Cormac Brown came out to Long Island...

...in the back room, he said "don't touch me! Get lost!"


C'mon Cormac

Take a walk on the mild side

I said hey Cormac

Take a walk on the mild side




We went to Jones Beach last Monday, the Mother-in-law rented for us a Mitsubishi Endeavor and the Avis supplied a Garmin GPS for us. The Garmin was pretty nice overall, though it had its difficulties with the antiquated freeway lanes and on-ramps from the 1930's that populate all of Long Island.

By the time it said "stay to the right," it was almost too late and the actual global positioning could be a little off...but so are the Google Maps on Virgin Airlines, which have you traveling too fast sometimes when you are cruising up to the airport terminal, or have sitting too high when you are just coasting on the runway.


The Mother-in-law gave us a Barnes & Noble giftcard and we tried our best to redeem it at the nearest B & N that the Garmin had given us...but that location was actually a cemetery, across the street from a Pizza Hut and right by Eishenhower Park. Go figure. The other address on Country Road was "oh, so wrong" as well. We finally made it to this one, no help from Garmin who I believed was hacked and their directory filled with bogus information.


The Garmin did get us to Jones Beach just fine...

They have a lot of garbage cans there. Check the clouds, they stayed nice and high, and kept the heat down.

We don't have green flags for the areas that are permissable to swim at in Northern California. There is usually a sign saying "no swimming." We also don't have the same amount of lifeguards, they went away with Proposition 13 and they haven't been back.

See that The Missus was looking down? She was on the hunt for sea shells, though she wasn't going to sell them by the seashore.

She found them and they will be come jewelry.

Look a shark egg! There isn't as much seaweed as there is in California, but we saw more shark eggs than usual.

"There will be no recreating Lawrence of Arabia here!"

The clock tower is really to far away to see. There is the amphitheatre next to it and see what I mean? I told you that there are way too many garbage cans...though they will probably come in handy for Labor Day weekend.

Cormac Travels Tramples Testy Trifling Tourism Touters

Yes, this is a traveling blog, but that doesn't mean that I cannot cover other things that are travel-related. And no, please don't jump to the conclusion from this post that I have a problem with Canadians, my problem is with the Canadian Tourist Board. They are simply not trying.

Oh, they are spending money, but they are just half-assing it. Witness below...

"Found new world cuisine amid old world charm." A wonderful slogan, though if you are going to put an ad about food up in San Francisco, try actually putting food in the ad. A salad from the local supermarket, coupled with some fish scraped off a pan, would not entice even someone from the Velveeta-chugging suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, to go to Canada.

This ad says even less about Alberta...

...come to Alberta and see our unusually large "Step Brothers" posters!

Actually, this is what happens on the American end, when only half of the ad is taken down. Down below is the ad in its entirety...

What it says is "who knew that blogging was so popular 3,000 years ago?" Well, if you had the carvings translated, you'd know why...

Yesterday afternoon, I believe that the Kiowan Bear Lady gave me a bad batch of bear stew. When I confronted her about it, she said "oh, I must not have completely rinsed out the deer urine I used to clean that pot. No problem. Come back tomorrow and I'll give you a slightly different bowl of bear stew."


So Canadian Tourist Board? Please, give it a little effort and not like this, but a real effort.

(amended) I Come From The Land Of The Pale Blue Legs

Alternative name for the post? "While the world unravels, Cormac travels."

So we embarked on our trip from the Land Of Pale Blue Legs (tourists who expect San Francisco to be warm during the summer, ha!) to The Island Of Long.

The shuttle van for the airport was on time...we were not. Minus one Karma Point. As we put our luggage in the back, there is a German woman in the driver's seat and people, she was not the driver. She was on her cell phone, shrieking into it...when she wasn't shrieking at the driver. Long story short, she didn't leave herself enough time for an international flight and somehow is everybody else's fault.

The Missus was convinced that the woman was Danish and my wife has certainly spent more time with Danes that I have. In retrospect, I believe that the woman was from Apoplecxia. She was quite a multi-tasker, hounding the driver and shouting at whoever she was talking to on the cell phone while looking for a taxi cab to jump ship to. The poor shuttle driver found a taxi before she did and we pulled over in somebody's driveway.

She ran off to the cab and a silent cheer went up throughout the van. Silent because no one wanted to break the new wonderful silence, Depeche Mode.


At SFO...

The family that wears travel head rest pillows together, shall be mocked for wearing travel head rest pillows together. Take them off and carry them like anyone with common sense would, dorks!

One day soon and though it probably won't even make the papers, the flight attendants for Singapore Airlines will all look like a bunch of polyester pirates, because of the eye patches that they will be wearing. They insist on tying the scarfs they wear into a bow with highest part of that tie sticking up at above chin level. Conceivably they could lose half of the flight crew, just bending down to fast and picking things up.

we watched a KLM plane unloading packages and parcels both in containers and plastic-wrapped/cargo-netted to a pallet. These pallets would then go on this articulated platform that would control the direction of the pallets by turning the wheels underneath them.

Guess what came out of the 747 next? I'll give you a hint, it's bigger than a baby's arm...

...and unfortunately, my in-laws computer won't let me upload the f*cking thing. Arrrggghh!

Trust me when I say it is fairly fantastic and you'll have to wait until I get home to see the thing.


(amended version) and here it is, a Lamboghini Gallardo!

Is that cool or what? The person who owns this must have made their money off of Ikea.

We flew Virgin American, mostly because I was scared that the other airlines would go belly up in between booking the flight and the actual flying. Virgin is cool, you get your own MP3 player, Television playing live TV, movie player, and you can even chat with your seatmates (though the keyboard is tricky).

There is light pink and purple neon lighting just like in a nightclub and you can order food or drinks at fifteen minutes after take off all the way up until fifteen before landing. The flight attendants are re-laxed and if not for having to wait a year for our luggage because Virgin had to share the luggage carousel with another Virgin flight and two other airlines, I would say don't bother flying with anyone else. But standing around JFK for thirty-five minutes waiting on just two bags of luggage, is not my idea of fun.

The Mighty Quin Speaks

When Quin found out via email that I am in New York and with rent-a-car, she dispensed the following advice...

"Just remember, when driving in new york... that middle finger they are holding up does not mean you are #1 to them."

And So It Begins Anew

So as I begin this new chapter in blogging, I look to the spirit of Jack Kerouac for guidance by reading "On The Road" for the first time in my life. I don't know why I chose this book in particular, other than the title came to me while I was at the bookstore. I was looking for a diversion from my usual steady diet of crime and mystery fiction.

I am the polar opposite of Kerouac in every sense of the word...

I am still on my first marriage and happy to be so. I have done everything possible to stay in my hometown, even though it is becoming nearly impossible financially. Rarely do I imbibe, though if I'm on vacation and I'm not driving, that will be the most likely time that I will. Not to mention I have never hitchhiked nor have I seen the Midwest, outside of various stopovers in airports.

The one thing I do have in common with Kerouac is the desire for kicks. For the experience of that which is unique, that which is different. I search for the thing that spurs the mind and all of the senses into a full gallop.

Alas, the spirit of Kerouac has left me on my own for now. He said "Frisco" one time to me and one time is one too many. So I will be without the spirit of Jack to guide me, but I will not be alone. The Missus and The Kid will accompany me on most of my misadventures. As always, I will be my stoic, detached and snarling self...ever on the cusp of turning into an anti-social misfit. It's what I do people and damn it, man has to do something in life.

Fortunately for America and the rest of the world, The Missus is here to balance all of that out.