Travel Days

Tips for Managing Airports:

1) Bring snacks from home – You can’t ever find just what you want at the airport… and, when pressed, you may end up getting crappy food that makes you feel kind of junky on the plane.

2) Laugh at the TSA – It is indeed “security theater” as you watch them pat down grandmas and children. I’ve seen so many stupid things they do just to give the “impression” of security, that I try not to get mad any more… and I just try to remember that TSA stands for Tub Stacking Authority. And, also, whenever possible, travel outside of US Airports, where they treat you like a human and not a guy in line at Taco Bell. Try the Japanese airports and you will have a happy experience.

3) Watch people’s eyes – I like to analyze people by looking at the way they are taking in the world around them. It’s very interesting… maybe you can see it too… when people just have a look in their eye like they’ve given up on life. You know what I mean… and then you see the eye of some other people and they look amazingly full-of-life and ready to engage in the world.

Daily Photo – Snowy the Snow Monkey

This little guy and I had a little friendship after a few days.

I spent time all over the hills and rivers here outside of Nagano taking photos of these snow monkeys. And you get to know them after a while… there are a few that you see over and over again. I started giving them names… the same way my daughter gives names to everything… and all the names were quite childish… Like I called this guy, “Snowy.” It wasn’t very creative, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He followed me around morning and night. And he posed… oh how he loved to pose. Some other monkeys I got too close too and they gave me the wide-mouth attack move…. but I never got too close to Snowy. I didn’t want to ruin the little grizzly-man thing we had a-goin’ on.