I spent the day booking hotels, and now I get to sit here for the next 4 days crackling with excitement for all the travel I am about to do.
I had a grand time visiting NYC for the first time.
I very nearly was able to meet Tim Rogers but missed him by a day, which is honestly making me quite sad.
I did however get a Pikmin hat at the Nintendo store and was told on the subway ride home that the hat was sick. So that’s good!
Also, I watched 3 movies on the flight home, 2 of them which were set in NYC (counting the Mario movie). I get it now!
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My mom is going to new york to visit a relative in a couple of weeks and that hat is making me consider asking her to get out of her way to the nintendo store and get me one lol
Just so everyone can see why I have so many questions about the midwest. My threshold for “stayed here” is I have to have slept over at a friend or family‘s house for more than 3 days, to actually “be” in the place. otherwise it’s a visit. I am however cheekily counting visiting the 4 corners at age 11 as “passing through” Utah and Colorado. Also I didn't use “Stopped” because that feels silly? like I stopped in some airports… I counted that as passing through.
I've spent a lot more time working on this map. My threshold for stayed in this context is I was there for a consecutive week, or thereabouts.
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I've been to germany a bunch of times but never for longer than a few days, so I'm not counting it as stayed. Also because I've never had a good time, take that Germany!!!!!!!!!!!!
@"diogo"#p117336 very curious what you mean by this!
@“saddleblasters”#p90508 I was surprised seeing this pop up in my notifications just now (Brandon liked it), because (1) I forgot I wrote it, and (2) I was sitting in a C-Store eating an egg sandwich when I saw the notification. I guess now that I've been in China for nearly a year, I have some more to say about this:
C-Store is definitely my favorite of the convenience store chains in Shanghai. The other three major ones (FamilyMart, Lawson and 7-Eleven) are all Japanese, then there's a few smaller ones like AllDays (好得) and Buddies (良友). All of these feel pretty much the same to me, except for Buddies, whose stores are all older, sell baskets of eggs, don't have as many refrigerators, but have big shelves lining the back of the stores with unrefrigerated beverages I've never seen sold anywhere else, so it holds a special place in my heart, despite not being my favorite. C-Stores on the other hand have a very distinctive interior, with what looks to be some kind of Italian ruins wallpaper, and big ornate painted-black metal fences separating off the eating areas the stores have. It also has the best egg sandwich, which is in stock at every store I've been to. Instead of the usual egg salad thing most other convenience stores have (which are often sold out), it's a "three kinds of egg" sandwich (I'll let you imagine what the three kinds are -- but I'll at the very least assure you none of them are egg salad).
The reason I didn't remember seeing any in Beijing is that there aren't very many to begin with, especially not in 2018. In Beijing 7-Eleven is a lot more common. (This has actually come up naturally in conversation without me having to ask people.)
Anyway, that's it for my C-Store update. Maybe I'll have another a year from now. It was surprising suddenly being reminded of my first encounter (11 months ago) with this store chain that has become such a regular feature of my life.
@“exodus”#p133522 being european I sure wasn‘t used to huge, wide crossings which combined with both the slowest & fastest red lights i’d ever seen in my entire life made for a very distressing experience. also trying to walk my way to the closest in-n-out was an experience. . .
I do miss having widely available pots of awful coffee everywhere I go though
@“diogo”#p133556 ahhh the wide streets! I see. and maybe also that cars go in the gaps between people? I am surprised there were any fast red lights in SF, unless it was real late at night?
@“exodus”#p133558 maybe they weren't that fast but they started blinking not even midway through so I assumed it was turning off soon lmao. still!
I like this chart, I still have mine from when I did it a long time ago.
I‘m personally not into domestic flights (never had to for work heh) so all of this is by bus or car or train. Never paid for hotels, I’d do warmshowers.org or whatever. On the east coast I would take the Chinatown Bus a lot.
(I was in my mommy's tummy in oregon so that definitely counts but I made it purple anyway)
Does making a point to stop at South of the Border every time I drove down the I-95 in South Carolina count as stopping or visiting? On the one hand it‘s a rest area, but on the other hand it’s a cultural experience of its own.
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@“treefroggy”#p133570 Chinatown Bus
The Chinatown bus ruled!
@“Tradegood”#p133575 that south of the border had a Tekken 2 Arcade cabinet in amazing condition as of 2012 and I'd suspect it still does.
Just spent 2 weeks traveling through Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) and as an American, it‘s worth visiting just to see the welfare state in top form (still capitalism, but it makes us look real bad); also the love of pastries and coffee is something I think most people here could relate to (the food overall was pretty good, they take their potatoes seriously). The fjords in Norway are on another level, definitely on Rocky Mountain National Park level of “how am I going to climb that?” - if you’re an outdoorsy person, you owe it to yourself to hike em. Also biking all over Copenhagen was amazing - it‘s a crime we don’t have that culture here in NYC.
@"Tradegood"#p133575
South of the Border was great for driving home that as a kid my New England education had not poisoned me against the south unjustly, it was really that bad (hater mode disengage)
I'm in Dallas. Hello!
Time to road trip for the holidays!
I'm in Cleveland!
@“DaveedNoo”#p146288 can you confirm, does cleveland rocks?
https://youtu.be/oKDjis1fg8E?si=wYGxBCFMYX-BOb2r
@“Tradegood”#p146303 yes
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Its a bit rainy tho
I went to Jinan for new year‘s, since that’s where my girlfriend's family lives. Her little cousin wanted to go to a convention there for Genshin Impact/Honkai Impact, so my girlfriend decided the three of us could go together. I figured this could be my chance to learn something about Genshin impact, but of course I learned nothing.
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原神！启动！(Genshin! Activate!)
The convention was on the 8th and 24th floor of a hotel and wasn't all that big. My girlfriend's cousin cosplayed as this cat and got an award for outstanding cosplay.
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It was interesting seeing people literally line up to take their picture with her. I kept asking her to explain the characters to me, but she was shy and didn't really tell me anything.
The next day we went to Zhongshan park, which has a used book market and I bought these tapes:
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I can hardly think of anything more American than the trip I just got back from -- I grew up extremely poor & have worked as a full-time creative person (i.e. gig to gig) for my entire adult life, so the first time I've ever used my passport to travel out of the US has been right across the border to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, to get serious dental work done for about 75% less of what it would cost in Texas. I flew 1.5 hours from Dallas (cheaper than driving if you book far enough ahead) to Harlingen, TX (a pretty nice town), rented a car, parked at the international bridge, and walked across the Rio Grande to Mexico
Nuevo Progreso knows what it is, so it's about a million dentists and pharmacies packed all together with dudes out front trying to get you to buy some spur-of-the-moment surgeries and prescription drugs. I'm 6'4" and even if ruddy skinned, still white, so there's just about no hiding that I'm a tourist. I got the two dental implants I came for -- the experience of that is so wildly different from America; I _emailed_ the dentist's office months ago after checking reviews and they emailed me back, answered every question I had, told me prices up-front, communicated as though modern communication exists while my American dentist couldn't tell me anything about the single crown they told me I needed, how much it costs, or really anything whatsoever without making me come in and charging me money for the x-rays they already had, if I could even get them on the phone. So I got an $8 feast and got that work done, which seemed to go pretty well except for when they dropped a drill bit down my throat and unsuccessfully tried to Heimlich me until the thing came out of my/its own volition, which was better than choking to death
Walking to Mexico is strange because you're not ID'd, don't need your passport or anything. You walk through a little room -- there was I'd say about a 19-year-old Mexican Armed Forces or border patrol girl with a huge machine gun just kinda milling about in there, but no one was there in the spot where you put your own bag through an x-ray conveyer and walk on through. Couple more truckfulls of teenage militia with giant automatic weapons cruising around. Nowadays, on the walk back, the bridge over the Rio Grande is a tent city filled with refugees from Ukraine and Russia seeking asylum in the US. People from Nuevo Progreso are feeding them, thankfully, and the only thing stopping them at the border are two also bored-looking barely not-teenagers from US border security who mumbled "you a US citizen?" at me as I passed. I also forgot the name of the town I was staying in (Harlingen) at the one point that my (optional) passport was checked, because of the painkillers, but they let me through anyway. So I did pass over the Rio Grande with my tooth in my pocket, and my only other souvenir, which was pomade presumably made from coyote jizz and snake venom (probably not an ethical purchase, but again, a heavily painkiller-influenced buying decision)
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P.S. after eating some baby food from H.E.B. back in the hotel, I found an extremely good coffee shop in Harlingen, TX, the next day. If you ever find yourself over there, I can't recommend Bandera Coffee highly enough [URL=https://i.imgur.com/irllwwe.jpg]
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@“tokucowboy”#p148686 it always amazes me how effortless so many non-US medical procedures end up being! My last US dental procedure was a simple filling that A) I was told was completely covered by insurance, but then B) they tried to charge me for on my way out, in full, before I pointed out the other person at the counter had told me was covered, and then C) I received a bill for half of the full price close to six months later. And in each case what they considered the full price was slightly different. Like… what? Now my partner's insurance covers a flat dollar amount of
dental services, and the dentist publishes a price list for what everything costs. Easy.
So! Travel thread! I was in Baltimore this past week, visiting my Dad (who I'm not certain recognized me) and my sister while we worked out details of my Dad's ongoing care. It was a lousy trip, and I don't think I'll ever enjoy going to Baltimore, for all kinds of reasons! But one thing it's got going for it is the three incredible soul food restaurants I got food from, two of them completely vegan and one with an entirely separate vegan menu. The food was so good it almost cancelled out how bad the rest of the trip was!