Travel Animal of the Month: The Pig

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Links:
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• Pig organs are so similar to ours we may have heart transplants from pigs some day.
• Okie-Dokie comes in second at the Iowa State Fair.
  
• Egypt slaughtered up to 400,000 pigs.
• If you're interested, it's safe to eat pork.
• Past Travel Animals: The Walrus and Prairie Dogs.

Favorite Place in the World

Travel talk is a lot like the "Price Is Right Game" Plinko. You drop little chips that bounce on metal pegs unexpectedly left and right (like chatting between funny souvenirs, stolen wallets, great banana pancakes, taxi scams, mountains climbed, dandruff). Eventually on the gameshow, the chip lands in one of the side-by-side buckets that offer prizes ($5000, $1000, $0). For travel talk it usually leads to a single question: "What's your favorite place you've ever been?"

After spending about a couple days of every five traveling since 9/11, more or less, I get asked this a lot. I tend to have two answers:

[smug reply] Travel isn't a contest, brother. Sounds like bongo-circle chatter, but truly travel is less about the destination than how you travel. Seeing Red Square, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and Tikal were remarkable, each, but I had about equal fun driving alone across Nebraska's panhandle and seeing where Crazy Horse died. Or across Bulgaria. Though some are places I'm more likely to return than others (for example, I'll never stop going to Mexico or Vietnam -- the latter's version of "The Price is Right" shown below), I can never say one is the best, or even the favorite.

[real reply] Home. Nothing really beats home after a long trip. When your travel radar and curiosity are still on overdrive, after a trip on the Trans-Siberian or a train ride to Montréal, and you see where you live more closely, with more perspective than before. It's the only time I really stop and chat with strangers, note tiny architectural details atop an early 20th-century apartment building, how waitstaff are dressed (or the fact they give you free coffee refills!), and how we line up for bagels or sit wherever we want in movie theaters.

Home's great in those days before it starts to settle to routine, BUT it takes travel to find it.

Travel Animal of the Month: Prairie Dogs

Links:

• Wikipedia reports on the Prairie Dog
• Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks
• Charles M Russell National Wildlife Preserve has tons to spot, incl two-mile tunnels
• So does Lawton, Oklahoma's Museum of the Great Plains, plus a controversy
• Meanwhile Environmental Chemistry asks if p-dogs are a nuisance
• Everyone wins, however, by using prairie dog coffee mugs

• 
  

--> Revisit June's travel animal of the month, the walrus

11 Things to Do in Tulsa While You're Alive

Us '80s-Tulsans grew up with a huge, decade-long sigh of satisfaction. We didn't have mountains, oceans or particularly good taffy, but we knew what we did have:

a) We weren't Oklahoma City. Meaning, we did have some hills, green grass, trees and (due to all the left-over oil money kicking around) art-house films. OKC may have the Flaming Lips, but we had the Hanson Brothers.
b) We had a pro soccer team -- NASL's glorious Roughnecks -- that won the national championship the year they went bankrupt.
c) We got MTV before anyone else (as test-market city). Even New York City, guy. We know MTV way before Thriller came out. So there.

These days, OKC has improved, soccer's gone and MTV sucks. But there are still some great things to do:



Go to Oral Roberts' Jetsons-meets-Jesus, futuristic-in-a-clearly-retro-way campus. Pose in front of the praying hands statue below the array of international flags. Walk straight to the Prayer Tower (shown above) and take the elevator to the top. You don't have to pray. You don't have to talk about el Bible. No one will bother you. And you can have nice views of the very unusual campus set up by a man who once locked himself in there to raise millions to save his life.
Go see the greatest shirtless statue you've never heard of, the Golden Driller. No, he's not gold -- more of a dry-river-bed brown -- but he stands with his derrick for photo opps. And you can sit on his foot if you like.

Go play the silly frisbee (aka 'disc') golf course on the river walk. The Arkansas River winds through Tulsa -- and as of late actually has some water in it. River-side parks stretch 26 miles. The golf course has been there for 25 years. And it's really not a horrible thing to do.

Go to the Gilcrease Museum and look at cowboy art. Don't like cowboy art? Yes you do. You just haven't seen much. Exaggerated or not, it's our most authentic images of Plains Indians, mean US military attacks and guys roping steers. A window to an 1800s America long lost. And it's a lot more fun than it should be -- and easier to decipher than those rained-on works by the Impressionists over at Philbrook Museum.

Go see the Admiral Drive In. You know from the scene in The Outsiders where Ponyboy (C Thomas Howell) tries to pick up Cherry (Diane Lane), in a time when greasers and socs were united by knife fights and watching sunsets. Author SE Hinton is Tulsan, and sometimes lazy.

Go visit the Greenwood Cultural Center in North Tulsa. It was the one-time location of America's 'Black Wall Street' and the stage of the tragic Tulsa Race Riot in 1921. When I first visited a decade ago I sat and chatted with a survivor in her nineties.

Go to a show, if one's on, at Cain's Ballroom. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys used to control the stage in the glory days centuries past, and it's become the vintage stage to see shows on in this corner of Oklahoma. The Sex Pistols' ironic tour of the south blazed through the stage, and Johnny Rotten apparently hid in the office out of fear.

Go to India Palace. Eat the buffet -- far better than your average Indian buffet -- then walk straight back into the kitchen, purposefully, without asking, and thank the chef personally. My family has done this for years. You will be rewarded with a sizzling 'fire/oil show' on the frying pans. And if you bring a tot back in, that tot will be held by the cooks.

Go up the 'Tulsa hill.' Driving from 61st St & Memorial, head west towards Sheridan, a mile away. The road rises -- a tennis center to the left, apartments to the right. About three-quarters the way to Sheridan you peak atop an unnamed hill -- 'Tulsa Hill' might work -- and can see the whole city scape. When a visiting cousin from (flat) Burleson, Texas, saw it a few years ago, she shot out: 'Wow. That's something. Burleson just looks like a fat guy sat on it.'

Go play Lafortune's three-par course at night. Screw Southern Hills country club, where Tiger Woods comes occasionally and then mocks the city ('boring'). Lafortune's little 18-hole job is the best thing to do in summer. Just don't do what me, Mark and Jay did -- walk on the course for free (or follow Jay's lead by shooting balls intentionally towards traffic on Yale Ave).

Go eat breakfast at Brookside by Day. It's in Brookside, a faintly hip area with biker bars and vintage clothing. Breakfast is as good as it gets.

--> When you leave, and you'll probably want to after a day or so, try to take Route 66 west to Oklahoma City. It's one of the longest stretches of the Mother Road not to be claimed by the interstate system. It saves you the $3.50 toll, you can try buffalo burgers and great cobbler at the Rock Cafe in Stroud, stop in antique stores in Chandler, and see a big round red barn in Arcadia.

47 or so Dumb Things I've Done Traveling

Twenty years ago, I was a quarter way through my first Eurail check-the-country-off-the-list trip across Europe -- London to Rome in 20 days. I don't regret it, but sometimes I think twice about how I spent that July 14 -- the 200th anniversary of Paris' Bastille Day. I was time-killing a day a few hours north in Bruges, leisurely walking by canals, sitting in quaint parks, getting ice cream in waffle cones from heart-melting blondes with long eyelashes and no apparent knee-jerk distaste for Americans, then boarding a train for Amsterdam, shrugging off Paris for future trips.

A regret? Or just plain dumb?*

Here are a few more that just might qualify for my list of things I might have done differently given a second chance:

1. Not accepting the invitation from the Hungarian film crew to camp at a gulag eight hours north of Magadan, Russia.
2. Living a year-and-a-half in London and taking all my trips (on budget airlines) to Germany and Italy, never seeing things like my namesake's birthplace, Scotland.
3. In 1989, skipping Berlin. 'Two cities in one? Big deal.' A few months later the wall came tumbling down like a John Cougar Mellencamp song.**
4. After James Brown died, there was a huge celebration of JB's life outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a 30-minute subway ride away. I watched it on TV.
5. Worn out in Bulgaria, I spent the airline's $200 change fee to fly back one day early. Really?
6. I trusted the 'where you from?' from a grisly guy with a huge fake smile in a Guadalajara bus station. While I answered cheerfully, his pal took a backpack from under my feet behind me. They didn't get much: just my camera, $200 and my passport.
7. Putting my passport in a backpack in Guadalajara.
8. Five years of living in San Francisco = not once going onto the bay. Not Alcatraz, not a ferry to Sausalito, where Chevy Chase lived in the immortal film Foul Play.***



9. On a study trip to Russia in 1992, yelling at the lady tour guide on a night St Petersburg bus tour to 'put the Stones tape in' after my unsuccessful debut with vodka. (I was successful getting the Stones tape in though.) Sorry Natasha!
10. Speaking of St Petersburg, I spent six weeks there. Time spent in the Hermitage? About 45 minutes.
11. In other museum underachievements, after 11 years or so living in New York City, total time in the Met? About 80 minutes.
12. Never going to Laos.
13. Or Cuba.
14. After driving purposely way out of my way to see Manitoba, spending only four wakeful hours in Winnipeg. (Though managing to see Louis Riel's grave -- and eat some bad Italian food.)
15. Not getting a photo with the Detroit Red Wings staying in the same hotel in Pittsburgh (while competing for the Stanley Cup) in June 2009.
16. Not spending longer than 10 minutes at a sprawling gypsy horse fair outside Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania.
17. Spending a week in Punjab, India, and visited the Sikh's Golden Palace in Armitsar -- a short bus ride from Lahore, but never even considering going crossing into Pakistan. May not have that chance again.
18. Not going up the CN Tower in Toronto because it IS too expensive (from C$22). (See it apparently get hit by a rebuking lightning a couple times, following.)

19. Eating one too many street barbecue beef skewers on a stick in Yangon, and spending two days vomiting.
20. Turning down the offer to stay a night on a floating house outside Chau Doc, Vietnam.
21. Driving into a thunderstorm during a tornado warning because I really didn't want to wait another day for my first glimpse of Nebraska. Had plenty of time to mull that one over, parked under a dentist's car park down-wind, while watching half the town pouring into a Wal Mart to huddle in sales sections away from windows.
22. Letting the film development shop in Tulsa throw away my photos from a trip to Rome after I complained (rightfully) that they didn't do a good job.
23. Turning down an invitation to hang with Civil War re-enactors camping by a basketball court at a forgotten battle event in southeastern Iowa. (See photo at top of post of completely different re-enactment.)
24. Skipping Mesa Verde during a five-day trip to Durango, Colorado.
25. Going whale-watching on an August trip to touristy Bar Harbor, Maine. Didn't see a minnow.
26. Going to Bar Harbor, Maine -- at least in August.
27. Obeying my parents who wouldn't let me, at age 16, to drive on a school night nine hours to Memphis with a free backstage pass for a REM show. (On the Fables tour!)
28. Not traveling more in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1992, especially.
29. Only driving through Albuquerque. (At least AC/DC's 'TNT' was on the radio.)
30. Summer 1991: Too much time in Vienna, not enough time in Czechoslovakia.
31. Having laundry done in places like Khabarovsk, Russia, where dry-cleaning-prices-plus cost more than buying new clothes.
32. Driving across Western Kansas and skipping Mt Sunflower. Children, don't do what I've done!


33. Russia 1991 study trip: throwing vegetables at trams from our hotel window, tossing penny soccer games out of skyscrapers. Mostly it was Pete the minor league baseball player's fault.
34. Not keeping much of a journal while living 18 months in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in the mid '90s.
35. Not spending the night, or more time, much much more time, in Kavarna, Bulgaria - the heavy metal capital of the world.
36. Another Bulgaria burp (there are many): Not climbing through the smashed ground-level windows of this building to see the towering commie mosaics inside:

Admittedly the place, with its front steps smeared in a LOT of cow dung, freaked me out.

37. Not going to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, when I had a chance in 1991, a few months before the war broke out.
38. Never going to Spain or Ireland, particularly when they were cheap.
39. After my trip, only once calling the lovely Grewals, the Sikh family who hosted a week-long stay in Chandigargh, India in 1997. Then losing their contact info.
40. Leaving my passport in my $8 room in Valladolid, Mexico, having to get off the bus on the highway, hitch-hike back to retrieve it.
41. Losing my photograph with Chris Jagger -- brother of Mick -- who wore a Tibetan hat after a regrettably bad cajun gig. (Watching live cajun/zydeco music by unfamous British brothers of famous British rock stars is another huge regret of mine. I can't seem to help myself.)
42. Losing my photographs of a great great day riding on the back of a local's bike and getting an airbrushed sign made in Batambang, Cambodia.
43. Staying with a Mexico City family in 1990, I bought some fake feces at Chapultepec and played a trick on kids way too young for the humor (maybe two years old?). Lesson: Save the fake feces for pranks back home.
44. A few hours to spare in touristy Deadwood, South Dakota with my dad, talked about dressing up as 19th-century gold prospectors for a hokey photo, but not doing it. This is easily outweighed by having my only just-dad-and-me trip and hearing his unguarded 'oh!' at first glimpse of Mt Rushmore, less than a year before he died. But I do have a photo with him at the taco truck outside Lonely Planet's Oakland offices:

45. On a two-date 'Indiana tour' (both in Greencastle) while playing guitar for the 'parted hair hardcore' band Tall Tales in college, we couldn't convince Mitch to call in sick and stop in at Six Flags Mid America in St Louis. Big-time regret, here.
46. Wetting my pants at my debut visit of Tulsa's legendary Woodland Hills Mall. Not sure if it was excitement or just plain nerves. Either way, my baseball uniform? Soaked from the waist down.
47. Not sending more post cards.

--> Feel free to share your dumb moments here, or at a new Lonely Planet 'Dumb Travel Moments' group I just started up.

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* Actually I think skipping a huge event like that isn't always a bad idea. Missing a walled-up Berlin is another matter.
** Please make the time to rewatch the John Cougar Mellencamp video to help me answer two key questions: At 2:32 mark is that really him sliding down tall ladder? And, at 2:48 mark, is that Mellencamper doing the moonwalk?
*** Anyone remember when Chevy Chase was funny? Vacation is to blame for the decline. It's good, but didn't play to his strengths. In Vacation, Chevy was clumsy and dumb. He's at his best, particularly in Fletch, when he's clumsy and smart. Probably his agent's fault.