This will be a typical travelogue. I will start with a description of the scenery, move on to a personal anecdote, and conclude with description of a cultural practice. I am told that by adhering to this format I can both tug at heart strings and change minds, which are things I enjoy doing. Let's begin.

Dijon is a small town of 150,000. The streets, which boldy ignore every known method of organization, are full of people and cover the valley. Despite this, people are constantly and accidentally running into friends and lovers (France is very open-minded, it's difficult to tell). This happens with such frequency and against such odds that I wouldn't rule out some kind of conspiracy – probably government organized to make the tourists feel welcome. All the buildings, new and old, fit into an architectural motif found in the middle ages; I know this because ye old tanner's workshop is perfectly situated for a side-by-side comparison with the apartment complex finished in '98. Each an every building here would be a curiosity in the states – the row of gift shops at Six Flags is actually modeled after a street here in Dijon, hand to god.

My first day here in Dijon – note the shift in tone, the personal anecdote is more low key than the mise en scene – I got lost. Being the adventurous spirit that I am, I decided to wake up early to visit the weekly market scene. Finding it was no problem, and once there I blended seamlessly in with the crowd and bought a wallet in which to put the bills that are no apparent reason a quarter-inch taller. Then, being the adventurous spirit that I am, I decided to explore a bit further. Then a bit further. Then a bit further.

I did, however, have plan: once finished, I would set my left side to the sun and head south to the central road in Dijon, from which I could reach my rendez-vous. It was a good plan, and like all good plans it should have worked. What I did not know was that the Rue de la Liberte ends, quite suddenly and with little fanfare. And so I walked past it, all the way down to the souther corner of the centre ville. And then, then I thought, “The greatest generals make opportunities: I know where I am, I shall north-west until I reach my goal.” Unfortunately, this was also a good plan. With a skill that wish I could wield against someone other than myself, I deftly chose the route around and between each and every landmark I knew, including, most unfortunately, La Rue de la Liberte, which ends, quite suddenly and with little fanfare, on the western tip as well. All told I made two complete circuits of the road before I finally was able to follow the directions I asked of 3 different people and have since resolved to carry a bus map with me at all times; it is unfortunate in the extreme that the French make such bulky bus maps and such tight pants.

I do enjoy America. I feel we do many things very well – processed food, for example, is available at prices and in quantities unmatched by the Old World. There is, however, at least one aspect of our culture that the French do better, and it is a practice I will detail here and encourage everyone to adopt. When the French throw a party, the host and/or the guests buy a selections of booze and food, clip the receipts, and throw them into a jar. Once all is tallied, the sum is divided by the number of guests and everyone, no questions asked, no complaints listened to, pays an equal share. I am not a communist. I believe the tragedy of the commons. But this works.

I also wrote a tribute to the flip-down trays, but that one's private

Always illuminated, never appreciated, No smoking sign, I thank you.

So little air to go around, and it won't be replenished until touchdown. For keeping breath clear instead of brown, No smoking sign, I thank you.

Shining lonely when the buckle's shut off, the one rule that runs from landing since take-off, All so I sigh instead of cough, no smoking sign, I thank you.

A subtle reminder that we're still flying it, a quiet notice that no one's buying it, for letting us know that we're not dying yet, No smoking sign, I thank you.

You're an icon, world famous, our response: I'll make it plainest. Circle-slash cigarette - can you blame us? - We love you.

I discover DoubleTime, wish I hadn't

We left Logan Airport at 5:30PM and will be arriving in France 12 hours later after a 6 hour plane ride. I have experienced DoubleTime, that most pernicious of time zone oddities. I am frankly disappointed.

I was expecting my smartwatch to recognize the time zone gradients so I could get a neat spinning effect, but of course the lazy timepiece only updates once a day. I tried to compensate by moving the hands forward at ten minute intervals, but it wasn't the same. It also turns out that even when it's happening twice as fast as normal, watching the sky dim is even less exciting than it sounds, especially when the sun's completely gone and your just watching black turn to dark black.

Really it seems like DoubleTime is just a trick to con naïve travelers out of sleep: convince them that running from the sun will have some kind of drama so that they stay up for the six hours they do have and just when they start feeling drowsy, flash on the cabin lights and brace them for the sunrise. Time zones have a mean streak.

So, the expected thrill was a letdown, my internal clock is set to midnight, and the day is about to begin.

Travel and Racism

It's 3 hours to boarding; 10 hours to Paris; 1 more to the hotel. And I've got a sunburn on my back that would make a baboon's ass jealous. Still, I'll be in good company, assuming I see anyone else from Colby. And, though my iPod is dead, the voice in the ceilings is suggesting I “enjoy the sounds of Logan Airport;” I think I'll do just that. At least until I can convince Wok & Roll Sushi to give me access to their WiFi. For the record, Wok & Roll, I find it suspicious that you only employ people of Asian descent - people of all creeds enjoy your Sbarro-style rack of raw fish.

Whoa. I just did a quick profile of the staff in the duty free area. No joke, not only is everyone at Wok & Roll,I want to guess Korean?, but Sbarro's is exclusively white, and the three people at Starbucks are all as dark as the beans. Way to segregate, Duty Free Area; way to segregate.

Further inspection shows an exception: The Earl of Sandwich is fighting the status quo of Logan Airport Duty Free Area and employing both a young hip white girl and an older Oprah-esque black woman. The friendship that blossoms between these two as they better understand the artificiality of the boundaries between them is practically begging for a soap opera treatment. Doubtless, the entire Duty free Area is destined for a radical re-imagining.

I want to discuss the nature of fear with you, from an evolutionary standpoint.

More specifically, I want to talk about fear of the dark, which, despite inspiring the greatest show Nickelodeon ever aired, is really very inconvenient. I do not enjoy seeing vampires and rapists in every shadowed corner.

Fear of the Dark (FoD from here on) must have had a beginning: at some point in our evolutionary history, some poor prick was born with what must have seemed a laughable phobia to everyone else around at said point. While they surely teased him, his irrational fear of dark spaces (dark is an adjective here, no abbreviation) trumped their inability to work out that tigers were nocturnal, and so Johnny-FoD outlived and outbred them.

So far this makes sense - we have established how FoD better enabled Johnny to distribute and care for his world-defining semen. But Johnny and I got beef.

Before we continue, I want you to consider, for a moment, just how cool nightvision is. It is really very cool, so cool in fact that governments and hobbyists will shell out between $50 and $10,000 dollars (thank you amazon) for the pleasure of enjoying what your housecat takes for granted every day.

Johnny had the audacity to, while still pre-natal, make the game-changing decision to puss out everytime the sun went down instead of making his retinas work a little harder. Bad call, Johnny. You are the reason I'm about to blow $50.

And, for the record, owning nightvision goggles doesn't make someone a stalker; I do wish people would think for a minute before yelling accusations out their windows at 3 in the morning. People are trying to be watched sleeping.