What We Loved This Week: Okkervil River, the ‘Thunderbolt Kid’ and Teeing Off in Kauai

Travel Blog • World Hum • 03.21.08 | 5:23 PM ET

World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.

Terry Ward
I discovered golf is actually a lot of fun while hitting the driving range for the first time in Kauai. Even better than making solid contact with a five wood, however, was watching the humpback whales breaching just offshore while puttering around the course in Princeville. I had heard it was the season, but I didn’t expect to be treated to seeing whale spouts every few minutes. So cool.

Laurie Gough
I just finished reading Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and laughed my ass off. It’s a travel book back in time to Bryson growing up in Des Moines in the ‘50s, and it’s now my favorite of his books. In his humble and self-deprecating cheerfulness, he reminds us of a magical world we’ve now lost—the atomic toilet at a local diner, the elevator man in the local department store, kids building forts—to a world of chain stores, organized sports and Starbucks. It makes me wish we could go back and grow up all over again.

Joanna Kakissis
I was taking a taxi home today and the driver turned out to be the first cousin of Chris Cornell’s wife, the hottest and most talented grunge rocker, in my opinion. I worshipped Soundgarden! Here’s what I learned: Chris is a nice, tall guy who likes hanging out with his kids and visits Greece every year. He goes to Mykonos to chill out, apparently. Most of my experiences with Greek taxi drivers have been bad to disastrous—some have ripped me off, others have tried to paw me, and still others regale me with stories about their days as disco-dancing “Greek lovers.” But today’s taxi driver was nice and funny, and he answered all my Chris questions without cringing. It was almost as cool as a taxi ride a few years ago when the taxi driver and one of the taxi’s passengers turned out to be related to me. Greece really is a small country.

Jim Benning
I was on a cross-country United Airlines flight a couple of days ago when my seatmate, a Navy helicopter pilot, suddenly began shouting and waving his arms: “Oh…oh…doh!” We were in the early stages of our descent into Washington D.C., and he was listening to United’s Channel 9, which plays real-time communication between the pilots in the cockpit and air-traffic controllers. My seatmate had just heard the tower tell our pilot we weren’t descending fast enough and we’d have to bank around. “We’re screwed!” my seatmate said. But he said it with such glee it was clear that, for him, listening to Channel 9 was as much fun as listening to a baseball or basketball game. As we began banking moments later, proving he’d heard right, I thought, he’s definitely ready for the cult.

Michael Yessis
I went to New York this week, but still had Austin on the brain from last week. So on the train up and back, I listened the latest album from Austin’s Okkervil River, “The Stage Names.” The song “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe” won’t leave my head. Extra love for the setting of the video: