Friday, August 18, 2006

travel bug

should i start with my earliest journey? is the most romantic trip to be addressed first? well. perhaps i'll start with my birth.

on a warm july evening a baby girl was born harriet and william of the scottish clan in the city of angels. i was delivered via cesarian section by an obstetrician who happened to be married to the orange juice hocking, homosexual lambasting singer known as anita bryant. not that that's anything of note, but it's a trivial pursuit bit of info at the very least, to be sure. my father, being the entrepreneur that he was, was not present at my birth. my mom drove herself to the hospital and, according to her recollection, was left strapped on a gurney in the hospital hallway to travel the journey of labour alone.

my first two years were spent in an upscale cottage home within a quaint L.A. suburb from which my parents decided to leave, as los angeles was growing too fast for my father's taste. L.A. was left behind for a sleepy beach town no one had heard of. our new home had the romantic sounding name of corona del mar (to this very day, few know of its existence, yet for the memory of beautiful coastal drives between newport and laugna).

my first memory is of resting in my crib within a sunny room, enveloped by a warm glow of pink. maybe this is the first glance of how compatible my nature is. i never screamed to be let out of my crib. i was content to meditate on the toddler view of my world. and what a world it was, for my view was the undeveloped expanse of the southern california coastline. i could look out my window (which was the whole friggin wall - top to bottom, left to right - all glass and view) and see forever. brown desert prairie summertime grass with roaming herds of cows,... and nighttime visitors of cougar, coyotes, foxes, possum and skunk, if one were to count the critters from largest to smallest. forget cable tv - all we had to do was put a few table scraps in our backyard, sit on the living room floor with the lights off and wait to see all our nocturnal beasties that lived in our neighborhood.

does it really need to be said that i could spend eternity contemplating that view? i truly spent hours upon hours gazing out my 4th wall....


to be continued.




here's a look at the states where i've been. i'll go into the stories why i visited a bit later...


create your own visited states map



here's a map of the countries i've been blessed to visit:


create your own visited countries map

10 comments:

Theresa said...

McKay, you've been to Long Island? If so, how did you like it?

Dave said...

Thanks, I'll make sure to stay away from these places.

mckay said...

theresa - I was in New York on a brief theatre student 'field trip' to see Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. I didn't get to see any of the normal touristy things, however i did drive past the UN and i did ride an elevator up one of the twin towers, now a bittersweet memory. i did get to see Liberace in the audience of La Cage Aux Folles...and i also saw Stockard Channing, Jeff Daniels and Dame Judy Dench in an off-broadway play, which was wonderful.

it's on my to-do list to go back to NY and see lots more.

mckay said...

croc, i've been there, but i'm not there now, so they're safe to visit - except CA. you've been warned.

TheCleaningWoman said...

Phew! So our Immigration Department does a good job after all! ;)

BlondeBlogger said...

Holy crap, McKay! You sure get around, lol! I'm soooo jealous!

Jamie Dawn said...

I like the visual image of tossing scraps in the yard and watching the animals come out and get it. That's better than any nature channel!
I was born in CA too, and lived there most of my life.
I grew up in Fremont.
I look forward to the rest of your stories...

Michael K. Althouse said...

I'm going to New Orleans on Thursday and then to Mississippi on Saturday, but those states are not new for me. I've been to 19 of the fifty states... that I've actually set foot in, airports don't count!

~Sam

Saur♥Kraut said...

VERY interesting. I was a big Anita Bryant fan.

Ellen said...

Anita Bryant used to come to the hotel I worked at when I first moved to Atlanta. She adored our Sunday Brunch whenever she was in town. The thing I remember most about her (besides the controversy) was that she wore an awful lot of make-up.... even for the 80's.

You are so right about the on-sight nature show. I just got back from the Smokies and was able to see a couple of deer by the side of a trail just munching away as if they didn't have a care in the world except to eat. It was fascinating that they never budged.... or perhaps they were already clued into the fact that they were on protected land where they couldn't be hunted down.