Category: Trip

Eulogy To A Hat

September 6, 2014

It was on December 30, 2000 that I bought it at a surf shop in the shopping center named Garden City in Australia. In the diary I wrote about that trip to Australia, I wrote the following describing the purchase: “I bought myself some shorts and a floppy hat“. The very next day the first ever photo of this hat was taken, and here it is:

Little did I know at the time how well traveled and how beloved this hat would become. It was my stalwart companion, always on my head in my travels, and would see the world as I did. This blog is a memory of those trips that I shared with my hat!

Of course after purchase it came back to the US with me, where it enjoyed many happy days keeping my in the shade. In 2002 it would go on its next vacation – to Japan. Sadly I have no photos of me wearing the hat from that trip, but here’s one from it’s next vacation, also to Japan in 2004:

You can see it’s unadorned in that shot, and still as black as they day I bought it! I know it really enjoyed those first two Japan trips, but it had always yearned for it’s homeland. That wish came true when I returned to Australia in late 2006:

By now the hat had well and truly caught my travel bug, and eagerly jumped into my suitcase every time I packed for a flight. This enthusiasm would bring it back to Japan in 2006…

To Hawaii in 2007…

Back to Oz in early 2008…

Puerto Rico that summer…

And then Florida later in the same year:

The above shot seems to be the earliest I have of anything pinned to the hat. In this case it was a Disney ‘anniversary’ badge, which we displayed prominently to ensure special treatment in the parks! Apparently this pleased the hat, because on our next trip to Japan in 2009…

It returned with a souvenir. While it’s not visible in the above shot (possibly taken before it had been acquired), you can see it here in a shot from Australia in early 2010:

Yes my friends, the hat had gained it’s first badge. This was a pin of Nel, a character from Bleach. I put it on the hat when I got it from a machine in Japan, and never ever took it off. Here’s me, the hat and Nel enjoying the lovely summer weather of Blackpool in England:

Our shared voyage continued! Back to Oz once again in early 2011…

And then San Diego that summer…

The hat seems to have gained a second badge above, specifically of Pikachu. Lord knows where that came from or what happened to it, but this is the only photo showing it so maybe I (mercifully) removed it and flung it into San Diego bay 🙂

However by this time one badge was hardly enough, as this shot from Oz in 2012 shows:

A dalek and Paddington had joined Nel! The first had been obtained at NYCC the previous October, and the second was a gift from my BFF Florence. Paddington quickly befriended Nel, and would never again leave the hat.

You can see in the above shot (from Summer 2012), that by now the hat had aquired even more badges. A kangaroo and a German shield had been added – both gifts from my parents. Those five (Nel, Paddington, Dalek, Kangaroo, Shield) became fixtures from that point on.

In these years there were other vacations: Albuquerque, Disney (again), Australia (again). Needless to say the hat came on every one. It was showing it’s age by now, and had faded somewhat from over a decade of use, but it soldiered on and sat ever proudly on my head. I remember it particularly enjoyed (what would be) its last trip to Tokyo in 2013:

Not to mention Canada that same year:

And a particularly memorable return to Oz in 2014 (it’s seventh time home)!

I’m not going to say it wasn’t showing it’s age by now. Countless hours in the sun, folded up in my pocket or a bag, and put through the washing machine had left it a bit ratty. But it still had life in it yet, and as far as I was concerned had a decade or mores worth of travel yet to complete.

Those are the only shots I have of anyone other than me wearing the hat. They loved it of course, for it was a great hat. A great hat.

On the way to Vegas this summer I lost it. I either left it on the plane or in the taxi I took to the hotel. I didn’t notice until the next day, and despite calling (many) lost property departments I was unable to retrieve it. This is the last ever photo taken of the hat, less than 10 hours before it was lost (I was hamming it up for a text here; I wasn’t really this grouchy!):

If you look very closely you’ll notice one pin – the dalek – is missing. I had become concerned about the clasp loosening over the years, and had removed it the morning of my departure intending to fix it and put it back when I returned. That simple act saved that pin, but ironically of the five pins on the hat that was probably the one I was least attached to. The others were lost with the hat.

Fourteen years it gave me so much happiness. Eighteen international trips and a dozen or more domestic ones, not to mention the day-to-day summer wear (such as hundreds of lawn mowings). A man couldn’t ask for a better hat than this one.

I miss you my floppy black hat! I’ll miss you forever! Wherever you are, I hope you’re as happy as you were on my head.

“The Annihilation Of Time And Space”

August 16, 2014

Before today’s destinations, we stopped by America’s least productive workplace:

Our first stop was the Air & Space Museum, which is apparently the Smithdonian’s most popular museum. Based on the crowds, I can believe that! It’s a massive place filled with extensive exhibits on flight and space exploration.

That’s the main space flight hall. All those rockets (including a V1, a V2, ICBM’s and many others) are real. They have an actual Skylab (the backup!), a Soyuz capsule, a Hubble prototype and much more.

Yes that’s real. It was originally built for a moon mission, but ultimately never left Earth.

That did leave Earth! You can still see the moon dust on the legs.

Amongst their other items on display were moon rocks (including one you can touch), the Apollo 11 capsule, Sputnik (yes a real one), many shuttle pieces including a piece of solid rocket fuel (which looks like an eraser) and so on and so on. It’s a mind-boggling collection that would take days to explore fully, and this is only half the museum!

The other half is devoted to flight, including a wealth of diverse exhibits. My favourite was the imaging exhibit, which included this photograph of one of the first aerial cameras:

We were both particularly interested in the piece of aerogel included in an exhibit about analyzing comets:

It’s the lightest solid ever invented, not much denser than air, and is so nebulous that it’s difficult to even focus on with your eyes. The piece above is about as big as an apple. Fascinating stuff!

In the afternoon we headed to the second most popular Smithsonian museum: Natural History.

This is an enormous museum dedicated to the natural world, which means plants and animals and rocks and humans.

As with Air & Space, you’d need days to fully explore this museum. In a few hours we were only able to scrape the surface!

A highlight was the gem collection, including a special display of the rarest jewels in the collection. The centerpiece is the famous Hope Diamond:

We also like seeing the stuffed Thylacine and the animal skeletons (including a Sea Cow, sadly now extinct).

Later in the day KLS returned to the hotel to relax and I hobbled off to yet another museum: the Postal Museum. If you like stamps (much more than me, if I’m honest) then this place would be heaven! I spent an hour or so browsing the voluminous displays, focusing on the rarest or most unusual, such as the only stamps ever to be canceled on the moon:

We visited only 5 of the dozen or so Smithsonian museums on this brief vacation, and (with the exception of the zoo) only managed to see a portion of each. Given how good they are, I’m not sure why it took me 20 years to get to them!

Zoo Day

August 15, 2014

The subway here has striking architecture:

And the stations are very deep underground, necessitating long escalators on which KLS got a bit scared:

We rode the Metro to the National Zoo, one of the Smithsonian institutions. As with all the Smithsonians, this is a free attraction that frankly does a poor job on its website describing just how wonderful it is!

The enclosures are large and nicely landscaped, the animals are active and easily viewed, and the zoo overall is as good as the best I’ve been to. If you ever visit Washington, put this near the top of your list.

That’s an arapaima, in the amazon exhibit. It’s almost as big as Kristin! We also saw countless birds, big cats, monkeys and apes, bears, reptiles and many more.

Have you ever wondered why zoos always have large flocks of flamingo, rather than just a few? The answer is for breeding: flamingos don’t breed unless there are at least 20! This fact was discovered by scientists at this very zoo.

That’s the underwater viewing section for the seals. I was impressed by not just the animal enclosures, but also the way the zoo has architectured the viewing of the animals, often with multiple-levels or overhead sections such as a bridge that runs far above the elephants:

The big draw of this zoo are their pandas. Here’s the mother and her cub Bao Bao:

I took the second shot through a telescope! You may wonder exactly where Bao Bao is, since only the mum is visible sleeping on the rock. She’s in the pine tree to the left of her mum, about 20 feet off the ground! Apparently she spends most of her daytime in the tree these days. She wasn’t sleeping, just playing and climbing and charming the large crowds there to see her 🙂

As I said, the zoo was great. Although we were quite tired afterwards, we decided to go and ‘finish’ the Museum of American History.

The museum has many different exhibits (war, transportation, money, presidents, electricity, culture, food etc) but our favourite by far was seeing the original ‘star spangled banner’, which is a gigantic flag made in 1814 that was flown during a battle that inspired the national anthem. I may not be American born, but I found this exhibit deeply moving.

That’s the original Miss Piggy, who has always been one of my mums favourites. This was in an exhibit on culture. Apparently this museum is sometimes nicknamed ‘Americas attic’ for the range of items it owns and exhibits. Here’s another example (from the food exhibit):

Nostalgia attack! Who would have thought those old polystyrene containers would end up in a museum? 🙂

Tomorrow we’re planning the Air and Space and Natural History museums. Can we see them both in one day, or will we collapse from exhaustion? I guess we’ll find out 🙂

Robot Claw