Tag Archives: travel

Name Calling In Soda Culture

I have come to understand where I am changes what I get when I ask for something from a “native.” I have lived most of my life in Michigan, apart from a brief stint in the Navy where I spent a half year north of Chicago and a year in California. So I was under the (mistaken) understanding that everyone did things the right way (that is, the way WE did things). HAHAHAHA!, What a foolish idea.

Take tho process of ordering a beverage with your meal. Here we drink pop, defined as a sweetened, bubbly drink usually served over ice. Different flavors exist and each restaurant usually only serves options from one of the major brand suppliers. So if you chose a cola, root beer, lemon-lime, orange, or a citrus flavored beverage at one establishment you get a Pepsi, Mug, 7-Up, Crush, or Mountain Dew. At the eatery next door your beverage is a Coke, Barqs, Sprite, Fanta, or Mellow Yellow. Purchase a ginger ale beverage and you get a Vernors. Iced tea comes straight up (although you can have a sliver of lemon added if you ask) and unsweetened (the way nature intended). Simple and straight forward.

Except for most of the other 49 states and hundreds of other countries on the globe. Ask for a pop some places gets you a bloody nose or the senior male member of the family. A soda comes without ice cream (my first real job was as a soda-jerk in a soft serve ice cream stand… and I was the only employee other than the owner that could make a proper soda, according to a number of loyal customers) and results in one of the (again, brand specific) beverages listed above. To make things even more confusing I have been in places where asking for a coke evokes the question “what flavor?” (and they don’t mean plain or cherry). Apparently in Canada and the southern US diabetics order iced tea at their peril (my first adult trip to Toronto involved a shocking slurp of tea-flavored sugar syrup from a fast food establishment… most of which ended up on the windshield).

The year in California was one spent in a wasteland without Lay’s potato chips, Kogel’s hot dogs, or Miracle Whip salad dressing (this was in 1976, things have changed since then, but the trauma remains). I have never been inside of a Waffle House, being forced to take starch-based breakfast food at the International House of Pancakes instead.

So many names for the same products (or maybe a variety of products with the same name… confusion reigns in either case). There is indeed a strong sense of culture shock when you move beyond the hundred-acre woods for the first time.  Usually there is enough information exchanged eventually to place an acceptable order. Using the worst-case scenario, pointing at the menu and asking for “one of these” will allow for an unexpected adventure not (necessarily) soon to be forgotten (a favorite ploy at establishments offering world cuisine not commonly found in rural mid-Michigan). I keep Maalox in the glovebox just in case…

So when I travel (not all that often, nor all that far anymore, I must sadly confess) I have learned to accept (if not embrace) the challenge of dealing with nomenclature regarding the local “pop” culture. To make life easier, I eventually just end up with a glass of ice water with my meal, and a cup of coffee with desert (I like pie). But I am reasonably sure of one thing.

Ordering a caffeine-laced-carbonated-soda-beverage in most places results in a blank stare.

Phred

post 38 of n

There’s No Place Like Roam

I finally made it home after an extended pair of trips.  A five-hundred-fifty mile journey to and from Indianapolis followed by a two hundred mile trek to see my granddaughter (and to provide taxi service to her parents while a car was in the shop). Basically this travel ate up the last half-month (save for a 45 minute gap in the middle to swap dirty clothes between the segments) and my body has been hallucinating about the joy of using my own furniture (I know my bed’s lumpy, but the lumps are in all the right places).

Finally the two hour drive home ends as I turn into the driveway at my apartment complex. My usual parking place is occupied (just as I had expected) so I parked in the closest overflow space. This necessitates about double the walking distance from my car to the door, but since I had taken my wheelchair on my trips (useful as a walker as well as a safe place to plop…and know I can get up again without calling for three spotters and a hoist) so the walk was manageable. I did notice a rather larger sheet of ice covering parts of the drive and walkways than usual, but since the air temperature was  10° F (-12° C) I presumed all was normal. HA!

Once I got in the door, there were two notices facing out to warn people about to depart into the world: that the drive and sidewalks might be slippery (a common notice that is hung at the first snowfall and remains till spring), and that because of the ongoing water problems they were flushing a well pump and to avoid walking across the ice sheets. THAT might have been nice to know about 10 minutes earlier as I began to navigate the antarctic ice cap that was our parking lot. But, no matter, my body reminded me that we were inside and only 30 feet from paradise and another room away from that glorious bed (rather than the hammock shaped torture device in Indiana or the sloping shelf of the kid’s broken futon frame which results in sleeping at the bottom of the letter “V”). Oh the blissful thought…

Put the key in the lock and find there are two notices on the shelf by my door. One is the monthly calendar for March events (also expected). The other points out that since one of the complexes well pumps failed (?) there was going to be the need to take at least two (2) water samples before we could be certified with safe water and that [the residents] needed to collect water before the testing began, and that the end of the “boil water” advisory would be posted in a couple of places. Oh, and they were going to have to flush the well and piping so there would be a great deal more ice outdoors than normal, so be careful. Great. I wonder if it took effect and when it would end. It’s just after nine in the evening but I didn’t see any lights on at my neighbor’s apartment. I let myself in and in the middle of the floor of the kitchen is a sealed gallon jug of spring water from the grocery store next door. Apparently someone thought I should have something to drink when I (eventually) got home. Nice to be remembered during challenging times.

I can hear water running. Still expected as I left all faucets running before I left to help keep the pipes from freezing. The water lines and heating pipes (we have hot water baseboard heating) run through the space above the apartments. Last winter a pipe in the next unit over broke about midnight. Before it was shut off, the hallway had a lake 3 inches deep and about 15 feet long starting just outside and to the left of my apartment door (my neighbor couldn’t get out without walking through the lake, and part of the flood was running down the wall of her kitchen). So the running water sound and corresponding rust stains where the iron-rich water splashed continuously the last three weeks was a “pleasant” reminder of home.

When I turned on the lights and looked closer, in addition to the rust a ring of grey silt had dried on the bottom sink surfaces. It looked like someone had entered my apartment and opened the faucets to flush the nasty water from the pipes. Or most of it, as they didn’t think (or care?) to rinse the sand/silt down the drain before resetting the flow to drip-mode. In any case, the sinks and bathtub look down right nasty (no long hot shower to unlax from the trip tonight, I’m afraid). When I flushed the toilet, I couldn’t see through the grey water that filled the bowl. I guess a couple (dozen?) more flushes might be needed before clean water appears again, but who knows?

Not I, said the cat… (quaint reference to a children’s story where the template ends with “then I will do it myself…and she did.”) I took a ride down to the office to see if more details could be found (and collect my mail). None found, met no one along the way there or back so the mystery must remain until morning.

Then there’s the problem with the computer (did not power up when  turned on, just made pathetic beeping sounds until completely disconnected  and reconnected the thing). And the internet would not work until router and modem recycled. And I discovered I failed to put away a can of refrigerator biscuits so they exploded from the tube. And then subsequently dried to a rock-hard mass needing a knife-chisel to dislodge and dispose of. And I had neglected to recharge the Steven-Hawkings-mobile (my electric cart’s name) after the south journey so my ride to the office was in danger of dead-battery syndrome and a lengthy push (it made it back, but I suspect it would have died had the trip been a third longer).

But I’m home, and I’m happy. And in about another 10 minutes, I’m going to reward my body with just what it’s been craving for the last couple of weeks…

I just need to take these ruby slippers off first.

Phred

post 20 of n

Sleep Deprevation For DUMMIES

I am currently on a road trip to the sub-tropical area of the mid-west known as Indianapolis, Indiana (temperatures when we left mid-Michigan was -11F and it was 18F when we arrived, a tropical heatwave by comparison). My traveling companion and I spent the day in conversation with several to many people, and eventually departed company to go to our assigned places of repose for the evening. After reading for about a half hour (a typical evening experience for me, to wind down from the day’s activities) I turned out the light about 10:45 in the evening and looked to enjoy a restful slumber.

HA! The best estimate I could come up with was a total of about 3 and a half hours of actual sleep by the time the alarm went off at 8:00 the next morning. The bulk of the night was spent lying motionless and listening to the sound of my sleep program. Rain, distant thunder, wind chimes, and camp fires crackling are all soothing sounds eminating from my i-Pad. As I use this every night, it was as much of my normal night routine as brushing my teeth and wearing my CPAP machine for my sleep apnea. Then why the disruption in my nightly experience.

I have noticed over the last 40 years that travel and sleeping in locations other than my normal bed would yield inconsistant results. Some nights would be the equivelant of being at home while others were extensive periods of torture, ending only when I could again place body upon the lumpy mattress at home (it may be lumpy, but the lumps are in the right places). Further contemplation revealed some times of torment could be reduced or eliminated by flipping end-for-end on the bed, putting my feet against the headboard and my head at the foot. Restorative sleep would result. Other locales resisted any satisfaction in any alignment.

Eventually I have determined I appear to be sensitive to the actual compass direction I am lying while attempting to sleep. If my bed at home is such that my head points to the West, then while traveling my best nights of sleep occur when my lodgings also have a bed running East and West. I am not sure if it has to do with magnetic lines of force or the rotational movement of the Earth, or some yet undiscovered organic GPS system locked deep within my brain, but this sensation of sleep vs. failure to launch has occurred more times than not.Even when moving to a new location would require abut a month to reset the compass direction before I would be able to sleep soundly at a new house.

Indeed, if this is the culprit, I fear my trip will be characterized by another three nights of restlessness and wistful awaiting the dawn. My current appartment is located in such a way that the walls do not align with the cardinal compass points, but are nearly 30 degrees out of line. Looking out the window of my living room allows me to see WSW (West by South West). To actually look to the west, I must lean over and look to the extreme right from my chair, allowing me to glimpse the sun setting.  Short of creating havoc by massive furnature repositioning, this bed will never align with home. Sleep deprevation awaits.

Then again, having five times the usual coffee consumption (and regular rather than decaf) may have played a minor part in thes struggle…

Phred

post 14 of n