Mr. T. Goes to Washington

I left Crystal and Chuck’s place in Evergreen just after 2 Monday afternoon. [I’d made the previous blog-post Sunday evening, since I knew that come Tuesday I’d still be making my way to DC.] So it was with a clear conscience and a smile on my face that I walked down the mountain road to where an entrance ramp fed local traffic onto the highway and down the hill into Denver.

I dropped the four bags I was carrying, and stuck out my right thumb while holding in my left hand a spiral notebook open sideways to a page on which I had written in bold blue letters: DENVER. A few minutes later I added in smaller letters below that the word bus, thinking that people might want a more specific idea about where it was in Denver I wanted to go, and assuming they'd infer from that the Greyhound bus station.

Seemed to work ... thanks too to my Angels of Transport who I know were watching over me as I'd expected them to. I was handily provided with the three rides that were required for me to reach my destination in time.

I’d waited at my first post about a half-hour when a middle-aged guy named Bill pulled his pick-up over. He said he was only going up to the next town, but that there were more cars getting on the highway there, not to mention a bus-stop. So in I climbed.

It was a good tip: there was a lot more traffic, and I wasn’t at this 2nd post more than ten minutes before a young guy named Josh stopped his pick-up and took me all the way down into west Denver (where for a buck and a quarter I connected with the # 16 bus into downtown). Josh had four jobs, only two of which I remember now: one was as a pilot instructor, and he was trying to get enough teaching hours in so that he could get a job as a commercial pilot; the other was making pizzas at night! He seemed like a great guy, clearly with a lot of ambition, but easy-going. I like easy-going.

The Greyhound station was just 3 or 4 blocks from where I got off the bus, and I then had about 2 hours to kill before the scheduled 18:30 departure time.

My first brush with the down-and-dirty post-9/11 world in the USA happened in the Denver Greyhound station. I paid the price in more ways than one for leaving my bags unattended.

You have to keep your bags with you till you board the bus, and when you’re traveling alone this can present a problem. I’d gotten away with it in Tallahassee, after I’d purchased my ticket for travel to Denver. There I had about an hour before departure time to run across the street to the library for a quick email to Crystal that I was coming, and then get on a bit further down the street to grab some fast-food.

They had working baggage lockers in St. Louis, which only cost me $2 for each of the 2 lockers required to store all my bags (max. 3 hours, more time than I had). But there were no storage facilities in the Denver station, and I figured I might get away with leaving them for a bit. I didn't.

When I returned from grabbing a big salad at Mickey D's and hitting a 7-11 for bottled water and snacks just up the street, I was unnerved to see that my bags were not in the out-of-sight place I’d left them: behind a wall and just opposite the ticket-desk. Security had eventually noticed they were unattended, broke the locks on both of the two larger pieces, and then put them in a storage area behind the desk.

It was discouraging to be told that I would have to pay $15 to have them returned to me, but I didn't argue and didn't get angry, although I was so inclined initially, for a moment. Finally though I just accepted the situation for what it was: my own foolishness at thinking 4 unattended bags might again go unnoticed. The Denver bus station was much busier than the one in Tallahassee, and I have to admit that I had been gone from the station for an entire hour. While I was outside, one of my Transport Angels had been whispering in my ear that this is indeed what was happening in my absence, but I was too hungry -- not to mention relaxed and trusting -- to return sooner than I did.

The distance from Denver to Washington, DC is 1620 miles [2613 km] and by bus takes 1 day, 17 hours, and 45 minutes. There were 15- and 30- and sometimes 60-minute breaks, and in St. Louis, Missouri, I even had enough time to walk the half-hour or so from the bus station, through downtown and to that arch, which is located in a park next to the Mississippi River. Actually, most people refer to the arch as The Arch, when in fact its official name is the Gateway Arch - Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

One thing that struck me as I walked through downtown St. Louis on the way to the arch and back: the streets and sidewalks seemed to be nearly deserted. The sun was in the sky and it wasn't that cold; it was a Monday and it was lunch-time, when one might expect to see people coming and going to grab a bite before returning to their offices and classrooms. But the city seemed eerily quiet, as if aliens were transporting the city's residents a few at a time to their homeland in a distant galaxy, and had managed somehow to buy the silent cooperation of those remaining.

I chose to include this photo of the arch because you get a good idea of its size in relation to the nearly adjacent downtown buildings, but also because there's a bit of a view of the Mississippi.

But you'll find a really nice series of photos (taken from different angles and at different times of day and year) at this website; [click on the left side under Visitor Information: Photographs].

More evidence of the post-9/11 world: as I approached the entrance to the underground section of the arch, a Park Service ranger materialized and asked to look through my backpack. He was smiling and polite and quite easy on the eyes and so I gently sighed, smiled and acquiesced. Waiting for me inside the doors a few meters away were 4 more rangers, a metal detector and a baggage x-ray machine.

A display about construction of the Gateway Arch informs visitors that it stands 630 feet [192 m] high. The Statue of Liberty by contrast is about half as tall as the arch's center, at 305 feet [93 m], while the Eiffel Tower is about 1.5 times taller, at 985 feet [300 m.] Finnish architect Eero Saarinen won the St Louis design competition in 1947, and went on to design the TWA terminal at JFK, and Dulles Airport outside of Washington, DC [both completed in '62].

I only spent about 20 minutes inside [I didn't want to push my luck in getting back to the bus station in time for my 2:30 departure]. But since the adventurers Lewis and Clark had ended their famous 2-year exploration of the Louisiana Purchase and beyond at St. Louis in 1806, there was a significant part of the museum beneath the arch devoted to that time-period and to their adventures, which I'm totally enthralled with.

But as much as I love history, I'm almost glad that I didn't have more time to spend in the 19th-century history section of the museum. As European and other settlers poured by the million into lands formerly inhabited only by native Americans, the westward expansion that the "gateway" arch symbolizes resulted in one of the most tragic and blood-soaked periods of American- or even world- history.

I was watching a tv program about the life of Hitler a couple of weeks ago, and this one included a closer look at Hitler's book Mein Kampf. Hitler was a great student of history, and had been impressed by a lot of what he had read about America, not least of which was the way in which the US government was able to defeat the native Americans by using the military to kill as many Indians as possible, and putting the rest onto reservations. The show claimed that Hitler got his idea to round up the Jews and put them (at first) into concentration camps from having studied this part of American history. Sounds depressingly plausible to me, and I spent some time searching an online text of Mein Kampf to verify this for myself [inconclusively]. What do you think?

On a positive note, I liked what this website had to say about a few of the contributions of native Americans, which include (1) sharing with the settlers knowledge about how to cultivate things they'd never seen before [corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tobacco, pumpkins, and tomatoes]; (2) giving them ideas about democracy which were "radically different" from those of the ancient Greeks; the Six Nations [Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Tuscarora] for example are said to have practiced a participatory democracy which inspired Ben Franklin as he was attempting to unite the English colonies during the Albany Conference of 1754. And (3) the oldest occupied communities in the continental United States -- the Acoma and Hopi pueblos [villages] -- were settled about CE 600 - 1000, 5 to 9 centuries before Columbus and his crew showed up.

Well, I never imagined when I started this that I would spend two hours writing about getting off the bus to walk to the arch. I'm gonna crawl into bed and come back tomorrow to finish the part where I actually arrive safely in DC, although unable to open my biggest suitcase without a screw-driver and brute force. Janet supplied the former and believe it or not, I the latter.

[Tuesday afternoon]
So I arrived in DC (on time) around noon on Wednesday, Dec. 22, a month to the day after my arrival back in the US. Janet had been at work, but was on her way back to her place to get ready for her trip up to our home town of Rochester a couple of days earlier than planned. The health of her 90-year-old father was beginning to deteriorate, and the prognosis wasn't cheerful. Shades of Colorado, although this time as I wait for word from the recently departed friend, I have to make the coffee myself!

She and I spent the rest of the afternoon together before her sister arrived to drive them the 296 miles [476 km] up to Rochester.

There's not much else to report until Christmas Eve, when I went out to begin my Christmas shopping! And I must say I did quite well. Considering how last-minute it was, I decided to buy everything at one place, which turned out to be books and DVDs from Border's. Love that place; just wish that shopping there didn't make it more difficult for smaller and more independent booksellers to get by.

With shopping bags in hand and my trusty backpack on [where else?] my back, I trudged back to the Pentagon City metro station for the train to Greenbelt, where my totally dependable, charming, lovable and vivacious niece Amanda [did I mention incredibly cute?] picked me up a short time later. Toni, Mario and Greg arrived later in the evening, and we had a nice reunion. Spent the night at Greg's place not far away, then back over to the big house Christmas morn' for the opening of gifts followed by a lavish Christmas dinner -- joined by Mario Jr. and later by Amanda's boyfriend Alex -- that I am not likely to forget for some time: a perfectly cooked and succulent roast beef, boiled potatoes, a baked spinach with 3 cheeses dish, a pasta dish [natch'], green peas, huge fresh codfish steaks, glasses of red and white wine and the company of loved ones. What more does on need on such a day?

Some beers with Greg and his/our buddy Bob later that night, and then back to Greg's place for a little late-night DVD action: the frequently hilarious comedy of Dave Chapelle. My favorite sketch: a black blind boy named Clayton Bigsby, orphaned in the deep south, is told that he is white in order to spare his feelings, and grows up to be a middle-aged white-hood-wearing Ku Klux Klan member! [When at the end it is finally revealed to him that he is in fact African-American, he divorces his wife for marrying a "n*gger-lover!"] The tears were almost flowing down my face, I was laughing so hard. And how great is it that actual racists get a chance to see how idiotic they sound?!

Sunday Greg and I went for eats in the gezellig little old town of Ellicott City, followed by a little shopping before hooking up with Amanda to see Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, narrated by Jude Law and starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep. For some reason I'd been really intrigued by a scene in the adverts that showed a strange-looking automobile on a bicycle-powered ferry being transported over calm waters toward mysterious cliffs in the distance. It was clearly a children's flick, but I'd been hoping there'd be a bit more in it for adults than there was. It was cute, I'm glad I went to see it, but there are a few other films I'd read about while in LA [Brother to Brother, The Aviator, Notre Musique, Pedro Almodovar's latest Bad Education, and most of all What the Bleep Do We Know] that, in retrospect, I wish I'd gone to see instead.

It was great to get some 1-on-1 time with Greg of which I can never get enough. He is one funny dude, as masterful at impressions as he ever was, and even had new material for me this time 'round: a spot-on imitation of what his dad would say after hitting his thumb with a hammer, new now-classic stuff! Wish I had more time to spend with this most excellent of all nephews, who between snowboading and finishing school keeps busy raking in the bucks waiting tables at Strapazza's. GREAT food if you're ever in the Columbia neigborhood, and you should be so lucky to have this guy wait on you!

Amanda and I met Alex later for dinner at a Chinese restaurant which was great. Alex is a big fan of all things Asian, and did quite a bit of martial arts as a kid. He seems great for my niece who totally deserves the best [don't we all?], and I let her know when we were alone that I totally approved. We then went out for a couple of beers to Famous Dave's where an old friend of Amanda's named Levi works and who I'd met on a previous visit a couple of years back. Good to see him again and to quaff a brew together.

Then it was back to the Greenbelt metro for me, and an attempt to get beyond all this celebrating and figure out What the Heck I've Got to Do Next!

In quite a large nutshell, what I've got to do next is:
1. Find place to live.
2. Get a job. Make some money.
3. Pick up Sandy at JFK Jan. 14 from friend Susan coming from Amsterdam.
4. Begin massage school. [You'll be hearing more and more about this. By next Tuesday I will have applied to my first massage school, Heartwood in California, which has a program I'm very interested in beginning in May.]

But lately what I've been doing instead is: reading the Sunday NY Times that I lifted from in front of a neighbor's door [I only picked it up after Sunday and most of Monday morning was completely gone, and I'm planning on putting it back almost all of it just as soon as I'm done with it]; cleaning out the kitchen closet [1267 plastic bags and 281 paper bags which really got me to wondering: when the HELL are American supermarkets going to start charging for each plastic bag they give out, like all of the Dutch supermarkets do? Man, talk about your no-brainer partial solutions to landfill problems and just generally unnecessarily wasteful living]; reading my Christmas gift to myself, Osho's Zen: Its History and Teachings; checking email once in a while; and trying to remember what it is I'm supposed to be doing next. I have got to get back to my meditation practice.

As I was searching for a link to the Osho book, I had a big laugh when I stumbled across the No-Thought of the Day. Well that particular no-thought for this day wasn't all that beautiful or even poetic in its reminder (if only one were enough) to not overlook the importance of this moment in favor of one either already past or one yet to come.

So if I'm going to share with you something before signing off until next Tuesday, let it instead be this:

The beginning of freedom is knowing that you are not ... the thinker. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter -- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -- all arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

-- The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle, p. 14