Airports

One of the sad parts of growing up is that you don’t get to see your family that often, especially if you move to a different state. This is one of the best parts of holidays. Right now, I get to see my family for Thanksgiving, Christmas and, oddly, Labor Day.

From where I live in Iowa, getting to my parents’ house takes at least 13 hours by car. I want to stress the “at least” modifier. What this means is that if I were to leave at 7 a.m., I would get to my parents’ house by 9 p.m. I’ve done this a few times, and more than any other factor this is why I bought a plane ticket for Thanksgiving.

Booking a plane ticket at any time of year is a tense experience. You know there are different ticket prices depending on where you leave, what time you leave, what day you leave, how old you are, the type of computer you’re using, the make and model of your car, your mother’s maiden name and your last two horoscope readings as printed in the National Enquirer. This is why discount flight websites exist and why there are so many of them now that websites exist that compile the prices of the other websites, and almost all of them are within twenty dollars of each other. But I played it smart—I bought my ticket near the beginning of October, where it cost me about half as much as what it would have cost had I tried buying that sucker in November, which is still more than I would have paid in gas prices, but got me there in about half the time, almost none of which required me to be awake.

I do have to say, the modern flight experience is somewhat curtailed from when I really started flying, which was only about two years ago. Right now, they serve you a drink in cups that are specially formulated not to hold all the contents of your standard pop can, and if you want a snack you can feel free to buy a pack of peanuts or pretzels. It’s sad that at least the airline I was flying had cut services, and I think it’s probably a matter of time before you see credit card readers on everything, including the bathroom and the oxygen mask dispenser.

On a more positive note, the one thing that really stuck with me on this trip was the O’Hare International airport. I know I’ve talked about this before, but airports are basically gigantic waiting rooms. Everyone there is trying to get to someplace else, and if you’re in an airport, you are playing the waiting game. In Rochester and Traverse City, there are two shops/restaurants. Rochester has the 331 Express, an extension of an Applebee’s-type restaurant that, while nice, is terrible as a hangout unless you’re going to buy a meal or an alcoholic drink. I suppose you could buy a coffee there, but it would be youre standard regular coffee, not one of the trendy neo-coffee house types. In fact, Rochester’s airport owes its very existence to the Mayo Clinic. It’s a hub of southern Minnesota/northern Iowa because people from around the world fly in to have Mayo cure them of their illnesses, and some of these people are kings, heads of state and CEOs, all of whom could build an airport like Rochester’s with a month’s salary. So Rochester is a hub of air traffic that is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Traverse City’s airport is similar to Rochester’s, but it’s more inviting. After all, Traverse City is an up-and-coming tourist city, and you can tell that a lot of effort went into having the airport be folksy and comfortable, yet still modern as possible. What’s really different, though, is the airport café, which is a combination of coffee shop, deli and gift shop. More than anything else, this is what separates Traverse City from Rochester. Rochester’s 331 Express is an awkward bridge between having a quick bite to eat and having a complete sit-down meal , which makes sense, since it’s trying to cater to your average middle (now lower) class Joe, and a bevy of medical residents, doctors, and the aforementioned power players of the world. Traverse City, on the other hand, kind of accepts that when you’re in an airport, you’re not too concerned with having a proper meal as opposed to just eating something to keep you from getting hungry, and that you really don’t want to be in the airport anyway. So you have a quick bite, you get a decent cup of coffee with some non-coffee flavors, and maybe buy a book about Michigan to read to help pass the time. Personally, I like the Traverse City airport better.

Then you have O’Hare, which I think may be the Walt Disney World of airports, although I haven’t been to JFK yet. As much as I never ever want to have to depart from O’Hare, being there as a hub between flights is kind of nice. Actually, it’s nicer than it has to be, because when you’re at an airport you are a captive audience, and as you walk along the shops you start to feel like a minnow surrounded by sharks, and you have to wonder whose mouth you are going to swim into voluntarily and ask to be eaten. You know you’re going to be charged more than usual, and you know that you’re going to be charged more than usual for everything, except perhaps at the newsstand. Yes, you don’t have to buy anything, but I always seem to be waiting in the airport at dinnertime, so I either get to have dinner in the airport or wait until I get to my destination and do the trifecta of awkwardness—have your ride drive through town looking for a restaurant that’s open, try to balance getting something good to eat with trying to arrive at your destination, and eating in front of your ride, who of course has already had something.

So O’Hare has kind of upped the ante on restaurants. You have your standard fast food fare, you have your standard coffee shops, Starbucks and Starbucks clones, but then you also have sit-down bars and restaurants. You have a restaurant that apparently serves dishes created by Wolfgang Puck, you have a miniature Chili’s restaurant in the airport, and for some reason this never fails to impress me. Perhaps it’s because these restaurants are better than they have to be. I don’t think anyone actually expects to eat well at an airport—it’s hard to enjoy a good sit-down meal with one eye on your luggage and another eye on the clock—but restaurants like these are all about convincing people to come in, take a load off, and behave as if their luggage wasn’t their dinner date.

In a way, all this is admirable. Yes, it’s just another opportunity for people to sell you something, but if you go with the theory that no one really thinks they’re doing something bad, then what you have are a bunch of people trying to make sure that your wait is as pleasant as possible. Don’t want a latte? Go for a hamburger and fries. Don’t want fast food? Go for a sit-down meal. In fact, why not browse for something that will make your flight easier, or buy a book? If you’re a soldier, there’s a special section for you, and if you want to feel elite there’s always the admiral’s club, where you can feel secure in the knowledge you’re getting charged more for services than the rest of the airport crowd. It’s a nice concept, at least in theory. Kind of an admission that waiting is rarely fun and they know you’d rather be at your destination already, but we’re at least going to try to make you feel good about the time you spend here. It’s nice to feel that way, even as you’re thanking all the currently-worshipped travel deities as you board your flight that you don’t have to stay at the airport any longer.

Miscellaneous Iowa Thoughts

This is one of those weeks where there wasn’t much to talk about. I mostly packed to go to Michigan for Thanksgiving, wrote a few blog entries, and thought about how in Michigan you can barely smell the farm animal crap if you don’t want to. So this entry will be a random collection of thoughts I had in the past week about northeast Iowa.

The corn fields and soybean fields have been harvested. Now there’s just large swaths of bare ground as far as the eye can see. I never considered this before, but farm kids must have some of the greatest hide and seek games of all time. I hope that snowmen and snow forts come to dominate the landscape in December.

It’s getting dark sooner, too. If you have an office job, it’s getting where you can go in at the crack of dawn and see one or two rays, then leave the office and be in utter darkness, with just a hint of sun slipping behind the horizon. You have to be fast if you want to get some daylight in the winter.

No one around here is looking forward to the winter. Absolutely no one. In Cresco, people speak of winter’s arrival like the Poles spoke of the arrival of the Third Reich. Sometimes I wonder why Cresco isn’t a ghost town.

The weather getting colder hasn’t done a thing to decrease the ever-present smell of crap in the air. It’s getting so I can tell where I am between the office and Cresco by the kind of crap I smell. By the office, you smell horse crap. A couple miles in, you smell pig crap. For about a mile, you have the relief of smelling cow crap, but then it’s back to pig crap until you reach the town limit and you smell cow crap again. This new ability bothers me to no end.

Deer are active during this season, too. From October to May, I drive a little more cautiously and I try not to speed. This means I get passed by horse and buggies, who are of course going ten over the speed limit.

There is an Iowa State Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in northeast Iowa. Also, Iowa has rock and roll bands.

Did I mention I can tell where I am on my commute home by the type of crap I smell? Also, I can now differentiate between different types of manure. I don’t know how I got this ability. I didn’t ask anyone. I just took a whiff of what I had formerly presumed to be fresh air, gagged a bit, and realized that only a pig could put out that kind of putrescent scent.

More and more people are showing up at the Cresco Fitness Center. During the summer, the place is almost deserted. When the winter comes, though, people flock to the place, even before the “January Joiners” club makes its appearance. I think that says something good about the entire town.

Seriously, I can tell where I am in my work commute by the smell of the manure. Other people get to tell where they are in their commute by how many Starbucks restaurants they’ve passed.

I have a lot of books. As in it’s a burgeoning library. I think this is one of the best parts of being me.

I also think I’m prone to clutter. I keep trying to sort it out, but the clutter keeps growing. I feel as though I’m waging a single-handed war against entropy.

Spiced cider is easily as good a winter drink as hot chocolate.

Seriously, my sense of smell is usually pretty bad because my nose is constantly stuffed up. So how the frick can I tell the difference between animal crap during my commute? For the love of God, why?

Another Casino Night

“So,” said “Spader” one day as he was by my cubicle, “Let’s go to Diamond Jo’s Casino this Friday.” I was a bit on the fence until he told me the buffet was even better than the riverboat casino’s. What can I say? I have a weakness for good food served in mass quantities.

So it was that we journeyed to the second of three casinos that are within a one hour radius of Cresco. One thing I noticed immediately was that Diamond Jo’s was a higher class of casino. In a way this was kind of sad—if I told you there were two casinos that weren’t in Las Vegas and one of them was a riverboat, you’d kind of hope that the riverboat would be the classier joint. Alas, the glory days of the Mississippi riverboats are long gone. Or maybe the traditions are more active further south.

The first thing that you notice about Diamond Jo’s is that they’ve tried to go the Vegas route, with lots and lots of neon, including a water tower that has “Casino” spelled down the side. It’s an odd mix of rustic and tacky, but it does get your attention. Only slightly less noticeable is the hotel that is right next to the casino, and the one right across the street. I tried to process the idea of people coming to the casino and wanting to stay more than a couple days, and thought about this long and hard before I realized that I simply can’t picture gambling as being an activity you would want to do for more than one day. Which would mean that there are people who not only have fun gambling, but they have so much fun they see the casino as an entertainment venue similar to Walt Disney World. Spader was pretty excited to be going in. I was wondering how I would do gambling. Given my wonderful luck at craps the last time, I had thought about setting up a small stake at a low-stacks blackjack table. In order to prepare for this, I downloaded a blackjack app onto my iPod touch and started playing with a virtual $1,000. In only an hour’s time, I was up to $2,500, which the app informed me had come from selling my virtual car to the casino after having exhausted the initial $1,000. I took this as a bad omen.

The décor of Diamond Jo’s is essentially high-class country. High ceilings with plenty of rafters and stained wood interiors dominated the casino, and the area surrounding the gambling section was tastefully sequestered by low walls with classy kiosks, where security guards waited patiently. Spader was excited to get in there and start gambling, but we decided to hit up the buffet first. This immediately put us in a line where, as Spader observed, I was the youngest person. Everyone else had to either be retired or getting close to it. Part of this was because it was Veteran’s Day, and the buffet was offering a free meal to every active and retired serviceman who could prove it. A man in front of me was a veteran of the Air Force, and he presented his card to the cashier, which looked like a yellow Social Security card. Holy Crap, I thought, anyone who had the inclination would be able to fashion one of those for himself and get free meals and discounts anywhere! Which is when I also thought of just how much America publicly treasures its armed forces members, and thought that a person who did that and got caught would become the most hated person in America, at least until the news picked up something better. Then there’s the fact that members of our armed forces might find him or her, in which case the person would either find themselves dead or involuntarily drafted.

One thing I did notice about the veterans was that all of them were pretty confident. That’s understandable—going through basic and then serving in the military is one of those things that has got to toughen you up mentally. (It may also run the risk of breaking you down mentally if you are in combat, but that is another issue altogether).

The buffet was incredible, and I could easily see it as being the main reason to visit here again. While we ate, I noticed that the casino also had an event center, and coming up were the band Bad Company and Steve-O from Jackass. This was honestly the most depressing thing I’d seen at the casino, if you don’t count a lot of the patrons.

Finally, we went to the casino to walk around. Spader decided to try his luck at craps and blackjack, while I decided to give the penny slot machines two, maybe three spins. I walked through the slot machines, all of which reminded me of pinball machines, but with less buzzers and whistles, as a cover band played country songs, country rock songs, and rock songs that up until that exact minute had never had a country twang near them. I wandered around the Mermaid’s Gold slots, the Pharaoh’s Gold slots, Elvira’s Spooky Treasure slots, and a few hundred others. This is when it hit me—casinos are amusement parks for adults who are embarrassed to be at amusement parks. You have the flashing lights, the constant sounds of someone having fun, and of course the ever-dangling chance to win, win, win in front of you if you just have the cash and the luck. At an upscale casino you have live music, and you have an all-you-can eat buffet, which is to an adult, let’s face it, a chance to be a little naughty and eat all those things you “really shouldn’t eat” anymore. How is this different from an amusement park, where you have constantly flashing lights and the sounds of amusement rides, the constant sounds of people having fun, the chance to win a stuffed bear, and a whole host of things that, as adults, you “really shouldn’t eat.” Maybe it’s just me, but I think I’d prefer an amusement park. It’s more honest about what it is, and I think if people just admitted that what would make them happy is a roller coaster ride, people might be a touch happier than trying to win money and constantly losing it in the pursuit. This may also be why there are so many senior citizens at these casinos—they get to be happy and enjoy the experience without thinking they’re going to embarrass themselves.

You know what? Screw that noise. When I hit sixty, I’m going to Walt Disney World if the prices are below $100. I’m going to be hollering on roller coasters, getting the pants scared off me at the haunted house and I’m going to eat ice cream. I’d rather do that than sit around spending hundreds of dollars and lying to myself that I’m going to win big. Shoot me an email if you’re interested.

P.S.—Spader won $40 before the night was over.  Jerk.

How One Cabin can be Bigger on the Inside

Every single time I drive by the park the cabin is there. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but driving through town on Highway 9, there is a park that has four train cars as its main attraction. However, in the center, completely overshadowed by the train, is this small log cabin that is occasionally open to the public. It is an authentic cabin that settlers lived in. A family of six lived here, and they lived most of their lives in that cabin. Here’s how big the cabin is: 

Now, think about six people in there. I was also part of a family of six, and my mom and dad worked exteremely hard to make sure each of us boys would have our separate bedroom. Looking back, this was some foresight that I think rivaled Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein in the genius department. I can safely say that if they hadn’t there would have been a serious risk of us killing each other just to get some privacy. As it was, we still got in each others’ way, but there was something about being able to retreat to your own private space when you needed some time away from other people. Not this cabin, though. In this cabin, I could see the children happily going out to do their chores, if only because it meant being able to get more than five feet away from everyone else.

The cabin is supposed to be open to the public occasionally, but I want to point out that prior to this fall I had never seen it open. This is the Loch Ness Monster of Cresco tourist locations. Yes, it’s supposed to be open. People sometimes talk about a friend of a friend who saw the inside of it, and occasionally you get someone who says they actually saw this cabin open with their own eyes, but drive by it at any time, and it will always be closed.

Then came Harvest Fest 2011. For whatever reason, the town of Cresco decided the cabin should be open to the public, although I don’t know why they decided to open it up at that point. There had been other celebrations in and around that park, and yet the cabin was still closed and locked.

It’s difficult to say why I wanted to peek inside. Part of it is that I can’t accept that the cabin can hold more than three people at one time. Another part is that winter is inevitably coming, and I remember the previous two winters like I would remember a rabid wolf attack. How could settlers cope with such extreme weather?

So, I went inside. And the inside, to be honest, looks bigger than the outside. I’m not entirely sure how that works. Granted, it’s still incredibly small when there’s more than one person, and the cabin was manned by one very nice woman who was extremely welcoming. She tried, with some degree of success, to keep out of the way as I walked around and examined the various tools and old-fashioned kitchen tools that were up on the wall. Here’s where I usually go into a bit of description, but I have to be honest, it was like going into any one of a number of chain restaurants nowdays that have random stuff tacked to the wall. Granted, there was one interested thing—a hanging cradle that mothers could set their children on while they did housework. Of course, given the size of the cabin, that was probably only for two minutes at best. The contraption looks like a giant scale, actually, and I had visions of babies being set on the scale until it touched the ground, at which point they were sent out to help on the farm.  It was a rousing tour, but almost too soon it was time to walk upstairs.

There’s a special kind of technique that goes into putting stairs in a cabin that is not quite 20 feet by 20 feet. That technique is known as “make ‘em steep.” This staircase honestly went up ten feet in four feet of space. The only reason it wasn’t a ladder was because it curved.  Right above the door is a sign that states “Watch Your Step, Not Repsonsible For Accidents.” This sign is not only a stroke of genius that probably prevented the cabin from long ago getting turned into kindling due to a lawsuit, but it’s practically a taunt. Watch your step? Of COURSE you’re going to watch your step on this staircase, if only because not doing so will result in a neck bent at angles only seen in advanced geometry courses.

It was the upstairs that convinced me that the settlers who went out west were clinically insane. Between the beds with the thin mattresses and covers, the lack of insulation and the bedwarmer that was a metal container you filled with coals and stuck it under the mattress, praying to God it wouldn’t catch fire. Then again, seeing as how the temperature outside would be similar to the temperature inside, you might want something to catch fire now and again. Then there was a very nice glazed pot, which may or may not have been the bathroom during the night.

A somewhat long time ago, my mom and dad lived in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. They came up to the rural part of northern Michigan and settled in a small town where my brothers and I grew up. My dad came up there because he loved the wilderness as much as I love comic books, which is perhaps the most emasculating thing I’ve ever said about myself. I grew up in more or less the wilderness, the real wilderness, and we cut wood each and year. My brother Andy and I would huddle in front of the big wood heater in the winter mornings, trying to stay warm, and we did yard work with the best of them. I used to envy kids in the city that could go to movies whenever they wanted, and whose yard was only an acre or so to rake or mow. I also envied that they got more than three television channels.

Then I look and see this cabin, which held my entire family, and I have to wonder about what drove these people to settle out in Iowa, away from everything and almost everyone. I really understand the desire to explore, but I absolutely do not get how someone can walk out into the middle of Godforsaken nowhere, look around at the flatness and think, “Yeah, I think I’ll live here.” Partially, I think these people must have been a lot tougher than we are today in the 21^st century. Partially, I think that they didn’t miss what they didn’t have. Mostly, though…seriously, there is NOTHING around. What on earth would make someone want to settle here? Did they have severe acrophobia or what?

When I graduated high school, I went to a college that was in the city. I stayed in the city for as long as I could, too. I can’t prove this, but I strongly suspect that when the kids came of age, the first thing they did was run for Boston.

The Haunted…Something

Okay, let’s be honest. The house wasn’t that scary. It wasn’t that professional, either. And yet, I had fun. I’m not sure whether I had five dollars’ worth of fun or not, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Fall is in full effect here in Cresco, and of course that means Halloween is coming. Personally, I like this time of year. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s the weather—not too hot, not too cool, and it starts as being not too hot before becoming not too cool. When you deal with spring, you have not too cool weather becoming not too hot weather, and while you get a happy medium with both of them, I just like the heat gradually subsiding, driving people indoors at the end of the shortening days to occupy their own little worlds. Kids go and do their homework. People turn on their TVs for the latest promising series, and blog writers go inside to figure out just what they’re going to write about this time.

This year, my month has been almost swallowed up by martial arts practices, to the point where northeast Iowa has slipped into the background. It’s hard to enjoy the beauty and uniqueness of northeast Iowa when you’re constantly trying to complete forms, write checks and learn the finer points of whacking people in the head. The side effect is that I really haven’t gotten much of a chance to enjoy the run-up to Halloween, which is a shame. Halloween is on Monday, but I don’t know if there are going to be any good parties going on during that time. I’m pretty sure I could find a bar full of drunk college students in costume, but that does seem to be missing the point a bit. So when I saw a haunted house had opened up for the time being in downtown Cresco, I was all set to go in and get a few shivers. It was going to be fun, too. Just me, a couple high school kids who were obviously, obviously way too cool for this haunted house crap, the high schooler’s younger brother, and his friends.

The haunted house opened up at 7 p.m., so I decided to get there fashionably late—around 7:15. After that, it was only a half-hour wait until the doors opened up. So much for punctuality. On the other hand, they had the place done up pretty well. Scary door decals featuring a zombified face with teeth the size of most arms, and all sorts of assorted bric-a-brac in the store front window. Flickering lights, assorted creepy-crawlies, and various scary masks promised good times within.

Once inside, the dummies of Herman and Grandpa Munster kinda dimmed the scare factor. On the other hand, this was supposed to be the waiting area, so you didn’t want anything too scary. And let’s face it, dummies can look pretty scary when they just have a mask over them, staring at you with black voids where their eyes should be. Still, it was a kitschy kind of scary, what an antique store would look like if it were a haunted house. And they served cookies and punch while you waited! I didn’t mind at all.

Then came the haunted house itself. As I said…it wasn’t necessarily scary. People blew their cues, and the special effects had a strong smell of cheddar about them. This is not to say there weren’t some high points. The little girl with the pale skin, sunken eyes and bloodstained face asking, “Would you play with me? I want to play!” gave me a bit of a shiver. There was also a “statue” that got me when it came to life. As for the rest—they were fun. It was well worth the money I spent to get in. I left suffused with the spookiness of the holiday spirit.