Hedging vs. Mr. Mojo Risin'

Booking the ticket hasn’t stopped me from hedging about this trip. Just feel irresponsible even considering being away this long. My wife has her hands full with three boys when I am around to help, and I worry they’ll turn her into a shivering shell of a human while I'm away. (That's me if she's away a few hours.) The lawn will be three feet high, and a revolution will have occurred at my office. Who do I think I am just taking off? Leaning heavily toward pulling the plug and eating the frequent flyer miles.

Caught a few minutes of a PBS funding drive last night that included classic rock-and-roll footage from the old Ed Sullivan show. It reminded me of a reason I want to visit Europe and in particular, Paris. Annette and I visited Paris for four days back in 1997, but we didn’t visit Jim Morrison’s grave at at Père-Lachaise Cemetery. I’ve always regretted that. Why do Americans, or frankly, young people from around the world feel the need to see the Lizard King’s finally resting place?

The few minutes of the Sullivan footage I viewed last night included the classic The Doors performance of Sept. 17, 1967. The story is legend. Sullivan and his producers asked the band to change the lyric “Girl, we couldn't get much higher” from Light My Fire to “Girl, we couldn’t get much better.” Morrison, of course, sang the song with the lyrics intact, and you can see other bandmates, particularly guitarist Robbie Krieger chuckling in the background. Sullivan, who apparently could hold a grudge with the best of them, banned the band from future performances to which Morrison replied, “We just did The Ed Sullivan Show.”

The silly Sullivan censorship story aside, I remain incredibly struck by Morrison’s stage presence. He had a good voice, but by today’s musical standards, where American Idol churns out super-human falsettos on an annual basis, Morrison’s baritone doesn’t stand out. Yet has there been a more charismatic lead singer in the history of rock-and-roll? As a viewer 42 years after the Sullivan performance, you still can’t take your eyes off the man. Confident, cool, vulnerable, theatrical… a living, breathing Adonis. The Doors cranked out a lot of music before a bearded, bloated 27-year-old Morrison died in Paris in 1971, so the man didn’t exit at the peak of his career. Nonetheless, he was still too young, and his attitude and abilities as a poet and lyricist have helped generations of literary adolescents survive their teenage years.

Of course, sometimes we look too hard for heroes. While Morrison was strutting around the Sullivan stage and inspiring future generations of rebellious teenagers, my dad (who was born the same year as Morrison) was on an airplane to Vietnam. He and my mom, just recently married, would spend the first 13 months of their marriage apart while dad served his country in a brutal war. Four years later, when Morrison died, The Doors' lead singer reportedly had 20 paternity suits pending against him. (According to Wikipedia, none of the claims against his estate actually were successful.) Just wanted to add a little levity to this fawning review of a dead celebrity.

Nonetheless, I still want to see the grave of Mr. Mojo Risin (an anagram of Jim Morrison) And that’s one reason I haven’t completely nuked Eurotrek 2010.

Shall we learn a language?

Imagine a German visits America, then begins speaking in Deutsch to someone on the street in say, Duluth. This visitor then acts bewildered, upset, and even rude that the U.S. citizen doesn’t respond in the teutonic tongue. Most Americans probably would – rightfully so – bust the clueless tourist in the mouth.

Now let’s say large groups of loud, obnoxious Italians begin visiting Minneapolis every year. They’re decked out in soccer garb, drinking like fish, demanding directions (in their native Italia) to Target Field, Mall of America, or the Guthrie Theatre, and they return in droves year after year. We probably wouldn’t have much time for Italians anymore, would we?

OK, the French have their flaws. Charles de Gaulle was an unapreciative arse, their love of Jerry Lewis is baffling, and their arrogant attitude precedes them. I get all that. (Two can’t-pass-this-up asides: Did you hear why France agreed to the tunnel beneath the English Channel? To make it easier for the French government to flee to London. Also, I understand that for travelers, France is a safe country, even though it is occassionally invaded by Germans.)

All that aside, Annette and I traveled to Paris for a few days in the late 1990s and – other than one prick waiter – found most Parisians to be at least helpful and some even congenial. We wore dark clothes, spoke in relatively quiet, respectful tones, and generally attempted to ask questions in French. We said, “Merci beaucoup” a lot.
Parisians have been dealing with the scenario outlined in the first paragraph for 100 years. So when most Americans walk up expecting French citizens to speak in our language, not theirs, one might understand how irritating sentiments toward us could develop. Riding on the RER, we saw a few groups of baseball cap-sporting, “College”-sweatshirt wearing, loud groups of Americans, and yeah, they clearly irritated the French people around them. Guess what? They irritated me, too.

Onto the point of this blog. (It sometimes takes a while to wade through the editorial comments… sorry.) I’m thinking of taking a serious crack at learning French. Annette and I have kicked this Rosetta Stone thing around for her, so maybe we’ll both try it. Though I’m confident in my abilities to get around Europe with English, immersing myself in a language beforehand can’t hurt, and it probably will improve the overall experience. If it leaves a few Europeans with the impression of an American trying to pass quietly and respectfully through their culture, all the better.

UK in '96 with my lovely bride

I’m waffling on Eurotour 2010, but nonetheless spent a few minutes with the boys looking at pictures from some past trips. Annette and I honeymooned in the UK in 1996, and these photos struck me as worth sharing. As for my bride: What a babe.

How about the sneakers in the bottom shot?! This could have been a marvelous image (not sure where it was taken…) had I not stuck out like a sore American thumb by wearing running shoes. For the record, those may have been the very pair I wore for my first marathon in 1995. In our later trips to Europe, I stuck to what I consider “formal” shoewear – those ever-so-posh Doc Martins. If I indeed travel across the pond next year, it will be with comfortable walking shoes, sans sneakers.

An Epic Tale Begins to Unfold

Most writers today transition from columnizing to blogging to (retch)… micro-blogging. Yes, the ultimate insult for those of us who mock attention-span-challenged Americans: Twitter. For six-plus months, I too have been part of the problem and wasted a solid chunk of my life tweeting. Now stop, reach out and grab that breath of relieved air you just exhaled. I’m not going anywhere. ODN_Editor will continue to sound off on Rob Drieslein’s pet peeves – Bud Selig, free-ranging domestic cats, Nick Punto, public subsidies for sports stadiums, anti-hunters, insurance scams, and agricultural subsidies, among other teeth-grinding inequities of this modern world.

As 2009 progressed, you perhaps noticed my tweets becoming angrier. An unhealthy edge and bluntness has developed. Zero patience for lazy cat owners. Suggesting that Bud Selig is ordering MLB umpires to throw playoff games for the Yankees. Bashing poor Zigi Wolf for merely suggesting that Minnesota taxpayers build him a billion-dollar stadium for his NFL franchise. Demanding that a starting shortstop bat above .200. Insisting that more Americans pay attention to the splendid-little wars that a tiny percentage of citizens and their families shoulder on their behalf. Surely someone this callous and unforgiving must have issues!

My wife has a term for this Nasty Rob, this evil Skippy twin. She calls it being “intense.” Many of you might recognize that this is a common synonym for “asshole.”

In all seriousness, dear reader(s), my wife-in-a-million thinks she knows the cause of these burgeoning symptoms. This proud Gen-Xer faces the Big 4-0 in 2010, and he’s not happy about it. No need to waste oxygen by debating “What’s the alternative?” or suggesting, “It’s just a number.” Here’s the straight scoop folks: It sucks. Turning 40 sucks. My life is at least, half over, and I have no clue where it went. A Harley won’t help my attitude… though a 2011 Mustang (400hp engines in the GT) might. But those run $32K, and Annette wants a different house. What a terrible gut-wrenching dilemma of a life, eh?

OK, this is all coming from a guy who recognizes that he’s damn lucky. He’s spent those 40 years living in one of the most prosperous countries in the world, getting a mind-stimulating education, enjoying a respectable career, and – the past decade – raising a healthy family with a beautiful, loving woman. With Thanksgiving looming in a week, I have a lot to be thankful for, especially this: That gem of a woman also has a cure for said pathetic middle-aged crisis.

Go away.

No, not go away as in “Don’t come back, ever.” (I kill me!) Go away as in “Take a vacation.” Of course, the very suggestion brought to mind balding baby-booming New Yorkers on a cattle drive. (Thank god she didn’t say, “Go find your smile.”) My black-and-white, no-shades-of-gray logical initial response was: “Absolutely not. Respectable fathers don’t shirk familial responsibilities to relax.” But she kept pressing, got my mom on her side, too. Then, while sitting in a deer stand last weekend waiting for a monster whitetail to never arrive, a tiny urge from my youthful past ignited in the deepest recesses of my brain.

I always wanted to ride the rails in Europe. You know, Eurail pass with a The North Face backpack skipping from continental city to city, sacking out in hostels while living off old-world bread, hard cheese, and brutally red wine. Working my way through college 18 years ago, I never had the time or money to scratch that Eurailing itch. My wife and I have been to Europe for three short trips since we married and even rode the train between Dublin and Belfast for a few hours. But there’s a lot of Europe remaining for me to see, and thanks to a boatload of frequent-flyer miles and more vacation hours these days, I have the time and financial wherewithal to see them. But no way would Annette let this happen, right?

“Go!” she barked at the mere suggestion. “Go in the spring before the boys are out of school and while we're keeping busy with kid-baseball at night.”

“But…”

“Go!”

A balding middle-aged editor tripping around Europe like a 23-year-old sounds every bit as pathetic as Daniel Stern on a faux cattle drive. But hey, it’s cheaper and safer than driving a Harley, and I’ll meet more interesting people in Prague than at Sturgis. This week, I decided. I’m going to do this. I’m going take advantage of my health, use a couple of weeks of vacation in May 2010, and explore across the pond.

This blog (and accompanying Twitter handle, IntenseTraveler) will explain the challenges in planning such a trip, and then share my experience on the tracks of The Continent. If anyone has any tips or ideas, I welcome them. God willing, I’ll come home a less-intense traveler. At the very least, it will keep my mind occupied while I eclipse a major milestone marker in my life. Thanks for reading: This might just be fun.