Monthly Archives: January 2019

Signs and Suds

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The American Sign Museum almost always has something on the schedule that interests me but there have been way too many scheduling conflicts of late. Not so on Thursday and the Signs & Suds event with Rhinegeist Brewery. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I like Rhinegeist and love the sign museum so I signed on just as soon as I realized I could make it.

I used the event at the museum as an excuse to have dinner at the nearby Camp Washington Chili. Traffic was nowhere near as bad as I feared so I got to the chili parlor, enjoyed my 4-way with absolutely no time pressure, and arrived at the museum just after the doors opened at 6:00. The event was scheduled to start at 6:30 so I had plenty of time to look through the gift shop, chat with a few of the other attendees, and speculate what might be inside those growlers and crowlers. I also spent some time contemplating the growlers themselves. The tight sealing insulated containers certainly bear little resemblance to the glass jugs my buddies and I would lug back from the neighborhood bar filled with 3.2 beer back in the day.

The beer tasting would take place during a fairly normal guided tour of the museum conducted by Kevin Wallace. No one will ever match museum founder Tod Swormstedt as a tour guide, although Kevin is getting pretty close. I failed to get a head count, but an after the fact guess is around 40 attendees. Before getting rolling on the tour, Kevin asked how many were in the museum for the first time. It seemed to me that about 3/4 of the hands went up. Maybe I should have expected that but I didn’t; Neither did Kevin.

Of course, this was not an entirely normal tour. Its other guide was TJ DiNino from Rhinegeist, who poured and described four different beers throughout the tour. The beers were Amelia Belgium, Existential Apple, Odd Job, and BA Big Willie. TJ spoke about the ingredients, process, and taste of each in an easily understood layman’s language although he was perfectly capable of speaking in more esoteric terms when called for.  

The event’s description included the phrase “will pair iconic American Sign Museum signs with rare Rhinegeist beers”. As someone who has toured the museum multiple times, I admit to sometimes wandering off and not always paying close attention to what was being said. I did not hear all of the pairings but I did hear “Since we’re drinking a California style IPA, here’s a sign from California.” Good enough for me. 

Fire and Ice in Hamilton

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This was the weekend of the Hamilton Ohio Ice Festival. The festival takes place every other year and I go to every other festival. The biennial schedule for the festival is intentional. My quadrennial attendance is not. In fact, I didn’t realize my attendance was so infrequent and regular until I started to write this post. I believe the festival is always a two day event with activities beginning Friday evening and wrapping up on Saturday. I was there in the bright sunshine of the event’s second day in 2011 and in the cool of Friday evening in 2015. This year the theme was Games and several Monopoly pieces were on display. This post opens with my favorite: the race car.

When I can’t get the race car, I go for the other wheeled marker, the wheelbarrow. It was there, too, along with the Scottie dog an Rich Uncle Pennybags.

More recent games were also represented including Dig Dug, Pac Man, and Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots. I’ve always wondered if my sons knew that the robots they played with on Christmas morning had received a few practice punches before going under the tree.

Most of the carvings are strictly hands-off, but there is an area where games are meant to be played. How about some chilled checkers or frosted tic-tac-toe?

All outdoor events are affected by weather and those involving ice doubly so. Good weather with high temperatures can be nearly as bad as foul weather. This year’s festival was faced with both. One of the reasons I chose to attend on Friday was that rain turning to snow was predicted for Saturday. Friday’s temperatures weren’t exactly balmy but they were above freezing and carvings that were to be judged on Saturday were keep inside so as to be in the best shape possible for the competition. That’s very sensible but does result in some disappointment.

One festival activity was a Friday night only affair. Fire and Ice action started a few minutes before 7:00 when three lead carvers and several assistants went to work on three giant ice blocks on the courthouse lawn. I arrived a little later with no chance of a good view so I took some shots over people’s heads. In just about an hour, the blocks had been transformed into Mario, Princess Peach, and Bowser the fire breathing dragon. The carving was impressive not only for the speed at which it was accomplished but at the details in the finished work in spite of the speed. The fire came in two forms. Mario was tickled by flames coming from Bowser’s mouth with the aid of a propane torch, and some unidentified fiery liquid erupted in intricately carved ice bowls beside the figures. There is a glimpse of Bowser breath in the second picture, and the last picture, which I took after the crowd thinned, shows one of the bowls of fire.

Trip Peek #78
Trip #122
Christmas Escape 2014

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This picture is from my 2014 Christmas Escape trip. This was a nineteen day affair that involved plenty of motel rooms but also included a night with friends in Savannah, Georgia, another with a friend in Saint Augustine, Florida, and a couple nights with my uncle in Lake Alfred, Florida. Christmas Day was spent in Saint Augustine. While staying on Marathon Key, I made a day trip to Key West and that’s when the sunset photo was taken. I worked in several new-to-me Dixie Highway segments on the trip and made a point of visiting all ten known Robert E Lee/Dixie Highway markers.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Book Review
A Canadian Connection
Denny Gibson

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This is my fourth self published book; All are travelogues. This one is a midquel that covers the omitted middle section of a trip that formed part of the previous book, 50 @ 70. When I did my faux review of 50 @ 70, I joked that it would not be my third strike because the first two, while not at all hits, were not quite whiffs either. 50 @ 70 pretty much was. In looking for things to blame that on other than poor writing and an uninteresting subject, I’ve grasped at two.

One is the lack of a predefined target group. The first two books were about named auto trails, the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway, which had their own fan base who could at least be informed that something new existed related to the subject of their affection. Not a lot of people are fans of being 70 years old, and any that are will most likely move on to some other number or will simply cease being fans — or anything else — completely. As for the 50 states part, I did know of a couple of ” all 50″ clubs but they are basically registries and stores with only one way communication. I recently became aware of a couple of Facebook groups focusing on visiting all fifty states so I’ll probably try dropping notes about 50 @ 70 but I don’t expect much.

The second problem is the name. I’ve long accepted that no one is going to find it by accident, but I recently found out that it can barely be found on purpose. The number one hit today for an Amazon all departments search for “50 @ 70” was an Evinrude carburetor rebuild kit. Lower ranked items included elite dumbbells and Honda foot pegs. Restricting the search to books put a John Deere manual at the top of the list. The list also contained books on mid-century music and a hot dog cookbook with 50 recipes. My book was at the bottom of the second page.

So when I picked a title for this book with gorgeous scenery, semi-exotic wild animals, native settlements, and frontier history I was careful not to chose something that looked like a broken email address or a rejected password. I also made an effort to identify with a predefined group. Canadians have been around for a long time and there’s a bunch of them. I’m not so certain that they’re actually interested in a connection to Alaska but I know there’s a good chance that, if they’re not interested, they might apologize for it.

A Canadian Connection, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2019, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 104 pages, ISBN 978-1719274449.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there.

2018 in the Rear View

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The year in numbers with 2017 values in parentheses:

  • 6 (9) = Road trips reported
  • 67 (73) = Blog posts
  • 66 (66) = Days on the road
  • 1941 (1896) = Pictures posted — 473 (284) in the blog and 1468 (1612) in Road Trips

I was on the road for the same number of days this year as last but packed them into three less trips. The three less trips account for half of the drop in blog posts with one less Sunday and two less reviews accounting for the rest. I posted a few less pictures from trip journals but more than made up for it with a significant increase in the number of pictures posted in the blog. There were no new-for-2018 blog posts in the top five but a new-for-2018 trip journal entry crabbed the top slot on the non-blog list.

Top Blog Posts:

  1. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
    After a couple of years in second place, the My Wheels post on my first brand new bicycle recaptures first. Three firsts and three seconds account for the post’s six years of existence.
  2. Hats Off to Larry
    This appeared more than a month before the Flightliner post but this is the first time it’s made the top five. The occasion for the post was a retirement party for musician Larry Goshorn. For the most part, Larry has stuck to his decision to retire from performing although he did release a CD of mostly previously recorded material titled I Wish I Could Fly in 2016. Health issues that prompted the decision to retire have continued. I have to note that the post on the passing of Larry’s brother Tim topped last year’s list. I have no guesses as to why this post got increased attention this year.
  3. Book Review — How to Visit All 50 States in 12 Trips
    This post ranked third when it first appeared in 2014, but this is the first time it has made it back to the top five since then. The book’s author, Terri Weeks, has begun working as a travel agent which might have something to do with the increased interest.
  4. Much Miscellany 2, Sloopy at 50
    Like this year’s number three post, this one made the top five when it first appeared and is just now returning to the list. That first time was in 2015 when the song Hang on Sloopy turned fifty years old.
  5. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
    This ranked number one in 2012, when it was first published and there was still hope of saving the historic Twenty Mile House, and in 2013, when it was demolished (Roadhouse Down). It was still on the list, at number four, in 2014. It dropped off in 2015 but a retrospective article (Twenty Mile Stand Two Years On) took the number four slot that year. I can’t explain its return but would like to think that at least one of those visits was from someone involved in the demolition feeling a little remorse.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

  1. JHA 2018 Conference
    It seems like I’m seriously baffled each year by some of the non-blog posts that make the top five but not this year. Every one is the journal of a major trip and that’s what the non-blog part of this website is basically about. It’s true that the eight years of Oddment entries are part of this category although they actually have much more in common with the blog than the trip journal. That observation is supported by the fact that I ceased posting Oddments less than a year and a half after the blog first appeared. But statistics for Oddments and the trip journal are compiled together so I’ll continue to rank them together but it’s kind of nice to see, for only the second time, all five top non-blog slots filled with fairly major road trips. It also feels nice, although I can’t explain exactly why, that the top ranked post is the biggest trip of the year just ending. This twenty-four day trip was named for the conference I attended in the middle of a full length drive of the Jefferson Highway.
  2. Alaska
    T    he journal for my longest — 41 days — trip ever maintains its top five perfection with this second place finish to go along with a fourth (2017) and third (2016).
  3. My Fiftieth: Hawaii
    This fairly epic trip didn’t make the cut last year when it took place, but earned a respectable third this year.
  4. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
    The third of my four full length Route 66 drives has appeared in the top five twice before. It topped the list when it was brand new in 2012 and grabbed the fifth spot in 2015. Its target was a Route 66 festival in Victorville, CA. The cryptic bits of the title stand for End-to-End & Friend-to-Friend.
  5. LHA Centennial Tour
    At 35 days, this 2013 coast-to-coast drive of the Lincoln Highway is my second longest. It happened when the road was 100 years old in a car that was 50 years old. Its two previous list appearances were at fourth in 2013 and fifth in 2016.

Both website visits and blog views were down. Website visits went from 138,047 to 100,878. Blog views dropped from 7,485 to 6,757. That may just indicate that the site is becoming increasingly irrelevant although overall page views increased from 578,893 to 658,425. I really have no idea what any of that means.

Four of the trips behind the top five non-blog posts have been or will be covered in book form. The Lincoln Highway Centennial trip is the subject of By Mopar to the Golden Gate. The Alaska and Hawaii trips are a big part of 50 @ 70. A book on the Canadian portion of the Alaska trip, A Canadian Connection, is complete and will be available within days. A not-yet-titled book on last year’s Jefferson Highway trip is in progress and should appear within a few months. Learn more at Trip Mouse Publishing.