Travels With Mayo

I know it’s been a while since the end of the trip, so we’ll try to make up for the delay and wind things up with a few goodies.

Can you guess where the picture was taken? Just outside Madison? Maybe nearer to Mount Horeb? Nope. A rest stop that’s a little east of Smithers, BC. Right after Mayo had her dip in the pond and pestered the cows, several other RVs pulled up and a mound of doggily happiness piled out. It was Sniffbutt Junction, right there by the road. Everyone ended up staying for over an hour, just letting the pups have some fun and talking about destinations, highways, and RVs. Of course there was the obligatory couple from Wisconsin (Janesville), and a dude with the exact same camera as me (Kodak V570). Ended up that we both thought it was the Best Vacation Camera Evar, and neither of us ever took it out of wide-angle mode.

One thing I forgot to mention was the reading material for the trip. I took a ton of books, and ended up reading only a few. Most days I preferred to just sit outside with Mayo for a while, then hit the hay. But when I did feel like reading, I dug into the delightful and very very funny Charlie Mortdecai series by Kyril Bonfiglioli. Think of Lovejoy being intermingled with Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, and you’ve got the idea. (Since Mortdecai made his appearance several years before Lovejoy and there are some striking similarities, I’d presume that the former inspired the latter. Much more pleasant to think of it that way than to drag in nasty terms like intellectual property and blatant theft. Well. To be fair, they were different types of roguish antiques dealers. And Lovejoy needed the money much more than the well-to-do Mortdecai.) Bonfiglioli only managed to write three novels in the series (plus the oddly piratical precursor, All The Tea In China), which makes them all the more special.

Since returning, I’ve read the first four of the Lovejoy series (of which there are many, and more yet to be stamped out), just to compare and contrast. The mysteries are more mysterious and the plots are more thoughtfully plotted than Mortdecai’s, but other than that, I vote for Charlie. Gash’s Lovejoy books are very similar to one another, both in structure and dialogue. Once you’ve read one, you’ve pretty well read them all. Anyway. I’ve also started “Travels With Charley“, in which I’ve found more resonance than I expected.

The word for the day, which is simply amazing: Filibuster. It can be used to describe all of the following:

  1. Pointless and potentially endless delays in the Senate. But that’s not the original meaning.
  2. The loyalty and patriotism of most Congresspeople.
  3. Our Commander Guy.
  4. The level of competence displayed in His Military Adventures.
  5. Aawon Buh
  6. Pirates!

Great word. I really like it. I especially like that it’s an English mispronounciation of Spanish mispronounciation of a Dutch word. And El Filibustero really seems to fit the Deciderer. Head mercenary for pointless, potentially endless military adventures.

And the site of the day: LOLBOTS. OK, admittedly, some of the latest posts are a bit lame, even for lolcats. But a few good ones might show up soon.

Well, that’s it, kids. TTFN!

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2 Responses to Travels With Mayo

  1. joviko says:

    Maps. I’m definitely a map person. I like to look at them, to study them, to find tiny details that promise untold stories from generations past. Some of my favorite jobtime has been working on GIS systems. I enjoy folding and unfolding maps, and get quite snickety with people who don’t have that simple knack.

    But when I’m on the road, all that goes out the window. I ignore, step on, and otherwise fold, spindle, and mutilate maps. And rarely use them. I mostly just go by feel.

    Sadly, by the end of most trips, the maps are in such sorry states that they’re no longer useful. And my inner map-lover scorns my inner traveller, folds up the abused dears as best as can be, and either stores them or gives them a silent but heartfelt sendoff at the recycling bin.

    I also am guided by road signs that promise interesting places–and the less information on the sign, the more intrigued I am. The little brown ones with the “tent” logo on them and nothing else, not even a campground name, are very hard to resist. They always seem to point to the very best places to stay.

    For this trip, which was over 10,000 miles all told, I had two primary maps:

    – An outdated Wally World atlas that came with the Winnii. This served most of my purposes.

    – A smaller Canada atlas that I bought at a gas station when I discovered that the Wally World atlas did not cover the Yukon at all. The Canada atlas devoted a single small page to the Yukon, but that was adequate. (Oddly enough, the Wally World “Canada” atlases–the ones sold in Canada–are the same as the U.S. ones on the inside, and do not cover any of the sprawling “upper tier” Canadian provinces, but do devote a page or more to each U.S. state.)

    I also brought along the Woodall’s and Trailer Life campground guides, and several maps and guides from AAA. I never used any of them. Mayo used them as a sort of stepstool, as they were lying on the passenger-side floor of the Winnii cab, and she could stand on them and see out the windshield. So they were useful in a way.

  2. Living says:

    Hi, very amused by your dinosaur comics 'review' of the Godzilla miniature. 😀 Thanks!

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