Traveling, Staying in Touch

#143, June 9, 2004

(May 26 vacation)

I’m back from my trip to Nawlins, and I must say: there’s something to be said about the horizon-expanding power of travel! We departed from our typical nature-based itinerary to focus on art, culture and history. You might expect this of a trip to the Gulf Coast – my daughter had warned us that the tallest mountains in Louisiana were the ones supporting freeway overpasses (the beauty of the swamps notwithstanding.) Our travel took us to Mesa Verde, Taos and Santa Fe, visiting museums and galleries, including the best of Georgia O’Keefe and a history of Jewish pioneers in New Mexico. 
 
New Orleans, home of proudly mispronounced street names (Calliope is “cal-ee-OO-pee”), home of *real* potholes. “We laugh at Petaluma’s potholes”, scoffs my daughter, whose home was protected by sinkholes converted to quicksand pits by City workers. How do they deal with it? They drive slowly, of course. We were extra careful, as our car was frequently riding low on its shocks, due to the satisfying deep-fried heaviness of our stomachs.
 
I had low expectations for Texas, thanks to the film Easy Rider, Texacutions, and the President who never cared to see much of the world. But we were nicely surprised by Lady Bird’s freeway-side floral displays, and the beautifully designed / ecologically enlightened Wildflower Center in Austin that bears her name. San Antonio’s Alamo – what a story! (By the way, it’s *David* Crockett, they take pain to point out.) And the San Antonio Riverwalk is simply the most amazing display of urban design I expect I’ll ever see. Petaluma, take note.
 
Downtown Austin features the Texas State Capitol building which, in my opinion, exceeds the US Capitol in beauty (as well as in height by seven feet, say the proud Texans.) Austin also lays claim to the Live Music Capitol of America. We stayed in a hotel that featured blazing internet service (Austin is home to Dell computers), so we patched in the laptop to check the local listings online. Overwhelming, to say the least. Then we checked the website of the South Austin Jug Band, a group that we enjoyed in Petaluma a few months prior. What are the chances they’d be playing Austin that night? But not only were they playing, it was a *free, outdoor* concert *a block from our hotel*. (BTW, they are coming to the Mystic Theater in July.) The next night, driving west thru a thunderstorm, we witnessed a “kingdom of heaven” full-sky sunset. Now we have a new appreciation for the Lone Star State! 
 
In our family’s recent wanderings we’ve discovered something I’ll call “digitally shared travel”. DST began for us two years ago when we drove to the Grand Canyon via Las Vegas. As we started down that long eastbound grade into the sea of glitz, my brother-in-law called our cell phone from Hawaii. Having recently made the trip, he guided us to our destination with auto-pilot efficiency, right into the best parking lot just in time to catch the evening’s last Fremont Street Experience light show. In return, we described the sights along the way, allowing him to refresh the memories of his visit.
 
A more advanced form of this “DST” has the base station cell phone caller online broadband with Google and Mapquest. My daughter was headed west into Texas, and couldn’t remember the off-the-beaten-path State Park she camped at a few years ago. She called, I Googled “Texas State Parks”, found a site with the listings, and read them to her. “Palmetto!” I found the directions, verified them with Mapquest, and passed on the critical fact: “gates remain unlocked all night.” I gave her a few more tidbits about the park, and told her to call if she got lost or sleepy. She now calls me “Pauline”, the name given to an arrtificially intelligent network wrist-link by a character in Kim Stanley Robinson’s futuristic Mars Trilogy (read it!)
 
Now we have a digital camera, so instead of channel surfing on the hotel TV, I sort then email the best of the day’s photos to my extended family. It’s a small world after all.