Tag: driving

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Secret Place, Idaho

A friend mentioned this place in a quick exchange as I was being eaten by mosquitos in the one spot with wifi in the whole of Priest Lake. When the mood turned sour in our immediate surroundings, Christine and I decided to head out here to spend the day somewhere totally unplanned, to catch our breath and reset; we were not disappointed. “It’s so unexpectedly nice,” I said to my friend, after asking her to guess where we are. “Exactly,” she replied and mentioned pickles. They have really good pickles here. Then she said: “Keep it a secret place…” No worries … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Secret Place, Idaho” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—E. Washington Roadscapes

x “I went in search of astral America, not social and cultural America, but the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. I looked for it in the speed of the screenplay, in the indifferent reflex of television, in the film of days and nights projected across an empty space, in the marvelously affectless succession of signs, images, faces, and ritual acts on the road; looked for what was nearest to the nuclear and enucleated universe, a universe which … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—E. Washington Roadscapes” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Palouse Falls, June 28

Getting here was incredibly rough on our poor little hybrid sedan; the road into the park is grooved like sawtooth, which is great for winter visits, I guess, but absolutely bone rattling for city slickers in a ten-year-old car like ours. I genuinely expected parts to start falling off the chassis like some Hannah-Barbara cartoon. But we made it and were greeted by the most incredible lunch spot and view. Palouse is the official state waterfall and is significant to me mostly for what isn’t here; I love that Wikipedia even includes a whole section about it: “In 1984, the … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Palouse Falls, June 28” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Sunland, June 28

Someone asked me some time ago why my username points to the Columbia River—why not the coordinates of Seattle itself? I said something about my fascination with dislocation & slippery identities; it’s that “catch me if you can” kinda vibe that’s very “on brand.” And all of that is true; I do indeed prefer to be pinned down &/or mapped out with at least some effort—quite literally miss me with that noise, as the kids might say. But there’s another dimension to my choice of this particularly off-centered coordinate. Before I ever read a thing about Nch’i-Wàna, a.k.a. the Columbia, itself, … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Sunland, June 28” →

by jad

Under the Hood

One of the more delightful aspects of setting up this blog has been forcing myself to tinker with HTML like I used to as a child of the early web. This was before the internet became much too complicated and way too simple all at once; when there was just enough innovation for my “computer user” magazines to keep me interested, but not too many over-friendly widgets and doodads that blackbox’d all hope for caring about the inner workings of things. This world would rapidly disappear (for me) with the advent of Blogger, Tumblr and eventually, Facebook, when it became … Continue reading “Under the Hood” →