49th State - Day 2 - "Idaho Complete"

9/28/14

Salt Lake City International Airport, Utah (SLC)

With my trip now complete, I have found myself in an airport smoking lounge with two hours to reflect before my flight starts to board.  The Harry Potter saga was primarily about love and death, the potency of love and the finality of death.  The love that Harry feels for Hermione or Sirius or Ron is no less real nor potent than the love he feels for Ginny.  As I drove through Idaho today, I realized that that was where I went wrong.  Love is an emotion, an emotion that cannot always be explained, Rand’s rejection of causeless emotions be damned.  There are 21 people in the world whom I love, some because of blood, some because of shared values and mutual respect, some because of a long history, other for reasons that I cannot fully explain.  I do not want to try to explain it.  The Greeks identified four types of love familial love, friendship, romance, and worship of the gods.  I will ignore the last one.  Every one of the 21 people on that list fall into one of those categories, so long as I stretch the definition of friendship to include what I call “fondness.”  However, I cannot explain why I include one cousin on that list but not another, one grandparent but not another, one friend but not another, one coworker but not another.

I have spent enough time philosophizing on love, and it seems like I have a new definition every months.  However, my philosophy is not a philosophy of love.  My philosophy is a philosophy of happiness.  Sure, love causes happiness, but it is not the only cause of happiness.  My philosophy seeks to maximize the sum total of happiness of the course of the entire life.  Today, as I drove through Idaho, which has become one of my favorite places in the country, I was happy.  Over the past two years and two months and two weeks and two days (since 7/12/14, the day I began my series of long road trips), I have spent more time driving through the heartland of our country than most New Yorkers do in their entire lives, exploring mamash every corner of the map, and pretty much every point in between.  I will not say that I have loved every minute of it, but I do love our country.  It truly is America the Beautiful.  The mountains are my favorite, from the Sierra Mountains in California to the Cascades in Washington and Oregon to the Aleutian Range in Alaska and the Yukon, to the Rockies in Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, I love the mountains.  I just don’t like driving through them at night, as I have learned the hard way.  Nothing is lonelier than driving through empty mountain roads in complete darkness, and that causes tiredness, which can be deadly on those roads.  However, as scary as those roads are night, they are just as beautiful by day.

I drove 1283 miles this trip, over the course of 48 hours, and though the view didn’t change much, it never lost its beauty, even in the rain.  However, I was not able to fully appreciate it until the sun came out, which it finally did today.  As I drove today, I worked on developing the theory I had come up with yesterday.  In the end, I made little progress, other than coming up with a few thoughts.  The first thought was the Harry Potter theory, as I will call it.  Romantic love is a very small aspect of this thing we call love.  Other kinds of love can be just as potent, just as important, just as meaningful.  To try and pigeonhole such a broad emotion into such narrow terms is an exercise in futility.  Further, the desire/compatibility dichotomy I mentioned last night is not about love.  I’m sure each of my readers knows the difference between lust (desire) and love and knows people in loveless but compatible marriages.

After deciding to stop philosophizing about love, I was struck by a metaphor.  That desire/compatibility dichotomy is like a candle.  Desire is the wick, compatibility the wax.  I suppose in this metaphor, passion would be the match that lights the wick.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  Passion is the wick, desire the match.  However, compatibility is the wax, the thing that keeps on burning.  Maybe a better example would be a fireplace, where you have the kindle that burns very hot and quickly and then the larger logs that burn for a much longer time.  Try lighting those larger logs without kindle, and you will have no success.  That is compatibility without passion.  I think I’m liking the analogy of desire being the match, since you can have desire devoid of passion.  Without passion, mere compatibility leads to friendship.  You can love someone because of compatibility, and compatibility in a friend and romantic partner is very similar, though there are major differences.  Now, imagine those larger logs are there.  The kindle burns very quickly but goes out because there is nothing left once the kindle is gone.  That is lust.  I was able to get no further on that topic and further discussion will be relegated to my personal journal.

When I got cell service back, I saw that I had gotten email from my father.  He had offered pretty much the same explanation, no doubt founded upon empirical evidence from his own relationships rather than my rationalist explanation, but the idea was the same.  He also added something where I disagreed about Rand claiming any man of unbreached self-esteem who was her intellectual equal should be sexually attracted to her.  Just because he was not sexually attracted to Rand does not mean he should be so quick to dismiss that line of thought.  There was a lot of merit to it, and, if I started to wonder if it was me at those lectures 50 years ago if I would have been attracted to Rand.  I know with absolute certainty that I would have been.  Why?  Because to do otherwise is to dismiss her entire philosophy, and, if I were dismissing her philosophy, why would I have been at those lectures?  While I understand why Branden made the decisions he did, I do not agree with them.  He made the wrong decision.  From what I understand, Rand and Branden had a once in a lifetime type of love, ignoring for the moment that they were both cheating on their spouses, and he threw it away over a pretty face.  The only two people who took his side were my father and someone who has become as an uncle to me.  It didn’t help that Rand never explained situation and that people were blindly following her, but how many of the men at those lectures were in love with Rand?  How did I get so far off-topic?

Back to the topic at hand, my journey through Idaho.  I slept pretty well out on the balcony, and I was cracking up from the prank that I would pull.  I left a generous tip for the made, along with a note that said “Sorry about the bed.”  Her first thought would be that I yakked or took and unofficial U in the bed.  She would then walk into the bedroom and see that the mattress was missing.  The note would take on new meaning, and she’d have no idea what happened to the mattress.  The tip was nowhere near generous enough to buy a new mattress.  Eventually, she’d go out to the balcony, or try to, since she’d have trouble getting the door fully opened, as the mattress was outside, partially blocking the door.  Then she’d see it.  A fully made bed outside, sitting on the balcony.  I managed to get the mattress outside, so she should be able to get it back inside, and I assume that she did, since I didn’t get an angry phone call or email from the hotel today.

I got dressed and headed the State Capitol.  After that, I went for my first Official breakfast in Idaho, though I had lost my appetite again, something that seems to have been a common theme for me over the past month and change.  I really wanted some hash browns though, and they were very disappointing, but the bacon was excellent.  I lit up a Romeo y Julieta and was soon on the road.  I stopped for gas along the way, and there was a grocery store at the gas station.  Perfect.  I bought 10 pounds of potatoes.  For the price of one keychain, I got enough Idaho potatoes to give to everyone I knew.

I smoked a Tattoo en route and soon arrived at the first NPS of the day, Craters of the Moon NM&Pres, which was two units in one.  I was unsure where the border between the monument and the preserve was, but I found out at the VC.  All the areas that were readily accessible were in the NM, but I could just walk off the side of the road to get to the NPres.  It was one of the units that had a driving loop, and was a short loop with short trails, nothing that would allow me to really make it official.  The first stop was a paved trail, no dice, but I lit up my Partagas and walked in the rain.  The real trail was a little off the loop, and it was one mile there and another mile back.  I was well ahead of schedule, so I had time to do it.  It even stopped raining by the time I got there.  It was a beautiful hike, but I was too exhausted to make it to the end.  I found a perfect spot for that Official U and collected a bunch of rocks to give out as gifts.  It looked like I was on another planet, something from a Star Wars movie or Star Trek episode.  I would later realize that it seemed alien because the color pallet was so markedly different from any place I had ever seen.

I left the NM and parked at a scenic viewpoint.  There was even an unofficial trail that led into the preserve.  I still had some cigar left and found a deep enough spot hidden from the road to make it Official.  That was that, I managed to Officially hit both units.  There were only two unit left in the trip before I would begin the Journey Home, and they both shared a VC.  That VC would be my next stop, but I was hungry, or so I thought.  My appetite had disappeared once I got to the restaurant.  For what I figured would probably be the last Official meal I ever have in Idaho, unless I take my kids there one day, I chose chicken fried steak and tots.  Today was an Atkins cheat day to be sure.

After my meal, I lit up a My Father Bijou and headed to the VC.  The site was called Hagerman Fossil Beds NM.  The Fossils were in the VC, but that was not Officially in the NM.  I did my business at the VC and drove to the NM, stopping at the first pullout where you could see the fossil beds.  After I Officially checked off the unit, my 212^th NPS unit, I headed to Minidoka NHS.  I found it with no trouble, and I was now over an hour ahead of schedule, which was great.

There was not much to see, just some stone structures still standing, but it made for decent pictures.  I lit up a Davidoff Special R to make it Official and announced, “Idaho Complete!” adding, “Who woulda thunk it?”  Okay, so technically I have not visited Nez Perce NHP, but that is not entirely in Idaho.  Yes, I will be getting the stamp for it in Idaho next I got Oregon, so maybe it was not technically Complete complete, but I said it anyway.

From there, it was a straight shot to the airport, just stopping for gas and an unofficial meal.  I got to the airport 4 hours before my flight, and there was no line at security.  I was at the smoking lounge, adjacent to the gate, ready to write this entry three hours before my flight would depart.  It was so nice to have a smoking lounge in the airport, the first time I had utilized one in a domestic airport that I can recall.  I was also surprised by the number of young and pretty women that walked in and out as I smoked my Gurkha.  I uploaded my photos and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close.

Next Stop: The nearest WHS I have yet to visit, Miguasha NP, along with stops in Albany, Maine, and New Brunswick.

49th State - Day 1 - Goal 2/17 Complete

9/28/14

Boise, Idaho

Today I did something that I will only do one more time in the rest of my life, something that I will do for the last time this month three years from now.  I checked a new state of my list.  Idaho is the 49^th state that I have visited.  There is only one more: Hawaii.  Granted, I could pick any weekend I wanted, take a flight from JFK-HNL, go find some beach roast party, light up a Cuban, eat some kalua pig, take an Official U into the Pacific, knock off that 50^th state, and be back at work Monday morning.  That is not how I will visit my 50^th state.  It will be an epic, and I mean epic, 18-day trip that knocks off the last of my 30 Goals and takes me to Guam and Samoa.  Speaking of my 30 Goals, I completed the second one of my goals today: all US Winter Stadiums.  In fact, I managed to visit the sites of all 4 Stadiums during this year, the year of a Winter Games.  I have actually now been to the sites of all Olympic Stadiums in the U.S., Summer and Winter.  It gave me a great sense of pride and accomplishment to be able to say that as I walked out of Rice-Eccles Stadium this evening, since each visit had its own story.

Before I get on to recounting the events of today, a brutal day in the rain, not the fun and relaxed day I had hoped, I must recount a bit of philosophy that I am working on.  It is nowhere near fully developed, but it is a good start.  Three months ago, I offered my idea of romantic attraction as a function in three variables.  That was the math side of me.  Simply put, it said that romantic attraction consisted of three aspects: physical, emotional (or mental), and chemical attraction.  It was a bad definition, and I was still using Rand’s definition of love, so I said that emotional attraction, the shared values and mutual respect definition, which would more properly be considered mental attraction, was the only type of love.

As I was driving, it struck me that that was the wrong dichotomy (well, trichotomy), especially since it ignored passion and compatibility.  Chemistry is not compatibility.  Those are two very different things.  Yes, chemistry is an aspect of compatibility, but it is not the only aspect.  Likewise, physical attraction is not passion.  Yes, again, it’s an aspect.  Without physical attraction, there can be no passion, but physical attraction alone is not a sufficient Efficient Cause of passion.  I am not sure where the mental attraction fits in.  I know that is possible to feel desire solely based on mental attraction (I am thinking of a specific person here), but I never got the opportunity to test if I would have felt passion towards her, nor will I ever get that opportunity (we are too incompatible in a very fundamental way).  Further, passion and desire are not the same thing.  They are similar, but they are not the same.  I am still trying to reshuffle the physical/mental/chemical trichotomy into this new passion/compatibility or maybe desire/compatibility dichotomy.

Last semester, Amelia called me a pure Rationalist.  I had not yet studied the Rationalist philosophers, so I just thought she was calling me purely rational.  I took it as a compliment, but it is not true.  I am not a Rationalist.  Everything cannot be deduced rationally.  Sometimes you need empirical evidence.  This question, this definition of love, a question I have been trying to answer for probably the past ten years or more, is one that requires empirical evidence, which I have been gathering practically my whole life, not that I plan to be looking for any more empirical evidence any time soon.  “I cheated on you in the name of philosophy” is not an excuse anyone would buy, and it is not an excuse I would try to sell, nor am I even the type of person capable of infidelity because it is as dishonest to yourself as it is to your partner, and I am incapable of lying to myself.  For now, I am going with what I call the Sochi definition of love: wanting to hold someone in your arms and never let go.  Wanting to hold them is the desire, never wanting to let go is the compatibility.  I have quite a bit of driving to do tomorrow, and I intend to better develop this theory by the time I get to SLC.

Alright, the adventures of today, and there were plenty.  I don’t remember if it was raining when I woke up, but it was certainly raining by the time I got on the road.  Breakfast was meager, but I wasn’t too hungry, so it was fine.  My plan was to light up my smallest Cuban, walk to the Capitol, take my picture, go to the Mormon Temple, take my picture there, and walk back to the car.  I figured that I would be done with the Cuban by then, so I could light up my Davidoff Nic Toro once I got on the highway.  It is the cigar that pumps me up for the first long drive of the trip, and I always feel alive and ready to drive to hell and back when I light it up.  One problem, well, two.  First, I forgot that State Capitols don’t get cigars.  I am so accustomed to lighting up the Cuban in front of the State Capitol, as those two things are often the last aspect of saying a state Complete, but I never have a cigar in the Official picture.  On top of that, it was either wet or rainy, so that made for a slower smoke.  In the end, I was underwhelmed by the Mormon Temple, so I didn’t even bother walking there, and the Montecristo lasted half of the way to Idaho.

When I saw the Welcome to Idaho sign, right at the border, since it was long and flat road, I was pumped, but I still hadn’t lit up the Nic Toro.  It was raining, but that didn’t stop me from getting out of the car to take my picture.  There was no place to take the Official U, so I knew that would have to wait until I got to the NPS.  I got back in the car and lit up the Nic Toro, but I wound up still having some left by the time I got to my destination.  The speed limit was 80 mph, the fastest I had ever seen in the U.S., so I had no trouble breaking 100 in both states, though I kept my cruise control at 89 for the drive.  My GPS thought the speed limit was 75, and the signs were new, so it must have been a recent change, which meant that I was able to shave significant time off of my drive, arriving well ahead of schedule.  I got my stamps at the VC and got a trail map and some guidance on a hike that would take me about an hour.

It would have been the perfect hike, if it wasn’t rain and if I hadn’t gotten lost.  Yes, I got lost, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but more on that later.  The views were breathtaking.  It was called City of the Rocks National Reserve, and it certainly was a city of rocks.  I lit up a Cohiba and hit the trail, quickly finding the perfect spot for my first Official U in Idaho.  I did the first part of the trail, almost slipping on the wet rocks a few times, with little trouble.  I then went to do the extension.  That was where the trouble began.  The signage was either lacking or did not match the brochure.  I was quickly lost.  I have a good enough sense of direction that I was pretty sure I could have turned around and just retraced my steps, but it seemed like I was heading the right direction towards the parking lot.  The sign posts just were useless.  I started to get a little nervous, and it quickly turned into fear.  Due to the rain, no one else was hiking.  My water supply was dwindling.  I didn’t have any food.  The rain would have caused very quick hypothermia.  I didn’t have cell service.

Eventually, I found a sign that said “Bath Rock,” which was where the parking lot was.  I followed that sign, and it seemed like I was back on the trail.  I was not.  I was lost again.  Then I started to panic.  To be afraid was rational.  It would allow me to recognize the dangers and do what needed to be done to cope with them.  To panic was irrational.  I reminded myself of that and calmed down.  I walked back towards the signpost that said “Bath Rock” and looked at my trail map.  I guessed where I was and where I needed to go back to the trail.  I calculated how long the walk was to the trail based on where I thought I was.  If it took longer than that, I would retrace my steps.  It would take longer, but it would get me back.  Sure enough, I guessed right, and I found the trail.  When I found the signpost for the trail, I kissed the signpost and headed back towards the parking lot.  I saw the view where I had taken my Official U, and I knew I had gotten it right.  I was freezing and soaking wet.

I looked at the timestamp on my picture, and, while it seemed like I had gotten lost for an hour, the whole hike actually took less than an hour, so I was well ahead of schedule, and I had time to stop for my first Official meal in Idaho.  I got a steak and fries, figuring that that would be the perfect local meal.  It was great, but the panic from getting lost had killed my appetite.  Someone people eat when they are stressed.  I lose my appetite.  I got the rest to go, saving it for later, knowing I would be hungry during my drive at some point.  That was that, the Cuban, the Official U, and the Official meal.  49 States down, 1 to go.

I lit up a My Father and headed towards Golden Spike NHS, where, in my mind at least, Nat Taggart drove in the golden spike to complete the Taggart Transcontinental railroad.  Yes, Reader, I know that it was actually the Union-Pacific railroad, but that was not what went through my mind when I was there and smoking my Prensado.  I was now in need of gas, and it was getting tight, tight enough that I used my GPS and drove out of the way a little bit.  I finished my steak and fries while I filled up.  From there, it was time to go to the 2002 Winter Stadium, the other point of this crazy trip.  It was looking like I would 45 minutes ahead of schedule and arriving at my hotel well before 10 PM, except for two things, parking and traffic.  The public parking area was quite a distance away from the stadium, and the traffic around the stadium, right before the game was brutal.  It wound up taking me an hour to do the whole experience, putting me right back on my original schedule with an arrival time of 11 PM, though I knew I could shave off another 30 minutes once I got back on I-84.  I was right about that.

The Stadium was well marked with glorious signs that it hosted the 2002 Winter Games.  There were also signs that said no containers.  My water bottle.  What would I do?  They didn’t care.  I walked in, took my Official U and some pictures and walked out.  That was that.  I had completed the second of my 17 goals.  I had visited every Olympic Stadium in the U.S., Summer and Winter.  I headed back to the car and got on the road.  I was right, in the end, I shaved off half an hour, even after stopping for gas.  The hotel, guest house, actually, had a weird check-in procedure.  They email you the code for the front door and leave the key in a drawer inside.  It seemed like a recipe for disaster.  It was.  My key was not there.  Ugh, what would I do?  Well, I just tried calling the number of the hotel.  No answer.  I left a message and started looking around for the key.

I got a call back.  She couldn’t find my reservation.  I had the confirmation email in front of me.  She was looking at the wrong day.  She was about 10 minutes away, so she drove down, gave me the spare key, and let me in.  She was nowhere near as apologetic as she should be.  It didn’t matter.  I chose this place because it had a balcony with a view of the Capitol.  That was all that mattered.  I got situated, lit up my Ardor Duo Punto, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can move the mattress outside and get some sleep.

49th State - Day 0 - "All Was Well"

9/26/14

Aboard DL 437. En route JFK-SLC

“All was well.”  With those three words (the last three words of the Epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), J.K. Rowling packed in more meaning and powerful writing than Stephanie Meyer managed to do in 4 books of the Twilight Saga.  When I think of my life 19 years from now (19 years being the time that elapsed between Voldemort’s death and the Epilogue), all I want is what Harry had in that scene.  He is happily married bringing his two kids to school and all of the troubles of his past have disappeared.

I can just imagine a Travelogue entry dated 9/4/33 with a byline of, say, “Nadi, Fiji.”  The entry would end something like this: “I always save the second to last Cuban of a box for some special moment (keeping the last cigar as a souvenir of the box).  This box had been a wedding present from my brother, and I smoked most of the box within the first year of our marriage, but I had been saving that last one for quite some time now.  I had assumed it would be for the birth of our first kid, but the folks at the cigar store had given me a box for that occasion, and I chose that one instead.  Sitting on the beach, watching my family frolic in the Pacific, as the sun was starting to set, seemed the perfect moment.  I took a sip of my water bottle, the same water bottle my mother so heroically shipped to me in Israel two decades ago, the same water bottle that had been to all 50 states and well over 100 countries, and I lit up the cigar.  All was well.”

Most of that passage would make perfect sense to anyone.  However, that last sentence has no meaning unless it is someone who knows me, someone who knows all the pain and troubles with which I have dealt in the past 10 years, the past 27 years, even.  Likewise, only someone who had read each and every Harry Potter book could possibly know how much meaning was packed in those last three words.  While I am far from achieving that utopian future of the “19 Years Later” entry that I just envisioned, as I was walking back to my apartment on Wednesday after I dropped off my bike, I knew that all was well.  I am very happy with my life now, far happier than I was in Carcassonne 12 days ago.  All of my doubts and fears and stresses that I experienced as I turned 27 have evaporated.  I know with absolute certainty that this will be a trip that I enjoy.  Yes, it will be exhausting and strenuous and stressful, but the enjoyment value of this trip to Utah and Idaho will be far more than my trip to Catalonia and Andorra.  When I left two weeks ago, it was, “I’m so jealous” or “Have fun in Spain.”  Today it was, “Why are you going to Idaho?” or “I’d say have fun, but I don’t think that’s possible in Idaho.”

After going a month without my sleep machine, it was finally starting to catch up with me.  The first two weeks I gave it up I slept fine, if fitfully.  However, I started to notice that I was getting more and more tired and having trouble focusing as the day went on.  When I got back from Spain, it started getting worse.  I’d wake up constantly in the middle of the night with a very dry mouth and needing to take an Official U.  When I was using the sleep machine, I’d typically sleep through the night, not getting out of bed until I was ready to wake up.  The past two weeks, I do not think I have slept through the night once.  I had been sleeping with a constant source of humidity entering my nose for 6 years now.  Of course I would get dried out without that source of humidity.  Then, I would drink the water, which would lead to the Official U (taking an unofficial U, no matter how tired I am in the middle of the night, was simply not an option).  That would lead to more water.  It was a vicious cycle.

I went from having no problem to waking up at 7 AM and being alert for the whole day to oversleeping, waking up past 8 AM, and getting tired by early afternoon.  Last night, I realized that not having the sleep machine was no longer an option.  I slept great.  I may have woken up briefly once in the middle of the night, but I didn’t wake up dehydrated or in need of an Official U.  More importantly, I was alert all day until I left work, and I got a lot done.  However, across the board it was a very unproductive day.  Between my boss’s daughter being there and the owner and HR manager not being there, it is safe to say not much work got done.  I did what needed to get done, in spite of the noise and commotion.  It was great to feel focused and alert again.  There was no stress or worry to distract me from my work, and I was as productive as I was when I work alone on a Saturday.

I had my pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, finished up what needed to be done, headed over to the cigar store, said my goodbyes, and took the car to the airport.  I got two more proposals done in the car and got to the airport with plenty of time to have some wings at Buffalo Wild Wings, as I tend to do when I fly out of Terminal 4, which I have done four times in the past 3 months.  Their buffalo wings are little too spicy for my palate, so I considered getting the medium hot, but the menu said the honey barbeque was about as hot as the Buffalo wings but had some sweetness to mellow it out.  I chose wrong.  I should have just gone with the medium hot.  The great thing about Buffalo wings is that they’re so spicy that they knock you out, making you feel both full and tired.  These honey barbeque wings did neither.  We were soon boarding, and I tried to sleep when we took off, but I think the Diet Pepsi I had with my wings effed that up.  Unable to sleep, I decided to write this entry, which I will now close, as my battery is about to die.  I have some more thoughts about this “All was well” theme, but I am still working on them and need to save something for my Salt Lake City entry tonight.

Salt Lake City, Utah

I had been intending to write a personal journal entry when I got to Boise on what I call, for lack of a better phrase, “hometown love.”  Quite simply, it is about rural towns where people live there their whole lives and fall in love with and marry their high school sweethearts.  I started a new personal journal, since the name of the old one, Who is John Galt?, is no longer fitting due to my rejection of certain principles of Rand’s.  My mother is fond of saying that she doesn’t like Rand because she tries to rationalize emotions.  I rejected that rejection.  Now, I am starting to see the merit of it.  There is no doubt that people feel irrational emotions, but the question is whether or not act on emotions you cannot rationally explain.  My father would say that our emotions are rapid judges of what is good for us or bad for us, telling us what we want far faster than our rational mind could do.  Rand takes a similar stance.  The issue becomes what happens when we feel an emotion we know to be irrational.  Take, fear, for example.  Everyone has their phobias.  For me, it is small, fast moving objects.  For someone else, it is crowded elevators and subways.  My rational mind knows that a falling leaf or a piece of cotton blowing in the wind cannot hurt me.  Does that stop me from being startled when I glimpse it out of the corner of my eye?  No more than it stops this other person from waiting for the next elevator or subway when he it is too crowded.  His rational mind should know that the consequences of giving in to this irrational fear (being late to work) are negative.  Unlike someone who is afraid of death and takes stops to avoid dying.  That is rational.  Death is a bad thing.

Anger is another great example.  If someone does something that makes you angry, and you act on it irrationally, no good can come of it.  If someone punches you in the face, you have every right to be angry, and you should respond in kind.  You should punch him back.  If someone pushes the wrong floor on the elevator, you should not punch him in the face.  That would be irrational.  I do not think any of my readers will disagree with my assessment that acting on irrational negative emotions is a bad idea and that trying to rationalize those emotions is very beneficial.

Now, let’s examine the positive emotions.  There is only one that matters: happiness.  I explored the idea of “irrational happiness” en route to Narita 4 months ago.  The solution I came up with was that irrational happiness was something that would make you happy in the short term but unhappy in the long run.  The arguments of my parents fall apart there, as well.  My father’s argument of trusting your baser instincts fails because otherwise there would be no argument against hedonism.  I would get great happiness out of eating a bag of Oreos or a quart of ice cream.  Why then do I not do it?  Because it would make me sick, gain weight, and have all sorts of health problems if continued in the long run.  My mother’s argument fails for a similar reason.  I know exactly why the sugary treat would make me happy.  Our body is designed to treat the sugary taste buds as pleasurable.  Nabisco and Haagen Daaz  have spent absurd sums of R&D money to figure out exactly how to best please those taste buds.

Okay, granted this is a silly example.  Love is a much better example, and it is where their arguments hold merit and where Rand’s falls apart.  In order to prove my point, I must first set the stage.  After I landed in SLC, I was a little hungry.  I got my car, got on the road, and decided to stop somewhere.  That somewhere wounded being a 24-hour burger joint.  Now, Reader, imagine you are hometown girl, a waitress at a burger joint, it is 11 PM on a Friday night, and a young man dressed in a suit walks up to the counter and orders in one breath, “A bacon cheeseburger, no bread, please.”  You smartly call out, “Now that’s a man who knows what he wants.”

Now, Reader, imagine you are a world traveler in a very happy relationship, a relationship that made you finally realize that all the definitions of love you had considered for 27 years were completely worthless, that you had finally realized six weeks ago that you had it right when you woke up the last morning of the Olympics 6 months before that after a very strange dream about Lucy Liu, which left you thinking, “Maybe love is just about wanting to hug someone and never let go,” that trying to force yourself to love someone because she reminds you of some character from a book written 50 years ago was stupid, and you hear some hometown girl smartly call out, “Now that’s a man who knows what he wants.”

What do you do?  You smile at her and answer, “I sure do.”  You say that because you know it will make her day.  You say that because you have finally realized what you want in love and life.  You say that because your doubts have vanished.  You say that because it’s true.  My high school self simply defined love as being unable to focus when you’re in class with your crush.  During the dark times, when I thought I would never fall in love again, I tried to define love as an emotional response to beauty.  When I rediscovered Objectivism, I used Rand’s definition of love as shared values and mutual respect.  Once I realized that mental attraction alone was not enough to build a relationship, I realized that Ryan was right.  Love is about the chemistry.  It is about the interaction of Style.  It is about those things you cannot put into words.  When he first offered that definition, I rejected it as merely another form of attraction.  I thought of my 9^th Grade crush, the way that she would stand up and raise her arms in their when she was happy about something, the way she smiled.  I knew that that crush was irrational.  You cannot build a relationship with someone based on those mannerisms, no more than you can build a relationship based on shared philosophical values.

I then got closer to the mark.  It was not about Style.  It was about the interaction of Style, just another way of phrasing what most people cause chemistry.  By this definition, I was able to incorporate my father’s views a little better.  You can instantly know if you have chemistry with someone, far quicker than you can rationally identify the reasons for the chemistry, but chemistry is rational in the end.  All of these definitions I had utilized since high school, they were all based on rationalization of emotions.  I still rejected my mother’s view.  However, there was something missing.  It is not enough to simply be physically, mentally, and chemically attracted to someone.  You need passion.  Passion is not rational.  By its very definition, passion is irrational.  You cannot force yourself to feel passionate about someone simply because your rational emotions tell you that she would be a good fit.

In order to want to hug someone and never let go, you need to feel passion, and that is impossible to rationalize.  That was where my mother finally got it right.  When my father first saw my mother, he was instantly attracted.  He saw a pretty woman with intelligent features, someone who would be a good mother to his young son and, in the future, to me.  His emotions were ahead of his mind, but his mind quickly caught up.  I do not know what passion they soon felt for each other, nor do I want to know, but I know that, if they had not feel passion for each other, I would not be writing this entry.

Reader, I have spent almost an hour writing the thoughts that went through my head while I was waiting for my burger, when I saw a group of these hometown kids standing by the cash register, two of them coupled, holding each other.  I knew that these were people who never once considered Rand’s definition of love, who never once doubted love to be anything other than chemistry and passion, that those two kids did not want to let go of each other, and I was happy for them.  They did not feel doubt, and, for the first time in quite a while, neither did I.  All was well.

I ate my burger outside in the parking lot, not finishing the fries, and I put the container in the back seat of my car, not seeing a trash can anywhere.  I heard a voice ask, “Sir, do you have any leftover?”  I was not going to eat the fries.  It was such a simple request, so I gave him the box and told him there were some fries left.  He was so happy to get that little bit of food, and, for the first time in 7 years, giving something to a stranger made me feel happy.  I headed to my hotel, checked in, and got ready to smoke my pipe.  My computer was dead, so I had to charge before I could write this entry.  I filled up my Ardor, got settled outside, intended to smoke it for about 30 minutes on the balcony before I wrote my entry, but the computer was slow to charge, and it started to rain.  Sleeping outside was not an option, nor was finishing the pipe out there.  The balcony was adjacent to the bathroom, so I moved inside to the bathroom, put towels by the door to my bedroom and the adjoining suite, used the outlet in the bathroom, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish it and get some sleep.

27th Birthday Bash - Day 3 - The Journey Home

9/15/14

Aboard DL 477, En route BCN-JFK

After I closed last night, I came to a sense of clarity.  It was a sort of “all is well” moment.  I would be back to normal life within 24 hours, and I could deal with needed to be dealt with, rather than stressing over the things that I could not change.  Writing about it helped, as did talking it out.  I was pretty much fully packed, never really having unpacked in the first place.  I knew that I needed to set an alarm as a fail-safe, and I opted for 6 hours later.  It would give me just enough time to eat quickly, dress, and head straight to the airport in time for my 10:40 AM flight.  Only, there was one problem.  That was tight timing, and my flight was at 10:25 AM, not 10:40 AM.  I did not realize that at the time.  I woke up naturally, of course, at 7:20 AM and headed down to breakfast.  This was one of those hotels where you need to leave your keycard in the slot to power the electricity.  As I was walking out, still in a bit of a daze, I felt a keycard in my pants pocket.  That’s funny.  I didn’t remember having two keys or taking out a second key.  I didn’t give it much thought.

My parents stayed at this hotel last summer, and my mother, not exactly a big breakfast eater, raved about the quality of the breakfast.  There were three rooms, but only one of them mattered.  There was a huge selection of cold cuts, breads, pastries, and fruits.  I got myself a plate and ordered a coffee.  I wanted to be in and out in about 15 minutes, but the coffee took forever, messing up my whole schedule.  I knew that I could not enjoy my breakfast without coffee.  I slowly pecked at the cold cuts while I waited for the coffee.  Eventually, it came, and I only had a few bites left.  I was pissed.  I then went for the hot food, a miserly selection, one small table.  I then went for the desserts, getting a little of everything.  That was excellent.  All in all, I was very disappointed by the breakfast, especially after the glowing review my parents had given it.  Nothing could ever compare to that amazing breakfast my first morning in the Black Forest.

Reader, recall that keycard?  I went to my room, only to discover that it was the keycard from Andorra la Vella.  Fuck!  I was locked out.  I went down for a new keycard, and they just asked my room number.  I could have gotten the key for any room.  I quickly showered, dressed, and gotten out of there, no time now to stop at Parliament.  It was 8:25 PM, and I figured that it was 15 minutes to the airport, which would allow me to arrive two hours before my 10:40 AM flight.  I was wrong on two accounts.  First, my GPS said it was 37 minutes to the airport.  Second, my flight was at 10:25 AM.  Fuck!  There was nothing to be done.  Stuck in traffic, I knew this was still the quickest way to get to the airport.  I think I might have even passed Parliament on the way.

Anyway, my GPS was all wrong, trying to take me to the wrong terminal, and I got to airport at 8:50 AM, already having checked in through my phone at a red light.  I was good on time, and I made my way through the airport, opting not to stop for more cigars or liquor at duty-free.  I was short on time, and I didn’t want to risk anything.  An hour later, I was asleep in my seat, awaiting take-off.  I slept some more and then woke up around 8 AM New York time.  I wrote my Philosophy Short Writing Assignment and then proceeded to write this entry.  I still have three hours on my battery and two hours up in the air, so I suppose that I will close and write some proposals.

New York, New York

There is a funny thing about the way you remember things.  Emotions and worries are fleeting, but memories last forever.  Whenever I look back on a trip, whatever stress I felt in executing the trip is always gone by the time I get back to New York.  That was how I felt walking through Grand Central this afternoon.  My stress was gone.  I had enough cigars to last me the rest of the year.  I was just happy.  I thought back fondly how wonderful of a trip it was.  I didn’t worry about my future.  About a week ago, I was struck by a singular thought.  It is funny how you can be struck by such a thought that sticks with you and forces its way into your life.  Descartes would call it a “natural light,” a thought that comes from no apparent source, and he uses that as the means by which he builds his epistemological foundations.

My philosophy is not about epistemology.  It is about happiness.  Six months ago, I was struck by one of those singular thoughts, and it was a thought that changed my life.  A week ago, the thought was, “Maybe if I stopped dwelling on the past and worrying about the future, I would start to enjoy the present more.”  I spent most of this trip doing both.  By the time I got back to New York, I started acting on that thought.  I decided to live in the present, to enjoy life as it comes, rather than to regret what could have been or worry about could become.  Granted, that is a dangerous path, and I am not about to devolve into a hedonist, but that doesn’t mean I cannot simply “seize the day.”  Once I adapted that mindset, I looked back on my trip with a different view, and I realized that it was a great trip.

Usually with Global Entry, they just wave you right through, but the officer had some questions for me this time.  “What did you bring back from?”  That is not a typo.  He continued, “Any food, alcohol, cigarettes?”  I didn’t have any.  He waved me through.  Reader, if you travel internationally and do not have Global Entry, get it.  It will save you at least 30 minutes every time you fly internationally.  The line was so long, and I was able to walk past the entire line.  It is amazing.  Not wanting to shell out for a cab, I took the bus back to Grand Central.  There was traffic, but I didn’t care.  Just like the last time I took the bus, I got the back two rows to myself, put the seat in front of me down, and used that seat back as a foot rest.  It was as comfortable as any cab, and I worked pretty much the whole bus ride.  There were outlets, too, which cabs don’t have.

I first stopped at the cigar store, and I knew that Jimmy would be back, too, having been in Toulouse, less than two hundred kilometers away from me.  He brought back even more cigars than, and his uncle was shipping him another 200.  We would be doing a lot of trading tomorrow.  Charles asked for his gift, and I produced it from my bag.  I then went to the office where everyone was eagerly awaiting their gifts.  I was right, it was much better handpicking the gifts for a few people than buying the random bag of crap.

It was a productive day at the office, and realized that I had not eaten since 1 AM New York time.  I had a little bit ice cream, blueberries, and two quest bars.  At 6 PM, I made my burrito and headed to the cigar store, where I opted for a My Father instead of a Cuban.  I biked home and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can pass out.  It’s like 2 AM in Barcelona right now.  Next stop: Salt Lake City and Idaho to get that last state of the Lower 48.

27th Birthday Bash - Day 2 - "Have Fun!" Not!

9/14/14

Barcelona, Spain

In many ways, this has been one of the least enjoyable trips of my life.  “Have fun!” they say before I leave.  “Enjoy yourself,” they tell me.  They do not know me.  They do not understand why I travel.  For me, my idea of fun is riding my bike full speed down the hill from 41^st to 42^nd Street in that little passage on Park Avenue where the construction is occurring.  For me, fun is discussing philosophy with Ryan and Emily after class.  For me, fun is getting toasted with my brother.  For me, fun is having lunch with an old friend who can still make me laugh.  Fun is not racing from one famous, historic site to another.  Fun is not walking through the streets of Andorra la Vella.  Fun is not smoking a cigar inside a medieval castle.  If I wanted to have fun, I would have stayed in the city.  When I set out to see the world, I did not do it because it was fun.  Yes, it would be fun to do it, fun to plan the trips, fun to have done it, but, the doing it, no.  Enjoyment is a little trickier.  In order for me to enjoy something, I need to be in the right mindset.  If I am exhausted, tired, hungry, stressed, or upset, I will not enjoy the activity.  This trip, I was all five.

The only part of the trip that I really enjoyed were my two dinners, being too toasted to care about anything last night, and finally be relaxed, awake, fed, and relatively happy tonight.  I also enjoyed my walk around Andorra la Vella.  The rest of the trip was about fulfillment value.  It was fulfilling to say, “Andorra Complete.”  It was fulfilling to see the 1992 Stadium.  It was fulfilling to visit every WHS in Catalonia in one day.  It just was not enjoyable.  Smoking this pipe, in Barcelona, writing my entry, celebrating a successful trip, that is enjoyable.  I just don’t care about anything else, save one thing that would be beyond the scope of this Travelogue to mention.  Actually, that’s not true.  The scope is what I make it.  There are just some thoughts I don’t want to share with the whole world.  No, what I want to share with the whole world is the similarities between Andorra la Vella and the Vale from Game of Thrones.  I passed out mamash toasted last night after an extended phone conversation with my brother and his fiancée.  It was past 3 AM my time.  The idea of the 7 AM hike seemed to be lost.  It would set everything back by 1:30 to do it that way, but I needed to sleep in.  Of course, I woke up at 7 AM, and I could have done the hike.  I was just too upset and wanted to go back to bed.

It was 9:40 AM by the time I got out of bed, and I rushed down to breakfast, which was rather disappointing.  My plan was quite simple, walk to the cigar shop, buy a box or three, light one up, get some souvenirs, take a picture at Parliament, come back to the hotel, and head to the WHS to do some hiking.  I would only be an hour behind schedule, and I knew that I could make that time up out of Carcassonne in the end.  I had budgeted 2:30 there.  If not, there was no harm in showing up at my hotel in Barcelona at 10 PM.  Reader, if you have ever been on a cruise or the cruise port on a Caribbean island, you know how they have a large collection of duty-free shops and souvenir shops.  Now, imagine Luxembourg or Vaduz or any other small, charming, old European city that is built into a mountain or cliff.  Imagine that that city is just one giant cruise port with nothing but duty-free and souvenir shops.  Reader, do you have that image in your mind?  That is exactly what the old city of Andorra la Vella was.

As soon as I got out of my hotel, not five minutes later, I got to a duty-free shop as big as any I had ever seen.  They had a huge selection of cigars, good ones, at better prices than I had ever scene.  My mother had said she would give me a box of Montecristo No. 4 for my birthday, the same present I got last year, so I picked up a box of those along with two boxes of Andorra Exclusivo (Ramon Allones and Juan Lopez), and about ten singles.  That was 85 cigars, all really good ones, for about the same the price as the 37 cigars I bought in Vancouver, and these cigars were better.  I lit up a Ramon Allones as soon as I walked out of the store.  I started walking towards Parliament, and I asked where to find souvenir shops.  Either there was a huge language barrier, or the local shopkeepers just never noticed the half-dozen souvenir shops on the main street on the way to Parliament.  Souvenir shops are like women.  There are plenty of great ones out there, but, once you find that one perfect one, the one that can give you everything you need, you are just wasting your time looking at other ones.

I had no desire to do my usual thing and got a big bag of miscellaneous crap to give away as presents.  Instead, I handpicked gifts for the people in my life about whom I actually cared and didn’t bother getting random stuff for my friends at the cigar store.  This was actually hard.  I barely know Emily and Ryan.  What do I know about them?  Well, Emily likes to drink beer and Ryan likes to smoke.  Ah, there was an Andorran beer stein and an Andorran ashtray.  Sokol and I always joke about unofficial Us, and they had a magnet of a guy taking an unofficial U (Category I, PS).  I continued perusing the store and handpicking gifts for other people.  I got a pin, two keychains, and a t-shirt for myself.  That was all I needed.  As soon as I got to Parliament, I immediately thought that I was in the Eyrie.  All that was missing was the Moon Door and the Knights of the Vale.  I took my pictures and headed back to the hotel.  I have a great sense of direction, and I knew that I would have no trouble finding my way back.  I was right.

I still had plenty of cigar left.  In fact, the cigar lasted while I checked out, headed to the WHS, getting gas on the way, and about half of the hike.  Andorra’s lone WHS, Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley may very well have the honor of being the least accessible in continental Western Europe.  In addition to being in the middle of nowhere, you have to hike at least 30 minutes from the nearest road to get inside the WHS proper.  It is a beautiful, scenic mountain valley, but it is inscribed as a cultural site, based on the way that people have used the mountainside over generations.  It’s about the way people have utilized land management, not about the land itself.  Go figure.  Anyway, I had thought that it was a mixed, which meant that it would need an Official U.  As I’m sure my readers know, a Natural (or Mixed) WHS requires an Official U to make it official.  Without that Official U, I would be unable to say “Andorra Complete.”

I parked the car, grabbed some cigars for the hike, knowing that I would want the Andorra Exclusivo Juan Lopez to be the official WHS cigar, but I took an extra one in case I finished it before I got back.  I had budget 1:30 for the hike, but the timeline is hazy.  I’m not sure if I was right on target or if I went 20 minutes over.  I knew that Coll Jovell was inside the WHS, and it said that it was a 35-minute walk there.  Perfect.  The walk was as harrowing as it was beautiful, and I was completely spent after 35 minutes, or maybe 55 minutes.  I eventually got to a sign post, and I assumed that this was Coll Jovell.  The distance to FontVerd was now at 1:10 instead of 1:40 from the beginning, so it meant Coll Jovell was either there or within 5 minutes.  The sign post didn’t say anything, and it was nowhere in sight.  To continue towards Fontverd was down a steep, rocky path, and I didn’t want to repurchase any more altitude than was strictly necessary to make it official.  Once I found a scenic spot to take my Official U, I lit up my Juan Lopez, took the U, called it Official, announced, “Andorra Complete,” and my made my way back to the car, ditching the tiny cigar at the parking lot.  On the way, I realized that my watch was 20 minutes slow, and I could not recall if I had been using my phone or watch as a guide, so I had no idea how much time I spent there.  It didn’t matter.

It was 1:40 PM, and Carcassonne was three hours away.  I could have 1:30 at Carcassonne and be right on target.  I entered Cite de Carcassonne into my GPS.  Problem.  It was showing as 3:20, which meant a 5 PM arrival time.  What if the castle closed at 5 PM?  I knew that I could make up some time on the road, but I wasn’t sure how much time.  I knew that I had looked up the closing time for Carcassonne, so I would not have originally planned to be at Carcassonne from 3:30 PM to 6 PM if it closed at 5 PM.  I knew this would be the one WHS of the whole trip that I would enjoy the most, so would I really have to Lavaux it and just take a picture outside?  I considered calling the whole thing off and just heading back to Barcelona.  There were two other problems.  First, my GPS had no reception in the Vale, but I knew how to get back on the main road, and I could just follow the signs to France.  Second, well, I had about 100 cigars in my possession, and I was technically outside the EU.  In theory, there are border controls from Andorra to France.  If I had to pay a duty on 50 of those cigars (50 being the usual duty-free limit), it would destroy all the money I had saved on them.  In practice, there were no border controls.

It was 4:30 PM by the time I arrived at the parking lot.  I was at one of the most amazing cultural WHS I had ever visited.  I was starving, had to U, and was almost out of water.  I was wrong about worrying.  Carcassonne is a walled city, and it has hotels and restaurants, so it never really closes.  It’s the castle inside the castle that closes at 6 PM.  I took my picture at the plaque, forcing myself to smile, and bought four souvenirs.  Yes, just four.  Two gifts for people whom I knew would appreciate the hand-picked present I chose and a replica and keychain for myself.  I would later add a t-shirt to that mix.  Okay, now what was I going to do?  Was I going to walk around the castle or look for Wi-Fi?  I chose Wi-Fi, having been off the grid since I left my hotel 5 hours past, and people in New York were just starting to wake up.  Eventually, I found an open network.  I then went inside the castle, sitting in the same area as Jimmy did last summer, smoking a cigar, just as he did, opting for a Cohiba.  I tried to relax, but it only lasted 5 minutes before I started taking pictures and moving around.

I had some trouble paying for the parking, being a little short on coins, having to use my souvenir coins.  I also knew that part of the Canal du Midi, another WHS was right in the area.  I had passed parts of the Canal on the way to Carcassonne, but I didn’t to stop.  I found a place to take a great picture of the Canal with the Cite in the background.  It was perfect.  Once I got on the highway, I floored it, easily breaking 161, getting up to 180 at some point, just keeping up with traffic, and made my way back to my hotel as quickly as possible, knowing that some food would make me feel better.  I had not had so much as bite to eat since breakfast.

There was some traffic along the way, but I still got to my hotel right at 9 PM.  I still had not had an Official meal in Spain, or even an unofficial one for that matter.  I was too exhausted, tired, hungry, and stressed to leave the hotel, and they had a rooftop smoking lounge.  Perfect.  I could have an Official meal there.  I brought a Montecristo, and the view was amazing.  I had Jamon Iberica and a veal burger, along with two glasses of Cava.  It was perfect.  I actually felt relaxed for the first time the entire trip.  After dinner, I headed back to my room, lit up an Ardor, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and get some sleep.

27th Birthday Bash - Day 1 - Looking Back

9/13/14

Andorra La Vella, Andorra

Today I turned 27, and I feel old.  If I think back to ten years ago how I thought my life would be at this point, it is nothing like that at all.  I fully expected that I would be married at this point, pursuing my passion in academia, with a PhD in Mathematics, possibly a post-doc or an adjunct professor at Princeton.  When I think back to five years ago, it was during the dark times, and I have no memory of what I might have been doing for my birthday at that point or what was going on in my life.  I have blocked it out.  I assumed that that was the new normal and that I would have no interests besides Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Twilight, and Narnia, that there would be no women in my life besides Padme, Arwen, Bella, and Susan, and I had no friends.  Now, excluding my family, there are four women in my life whom I love dearly, each by very different definitions and uses of that word, and I have more friends than I ever had.  Now, well, recently, I seem to have lost interest in all of my old interests, except work, travel, and philosophy, but I have cycled through so many interests and passions in the past five years that I have lost count.

Five years ago, I certainly did not expect my life to be going this well.  While the happily ever fantasy I dreamed about ten years did not exactly come to fruition, the doomsday scenario I feared five years ago did not either, so I can be happy about that.  Happiness is such a fickle thing.  On paper, today was a great day.  I said, “Catalonia Complete,” and I celebrated my birthday in Andorra.  I rekindled an old friendship, and I am steadily building a new one.  Why then, did I feel so miserable all day?  It is in my nature to try to overanalyze everything to try and overlook the simplest answers.  Could it have simply been that I spent the day driving on winding mountain roads and walking around in the hot sun with no food and almost no sleep?  Could I have just been tired and cranky?  Did I really have to start questioning my whole travel routine, that I was getting jaded of these WHS runs, that Catalonia could not really do anything for me?

Let's start at the beginning.  The flight was long and boring, and I got some sleep but not enough.  I had extra legroom, but I had misunderstood the seating chart and had opted out of getting a seat with even more legroom.  When we landed, there was a long line at customs, but, when I got there, she just looked at my passport for the next empty spot, not even scanning it.  Seriously, that’s how easy it is to get into the EU?  I didn’t complain, much better than Canada.  It was another ordeal to get the car, but I got GPS, and I was told I could in fact drive it into Andorra.  My first stop was the Olympic Stadium.  As I was driving towards the city, it finally hit me, “I’m in fucking Spain!”  Of course, it would be better to describe my day as being in Catalonia.  I saw more Catalonian flags than Spanish ones, and all the road signs and street names were in Catalonian, not Spanish.

The stadium was mamash, and I knew there was a viewing gallery where you could see the inside of the stadium.  I wasn’t sure if you could just stand under the archway or actually go all the way inside to make it official.  I also didn’t know where it was, so I started to circle counterclockwise.  I wound up walking 330 degrees around when I could have just walked 30 clockwise.  At least I got to see the whole stadium.  I was spent from that walk in the hot sun, and I did not recover until I got to Andorra.  I finally got to the viewing gallery, and it was official.  You could go inside the stadium.  I was so happy.  It was the last time I was happy the entire day.  I took my first official U in Spain, glad I got to do it in the Stadium, since that was the whole point of the trip, headed back to my car, and put in the Gaudi site.  I was to be my first WHS of the trip, and I was now almost an hour behind schedule.  I had allowed an hour of Dutch Time, but it wasn’t yet noon, and it was almost all gone.  I figured that I would probably just Lavaux the rest of the sites to make up the time.

I planned to just park the car outside the Casa Batlló, light up my cigar, take a picture, have a sip of water, and be on my way.  I knew that the next site was close by and would have some souvenir shops nearby, so I would share the cigar between the two sites, my stash running low.  There was one problem with this plan.  There was no safe place to pull over and take a picture.  The nearest spot was like three blocks away.  In the end, whatever time I had hoped to recoup got absorbed into this Dutch Time for the parking.  There was a tobacco shop on the way to the Guadi site, so I walked in, hoping to reload.  I asked if he had any sealed boxes.  He laughed and shook his head.  At that point, I should have walked out of there, but they had Cohiba Siglo II, my favorite cigar in the world.  The problem is, there is no way to tell a fake one from a real one without smoking it.  I smelled and felt it, and it seemed fine.  After two puffs, I suspected that it was fake.  I tried peeling the band off, and it was glued sealed, a clear sign of it being fake.  I threw it out and lit up my Partagas.  The Guadi site, while architecturally interesting, was a huge letdown.  I took my picture and headed back to the car.

After that, I planned to go to the Palau de la Musica Catalunya, which seemed to be in the touristy part of the city.  I just found one souvenir shop, and the selection was lacking.  Parking, this time in a garage, was another ordeal.  I had to drive all up and down the garage, reversing in and out of tight spots, until I finally went to the floor he wanted.  Again, the Palau was underwhelming.  I still had plenty of cigar left, and the touristy part was actually by Parliament.  Perfect.  I would add in the Parliament to help make Catalonia Complete more Official.  The parliament building is called “Palau del Parlament,” simple enough.  I put in to my GPS, “Palau de, “Palau de Congressos de Catalunya,” and it seemed to be in the right spot.  When I got there, it was all wrong.  Apparently, it was just a convention center, not the actual Parliament, which was far away, and I was already 1:15 behind schedule, having exhausted my Dutch Time.  If I really needed it, I could stop by at sunrise on Monday before breakfast.  I had collected the bear minimum for souvenirs, so I was good.  Okay, I am mamash tired, so I need to pause to rest my eyes for a bit before I continue with the rest of my voyage through Catalonia.

Okay, that pause was longer than anticipated, and I almost fell asleep.   I will need wrap this up as quickly as possible.  Anyway, my first site the Roman Ruins in Tarragon.  The drive was fast, and I even broke 161 at one point just keeping up with a couple of hot shots ahead of me.  I got there, and I was wowed.  I certainly was not jaded at that point.  Before I got out, I checked my itinerary to see how much time I could manage there.  Then I noticed something strange.  The distance I had recorded to the next site was 2:45, while the site after that was only another 0:30.  The latitude/longitude coordinates showed the distances to be about the same, the second one even a little further away.  How could it take so long?  Were the roads for Tarragon to Poblet that much worse than the ones from Poblet to Taull?  It seemed off.  I entered the site into my GPS, and, sure enough, it was less than an hour.  That meant I had just recovered two hours, one of them having gone to Dutch Time, the other available for a nice lunch in Poblet so that I could get my official meal in Catalonia.  It even meant that I would have had time to go the correct Parliament after I realized my mistake.  I lit up an Hoyo de Monterrey and walked around a bit, taking pictures and sharing them in various manners.  It was certainly my favorite WHS of the day.  My birth minute came and went, and then I was on my way to Poblet.

When I got to Poblet, there was a great place to get lunch across from the monastery, so I figured I would eat there.  I went to enter the next site, the Sint Climent church in Taull, but it was all wrong.  It was a hotel by that name, the church of that name was far away.  I went to the failsafe, the latitude/longitude coordinates.  No, that wasn’t right either.  Something was very off.  I looked up the coordinates again, and I had recorded them by a one degree south, closer to the monastery than it should have been.  I entered the right coordinates.  Fuck!  There was the 2:45 drive.  I had transposed the two distances.  On top of that, I was one Cuban short, and the last one would only bring me to Andorra, leaving me nothing for the WHS in France.  I would have to reload in Andorra, but I was hoping to push everything up and get to Parliament before dark tomorrow.  That was a lost hope.  Okay, so I certainly didn’t have time for lunch.  I also didn’t have time to really walk around.  I was now risking arriving at the restaurant after they closed.  I lit up my tiny Fonseca and took my pictures at the monastery.  I knew the rest of the day would be a complete rush until I got to the restaurant.  On top of that, I was tired and hungry, but I had no time to eat anything other than a couple of Quest bars, and I had no time for a siesta.

I raced to the final WHS of the day, one of the Catalonian Romanesque churches.  This one was called Sint Climent.  By the time I got there, I was so spent, so jaded, so fed up with everything that I didn’t bother to check if they had souvenirs or even look for a plaque.  As I walked out of the car, I decided, “Fuck the Parliament.  Fuck the Official meal.”  I just lit up the H. Upmann, took my pictures, posted one, and announced, “Catalonia Complete,” adding some sarcastic retort.  The church was pretty cool, and, if I was in a better mood, I would have enjoyed it a lot.  Then, I had to go back down the winding road, all the way to Andorra, and the elevation was killing me.  Everything was making me sick.  I almost pulled over to take an Offical yak.  Instead, I just opted to rest my eyes.  As I was trying to lean back, I got a phone call from an unknown number.  It was Hotels.com, and they were calling to tell me that my hotel was shut down and that they needed to transfer my reservation to another number.  Ugh.  Well, the guy took care of it, and I adjusted my GPS.  I was past caring about anything at this point other than getting to my restaurant for my first Official meal in Andorra, my first Official meal as a 27-year-old.  As I’m sure my reader does not know, Andorra is not part of the EU or even the Schengen Area.  That means that, in theory, there is a border control between Andorra and the surrounding countries (France and Spain).  In practice, there is not.  I kept asking, “Am I in Andorra now?” until I got to the Official sign.  It was so weird.

Anyway, I got to my hotel, checked in, and took a taxi to the restaurant.  I knew that I would be in no state to drive home after the meal.  It was Andorra’s best restaurant, and the food was excellent.  I opted for their snail specialty as my appetizer, which was way too much work, and the lamb, which is a local favorite, for my main course.  The lamb was too fatty, but I didn’t care.  I was mamash toasted at that point, so I just picked it up with my hands and ate all five chops like that.  Oh, so I had wanted a glass or two of Andorran wine, but they only had it by the bottle.  They had a small bottle for a reasonable price, so I ordered that.  It turned out, they were sold out of the small bottle, so he gave me a full bottle for the same price.  I only drank half of it, and I poured another glass when I got back to my hotel.  After the lamb, I got flan for dessert.  It wasn’t on my diet, but I didn’t care.  It was my birthday.  If I wanted a piece of flan, I was bloody well having a piece of flan.  When I got back to the hotel, I weighed in.  I’m convinced that the scale is wrong.  The number that came up was lighter than I had ever been since my freshman year of college.  I didn’t doubt my metric conversion, but this was post-meal, pre-U, and it just couldn’t have been right.  Anyway, I was happy, if it was not true.  Sometimes it’s nicer to believe a pleasant lie than face a hard truth.  I lit up a Davidoff and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and get some sleep.