Category Archives: Travel

Travelogue 1984: Taiwan and China

My father was a prolific letter-writer. What follows is an excerpt from his letter to – of all people – my mother’s aunt and uncle in March 1984, describing his travel to visit me in Taiwan and then our travel together to Mainland China. The letter concludes with my brother’s news, which I leave to him to share verbatim but which details his upcoming college graduation, potential graduate program with showers of fellowship money, and his choice between that and a job offer “at an outrageous rate of pay.”

March 22, 1984

Dear Ben and Brenda:

It has been so long since I have had a chance to either visit with you or write but I thought it was about time to bring you up-to-date on our news. As you know, Amy is spending the year in Taiwan on her Fulbright/ITT scholarship studying Chinese law. I had a chance to visit her over Christmas for an excursion that took us to Hong Kong and the Mainland; and Ruth went for a somewhat longer visit at the end of January and they had an opportunity to go to half a dozen Asian countries.

I delivered a lecture at one of the law schools in Taiwan which Amy arranged. She and I had a great deal of fun working out the potential translation with the law professor who was both our host and our translator.

We decided to experiment to determine whether it is possible to visit Mainland China without either advance preparations or a formal tour; I am pleased to report that it is possible. A travel agent in Hong Kong (a friend of a friend of a friend of Amy’s in Taiwan) got us a visa in only 24 hours. We then went to the Hong Kong railroad station, and took a train to Canton.

In Canton we went to the airport and purchased an airplane ticket to Guilin. Actually this stage wasn’t quite that simple. We first went to the downtown ticket office which told us nothing was available. It was the cab driver who said that we should ignore those bureaucrats and go to the airport because “something is always available.” He was right, at the airport Amy walked right up to the counter, purchased two tickets, and we got on our Boeing 737 and were on the way to Guilin and some of the most picturesque scenery in all of China. (I have since learned that they hold half the seats for government officials and release them at the last minute if nobody shows.)

We arrived in Guilin at about 8 in the evening, took the local bus into town, got off the bus, and walked six or eight blocks in the darkness to a hotel which had been recommended to us; and walked in and rented a room.

We were only there three days but, frankly, it was one of the most fun adventures I have ever had on a foreign trip. We rented bicycles and spent two full days touring around the countryside. On the first day we stumbled into a small village which was actually a teachers training college for students who would teach English. We spent three delightful hours with several students eating rice and stew warmed over a small charcoal grill in the middle of their dorm room — 55 unheated degrees. They had seen us bicycling through the village and had stopped us in order to practice their English. One of the most moving moments was when one the students, after having shown us his standard text with its typical English language sentences such as “the neighborhood committee assures that all the peasants carry out the teachings of the party leaders” (why, I use that vocabulary at least twice a day), proudly took a paperback biography of George Washington out of the back of his desk. It was dog-eared and obviously heavily read.

The next day we bicycled in a different direction and ended up following a road that turned into a smaller road that turned into a smaller unpaved road that turned into an even smaller, smaller dirt road that turned into a path that turned into a narrower path that ended up winding us for three or four miles literally down a two foot wide path among the farmers’ fields and provided us with an excellent opportunity to observe the agricultural process at very close range.

I sometimes wonder what Chinese peasants must have thought when they looked up and saw this American on a bicycle with a three piece pin striped suit, white shirt and tie, riding down a path through their fields. Actually, my fantasies were even greater when we passed a railroad crossing. I thought of some American tourist on a packaged tour traveling first class through China babbling on to his/her spouse about the “picturesque little peasants” when suddenly he flashed by this grade crossing on one of these country lanes and saw this American male in a three-piece pin striped suit on a bicycle and turned to his wife (whose attention meanwhile has wandered) to describe what he had seen; and received a “that’s right, dear” in a Thurberesquet so-you-heard-a-seal-bark tone of voice.

I thought you might enjoy a miscellaneous collection of some of our more interesting photographs and I am enclosing several:

[Amy’s note – my copy of the letter did not include the photos, but I think I’ve identified them and include them here. I have not included alt text as my father describes them below. In each, I am a mid-20s white woman with a really bad perm; my father is a late-40s white man in, yes, a pin striped suit.]

1. Amy cooking New Years dinner in Taiwan.

Amy in gray sweater stirring something in a kitchen .

2. Amy buying plane ticket in Canton as we leave for Guilin.

3. Amy arriving Guilin — note the characteristic mountains in the background. They really do have mountains like we see in the paintings. But then New England Lobster Villages really do look like the paintings — I don’t know what I expected.

4. Biking in Guilin.

5. Street side library in Guilin. Brenda, as a librarian, I thought you would find this of particular interest. Note the books hanging on a clothesline, the rack of books in the back left-hand corner as you face it, and another rack of books up front. As near as we could figure out they actually pay a small fee for the privilege of sitting and reading these books.

6. Amy looking at typical Guilin scene. [Couldn’t find this one.]

7. Amy and friend Ben from Taiwan. [Editorial privilege not to include photo of long-ago ex-boyfriend.]

8. Amy and the students we met in Mainland.

9. A local fisherman near Guilin balancing on his boat (which consisted of four long bamboo logs tied together and was not much different than balancing on a floating large sized diving board) as he strung out his nets. He sculled backwards with an oar in his right hand while feeding out some 200 yards of net from his left hand in a pattern that went back and forth across the river about eight times. Why, you might ask would one need eight separate layers of net. to catch fish coming down the river? Answer, the fish aren’t coming down the river. The fish live in a cave on the bottom of the river and after the nets are strung out the fisherman makes noise and scares the fish out of the cave and they come up in between the various webs of the net rather than being trapped by swimming into the net end wise. I wished I could have taken a movie of this operation because the grace with which he sculled backward with his right arm, fed the mass of net out neatly with his left hand, while balancing on his diving board all the while was astounding.

Soon after I got back from China, Ruth went over and spent several days with Amy in Taiwan and they then spent close to two weeks traveling to a number of countries and ending up in Singapore on the Washington birthday weekend. Just as they were about to leave their hotel for the airport Amy’s pocketbook with tickets, money, passport, credit cards and camera was stolen and she had to remain behind to obtain replacements when Ruth headed out. Amy is apparently a miracle worker or, at least, has figured out how to function in the Asian culture. She was able to get replacement tickets without paying for them, (it usually takes four months); get the American Embassy to open up on Washington’s birthday and replace her passport (it usually takes three days and cannot start until after the holiday); and she made arrangements through the law firm where she works in Taiwan to get somebody who lives in Singapore to lend her $1000 cash American money. She spent three days dealing with these loose ends and then headed back to Taiwan — her adventure over. I think poor Ruth suffered worse — what with the imperative of her own plane schedule meaning that she had to go to the airport and leave Amy behind within an hour after the theft. Even though Amy was doing very well, Ruth was isolated on a plane for eight hours and she had no way to know that things were working out ok.

Amy here, adding two more photos. First, my father teaching the law school class he discussed in the letter. He is bundled in a winter coat, as Taiwanese classrooms were not generally heated, and is pointing to a blackboard with notes of anti-discrimination remedies. A photo of Sun Yat-sen is hanging high on the wall on the right. The second photo is of my father and me in Guilin, possibly the two dorkiest American tourists ever to visit China.

Amy and Peter posing in front of a tree.

Adventures in Discrimination and Intimidation at the Marriott Courtyard Santa Fe

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Below is the guts of the letter we sent to Marriott and Fine Hospitality Group, the management company at the Marriott Courtyard Santa Fe. We had reserved a room at the Santa Fe Courtyard Marriott for March 15 and 22, on our way to and from a vacation in Phoenix. On the 15th, our request for an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act resulted in a police response.

I want to preface this by recognizing that we have a weird sort of privilege — the “sitting in a hotel room waiting for the police to arrive without fearing for your life” privilege — that made this incident stressful and illegal but not, ultimately, fatal. This does not reduce the extreme danger hotel personnel were willing subject their guests to in pursuit of an ADA violation.

Update: The Fine Hospitality Group (not Marriott) reached out and the upshot was that they comped us that night and (in theory) a future night, and promised discipline for the manager and training for staff.

Here’s what happened:

After we checked in and got to the room, it became clear that the bed was too low for Tim to be able to easily transfer in or out from his wheelchair. This is a fairly common problem that can be solved by either putting blocks under the legs of the bed or adding a second mattress on top. We called the front desk, requested this modification and were told “no.” The staff member explained that the way the bed was set up did not permit adding anything to raise the legs of the bed. We suggested that a second mattress could be placed on top of the first; this suggestion was rejected out of hand (“no”). We asked if there were any extra mattresses in the hotel. “No.” (This seems unlikely but who knows.) We asked if there were any empty rooms from which a mattress could be moved. “No.” The staff person then asked if we wanted to talk with the General Manager. Yes, we said, we would.

The General Manager got on the phone and we went through a similar litany of requests and refusals, but the GM added that the room was set up precisely as required by the ADA and therefore could not be altered. As an initial matter, this is not true: ADA regulations and standards do not prescribe a minimum or maximum bed height. But it also doesn’t matter. In addition to requiring certain basic physical and architectural configurations, the ADA also requires that businesses provide reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures. I explained this to the GM, who continued to insist that the room was as legally required and no changes could or would be made. We explained that we were lawyers who were familiar with applicable law, and that this simply was not true. He stood firm on his refusal to make the required modification. Sensing that this conversation would not result in the modification we needed, we said that we’d deal with the room as it was set up but would take up the matter with Marriott’s legal department. We all rang off.

The staff person, the GM, and both Tim and I were entirely calm throughout the call. We were all firm in our respective positions, but no voices were raised, no inappropriate language used, and no threats made.

Less than a minute after the call ended, the GM knocked at our door and told us we would have to leave the hotel. We said no, we did not intend to do that. He said he would call the police.

Approximately 20 minutes later, four fully-armed officers from the Santa Fe Police Department knocked at our door. We invited them in and Tim explained the above interactions and expressed our desire – it was by that time around 9:10 p.m. – to stay in the hotel so we would not have to pack up and try to find an accessible hotel at that time of night. One of the officers asked what threats we had made. Tim explained that there had been no threats. The officer informed us that the GM had told the police that we had threatened to go door-to-door through the hotel, knocking on doors and harassing guests. There is no other way to characterize this than as a lie, and a dangerous one in that it was used to invoke police intervention in an otherwise calm albeit disappointing interaction. Tim explained to the police that we had not done this, and that it would make no sense for us to anger other hotel guests, who had nothing to do with the situation.

It was my impression that the police were somewhere between puzzled and bemused that they had been called out to discuss wheelchair accommodations. They were professional and friendly throughout.

After the officers had heard us out, one of the officers went to negotiate with the GM on our behalf. The officer returned to say that the GM would “allow” us to stay provided there were no further “issues or threats.” Although, given the exchanges that had brought us to this point, this was a pretty humiliating request, we agreed, the officers left, and we stayed the night.

This entire interaction violated both the requirement to make reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures, 42 U.S.C. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(ii), and the prohibitions on retaliation for opposing discrimination and interference with and intimidation of people exercising or attempting to enjoy their rights under the statute, id. § 12203(a), (b). Indeed, calling the police is at the extreme end of interference and intimidation.

In our letter to Marriott and the management company, we proposed several measures to address this discrimination:

Training for all staff of the Santa Fe Courtyard on the requirements of the ADA, and specifically the requirements for reasonable modifications;
Communication to all U.S.-based Marriott and franchisee/licensee staff that, under no circumstances, are they to involve law enforcement in the discussion of the accommodations and modifications needed by guests with disabilities;
Reprimand to go into the personnel file of the General Manager (whose name we never got); and
Refund of our payment for the room on March 15 (we have, of course, cancelled our reservation for the return trip and will not be staying at that hotel in future trips to Santa Fe).

Stay tuned! I’ll update the post if we receive a substantive response from Marriott or Fine Hospitality Group.

Trans-Siberian Railway 1985: Ruth and Amy’s Big Adventure

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[For Ken Shiotani, so some of the photos will be illustrative of text and some will be random trains. Ken generously helped with the alt text for many of the train photos.]

During the summer of 1985, my mother, Ruth Blau, and I took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow. Here we are getting ready to board in Beijing. (I’m adding alt text to the photos. So I don’t have to repeat: Mom and I are both white women with short brown hair. In July, 1985, Mom is 48 and I’m 24.)

Ruth (white woman; blue t-shirt; jeans; short brown hair) standing in front of a train car with writing in Chinese, Russian and another language I don't know.

Amy (white woman; white short-sleeve shirt; jeans; short brown hair) standing in front of a train car with writing in Chinese, Russian and another language I don't know.

I had just spent two years (and three out of the last four) in Taipei, Taiwan, first as a gap year (which we called “taking a year off” or “not being ready to face your senior year”) in 1981-82, during which I took odd jobs teaching English, getting my head around the idea of my future, and eating extraordinary things from food carts, night markets, and the occasional restaurant. I came back to Taiwan after graduating in 1983, first on a one-year fellowship to study legal history at National Taiwan University, and then stayed on for another year of teaching, translating, saving for law school, and eating. In 1985, I was heading back to start law school at Yale, but took the long way from Taipei to New Haven through Hong Kong, Nanjing, Beijing, Ulan Batur, Irkutsk, Moscow (for about 2 hours, but that’s another story), Kyiv (which we called Kiev), St. Petersburg (which we called Leningrad), Helsinki, London, Edinburgh (for a friend’s wedding), and Arlington.

I met my mother in Hong Kong, traveled to Nanjing, somewhere along the way climbed Tai Shan at four in the morning (yet another story), and ended up in Beijing where we boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway for the trip to Moscow. I was at that point fluent in conversational Mandarin, and my mother had brushed up on her master’s-degree-level Russian from 1960.

These are mostly my mother’s photos, as I was still in the phase of my photography habit known as “I don’t have the money to develop a ton of 36-frame rolls” so I took photos pretty sparingly. Luckily my mother had a bit more money to devote to the photo counter at Drug Fair (the CVS of early 1980s suburban DC). In addition, both my mother’s and my photos sat in boxes in our respective attics/basements for the past 35 years, so the organization is not great. That is, I may call something “heading out of the station in Beijing” that is really “pulling through some other random station.” But you’ll get the gist.

First, the route, from the modern-day TransSiberian website (haha as opposed to what? the 1985 TransSiberian website?).

Couple of photos in the station in Beijing and heading out.

The dining car. We were, if I recall correctly, told that we were lucky to be riding from Beijing to Moscow rather than the reverse direction, as we had Chinese chefs most of the way and therefore far better fare than was offered by the Soviet chefs. After spending a week in the USSR – where the five year plan appeared to have focused on cucumbers – I’m guessing that was accurate.

Also note that while my hair is grayer, my fashion choices and coffee addiction have not changed in almost 40 years.

Although both of us are introverts, my mother and I somehow managed to occupy this space together for five days.

Not far outside Beijing we crossed a portion of the Great Wall — not the well maintained, touristy part, but a part that gives a sense of what the builders were trying to do (and how silly, for example, a modern-day wall might be).

Also during the first day out of Beijing.

Somewhere between Beijing and Mongolia.

Mongolia:

Yurts! For real!

Though both Mongolia and the USSR were still communist in 1985, small-scale, babushka-based capitalism thrived along the railway.

We would be allowed off the train very briefly at stops, though the stations were tightly patrolled. Although this was taken in the Beijing station, it is relevant to the end of our journey.As we got closer to Moscow, we were told to close the window in our compartment as the train had switched to a diesel engine. I managed to convince my mother that this was no big deal and that we should keep the windows open — it was, after all, July. The result – of which I don’t appear to have a photo – was that we arrived in Moscow covered in diesel soot.

Our arrival in Moscow marked the end of the Trans-Siberian part of the trip, but not the adventure. We were met by our Intourist guide who told us that “Moscow is closed,” and that she’d be transporting us to the airport for an immediate flight to Kyiv, the next stop on the trip, but one that was supposed to come after a couple of days touring Moscow. Turned out there was some sort of Communist youth festival in Moscow — the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students to be precise — and Intourist did not want rando Americans wandering around interacting with Youth and Students. So after all that, the entirety of my experience of Moscow is a cab ride from the train station to the airport. We continued our trip with an extended stay in Kyiv — which was cool, as my grandmother was born there — and then Leningrad. We took another train from Leningrad to Helsinki, but sadly I don’t seem to have photos. My memory is that that train ride was VERY tightly controlled, so it’s possible photography was not permitted?

It was truly the trip of a lifetime, and I’ll be forever grateful to my mom for making it happen and putting up with me in a small compartment for five days!

Extra bonus train photos for Ken – from the Beijing to Nanjing trip:

Update: In the process of scanning & tossing old documents, I came across my calendar for 1985, Here is the page for the week of July 22-28, 1985, reflecting the quick change in our itinerary.

CREEC-Colorado visits CREEC-California

Access success and fail in Helena, with random Helena photos

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I spent part of last week in Helena, Montana on a new/old case in which CREEC is joining the ACLU National Prison Project and the ACLU of Montana as co-counsel on the case of Langford v. Bullock. The Langford case was brought and settled in the early 1990s, but the implementation period is ongoing with respect to a claim under Title II of the ADA. CREEC is lending its expertise in this area.

Image: four people standing arm in arm. From left: a middle aged white man with red-blond hair and a gray goatee wearing a tan suit jacket and open collar shirt, an younger middle-eastern man with short hair wearing a button down shirt, a young white woman in a gray t-shirt and blue scarf, and a middle aged white woman in a yellow shirt and multi-colored scarf.

Jon Ellingson of the Montana ACLU, Ajmel Quereshi of the ACLU NPP, and CREECsters Sarah Morris and me.

Sarah and I flew into Missoula, met with Jon and Ajmel, and then all drove over to Helena. The meeting went well, and left me a few hours of Wednesday afternoon for a leisurely stroll around Helena. As I’ve mentioned — among other places, in my Ramps of Route 1 post — I love to observe the small ways that small town small businesses find to provide access.*

First up: Taco del Sol on Last Chance Gulch Street.** I love not only their tile ramp

but that, even as a small restaurant, they made Braille menus available.

Also the carne asada burrito was fantastic!

Last Chance Gulch was a sort of pedestrian mall that did a great job ensuring the one or two steps of rise at most stores was ramped. The giant plush bear added an extra touch at the Lasso the Moon toy store.

And accessible ice cream!

Helena had a couple of hilarious access fails, as well. Flower pot access fail:

Pink flamingo access fail:

And major design brain fart fail:

The photos below were just randomness from my walk:

And my photos could not capture the beauty of the mountains, but I tried:

********************

* As with the original post, I have to offer this disclaimer, because every now and again some defense-side attorney (hi, guys!) may read this: I did not evaluate these ramps for compliance with the Standards. I don’t know their dimensions or slope. If you try to introduce this as evidence in one of my cases, I will file a Motion for Judicial Notice of Completely Missing the Point.

** Not kidding!

New Rule: Remedial Scotch

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New rule: when we arrive at a hotel at 2:00 in the morning — a hotel that has confirmed by phone and fax that it has reserved for us a room with a roll-in shower — to find, after unloading our voluminous luggage (shower chair; giant duffel; garment bag; suitcase; suitcase; computer wheelie; backpack), checking in, and tipping the helpful bellman who has transported this unGodly collection of luggage to the room, that the room has only a tub and that, in fact, no room with a roll-in shower is available that night (“night”), there will be a member of the ADA defense bar available on-call to secure alternative accommodations and to provide a nightcap of very very expensive Scotch.

These are the facts:

1. The hotel had at least one room with a roll-in shower.

2. The hotel confirmed — several times* — that it had reserved a room with a roll-in shower for us.

3. This was incorrect. When we arrived, there were no roll-in-shower rooms available.

4. The hotel had at least one non-roll-in-shower room available — the one with the tub that they sent us to with our mule-train of luggage in tow.

5. At least one of the rooms with a roll-in shower was occupied by someone who did not need it (this fact related to us by the night manager).

This is the law:

1. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in places of public accommodation, including hotels. 42 U.S.C. § 12182(a).

2. Hotels are required to provide rooms with roll-in showers in proportion to the total number of rooms. DOJ 2010 Standards for Accessible Design, Table 224.2. I’m guessing that this hotel was required to provide at least nine such rooms; every hotel is required to provide at least one.

3. Hotels are required to

[e]nsure that accessible guest rooms are held for use by individuals with disabilities until all other guest rooms of that type have been rented and the accessible room requested is the only remaining room of that type;

and

[r]eserve, upon request, accessible guest rooms or specific types of guest rooms and ensure that the guest rooms requested are blocked and removed from all reservations systems.

28 C.F.R. § 36.302(e)(1)(iii) and (iv).

So there’s pretty much no question that the hotel violated the law. And there’s no question that the violation had consequences: after flying across the country and arriving at 2:00 in the morning, Tim would not be able to shower when he woke up later that day.

The problem is, while there were consequences for Tim, there will be no consequences for the hotel. Title III of the ADA has no damages remedy. Truth is, we would be fairly unlikely to bring a lawsuit for damages. We didn’t want damages; we wanted a useable hotel room. We wanted to be able to do what every weary traveler wants at 2:00 a.m. — to check in and go to sleep; NOT to travel up and down the elevator with our piles of luggage, have a long — pleasant but unfruitful — conversation with the night manager, wait through long sessions between the night manager and his computer terminal, finally settle for the (inaccessible) room at 3:00, and (Tim) be unable to shower the next morning.

In other words, we just wanted the system to work.

But wait!, you say, Title III has an injunctive remedy! The court can order the system to work, right?

Well first of all, of course, only after a lawsuit, which can take anywhere from two to 12 years. By then, we’d be home and Tim would have showered, repeatedly, in our very own roll-in shower.

But more importantly, the hotel, in a case like this, would almost certainly argue** that Tim has no standing to sue unless he can specify the date on which he will return to this precise hotel. And while many people travel repeatedly to the same hotel, many don’t. That’s the point, right? When you’re planning travel to a new city, you want to be able to pick up the phone or go online, make a reservation, show up, and have a room you can use. The problem is, under the current system, there is very little incentive for this system to work for people with disabilities: no damages remedy; and no injunction unless you plan to come back to the very same hotel AND have the time and energy for a lawsuit. Given this, the hotel knows that it doesn’t really need to comply.

So — new rule: every ADA defense lawyer who makes these bone-headed standing arguments must register on an ADA Compliance Resolution List and provide a number where they can be reached 24 hours a day. When one of these damagesless, standingless events occurs, they must be ready to solve the problem, provide the room, and send a nightcap of very very expensive Scotch.

Anyone want to help me draft the bill?

[Cross-posted at CREECblog.]

************

* When we make hotel reservations, we can’t just go online and request the room we want. We call, we have a long conversation about roll-in showers (“Are you sure? You’ve seen the bathroom in that room? Can you ask housekeeping to check? I heard you roll your eyes — just go check please.”), we often call back at least once, and we send a confirming fax, which we then have on hand when we arrive at the hotel. None of that matters if it’s 2:00 a.m. and there simply isn’t an accessible room available.

** Indeed, this hotel has made this precise argument with respect to violations known to exist in many of its hotels. The court held that the plaintiff “must assert an intent to return to the particular place (or places) where the violations are alleged to be occurring.” Scherr v. Marriott Int’l, Inc., 703 F.3d 1069, 1075 (7th Cir. 2013). So there is no standing to make them fix the problem in other hotels unless this plaintiff is planning to go to each of them? Which means, of course, that none of the other hotels in the chain will be fixed until other wheelchair-using hotel guests — in this case, 56 other guests at 56 different hotels — encounter the barriers and sue. Or unless one guest has the foresight to bring a class action, adding to the length and complexity of the suit and the elapsed time until a discrimination-free stay can be ensured.

Image from the webpage of Fine Design Contractors of Somewhere, MN.

Photos from Baltimore

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In Baltimore for the National Disability Rights Network conference and have been playing with a new lens.

Update: More Baltimore photos on my Flickr page.

Holly and Amy’s Big Adventure

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I got to do one of my favorite things on Friday: talk about the ADA to a bunch of disability rights advocates. Even better: the advocates were with the Southwest Center for Independence, and were in Durango, Colorado. I had the choice of six* hours of driving (each way) through the amazing Colorado countryside, or an hour (each way) bouncing over the mountains in a regional jet. I chose the drive without a second thought.

So Friday morning early, I lit out for Durango and because Holly still isn’t fully house-trained, and thus can’t stay alone with Tim, I brought her along for the ride.

It’s almost as if I bought the CRV with the dogs in mind! Oh, right. Turns out it has an added feature I hadn’t even known about. For those awkward moments when she poops in the middle of a scenic overlook that lacks a trashcan:

Always pack out your trash!

Anyway, I chose the southeastern route in the map above — down I25 and across Route 160 — because I’m not a big fan of pass driving. Google Maps helpfully sets out various routes, and then lets you choose your mode of transportation: car; bus; on foot. To accurately calculate our time, however, they need another option: traveling with puppy.

We stopped every hour and a half to two hours to find Holly a grassy spot. Besides that slight inconvenience, though, she was the perfect traveling companion.

Driving in Colorado: breathtakingly beautiful.

Breathtakingly scary:

Breathtakingly . . . obvious?

Got to Durango without a minute to spare before the talk. That is, though I didn’t have any minutes to spare, I spared a couple, and ended up about 5 minutes late. It was my favorite kind of talk: with interested advocates who had great ideas and great questions.

After the talk, Holly and I set out to explore Durango a bit, and found a path by the river that was perfect for a post-driving-trip stroll.

Obligatory “Holly Posing Because She Knows Just How Cute She Is” photo:

Dinner was yak stew — a first for me! — and lamb dumplings at The Himalayan Kitchen, then back to the hotel, where Holly checked out the accommodations.

For the drive back to Denver, I chose the more direct route — in blue in the map above — that took me on Route 160 as far as Del Norte, and then Route 285 northeast through the mountains. There were a couple more passes, but either they were relatively easy passes or I’m finally getting use to pass driving. Or possibly exchanging the 1988 Accord for a 2013 CRV just makes the whole thing feel safer. But I also took the time to stop for photos. These first four were processed in HDR:

Wildlife!

Colorado life!

Uh oh! Better behave myself!***

I arrived home, tired and happy, yesterday afternoon, very grateful to live in a state of overwhelming natural beauty and kick-ass disability advocates.

*********

* Actually, I have to confess, when I first learned I would be going to Durango, I thought, “it’s in the same state; how far can that be?” Having grown up out east**, I assumed that anywhere you had to go within a single state couldn’t be more than a couple of hours’ drive. Soooooo it turns out they make states bigger out here. So the six-hour drive was a bit of a surprise, but ultimately a pleasant one.

** I’ve been overthinking the phrases “back east” and “out west” recently. I use the phrases mostly because they reflect my path. I started life on the east coast, and I’ve migrated out west. But it occurs to me that these common phrases are not only sort of east-coast-centric, but also reflect a European-American-centric path (my peeps mostly entered the U.S. from the east coast and headed west) as opposed to an Asian-American path, as many Asians entered the U.S. from the west coast. So I thought I’d try “out east” for a while and see how it sounded.

*** Tim’s uncle Pete Palmer is sheriff!

Vegas at Sunrise

More photos from Santa Fe

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Taking photos in Santa Fe is like cheating. You just point the camera out the back door and voila!

Disc Golf Henge:

Fence.

Fence, HDR.

Barbed wire, HDR:

I couple of friends we met on our walk.

Window. Almost anything looks good in adobe. Ask Santa Fe! I think it’s in the building code!

Water spout:

The same water spout, an hour later:

Hubble the Golden Retriever discovers that Rodney has a snack.

And it wouldn’t be my blog unless I took the opportunity to go just a bit Andy Rooney on your ass. My rental car was a Prius. Even after I learned the sequence of button pushing and gear shifting that was necessary to make it go, and adjusted to the fact that it sounded, at every light, like the car had died and I’d need to call a tow truck, there were two more very disconcerting things.

(1) You don’t need a key to drive the car but you do need a key to unlock it. This means that when you get in the car, you have to figure out what to do with the key, since it’s not sitting in the ignition. If I owned a Prius, I would lock the keys in the car at least once per week.

(2) You not only get the general warm, fuzzy, superior feeling of driving a really fuel-efficient car, you get a constant, real-time, animated demonstration of just HOW efficient you’re being:

This little animated diagram changes as you drive, showing — near as I can tell — which direction the little energy hamsters that power the car are traveling. The diagram is (a) designed for the driver to monitor the car’s energy situation in real time, and thus incredibly distracting and unsafe; (b) not designed to convey anything to the driver, and thus pretty pointless; or (c) designed solely to show the passenger what a cool, energy-efficient person the driver is.

Thought Snax

Food for thought . . . in small tasty bites.

Category Archives: Travel

Travelogue 1984: Taiwan and China

Adventures in Discrimination and Intimidation at the Marriott Courtyard Santa Fe

Trans-Siberian Railway 1985: Ruth and Amy’s Big Adventure

CREEC-Colorado visits CREEC-California

Access success and fail in Helena, with random Helena photos

New Rule: Remedial Scotch

Photos from Baltimore

Holly and Amy’s Big Adventure

Vegas at Sunrise

More photos from Santa Fe

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