Ian and Garret

Bryan Ferry was a man ahead of his time. Armani, Roxy Music and the continuous reinvention of himself, now in Babylon Berlin. Now Iowa is Avalon.

Life is full of surprises if we challenge our assumptions – the natural beauty and imagination of the rest areas in Iowa. Who’d have known – east coast provincialism. I had thought it was all flat, snow and Charles Grassley. Now I’m a fan.Love the Wallace Stengler, even if he made is name in Wisconsin. Anyway, musical religious notes from Nick Cave and Joan Osborne nicely offset by Lola and Lou as we glide towards the mother of all rivers, the Mississippi , that sea of heartbreak. Ian ponders Jesus, the missing years.We crossed the rubicon into Illinois. Good bye west but I hope there is some going back. The boys chartered their whereabouts in their own distinct ways.A burst of rain but storms never last. The locals do seem to take pet hygiene seriously.We pressed on singing with the Blues Brothers and nodding to Plainfield as we passed Joliette, numbed by Moby, soothed by Sade and chewing gum to Kyla la Grange. Then the towers of Chicago loomed through the midst and soon became real.Another hotel – another shower challenge, or maybe I’m just getting old .Just as well the solution is just a rub away , rub away. This should start me up.Refreshedly now wrinkle free, we head out for dinner in Chicago’s Viagra Triangle with old friends, Linda the writer and Eric the super Dean.

Great friends of Kate and me , our sons Tinsley and Hugo were brothers in arms. Now these kids are both responsible parents: we remember them from the earlier times of their midnight rambling. The restaraunt name made the nod.After a great night of medical politics, good food and wine and well, some of the real stuff ( collusion is not a crime ) the boys headed back to the hotel where there, on the big screen in the bar, was Nonno’s Roma playing Barca while below them on split screens CNN and Fox gave competing views of the world.Only mildly distracted by the ludicrous novelty of watching Fox , we enjoyed our guruette recommended Rose while seeing Roma win even if Messi and Neymar seem to be on their summer holidays . Nearing the end now, could this be the last picture show?

It’s a beautiful day and we can see the lights of home: more than half way. Quick breakfast with a very hip looking crowd in the Deco hotel, then pack the car, trunk lid behaving and off we go under the instructions of Ms Waze: but then Waze waivered – directing us to Des Moines, she suddenly changed her mind and instructed us to divert to KC at a fork. We surrendered. Diversion, circling and recalibration but not before taking us through some stunning bridge sculpture: she didn’t apologize.Crossing into Iowa, our 10th state, we find corn as high as an Elephants eye, crop dusters and quilts and in a sea of contrasts, the birthplaces of Woody Guthrie and John Wayne: something for everyone.This is the heartland. Amidst the bounty of plenty we find windmills, iconic sculptors of change. The boys approve.Van is singing Brown Eyed Girl that makes me sad and happy. Then we divert – one for Anders and Lone.

Elk Horn Iowa, capital of Danish America and another windmill , this one (1848)) moved from Norre Snede in 1975!Here we meet Julie and Lisa who tell us the Danes came to farm in the later 1800s and then as emigrants do, brought the rellies, farmed the land and made it bloom in the vast emptiness of middle America. Plenty of room and work to do for plenty more.The windmill reconstruction is a work in progress: donate at danishwindmill.com

Meantime, as we get walls and travel bans rather than clean energy and grinding grain, I’ll leave the commitments to Bono and the boys from DNS ( work that one out).

Sorry just saw that this doesn’t show ( editing in McDonalds). It’s a COEXIST sticker from U2.

High on the desert plane, the travelers encountered poison rain, blindingly beating down on us, blindingly driving. Gimme shelter. Come on she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm.Janice, Jagger Van and Dylan eased us down. And then we reached Omaha. Not much was going on:Undeterred, the boys took a quiet nap and then prepared to smarten themselves up for their public. Evidently, there is a conspiracy of shower-makers hereabouts. As AI is to an IQ test, this took things to a different level from Gateway.Press the wrong button and you might experience an unwanted anatomical thermal contrast. However, here at least you were warned.At least there was no discussion of a faucet.

Off we went through the wide empty streets of Omaha to the fashionably hip Grey Plume.

Where was everyone?

Our server, Chelsea seemed perplexed: was she dealing with a couple of lunatics or were they just foreign? She warmed to the task when the exquisitely prepared fish was servedand the Barolo began to open up.Despite her understated charm, Chelsea’s real gift was in instructing us how to remove the flower from the fish eye socket, scrape away the suboccular skin and reveal the delicate cheek meat. That’ll teach Blair, the thinking man’s piscatorian.Cheek presented after an off-site beheading and dissection . I’ll never feel guilty eating meat again!

Just kidding, the fish and the garnishing was fabulous and we were lucky to be joined by Chef Clayton and Chelsea for a fond farewell.Back to the hotel and the boys meet barman Jake, who turns out to be a buddy of Clayton, and ask for a couple of limoncellos. This catches the attention of Geraldine, sitting at an adjacent table with Mark. Lawyers in love .

Geraldine is a woman of complex background and many talents. From a Swiss Italian (Lugano) home this British Irish FitzGerald ( big G) name donor to her daughter (while she goes by the decidedly Anglo Sutcliffe) is an active lawyer and maker of Limoncello in … Rochester , Minnesota.

There was harmonic convergence on politics with Mark and Geraldine as we discussed passport back up strategies, performance art, Brexit and Blair and the midterms. They are off to see Yo Yo Ma and an Italian in Algiers ( well , in Santa Fe). A hug and we all promised to keep in touch.Could this be him – ahead of me in Berkley?

To the strains of the Pastoral, the boys stared into the empty green nothingness of Western Colorado as they began the long haul to Omaha.The excitement could be briefly summarized – the odd tree, cows and the occasional bump in the otherwise flat pancake. Maybe if Trump built a wall here it might attract some migrants?Sometimes there was a slow train coming: that really got our pulses going, but in a laid back way; nothing high speed here. Still, there seems to be golf in Hugo, south of Last Chance.You may be impressed that despite the crushing monotony of the landscape that we are not on the verge of a Thelma and Louise exit, just to liven things up.

Well we front loaded our excitement for the day, a bit like time restricted feeding ( something we should try). After loading the trunk of the car with Blair’s massive red Bertha, assorted other bags of junk and dirty washing and my few compactly packed essentials, we found that the trunk would not close. After multiple repacking and eventually complete unpacking it still would not lock closed.

An expedition to the Porsche dealership 10 miles away provided plenty of thrills, especially when the unlocked trunk sprang open on the interstate. The need to make the minimum 40mph was a nice contrast to all those tons.

Eventually we made it to the welcome concern of Ethan Valeruz. When I took him round the back of the car to show him the unlockable trunk we now found it was unopenable. Bloody Germans.

Like someone I know, we just kept pressing buttons , Ethan saying this was a first for him: then it sprang open. As we contemplated an extra night in Denver to wait for parts , Ethan tried the long button push, a political favorite, the system reprogrammed and we were back in business. A bit like Hilary’s reset with the Russians except this worked.

After that we needed the numbing solace of Western Colorado. And then we were in Nebraska – strikingly more fertile from the state line.So when things look bleak, all you need is love…

Yes the traveling duo wandered through some amazing landscapes listening to Roxy Music but they also addressed two demanding technical challenges today. The first was how to have a shower in the Gateway resort, the second was to deal with an errant tire – more of that later. But first that scenery.OK first the shower. All right I know I only have an MD ( but it’s real, despite the MB). but for God’s sake, Blair has a PhD or so he says. After about 10 minutes of trying to get the shower to work we called the desk: pull down the thing in the faucet she said. Of course we know what’s a tap, but what’s a faucet? Eventually the engineer came to demonstrate the least intuitive piece of bathroom equipment since the Japanese toilet, leaving our self regard barely intact.

That solved, we cleaned up and hit the road. An impressive rest stop was No Name Canyon, Colorado where we looked at canooers on the Colorado river rapids.OK, now for the supralavatorial challenge, a tyre dropping off the car in front of us. We hit it with a thump at about 60, no time to swerve as we were in single file traffic. After a while there was a new sound. We differed on whether this was the roadworks or the car. Eventually switching between road surfaces we shed a big chunk of tyre and the car seemed fine. Until we pulled off.Then we found we had taken a hit and a bit of porsche that had been covering the undercarriage had been flipped and was now dragging along the road. The travelers fell prone on the pavement and wrestled it back into place. Cometh the hour , cometh the men.

On down the canyon , past Vail and on to Boulder, Loveland, Keystone and Leadville, – all the ski runs down to where Oscar delighted in the miners.Meantime Blair was thinking about how he keeps his mass specs in the air and speculated about patch ups with wire from the hardware store ….

The magpies shared his concerns . We pushed on down to Denver to be Born again.Thence to the local Italian where I did my best Capri vacation imitation andafter extensive consultation with David our Texan grade 2 Sommelier (7500 flash cards and counting we opted for the day’s perfect pairing:The result of a showdown at the Barolo corral with the local DGOC commissioner. The boys were impressed with the great food, harmonizing on the tagliatelle: the owner is #4 allegedly but Elvis wasn’t in the building .Finally, we were impressed by the apparently disinterested and non obsequious style of Noel, a Connecticut explant who , unprompted( she wasn’t our server) came back and changed our mind to the tiramisu – good advice.

Finally we adjourned, leaving the restaurant to step onto the arrivals of the attractive Denver station.Exactly what we need, the last metro – more public transport, attractively framed, fast and efficient.

As I kept my beady eyes mostly on the road Ian had his head in the clouds…Then we came across this massif…Before catching up on one of the last Hole in the Wall gang exploits in the oddly named Parachute.Good place for a drop off while Emmylou sings Red Dirt Girl – plenty of it hereabouts.

Stunned by the beauty of this Garden of Eden, the travelers shared a repast under the guidance our local SOM (step 1 from Srinagar via Dubai and delightful Philipina server.

Fish and fowl combined with the Columbia Valley to shape the meal while pink champagne complemented a fruity dessert – the lingering influence of the Portland guruette.A spot of Michael Cohen disclosure entertainment rounded off the evening despite resurrection of the Mooch as a talking head. Besides the natural beauty of the surroundings the lavender tinged , hummingbird filled gardens are stunning.Up in the morning, the boys are mesmerized by the sun on the red rocks and agree that this the most beautiful place either of them have seen ( well up there with the Grand Canyon but here complemented by the easy charm of the migrant workforce ).

The boys caught a farewell limoncello as a cure for the man – colds. John skipped his 4am flight for something more sensible.The next morning the boys worked until a delicious final caprese lunch with Missy, an indoor and an outdoor squeeze for Nonno ( that’s me ) and Blair doing his queenie wave and we were off.Out on the open road again, big sky, windmills and buttes we zipped down Utah towards the Colorado border.On into canyonlands. At one forbidding rest area we encountered competitive queuing for a single looHowever, deeper in sphincter territory — down by the Green river – we encountered a more imaginative approach.As we listened to Knopfler and Emmylou, Prine and Pink Floyd, we thought of the Hole in the Wall gang and gazed at the buttes – the pinks, the greens, the browns, the lightning and the lowering skiesOnward towards Grand Junction, dinosaur country..

Speaking of which I drove Genevieve here from Moab along the Green river to sit her SATs a couple of decades ago. Footprints in the sand.

Off the main highway and into the canyons. It just leaves you comfortably numb.

And then we arrived….

Dust is in the air and the sun has turned red again: the boys are coughing , noses running.We set out from J&M’s house at the foot of Mt Olympus to fetch Matias, the prodigal son, from camp after a fevered (literally) morning of work.Matias has spent the week at Camp Roger deep among the Aspens an hour from home. Camp, that great tradition of American childhood is run by counselors from America but also Britain and Brazil, Columbia, Ireland and Singapore. Core values are fostered in all the activities from mountain biking to swimming, to horse riding – friendship, respect, caring, honesty and responsibility. The kids are rewarded with dog tags to recognize their adherence to and promotion of these values: sounds like a good place to send members of Congress.After the celebrations, the mud caked campers reunite with parents , collect their belongings and head for home : unlike in the song, they all seem to want to go back as many have already done . I get the big hug from the grandson.All the family go out to dinner with the boys and then we ascend the mountain for an Olympian view and to howl with the birthday boy, one last time at the Moon.