Wednesday, February 24, 2016

2/18-20/16: Doing the Charleston ... Again

Yep, again: a doctor-visit trip to historical Charleston, SC (and, again, after a stretch of totally unmentionable shut-in marsh-side yoga).

First up: a studio apartment (photographed only inside, as to keep with the blog's poor-picture theme).





The initial two nights of this escapade, I stayed in a wonderful little AirBnB bungalow in the middle of the city (hotels are cool, but I like to switch things up every now and then). I found the cozy backyard apartment endearing from the get-go, but that went double after my first yoga there, when I realized just how secluded and quiet the property was. Once again, I felt to be anywhere but the heart of a beastly city (yet I was, minutes from about anything I could need or want; talk about having your cake and eating it too). The place had a prominent chemical odor, thanks to its in-apartment washer and dryer, but this failed at ruining the stay for me. At the end of my two days there, I left only hesitantly.

 Next, a Holiday Inn.

Okay, so my third night, in this hotel ... Yoga-wise, it was pretty routine: I did it, and it was good, God in his Heaven, etc. As for the hotel itself, however, it started on a disturbing note.

The Holiday Inn in question was sandwiched between two other, less-handsome hotels, and when I pulled into the parking lot, a police cruiser appeared beside me. The next thing I knew, two officers were informing me that they'd seen me driving around (in my conpsicuously expensive rental car, a Nissan 370z that I'd been upgraded to when no economy models were available), and that the hotel I was parked at was "okay," but that the police "had a lot of problems" at the two on either side of it, so I'd be best off staying here at this one, in such a criminally attractive car. I thanked the officers and we parted ways, but soon afterward, as I stood within spitting distance of the two "problematic" (read: cheap and crime-ridden) hotels, my thankfulness turned to alarm: a sports-car thief wouldn't discriminate between the parking lot of the uppity Holiday Inn and those of its seedy siblings, each of them being un-fenced and open to one another. I considered leaving altogether ... but I needed a hotel, and these were the only ones for miles. (The next morning, the car was still there, unmolested.)

And now I'm rambling. My awkward little anecdote is the closest thing to some interesting substance, I suppose.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

2/4-8/16: Another Visit with the Family

Three different yoga-spots (a hotel, then my parents' spare bedroom, then another hotel, respectively as pictured), spread out across five days:













Okay, so I've made this trip (from the beaches of South Carolina to the mountains of North Carolina) many times ... and posted about it many times ... and this one wasn't much different, other than being even less interesting than those previous, if only out of sheer repetition. So why post about it at all?

Good question.

The answer, I guess, touches on pretty much the underlying ethos of this whole blog: to say, quite simply, that I was There, in that mystical, elsewhere space inhabited by all actively traveling travelers, both great and not-so-much. And even though my recent travels have been beyond mundane (to anyone not me, at least), it still seems appropriate to report on them, for what those reports are worth (whatever their worth).

And so it is: my mundane trip to see my mundane family in mundane locales where I performed mundane, shut-in yoga -- reported! Give me my trophy and call the papers. Amen.