My Year in Cities
One of the go-to sites on my Google Reader is kottke.org. The site’s proprietor, Jason Kottke, blogs about some interesting and widely varied topics. I hit my Kottke link every few days, and inevitably come up with a bunch of good reads.
Today Kottke has a post up that’s so simple and discussion-worthy, I had to steal pay tribute to it.
It’s the Year in Cities. Simply put, which cities did I visit in 2008?
The rules are simple: I had to spend a night in a city for it to qualify, or at least the bulk of a day there (i.e. 12 hours or more). Airport transfers, highway pit stops and random lunches don’t count.
Here’s the list:
Durham, NH
Saco, ME (ugh)
Somerville, MA
Newton, MA
New York, NY
Buffalo, NY
Albany, NY
Baltimore, MD
Myrtle Beach, SC
Phoenix, AZ
Las Vegas, NV
Niagara Falls, ON
Toronto, ON
Montreal, QC
Rome, Italy
London, England
Budapest, Hungary
Prague, Czech Republic
Vienna, Austria
Hong Kong
Tokyo, Japan
Twenty-one cities, nine countries. Wow, crazy year.
Could have been more too. I was planning to go to San Antonio to cover the Final Four, before deciding to bag it at the last minute. Hoped to make it back to the Pacific Northwest to visit friends left behind when we moved away from Seattle in ’06–but couldn’t find the time. Planned to go a friend’s wedding in Chapel Hill, NC, but had an unresolvable scheduling conflict. Almost did a summer cottage weekend with buddies in Ontario, but couldn’t pull it off. Didn’t get a chance for an extended trip to see various siblings in various Ontario towns, unfortunately. Also, this is the first time in 15 years that I haven’t been to L.A. or San Diego–basically as long as I’ve known my SoCal-native wife.
As for 2009? Too early to tell. All I know for sure is, by this time next year, I’ll be an absolute expert on restaurants and bars in the greater Tampa/St. Pete area.
Got an interesting Year in Cities of your own to share? Let’s see ‘em!
Well Jonah, you need something to contrast this amazing travel log. Since I’m a boring guy, I’ll go ahead and take one for the team and share my travel adventures from 2008. The extent of my qualifying list of cities:
-Rockingham, NC
-Tampa, FL
-Paducah, KY
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Let’s recap how exciting it was:
My buddy from Beaver Dam, KY and I drove down to Rockingham for a race, and met up with our mutual friend from New York. We stayed at a godawful, horrendously overpriced Budget Inn since all the good hotel rooms were booked by the race teams. The toilet may not have worked right, the lights may have not been very effective, the carpet and beds may have been sticky, but hey, at least we got free Playboy Channel in our room. And we had a somewhat-working refrigerator and microwave to keep our alcohol cold and our pizza hot. That weekend was a lot of fun, but scheduling means we won’t be able to do it again this coming year.
I also drove down to Paducah, KY for a bowling tournament (in which I did pretty poorly). After our first block of the tournament, we stopped at Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and had to wait 45 minutes for a table. Apparently every attractive woman under the age of 35 in the western half of Kentucky goes to the Texas Roadhouse in Paducah on Saturday nights — it was ridiculous! However, since I have no game and I’m not much on one-night stands, it meant a lot of eye candy, but not much else. After we left and bowled some more, the adventurous half of our troupe went to a local strip club; the boring half (including myself) went back to the hotel and watched goofy videos on Youtube. Yes, I’m such a party animal… The trip was fun, but that’s mostly because my teammates are a riot. Paducah isn’t exactly the most exciting town I’ve ever visited.
Another one of my friends and I went to Cincinnati to see the Cubs/Reds series, but had a goofy set of circumstances that meant we were better off driving back-and-forth from Louisville to Cincy each day, so that was an adventure. We got well-acquainted with downtown Cincinnati to say the least. (We also saw that incredibly phenomenal mascot Whiffleball game that I documented for you in pictures, including the legendary and creepy Produce Man) I also saw Steely Dan in concert in Cincinnati and met up with some people beforehand at a bar, so I got a nice chance to visit some of that city.
(I also spent a lot of long days at tracks for stock car/monster truck races in Lexington, KY and Salem, IN, and some time Kettering, OH for a Boz Scaggs concert, but those don’t really fit the rules of this discussion.)
So in summary…. wow. 2008 was pretty dull. It’s sad when Rockingham, North Carolina is the high point. At least in past years I’ve gotten out a little more. (Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Nashville, Las Vegas, and Pinckney, Michigan) Plus I’ll be bowling in a big tournament in Las Vegas this year, so that’s pretty much a mortal lock to be an entertaining few days.
I’ll have a go…
Redwood City, CA
Anaheim, CA
Las Vegas, NV
Carmel, CA
Madison, WI
New Orleans, LA
Renton, WA
Victoria, BC
Was hoping to do work-related trips to Italy and Germany, but they didn’t pan out. 2009 should have some more trips for sure.
I’ll have a go. My list is mostly the same as Jonah’s, minus all the sites of his Boys’ Trips:
New York, NY
Baltimore, MD
Myrtle Beach, SC
Phoenix, AZ
Las Vegas, NV
Niagara Falls, ON
plus a couple of work trips not accompanied by JK:
Chicago, IL
Preston, England
totaling 16 cities in 9 countries.
Preston vs. Myrtle Beach is really a toss-up of crapitude; I’ll take Chicago above any of the others except NYC any day. Of course, unlike Jonah, none of my trips were detailed in Penthouse Magazine (at least none that you know about).