About
Wandering and wondering across America. You can contact me at patrick (dot) mcleod (at) gmail (dot) com.Following
Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart, 24, was killed in a traffic accident early this morning in Fullerton, California only hours after pitching a six inning gem in Anaheim. The two of the three other passengers in the car in which he was riding were also killed when a speeding minivan ran a red light and slammed into them in an intersection.
One of my most vivid memories from high school is a project we did in Latin where we had to take a saying, translate it into Latin and then make a poster for it. My friend Sang chose “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
That is about as apt a parallel as there is for my blogging. I was planning on a day-by-day blog of the Madison conference trip, but the trip ended up being such a beating that my plan only lasted two days. I’ve not even downloaded the photos from my cameras onto my computer thanks to a hard drive that is crammed full of photos, applications, documents and data.
In short, I’m sucking at this social media stuff right now. I’m going to try to improve, but you may have to bear with me just a bit longer.
Tale of the Tape: Where Numbers Come To Lose Their Meaning
Distance traveled: 527 miles. Iowa smells a whole lot better when it’s 35 degrees outside and your windows are rolled up.
Jinxes averted: 1. We were able to download Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” via iTunes on my iPhone and play it before we crossed the Mississippi River at Dubuque. In case you don’t know, crossing the Mississippi without the accompaniment of Mountain is inviting deeply bad karma to curl up with you.
Time on the road: 11 hours ?? minutes.
Pit stops: Several, most notably the Amish store/Maid Rite fast food place/Graceland University in Iowa.
Embarrassing Midwestern naming conventions spotted: 1. “Kum & Go” should be an adult film title, not the name of a chain of convenience stores.
Identifying foods that start with an “H”: 1. Havarti.
Raptors spotted: I lost count after 9. I saw lots of red-tailed hawks and Ethan saw a bald eagle.
The tale of the tape will take a two day hiatus while I attend the Document Academy conference here in Madison. I’m not going to live blog the conference, but I’ll stop in and let y’all know what kinds of interesting things I find here in Madison…Karl Denson is playing the Majestic tomorrow night with Clyde Stubblefield, the original Funky Drummer. You know I’ll be there!
Tale of the Tape: Where Numbers Come To Lose Their Meaning
Distance traveled: 481 miles. I pulled out of my driveway, took three right turns and then drove 372 miles before making another turn.
Red Bulls consumed: 4. Is it weird that I kind of like the taste of sugar free Red Bull?
Time on the road: 6 hours 55 minutes.
Pit stops: 1. 3 Red Bulls and a liter of water catch up to everyone eventually.
Minutes spent listening to raving AM radio fundamentalist prairie preacher: 47. I imagined I was listening to John Brown the entire time.
Number of Old Backus Barleywines consumed: 3. If Jesus was a brewer, this is what He would have brewed.
Fun qualitative fact: There is such a thing as thundersnow. It’s not a typo or a mis-statement as I originally assumed. I think it must mean God hates Kansas.
It’s been several years since I bade my former personal blog farewell. I made a commitment at the time I shut it down that I would one day bring up a new personal blog. While I’ve had the domain parked…and even had hosting set up…for more years than I care to admit, it’s still sitting around undeveloped.
Funny thing about blogging…I used to love it. I still do love the political blogging I do at The Texas Blue, but for the last several years I’ve had almost no interest in personal blogging. I think that is partially due to the fact that I read so many other blogs on a daily basis; there’s nothing like finding someone who’s written about some idea you’ve been kicking around your head and who has done it better than you could on your best day.
The deeper reason, though, is because I go through long periods of time where I don’t feel like I have anything unique to say or anything worthwhile to contribute to public space. There are just some days where countries are invading other countries and political fortunes are made and lost and all I am really interested in doing is digging in the yard, playing with the dog or spending some quality time at the driving range.
Throughout this personal sabbatical, there’s always been one thing I’ve wanted to write about despite global politics, elections, seasons or the Hollywood flavor of the week: Travel. I’ve been to a lot of places and taken a lot of pictures, but I’ve hardly written anything about my time in the air and on the road. What little I did write went the way of the dinosaurs when I shut down my old blog.
Steep Grades, Sharp Curves is not going to be an expansive personal blog. It is, however, going to be a personal travel blog for where I’m going and where I’ve been; it’s going to be a place to give some context to my pictures and to paint a few with words for the places I’ve been without my camera.
The name comes from a song and a band that’s accompanied me through numerous states, at least three time zones, all kinds of weather and just about every state of mind you can imagine. There is no better music to roll through the American West to than Yonder!
