Simanaitis Says
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A GIFTED LIFE OF TRAVEL
HAVING JUST READ THE DISCOVERER BLOG’S “12 Types of Trips Everyone Should Take in Their Lifetime,” I am all the more certain that I’ve had a gifted life of travel. Without stretching the point, I’m 11 1/2 for 12 in Discoverer’s list.
The missing one is a Backpacking Trip, though I do have a neat-o backpack, sorta. It has a stitch-on from the 1999 Rally New Zealand, one of the World Rally Championship events, as well as a large “Pure New Zealand.”
The adventure had no backpacking per se, unless you count clambering through North Island forest groves to Special Stages.
Animal Safari. Pirelli once offered South Africa for its summer/our winter tire intro, and PR pal Jack Gerken added a post-testing visit to Malamala Game Reserve adjacent to the Kruger National Park.
My favorite photo: This feline is ready for her close-up. Note the Range Rover blur to judge proximity.
Train Trip. Two examples of rail travel stand out in my recollection, each related to another Discoverer category Last Minute Trip. With one, I had visited Saab’s hometown of Trollhätten with a plan of flying from Göteborg, about 46 miles south, across the country to Stockholm. I’ve forgotten the reason why (a missed flight? inclement weather?), but I traveled instead with a First Class ticket on a cross-country train. The scenery was beautiful.
The other, as I recall, was in my visiting Mazda in Hiroshima (possibly for the preproduction Miata clinic in 1987). Again I don’t remember the particulars, but I did enjoy 4-hour high-speed Hiroshima/Tokyo travel. The Shinkansen was a two-decker, with First Class private little rooms below. All very posh, even to a waiter serving a nice meal.
Solo Trip. My “early-retirement” business-travel stayovers had lots of solo tripping. Among the most memorable was my day at “Japan’s Little World.” One of its exhibit areas is a Values Hall giving many of the world’s religions their own display cases.
The world’s five major religions had no extra space. As I noted, “Just by chance, the place was free of energetic school kids, cool and serene in subdued light. An audio system played ever so quietly, Gregorian chants familiar to me, others less so but somehow still satisfying. As I rose step by step, I knew that, despite all our differences of evolution, technology, language and society, we are all one humanity.” Talk about memorable.
National Parks. The Discoverer mentions our Redwoods and I offer proof of the majesty of The Avenue of the Giants.
Image from mirandagardens.com.
The Redwoods are a saintly place as well.
Luxury Trip. Just about any automotive press junket qualifies as luxurious. Certainly residing on a Cruise Ship in Monte Carlo harbor for the Grand Prix qualifies on two Discoverer counts.
Adam et Eve by Fernando Botero, in a garden near the Casino.
Toss in sightseeing, the Yacht Club de Monaco, and “A Monaco Lap.”
Romantic Trip. Occasionally, Wife Dottie and I travelled together in Germany, England, Japan, and throughout the U.S.
Road Trip. California’s coast is a fabulous road trip. Do it in the right kind of car and it’s a trip in every sense.
Not your average road trip: lunch on the way north to the 1998 Monterey Weekend. Wife Dottie drove the Jaguar XK8; I piloted the C4R continuation Cunningham.
Off-the-Grid Trip. Uh, just how off-the-grid do you want? What about the middle of Baja’s Laguna Diablo with a flipped mini pickup?
When Bill Motta came hunting for me, he first saw “this shack” in the distance.
A Trip That Scares You. I’d have to cite a Bentley Colorado adventure. The cars were delightful, my hosts charming, but I learned my own sensitivity to high altitude. It was comforting to get below 9000 ft.
Telluride’s airport, down there somewhere, is the highest commercial one in the U.S. Image by Yaya Ernst from The Discoverer Blog.
The landing at Telluride was quite enough to scare some, but I had already savored adventure setting down in Madeira. See “Fasten Your Seatbelt! (No Kidding…).” ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
I’m 10/12 with no desire for a cruise (I’ve had numerous opportunities), but I do want to do an animal safari one day.
I do most of my traveling alone for business, and very often stay a day or two to explore whereever I am, particularly if I think I won’t be back soon or ever.
I also know I’ve been VERY lucky, as most of my travel has been mostly paid for by someone else.
I’m with you, Monsignor Albrecht. Cruise ships are environmental disasters. They’re also hideous, top heavy, b a r e l y ocean-going SUVs (Stupid Useless Vehicles, giant “Crossovers), a far remove from the sleek “greyhounds of the sea” many of us here gathered recall parked along the Hudson.
Hunting with a camera, si hable!
However, our genial host and wife Dottie clearly had a swell pair of rides for their ’98 Monterey Weekend trek.
Meanwhile, for those who’ve traveled enough and are quick studies:
http://www.newyorker.com › the-case-against-travelThe Case Against Travel | The New YorkerJun 24, 2023 · The Case Against Travel | The New Yorker. The Weekend Essay. The Case Against Travel. It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. By Agnes…Author: Agnes Callard
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Condé Nast
It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. |
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Dennis, have you ever written about the unusual aircraft you have flown in, apart from commercial flights? My list is short:
My first flight ever was in 1953 in a Piper Tri-Pacer off (and later onto) the front lawn of the Hotel Hershey. It probably cost $4.
In the 1970s, Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Airways flew De Havilland Twin Otters between Denver and the state’s ski areas, all of which had short runways and frequent foul weather. The planes climbed like crazy and descend as steeply and calmly as a feather in an elevator. One night, two of us were the only passengers from Steamboat Springs to Denver, and since there was no cockpit door in those days, we chatted with the pilot and first officer. All of us were hungry, but my suggestion to call ahead to a pizza joint in Kremmling then land to pick it up from the delivery guy was not all in jest. No, we didn’t do it.
Another oddball was a Shorts Skyvan, flying from Monterey, California. By coincidence, Bruce McCall was a fellow passenger, and I suggested that he portray the flying shoebox in one of his cartoons.
The best was a ride in a Stearman! From the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum’s grass strip, the septuagenarian pilot flew us at 70 mph and 700 feet above the rocky Maine coastline.
My old friend Tom Warth once rolled his Robinson helicopter out of a Minnesota barn, removed the doors, and piloted me over the green farmland. Without the doors, about a third of us hung precariously outdoors.
I hereby claim to be one of the few to have flown in both of the Porsche Turbo-powered aircraft developed by Mooney and Cessna. In 1988 it was the rarer version, the Cessna (182?) prototype. In 1990 it was my favorite, the Mooney. Quiet, smooth, no steam gauges, no mixture control–all electronic. The story of that aircraft is sad but would make a good column subject for you, but you’ve probably already written that.
My life goal is to experience an airship, but you’ve probably already done that, too!
Good adventures, these. Thanks. Yes, the Goodyear airship and Pontiac hot-air balloons are the only “lighter-than-air.” Otherwise, my list is dramatically shorter than yours.
Twin Otters were common in the Caribbean, and are the only ones on your list I’ve sampled. I’ve been in only a few modern private planes (of unremembered types).
I had a dream (alas unfulfilled) of flying in the restored Dragon Rapide in the U.K. Regrets but no problem: I have one on the sim that I built myself.