On our trip to London I spent some time browsing the Science Museum, which holds many wonders. When I got upstairs I tingled inside at the sight of this beauty. Charles Babbage was a genius who designed a mechanical, base-10 computing device way before the modern computer era. His vision was never built: it was just too hard and expensive and plain old ahead of its time. Finally, in the 1980s, this computer was built based on Babbage’s old designs. A beautiful brass hand-cranked calculating machine! For a modern computer geek this is not unlike seeing a dinosaur brought to life.

But you’re not planning to visit everything in each guidebook, are you? Nah! So, make your own guidebooks!

Step 1: remove the bits you are actually interested in:

Step 2: collate those bits into mini-dossiers. Now, both your “Italy” chapters from Fodor’s and Lonely Planet are in one convenient place!

Have fun! Maybe you can send me a post card!

Saturday, 21 November

On Friday I took Mei out to dinner, since we were going to not see each other for most of a week. We went to an Indian place up near the Kips Bay theater, where we then saw “Where the Wild Things Are”. I think the first time I saw that book I was impressed with its style, and so my Mom thought I liked the story and read it to me a bunch, but I always thought Max was kind of a spoiled brat. At the end of the movie I mumbled to Mei, “if my son pulls that crap he is not getting any chocolate cake.” When asked if he’d get any dinner, I responded that I wasn’t so sure. I wonder if the kid might have some blood sugar issues such that missing dinner may be a bad move.

Saturday morning, Mei was up early to go to work. I slept in a bit, and treated myself to brunch at Teddy’s, which served me two eggs, fried potatoes, Canadian bacon, rye toast, fruit salad, orange juice and coffee for $8.25. Now, Cheryl’s has some tastier food, so I’ll take Mei over there, but if it is just me, I stick with the cheaper, hearty meal.

I went home, washed the dishes and relaxed a bit, until around 1400 when I rode up to Penn Station to catch the 3:45 to Chicago. Now, a plane would have been faster and cheaper, but now that I live in New York, I can “afford” the relative luxury of a train ride home. The train was pretty full, and a guy named Don sat next to me. I got the modem working on my laptop and caught up somewhat on Internet reading. At Albany they took our engine off the train and shunted a series of cars from Boston onto the front. This was exciting to me, so I shot some dark, blurry video from the passenger area.

I treated myself to dinner in the dining car. Lamb shank, half a bottle of wine, dessert, coffee, and conversation with a cute college couple who were switching to the California Zephyr in Chicago, arriving in Emeryville on Tuesday to enjoy Thanksgiving in Santa Cruz. Robin the Film major and Miru the Art History major. They’re both minoring in Making a Living.

Despite ample legroom and a glass of Scotch from the Cafe car, I tossed and turned a great deal.

Sunday, November 22

After much tossing and turning at some point I blanked out for what must have been several hours, until they turned the lights on at 7am. I kept my eyes covered with my scarf for another hour or two, taking peeks out at as Indiana passed us in an early morning haze. After South Shore we set our watches back an hour, and our train pulled into Chicago about 15 minutes early.

Don had disappeared by morning. He found me on the platform at Union Station and explained that I had been tossing and turning so much he found a seat elsewhere. He said he wanted to afford me more room, but I think he also wanted some peace and quiet. I also got to bid Robin and Miru adieu, then went upstairs to be reunited with my family. We had brunch at a place called The Breakfast Club, and headed home.

I took a walk around the neighborhood, noting the really cheap house prices, the fat and friendly squirrels at Indian Boundary Park, and the friendly duck who approached the benches with what looked like a weird chewed gum wattle hanging from his chin. When he got closer I saw he was missing his lower beak, and that wattle was his tongue hanging limply down his throat. He looked otherwise healthy, and I like to think that people manage to stuff some food down his throat. My hunch is that he will not survive the winter.

After a dinner of Mom’s ham-and-potato casserole, at some point we were watching squirrel videos on the Internet, starting with this family classic.

Monday, November 23

For some reason my work laptop couldn’t join Mom’s wireless network, and after trying to fix it I only made things worse, so I upgraded Ubuntu to 9.10, and then fixed networking.

Following advice from Mei, I did some very light research on the physical rehabilitation benefits of the Nintendo Wii, and after talking with Gwen, went ahead and ordered a Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo Fit for Dad’s birthday. With any luck, he’ll find the video game system sufficiently engaging that it will improve his physical activity and range of motion.

In the evening we ordered a pizza from Gulliver’s and I found that Netflix had Wall-E available for instant viewing, which I showed Mom on her laptop. (Now that I have a DVR again, standard cable TV is just obnoxious.)

Tuesday, November 24

Dinner was $2 burger special at the sports bar near the house with Mom. I was supposed to go by Sue’s house to help repair chairs with glue, but forgot, so I invited Sue to join us for burgers, and she and Mom concluded over dinner that it would be easiest for everyone concerned if we just brought a few more chairs to Sue’s house.

Wednesday, November 25

At work I took a stab at converting my Django application from a SQLite backend to MySQL, but ran in to all sorts of trouble because in trying to reload the data, Django freaks out because Django’s internal metadata has changed between versions, and newer Django doesn’t want to deal with older Django’s data. So much for making things painless. Anyway, this will take more effort than I had hoped.

After work I shied away from the tuna casserole and discovered the leftover pizza I had promised Mei had in fact been consumed. She also scored an earlier flight so after picking her up at O’Hare, I had her order a pizza at Gulliver’s which I picked up on the way home. On the one hand, this was the late night before Thanksgiving and she would have been sated on our local leftovers. On the other hand, she was only going to be in town for the day and I wanted to indulge my girl in a Chicago pizza.

Thursday, November 26

Thanksgiving! Turkey at Sue’s house. As a bonus, Erik and Jeannie joined us with their one year old kid and Jeannie’s parents, who don’t speak much English. Of course, Chinese know how to feast just as well as Americans so they were very much at home. I was able to exchange a very few words in Mandarin, with Jeannie’s mother enthusiastically guiding my pronunciation.

Friday, November 27

Up at the butt crack of dawn to drive Mei back to the airport in Grandma’s car. She was hoping to try and catch an earlier flight just-in-case there might be delays. I dropped her off at O’Hare at 6am, then drove back home and hibernated. Mei called around noon to say that she had caught her scheduled flight, which arrived on-time in New York, and she would rest a few hours before work.

I took the bus down to join Erik and Jeannie at their place for lunch. Chinese-style noodles, followed by Jeannie’s inaugural experiment with home-made pizza, and then a dim-sum style dessert with puff pastry and ice cream. Fanciest home-made lunch I have had in some time. Along with Jeannie’s parents we were joined by Erik’s college friend. On the way back I saw a fire truck blocking Lincoln, and a body covered in a white cloth resting in the street. An ambulance came up and picked up body. I would guess a hit pedestrian, and only now do I wonder if they may in fact have been retrieving a corpse. At Paulina I managed to card in at the turnstile and leap through the closing doors: always a rush!

Dinner was Thanksgiving Part 2, featuring Janice and Dan and Dan’s new girlfriend. We played charades.

Saturday, November 28

Brunch at P&S with Mom, Grandma, and Jessica. I packed a container full of turkey, stuffing, and veggies that proved a delicious Greyhound meal. My “Third Thanksgiving” at a truck stop McDonalds amid other pilgrims. I also grabbed a small order of french fries.

Greyhound is more uncomfortable than I remember. All the same I slept better than I had on Amtrak. I figure my body had adjusted to “travel” mode over the week, the first night out of the usual comforts of my own bed being the hardest.

Sunday, November 29

At 2AM our coach arrived in Cleveland, and we all had to get off so the coach could be cleaned, but we could leave our stuff on and we eventually got to re-board before the other passengers joining us from Cleveland. This was not a joyful experience but at least the Cleveland station had some architectural style and orderliness to it that reassured us that the ugly chaos of Chicago is not the universal truth of Greyhound.

At around 2AM, there were about three bus loads of passengers boarding coaches for New York. We waited in a separate line as the throngs marched past, until our coach was ready and we were once again aboard. My new seat mate was a tall, thin, blond, bespectacled English major named Joe returning to NYU from Louisville, (lew-uh-ville) Kentucky. Nearby was a passenger from Chicago who, through strategic sprawl of his own corpulence and feigned sleep, had managed to secure two seats to himself thus far. But as the bus filled up and the Pretty Girl came aboard, he suddenly discovered that the seat next to his was astonishingly empty, and he gallantly offered it to her. Alas, the Pretty Girl had not just come into her beauty yesterday, so she managed to look past this offer to other seats that might be available to plain-looking folk. But at this point, the bus was pretty darn full, so she soon accepted the offered seat.

From Cleveland it was two rest stops until we hit Newark Penn Station, which was choked with poorly managed traffic. After some patient navigation were were finally en route to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and it was not much after noon that I was home, and grateful for a shower.

I have made this trek before, with and without my worldly possessions. This time through I own a crazy smart phone which is recording the trip via GPS, and I can upload progress to Google Maps, for all my friends and evil stalkers to see. I can send you a link: just shoot me an e-mail.

I am very happy with the Budget truck. It is a no-frills affair: the radio is just a radio. It has two power ports. I could gripe that it doesn’t have cruise control, but that might actually be a “feature” to keep the fool at the wheel alert. Best of all, it is a Ford, so I already know the dashboard!

This Motel 6 isn’t shabby either. I inquired at a casino just down the road, figuring room rates would be subsidized by gambling, but no. The Motel 6 is less than half the price and has all I need: a decent bed, toilet, shower, air conditioning, a desk and Internet access! (Oh and a TV.) They claim the lowest rates of any national chain, so I’ll have to research what they have down the road.

Ah yes, and as for work: I have received permission to work remote for my San Jose-based employer. As for my old apartment, which I love, a friend fell in love with the place and signed a lease. I left some furniture behind and some e-waste which I have to sweet-talk her into toting downstairs on a weekday, where San Francisco will collect it for free. Another blessing was the help of a trio of college friends who helped load the truck. I treated them to pizza and beers afterwards and we reveled in the pending home ownership of two of our friends. While this recession is hurting many folks, others who have been priced out of the housing market are finding their prudent patience rewarded.

Time to settle in for the evening so I can get on the road good and early tomorrow. The Motel 6 charges $3 for the wifi access, which is just the perfect price for a guy who’d like to kill an hour before bed!

“I think it would be politically possible to return to a gold standard.”

I responded that:

“I think a carbon tax would be more relevant to the concerns of the 21st Century.”

To which some else responded:

“Our currency and economy are broken, and the solution is to tax use of fossil fuels, biggest source of productivity the world has ever seen!”

And I though yeah . . . it is hard to advocate an idea like a new “tax” during a recession. Personally, I think calling it a “carbon ration” might be smarter: you get your allotment and if you make good lifestyle choices you can sell your excess at a profit. Anyway, I responded from the basis of an idea I heard at TED last week:

Over a century ago we swore up and down that without the cheap energy afforded by black slaves the national economy would collapse. So, instead of abolishing slavery we made compromise after compromise. Ultimately our nation was plunged into the catastrophe of civil war, and we abolished slavery for International PR reasons and in order to literally free up fresh soldiers for the war effort from among the newly-emancipated populations.

These days we swear up and down that without access to unlimited cheap energy, our economy would collapse and we would be unable to enjoy the “quality” of life we do now. And as each decade passes we find greater and greater evidence that we are living on borrowed time, and that we are multiplying the problem of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and that we are approaching various global tipping points which bring us closer to catastrophe.

In both cases, abolitionists and environmentalists are ridiculed and despised an know-it-all killjoys out to ruin everyone’s fun. Where the abolitionists had printing presses that would literally be burned down by their detractors, modern radicals warm themselves with flame wars on the Internet.

To go back to your glib response to a carbon tax, it is easier to make radical changes when it is clear that the status quo is broken. A big reason for the present crisis is that we were fueling growth on unsustainable credit models. Debt Debt Debt. Injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a form of debt against the future, and if we go bankrupt with climate that’s really really not pretty. So, we have a good opportunity to look at how we structure the free market to take natural resources like the atmosphere into account, and price them appropriately so that we can realize economic benefit with the greatest efficiency.

Maybe one way to think of the idea of carbon rationing is that it is like Social Security for the environment: we each make a sacrifice now so as to secure against a future characterized by poverty. In this case the poverty would be a world wrecked by sudden catastrophic climate changes.

“Angry monkeys turn on their cruel trainer and beat him senseless with his own stick after he handed out a vicious beating to one of the trio during a performance riding mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, China”
Picture: EUROPICS[CEN] (Via: Telegraph.co.uk)

The times, they are a changin’. Huzzah!

Update: Additional photos and story at The Sun. Even more, smaller photos at Mirror.co.uk.

Awww crap.

I figured I’d revisit the problem after I had grabbed a cup of mind-enhancing coffee.
I grabbed my travel mug and headed toward the cafe where I had dined on pizza last night, and encountered a lady who explained that that guy usually opens around noon. I walked over to the main street and up a couple blocks and grabbed some coffee and a muffin at a bustling shop full of snowboarder duuudes.

I hustled back to the car, and the same lady from earlier passed by, and I asked about mechanics. There were a couple in town, but they were closed today. You could knock at their house, and they might help, but it is probably better to let them alone. I agreed that I like to have my weekends off, too, and as much as I’d like to spend the evening with the family in Pueblo, I figured that I could get a lot of reading done and rest easily another night in this quiet little mountain town. Maybe I could track down the train station and welcome the steam train as it arrived in this old snowy mountain town, which could be a lot of fun even if I didn’t get to ride.

All the same, I fiddled with the wires some more, but I couldn’t do much without even the most basic tools, so I wandered toward the highway were there looked to be gas stations, where I might find a brief diversion, and possibly even something useful.

I found someone useful. The guy at the Citgo admitted that this was the first weekend of the season that they were open for weekend service, but that he wasn’t a real mechanic, just the weekend warrior. (The owner / mechanic’s son, it turns out.) He said he had a few ideas that might help, but that he’d have to close the shop for a few minutes . . . I wandered back to the car and a bit later he pulled up to the hostel, cleaned up my ugly battery wires, noting that the one terminal had been overtightened and cracked, so let’s put on a new one . . . explaining that you only have to tighten the terminal to the point where it doesn’t move on the post . . . doesn’t start? Okay, so, you did the right by the battery, and the solenoid, so yeah, its looking like a bad starter.

Sure, he could order a new starter and get it replaced during the week, but in this situation, sometimes you could tap the starter a few times with a hammer, and then he crawled under the car on the muddy street, found the starter motor, tapped, got out of the way, and I successfully started the car. He explained where the starter is, and that it looks like a cylinder, and in my case, a very rusty cylinder, and that I could tap it myself if I had to, but that at this point, the starter is likely about to fail completely . . . it might work fine, the tapping trick might work a few more times, but most likely I’ve got just a few more starts, if any, before the thing fails completely and leaves me stranded somewhere. We figured that I might as well keep the engine running and get to Pueblo as soon as possible, where the starter could be replaced under favorable conditions. He reminded me that you don’t actually have to stop the engine to fill the tank . . .

I beamed as he modestly basked for just the briefest moment in heroic glory. I got the sense that he might be most content to account the incident as a good deed, and waited just a moment more before I inquired as to whether and how much cash he should charge for his time. He figured about fifteen or twenty dollars. He then, as I figure it, very quickly considered my circumstances versus my poverty . . . computer guy from San Francisco . . . not working . . . going to see Dad . . . nice old clunker . . . is going to need a starter . . . stayed at the youth hostel . . . and set the charge at $15.

I headed down the road, and there was still a chance I could make Durango in time to catch the train, maybe, and I thought over whether it would be worth the risk if I could, and concluding that yes, if I made Durango in good time I would risk stopping the car if I got to ride the train, because even if I got stuck, I would have had a good time for my trouble.

At any rate, I was still on the highway at 10:00, when the train was set to leave. Several minutes later I noticed some smoke on the horizon . . . I slowed down and listened out the window . . . yes, that was the train coming toward me, parallel to the highway!

You know I pulled over to the shoulder and managed to squeeze some pictures out of my dying old camera! And these were the last pictures I ever took with this camera, which has since refused to work at all.

My last camera, a Canon S100, died at around the same time as Grandma Howard, so I gifted the-camera-I’d-taken-round-the-world to my Grandma to take with her in her coffin to her next life, which makes me inclined to see changing-cameras as epochal. It had been a weird twist of fate to have been in the Midwest at that time, which allowed me to visit her in the hospital just before she entered hospice, and which allowed me to drive back up to Michigan for her funeral not long after. I was pretty broke that summer, working in the cafe in Champaign, and it wasn’t until I was back at Mom’s house and living on Unemployment Insurance that I dared to buy my Canon S400, which I badly wanted for a trip that Yayoi arranged for us: we drove together in my car to Boston so she could check out a job fair. That was the first road trip that I took with a woman who, when I returned to professional work, I invited to live with me. Later, we would marry, move to California, and become separated. I took a third professional job in San Francisco during the divorce process, and shortly after the divorce concluded, so did my most recent job.

So, you will pardon me if I read extra significance into these last photographs and bust into personal metaphor; As the day began, the trip to Durango looked unlikely, but with some outside help, I was pleasantly surprised to be on the way. I was warned that stopping to catch this train was risky, but I decided to take the chance and try for the ride. It proved to be a long shot, and I ultimately missed the full experience, but I am glad I made the effort, because I got close enough to be reminded of my own love for what I had pursued. I don’t regret the near miss, and I know better than to blame anyone. What I do know is that I really dig trains, and that at the next appropriate opportunity, it will be my privilege to buy a ticket, hop into the cab, and work to keep the fire stoked for a prolonged ride through beautiful country. (And until then, I will work for a better understanding of the whole darn thing, to avoid or at least tackle nasty surprises on the next trip.)

So, I rolled through Durango without stopping, and turned East onto US-160. Since I hadn’t stopped to ride the train, I was ahead of time, and perhaps the natural beauty of the mountains on my final leg was further enhanced by mid-day light, as well as my own hunger from not stopping for food, and my eagerness to pull into Pueblo sooner-than-expected, to see Dad and Gwen. That was a good ride, and a homecoming that did us all some good.

It was a rough night at the Lazy Lizard on a thin mattress with a thin pillow. I tossed and turned and just as I was getting my sleep on right my roommates began to stir in noisy ways so that they could get a start on the day’s rock climbing. Americans are not accustomed to the ways of youth hostels, and these guys loved to rifle through their luggage and tromp in and out, leaving the door open. I got up several times throughout the morning to shut the door. At one point I sat up awake waiting for one of the last guys to finish his noisy morning rituals and make his way out of the room. He greeted me and asked if I was a climber. When I told him no he expressed a sentiment that I was probably a nice person anyway, and he was gone, and I rested well a bit longer.

Probably around 0800 or 0900 I made my way out of bed, downstairs, apologized for waking the guy up in the middle of the night, and gave him $9.80 (tax, you see) and bathed. I packed up the car, looking forward to a breakfast in town, some hiking, and some scenic driving. I turned the key in the ignition and where the car usually makes a confident rumbling sound to get the engine purring I heard a click.

Click.

Click.

Huh.

The battery wasn’t dead, but perhaps it was weak. I got the cables out and bummed a jump off a fellow traveler. Nada. A bit longer? No.

Could be a bad battery. The hostel guy suggested the auto parts store was a twenty minute walk into town, and the maintenance guy might be going that way in a while and could give me a lift. I said I wanted a hike anyway, so I walked down the highway for not more than five minutes and bought a new battery. The battery was much larger than the one I purchased last year, but I figured bigger is better. The folks at the store lent me a crescent wrench to get the new battery swapped in.

I had thought to stow the battery in my backpack, but the battery was too large, and needed to be carried level, and besides it was heavy enough to possibly damage or destroy the backpack that has been my long-time companion around the world. I carried that sucker, taking breaks every hundred feet or so to switch arms . . . a guy was packing something in his pickup truck along the way and he offered a ride, which I politely declined . . . it is not that far. A bit farther and another guy offered another ride in his pickup truck. I accepted, and was dropped off in front of my car.

I extracted the old battery, stowing it on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, and installed the new battery, all charged and ready and–click.

Click.

Click.

“Well, I took an auto shop class twenty years ago . . .” offered the hostel guy. He took a listen to the click. The starter solenoid goes click. Well, you could try replacing that . . .

I walked back down to the parts store and easily carried back a starter solenoid. More work with the wrench and nada. Dang.

So, I asked a couple from Oregon about the mechanic they were waiting to hear back from. They said the guy had been really busy and might not be able to figure out there car today and the woman had figured out Greyhound tickets so she wouldn’t have to miss work on Monday. Gee. I wandered down the road a bit to what looked like a service station where the guys were working on Jeeps. I explained my plight. The guys said they did Jeep rentals and only knew how to service their own fleet. The more mechanically-inclined fellow affirmed that yes, start with the battery, then the solenoid . . . he recalled that with Fords often if the current from the battery is too low then the solenoid wont send any current to the starter . . . anyway, there’s a really good mechanic a little ways down in a big yellow building, and in front of him is another mechanic who is also pretty good.

So, I wandered down the road. Both mechanics were closed. I sighed and wandered back towards the hostel, figuring that worst-case, Moab isn’t such a bad place and the hostel should be cozy for a few days. I badly needed coffee and so stopped by the roadside espresso stand just a little ways down from the hostel. The guy working in the stand was friendly and asked how everything was. I replied that things were good overall, but I had to figure out my car problem. He suggested another guy that might be helpful just a few doors the other side of the hostel, and explained what he called “an old redneck trick” of climbing under the car and shorting the terminals on the starter to get a car started. That sounded worth a try, maybe. He didn’t know if his friend would be open, but he might be. He gave the guy a call and left a message, “but that doesn’t mean he’s closed.” My coffee was on the house.

I walked over there and the guy looked pretty closed, which was easy for me to accept, the kindness of the guy at the espresso stand had buoyed my spirits. I wandered back to the car, and poked around a bit. The wires coming off the negative terminal have always been a bit gnarly, so I cleaned them up a bit and gave the ignition another try and the beast started!

So, I rolled down to the auto parts store and waited a decent while to return the old battery. (I figured the big new battery a worthwhile investment, anyway.) While I was waiting I ended up talking to this other guy about the various symptoms–for example, the alternator light was on as I left the car idling. He suggested I hit it with a piece of wood and see if it started to whine. I banged the alternator with something and yes, it started to whine and the light went out. “That doesn’t mean its bad,” something about setting it to a known state because the indicator light needed a baseline or something. After we had concluded our respective business he had me follow him over to his shop, where he hooked the alternator up to a load tester, which verified that things looked good.

Well . . . I had missed my opportunity for a hike, but I could still have a meal and a scenic drive to Silverton. I popped into the Moab Diner with my maps to consider my itinerary options over a meal. The hostess assured me that a waitress would be right with me. I pored through maps and double-checked calculations, pondering some alternates . . . everything looked good and nobody had yet taken my order. I put my maps away, looked around. I tried making eye-contact with a few waitresses but they all seemed harried and uninterested. I calculated how much time I would need to order and eat and get out of there in order to make it to Silverton before sunset. I figured 3:45 would be my “drop dead” time and five minutes of being ignored later, I finished my ice water and headed out of town, stopping at the espresso stand, where a lady was now working, left a generous tip, and drove off into some beautiful beautiful breathtaking wonderful beautiful scenery. With my failing camera. That’s okay: some things are for my own eyes.

It was a good trip down UT-46, which became CO-90, but no gas along the way until I stopped at Naturita. There I found a green dinosaur logo and stopped at an old-school pump at a Sinclair station. The station was with the convenience store, and I asked the lady at the cash register is $3.05 per gallon was expensive by Colorado standards, and she explained that she hadn’t been beyond the neighboring town since Christmas, so she had no idea. Cool!

I pushed on and down US-550 South from Ouray, where I calculated I had enough time to make Silverton before dark . . . and I drove up, past signs advising of curvy roads, avalanche zones, and speed limits between 10 and 30 MPH much of the way. Up and up twists and turns and curves and well-plowed snow and ice, and freezing water streaming across the road way. Occasional wild animals and oncoming cars, nobody passed me and I passed nobody. Much of the time it was me, the car, and a blue-gray sky going on twilight. Where the scenery of the afternoon had been beautiful, the scenery of early evening was transcendent. It felt very much as if I had drove clear up into some special realm where we mortals are allowed to tread only in times of fair weather, and with great caution. My experience of the road between Ouray and Silverton was this: sublime.

I pulled in to Silverton, which looks every bit an old west mining town with very broad streets. There was snow piled along the streets, and it was nice to be visiting with a proper Winter. I couldn’t figure out the street signs but managed to find the Silverton Inn and Hostel without much trouble. I parked in front, walked right in, studied the notes left to would-be visitors explaining guest cards and rates, toured the available rooms, picked a bed, filled out a card, and took a key. I stopped down the corner where the guy admitted he would have been closed an hour ago, but that he would “make hay” and although he was out of most of his toppings he managed to make for me a delicious pizza, which I enjoyed in the company of his other customers, whose primary interest was skiing. There was further discussion of the guy’s need to sell the property we were on, which included not only the cafe we were enjoying but the energy-efficient house he had built behind it, because he was moving to New Mexico. I then dropped by the bar one block over, and for two or three dollars enjoyed good beer in the presence of a colorful cast of relaxing locals.

I turned in early and slept a good, solid, comfortable Winter sleep on a firm $20 bunk.

I figured Friday the 13th must be a good time to at least say I gambled in Las Vegas. On my way out of the buffet I counted to 31 as I walked, and stopped at the slot machine nearest me. I puzzled over the thing a bit, inserted $20, pressed the button just over 100 times, ejected a receipt, and cashed that at the teller for $25.50. This made the buffet a better deal, in my mind, but the truth is that what I mostly lost in Vegas was driving time. Oh well.

I pushed North into Utah, making good time. Just after dark I stopped for gas in Elsimore, UT and inquired about local accommodations. The lady suggested a likely-cheap place the next town up the road. I was feeling pretty tired as I hadn’t slept much the night before, and the car has this disquieting habit where the AMP light will come on and the headlights start to flicker while driving downhill a long ways. I figured that if the car was to break down, I’d rather not deal with that in the mountains of Utah at night.

But, after a bit of relaxation at the gas station in Elsimore, a bit of coffee, a bit of chocolate . . . I took off down the road, feeling better. I wasn’t sure what I would do, but when the exit for the motel came up I kept on the highway, past the sign that promised no services for 100 miles, and into a few fairly uneventful hours of mountain driving. I missed out on what is probably some gorgeous scenery, but I managed to keep the car running safely through the night through the mountains, despite the flaky electrics. At one point I had to pee really bad so I pulled over and stepped off the highway, and was struck at the vast array of stars in the sky. That made the whole adventure worthwhile.

I pulled into the Lazy Lizard Hostel at Moab around 12:30. I felt bad about waking the guy up for a $9 dorm bed. He was way out of it and told me to just take any top bunk in a particular dorm room and we would figure things out in the morning. That I gladly did.

Next, we visited the Korean Friendship Bell, a bronze bell in a beautifully-painted pagoda overlooking the Pacific, which Korea gave us for the Bicentennial. There is a youth hostel next door, which I would check out next time I may decide to visit Long Beach, if I did not already have accommodation. We drove further along the coast, visiting the Wayfarer’s Chapel, which is a beautiful glass church on the coast, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We arrived during a wedding, as this is a very popular venue for weddings, so we couldn’t enter the chapel, and the lady at the visitor’s center advised that visits are best planned for odd hours–11am, 1pm, 3pm–since weddings are scheduled on even hours.

My original plan had been to take off in the evening and drive about four hours to Las Vegas, and crash at either of two youth hostels I had found online, or perhaps a hotel room, since accommodations are cheaper in Vegas during the week. But I changed my plans to join my friend for a late night of clubbing in Hollywood. Having no particular agenda and an evening to kill, we moseyed further along the coast, and my friend decided to give Santa Monica a shot. We found a parking spot near the beach, and noticed a movie theater. We were just in time to catch “The Namesake” which is a movie we had both wanted to see, and which we both enjoyed.

Afterwards we strolled along the beach, catching the sunset. We then embarked upon several hours of groovy carousing in the Southern California style.

Anyway, I had recently gotten in touch with an old friend, who is now living in Long Beach, CA. She said I could stay on her couch, and I inquired if there was any gift I could bring her from San Francisco. She suggested that a Hobee’s coffeecake would be swell. Hobee’s is a breakfast chain in the south bay, and they tend to close at 3pm. I crossed the Bay Bridge and rode down 880, to drop by their East San Jose location, but the traffic turned nasty, and time was running short, so rather than delay I headed East on 580 when the chance came.

It was a breezy ride, as ever, down I-5, up over the hills, and into Long Beach. I tried to get in touch with my friend along the way, but her mobile kept answering “out of range” with no voicemail. Weird. I sent an e-mail . . . finally I arrived in Long Beach and found her place, embarrassed that I couldn’t get in touch beforehand. But, nobody was home.

Ah! What to do? I turned to Yelp Mobile and found a local bar, Joe Jost’s, where I was able to consider my options over a beer and a polish sausage. I had picked up some “discount hotel” booklets at a rest stop along the way, and found a place to crash near the beach. I then visited the rest room and got a call from my friend inquiring as to whether I was planning to visit . . .

. . . it turns out that the mobile number I had for her was an old old old mobile number from the last time she had lived in Long Beach. (She, like me, being one of those folks who has had several phones and area codes since the boom.) At any rate, I got the tour of her new place and spent a comfortable night on the couch.

As memory serves, the first movie that I saw was “Lawrence of Arabia” in which an eccentric, talented, idealistic, and iconoclastic young man with blond hair and dreamy blue eyes gets mixed up in the Arab revolt against British colonial rule. When you meet him as a young man in an office in the middle of the desert somewhere, he is explaining to his companion, in the third person, how boring his current job is . . . he extinguishes a match against his hand, just because, and when his friend hurts himself copying the move, and wants to know the trick, Lawrence explains “the trick is not to be bothered by the pain.” The movie is about three and a half hours long, which is insane, but then so is the subject matter, and three and a half hours is not so long to find yourself lost in the mystery of Arabia. I believe I watched this movie twice, and my description doesn’t do it justice.

The next is “Doctor Zhivago”, that movie we’ve all heard about but none of us has ever watched. Well, I watched it. I don’t remember it as well as Lawrence, but I do remember that this was another epic 1960′s film in which you could get lost in the lead actor’s face, his eyes. You again have the impression of a remarkable man in remarkable times, and the three and a half hours is spent guiding the protagonist through the vagaries of the Russian Revolution and World War II, ending up in this enchantingly weird “ice palace” toward the end. I look forward to an occasion to re-watch this . . .

. . . the third film–and there’s a good chance that you have never heard of it–is Zhang Yimou’s “To Live” . . . at a modest two hours and thirteen minutes, you witness the story of a guy whose wife leaves him because he won’t stop gambling, and he gambles everything away, and then he’s drafted into the war to fight the Japanese, then he finds himself fighting the Communists, then he finds the Communists have pretty much won, he makes his way home, is rejoined by his wife, and it turns out that having lost his material wealth is a good start for Communism . . . the film just barely starts there, and you travel through another decade or two of their life together under the various kinks of Chinese rule. In that it is an epic that brings you through WWII and a Communist revolution, this movie is a lot like Zhivago, but more focused on action and narrative than on the character of the protagonist. I think it is more approachable.

And, more precious. It is out of print and the DVD was over $50 on the Amazon.com Marketplace!

I am thinking I will have to have friends over some nights for epic movie watchin’. If you happen to be interested in getting in on a viewing, let me know, right?

I am not at all on my game today. I went to kick the tape robot, right? Then I check on the backups server to see if it can see everything, and it seems like it lost its SCSI capabilities. Huh? Reboot the server, and get kicked off IRC. Stupid Sysadmin brainfart! I was on the wrong server.

I hope maybe my brain comes back soon, I got work to do.

Yayoi’s been working at the cafe, which tends to mean she’s out for the evening. I love spending time with her but a little quiet time to myself is good for non-work geek productivity. I’m worried if maybe my brain has a finite capacity to function and I used it all up last night working on my WordPress Flickr plugin. You can see it taking shape. I am very excited about that. And, no, its not that my brain has finite capacity, its just that maybe its too busy being excited about other things. The least of those being PHP code.

First item of interest is, I am a tad burnt out lately, and while I’m saving vacation days for our expedition to Japan in May . . . I need to get out! I’m thinking to take the week of President’s Day off, since it’ll cost me only four vacation days. I have looked at London–cheap flights, as well as Mexico, a bit, then decided that what would really sooth is to just take a long train trip. The US transcontinental stuff with a private bedroom would rock, but that is expensive these days. How about overseas? I rode First Class, private sleeper overnight in Thailand for $25, and you can do the same in Vietnam for two nights between Hanoi and Saigon for $60. Vietnam sucks, though, since the entry Visa is $80. Well, the flight’s going to be $1,000 anyway.

So, I looked at maybe Bangkok to Cambodia, see Angkor Wat? Ride the boat down to Phnom Penh, and on the way back, take this fantastically crappy train where the best seats are what Thailand bills as “Third Class” . . . rolling through the countryside at 20kph . . . you can ride on the roof, if you like. Man! That appeals to me . . .

But maybe best to save some airfare pennies for Japan, so . . . at the moment I’m thinking take the train to Santa Barbara, then to Los Angeles, then to San Diego, then maybe visit Mexico, and ride the train back up . . . we shall see. The Coast Starlight to Santa Barbara is $98 for the two of us, and while that’s no “soft class” 2-day private sleeper through the rice paddies action, it saves us $2,000, nearly two days of flying, Visa hassles, and the rest.

What would also be helpful is if we hired another SysAdmin before I tried to act on my vacation fantasy. We recently approved funding, and haven’t even wrote the req, but we got lucky and . . . well, an old friend of mine might accept a position here, which would rock tremendously, but he’s got to take some time to consider an alternative offer as well.

So, there’s a brief dump of what’s been going on with the brain. Maybe by yammering about it here I can flush it from my primary CPU enough to get some work done, as there is certainly work to be done . . .

Our own little human world is so big, and vast, just the human part! The part that speaks a thousand different languages, and lives anywhere from hunting in the forest to scavenging from Tokyo convenience stores. Walking, running, subways, minibuses, broken-down old cars, city buses, interurbans, shinkansen, airplanes, ferries, Porsches. Most people are very poor, and a few of us are quite wealthy, and the spread in between is such that it is nearly impossible for anyone near either end of the economic scale to understand the lifestyle of those opposite.

But unlike the vastness of the Cosmos, we can’t let the vastness of the human world slide. We are all human. None of us should be going without food, none of us should be unable to find a place to sleep at night, anyone of us should be able to be treated for medical problems.

We need to learn to communicate with each other … all these languages! We should each learn a few, make friends with people whose existence and culture are far away from our own. An American in the car suburbs of California ought to be able to dig the lifestyle of a Bushman, who ought to be able to dig the lifestyle of a service worker in Italy, who ought to be able to dig that a kid in Afghanistan balances selling newspapers on the streets to support his family with getting to school to realize his dream of literacy, and that kid ought to be able to chat with a technology worker in Tokyo.

And these days, the world just seems blurry to me. I walk around America digging it like it was another foreign country, even though it is also my home, the place where people share my cultural heritage and speak the same language, the place where I am most readily understood and understand without great difficulty. But I don’t know what I want. I’m floating along. A few years ago when I was floating along in the dot-com bubble, living large on the well-paid tech frontier, the idea was pretty clear: work hard, live life, get rich. Recently it has been seek work, get afloat, look forward to paying off debts.

But I still live life. I can’t go without my daily trip to a coffee shop to read the paper. And even if I’m poor I still tip better than most. You gotta have your Confucian rituals and personal code of honor. And even if I lose these bits of my lifestyle, there will be other things that I will find in my shrinking Universe to call my own, to mark my Self.

Work went pretty well today. Then I grabbed myself a haircut, at long last. I bought some soap, I called Rachel while walking down Green Street to check up on her.

And then I got an e-mail from dad.

We don’t communicate so well, so regularly. We have so much in common but we live different lives, far apart.

Grandma had surgery. They pulled out a tumor. But she has more. Six months left to what has been a long, healthy life, with three kids and four grandchildren. Dad’s coming through on his way from Colorado in early May. Maybe I can ride up to Michigan with him.

At first, I was glad that fate had brought me to the Midwest at this time. Then I thought of the scheduling challenges at the job. It is a decent job, but nothing I wouldn’t easily sacrifice if it came to that. The student employees peel away in May, and another full-timer is leaving next week to help her mom raise a new baby. I got frustrated and upset that now I finally have a job, I may have to screw the boss over.

But I know things will work out, one way or another. I’ve got to keep on surfing along the currents of fate in any case, its not like any of us have so much choice about the fundamental things of life anyway. We’ll all do what we have to.

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I began stopping more frequently to scrape ice from the windshield wipers and from the front of the car, which quickly became coated with ice, like this, as trucks would pass and splash large amounts of freezing slush on the front of the car, which would also destroy visibility for a few nervous seconds while the wipers caught up with the inundation of slush.

After coffee I pulled back on the road. Turns out that the headlight switch was still mucked up after all, so soon after I spent another night in the car tucked behind a tree at a Wyoming rest stop.

Next morning it was back on the road through more snow. Nebraska came and went hardly without note because my attention was on safe navigation through patches of rough weather – not as rough as the night before but definitely stuff that requires your attention. It was pretty rewarding. I dont know how many snowplow I passed with their warnings, “SNOWPLOW / FLYING SAND” mounted on the back with strobe lights flashing, and sparks flying where the plows scraped the pavement ahead of them.

At a truck stop I heard tell of a snow plow that got rear-ended by a semi. I later passed some orange service vehicle that was laying on its side next to the road. Plenty of cars were stuck where they had wiped out, and I saw at least two truck trailers on their sides.

Iowa came without fanfare. Now it is getting dark and the rain that was the eastern part of Nebraska is turning back to snow. I can drive with headlights and flashing hazards at my rear. Maybe it is time to relax a while and see if the weather abates before considering eastward progress through the night.