SOLTuesday: Rainy Traveling Tuesdays

It’s my annual trek to warmer places, if only for a few weeks. This year I’m visiting Alabama, where I have a friend who teaches in Mobile, and civil rights museums and memorials to visit in Montgomery and Birmingham.

            Last Tuesday and today, it’s been rainy. Warmish, but wet, both days. Last week I was in Mobile, today I’m in Montgomery. Last week, I was feeling the culture shock of living in car culture. At home in New York, I walk many places and take the subway or bus—have never owned a car in my life. When I travel, I often rent a car, and I love to drive, but driving is just another mode of sitting. I think last week my body wasn’t used to the walk-to-the-car-drive-park-walk-to-wherever-drive-park, and it rebelled by, paradoxically, not wangint to do anything. And I couldn’t go for much of a walk in the rain.

           So last week, I drove to a barbecue place called Meat Boss, had a pulled pork sandwich with sides of baked beans and Asian slaw, then drove to a couple of malls and just walked around the stores. The Walmart was the most interesting to me, since we don’t have one in New York. It’s like a department store, but horizontal instead of vertical, and in miniature, since each department is smaller than, say, a Macy’s, but there are some departments our New York Macy’s doesn’t have, like automotive supplies, or guns. I didn’t buy anything, just walked.

            This week, in Montgomery, I’m in a hotel in downtown. Most of the sights I want to see are in walking distance, so I feel much more at home. Luckily, I was in a drugstore when the deluge came, so I was able to sit inside until the rain slowed, then found a coffee shop a few doors down. Then an art gallery next door, with a tour company next to it. By the time I’d arranged for a civil rights tour for Thursday the rain had stopped and I could go across the street to Island Delight, a Jamaican restaurant, for jerk chicken lunch. Delicious. Walked some more around the city, made a reservation for dinner tomorrow night, found where I’ll eat dinner to night (more barbecue), and back to my hotel. I haven’t quite gotten to 10,000 steps, but maybe getting out for dinner will do it.

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SOLTuesday: Traveling, Movie-Going, and Not Quite Getting Lost in Hawaii

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            Two weeks ago I flew to Hawaii to get away from New York City’s cold weather. The two Tuesdays I was there, I went to the movies.

            The Doris Duke Theater at the Honolulu Academy of Art was showing the three sets of Oscar-nominated shorts – live action, documentary, and animation – and that first Tuesday my friend and I went to see the live action shorts. I wrote a Slice about the film I liked the best, Enemies Within, last week, but it doesn’t seem to be available online, and neither are Timecode, a peek into the secret dancing life of parking garage security guards in Spain, or Silent Nights, about a volunteer working with immigrants in Copenhagen who falls in love with one of them, without knowing all the facts of his life. The winner, Sing, can be watched here.  And The Woman and the High-speed Train, a fable about a baker in Switzerland who waves to the train that passes her house every day for 30 years and begins to correspond with the conductor, can be purchased for $2.99 on iTunes.

            The following Tuesday I saw Hidden Figures, which I loved and now have the book to see what else I can learn about these remarkable women.

            This film I went to on my own. I had no problem finding the mall theater, but returning, I took one wrong turn after another. The first time I turned right instead of left, and almost immediately knew it was wrong. But the highway here was two lanes with no place to pull over and make a U-turn. I had to go more than a mile before the next intersection, where I could get turned around. But then there was the three-highway crossing, and again, I followed the wrong signs. It took me a bit longer to realize I was on the wrong highway, and again, I had to travel almost 10 miles before I reached a turning point.

            Oahu is divided by a range of volcanic mountains; the friend I was staying with and the mall showing Hidden Figures  were on the windward side, while Honolulu is on the leeward side. When I reached the long tunnel going through the mountains, I knew I was on my way to Honolulu. Eventually, I reached an intersection and could get back to the other side and the town of Kailua.  And I was passing beautiful vistas, which, since I was driving, I couldn’t take pictures of.

            The whole enterprise made me rethink the value of letting Google Maps tell me how to get from one strange place to another, and I used it on my new iPhone a few days later when I had to get to the airport with my rental car. Hurray for technology!