Remote Blogging

So here I am in Delaware, Ohio where my son is attending a soccer camp at Ohio Wesleyan University. The camp is about twenty-five miles from my home and so I have been wayfaring and loitering and drifting around this town for the last three days. Every once in a while in my

life, I have stumbled upon this opportunity which I realize some of you might not consider much of an opportunity. Sure, the day is long enough for me to drive back home and be practical and responsible––mow and weed and clean and repair and remodel and in general do work--and then drive back to Delaware and pick up the boy, but Delaware is just far enough to justify hanging out while I wait for the end of the camp day. 

What does one do when hanging out all day. Well, I suppose I could go running or biking or something athletic like that, but I do that stuff at home and this is suppose to be a break from the routine. Thus today's blog is about how to spend a good day away.

It starts with finding a good coffee shop for the morning session. Each person looks for different things in a coffee shop. For me, I

look for palatable ice coffee, free wifi, comfortable seating, relative noise control, good niches, and ambiance. I find a decent place for this in a little off-the-main-street joint. The piped-in music is quietly tuned to pop radio station that I could live without, but the rest is acceptable. So I order an ice coffee (It is always best to drink ice coffee when it's hot out. I get the coffee I want and the cooling effect of the ice.) I select a niche table--you know one of those off-to-the-side with decent lighting for reading and somewhat removed from the in and out traffic. I settle in, open the iPad, set the phone to vibrate, and read a recent edition of Esquire. I read Esquire because a coffee shop can be a difficult environment for serious sustained reading. I have time for that later. After paging through the magazine, I write my blog entry and check a few emails.

Now here's the trick for a good day of hanging out, switch up your environments every two hours or so and switch up your activities a bit as well, and definitely limit your driving. If possible, park on a shaded side street, lock up the vehicle, and go on foot for the day.

So my next stop is the public library. This is a decent walk which gets me outside and moving. I like the public library as a change from the coffee shop because I can find a good quiet niche there where I can do some serious reading. Today, having just finished Atlas Shrugged, I am eager to jump into one of the two novels I have pulled from my reading stack. One is the Gertrude Stein classic The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and the other

is a newer novel called St. Famous. I will spend some time with both of them over the next two or so hours and decide which one is right for my mood today. I might also serf the web a bit and maybe even watch an episode of "Arrested Development" on my Netflix account. 

Now it's about one o'clock, and it's time to think about lunch. Usually this means a burger and a beer for me. This all-American lunch is great for a day like this. Almost every place serves it, so I can walk around and explore and find a place that feels right.

I smoke cigars on occasion and there happens to be a cigar lounge here in the downtown. For me, this is a perfect after-lunch stop. I can buy an interesting cigar, perhaps a Kristoff Criollo Lancero, and settle into a long smoke 

and more reading. Now cigar lounges are like coffee shops in that each one has a certain feel, an atmosphere that either works for you or does not work for you. This particular shop, like many, features lots of leather chairs and a big television. A DVD of one of the Batman movies is blasting. So this is when I put in the earbuds and listen to jazz on the iPod and do some more reading.  I have decided on St. Famous, but after 65 pages I'm worried that it might be a poor choice.

So now I walk off the cigar buzz and get some air as I take the long way to my vehicle. I get to camp and watch the last twenty minutes of the final soccer scrimmage. The drive home offers a good chance to talk with my son.

So goes a day of hanging out Dunbar style.