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Over Thanksgiving, I flew back to see my family, and participate in the extended family Christmas celebration. I was great to have some time off, and great to see much of the family on a holiday that always seems less stressful than Christmas. Here are a  few notes from my time back on the East Coast for Thanksgiving.

- We did a surprising amount of driving for a relaxing holiday weekend. We visited the Air and Space annex at Dulles on Saturday, despite the fact that I was at Dulles on Wednesday and Sunday flying into and out of town. For Thanksgiving on Thursday we drove to my Aunt and Uncle’s in the Shanendoah Valley in Virginia. In fact, the only day I wasn’t in Virginia and Maryland was Friday, the day we discovered my sister’s car’s terrible secret. I think I spent about 8 hours in a car over the four days driving from here to there and back. Hurray for America!

- While most of the driving was easy and stress free, the weekend was not without it’s driving hazards. It was an insteresting car weekend, between my Dad’s minor accident that I mention in my previous post, my sister also complained about her car vibrating and making bad noises. I told her that vibrations normally come from the wheel, and often are an out of balance wheel. Turns out I was sort of right, it was the wheel. Turns out there was one lugnut remaining on one of the wheels, and that all of the studs and the steel wheel itself was so damaged by flopping around there that they all had to be replaced. A few more miles and it would certainly have fallen off. Luckily the hubcap hid this problem until it became dangerous. Stupid hubcaps.

- While I was at home I visited the new Smithsonean Air and Space annex at Dulles Airport called the Udvar-Hazy Center, with my Mom, who has always loved flying, my brother, and my sister, who turned the trip into a lesson in internal combustion engines and how they work.

The museum is very cool. Much of the history of flight is contained at the original Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC, but there was never much room for all of the aircraft that the Smithsonean has aquired. The It’s basically all of the big airplanes and many other smaller airplanes that the Smithsonian has in it’s collection that don’t fit in the original museum in DC. There were lot’s of aircraft from hang-glidersa and ultralights to military aircraft and several very cool airplanes including The Enola Gay, the fake-shuttle Enterprise (it never went into space), a Concord SST, the Boeing 707 prototype (the first US jet airliner), Richard Bong’s P-38 lightning, an SR-71, the human powered Gossamer Albatros, and (literally) tons of others. It’s full of planes that are the only surviving example, including several German and Japanese WWII aircraft. There wasn’t a lot of information on each, but they had lots of guides that seemed very knowledgable. I’d like to go back and follow one of the guides around, which we didn’t do this time.  Rating: Very Excellent

 In the past several years I’ve noticed that many things that “everybody” knows do not seem to be very true in my experience. I ran into another example of that this past weekend when I traveled over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Presumably, this weekend contains the three biggest travel days of the year: Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. I was braced for a horrible travel experience that never happened. 

 I flew back to the east coast for the weekend to spend Thanksgiving with my family. When buying my ticket, I decided to fly the typical times, flying out on Wednesday afternoon and back on Sunday afternoon. I assumed there would be lots of people in the airports and that security would be slow, so I gave myself plenty of time on each flight, and found myself breezing through security and sitting in the airport waiting on both flights. 

 My flight out was out of Minneapolis-St Paul and I arrived hours early, but with somebody who could get me into the Northwest World Club to wile away the time. It turns out I had a lot more time than I expected when the two people in the security line in front of my had cleared out before I cleared all of the turnstiles to get to the TSA ID checker. I spent the most time pulling out my laptop, taking off my jacket and shoes, taking my wallet and phone out of my pockets and placing my bag of “liquids and gels” into a tray for inspection. My flight was full, but I had a window seat, and not a middle seat, so it was fine. My dad assumed that traffic to and from the airport on the day before Thanksgiving would be terrible, but it was only bad due to pouring rain. Honestly, the biggest hassle of the trip was after my Dad picked me up from the airport in the rain, we managed to get rear-ended by another car on the Capitol Beltway. Oops, luckily there was only minor damage to each car. Insurance info was exchanged in the rain, and off we went. 

The flight back was just as easy. I thought that MSP might be a little lighter than other cities, because, perhaps, Minnesotans don’t fly for holidays as much. I figured that Sunday would be worse, and that far more people would be traveling, and more people would be traveling from Washington-Dulles. Nope, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There was heavy traffic on I-95 as there always is, but it was moving plenty fast, the Beltway was fine, and the road out to Dulles was almost empty, as was the airport. There were three people in front of me at security. Again, my flight was full, but overall, there were no the huge delays, or crowded airports, or frantic travelers, or any of the other things we’ve been conditioned to expect on the busiest travel weekend of the year. They did decide that I brought too much toothpaste with me, however, and confiscated it. If I have yellow teeth and bad breath now, it all the terrorist’s and TSA’s fault, not mine. 

 Minneapolis was a bit busier when I arrived on Sunday night than I had seen either airport earlier, so perhaps flying earlier in the day saved me some hassle. However, I’ve seen airports far busier just trying to catch a Monday morning flight for a business trip. Have we been conditioned to believe that travel on these days is so bad that we must avoid it, creating a travel void that debunks that common theory? Or are more people spending “outrageous” amounts on gas and driving? Or are more people just staying home for Thanksgiving? It’s hard to say, but I can say that my flights over the Thanksgiving holiday were no problem, and that I’ll gladly repeat it next year despite the naysayers and gloom predicted by the TV news. 

It started out as a general idea. Something a little different, something that would signify a change, an evolution of me as a person. My life had become mundane, tedious, boring, and I wanted to change that, something to shake things up a little. Perhaps a tattoo would add some excitement, or adventure to my life, to help transform it into something more than the 9-5 ho-hum. It should be something that was both meaningful and artistic, something that was wholly unique to me. It was an idea that, like many of my ideas, just needed the right trigger to go from idea to a reality.

Unfortunetly, that trigger was the death of my brother Arlen in October of 2005. His death was a surprise, and shook us all up. We weren’t really prepared for something like this. My idea was to signify strength in the design, but it evolved into something that would at once be a symbol and a memorial. I struggled with the design as I worked through how to best memorialize Arlen. This would be something that I would wear forever. My basic design remained the same, but it evolved over time.

The design evolved over time. It started more complicated, with more “hidden” meaning, but it became clear that my pencil was much more capable than a needle and ink at small detail, and the design was morphed slightly, and simplified. The tattoo is, in the whole, a Troll Cross, a symbol of protection from Norse mythology. On closer examination, the cross is made up of words, the memorial, and Arlen’s signature. Across the room, it is symbolic, and hopefully a little artistic. It is something that is interesting, but seems to hold some additional meaning hidden in the shape. For those that get close, you can see the complete meaning of the tattoo. Not just a symbol of protection, but one that will forever be a sign of the loss of my brother.

A year after Arlen’s death, I stopped into Uptown Tattoo in Minneapolis, and started the process. On October 21st, 2006 over the course of two hours, these words, and this symbol was etched into my skin. You may love tattoos, you may hate them, but no matter what happens in my life, I will always have this with me to protect me and bring me strength, while reminding me of my little brother who left us far too early, far too young.

FIND PEACE- YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

Arlen’s life:

SMERTE – Norwegian for pain

Who Arlen was

MUSICIAN

ARTIST

From my recent stay in Las Vegas, here are a few reviews.  Ratings are out of five stars.

Excalibur

Nothing fancy, but a decent, clean place to stay. The Casino is not the biggest or fanciest, but it’s addequte. The Buffet is reasonabley priced, and worth thr price, nothing too fancy, but a good selection of decent food. There seem to be more families here, and it is definately not the hip, young place to be. It’s on the strip, which is nice, but it’s near the southern end of the strip, so it’s a bit of a walk to get to most of the other Casinos.

Room              ***  Nothing special, a view of the casino roof
Cleanliness      ***  No complaints
Atmosphere     ***  More family oriented
Price               ***  We paid the SEMA rate, $129/night
Location          ***  South end of the strip
Overall            ***

The Sahara

The Sahara is old school. The rooms are fine, but nothing fancy. Our room had pretty weak water pressure and some peeling wall paper in the bathroom, but it was up to my cleanliness standards. The buffet was nothing fancy, but was not crowded at all, which was nice. The Sahara is located on the north end of the strip, and isn’t exactly convinient that way, but does have a monorail stop that allows easy access to the rest of the strip.

Room              ***  Nothing fancy
Cleanliness      ***  No real complaints
Atmosphere       **  The building and crowd are a little old
Price             ****  We paid the SEMA rate, $89 a night
Location          ***  North end of the Strip
Overall            ***

The Gun Store

While we we in Vegas, I used the opportunity to rent a machine gun and do a little shooting. The Gun Store advertises heavily and is a small place a ways off of the strip. We ended up getting there shortly before closing and were a little more rushed than I would have hoped. I chose to rent a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachinegun and thoroughly enjoyed shooting up a paper target in their indoor range. It’s a little pricey, but something you can’t do just anywhere.  Overall Rating: Great fun.