Befuddled in the USA: Part II

Buffalo NY

First, the basics:

Miles driven: I stopped counting at 1500 and am now obligated to plant 187 trees

Bagels eaten: 11, most with cream cheese

Bags of chips consumed while driving: 4

Number of times my 4-year-old has watched The Swan Princess: 4

Number of states visited: 7, including District of Columbia

National historic sites visited: 2

Episodes of a show called Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel watched with my nieces: 5

"Mayberry on Acid"

Fairfax California is a small town of 7,500 nestled in the hills of Marin County a short drive north of San Francisco and a few miles inland from the state's lethal injection chamber at San Quentin. If you have a good deal of money and want to live in a thriving bastion of the counter-culture, Fairfax is for you. Where other towns boast a full collection of Burger Kings and yellow arches, Fairfax is rich in yoga workshops, a health food store bigger than the local grocery, and a veterinarian that offers message therapy for animals. A bumper sticker in a local store window reads, "Fairfax: Mayberry on Acid".

"For English have your dog bark twice."

An obituary: Sometime in the early years of the 21st century, the once-beloved pay telephone met its final demise. Replaced by the common ownership of cellular telephones by every U.S. resident over the age of 10, coin operated phones were taken out of service completely in 2011.

Okay, well it seemed this way on the streets of San Francisco when I needed to reach a live body at a big company. For miles I found only a few phones and these were in various state's of creative disrepair (What do you suppose someone did with that receiver cut from its silver cable?). On a noisy corner near Golden Gate Park I found one that worked and I began a 15-minute quest to connect to that rarity of the modern age, a live operator. I tensely navigated my way through the voice-controlled system on the other end of the line, dodging past a dozen computer-generated, "Sorry, I didn’t hear you, can you repeat that?"

Just as I neared the end, live operator just moments away, a small dog walked by me, igniting a storm of loud barking from a sleeping dog in the bed of a parked pick-up truck. The computer on the line eagerly recognized the barking better than my human voice and I ended up back deep in computer oblivion. I gave up.

Side effects may include painful death

I remain fascinated by U.S. television, most especially the many ads for medication. 'Back in the day' doctors or other medical professionals dispensed medical advice. Now you can get it in soft and friendly tones on television ads. Some clever politician or regulator decided to mess with the pharmaceuticals' marketing however, and at their end these ads have to list out all the potential side effects. In the same soft voice that pitched a sleeping aid, a woman announcer explained, "Side effects may include disease…" My favorite was a Viagra ad, "Consult your doctor if you have an erection that lasts more than four hours…" I would rather not imagine those panicked phone calls to doctors at 2am.

MapQuest vs. the Sheriff

To make my long journey from Washington to the outer banks or North Carolina I did the technologically modern thing suggested by relatives, I quipped myself with hi-tech directions from MapQuest. They worked out just fine until, in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, I was befuddled by the non-existence of route 158 West, despite MapQuest's assurance that it existed. I found a local Sheriff buying a cup of coffee in a 7/11. "I bet you're using Map Quest," he told me. "I wish I had a dollar for every lost driver who gets stuck looking for 158 west courtesy of Map Quest." Thank you Andy Griffith.

The Popularity of Water Fowl

In San Francisco we went for a walk through the Castro, the city's gay district. I estimate that 3 of all 10 gay men on the street are walking a dog, most small. My daughter Mariana loved this and demanded to pet all of them. Our favorite was a black poodle named Goose. Many times since my daughter has reminded me, "And Dada, we met a dog named 'Goose', right?" In North Carolina we passed through town named Duck.

General Lee might have won the Civil War

Yesterday we visited the battlefield at Gettysburg on our long trek north to Buffalo. Here is where more than 40,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives in a battle that lasted three days across 20,000 acres of Pennsylvania farmland, and marked the real end of the confederacy's military hopes. Afterwards we sat in a nearby Subway eating sandwiches when two Boy Scout leaders came in to arrange an order for three dozen box lunches, which the owners of the shop promised that would deliver to any location on the battlefield, to be coordinated by cell phone. According to history, one of the reasons for General Robert E. Lee's retreat at Gettysburg was his army's dwindling food supplies. If Subway had been in business during those historic days in July 1863, the course of the nation might have ended up vastly different.

Gumby Across America

I am a man of small amusements and one of my adult nieces who knows me well gave me a meaningful gift during our visit to California – Gumby. The cartoon figure who was "once a little green slab of clay" is a classic. So across the U.S. I have begun compiling a collection of Gumby portraits, which I will eventually post in full on our Web site. Enjoy the preview above, which I call, "Gumby Amidst Ketchup."

Enjoy!