The Road From Change - Jan. 22

We left Philadelphia - or "Phila" as the road signs refer to it - around 1 PM, and headed for New Jersey. Stopping for gas just north of Trenton, we were hoping to hear some good Sopranos-style Joyzee accents, but to no avail. We continued north on the fabled New Jersey Turnpike. It was my first time driving the length of the Garden State and I had high hopes for such a place that brilliant thinkers like Bruce Springsteen and Kevin Smith couldn't shut up about.


New Jersey proved to be uninspiring, it was like Orange County at thirty degrees. But given that we were expecting that, it didn't work out so bad. We decided to stop in Newark and ride the PATH to New York for a brief walk, seeing as we rarely ever get to visit the East Coast. Newark is remarkably similar to Oakland; it's old and run-down, it has a sports stadium, and it's built on a swamp. However, the most striking similarity between the two is that they are clearly set apart from the "desirable" city centers of Manhattan and San Francisco. I find it remarkable how how much both cities benefit from waterways; they allow the tourists and businesspeople to confine themselves to stunning civic cores while the nasty urban realities of Newark or Oakland are kept thoroughly out of sight, out of mind. Call it the theory of urban moats.



We boarded the PATH at Newark Penn Station - apparently all train stations in the Tri-State area have "Penn" in their names. The train rumbled past downtrodden railyards and forlorn ports before turning underground. Eventually we emerged at the former WTC site. I stopped to take a picture and was promptly repremanded by the New York cops. Apparently taking pictures in PATH stations is bad. But to be barked at in that inimitable East Coast style was actually an "authentic" experience - awesome!



Our walk around Lower Manhattan was short but sweet. There was of course the requisite gaggle of skyscrapers, the Duane Reade drug stores, the lack of public restrooms. We walked by Trinity Church and the entry to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. We ended our walk at Battery Park City, which is more park than city. The sun was setting over the statue of Liberty, but all I could think about was how cold the Hudson must be right now.


With the sun down, we turned back toward the PATH station. The ride back to Newark was smooth, and thankfully there was no traffic on the way out of town. We headed north to Massachusetts, crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge and the diminutive state of Connecticut. By the time we got to our family's home in rural Massachusetts, our relatives had already gone to sleep. But that was just as well, we were tired and didn't particularly feel like talking.

The Road From Change - Jan. 21

Our drive was largely uneventful after we left Washington on Wednesday evening. The Beltway was clogged, so we took a shortcut which ended up being a detour. Roadside signage warned us of severe traffic through downtown Baltimore, so we skirted the city via highway 695. We got off on the northwest side of town and had pizza at an Egyptian restaurant (go figure). Upset that the restaurant didn't carry soda, my associate asked that we have some form of beverage afterward, so we went to a nearby trader joes and had a free sample of coffee. Problem solved!

We hit the road again, reluctantly paying a toll to drive on I-95 through Maryland, and again through Delaware. For those of you with plans to drive through Delaware, I suggest you find some other way to go than 95; it costs 5 friggin dollars to drive on that road through our nation's first and lamest state. Maybe that's why Biden always rides the Amtrak.

So we drove on through the night. We crossed into Pennsylvania and realized we were pretty tired, so we checked in to a hotel just outside Philadelphia and called it a night.

The Road to Change 1/12: Rust Belt Roaming

We spent the morning chatting and touring St. Louis with Steve Patterson. We had a great time and learned a lot, much more than we would have on our own. We left town at about 12:30 PM, and headed for Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Appropriately enough, we passed by the source of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's ethics on the way. See below.


The drive to Springfield was dull, and the fact that the sky was overcast didn't make things much better. Fortunately, radio signals carry much farther on the open plains, and we were able to pick up stations from St. Louis 80 miles away. We listened in on an interesting debate about whether or not Bush should be tried for war crimes. As we entered Springfield, it began to snow, which worried us a bit until the snow stopped. We walked around Springfield for a bit and chatted with some of the locals, then left.


Afterward, we drove to Champaign-Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, and former home to our great-aunt (as in our grandmother's sister, not just an aunt that was great). CU, as its commonly referred to, is unusual as college towns go. It's not as well manicured as other places, but we were able to find a hip coffee shop whose baristas discussed the nuances of Battlestar Galactica while solo cello music played in the background. A few of the shop's patrons were excited over a trip to Chicago they were about to take. We wished we could go to Chicago too and spend just a few hours in Obama's adopted home to get us fired up for the inauguration. But in a way, CU was like a miniature Chicago; the people were sophisticated but extremely polite, the buildings were old and made of brick, and the weather was cold. There was no lake, there were no El-trains or skyscrapers. But as we sipped our coffee we could easily imagine we were sitting in that broad-shouldered city, that modest Manhattan 150 miles to the north, that had so profoundly shaped the life and character of our president elect. Fortunately, as we walked out the wind picked up, and we became less reluctant to turn southward to warmer climates.


We drove on into the night, breezing through Southern Illinois towns made more anonymous through lack of daylight. We crossed the border into Kentucky at midnight, and decided we had done enough driving for one evening, checking into a nearby motel in the riverside town of Paducah and bracing ourselves to enter the South the next day.

The Road to Change 1/11: Rollin' on the Roadway

We awoke in Warrensburg, Missouri, a bit later than I had hoped due to the time change (grrr). We had arrived at night, and I must say, Warrensburg is a bit prettier at night. At least there's nice college nearby. When I went to check out from the hotel, the clerk thought I was with a group of fraternity brothers. To her dismay, I wasn't.

Next stop was Sedalia, an otherwise unremarkable town except for its amazingly well-preserved main street, which in this case was named Ohio Street. Sedalia was the early home of ragtime legend Scott Joplin, before he moved to St. Louis and later New York. The Scott Joplin Foundation occupies the ground floor of the ornate Bothwell Hotel, reminding visitors of Sedalia's little slice of history in the midst of grain silos and Wal-Marts.


After driving for what felt like three hours, we realized we had been driving for an hour and were in Columbia, just in time to admire the historic buildings and the fact that every store's title bore some reference to University of Missouri's mascot, the Tigers. They're great!


We had a pleasant chat with employees at the city's premiere independent movie theater, then we ate a burger and left. On the way to St. Louis, we passed Fulton, the site of Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, as well as more empty space. The increasing frequency of Wal-Marts signaled the approach of St. Louis, and landing airplanes on the horizon indicated the location of our discount motel. Time to park the wheels and take to the heels, the Gateway Arch beckons.

The Road to Change 1/10: Yes We Kansas

We spent all day yesterday driving, without too much to report. Kansas is long, not entirely flat, but flat enough to be dull. Denver to Kansas City is about 600 miles, and we lost an hour on the way, so it took us until nightfall to cross the state. Leaving Colorado, the mountains were visible in the rear view mirror for nearly 100 miles, and before we left the state we crossed through Deer Trail, which boasted that it was the home of the world's first rodeo. Entering Kansas, we passed through the the border town of Kanorado (clever), Colby, Hays, Salina, and Abeliene, and found them not to be noticeably different from each other. Good thing we had an interesting audio book to listen to.



The roadside is the Kansan's message board to the rest of the country. Hastily built signs trumpet the World's largest prairie dog, advertise fertilizer, and assure us Jesus is real. And in Kansas, he is; the only structure as prominent on the vacant horizon as grain silos are church steeples. We passed a field of wind turbines in central Kansas, and later, a truck delivering a blade to one of the broken ones. While Kansas may not have the most attractive topography, it is also the home state of Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of Barack Obama.

Checking in with Main Street

Even though we've wrapped our Travel Log Series for as far as Denver, Obamathon Man and his associate want to briefly look back on the morning we spent in Richfield, UT. On the outskirts of town there is a Home Depot, a Wal-Mart, and the same clump of hotels and truck stops you would usually find in any interstate town. The center of town lacks that normalized, chain-store look; there are old banks, fishing supply stores, and DVD rental stores whose signs still read "Video Rental". Walking down Main Street (it really is called Main Street) you could easily imagine the same buildings existing 50 years ago, before the interstate existed, or even 100 years ago, when the only way into town was by train. Time moves slower here, and whereas modernity is a way of life for city folk like myself, in Richfield it is more of an oddity. If there is a Middle America, Richfield is it.

We spent the night in a motel in the center of town. From the looks of it, the place used to be an old brick hotel that was bought out by a chain, modernized, with an 80s era addition built later in the back. Waking up in the morning, we were surprised to see the Salt Lake Tribune, which proclaimed that many parts of Salt Lake City were turning democratic. Could Utah be the next Colorado? Maybe, but whatever change was going on in SLC had yet to be felt here in Richfield. An interesting side note: the Tribune has an entire section dedicated to polygamy.

We had looked to the hotel's local attractions guide for a good place for breakfast. One of the guide's recommended Richfield restaurants was the Pizza Bowl, which unfortunately was misspelled as "Pizza Bowel". However, not being in the mood for a breakfast pizza and soured by the thought of bowels, we decided to just walk up the street until we saw a decent breakfast place. The first restaurant we saw was the Little Wonder Cafe, and as it turned out, the place could not have been given a better name.


It's a sweet little restaurant, well worn, and frequented by Richfield's finest. Decorative auburn leaves cover the windowsill, red vinyl booths are cracked with age. Listen in on the conversations: a man in a jean jacket and a wool cap tells of how the nearby mountains just got 18 inches of snow, a pudgy young man in an army jacket raves about his hot cocoa. Our waitress was short, redheaded, and looked like her best years had already passed right here in this restaurant. Listening to her talk, life seemed so simple, and I could better understand why people vote Republican. The food was remarkably cheap, and I ordered overeasy eggs and corned beef hash. My associate suggested I tell her about our journey, but I was reluctant, she was so nice and I didn't want to bring nasty thoughts like a democratic president into such an idyllic locale.

She came by with our food, and my associate blurted out that we were on our way to Washington to see Obama get sworn in. Far from the cold stare I had expected, she could not have been happier for us. She admitted that she couldn't make the journey herself because she was afraid of crowds, but she would want to go if she wasn't. I told her that we would wave to her on the t.v. cameras if she cared to tune in. And while she didn't admit to actually voting for Obama, she said she supports him. She assured us that we were young enough that we couldn't fully appreciate how historic this election was. Maybe so, but I'm not sure if anyone really does.

So it turned out the joke was on me. In my mind, Richfield was one of the last places to ever undergo what Barack Obama refered to as "change", and that this change would have to come in spite of the Richfields of America. And it turned out that Richfield - or at least part of it - was already on board. That citizens here could look past his middle name, his palling around with terrorists, and everything else about him, was as amazing to me as any part of his historic election.

The food was delicious and filling. We took the bill to the register and our waitress rang us up. I asked if I could take a picture and she obliged, though she warned me that she wasn't photogenic. I would disagree.


So we left Richfield happily, and with the knowledge that Obama's change might be a bit deeper than we had thought.

The Road to Change - Travel Log 10/20

Here it is, the 20th of December, one month before the big event. And today we set out from the comforts of home, toward the rising sun. We left town on the 210, past a strange city of gravel quarries known as Azuza, then through the desolate land of Foreclosia. At least the mountains were snow-covered and pretty.



Onward and upward, over the Cajon pass to Victorville, Barstow, and a coffee break in Baker, home to the world's largest thermometer and Alien Fresh Jerky!



Then, the bright lights and rapidly emptying wallets of Vegas! Obamathon Man salutes the citizens of Las Vegas this year for helping to push the state of Nevada over to the Obama Column. And apparently, Vegas is still stoked over the Obama win - they had a giant O poster right in the center of town! We regretted that we couldn't stay longer, but we had to press on as family is expecting us tomorrow night in Denver.



We passed through miles of nondescript desert, then through the canyons of Arizona and Southern Utah. Stopping in St. George, we ate our premade sandwiches outside of the Utah Welcome Center and Nature Museum, aka the Dixie Center. St. George has always been fond of calling itself the Dixie of the west - leave it to a city in Utah to wish it were part of the South.



I kid St. George, with love. Back in the day, before the election, I had the opportunity to drive through town on another LA-Denver trip. And there were signs out for Obama! Never thought I'd see divergent viewpoints in Utah. Unfortunately, on the outskirts of town we passed what could be described as the world's greatest eyesore: the Wal-Mart distribution center. Spreading Wal-Mart to every corner of this great land! I've always thought that Wal-Mart would make a great monster for a sci-fi movie.



We pressed on through snow-covered hills and valleys, ultimately spending the night in Richfield. Tomorrow, the majestic rocky mountains await.

Leaving Tomorrow

Tomorrow Obamathon Man and his associate depart for Denver. To celebrate our last day in LA before Obama takes office, we took a leisurely afternoon stroll through some of our favorite LA haunts. We took a bunch of pictures, not all of which will fit in a blog post. But you can find all of our fine photographic works at the new Obamathon Man Flickr Page, which also includes the previously shown DC pictures and some photos from Chicago as well. Look for plenty of roadside photos from all across the country, coming soon!




We rode the metro to Pershing Square in Downtown, then visited the skating rink. Unfortunately the zamboni was called out before we had a chance to skate ourselves.




We then hopped back on the Metro and rode to Los Feliz, picking up coffee and heading to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hollyhock House/Barnsdall Park. It was a clear day and we had a nice view from the hilltop park, formerly home to a wealthy oil heiress.




Then, acting on a heavily misguided whim, we ventured west to Hollywood and Highland, aka Toruisttrapistan. We were hoping that an Obama impersonator who we'd seen earlier might be there again, and that I could use that as material for this otherwise meandering blog post. But alas, all we found was a guy trying to sell cds, and a bunch of foreign tourists. That's the one cool thing about H&H. you're surrounded by foreign languages. Portuguese to your left, Tamil to your right, and in front of you a gaggle of British tourists who can't figure out who Jackie Chan is. Surreal.



After that disappointing turn on Wax Museum Way, we were entreated to a nice holiday scene on the subway: holiday flowers and a hipster in a santa hat.




I'm thrilled to be trekking, but I'll be a bit nostalgic for my home town. If for no other reason, for the weather.

In other LA-related news, congratulations to Hilda Solis, who has been appointed by Obama to head the U.S. labor department. Solis is an LA native and long time representative of the San Gabriel Valley's 32nd congressional district. Way to represent Hilda, and Solis Navidad!