The Joyride Zone

Book Review: Joyrides Around San Diego by Jack Brandais

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop ..." ... The Joyride Zone!

For the majority of people, San Diego can be defined by the "high points": Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo, the waterfront, the beaches. The farthest afield most people get is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in the northern part of the county. I'm not just talking about tourists - many San Diego residents probably don't go much beyond the perimeter defined by their home, their work, and their favorite activity, and the network of freeways that connect them.

Author Jack Brandais is a native San Diegan, and he has made it his particular mission to find, and to chronicle, those spaces in between the high points. The counties of Southern California are among the largest in the United States, and San Diego County is no exception; there are lots of places in-between. For those of us who were born and raised there, those places, and the narrow roads that take you there, are an indelible part of San Diego history.

Joyrides Around San Diego is a compilation of Brandais' Kindle driving guides covering San Diego County from the Pacific Ocean to the Borrego desert. Now, I don't have a GPS in my car, and I still use paper maps, but the Kindle version has certain advantages. There are live links to take you to websites with background information, color pictures ... it's interactive.

On the other hand, the new "hard copy" version has all 10 San Diego Joyrides in one convenient package. You can browse it at your leisure and pick out a destination for the day, or plan a weekend getaway. You can leave it in your glove box and it never needs batteries. And if you want to see that background info, the author has put the links on his Joyride Guru website for your convenience.

Either way, you get driving directions, handy maps, a list of sights to see, and a bit of history to boot. If you're new to San Diego and really want to see San Diego County, this is the place to start. If you're an old-timer like me, this is a great opportunity for a trip down memory lane, literally. Batteries not included - or needed!

How About Some Pie?

Book Review: Jaunt to Julian by Jack Brandais (Kindle Book)

Like "Joyride Guru" Jack Brandais, I too am a second-generation San Diegan, and spent many a weekend with my mother and brothers on the road to Julian (or points east). I was anxious to see if the trip has changed much over the years, or if it still matched up with the memories of more than four decades ago.

I was glad to see that, other than a few more buildings, the route has retained a good deal of its original character. You can still catch glimpses of San Diego County as it used to be. I was glad to see that Dudley's Bakery was still in business; it was a favorite stop, especially if I could talk my mom into getting me a donut. Their bread is the best!

In addition to the sights along the highway, the author includes some of the back-country routes that my family "discovered" over the years: the Old Julian Highway, Wynola Road, and Farmer Road. You can while away an autumn afternoon just wandering the side roads - it's especially enjoyable when the leaves are turning and the air is crisp as a Julian apple. Just mind your manners and be sure the road you're on isn't somebody's driveway.

And of course, save some room for pie. I like mine warm, with a scoop of vanilla.

I'm old-school, and to me a map is an intricately folded sheet of paper, but Jaunt to Julian covers everything you need to know for either a day trip or a weekend getaway. Hyperlinks provide specific information on sights and side-trips (for casual hikers I recommend the Santa Ysabel Preserve), and there are interesting notes on the history of the town and surrounding areas.

One of a series of Kindle drive guides by the San Diego Union-Tribune's "Weekend Driver" columnist Jack Brandais

A Tale of Two Women

Book Review: Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman

The story of not just one, but two historic trips around the world, Eighty Days is much more than a travelogue. In following the two protagonists, Nelly Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, in their race around the globe, Matthew Goodman gives us a close-up view of the challenges facing women at the end of the nineteenth century.

Not just ANY two women either. Nelly Bly was a small town American girl, who fought her way into the position of journalist through hard work and determination. Her room in New York was on an unpaved road far from the newspaper offices in Manhattan. "Her grammar was rough, her punctuation erratic", but she persevered.

Elizabeth Bisland also lived in New York; although her apartment was only a few blocks away from Nelly's room in physical distance, it was miles away in social standing. In addition, she was "highly literary, with refined tastes", with a family background to match.

These two women, dissimilar in so many ways, had one thing in common: they had both managed to find their way into that bastion of masculinity, the newsroom. And by "find their way" we mean they persisted in the face of incredible resistance to the very presence of "the weaker sex" in their chosen profession.

Eighty Days is more than the story of two women cutting a path around the world - it is the story of two women from vastly different backgrounds who, each in their own individual way, together cut a path for generations of women to come.

The World's Toughest Job

Book Review: Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son by Buzz Bissinger

As my own children merge into the adult world, I have become increasingly certain that the hardest thing in the world is being a parent - that is, being a "good" parent. Knowing when to guide, when to discipline, when to hold them, when to let go; it's enough to give anyone nightmares.

In Father's Day, Buzz Bissinger adds yet a new element to the waking dream that is parenthood - that of being a parent to a 'special' child. Multiply all of the uncertainty factors by 2, add a 'normal' twin brother, and you have a landscape that Bosch would envy.

While I did not agree with the author on some counts (like taking this trip in the first place!) I could certainly empathize with his situation. Taking a cross-country trip with my two kids by automobile was stressful enough; the bonding experience was excruciating at times. But being a parent means taking the bad with the good. Bissinger wanted to be closer to his son, to get to know him again as he grew into an uncertain manhood.

Father's Day captures the anxiety, turmoil, hope, and love that define what it is to be a parent. At times an enjoyable father-son travelogue, sometimes a painful experience in estrangement, it is as real as it gets in a rented minivan in the heartland of America.

Travels with Reg

Book Review: The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love." [1 Corinthians 13:13, NASB]

Easy to say, not as easy to realize. As Howard Frank Mosher takes us on his journey through the three phases of The Great Northern Express, he re-learns the lesson that love is an ongoing process, not a destination. Love of life, of one's work, and of the people that we hold dear are intertwined in ways that we do not always appreciate or comprehend.

Northern Express is not so much a tale of a book tour; like all great journeys the actual reason may be obscured, even to ourselves. It is not a series of momentous discoveries and personal epiphanies. At the simplest level it is the story of a man in a car, traveling across the country to see what he can find. Like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley in Search of America, Mosher is not really sure what he is looking for, or even sure he will know if he finds it.

The true measure of a road trip is not the things that you see, or the people you meet, or the photos you take. The true measure of a journey is seen in the person that comes back home. The journey does not occur 'out there', it is internal, and personal. Through his series of tales Mosher shows us both sides of the story, allowing us a glimpse of ourselves as he finds his own way home.

Thanks for the ride Harold.