When I wrote my defense of commonmass, which should have been more of a defense of commonmass than it was and which should not have touched on anything else, yesterday, it was the fruit of a review of a diary in which I was going to talk about my two other trips. This is the way that diary began.
I understand that I should not have published yesterday with any call-out information in it. I should not have changed the title either. I didn't delete the diary because I thought the comment thread was amazingly instructive. I did not do that to be manipulative, I was operating on a suggestion from another Kossack. I should not have updated it in the morning either. That's the apology. The rest is an essay on travel and friendship.
29 days. Roughly 12,700 miles (not counting a day trip to Pittsburgh). 18 Kossacks (not counting Netroots Nation 14). All friends, a few new friends and several people who became better friends. I diaried the first trip in two installments: Puerto Rico and the Northeast. I didn't take many pictures on my second trip and I didn't even bring my actual camera (yes, I have some pics on my phone, which is not talking to my computer very well these days) on the third trip, to Sonoma County and San Francisco. Thus, this will be more thematic and probably not that well illustrated.
Follow me below the great orange hazelnut croissant with chocolate and orange peel for more.
I'm going to discuss two points: the importance of friendship (in case you think I don't appreciate it) and the idea is that travel is to discover things you don't expect.
1. Friendship is important. It's one of the reasons I travel, to see some of the people I don't get to see at the monthly LA Kossacks meetups. Casual readers of the blog might not know this, but when, for example, a community diary like Kitchen Table Kibitzing makes a statement like this:
Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degreethey aren't kidding, and I've hung out with many of the "most" in real life myself.
We don't always get to spend time with our online friends alone, not even at NN 14 when we usually travel in groups. Thus I was REALLY happy to spend time, even if it was just drinks, dinner and a bar crawl, with some of the people I had become very familiar with online.
And now I have three new friends (or groups of friends): gizmo59 and his new husband, who were actually the first Kossacks I spent time with after Jim died, on January 1 2013, for the four days after NN 14; Mr. and Mrs. side pocket (who will show up later in this diary too) for four days in Sonoma County, and librarisingnsf, for the first of three incredible evenings in San Francisco. Yes, only six hours, but you can learn a LOT about each other in just six hours.
2. Travel is about what you DON'T expect. I'm pretty sure you were able to see some of the things that surprised and delighted me in the diaries about my first trip. The lechonera in Guavate, for example, especially knowing that it wasn't the one we thought we were going to. How convenient a hotel at 27th St. just east of 5th Avenue in Manhattan is. My impulse has always been the east 50s or the northern part of Murray Hill, but this was even better. The dalliance that I arranged on my phone in the sculpture garden at MOMA. Nothing earthshaking, all pleasant surprises.
From the remaining 18 days? After the lechonera I KNEW I needed to make arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas) myself, and I was able to get everything I needed for it in Los Angeles, except for the pigeon peas. I found them in my travels, at a grocery store in Erie, Pennsylvania. Canned AND dried. I guess that when I do make them I'll diary it if I can find a community diary to do that for. Erie itself is surprising, mostly because of the peninsula that juts into Lake Erie from it. Beaches and everything, and a monument for an event during the War of 1812. And the Andy Warhol Museum. Spending four days on a farm in Sonoma County was just remarkable, and the restaurant that the side pockets enticed me with - Woodfour - was worth the trip every bit as much as making applesauce with just picked Gravenstein apples the next day was. I guess I'd count Richard Lyon and Mr. maggiejean as pleasant surprises too.
The chef at Woodfour gave me some recommendations for where to go to dinner, too. I went to the one restaurant of the four, Central Kitchen, that I had never heard of. OMG. I think I mentioned in a previous diary that I am now comfortable dining alone, and I could not have been more comfortable here. No food pr0n, sorry, but the Fried Green Tomatoes, chili-caper aioli, white anchovy, with a glass of domaine collin, cremant de limoux brut rose, languedoc, france (a sparkling wine) was excellent. The fennel pollen maltagliati with home cured pancetta, lobster mushrooms, corn and sea beans was one of the four or five best plates of food I've ever had, and the wine they suggested with it (and not one of the more expensive wines by the glass), the sean thackrey, pleiades XXIII, bolinas, california '12 was perfection. Incidentally, a wine store I can WALK to carries it.
So that was what had been on my mind. I'll apologize for the in-progress edits and title change in yesterday's diary again.
UPDATE, 8/31, 3:10 PM PDT: I'm stepping away from the computer now, and I am not going to mention my summer travels in any more diaries, especially not the trips I have diaried already. I also took any mention of newpioneeer out.