Places to Write About and Other Observations

This weekend the husband and I took our first trip to Berkley to see a Mumford & Sons concert with the mother-in-law.  Arriving in California from Texas, you are aware of Berkley, you know it’s a college town, its history, and you know that’s where all of the hippies are.  Berkley didn’t disappoint.

Observations on Berkley:
1. There is a distinct aversion to deodorant.
2. They are allowing toddlers on campus and calling them "college students."
3. Everyone in Berkley has the same walk, a kind of lope.  I would imagine due to all of the drastic inclines and declines. (Seriously, I had to have lost five pounds just from walking.)
4. Despite the need to go natural with the arm pits, it is probably one of the coolest places I've been.

Speaking of places I've been...My junior year of college, I was selected to be part of a group of students to travel around the world with TIME Magazine.  It was a study tour, I earned college credits for it and the point was essentially to meet with the bureau chiefs, reporters, and writers and learn from them about the world of journalism that which we couldn't just read about for ourselves.  We traveled to twelve different cities in seven different countries in thirty-two days.  Mishaps happened, people were lost on the way (me, included!), and one of us dressed up like the pope using a towel, a bandanna, and a toilet bowel brush.  It was an incredible experience, one from which I draw little bits to use in my stories, but I’ve been thinking about using the entire experience for a story.  I see it all starting on a train…

I discovered this weekend that I am not a wine drinker.  Everyone said, “Oh, but the wineries know how to serve you, they’ll cater to your tastes and find you the perfect wine…”  Nuh-uh.  Didn’t happen.  Wine makes my jaw sides hurt.  And I can’t prevent making a bleck! face after each taste which I didn’t think the fancy wine dude appreciated.  The place was pretty in an old-wordly way and the people there were friendly with a hinting undercurrent of pretention and the guy that greeted us at the door burped when describing the place to us, which I suppose I can sort of appreciate given that he’s probably been pounding wine all day.  But at the end of the day, it was verifiably determined that I’m a beer drinker.

Reader Spotlight is to come shortly; with the family in town and traveling all over northern California because of it, RS was a little delayed, but I hope to post it soon and expect it to be a fun one.