Item From the Past: Austin '88

On May 20, 1988, I flew to Austin for a long weekend. My old friend Tom was graduating from UT. Later, instead of detailing the weekend in diary form, I did a schematic.

I'm not going to transcribe the entire thing, but it shows my arrival on a United flight into Austin -- I'm surprised I didn't fly Southwest -- and then my movements afterward: to Tom's apartment, Kirby Lane for dinner, back to Tom's, and then that night's sleep, which was disturbed by cats. The next morning, we bought groceries, helped Tom clean up, and then went with a number of people to Carmelo's for the "Graduation Banquet," as I called it.

After that, we hung out awhile, eventually attending Tom's graduation. Bill Moyers was the commencement speaker. For dinner that night, we went to a place called Trudy's, a Mexican restaurant ("Saturday Night's All Right for Eating," I called the meal). That night's sleep was "smooth" -- the cats were quiet, I guess. The next day we had breakfast at a place called the Omletry [sic] and spent some time at Pease Park in Austin. I went to the airport after that.

The Joneses together for the occasion (from left): Richard, Lisa, Tom, Zan.

Tom, Nancy and I, during an interlude.

Remember the Akron

I forgot about the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, which was yesterday, but today's close enough. So I poked around a little because it's easy to find film and audio and a lot of reading about the disaster on line, such as on this page about the history of WLS, where Herb Morrison worked when he made the famed recording describing the explosion and fire as he saw it. The lesson here? Besides not to load your airship with hydrogen, that is. If you want your disaster remembered, point cameras at it.

The point is driven home by the loss of the U.S. Navy airship Akron in 1933. More people died in that disaster than the Hindenburg. Though it was a helium ship, bad weather took it down off the coast of New Jersey (and what is it with New Jersey and airships?). Still, who's heard of that accident anymore? Of course, the Akron was major news at the time, but left no dramatic images. Even the song about it, I think, is lackluster, but things might have been different had Jimmie Rodgers or Woody Gutherie written a song about the Akron, though Rodgers was nearly dead himself by then.

Speaking of helium, years ago I read that the Germans couldn't make enough of it to raise a ship like Hindenburg, so they used hydrogen and tried with German thoroughness to control any possible sources of ignition. In hindsight, not thorough enough. According to this always interesting site devoted to National Historic Chemical Landmarks, the virtual U.S. monopoly on helium also had its advantages in wartime a few years later.

"Large-scale production of helium came too late to be of much value in World War I, but it did play a major role in World War II, when helium-filled U.S. Navy patrol blimps safely escorted thousands of ships carrying troops and supplies," the American Chemical Society says (and they ought to know). "The blimps used sensitive listening devices that when lowered into the water could detect submarines up to five miles away. At the time, the Allies had a virtual monopoly on helium, because the only known gas wells capable of producing helium in large quantities were in the United States and Canada."

The Schaumburg Municipal Helistop

On Friday I chanced on the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop -- a helicopter landing site, that is, complete with a large H painted on the concrete. I don't think I've ever seen one except at hospital complexes, but then again I never travel in helicopters (and when it comes to hospitals, never hope to).

The sign at the helistop says Elevation 729 feet, and there's a red windsock. There wasn't much wind on Friday, so it was flaccid. Nearby was a large parking lot, a vacant lot, and the backs of retailers on Golf Road. I've been driving by an intersection about a half-block from the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop for years now and had no inkling it was there. That just goes to show -- something, maybe just that I'm unobservant.

Now that I know about it, I have half a mind to show it to the kids, and tell them it's the final resting place of Hubert, the famous circus elephant. Ann might believe it for a while, but Lilly will probably be skeptical.

Small Kolaches & Big Airports

I didn't have the pleasure during this visit to Texas of going to the central Texas town of West, home of Czech Stop, a bakery well worth stopping at if you're south of Dallas but north of Waco on I-35. The kolaches are superb. I've never actually been there myself -- and how I forgot to stop there in '09, I don't know -- but my brother Jay and sister-in-law Deb picked up a box of the bakery's creations and brought them to San Antonio last week. I enjoyed a couple of fruit kolaches and a sausage roll before we ran out.

A Czech bakery in Texas isn't the oddity it might sound like to non-Texans. Czechs have been coming to Texas in some numbers since not long after Stephen F. Austin came, though most came in the years before World War I. The ever-informative Handbook of Texas Online has an article about Czechs in Texas.

I flew to Texas this time via Denver. That sounds like an out-of-the-way route, and it is somewhat, but that's what you get when booking Southwest; Chicago-Denver-San Antonio was the best price at roughly the time when I wanted to fly. Besides, I also wanted to look around Denver International Airport, which I still think of as the "new" airport in Denver, even though it's been open for 15 years. Not that I ever flew into Stapleton. When I came to Denver in 1980, I was on a bus.

I barely got a glimpse of the distinctive white roof of the airport on the return trip, when I had a window seat. It's supposed to evoke the snow-capped Rockies, and maybe it does, but I thought of teepees. A small town of teepees way off on the Colorado high plains somewhere.

On the transit to Texas, I had a chance to look around Terminal C, since my connecting flight was a little late. It's a spacious place, and you feel when looking out the windows that you aren't really near anything else. Which is true. The airport is far off to the northeast of Denver proper, occupying 53 square miles or so, enough acreage to make the facility expandable to accommodate space planes, if it ever comes to that.

During my transit back to Chicago, I barely had time to catch my connecting flight. Naturally, it was at the other end of Terminal C, so I was huffing along, not quite running, to get to the gate. Which brought to mind O.J. Simpson, once upon a time,
running through an airport with panache. That was the pre-murdering-his-ex-wife O.J., of course, but looking at the commercial again after so many years, I have to ask: just why was he running so fast, not to catch an airplane, but to get to his rental car?

Item From the Past: The Day I Drank With Herb Kelleher

On February 25, 1986, I went to the Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel on West End Ave. in Nashville and received lunch, some whiskey and an airplane ticket, all at no charge. It was a pretty good day.

I wasn't alone in getting such largesse, since very many members of the Nashville media had been invited to the main ballroom at the hotel that day for a lunchtime announcement by Southwest Airlines that it was starting service in and out of Nashville International Airport (BNA). All I remember about the presentation was that it included clips from old Southwest commercials, early '70s items that looked dated even in 1986. In its earliest days, Southwest was a businessman's airline that flew the triangle between Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. It sold passage between those places, of course, but the commercials also emphasized stewardesses in hotpants.

Toward the end of the lunch, everyone attending was given an envelope containing a voucher for a round-trip anywhere Southwest flew. (That spring, I used the voucher to fly to Austin to attend a friend's wedding.) There are news organizations that frown on their employees accepting that sort of gift, but I didn't work for a media company inclined to frown in that way. Southwest did not, in fact, ask anything in return from me, and I, in fact, never wrote anything much about the airline (until now). It was just the company's way of making itself memorable among those who, in the fullness of time, might tell a lot of other people about this unusual new airline.

A couple of years later, I traveled with some friends between Chicago and Nashville on Southwest, including one who had never flown on the airline before. Right after we received our numbered plastic boarding passes at the gate, rather than seat assignments, he commented, "This isn't like any other airline, is it?" he asked rhetorically.

It wasn't in those days, anyway. One time in the late '80s, I remember a Southwest flight attendant singing to us passengers a few bars of a song to the tune of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett."

Either before or after the lunch, I went to one of the hotel's hospitality suites for a short appointment with Herb Kelleher, co-founder and chairman of the airline (maybe CEO too, at the time; he's since retired). An affable sort, he poured me some whiskey and we talked about Texas and I can't remember what else, but it wasn't much of a formal interview. Kelleher had probably knocked back a few himself by that time, but not enough to embarrass himself. Fun airline, fun interview.

View From a Runway

Last Friday was probably the one and only time I will ever stand on an airport runway. I've deplaned onto tarmacs, but that isn't what I mean. By "stand on an airport runway," I mean stand smack in the middle of a stretch of concrete that airplanes typically use to land and take off. And I don't mean a runway at some general aviation airport. I was on a runway that could land a jumbo jet.

I didn't break any federal laws to take in this peculiar vista, since the runway is part of an airport still under construction, and I was the guest of the airport authority, so I could look around and write about the place. Write about it again, actually. To quote myself from an article I did about three years ago:

"Built it and they will come. Occasionally that happens in real life, and in the case of Bay County, Florida, it's about to happen in a big way... 'It' in this case means a new international airport in Bay County -- the first major airport developed in United States in years. 'They' mean home-buying retirees from the Midwest and Northeast, time-sharing vacationers, beachfront aficionados and spring-break revelers, real estate investors, developers, speculators and flippers. The rush is just beginning."

The rush might be delayed by the current state of the economy, but the airport's going to be ready for them when they eventually come, as they surely will. People familiar with the project told me that construction will be done in about a year. When I was at the new Panama City airport on Friday, only part of the the skeleton of main terminal building looked finished, and none of its exterior was; the control tower was just a stump; and an enormous pile of asphalt stood near the runway, waiting to be used in some part of the project. Workmen here and there attended to parts of the project. A couple of cranes were hoisting things. Earth movers were scraping away earth.

Still, the basic structure of the runway was there, long and flat. Flatness in both lengthwise directions, so far that it almost extended to the horizon. A thin rim of greenery marked that horizon, which was sandwiched that day between a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds and the reflected brightness of the white runway surface. As the picture shows, the surface sported a lot of tire marks.

The surface was still unpainted, so I saw no alphanumerics or other symbols known best to pilots, but I did notice that the surface was grooved, for traction. Our guide said that the slight slope to either side directs the rain off the runway, and I couldn't help but think of way Roman roads deflected water, even though the comparison is probably off. There was no threat of rain on Friday. It was sunny, and it was Florida in mid-May, yet the spot wasn't quite as hot as I'd expected. Could be that the whiteness of the surface bounced some of the heat away.

So even if I hadn't seen anything anything else on this latest trip to Florida, I'd count it as a success, in terms of novelty. But I did see other things between flying down late last Thursday (to the existing airport) and returning early Sunday: parts of Panama City and Tallahassee, long stretches of state and national forests lush with the Southern summer, a couple of small-town Southern cemeteries complete with ancient trees and their Spanish moss, a pair of capitols, the site of an explosion heard 100 miles away in Pensacola, docked fishing boats smelling of recent cargo, a lighthouse, a delightful city park that included a Huey helicopter, and this item:

This statue can be found near a small office building at E. 1030 Lafayette St., Tallahassee, Florida. No indication of why it was there, but I suppose it was because the property owners wanted a statue.

Further South Than I've Been in Years

The fellow who looked at my boarding pass last Monday as I entered the passengers-only zone at O'Hare couldn't have been older than about 23, a lad in the new uniform of the Transportation Security Administration. But a good-natured lad at that moment. He took a look at me in my traveling clothes, a gray suit with a blue shirt but no tie.

"Going to Puerto Vallarta on business?" he asked, more in an conversational tone than an interrogational one.

"Yes, I am."

"That sucks."

He waved me through. Often enough "business trip" means a few days in climate-controlled meeting rooms struggling against yawns and heavy eyelids, and that would have been bad. But that isn't the kind of business trip I took. I went to look at properties about 20 miles up the coast from Puerto Vallarta, and write about them later.

Not just any resort properties, but exquisite Mexican-flavored residences overlooking wide views of the Pacific horizon, enlivened by frequent flights of seabirds, the sound of the ocean thumping the rocks below, and regularly scheduled sunsets. That describes my villa, at least, but all of the properties had considerable charm, and sometimes arresting designs.

Other writers had been gathered to see the properties as well, three from Canada and one other American -- an amiable, well-traveled group. Comparing destinations was a continuing subject of conversation, but hardly the only one. Besides touring resort- and second-home properties, we participated in the slow-food movement at a number of fine restaurants, mostly open-air establishments.

One afternoon a boat ride was on the schedule, too, taking us near offshore islands that functioned as seabird cities, complete with the smell of guano. I'd say that was a first for any business trip of mine.

He's No D. B. Cooper

I was able to include the following in a story I filed recently: "Only last week, Marcus Schrenker was just an obscure Indiana financial industry businessman up to his eyeballs in legal trouble. Now his 15 minutes of fame have arrived after he allegedly did a variation on the D. B. Cooper maneuver by parachuting out of an airplane in a vain attempt to fake his own death..."

It's the first time in all the thousands of articles I've written (counting five-graph shorts) that I ever remember referring to D. B. Cooper. It was a bit of a stretch, comparing Mr. Schrenker's efforts to the one and only D. B. Cooper. About all they had in common was a willingness to parachute out of an airplane in order to disappear. I guess Schrenker expected the plane to crash into the Gulf of Mexico, which might have avoided the embarrassment of having the authorities find empty wreckage. That would pretty much give the whole thing away, and in fact did.

D.B. Cooper, on the other hand, is still on the lam after nearly 40 years, provided he's still alive. Even if he's not, he belongs in the Vanished Without a Trace Hall of Fame, members of which include Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and Judge Crater. It's certainly one way to be famous, if you do it right. How many other noted pre-WW II aviatrix, crooked '50s labor bosses or minor New York state judges in office nearly 80 years ago immediately come to mind?

(Wiki notes that even the least known of those three -- Judge Crater -- still gets pop-culture references: In the episode of The Sopranos entitled "House Arrest," the doorbell rings at Uncle Junior's house. When Bobby asks who it could be, Junior responds, "Judge Crater. How should I know?" A puzzled Bobby asks, "The one who ordered the house arrest?")

This Way to the Labyrinth

A fine Memorial Day to all, or at least everyone for whom it's a day off. For everyone else, have a tolerable Monday. Back on Tuesday.

Here's how to joke about death. Years ago, I remember Johnny Carson mentioning in his monologue that, statistically speaking, there were going to be x-hundred traffic fatalities nationwide over the upcoming holiday weekend. He asked Doc Severinsen or Tommy Newsom whether he knew that, and they bantered a little, and then Johnny turned to the camera and said, "Goodbye."

Today was Ann's last day of preschool. Come September, she'll be on that long toboggan ride known as K-12. I picked her up, and felt a small twinge of melancholy. For me, because when this child is grown, I'll be old. For her, because you can't be six on Sugar Mountain. Well, maybe seven. It passed quickly, this twinge. The kid needs to grow up over the normal span of a couple of decades; the world needs grownups.

A few more Canada notes. Squeezed in between a mall called Toronto Eaton Centre and a hotel -- the one I stayed in -- is the Church of the Holy Trinity, part of the Anglican Church of Canada and a fine Gothic structure. It was there long before the mall or hotel, of course, and most of downtown Toronto for that matter, dating from 1847. I saw this plaque. The other photo featured at that link is of the front entrance. Off to the right and behind the entrance is the mall, and also -- in its own little space -- the church's labyrinth. A sign I saw elsewhere said, This Way to the Labyrinth.

Inside the church sported hard pews ready for kneeling (no folding kneelers), some excellent stained glass, various social activism banners ("Compassion for Cameroon") and a couple of bums -- homeless men, I mean -- parked on benches at the side of the building. The outdoor labyrinth was interesting, but looked better from about 20 stories up.

I attended a meeting in a nearby skyscraper, and was able to take a picture of the old city hall (until the mid-60s) from about 20 stories up:

And the new city hall. Newer than the old one, anyway. Compare and contrast:

Transit to and from Toronto was amazingly smooth. No delays either way, not much in the way of rough air, and customs was fairly straightforward on either end. Canada didn't stamp my passport, though. I like passport stamps.

The Air Canada flight to Toronto was on an Air Canada Embraer 135, small but not the smallest regional jet I've been on. While waiting at the gate in Chicago, I actually witnessed my bag go into the plane. A first.

Approaching Chicago on the return flight, I saw the arc of the North Shore, all the way from the Bahai Temple in Wilmette to the familiar shapes of downtown, and then we headed west over other familiar territory – such as Ned Brown Forest Preserve, an enormous track of undeveloped land roughly east of where I live. The plane then went further west, turned, and headed east in such a way that I could see Lilly’s elementary school. The sight of it guided my gaze to a fuzzy spot nearby: my house. I’d never seen it from the air before.

Goodyear Nipple

Posting photos is the refuge of an indolent blogger, but lately for-profit writing has taken up most of my total writing time. That isn't remotely a bad thing, of course.

Still, this too is a September memory. It's my "nipple" shot of the Goodyear Blimp Columbia at the Smyrna, Tennessee, airport in mid-September 1986. I rode on the blimp shortly after taking the picture, which I wrote about some time ago (see March 9 & 10, 2003, on the original BTST).

I did some looking around and found out that Columbia was retired in 1992. I also found this intriguing story from the FAQ section of the Goodyear Blimp web site.

"Q: What is the story behind the 'ghost blimp'?

"A: Early in World War II, the Navy blimp L-8 left Moffet Field in California on a routine anti-submarine patrol flight over the Pacific. Two Naval officers, Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams, were aboard When L-8 had been out for about an hour, Cody radioed that they had spotted an oil slick and were investigating. Then nothing. This message was the last ever heard from the two men. Later that same day, the blimp was spotted nudged against a cliff on a beach south of San Francisco. As rescuers approached, the ship dislodged itself and drifted inland. It floated down in Daly City, made a perfect landing on its one wheel, and came to a stop in an intersection. No one was aboard the L-8, and no one has even been able to account for the disappearance of Cody and Adams. The throttles were at idle, everything was working normally, there was fuel in the tanks and the cabin door was open. Some local volunteer firemen slashed the envelope, completely destroying it, in the mistaken belief that the crew might be trapped inside. Only the car was saved. Goodyear donated the gondola to the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola, Florida. It is currently being restored and will soon be on display."

All the Way the Paper Bag Was on My Knee

My cousin Jay in Mississippi e-mailed me to let me know that the plane I saw at Pilot Pete’s (see yesterday) was likely a species of “ultralight aircraft,” the kind that enthusiasts build and fly. I’ve heard of such, and seen pictures, but I don’t think I’d ever seen one myself, which only goes to show that you never know what you’ll see out in the inexhaustible, variegated world.

I forgot to mention it, but my favorite bits of decoration at PP’s weren’t the planes, but the reproductions of travel posters from the early days of jet travel. Why the proprietors picked jet travel, I don’t know, since jets do not land at the airport in Schaumburg, but there they were in the small waiting area just inside the entrance.

FLY FINNAIR TO FRIENDLY FINLAND said one, illustrated with a lush scene of lakes and trees and a blonde bathing beauty ca. 1960 style. Funny how you can feel a touch of nostalgia for a time when you weren’t quite born yet—but something of the newness of jet travel, the progress it represented over slower airplanes in getting you to exotic destinations, comes across in the posters.

There was also a poster for destinations served by BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corp.), another distinct bit of airline nostalgia. A lyric in the Beatles song “Back in the USSR” is probably where I first heard of BOAC, which in a fit of rationalization in the 1970s -- the British had several such fits in that decade -- was merged into another state-controlled airline to form British Air. I had a good couple of flights on BA once upon a time, but it doesn’t quite have the distinctness of the older name.

Fred, Barney & Alec Guinness

No blogging till Sunday or so. Best to all for Thanksgiving.

Till then, some odds and ends. A local radio news report this morning claimed that today, in fact, is the busiest day of the year at O’Hare International Airport, in terms of the number of human beings who arrive, depart and transfer there. A madding, and probably maddening, crowd. I’ve flown on days like that. No thanks.

At least the skies are clear and the winds light, so there wouldn't have been the standard weather-delay shots on local TV news tonight of people sleeping at O’Hare boarding gates. Or the standard interviews of Families Who Just Want to Get Home for the Holiday, But Can’t. I sympathize, but what’s the news value in that?

Friday is Buy Nothing Day. I’m unpersuaded of some of the creators’ (a group called Adbusters) ecological premises, such as “the Earth could die because of the way Americans live,” or its sociological notions, namely that Americans are uniquely pathological in our consumer acquisitiveness. Just more successful, perhaps. Still, I like the idea of such a day, if only because of personal inclinations. My quixotic dream would be to buy all the nonperishable goods I ever needed at once, and then never have to buy any more of them again. With certain exceptions, of course, mainly books.

Netflix certainly doesn’t promote DVD acquisitiveness, since they go back by return post. Just send back Season 1, Vol. 1 of The Flintstones. I remember it as a Saturday morning cartoon, not a prime-time series. In fact, I think I was in my 20s before I realized that it had originally been in prime time, running longer than any other cartoon of the pre-Simpsons era.

The DVD colors are lush, which made me wonder why Hanna-Barbera bothered with color at all in 1960, when most TV shows were still black and white. Also, either Fred Flintstone mellowed slightly over time, or I misremember his character, but there were moments in these early episodes when he reminded me more of Moe Howard than Ralph Kramden. At one point he clonked Barney on the head despite discovering the he, Fred, had been mistaken about Barney taking something of his. He then told a puzzled Barney, “That’s for the next time you do something wrong.”

Kind Hearts and Coronets also went back recently. One day a few months ago, I decided I hadn’t seen nearly enough Ealing comedies, creations of a British studio of that name in the late 1940s and early ’50s, so I put several in my Netflix queue. Considering all the interruptions around here, it takes three or four sittings at least at work my way through a feature-length movie, but I've seen two so far. The Lavender Hill Mob came first, then Kind Hearts.

Droll comes to mind, though the word hardly does either of them justice, since they’re so much more. They’re comedy for grownups, for moviegoers that the filmmakers assumed were paying attention. It takes a deft touch to make movies about grand larceny and mass murder and yet leave the audience smiling.

Item from the Past: Summer of ’99

July 8, 1999

Had a good Fourth of July weekend hereabouts. High point was the fireworks by the towns of Westmont, Woodridge and Downers Grove. Which means, being a taxpayer in Westmont, I paid a bit to put ’em on, and it’s a fine way to spend public money, too. We watched the show from a large parking lot; us and a lot of other people, sitting out side their cars on folding chairs. Even Lilly paid some attention, though she was a little scared of the noise.

The day before, we spent some time the day before at Navy Pier, an excellent public space that juts into Lake Michigan downtown. Lilly had the best time of all, finding short sets of stairs to climb up and down (a current favorite of hers). There was a band, and Lilly danced -- wobbled, really—to their tunes, which was a seriously cute activity.

About my recent to Grand Rapids, never mind the town itself. The best parts of the trip were the flights over and back, on Jetstream 31 propeller airplanes, seating about 20. It was a little like being inside a flying lawnmower, but the view was splendid, especially on the return, when there were few clouds. We flew at about 8,000 feet, according to the pilot, and generally followed the coast of southern Lake Michigan, so I could see some of the parklands, the lakeside towns, and, in Indiana, the active and inactive steel mills.

Later I went to Columbus, Ohio, was to conduct a Columbus roundtable, which I did—14 or so local real estate types, sitting around a conference room, eating breakfast, responding to my questions and often, each other.

Currently, there’s a quarrel between the owners of an older mall (a Cincinnati company) and a Columbus developer who wants to build a new one using tax-increment financing, which is essentially a local tax break. Of course, it’s really a quarrel between competitors, but it’s being portrayed as a matter of public interest by both sides.

Columbus seemed pleasant enough, a Nashville-sized city. Before I went, I only knew a few things about it -- it’s the capital of the state, and Thurber’s hometown (I had to tell my young associate editor who that was). Also, Wendy’s started there. The Ohio state capitol isn’t impressive. It, like Tennessee’s, is Greek Revival, but not nearly as elegant.

Even the inside was spare, with a few monuments to obscure pioneers of Ohio, heroes of the Great Rebellion, moldy governors, etc. Some of the statuary outside was well done, however: a good Spanish-American war memorial, and a prominent larger-than-life of President McKinley, erected a few years after his assassination, with words to the effect that such a man’s fame would shine through the mists of time. Uh-huh.

Florida IIII

“Is it still cold up there in Chicago?” the clerk at the Enterprise car rental desk in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater International Airport, a nattily dressed young black man, asked me last week.

“Yeah, it’s still pretty cold. Spring hasn’t come to us, so we decided to come to spring.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

And it was. I arrived in Florida late in the afternoon Easter Sunday to a welcome surprise. Instead of leaving the airplane into a sterile jetway, I felt the warm Southern air immediately, because we disembarked down stairs directly onto the tarmac. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve done that, but it was long, long ago in an airport far, far away. A small but worthwhile treat.

At that moment I was traveling without my family. Because of the details of my frequent flier miles, I had one free flight on ATA, which took me to St. Petersburg; also available were two free flights on Southwest, which uses the considerably larger, mall-like Tampa International Airport; Yuriko and Lilly and Ann went there. We flew to our respective Florida airports, and back to Chicago Midway, on the same days, within hours of each other, with me scheduled to arrive first and take care of things on both ends, like picking up a car in St. Pete, or picking up our bags in Chicago. Like any plan that depends on airline schedules, a lot could have gone wrong, but fortunately nothing did. Our flights were all more or less on time.

So we had about six days in central Florida. A line from Tampa Bay to Cape Canaveral, roughly paralleling I-4 and the wonderfully named Bee Line Expressway, formed the axis of our vacation. It was Yuriko and the kids’ first visit to the state, and my fourth. It included an empty beach, the Mouse Empire, strange sea horses, a Saturn V, a brewery with good beer, a busy beach, Salvador Dali, swimming, walking, driving, near-sunburn, crowds, traffic, noise, too much Cartoon Network, excellent orange juice, decent barbecue, stellar Cuban food, warm days, cool nights and commercials on the radio advertising the best way to rid your property of fire ants. It was good to be away.

Indy for the Nth Time

Usually, I wrap up writing about short trips with miscellaneous observations, but today I’m going to start with them—observations of various sizes and shapes from my recent 24 hours in Indianapolis, which started on Tuesday afternoon and ended on Wednesday afternoon.

It’s a hiccough airplane trip across the flatland between Chicago and Indy: one state over, one metropolis down. Up you go, get your drink, down you go, do not stand until the plane has made a complete stop. Leaving Indianapolis this afternoon, I got to see the city from up high, making the downtown especially look like a model of itself on a table. Off to the west was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the famous race, looking like a model Circus Maximus in a model of ancient Rome.

I’ve been to Indy so many times now, I’ve lost count. This was my nth trip, then. But I always forget how empty downtown seems, even in the full flush of a business day. My business in town took me from my hotel, the Hampton Inn on Meridian Ave., to the huge Marriott down Maryland St., a wide street, as many of the CBD streets are. I walked the five blocks or so several times. I’m used to the rush and din of Chicago, where the downtown streets always flow with cars, and the sidewalks always sport pedestrians. In Indianapolis, cars seem to trickle down the major thoroughfares, and there are only a handful of walkers on each block.

Many of the crosswalks have timers. That is, along with the standard Walk-Do-Not-Walk ideogram lights, there’s another electronic sign, a timer, to let you know how many seconds are left until the light changes from Walk to Do Not Walk. I’m fairly sure Indy was the first place I ever saw that particular pedestrian aid, though I have seen it a few other places since.

It was cold during my visit, but this time precipitation didn’t chase me, like it did when I came to town in January, or like last week in Michigan. I did notice, while walking to my gate at Midway yesterday, that a lot of flights to LaGuardia had been canceled. Later, the Weather Channel confirmed that a late-winter blast had hammered the Northeast U.S. that day, illustrated by beleaguered pedestrians in Manhattan and snow-shoveling Bostonians. This is the kind of thing that excites the Weather Channel. Gives them some thrilling weather to report till tornado season gets under way.

Saw an enormous man—a 100 lbs. my senior in bulk, at least—reading a comic book at the Indianapolis airport. I mean, a graphic novel. Dungeon, was the name, I think. Sure, they’re supposed to be for adults. But I don’t see too many adults actually reading them in public. Maybe it’s because we suspect that, despite adult themes, they’re still just comic books. Besides, “adult” themes usually don’t mean stories about dealing with your spouse, your kids, your house, your job, or other activities that fill the days of adults. No, it means large breasts slung in small cloth, plus a little ultraviolence, if the cover of Dungeon is any indication.