Because the deli I found yesterday isn’t open on the weekend, I’m back to the choice between the overpriced bagel at Starbucks and the one that’s a few cents cheaper down the street. Although I should probably take the walk and get a few steps in, I elected for the Starbucks bagel. Bagel (toasted) plus cream cheese plus tax works out to $4.60. I gave the cashier a $5 bill. She rummaged through her change drawer, closely inspected a coin or two, then gave me a nickel and smiled.
“You said it’s $4.60. I gave you a five, but you only gave me a nickel back!”
She fished around in her drawer some more, handed me three more nickels, and said, “We’re out of coins.” Really?
Yesterday, when I told Ryan the symptoms and that we’d done a recent engine swap came up with a few possibilities. One was that maybe we had a poor ground. That would explain why the misfire progressively got worse, and why replacing the plugs and coils didn’t fix it. If that is it, it’ll be an easy fix. Maybe I wouldn’t have to fly home after all.
In early afternoon, I was in the parking lot chatting with a couple who were wondering about all the cars when I spotted Ryan heading my way with Dave, his boss, and the other Lotus USA tech. These are the experts that the dealers go to when they have issues.
Dave is a funny guy. Every time somebody says they’ve modified their cars, Dave asks for their VIN. He takes one look at my car and says, “I see what the problem is. He has an aftermarket diffuser!”
It only took Ryan a few minutes to discover that one of the new ignition coils Michael and I installed a couple of weeks ago is messed up. It’s missing its boot, and it has some witness marks on it. Clearly not a new part. Three came in one kind of box, the fourth in a slightly different one. It must have been the one in the oddball box: a returned item that got shipped out as new. I’m surprised we didn’t spot it when we installed it. I don’t know how we both missed it; the missing boot is pretty obvious.
I called the nearest Advance Auto Parts. The gal I talked to said, “Sorry, but I only have one.” That’s great! I only need one! With a hotel full of Lotus peeps, it only took a few minutes to arrange a lift to the store. John kindly took me there, and after returning to the hotel, it was simple (even for me) to effect the repair.
She fired right up and idled nicely. I cleared the codes and drove a few miles. Music to my ears. I wouldn’t have to fly home, and I’d get to do the track day.
These Utah trips are emotional roller-coasters. Last year, the mysterious oil issue; this year, the misfire. They’re memorable trips, that’s for sure.
Dinner tonight was at the Natural History Museum of Utah. It’s just a couple of blocks up the hill from the hotel. I was a bit surprised that so many people drove. We filled the parking lot, but we could have filled it three times.
We had an hour to explore the exhibits before dinner. It’s not a large museum, maybe only a sixth the size of the Denver museum. It’s mostly dinosaurs. It’s packed with dinosaurs. You walk among them, under them, over them. They menace with open jaws, all pointy teeth and big claws.
I am such a child. There’s a little demonstration of a seismograph. On the floor is a painted box: “Jump!”. On the wall is a display. I jumped, and jumped harder a second time. I “pegged” the needle. A minute later, two people were trying it out, stomping one foot instead of jumping. “No, no, no. Here’s how you do it,” I said, and took a running leap. Pegged it again. I’m such a child.
This place is just a fraction of the size of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but I really liked the way they did the exhibits. The dioramas in the Denver museum are stodgy – very last century.
Our speaker after dinner was Robin Shute, Tony’s son. Robin is a 4-time Pikes Peak Hill Climb winner. He’s a bit of a unicorn – he didn’t just drive the car; he designed it. Like his father, he’s soft-spoken, and I missed a little of what he said. Quite the accomplished guy.
I’ve been meaning to visit this one for years. I finally found an excuse to do it. I had to go down to Colorado Springs for some Lotus club business, and once that was done, I grabbed some lunch and a beer at Wackadoo Brewing Company (pepperoni pizza and a pint of Pucker Up Sour – a pineapple mango sour), then headed over to the museum.
I took photos of all the planes, but I won’t bore you with them here. If you’re interested in aircraft, particularly American planes that saw service in the Second World War, you should just visit yourself.
What fascinated me most was that all the aircraft in the collection (or almost all of them) are operational. Every one of these planes has an oil pan underneath its engines, collecting any drips. Warbirds of this era are rare. I had the impression that the ones still airworthy had survived not only combat, but the scrapheap. Today, I learned that my impression was incorrect.
I’ve been fascinated by YouTube videos of automobile restorations. I’m also addicted to a YouTube channel that features restorations of World War II tanks. Airplane restorations are a thing, too. But there are a few differences. For cars, unless it’s a very rare car, people can find parts at junkyards or even purchase “new old stock” parts (parts manufactured when the cars were made, but sat in warehouses since then). It’s harder to get parts for your vintage tanks. Who has parts for World War II German tanks? You probably can’t find that Maybach V-12 engine for the Tiger tank, but does it matter if you replace it with a Caterpillar diesel?
But aircraft restorations? Not really the same. First of all, if you’re going to fly your plane, it has to pass FAA inspections. This is a non-trivial thing. And, considering the source material for many of these planes, it borders on miraculous that they get restored.
One of the planes (a Grumman F3F-2) was crashed into a mountain on Maui in June of 1941, recovered from the crash site in the 1980s, and restored to flyable condition. An SB2C Helldiver was recovered from Lake Washington. They have a P-47D that was buried on Papua New Guinea in 1945 and recovered in 1990 that’s slated for restoration soon. Seeing the current state of the P-47, I have a hard time imagining it flying.
The museum doesn’t do their own restoration or service work. In a hangar next door is an outfit called Westpac. They perform restoration work, including some highly specialized tasks. The old propellers are precision devices with moving internal parts. Nobody makes them any longer, and parts can’t be found, so Westpac has their own propeller shop.
Of course, they also do all sorts of metalwork. They can’t just pop down to the Republic dealer and find a new cowling for their P-47 restoration. They need to fabricate all the parts themselves. They have managed to obtain many of the original plans for these craft, and their machine shop has all the equipment: English wheels, brakes, anvils, and so on. And it’s not just any such equipment, but of the same vintage as the planes being restored. They sourced their equipment from the old factories in Southern California.
During these extreme restorations, they often cannot use the original material. But nothing gets wasted here. They have volunteers who work in their “Alchemy Department”. Here, artisans take the scraps not destined for FAA-certified airships and make trinkets that are sold in the gift shop. You can find clocks made with the skin of an old bomber, tables that feature cylinders from old radial airplane engines, and odd devices that dispense potent potables (sorry, I didn’t snap any pics in the gift shop).
Last but not least, they have a number of simulators guests can try out. One of them is a biplane flight simulator. No, you don’t sit down at a desk with a toy joystick; you sit in the cockpit of a biplane and work the real controls. Push the joystick to the left and watch the ailerons on the wings move. Kick the rudder pedals, and the rudder moves. Yes, there are computer monitors as well, and the gauges on screen match the layout of the gauges in the cockpit. You won’t find this simulator anywhere else!
Long-time readers will react to me saying “I go to a lot of car shows” with an emphatic “DUH!”
Before the blog, when I lived in Phoenix, I attended several Barrett-Jackson auctions, which, if you’re not buying, are just big car shows where every car is for sale. I went to a couple of Copper State Rally shows, where all the cars embarked on thousand-mile tours. The first place I saw an Elise was at an English car show there. Since I got the Elise, I’ve entered the Colorado Concours and the English Motoring Conclave several times. I’ve been to a couple of dozen Cars and Coffee events. I’ve taken tours of restoration shops where I’ve seen multi-million dollar Bugattis and Ferraris. I’ve seen exotics, muscle cars, race cars, hot rods, antiques, low-riders, motorcycles, tractors, and fire trucks. I’ve never had to drive more than about thirty miles to go to any of these.
So, when a Lotus Colorado member told us about a big car show at McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas, my first thought was, “That’s a long way to go for a car show!” I think it’d be a fun trip to go to the Pebble Beach Concours in Monterey, California. It’s one of the world’s great car shows. Although it’s more than twice as far as McPherson, it’s through some fine scenery and over twisty roads through the Rockies and Sierras. To get to McPherson, it’s eastern Colorado and western Kansas.
And how does the show in McPherson compare to any others I’ve been to? They have a renowned auto restoration curriculum there, and the students entered a car they worked on into the Pebble Beach show and won the top prize. The show is run by the students, and several of the cars on display are student projects.
Club members didn’t express much interest, and I had pretty much decided not to go when Chad called and said he’d drive us in his Maverick rather than the Lotus. I thought, “What the heck,” and said I’d go. We both had the condition that we’d have to include some interesting side-trips to sweeten the pot. In nearby Hutchinson, there’s a salt mine you can tour, and there’s the Cosmosphere, a space museum. As a bonus, on the drive back, we can stop at the site of a World War II Japanese Interment camp. (A tip of the hat to Jim for his helpful suggestions.)
So that was the plan: salt mine, space museum, car show, and concentration camp.
Thursday was the drive to Hutchinson. There’s not much point in describing the route or the views. After checking in at the hotel, we went to the Salt City Brewing Company for beer and dinner.
Strataca
About a century and a half ago, a man drilled for oil but found salt instead. Today, you descend in a hoist 650 feet down to the mine, where you find over 150 miles of tunnels, a small sample of which you are allowed to explore.
We did the basic tour and added the Lantern Tour, where we were taken deeper into the darkness. The guide compared it to the surface of the moon: no wind, no weather, nothing to disturb the footprints miners made 80 or 90 years ago. It wasn’t worth the effort to haul the miners’ trash back to the surface, so we occasionally came across piles of perfectly preserved trash – cardboard dynamite boxes still like new (but empty of dynamite), newspapers and magazines and those conical water fountain cups looking as if they were discarded yesterday.
Generally, the caverns are fifty feet wide, separated by fifty-foot-wide pillars, making a sort of giant waffle iron. The walls are salt, the ceiling is salt, the floor is salt. It looks like rock, stratified by bands of dark and light. We are told the salt is 95% pure, with some formations reaching 99%. We were also told not to lick the walls. The salt mined here is used on icy roads and as cattle feed. There is red salt in places, but they don’t mine it as the cattle won’t eat red salt.
So, what is there to see in a salt mine, other than salt? First, there’s the obvious display of the mining equipment used over the decades, along with helpful videos explaining how the salt was (and still is) mined. After several such exhibits, we turned a corner to find … a Civil Defense shelter! As a child of the 60s, I’m well familiar with the lore. But before now, I’d never seen what someone hiding from nuclear holocaust might eat. I imagined stacks of canned green beans (and was not disappointed to see them), but didn’t realize that crackers, biscuits, and carbohydrate supplements were distributed in giant cans, along with 17-gallon drums of water, complete with instructions to turn the drum into a commode.
Also, because of the constant temperature and lack of humidity, a salt mine is a great place to store things you want to preserve, such as paper documents, computer tapes, and old films and movie memorabilia.
Detail of salt mine wall
Fifty foot wide gallery
Mining equipment
Survival water
Civil Defense supplies
Buried “Friends”
Cosmosphere
Now and then, I come across something that seems out of place. The world’s foremost pre-war Bugatti restoration shop used to be in Berthoud, Colorado, a town so small it has no traffic signals. How did that happen?
The Cosmosphere is a space museum that rivals the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. How did such an impressive museum come to be in Kansas? Florida or Houston would be obvious choices. Huntsville or Pasadena, maybe. But Hutchinson, Kansas? Go figure.
It concentrates on space, not aircraft, so it’s not as big, but the collection of space artifacts exceeds what I saw at the Smithsonian. Some of the exhibits here are on loan from the Smithsonian, and some are from private collections, but much of what’s on display at the Cosmosphere is from their own collection.
There are a few aircraft here, like the SR-71 Blackbird. How do you get your SR-71 inside a museum? That’s a trick question: you build the museum around the plane.
Their exhibits cover the entire history of manned spaceflight, from the origins in Nazi weapons (the V2 was the basis for the Redstone rocket) to a SpaceX Merlin engine. I was particularly impressed by the quantity of Soviet gear here. I want to make a joke that this is the entire collection of Soviet space capsules that didn’t blow up on launch or on landing
I was surprised to learn that the Cosmosphere restores these artifacts. It’s not like restoring an eighty-year-old car that can be driven on the road – the spacecraft here in Kansas are only restored to look functional. Nobody is going to fire up that rocket engine or launch this capsule. Still, how do you go about getting a job as a restorer of antique Soviet spacecraft?
These guys restored a V2 they found in a barn. It’s fairly common to hear of rare old cars found in barns, but a V2? Incredible. And it’s not just “barn finds”. They have the Liberty 7 capsule. It was the second manned craft in the Mercury program, a sub-orbital flight carrying Gus Grissom. The capsule sank to the bottom of the ocean after they got Grissom out. It was recovered from the ocean floor in 1999 and was restored by the museum. Amazing.
Lunar Lander and Rover
Apollo/Soyuz
Liberty 7 capsule
V1 (green, left), V2 (black/white, right)
Gemini/Titan rocket
Apollo hatch opening/closing instructions
I assume the name “Cosmosphere” is a play on Cosmonaut. I recently learned the origin of the word “Cosmonaut”. I thought it was simply from “cosmos,” an alternative name for the universe. Instead, it comes from “cosmism” – a Russian philosophical movement integrating science, religion, and metaphysics into a unified worldview and characterized by the belief in humanity’s cosmic destiny, the potential for immortality, and the use of technological advancements to achieve control over nature and explore space. Believers in cosmism imagined immortality for everyone and the resurrection of all past people. (Now I can’t help but wonder if Philip José Farmer looked into it before writing To Your Scattered Bodies Go.)
After exploring space technology, we continued our exploration of local brew pubs. Tonight it was Sandhills Brewing. As a fan of fruit sours and goses, I liked their selection of beers. No kitchen here, but the food truck outside had a selection of tasty foods.
Breakfast at the hotel was much like you’d expect breakfast to be at any Ramada Inn stateside, but with a slightly different selection of fruit. The sausage was different – instead of patties or links, it looked like sliced-up hot dogs. I sampled it; it wasn’t hot dogs, but I can’t say for sure exactly what it was.
Genae found out that the Museum of Belize was nearby. We didn’t know if it was open yet, so we asked the hotel’s concierge. She said it was open and that we could get there on foot or by taxi. Instead, we drove. Yes, we could have walked it, but the roads are narrow and not particularly well set up for pedestrians.
The building the museum is in was built more than a century and a half ago by the British colonial government as a prison. The prison was shut down not long after independence, and in about 2002 was made into a museum chronicling about 3,000 years of history. It hosts a rich assembly of Mayan ceremonial objects, carvings, paintings, and other cultural artifacts. The story of slavery is told – loggers who braved malarial swamps and often tried to find freedom in Guatemala – and emancipation 15 years before our Civil War.
There are exhibits of the region’s animals. Each stuffed animal is accompanied by a sign telling visitors how the animal came to be here: killed by a vehicle, or died of old age. Animals aren’t represented only through taxidermy; there are some beautiful paintings and photographs. One exhibit tells about the destruction caused by Hurricane Hattie, which struck Belize in 1961. It was this hurricane that caused the capital to be moved inland to Belmopan.
Ex-prison
Mayan numbering – they had a zero!
Not Toucan Sam (Froot-Loops)
Our museum craving satisfied, we hit the road and headed to the zoo.
I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of zoos. They always feel a bit wrong to me. Yes, it’s nice to be able to see these creatures, but they’re in jail! The Belize Zoo is a not-for-profit organization founded by Sharon Matola in 1983, who was caring for a handful of wild animals that had been part of a natural history documentary. When filming was completed, she was left with these animals and decided to start a zoo. The animals here are rescued, confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade, or transferred from other rehab facilities. Most of the exhibits have signs telling visitors how they came to be here.
When we were looking at the spider monkeys, a tour guide came up onto the platform leading a small group. Once the monkeys spotted her, they came running up to the fence. She tossed them bits of food, at first on their side of the fence, then on our side of the fence, which they could grab with their prehensile tails.
The howler monkeys were all asleep at the top of their tree. A sign said. “Please don’t howl at us, it causes us stress.” I don’t know if they’re nocturnal, but it was fairly hot out, and even many of the diurnal animals were sleeping in the shade.
Tapir
Spider Monkey
Harpy Eagle
American Crocodile
Iguana – a visitor, not a resident
Today’s beer
We had lunch at the restaurant at the zoo, bought some T-shirts, and then headed back to Corozal.
Another miserable sleepless night. I slept about an hour and a half, then was awake for four hours and managed to sleep for another hour before dawn. Yeesh.
For breakfast, I walked to a nice bakery and had a delicious pastry loaded with raspberries. Definitely not allowed on the sugar-free diet!
Ryan and Laura picked me up a bit after 11, and we went to Autoworld. Somehow, I didn’t see it yesterday – it’s where I saw an Elise parked across the square from the military museum. Clearly, I only have eyes for Lotus, and didn’t spot that there was a car museum right there.
Autoworld is the Belgian National Car Museum. Their current pop-up exhibit, called “Big In Japan,” is Japanese cars. Somehow, not one of them was JDM (Japanese domestic market). They were all left-hand drive cars. I was mildly surprised and mildly disappointed. They couldn’t find even one JDM car?
The permanent exhibition is a nice collection of cars. Obviously, the majority of cars are European, so I saw quite a few cars that were entirely new to me. But I have seen other examples of many of the more valuable cars here (the pre-war Bugattis and modern Ferraris, for example). I go to a lot of car shows. They had a 1901 Toledo Steam Car, built by bicycle makers.
Hit the Road
The road to Spa – more correctly, the road to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps – was pretty crowded the entire way. It was a bit more than an hour and a half of mostly rural expressway. We headed to my hotel so I could get checked in, but nobody was there. My reservation confirmation email said check-in starts at 4 pm and we were early, so we went to the track to get checked in for tomorrow with RSR.
That accomplished, we headed to the grandstands at Raidillon. It’s pretty trippy finally being here. Ryan and I are driving on the second day of a two-day event, so there are cars out running on the track. The weather is beautiful, hopefully it will be this nice tomorrow. Watching the cars blast down the hill from La Source, down to Eau Rouge, vaulting up over Raidillon, and disappearing, full throttle echoing up the Kemmel straight was fantastic.
Back at the hotel, there was still no sign of life. The address in the email said the address was 220, which is a restaurant. All the rooms are at 223 and have keypads on them. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to get into my room. I was not yet in full-on panic mode.
I phoned the number listed on their website, but it went straight to voicemail. A moment later, a maintenance guy came out the door of 220. He didn’t speak any English, but understood that I wanted to check in. He made a phone call and got through to someone. After a conversation, he handed me his phone.
The nice lady I talked to told me that my room number and code were in an email. I never received any such email. She told me the room number and code and asked when I wanted breakfast tomorrow. It turns out I’m the only guest in the place. I told her I could do without, but she said she’d have breakfast delivered to my room. What time did I want it? As I needed to be at the track at 8, she suggested 7 am.
Disaster averted. What would I have done if I’d been a few minutes earlier or later and not run into the maintenance guy?
On the phone, she told me the code, but the maintenance guy worked the doors for me. I had a little heartburn that there was some trick I missed.
I had a nice dinner out with Ryan and Laura, another traditional Belgian food: Hawaiian Pizza!
No heartburn at all – not from the pizza, and there was no trick to the hotel code.
My first good night’s sleep. I woke up twice, as previous nights, and at 2:00 was worried I’d get a repeat of last night. But all was good, I fell back asleep fairly quickly and slept until 8. I almost never sleep that late.
Today is another day of semi-aimlessly wandering around on foot. Rather than sitting in a restaurant for breakfast, I was looking for a nice bakery. Last night, I thought about that segment of city wall I found and tried to get more info about it. I found that there’s an old gate from that wall serving as a museum, Porte de Hal. Google showed me a bakery between the hotel and there, and off I went.
This is a fairly densely populated area, yet I don’t see too many grocery stores. There are little shops, like convenience stores, but they sell some produce. The only true grocery markets I’ve seen are much smaller than your typical suburban Safeway store, maybe a quarter of the floor space.
Just before I arrived at the bakery, I walked through a small square where they were setting up an outdoor market. Not a farmers’ market; it had a much wider variety of food. Between the market and the bakery, there’s a bar on the corner. It’s 10 am on a Sunday, and two tables on the sidewalk are full of guys drinking beer and singing happy songs.
Porte de Hal was closed. It’s being renovated, but is still open. Except for every other weekend. Evidently, this is every other weekend. Just my luck.
Next, I headed to Parc du Cinquantenaire. The only art in my hotel room is a picture of the arches there. I had no expectations as to what I might find of interest there, but it was somewhere to go. It’s a bit of a hike, but I enjoy a nice hike.
Just before I got there, I found myself outside the House of European History. It’s not on my radar at all. Entry is free, and they give you a tablet and headphones for the self-guided tour. Their exhibits cover European history, focused mostly on recent history. Brussels is the administrative home of the European Union, so it’s natural there’d be a museum focusing on European history after World War II.
It’s in the building of an old dental school. The central staircase features a giant hanging sculpture. It’s hard to describe and nearly impossible to photograph. It is 25 meters tall (82′), made of steel and aluminium. It’s called Voxtex of European History, and rises beside the staircase to the skylight, traversing all six floors of the building. I’d say it looks a bit like a giant squid, but that’s not it. The tentacles are ribbons of metal with letters and words cut out. The ribbons snake into the exhibits on each floor and feature relevant quotations.
Most of the exhibits cover territory I’m already familiar with – the industrial revolutions, the world wars, the cold war, the siege of Sarajevo. Very well done. On my way out, I asked if they had a water fountain. Not one you can drink from – you have to have a bottle. I meant to bring a Nalgene bottle with me, but failed. And I never buy bottled water, so I was without a bottle. I was directed to some vending machines, where I used the wrong one and learned what eau chaude is. I saved the cup. It may come in handy.
There’s a whole side of Brussels that interests me, but that I’ve ignored. NATO headquarters is here, as is the EU headquarters. This museum was a nice little taste of modern history, in contrast to all the 13th-century churches and 17th-century art I’ve been immersing myself in. It was a happy little accident, finding this place.
Only a few minutes after leaving there, I arrived at the Parc. It’s a nice, big park with beautiful trees and landscaping. I headed directly to the arches.
The arches look like many other triumphal arches. I can’t just look at a set of triple arches without going through and looking from the other side. Can you? When I stepped through, I was faced with a bunch of old cannons outside the entrance to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. Planes and tanks! Sign. Me. Up.
I could have spent all day in there. I was hoping for a bit more of it to be World War II, but they didn’t make the place to cater to me. The large hall is dedicated to aviation, spanning from the early hot air balloons to relatively modern jets.
I’ve seen a lot of planes. There was a big collection at Falcon Field in Mesa, in hangars next to what used to be the Confederate Air Force. I’ve been to the Pima Air Museum, the Air and Space Museum. Wings Over the Rockies at Lowry. I’d like to go to the National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs. So I’ve seen pretty much every kind of plane that I know something about. Here, most of these aircraft were ones I’ve never seen before. But I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know why they’re in a museum. Only a few attracted my attention.
Tanks, on the other hand, I seldom get to see. I want to see tanks! The only WWII tanks were American, which disappointed me a bit. Ohio is loaded with Sherman tanks outside of VFW posts. They have an M-47 Patton. They also have a few German Leopard tanks. These were developed in the mid-1960s, used by the West German army (and Belgian Army, evidently). I was a big fan of these when I was about 10 years old.
These are outside, and the ground had tank tracks on it. I hadn’t thought about it, but you have to keep these things drivable. You don’t have to keep your museum piece Spitfire flyable, but if you can’t drive your tank, you’ll never be able to move it.
They have quite the collection of WWI items, including a few tanks and more types of artillery than I knew existed (yes, I’m prone to exaggeration, but I’m only exaggerating a little). In the technical hall, some exhibits showed many (all?) of the processes and parts required to manufacture sabers, flintlock guns, and rifles. Think “exploded diagram” but with the real parts.
Stumbling across two nice museums. I couldn’t have planned it any better.
As it was a Grand Prix Sunday, my next stop was a sports bar, where I watched the Hungarian Grand Prix and had a couple of beers. I had just stepped in the door, was putting my backpack down at a table with a view of the TV, hadn’t yet gone to the bar, when an older guy berated me in French for not having a beer. Dude, lighten up. Can’t I put my stuff down first?
I slept poorly last night. More precisely, I slept well from 10 pm to 2 am, then not at all from 2 to 6, then well from 6 to 9. I woke up covered in sweat, not at all refreshed. I’m normally up before 7, ready for the day.
Rather than mounting an expedition in search of breakfast, I ate in the hotel. Imagine your basic complimentary motel breakfast in most of America: serve yourself scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, maybe a banana. That was the fare here, except it wasn’t complimentary. When I checked in, I was told breakfast would set me back 23€ per person, or just under 27 bucks. (When I checked out, it turned out to be 18€, or $21.) When I planned the trip, I thought breakfast was included, but even at that, I didn’t plan on eating at the hotel.
Today I widened my radius of exploration by using the subway. First was the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart, or Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur. For some reason, I was thinking this was another Gothic cathedral. I couldn’t have been much more wrong. It was built only a century ago. The cornerstone was laid in 1905, but construction wasn’t completed until after the First World War. It’s not Gothic: it’s Art Deco!
It’s somewhat larger than the two churches I visited yesterday. They claim it’s the fifth-largest church in the world. I know, the internet is never wrong, but various sources I’ve found put it no higher than 8th largest. Back in 1975, I visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral in what was then Leningrad. Through the mists of time and my poor memory, I believe they also claimed it to be the 5th largest. In any event, the Basilica is a significant building, erected at the behest of the King, as a symbol of national pride.
I wouldn’t say the weather was ideal when I arrived there, but I was a bit shocked to step out of the elevator onto the panorama (the walkway around the base of the dome) into a major downpour. Luckily, it was a minor squall and passed after a few minutes.
Next, I went to the Atomium. It was built for the 1958 World’s Fair. Very crowded. I asked for a senior ticket, but she charged me to standard adult fare. Backpacks had to be put into lockers, which were coin-operated. She kindly loaned me a 1€ coin.
I was a bit chagrined to learn that pay toilets are a thing here, particularly as I still haven’t converted any money. Fortunately, the ticket to the Atomium (where toilets cost 0.70€) also includes entry to the Design Museum, where toilets are free.
I don’t know what I was expecting at the Atomium. When you first enter, there are some exhibits telling the story of the 1958 World’s Fair. After that, I don’t know what to make of it. You proceed from escalator to staircase to escalator, moving from one globe to another. There are flashing colored lights and … noises? … electronic music? I was underwhelmed and it’s a mystery to me why it draws such large crowds.
The Design Museum basically had two exhibits: plastics and skateboards. I suspect the plastics exhibit is permanent. The skateboard exhibit is temporary. I found the skateboards more interesting than the plastics, and I’m not particularly interested in skateboards. I was thankful for the free toilet. We take our victories where we find them.
Outside, there are food trucks selling waffles and ice cream. I’ve been using my credit cards the whole time, but these food trucks were the first places I’ve seen where credit cards aren’t accepted. A waffle would have hit the spot right then. They look delicious, served with a dollop of ice cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup. Seeing that having some cash might be handy, I stopped at an ATM in the subway station and got 40€.
After a short break back at the hotel, I went in search of food. My daily wandering took me by the Ferris wheel next to the Palais de Justice. There’s always been a waffle truck there. I elected to go without the ice cream. The waffle was warm, drizzled with chocolate syrup, and served on a piece of waxed paper with a paper towel. It was warm and sticky and quite tasty.
One of the places on my list of potential sights was the Belgian World Beer Experience. I had walked by it the first day I was here. It looked like a bit of a tourist trap. I went in anyway.
It’s housed in the Bourse de Bruxelles building, the former stock exchange. Before going upstairs to learn about beer, you go downstairs for an archeological tour of the site. I didn’t expect that! Archaeologists excavated the site from 1988-2012. In the 13th century, there was a Franciscan church here, with a cemetery. In 1695, Sun King Louis XIV’s troops bombarded Brussels, destroying the nave and the choir down to the foundations.
Legend has it that it’s the burial site of John 1st of Brabant, also known as Gambrinus or Jan Primus. Gambrinus would be St. Gambrinus, who embodied the joyful enjoyment of alcohol, and has even been credited by some with being the inventor of beer.
The beer museum was more interesting and informative than I expected. I learned that hops is a distant cousin of cannabis. One exhibit had funny quotes about beer. Frank Zappa said, “You can’t be a real country without a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some sort of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” And, from Plato: “He was a wise man who invented beer.”
To top it all off, admission includes a draft beer served on the rooftop terrace. They had about 50 beers to choose from. I picked the Chouffe Cherry. It was very cherry; sweet rather than sour. Not something I’d have on a regular basis, but I enjoyed the change of pace. Sipping my beer, looking out over the old town, I heard more American voices than I had since I got off the plane.
Beer gone, it was 8 o’clock, and time to find dinner. I was hungry, it was late, and I didn’t want to take a lot of time searching for a nice place, so I ended up at the same restaurant as last night – good food, friendly staff, English menu. Why not repeat, as long as I don’t repeat any part of the meal? Instead of the stew, I went for the meatloaf with the mashed potatoes/carrots. After the meatloaf, I asked for their second-best chocolate dessert. They brought out their chocolate cake. Served with a scoop of ice cream and filled with delectable molten chocolate, it hit the sweet spot.
My travels through Brussels may sound a bit … aimless. That’s because they more or less were aimless. I had a short list of sights that I thought might be worthwhile, but I didn’t have anything like an itinerary or a plan. If I went everywhere on the list, great. I had no doubt I’d like places that weren’t on the list if I just stumbled upon them. And, with only a handful of days to explore, I would certainly get back home and think, “I should have gone there!” So my general plan was to begin each day with a starting place, then improvise after that.
I picked my hotel because it’s in a network where I can use some points to cut a few Euros off the daily bill. It fit my budget, and it’s close enough to the center of the city that I could get around on foot. For a budget place, it’s in a nice neighborhood. The neighbor across the street is the Mission of the State of Qatar. A block away, there’s a very upscale hotel that I passed by every day. Often, a Ferrari was in the driveway. Once, a Maybach was parked out front.
August 1
My first destination today was the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. Amazing building. Construction began in the 11th century, and was largely complete in its current Gothic form by the 16th. As the national church of Belgium and the Primate of Belgium’s official seat, it frequently hosts royal weddings, state funerals, and other official ceremonies.
There are public parks all over the city. Some are tiny, some are significant. After the cathedral, I came upon one that was a little different than other city parks I’ve seen. City parks are all very well-manicured. This little park was a bit on the “wild” side – very little sign of curation other than the fountain and the paths.
Next, the sidewalk led me to the Oldmasters Museum, or Musée Old Master. It concentrates on works produced from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The museum was founded by Napoleon in 1801 and includes many artworks seized from religious institutions. This is an all too common story of museums. It’s definitely not good that museums all over the world are filled with stolen goods, but at least these artifacts are now kept in controlled environments for proper preservation (and sometimes restoration) and that they’re available to the public.
The temporary exhibit is Rene Magritte. Interesting work. I guess he did a lot of wordplay. I didn’t see a work’s title that matched the work. It’s like he played games in naming things. I saw one Magritte piece in their permanent collection – a bowler hat with a light bulb on the front. Not a painting, an actual hat with an actual lightbulb.
Magritte, like many artists, made numerous variations of many of his works. He had one, The Treachery of Images, that’s a painting of a pipe with the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe). The 1929 version of this is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In this exhibit, there’s one from 1962 called The Tune and also the Words. This exhibit also has a few other variations, including one that’s officially untitled, but is called “The Sexual Pipe”, where the stem is a phallus. He also had a thing about painting men in bowler hats, and a series of landscapes derived from an Edgar Allan Poe story I’ve never read called The Domain of Arnheim. Certain images repeat throughout much of his work, such as eggs or white balls with black equators.
The Old Masters collection is about what I expected – mostly religious. One hall was filled with giant pieces. I can only imagine how much work went into all of these. Some of them seemed somewhat anachronistic. I think of paintings of anthropomorphic landscapes as being a modern or surrealist thing, but there are a few here from the 16th century.
I had lunch at a little brew pub. I had two different beers, both tasty. I asked the bartender for a lunch recommendation. He suggested the Salade du maraîcher. I had no idea what it was; I’d never heard of it. Through the power of the internet, as I write this many days later, I’ve learned it simply means “market gardener’s salad.” I ate it without knowing even what was in it. Among other ingredients it was beefsteak tomatoes, grilled zucchini, roasted garlic, feta cheese, purple basil sauce, and a slice of sourdough bread.
After lunch, I found myself at another church, Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, or Church of Our Lady of the Chapel. It’s not quite as large as St. Gudula, and doesn’t look to get as much funding for upkeep, but it also doesn’t get the tourist traffic. This one was built between the 12th and 13th centuries. This church is only a kilometer (0.6 miles) apart. They’re significant structures. From what I can tell, the population of Brussels at that time was perhaps 30,000.
Both of these churches were built about the same time as the city was being enclosed by walls. I only found one small piece of the old wall (not that I was looking for it), and the museum about the wall was closed when I went. The original walls were about two and a half miles long. The defensive walls, though larger than the churches, were crude in comparison, as befits their purpose. If you think of wealth as being the accumulated surplus of production beyond subsistence, it seems inescapable that the vast majority of wealth went to the Church.
As I said earlier, I didn’t go to Belgium to eat tacos. I wanted to try at least a few traditional Belgian dishes. My very limited research suggested mussels, or beef stew, or meatloaf with mashed potatoes and carrots. And, of course, there are waffles and frites. And chocolate. At the hotel, I asked the desk clerk if he could recommend a nearby restaurant with good desserts. He wasn’t much help – he said I should find a restaurant with pictures on the menu. It’s not the worst advice for a monoglot American tourist, but I’m somewhat willing to be daring. He did, though, suggest I try something in the Sablon, a neighborhood of chic bars, fashionable restaurants, and chocolate shops near Central Place.
So I basically wandered around the Sablon for an hour, where I came across a place serving Belgian specialties that had an English menu. I had the beef stew. It was delicious. The typical beef stew I’m familiar with always has potatoes, onions, and carrots. This was just beef, and is made with beer. The side dish for the stew was frites. They recommended beer pairings with all their entrees. For dessert, I asked for their best chocolate dish. It was a mousse. Delightful!
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula
One of the stained glass windows
Interior
Exterior, side view
“The Tune and also the Words”
Big Old Masters
Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle
Fragment of Ancient City Wall
On Blending In
I recently watched a movie where the characters were Americans in Europe, on the run from the bad guys. One character told the other to lose the backpack and baseball cap so he wouldn’t look like an obvious American. Here in Brussels, if you want to blend in as a local, a backpack and baseball cap are good, as long as the cap is for the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers. Also, feel free to wear a t-shirt with an American city name on it (New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago) or something like “East River” or “West Coast California”. But to seal the deal, to really fit in as a Bruxellois, smoke a cigarette.
I carried my backpack, rain jacket and umbrella in it, and wore my baseball cap. I wore polo shirts instead of t-shirts, and I don’t smoke. But there was no hiding the fact that I’m an American every time I opened my mouth to speak.
Two days of hanging around the race track wasn’t enough for me. The Chin event was over, but I still needed to go to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.
The museum is best known for its motorcycles. They have over 1600 bikes in their collection, with over 900 on display. But that’s not why I wanted to wander through the place. You see, it also happens to have the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars. Throw in die-cast cars, wooden toy cars and trucks, outboard boat motors, and a lawn mower and you have a pretty interesting way to spend a few hours.
Whereas the Presidential museums I visited on this trip both opened at 9:00 am, Barber doesn’t let you in until 10. Or so says the sign on the door and their website. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I got there a little early. I was hoping they’d let me drive around part of the perimeter road so I could look for more treasures. There wasn’t anybody at the gate to ask, and they had the road coned off. So I parked at the museum.
To the right of the main entrance, they have a very striking trio of sculptures that make up one piece. Is there a sculpture-oriented word equivalent to triptych? It’s called “The Chase”, and the plaque says it indicates “the super-human power and sense of achievement that one experiences on the track.” They have a smaller version of at least one of the figures on display inside.
After taking a few photos, I started walking back to my car. A guy came out the museum doors and called to me, “Come on in! We’re open!” It was 9:38. This was good news. After the museum, I’m driving to Atlanta. I had been going back and forth about whether I’d have enough time to take the back roads or I’d have to violate Rule #1. Extra time in hand is good.
When I paid for admission, the cashier told me that I was in luck – Indycar was here at the track doing some testing.
They tell everybody to start touring the museum from the top down. Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, then walk down the spiral ramp to each lower floor.
The number of motorcycles there is ridiculous. I’m not particularly interested in motorcycles, so I was a bit overwhelmed. Bikes from World War II, Italian Vespas, a bike with a wooden sidecar. I wandered randomly, perhaps working down to the cars a bit quicker than I should have.
The Chase
Lotsa Lotus
Model Lotus
Vincent Lawnmower. “Vincent” as in “Vincent Black Lightning”
Hanging Lady
Graham Rahal
Marcus Armstrong
Dragonflies
Fittipaldi fire
I’ve seen large numbers of Lotus before. At the two LOGs I attended, we had more than a hundred, almost all of them road cars. At the F1 race I attended, they had a bunch of classic Lotus F1 cars that ran in a vintage race. But the collection at Barber is impressive for its breadth. I don’t think any of it was post-Chapman, and a few of the very earliest models were reproductions, but they damn near had one of everything that raced. They even had the bicycle.
After checking out the Lotus collection, I wandered out toward the track. From the museum, you can go across the first bridge (the second when you’re on the track), down to a path through the woods in the infield, and then up to the second bridge (the bridge with the hanging lady). The bridges have clear sections in the walkway – you can look straight down onto the track.
Indycars do a lap here as fast as 1:06. That means, if I were to be on the track for a half-hour session with an Indycar, he’d pass me nine or ten times.
I chatted with a couple of guys who come to the Indycar race every year. They said, “You can’t see it from here, but over there,” they pointed vaguely to the woods, “some big ants are carrying off a motorcycle.” Then we got to see Pietro Fittipaldi’s car catch on fire. He was frantically waving his arms for somebody to come to extinguish the fire, but it took a couple of minutes for the trucks to start rolling. He’s the grandson of Lotus F1 champ Emerson Fittipaldi.
After stopping by the gift shop to buy the obligatory t-shirt, I hit the road. I had plenty of time to take the back roads for a pleasant drive through the Alabama and Georgia countryside. I didn’t have much traffic until the last forty minutes or so, as I got near Atlanta.
If you’re a motorcycle lover or a fan of Lotus, the museum is worth the visit.
Today’s diversion is a visit to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. It doesn’t open until 9:00, so I could sleep in a little.
The free breakfast cost too much. Yesterday, at the bad motel, at least I got a bagel with cream cheese. This morning, no such luck. My choices were cold cereal or yogurt with lots of sugar. I tried the biscuits and sausage gravy. The biscuits were hard. The sausage gravy may have been vegan. After two bites, I tossed it. The woman at the next table made eye contact with me, chuckled, and nodded.
After the non-breakfast I headed out, stopping to fill the tank on my way to the museum. I got there just as the doors opened. There was just one problem, though: I couldn’t lock the car. It acted like it locked, it made the right noises in the right sequence, but after a few seconds, the alarm gave a steady beep. I’m pretty sure that’s what it does if I try to lock it with the boot open, or a door. I opened and closed the doors and boot lid and tried again with the same result.
That’s just great. I have the passenger seat and footwell filled with stuff including a laptop, some tools, and all the cameras. In theory, I could repack the car to have the valuables in the boot, but something will still be in the unlocked cabin. When I’m just driving around town, I almost never lock it, as I often have the top off, and I seldom carry anything. But road trips are a different kettle of fish.
After my third unsuccessful round of opening and closing the doors and boot lid, one of the groundskeepers rolled up in his cart. He asked the usual questions about the car, including “What kind of car is it?”. He was not the first I’ve talked to on this trip who’d never heard of Lotus and would not be the last. I answered all his questions, then told him that I was having trouble locking it.
He said, “Go visit the museum. I’m going to be working right over here all morning cleaning up from the storm. I’ll keep an eye on it.” That was very kind of him. I have a blue tarp that I use to keep everything on the passenger side covered up.
I have no idea why it’s failing. One possibility is damage from the collision. I don’t think that’s the case, but it’s possible. Another is something’s wet. I drove through 3 hours of rain, and it rained most of the night, so who knows? My tape job is holding up to the weather, still looking good. I think I have enough tape left to redo it if I have to.
The Clinton Presidential Park bridge crosses the Arkansas River
Bill’s ride
Bill’s WFH office
What Bill did on my 34th b-day
Each globe has a theme
The Clinton Museum is the largest of the National Archives Presidential Museums. At least, according to the Clinton Museum folks. They admit that Reagan’s is bigger if you include the hanger that holds Air Force One and Marine 1. Not that it matters who’s is bigger.
The grounds here are pretty nice, but the rain had started up again so I didn’t wander around. One of the things a President has to do these days when he gets the job is to decide where he’s going to be buried. While I was looking out an upper-story window at the grounds, a worker pointed out where Bill and Hillary will reside after shuffling off this mortal coil.
When I visit these Presidential museums, I always look for a life-sized statue so I can get a selfie. Ike was on a pedestal, and I figured it would be poor form to climb it for a photo. There is no statue of Clinton here.
The price I paid for going to the museum was having to trade some back roads for interstate. My route started with sixty miles of interstate and ended with another hundred and fifty, making it just a tad over half the total mileage. Had I taken interstates the whole way, I’d have saved a few minutes but gone farther, going through Memphis. The middle section took me through the backwoods of Mississippi.
It was still raining when I got off the superslab. The first thing I noticed was that there wasn’t nearly as much standing water as on the interstate. The two-lane roads are crowned much better, with water flowing from the middle out. Much better drainage than the interstate. And with so much less traffic, I wasn’t constantly driving through somebody else’s spray.
I crossed the Mississippi River on US 49, over an impressive old girder bridge. I’d have loved to have stuck the 360 camera out the window, but it was raining. Too, the road on the bridge is in rough shape. It was definitely two-hands-on-the-wheel rough.
Just as on many of my other trips, I saw quite a few flooded fields. Is it always flooding somewhere in the Midwest when I’m driving through, or is it just where I go?
I was on a mix of roads, from four-lane divided highway down to a stretch of state highway with neither speed limit signs nor a centerline. Once the rain stopped, it was a pleasant drive.
This narrowest, least-traveled road alternated between small cultivated fields and stands of trees. There were quite a few run-down, abandoned-looking shacks along the road. Where the road went through the woods, the trees made an archway over the road. In one place where trees arched the road, I spotted a doll hanging in a tree, lynched. Right above my head. Maybe two feet tall. I couldn’t tell if the doll was black. I have a guess based on nothing more than stereotypes.
I was surprised at the lack of restaurants on my backroads drive. I had the same thing last year in Missouri, but I was on a number of county roads. Today, I was on state routes and US highways – no county roads. I was in this foodless zone from about eleven to after two. Maybe I was still feeling good from last night’s steak, but I wasn’t particularly hungry for any interstate fast food. I powered on to the motel.
The last two hours of the drive were dry. I basically ran a 75-mile-an-hour blow-dryer on the car for two hours. I still can’t lock the car. This does not bother me at all until my return trip. But I don’t think I’m comfortable leaving everything in an unlocked car while I wander around the Shiloh battlefield and Indian mounds. I doubt I’ll be able to count on the kindness of groundskeepers to keep an eye on my car. Driving back with no diversions means I’d be able to trade more interstate for back roads.
Dinner was at a little Mexican place next to the motel. It’s in a former fast-food building. There’s parallel parking where the drive-thru was. The place was busy, and it seemed like everybody knew each other. I had a chimichanga and a beer.
