
Let's make it happen Brits. Let's set our nation's characters in stone. The people of Derbyshire and the world are looking on expectantly.
]]>I had heard about Crazy Horse Mountain from guide books that we picked up along the way and was prepared to be impressed, but nothing could have prepared me for how moving, how full of passion and how honest is its endeavor. It was a start contrast to Mount Rushmore (more about that later).
Crazy Horse Memorial was a revelation to me and it is already a staggering achievement. Started in 1948 and largely the work of just one family, that of sculptor, the late Korczak Ziolkowski, this memorial to Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse will ultimately transform a mountain into an 641 feet wide by 563 feet high statue. To put that into perspective, you could fit the whole of the Mount Rushmore statue into just the head of Crazy Horse.
It was conceived by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear who had said,
My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too.
But the monument's achievement is not simply one of art or engineering, its a human story of one man's vision to dedicate his whole life to creating a monument to the native American peoples. The mountain sculpture is still a project driven by Ziolkowski's wife, his children and grand-children. It is entirely supported financially through private contributions and from proceeds from visitors like us rather than by tax payer's money and it is this passion and honesty, plus the story of Crazy Horse himself that helps to make the Crazy Horse monument so moving.
We took a bus ride from the visitor center, itself a wonderful exhibition of native American culture and history, to the foot of the mountain. The ride offers a different view of the memorial from that you see from the highway and as we stared up at the mountain's transformation an eagle soared above Crazy Horse's head. I couldn't help but wonder if that eagle was Crazy Horse himself, checking out his peoples' monument.
I won't see the monument finished in my lifetime, but I really hope that Alex will visit with his children one day to see it completed. Standing at Crazy Horse Mountain I realised fully that neither I, nor the other foreign tourists, nor the millions of people who now call themselves citizens of the United States, should ever forget that today I was standing on stolen land, occupied through political manipulations, warfare and at worst (in the case of Crazy Horse himself and others) cold-blooded murder.
Our hearts lifted by what has become one of the highlights of our journey, we drove off to that symbol of another American nation, Mount Rushmore. The drive to Mount Rushmore is worth it if only for the spectacular scenery. The Black Hills of South Dakota are exactly as I imagined them to be, dramatic and beautiful with green trees peppered by spectacular rocky outcrops in amazing formations.
The Mount Rushmore National Monument itself was less impressive that photographs portray. Perhaps we had been spoiled by the wonder of Crazy Horse Mountain, I'm not sure, but instead of the passion we felt at Crazy Horse we were all left cold. The place and even the famous faces of the four presidents felt soulless. As these historic figures stared out across the landscape I couldn't help thinking that they each had a look of melancholy about them.
Of course, being a National Monument, the surrounding area with its visitor centre and amphitheater were very well organised with the visitor center itself teaching me more about American history and the United States' expansion west than I ever knew before. The exhibition on the monument's conception as an attraction designed to bring visitors to the Black Hills, through its construction was interesting too.
One of the explanatory panels in the museum read:
The four American Presidents carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore were chosen by the sculptor to commemorate the founding, growth, preservation and development of the United States. They symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom on which the nation was founded. George Washington signifies the struggle for independence and the birth of the Republic; Thomas Jefferson the territorial expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln the permanent union of the States, and equality for all citizens, and Theodore Rooseevelt, the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs and the rights of the common man.
After standing at the foot of Crazy Horse Mountain, I couldn't help but ask myself how native American peoples must feel about Mount Rushmore. After all, many of their ancestors were forcibly evicted from their homelands and relocated into the area. When gold was later discovered in the Black Hills these native peoples were persecuted again.
They have seen their nations displaced while another was founded, suffered while others' territories expanded and theirs diminished and seen little equality. What must they feel when they look up and see the sixty feet high faces of their ancestral oppressors staring back at them?
]]>