I sometimes wake in the night and listen for a distant train, a steady rumble as locomotives pull a mile of freight cars. Oil from North Dakota, coal from Wyoming or Montana, grain from Minnesota or North Dakota. I’m standing next to the railroad. The first snow of winter has melted, fresh snow is falling.… Continue reading Urban Hike: Disputed Tracks
Year: 2014
My Worst Travel Fail
I have rarely felt more alive, more calm, more in the moment, more close to death. But that all came later that night. It was October 2011, northern India, Haridwar, one of Hinduism’s holiest places. The city is set in the foothills of the Himalayas at mile 157 (253 km) of the Ganges’ 1,569 mile… Continue reading My Worst Travel Fail
Changes of Gauge
Delta flight 160, Denver to Amsterdam, landed today (December 1, 2014) in Amsterdam with no Denver passengers on board. This is not uncommon: it also happened with DL160 on November 13. The explanation starts with a “change of gauge,” a term rooted in railroads.Track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the two… Continue reading Changes of Gauge
An Old Lady with Attitude
What is this? Surely it’s not a hat. I came across this while reorganizing our kitchen drawers. It’s a tea cozy, designed to keep a teapot warm. It was 1999. I was in Glasgow, Scotland, visiting my elderly aunt. Her elegantly dressed, equally ancient neighbor presented me with the tea cozy she had knitted. The… Continue reading An Old Lady with Attitude
Dreaming of Kyushu
This winter I’ll be back in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. I will have visited Kyushu three years in a row: 2013, 2014, and 2015. I go back for the gentle subtropical climate while Minnesota’s long winter refuses to budge. Kyushu is a manageable size, about one-sixth the area of Minnesota or… Continue reading Dreaming of Kyushu
Travel Gear: Spectacle Case
You pay attention to every item that goes into your backpack if you’re going to carry it for 330 miles (about 530 kilometers). That was my state of mind when I planned a walk around the north of England with my partner. I scrutinized every item. Does it provide sufficient value? Can I find something… Continue reading Travel Gear: Spectacle Case
7 Ways Twitter Helps My Writing
I use Twitter as a microblogging tool. Because I use photographs, Twitter limits my posts to 118 characters. In that small space I can tell a story about my day. You can see the results in the sidebar to the right of this post. If you are reading this on your phone, my Twitter stream… Continue reading 7 Ways Twitter Helps My Writing
Phase 3 Writing
All my life I’ve allowed my audience to constrain my writing. Writing was a product for teachers, academics, engineers, customers, and decision-makers. I succeeded if I satisfied my consumers. The cage door is now open and I am free to step outside. In Life, Phase 3, life untethered from work, I get to write for… Continue reading Phase 3 Writing
Travel Gear: Trekking Gloves
In Marketing class I learned about a man who had a bunch of folding stools to sell. He first positioned them as general-purpose folding stools, but there were no takers. He sold them all when he positioned them as fishing stools. A well-positioned product connects with a specific market. With a bit of luck, the… Continue reading Travel Gear: Trekking Gloves
Gas
It was breakfast at the Granvia Okayama Hotel. The tour group at the next table murmured in agreement as the colonel railed against typographical errors in the itinerary. I pegged him as “the colonel,” now a paper-pusher, close to retirement. It was impossible to tune him out as he recalled his first encounter with the… Continue reading Gas