Wrong Way McDonald's

One of the strangest things I had ever done was to go through a McDonald's drive-thru backwards. Many of you have already tried to visualize going through in reverse either so the guy riding shotgun would be able to place his order directly but that's not what I meant. This relates to my first experience at the world-famous restaurant chain at one of their franchises in England. "Backwards" means that the drive-thru wraps around the building in the other direction, as in clockwise!

Many things are different about the overseas experience with fast food, all of which make it at interesting enough to almost be an adventure but certainly not the normal routine expected at home. In Germany a Filet-o-Fish is called a "Fisch Mac," for example. We all know by now that a country that operates on the metric system would therefore not have a "Quarter Pounder" on the menu so it might have a name like the French "Burger Royale" instead. Likewise they by now understand that the German word for big, "Gross," would NOT translate to steady sales from English speaking patrons who happen to stop by. Another reason for names like "Koenig'sburger" (King's Burger).

In England the product names tend to translate fairly easily so no worries about what exactly is being selected from the menu. The interiors of the restaurants from one country to another are also fairly innocuous and easily recognized, perhaps with a few local flairs thrown in just so the natives will feel more connected as well. While on business in London one time, though, we were in a hurry as most business travelers tend to be and decided we had just enough time to hit the drive through before going back to the office.

McDonald's was nearby, everybody knew the brand, the product and what to expect so in we go to the parking area, except I happened to be the one that was driving. Instinctively I started turn right to join the "queue" for the drive-thru. "No, mate, turn left!" my local companions warned before I completed my maneuver. In England with right-side drive (from the passenger seat to most others) the menu board and attendant speaker is on the right hand side of the car. To face it properly and not be considered a total "prat," the line for the window starts at the left side of the building.

Drive thru's in general tended to be more of a novelty at the time as opposed to something absolutely required in the design of the establishment. This is Europe, after all, where population density is much greater than America and land is certainly not to be frivolously paved over. Even at a lot of highway rest stops the logic leans towards entering the restaurant as opposed to pulling over in a drive-thru. One has to get gas in the first place, which means getting out of the car, plus the fact that a gallon of regular there is easily twice the cost in the United States. Not something to burn through so readily while idling in a drive-thru waiting on a burger and fries.

So here I am trying to navigate the narrow lane for the drive-thru near Heathrow Airport from the left side of the building while piloting a car from the right hand side of the front seat. Even though my favorite sandwich at Mickey-Ds is the Filet-o-Fish I knew better than to order something like that while in England, home and reigning king of fish and chips.

I went with a Quarter Pounder!

Gotta go.

Clearing My Mind at Carhenge

Nebraska is big. It's not quite the size of Montana, Texas or Alaska but it is certainly no slouch in the wide open spaces department. Most people not from the area tend to think of Omaha or the state capital, Lincoln where the Cornhusker Nation lives and breathes. I had never been to the state before and this day found myself in the far northwestern corner rolling south in my buggy on US Highway 385 through Chadron. The Black Hills of South Dakota were behind me as was my visit to both Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument near Keystone with my next destination a solid ten hours of driving in front of me, Lubbock, Texas. HIghway 385 would take me straight to Amarillo and from there the rest of the way in on I-27 to the home of Buddy Holly.

The four presidents of Mt. Rushmore gave me inspiration during this toughest period of my life, having recently been furloughed shortly after the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001. Crazy Horse showed me the truest face of resolve and personal sacrifice against impossible odds. Before that I found reason to look to the heavens for guidance after spending a day at the Devil's Tower National Monument. Well, truth be told I was looking more to see if the Mother Ship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" had actually been there or might one day actually pay a visit. After all that existential and spiritual musing the great plains of Western Nebraska worked their own special magic in helping me clear my mind for the drive ahead as well as the next round of ethereal events.

Neither prairie dog or buffalo made an appearance but I honestly felt it would have spoiled the truly unspoiled landscape all around me. If I had seen buffalo I would have wanted to see Kevin Costner and a tribe of Lakota Sioux pounding over the hills, guns, bows and arrows blazing and zinging through the air. The sky was royal blue, the long grass 24 karat gold and the air scented just slightly with natural pixie dust. There wasn't a soul around in the middle of the United States of America, something both rare to experience and worth every minute of preserving. When it did come, civilization came back in to focus in probably the quirkiest manner I'd yet come across.

Alliance, Nebraska is like any farming town, a gathering place for locals to do business when not tending the hundreds of square miles of the immediate area. Others in the area are either pure-dee-lost or on their way somewhere else, most likely Mt. Rushmore where I'd just come from. One farmer in the area like any typical farmer had a lot of junk cars and trucks on his property with no real purpose other than to rust back in to the ground and re-enrich the soil. Unlike any other farmer in the country, though, he drew inspiration from a famous international landmark in England and decided to recreate it as closely as possible with his collection of clunkers.

"Carhenge," just like the original Stonehenge, this one sits on the side of a two-lane road with little in the way of facilities or parking except this one is free of charge. Since I was the only one there none of those issues were a problem. I didn't have a lot of time to explore the homemade exhibit and there was zilch in the way of informational plaques and markers. Still, it was there, I felt quite confident I wouldn't be back anytime soon and it helped break up the long drive to Texas.

Mind cleared, somewhat, it was time to move on.

Gotta go.

Yards and Gardens

I was having dinner with a friend of mine recently, the occasion being to introduce him to a special "person of interest" in my life. Yes, at the time we were at that Meeting-The-Friends stage but trying not to be too goopy in public. My friend travels regularly to Texas from his home in England and we were enjoying a beautiful al fresco meal and trading fun stories about how everyone met for the first time and most particularly my taking Mr. Brit around Northern Texas on various tours of the area.

One such story involved house-hunting which I am wickedly famous for doing to out-of-towners. I do admit to a devilish joy in seeing their faces at the amount of housing one can buy in this part of the country compared to just about anywhere else they happen to hail from, especially if they're coming from overseas. For the Englishman his tour began with a simple "3-2" starter home of about 1600 square feet. He immediately went "bonkers" over the amount of space for the price compared to his own digs back home to which I simply warned him that we hadn't even gotten good and warmed up. By the end of the day he went "spare" as they like to say over a 6,000 square foot wedding cake of a house a third larger than the Southfork home less than a mile away and featuring a marble entry and two arched stair cases to the upper floor.

We all laughed as we enjoyed the comparisons between "flats," terrace houses and the different terms for a "single-family" home here in the United States, known as a "Fully Detached" house over there.

"But why," he began the next linguistic challenge, "do you insist on calling a garden a yard?"

"Why do you insist on calling a yard a garden?" We went right back at him. Because, he explained, it has flowers and vegetables and grass. A-haaaaa! In the United States a garden is ONLY for flowers or vegetables. There's never any grass in the garden, the grass is out in the yard unless it's a formal garden which usually comes with a "lawn." We did go in to how some people will make the distinction between the front lawn and the back yard but we didn't get in to the jargon change between raking the yard and mowing the lawn no matter which side of the house it's on.

We learned that evening that in the UK a "yard" is a concrete or brick paved space surrounded by high walls, a courtyard perhaps. My soon to be significant other and I looked at each other and cringed an "Ew" together before we all laughed out loud again in accepting camaraderie. In the case of the New Scotland Yard the yard is actually the headquarters building of the London Metropolitan Police and even then legend has that it was named after the street it was on in Whitehall!

We weren't going to solve that distinction or dive in to the etymological history of how one became the other. That wasn't the point, really. Sir U of the K decided that he was pleased with my choice in potential mates and we went on to finish the evening over a rousing conversation of favorite places to travel.

Thoughts of a British vacation popped immediately in to mind.

Gotta go.

From Which It Happened Well...

Nine seems to be turning in to a far more important year in my life than I had previously considered. I mean, what really happens at Age Nine that is so memorable or has such a lifelong impact on one's sense of the world? So far in this forum I've come up with some personally pivotal memories, including my first trip to Paris and the first time I ever heard about the ancient wonders of Greece. I'd gone to movies before in my life, certainly, but this was probably the first one that would stick with me like no other outside of the Disney classics. My fourth grade class was called to order and we marched out of the school building and down the street to the movie theater where an entirely new and unheard of world came to life before my eyes.

Charles Dickens' classic tale "A Christmas Carol" is the story of the rebirth of Ebenezer Scrooge from bitter, miserly skinflint to benefactor and loving patron following one traumatic evening involving the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. First published in 1843 the story has been adapted for film, stage and television in every format from short-reel to high art, musical, animation and Muppets. Actors as diverse as Patrick Stewart to George C. Scott, Jim Backus (as the voice of Mr. Magoo), Susan Lucci, James Earl Jones and Scrooge McDuck have added to or detracted from the role.

In 1970 the musical film was produced featuring Sir Alec Guiness in the role of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's late business partner and Albert Finney in the title role. This film is the one of the first times in my life I ever sat happily through a movie without a bag of popcorn.
Holiday films are very personal things and usually handed down from one generation to the next. Not this one; "Scrooge" is all mine, right up there with "A Charlie Brown Christmas" as the only two I insist on every season. I've never seen "It's a Wonderful Life" all the way through and "Miracle on 34th Street" only once. None of the contemporary releases compare to me though I can well imagine they resonate just as strongly with the youngsters who watch them for the first time.

Why this version of the story? As mentioned it was the first telling of the story that I had ever seen but also because of the beautiful and yes, "cheeky," songs included in the narrative, most especially "Father Christmas," "Happiness," and "Thank You Very Much." I mean ask yourself, whoever heard a happier tune celebrating somebody doing them all the favor of dying? Critics pretty much dismissed the film all together but this nine year old boy ate up the over the top performance of Guiness, the seething anger of Finney's Scrooge and the completely foreign language and cadence that was Victorian English.

Name it and this version had it all: flying ghosts, kids my age, the deeply infectious optimist of Bob Cratchit in the face of insurmountable problems, the additional scene in Hell which I took to be part of the original story and always felt cheated if it was edited out or not included in other adaptations. Then there was the magic of Finney's old and young Scrooge. I refused to believe for the longest time that they simply didn't wait 30 - 40 years to film the 2nd half of the picture!

The London of Dickens' writings is gritty, crowded, wallowing in despair and poverty and yet filled with such an overwhelming joy of living and beauty in both speech and manner that I immediately wanted to see and feel this world for myself. The Victorian class structure resonates today, 160 years later. Most of the vestiges of the era are gone, the workhouses, the high collared clothes and top hats and certainly the manner of speaking but such is the power of great writing and imaginative film making. I didn't believe in ghosts but I wanted to go to London.

I got my wish the very next year.

Gotta go!

Globe Trotting Around the World

I had to go to Hong Kong on business one day and then from there on to India for an exploratory session with the new service team my company had installed at Delhi. Was I up for it, they asked? I kept telling them they didn't need to ask twice much less the first time. And I even sweetened the pot by offering to schedule a longish layover in London on the way back to do a drop-in on our offices there. I was going around the world, from Chicago to Chicago, for the first time in my life. This time the journey itself was the destination.

It would be 747s all the way as the first great bird lifted off the runway for Tokyo. Changing from there to Hong Kong we came down over southern Japan where I noticed a very large and active volcano softly belching white steam in to the atmosphere, a major city built up in every direction around it. The AirMap informed me that this was Kagoshima at the very southern tip of Kyushu Island and a "Sister City" to Miami. Mt. Sakurajima pops off with almost boring regularity, apparently, as evidenced by the densely packed villages all around the island on which it sits in the middle of the bay.

Leaving out of Hong Kong was disappointing in that the service operated in the evening with an arrival in to Delhi along the order of Midnight. Still, I hoped for a moonlit sky that might offer a unique view of Mt. Everest directly on our flight path in to the Indian capital city. No such luck. It fogged up around the mountains to the point that I was hoping the instruments would keep us well abeam the mountain and not heading directly for it. We landed safely in Delhi without further adieu.

Mosquitoes in baggage claim, mosquitoes at the check-in counter a few days later, mosquitoes in the boarding lounge and one or two brave ones actually on the plane sums up the experience at Indira Ghandi International Airport. We closed the door, the flight attendants hit the aisles with bug spray and we launched in to the night sky for London at around 3AM. The captain informed us of our flying route that would deliberately avoid Iraqi airspace, news we all accepted with relief. He went on to explain we would be flying over the heart of Iran instead.

I hoped to sleep all the way to London considering the hour of the night and the eight hours of flying time. I woke some three hours out right over downtown Tehran, noticed how brown absolutely everything was and dozed off for the hop over Turkey and across the Black Sea in to Bulgarian air space and central Europe on a beeline to London Heathrow.

Seven hours on the ground in London and back in the air again I was, now headed home for Chicago on the fifth 747 of the journey. This time there was something spectacular to capture the moment following the view of Mt. Sakurajima in southern Japan. I wish pilots would call out traffic in the area even if it is a competitor's airplane. If I hadn't been seated on the left side of my plane I would have missed this. We were bigger, higher and faster but that just made it perfect to capture the ice floes and bergs all around this magnificent moment in time.

Pan Am used to fly a Round the World Service offering the same flight number in each direction though sometimes there might have been a change of aircraft for scheduling reasons. After Pan Am folded United Airlines tried it a couple of times only to discontinue the service for the last time shortly after September 11, 2001. I was able to make the trip twice, once in each direction before it was all over.

I'd do it all over again tomorrow.

Gotta go.

Going Graving

Why is it a "must see" part of any tourist trip of Washington, D.C. to include time at Arlington National Cemetery yet any other part of the country or world visiting graveyards can be viewed as downright creepy? Same thing in Europe where one can hardly consider going without taking in the crypts of Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, all manner of Parisian and Roman Catacombs or even the US National Cemetery at Normandy on the coast of France. Millions of people pay big money to come from all over the world, myself included, to visit the last resting place of the Kennedy Brothers and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier yet few of them wander or even know whom in their own area might be sleeping peacefully just across town.

Graveyards never creeped me out as a child because I never hung out with the kind of friends who wanted to tell ghost stories by the light of a flashlight held under the chin by the side of a tombstone. I was fascinated with them just the same for the simple fact that people were under the ground, as if in some eternal spa, stretched out in their finest clothes and undergoing some long term beauty treatment. Yea, that just got a little macabre, didn't it?

Anyway, the notion of visiting burial grounds in to adulthood stems from still wanting to pay my respects to notable people along with the fact that standing graveside is quite often as close as I'll ever get to some of them in real time. They can't go anywhere and in most cases the entourage of hangers-on and private security have long since died with them or latched on to some other living soul for their livelihood. Add in the fact that most cemeteries and mausoleums do not charge for admission and there's no such thing as a bad seat. Just don't expect them to perform while you're there.

One meaningful visit to a fallen personal hero was the chance to express my condolences and gratitude at the grave of Brian Piccolo who's story was so movingly told in the film "Brian's Song," still a Top 5 favorite movie of mine today.

Thanks to websites such as FindaGrave.Com a particularly enjoyable trip took me one bored Saturday from my then home in Chicago to visit James Dean in his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. I put a tank of gas in the car and drove through the heart of die hard America, the kind of deep rural country where only people with relatives go. I learned some things along the way, including the fact that Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield is from the same area!

Luther Vandross in New Jersey, George and Martha Washington as well as Abraham Lincoln, Frank Sinatra and Sonny Bono (same small cemetery) in Palm Springs, Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles, even Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas, the list goes on. I never met Michael Jackson in person and he now lies in a restricted area of Forest Lawn in Glendale. Still mourning the loss nearly a year later I have to be thankful at least that I saw him once in concert.

Only, of course, in the middle of 73,000 people, he didn't see me.

Gotta go.

The (Soccer) Battle of Britain

It was a modern major miracle for Germany and the world when the wall came down in 1989. A more recent modern miracle for Germany was the blown call in the Round of 16 at the World Cup in South Africa this Summer.

"Watch," I told friends during the Group Play. "Some way, somehow, someone will bring up 1966. Fights still break out over that World Cup Final between England and Germany; it's their clarion call to arms, I explained. In that famous game the Germans were defeated in part by a Geoff Hurst "Ghost Goal" that shouldn't have been because the ball never crossed the goal line. Instant replay didn't exist then but it does now and it is needed as much as it was then.

The purists within "FIFA," the international governing body of soccer/football, claim that although some calls may be considered questionable that all evens out in the end; that within the spirit of the game one blown call should not and often is not the deciding factor within a match. To their point, the final score between Germany and England oh so long ago was 4-2.
At the same time, however, with the entire sporting world up in arms over repeated and repeatedly bad calls during the 2010 World Cup FIFA chose to retreat within its bunker by declaring no re-broadcasts of controversial plays. Let the boos, whistles and vuvuzelas ring out in full, cheated cry! As if that will fix the problem or make it go away? Uh, can you say ESPN? YouTube?

Some say a key reason behind the refusal to introduce new technology to the sport is because of the American roots of instant replay. High-falutin' electronic interference from a brash and meddling nation that doesn't even really care about the game? I doubt it but they're still missing the point. Instant replay doesn't fix all the ills of a judgment call as most fans of American football will attest. It does rectify egregious errors, however, like the obvious-to-a-blind-man goal England scored to tie the game in the first half against Germany at two all.

A mentor I had once told me that no progress in a relationship will ever be made if unresolved issues remain festering on the table, be it between co-workers, customers, family or friends. How can a team play its heart and hardest if there is a lingering sense of being cheated, that the pitch is not a level playing field?

Germany's "Mannschaft" ultimately dismantled the English with surgical precision by a score of 4-1. One blown call didn't seem to matter much, or did it? Either way, forty-four years is an awfully long time to wait for things to come out even. In this current truculent refusal by FIFA to modernize the fans will never abandon the game they so dearly love but many have gone or will go to their graves waiting for spirit of the game to serve its own justice.

FIFA simply must find a way to instantly address the human error equation of the judge. As I write this the World Cup is still only in the Round of 16; and though Mexico, the United States and England, bad call victims all, are gone, I'm quite sure as the stakes get higher that the real squealing and screaming has only just begun.

Gotta go.

Magnum Soapus

"Soap is soap, as long as it's cheap and you're clean" say the masses and this is the very statement that has kept Ivory in business for 125 years. My family staple has always been Dial, the preferred brand of my mother but others have snuck in to the rotation from time to time. I don't recall resisting bath time too much growing up, any more than I gave Mom a hard time over dinner as long as she didn't serve lima beans or liver. It was a particular delight to soak in a tub of hot water and absorb the different fragrances in to my skin.

I love soap. Don't ask me why, I just do. My earliest fascination was reading about the legend of the Titanic and the level of service provided on this magnificent ship during her fateful maiden voyage. The article highlighted Vinolia Otto Toilet Soap as being exclusively offered to First Class passengers. I wasn't thinking whether or not soap of any kind was offered to Second or Third Class on the boat - I only knew that from the picture it bore a resemblance to the rounded oval I was using at the time by the makers of Vel. My left-brained imagination simply allowed that I was using the same product.

In my professional life I have worked as a day laborer moving furniture, fast food and field sales, jobs where the end of the day can't get there fast enough for the chance to unwind under some water and lather the day's troubles away. On those days when I was particularly grimy from dirt, grease, soot or had really stunk up the joint there was nothing I wanted more than a long, cleansing shower and a full bar of soap of which half would be used before I finally felt human again. During cold weather I'd come home with frozen feet, ice in my goatee, numb skin and tingling fingers, all wrapped in two to three layers clothing and socks that were equally soaked through. Oi, the sounds of ecstasy that came from my shower on those days....

While traveling around the world there came a natural curiosity with what kinds of toiletries were used in other countries. As a child growing up in Germany "Fa" was a sentimental old favorite and I also came to enjoy Yardley's Oatmeal and Almond. From Italy comes the Alchimia Soap line which features natural ingredients infused with essences of rich florals such as Hydrangea, Cornflower and Tuber Rose. I don't bathe with those so much as use them for air fresheners in clothing drawers and for the car.

Friends in New Zealand think I'm mental because I have been known to ship home boxes of Knight's Castille as a durable every day soap over the domestic brands. They remain equally as perplexed when I said that soap from a different country serves me like food in reminding me of good times from another corner of the world.

I felt that I had hit the jackpot when I discovered Roger & Gallet's Oat Milk from France but that was before I went to Japan and was introduced to Kao White. Kao is as every day in Japan as Dial is the United States but I have never come across another bar of soap that seemingly lathers at the mere suggestion of water. Thick, billowing clouds of the stuff all around me with a mild fragrance that lingers long in to the day. The fastidious Japanese are known for multiple soap and rinse cycles in their daily toilet and with Kao at their ready disposal I can easily understand why.

Imagine my delight when in Paris I discovered the high end toiletry counter where "triple French milled" really meant something. Oh my God. I didn't know where to begin but I knew where I would end up once I saw those prices; hey, clearance merchandise in Paris still beats off the shelf back home! I wonder what they use in Russia.

I'll spare you the discovery of liquid body wash but I've often wondered what happened to Vinolia Soap from the Titanic? It is still made and sold in the United Kingdom today. Hmmmmm....

Gotta go.

Sister Who?

Dallas, where I live, has a "twin" city although most of the fine citizens of Ft. Worth might disagree. They may say that there is precious little between the two that could be described as even fraternal much less identical. In some cases twin cities are connected even within the airport code that serves the area, like DFW, MSP or BWI (Baltimore/Washington). I even know what Quad Cities are thanks to Moline, Davenport, Rock Island and Bettendorf clustered on either side of the Mississippi River dividing Iowa from Illinois.

What I haven't quite gotten my mind around is the concept of the "Sister City." Online I found a definition that says, in general, that it is a cooperative arrangement between two areas intended to foster cultural and commercial ties. In some cases there's also an aesthetic similarity between the two regions. Most developed nations have commercial interests in the San Francisco Bay Area, certainly far more than Wellington, New Zealand but the latter is nothing if not the spitting image of its larger American twin, this of course in addition to being the capital of a country.

So the question is, and there are really two, how are sister cities determined and do the people that live there, the ones that are the target of all this effort, actually know anything about the other town or towns on the list? Texas' European history is centered heavily around German and Czech immigrants, so is that part of the reason behind Brno in the Czech Republic being selected as a sister city to Dallas?

Sister Cities International is a website based in Washington, DC and used to promote economic and civic ties between cities all across the country. It's almost like an online dating service for urban centers, even including a page titled "Cities Seeking Cities." Hmmm..."Single Urban Town seeks Industrial Commercial City. Must like hard workers, have diverse cultural attractions and be willing to develop deep economic relationships."

And I'm going to stop there before it looks as if I've written way too many of those things! That London, England is a sister city to New York City is a no-brainer. One can also divine politics as well as economics in other sister cities to London such as Berlin, Moscow and Johannesburg or between Beijing and Washington, DC. If I were a citizen or a leader of Denver, though, would I have picked Brest, France, or Potenza, Italy and not Zurich, Switzerland instead? Brest is on the very western tip of France, a seaport looking out on the Atlantic Ocean and home to barely 150,000 people.

Zurich, on the other hand? About the same size, surrounded by gorgeous mountains, major economic engine of the region, on and on and oh, people in both cities have at least heard of the other. Ask someone in Denver about Brest and you might get an anatomy lesson.

Being a resident of Dallas/Ft. Worth, I wondered what some of the sister cities are. Try Mbabane, Swaziland, Saratov, Russia and Cairo, Egypt. Cairo?!

Gotta go!

Her Royal Rock Goddess

Music concerts have never played that large a part in my entertainment life but the ones I have enjoyed have been nothing short of once-in-a-lifetime events, including two spoken-word opportunities to hear Bill Cosby at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and Miss Maya Angelou at the Myerson Symphony Hall in Dallas, Texas. Well, "hear" Bill Cosby might be a misnomer as my younger sister and I spent most of the evening doubled-over and crying tears of laughter during the famous "Dentist" routine.

A friend of mine took me to see Stevie Wonder "In the Round" at the old Reunion Arena in Dallas for my birthday one year while the highlight year for me was 1997 when I saw five different acts, including Bruce Springsteen at the Oakland Coliseum, the Prince "Emancipation" and Fleetwood Mac "Dance" tours within days of each other at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California and the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson's "HIStory" tour at Wembley Stadium in London, England.

It was particularly hard to choose which of these was the best of the best since each offered a different style of music, evoked different personal memories and feelings and presented different levels and values of production. They all fell short, however, of the original Rock Goddess, Miss, Lady, Her Histrionic Highness, Dame Tina Turner. Where music is a highly personal choice and some do not prefer her body of work there has always been the consensus that her story of survival is at least among the most compelling and miraculous of them all.

I missed the "Private Dancer" and "Break Every Rule" tours and wasn't old enough to see the decidedly adult shows that she fronted during the "Ike and Tina Turner Review" days in the late 60s and early 70s. My first audience with Her Musical Majesty was the "What's Love" Tour, an Americanized version of the "Foreign Affair" production that had taken all of Europe by storm. I was on the lawn in general seating at the Shoreline Amphitheater but felt as if I was the only one in attendance, certainly not the last time I would feel that way in her presence. I sat in the outer section of reserved seats at the same venue for her next visit and arguably high-water mark, the "Wildest Dreams" Tour at the tender age of 57. Fifty-seven? To this day an aunt of mine laments that she and Ms. Turner share the same age but by no means the same genes!

The Year 2000 found me in London, England on business for my employer at the time. I had contacted a cousin who had never been to England to join me for a few days over the weekend because I had a big surprise planned for her. My colleagues in London had presented me with tickets to Tina Turner's "24/7, One Last Time" Tour on the very day of my birthday. I told my cousin my plans were only to take her through Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bath for our one day out in the countryside.

The performance was the first music event at the brand new Millenium Dome in Cardiff, Wales and the shocked look on my cousin's face remains a treasured moment to this day. And Her Rockness did not disappoint.

The seats were the closest I'd yet come to the stage, I discovered a new band from Australia, "Taxiride" who did a solid job as the first of three acts on the bill, to be followed by John Fogerty himself, author of Tina's signature song, "Proud Mary." We were breathless when she invited him onstage for the opening "nice and easy" part of the classic song and out of breath indeed when it was all over.

Of course I saw the "50th Anniversary" Tour, her last, in 2008; as if! And for me, finally, after all these years of respect and admiration, I got as close to my wish as anybody in a 20,000 seat venue (The United Center at Chicago) could hope for. I met her.

Sort of. Saying her good-byes to the audience at the end of the evening, she walked over to my side of the arena and, pointing to me, Anna Mae Bullock, "Miss Tina Turner" blew me a kiss, waved and was gone.

Gotta go.

Southampton, Simply

There are a ton of day trip options outside of Greater London that the packaged tour crowd rarely have an opportunity or interest in seeing. Dover, Canterbury, Bath and Stonehenge are most likely the big four that attract day trippers from the English capital with a few stragglers maybe showing up at Leeds Castle or down to Salisbury Plain to see the great cathedral there. Each of these attractions has a tourism infrastructure to support what business comes their way.

One city, Southampton, does not enjoy much business unless you're catching a cruise ship heading somewhere else. I decided that since I'll probably never dive to the wreck of the Titanic then I can at least go to Southampton to view some of the touch points, markers and memorials erected in the city to honor this great vessel and tragedy.

The "M3" Motorway southwest of London speeds you straight to the city on the southern coast of the country in hardly an hour's drive. At the time of the tragedy few residential streets in Southampton were spared the loss of life as fully a third of those lost came from this working class city by the sea, in most cases the sole breadwinner for the household which, often at crew wages, wasn't much to begin with. Those homes are still there today along with a few pubs frequented by both workers and passengers alike.

The grandest building, the South Western Hotel, also still stands though it has since been converted to private condominiums and flats. First Class passengers arriving from London on "the Boat Train" stayed here the night before the sailing. They could look out their windows to view the Titanic lying at anchor and finishing up final provisioning.

Holyrood, the Sailors Church, was bombed during the Second World War and preserved in that state; it contains a small memorial to the Titanic's Stewards while elsewhere is a small plaque honoring the 1st Class Band who's musicians famously played on during the sinking on April 14th. The hulking Engineer's Memorial in East Park seems barely noticed by passersby today where 100,000 attended the unveiling barely eight days after the tragedy. Beyond a doubt for me, however, the most telling marker wasn't even a memorial, plaque, tower or monument at all. It was the mooring bollards along Ocean Dock #44 that marked location of the ship prior to its one and only sailing.

The RMS Titanic berthed here and not even a wind's whisper on this calm day to tell the tale. #44 is a commercial use pier, as lacking in beauty and sentiment as any other seaport dock would be. No one travels from London to see a single, ugly, empty pier; there's nothing to see! Sometimes history cannot be seen but can surely be felt as I gazed at the stretch of concrete and up to the blue sky, smelling the smells and tasting the sea air around me. This being England there still remained traces of coal in the air as it would have been for the coal-burning Titanic and other vessels of the period.

No gift shops, no guided tours, no city ambassadors or others engaged in an effort to preserve the history and legacy of the city and the shipping of Southampton. For that I felt saddened. I saw one other thing on the way back to London, however, that gave me a shot of inspiration:

The Mayflower Memorial.

Gotta go.

One Down, Nine Decades to Go

"And then," he continued enthusiastically, "for New Year's Eve we're renting out the entire convention center in Santa Ana just for our members. Won't that be great? You wouldn't want to miss out on a party like that!" The tone of his voice was Grade-A Choice sales pitch - not only would I be a fool to pass up a chance to get in on the ground floor of the pyramid scheme he was pitching but I would also be a complete social outcast if I didn't want to spend Y2K in Orange County with 10,000 other converts, believers and snake-oil suckers.

That conversation was somewhere around 1997 and suffice to say that I did not sign up for a motivational cable network that required members only access and bought its air time from other providers during the late evening and wee hours of the night. Whether or not their plans for the Orange County Convention Center ever panned out either, don't know, don't care. I knew one thing about Y2K and that was where I wanted to be to ring in the new Millenium.

Flights and hotel secure, I arrived in London, England on the morning of New Year's Eve, 1999. The plan was to arrive in time to turn around and high tail it back to America if New Zealand did in fact black out, signaling a worldwide technology meltdown. If that happened I hoped that the systems on my side of the planet would work long enough to get me home. With my plan in place I made it to my hotel near Earl's Court, caught a quick nap and woke up to television images of Auckland, New Zealand ablaze with lights and revelers in the streets celebrating the first developed nation to ring in the new year. Good!

Greenwich Mean Time was to me the official start of the new year and that's where I wanted to be, not ahead of it or behind it, first or last; "GMT," or as close to it as possible. Some in London chose to be right where the gold line is embedded in to the pavement, symbolizing positive and negative time. I was content with being right under Big Ben at Parliament House along the Thames River at Westminster Bridge. I wasn't alone...not by a long shot.

London was cold and overcast - big news flash there, it was the middle of Winter! There was some rain but not enough to keep anyone indoors or deter us from this cosmic moment in time. Touring the city wasn't part of the agenda for me, either, as I'd been to London many times before including one other New Year's occasion at Trafalgar Square. Since I planned to fly home the very next day my one full day in London was all about resting from the flight over and saving my energy for Midnight.

I figured if I got to Parliament by 10PM I'd have a good choice of viewing spots while not having to stand around on my own for too long. Uh...not. Police estimates were in the range of four million gathered along the Thames from the brand new Millennium Dome in the Docklands to Vauxhall Bridge home to MI6 and the farthest point west of Parliament where it can still be seen from the river. I only made it as far as the intersection of St. Margaret and Bridge Streets, well back from the river but still largely underneath the famous bell tower. Westminster Bridge had been closed to additional visitors for safety reasons so I took up a spot on the island supporting the traffic light and waited for unforgettable, once in a lifetime magic to happen.

It did. Happy New Year!

Gotta go.

Nothing Much at Naseby

From a young age I’ve always enjoyed “period” films depicting events from an earlier, more colorful time. The style of speech, the battle scenes and the depiction of life from lowly serf to highest royalty fascinated me and "Cromwell" had it all, including a “live” depiction of a royal execution! What eight-year old boy could pass that up?

Many years later I was an invited guest to a Highlander’s Wedding in Daventry, Northamptonshire, about 80 miles northwest of London. In the "Pancreas" of England between Birmingham at the west, Stratford-Upon-Avon to the south and Leicester to the northeast lay the birthplace of rugby, Warwick Castle and the Roman Road of “Watling Street.” Most exciting of all to me, however, was the Battlefield of Naseby only 15 miles from the site of the wedding!

In June of 1645 the “unthinkable” English Civil War had been raging for nearly three years and things were starting to turn against the crown. King Charles I (played in the film by Sir Alec Guinness seven years before Obi Wan),was heading south to his base at Oxford following a costly victory at Leicester when he was flushed out by the Parliamentarian “New Model Army” racing northward under Sir Thomas Fairfax to catch him. Unable to meet up with reinforcements from Wales and Somerset, Charles swung back north to regroup at Newark but was forced to turn and fight on the fields of Broad Moor at Naseby.

Oliver Cromwell (a scene chewing Richard Harris) made light work of Sir Langdale, his direct opponent on the King’s left. He then charged to the west through the weakened center of the Royalist infantry towards the remaining cavalry of Prince Rupert (a scene stealing Timothy Dalton) on the King’s right, routing the royal army in short order, just as he had done the year before at Marston Moor.

The film that I first saw as a boy covered nine years of British history in under three hours. The Battle of Naseby itself lasted about as long.

Few historical films are ever 100% accurate and “Cromwell” is loaded with inaccuracies and blatant omissions but it hardly mattered to a mesmerized eight-year old. One thing is certain: Charles lost the war and ultimately his own head, the only sitting monarch in English history to be executed. It ran in the family: his grandmother was Mary, Queen of Scots. To this day, however, he maintains a loyal following of supporters.

This is not an American Civil War battlefield. On the edge of an unremarkable field stands a weather-beaten monument that seems cast aside, woebegone and misplaced but in truth marks the center of the “Roundhead” Parliamentary line. No manicured green space, tour bus parking lot ringed with gift shops and cafes, "timeline trails" stuffed with placques and markers detailing what happened "at this very spot" or guides to retell the tale. There’s not even a McDonald’s; just an open field gently sloping downward beside a quiet country road before rising again barely a half-mile away at Dust Hill where the Royalist army was positioned on the northern ridge.

The entire area is pregnant with silence, the Sulby Hedges at the western edge of Broad Moor field are the lone surviving witnesses, resolutely maintaining a 360 year covenant with the stillness. Where buglers sounded, calling to nameless and forgotten men at odds, today hardly even the winds remain.

At least it is still there. If every battlefield in England were preserved there’d be no living England to speak of. Yet for as much fighting that has taken place on and above British soil only the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Battle of Britain ever garner much in the way of conscious thought. Naseby in comparison may as well have not happened at all.

In the grand scheme of things Naseby merely started the transition from monarchial to parliamentary rule, little more than the natural evolution of government in one country among many. Right. And nothing much ever really came from the Battle of Yorktown either.

Gotta go.

An Assembly at Wembley

“Dude,” I pleaded, “I can get tickets to any show on the tour.”

In my eyes it was a fair trade. Free concert tickets for a place to stay. The new album was out and a monster tour all over the world was in full swing but one that would not touch the American mainland. It had been at least five years since the last tour but there was no sense that everything was winding down, heading towards retirement or that this would be the last show. I only sensed that for a tour that size NOT to touch the United States it seemed unconscionable to miss.

Having playfully twisted my buddy’s arm I flew to London from my home in California for a once in a lifetime event at Wembley Stadium. On the famous Metropolitan Line heading up to the historic venue we rattled off which songs were likely to be performed and which ones were our personal favorites, hoping the two lists would overlap more often than not. Would the oldies medley be different this time? Would it matter?

London fans have always set the bar for adoring and supporting their music icons. Still, very few artists dared to announce not just one but multiple dates at the original Wembley Stadium instead of the arena nearby. Adding to that would be the festival atmosphere of open seating on the field itself instead of the orderly reserved seats for premium prices at American venues. I also knew the energy of the crowd would be just as electrifying as the show we had all gathered to see.

July 15, 1997. Some 73,000 descended on venerable Wembley on a clear, late afternoon to fellowship with and bask in the presence of one man. And this was a Wednesday. In the United States we only see packed stadiums like that on Sunday afternoons in the Fall. Our spot on the field was half-way back in the midst of a human ocean yet we still had a good view of the stage. What would the opening number be? Would it matter?

Not a bit. Over the next two and a half hours the fans showed out as much as the man putting on the show. The opening was bombastic, the ballads beatific, the dance numbers dazzling and the signature moves as silky and sizzling as ever, this in a production already ten months on the road with three more months to go.

His greatest hits were then and are now permanently behind him. His detractors will fade in to the shade they struggled to cast upon him. Will it matter? Not to the exhausted but satisfied fans then, now and always. Decades from now "Wanna Be Startin' Something" will kick some party in to high gear just like it did that yesterday's Wednesday at Wembley. That is HIStory.

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.


Gotta go.

Why Are You Here?

Yoda asked that question of Luke Skywalker on Degoba, Khan grilled Chekhov with it on Seti Alpha V and a local asked me the same thing one fine day on my first visit to her country. Being a minority and an American I could have taken instant offense but instead I knew what she meant and smiled:

“I’ve never been to New Zealand before and wanted to see what it’s like.”

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Optimist! The idea is to explore every facet of the travel experience using my experience as a 20-year industry insider and now as a customer. While there will be views on traveling, shopping, touring and dining in unique places around the world the main focus is meeting people, interacting with their culture on their turf and sharing what I do and don't know about mine.

One of the things I hear quite often from locals is how I’ve been to places and seen things they’ve hardly ever bothered with. Nearly every visitor to England goes to Stonehenge but I was quite alone the day I went to Southampton to view the pier from which the Titanic sailed and other places of interest around the town. Other than why I’m there, however, I am more often asked what it’s like to be an American which really allows for a much longer conversation and deeper sense of understanding.

Yes, yes, nosy and suspicious people with rude manners, a fear of outsiders or nothing better to do pose this challenge all the time but so do people from all walks and in all corners who are simply not expecting visitors. Behind the audacity is perhaps a more innocent question of validation. New Zealand is not alone in seeing larger neighboring countries receive greater numbers of visitors.

“Yes, I came here on purpose.”“Good on ya, mate!”

Who needs another complaint blog, although a few posts like that on here are inevitable. Join me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8AM Central Standard Time for new posts in an ongoing journey of personal enrichment and discovery on this floating boulder we call Earth.

Thank you, stay tuned, and look for my first post on Friday, July 10th, 2009.


Gotta Go!