My Travelogues, 365 E Commercial Road (2025)

09/11/2022

FROM THE LAND OF THE AMISH TO THE LAKE OF THE OZARKS AND OTHER EXOTIC PLACES

July 1, 2001. Bridgewood, CT - My one-month stint in Shinar‘s place brought me to places I never dreamed to set foot on, many of them I only read in books and magazines.

On my first Sabbath in the Midwest, we attended a camp meeting held at the campus of Graceland University in the town of Lamoni situated on the state line between Missouri and Iowa. A camp meeting is similar to our association rally in the Philippines except that ours is done by district while theirs is conference wide. The principal speaker was the President of the North American Division. In the afternoon, we took a side trip to visit Jamesport---an Amish country. That was my first time to see the Amish with all their primitive way of life---no electricity, no motorized vehicles, no TV, no nothing. Previously, my Amish knowledge consisted only of occasional articles I read from newspapers and magazines and the movie, The Witness, starring Harrison Ford.

On Sunday of the following week, we made a 3-hour drive to Saint Louis, a city known for its magnificent Gateway Archs. This is also the home of the first aviator to cross the Atlantic, Charles Lindberg---his plane, Spirit of St. Louis, was named after the patron saint of this city. St. Louis lie along the Mississippi River on the boundary of Illinois. From the summit of the Archs you can see the entire St. Louis on the west and a large portion of Illinois on the east. Beneath the ground level of the arch is the Museum of Westward Expansion. From there we went to St. Louis Science Center and the Purina Farms.

On our way home, we made a stopover at the tomb of that famous American pioneer Daniel Boone in Marthasville.

Last June 13 we went to the legendary Lake of the Ozarks. It was the most scenic place in Missouri. We made a stop-over at one 5-star resort hotel, loitered in their spacious terrace then went to the marina and took turns feeding those gigantic carps and catfish with the remnants of hand-baked bread we bought at an Amish bakery the week before. Before reaching the Ozarks, we made a brief stopover at the Harry S. Truman Dam.

The Truman Lake is one of the tributaries to the Lake of the Ozarks before it empties its waters to the snake-winding Missouri River. I learned that President Truman, one of the greatest personalities that Missouri has ever produced was born in Independence a city not far from Kansas.

On our way back from our Great Lakes escapade we made a 2-day stopover at the Saldias in Berrien Springs. In the afternoon of June 23, we made a side trip to the Amish Acres, another Amish colony in Northern Indiana. We were rather quite a big group consisting of Amy and her 2 kids: Amythst and Don, Shinar, Manang Vi, Shinar’s sister Pilar and Danish nephew Svend together with Pilar’s childhood friends from Chicago, Nenett and Twoots and her son Dwaine.

Leaving Berrien Springs on our way home to Sweet Springs last Sunday (June 24) we made a brief stopover at Springfield, the state capital of Illinois and the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln. Shinar’s 11-year-old Danish nephew, Svend, contended that that was the place of the Simpson Family (one popular carton series) but considering that there are so many Springfields in the US, we reserved our judgment on the validity of his contention. We posed for some photos with the statue of the 6th US president.

Reaching Missouri using the northern route we made a stopover at Hannibal, that sleepy little town by the Mississippi which was put on the map of world literature by its most famous resident by the name of Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens in real life, Twain created the two famous fictional characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in his book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. All the fictional characters in that book were based on real people living in Hannibal during his time. We joined the guided tour inside the historical Mark Twain Cave which was a maze of passageways and cracks. What an experience that was!

09/11/2022

FROM CONNECTICUT TO CALIFORNIA: WHAT A LONELY, LONG DRIVE

September 12, 2011, 12:41 AM. - It took me five days to negotiate a circuitous route coast to coast from the northeast to the southwest of US mainland. I left New Haven early Thursday (September 6, 2001), arriving Chicago the following morning where I made a two-day stopover. Departing Chicago Sunday I arrived at Shinar’s place in Sweet Springs, Missouri in the afternoon of the same day where I stayed for the night. I resumed my westward journey in the morning of Monday and finally reached Ate Jed’s place in Colton, California in the evening of Tuesday. It was a long and lonely journey with an epic proportion of adventure replete with mental images of what I saw and experienced along the way. That journey was worth remembering for a lifetime. All in all, I traveled 3,236.5 miles and spent $150.00 on gas.

I chose the longer route suggested by Dave for its simplicity. The internet-directed route was shorter, but it made a lot of switching from one highway to another that it is almost impossible for a first-time long-distance driver to follow unless he has a full-time navigator by his side. From New Haven, I drove north along the Wilbur Cross Parkway that soon converged into I-91 until I reached Springfield, Massachusetts where I made a few wrong turns and got disoriented in the process. After asking directions from some helpful and friendly people, I hit I-90 West which would bring me all the way to Chicago. I was in the vicinity of Niagara Falls as I passed by Buffalo of upstate New York. From there my route followed the shoreline of Lake Erie passing through Pennsylvania until the evening hours caught me up somewhere in Toledo, Ohio where I passed the night in a rest area. Having been refreshed with a few hours of sleep, I started early the next day to finish the last 300-mile lap to Chicago passing through northern Indiana.

Reaching my exact destination in Chicago was my greatest challenge during this trip. I was reminded of our experience with BJ Quirante two years ago when he met me at the Midway Airport together with another MSUan Malou Lustre, we lost our way in going back to their apartment. BJ was already 6 months in Chicago during that time and was very confident that he already mastered the highways and byways of this vast metropolis but made a wrong turn as we approached Polaski Road and went the opposite direction. The supposed 15-minute drive to their apartment became 45 minutes and we were already in the boundary of Indiana before BJ conceded that we were lost. This time I was determined to find my way.

The day before I left Connecticut, my brother sent me an e-mail giving me his apartment’s address. He proposed that I will just stop in some familiar place in Chicago and he will just meet me there. I told him not to bother and suggested that he just stay in his apartment for I just go directly to his place. All the while he was worried that I might not find my way but he did not know that I have at my disposal a high-tech navigational tool---the Internet---which can pinpoint to you the exact location of any address in the US and Canada and the driving direction on how to get there.

The following day I attended church at the Chicago Fil-Am SDA Church, and it seemed like home to me. BJ was the Sabbath school superintendent while Adam Cabantac offered the closing prayer. There were other people who knew me like Jun Bello and his wife, and another lady named Queenie. When I asked Queenie where have we met before, she told me that they came from Ozamiz and they remembered me as their divine service speaker one or two times on invitation of Pastor Nelson Paulo. During lesson study, we were divided into three classes: one class was conducted in English, another group discussed it in Tagalog. BJ, Adam, myself and the rest of the Ozamiz and Dipolog people belonged to the Visayan class. We had our buffet lunch at a Chinese Restaurant on invitation of Jun Bello in celebration of their wedding anniversary. While we were enjoying our meal, I saw Malou Lustre at a far table together with another MSUan Jo Paradero (BS Biology, 1972).

My driving towards Missouri was straightforward. Although the route that I followed was different from the one that Shinar took when we went to the Great Lakes two months ago, the topography of the land was familiar to me having crisscrossed Missouri during my one-month stay there. When I arrived in Sweet Springs nobody’s home and so I just waited in the car and slept. Shinar and Manang Vi arrived later in the afternoon with Shinar’s parents and a sister together with her sister Ining and nephew Svend from Denmark and a cousin named Rene from Singapore. They just came from Arkansas where Shinar toured them during the weekend.

Before I departed Monday morning for the final leg of my journey, the ever-thoughtful Manang Vi hastily prepared a baon for me: two sandwiches, half dozen apples and a box of juice packs. Cruising along I-70 that cut across the three midwestern states of Missouri, Kansas and Colorado was far longer than I thought. My only entertainment was a stream of classical music and some oldies coming from the FM radio.

The Colorado landscape has dual profile. Approaching from Kansas, it is a wide expanse of farmlands and rolling grasslands. But as you pass by Denver the topography suddenly changes into high-rise snow-capped mountains. The I-70 was transformed into a winding road that dwarfed the Kennon Road to Baguio. After passing through a number of tunnels darkness compelled me to make a stopover at a parking area in a small mountain city of Silverthorne. I decided to sleep in the car but the cooler temperature in the early evening was ominous. And to think that summer has not ended yet I could not imagine how cold it would be here during winter. Since I was just wearing shorts, my lower extremities were now beginning to feel the cold. I closed all windows allowing only a very small opening at the back for a steady supply of fresh air.

A few hours later, the coldness became unbearable that I had to retrieve the woolen blanket that Dave and I bought at a mall in New Haven. It has never been used during my entire stay in Connecticut. For a while, it gave me a comfortable warmth. But by midnight, the law of thermodynamics finally succeeded in attaining thermal equilibrium and the woolen blanket was already icy cold both inside and outside. I had no other recourse but to turn on the car engine and switched on the heater of my black 1998 Nissan Sentra.

It was still dawn when I resumed driving with the eagerness to go to the lower elevation to escape the coldness. But after crossing the Colorado River several times, the Eagle River once and a few more tunnels, the desire to sleep came back to me and I have to stop at a rest area in a place ironically called No Name and returned to sleep for about an hour.

Daylight was beginning to peep in the eastern horizon when I started driving again and I could now see the silhouette of mountain walls reaching up to the sky that I realized how much beautiful scenery I have missed while I continued driving the evening before. For the first time in my life all those sceneries of nature’s forms and shapes sculpted by time and glistening against the golden sky which I only saw in the western movies and magazines now flooded my eyes in living color.

I was at this near-reverie state of leisurely driving along the canyons of Colorado when the morning music from the car radio was suddenly interrupted as the first news of a commercial jetliner slamming into the World Trade Center broke out. I kept monitoring the news as it further developed to include the smashing of another jetliner into the second tower, the crash in Pentagon of still another jetliner and the fourth hijacked airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania. When I made a stopover in one of the towns of Utah for breakfast, I saw the CNN live coverage in TV of the burning WTC towers.

I continued driving but my thoughts were now diverted from the magnificent scenery before me to the on-going turmoil in New York which is just an hour away from the place which became my home for more than 2 months. I almost ran out of gas as I traversed the vast deserts of Utah and Nevada consisting of about 200 miles of uninhabited wilderness. I cut across the heart of Las Vegas, and I was almost tempted to stop there for a while. By sunset, I was already blending with the other motorists along the multi-lane freeways of California. By 7:30 PM, I gently parked the car just outside of Ate Jed’s beautifully manicured lawn and my tired body breathed a sigh of relief.

09/11/2022

MY FIRST WINTER IN NEW MEXICO

Portales, NM, January 22, 2015, 7:28 AM.--- As I write, powdery snow continue to shower outside of my house slowly covering my car, and the driveway. The forecast is that it will be snowing the whole day so I imagine that by noon my car will be melded with the driveway into one continuous form of white landscape.

I did not expect Portales to have this much snow considering that it is situated at a lower latitude compared to say, New York or Chicago. At 34o N, it has the same latitude as Los Angeles in California and for the past 15 years that I have been in the US, I have not heard that Angelenos have seen any snow in their city. But there is one big difference: LA is a seaside city so it is constantly fanned by a warm current of ocean winds. Portales, on the other hand, is situated on the central highlands near the Texas panhandle with an elevation of 4,000 feet.

This is not my first snowy winter in America. A major portion of my first 4 years in the US was spent in New York – New Jersey area. I can still remember the excitement and the exhilarating experience when I first saw and touched a snowfall. They were fluffy like feathers in my hands. But when my car started skidding and sliding and became less manageable as I drove, I realized that winter is not my favorite season after all. It was there in New Jersey where I learned the rules of driving on a snowy road: No sudden braking or turning, slower speed, keep a fair amount of distance from the car ahead of you, et cetera, et cetera.

Twelve years later, just a day after we welcomed the new year, I had to retrieve those rules from my mental hard drive. I was driving my way back from Loma Linda, California where I spent the Christmas break with my wife. By late afternoon, as I was approaching Albuquerque along I-40, white powdery mists started hitting my windshield. By sunset, snow shower started to intensify reducing road visibility that I decided to exit as I saw a sign of a gas station. There was only one vacant space in the station’s parking area and all the cars parked there were already covered with snow. As I parked, I searched my GPS for a hotel where I can spend the night and learned that the nearest hotel is 9 miles away. I cannot risk going back to the highway and drive 9 more miles so I decided to just spend the night in my car. The snowfall abated by midnight.

Early in the morning I resumed driving. Traffic was slow as cars formed a single line on the outer lane of the interstate where the pavement was still visible. As I took the exit in Santa Rosa for the last leg of my journey, I did not expect to meet my hardest challenge as a driver so far. Portales was still 100 miles away. Coming from a busy highway like the I-40, I had some eerie feelings when I realized that I was driving alone on that barren piece of snow-covered highway. No tire tracks were visible. If there were some vehicles who passed there before me, the evidence of passing wheels were easily covered with continuous snow shower. In fact you cannot see the outlines of the road. Your only guide were the few road signs sticking out on the sides like emaciated snowmen.

I kept my speed at around 35-40 mph when I realized that there were two vehicles behind me. They must be driving faster because they got closer and closer. I expected them to pass me by my left but that did not happen. Instead, they got closer---too close to me for comfort. Automatically, I increased my speed to 45 and that’s when I started skidding. I never expected that on the third day of a new year, I would experience the greatest scare of my life for the entire year! First my car veered 90 degrees to the right then veered 180 degrees to the left before correcting itself back to its original position. All these while, my car was still moving on the forward direction of the road before it exhausted its linear momentum and stopped.

The two cars that were tailgating me must have slammed on their brakes for they parted to opposite directions. The one closest to me---an Acura SUV---fell, buried on the right side of the road and stuck. The other has turned left onto the middle of the road. I felt guilty that I caused the accident. So, I got out of the car and started walking towards them to see if I could be of any help. The two cars must be traveling together because the drivers seemed to know each other and had conversations. That’s when I heard the first driver telling the other that he had a shovel in his cargo bay. Then three passengers---all men--- stepped out and started pushing the vehicle. I wanted to come near to apologize but then I realized that it was their tailgating that caused me to skid in the first place. And considering that they have more than enough helping hands and that I could not be of much help to them anyway, I went back to my car and continued driving.

When I told my wife later over the phone about my near mishap, my mother-in-law butted in telling me that God must have protected me because she prayed for my safety. I believed her. I mean, I prayed, too, but I always consider my mother-in-law closer to God than I am so that it must be through her prayers that God spared me.

Approaching Portales, I could see that the snow cover was thicker here than the areas I passed by. As I turned right from the road onto the alley that connects to my driveway, I got stuck. Fortunately, or because of my mother-in-law’s prayers again, an angel with a midsize snow-plow was standing by. No, he was not really standing by---he was busy clearing the parking lot of a furniture company next to my yard.

He came to me and with the help of two other men passing by, they helped me extricate my car from that mound of snow. Then with his snow plow he cleared the alley including the entrance to my driveway. My driveway, which had not been used for two weeks, was covered with about a foot of snow and my car could not move any closer to the house than at the entrance that was cleared by the angel with a snow-plow. But that was good enough.

09/11/2022

A RELAXING WEEK

June 25, 2007. Moody, Alabama --- I had a very relaxing week. An elderly couple friend of mine gave me an advanced birthday gift --- a 5-day stay at their beachfront condominium unit in Orange Beach. But in spite on the abundance of the sun and the fun, something was missing in my life--- no Internet! I brought with me my laptop with a roaming capability. But when I got there, there was no WiFi in the vicinity, and I wondered how come all those people who were there were only interested in swimming and water surfing and sunbathing.

I did not know that Alabama has beautiful beaches down there along the Gulf of Mexico. I initially thought that Alabama is a landlock state. But a simple peruse of the map would show that it has a very short strip of shoreline squeezed between Florida and Mississippi. And that short strip happens to be a very beautiful shoreline. I had to see it to believe it. And the sand, oh my! It was as white as the sands in Boracay.

It was also my first time to dip in the blue-green waters of the Atlantic. The first time that I stepped on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico was way back in 1992 when we had a 5-week tour in South Texas, courtesy of Rotary International. The high point of that tour was our one-week R & R at the resort island of South Padre. The first thing that I noticed then was that the color of the water in Atlantic was greenish while Pacific Ocean is pure blue. Maybe it has something to do with the kind of algae and other microorganisms that thrive in each ocean.

Six years ago this week, I was at the opposite end of the US mainland. Together with Shinar, Manang Vi, Shinar’s sister Pilar and Shinar’s nephew Svend, we drove for about 12 hours from Shinar’s place in Missouri before we reached the northernmost tip of Michigan where you can see four of the five great lakes stretched out in different directions. Canada was just a bridge apart. I wrote about that experience titled “At the Great Lakes On The First Day of Summer 20001. ”

Time passed by so swiftly. All I did was riding the waves if not backstroking in the swimming pool and it was time to go home. I did not even find time to use my fishing gear. Seashells were very abundant, and we have gathered quiet a large collection. By Thursday, we left the place for another 5-hour-drive back to our home in Birmingham.

09/11/2022

AT THE GREAT LAKES ON THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER 2001
Monday, October 3, 2011

The 21st of June officially marks the beginning of the summer season. It was also the day I found myself wandering around one of the most scenic places in the world---The Great Lakes---which form part of the boundaries between the US and Canada. Thanks to Shinar and Manang Vi who financed the entire trip as a treat to Shinar’s sister Pilar and nephew Svend on vacation from Denmark. By default, I became part of the entourage.

I first read about the Great Lakes in a geography book when I was in high school. It consists of five connected lakes whose names form the acronym HOMES which stands for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. In its totality, it is the biggest inland body of water in the world. According to that book that I read, if you are in the middle of Lake Superior---the biggest among the five---you cannot see any land in every direction.

We left Sweet Springs, Missouri at around 2:00 PM last Wednesday traversing the states of Illinois and Indiana before stopping over at Roger and Amy Galang Saldia’s place in Berrien Springs, Michigan at around 1:00 AM to spend the remaining hours of the evening, take some rest and a short nap. Amy was very patient and accommodating waiting for us at the door when we arrived. By 5:00 AM we resumed our long journey that would take another seven hours more before we reached our destination: Mackinaw City. And grrrr! It’s very cold there. No wonder the Indians chose that name.

While on the way, we received a call from Manang Raytim. (How she knew of the number of Shinar’s brand-new cell phone is the wonder of modern technology and sheer human ingenuity.) She passed on us the news that Bebing Aguilo, a MSUan has arrived in Toronto from Singapore. And that she, Tirso and other MSUans there have helped her find a job. I sent my regards to Brother Philip and the rest of the Sayote Gang-Canadian Branch.

We checked in at Best Western situated on the shores of Lake Huron. After lunch we proceeded northward passing by the Mackinac Bridge which connects the northernmost tip of Michigan mainland and the Upper Peninsula effectively drawing the boundary line between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. With its length of 5 miles, it is the longest bridge in the western hemisphere according to one brochure. It is 950 feet longer than the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the brochure continued.

We traversed the Upper Peninsula until we reached the city of Sault Ste. Marie which is actually a twin city located on both sides of the US-Canadian border linked to each other by the International Bridge. We could clearly see the Canadian side from our vantage point. We visited the Soo Locks, an engineering marvel constructed by the US Army which controls the water exchanges and the shipping passageways between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

On Friday morning, we rode on a fast ferry that would bring us to our final destination: Mackinac Island. As we set foot on the island it was as if we were transported in time back to the 18th and 19th centuries with all its beautiful and stately buildings in gothic architecture. To preserve its historic ambiance motorized vehicles are not allowed on the island. Your options are either to rent a bicycle (some brought bicycles with them), ride on horse-drawn buggies driven by uniformed chauffeurs or simply walk which is more healthful. We chose the more healthful option. (According to one postcard, Mackinac Island has a population of 500 people and 600 horses.)

We met and befriended some Filipino construction workers who responded to our call of Balot! Balot! as if we were vending balot in Quiapo. It was an effective call sign and I suggested to my companions that next time we meet a Pinoy, I will shout “Itlog mo, Noy, orens!”

Then we went to the Grand Hotel standing tall in the middle of a garden of several acres interspersed with well-manicured trees, a fountain and carpeted with flowers of different colors. As we approached the entrance through a long, elevated driveway, there was a feeling of déjà vu in me as if I have seen the place before. I learned later that this was the setting of that romantic movie Somewhere In Time starring Christopher Reeve and the stunningly beautiful Jane Seymour.

On our way back home, we made another stopover at Roger’s place and stayed there for two more nights. We spent the Sabbath at Pioneer Memorial Church in Andrews University campus and listened to the sermon of Timothy Nixon titled, More Love. It was one of the best sermons I ever heard.

09/11/2022

DÉJÀ VU
Friday, November 15, 2019

It is a French term for “already seen.” It is that strange feeling you get when you are in a situation and feel like you've been in the exact same place before, but really haven't; or meet a person for the first time but seems that you have already met that person before, somewhere. Buddhists point to déjà vu as proof that reincarnation is real. But our present crop of scientists and researchers admit that they still don't know what actually causes it.

I have had two déjà vu experiences and, thankfully, I found down-to-earth explanations to both of them. My first experience was resolved almost immediately but it took more than a year for my second experience to make sense to me.

Scene 1:

In June 2001, I was part of an entourage who drove to northern Michigan. I described the details of that trip on my other write-up titled ‘At the Great Lakes On The First Day Of Summer 2001.’ One of our destinations was the idyllic Mackinac Island in Lake Huron. Since the island has no public transportation (motorized vehicles are not allowed on the island), we just walked around. When we reached the entrance to the Grand Hotel, I was mesmerized looking at the long stairway---as if---I had been to this place before!

Scene 2:

In summer of 2002, I was driving solo, going northwest along US Highway 101. At that time, this was the farthest that I have driven northward from Los Angeles. I was in the vicinity of Santa Barbara when, suddenly, I had a weird feeling as if I had passed through this part of the highway before---the mountain formation ahead of me looked so familiar. I could not explain it, so I just filed it in my mental database under the category UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

Going back to the first scene, I was at the foot of a long stairway that led to the entrance of the Grand Hotel. The place looked so familiar… Shirley aka Shinar must have noticed my bewildered look and asked me, "Kuya Shem, have you seen the movie, ‘Somewhere in Time?’ That movie was shot in this island, specifically here in Grand Hotel.” Oh, I see. Every tidbit of my mental processes seemed to fall into their right places. My favorite movie, that I saw three or four times was filmed here. The added information heightened my interest to explore the island some more.

In 1983, we had a day of gallivanting around Metro Manila with Roger Saldia and Sandra Querol, and we ended up at the Manila Film Center watching the movie SOMWHERE IN TIME. That movie was unforgettable to me for a number of reasons:

 I like the tune of the theme song and became one of my favorites ever since,

 I have an intriguing curiosity on the idea of time travel as a theoretical possibility, and

 Richard Collier (Christopher “Superman” Reeve) met the girl of his dreams, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) on the grounds of Grand Hotel on June 27, 1912, of which 43 years later to the day, I was born.

One case closed.

I was in staying in New Jersey in the autumn of 2003. One lazy Sunday, I decided to watch a movie from among my DVD collection. I picked up an old movie, The Graduate. I first saw this movie in 1968 when I was still a high school freshman. I always remember that movie because it was Dustin Hoffman’s debut and every time I see Hoffman in later movies, I am always reminded of The Graduate. It was also in that movie that I first heard Simon and Garfunkel’s song Sound Of Silence. As the scene moved on to the time when Dustin’s character was traveling to San Francisco in his convertible, the same mountain formation in Santa Barbara that gave me a weird sense of déjà vu the year before, flashed on the screen. It was an ‘aha-moment’ for me. No wonder the mountain formation in Santa Barbara looked so familiar to me for I first saw it in this movie 35 years earlier!

As I look back through my two déjà vu experiences I cannot help but be amazed on the indelibility of the human mind. A momentary scene, a wisp of perfume, an innocent laughter, a casual touch---all these sensory information are processed and meticulously filed in the inner recesses of your subconscious only to surface when a similar information is encountered in another time or a different set of circumstances.

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