Mitch Gann’s

Reading over my previous post, I realize that it sounds as if I am promoting life in Alaska, with its wide open but largely uninhabited spaces, over life in big city America, with its teeming millions all trying to get somewhere at the same time you are.  This is not the case at all. Mitch Gann is a city boy, through and through.  I love having neighbors.  I don’t interact with them much; I just love having them around, in case I need something.  I love city conveniences, such as paved streets and cable TV.  I love the cultural opportunities, such as libraries, theaters and cable TV.  I love the big-box stores where I can buy a 65 inch plasma TV, cable-ready, any time I want to. I’ve never bought such a TV; I just love knowing I could drive to a store and in ten minutes live out the American dream of big-screen plasma ownership.

I am not into roughing it. The wide open spaces give me the hebee-geebees.   The sad truth is, I feel at home in the lonely crowd.

So, it is perhaps to be expected that my two big trips this summer were to major cities — indeed, great cities — Chicago and New York.

I enjoyed my time in both cities, even though the hotels in both were relying on satellite TV, which just is not as reliable as cable; I don’t care what anyone says.   I would return to either Chicago or New York in an instant, especially if someone else were paying the fare and offering a generous per-diem.

And yet, I felt far more at home in Chicago than I did in New York.  Well, I have visited Chicago many more times than New York, so that is a big part of it.  But there was something else, too.

New Yorkers walk faster and there are more of them on a given stretch of sidewalk.  In Manhattan, I felt like I was merging onto the high-speed lanes of an interstate — even when I was merely walking out the door of our hotel.  “Fast-paced New York” is a cliche, and an over-generalization, but nevertheless it’s my dominate impression of the place.  The crowds on Manhattan’s sidewalks, at almost any time of the day or night, are thick and fast flowing.  An abrupt stop in the middle of the sidewalk is not advisable. Get into a doorway or off to the side somewhere.  But exit with care.

Chicago has its crowds, too, of course, and people aren’t exactly lolly-gagging around there.  But on foot, at least, I felt more comfortable with the Chicago pace. (The cabs were another story.)

Maybe Chicago just has wider sidewalks to accomodate the famous broad-shoulders.

Broadway, looking south from 49th Street toward Times Square, on the evening of Saturday August 2, 2008.

We have returned from a six day family trip to NYC — the kind of vacation you need to rest up from. This is especially true if you go by train and are too cheap to pay for a sleeper berth.

I’ll blog more when I wake up.

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NOTES

Friday, July 11, 2008

Chicago, IL.

Big delegate & guests reception tonight out at the end of Navy Pier. Finger food. Open bar. Music. Sat outside with two guys from Guam. 23 hour flight. Put our train ride into perspective.

Mob scene in Grand Ballroom. All 3,000 delegates seemed to be in line for hot food. Still, Amelia emerged in no time with a plate of Buffalo wings & flat bread pizza.

“People weren’t paying attention,” she said.

Only way to find friends at the party was to call them on cell phone.

Each delegate to the AFT National Convention receives this handsome tote bag.  I heard one woman refer to it as a “purse.”  It is definitely not a purse. You could carry a laptop in it.  Now, a laptop would be great swag, but the bag is nice.

I walked up Wacker Drive to the Hyatt to catch the convention shuttle bus.  I timed it perfectly, got right on the bus, and rode over to Navy Pier.  There was a good crowd in the Exhibition Hall, but no line at registration.  Michigan locals had two booths; naturally, I went to the wrong one first.  It looked like half the registration booths were serving a single local — #2, New York City, the United Federation of Teachers. Somebody told me the UFT had 600 delegates at the convention, out of a total of 3, 000.  Not coincidentally, the incoming president of AFT is the current president of the UFT, Randi Weingarten.

Our delegation is six members strong, and I am apparently the first to arrive.  I went to a new delegate orientation, and then returned to the hotel, tote-bag over my shoulder.

Amelia was drinking wine in the lobby. “It’s free,” she said.  I grabbed a glass of Merlot and joined her. I showed her my convention swag and told her about the woman who had called it a purse.

We were sitting in winged-back chairs next to an older woman who sat behind a small round table.  “Sir, I was telling the young lady that I am available here each evening to do palm and tarot readings, as well as handwriting analysis, for a nominal fee. Please let me know if you are interested.”

“It’s twenty dollars,” Amelia whispered to me. “Not so nominal.”

“You’re the ‘young lady’? Amazing.”

Amelia smiled.

“Nice purse,” she said.

I am attending the American Federation of Teachers National Convention at Navy Pier in Chicago this weekend. But you will not find “Mitch Gann” in the official list of delegates.  I am attending under an assumed name.

Do not tell the AFT. It lacks a sense of humor.

My posts are being written in long hand on whatever paper is available. They will appear late. Or not at all if I lose the scraps.

The train arrived at Union Station an hour and fifteen minutes late.  Not bad. I like the romance of train travel. Plus, it’s only a five buck cab ride to most downtown hotels, depending on what route the driver takes, which hotel you are going to, and how much traffic there is. Also, whether or not the city has authorized a gas price surcharge on all cab fares, which it has — one dollar.  Still, it’s a shorter and cheaper ride than the ride in from O’Hare, which is a flat $22.

When we got in the cab, I gave the name of the hotel and its address. This prompted the cabbie to say, “Oh, sir, are you a professor of hotels?”

Travel tip: always buckle your seat-belt in a big city taxi-cab.

A jack-hammer was busting up the sidewalk outside the entrance of our hotel.  This is seldom a good sign, but our room is on the far side of the building and we hear nothing.   For security reasons, I won’t mention the name of the hotel.  Nor the real name of my traveling companion.  Call her Amelia.  She wants a gold fish for the room. The front-desk is sending one up.

I am off to Navy Pier.

An adventurer named Roz Savage is attempting to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific. She left San Francisco Bay a little over a month ago. It took her a couple of weeks to get far enough out to not have to worry about being blown back into the West Coast. Then her electric water-maker broke. She has 1800 gallons of ballast water on board, which is drinkable but not tasty. Her immediate goal is Hawaii. She will lay off for the winter, and then leave from Hawaii next summer. That is, if she ever reaches Hawaii. You can listen to a podcast of the journey on Leo Laporte’s TWiT network; Laporte, a well-known tech journalist, interviews Savage three times a week via satellite phone.

This is her second attempt to row the Pacific. Last year, she ran into severe storms and abandoned her effort after her boat capsized three times in 24 hours.

Savage was born in 1967; that’s close enough to 1964 to call her an honorary Boomer.

(Source: Reuters/NASA)

Astronauts aboard the NASA space shuttle Discovery will be carrying an extra piece of cargo when they launch on Saturday — a new toilet pump.

Crew members aboard the International Space Station have been fumbling with plastic bags since their zero-gravity toilet . . . made “a loud noise” and stopped working properly last week (Reuters).

Let’s hope what goes into orbit, stays in orbit.

Part of aging gracefully is to do it somewhere else. A new travel web site for baby-boomers called “Boomeropia” (www.boomeropia.com) boasts 30 travel categories. One that caught my eye was called “Glamping.”

As far as I can tell, glamping is roughing it in style. Destinations are places like the Adirondacks, where you can sleep in a yurt on an island in Upper St. Regis Lake, or Ayers Rock, Australia, where you can watch the sun rise from a king-sized bed in your “5-star” tent.

For the hard-core glampers, there’s the Three Camel Lodge in the middle of the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. You get to ride camels and horses, and eat in a ger. For you non-glampers, a ger is a really big yurt. The Khans ate in them all the time. You’d know that if you’d ever glamped anywhere.

Glamping it at the Three Camel Lodge, Gobi Desert, Mongolia, China.

(Source: Three Camel Lodge)