The Trip Overland™

On Packing Up On Moving On The Trip Up North

MSantiago — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:36:49 +0000

I wake from a dreamless sleep in a dark cold. It feels as if there is nothing around me, not even the ground on which I lie, though I take this for granted as I am not falling. Trembling, I push myself up and attempt to feel my way through the chill nothingness, though where [...]

Death in San Francisco

MSantiago — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:58:00 +0000

“East is East, and West is San Francisco.” — O.Henry The brilliant curmudgeon Norman Mailer called Chicago “a great American city” yet allowed that she is a lady. H.L. Mencken noted [...]

The Trip Overland Hacked via the Timthumb Vulnerability

MSantiago — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:41:17 +0000

On the road there is little time for anything other than catching glimpses out of the corner of your eye along the speeding road of the blurred trees and the slower moving mountains at the far-off horizon line. There isn’t an opportunity to jack in, hook up, dose out online. When you are working out [...]

Riding the Dog – Across America by Greyhound Bus

MSantiago — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:53:47 +0000

Come on, Bryce. There are a lot more important problems than Sri Lanka to worry about.” “Like what?” “Well, we have to end apartheid, for one, slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless…and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while [...]

The Obligatory Trans-Atlantic Container Ship Experience

MSantiago — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:20:49 +0000

…”we live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.” A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (Broadway Books, 2003) You live in a house. [...]

Books To Sail To

MSantiago — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:42:03 +0000

From my Sealog: Over the next three days I drank as much of the steward’s horrible coffee—a diuretic—as I could possibly choke down. This, coupled with ransacking the library for what hard-boiled detective novels as well as any and all spy thrillers I could find, served to allay my hand from the ship’s well-stocked stores [...]

Going Dutch in the Digital Age

MSantiago — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:52:53 +0000

On the last leg of the European Trip, Manny finds himself talking Porn & Social Networking on a Dutch island with a woman who may not really exist...

The Future of Us

MSantiago — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:52:44 +0000

Everywhere—all over Africa and South America … you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There’s a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they’re terrifying, because they are the death of the soul…. This is the prison this planet is being turned into. - J.G. [...]

Getting to Copenhagen

MSantiago — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 07:05:15 +0000

You turn over the last of your cash to the smiling lady, the amalgamation of months of traveling: Yuan, Tugriks, Rubles, Kroons, Zlotys, Forints, even some Rupees, all heaped on the counter in the dismal hope that the beautiful smiling machine can change it into whatever it is they use here, in this way station, [...]

Beer from around the World

MSantiago — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:23:08 +0000

Beer is water, barley, hops and yeast. More or less this is the recipe for the most popular alcoholic drink-and third overall-the world has ever known. There are many variations on this recipe, which, much like the variations in people, give rise to the differing characteristics that make the world such a diverse and awe-inspiring [...]