Good Morning, Baltimore!

It has been four oddly robust days every way you measure it--hours asleep (less than 6 a night), miles walked, and balloon hats made (more on that later).

Somewhere between Louisville and Tokyo, there is Baltimore--a city who by all accounts, is big enough to keep you busy, small enough to allow you to easily enjoy it. The taste of Old Bay is still in my mouth and I have confidently explored much of this quirky locale's offerings. I stayed in town centrally located within a half mile walk of the Inner Harbor (yuck), the cultural institutions of the Westside (Walters Art Museum, the Pratt, and the Cathedral), sports (walked on the Camden Yards field!) and the artsy happenings further North--with Baltimore School of the Arts, MICA, and the Symphony. So, I walked a lot, mostly because the MTA ticket machines don't take credit cards, but still, I walked all over this city, and the architecture, the food, and all the heaploads of culture here leaves me with a soft spot for the Charm City.

As the cab driver back to BWI said, "2 hours to everywhere, but why would you want to leave?" Well said, cabbie.

Carrying On, Movin' Out

I’m on the road again, a mere three days since my last trip. And, sitting again, for the third time in Philadelphia International’s F concourse in a week, it is strikingly clear why I picked up this ‘life in transit’ theme for a blog in the first place. It’s early morning—7:50 to be exact—and somehow, magically, Sbarro and the entire food court already smell like stale pizza, the same pallid display of bread and grease, it appears from three nights ago.

Today is a work trip, but I’ve given in and given up on work clothing. When I packed up for summer, I put some of them in my luggage and others, most actually, went in to a storage unit. My one attempt to look at said storage unit has resulted in me opening the door, taking note of the 70 or so boxes, a couch, bed, nightstands, desks, tables, and a Knoll chair (can’t forget that—my favorite! Ask me, sometime about how I used to stare at this thing in the windows outside the Merchandise Mart and how I miserly saved to splurge on this mid-century velvet chair, even when I had no room to walk around it.) I stare at my contents—I fought and saved for this stuff—and I am but powerless and utterly confused. I walked out of my storage unit with two mahogany hangers from Nordstrom and a personal steamer. Somewhere, it that very well assembled game of Jenga-Possessions was all the clean clothes I could want. But given the prospects of rifling through these boxes, I’d rather not want.

I’m not alone—The New York Times recently ran a story in the Sunday Magazine chronicling the storage industry. Not surprisingly, Americans have and hold on to, a lot of crap. While that’s dipped ever so slightly since the financial apocalypse last fall, there is still, a heavily entrenched sense of wealth measured in America by the amount of stuff we hoard. (I wonder if I really need a dinner service for 20 after all.) Given my short stint of a couple months of living with less—no waffle makers, no sandwich presses, and a vastly smaller selection of haberdashery—I am inspired to trim the fat and get rid of all that extra junk weighing me down.

It is the kind of change I’m finally ready to make. The big, meaningful changes that help us appreciate there is a difference between wealth and happiness. And that holding on to play and child-like imagination does not demand a childish sense of materialism. I make no pretenses that purging will be easy—it won’t be, and I can cleverly craft a narrative for each julep cup, each keyboard, and every vase in there. I was that consumer who was hopeful each piece said something about me—as if my personal ethos could be commoditized in the aggregation of junk.

So, one of these days when the travel cools (if only for a moment), we’ll head to the bin. Look out for me as I wax nostalgic and get ready to say goodbye to that Family Ties board game and every boarding pass from 2006. Now, 2007--well, that's another story...

On Play

The Old Man and the Monolith
Originally uploaded by joshlabove

Travel can be incredibly nourishing, even as it tires us and leaves blisters on our toes. As I crawled up the statues in Vigeland Sculpture Park, I couldn't help but think, when did we stop playing?

Business travel--what I used to do much more of--is not about roaming, but about order. The conveyor belts and security lanes feel not like a new special stage of Super Mario Brothers but the kind of uniform people processing that quickly make even the not terribly introspective feel like a cog in a machine who's on/off switch we've yet to find.

But, leisure travel--and I mean real leisure, not Thanksgiving at home with the whole family and that fattening food you would never cook for yourself--is about roaming. It's about exploration and quenching one's thirst for discovery. Simply put--it's about play. Sometime in middle school, recess was crimped to some stifling 'break' time where we sat around and hoped to trade apples for ho-hos. In lieu of carving out our nooks and crannies of the playground, we were left with a locker bay and a cafeteria to roam. Meager prospects compared to the great outdoors.

My time in Oslo has been, as I think you'll soon gather, about reaffirming faith in play. That when they took recess away, they didn't take away innately human desire to explore, to question, to witness. I came to remind myself that such values are enduring and a belief in that principle is incredibly nourishing. I don't do this often--or, I haven't placated my whimsical desires in a while, and seeing the prescribed 'adult' life of work and sleep, I realize that just as we looked forward to kickball, we still need opportunities and adventures to look forward to, to live for. The answer, to that stinging question most Boomer-parents ask their college graduates, "what will you do with your life?", is "live".

Swedish Films on Norwegian Rooftops

Up in the Clouds
Originally uploaded by joshlabove

Such a title already suggests the kind of culture-blur that happens when one leaves the comforts of one space and moves in to another altogether different one. The weather was decidedly cooler Saturday, a crisp, clear autumnal (or pre-autumnal, yes?) night that produced wispy clouds and a breathtaking sunset. While I've done my best to attempt to capture the beauty of sun falling in to the horizon line of the North Sea, you may just have to take my word for it. Standing on top of the Oprean--a building of glass and limestone that is part ballet hall, part opera house, 100% urban park--I looked out, to one side, on the capitalists transforming Oslo's modest skyline, while on the side, the chilly coastal waters still rippled from the passage of yet another cruise ship.

This morning, the Operaen had been taken over by the Norwegian Bokklubben--a book fair/sale of epic proportion. Now, as the sun was falling behind it's elusive angles, the roof played host to a film screening. In a literary twist, this film, Swedish as you've by now surmised, was based on book two in a three part series by Steig Larsson. Larsson achieved something of a cult popularity in Scandinavia when his trilogy hit bookshelves only after the writer himself had suddenly (and quite sadly) passed away. The ensuing year has been a chance to eulogize the man who became the voice of Northern Europe, whose commercial and critical success has been loud, proud, significant--but all sadly, long after his early demise. Few have taken up the practice of truly using the setting of chilly winters in Stockholm, or a dock in Oslo, with as much nuance and skill--in doing so, he earned the affection of plenty in these parts.

I was at the movie, oddly enough, with one guy I had met at cafe from Spain, and a girl who worked at said cafe, herself from Boise, Idaho. He was a graduate student in Salamanca; she was working through a visa program similar to one I had once used in the UK--learning Norwegian (she was already convincingly local with her six foot stature and blond hair). And together, we, a rather motley crew, enjoyed the cool air, the camaraderie, and a rarity in Norway: a freebie. The film, and, as it turns out, a bagful of hot muscat rolls (boller). We made no pretense about this night being fleeting and beautiful--no pretending to take down numbers and emails and promising to "facebook you later". It was organically derived connections between three people--in a moment, in a place--and when it was over, we'd all have a great night under the Oslo stars.

I Turn My Camera On

The weather has cooperated and provided a beautiful first day in Oslo. With a small bag of a change of clothes, water, and peanuts (what more do you need, really?), I picked up my camera and began capturing my travels. You'll have to wait a few days for the photos to make their way to my Flickr feed--traveling without my computer means no uploading and no editing. (It also means running low on storage space. More on that later, perhaps.)

It has been delightful: snapping photos and walking (lots of walking) from the fjords to the fortresses (yes, fortresses). I knew from even a cusory scan of the visitor's guide that the sight to see would be the Opera House--a breathtaking feast of archetecture and engineering carved right in to the Oslo coastline. I stopped off in the Nobel Peace Centre, waved "Hi" to the armed guards outside the King's digs, and took in a national science fair at the University of Oslo.

It has been noisy in that way that Europe is--here is a city smaller than Cincinnati, Ohio with light rail, subway, train, monorail, and bus after all--and it has been quiet in a way that almost never is. The penetrating sound of the day has been the snap of my shutter--my phone is buried at the bottom of my bag. My photos will say more for me and my time in Norway than I could to anyone by a phone call. I'm staying busy, then, amassing a most impressive text.

Tasting Europe

One of the ways I know for sure I am in Europe is by the taste of Coke Light. For those of you who have crossed the pond, you know that Diet Coke is branded as Coke Light in most of Europe--and the taste is so distinctive, it becomes a sensory anchor to the location.

While Diet Coke is actually, light on flavor, just a subtle hint really, Coke Light bursts with a syrupy aftertaste that is sweet to the tongue. In the modern world, where much is not merely globalized but homogenized, it is these little things, like a sweeter version of Diet Coke that remind us we are in fact not in the United States.

I took pleasure in slurping my Coke Light outside the museum, next to three women from Virginia complaining about their nannies (who were on the trip and in their company), as well as a German couple oogling over a pair of Obama ovenmits.

It may be a small world after all, but sometimes, I don't want small: I want big and overstuffed with possibility. For times that like, for times like this, I pick up my Coke Light and know there's always more to see.

Dreaming: A Most Important Activity

Greetings, all, from Oslo, Norway. And while it might make sense to just ooze all the stories of 12 hours (roughly) in Europe, I'm going to resist that temptation for at least just a few more moments, and capture instead the thoughts I would have shared with you if you had in fact been sitting next to me for the 12 hours of flying prior.

I would have told you all about how this trip was a dream--not like Martin Luther King, but an musing that pranced around my head last week. The flights were cheap--seats were plentiful, and I had time. And that was enough. For nearly 3 years, in my quest to appreciate the 'real world', I squelched such imagination and curiousity behind desks and copy machines. When I looked again at the flights--everyday the same price, the same discount award seats available--I realized that I could be both behind that desk and in front of opportunity. The two, as it turns out, are not mutually exclusive after all.

Redemption Song

I'll be maximizing my 3-day weekend up at 35,000 feet--on my way to Oslo courtesy of all my past bosses and my parents who have paid for all those stinkin' miles getting dusty in my account. $100 later, I had a ticket to Norway--with the caveat that I hand over 50,000 of those seemingly useless miles and accept that this jaunt across the ocean is not going to my leaderboard tallies for 2009. In some ways, I've come to grips with the fact I may not be an elite this year, but the idea of resigning to sitting at the local Panera for another three days is far less appealing than the little ego rush I get from using the priority lanes at the airport.

It is about, as I think I've already suggested, attempting to not let 'imagination' become a proxy for 'things we'd love to do but don't'. Lennon said it better, but I'm keenly aware my days are far too numbered to not make good on my errant curiosities, within the limits of time and money, of course.

You'll be with me--and I'll do my best to update flickr and Twitter as the fun begins Thursday afternoon. Aside from a little museum hopping (Nobel Peace Centre, National Museum of Contemporary Art), I plan to just wander and soak it all in. Pack your bags: we leave Thursday afternoon, and no, we're not actually going through O'Hare--this time.

Ode to O'Hare

Much has been written about Chicago's O'Hare International Airport--that massive, amalgamation of seemingly never ending concourses and populated by, at any given point, 18 guys named "Brent" talking into a Bluetooth about "closing the loop" or "resynergizing back with the team". Plenty of internet space is dedicated to grumbling about its size, missed connections, and of course, lost baggage.

I won't take such a tact--because, for me, well, I came of age in O'Hare. As I slouched around the F concourse yesterday, sniffing out the few working power outlets in there (there are very few), I recounted the memories I have throughout this massive, often derided-place: the times I've dashed through here with big expectations and the times I've chased the inebriation of such imagination with the hour and a half ride back on the Blue Line to my home on the South Side. It's where I went to go see about a girl, to pursue my dream of being a Shakespeare camp counselor, and of course, where I went when my first real job sent me out to the Heartland: there I was--on the B/C Connector, with my itinerary: I was now much like those yappity-yap Bluetooth bedecked guys I was once so scornful of. With a ring of sweat around my neck, a suit unnaturally draped on my body, I was now charged to "close the loop" and expense report--in places like Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, places I never thought I would be.

O'Hare is at once Chicago an still not--it is a hermetically sealed world of fantasy--if, like me, your idea of fantasy is choosing between Fargo and Frankfort. There is plenty of Cubs (and to a greater extent now, thankfully) Sox kitsch, and there are plenty of those Chicago cops, and even things that claim Mayor Daley king. In the way that one look down the Terminal One Helmut Jahn-designed concourses and you think, "I can do anything today", such is so elementally true about every street of Chicago--brimming, for me at least, with big ideas. But, really, it isn't Chicago. It's at best sometimes, a helpful proxy for Chicago. And while I think of the nooks and crannies of the concourses as little neighborhoods, they do not do justice to a walk about in the real thing. Few things beat the realization in Chicago that the snow has relented and summer, complete with festivals and paloozas and of course, the noise of neighbors sitting outside and enjoying the warm evenings.

So, to this often loathed place--a place that people dash through, I find solace. I find a place that has watched me grow from the early days of college, through trips for human rights, study abroad meltdowns, and escapades in personal 'discovery'. Next time you find yourself passing through these parts, stop and take in all the excitement and expectation this massive space has to share--skip the Starbucks, and look for me, staring at the departures board, wondering where to dream myself to next.

Takeoff

It was a little after 8:15 yesterday, sitting in 2A, when the flight attendant was perched in front of me with that familiar cornucopia of goodies: the Biscoff cookies, the Sun Chips--when I realized, I was home, home in the air, home in that state of flux we call travel. I dedicate this blog to the pleasure of going places and getting lost. Now, many travel blogs exist--I get that. And I don't propose a book deal or movie rights to be coming my way any time soon, but I am hoping to talk about something...well, different.

Inherent in that infamous USAirways snack basket is a variety of caloric choices: sweets and salty nicely mixed with indulgent and greasy. Much like that basket from which my blog takes it's name it also takes it's shape--and hopefully will offer a salty and sweet mix of observations of a life in transit.

Before I had adult teeth, I had already long been a member of a frequent flyer program--at 8, the idea of being part of a club, like a treehouse, but one that could somehow take my family's staid trips to Orlando and turn them in to, I imagined, backpacking and exploring the world. Before the internet made everything instant, I ran to my mailbox to check those statements--which often just said zero, hoping that as some kids collected box tops for alarm clocks, I could save up points for those swanky bag tags and of course...that trip of my youthful, wide-eyed dreams.

No Guinness Records, no 365 cities in 365 days, no crazy hooks. Just one guy, still adjusting to the real world, reporting from inside the Columbus Airport Hampton Inn, slowly reconciling the currency of ideas with legal tender under the lull of (when times are good) a Westin Heavenly Bed and, (whenever) good hearty, eco-friendly, hold the pesticide, fight-the-man, eating.

Thanks for stopping in--and, I hope you'll come along, and enjoy the places together we go.