Traveling to Italy

I love travel. I love seeing new places, trying new foods and a new language on for size, and finding out how the rest of the world works (and how much we really all do have in common).

I also love all the day to day tasks that go along with travel, too. Packing lists, passports, tickets, itineraries, and planning, planning, planning—it's all good.

Life just seems a lot better when you have a trip to look forward to. I figured that out the first big international trip I took, a mini-grand tour of Europe. When I got back, I promised myself that I'd take another international trip every year. So far, I've been able to keep to that promise. Every year (except 2007, sadly), I went overseas again. It's been a tremendous ride and I've been blessed to take it.

So, when Sonja and I started planning our wedding, we also started planning our honeymoon. We didn't know where we wanted to go at first. We just had some grand plans and schemes, but now it's all coming together and I'm getting a whole load of pre-trip anticipation. We're heading on a two-week honeymoon to Italy.

We booked plane tickets way back in December, before Christmas even, so we could lock in the price (and fly Swiss Air, so I could collect some Star Alliance points to pay for our next trip), then we booked some hotels and travel insurance. Now, we're just playing the waiting game. But, I figured I'd fill you in on the details so you can get pumped up along with us (or offer some travel tips).

We're going to take it slow. It's our honeymoon, right? We want to enjoy it, so we won't be rushing from sight to sight in a half-dozen different cities. We narrowed it down to four nights in Rome, five in Florence, then three in Venice. For the first two cities, we used Bed & Breakfast Italia (thanks to Lonely Planet's suggestion) and then, in Venice, we booked the second-most-romantic hotel in Europe (according to TripAdvisor, anyway).

The plan is to do all the tourist, historical-type visits in Rome, then move on to Florence for a couple days of the same. But can you be in Tuscany and miss the vineyards? No way... we'll have to do a bike tour of some sort. And we're probably going to do at least a day trip to Cinque Terre to hike along the coast and soak in the beauty of the Mediterranean. Finally, we finish off in Venice where the only plan is to get lost in the canals (which hopefully won't be smelly).

Oh sure, there will be more planning the closer we get. The excitement's mounting every day, though. There's a big trip on the horizon and, like I said, that makes everything better about life. Having a tough day at the office? So what, you're taking a trip. Car troubles? Big deal, you're renting a bike overseas. No money? They take credit cards internationally.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm rubbing it in or anything. I'm just totally pumped for the trip.

When are you too old to learn new tricks?

When are you too old or snowboard?

Or when are you old enough to know better?

A couple weeks ago, my buddy Kevin (who's also starting a new blog about Things to Do in NYC) came up for a weekend. We hung out, did some sightseeing around Portsmouth, NH and caught up on life in general.

We also tried out something new to the both of us—snowboarding.

He'd just bought a board from a guy off Craigslist. The previous owner had run into some leg problems and had to give it up. Since he now owns gear, Kevin's hit the slopes a few times this season and also took some lessons. I've grown up as a skier, but have boarded a couple times so I knew the basics. Or I thought I did, completely forgetting that the last time I was on a board, I was in high school and probably didn't have my license yet. Whoops.

We went up to Cannon Mountain in the beautiful White Mountains of my home state. I wound up buying my own board while I was up there (Renting was $40, buying a used board, with bindings and boots, was $100. All I have to do is use it another time and a half and I get my money's worth. Freakanomics, baby.). It was a perfect day for it, really. Clear skies, relatively warm, and we still hooked ourselves up with student discounts since we're cheap like that.

We hit the bunny slope immediately.

And, immediately, my tailbone became intimately familiar with the packed powder of Franconia Notch. Again. And again. And again.

Eventually, I started to get the hang of it. After a couple runs, I had stopped falling on my butt entirely. Of course, that meant I was falling on my face instead, but it seemed to indicate some sort of progress. At least I thought it did, and then my lips swelled up. But after finishing another another couple runs, I'd managed to get the falling thing under control. Now, I was alternating between having my face smashed into the snow or bruising my pride and my coccyx simultaneously.

When you're learning to snowboard, by yourself, on a bunny hill, you're pretty exposed. Not to the elements—the ground down there is so flat that the wind doesn't whip by, it stops to laugh at you instead. Rather, you're exposed to the mockery of tiny midget jerks flying by on their own pint-sized boards and skis.

That's right, all of the under-four-footers, the beginner skiers who are too short to ride the adult-sized chairlifts to the top of the mountain are all around you, constantly annoying. To their credit, they can sure cut some snow, doing figure eights around you while they giggle at your prone form, ooohing and ahhhing at ever spectacular tumble. Even worse are the parents and ski instructors shooshbooming down the slopes with them, mournfully shaking their heads at mortifying failure after mortifying failure. My face was probably beet red, but you could also chalk that up to furious anger at the inventor of the snowboard and/or scraping it raw on icy patches.

Eventually, after breaking a couple times for cocoa, food, icy hot, pee breaks, and to cry softly into our scarves, Kevin and I graduated ourselves to an adult-sized lift. There, we tumbled off the chair at the top of the hill and realized that things get much steeper very quickly in the northwoods of NH.

You know those cartoons where Wil-E-Coyote falls down a mountain, rolls into a ball, picks up all sorts of detritus along the way, then crashes into a tree? Yeah. That was me. Repeatedly and painfully.

I remember our final run. I'd just taken a spectacular spill and was completely sprawled out, face-up in the snow (a crash made even worse by the fact that I hadn't even been moving when I fell, I just fell over). I ripped off my goggles and lay there, staring up at the puffy white clouds like some kid trying to pick out shapes, when I realized that I wasn't a kid anymore.

My butt hurt. My back hurt. My face hurt.

"Dude," I turned my head uphill to Kevin, who was mimicking me in a similiar state of repose, "I am too old for this."

Thankfully, the next thing my butt hit was a bar stool.

Time to Decompress...

I drive a lot. My commute is 75 miles in each direction. And though I only work in the office three days a week, I still spend at least 500 miles on the road each week. Add in the other miscellaneous driving I do, and I'm putting well over 2,000 miles on my car each month.

(For reference, I snapped this picture on January 2nd and I've gone over 3,000 miles since. This means I get a lot of oil changes.)

Typically, I spend about 100 minutes driving into work and 80 going home, since there's less traffic when I leave the office.

That's a lot of driving for anyone, but I have gotten used to the commute. I don't love it, but I can't say that I actually hate it, either. That drive home, spacing out as I maintain a certain cruise control speed in the fast-lane is peaceful alone time—the majority spent listening to the music, NPR, or audiobooks—does wonders for my post-work psyche.

Now, I don't have a stressful job. Sure, some days are busier than others, but it's nothing like a fast-paced, Crackberry, newsroom environments from my past gigs. Heck, even working at the travel agency caused more stress, since I was in charge of everything. Mostly, I do my thing, do it well, and leave it behind at the end of the day.

But for me, I still need that time in the car to decompress from my day. I use it as a transition from "work mode."

What's work mode? Work mode is how I get when I'm on task. It can happen in the office, at my real job, or when I'm banging away at the keyboard at home. As a guy, I can only handle one task at a time. I'll focus on that one thing and ignore everything else. This makes me a delightful conversationalist while I'm in work mode.

"Mmhmm... yeah, whatever."

"Uh, what'd you say?"

"(Dead silence)"

Yeah, I'm not that much fun in work mode.

The problem with work mode is that it takes me some time to work my way out of it. I can't just instantly leave the office and feel my brain turn to back toward my real life. Nope, it requires some coaching, some telling myself not to think about work stuff, and a lot of zen-like emptying of the mind. Not that I'm meditating while I'm driving... More likely, I'm just not thinking of anything.

And that part's great. I'm much more social and relaxed when I get home.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I was just thinking about it the other day and I wondered if anyone else has a "work mode?" Or is that purely an annoying Nagel trait?

(Yes, as you can see from my odometer, my Toyota Camry is the definition of a high-mileage car.)

Aristotle on Knowledge and the Soul...

"Holding as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to be honored and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its greater exactness or of a higher dignity and great wonderfulness in its objects, be more honourable and precious than another, on both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul."

- Aristotle, "De Anima (On the Soul)"

Motivation to write...

From Paulo Coelho...

"I think the only advice I can give you is this : seat down and write - anything that comes to your head and keep going. At first you may feel stuck, but with time, if you continue on your quest of storytelling, you will see how the first barrier was only an illusion."

I have to say that I both agree entirely and also ignore this truth completely.

Bad Mike, bad!

Live Blogging the Obama Inauguration

Work's letting us watch the swearing in and speech for Obama, so I'll live blog it and then post a transcript after the fact. What fun!

11:38 am - Signed into CNN.com to watch their live report. Got this error message. Looks hauntingly similar to the "virtual waiting room" I sit in every time time the Sox release new batches of tickets.

11:41 am - Allowed in, but need to update my Adobe something or other. At this rate, I'll be able to see the 45th president's inauguration.

11:42 am - Lots of pictures of people on the Mall. Not a port-a-john in site. Hope all of DC's holding it!

11:44 am - The President-elect was just introduced as "Barack H. Obama." That noise you heard was a unified body of rednecks screaming "Barry HUSSEIN" at the TV. Oh wait, nevermind, they don't have cable.

11:46 am - CNN is showing a Facebook status feed. Um, Twitter much? FB status is sooo 2007. So much for Hope and Change.

11:49 am - Scattered applause for Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven Prayer. Surprised he's wearing a tie and not his traditional Hawaiin shirt.

11:53 am - Good prayer. Inclusive, yet definitely Warren-esque with the Lord's Prayer and multiple pronounciations of Jesus.

11:54 am - Aretha Franklin's wearing a bow that looks like it was made for a battleship. Seems fitting.

11:56 am - This begs the question... if McCain had been elected, would they have asked "Boot in Your @$$" Toby Keith to sing "God Bless America?" I say yes.

11:58 am - Joe Biden's orange spray-on tan rocks. I'd like to have a beer with the VP. I bet he makes a mean margarita.

12:05 pm - Sorry for the short break, had to use the potty (probably from the port-a-john reference) and move over to the big office viewing area. Somewhere, six dozen guys are gathered around a national monument, doing the same thing.

12:06 pm - "Barack HUSSEIN Obama... repeat AFTER me, dang it!" - Chief Justice John Roberts.

12:06 pm - Round of applause in the office for the 44th President. How cool would it be to have the military band play "Hail to the Chief" for you? Even if you weren't actually becoming president, it'd still be awesome. I'd pay cash money for that.

12:07 pm - They're showing a whole lot of "young people" in the crowd. What's the over/under for drunk people in a crowd of 2 million? I'm saying it's at least 200,000 (or 10 percent).

12:09 pm - Obama thanks Bush. Definitely a golf clap.

12:10 pm - Starting off talking about the war and the economy (and crappy energy consumption). Hope-O-Meter plummets.

12:11 pm - Bringing the hope back with, "On this day we gather because we have chosen hope over fear."

12:12 pm - "The time has come to set aside childish things." A dig at Pres. Bush? Ba-zing!

12:13 pm - Other than the swearing in, he hasn't made a single vocal gaffe or even uttered an "um." He rocks as a speaker, no doubt about it. My keyboard is the only sound in the office. You could hear a flag-pin drop.

12:17 pm - "Restore the vital trust between the people and their government."

12:17 pm - Eight minutes in and we get the first mention of national security (without using the word "terror"). Therein lies the difference between the Democratic and Republican party for this past election. He does mention "co-operation," though.

12:20 pm - One co-worker is holding a box of tissues. Pass 'em around (no matter who you voted for). The entire crowd's hanging on every word.

12:20 pm - "As the world grows smaller, our common humanity will reveal itself, and the United States must become a distributor of peace." Or something like that. He said it better. Great quote. Can't type fast enough... trying to be quiet.

12:24 pm - "Tolerance and curiosity" nice juxtaposition. He's talking about the truths and integral American qualities that have always defined us.

12:25 pm - "Why a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, could not be served in a restaurant, can now stand before you and take a sacred oath."

12:27 pm - He just finished speaking with the requisite, "And God bless the United States of America." Interesting speech... he didn't deviate from any campaign themes. Definitely called for Americans to stand behind him, like we're in a fight for survival. We'll see if that bodes anything for the first 100 days in office.

12:28 pm - G.W. looks genuinely happy to be done. Whether or not you like him, can you blame him? Eight years in the world's most stressful position has to be a crushing weight. Clinton had a heart attack afterward and Reagan lost his mind (to put it frankly).

12:29 pm - Hello, America. Here's what poetry sounds like. It does not involve Lil' Jon, windows, walls or sweaty testicles.

12:33 pm - I'll get reamed for saying this, but it sounds like Fat Albert is giving the benediction. "Hey, hey, HEY!"

12:33 pm - Watching a live news event WITHOUT anchors' commentary is amazing. Why can't they shut up more often and let viewers think for themselves? We don't always need Wolf Blitzer's beard's input.

12:35 pm - Hey, that guy on the left looked just like Kelsay Grammar! How's Fraiser get front-row seats? And where's Oprah?

12:37 pm - The glare on the TV is making it hard to distinguish faces, but it looks like Bush Sr. shot a bear last time he was up in Kennebunkport, ME and wore it today.

12:38 pm - "And when the Blue Man Group can not be known for their color but as the Cool Jam Crew." (Okay, that was lame on my part.)

12:40 pm - I could make a Family Guy-esque joke about seamen being all over the platform, but it's during the National Anthem, so I won't.

12:40 pm - I think the incoming President should be able to pick his exit music. I'd have gone with, "For those about to Ba-rack, we sa-luuuuute you!" (And the hits just keep on coming).

12:41 pm - Handshakes, congratulations, high-fives, and Hillary looking like she bit into a lemon right before someone goosed her. Time for lunch!

Get On Your Boots

In case you haven't heard, but that big band from Dublin just released their new song. You can listen to "Get On Your Boots," the first single from No Line On the Horizon at U2.com. Check it out here.

I listened to it twice and liked it. It's not "Vertigo," but it's along the same vein. It's a catchy piece of pop rock that's hard enough to maintain credibility, but light and upbeat enough to garner some serious radio play. Of course, if the Edge wanted to play fart noises through a cardboard tube while Bono read off a Campbell's Soup label, they'd still sell 18 bazillion records.

It's good to be U2.

While I'm at it, here's the track listing:

1. No Line On The Horizon
2. Magnificent
3. Moment of Surrender
4. Unknown Caller
5. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
6. Get On Your Boots
7. Stand Up Comedy
8. Fez - Being Born
9. White As Snow
10. Breathe
11. Cedars Of Lebanon

And I'll also share my requisite U2 story and say that I saw them, live and in-studio, on Saturday Night Live when they played Vertigo and I Will Follow and brought the house down. Yeah, you're jealous. Heck, I'm jealous of the 2004 version of me.