On The Road Again

My Summer Road Trip, part 1

So there I was: eating a rather inauthentic burrito in a no-star Mexican restaurant on the north side of Independence, Missouri. I sat at the south end of a long table, the other end bedecked with a tall birthday cake while various relations whooped and hollered in celebration of one of my cousins' birthday. Suddenly, between bites, I had an epiphany: I could just leave, could get up and leave the table, go out and drive far away and never return. I had my bag packed; I always keep a packed bag with me in case of errant interdimensional tangents opening up. I wasn't expecting any, however; indeed it had been years since the possibility last occurred. 

Actually, I had been planning a road trip ever since the issues of 2020-2022 made the idea disheartening and possibly inconvenient (running out of gas, quarantine checkpoints, etc., yes, the stuff of my FLU SEASON trilogy). Now I was ready to go again. As planned, my route would take me eventually northwest to Montana. I planned to stop at specific scenic locations along the way which I'd never been to in all of my youthful travels.

As my general direction sent me northeast to Kansas City to start my travel, I found myself pushed into a birthday party not of my choosing. Enduring that brief detour, I left my hometown and continued north into Iowa on a bright, sunny Sunday morning. A surprisingly unassuming bit of pasture I hadn't passed through since 2019 when I went to Canada spread out from the pavement as I rolled along. As I drove, I listened to the soundtrack I'd put together for my pandemic trilogy and little by little managed to plot out the next book.

For that 2019 trip, I had it stuck in my head to replicate the travels of my youth when my teacher-vacation parents drove me here and there at their whim while I remained ensconced in the backseat sans seatbelt. I went as far north/northwest as Edmonton before venturing south to slink back into the comforts of Montana, and onward home. In my childhood and youth, we had gone all the way to Alaska.

Not this trip, however. No, the Great White North was not my destination. I had nobody to buy me lunch there. Instead, I would travel to nearer places of childhood significance as well as revisit some places that had glittered with roughshod joy on that 2019 trip. So I began with a deliberate stop in Iowa. Because it is there.

You wouldn't know it to look at me but I once flew from Kansas City, before the vast new airport was built in the countryside far to the north of the city, all the way, non-stop, to Cedar Falls, across the river from Waterloo, in that so-called Iowa. I think I must have been around 14. I know it was summer and I was allowed to fly by myself (there were a few other passengers) on an Ozark Airlines turboprop (no longer in business). 

My purpose there in Cedar Falls was to help my great-aunt (little sister of my grandmother) and my great-grandmother (their mother) build a "dog run" in the small backyard of the house. In exchange for my help, I would be fed and perhaps get a gift later (it was a model airplane kit). My great-aunt raised poodles for show, so being a boy who liked dogs but did not have his own, I also liked that aspect. I got to play with dogs. Back home, our landlord didn't allow dogs. 

I also flew up there in March of my final college year, all coursework having been completed the previous December and awaiting the May graduation ceremony. The purpose then was for me to consider continuing in my field of study at the University of Northern Iowa, where my great-aunt had been a professor (but at that time recently retired). I consulted with a Music professor there about my musical future. The lingering snowy landscape did not impress me, however. In hindsight, I should have given it a go because you never know where you might go if you don't go, you know? So it goes.

I found the house from my youth after a day's drive, long since occupied by other people, and was pleased it looked as quaint and charming as it did during my previous visits. There was no longer the "dog run" I had helped build, yet to my mind everything else remained the same. It had been 40+ years since I had been there, after all. Yet I felt nothing. No nostalgia. This is a phenomena I've noticed when seeing other places from my childhood: my mind knows it is the same place but the emotions I expect to flood me instead evade me. (Same with seeing my cousins after many years' apart.) As I drove the neighborhood, I recognized other places from my two visits. Creepy.

On that first visit at 14, I recall spending my evening hours in the house's cute little attic, which my great-aunt had filled with bookshelves. There was a small desk up there and once I climbed up, I could hide away. While hiding away, I would peruse the books on the shelves or, more typically, sit and type on a story using my great-aunt's manual typewriter. It was one of my first long-form pieces, a rip-off of Dr. Zhivago, which I eventually turned in for a class assignment. The teacher was amazed by my 105-page double-spaced epic. However, my great-aunt constantly urged me to stop typing and get to bed, to stop the racket she was not used to - though she was happy to let the dogs bark!

Finding nothing suitable for overnight accommodations, I drove back across the state and did not find anything that had changed during the day. At the west side, I was close to my next visitation destination, the site of a week which shall live in infamy! I would get my revenge by driving there, parking, and taking a photograph of myself standing there (to prove I was there) and that would put them all to shame! They would feel sorry they hadn't embraced me into their family but sent me home like a sewer-soiled puppy.

NEXT: "Waldorf Hell Week"  and Devil's Gulch!

THEN: The Long Trek West!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Ruined My Summer Vacation (2017 Edition) Pt 2

As many of my dear readers may be aware, I was on vacation last month. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. Actually, I was working - in a sense - so let's call it a working vacation. I traveled to Beijing, China for four weeks to teach a university course. As the class was only twice a week, I had plenty of time to get into trouble.

First, however, I had to get there. That part I had easy. At the early morning hour leaving Oklahoma, the lines were almost zero and the airline employees at the check-in were quite friendly and helpful. One woman, when learning I was headed to Beijing, thought to impress upon me that she was really a Ph.D. candidate studying economics. Her dissertation explored Chinese influence on global economics. We chatted a while on the topic, having plenty of time and nobody behind me in line. It was 4:30 a.m. 

Then the security checkpoint. I whizzed on through, having a kindly countenance and a lingering gait. I saw that my boarding pass had the "VIP" indicator on it. So, feeling like a VIP, I relaxed on my first flight of the day, napping until arrival in Chicago. As a connecting flight, I walked out already in a secure area and so I could continue to relax, even grab a Chicago-style pizza for my lunch. 

As I sat on a bench next to a bank of charging stations to eat my pizza, trying to stay away from the crowds, a woman arrived and sat on the floor beside the chargers to charge her phone. I invited her to sit on the bench instead of the floor. We talked, of course. She appeared to be Chinese so I thought she might be on the same flight with me. No, she was transiting between Syracuse, NY and Denver, Colorado. But she was born in China, so I got that much right. She was a masseuse, she said, so I told about the fabulous massage I had just before my trip, at a "Chinese" massage spa (the style is remarkably different than the standard fare).

On board the Beijing-bound flight, I was in the window seat, chosen so I could lean that way and sleep. I brought my neck pillow just for that purpose. There was still too much of a gap because the seats did not align sleepily with the window. My seat was one of a pair, not a trio, in the first row of the coach cabin. That meant no storage under the seat in front of me. In fact, while everyone else had a video screen in the back of the seat ahead of them, we had some funky metal arm which swung up like a tentacle. With the tray tables also swinging up, it became quite a mess juggling all of the appendages. But we got 'er done, as they say, and I was not too wrung-out by the time we arrived in Beijing. 

Apparently, four airplanes arrived about the same time so the line at immigration was long. They had all the gates open, however, so it was better than previous visits. Then I followed all the usual steps to get to the outside world. In Beijing's Capital Airport, advertised as the largest terminal in the world, you get some exercise. From gate to immigration line was about 3 kilometers. From immigration to the tram is about 1 km. The tram takes you about 3 kms. When you exit the tram, it is time to get your luggage and go through customs inspection. That is about 2 kms. As usual--this has been the case since my first day in public school where I sat at the back of the room alphabetically--my suitcase was the last one coming out of the chute. My ID tag had been unceremoniously ripped off the handle and the little TSA-approved lock had also been removed. 

Then I was going out the doors into the real world! Many family and friends and work colleagues await arrivals there. It makes for a huge crowd, so they have set up barriers to draw out the crowd. The effect is that of being a celebrity walking a runway, perhaps for 1 km, until the barriers end and you can go on out and join the crowd. Having everyone peruse you as you arrive--after a 13 hour flight, clothes ruffled and hair matted, a grim facade greeting them--is rather daunting. Not for the faint-of-heart! And yet the sight of my name on a placard caused a grateful smile to appear on my face. My student assistant was there to greet me and escort me to my home for the month.

My assistant, "Catherine", had it all planned. She led me in as short a route as possible to the taxi cue. She instructed the driver where to go. En route we talked about the class, since she was a student in the class as well as my assistant. We arrived at the same hotel as always, the Yinghua, and she helped me with translation during the check in process. It was late enough in the day and I was hungry so we dropped the bags in my room (324; see the discussion of rooms on my previous blog post) and went out to get some dinner at a sandwich shop. That was Saturday, so I had a lot of time until Monday afternoon when the first class would begin. 

Returning home, however, was a much more disagreeable experience....


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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The End of the Adventure Begins!

As promised I'm telling about my month in Beijing to teach a course in Business Writing in reverse. And so I arrived.

In fact, my airplane arrived a full hour early. Tell your grandchildren about this strange phenomena. Because of that, I missed my contact who was supposed to meet me at the airport. Fortunately, I had been to Beijing twice before and did not panic. After waiting a respectable amount of time, I took a taxi into the city and found my hotel, provided by my summer employer.

Then the fun began. My first class. The first welcome reception. The first case of Mao's revenge. The first sightseeing.

I found my way to the correct building at the appointed hour (8 a.m.) and was happy to see a tall floor model air conditioning unit. My assigned assistant met me there, had the room ready, the a/c on. Then the students arrived--all 58 of them packed into the one small classroom. I spoke slowly and carefully, unsure that first day how well they understood English. The class, like all of them at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), was intended to be taught in English. All went well and we developed a good rapport that lasted through the final exam.

The first evening, we foreign instructors for the summer were invited to the formal welcome reception in a lavish venue just off campus. Students from the university entertained us with song and dance. The food was delicious, as expected at a formal dinner. What was served was supposedly representative dishes from several provinces around China. What was especially delicious was a mushroom soup which featured about a dozen different kinds of mushrooms. In the hours to come, it proved to be my undoing, forcing me to battle a case of Mao's Revenge for more than a week.

Since I had already seen the major tourist sites, I went to a few lesser ones. First up was a tourist enclave south of the Forbidden City (aka The Imperial Palace) called Qianmen. Men means gate and the gate there, obviously built just for me, was rather impressive. Something I might like to see in my neighborhood back home, just to show everyone where I live. Knowing I had plenty of time to gather souvenirs, I only looked at the many shops along this pedestrian mall. I did stop to enjoy roast duck once more--because you really can never enough of "Beijing Duck"!

Qianmen gate (one side of the street)

Gate at entrance to Qianmen pedestrian shopping street.

Me at the duck restaurant with the Duck Meister slicing it up.

Then I was off to another "minor" site: Beihai Park and its famous Bell Tower. To the west side of the Forbidden City are a string a lakes, intended for the Emperor's pleasure, all strung together with canals. This is the north lake ("Bei" means north; the subway station there is Beihai Bei: the north end of the north lake). The day was oppressively humid--as almost all of the days there, as I was to discover. 

However, once you totally sweat out your clothes, then you just go on for the rest of the day, moisture and all. Just part of the experience. I saw a lot but I sure didn't look good enough for photos. The crossing of the lake and the hike up the hill to the tower made me feel like I was really back in Beijing. The lotus-filled lake further convinced me I was no longer in Oklahoma. 

Beihai Lake and the Bell Tower.

The Nine Dragons Wall. Same design on the reverse side.

The most famous thing at this park is the "Nine Dragons Wall" so I took a few pictures of it. Everybody was taking photos of it, too. It was difficult to catch a moment without anyone in front of it, especially when I posed there. (Any of you who may write fantasy stories involving dragons, now you know: There are only nine of them!)

Another wall (gate?) with a lion. The wall is only about a meter thick.

View from top of the hill where the Bell Tower is, looking down at Beihai lake.

To get over the Mao's Revenge, I sought out cheese, the tried and true remedy. It might be easier to find a palm tree in Greenland than it is to find a chunk of cheese in Beijing. Milk, yes. Yogurt, now trendy, yes. Ice cream, for kids, of course yes. But actual cheese? Nope. So I concocted a plan to find a McDonald's and just eat a big cheeseburger, knowing full well that the cheese would not be real cheese but a fake version. I walked around in the heat of the day and subsequently dined at the first McDonald's I found. 

Your typical street Mickey's.

Strangely, the cashier woman couldn't understand me even when I pointed to the menu, so the young man standing in line behind me helped me. The dining room was crowded with students studying or "studying" on their laptops, tablets, and cell phones, so I invited him to sit with me. He was back home for summer vacation from studying at a university in Wisconsin. This is what we call irony. 

I was beginning to realize that I, a German-English hybrid genetically constructed from the dairy regions of Europe required cheese like Chinese people required rice. I searched online for Mexican restaurants in Beijing, craving tacos. None were convenient to my location, the best choice requiring 4 subway line changes. I gave up on that idea. Instead, I did find a good ol' KFC. I also found a Subway franchise a few blocks down from my hotel, right across from the campus. In fact, one of my own students worked there! An Italian Combo footlong did the trick. Those deli meats and layers of cheese got my insides back on track. I would return to that Subway several more times during my month-long visit. Because, yes, you can have too much Chinese food! 

Nevertheless, I visited the Yonghe King Chinese BBQ restaurant around the corner from my hotel multiple times for my dinners. I could get a bowl of barbecued meat, a bowl of rice, a couple sides of veggies, and a tall glass of iced coffee with tapioca beads in it for around 35 Yuan--about $6, best deal in the neighborhood. I visited twice a week, often enough the girls knew me by name: "that weird foreign guy with the wicked grin." They jostled with each other for the right to take my order. Probably they did the same for the right to deliver the tray containing my meal to my table. I can only imagine.

Next time: Writing about Greenland in a Beijing Hotel


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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.