They have a full body scanner at the airport in L.A. They have a Moxie Java coffee shop in the airport at Boise. Boise is where I am today and yesterday and part of the day before yesterday.
It would be easy to discount Boise if you have never been here or if you have spent your entire life in someplace like the Upper West Side, or Miami or, dare I say it, even L.A. Discounting Boise would be a mistake. Let's just leave it at that for now.
Since Seattle (the last post) I have been to Georgia, Alabama, yes, L.A., and Seattle again. In between all of that I went to France and Belgium. I will do a special post on Euro-G, advertisements for the rock band KISS, and all that superior attitude-thingy that seems to saturate the air over there. But, of course, I will do that later.
I am growing a little weary of the road. And, in truth, it is not the road that is making me weary, it is the lack of companionship on the road -namely the wife and chitlens. So, I am brainstorming ways that I can travel, get paid and have the wife and the traveling circus join me. A good friend said to me when I took this job, ..."you will eat some of the nicest meals you will ever have in your life, however you will either be eating alone or with complete strangers. It will start to seem", he said, "hollow." Very, very true.
I console myself with the fact that this job really IS a blessing. That I get to meet and shake hands with some of the best architects in the country -if not the world. I get to indulge my passion and this overwhelming curiosity to see new buildings, new art, new restaurants and to meet new people. I get paid to do this. I am blessed.
And then, on some mornings, I wake up and know that I am traveling to a place like Boise. The reps in Boise are eerily quiet. They don't talk much and one gets the sense that they feel like they don't have to. After the first day, long into yet another car ride to yet another architect's office on the second day, you find out that the kid (in a father-son team) had lived in Washington, DC for ten years. He doesn't look old enough to have done this. He looks like he's twenty, maybe twenty-two at the most. "I love DC," you say, "Why did you leave?" The response comes back and all preconceived notions take flight across the arid landscape.
"I was the chief financial analyst for a non-profit. The money was decent and the city rocked, but I made a five year and a ten year plan and I did not want to raise kids in DC."
It turns out that the son attended GW on a golf scholarship. So much for inviting these two guys to the course at some future date. The father has said very little lately and mainly just grins at the son. I feel (and have felt) like a schmuck! I realize that this is because I am guilty of the sin I can not stand in others: A Geographical Slur. I have assumed that Boise was a fly-over city... much like people assume North Dakota is a fly-over state. And golf scholarships or not, Boise is composed of people with amazing stories and history and predilections towards art and architecture and music and good food. Suddenly it feels a lot like home, just like 5th Avenue in New York can seem like home as you walk along on a brisk day, sipping coffee, and talking architecture with a rep who should have been an architect. Or how Miami can feel like home when you walk on the beach and realize that life is really good in the small moments and occasionally grand in the large.
I walk through the local mall, knowing, feeling, sensing and remembering that I designed a store for this place a few years ago -back in Fargo, working as a project architect for a small and good firm alongside my friends: Rich, Tom and Shaun; another lifetime ago. I find the store and the ceramic glass tiles look faded because the light sucks in the location, but the curved walls and circular layout of the dressing rooms still look good. I snap a couple of shots and get some long stares from some college girls. Yeah, that's right, baby, architect -kind of... okay, not really, not anymore. But this is cool. Glory days revisited and then I realize that I am creating new glory days every day.
I flip through the local independent paper and realize that Joe Bonamassa was playing last night at a place called The Knitting Factory here in Boise. I see that Candlebox is coming, as is Ani Difranco. Nugent will be here kicking up the great white buffalo in eleven days. Coffee shops populate the nearby streets. The Capitol building catches the eye as does the terrain of surrounding hills and mountains. The locals refer to the Treasure Valley. People are friendly and smile.
I am blessed.
-G
Disclosure: It would still rock to share this with Mrs. G and the little G's on a daily basis. If you would like to be a patron of a traveling fun show and daily mini-drama, let me know. Of course, we have to wait until our 16 year old daughter graduates in two years because she "ain't going nowhere." Don't use a double negative, honey.
