RichEisbrouch

Friday, June 11, 1999 On the short drive between Nina's mother on the Cape, and my own in New York, we saw three of my friends, two of Tom's, had conversations with several others on the phone, and visited a pair of my cousins in Rhode Island. In contrast, in the first four weeks of the trip, we'd seen almost no one we knew: just Nina, Jeff, Lisa, and Tom's friend in Toronto---his name was sometimes Terry and sometimes Richard. That's one pal every hundred-and-sixty-eight hours, unless

I just noticed this note. Didn't mean to be ignoring it. And, yeah, under certain conditions, it would be great to slowly, freely travel in the way I've sometimes done and had long-ago intended to do far more of. But I have other responsibilities now and am happy to have them.

Thursday, June 10, 1999 Nina, from Salinas, has a mother---a mother I knew. And a grandmother I'd also met. And sometime before Nina and I were born, her grandparents built a summer home on what's now the National Seashore of Cape Cod---meaning it's federally protected from the rest of us. Specifically, the house is in Truro, though built years before that quiet village became a punch line to New York psychiatrist jokes. Nina's grandparents first bought the land, then hauled a two-

Thanks. It was great at the time, and rereading this journal, it's almost freshly fun again. The reason I kept the journal is I'd spent a year, partly on the road, in 1971-72 and I was too young and arrogant to think I might ever forget my trip. I didn't even take photos because my early ones seems so reductive, compared to what I'd seen. Now I can't really remember where I'd been.

Wednesday, June 9, 1999 The difference between the East and West coasts is you can drive fifteen hundred miles from San Diego to Canada and almost always see the ocean. On the East coast, once you're much south of Bangor you gotta creep eight hundred miles to North Carolina before you can even glimpse the water. Yeah, there are boardwalk stretches on the Jersey shore, but---like Cape Cod---the beach houses barely hold back the suburbs. In L.A. Tom was used to crazy traffic, but

Tuesday, June 8, 1999 I noticed my credit card was gone when I went to pay for dinner. "Whoops," I said---what I always hope isn't one of my last words. It wasn't a disaster. I had another one. And Tom had several more. But it took a long moment's thinking, then a couple of phone calls, to track my mistake. "Oh, we have it," the friendly lodge owner laughed when she realized who I was. "My husband went racing after you, but you must really have been making time. He couldn't catc

Monday, June 7, 1999 In Penobsquis, which comes from an old tribal name, the motel clerk just couldn't stop being friendly. After telling us every local thing there was to see, she brought out pictures. "I took these myself," she confided, though we could've guessed. "Now you've got to see the Bay of Fundy." I'd read about it in our guides, 'cause it was a natural wonder. And it seems the thing to do is go and watch the tide go out. Then hang around for a mess of hours and watch

Sunday, June 6, 1999 Our first stop in New Brunswick was St. Andrews though our guidebooks warned it was poky. And it was poky, especially since their main street was currently blowing dirt. It was being repiped and repaved. "We sweep it down, and hose it down, and try and wash away the dust," a hotelkeeper told us, thoughtfully pointing a stream of water past our feet. "But nothing helps." "When'll it be finished?" I asked. "Hell, they just started. Could take all summer

Saturday, June 5, 1999 Looking for breakfast, we were heading to downtown Bangor, to a place one of our guidebooks claimed was the best deli in Maine---a presumably hollow honor---when traffic stopped. Absolutely. At the intersection ahead, nothing but semis rolled by. "What gives?" Tom asked. "Beats me." Then I got out to look. "Where you going?" he grouched, still coffee-deficient---he'd been stalling till breakfast. "To the corner. Pick me up if you get there."

Friday, June 4, 1999 When we asked the motel manager for a good place to eat in Bangor, Maine---we'd long given up on the best food anywhere---she cheerfully said, "Miller's Buffet. They have over two-hundred items on their steam tables." Run! Run Away! Now! Leave everything you own! No wonder Stephen King lives in Bangor. But no, we had to explore. Actually, the restaurant's full name is Miller's World Famous "All You Can Eat" Buffet. It's right there on the sign. "Wo

Good point. But the book is about two gay guys in love on a road trip, and you can watch how their relationship works.

Thursday, June 3, 1999 Otherwise desolate Ogdensburg, New York had two small surprises, both tucked in the same old house. One was the Remington Museum. Yeah, that Remington, father of a million bad bronzes. The other was the house itself, once the infamous Red Villa, home of a kind of classy French whore. But first the sculptures, since their mangled offspring will probably haunt us forever. To start with, I had Remington all wrong, not hard since I'd mainly seen his cut-rate r

That part, as I mentioned in the introduction, is indirect. The feelings are there all the time, and you can watch the comfortable give-and-take in the relationship, which can mainly lead in one direction. You can also sense the narrator's stubbornly growing affection for the dog. But this book's about a trip, not a courtship. I've written other books about that. And thanks, everyone, for reading. I'm always afraid when I go back to a piece after a long time that it won't hold up. But this one, like Quabbin, seems to have found a happy audience.

Wednesday, June 2, 1999 We hadn't intended to go to Rochester. But one problem with driving through paradise is there are no motels. So we spent the night in a dim corner of the city George Eastman built. You know, Eastman Kodak---a made-up name it seems, possibly inspired by bears. I had to pay for our room in Motel 6---yep, we'd slunk low again---through a thick plate glass window. "Why?" I asked, trying to make conversation with the Outer Limits desk clerk. Lobbies had nev

Tuesday, June 1, 1999 In a way Toronto was a little like L.A: pretty women, nestling cell phones against their tight shoulders, zipped by us in hot cars doing eighty. Though the roads were très slick. "Not where I want to die," I told Tom. Which isn't why we left. Again, this simply wasn't the city tour. The next day, we had lunch in far smaller Niagra-on-the-Lake. A half-dozen unrelated people had all insisted we must eat at The Prince of Wales. Which was closed for r

Monday, May 31, 1999 Canada didn't herald our return. In fact, it was delayed for an hour while three minor Mounties took apart Tom's truck. "Is this because we've been going in and out of the States?" I asked. "Nope. Just random. And could you keep that dog away from us?" That dog was sleeping on the sidewalk. We'd planned to stay in Sault Saint Marie, but though it sounded provincial and French, it was barren and industrial. Still, Thessalon, 50 kilometers east, was gre

Sunday, May 30, 1999 The morning began with tiny drama---the dog ran away. When I woke, just before seven, Tom was at the door. "Going for coffee?" I mumbled, already heading back to sleep. That was his usual routine. "Looking for the dog," he said. Then left. That was enough to jump start the day, though I'd been dreaming of young Brenda Vaccaro. (Who knows why?) I pulled on clothes and wandered outside. We hadn't really looked at the motel the night before, happy eno

Quick update: three people's thoughts about the park, from Yelp. 2012. This place is disgusting. People who love it are blind to the obvious. I am searching for a Latino person who gave it a positive review. Most people remark how they are tough because they have been to this park, give me a break. I lived over here and hated it. The place smells like trash except when there are burning mattresses and then the place smells like burning mattresses and hot urine. The quality of life around MacArthur Park is a little below South Central (60th and Vermont ) but just above Watts. If you hang out here at night it isn't because you are tough, it is because you are a moron. The only positive is that you can easily get fake ID's -- I cannot comment about the quality. 2014. This park is super dirty and there's a bunch of people who basically live here. It is NOT relaxing to visit. More like you want to walk around it as quickly possible and check it off the "done" list for the day... Kind of disappointing considering the surrounding neighborhoods aren't that bad. 2012. Sadly, this park is a bust. It looks from a distance to be epic. Palm trees everywhere, a fountain with ducks that circle a pond all while people walk around with ice cream carts. It's just a mirage though. Walk closer up and its littered with trash everywhere. People are openly drinking beer. The water looks dangerously toxic and the boat house has been long gone.

Probably not. Maybe not then. Maybe not now. I haven't been to that section of the city for years. But I remember that at one point I saw it, and it looked absolutely wrecked. I'll have to go visit again. Thanks.

Saturday, May 29, 1999 After pushing through Montana and North Dakota to reach hopefully more interesting Minnesota, we found ourselves trapped by Memorial Day Weekend. Also, by an extended tourist zone, a combination of the Upper Lakes district of Minnesota, and Wisconsin's Lake Superior shore. After a half-hour of calling ahead, the closest motel reservation I could find, outside urban Duluth, was Ironwood, Michigan. "Three-hundred-and-fifty miles," I warned Tom, close to what we

Friday, May 28, 1999 It's unfair to say North Dakota is simply flat. Though I hate to lie. How did it compare to eastern Montana? Is there's a border? We started the day at The Trapper's Kettle, a theme restaurant aimed at "maintaining the Authenticity of the Trapper's Era (1820-1860)." The boxy room was decorated with All Things Trapperesque: paddles, snow shoes, pistols, knives, stuffed pheasant, pelts, and---of course---traps. Used every which way---like door handles. Careful

Thursday, May 27, 1999 It's unfair to say eastern Montana is simply flat. To be truthful, there probably is some texture. But the human eye can't see it. Okay, okay: there are hills. And maybe some low mountains. An ebb and flow of trees. "And it's green as it ever gets," a cheerful woman told us in Kalispell---her husband had just driven home from North Dakota. It was green all right. And the sky was blue. And I was suitably astonished for the first two or three centuries we edged

Wednesday, May 26, 1999 I had few expectations for Montana: Big Skies. Celebrity ranches. Flat. Still, we started off in mountains I hadn't realized existed. The Rockies? Okay, I'm a geological idiot. But these were easier to drive than their Canadian equals, though less amazing. And midway through our ascension was Kalispell, which the guidebooks dismissed in less than two sentences, emphasizing winter sports. "Where to?" Tom asked as we pulled off the highway for a break. "R

Tuesday, May 25, 1999 Archeologists say Lake Louise was in use over ten-thousand years ago, but the first white guy saw it in 1882. He named it Emerald Lake, for its color, though returning two years later and finding the water now reflected unclouded sky, he decided "emerald" was wrong and renamed it Louise---for the daughter of a man traveling with him. Still, when the lake was officially christened, by the Geographical Society of Canada, it was after Victoria's fourth daughter, Pr

Monday, May 24, 1999 Morning just about started with Sandy's husband, Pat. I was sitting on a large indoor balcony overlooking the lobby when he came up to adjust the radio. "Sorry," I said. I'd turned it down. "Not a problem. Only wanted to make sure it was on." He tweaked the volume slightly, giving low-tech music to the registration desk below. "Great place," I told him. "Must've been something to build." He laughed, almost modestly. "I mainly did the figu