BatesLine

I spent the summer of 1982 in Ocean City, New Jersey, a beach resort 12 miles or so south of Atlantic City, as part of a Campus Crusade for Christ summer project with about 50 other college students. We spent our days working -- I was one of several who commuted to Atlantic City to work in a souvenir shop on the Boardwalk called Rainbow's End. It was one of nine or so in a chain run by a man named Ed Devlin, Jr., out of the flagship store, Irene's, in Ocean City. Most of the time, I was either inside trying to sell guilty gamblers some cheap inflatable airplanes to take home to their neglected children or out on the boardwalk making sure no one ran away with our selection of 99-cent cassettes and two-for-a-dollar LPs as the Ms. Pac-Man theme blared from the arcade next door. (The store was on the ground floor of what was then the steel skeleton that was intended to be the never-completed Penthouse Casino Resort and which ultimately became the Trump Plaza.)

(I spent two weeks trying unsuccessfully to find a job like the one I'd had the summer before, being paid to write computer programs. In 1982, no one in Ocean City seemed to have a computer that needed programming.)

But Ocean City itself was a delightful and relatively quiet beach resort. Intended as a resort for Methodists, it was a dry town that shut down on Sundays.

One of the things I took away from that summer was a new word: Shoobie. Ocean City had long been a popular summer getaway for Philadelphians and other tourists, who were dubbed "shoobies" by the locals. A recent article on the American Heritage website about Wildwood (another, wilder resort town further downshore) explains the origin of the term:

In Wildwood the locals have a term for tourists, shoobies. Derived from the habit of day-trippers’ bringing their lunches to the shore in shoeboxes, a practice that probably started in 1889 when the Pennsylvania Railroad began running dollar excursions from Philadelphia, the epithet retains the behind-your-back scorn that distinguishes the love-hate relationship between any tourist town and its prey. (A teenage Wildwood native, ignorant of the etymology of the word but deeply familiar with its connotations, told me it came from the horrible habit of tourists wearing shoes on the beach. “That,” she said, “is a very shoobie thing to do.”)

Considering that the year-round population of the town numbers just 5,400, the shoobies, who swell the island’s population to 250,000 during the height of summer, have always been the economic reason for Wildwood’s existence. Originally a dense forest of tangled trees, Wildwood began its transformation from a wild wood to a smooth landscape of motels and sand in the 1880s. Local working-class and middle-class Philadelphians and neighboring New Jersey residents were drawn by the proximity and affordability, and soon the town was a popular destination. In 1927 more than 20,000 day-trippers came to visit the island over the course of just a few days. But these early shoobies were not well loved by local merchants. The thrifty shoebox-toting visitors were not staying in hotels or eating in restaurants, and, scandalously, they changed into their bathing suits in their cars, before dumping their picnic lunches all over the sand.

The article goes on to talk about the rise and decline of the seaside motel -- being replaced by condos -- and the demographic changes in the workforce that arrives to handle the summer crowds -- once blacks from the Deep South, now Eastern Europeans.

I hope that, just as Cape May has tried to preserve its Victorian seaside resort heritage, Wildwood will wake up and see the value and appeal of its mid-20th-century motels, cafes, and seaside amusements before they're all gone.

(Via Addled Writer, who went to Wildwood last month and took some pictures.)

This may look like a souvenir from my recent trip to Britain with my 10-year-old for the Tulsa Boy Singers choir tour, but it's not, although the trip reawakened an interest in it.

This is The London Game, a strategy game based on a map of the London Underground. The object is to be the first to travel to six tourist destinations and return to your starting point at one of London's main railway stations. There are "hazard" cards that either delay you or allow you to delay another player. Each "souvenir" card has a drawing and a description of the point of interest and the name of the nearest Tube station.

I remember playing this game with a friend of mine when we were probably 10 or 11. His family subsequently put it in a garage sale or otherwise disposed of it. I had always thought it would be a fun board game to have.

Three times in the past I've been to the London Transport Museum gift shop in Covent Garden, and three times I've balked at paying the asking price, not to mention wondering if I had room and sufficient spare weight in my luggage for the box. Last month, the museum shop had a special edition in a metal box for the low, low price of 25 pounds sterling -- about $50, and too dear for me. Once back home, I checked eBay and found a copy of the 1972 edition. I was the only bidder and price and shipping combined came to $15.

While my wife and our 10-year-old went to hear Weird Al Yankovic in concert last Friday, and after I put the 18-month-old to bed, the six-year-old and I played the game a couple of times. We opted not to use the station blocking rule and instead concentrated on getting familiar with where everything is on the board and how the basic rules work.

We added a rule that you have to say the name of each station as you pass through it. I figure it'll help the kids learn to pronounce Gloucester, Leicester, and Tottenham correctly and how to interpret a map and plan a route, and we'll all build a mental map of London which will come in handy when we go back as a family someday. There have been a few changes to the Tube map since 1972, but not many to the central London section that makes up the game board.

We had fun playing it, and we each won a round. I'll have to try the more cut-throat version, where you can block stations to delay your opponents, with the 10-year-old.

One of my earliest blog entries was about a brief visit four years ago to Riverside Park in Independence, Kansas, on the way home from seeing my cousin graduate from Lawrence High School.

Last Saturday, my uncle was celebrating his 50th birthday, so I drove myself and the toddler north, stopping in Riverside Park for a couple of hours on the way up. (There were also the requisite Sonic stops -- three in all.) We spent some time looking at the animals in the Ralph Mitchell Zoo (did you know porcupines could climb?), letting the toddler explore Kiddy Land, a nursery-rhyme themed playground created by the local Lions Club, walking through the big kids' playground, admiring the statue of a corythosaurus (a bit of Forgotten New York from the 1964 World's Fair), riding the carousel (still just a nickel) and the train (only a quarter), and envying the crowds cooling off at the city's water park.

In that earlier entry, I described in detail the wonderful old-fashioned playground equipment, much of it bearing the FUN-FUL brand. These are playground pieces you don't see in parks anymore for fear of litigation. This time I took photos and posted them on Flickr.

I should note that it was a pleasant surprise that we were able to ride the train and carousel. That was the last Saturday afternoon for the carousel and train to be running; the weather is getting too hot. I believe they still will run on Sunday afternoons, but the rest of the week only from 6:30 to 9:30.

Our route took us through the area along the Oklahoma-Kansas border that was so badly flooded only a week ago. Johnstone Park in Bartlesville was closed, but people were at work in the Bartlesville Playground (the Kiddie Park) getting it cleaned up. (The park was not yet open for business.) Highway 123 between Bartlesville and Dewey is flood-prone; the old KWON studios were built on stilts. A big tent, the kind used for outdoor sales or wedding receptions, was set up in front of the old radio station, and the stain from the flood reached at least two feet higher than where the roof met the sides -- probably 10 feet above the ground. Mud stains on the trees lining the highway told the same story.

Further north in Kansas, we could see where flood waters had matted down corn fields. The east side of Coffeyville, which we passed through on the way home, nearest the Verdigris River, was like a ghost town. Only the lights along the main road were lit; all other buildings were dark, and the flood stain reached five or six feet up the sides of the buildings.

We also took a detour into Chanute on the way home, in search of a place to buy gas and rest for a minute or two. I was surprised to see how lively the downtown was at about 11:00 p.m. The center of activity seemed to be Fire Escape, a spacious and inviting Christian coffee house on Main Street. (Had I not had a sleepy toddler, I'd have dropped in.)

Some years ago, the Kansas highway department rerouted US 169 to bypass most towns between Coffeyville and Kansas City. They did such a good job, it's often hard to know when you're passing a town. Chanute signed its own business route to help travelers find their way off the main road, through town, and back to the highway.

The toddler slept for the first half of the trip home, but he stayed awake after we stopped. We listened to Bob Wills, and I passed him back his water cup, Pringles, and rolls that my uncle sent home with us.

I'm going to repeat a question I asked after our drive through Kansas four years ago:

I am a proud Oklahoman, and yet I can't help but notice a quality and pride in these Kansas towns that I don't see in towns of similar size in Oklahoma. These Kansas towns seem to be surviving and thriving, while many similar towns in Oklahoma are on the wane, with Main Streets falling into disrepair, storefronts vacant or filled with sub-optimal uses and public spaces showing signs of neglect. The pride I've observed in Kansas I've also seen in many parts of Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Arkansas, and Illinois. What accounts for the difference?

What do you think?

MORE: FUN-FUL playground equipment was made by General Playground Equipment, Inc. of Kokomo, Indiana, a successor to the Hill-Standard Company of 116 Fun-Ful Avenue, Anderson, Indiana. Here's the story of one man's effort to save a spiral slide in Burlington, Iowa, that was made by the company and which had been installed in the 1920s.

Ron of Route 66 News evaluates one of Lady Bird Johnson's legacies:

But the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which restricted billboards along our nation’s highways, proved to be damaging to Route 66 businesses when they were struggling to survive amid the continuing rise of the interstates.

These Mother Road businesses were struggling enough against the chains. Restricting the use of billboards — a crucial advertising tool — made it harder....

[R]ich and powerful companies managed to skirt the law, while many mom-and-pop businesses didn’t have the influence to so.

From family trips back in the early '70s, I remember the stark difference between driving the Turner and Will Rogers Turnpikes and the Indian Nations Turnpike. The Turner and Will Rogers were built in the '50s and had many signs (evidently grandfathered) pointing to nearby Route 66 businesses like the Thurman Motel, Buffalo Ranch, and the Lincoln Motel, along with the requisite notice to save your appetite for a free 72 oz. steak dinner in Amarillo.

The Indian Nations Turnpike, built after Ladybird's Law, had no signs. This meant there was nothing to entice a passing traveler to venture off the highway, no indication that, for example, the McAlester exit could lead him to a land of hearty Okie-style Italian food. A traveler wouldn't know anything about available service stations or accommodations that might be just a few hundred yards away from the turnpike.

For kids, the Highway Beautification Act meant no practical way to play the Alphabet Game.

At some point, states began posting official exit services signs, with little logos to notify the traveler of available restaurants, gas stations, and motels. Of course, this favored the chains as well: An out-of-state motorist would know exactly what to expect from seeing a McDonald's or Cracker Barrel logo, but a logo isn't enough for a local cafe to tell you about its chicken fried steaks and pies.

(Then there was the case of the Okie Gal Restaurant in California, which wasn't even allowed space on the exit services sign because the highway department deemed "Okie" a derogatory term.)

Ron praises Lady Bird's work on behalf of wildflowers, as does Joshua Trevino, writing at National Review Online. You could see the wildflower and anti-sign initiatives as consistent, both favoring the natural over the man-made, but there is also something contradictory about them: Wildflowers are a kind of rebellion of local color against the monotony and standardization of a perfectly green, perfectly manicured right-of-way. But ads along the highway are also a splash of local color, a hint about the distinctive qualities of the next town and the people who live there.

Marvin Olasky mentions in passing another example of the damage caused by "beautifiers":

Coney Island, part of New York City, is famous in American literature and film. In "The Great Gatsby," Gatsby invites Nick to go to Coney Island, and in Clara Bow's 1927 silent film "It," the neighborhood's amusement park is practically a co-star. After 1950, though, waves of officials such as New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses looked down on the "tawdry" amusements that characterized the boardwalk area. They pulled strings to substitute tawdry housing projects that became gang havens.

Coney Island went through bad decades, but even bureaucrats can't take away the ocean, and the beachfront location has inspired some entrepreneurs to ignore planners' sandcastles and attempt to develop new small businesses and privately owned housing.

Tulsa has had its share of destructive "beautifiers": The barrenness of the Civic Center, the Williams Center, and the OSU-Tulsa campus parking lots are their legacies.

We're hearing reports of moderate to severe flooding north and east of Tulsa. If you're wondering whether you'll need an ark to complete your Fourth of July travel plans, you can ask NOAA.

The website for the Advanced Hydrological Prediction Service has a national map showing all active flood gauges and their current state. Purple means major flooding, red is moderate. Click on the national map and you'll see an area map, and you can then click on an individual gauge to see the flood level in recent days and the predicted level over the next few days. Here's the map for the Tulsa area.

The gauge for the Caney River at Bartlesville shows that the river has crested at 21.45 feet, more than 8 feet above flood stage, but is still about 6 feet shy of the record October 1986 flood. If you'd planned to visit the Kiddie Park, you might want to phone ahead.

Here's a map for NOAA's Arkansas-Red Basin River Forecast Center, which will give you a sense of the extent of flooding around Oklahoma and neighboring states. Not only is there some major flooding in southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma, but also in southwestern Oklahoma and Wichita Falls, just across the Red River in Texas.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol posts road closings due to weather, or you can phone (405) 425-2385 or (888) 425-2385. There are a number of warnings and closings in Nowata, Craig, and Ottawa counties.

My 10-year-old son and I got back home about 11 p.m. Wednesday night from a week in the United Kingdom with the Tulsa Boy Singers tour. It was his first trip out of the US, and my first trip overseas in eight years. We had a wonderful time, and I'll tell you about the trip itself later on, but here are a few random notes, which I'll add to as the mood strikes me:

I don't know what is in bloom in England right now, but I am highly allergic to it. It didn't bother me in Scotland, but my nose and eyes got itchier the further south we went. (Grass pollen, evidently.)

Seven days in Scotland and England and we didn't need an umbrella once. It sprinkled a bit in Edinburgh, and I'm told it rained at night, but we never saw it. Meanwhile, Tulsa is getting muddier and muddier.

The dollar is at its lowest point against the pound in years -- $2 = £1 -- but prices are the same in pounds there as they are in dollars here. Fuel costs are pushing food prices higher. Petrol is just under £1 per liter, or about $8 a gallon, and most of that is tax. High fuel prices don't seem to be keeping people from driving -- the motorways were jammed with cars.

With regard to WiFi, the UK is about four years behind the US. Free WiFi is rare, and even working paid WiFi is hard to find. I spent sometime before leaving the US compiling maps of free and paid WiFi locations near our hotels. It wasn't that I planned to spend hours surfing, but I wanted to be able to upload photos to Flickr and videos to Google for the benefit of TBS families back home and to respond to e-mail. As we waited for our bags at Tulsa International, several parents came up to thank me for posting photos, as it was reassuring to see that their boys smiling and having a good time.

Hotel access typically runs at least £10 a day, or you can pay a pound for 10 minutes of access on a terminal in the lobby. Even though we stayed in three different Holiday Inns, each one had a different provider, so it was impractical to buy a week's worth of hotel access.

A few pubs and coffee houses have free WiFi, but many more are part of a network called The Cloud. I bought a week's worth of unlimited access for £11.99. I was only able to use it twice, for a couple of hours each time, at the Cross Keys pub in Dringhouses near York. Uploading speeds were slow, but it worked. I thought I'd be able to use it at the Little Chef cafe next door to the Holiday Inn outside of Oxford, but the cafe closed at ten (despite being located on a busy highway junction). I sat down on the sidewalk outside and tried to connect; I could get a signal, but the DHCP server didn't give me an IP address, so I couldn't sign in.

WiFi worked well in only one place -- Isobar on Bernard Street in Leith, Edinburgh's port town. Isobar is a tidy modern place, smoke-free (as are all Scottish pubs, and England will follow suit on July 1), and frequented by twenty-somethings. Drink prices were reasonable. It was quiet on Thursday night, and one other person was working on a laptop. The bartender pointed me to the area where I'd get the best signal. I went back on Friday night, after a failed attempt at connecting at another free WiFi pub (Stack Bar and Grill -- could connect, but couldn't get a DHCP address). Isobar was almost packed, but a found a place at a long common table and wound up next to a group of female office workers out on the town. The one sitting next to me apologized for the rowdy behavior of her coworkers, but I found it entertaining.

The Jolly Judge Pub on Lawnmarket near Edinburgh Castle had good beer, a nice traditional atmosphere, free WiFi, and a decent signal, and I might have stayed longer, but I needed to eat dinner and they only had crisps. A search for a free WiFi restaurant in the Old Town -- the Honey Pot -- was fruitless, and I later learned the restaurant was no longer in business.

The Royal National Hotel had free WiFi, but only in the lobby, and the signal was weak and intermittent.

I had a delicious lamb keema wrap at Wrapid in York, a place that offered not only free WiFi, but, unusually for the UK, free refills on fizzy drinks and coffee. The free WiFi is actually advertising-supported WiFi -- you watch a short commercial, and you get connected. Unfortunately, the website that served the commercial was down, so the sign-in web app didn't work. Flickr Uploadr was able to connect and upload at a very slow speed, but I couldn't check e-mail or the web.

UPDATE 2007/06/25: Some further notes about what worked and what didn't.

A few weeks before the trip I purchased a set of grounded plug adapters from Family on Board. These were not converters or transformers. They simply allowed you to take a dual-voltage device with a U. S. grounded plug to and plug it into a British three-prong grounded outlet. $15.95 covered three adapters, and all shipping and handling costs. They worked wonderfully with my Dell laptop AC adapter and the charger for my Palm Treo 650. (Even though my Treo didn't work as a phone over there -- CDMA instead of GSM -- I still used it as a PDA to make notes and keep track of scheduled events.)

To emphasize, these US-to-UK adapters should only be used with devices that accept inputs of at least 240 V -- there should be a label on the device, charger, etc., that indicates, volts, frequency, amperage, and wattage for input and output.

Even then, a device may fail. My Duracell rapid AA/AAA battery recharger blew a fuse -- or at any rate stopped working -- the first time I plugged it in. It professed to be dual voltage, but I suspect it drew too much current when first powered. It was a 25 W device. (The laptop, which uses 70 W, had no problems.) The slower-charging 8 W charger might have fared better, but I didn't bother to bring it along.

Thankfully, the Duracell rechargeable AA batteries performed well enough that I didn't have to buy any on the trip, even though I couldn't recharge. For the digital camera, a Canon S3 IS, I started out with two sets of 2650 mAh batteries and a set of 1800 mAh batteries, all fully charged. Each set lasted me through two days plus a bit. All three sets together got me through eight days, 900 pictures, and nearly an hour of video.

I can't say enough good things about the Canon S3 IS. The photos were wonderful. While its critics are right that, at the ISO 800 setting, images in low light are grainy, it's still wonderful to have the option of taking relatively low light photos without the need for a flash. It takes great video, too, although it wasn't always easy to hold it steady, and the audio quality is wonderful. You can see the photos for yourself, and this link will take you to a search for the videos from the TBS tour and their concerts here in Oklahoma.

A cool thing about Flickr is the ability to connect photos to a map. I've done that for most of the TBS tour photos. Zoom in to a particular city, and you'll see photos placed to the street and block.

I won't be able to go because of prior commitments, but this looks like a lot of fun:

The American Heritage Music Festival to be held June 7, 8 & 9 in the Grove Civic Center and Snider’s Campground will feature Hee-Haw stars LuLu Roman and Grove’s own Jana Jae.

There's a kickoff party and barbecue on Thursday, June 7 -- admission free, dinner $5 -- music contests on Friday for fiddle, dobro, banjo, mandolin, clogging, and a special competition for Bob Wills's fiddle music. The fiddle and clogging contests each have a $1,000 first prize, so it should draw some excellent competitors. Saturday night is the big finale concert.

For tickets and more information, visit http://www.grandlakefestivals.com/.

The story above came from the online home of the Grove Observer, a weekly paper. Instead of paying through the nose for a fancy website, they simply set up a blog on Blogger.com and started posting news articles. There are several other small papers in Oklahoma doing the same thing. (I've tried, and given up trying, to convince the Tulsa Beacon to set up a simple blog to post last week's stories and keep an archive.)

A group of 20 motorcyclists from England are blogging about their trip down Route 66. They began in Chicago about a week ago, and today they traveled from Rolla, Mo. to Tulsa. Everyone be on your best behavior, and make our guests feel at home!

Sometime last year, the United Kingdom Department for Transport imposed a ban on laptops and other electronic items in the aircraft cabin on flights originating in the UK. This created the absurd situation that you could carry your laptop or iPod with you in the cabin for the flight from the US to the UK but had to pack them in your checked baggage for the trip back home. At one point you could only carry your travel documents in a transparent pouch -- no handbags, nothing in your pockets.

I was thinking about this again today when I booked a domestic business flight online and found the following alert on my Travelocity itinerary page:

Travel within and from the United Kingdom:

• If you are traveling within the UK, or if you are departing the UK for another international destination, you must check ALL of your belongings. Wallets, IDs, and necessary medications are exceptions; these essential items must be carried in a plastic bag (clear bags are recommended).
• Electronic items are not permitted on board any aircraft. Electronic items include laptops, mobile phones, and iPods.

In trying to find out whether the policy is still in effect, I found plenty of comment (nearly all negative) on the ban when it was enacted, but I had a hard time finding anything indicating whether the ban is still in effect, or if there are any plans for changing the policy.

I did find this airport security page on the UK Department for Transport website, which appears to be authoritative. The rules, regarding carry-ons, electronics, and liquids seem to be only slightly more restrictive than the rules in the US. The only reference to electronics is that large items like laptops have to be removed from carry-on luggage and screened separately. No hint of a ban, and no reference to the lifting of a ban.

So were the restrictions lifted, and if so, when?

UPDATE: Here we go:

Home Office (roughly equivalent to our Justice Department) press release from August 14, 2006:

Passengers are now allowed to carry one item of cabin baggage through the airport security search point.

The dimensions of this item must not exceed a maximum length of 45cm, width of 35cm and depth of 16cm (17.7"×13.7"×6.2" approx) including wheels, handles, side pockets, etc.

Other bags, such as handbags, may be carried within the single item of cabin baggage. All items carried by passengers will be screened by X-ray....

All laptops and large electrical items (eg, large hairdryer) must be removed from the bag and placed in a tray, so that when the cabin baggage is x-ray screened, these items neither obscure nor are obscured by the bag.

And this from September 21, 2006:

Starting this Friday, 22 September, larger bags will again be allowed into airplane cabins, the Department for Transport announced today.

Currently, passengers boarding flights in the UK are limited to one item of carry-on luggage, with dimensions no more than 45cm by 35cm by 16cm. Starting Friday, passengers will still be allowed to carry only one item of luggage into the cabin of the aircraft, but it can be bigger, as limits are being raised to 56cm by 45cm by 25cm (including wheels, handles and side pockets).

It's odd that I can't find any reference to the changes in the press release section of the DfT website.

As I write this -- this is being posted on a delay -- I am sitting in the Albuquerque airport. Not only do they have free wi-fi here, but there is an upstairs lounge (with power outlets!) near gate B1 with views of the airfield and the mountains to the east of town.

This was my first visit to the Duke City (where the minor league baseball team is no longer the Dukes, but the Isotopes). I'm impressed. It was a business trip, so I didn't have a lot of time to explore, but we got out a little bit.

We had pizza at Il Vicino in the Nob Hill district, a lively area of restaurants, little shops, and old motels on Central -- old 66 -- just east of the University of New Mexico campus. The next night we headed north of town to a hacienda-style restaurant called El Pinto. It's on Fourth Street, the pre-1937 alignment of US 66 that passed through Santa Fe and came into Albuquerque from the north. It's in a picturesque setting not far from the Rio Grande. The restaurant, with its various rooms and courtyards, made me think of a more authentic version of Casa Bonita with better food. Even though we were in the most unattractive room in the restaurant and had an inexperienced waiter, I had a great meal of carne adobada (roast pork marinated in red chiles) with fresh guacamole. I substituted calabacitas (summer squash, zucchini, corn, onions, and green chiles) for the pinto beans. (Taco Cabana used to offer calabacitas -- I miss that.)

I saw a little bit of Route 66. Albuquerque's stretch of the Mother Road has one of the better assortments of classic old motels, and the section of Central that passes through downtown is a lively entertainment district. I'd love to come back and explore further some day.

One of the highlights of a July 2004 trip to Texas was an unexpected late-night excursion to a renowned San Antonio coffehouse and restaurant. We had stayed at Sea World until near closing, having spent most of our second day there at the water park. The kids wanted ice cream, and I promised we'd stop somewhere on the way back to the hotel downtown.

Only we didn't find anywhere on the way back to the hotel. No Braum's or Baskin-Robbins, no Village Inn or Denny's, and no frozen custard stand.

Then I remembered a place I'd driven past on a late-night grocery run a couple of days before. Even though it was after 10, it was still open. The place had beautiful mid-century neon, and it sat at a bend in the old highway like a lighthouse on a point.

(Flickr photo by bravophoto.)

So we headed north from downtown and made our way into Earl Abel's Restaurant. The interior was dark and woody. There was the requisite counter, behind which stood the lighted pie case and the kitchen window. It seemed like a bit of late '50s Hollywood had been plopped down in the middle of Texas.

We ordered pie and chocolate cake and ice cream. The ice cream was served in tall metal parfait cups with long spoons. My daughter, then not quite four, exhausted from a day in the sun and water, and a bit chilled by the air conditioning, fell asleep in her mom's arms. My son, then almost eight, had a fun chat with our waiter, who was a middle school science teacher working there while taking summer graduate school classes nearby. He had a special interest in insects.

That was one of our favorite memories from our trip, so I was sad to learn that the place was to be demolished for a condominium. That happened last summer.

But the neon was saved, and a new Earl Abel's is now open on Austin Highway in San Antonio. New ownership, but the same cool decor and the same recipes. Here's a link to a sketch of the new restaurant, and here's a picture of the neon from the side of the old building now mounted on the new site.

(Flickr photo by copazetic.)

I hope they make a go of it.

Here's a flickr search that will turn up a bunch of photos of Earl Abel's, both old and new.

I went to Arlington, Texas, today for what turned out to be two hours' worth of meetings. It was a thirteen-hour trip all told.

Anytime I have to go to the DFW Metroplex, I consider whether it's going to be faster to fly or drive. Sure, it's only a 45 minute flight from TUL to DFW or DAL, but for an accurate comparison, you have to include the drive to the airport, parking at Fine, shuttle to the terminal, early arrival for check-in and security, waiting for baggage, waiting for the rental car shuttle, waiting to pick up the rental car, and then the travel time to the final destination. Then there's the flight schedule -- unlike a personal car, you can't leave on a commercial flight anytime you want.

Today it took me four hours to get from my son's school in south Tulsa to my destination in Arlington. I only arrived an hour before my flight. If I had obeyed the instructions on my boarding pass, I would have been there three hours in advance. The biggest delay was having to go to DFW's remote terminal parking.

It took me four and a half hours to get home, from the time I started out for the airport until the time I pulled into my driveway. Because I didn't know when the meetings would end, I booked a 7:30 flight to give me plenty of time to get to DFW and get through all the pre-flight nonsense. If I had left for Tulsa as soon as my meeting was over, I would have been home an hour earlier than I was.

This was a day trip, so I saved a half-hour each direction by not checking a bag. Originally, I was supposed to be picked up and dropped off, which would have tipped the scales overwhelmingly in favor of flying -- two hours saved not dealing with a rental car.

I haven't even added in the hassle factor of flying, and the pleasure of being able to turn off the Interstate, travel the old road for a few miles, and stop at a small town cafe.

Arlington is one of the few places in the Metroplex where flying is almost always quicker than driving, because of its propinquity to DFW and the lack of a sufficiently direct route from the north. No matter which way you go to Arlington, you have to go through half the Metroplex to get there. It's definitely quicker to drive to Plano than to fly and drive, since its on the side of the Metroplex closest to Tulsa. But it's almost as fast to drive to Ft. Worth, even though it's farther, because it's interstate all the way -- higher speed limits and no need to slow down for Stringtown.

The building where the meeting was has a good view of Six Flags over Texas. I told someone that it was strange to see the place in the grownup context of a business meeting, when I remember going there as a kid 37 years ago. The "skyline" of Six Flags has changed -- lots of roller coasters and drop rides -- but the big orange derrick is still there, albeit without the giant slide that I remember from '69 and '73. (Here's a collection of Six Flags maps from the past, plus a map of Seven Seas, the marine wildlife theme park that was where the Wyndham Hotel is now. We went to Seven Seas on our '73 trip.)

There were cranes in the air -- the new Cowboys stadium is going up, near Collins and Randol Mill Road -- being built by Manhattan Construction. I would love to see some aerial photos of the Six Flags / Arlington Stadium / Ballpark at Arlington area and how it evolved over the last forty-five years, since Six Flags' debut in 1961.

I will stop my rambling there. I'm on 1170 KFAQ tomorrow from 6 to 7 as usual.

My wife's dad's folks are all cotton farmers from west Texas, specifically the area around Stamford, which is just a bit north of Abilene. We drove down and spent fall break there. What follows are some disjointed notes from the trip down and back:

We stopped at the Rock Cafe in Stroud on the way down. It was supposed to be for breakfast, as an incentive for the kids to get up and around early. But then a stray dog, a beautiful and friendly young chocolate labrador, strolled up while I was packing the car. We spent the next couple of hours trying to see if he belonged to anyone in the neighborhood, and called the Humane Society and area vets trying to figure out the best way to get him back to his owner. We finally took him to the animal shelter, figuring the owner would be most likely to look there first. The dog had no collar, no tag, no ID chip. He was not neutered. He was healthy, and although he was thirsty he wasn't hungry, so we figure he can't have come far. We posted a few signs around the neighborhood, and I posted to a couple of Internet pet lost-and-found sites.

But back to the Rock Cafe: We had lunch there. We sat at the counter, and Dawn, the owner, and the inspiration for Sally in the movie Cars, told the kids about the real-life incidents involving the cafe that inspired some of the scenes in the movie. (The DVD is out November 6, by the way!) Everyone enjoyed their lunch. I had the prettiest patty melt I've ever seen -- on marble rye -- with a side of tabouli. Delicious!

Further down the road, we stopped at a Dairy Queen south of Wichita Falls, Texas. You know you're in a small west Texas town when there's a sign on the Dairy Queen that says they'll be open late after home games. Or when the Dairy Queen has the only banquet/meeting room in town.

I liked the way this DQ does kids' meals. They're served in a sack with a coupon for a free DQ treat (Dilly Bar, ice cream sandwich, or ice cream cone). When the kids are done with their real food, they can go back to the counter to pick out their dessert. It's an incentive to finish supper, there's no cheap little toy to deal with, and dessert doesn't melt while they're eating their meal.

Also, the chicken fingers come with cream gravy for dipping.

I had a pepper-pepper burger: It had jalapeno bacon, pepper jack cheese, and chipotle sauce on it. The menu said it was a local favorite.

Favorite high school mascot name spotted on this trip: The Munday Moguls. (Will Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, etc., sue the school to change the nickname to something less derogatory?)

Normally when I travel I have no worries about finding a high-speed Internet connection. If the hotel doesn't have it, there'll be a Panera or a local coffeehouse with a free wi-fi connection, or at least a McDonald's (AT&T DSL subscribers can have unlimited use of Wayport hotspots for a tiny monthly fee). I was working on a project and was going to need to upload some large files while we were in Texas, but none of the usual alternatives were available, and we were staying with family who didn't have a computer, much less broadband. My best option looked like driving an hour each way to Abilene. As we were passing through some small towns on our way south, I noticed several motels advertising free high-speed Internet. I made some phone calls and sure enough, the two motels in Stamford both had free wi-fi for guests, although it wasn't advertised on their signboards. Problem solved. $40 (the price of a room with tax at the Deluxe Inn) is a bit steep for a day of wi-fi but it was the cheapest alternative.

I heard several mentions of wind farms in the works for the area, which sits about 1500' above sea level. Folks I talked to didn't think wind turbines in a river valley at 600' elevation was likely to work very well.

You think water is expensive? One relative, who gets city water out in the country, told us they pay $50 a month for the first thousand gallons of water. In Tulsa, that pays for 5,000 gallons, plus sewer, plus trash pickup, plus stormwater fees. Another relative has installed rainwater tanks with a 20,000 gallon capacity, and they collect "gray water" (drainage from sinks and showers) for use in the yard.

US 277 was once paralleled by the Texas Central Railroad, but sometime during the mid '90s the rails were pulled up and the viaducts demolished. You can still see the track bed, usually elevated several feet above the surrounding terrain, and the supports for bridges. Occasionally you'll see piles of railroad ties or lonely old telephone poles (the kind that look like Orthodox crosses). The old track bed and right of way is being reused to turn 277 into a four lane divided highway, and most of the towns between Wichita Falls and Abilene are to be bypassed.

Oddly, US 277 used to bypass Wichita Falls, but now it runs along the western edge of downtown and then west along Kell Boulevard. In the downtown section, they've cantilevered new expressway lanes above existing streets, minimizing the amount of demolition they had to do. The new lanes aren't open yet, and I would still expect to see a certain amount of decay from being in the shadow of the freeway, but I give them credit for trying to provide the highway without dividing their downtown from the surrounding neighborhoods.

My wife's relatives remember going to a hangar dance at the local airport back in the '40s, featuring Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. More often, though, they'd have house dances -- they'd move the furniture to the walls and roll up the linoleum. A couple of folks would sit in the corner and play fiddle and guitar, and people would dance as best they could in the limited space available. Or they'd go to all-night parties at the Sons of Hermann Lodge in Old Glory -- play games, eat, dance until the wee hours, then roll out their bedrolls and sleep in the hall. (My wife's aunt and uncle preferred to sleep in the camper on their pickup, so the pranksters at these events couldn't get to them.)

Speaking of the Old Glory lodge, next Saturday is the big event of the season -- a sausage supper and dance. Wish we could have been around for that.

Old Glory was originally called Brandenburg, but they changed the name during World War I.

It wasn't until 1961 that my wife's relatives went to mechanized cotton harvesting. Until then, working cotton meant going out and picking it by hand.

Most family get-togethers feature cards or dominoes. Saturday night we played a game of Chicken Foot, a domino game that moves pretty quickly, as about half of your moves are tightly constrained. Each hand begins with a double (in sequence starting with double-nines) and the first eight plays must be off of that initial double, creating eight radial lines from the middle. Subsequent doubles are laid perpendicular to the line of play, and the next three plays have to be off of that double. Double blank counts 50 points if you still have it at the end of the hand.

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a Texas Roadhouse in Wichita Falls. (I would have stopped at a truly local place, but I hadn't done any research ahead of time.) I gave the baby little bites of my sweet potato. He loved the taste, but with every bite he made the funniest face because of the difference in texture from the usual pureed stuff.

We made our usual stop at Elmer Thomas Park in Lawton, home to a huge prairie dog colony. We watched them pop out of their holes. A lady walking her baby in a stroller gave us some crackers to toss at them, and then a couple who brought some old bread out for the prairie dogs shared some with the kids. The couple told us about seeing all the pups in the park back in June. You can get to the park by heading west from I-44 on old US 62, then south on 6th Street.

I also drove us through Medicine Park, an old resort town, founded about 100 years ago, just east of the Wichita Mountains wildlife refuge. It's distinguished by buildings made of cobblestone, which sit along Medicine Creek. My last visit was four or five years ago, and since that time several more businesses have opened and old buildings are being renovated. Improvements have been made to trails and bridges along the creek. We noticed signs of renovation in the Old Plantation Restaurant (once the Outside Inn, then the Grand Hotel). A number of homes advertised bed and breakfast or cabins for rent. On the north edge of town, we noticed some big and expensive looking new "cabins" up in the hills with a commanding view of the Wichita Mountains. The town still might qualify as undiscovered, but just barely, and not for long.

My birthday-mate Jan (we are exactly the same age) has been kind enough to humor my request that she post more of her postcard collection. The recent entries include postcards from the Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas, various attractions in the redwood forests of northern California, and Indian City, U. S. A., in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

(The Eisenhower Center is an exemplar of the architectural style known as MidCentury Hideous. The town of Abilene, by way of contrast, is a beautiful place of tree-lined streets and Victorian architecture.)

(Note: There are plenty of cool and interesting mid-20th-century buildings. These aren't, however.)

This is one of my favorites of her recent postings: The Holiday Inn Topeka West. What's with the little gathering in the parking lot (lower right), and is the lot surfaced with something that dissolves tire treads?

Here are some interesting photo pools and sets I found recently on flickr, all featuring cool old buildings and signage, much of it of the vanishing variety:

First, Tom Baddley's Lost Tulsa, which we've commended to you before. He has a new set devoted to the soon-to-disappear Metro Diner.

Las Vegas History: Old photos and postcards, then-and-now pictures of casinos, motels, and other places which have or will likely soon succumb to the bulldozer.

The Vanished photo pool: That's where I found the photo of the Las Vegas Union Pacific Depot which is shown below.

The Googie, Anyone photo pool, devoted to flamboyant mid-20th-century architecture and signage.

While looking for info about Dinosaur World (a place we visited sometime around 1970, I came across The Arkansas Roadside Travelogue, a website devoted to odd and interesting things the author has found in his travels around the Land of Opportunity. For example:

• Little Rock's Ray Winder Field, for 70 years home to the Arkansas Travelers of the Texas League, (and my all-time favorite minor-league ballpark).
• Monte Ne, once a resort southeast of Rogers founded by radical Progressive William "Coin" Harvey. In its heyday, Venetian gondolas ferried guests across a lagoon from the train station to the lodge.
• Possible explanations for the name Toad Suck Ferry.
• A place near Lepanto in northeastern Arkansas where two rivers cross.
• What really happened when Keith Richards was pulled over in Fordyce, Arkansas.

It's a fun site to explore, in the same vein (although not as thorough or focused) as Kevin Walsh's Forgotten NY.

American Restaurant: Mr. Swiss,
originally uploaded by nickgraywfu.

Found this photo on Flickr next to one of a beef on weck sandwich. We used to have Mr. Swiss here in Tulsa -- there's a former Mr. Swiss building on the south side of 31st Street just west of Mingo. (I think it's a used car dealership now.) Click on the picture to see a bigger version.

If you have trouble finding your way around the tidy Cartesian grid that defines Tulsa's street network, imagine learning your way around an ancient, complex, and chaotic street network, and keeping that map entirely in your head.

From the Transport for London website:

All licensed taxi drivers in the Capital must have an in depth knowledge of the road network and places of interest in London - the 'Knowledge'. For would be All London drivers, this means that they need to have a detailed knowledge of London within a six mile radius of Charing Cross. Suburban drivers need to have a similarly detailed knowledge of their chosen sector.

From a PDF document about the Knowledge of London examination system:

In order to complete the Knowledge you will need to know any place where a taxi passenger might ask to be taken and how to get there. To do this you will need to know all the streets, roads, squares etc. as well as specific places, such as parks and open spaces, housing estates, government offices and departments, financial and commercial centres, diplomatic premises, town halls, registry offices, hospitals, places of worship, sports stadiums and leisure centres, stations, hotels, clubs, theatres, cinemas, museums, art galleries, schools, colleges and universities, societies, associations and institutions, police stations, civil, criminal and coroner�s courts, prisons, and places of interest to tourists. Such places are known as �points�.

How do you organize all this information in your brain? You learn 320 "runs", divided into 20 lists of 16 runs. A run connects two major points, and you learn the route from one end to the other, the reverse route (which may differ because of one-way streets and turn restrictions), all points of interest along the way, and all points of interest with a quarter-mile of each end point.

After an introductory talk, you have six months to learn the first 80 runs, then you go through a self-assessment, just to see if you've got the hang of it. You have another 18 months to learn the remaining 240 runs. Then there are four stages of oral examinations, each of which may involve multiple exams before advancing to the next stage. According to Transport for London:

On average it takes an All London applicant 34 months to learn the Knowledge and pass through the examination process, 26 months for a suburban applicant.

Small wonder that that London cabbie was able to keep his composure when he unexpectedly found himself being interviewed on TV about an Internet intellectual property case. (Hat tip on the cabbie story to The Dawn Patrol.)

Ron at Route 66 News has been covering the proposed rezoning and demolition of the El Vado Motel in Albuquerque, built in 1937. Albuquerque planning staff are recommending against the rezoning and demolition, which is a hopeful sign, but Route 66 aficionados are urged to send comments to Albuquerque's planning commission.

Ron also links to an Albuquerque Journal column from 2003, praising old motels, outlining the history of roadside accommodations, and spotlighting the history of three classic motels in the city.

At least in Albuquerque, it appears that city officials understand that you can't promote Route 66 unless you preserve roadside businesses. People drive old 66 for the chance to see and stop at, maybe even stay at, motels and cafes and service stations from the heyday of the highway. Tear them down in your city, and your city becomes less compelling as a place for 66 fans to spend time.

Here in Tulsa, I am hearing that most of the Vision 2025 Route 66 money may go to a new museum/roadhouse at 12th and Riverside, rather than to promote the preservation of authentic Route 66 landmarks, like the Rose Bowl, or the tourist courts way out on 11th Street, or classic neon signs. As others have already suggested (I believe Mad Okie did, for one), put the city's Route 66 museum in the Rose Bowl.

Some sound advice from Jessica, who is fed up with restaurants that are so successful they no longer care about their customers:

I urge you all to help support those accomodating restaurants that may not have the most accomodating locations. Step outside of the neighborhoods you generally frequent. There are some gems out there that need the financial support way more than these other places. Do your research on Chowhound, like I do on a daily basis. You will be rewarded with a great meal, and probably at a lower cost. Plus, you can be a tourist in your own town.

A lot of Tulsa diners are stuck in the 71st Street rut, but there are plenty of great locally-owned places that can give you a great meal and great service for a reasonable price. Many of them are off the beaten path because they're new and the owners were looking for the least expensive storefront they could find as a place to get started. Keep an eye peeled for them, and givem them a try.

More about our Florida vacation:

After snorkeling in Key Largo, we spent the night in Florida City, at the southern end of Florida's Turnpike. We got around in time to go on a nature walk around the Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park. The ranger who normally gives the tour couldn't make it, but his substitute did a competent job. We spotted a couple of small gators and saw a gator's nest. Joe tried his uncanny baby gator call, but it didn't bring Mama Gator running. We spent some time at the main visitor's center, then on our way back to Florida City we stopped at the famous Robert Is Here fruit stand, which sells exotic fruits both fresh and preserved in every way imaginable (chutney, jam, jelly, preserves, relish, butter, curd, marmalade, salsa). Signs tell you the name of the exotic fruit and try to describe the flavor in terms of more common fruits. (You'll find two of the fruits we saw, sugar apples and dragonfruit, on this WFMU blog entry about tropical fruit.) We bought some fresh pineapple and had them cut it up, then sat down at a picnic table to share it, along with a guanabana milk shake and a key lime tart. We bought a bunch of apple bananas, too, but we were told they weren't quite ripe. (When they were they were wonderfully sweet.)

Fresh pineapple brought back memories of my summer in Manila. One of the things I most looked forward to after the smog and swelter of the city was enjoying a wedge of pineapple that had been chilling in the refrigerator all afternoon.

After grabbing a quick lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon indulging my curiosity about urban redevelopment in Miami, before heading north to the Orlando area. More about that in another entry.

Via The Basement comes a link to a kind of McDonald's fan blog called McChronicles. The writer obviously loves Mickey D's and expresses disappointment when he sees one of their stores fail to be all it can be. His first entry, from January:

I LOVE McDonald's ... and I HATE McDonald's. This blog will chronicle this love:hate relationship. It will include thoughts, experiences, and information regarding how McDonald's created an awesome brand - and how they seem to be systematically destroying it "Billions and Billions" at a time. It also breathes life into the notion that there is hope to resurrect the once-great image of McDonald's.

I too have a love-hate relationship with McD's, tending more toward love these days.

The summer of '84 I worked at the Catoosa McDonald's when it first opened. I remember coming home every day in my crimson polyester uniform, which was impregnated with the odor of grease and onions. Sometimes I worked the cash register, but most of the time I was on the quarter pounder grill. I learned two things that summer: (1) Eat the fries first. They put them in the bag last because they cool off the quickest. (2) A Quarter Pounder is a better value than a Big Mac. A Big Mac has two 1/10th pound patties -- same patties used in regular hamburgers and cheeseburgers -- and a half-inch of lettuce. Besides the meat advantage, the Quarter Pounder's two slices of cheese help glue the thing together, making it less likely to fall apart if you're eating it while driving. (Not that I would recommend such a practice, of course!)

We ate at McDonald's quite a bit during the driving parts of our recent Florida trip. One of the advantages is that we always knew what we would order. The kids always want Happy Meals -- plain cheeseburger for one, chicken nuggets for the other -- with Apple Dippers (peeled apple slices with caramel dipping sauce) instead of fries, and chocolate milk. (The older one will take a soda if he can talk us into it. Sometimes he can.) If we're eating in, the grownups get grilled chicken salads, which are quite good. I tried to be very clear about our order, and to make sure that it was correctly repeated back to me, but every time, no matter whether we ordered at the drive-thru window or in the store, the Happy Meals came with fries, and we always had to ask again for the apples. This streak of spud luck followed us to Perkins, a sit-down family restaurant, when our four-year-old wanted broccoli with her lunch (really!), and they brought her fries instead.

I like the new look of the stores. I call it technogoogie -- a 21st century update of the coffee shop modern look (aka Googie architecture) from the '50s, but without so much orange and brown. (Or avocado or harvest gold!) Most of the remodeled stores have wide screen TVs, usually playing Fox News or CNN, and most of them also have Wayport Wi-Fi. (SBC Yahoo DSL subscribers can access McDonald's Wi-Fi through the FreedomLink service for an extra $2 a month.)

During our trip to Little Rock, while my wife and mother-in-law were at a luncheon at the Governor's Mansion, I kept the kids busy while I worked at a McDonald's on Markham in west Little Rock. I positioned myself outside the door to the play area, where I could see them, but didn't have to listen to the racket. They kept amused with the climbing equipment, the video games (free!), and the air hockey table. Everyone was happy.

I never would have guessed, back in 1984, that I'd ever be able to say this, but McDonald's is my kind of place.

One of the delightful surprises of our recent vacation was the unexpected upgrade of our rental vehicle. We'd booked a minivan, but Dollar was out of them when we arrived at FLL past midnight, so they issued us a blue Dodge Durango SUV. (Yeah, it's got a hemi.)

In exploring the controls, I noticed the magical alphanumeric sequence "MP3" on the CD player. I just happened to have, in the case with CD-Rs of data for work, a couple of CD-Rs with a compilation of '60s music, including the entirety of King Of The Surf Guitar: The Best Of Dick Dale & His Del-Tones, plus several subtropical songs by Santo and Johnny (including a nice cover of "Harbor Lights" and a long version of "Sleepwalk"), and a few Jan and Dean tunes. The kids loved the Dick Dale album, and the four-year-old asked to hear "the surfing music" again and again. She also objected loudly when the Dick Dale music gave way to the opening bars of Gene Pitney's "Town without Pity" -- the next folder in sequence on the CD. (I know, I know. The self-pitying lyrics are ludicrous, and what self-respecting girl could love someone singing such whiny lyrics with such a whiny intonation, but you have to love the saxophone solo, and the song is sufficiently over the top to have some camp value. Plus I can't hear the song without thinking of John Belushi singing it in an SNL sketch about Indira Gandhi losing an election to an Untouchable -- who turned out to be Dan Aykroyd playing Robert Stack playing Eliot Ness. But I digress.)

So the rapid-fire picking of Dick Dale and the sultry slide of Johnny Farina's steel guitar formed most of the soundtrack of our tour of the land of swaying palm trees and crashing waves.

Most of the soundtrack, but not all, as the vehicle had another nice surprise -- Sirius satellite radio, which has an excellent "standards" channel playing music from the Great American Songbook.

(While waiting in line for the Enchanted Tiki Room show at Disney World, listening to what sounded like Martin Denny's "Quiet Village" on the PA system, I realized that we should have had some '60s exotica to fill out our Florida playlist -- that, and some Jackie Gleason Orchestra.)

When we picked up the car, I assured my wife that if we'd rather have the minivan, Dollar would exchange it when one was available. After I discovered the MP3 player and the satellite radio, I told her there was no way we were turning the Durango in, 18 MPG and $2.50 gas notwithstanding.

For the record, the soundtrack for last year's family vacation through Texas was "No!" by They Might Be Giants.

Why is it that, when Dawn Summers writes about traveling somewhere, whether to LA or New Jersey, it reads like one of the lost books of Homer's Odyssey? (Or would, if the Odyssey were laugh-out-loud funny?)

I don't get this.

The Whirled reported today that Sen. Jim Inhofe has introduced a bill that would force Southwest Airlines to move from Love Field in Dallas to DFW Airport.

Knowing how much the Whirled hates Sen. Inhofe, I'm sure this must be some kind of smear. I am sure that Sen. Inhofe is fully supportive of Nevada Sen. John Ensign's efforts to eliminate the anti-competitive Wright Amendment, which sacrificed the interests of the traveling public for the sake of one favored airline and one favored airport. The Wright Amendment, as originally passed by Congress in 1979, singled out Love Field and prohibited direct flights between that airport and airports in states not contiguous with Texas.

Ensign and other sponsors of the American Freedom to Fly Act want to completely repeal the Wright Amendment and allow Love Field to operate like any other airport in the country. Here are some of the idiotic restrictions that the Wright Amendment imposes:

• Restricts flights from Love Field to Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas.
• Flights from Love to Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas cannot fly on to other states, but must return to Love before flying elsewhere.
• You can't buy a through ticket from Love via another city within the Wright Amendment zone to a city beyond the zone -- e.g. Love to Tulsa to Chicago. The airline can't even tell you that such a combination is possible. You have to figure it out and buy the two tickets separately. (I don't know this, but I'll bet the airline isn't even allowed to transfer your bags to an onward flight in this situation.)

The Wright Amendment is a fitting legacy for former House Speaker Jim Wright, famous for being forced from office for ethics violations. (Remember his vanity-press book, Reflections of a Public Man, which was purchased in mass quantities by lobbyists who wanted to help him skirt outside income restrictions?) Republicans swept away much of his dubious legacy when they gained control of the House in 1995, but this is one last bit that deserves to be trashed. I'm hopeful that Oklahoma's pro-freedom, pro-competition congressional delegation will lead the way in eliminating this provision that stinks of favoritism and crony capitalism.

Postcard found in a Nebraska truck stop -- a beige relief map of Nebraska with the caption, "NEBRASKA: No Relief." On the back of the card: "There's a reason it's called a plain state. Road-weary pioneers just gave up and stayed. Their descendants are the counter clerks who sell these cards."

(The card is published by Ersatz Nebraska, 800-300-1050 x04.)

It really does go faster if you load the plane from the back forward.

What Einstein came up with the idea of loading front to back?

Personally, I look forward to the day that they line us up in the terminal on a seat map stenciled on the floor, then march us on in exact order.

In my last day or two at FlightSafety, I was going through my old engineering notebooks and remembering some of the projects I worked on. Occasionally some non-engineering thoughts were recorded on the page.

During a business trip to Montreal in the summer of 2001 I came up with an idea for a website devoted to helping business travelers find hotels with the kinds of amenities I wanted -- amenities that you couldn't usually specify when searching online for a hotel.

I was staying in the Hilton at the entrance to Dorval Airport, spending as little time in the hotel as possible. (Montreal is one of my favorite cities, but the area around the airport looks like the area around the airport anywhere else.) The Hilton is a full-service hotel, with a restaurant, a bar, meeting rooms, a concierge, a gift shop, and a pool.

Like most full-service hotels, every little thing at the Hilton was extra. Local phone calls had a surcharge. Long-distance calls had a surcharge. There were a dozen free TV channels -- and pay-per-view. And there was a refrigerator in the room, but it was a mini-bar -- stocked and checked daily, so I couldn't buy cheap sodas at the supermarket and keep them cold. The bed wasn't even that comfortable. I do not remember if there was a mint on the pillow, but I am sure I did not care. On subsequent trips, I stayed elsewhere.

Full-service hotels were apparently designed for the business traveler with an unscrutinized expense account. FlightSafety has a fixed $25 per diem for meals and incidentals in the U. S. and Canada, so I would find ways to save money, like buying sodas and snacks at a grocery store. A traveler could keep receipts for the whole trip, and get reimbursed for actuals, but it never seemed worth the bother, and I doubt they would have reimbursed me for a soda from the mini-bar.

The hotel rooms that have what I like are usually much less expensive than the full-service type, and the extras are included in the price. Here's what I look for in a hotel room, beyond the basics of comfort, cleanliness, and security:

• Full extended basic cable -- all the channels you'd get if you lived in the town, including C-SPAN. Especially C-SPAN. C-SPAN is an effective noise-blocker and sleep aid. Extra-strength C-SPAN (officially known as C-SPAN2), with the special ingredient Senitcuvraj, is even more effective, and the only side effects are disturbing dreams about Orrin Hatch.
• A free local paper. I'll read USA Today if I must, but I'd rather learn something about the city I'm visiting.
• Free high-speed Internet access in the room, preferably wired access. This is non-negotiable, especially now that I'm a big-time blogger. The most frustrating Internet / hotel experience I ever had was at the Residence Inn in midtown Savannah, Georgia. The phone system was so old, it could only manage a 28.8 kbps connection when it could manage a connection at all. Of course, the Residence Inn charged for each local phone call. To her credit, the manager refunded the fees for the failed connection attempts, but I stayed elsewhere on future visits. The second most frustrating experience was at the Comfort Suites in Wichita. They offered wireless Internet "in every room," but it was done using a single wireless hotspot in the hotel's atrium. When I complained about the flakiness of the connection in my room, I was told that I should have requested a non-corner room if I wanted to use the Internet.
• A fridge and a microwave, so I can have cold sodas handy, keep and reheat leftovers from enormous restaurant meals, and have something that isn't entirely starch and sugar for breakfast. The Hampton Inn in East Aurora, New York, offered a free breakfast each morning, but it was 100% carbs, so I'd eat in my room. I'd slap a pre-cooked ham steak and a slice of swiss cheese on a piece of bread, heat it in the microwave long enough to melt the cheese, then top it with good ol' Buffalo-style horseradish (and plenty of it) and another piece of bread.
• An iron and ironing board. I never use one at home, but at home I can fluff a wrinkled shirt in the dryer.
• Plenty of accessible outlets -- one for the laptop, one for the cellphone recharger. Don't make me move the bed out from the wall to plug something in.
• A clock radio that can actually pick up the local news-talk station inside the hotel. Bonus points if I can move the alarm time forward and backward. Extra bonus points if the radio isn't reset to the chambermaid's favorite station every day.
• A decent place to work -- a desk at the right height, a comfortable chair, a phone nearby, plenty of outlets and an Internet hookup, with a view of the TV.
• Good pillows and plenty of them.

If the hotel is in an interesting, walkable area -- like Savannah's Historic District -- I can do without the TV. In a place like Altus, Oklahoma, it's an absolute necessity.

That really isn't too much to ask, is it? More and more mid-range hotel chains seem to be offering those sorts of amenities as standard features, which means my website idea isn't really needed now. Wingate Inns started offering free high-speed Internet in every room in 1999, along with a fridge, microwave, a cordless phone, ironing board, and full basic cable. Other chains have been slowly catching up. I've noticed that Hampton Inns appear to have standardized over the last year with free high-speed Internet in the rooms, WiFi in the lobby, hot breakfast with scrambled eggs and sausage, and free local calls.

So what are your business travel hotel must-haves and pet peeves? Leave a comment.

I enjoy traveling and seeing new places, but my current trip has been spent mainly in a computer room or in my hotel room, or traveling through the dreary industrial wasteland between the two. As I mentioned, this has been a particularly solitary trip, and dining alone, often a welcome break from constant interaction with others, has been a real drag. "Table for one" gets pretty depressing after a while.

So I want to send special thanks to some people who have been kind enough to invite me out for a meal and some good Christian fellowship.

Sunday morning, after a wonderful time of worship and teaching -- not the kind of traditional service I normally prefer, but nevertheless one that really spoke to my needs -- I caught up with WMCA talk show host and blogger Kevin McCullough and his lovely wife, and they treated me to a delicious Italian brunch and some great conversation (also about faith, family, and politics, as well as radio). I met Kevin during the Republican National Convention, and he has been a great friend to BatesLine, giving this site an honored spot on his list of premium blogs and also advertising here.

Many thanks to the McCulloughs for their friendship.

Found on the table, in a plastic sheet protector:

WELCOME

In ancient times, there was a prayer for the "Stranger within our gates."
Because this Inn is a human institution to serve people, and not solely a money-making organization, we hope God will grant you peace and rest while you are under our roof.

May this room, and Inn be your "second" home.
May those you love be near you in thoughts and dreams.
Even though we may not get to know you, we hope that you will be as comfortable and happy as if you were in your own home.

May the business that brought you our way prosper.
May every call you make and every message you receive add to your joy. When you leave, may your journey be safe.

We are all travelers. From "birth til death" We travel between eternities. May these days be pleasant for you, profitable for society, helpful for those you meet, and a joy to those who know and love you best.

If things go wrong, we want to know. If things go right, we want to know. We are here to show you what Maryland hospitality is all about. Sit back, relax, let your hair down and enjoy.

We hope you stay with us is a pleasant one and that we will be able to serve you again in the future.

The Staff and Management.

Charles of Dustbury lists some of his life's ambitions (them that are printable, or nearly so). One of them is to drive a couple of the diagonal U.S. highways that are still official: US 62 from El Paso, Texas, to Niagara Falls, New York, and US 52 from the Canadian border in North Dakota to Charleston, South Carolina.

Never thought about 52, but US 62 has fascinated me for a long time. It is the only even-numbered U.S highway that stretches from border to border. It isn't coast to coast, but it does begin and end at a water boundary -- the Rio Grande and the Niagara River.

It passes Carlsbad Caverns and near Mammoth Cave. It covers the flat arid lands of the Texas panhandle, the Ozark mountains, and the hills of Ohio. It passes through ten states -- the shortest segment is in Illinois, through the town of Cairo, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

In Oklahoma alone, it passes through diverse terrain -- cotton fields and the Quartz and Wichita Mountains in western Oklahoma, Green Country and the Cookson Hills in eastern Oklahoma. Two state capitals are on 62 -- Oklahoma City and Columbus, Ohio, as are at least two tribal capitals (Tahlequah and Okmulgee). (Anadarko is home to Indian City USA, but is it a tribal capital?)

During my week-and-a-half trip to western New York, I had last Sunday afternoon off to roam a bit. I spotted a marked scenic route on the AAA map about an hour east of Buffalo -- Letchworth State Park, near Perry, New York. After a morning storm, the day was perfect. I headed east on US 20A, past countless dairy farms, over hills and through deep valleys. The terrain reminded me of the Ozarks. The approach into the town of Warsaw is so steep that heavy vehicles are required to exit the main road into an area that looks like a weigh station, but the only thing there is a large sign mapping the road ahead, showing where the steep grades and curves are, and reminding truckers to use low gear and conserve braking capacity.

Warsaw, the seat of Wyoming County, is a pretty little town. I spent some time walking around and admiring the neatly kept craftsman-style and late Victorian homes before grabbing a late lunch at the local Chinese buffet.

If I had known how amazing Letchworth State Park would be I would have headed straight there. The name doesn't do it justice. It really ought to be called "Amazingly Beautiful Gorges and Waterfalls State Park". But the name is a fitting tribute to the man who bought the land about 130 years ago, worked to restore it to native condition, then donated it to the state of New York in the early 20th century.

The park encompasses the gorge of the Genesee River. At places the walls are 500 feet high. The river goes down three waterfalls -- the Middle Falls has a 100 foot drop. Further down river, Wolf Creek drops from the western rim of the gorge through a narrow, twisting gorge of its own, down several stages of waterfalls to the river 200 feet below. Nearby viewing areas give you tantalizing glimpses of part of the Wolf Creek falls, but there is no place to stand to see all of it at once. Down below on the river I noticed some kayakers and rafters who had stopped for a few minutes to rest and look.

At the lower falls, you can take steps down to a viewing area only about 20 feet about the river. There's a footbridge to a walkway on the east bank of the river. The east bank path was treacherous. I had to walk around a three-foot high chunk of ice and snow -- protected from the sun -- and in the process slipped and fell. I thought I was walking on mud, but it was mud and slippery chips of shale on top of a nine-inch thick pad of ice which covered the entire walkway. I recovered and made it safely back to the car, thence to Inspiration Point and views of the middle and upper falls.

As I looked at the upper falls, I started thinking about the gospel chorus based on Revelation 4:11 -- "for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." What an amazing thing that God, who lacks nothing, nevertheless takes great enjoyment in creating and looking upon such beauty.

I drove off into the setting sun, listening and singing along with "Best Loved Hymns", an album by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, with beautiful arrangements that go from quiet a cappella to triumphant brass. A lovely Sabbath break from the grind.

National Review's The Corner linked to the website of an idiosyncratic magazine called "The Believer". Not a religious website, I'm not sure how to characterize it. They have regular features on power tools, motels, and mammals.

The motel section included an article on the Snow Flake Motel in St. Joseph, Michigan, which was designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright by William Wesley Peters, Wright's son-in-law, and built in 1962. The motel is built in the shape of a snow flake and looks like no other motel you've ever seen, inside and out.

My friend Rick Koontz and I ended up spending the night there in the middle of our 1988 "Rust Belt" tour, a week-long swing through the Great Lakes states, taking in five major league baseball games in six days. (One of the motivations was to visit the old ballparks before they were gone forever. Funny to think that the newest one we visited -- Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati -- is gone too.)

After an early departure from a Chicago White Sox game in the original Comiskey Park (we were thrown out for complaining about drunken floozies spilling beer on us), we started out for Detroit. If I recall correctly, we were ready to find a place for the night, saw the sign advertising the motel and decided to stop. It was a bit down-at-the-heels then, but it seems that matters have gotten worse, and the owner, a Mr. Patel (really), despairs of attracting the investment needed for a first-class restoration.

Jet Set Modern has some good photos. So does the website of the motel, which has an aerial photo. If you're flying into Chicago from the northeast, look out the window as you approach Lake Michigan. It's easy to spot.

Someone has graded the world's flags based on their aesthetic qualities. Here is the full alphabetical list of flags and their ratings. Flags get marked down for having the name or any other kind of writing, a map, or representational art, too many stars, "eyewatering" or nauseating color combinations, and lack of originality.

Some sample remarks:

Turkmenistan: Flag actually includes a Persian (sorry, Turkmen) carpet. Only flag to both make eyes water and induce vomiting.

Mozambique: Automatic weapons on a flag are especially bad. Appears to have been designed by a committee all of whom had stupid ideas for pictures of extra things to put on the flag.

(Hat tip to The Corner.)

What do I have against the northwest quadrant of the US?

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

I really hate the drive to Wichita. It is desolate. The Cimarron Turnpike is so seldom traveled that no one has figured out a way to make money by building a gas station or restaurant at the exits. And once you're done with the Cimarron, it's another 20 miles north on I-35 before you get to a place where you can buy a Coke and use the potty. The road gets monotonous. Every road can be monotonous at night, but this road is even boring by day. Once you leave Sand Springs behind, the next settled area visible from the highway is Wichita.

So on the trip up, I took an extra 40 minutes or so to go by way of Ponca City, Newkirk, Arkansas City, and Winfield, up US 77 and Kansas 15. It was worth it. Although I didn't take my usual detour down Grand Boulevard in Ponca City, and I missed getting to Head Country BBQ before it closed, I did enjoy seeing the restored and interesting downtowns of the other three cities.

On the way home, I took a less extensive detour through Tonkawa, stopping at the local convenience store and hangout for a Coke, then joining the Cimarron south of town. I don't think I'd ever been through Tonkawa before. That stretch US 77 is only a couple of miles east of I-35, so it didn't cost me much time, although it nearly cost a raccoon family its life -- they weren't accustomed to seeing traffic.

I'm on my way home from three days in the vicinity of Buffalo, New York. This is my third trip there in as many months.

When I travel, I make a point to learn about local favorites. I could easily eat all my meals at national chains, but I don't make interesting discoveries that way. On my first trip to Savannah, back in 1997, I was looking for a place to eat Sunday lunch. The legendary Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House doesn't serve on Sundays, but there was an ad in the local weekly for a new little place called The Lady and Sons, advertising a Southern buffet. I went, had a wonderful meal, and bought my wife a copy of the restaurant's self-published, spiral-bound cookbook. I met the owner, Paula Deen, who autographed the cookbook for my wife: "Shake those pots and pans!" Today, Paula Deen has her own weekly show on the Food Network and the restaurant has moved to a new location four times the size of the old one. And I got to eat there before it became famous.

On my first trip to the Buffalo area, we had lunch brought in. Hot, thin-sliced, roast beef au jus; big rolls, sort of like kaiser rolls, but with caraway seeds and coarse salt baked into the top; and as a condiment, a dish of horseradish. Not "horsey sauce", but the real deal. As world-famous as Buffalo wings are, I am told that beef on weck is the unofficial sandwich of western New York. (Weck is short for kimmelweck or kummelweck roll.) Every tavern serves it -- I had a particularly good one at the Bar Bill Tavern in East Aurora -- and most local restaurants too.

There's something about the combination of the caraway seeds, salt, and horseradish. And there's nothing like a big bite of horseradish to clear the sinuses. I have to admit that part of the appeal of the sandwich in cold and flu season is its medicinal qualities.

This afternoon I had a late lunch at Danny's Buffalo Cuisine near the airport and ordered a beef on 'weck. I got way too much horseradish in the first bite. I felt the heat spread through my sinuses. My eyes began to water, my ears began to burn, my face flushed, and my nose started to run. The waitress was over in an instant to ask, "Is everything OK?" I thought I detected in her voice a note of genuine concern for my well-being. You could easily mistake my symptoms for the signs of an imminent emotional collapse. I choked out the words, "Everything's fine, thanks." And it was.

I had a free day yesterday and decided to go cross-country skiing. I had enjoyed the sport a couple of times in college, but had never had the opportunity since. Western New York has several ski resorts that take advantage of the hilly terrain and lake-effect snows. I headed to the Holiday Valley resort near Ellicottsville, New York, about an hour and a half south of Buffalo. The drive took me through beautiful country and pretty villages -- places built when people took pride in what they built, places preserved by their successors who could appreciate the value of what they inherited.

The resort's parking lot was packed. It was evident that the resort, probably the largest in the area, was geared for downhill skiing and snowboarding, with cross-country accommodated but not emphasized. When I asked a staffer where I could ski, the staffer had to find someone else to answer the question. I could take a lift to the top of the mountain and ski along the ridge trail, then take a lift back down, or I could go down to the golf course, which serves as a cross-country course during the winter.

I opted to avoid the crowds waiting for the lift and headed to the golf course. I had the place to myself. It was wonderfully quiet, with a light snow falling. I spent about an hour and a half, a good workout, but not so much that I'd be racked with pain the next day.

Why not downhill? I tried it once, at Keystone, about 10 years ago. It took three days to get boots that didn't kill my feet. (I have a high tolerance for pain, so that's saying a lot). It was only on the third day that I finally got all the way through a lesson, and I decided to go ahead and go with my wife up the lift and down an easy slope. I still didn't have the hang of controlling my speed, got moving too fast, so I sat down. One ski didn't pop off and I wound up with a sprained MCL. It might have been better this time, but with only part of a day to spend, I thought I'd better do something with less of a learning curve and lower odds of injury.

I observed today's centenary of controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight by flying, and passing through the world's busiest (and nicest) airport. In an era when air travel is in decline -- ever more inconvenient and uncomfortable -- it was nice that my centennial flights were relatively comfortable and trouble-free. No one in the next seat on both flights, and lots of leg room on the A319. There were the usual annoyances with flying a segment on a commuter airline -- gate-checking the rollaboard, then waiting in the cold for it to be returned, walking 100 yards in the cold from the plane to the gate. I find I have to reorganize my carry-on bags three times -- once to smooth passage through security (laptop out and ready to inspect), once for the commuter jet flight (no valuables or fragile items -- the laptop specifically -- in the gate-checked bag), and once for the big jet flight (stuff I wanted handy under the seat, the rest in the overhead bin).

I flew United for the first time in ages. Service was great. The ticket agent saw that the delay of the first leg of the flight might prevent me making the connection, so he reserved a spot for me on a later backup flight. Boarding was smooth. The A319 had good music on the headsets, or I could watch a Frasier episode. The seats have adjustable headrests.

Funny that both my flights on this centennial day were on foreign-built aircraft -- a Canadair Regional Jet and an Airbus A319, made in French-speaking Canada and in France, respectively.

I refer to O'Hare as the world's best airport. When my wife worked for Sabre, then part of American Airlines, we did a lot of standby travel and spent a lot of time waiting for flights in airports all over the country. O'Hare's tree layout makes it quicker to go from one gate to another. The semi-circular layout used at DFW guarantees a long walk for most passengers. In algorithmic terms, the time to go between any two gates at ORD is O(log n), at DFW it's O(n).

If I had to pick a place to get stuck, I'd pick O'Hare any time. It seems more spacious, less crowded, even when it's busy. Atlanta is crazy, especially near the nodes where the terminals connect with the interterminal train. Getting around DFW is all about dodging the carts, which have to be made available because it is so far between gates. DFW always seems to have spillover into the main corridor -- seldom see that at ORD.

ORD has more amusements. The Chicago Children's Museum has an exhibit and play area in Terminal 2 that is a great place to take the kids to while away hours and burn energy between missed standby flights -- lots of steps to climb, slides to slide on, big vinyl-covered foam blocks to stack (pretend cargo), knobs to turn, and buttons to push. (But they seem to have gotten rid of the cool Sears Tower made of Legos.) In the United terminal (Terminal 1), there is a replica life-size brachiosaurus skeleton.

ORD has made their restrooms the envy of the airport industry. I remember during my student days, flying through ORD, that the restrooms were tiny, crowded, and smelly. Over time they've opened things up, gotten rid of the entrance doors, to make it easier to navigate with luggage, and installed all manner of automatic conveniences. With the exception of shutting the stall door, you could get through a visit to the restroom without touching anything other than your own person, which is a good thing with all the wild viruses that must pass through O'Hare from all corners of the globe. What genius came up with automatic toilet seat covers?

Of course, airport comforts don't have much to do with aviation per se, but isn't it amazing that flying is so reliable and so routine that we can afford to be more worried about whether the seatback fully reclines than whether a part will fall off the plane.

We descended from bright sunshine through a thick layer of clouds, emerging a few thousand feet above the ground as fat snowflakes blew past. In the dim late afternoon, the woods were monochromatic -- black leafless trees, adorned with white snow, not a splash of color to disturb the view. Then suddenly, there's the airport. 100 years after Kill Devil Hill, I thank God for the Wright Brothers and how their invention brought the world closer together. I also thank God for whoever invented ILS and anti-icing systems and made it possible to land a plane safely in a snow storm.

P.S. The Smithsonian, from 1914 to 1942, tried to discredit the Wright Brothers as the first flyers, in favor of the Smithsonian's own Samuel Langley. In 1914, they went so far as to reconstruct Langley's failed machine of October 1903, modify it significantly, and flew the modified aircraft, allowing the Smithsonian to make this claim:

In 1918, Zahm had Langley's Aerodrome restored to its 1903 condition and put on display in the museum with the label: "The first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight. Invented, built, and tested over the Potomac River by Samuel Pierpont Langley in 1903. Successfully flown at Hammondsport, N.Y., June 2, 1914." An audacious claim, to say the least. Indeed, "it was a lie pure and simple," writes Fred Howard in "Wilbur and Orville." "But it bore the imprimatur of the venerable Smithsonian and over the years would find its way into magazines, history books, and encyclopedias, much to the annoyance of those familiar with the facts." The lie lasted 25 years. Angered at the Smithsonian's refusal to retract its statements even in the face of published articles describing Curtiss's modification of the Aerodrome, Orville Wright sent the 1903 Flyer to the Science Museum in London in 1928. In 1942, a new Smithsonian regime finally retracted its Aerodrome claims and privately acknowledged wronging the Wrights.

It's a fascinating story.

UPDATE: In honor of the day, here is the FAA-annotated version of "High Flight".