Calvinzilla – A Quick Explanation

Cleveland, OH - June 12, 2013

Of the handful of comic strips that made a big impression on me growing up (Peanuts, The Far Side, Robotman), none was more influential than Calvin and Hobbes. My grandmother introduced me to it. She kept several collections in the drawer of an end table in her living room, next to the light brown sofa. The first I remember reading is Yukon Ho!

     I was eight or nine at the time, and I was astonished at the idea of leaving my family and walking to the Yukon. I pretty much took Calvin’s imagination literally. Hobbes wasn’t a stuffed tiger; the mom and dad just couldn’t see him move. When Calvin transmogrified himself using a cardboard box, I wondered where you got a box like that.

     Reading Calvin and Hobbes left me drunk with ideas. Woven through it was a wit and wisdom I wasn’t always old enough to get, but Calvin’s intelligence, mischievous innocence, and his way of seeing things differently than his parents and schoolmates all struck a chord, and increased my own excitement at being alive in a magical world. If I wasn’t aware at the time that Calvin and Hobbes had higher artistic aspirations than other comic strips, I absorbed it unconsciously as a watermark. I now regard it to be the best there has been.

     When I was eleven I wrote Bill Watterson a fan letter asking for his autograph, and sent it to his publisher. I received in return a printed letter from Bill that read something like, “I really hate having to use a form letter but I get more mail than I can ever respond to!” The envelope included a beautiful printed poster of a Spaceman Spiff cartoon, which I have sadly lost over the years.

     In Chagrin Falls, OH there is a bookstore called Fireside Books. It is the only bookstore to ever sell signed copies of Calvin and Hobbes collections, which it did for less than a year in the late 1990s. Soon after, opportunists began snatching the books up and reselling them on the newly popular Internet at exorbitant prices. When Watterson found out, he stopped supplying them.

     One of the volumes signed for Fireside was The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, the back of which depicts the town square of Chagrin Falls being demolished by a giant Calvin.

 I noticed this picture in the course of my long search for a Watterson autograph, and thought it would be fun to see that square for myself. Maybe while we’re there we can buy something at Fireside, and see the waterfalls for which the town is named.

CLEAN AND QUIET!

Cleveland, OH - June 12, 2013

On the way into Cleveland Leighann quizzes her smartphone for hotel deals. Her system is this:

1) Check Priceline for a list of affordable options.

2) Check TripAdvisor for reviews to vet them.

She’s good at the hunt, and you’ve got to actually read what people write. Some reviews will only give one-star citing, “staff wasn’t friendly enough,” and go on to describe the most comfortable room they’ve ever rented. We’ll stay at those. If the words “bug,” “insect” or “spider” appear anywhere, however, that hotel does not exist for us.

     On at least one occasion a review has stated, “the whole property smelled like fried chicken.” We could not tell if it was positive or negative.

In the adventurous spirit of exploration, we’ve considered alternative lodging such as AirBNB and CouchSurfing, but have yet to find deals significantly better than the available hotel rooms. Well, some deals have been better but we weren’t feeling adventurous enough…

click to enlarge

After combing through several options in Cleveland proper, Leighann finds a severely discounted room at a resort 15 miles east of town. It’s a $49 rate for a normally $130 room, and all the reviews are positive. She books us with a tap of her thumb and we hit the highway.

The resort turns out to be the nicest hotel we’ve stayed at in a while, and we are sad it’s just for one night. 

     I’m excited, though, that tomorrow we’re going to Chagrin Falls, the childhood home that inspired Bill Watterson when he wrote and drew Calvin and Hobbes. I know it will be like many other small towns, and I suspect the famously private artist would find it a little absurd for people to travel there on his account (he doesn’t live there anymore), but I am going in search of a particular photograph, if I can get it, and because it is a mere 30 minutes out of our way.

Besides, I like small towns.

Twin Cities

Cleveland, OH - June 12, 2013

On the outskirts of Cleveland, OH we stop at a liquor store. Throughout the trip I am looking for beers that may not be available elsewhere. It is like a very long, very responsible pub crawl.

     This particular store has a sign reading “Beer at state minimum. We pay your sin tax.” Inside we are greeted by two Indian men running the place, and I head for the section marked “Micro-brews and Imports” to discover… a wall of Indian Pale Ale. Many, many brands. All IPAs; not a single other kind of beer.

     Given Hobson’s choice, I grab an IPA and we head to the checkout, where one of the proprietors is friendly and ends up asking about our trip. We answer his questions: We’re from Arkansas. We're exploring the country. Yes, we’re driving for the whole summer.

     He asks where we would like to live if not Arkansas.

“Not sure,” I say. “That’s part of why we’re looking around.”

“You should move to the Carolinas,” he says in a thick accent.

“Cleveland is okay,” he goes on, “depending on how you feel about snow. But if I could live anywhere it would be Myrtle Beach or Atlanta.”

On Set Two Decades Late

Mansfield, OH - June 12, 2013

As we prepare to move on toward Cleveland, Kathy tells us that we can’t be “movie people” and miss a chance to visit the Ohio State Penitentiary in Mansfield, the prison where most of The Shawshank Redemption was shot in 1993. I vaguely remember reading about it in Empire magazine years ago, but didn’t realize it would be less than twenty minutes out of our path. Kathy has a friend who works there, and she calls up to arrange a comped tour for us in connection with The Weekender. I’m liking this journalist gig more and more.

     The prison is incredible, the closest thing to a castle I’ve ever been in (other than Le Château Frontenac). 

We document our experience in the same issue of The Weekender as our Cedar Point article, which you can read here. (pages 12 & 13)

     One thing we don’t mention in the article is that our guide is a firm believer in the paranormal, and says he has heard supernatural noises and even seen “shadow people” walking the halls. He tells us the last warden to live at the reformatory in 1951 lost his wife when she was accidentally shot by a gun falling off the closet shelf. Ten years later the husband suffered a heart attack and died in the same hospital as his wife. Our guide tells us her rose perfume still lingers in their bedroom, along with the smell of cherry tobacco her husband loved. 

If it seems a little sensationalist, this building is the perfect stage for it. The idea of being here after dark, especially alone, is absolutely terrifying. 

     But here’s food for thought: The prison was operational from 1880 until 1990, when the state built a new facility and moved all the prisoners over to it. When they closed the old building, they left the doors open, expecting to just demolish it at some point. In 1993, production of The Shawshank Redemption took it over during shooting, and when that was done concerned locals founded a non-profit to preserve it, buying it from the state for a dollar. 

So for three years - from 1990 to 1993 - it just sat there, empty and unguarded. Somewhere in the world, I am certain there are people who as teenagers rode their bikes up and down the cell blocks during that magic window, or dared each other to spend the night in solitary, or maybe played laser tag. Somebody's got some stories. 

Kinda wish I could have been one of them.

The Roller Coaster Capital of America

Sandusky, OH - June 11, 2013

Our first assignment for The Weekender is a day trip north to Sandusky where Cedar Point amusement park stretches on the shore of Lake Erie. It is a park with deep history: first developed in the 1800s and now home to 17 roller coasters that have held various world records in the years since. Today we’re covering the latest addition, a hulking wing style coaster called The Gatekeeper, so named because you have to walk under it to enter the park. You can read our article about it here (page 52 & 53).

     Cedar Point has my personal favorite coaster anywhere, The Raptor, a bright green hanging style ride which is nearly perfect: as fast as I ever want to go but as smooth as loops and corkscrews can be. The last time I was here with my family it was the off-season and there was no line.   This time it’s the heat of summer and the line is two hours long. But I didn’t drive all this way NOT to ride The Raptor.

     There are so many people they have opened every stanchion, and we stand there sweating, shuffling a few paces every ten minutes or so. When we get to the wooden stairs that mark the final approach toward the loading area, a voice sounds over the intercom: “We’re sorry everybody. The Raptor is experiencing technical difficulties and is now closed. We hope to get her running again today, but I can’t tell you when it will be.”

     People fall out of line in clumps, until there are just eight besides us. We look at each other. “Should we go get in the back of a different line? We’re basically in the front of this one.” Then I have a revelation. I pull out my phone and call the number for the press liaison we got from Kathy. “Yes, hi, this is Jacob LeMaster with The Weekender magazine. I’m here at the park and the Raptor ride has just closed. Do you know if it will be operating again soon?” She checks. “Ten minutes or less? Thank you. Really appreciate it.” I look around at the empty maze where the line used to be, and barely manage not to laugh maniacally. 

The Raptor is everything I remembered. Still my favorite.

On the way back to Kathy’s we see a sign advertising the birthplace of Thomas Edison. Who knew? The museum is closed but we look at the outside of it. Sadly, nothing appears above our heads.

Our First Plymouth: Journalists for a Day

Plymouth, OH - June 10, 2013

Leighann’s aunt Kandy has a sister named Kathy who lives in Plymouth, OH. Kathy is the owner and editor of a local magazine called The Weekender and a national edition called The Weekender Extended. Since we’re traveling the country and all, Kathy thought maybe we could write some articles for her along the way. It’s not a paying gig, but it would mean free admission to cool places like amusement parks, museums, and maybe even B&Bs. She says she’s working on lining up the assignments, but offered to put us up for a night if we wanted to swing by Plymouth to meet face to face. 

Why not? We have nowhere to be.

     Plymouth, OH is a crossroads town in the upper middle of the state, surrounded by fields and forests. The area has signs depicting horse drawn carriages that remind me of deer crossing signs, and I imagine a buggy bounding suddenly out of the trees and into our path.
    

     When we arrive at Kathy’s, she and her husband have cooked us delicious steaks. I am dimly aware that this is an American way to honor visitors. We eat beef but not very often and we don’t cook with it for ourselves, so it almost feels like a foreign custom wherever we encounter it.

     Over dinner Kathy tells us about her rise in journalism, working for newspapers and magazines. She talks about work at the local paper and how a new editor came to town once that had no idea how to write for Plymouth readers. Her husband interjects, “This fellow, he didn’t think anything was news. When a car came speeding through the Intersection and flipped upside down, and sat there like a turtle for a whole day, he didn’t think that was worth writing about. Or when the sheriff took his annual firearms test and shot out the windows of his own patrol car, this guy didn’t think people wanted to know that?!”

    We’re no strangers to amassing spectacular amounts of things. For us it’s books and DVDs; for Kathy, it’s Mickey Mouse memorabilia.

She has the most impressive collection we’ve ever seen, and it even continues onto her porch. 

Leighann wholeheartedly approves.

AKA Agnes Claudstein

Anne Arbor, MI - Saturday, June 8, 2013

Leighann doesn’t go for designer merchandise, with two exceptions: For nail polish she buys Zoya exclusively. For bags and purses it’s Vera Bradley.

If you see a paisley handbag, purse, or backpack these days, there’s a good chance it’s a Vera.

Leighann being Leighann, she sports a jumbo purse she made herself that bears a striking resemblance.

Call it Vera Bradleigh.

So when we discovered a Vera store in the mall where my marathon packet pickup was, we kind of had to check it out. I’ve been to an outlet one in Nashville, but this store looks completely different, particularly the large chandelier and painting behind the counter.

“Who does the design for those?” I ask. 
The saleswoman explains, “We’ve got a whole design team. They like to pick items that are really unique.”

She pronounces it “yoon-ike.” We are in Michigan.

“The designers try to model every store after one of our owners’ homes," she goes on. "So for instance our Twelve Oaks store is modeled after her Florida house.”

I wonder how many stores there are, and if the owner has that many houses. At these prices it is possible.

We browse through patterns and colors, most on the verge of extinction. Leighann points out which ones will soon be retired to online orders only.

She’s torn about buying anything, even with a storewide sale, and I get the feeling she is taking notes as much as shopping.

As we leave we stop to sign the guestbook. Sitting near it is a picture of an elderly woman.

“Is that Vera Bradley?” I ask the sales rep.

“That is Vera Bradley,” she says. “The two founders, Barbara Bradley and Pat Miller, decided they were going to name their company after one of their mothers. And Pat’s mother was something like ‘Agnes Claudstein,’ and Barbara Bradley’s mom was ‘Vera.’ And it was like, which brand would you buy?”

I would personally go out of my way to buy a line called Agnes Claudstein but I see her point.

Beautiful, Sadistic Ann Arbor

An Entry From Jacob:
Ann Arbor, MI - Friday, June 7 - Sunday, June 9

This weekend has been looming large in my thoughts for months now. When we were first planning our trip I somehow thought it would be a good idea to include a long distance race in the first half of it, and the internet being what it is before I thought too much about it I was registered for the second annual Ann Arbor Marathon.

Never been to Ann Arbor. I hear it’s nice.

This will be my fifth marathon. My last one was at Walt Disney World in January but I was doing Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge in 85 degree heat so I was just trying to finish. (By real runner’s standards that’s all I ever do. My average minutes per mile just got below 9 this year. I am only using the improvement I've seen to call it good.)

When we get to Ann Arbor, Leighann wants a picture in nearby Ypsilanti, since a book series she likes is set there. We see a sign for Eastern Michigan University, but my first thought is of a bald ostrich perched majestically in front of a flag.

If anyone reading this is handy with Photoshop all I can say is, "Please?!"

We have an unrelated revelation: we like Thai food all the time. It is our hamburger, our baloney sandwich. There is no meal where it is not an option worth considering, and the only question is do we want curry, drunken noodles, pad thai, or fresh springs rolls (if it’s breakfast/brunch).

At Thai-Thai in Ypsilanti we splurge to order curry AND pad thai, and we have no regrets, not one. Other customers may have fared less well, suggests a sign on the bathroom.

The sky goes all kaleidoscope as we head toward the hotel, and I wonder for a second if anyone has ever died taking a picture of a sunset while driving. If so I bet it caused an accident.

On Saturday we hit the race expo to pick up my runner’s bib and swag. It is the smallest marathon expo we’ve seen. Many small races forego this part and just hand you your bib and t-shirt. Not Ann Arbor. Their expo takes up a whole cul-de-sac inside the local mall, wedged between a department store entrance and a pile of dirt and rubble with a sign reading, “Pardon Our Construction.”

Though modest, the expo is a good pre-race resource, including the two most important freebies: massages and cow bells. There are also pens, stickers and an uncommon proximity to a Pinkberry.

Honestly I would take an expo in someone’s driveway over a mere bib pick-up, because it makes you feel official. It helps pull the recliner out from under your inner athlete: Hey, you. It’s time.

Our good friend Jason joins us, having driven from his home in Milwaukee, and we while away the day at our hotel, knowing that our recent breach of Eastern Time will make the 6:30am start feel like 5:30. Who picked this race again?

I don’t know if I sleep more than a couple of hours. I doze, but my brain is on high alert, like a race is going to burst through the door any minute and make me run.

It’s finally time to get up and get dressed, and I don’t feel much more rested than at Disney World, where we had to get up at 2:30am to catch a bus, walk a mile to the starting line, then sit an hour in our corral. At least here we’re only ten minutes from the start.

Jason hasn’t trained like he wanted to and is relying on his base from being a lifelong runner to get him to the finish line. Since I’ve been able to put in more training miles recently he tells me not to worry about hanging back with him, and that I should pursue a “PR.” (note: PR is runner’s lingo for Personal Best. I think the B is just stretching its leg.)

My PR is from more than a year ago at the 10th annual Little Rock Marathon, where I posted 4:53:33. Not the worst (as I proved on three other occasions) but very slow for a thirty-year-old male.

The starting line is at the top of a hill so they are giving us a little push out of the nest. When the air horn sounds the crowd rolls its way down and I feel strong and awake. The course turns away from town very early and by the fourth mile we are running past the woodlands and river views for which I think I remember hearing about Ann Arbor at some point.

Mile six comes and goes and I still feel like a champion, despite more hills than I’ve trained on and stretches of road patchy enough to be a concrete tire course. I overhear the runners next to me talking, and apparently one of them is running his third marathon within 90 days, one of the ways to qualify for the Marathon Maniacs running club. Another chimes in that he has done four marathons a month and two half marathons a week since the beginning of the year. “It’s just not fun anymore,” he laments. I do not feel your pain, sir, and never want to.

The stretch between miles 8 and 13 contains two out-and-backs, where you leave the main course for a certain distance then turn around and head back to it. They can be psychologically debilitating because you have to watch all the people ahead of you stream by and you can’t even see how long before you get to be them, at the same point but facing the other way. It’s like a horizontal hill.

Also a vertical one, in the case of Ann Arbor. Steady climbs are everywhere and by the time I cross the 13.1 mile marker I have to give myself my first walking break. I begin rationing my strength, trying a trick I did in training where I let myself walk some during the even number miles and run the odd miles without stopping. This works until mile 17, where we head up a switchback trail that reminds me of Pinnacle Mountain. It feels like a solid mile, and as we get back into town at the top, sure enough, we pass the sign for mile 18.

This is the portion of the race where many people hit “The Wall,” the point at which you feel you can’t go further and have to start playing a mental game to continue. The inclusion of the tallest hill on the course at this exact moment feels like some sort of misplaced pride. “What do you mean you don’t train on potholes and steep hills? Oh I keep forgetting, you’re not from Ann Arbor!”

If they’re trying to wear down outsiders, it's working. My legs feel spent. The inconvenience is I still have eight miles to go. I make a deal with myself that I can walk as much as I want of the even miles if I will still try to run the odd ones. Maybe the average won’t be too bad. Midway through mile 18 I realize I have passed and been passed by the same woman about four times. She seems to be struggling as much as I am. I say hello and we talk about how much hillier this course is than we expected.

It turns out we have the same PR down to the minute, and she has come here hoping to beat hers too. Unlike me, she has a running watch and GPS. I suggest we run intervals together the rest of the way, and that she use her watch to make sure we’re staying ahead of our goal. We are soon making bets about how far we can go at a time.
“Do you think we can run to that bridge?” I say.
“Do you think we can run 30 seconds past that bridge?” she counters.

This is the benefit of team sports, and it is particularly helpful on this course because the race makers haven’t finished their assault on our resolve. Miles 19-22 take us down a hill to yet another out-and-back, this time around the mall where the expo was. The view is the same during every step of that circle, and I have never felt so much like I made a wrong turn and am just running down the middle of the road. At the end of this suburban monotony, we have to head back up the hill, past the finish line, and up another hill for a final out-and-back. Some runners are cursing audibly at this point but I have to save every breath.

The only redemption: when we turn around for the last time there is less than a mile to go and it’s all downhill. We glide like Emu Eagles onto the astro-turf of the University of Michigan’s, er, band practice field. Whatever, it’s soft and you can lie down on it, so I do, and enjoy having a single, sensibly sized medal for a change.

I finish in 4:48:43.
And I vow to take an hour off of that someday. Even if I do it five minutes at a time.