No Place Like It

When we travel, we realize we are trading the comforts and conveniences of our home and our way of living there for the excitement of seeing and experiencing new things. But I will tell you that after our recent driving trip to the West and Southwest, I can pinpoint exactly what I missed most about home.

We were on the road for 31 days, and our accommodations (not counting a few nights' respite with relatives) ranged in price from $54 to $230 a night (that would be California) and included motels (one each Travelodge and Super 8) and hotels (Hiltons, casino hotels), a bunch of Holiday Inns/Expresses, and one very lovely Candlewood Suite. Some were shabby, some were brand new, all were basically clean (probably), but they all had one thing in common that frustrated and disappointed me at the most fundamental personal level: cheap-ass plastic toilet seats and cheap-ass toilet paper.

I shall not elucidate. But it is good to be home.

My Kind of Celebration

Instead of a party for her retirement this summer, my partner wanted to take a celebratory trip to the Grand Canyon.  We left in the middle of September, traveling by car to the West and Southwest and became avid seers of sights.  There are so many absolutely magnificent things to see in this country.

Of course, by the time we got to the Grand Canyon, the juvenile delinquents who are representing us in Congress had shut down all the national parks, so we couldn't get in.  Never got near it.

As for me, I had always wanted to visit Reno, but we unwittingly arrived on the weekend they were hosting “Street Vibrations” there.  Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists descended on the area like locusts who choked the life out of everything with their leather and their noise and their gang colors and their endless parade of motorcycles.  I never even got to see Downtown Reno.

We went to Boulder City.  The park that provides the most beautiful scenic view of Lake Mead was closed too, but some of the lake is visible from the road, and we did get to drive across the Hoover Dam.

Before we left for our trip, I gathered 10 dollars in quarters and 50 cents in copper (pre-1982) pennies so that I would be able to avail myself of those machines that squish pennies into souvenirs, to add to my collection.  In the 31 days we were gone, we saw only one such machine, in New Mexico, and it was out of order.

Could we surmise this trip was something of a disappointment?  Well, only here and there.  After all, I did get to see my great (or grand) nephews in Kansas City.  I also gambled in 16 different casinos, visited 4 states I’d never been to before, added 8 state capitols to my collection, and saw enough breathtakingly beautiful scenery to last me a lifetime.  Oh, and there was one other thing.

On the beach at Pacifica, California, on October 1, with the ocean waves crashing into the rocks behind us, the Rev. Terri J. Echelbarger, pastor of the Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church in San Mateo, performed a simple ceremony which she concluded by saying, “By virtue of the authority vested in me by God, the Metropolitan Community Church, and the State of California, I now pronounce you spouses for life.”

I didn't get to see the Grand Canyon, but I did get to marry, legally, the woman with whom I have shared my love and my life for the past 27 years.  Altogether, I’d say that made for a pretty good vacation.

Very grand and great they are too

I referred to my niece's son as my great nephew, and someone suggested that was wrong and that I should call him my grand nephew.  The argument presented was that the grand child of my brother should be my grand nephew.

Well, okay, but the sister of my grand mother is my great aunt, isn't she?  So there.