The good memories remain intact.

I had, however, forgotten about the panhandling.

I would swear the panhandlers are unionized.

I am not joking.

Any time I paused — sitting in Pioneer Square, or along the river — I was asked for money. Young, able-bodied people were sitting around with signs asking for change wearing shoes far more expensive than I could ever dream of casually buying. It got to the point where it was annoying to even be on the street.

The last evening, as I was wandering about, buying some chocolates for a friend and looking for a particular pizzeria which was in my budget to grab a little dinner before packing up for the flight out the next morning, I lost my North Dakota nice. Walking down the sidewalk towards me was a woman I would guess to be in her late twenties. She was sauntering along eating a slice of pizza in one hand with a Starbucks cup in the other hand, leather backpack hanging off one shoulder, her pale skin clean and healthy. She noticed me, and veered off course to cross paths.

“Hey, you got any spare change?”

Damn it!

I paused, and looked her over from top to bottom. Again, name-brand shoes, nicer clothes than I was wearing, eating pizza from the pizzeria I was heading for — it made me angry.

“You know what? No. I don’t. How about you give me some spare change instead?” I asked. “I could use some myself.”

I was treated to the sight of the rare Oregon Flipping Bird right there on the street, and she walked off, dreadlocks bouncing.

You know, if you’re going to try to guilt me out of my money, at least look the part. Maybe forgo the stop at Starbucks before hitting me up for change.

I gave five bucks to the guy on the corner playing classical guitar, though. He was talented, and at least he was doing something. The world can always use more music. I could’ve listened to him all evening.

The photo from the Tower of Terror is the one I kept hounding her for. Though (due to the time of year and a not-so-packed park) we were able to ride the Tower about five times, this photo is from the first ride down when it was all a surprise. What made me laugh was that my sister Janet (sitting next to me in the back row, left), despite everyone else screaming during the drop, somehow calmly held onto her bottle of Diet Coke with a smile, as if she were doing an advertisement for Coca Cola. If you look closely, you can even see the pop rising in the bottle. Everyone else is screaming and about to grab at the seat handle, everything stowed below, while she somehow was drinking her Diet Coke on the way up and held it through all the plummeting drops.

Janet, calm. Me, screaming my head off. (I’m a big screamer and laugher on rides.)

The next photo was a few days later. I hadn’t really wanted my picture taken with any characters since I am a little creeped out by who might actually be dressed in the costume. Just my luck — I’m not even a dog lover! — I found myself pushed into the line for a photo with Goofy and Pluto, the only ones we really saw the whole time we were there. I wasn’t going to have my photo taken, but my sister Janet “encouraged” me to do it. So, there I was, in a line full of kids, dreading the moment, pushed between them and asked to pose.

And then Goofy laid his hand on my shoulder and I at last understood why little kids cry when they get forced to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall.

I hadn’t even been aware she’d paid for the photos. I was just going to suffer through the event and not get the actual photo.

The next photo was from the day we visited Kennedy Space Center, which was another amazing experience. There was a shuttle out on the launch pad (we didn’t see the launch, though). The tours and Apollo exhibits and the room the simulated the Apollo launch (complete with rattling windows) still stick in my mind.

All in all, it was one of my top three trips of my life; I had such a fun time with my sister and nephews and finally (as cheesy as it is) completed my dream of going to Disney World.

When she had called and asked me, many months before, if I wanted to go, I remember how I ran into the next room and started jumping around and hollering “I’m going to Disney World! I’m going to Disney World!”

Yeah.

I’m like that.

The actual trip was rather hilarious in all that went wrong. My nephew Cody and I listed all the things that went haywire as we were stuck in the Orlando airport. It went like this:

• Drove to Omaha and got lost (we flew out of Omaha).
• First flight had mechanical problems and was delayed. Missed connecting flight.
• Got Orlando late and had hassle with rental car. Trey wanted to eat an old pop tart on the baggage carousel because we were starving.
• Got to hotel room and got food after 16 hours of no eating. Power to entire hotel promptly went out.
• Magic Kingdom: thunder Mountain broke down after we waited in line 1 hour (eventually rode it).
• Space Mountain broke down (eventually rode it).
• Splash Mountain broke down while we were in it.
• Kennedy Space Center: bus driver sounded like he was dying of a heart attack the whole time.
• Hollywood: Stupid High School Musical crap was featured.
• Busch Gardens: almost arctic weather, three roller coasters down (two eventually ran, so we rode all but one), Trey puked in the parking lot before we went in, and thousands of Brazilian teenagers were there on some event and annoyed every other person in the park.
• Animal Kingdom: Perfect day.
• Epcot: One ride down.
• Flight home: missed first flight, second had mechanical problems, replacement plane/flight also had mechanical, spent the entire day in Orlando airport to be stuck in a hotel and fly out the next day.

Makes for some funny memories now.

I spent quite a bit of time smiling after I opened the packet that had these photos inside this Christmas. It was fun to relive the memory.

“Thanks for finally getting me those photos, Janet,” I said to her later on the phone.

“Yeah. Kinda forgot about them. Stumbled on them when I was going through some things.”

What a great memory that trip was.

The cliff was littered with dead evergreen tree trunks, bleached white by sun and surf. They appeared to be cyclopean bones carelessly swept into a pile against the rocks, the remains of some epic battle long lost. The beach was walled in by the cliff and by the jagged tree bones. There were also a few trunks scattered about the beach, and I sat on one.

I lost track of time.

The sound of the water, and the sound of no one else, maybe, or the cool autumn breeze and bright sun — they were the culprits. Losing track of time is a luxury rarely so well done. Off the shore was a rock formation, and I drew it in my journal. The sun and air and sound of the water made me  feel sleepy and safe and alive; they made all the cycles of life seem not a hopeless circle of repetition and nothing more, but new every morning. The water pounded the rocks into sand and the trees into bones and I did not see death in it.

Bine was gone a long time.

I think about that place now, and how it doesn’t exist. Oh, the beach is still there, but that place was more than just geography. It was also an intersection of time and my path in life. I can’t go back to it again, even though I often want to.

I now think of the sand on that beach, once something monumental, now ground down and easily tossed about; the trees once tall, now rotting in haphazard piles. I know their story best.

The rocks will cry out.
The dry bones will live.
Before I will.

A friend recently sent me an email and indicated both surprise (“I just found this on your site!”) and interest in one of the art formats I make available for commission.

Originally, I had it buried several sub-pages deep on my site with the following inglorious description:

Travel Maps: Remember your travels, trips and vacations through a custom-painted map that depicts your route and any other key events or visual elements you’d like included. This is an excellent way to remember your travels and have a great display piece.

My friend wanted to know more about it.

I can see why; my description is brief, indeed, and does little to entice anyone to pursue it further. It then occurred to me that perhaps others would, too, and so I decided to pull it up on the front page of this site and give it its own blog post.

Basically, a travel map is a map that depicts an event or time in a person’s life that can in some way be geographically mapped. Calling it a “travel” map limits what it is, frankly. The map can depict more than just travel. College, career, moving, children, vacations, pets, work, dream locations, family — anything that can somehow be depicted in a map form will work, not limited to time, but to geography.

The image I have shown here is one I did for a friend for a cruise. The style of your map doesn’t have to have this look, but this worked with the kind of subject matter at hand. The map being more than just a mere map means that I included additional things in it. Though I won’t tell you all of them (that is private, for the customer), you’ll see I have included everything from the weather on the cruise dates, activities at various stops, airport diagrams, and, if you could see it up close, the entire border has the cruise ship official description (tonnage, engines — everything) written in tiny writing all the way around. There are lots of other elements I gleefully sneaked in that won’t make sense or be noticed by the casual viewer, but will mean something to the person to whom the map was intended for.

If you are interested, please contact me directly. We can discuss your project, pricing, materials, themes, stylistic concerns, colors, ideas, etc.

It’s gotten more enjoyable these past years as the government has expanded its interests from liking long walks on the beach and pina coladas, delving into Uncle Sam’s Hell-On-Earth Travel Agency, which is exemplified in a sort of schizophrenic attempt to both bail out a troubled airline industry and make it so customers don’t want to use it.

The recent attempt to blow up a plane by a male Nigerian passenger has beget some interesting news articles. Here’s the money quote, though, to the question everyone is likely thinking:

Federal officials imposed stricter screening measures after the incident.

Really.

Knitting needles? No, but then yes. Fingernail clippers? No, but then yes. Liquids? Definitely no, but then a 3 oz. yes. Shoes and belts? Oh yes, except for a short period of time in the security line. Personal dignity? No. Shoes with fuses out the back? Probably not. Hand lotion in a 3.1 oz bottle? Absolutely not! Powdery substances? Looks like a new no. Suspicious, uh, bulge in your underwear? I’d like to see them try.

Power-hungry and bitchy security agents who mistake a uniform with a stripe on the pant leg for permission to arrest, unlawfully detain, and otherwise insult and berate normal people for going too slowly through the metal detector and getting behind their bag or going too quickly and getting ahead of their bag in the scanner, or in any way make them get up off of their stool? Oh, yes.

So we are scanned, searched, felt up, pulled aside, insulted, partially stripped, pockets emptied, charged fees, suffer private property confiscation, multiple ID checks, all-but cattle-prods, eye-rolling, crammed into metal culverts with wings, and no more peanuts and $5 dried out sandwiches once on board as reward.

Expensive perfume and liquor, random toiletries, forgetful tourists who mistakenly packed things in their carry-on — not on my watch!

Nigerian guy with some sort of incendiary device? Bring it on through.