Up to California
Jul/090
Once upon a time in a land far far away there was a Jetta with a Connecticut license plate in the parking lot of hotel. In a 4 day whirlwind we drove across the country and ended up staying with a good friend of ours also visiting San Diego. We took I-81 from Pennsylvania down to Nashville and stayed at the Music City Hostel. Although we only stayed for a night, Nashville seems like an interesting city, definitely worth checking out again. Next we drove up through Missouri and Kansas, sleeping overnight in a Colorado rest stop. From there we visited Boulder, a really hip and happy city. We at brunch at the Dushanbe Tea House made and shipped from Tajikistan. We had Russian caravan black tea and vanilla nut rooibos. Next we grabbed a beer at Mountain Sun Brewery, specifically the Kind IPA on nitrogen.
The real purpose of our excursioin to Colorado was to visit and mooch off a friend of ours living in Fort Collins. We made the 45 min drive north and met him after work for some beers at the Odells brewery. My friend had recently bought a house, had 2 dogs and a cat, and was getting married in 19 days, it was an interesting stay. The following morning we got back in the car and drove through the rockies, and over the continental divide. Its interesting how on the east side its all green, lush and full of pine trees while on the west coast side the land is sun baked shades of red and orange.
Then a few hours later we ended up in a castle in Las Vegas. Then after checking in, walking through the New York New York we bumped into some friends from home. Small world. After a night of drinking and various Vegas activities we drove the final 5 hours to San Diego.
Across the country in one post.
Road Trip 2.0
Jul/090
I have complete another college degree and therefore I will undertake another road trip across this great and large country. This time my travel companion will be my girlfriend Emma. Our goal is to visit the cities and natural wonders of the pacific coast. We will focus on San Diego, San Fransico, Portland and Seattle with definite stops at Yosemite, Big Sur, Oregon Coast, Mt Rainer and hopefully Alaska. We will also be attempting to document our travels visually through our digital cameras and mentally through more indepth writing. We have discussed writing about our experiences with this trip and how they reflect on our through our relationship. I will certainly post occasional updates here, I may even post snipets of some more formal writing, who knows.
Of course we really haven’t planned the trip much, I’d say we’ve put less thought into it than I did on the previous road trip. Tomorrow we leave, no first destination, or inclination of the declination of the north star from our first stop. I believe we may try and stop some where in Colorado for our first official way point of the journey. I have been reading a bit more and, oops I forgot to finish the sentace and we started our road trip already.
Once you go King Crab Do You Ever Go Back?
Jun/090
I’ve never had Alaskan King crab before today, I’ve never interviewed seriously with a large corporation I could potentially be working at for several years before today. Today I caught a glimpse of a potential future for myself and I was quite shaken.
Yesterday I caught a flight out of Hartford, a layover in Chicago and my final destination being Seattle. I didn’t pay for the flight, in fact I didn’t have to book the flight it was all taken care of for my on behalf of a large computer software company. This experience was unique to me, not because I haven’t flown to Seattle before (I have, check previous blog post) but rather it was the first time I was courted by the money, experience, and life of corporate culture. Recently I had planned a trip to the Florida Everglades, and myself and classmates spent hours scouring the Internet for the very best flight and car rental details we could find, our objective was to minimize cost. Now this software company believed It was a good investment for them to spend a certain amount of money to fly and arrange for all my travel and housing accommodations while they interviewed me. The contrast between the two scenarios was unbelievable, and the simplicity of the latter was very enticing. I find myself wondering if it was worth my time to find the cheapest flight to Florida, or should I have a bit more and thrown a wad of cash at the problem?
After completing my obligation and interview with this company I was given several taxi vouchers to go explore the Seattle areaa. Now I have been there before, but I was given a certain allowance for food, I might as well experience what the city has to offer.After paying a 30 plus dollar cab ride with a coporate voucher I eventually found myself at Fisherman’s Restaurant where I inteded to purchase a fine dinner for myself. Being seated outside I had a clear view of the sun setting behind the Cascade mountain range, the commericial docks of Seattle and from behind the restaurant rose the sky scrapers of Seattle. The Cascades are a given, but the latter were a result of someone choosing to create them, and working very hard to build them.
Places I want to Visit
Apr/090
This is a quick post of places I would like to visit. I am rapidly approaching the end of my college career and it seems like it would be a good time to try and visit this places. I’ll update this list with more information as I investigate each one of them.
- Georgia Guidestones, because they are a cool glimpse into the making of a legend.
- Alaska.
SISG08 around the world
Jul/080
I recently attended the Summer Institute of Statistical Genetics which was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. The school attracts students and professionals from around the world and instructs them in the latest techniques in a large variety of areas. I traveled from Connecticut with my lab mate Jorge, and I was scheduled for 2 modules taking 6 days with a weekend in the middle. I also added an extra 4 days onto the end of my stay to allow for sight seeing. Many of the attendees elected to stay in a dorm because it was the cheapest housing available, Jorge and I choose this route.
We began to hang out with several of the attendees and by the end we were good friends. The variety of people was amazing. There were professionals and students from Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Columbia, the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Austrailia, Denmark and England. Early on a large number of us, maybe 20 or so had dinner at a brew pub creating a table the size of the entire room. It was such an awesome moment because so many people, with no connection got together and had a great time. We found differences and commonalities in our work, social experiences and politics. In fact if you wanted a new perspective on politics, or a world event you only needed to pick up your beer and walk to a different part of the table. It is interesting discussing revolution with people whos country has recently gone through one in the past 50 years, where as its a much more abstract discussion for Americans.
After leaving the bar, I suggested that several of us try and walk to the shore. Severall people agreed and I picked a direction and lead the group. I really had no idea where we were going but I found my way and we made it to the water eventually. We were able to spend the nights and weekend of our stay exploring downtown seattle and the surrounding areas. It was a very relaxed atmosphere as most of us had put on hold our daily responsibilities for this trip, a very rare situation in which to meet new people. We celebrated a fellow compute programmers birthday who was from Denmark by all packing into a sushi restaurant where you can pick your dish off of a large conveyer belt, and finished off the evening awkwardly remembering our childhood piano lessons in the dorm.
All good things have to come to an end, and slowly we began loosing members of the group as they finished up their courses. I luckily had a few extras for my first north western adventure.
Back to the inspiration
Jul/080
The title of this blog is in reference to a line from Richard Linklater’s movie about dreams. A lady is speaking to the dreamer about her frustration with human interaction. She feels that in what ever society she is from people are afraid of people. We follow predetermined scripts in many of the actions we do daily, supposedly to get away from this human to human interaction. An example she provides is at the fast food joint, rather than speaking out our order we just say a number and expect the “do you want fries with that” response.
Most my posts have been more in the travel log format, simply a glorified list of where I’ve gone, and what I’ve done. I haven’t really been diligent in keeping it current because I find that writing that information is not entertaining to me. I am going to try and switch my posts focus to the human situations which I encounter in every day life, or travel.
Chicago, IL
Mar/080
Well, I am going to finish up the road trip tale once and for all. After driving the better part of the day across Americas upper heartland we arrived in the city of Chicago. We knew of nothing to expect other than we were staying at a high class hostel. I recommend the HI in downtown Chicago, a very professional and fun place to stay. We all checked into our rooms (although they were on different floors) and called it a night for the first time on the trip.
In the morning we woke up just in time to see the free breakfast being taken away, and we made our plans. We bought tickets to the observation deck of the sears tower, asked around for a good pizza place and a museum and began our day. We made the long walk to the “magnificent mile” and took in the beautiful architecture about which we new next to nothing. The sears tower was slightly anti-climatic, although it did afford amazing views of the city. After the tower, we made our way towards the Art Institute of Chicago. It was half price for kids, so it made the sights that much better. Among the many exhibits in the museum there were two which really stand out in my mind, even today. The first was the Contemporary wing which house a few exhibits in “new media”, one was a room with large ceiling to floor, kitty-cornered scrolling LED bars displaying various messages. I had never known that this type of “new media” was accepted at traditions art institutions. Another neat exhibition was one with miniature rooms from every period in modern times. Each little piece just reminded me of the many dioramas I created as a child, and how crappy they must of been.
Later in the day we made our way to the Museum of Contemporary Art which had an interactive exhibition of a skinny kid trying to cut a large tree using an old fashion lumberjack saw. He kept stopping every minute or so for breaks, you’d think they could have found someone with a little more muscle, even contemporary gym muscle (compared to old school lumberjack muscle) to man the exhibit? Another neat feature was they had a car cut to look like it fell from the sky and crashed into the sidewalk in front of the museum. Our penultimate destination of the afternoon was Millenium Park, which included the Cloud Gate, and Crown Fountain. Cloud gate is a large 3 story tall stainless steel, reflective, donut like structure, only with no hold. You can walk under it, and it provides awesome reflections and distortions of yourself and surroundings. Crown Fountain, is a huge rectangle structure with LED display that can change, and fountain fixtures that spew water out the front and sides. They had several images up, I believe the most interesting one was a female head which looked like it was spitting on everyone. We finished up the afternoon with a deep dish pizza from the original pizzeria UNO.
At night we made our way across town to the hip, jazz bar district where we caught a live act. It was an interesting evening, however I most distinctly remember Pete and I were drinking expensive beers, while Sasha managed to get free PBR from the bartender because he asked her what its “vintage” was. Back at the hostel we bumped into some Irish lads, who traveled all the way from the Green Isles for some KISS music festival? They apparently had gotten drunk that night and went to a strip club, then though they could take us in ping pong, hah.
What conclusions can I draw from the trip? Maybe in another post…
Copper Mountain, CO – Keystone, South Dakota
Feb/080
Wow, what a delay between postings? I apologize for the lack of narrative not only in finishing the tale of the great cross country epic, but also in the following months. I will do my best to summarize the events after our time in Utah. We drove most the morning, and afternoon through the canyon, bare rock landscape of Utah. We were slowly gaining elevation as the mountains in the distance were not so distant anymore. I can only assume that we were crossing the great continental divide, the Rocky Mountains. Our surroundings transformed from earthen shades of washed out red to beautiful green, mountain vegetation. We passed towering mountains, with rivers, rafters, bikers, and hikers all traveling orthogonal to the road. As we got closer to Copper Mountain, a ski lodge / venue for Trancegression we started noticing towering pine trees. Behind the towering tree’s were equally towering houses.
The Trancegression festival was a slightly different atmosphere than what we were used too. Apparently the majority of attendees stayed in the ski lodge itself, which essentially eliminated the “shakedown” atmosphere that is, at least I though, ever present at music festivals. Instead there was a small parking lot, a bus rides away from the stage where people in tents congregated. The music was pretty good, we relaxed on the mountain side in the rain listening to Pharcyde, while watching the local police watch us with high powered binoculars. Evidently the local law enforcment was very worried about the type of people that are traditionally associated with a music festival, and went out of there way to harass festival goers. While listening to Pharcyde, we saw the police confront four people, each of which eventually ended up face down in plastic handcuffs. Apparently there was a representative from the ACLU lawyer in attendance and was helping people avoid from forfeiting any of their rights while dealing with the police. The Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s McGee were very good, and played till sometime in the early morning.
We ended up just deciding to continue on with our journey, knowing we had to cross vast distances of America’s heart (flat) land. We did most the traveling at night, however not once during my turn at the wheel did I notice a speed limit sign outside of a town. Somewhere in Wyoming we stopped at a rest stop, which was supposedly self maintainable. Obviously, someone probably cleaned every once in a while, but all the toilets just dropped deep into the ground, where they somehow created a vacuum effect which kept all smells in the ground, and gave your butt a nice breeze. I believe this effect was what ancient Greek and Roman plumbing systems were designed to do, a 2000 year circle.
Following the GPS we eventually made our way into North Dakota and the foot of Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. We only choose to see Crazy Horse from affar, fearing a large parking and admittance fee. We arrived at Mt. Rushmore before official park hours began, so we walked right in for free. Its quite amazing seeing these huge stone faces remove themselves from a photograph and be placed right in front of you.
After leaving the park, we began our long ride across South Dakota, past Wall Drug, and Minnesota, Illinois to Chicago.
Arches National Park | Moab Utah
Jul/070
We arrived at Arches National Park around noonish the next day. We lucked out and the outside temperature was only a cool 100 degrees, we stocked up on water at the visitor center and checked out the park. Arches is a beautiful national park of sand stone formations that sometimes form these amazing arches. They all have ominous names like the Fiery Furnace and Devil’s Garden.
If you disobeyed the posted signs they also turned out to be great places to do simple bouldering and climbing. The extra views offered on top of the boulders or arches were extremly gratifying. We checked out all the different arches and structures for most the day, around 7 oclock we headed into Moab to grab dinner.
In New Orleans we met a beautiful lady from the Moab area who told us about an awesome hostel to stay at and a cool natural pond to go swimming. We found our way to the Lazy Lizard hostel and asked directions to Left Hand to go swimming. We found our way to these sets of small swimming ponds and cooled off in the clear water. While swimming I felt such an overwhelming feeling of … connectedness, this really was a Real Human Moment. Someone in New Orleans was able to help us find a great place to stay and go swimming half way across the country. The few hours we spent swimming really solidified what I was looking for in the trip.
Back at the hostel we met our fellow travelers and chatted the night away. There was a couple traveling from a semester in California back home to Boston, another couple originally from Connecticut was on their way back to Texas after Bonnaroo. There were a few more permanent residents such as Carmine and John. There was also another traveler, 22, who was moving to Lake Tahoe, CA. She was a beautiful and charming woman who was making her journey’s by herself. We started chatting and talked most the night, only interrupted by the various characters and locals coming in and out. I felt as if I should have asked for her number or e-mail, but of course I didn’t. Oh well its moments like that which keep the traveling bug alive. If anyone knows a girl moving to the Lake Tahoe region, send me my email.
Jimbo
Grand Canyon
Jul/070
It seems that they raised the prices of visiting a national park such as the Grand Canyon is ridiculous. It cost me 250 dollars to see the Grand Canyon. 25$ per car and 225$ for a damn speeding ticket. We finally made it to the Grand Canyon about an hour before sunset. The North Rim is setup like a resort with many small cabins lining the rim and a great lodge right on the edge. The lodge had a pricey restaurant where you can dine on expensive food while looking out into the Canyon through the large picture windows. After dinner you could relax on faux Adirondack chairs outside while the sun sets.
For the poorer traveler we skipped these ameneties and just ate the beautiful views (ZING!). We walked out on a little secured outcropping built into the side of the canyon and absorbed the sites. The views are way to immense to try and capture with my simple camera. The immensity and scale of the canyon is even more impossible to capture physically, it truly is a site that you must see for yourself.
After watching the sun descend behind the back of the canyon we restarted our never ending travels. Fearing the strict rules and wizardy of the Mormon commanders in Utah we stopped at the last open liqour store just before the border in Arizona. This small esetablishment was half bar / half liqour store, an interesting idea. We all bought our liqour with our 3 different versions of the CT license and crossed the line into the much feared Utah. We found a motel around midnight and crashed.
Jimbo