The Ultimate Road Trip Detour: Go Kart Racing?

by Paul Brady on


At the outset of this road trip, I invited friends and readers to jump in the car with me. After more than a month on the road, one of my buddies finally took me up on the offer, planning to meet me in Virginia Beach after I toured Colonial Williamsburg.

I’ve known Rob for more than 10 years, and while we get along wonderfully, we love competition. So it being a road trip, there was no better place to spar than on a go kart track.

Traveling the American Road – Go Kart Racing


By a fantastic coincidence, Virginia Beach Motor World has a loop inspired by Watkins Glen International, a place I’d visited earlier this summer–and driven on the pro-level track. It wasn’t an exact replica, but I planned to put some of my driving experience in Upstate New York to good use in Virginia.

Rob and I have raced before, in Chile of all places, in super-speedy karts that required helmets. Splitting a few races this time around, we still haven’t determined a champion. We’re hoping to do that when we get to the Orlando Kart Center. But first we have a stop to make in the Outer Banks.

Inside STS135: The Experience at the Final Shuttle Launch

by Paul Brady on


I got to William J. Menzo Park in Titusville at about 3 am, in a bad mood and not sure if the shuttle would even launch. NASA said the odds for departure were only 30 percent. But until NASA officially scrubbed the Friday morning liftoff, I’d be here, set up in a tent with provisions packed in a Styrofoam cooler I’d just bought.

The shuttle’s been ferrying people to space for just a few more years than I’ve been alive–and today’s mission was my last chance to see the space ship of my generation.


It’s a logistical nightmare, seeing a launch. There’s no certainty the weather will cooperate, as I and a reported one million other spectators know all too well. Hotels in Titusville and along the Space Coast charge incredible prices, which isn’t exactly unfair–this is the hottest ticket in Florida!–but it does put rooms out of reach of many. And so we drive, in cars, in SUVs, in station wagons and RVs and camper vans with pop tops. Parked on sidewalks and lawns, along the sides of roads, there seems to be a suspension of rules.

It’s the same in the park, where according to a sign, there’s no overnight camping. (Broke that ordinance.) There’s also no alcohol without a permit. (Plenty of people not heeding that one.) The fires that were going last night must violate some rule, but I’m not sure which one. But there’s a singular focus here, and the only real crime would be to block someone’s tripod-mounted camera.

Lenses bristle along the coast, set up since the middle of the night to stake out an ideal vantage point. It’s an outlandish collection of gizmos–all manner of video recorders, lenses bigger than magnum wine bottles, boom mikes with wind screens–that reminds me that half the fun of space exploration is taking photos of what happens when we explore space.

With 56 minutes left until launch, a duo strums a guitar and plays a drum, while spectators smoke cigarettes out of habit or nervousness or need to do something, anything to pass the slowly ticking minutes. Kids are slathered with sunscreen and bug spray by parents who no doubt brought them so the youngsters could one day say they’d seen a shuttle launch. I wonder if they’ll even remember the experience, like many of my generation can only hazily remember the Challenger disaster, the defining public tragedy of our lives, at least through September 10, 2001.

With five minutes left to go, someone in the crowd shouts out “FIVE MINUTES.” We’re all excited, the atmosphere tense with the hope that we’ll see the launch but wary of a last-second call-off.

Two minutes. A duo of military fighter jets fly over, making a deafening racket, drowning out the sound of radios broadcasting the mission control chatter. Final camera checks are made.

We all hear the words “main engine start” at seven seconds and a tiny spark, 10 miles away but very distinct, appears. Breath is drawn. I don’t remember hearing the rest of the countdown.

A giant cloud of steam and exhaust explodes, silently because the sound hasn’t yet reached us, and Atlantis surges off the pad. We start clapping and cheering, with tunnel vision chasing the craft up into the low-hanging clouds that threatened the launch minutes before. After another minute–or what feels like a minute–the exhaust stream pokes out from a gap in the clouds, and we can see the shuttle again, already hundreds of miles away, tiny and flickering on its way to space. Applause goes up again, as those of us who see it point it out to those who don’t.

And then it’s gone.

Later, as the basso profundo of the rockets finally rolled across the water, I talked to Tim, a local construction worker who’s seen more than 100 launches, including the very first and today’s, the very last. It was a celebratory day, with our four astronauts on the way to orbit, and a sad day. It’s the end of the program, a retirement that Tim says will be “devastating” to the region. There were little kids running around, here for the last shuttle launch, but probably too young to ever fully remember it.

Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America

by Paul Brady on


The last time I visited Colonial Williamsburg, I was about half as tall as I am now. Would it still be worth seeing-or as fantastic as I remembered-now that I’m a grown up? I drove south from Washington, D.C. to find out, without doing a lick of planning or advance research. This would be a visit informed only by my fuzzy memories of hiking around in the heat and talking to people dressed in period costumes.

It turned out to be just as cool as I remembered, even if it was nearly 100 degrees.

Traveling the American Road – Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America


The city spans 301 acres, and it’s accurate to describe it as a village, since people actually live here around the clock. Staffers occupy buildings in the historic section and artisans working in Williamsburg create the tools, clothing and even beer that’s needed on site. While it sounds like a marketing line, it’s true that this place is much more than a theme park. It’s a sort of living museum, and what they’re preserving is the knowledge and history of small-scale American manufacturing and handicraft.

Take the milliner’s shop, where I met a tailor who’d been apprenticing for seven years, showing off a dress crafted in 60 hours of stitching. I learned about movable type from a printer, probably running one of the most profitable presses in the country, given the current state of publishing. A youngster was talking the trade with a blacksmith, the former an avid hobbyist in the art of mashing metals, picking up tips from the professional. A wheelwright described how to build an ox cart. (They can last years as long as you scoop the manure out and bring it in from the rain.)

As I’ve found stories of resurgent places, the made in America element of Williamsburg captivated me in its historic rather than innovative focus. In other words, there’s a difference between Korean tacos and hand-hammering a pewter cup. But by quietly building things by hand, the craftsmen and women of Williamsburg are doing something very, very cool-and something I didn’t have the chance to appreciate as a kid.

How to Navigate Washington, D.C. Without Going Nuts

by Paul Brady on


I’ve been on the road for more than a month, and here’s my number one tip: Don’t drive in Washington, D.C. Nightmare would be a measure too generous.

As soon as I could park my ride, I did, content to not touch it until I pulled out of the District two days later. And considering the byzantine fare structure and bizarre routing of the Metro, it’s something I avoid, too. Here’s a better idea.

Trade four wheels for two: Rent a bike. While you can certainly walk the city-getting to your destination eventually-it’s much easier to just pedal there, particularly in the summer, when temperatures in Washington hit roughly “surface of the sun” levels. Best to limit your exposure by riding where you’re going in a hurry.

The newest option in town is the Capital Bikeshare program. Another in a growing list of bike-sharing efforts around the world modeled on Paris’ Velib, the initiative is open to visitors because it offers 24-hour and five-day “memberships.” Any riding up to 30 minutes is free after that, with longer rides racking up bigger bills. (The clock resets each time you dock your bike, so it’s possible to do the whole day for five bucks.)

But the claim that Capital Bikeshare “puts 1,100 bicycles at your fingertips” is a stretch at best: On the occasions that you actually stumble across a station, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually find one to ride. A couple of smartphone apps have been developed to help with this problem, but they’re not foolproof yet.

The easier solution is to buy some convenience with a Bike and Roll rental. You’ll pay a little bit more, but you’ll have the same ride all day-and ditch the hassle of looking for docking stations while on the clock. With your bike dialed in, you’ll actually want to ride from the Capitol all the way down to the new Martin Luther King, Jr. monument that’s scheduled to open to the public before the end of summer.

Exploring the Baltimore Beyond the Inner Harbor

by Paul Brady on


To me, a huge fan of Baltimore but still a tourist, it seemed like a random Saturday in the early summer. But in Charles Village, a neighborhood between Johns Hopkins and the harbor, it was the weekend of the “Pile of Craft” fair at St. John’s church. I found out about it by chance, leafing through a copy of City Paper while doing laundry. (One accumulates lots of laundry on long road trips!)

Dozens of tables filled the sanctuary, selling prints, jewelry, art, fashion, toys, gizmos, and all manner of decorative doodads. A food truck was parked on 26th Street, selling fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, as neighbors bumped into each other outside, catching up-and probably discussing the day’s haul from the nearby farmer’s market.

This was Baltimore, alive and fun and quirky. I’d found Charm City a couple miles north of the Inner Harbor.

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I wasn’t staying there either. I’d found a hotel built on the site of a brewery in what real estate people and Baltimore boosters are calling Harbor East, a little east of the National Aquarium and a little west of Fells Point, the historic district that’s one of the city’s busy nightlife districts. The Fairfield Inn & Suites Downtown caught me eye for more than just the free wifi, free breakfast and free bikes to borrow: It’s a newly built, LEED-certified hotel that’s embraced the architectural vernacular of its city.

The general manager, Roberta Wittes, explained as she took me on a tour, pointing out the row home that’s been integrated into the building and now serves as a presidential suite. The hotel is built on the site where the original Star Spangled Banner was sewn: Mary Young Pickersgill finished the flag that would fly over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 at 101 President Street, when it was Claggett’s brewery.

While the Fairfield was built to echo the look of an old brewery, Woodberry Kitchen, the city’s hottest restaurant, is set in a foundry built around 1870. The menu lists the farms and fishermen of the Chesapeake Bay region who provide the night’s ingredients, making it as of-the-moment as a restaurant can be, with handsome waiters parading around in plaid button-ups. The night I had dinner, Duff Goldman was sitting at a two-top and got up to say hey to the guys working the wood burning oven.

There are, of course, still problems in Baltimore, starting with blocks and blocks and blocks of abandoned housing that are both symptom and cause of urban decay. With a talented local photographer named Patrick Joust, who happens to have a day job as a research librarian, I toured some of the more depressed corners of the city. An understatement: It’s not all new hotels and fancy restaurants.

But among the boarded up row homes are signs of civic pride, like Roots Fest 2011, an event held in West Baltimore the Sunday after the craft fair. The idea is to reunify a neighborhood that was rent in two by the construction of a highway that’s now been partially abandoned. (Traffic still flows in one direction.) Attendance was light, but that the festival would happen at all is a sign of progress, Patrick said.

I found more good news at Lexington Market, the home of Faidley’s, the restaurant that’s been praised so many times it shouldn’t need to make lump crab cakes that taste this good. But they do. The line still snakes around the space, all the way to the lobster tank, as fish mongers banter in thick Baltimore accents. Who needs the Inner Harbor anyway?