This week we’re parked at one of those brewery/winery/event spaces that are so popular with young, Eastcoast families with disposable income, this one near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and we chose it only because we were pretty desperate. It was a last-ditch plan because it’s part of the Harvest Hosts and Hipcamp listings that drive us bonkers: […]
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Two Bands, Four Styles, Several Surprises, One Happy Me
“Is this the The Other One?” I can’t believe I’m about to ask this of a guy who looks to be the dad of the band we’re watching at a park in Upstate New York. The kids in the band are blaring distorted guitar and screaming vocals; they’re metal in every way. There is no […]
The Absolute Freaking Weirdness of this Lifestyle
This hometown week on the Friends and Family Tour ‘24 has been a honking-big, tangled-up knot of red-hot emotions. It’s not just been about seeing people I haven’t seen in years. It’s been about being struck by aging (and in a flash of recognition that really should be hidden). It’s been about cramming what we’ve […]
Highs, Lows, and Weird in ATX
There is so much about Austin, Texas, that maybe once was weird but now is American cliche. Young people with long, groomed beards and handlebar mustaches. Statement eyeglass frames, cowboy boots with 70s-style jumpsuits. Putting your toddler in a t-shirt with a portrait of Ruth Badger Ginsberg on it. As I say anytime I start […]
Austin = D.C. with Cowboy Hats
I joked last night to Tracy that Austin, Texas, seems just like Washington, D.C. but with different hats. He looked around, at the hordes of sweaty soccer players and the hipster parents with feral children—all at the brewery where we were sitting—and he totally agreed. Except that the only cowboy hats around were on the […]
Goings on in Brownsville
It’s not until we’re in place for a while and I sit down to blog that I realize how freaking content-rich the traveling life is. When we’re still, I have no cogent theme to write around. How do bloggers bind everything together so neatly when you don’t have a tidy timeline of change to follow? […]
Stand in the Place Where You Are
Your feet are going to be on the ground. Your head is there to move you around, so stand. REM Missoula Then and Now To me, this town is filled with ghosts: unpublished writers, slacker pool players, crystal jewelry purveyors, and long-dead mining engineers. People I knew 30 years ago. I keep seeing them in crowds. […]
Perpetual Stranger in a Strange Land
I’ve a friend who lives in her Airstream but travels less than we do; she and her husband own a parking pad in a little Airstream community that they use as a home base. So we share quite a bit in terms of lifestyle, but we also live very differently within that lifestyle. What’s funny is […]
