4/23 and 4/26/16: More Hotels

I went up north to see family ... again. And stayed in two more hotels ... again. And did some routine, shut-in yoga in said hotels ... again.

So, to make things interesting, I graffiti'd the two hotel rooms before leaving.

Okay, the graffiti was just Photoshop'd, if that isn't obvious. But, still ... I traveled, and I yoga'd, both of which feel like enormous triumphs, these days.

In that sense, I am pleased.

4/13-16/16: Taking It Up a Notch

So, my yoga has gone up a notch -- maybe just one notch, but a notch nonetheless.

It started with yet another, routine family-visiting trip from SC to NC.

No, you aren't seeing double; I really did just do a family-visit post (after a scattered succession of such, each more lackluster than the last). And, likewise, this one isn't too interesting to anyone but myself (until I get hideously famous and people begin buying my underwear and writing unofficial biographies of me, anyway). But, this particular trip did accomplish one thing of interest to this blog: I did yoga in public, for the first time in ... too long. (Note that I did say "of interest to this blog," by the way; not "of interest" in general.)

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. That picture there, Exhibit A? That's just the motel room I lodged in on the way up north, and my yoga there was totally hermetic, like the rest of my post-last-summer sessions. So, after you finish admiring my trunk of foodstuffs, let's move along.

Don't laugh (well, no, feel free to laugh), but the finger invading the picture was not intentional. I only saw it after the fact, and that picture was the only one I took, so there. Anyway, pictured is the SC gym where I -- gasp! -- did yoga in its stretch room. No, my public yoga wasn't even outside and in a conspicuous public space, but in the semi-private space of a gym. Still, it felt a bit daring for me, in the sense of "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." (As the more perceptive of this blog's readers might have inferred, my "retirement" from audacious public yoga last year was due to some serious health problems that I won't elaborate on. I mention this only to explain how doing some yoga stretches in a semi-public area can be at all noteworthy, to anyone, on even a personal level. For me, the gym-yoga was akin to taking the first steps after being bedridden from crippling injury.)

Note the van in the foreground, which is (was?) the ill-fated successor to the RV I vagabonded around in last summer. Ill-fated because, a few hours after this ridiculous picture was taken, the van broke down, seemingly for good if the violence of its breakdown was any indicator. So, in light of that, I guess this post has two (count 'em, two) nuggets of semi-interest: first, my return to public yoga (sort of), and, second, a memorial of my maybe-deceased Dodge van. Alas, we barely knew ye.

3/25-4/1: Another Northern Trek, Another Hotel

I went North again, to visit the family for Easter.

I should start by stating, right off the bat, that this post is gonna be even more boring than whichever previous one holds the record, for this trip was, besides being one I've documented here multiple times, almost entirely uneventful (or, at least, without any non-personal, blog-friendly events). On the way up North, I overnighted in a hotel, and -- gasp! -- I yoga'd there. And, once safely in North Carolina, I yoga'd there too!!! Can you believe it?! Me either.

So, yes: I went from a totally random, capricious, spur-of-the-moment thrill-ride trip up to NYC ... to a routine back-and-forth from SC to NC (and, probably, the most-routine one of all thus far). But ... it was travel (and while Out There, with Spring in the air, I felt stirrings of last year's summertime nomad'ing around, and its more-adventurous, non-hermit yoga ...).

3/18-21/16: A Yogi in New York

I spent last weekend in New York City.

That Thursday evening, I was struck with the express desire to visit NYC (for the first time). I tried to come up with a reason to justify such an excursion and its expense, and failed beyond "Just because"; however, I came up equally at a loss for a reason not to go. And so NYC it was. I was on a plane the next afternoon (on a free-ish ticket, "bought" with saved-up frequent-flyer miles).

Not much to say about my NYC caprice, really. Despite the relatively exotic locale (you would see Times Square just outside my hotel window, were the snapshot not so despairingly bad), my trip, and its attendant yoga (again performed hermetically in my high-rise room), was pretty routine. I ate food from a reasonably priced market. I walked miles over the crazed streets, and was not so much as harassed (though I had my mugger's wallet handy, not so much out of fear but just to use the darn thing for once). I took a sightseeing tour over Manhattan, and indulged in much people-watching. I left intact, and quite contented with my trip (as well as well-stretched, not having fallen behind on my yoga).

Uninteresting? Perhaps, to the outside observer. Worth blogging about? Well ... for me it is.

3/7-11/16: Hotel Tour

Last Sunday afternoon, I surprised myself with an odd road trip.

The surprise: that I was taking a trip at all, totally unplanned as of that morning. The oddity: that I had nowhere to go. Upon departing the beach, I literally just drove west, "go West, young man"-style. From there, things only got odder, when I was equally compelled to stay in an unfamiliar and unnotable town in the middle of the South Carolina swamp lands.

Enter hotel-yoga #1, a Traveler's Inn and Suites (my first TIaS, as it were):

And still this spontaneous trip grew odder, when I decided, on yet another uncharacteristic caprice, to drive a few hundred miles north, to NC, where I would pay a surprise visit to some family. I took my time, however, and so on the way there, I laid over in hotel #2, a Super 8 on the non-luxurious outskirts of Charlotte:

Here, I have something of a confession to make: my yoga at the Super 8 was ... minimal. That is, I had time only for a single (albeit important) asana, due to the unrelenting loom of the 11 o'clock checkout -- ironic, given the highly yoga-y lotus picture commanding the room. But, unquestionably, yoga did occur in this place, hence I am legally entitled to include the picture (just you try and stop me!).

Next up, I returned to my favorite "visiting family in NC hometown" layover spot: a wonderful (and curiously cheap) Sleep Inn, which the huge crowd of this blog's regular and rabid followers will recognize from past snapshots (all of the hotel's king suites are, apparently, identical):

Unlike my last two stops, I hung around the Sleep Inn for two nights; and, unlike the Super 8, I got to genuinely yoga there (and quite extensively, as if making up for my non-session).

And, last but not least, hotel #4 -- well, actually, this one was the least, being a mere motel, and of somewhat lesser quality than my prior lodgings. Nestled in a small, name-place SC town that just happened to appear along the freeway when I was ready to retire for the evening on my return trip south, this last layover was a sixties-era brick ranch-style affair, a rather different animal than the handsome, earth-toned structures I'd been staying in. The less-appreciated might've called it a "dive"; and, I must admit, when I entered the room and was smacked with the reek of spilled whiskey, and then found the shower stall pocked with cigarette burns, my optimism did fade somewhat. But, nonetheless, the room was functional enough, and bug-free, and the motel proved to be serenely quiet. In the end, I was even rescued from the whiskey smell, for I just happened to have with me an oil diffuser and a fresh bottle of orange-blend essential oil (thanks to a complicated and ironic series of suspicious coincidences that some might have attributed to exaggeration or divinity).

So, there, amidst the small-town silence and the friendly odor of orange, I yoga'd. After that, it was back to the beach. Amen.

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.

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.