Category Archives: travel

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My Evening with the Eagles

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by Bob Sparrow

Eagles      I have a friend, who happens to know a guy, who is an acquaintance of the road manager for the Eagles, so I felt distantly-connected for getting good tickets for the kicking off of their History of the Eagles concert tour at the ‘Even More Fabulous Forum’ last week.  My friend said, that his buddy told him, that the road manager indicated that we’ve got great floor seats with back-stage passes AND we’ll have an opportunity to grab a bite to eat with the Eagles prior to the concert – are you in?  “Am I in?  You’ve got to be kidding me – the Eagles are my all time favorite group.  Book it!’

limo

The limo was real

Our limo was waved up right next to the entrance to the Forum Club, a well-dressed gentleman escorted the four of us into ‘the club’ and then into a separate room where there were only about twenty people.  Among those twenty were Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh – the Eagles, who were casually moving amongst the guests, meeting and chatting with them.  I personally got to meet them all and in fact carried out a plan to give Don Henley a $2 bill saying, “I sang one of your songs, For My Wedding, at my daughter’s wedding, but changed the words to fit the occasion, so I figured I owed you a royalty of some kind.” I held out a $2 bill.  He looked at me sternly, grabbed the $2 bill, then smiled and said, “It’s about time you paid up!” and we both had a good laugh.  He kept the $2.

I thought I was too excited to be really hungry, but the food looked and smelled so good I had to try it – I ended up trying it a lot.  I didn’t think I was that thirsty either, but how do you pass up ‘having a cold one’ with the Eagles?  OK, maybe a couple of cold ones.  OK, OK, it was more than a couple, but it was free . . . and it was the Eagles for crying out loud!   After about 30 minutes the Eagles said their good-byes and went off to prepare for the concert.  We stayed a while longer, eating, drinking and thanking the people that made this all possible; we were then escorted to our seats – floor level, middle, 6 rows back – perfect!

The concert started with just Don & Glenn (yes, we’re now on a first name basis) coming on stage with guitars and singing ‘Whatever Happened to Saturday Night?’   Other band members, including former member and guitar virtuoso, Bernie Leadon, gradually joined them on stage.

     “BOB? BOB?  BOB, WHERE ARE YOU?” LINDA SAID AS OUR LIMO PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT OF THE FORUM.  “OH, SORRY, I WAS JUST IMAGINING HOW THE EVENING WAS GOING TO UNFOLD.”

hotdog

Pink’s hotdog

Reality first struck when we picked up our tickets at Will Call, which I now refer to as ‘Won’t Call’ – no backstage passes!  So instead of a gourmet meal with the Eagles that I had envisioned, we bought a Pink’s hot dog from a vendor wandering through the masses in the Forum lobby.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Pink’s – it’s an LA landmark that started with a funky little hot dog stand back in 1939, but it wasn’t the beef filet tornados sliders on Hawaiian rolls that I had imagined.  Of course, there was no personally meeting the Eagles and the seats . . . well, not exactly floor level, but we could see the floor from where we were, more importantly, we could see the ‘Jumbotron’, which is where we watched most of the concert.  Right before the concert began, I was almost expecting to hear the announcement, “Sitting in for Glenn Frey this evening will be Stir Frey, Glenn’s older, tone-deaf brother.”

top of stadium

Not our actual seats – I was visiting a friend . . . really!

Further reality sunk in when the concert actually began – the Eagles are still amazing – great harmonies, great musicians and great guitar riffs.  They talked to us between songs and provided stories around the history of the group and the songs.  Glenn Frey said he wrote ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ after the divorce from his first wife, whose name was ‘Plaintiff’.  The sound system, which was an integral part of the recent $100 million makeover of the Forum, was second to none in the world (so I’m told, I haven’t actually heard them ALL).  In my opinion, the only thing they neglected in that makeover was to move the Forum out of Inglewood.

All in all it was a wonderfully entertaining evening, both real and imagined.

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Posted in opinion • travel

‘The Tape’

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(Author’s note: I have many interesting places to go this year and I thought I would add the following ‘search’ to my adventures.  I’d be interested in your feedback of this episodic allegory – good, bad or indifferent.  If you don’t like it, Suzanne will be back next week with something more normal I’m sure.)

by Bob Sparrow

The Tape

‘The Tape’

     I turned The Tape over in my hands several times; examining it like it was a rare gem – which, in fact, it might be.  The title written on the plastic cassette case was ‘In Search of Xoon’.  Xoon was my dog in Japan in 1968.  Titles, I must tell you, were always non-sequiturs of sorts, never really pertaining to anything on the tapes – ‘Music to Slit Your Wrists Over’, ‘Zsa Zsa Sing Bob Dylan’ and ‘Garbage Soup’ to name a few.

     I exchanged a number of cassette tapes with Don while he was living in the Middle East in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.  We’d affect our DJ voices and ‘do a show’ for each other; I’d send him the latest hits from the US, he’d send me off-the-wall songs from his vast collection of eclectic music – we’d separate the music with talk about the news of the day as well as the personal issues going on in our lives – 90 minutes, commercial-free.  It kept us close at a time when the Internet was not available to the common man, or even two uncommon men like ourselves.  I think there were 39 tapes in all, plus the one I was holding, the one he sent toward the end of his stay there; the one in a strange language, a very strange language.  When I first listened to it I thought it was going to confirm that ‘Paul was dead’.  It was just gibberish, backwards or forward.  I fast-forwarded it to see if the gibberish stopped and he started talking in English, it didn’t and he didn’t.  B-side was the same, ninety minutes of gibberish, but it was commercial-free . . . I think.  I concluded that he had spent too much time wandering in the desert sun or had been captured by a herd of Bedouin camels and was forced to confess something.  I think it was he talking on the cassette, although it sounded a bit altered or perhaps addled.  No, I’m sure it was his voice – now that I think about it, it was unmistakable – I could hear the humor in his voice even though I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.  But after 50 years of companionship with this eccentric genius, I was used to not understanding a good deal of what he was saying.

     He lived 13 years in Ta’if, which is in the Sarawat Mountains of Saudi Arabia, so he spoke some Arabic, but The Tape was not in any form of Arabic, it had a much more euphonious, even a melodic lilt to it.  He had lived in Sicily in the shadow of Mt. Etna at Sigonella Navel Air Station and spoke Italian.  He spent several years in Caracas, Venezuela  at the foot of the Maritime Andes, so he knew several dialects of Spanish and Portuguese.  The language on The Tape was none of these.  It didn’t sound like he was reading from something, it sounded very improvisational.      What the hell was he saying and why had he sent this to me?  In subsequent tapes and years later in face-to-face conversations with him when he came back to the states, I’d ask him about The Tape.

I said, “OK, are you going to tell me what was on that crazy tape?”

“Did you destroy it?”

“No”

“So do you mean what is on the tape?”

“Yes!  Were you drinking when you made it?”

“Don’t you have to be drinking to spend 13 years in Saudi Arabia?”

     I got so frustrated with his answering a question with a question that I stopped asking him about it altogether – I’d show him!  Who cares about this stupid, nonsensical tape anyway?  I forgot all about it.

The case

Cassette carrying case

     Every few years, particularly on a long, solitary drive, I’d put my cassette carrying case in my car and pop in tape after tape – it was always great to hear his voice.  I did just that when I drove up to his funeral service following his death in February 2012.  While driving up Interstate 5 and fumbling through the cassettes, I inevitably pulled out The Tape, laughed to myself, shook my head and put it back in the case.  But this time, perhaps because he was now gone, I stopped before I put in another tape and starting thinking about The Tape, what it could possible say, what it could mean and why did he send it to me.  So I ask him to help me solve the mysteries of The Tape.

He said, “Yes, but you do understand about my ‘condition’ don’t you?

“Your condition?”

“Yes, do you think I’m as sharp as I used to be now that I’ve been dead for several weeks?

     For the next 90 minutes I listened to The Tape in its entirety.  I asked him, “What language is that, I don’t understand any of it”

“Do you understand the song Nessun Dorma?” he said.

“No”

“Do you know it?  Do you like it?

“Yes, I think it’s maybe the most beautiful song ever as Pavarotti sings it.”

“But you don’t understand it?”

     I popped it in the car’s cassette player and spent the next 90 minutes listening to The Tape, more carefully this time, and I did hear it a bit differently; I heard more of the rhythm of the tape and . . . perhaps I picked up what might be some small clues as to where to begin my search for the translation and thus the meaning of The Tape.

 

 

Posted in travel

The Sparrow Returns to Capistrano

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by Bob Sparrow

DSC01097     I lived in San Clemente for several years and made more than a few trips into neighboring San Juan Capistrano or SJC as it’s colloquially known, so this week I thought I would return to Capistrano to see the returning of the swallows.  Unfortunately I was about 8 months late or 4 months early, depending on your perspective; either way I missed their annual spring landing date by a good margin.  They leave Capistrano in October, so I managed to miss them completely.  My unceremonious arrival in SJC was in stark juxtaposition to the celebration the swallows get when they arrive every year exactly on March 19th  – St. Joseph’s Day, the city’s biggest celebration of the year. Actually there are a few ‘scout swallows’ that arrive a few days early, probably to dust off furniture, turn on the utilities and things like that.  The cliff swallows must arrive exhausted as they’ve come from Goya, Argentina, where they’ve spent the winter.  The round trip the swallows make every year is an astonishing 12,000 miles!  I tried to find out how long it takes them, to no avail – I guess it depends of whether their connecting flight goes through Dallas or Mexico City.

     Once the birds arrive, then they just mostly crap on everything, so they lose quite a bit of their charm, however the Mission at San Juan DSC01100Capistrano does not.  It is the oldest building in California with construction starting in 1776, however a major earthquake leveled most of it in 1812.  The grounds are beautiful and its history is fascinating, for which you can be thankful I won’t go into great detail here.  But I will give you the short version: The Spanish claimed the land from the Acjachemen Indians, descendants from Asians who came over from Russia and first called dibs on California about 15,000 years ago – I’m guessing the traffic and smog wasn’t that big a problem back then.  The Spanish moved them out and colonized California, in part with ‘Missions’ which held the paradoxical position of being both religious centers and military outposts.  In all there were 21 missions dotting the coast of California from San Diego to Sonoma, built to be ‘a day’s walk apart’.

Mex-Amer War  Ultimately Spain was too far away to control the territory; so when neighboring Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 they moved in while Spain wasn’t looking.  America won the ‘pink slip’ to California after the Mexican-American War concluded in 1848 and subsequently the white folks rushed to California looking for gold – statehood followed in 1850.  The mission is filled with details of these stories and many more, along with a good many artifacts.  It was a great learning experience, and while I think California History is a require subject in all California elementary schools, what I mostly learned was that I was NOT smarter than a 5th grader.

     While in SJC I wanted to return to an old haunt, the ‘El Adobe’, a famous Mexican restaurant just down the street from the mission.  This is theDSC01113 restaurant frequented numerous times and made famous by President Richard Nixon, when he was working at the ‘Western White House’ in San Clemente.  There is a picture of Nixon and the chef hanging in the foyer of the restaurant where I imaged the conversation between them went like this:

Chef: “Mr. President, would you like to come back to the kitchen and create your own tamales?”

Nixon: (jowls flapping) “I’m not a cook”

DSC01118

I had one more stop before I left town, ‘The Vintage’, a bar and restaurant, created from real train cars, just across the street from the mission.  It used to be called ‘The Depot’, as it’s where Amtrak makes its SJC stop.  I went into the bar and had a beer and toasted to the time Linda, my best friend, Don and I sang on stage there in 1981, which seems like 12,000 miles ago.

   It was a memorable return to Capistrano.

 

 

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Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 3 More Rhine Ramblings

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by Bob Sparrow

DSC00738

Rene Van Loon

   The crew of the Jarl was outstanding – great customer service, attention to detail and always went the extra mile to accommodate our needs.  The food was excellent – varied, plentiful and often times themed according to the country we were passing through.  Our most frequent contact with the crew (with the exception of the bar tenders of course) was with Program Director, Rene Van Loon, a delightfully entertaining gentleman from The Netherlands who, each evening, gave us the next day’s itinerary along with a few amusing stories.  I had a chance to sit down with him during the cruise to talk about his river cruising experiences (I had lied and told him I was a fairly well-read travel blog writer.  It really wasn’t a lie; I am fairly well read and I do write a blog).  He talked about his love of travel and people as well as his time with Viking River Cruises.  He says, “Our CEO’s focus on customer service pervades the whole company.  Our goal is to create an UFE for each passenger”.  UFE?  UnForgettable Experience.

      When asked about amusing or unusual experiences he gave two:

1)    Prior to his cruising days he was giving a tour of Rome, when he asked the group at the end of the tour if they had anydo not disturb questions.  A tourist in the back of the bus asked: “Why did the Roman build so many ruin?”

2)    During a cruise he got a call from an elderly lady who said she was trapped in her room.  He told her that if her door was locked that she could unlock it from the inside.  She hung up, but called back a few minutes later saying she was still unable to get out of her room.  So he decided to walk her through the process and asked her to describe what she was looking at.  She said, “I see two doors, I tried one, but that was the bathroom and I can’t try the other one because it has a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on it.”

      The people we were cruising with were very fun (See Part 2) and the crew was incredibly accommodating, but if I’m being honest, the people at our ports of call, to put it as nicely as I can, seemed a bit tired of tourists.  Maybe the summer had brought them too many ‘ugly Americans’, perhaps the fact that Germany had just finished it’s ‘Oktoberfest’ attributed to a ‘hang-over’ affect.  Perhaps they’re still a bit miffed over losing a couple of world wars, I don’t know, we just didn’t see too many smiling, laughing, glad-to-see-you Germans.  Whatever the opposite of ‘warm and fuzzy’ is may2013-10-14 03.47.35 be a good description. And the French have never really had much time for us, to wit:  We were in the town of Strasbourg, France and I was trying to find change for 10 Euro so I could tip our tour guide.  After being refused in two stores I went to the tourist2013-10-14 00.48.30 office to asked for change.  I was told something in French, by the lady behind the counter, and while I didn’t understand her, I could tell from the body language I probably wasn’t getting any change.  I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand”, to which she replied something else in French.  A British lady standing next to me in line interpreted and said, “She’s not giving you any change unless you buy something.”  I said, “Why couldn’t she tell me that in English?”  The Brit leaned toward me and whispered just loud enough for the French lady to hear, “I don’t know, but if it weren’t for British and American troops, she’d wouldn’t understand French either, she’d be speaking German.”

2013-10-17 05.00.20      Viking offers plenty of ‘included’ (no additional cost) tours to castles, cathedrals, the Black Forest, etc., as well as additional tours you can pay for – which we did for 1) a pub crawl in Cologne (What a surprise!), and 2) a tour of World War II battle grounds.  The latter was my personal favorite.  Our guide, a gentleman from New Zealand, took us to the top of a hill and described the movement of American, French and German troops in the valley below.  He was so passionate and created such descriptive word-pictures as he described the battles for the Colmar Pocket, that you could almost hear the tanks rolling and the machine guns firing.

audie murphy

Audie Murphy

     It was in one of the battles for the Colmar Pocket that Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII, won his Medal of Honor.  There is also a memorial museum in town where there are an incredible number of WWII artifacts.

     A short cruise from Breisach, Germany to Basal, Switzerland concludes our romp up the Rhine.  In summary, I had a lot of fun, gained a lot of knowledge, gained some new friends and gained a few pounds, and it was all well worth it.

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Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 2 Rollin’ on the River

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by Bob Sparrow

Rhine map     Let’s get the itinerary out of the way first, because rather than focus on the places, which you can look up on the Internet if you’re so inclined, I’ll focus on the people – the crew of the ship, the people cruising with us and the people we met at our ports of call.  After leaving Amsterdam . . .

    First port:       Kinderdijk – Lots of windmills

    Next port:      Cologne – Gothic Cathedral

    Next port:   Koblenz – Marksburg Castle

    Next port:      Rudesheim – Quaint German town

    Next port:      Heidelberg – Famous castle and university

    Next port:      Speyer – Another quaint German town

    Next port:      Strasbourg – Quaint French town

    Next port:      Breisach – Quaint German town in the Black Forest

    Last port:       Basal – probably a quaint Swiss town, we only saw the airport

river cruise     Our ship was the Viking River Cruise Ship, Jarl. Jarl was a mythical Norse god who was the grandson of Odin and a symbol of strength and intelligence – characteristics with which I am unfamiliar.  We had a full ship at 186 passengers and 52 crew members.  River cruising provides a much smoother ride than ocean cruising, provided the water level isn’t so high you can’t get under the bridges or so low you can’t move at all, or you don’t run into all the other traffic on the river, and you are able to negotiate the tight walls of the many locks along the way.  So on the surface, while river cruising may seem rather benign compared to ocean cruising, it is actually filled with a lot more variables.  However the Captain did reassure us that if the boat sank and was sitting on the bottom of the river we could all stand on the top deck and be higher than the water level.  So we had that going for us.

     I must admit that when I first went aboard the Jarl and saw my shipmates, I had the same reaction as when I arrived at my 50th high school class reunion – “What are all these old people doing here?”  I wondered if I had mistakenly stumbled onto a ‘Prunes for the Prostate’ cruise?”  However, like the high school reunion, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was ‘one of them’.

mensa

     As we introduced ourselves to our new shipmates, I found that the first three men I met were two engineers, and a research scientist and the first three women I met were two authors and a Stanford graduate.  I then met a group of 18 Filipinos – all doctors from Chicago.  I was wondering if we’d mistakenly been booked on a Mensa Cruise – talk about miscasting!

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Me, Linda, Liz, Cathy, Gary, Kathy, Mark, Bill

     We then met Gary and Cathy and realized that this was no Mensa cruise.  I promised them that I’d mention them in my blog so there you are!  Just kidding, they were delightful people that we hung with for the entire trip and laughed our way up the Rhine.  They are from Tennessee by way of Michigan and Buffalo and said if we ever wanted an NFL team to have a losing record that they would just need to move there.  We also met and hung with a father and daughter, Bill and Liz, traveling together – both cigar smokers.  He looked hauntingly like my late best friend, Don Klapperich and she looked like . . . well, she just looked drop-dead gorgeous.  And we also hung with three ladies from San Antonio, the Stanford grad, Krista, also a cigar smoker, and her friends, Carla and Dez.  We met a lot of other very nice people, all from the US or Canada (Viking separates their cruises by language so they don’t’ have to translate everything into 5 different languages throughout the cruise), but these three groups helped us close down the piano bar every night.

DSC00736     We became good friends with Lazlo, our delightful Hungarian piano player, who encouraged people to get up and dance as well as come up and sing.  We were told that one of the doctors from Chicago was a contestant on the Filipino version of American Idol, I guess that would be Filipino Idol, and he was very good.  One of the female Filipino doctors, specializing in internal medicine, wanted to do a traditional German dance, the hula, and asked if anyone knew how to sing ‘The Hawaiian Wedding Song’.  Having had enough rum to cause the ship to stop in the first port and on-load another couple of cases, I lied and said, “As a matter of fact I do.”  In retrospect I knew of the song and vaguely remember Elvis singing it back in the 60s.  Undaunted, I got up to sing as the ‘Dancing Doctor’ performed a quite authentic version of the hula.  In my enthusiasm I even included a verse in the Hawaiian language – or at least my interpretation of the Hawaiian language, which included a few swear words and several unmentionable (in English) body parts.  Little did I know that there was a native Hawaiian in the audience, so when I was finished and walked past him he looked at me and slowly shook his head in disgust and said, “Really?”

228

No, I’m just standing in front of a fountain!

   It wasn’t the first time I’d publicly embarrassed myself and it wouldn’t be the last.

Thursday’s post: Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 3    More Rhine Ramblings 

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Viking Rhine River Cruise – Part 1 Three Daze in Amsterdam

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by Bob Sparrow

amsterdam     It’s raining as we (“we” is wife Linda and me along with long-time friends and traveling companions, Mark & Kathy Johnson) arrive and complete the stringent requirements for passage into the wild and crazy city of Amsterdam, which consists of a stamp on the passport and a pat down to insure you have enough Euros to enjoy all that this ‘Venice of the North’ has to offer.  Actually there aren’t enough Euros to enjoy ALL that this city has to offer, but we enjoyed the pat down.  The rain doesn’t dampen our spirits, which have been buoyed by a sampling of that famous Amsterdam spirit – Heineken beer.  OK, perhaps more than a sampling, but we were just trying to be good guests and help erase that ‘ugly American’ image.

ann frank

Lines around the block we avoided

  Our train from the airport arrived at busy Central Station, which sits at the north end of town and right next to the busy ‘Red Light District’, but since we’d just come from the ‘Red Eye District’ – our 7½-hour overnight flight from Chicago – we thought we should be a little more rested before we tackle ‘the meat’ of the city, so to speak.

  First stop is the Ann Frank House. As instructed, we got there early to avoid the lines to get in that extend around the block.  Reading ‘The Diary of Ann Frank’ before going will enhance your experience, but the tour through their living quarters does an excellent job of telling this amazing story.  I can’t imagine doing this in the heat of summer, as the rooms are small and the stairways are narrow, so being herded through the house shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of tourists in need of a shower could alter the experience significantly.

van gogh

Don’t look for this in the Van Gogh Museum

     It’s a short walk along a canal from the Ann Frank House to the Van Gogh Museum.  Van Gogh was many things – hard to understand as an artist, hard to categorize as a post-impressionist painter, hard to understand his relationship with Gauguin and hard of hearing – what with that cutting off of the ear incident and all.  The museum is great, but don’t go there expecting to see one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Starry Night, as it is owned by the Museum Of Modern Art in New York.  You couldn’t even buy a replica of that painting, as all rights are owned by MOMA.  I almost got thrown out of the place for even mentioning the painting.

  It was another short walk from there to the Heineken Brewery – where the highlight of the tour is at the end – not only is it over, but that’s where you get to drink a few Heineken beers, which we could have done at home.  The low-light of the tour was a Disney-like ‘ride’ where you are an imaginary grain of barley or a hop or some yeast or something and they put you through the beer brewing process.  We might have been better off and certainly many Euros ahead if we’d just gone to a café next door and ordered a Heineken.

Red Light

Sorry, no photos were allowed

  The ‘Red Light District’ made up for it.  All this time I thought Las Vegas was the ‘Disneyland for adults’.  Goodbye Vegas, hello Amsterdam.  Prostitution is not only legal, but also quite uniquely advertised.  We walked down the street and there in store window after store window are attractive young ladies dressed rather scantily just standing there ‘selling there wears’.  I did feel a journalistic obligation to stop and interview a few of these working girls, but Linda failed to see the literary value in that pursuit.  Between shop windows there might be a drug store – no, not the kind of drug store we’re used to, but a place to buy a sampling of various cannabis leaves, without a doctor’s prescription.  The reality is that you really don’t have to buy it, just walk down the street and inhale deeply.

2013-10-10 07.41.03

A couple of not-so-famous Dutch painters

I know we did some other things over that three day period, like canal rides, other museum visits, visits to great restaurants and bars, but it’s all a little foggy right now, perhaps I was inhaling too deeply as I wandered through Amsterdam.

Next post: Viking River Cruise – Part 2   Rollin’ on the River

Posted in travel

Childbirth, Kidney Stones and Amsterdam

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by Bob Sparrow

photo (2)     Sometimes my travels take me to exotic places; sometimes my travels take me on introspective journeys, but last Friday morning at around 2:00 a.m. my travels took me to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital with the on-set of a kidney stone.  It was my third, so I’ve become quite knowledgeable about them and familiar with the associated pain, which has become the subject of some debate.

It has been said that the pain of a kidney stone is similar to the pain of childbirth.  Having never given birth, I wouldn’t know and my personal experience has told me that some stones are more painful than others.  Obviously women would be the only ones who would be able to give us an objective perspective on this subject, but do they?  Surely some do, but it’s easy to see how they might stretch the truth a bit when they’re in there pushing and breathing and sweating and yelling while the father-to-be is out in the waiting room waiting to hand out cigars.

So to settle the question once and for all of which is more painful child birth or kidney stones, an extensive survey of both men and women was conducted.  OK, it wasn’t really that ‘extensive’, it was really just a simple question to each gender.  Because many of the male survey participants had never had a kidney stone the survey equated the pain of a stone to the pain of being kicked in the river cruiseballs.  Survey participants were asked the following questions:

To the women: Knowing the pain of childbirth, would you have another child?  Only 3% answered ‘No’.

To the men: Knowing the pain of being kicked in the balls, would you like to be kicked in the balls again?  100% answered ‘No’.

There you have it – statistics don’t lie.

So how does this all tie into my up-coming river cruise down the Rhine?  It doesn’t, but hey cut me a little slack here; I’ve just been kicked in the balls.

van gogh     Prior to boarding the Viking Jarl, we’ll be spending three days in Amsterdam and I understand, according to our itinerary, we will be:

– Touring Ann’s House of Franks (I love hot dogs)

– Goghing in a van to see a starry night (I hope it has a moon roof)

– Drinking Heineken cheese beer (Leave it to the Dutch to combine beer and Cheetos)wind mills

I’m just excited to sees the famous Wind Tunnels and a field filled with Two Lips.

OK my medication is starting to wear off – I’ll be fine.

 

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Steins on the Rhein – Rollin’ On The River

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by Bob Sparrow

viking     Next Tuesday I will be on the road again, this time to Amsterdam for a Viking River Cruise down the Rhein River to Basal, Switzerland.   Just like prior to leaving for Africa earlier this year, I’m noting here some pre-trip  anxiety .  Prior to Africa I was concerned about everything from getting malaria (we didn’t see a bug the whole time) to being murdered (our guide killed us, in a humorous way), so all my fears were eventually allayed.  But now on the eve of our river cruise, several events have given me pause.

Two couple friends of ours have taken river cruises this year in Europe, the river flooded one couple out and changed their itinerary, and a river lock damaged the aft of the other couple’s boat and they had to stay ashore for three days.  That’s 2-for-2, so it would seem that we could be in for a few surprises.  Here are three of my concerns:

My wife thinks she knows German (she took two years in high school) and I fear that she is going to misspeakriver cruise and get us in the middle of  a Neo-Nazi head-shaving ceremony.

While we thought that October would be a great time to go to Germany to enjoy Oktoberfest, we’ve come to find out that it is mostly in September and will be over two days before we get there, so I fear we’ll get to see the Hungoverfest.

And finally, there is free wine and beer on board for the entire 8 days we’re on the cruise, so someone will probably fall overboard . . . just hope it isn’t me . . . again.

man overStay tuned for the reality of The Rhein River Cruise – or at least reality as I see it, which may be a bubble off plum.

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Voting or Vegas

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by Bob Sparrow

     Well of course you knew with Monday being the last day for voting, that this week’s blog from me just might mention ‘The Best Job Around the World’ competition being offered by travel company, Jauntaroo.  I’m actually sending this from the road as I’m on a ‘Boy’s Birthday Bash’ for a friend, which includes Las Vegas (I’ve been reminded several times about that ‘What goes on in Vegas . . .’ thing, so I’ve probably already said too much) and playing golf at two classic golf courses, Wolf Creek in Mesquite, NV and Sand Hallow in Hurricane, UT.

On Monday, I’ll be an easy golfer to identify, I’ll be the one with my laptop in my golf cart and running off the green after each putt to see where the ‘Like’ count is.  For those who have been asking, and for those who haven’t, here’s what will happen with the Jauntaroo job thing after Monday . . .

A. Jauntaroo will select the Top 50 candidates based on (not necessarily in this order):

1) Qualification of the candidate

2. Quality of their video

3. Number of video ‘Likes’

B. The Top 50 candidates will be asked to make another video.  It has not been disclosed what the subject matter of the second video will be or whether it will be something that the public votes on again.

C. From the Top 50, a ‘Top 5’ will be selected and flown to a ‘secret’ location for face-to-face interviews

Although I don’t know the timeframes for these last two phases, I do know that it will progress rather quickly as Jauntaroo wants to make the announcement of the one person selected as their Chief World Explorer on or around October 26th – just 3 weeks away.

So if you’re reading this on Monday, Sept. 30 you can still vote, so please click on the link below and vote and then pass it along to a contact or two . . . or 5.

http://www.bestjobaroundtheworld.com/submissions/view/4459

I’m not sure when the Top 50 will be announced, I suspect by the end of the week, so you’ll soon be hearing from me one way other the other either about moving on to the next phase of this competition or a blurred recollection of my adventures at the Boy’s Birthday Bash, if I can remember any of it.

Thank you again to all those who have so faithfully supported me in this endeavor.

 

Posted in Blog Info / Up-dates • travel

SEEING STARS IN SUN VALLEY

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Igrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable skiing in Sun Valley

Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable skiing in Sun Valley

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Well, if it’s September, we must be going to Sun Valley. Yep, like lemmings to the sea, each September we migrate to Idaho in search of great hiking, spectacular golf, and cooler air. That last part becomes very important this time of year – our lows in Scottsdale last week averaged 84. The 10 day forecast for Sun Valley has the lows in the 30’s. I may just sit outside in the mornings with a cup of coffee until ice forms on either it or me.

Friends often wonder why we return to Idaho every year. People who haven’t been there usually ask something along the lines of, “Oh, do you have to go see family”? Like it is some obligatory trip that we take to an ugly part of the country to see people we don’t much like who require that we sleep on a hide-a-bed in their basement. But people who have been lucky enough to visit Sun Valley ask us if they can climb into our suitcase. Since its inception it has been the playground for many celebrities – Ernest Hemingway lived (and died) there and Gary Cooper and Clark Gable made regular visits to ski and hunt. Since we’ve been going there for 26 years we’ve also seen our share of modern-day movie stars, although they don’t seem quite as big as Cooper or Gable. Maybe some version of that line from “Sunset Boulevard” applies here – the scenery is the same, it’s the stars who have gotten smaller. My husband spent 30 minutes talking to Arnold Schwarzenegger once about tax policies in California, but even though he’s big, I’m not sure he counts as a “star”. We’ve seen Candice Bergen, Muriel Hemingway and I once ran across Jamie Lee Curtis in a store. I was tempted to tell her that the Activia really wasn’t working for me but then my better angels prevailed.

The Lodge at Sun Valley - made of concrete poured to look like wood

The Lodge at Sun Valley – made of concrete poured to look like wood

From the outset, the Sun Valley resort was marketed as a haven for the rich and famous. It was developed by Averell Harriman, who was chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 30’s. He was an avid skier and after the success of the Lake Placid Olympics in 1932 he correctly assumed that Americans would develop a keen interest in winter sports. Harriman had the idea of building the first destination ski resort in the U.S. in a place so remote that – what a coincidence – the only way to get there was via the Union Pacific Railroad.  In 1935 Harriman hired an Austrian count, Felix Schaffgotsch, to travel across the western United States to find the perfect setting for a ski area. When Schaffgotsch visited Ketchum, Idaho he decided that the combination of good snowfall, sunshine and the perfect ski mountain was where Harriman should build. Harriman started construction immediately and then hired a marketing genius to spread the word. Harriman was afraid that people would not be attracted to the cold climes of Idaho, so he named the resort “Sun Valley” to conjure up images of warmth and coziness. He installed the world’s first round swimming pools to garner more attention and they did.  Sun Valley took off as a locale synonymous with great skiing, fine dining and first-class entertainment.

But the really interesting history of Sun Valley lies in the story of the ski school. Count Schaffgotsch helped Harriman attract the top ski instructors in the world, including Friedl Pfeifer. Pfeifer was Austrian and not only the most famous downhiller in the world, he also managed to carve out time to teach between racing circuits. His pupils ranged from the famous (Claudette Colbert) to the infamous (Rudolph Hess). In 1937 he fled Austria weeks after Hitler’s invasion and was lured to Sun Valley, just in time for the opening of the ski school. As it turns out, Schaffgotsch was a huge admirer of Hitler and among the Austrian instructors he recruited to Sun Valley were several avowed Nazis. From 1937 to the outbreak of the war, they put Sun Valley’s ski school on the map and, despite the instructors’ political leanings, people flocked there by the thousands to learn from the very best.

Friedl Pfeifer as a dashing ski instructor

Friedl Pfeifer as a dashing ski instructor

But the shadow of World War II loomed large. Once the war broke out, Schaffgotsch and several other instructors returned to the “Fatherland” to enlist in Hitler’s army. Schaffgotsch joined the SS and while he was in Italy he received a letter from Harriman letting him know that his duties were complete at Sun Valley but that he was welcome as a guest at any time.  The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed FBI agents from Salt Lake City descended on Sun Valley to investigate reports of Nazi sympathizers among the ski school staff. Three of the most prominent instructors were arrested, including Pfeifer. Pfeifer and several other Austrian instructors enlisted in the U.S. Army and had distinguished war records as part of the 10th Mountain Division.

In 1942, Harriman offered up the Sun Valley Lodge to the Navy to serve as a hospital for both officers and enlisted men. He thought the quiet and solitude of this remote mountain village would sooth their war sufferings. Most of the men enjoyed the peacefulness of the Wood River Valley, but some found the isolation difficult. No matter, the resort remained in service to the Navy until war’s end and did not re-open until the spring of 1946. Most of the instructors came back to Sun Valley after the war and were instrumental in advancing the burgeoning ski industry. Pfeifer returned to the U.S. and settled in Colorado where he helped found the Aspen ski resort.   Ironically, Schaffgotsch was killed in Russia during Harriman’s stint as our ambassador to that country.

In 1995 we were lucky enough to be in Sun Valley when a memorial to the 10th Mountain Division was erected on the Sun Valley grounds. We watched as several elderly men, some in uniform, paid tribute to their fallen comrades. They were a spry and inspiring group, unbowed by the years with their physical prowess still much in evidence. As far as I’m concerned, they were the biggest stars we’ve ever seen in Sun Valley.

And speaking of stars, let me pass along a friendly reminder to ‘Like’ my brother’s video (every 24 hours) at the link below:

http://www.bestjobaroundtheworld.com/submissions/view/4459