STILL catching up: driving to Bend 10/29, Oregon Men's Correctional Facility, Max Secure

Also, a side note about Spanish Television...

 

My new favorite show after touring around the west for a couple of weeks has to be Telemundo's "Descontrol."  Of course, there are the obvious reasons: an overabundance of lush, scantily-clad, Spanish beauties shaking their barely-liveried and occasionally oversized tushes with a wild, Latin abandon.  However, there are also comedic elements, as this clip will show.  They are often shaking their shapely, desirable hinderparts to clunky, mom-and-pop sounding horn music performed by mariachi bands that seem to be comprised of middle-aged men concerned with neither their appearance nor their modern appeal.  It's as if MTV's Beach Party had Lawrence Welk playing, but kept shaking their hot, teenage asses 2012-style nonetheless. Charming.

Still Catching Up...The Hotel Murano, Tacoma, WA, 10/28

 

This is the Hotel Murano in Tacoma. It is ridiculously beautiful and well-appointed.  Murano is where fancy glass comes from so the hotel is themed with beautiful, museum-quality glass from top to bottom.  there will be a lot of pictures of the Murano because I liked it a lot.

This is the glass just in the lobby. Not to mention the long fireplace with glass oars and glass portraiture on the walls.

 

 Every floor is dedicated to a different modern glass artist. I was on the 10th floor: Steve Klein.

Even the men's room in the lobby was gorgeous.

Room was fine. Not a bad view.  Room 1014, Hotel Murano, Tacoma, WA.

En route to Tacoma, 10/28: Washington State Women's Correctional Facility

Where they kept Mary Kay LeTourneau after being convicted of sexing up her student. I would point out that if a man had done the same thing, he would still be rotting in jail instead of being free and married to the person he molested. This is for Jon...

Tacoma Narrows Bridge, en route to Tacoma, 10/28

This is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

 Sure, it looks safe NOW.  But you might remember this clip from 1940, almost the same angle here.

Catching Up: Bremerton, Sat 10/27

 

OK, I've had a down couple of bummy days, but I'm trying to catch up. On one downtown corner in Bremerton is a large, arty fish holding a fishing pole...

 

 On the opposite corner is the fisherman he is catching. Cute. But weirdly, I met the city councilman after the show who had been the one that argued vociferously that the man, not the fish, should be the one getting caught.  His utter, guileless, and 100% complete lack of any sort of sense of humor made me doubt myself. Also wonder why he wanted the fisherman caught?  That seems humorous.  Not when he explains it. It is really strange to meet someone who really has no sense of humor whatsoever:  that is essentially the equivalent of "color-blind" to any normal funniness or jokes or amusing references or anything, really.  it's sort of a different kind of sociopathy. Unnerving.

Also, Bremerton's Admiral Theater is done up bigtime in "Under the Sea" motif.  I felt like Marty McFly walking in there.  

Breezy day on the Bremerton ferry

Someone needs a haircut.

Movie: Seattle Ferry Terminal

Taking the slow, fun way to Bremerton.

The Grim Raininess that is Sea-Tac

Boise Airport, headed back to Seattle

This has been as grueling a three-day stretch of travel as I have ever had with the Steps. Just brutal.

Second in an Endless Series: Odd Things Adorning Hotel Rooms - Hideous Paintings of Horses

The Fountaingrove Inn, Santa Rosa, CA, rm. 228

Golden Gate Bridge

Today has been a morass of delayed flights and lost luggage. But this is pretty.

Finally en route to SF after 2-hour delay.

Santa Rosa beckons....

This is my hair at Sea-Tac too early in the morning

A visible version of the view out my window

The Inn at the Harbor, Everett, EA, Rm. 309

Nice view, but long day: coast-to-coast in a middle seat from ATL to Sea-Tac, with TW next to me purposely eating offensive foodstuffs. I wish to smite he and his accurséd curried chicken salad!

Grand Opera House, Macon, GA

Guess who just woke up from a nap. This is a trapdoor that was cut into the stage for Houdini back in the day. Cool!

Landed at home at 1:00pm...

Dropped the $100G in checks I'm carrying off at the office, doing laundry...have to be back at National Airport tomorrow morning at 7:00. Last, and worst, travel turnover of the busy season.

Wish me luck.

The Deco Hotel, Omaha, NE

Room 732. Nice joint. The shower is not to be believed.

Secondly...

Cut off half my eyebrows last night. Serious: cleaned the hair out of the sink, there was just as much there as on my face. Used that great little trimmer you got me years ago, Pop.

No one even noticed. :(

Two things....first...

...En route to Omaha from Kansas City, passed Leavenworth again. That wall is terrifying.

Yardley Hall, Jefferson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas

Nice hall. Two days, mostly sold out. Fun times.

The Death Hole of Jesse James

Driving through Kansas and Missouri the last couple of days, we stumbled upon the Jesse James Death House in St. Joseph, MO.  Here, I am actually standing in the spot where "...that dirty little coward, that shot Mr. Howard..." ...that is to say, Bob Ford, pulled out his gun and shot Jesse James in the back of the head as he stood on a chair and dusted a framed needlepoint. 

 Small room.  Don't know if I could shoot a friend in the back of the head in a room that size. Or any size, come to think of it.  Underneath the needlepoint is a hole in the wall that legend holds is the bullet hole from the fatal shot.  It was picked at by tourists over the years until it was this gaping opening and then they sealed it off with a clear framed plastic shield. Here's a closer look.

Like so much about this whole thing, though, it's not quite real.  The doctor attending claims the bullet never left Jesse's head, so the hole is fake.  But then again, the house was at another location, a few blocks away at the time of the shooting and has been moved four times since.  Also, the wallpaper, furnishings -- just about everything, has been replaced and is not original.  Essentially, you stand in a room that once was somewhere else and looked completely different and pretend it's not. Weird.

Whenever we get a great hotel room...

We're in it for about six hours. This is the St. Regis in Buckhead  Atlanta where we were day before yesterday. It may be my new favorite hotel, superseding the Ritz-Carlton in Naples,FL. We got here late, left early, and had no time or cars in between. I still got in three long soaking baths.

The Athelton Hotel, in the Student Union at OSU, Stillwater, OK

Things are orange here........ Too orange.........