Greetings from Gloucester, MA.
Well, my trip to New England went fine, if somewhat slowly. I spent a half hour sitting in a car in downtown Crystal Falls with my mom at 1 a.m. to catch the Indian Trails (local bus line in lieu of Greyhound) bus. Crystal is a small enough (or backwards enough- take your pick) town to lack a bus stop. To catch the bus, you wait eagerly at the busiest Main St. intersection, and flag the Greyhound down when you see it. Quaint, no?
It probably goes without mentioning that I forgot something else important. This time I left my rail pass (the one that reads "must be presented to obtain tickets" or some such) on the desk in my mom's cabin. I remembered this approximately 2 minutes after boarding the bus. Since I had to pick up my tix in Milwaukee, and judging from the previously "pretty German" (as my uncle puts it) attitude of the amtrak establishment, this could have been a big problem. I could quite reasonably freaked out about it, since Milwaukee would be a shitty place to get stranded. But, rapidly improving at my zen traveler mindset, I took the "nothing I can do now" mindset, and went to sleep instead. I'm really starting to rock socks at this traveling thing, people.
I spent the next 8 hours, as bus passengers do, drifting in and out of consciousness. We stopped for an hour in Escanaba to switch buses, so I got to sit in the bus station for an hour and observe the mundane goings on through a film of semi-waking consciousness. This brought a singular revelation; all bus drivers in the U.P. look identical. No shit. Same height, same weight (male yoopers in general are of that particular beer-induced body type that makes them look, for all the world, like they're pregnant) Same voice, same haircut, same fungible Flanders-esque mustache. Of the 3 or 4 bus drivers I saw in Escanaba, the only differences were, one had brown hair, and one lacked the mandatory surly demeanor. Swear to God.
So, I made it to Milwaukee. Exhausted, I stumbled to the ticket counter where I was actually treated kindly. Either taking pity on my wearied countenance and dehydrated voice, or just because she was nice, the ticket lady used a couple quick keystrokes to circumvent my need for a rail pass, and handed off my tickets, noting that I was free to use my ticket to travel on any Chicago-bound train throughout the day. No problemo. This reinforces my belief that obnoxious corporations are mostly built on the backs of generally decent people.
So, I spent that day killing time. As my train out of Chicago didn't leave 'til 9:30 p.m., I had some time on my hands. I got good and sweaty hiking around Milwaukee for awhile. My final judgement on Milwaukee was, aside from a couple cool old buildings... boring. So I took off to Chicago, grabbed a too-short nap on the train, and got good and sweaty wandering around there instead. My assessment of chicago... also boring. I'm getting pretty used to carrying a backpack and a guitar around, but I suspect my pack is not a good fit. Either that, or I'm using it wrong. Either way, I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be experiencing sharp nerve pains through my upper shoulder when I wear it for more than 5 minutes. Oh, well.
I ended up in the Chicago train station with a book for about 3 hours. I must say, the Chicago train station is about as bleak and shitty as they get. Utilitarian, dirty, busy, disorganized... you name it. Fuck Chicago... I kinda knew we wouldn't get along. The conductor lady was also a piece of work. One of those "sassy black women". Effectively, she gets by on an attitude that's alternately charming and offensive, depending on whether or nor she's getting what she wants. She sat me in the wrong car (they only open the applicable car doors when they stop, so that's actually important to the conductor), and when she realized her mistake, sat me in the only one she had left- one with a wall instead of a window. Somehow she seemed to feel this was my own fault. Whatever. At least I got to sit next to a pretty (if not too chatty) Bulgarian girl, instead of a fat Texan or something.
She was a nice enough travel companion, but really hammered in a disturbing trend I've been noticing. Girls my age (esp. ones I find attractive) are always apologizing to me. For no reason. ALWAYS. As in "sorry... my blanket's all over the place" "sorry, I know my job's cliché" or inexplicably apologizing every time she moved her legs so I could get up. Are girls in my generation really this insecure? Do I only find insecure girls attractive? Is there something in my demeanor that compels girls to apologize to me? Is it perhaps even some bizarre expression of attraction? If the last is so, I do not find that flirtatious, Sam I Am. Seriously, what the fuck is it?? If you have a theory, spit it out...
Blah blah, train, blah blah, sink bath (they're even harder with the "push up to activate" sinks- I'd love to hang the bastard who invented those). Blah blah Boston, blah blah funny accents, blah blah swearing. Blah blah "Good Will Hunting". Blah blah commuter train to Gloucester, blah blah pickup at midnight, blah blah safe and sound.
Whaleses!
So, I did the quintessential Gloucester tourist thing, and went on a whale watch. Basically, you climb on a big boat, they tote you out about 30 miles to sea (2 hours or so) and you look for any big sea creatures that might happen to swing by. It's kinda like a photo safari, but on the ocean. One of the attractions is, there's no walls, no fish-finder action (all they do is take you to likely spots), and certainly no goofy animal trainers. You're going to see them in uncontrolled conditions. This has the dual attraction of "untamed nature", and of the unknown (particularly whether you will actually see any friggin' whales). I've been informed by my aunt that more than one visitor has been burned on this latter account.
Luckily, this wasn't a problem for me. I saw a veritable fuckton of humpbacks, and a shark for good measure. We came upon a very active feeding ground. We watched over a dozen whales (possibly more than 20) within a relatively tiny patch of ocean (they were basically right next to the boat) scare up a fishy meal, both by slapping the water with their tails, and corralling schools of fish with circles of bubbles. This went on for about half an hour before we had to motorize on home, taking extra special care not to run over any whales on our way out of the feeding ground. It was pretty cool.
I couldn't take pictures. But I asked a nice young woman with a telephoto-lensed camera who stood next to me if she would e-mail me some pics. So if she gets around to it, I will share them then. Also, I was informed later that the shark we saw on the way home was toothless. Apparently the sharks around here are plankton feeders. That was kind of a boner-killer. What kind of self-respecting shark eats fucking PLANKTON?
I will also note how cool it was being on the sea. This was my first time on a legit boat ride, like... where you can't see land anymore. I found the motion of the sea, far from the nauseating experience some people seem to get, quite wonderful. To me, it felt like love. From the rocking of a cradle, throughout the arts (especially musical, like singing and dancing), and of course in the love-making of adulthood, that ever present swell and fall feels like the undercurrent of everything heart-based I've done in my life. I can only surmise that those who find it nauseating must have some serious troubles navigating the seas of emotion as well. Anyway, I'm thinking maybe I should move a little closer to the water.
Witches!
Also, today, I did the other touristey thing and went to Salem. You know... with the witches and all? That was pretty cool. I was amused that the town that's best known for prosecuting witches back in the day, is now a veritable shrine to witchcraft. Albeit a pretty touristey one. I must have passed a solid dozen "witch museums", along with countless witch-related storefronts.
I, however, eschewed the sensational, and instead spent the day at the Peabody-Essex museum. I'm not much of a museum guy, but it was pretty friggin' cool. It's a 3 floor museum, and it's pretty jam-packed. They have a lot of old sian art (I guess Salem was a big stop on the asian import route)-everything from sculptures to paintings to furniture. They also have a lot of old colonial type stuff, including a well-chosen selection of maritime artifacts, and a crapload of old china and silver. On the top floor I saw an exhibit on Man Ray and Lee Miller, a surrealist dream team who had a rocky romantic relationship for a couple years, but remained good friends for life. It was pretty cool, but a little sad, since they had a lot of art and some really (overly) personal letters on display relating to their break up. That theme always tugs my heartstrings a little, I guess.
This Amtrak deal is the most regularly I've been fucked in some time...
...and that's sad on multiple levels. New Orleans, sadly, is out. Booked up. After this discovery, I decided to cough up another 66 bucks extra and go see my aunt in Omaha on the way home (esp. since the first available ticket back to alb. from Boston leaves on the 16th). But, as it turns out, she's too busy for guests right now. So, I've opted to eschew the entire fucking rail system clusterfuck, and drive back to CO with my uncle Paul, who just happens to be up here on family business. I will then leave Denver by bus at the ungodly hour of 5:35 a.m., and be home in time for dinner (and probably a 24-hour sleep marathon in my own fucking bed!). Plans are finalized, I'll enjoy my last couple days in MA (hopefully I can get some more loblob in my tummy before I go) and hopefully everything goes smoothly from here. I will likely not find an excuse to blog again before I get home, so this may well be the penultimate travel entry (!!!!). It's been fun, y'all, every step of the way ...even all the bitching was mostly just to enhance the dramatic value... but I'm ready to be home.
Wish me luck.
-Mojoe
P.S. did you think I forgot to leave you a song? Silly rabbit... here's some Billie:
I will probably learn to play this one. I especially like the "some like me" verse at the end... I really wanna sing that verse.
And here's a sad, sad song my brother turned me onto when we were hangin out ( I gotta say, he got a pretty good line on my musical preferences just from listening to me for a couple hours).
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