Road Trip – A Snapshot from the Lincoln Highway in Illinois

First designated in 1913, the Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental highway across the United States, stretching from Times Square in New York City to Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco. In 2005, I drove the … Continue reading

Transit Tuesday – How I would have loved to take the train to Albuquerque…

But instead, all I got was this tiny seat on a tin-can of an airplane. I investigated the details of how I would possibly get to Albuquerque by train. In the adventure category, it puts plane travel to shame. But … Continue reading

New York Calling – and gets voice mail

If there’s one thing I felt after reading the excellent New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg ( eds. Marshall Berman and Brian Berger, University of Chicago Press, 2007), it was a compulsion to challenge the statement that newcomers to New York … Continue reading

Wanderlust Wednesday – Barcelona

Make sure you slip in that “th.” Bar-thelona. Crazy architecture. Eating dinner at 9:30 pm there means you are dining with the elderly set. It didn’t matter that I had packed my luggage for  hot and sunny, and I arrived … Continue reading

Wanderlust Wednesday – Stockholm

Stockholm: scary sandwiches, incredible museums, and the beautiful islands which serve as the city’s perch. I visited Stockholm in September of 2011. Approximately fourteen islands make up Stockholm and the reflections off the water filled the autumn air with light. The … Continue reading

Transit Tuesday: The Train Station

Bumping around the Internet, I came upon this group of images of North American train stations. Some I recognized, while others were from towns I have never considered. As I looked at the first photos, more photos kept loading, until … Continue reading

Transit Tuesday: New York Penn Station

New York Penn Station, thy name is Melancholy. More than one website chronicles the beauty lost that was Penn Station, so I’ll skip the details about McKim, Mead, and White, Jane Jacobs, and Madison Square Garden. But every time I … Continue reading

Museum Monday – The Empire Ranch Foundation, Sonoita, AZ

  My great uncle started a cattle ranch near Sonoita, Arizona in 1952. Sonoita isn’t a town with one traffic light; it’s a town with no traffic lights. It’s located at the crossroads of AZ Routes 82 and 83  in … Continue reading

Trainscribbling – Moving and Writing.

When I leave the city, it’s either on a plane or a train. On a plane, you have little sense of forward travel once you’ve reached cruising altitude. Everyone channels sardine-ism for a number of hours, and the landscape below … Continue reading

Transit Tuesday : Hurray for the Streetcars of Toronto

  During a short business trip to Toronto, I had the pleasure of getting around town on their streetcar system. Unlike American streetcar systems destroyed by the National City Lines/General Motors streetcar conspiracy, Toronto’s streetcar system is intact due to … Continue reading