category: abandoned category: louisana pubDate: Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:41:25 GMT

>> The Miss Rockaway Armada is both a collection of individuals and an idea. At its most basic, the idea is this: we’re going to float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans on rafts that we built ourselves. The crew can be called many things: artists, musicians, builders, travelers, organizers, dreamers. ... We are floating down the Mississippi River on a raft we built from trash. The catch is that we don’t know much about boats or rivers, and we don’t have any money. We know we are blowing crazy hot air, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand what we’re doing. <<

http://www.flickr.com/groups/missrockaway/pool/tags/forsite/show/

http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/boat/

category: unsafe activities category: adventure category: boats category: the river category: to-do pubDate: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:23:49 GMT

category: abandoned category: louisana pubDate: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:17:57 GMT

It's been cold and stormy for much of the last two weeks, and I took the good weather last weekend to go on a swamp tour with my parents near Lafayette. This weekend, however, turned out sunny and warm, perfect for flying. As promised we practiced emergency procedures, including landing at a grass field north of the Hammond airport. This grass field you would hardly ever mistake for an airport! It's just some grass beside what looks like a farmhouse, surrounded by plowed fields, some cattle. We're cruising along at 3000 feet and the instructor pulls the throttle to idle, and we circle to lose altitude, sideslip to lose some more. Pretty soon we're floating on in over some bemused cows.

total: 8.0 hours dual instruction

category: flying pubDate: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:28:40 GMT

My new work computer, a ThinkPad T410, finally arrived at LSU! I went to pick it up this morning with the complete entourage of parents and the little dog.

It's running Windows 7. I plan to blow this away in favor of Ubuntu, but for now I'm giving Windows a little test-drive. It seems not too bad, in the sense that it generally stays out of the way.

I installed Google Chrome and Mozilla Thunderbird immediately. Unfortunately I can't do any actual work on it until I get Matlab installed--tomorrow night hopefully. Looking forward to getting down to business!

It doesn't have nearly the battery life of the tiny X-series, but I'm happy to have a powerful machine, as I've been doing some very CPU-intensive simulations lately.

category: computer pubDate: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:01:42 GMT

The ceiling at George's restaurant, located under Interstate 10 just around the corner from my house in Baton Rouge, is covered in dollar bills. Most are heavily tar-stained from the not-so-distant past before the restaurant smoking ban.



It seemed like the time had come to add my own. I borrowed the house Sharpie and mooched a dollar (actually, two!) off my friends to make this birthday contribution to George's ceiling. You'll be amused to know that in the first attempt I misspelled my own name!

category: pictures category: birthday category: louisana pubDate: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:35:40 GMT

>>The best idea seemed to come from Martin's own mother. She used her $100 to buy 400 quarters and scatter them on a grammar school playground. Recess that day was unlike other recesses.<<

via sfgate.com

pubDate: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 06:25:26 GMT

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day at the airport and it seemed like everyone wanted to fly. Usually I have the Hammond airport all to myself, but today there were three, four aircraft in the traffic pattern and the usually quiet common traffic radio frequency was alive with pilots coordinating with each other. Must sound hilarious to someone flying out of a busy airport, but for Hammond/Northshore (KHDC) this was a busy day! Adding to the day's novelty, the wind was blowing opposite its usual direction, so we took off (er, departed) on Runway 13 instead of 31. Which of course is the same runway, just used in the opposite direction. Waiting for departure, a bright yellow Steerman bi-plane (looked just like this one) landed right in front of us. Next week we're going to practice emergency procedures, including landing on a grass field somewhere north of the airport(!).

Up to 6.9 hrs dual instruction.

category: flying pubDate: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:34:05 GMT

pubDate: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:16:30 GMT

category: mardi gras category: louisana pubDate: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:31:30 GMT

pubDate: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:58:11 GMT

H&R block has decided to start charging for access to past years' tax returns:

"Our H&R Block Free Edition customers don't get free storage. But you can still access your prior-year return.

2008 return Only $9.95"

Jerks.

pubDate: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:09:20 GMT

Drove out to Tangipahoa Parish this afternoon for my first 1.1 hours logged of formal flight instruction at Hammond Northshore airport in Cessna 152 number N5107B (!).

First impressions: that's a damn small airplane!

category: flying pubDate: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:55:16 GMT

I thought there was an agreed-upon global standard, but apparently I am mistaken.

Also: why?

category: reader participation pubDate: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:50:01 GMT

The place where Bree works was mentioned and pictured in the New York Times today:

Walking Into the Earth’s Heart: The Grand Canyon



>>By the time we reach Phantom Ranch, its own side canyon, Bright Angel Creek, is deep in chilly shade. To reach the quiet huddle of stone and timber cabins under their grove of silvery cottonwoods, the trees tattered with old dry leaves, with a bunk waiting, and hot showers in the bathhouse, and the creek plashing by — relief floods in. But even though we’ve descended to 2,000 feet above sea level, it’s still freezing.

When the ranch bell rings for dinner, some two dozen guests troop from the cabins through the frigid dusk to the main lodge, where we quietly feast on stew, corn bread and salad. We’re from all over, all walks of life: a student from Quebec, a trucker from Kentucky, a fisherman from Alaska, a college student from New York, a woman in insurance, from Pennsylvania. All these trappings of people’s lives seem to fade in the context of this deep retreat from the world. We’re just people, making the pilgrimage from cradle to grave.

At 8 p.m. the dining room turns into a kind of mess hall. People sit around playing cards, or Trivial Pursuit, drinking wine or beer, and the counter opens for the sale of odds and ends. On a shelf sits the box for river mail, where letters wait for rafters coming downstream.<<

category: arizona category: bree pubDate: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:07:24 GMT

You couldn't ask for a more perfect autumn day for a holiday, cool and breezy with the cold winter sun shining down brightly at high angles through the oak canopy, the streets devoid of all traffic and startlingly silent, some houses with twelve cars parked in front and the others with none. I took the little dog on a long holiday romp, running through the empty streets and chasing squirrels up the driveways towards columned southern mansions, spanish moss draped in front. Sara prepared a great little thanksgiving for us: me and her and ryan, ryan's dad, Azedah and Rob. Turkey and stuffing and potatoes and cranberry sauce. Saffron rice from azi, curry chicken from Rob. Pumpkin and mint-chocolate pies, Swiss chocolate and Belgian beer.

Now just me & the little dog back at home, drinking hot green tea.

pubDate: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:28:03 GMT

It's finally gotten cold here in southern louisiana (hey, it hit 38° one night!). The following recipe really hit the spot:

- soup stock of some kind
- tortilla chips (corn)
- cheese (grated)
- bunch of cilantro (chopped)
- salsa (chunky, spicy)

This sounds like an unnecessarily contrived concoction, but it turned out to be unexpectedly delicious, and perfect for these chilly autumn nights. Heat up the soup (I was told to use chicken stock but instead used a carton of tomato basil soup from whole foods), add the salsa. Put tortilla chips in a bowl, sprinkle cheese on them, and pour in the soup. Add generous helping of cilantro. Warm, spicy, and delicious.

category: recipes category: cooking pubDate: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:42:26 GMT

[ dawn over san luis obispo vineyards, as seen from the train ]

I was delighted to find the Obispo Hostel in San Luis Obispo, a reasonably cheap ($26) and very clean place to sleep just a block away from the train station. I've been in SLO a few times before, visiting shamster and bobolly back when they went to school there. It's a pleasant college town, full of enterprising students, and with a walkable downtown full of independent businesses (not to mention curiosities such as the Bubblegum Alley). But I think this was the first time the town really clicked for me, though, enjoying slices of pizza and, then, hunkered down at Linnea's cafe, enjoying coffee and waffles while peals of laughter from one joyous group intertwined with piano music being played by another guest.

The town is a stop for Amtrak's Coast Starlight train that runs from Seattle to Los Angeles daily, and for the more frequent Pacific Surfliner trains that originate in SLO and run to San Diego. I woke up early and made the easy stroll from the hostel over to the train station, catching the 6:45am Surfliner bound for Orange County. I was happy to find such a functional little train station at the outskirts of such a functional little town.

The train made for a pleasant ride. The train itself doesn't go very fast, never really exceeding 40 MPH while gliding between small coastal communities, often traveling right at the edge of the ocean and other times moving through agricultural areas. There's an AC electrical outlet in each row, so I didn't have to worry about battery power while I typed up that livejournal entry about my hitchhiking trip (though of course I'd have to wait till later to post it).

I have to say that the cafe car, though, was a disappointment, selling only nonperishable trail mix and shrink-wrapped danishes and that sort of thing, the fare of cheap motel breakfast buffets and less appealing even than airplane food. Scowling at the other options, I settled on a simple coffee for my breakfast. Notably, though, they do sell Arrogant Bastard beer, a delicious San Diego microbrew—but not what I had in mind for breakfast. With nearly a whole train car at their disposal, and traveling through the most productive agricultural land in the country, don't you think they could muster something a little more ... Californian?

At Oxnard the train begins to head inland and the terrain turns into an interesting rocky landscape near Chatsworth, traveling through a sequence of tunnels and passing the northbound Coast Starlight on its way to Seattle. At Los Angeles Union Station the train pauses for 15 minutes before resuming the second half of its journey.

The train ran precisely on time, which surprised me. At Union Station an Irish man took the seat next to me and we chatted about our various travels; I felt quite legitimate with a casual mention of being in Belgium last week. He marveled about Amtrak's promptness and affordability--a judgment error due to small statistics, I assured him.

The ride to Irvine took 6 ¾ hours and cost $38. It's about 230 miles, giving the train an average speed of 34 miles per hour and a cost of 16 cents per mile. The cost seemed reasonable, the pace a little slow, but, altogether, being on vacation after all, it was a satisfying experience.

At Irvine I caught a local Orange County bus #86 right to my parent's house. I don't think I've ever before taken an OCTA bus, but it turned out to be super convenient.

I'd love for Amtrak to resume the Sunset Limited Service from New Orleans east to Jacksonville, Florida and on to Miami (which ceased with hurricane Katrina). I'd take that trip.

category: trains category: waffles pubDate: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:39:20 GMT

My favorite ride on this trip was with Hal, a sprightly and kind gentleman driving this fine old contraption. I was thumbing just outside the Big Sur general store. Pulling out of a parking spot, he waved me over, and I climbed up into this interesting vehicle of his, which he eagerly explained to be a 1968 Toyota Landcruiser. He told me that he grew up in Big Sur and had lived most of his life there. When I asked him whether he'd taken any off-roading trips in his Landcruiser he told me about the time he lived in Darwin, a tiny little town just outside of Death Valley, and the backcountry trips to the Saline Valley hot springs. The funny thing about his landcruiser is that, despite being more than 40 years old, it has only 70,000 miles! His son had found it abandoned in a barn somewhere.



Hal was one of those people I really felt I'd like to keep in touch with. He seemed like such a nice person to join for one of these back-country off-road treks through the desert, exploring hidden canyons and camping by oases. If I had a card handy I'd have given him one and hoped to hear something, but asking for anything more than a ride just seems presumptuous. Though I'd love to have a photo-album of all the interesting people who've given me a lift, I rarely even try to take their picture, for the same reason. But I did ask Hal if I could take this photo, and he readily agreed, even driving up on an embankment (teetering on an escarpment to the pacific ocean!) for a good shot. It was a short ride, only five miles down the road, but a joyous one.

category: hitchhiking pubDate: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:59:52 GMT

The open road is a hitchhiker's best friend. A two-lane highway in a remote place is the best kind of road. You're going north or you're going south, that's all there is to it. Stop in at a town for a bite to eat, then stick out your thumb and get back on the road. Urban sprawl, on the other hand, is a trap for us, a slog through a hostile jungle. In cities the going is slow. Everyone going every which-way, thru-traffic is hard to find, and the good hitching spots are few. On the country road, just walk to the edge of town and now everyone is going your direction and happy to give you a ride.

As an infrequent hitchhiker, this trip started with that slightly sick, anxious feeling in the bottom of my stomach one feels when one gets close to the moment of truth in some questionable enterprise. I took the city bus to the outskirts of Santa Cruz. When the bus route crossed the highway, I knew it was time, time to put plans into action. The queasy feeling comes from knowning that a road that looks simple on a map is really a complex thing, with onramps and offramps and bubbles of urban sprawl. What if no one stops? What if I don't get to a good stopping place by sundown? What if the road turns into an unwelcoming high-speed, six-lane freeway? I pulled the cord and stepped out into an unknown place, on my own now. With that slightly queasy feeling I marched over the road and down onto the onramp, right by that pedestrians prohibited sign, set my bag down, put on a grin and stuck out my thumb.

And that queasy feeling instantly disappears when the feeling of the open road comes flooding in, when the third car to pass stops and offers a ride. Now you know it's all going to work out, that hitchhiking still works, the river is still flowing, the train is still moving, America is still yours to discover, and you can travel it with just a small knapsack and no fixed itinerary. You've injected yourself into the bloodstream of society, you're coursing along, mixing and mingling with the machinery of society. Along one of the most beautiful roads in California, too: Steinbeck Country, Monterey, Big Sur, Morro Bay.

Ten rides, Santa Cruz to San Luis Obispo

0. 09:19 am, Santa Cruz city bus #71, Santa Cruz towards Watsonville, $1.50. All of the crazy people I met on my trip were aboard this bus.

1. "Sorry I'm only going a couple miles, but you're welcome to a ride!"
   "A mile's a mile, thanks for picking me up!"
   After I got him started story-telling, he seemed genuinely disappointed he wasn't going further.
   "Too bad our ride's so short, there's so many stories we could share!"
   To Larkin Valley exit.

2. Waiting at an onramp, the first vehicle to pass picked me up, a small farm delivery truck taking oranges to market. Got to try out my tiny bit of spanish. Agricultural workers are a reliable source of rides, and riding in trucks is fun. Waiting at onramps, especially in the country, is very effective.

3. A pretty 35 year-old woman with an infant in the back seat picked me up from an on-ramp at the edge of Monterery and took me to the other side of town in a fancy new Honda.

Waiting for rides is really a visceral experience of a Poisson process; doesn't matter how long you've been waiting, the next ride could be yours. Standing along side the highway, the wait can seem an eternity. But then you check the time and see that it's only been ten minutes.

4. "Hey, I figured you look like a clean-cut kid, I figured, Hey why not?"
   Middle-aged Hispanic woman on her way home from work in Santa Cruz.

5. In a raised, black F350 truck with a painting-company logo on the side: "Hey, what's in the bag? No guns or nothing? 'cause I got a gun and I'll shoot you. [pause, grin] Well, you look pretty clean-cut. We're going to Carmell." The same driver handed me a bottle of wine when he dropped me off at the general store in Big Sur.

Here, amongst redwoods and mountain streams, I wished I were traveling with a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a tent. Hike, camp, hitch a ride, repeat.

6. My favorite ride of the trip, a short one from the general store to a scenic veiw stop a couple miles down the road, with Hal in his 1968 Toyota landcruiser.

The ocean view is beautiful, but I'm nervously measuring the diminishing distance between the sun and the sea.

7. Dan picked me up from the turnout where I was stationed, overlooking the ocean but generally being ignored by the tourists driving the highway. "You know, I had a feeling there'd be a hitchhiker," he said.

   Feathers, fossils, and dried flowers lined the dashboard of his Honda CRV. At first I feared he might be of the annoying overly-spiritual sort, but our conversation turned out to be quite enjoyable. He's a conservationist for the American Land Trust, out on a field trip to investigate a few sites. We discussed astronomy and geology and out of the corner of his eye he somehow spotted a huge bobcat stalking its prey in a field along side the road. Dropped me off at the Hearst Castle road in San Simeon.

I'm passing and being passed by many long-distance bikers, making their way up and down the Pacific Coast Bike Route.

8. A nice guy in a pickup took me twenty miles down the road on his way home from work. It occurs to me that no-one has asked me why I am hitching, as if it's assumed to be a completely normal activity.

9. Immediately I was picked up by an enthusiastic Peruvian and his young wife and stuffed myself into the back of their tiny Honda alongside their cute infant daughter named Adrianna. Dropped me off on Santa Rosa street in San Luis Obispo. Dinner, a hostel, a train station.

180 miles in about 7.5 hours, an average speed of 24 miles/hour. Probably with a sign I could have held out for a long distance ride and made the trip at full highway speed, but meeting so many people and traveling leisurely along the coast highway was kind of the point. Eating waffles at a cafe in San Luis Obispo, the slow travel, stopping at dusk to check into a hostel, seemed delightfully and refreshingly antiquarian in an age of red-eye flights, late-night arrivals, and rushed connections.

Beats taking the all-night greyhound, anyway.

category: california category: hitchhiking pubDate: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:53:29 GMT

pubDate: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:35:19 GMT

>>I spent my first night in Manhattan curled up in an alleyway. It wasn't intentional; while still in LA, I had heard that a friend of a friend would be vacating her apartment in Spanish Harlem, near Columbia, and that given New York's real estate market I'd better grab it while I could. An agreement was reached; I wired ahead with the date of my August arrival; and after dragging my luggage through the airport, the subways, Times Square, and across 109th from Broadway to Amsterdam, I finally stood at the door, a few minutes past 10 PM.

I pressed the buzzer repeatedly, but no one answered. The street was empty, the buildings on either side boarded up, a bulk of rectangular shadows. Eventually a young Puerto Rican woman emerged from the building, throwing a nervous look my way before heading down the street. I rushed to catch the door before it slammed shut, and, pulling my luggage behind me, proceeded upstairs to knock, and then bang, on the apartment door. Again, no answer, just a sound down the hall of a deadbolt thrown into place.

New York. Just like I pictured it. I checked my wallet--not enough money for a motel. I knew one person in New York, a guy named Sadik whom I'd met in LA, but he'd told me he worked all night at a bar somewhere. With nothing to do but wait, I carried my luggage back downstairs and sat on the stoop. ...

It was well past midnight by the time I crawled through a fence that led to an alleyway. I found a dry spot, propped my luggage beneath me, and fell asleep, the sound of drums softly shaping my dreams. In the morning, I woke up to find a white hen pecking at the garbage near my feet. Across the street, a homeless man was washing himself at an open hydrant and didn't object when I joined him.<<

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, pages 113-118. I think this anecdote took place in 1981.

pubDate: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:23:33 GMT

four wrote this in my notebook:

"Note to self: Rent cabin for a week
in the late Autumn in Bomal Belgien
(near Durbuy). Cabin must have fire place
and wood. Wine + friends"

I think any future trip to Belgium will necessitate keeping a "beer journal". The beer in Belgium was really good, just as you might have suspected! Ryah in particular was ga-ga for it, as he is v tired of the Kölsch pilsners.

Readers may also be interested to know that FrenchBelgian fries are very popular in Belgium. There were "Friteur" stands and shops everywhere, serving up fries and other fried things, covered in various goopy sauces (mayo, curry ketchup, thousand island, etc). They were actually quite good. Somewhere around Liege we saw a stand selling Frites and Escargos.

Furthermore, there really are Belgian Waffles in Belgium. They come in two varieties, named for two cities in Belgium. The Brussels style is along the lines of what passes for a Belgian waffle in the United States: thick, light, not sweet, but topped with sweet cream or fruits. On the other hand there is the Liège style, which is extremely sweet, even a bit caramelized (delicious). Both are served as a snack by street vendors, such as by the beach.

Gasoline costs about $7.25 per gallon. Google happily interprets queries like "1.3 eur per liter / 30 miles per gallon in usd per mile", which tells us that the fuel cost alone for driving is 25 cents per mile(!) in an efficient small car.

In short, Belgium agrees well with its stereotypes.

category: ryan category: waffles category: europe pubDate: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:12:02 GMT

Emily packed up and drove away on Thursday, the day after my return. She hasn't yet lined up a place for sure in Seattle, so we decided Little Dog would stay here. So it's just me & Little Dog here until I find a new housemate. New housemates seems to be in short supply in November. Also, I need to figure out some kind of puppy-sitting arrangement.

Yesterday was stormy, with gusts of wind and multiple thunderstorms passing through. One even broke off a branch of one of the many oak trees, which fell onto and shattered the windshield of Kate's car. The storms have all moved along down the road, and today is bright and sunny and cool.

category: little dog category: emily pubDate: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:55:40 GMT

(Christine's backyard in Zürich)

After a long day of travel, finally back at home in the swampy American hinterlands. Tomorrow my housemate Emily is moving away, roadtripping up through Alabama, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and Montana to Seattle where she has a new job waiting for her. We haven't quite decided yet whether Little Dog (now known as Cassie) is going or staying, but it's looking likely that she'll join Emily for the move to the pacific northwest.

pubDate: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:17:19 GMT