Benched

Newport, Rhode Island. Not too shabby of a place. I drove into town at rush hour (once again; I've got to start thinking ahead about that kind of stuff) and made it to the hostel where I'm staying. I walk through the door and the owner talks a mile a minute about everything one needs to do when in town and she's giving me brochures and suggesting bike rides and where I should eat and what I should see and what tours I should take, etc. It all just got me vacation-overwhelmed. My thing about sight-seeing is that I don't really like to do it. And my thing about historical tours is that I don't really like to do those either. I think I feel some guilt about this. Its like when its a sunny day and everyone is outside playing but I really just want to take a nap.

I read that its a good idea to have a theme for a road trip. Like if you enjoy national parks then try to visit all of them or if you like golfing, try to golf in all of the states. The theme I came up with is to walk around town looking for good reading spots. This theme has evolved into a hunt for good benches. There are good people-watching benches: ones that are in the busier parts of town but slightly removed from the rush of people. There are good reading benches: usually these are somewhere off by themselves, and don't necessarily need to have the best views, just a bit of quiet and a bit of shade. There are good thinking benches: ones that have great views and few people. There are good talking-on-the-phone benches: view doesn't really matter for these but being away from other people is a must.

View from my bench Tuesday morning in Seneca Falls (it ended up being a talking-on-the-phone bench):

Leave it to me to want to travel thousands of miles just to sit. But I do it so well. Newport, at first, was a horrible bench town. The hostel is right in the busy part of town and my first impression was "there are too many friggin people." I knew I was at the beach but it felt like Times Square. And all prime real estate -- not even talking on the shore but around the town and around the streets -- is taken by fancy restaurants or fancy houses. The last thing they want here is people sitting around not spending money. So it was quite a search and I felt pretty hopeless. But today I explored and found some treasures, especially this one:

Oh, and I have a tripod for my trip. It sounds slightly pathetic at first that I'm working so hard just to get myself into a picture and that I don't have anyone to take a picture of me; but its actually fun. You get to play with this spider-like contraption and set it up and focus it just so and then run over and get into place and let it snap the picture and then run back and check to see if you are even in the picture and, if so, how you look and if you have a double chin and if this is the case, try again. I suggest going out and giving it a go sometime. (Although, maybe I'm just saying this to get everyone to get tripods for taking pictures of themselves so that I don't look so ridiculous.) This is also a heads up that when I look like I'm nice and relaxed in a photo, really I have just run over and struck a casual pose. (Refer to top picture for example.)

What I've listened to :

"Legends" by Bob Marley

"Bachelor No. 2" by Aimee Mann

"The Magic Numbers" by The Magic Numbers

Disc 1 of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" audiobook

Podcast: This American Life (Social Contracts)

"Time (The Revelator)" by Gillian Welch

"The Grey Album" by DJ Danger Mouse