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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

On Der Road Again

Alright, it's more of a vacation than a trip, but I am on the road again.

I left Minneapolis on Saturday after working hectically to clear off all my consulting assignments, and didn't make it out until 6:00pm on Saturday. I cursed myself for not doing all the little things I planned to do to get ready until the last moment. After finishing some work assignments about 2:00pm, I packed and went through my stuff in preparation for leaving.

After a false start (I got to the highway before I realized that I had not brought along my toiletry case), I hit the road around 6:30pm.

I ended up making it to Ames, Iowa the first night, and got the last hotel room in town after the local college team had homecoming weekend. Total, about 200 miles, and down in the high 30's by the time I arrived in Ames.

Next day was sunny and beautiful as I headed south through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. I made it to Norman, OK, home of the Oklahoma University and the Sooners, who also lost this weekend to Texas. That made it around a 600 mile day. It would have been too long a push to make it to Austin, I wouldn't arrive until around 3:00am so I decided to split it into two days.

Next day, hit the highway under partly cloudy skies, and a few sprinkles of rain. South into Texas, Gainsville, Denton, through Dallas on Interstate I-35E, and then down to Waco and Austin. Phase 1 of the trip complete, arriving at my brothers house in Austin.

Total mileage: 1180 miles from Minneapolis to Austin.

Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 06:22 PM in 2005 Central America | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Reading

  • Octavio Paz: The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre

    Octavio Paz: The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre
    "First published in 1950, The Labyrinth of Solitude addresses issues that are both seemingly eternal and resoundingly contemporary: the nature of political power in post-conquest Mexico, the relation of Native Americans to Europeans, the ubiquity of official corruption. Noting these matters earned Paz no small amount of trouble from the Mexican leadership, but it also brought him renown as a social critic. Paz, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, later voiced his disillusionment with all political systems--as the Mexican proverb has it, "all revolutions degenerate into governments"--but his call for democracy in this book has lately been reverberating throughout Mexico, making it timely once again."

  • PATRICK SYMMES: Chasing Che : A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend

    PATRICK SYMMES: Chasing Che : A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend
    "A motorcycle trip in 1952 marked a turning point for Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna, a medical student returning from a journey into poverty and oppression with a vision of guerilla-style change and a new name, Che Guevara. Going on to help overthrow the Cuban government, align himself with Castro, and become elevated to martyred hero status when he was executed in Bolivia in 1967, Guevara's likeness is now commercialized and captured on T-shirts, castanets, and watches. New York writer Patrick Symmes embarks on motorcycle tracing Guevara's route through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Cuba, seeking insight into what Guevara experienced and what his political movement wrought. Meeting with those who knew the young Che--among them a lover, a leper, and his motorcycle traveling cohort--proves interesting enough, though rarely insightful since some were children at the time, some are confused, and others refuse to talk openly. More revealing are Symmes's travels on his bike, nicknamed La Cucaracha. He winds through both Buenos Aires' high society and Peruvian poverty, finding a fragmented country where revolutions have brought mountain peasants fleeing to shanty towns, and where blind idealism coexists with blatant denouncement of the violent tactics used by Cuban Communists, even by Che's most respected soldiers. Beautifully written, the stories that unfold here reflect the complex contradiction that endures in Latin America three long decades after Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death. --Melissa Rossi"

  • Ernesto Che Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries : A Latin American Journey

    Ernesto Che Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries : A Latin American Journey
    "Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara became Fidel Castro's chief lieutenant in the Cuban revolution, Cuba's minister for industry and later a guerrilla in Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967. This high-spirited travel diary of Guevara's eight-month motorcycle journey across Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela as a 23-year-old medical student in 1951-52 mixes lyrical observation, youthful adventure and anti-imperialist political analysis. With a doctor friend as traveling companion, Guevara stows away on a cargo ship, explores Inca ruins, volunteers as a fireman, visits a leper colony and displays solidarity with miners and farm workers. Guevara's snide passing remarks targeting blacks, homosexuals and Jews reveal an unpleasant side of the countercultural icon. On balance, this candid journal, part self-discovery, part fieldwork, glimmers with portents of the future revolutionary. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc."

  • John Steinbeck: Cannery Row

    John Steinbeck: Cannery Row
    I'm on a little Steinbeck jag, and I enjoyed this book, his descriptions of the characters that inhabited the waterfront in Monterrey, his compassionate and understanding view of the have-nots (at least the have not's regarding material wealth).

  • John Steinbeck: Log from the Sea of Cortez, The (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

    John Steinbeck: Log from the Sea of Cortez, The (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

  • John Steinbeck: America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (Penguin Classics)

    John Steinbeck: America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (Penguin Classics)
    When I was in California, I visited the Steinbeck Center in Salinas. It is about 15 miles from Monterrey and Carmel and they have a lot of interesting exhibits on Steinbeck, including his camper from his trip he wrote about in Travels with Charley. Since then, I have read a couple of Steinbeck books, and I really enjoyed his point of view and personality which is apparent in his non-fiction works, particularly The Sea of Cortez and this work, America and Americans.

  • Loren Eiseley: The Immense Journey : An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature

    Loren Eiseley: The Immense Journey : An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
    I read this book about 20 years ago and the lyrical mood of this naturalist struck a cord in me. I picked it up recently on an urge and am enjoying it again.

  • John Bakeless: The Journals of Lewis and Clark

    John Bakeless: The Journals of Lewis and Clark
    I bought this version at Fort Clatsop in Oregon on the 200th anniversary of the date the Corps of Discovery Left their encampment in Illinois at the mouth of the Missouri. This version cleans up the spelling and references, but that's half the beauty of it, but the size fits in my bag for my motorcycle journey.

  • John A. Crow: The Epic of Latin America

    John A. Crow: The Epic of Latin America
    Good overview of the native cultures of Central and South America, Spanish colonization, and the eventual independence.


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