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Back Travelling - Brasil

2007-02-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

Day starts at 6.15 am with that stupid alarm. I don't even think it was light out yet. I got a whopping 4 hours of sleep (or so). Oh well, I can always sleep on the plane. The cab ride to the airport was ... um ... interesting. The cabbie grew up in a Quaker family without any joy. They maybe smiled 3 times in 20 years. It was an interesting start to the day. How do I find these people? I really just wanted to sleep. 06.15 is not really a reasonable time to get up, I mean come on. Who really wants to get up early?

I met Jeff at SFO and gave him his passport. Why is it that whenever one travels, crazy things must happen? At least there were no bomb scares (like at BWI) or bombs going off (Paris-CDG) this time. I was able to upgrade to business class for the longer trip to Sao Paulo. That made the trip much nicer. We get to Dulles. It was weird to be back in the DC area. I hadn't been back for over a year. Though, I only saw the airport. We touched down 15 minutes early. That must have taken an act of Congress for United to do that. Of course, they still managed to be over 30 minutes as we sat on the taxiway for over 50 minutes waiting for a gate. We had to rush to scarf down a Wendy's sandwich and get on the plane. That was lunch at 6pm. Then we had dinner a few hours later on the way to Sao Paulo.

Got to see a pretty awesome sunrise at 33000 feet over the Atlantic. Except he who can always sleep on planes, couldn't sleep much. Even though I only had about 4 hours the night before. Great, that means jet lag is gonna suck.

We get in to GRU. Walk a long way, wait in line for passport control for about an hour. Our 2+ hour connection time just got a lot tighter. Then we wait in line for another 15-30 minutes to hand in a little piece of paper that says we've got nothing. Oh joy. Even less time to make a connection. Now we get to wait in another line for 15-30 minutes to check in. By this time they were already boarding the plane. Pretty stupid to tempt Murphy, I know, but I mentioned to Jeff that I had never missed a flight in all my other travels. The boarding pass says go to gate 3, which is also what the attendant said. We get to gait 3. Thankfully the security line was reasonably short. The airplane leaving gate 3 is going somewhere else. The guy was nice and told us to go to gate 5. We did get on the plane around the time it was supposed to leave. There were a bunch of other people that got on behind us, so it wasn't that close.

This is a pretty bad introduction to a country. Get up at 2am, fly for about 24 hours, wait in line for another couple of hours and almost miss the connection. At least I had been to Rio before. I don't remember any issues like that. Maybe Sao Paulo airport just sucks.

Everything else went pretty well. The airport is a long way from the city center. It's a really beautiful ride through the countryside to get downtown. I slept for a little on the plane trips, but probably less than 2 hours. Kinda tired. Travelling sucks, but man is it fun to be travelling again. :-)

Oh, we managed to get a second hotel booked. We didn't find that out until after we had already checked in the first hotel. This is gonna be interesting to see what happens. Got some good news about Testing on the Toilet doing well. But I already knew that. :-) Mail is down, but still have more to catch up on. :-(

We walk around the city for a couple of hours. There's not a ton to see here, but it's nice. Had an awesome burger for lunch! It's been 36 hours since I started, still not tired, but I gotta try to go to sleep. It's 2300 here. Good night!

Confessions of a Language Bigot

2005-12-22T01:45:00.000-08:00

I'm so ashamed. It all started when I was a poor boy and awfully abused...

Ok, well, that's not quite true, at least the second sentence. :-)

Back in 1995, I was exposed to Python for the first time and pretty annoyed by it. Unlike most people significant whitespace was a positive, since it was pointed out curly braces are redundant with whitespace. So I was already specifying my intent once, why would I need to repeat myself. DRY and all that. Ok, I buy that argument.

But really, C had served me quite well for many years, I was quite experienced with it and I could do everything I needed. Sure developing GUIs was kinda painful, but come on, what's really better.

Well, we had to develop over 280 C APIs to implement the highly repetitive, but fairly regular RTCA DO-219. So this guy wrote Python code that generated the C APIs. I had to review the Python code. I wasn't really happy about it.

Ok, there were a few things which I reluctantly had to admit were half decent. I still managed to avoid actually using Python for the duration of my stint at ARINC which lasted until 2000. In the meantime, I learned C++ and used it increasingly. It was fine, better than C in some ways, worse in others. But since it was mostly C-ish, it was okay, I didn't really have let go of the basic syntax. No matter how bad something is, most people prefer a known bad versus an unknown.

In 2000, I wasn't able to achieve the things I wanted at ARINC, so I followed that guy above to a dot bomb in DC. There was this new-fangled technology I'd heard so much about called Java. It was gonna fix all the worlds problems and there would never need to be any other programming language. It would be perfect. It would do everything but give me a blowjob if I believed the hype. (Or maybe I just missed something.)

I was quite eager to learn Java. I wanted to believe the hype. I really wanted to learn just one more language and be done with it. I had already learned BASIC, machine code, Pascal, assembly, C, shell scripting, make, C++ and others I forgot (like Prolog). I can be pretty lazy, but that's the ideal programmer, right? I even have some, um "colorful," constructive lazy solutions lurking in my closet. So if I learned just one more language, I could stop wasting my time learning a language and actually solve problems.

I already mentioned I was working at a dot bomb, so you can imagine what the business was like. OTOH, I had a lot of fun. The first week was great, I had to learn Java and Javascript and create a working web page to submit auction data. Oh, did I mention I didn't know HTML at this point either. It was great to be overwhelmed. The second week slowed down and I jumped into some awful code. It happened to be written in Java, but I can't really blame Java, ugly is ugly straight through. I've since seen even worse Java code that was Pascal, ported to C++ and then ported again to Java.

I learned a lot about Java in the next 9 months--completely lived Java. At the end of the 9 months, I was completely disgusted. The "company" was a joke and the Java hype was about as accurate as saying the Earth is flat. It had a few marginal improvements over C++, but in the hands of well qualified people it seemed to do more harm than good. We mostly used Java 1.1, with a little 1.2 at the end.

I quit the dot bomb and decided to take some time off. I figured that since I had already taken the plunge to learn a new language, I better learn one that could teach me more than Java had. Actually, I learned to ignore the hype, so it wasn't a complete waste. I figured I might as well learn Python finally. It had a few things that really made it much easier than C. Like when I needed to do something like:

    for x in range(100):
        print x,
        for y in range(100):
            print y,
        print

I don't remember the exact code. There was more formatting, but this sort of stuff is much easier in Python (or any scripting language) than in Java or C++.

I wasn't about to work for someone else again after the dot bomb experience. Eric and me had already decided to start our own business. We were both contractors for ARINC, so it was easy to go back to being contractors/consultants. This time we were going to work together rather than as individual hired guns. He was already consulting on a short term gig and I was going to take a break.

The stock market was still doing well and I decided it was fun to watch it. I started a project to pull down stock quotes and track portfolios. I had already decided I was going to really give Python a shot (5 years of hostility was long enough). It seemed like a good match to do the portfolio app in Python.

I think I got about 2 weeks of Python programming and learned some nice features of Python. It wasn't great, but it was usable. And GUI programming in any scripting language beats Motif. Hell, what doesn't beat Motif programming?

Stupid ARINC decides they have a lot of money to spend and we needed to hurry up and get the business up and running. Dammit, I didn't even get a real month of vacation between jobs before I gotta start again! Well, what are you gonna do when they are practically throwing money at you. It's a good problem to have.

So after about 4 weeks of moderate Python use, I decide to write the new product we were contracted to write in Python. This wasn't quite as risky as it sounds. Eric had a bunch of Python experience, so he was my backup. It was only a 3-4 month contract. How much could possibly go wrong?

Heh, don't answer that question!

Actually, the project went very smooth. We hit all the deadlines which was really good since it was a fixed price, fixed schedule contract. There weren't any big gotchas. I learned a lot about Python and really learned its strengths. I was quite impressed.

Towards the end of the contract, I was demoing the system to the customer. I did some simple action like dragging a plane being deiced at one gate to another gate and the whole app crashed! !@#$% (blush). Sorry about that... It really wasn't that big of a deal, just major embarrassment and my own disappointment that I had screwed up. It still wasn't final delivery and everything else went very well.

I later determined the problem was I had moved some code between modules and forgot to copy the import. Based on my enormous embarrassment, I pretty much vowed at that point to fix the problem. If there wasn't a solution, I would create one. Well, there wasn't a solution. I had read what Guido wrote about compiling Python, etc. I didn't care if I could only find the one bug that made the app crash, I was going to write a program to find that problem. Did I mention, not only am I lazy, but I'm also stubborn. I really didn't think you could find many bugs in Python programs. Boy was I wrong.

There have been many other less embarrassing moments that most people don't know about. I suppose it's time for me to come clean about those moments too. People made various requests for adding warnings to pychecker. I often commented to myself or privately to others how stupid that mistake was and it will only find problems in one persons code. I mean, really, who forgets to add the parenthesis when calling a method as in file.close (as opposed to file.close()). And damn if there weren't too many times to count I saw that message come out from my own code!

I spent the next 4 years or so (2001-2005) annoyed at the Java letdown. But I had my Python, I was very happy with it. I still did a lot of work in C and C++. They annoyed me from time to time, but they were still my old friends. I really liked Python and became a developer at the end of 2001 (I think). I got really involved with Python and the Python Software Foundation.

My 5 year cycle hit and it was time for me to move on again. Somehow I wound up at Google. Sometimes I still try to figure out how I got there, but mostly I'm just having a good time and learning tons. Google uses many languages, but primarily they are C++, Java, and Python. There's lot of code in all those languages. There's lots of experts in all those languages. There's lots of bigots emphatically declaring the One True Language. (I'm not implying the experts are the bigots.)

I used to say I don't like Java. I find that isn't even accurate anymore. Java has it's strengths and weaknesses. No different than Python, C, C++, Ruby or any other language that's ever been created. Different strengths and different weaknesses, but every one of them is flawed. Some flaws run deep, others are shallow. There's no shortage of people spouting how some idiosyncrasy is hugely important in the language they don't approve of, while the idiosyncrasies in their own pet language are of no importance.

Languages are just tools. Like all tools, have various intended purposes. Use the best tool for the job. In order to determine which tool to use, it's up to you to base your opinion on prejudice and innuendo. Or to base your opinion on how well a language solves a specific problem.

IMO, the hype that surrounds Ruby (particularly) Rails is overblown. So what? It helps Python in many ways. The more attention one P language gets, helps promote all the P languages. Puby is definitely a P language as long as you read it in Cyrillic. ;-)

All languages annoy me at this point. I wish they were all perfect, but none of them are. I just recently realized one reason I like Python better than Java and C++. I can change Python, I can't change the proprietary/closed languages. This obviously applies to all open source languages.

I've looked at Ruby a couple of times. I've never found it to be much better than Python. I find it to be different in many small ways. That doesn't make it better or worse, just different. People are different, some people will prefer one vs. another. That's ok.

We (the language developers) need to learn more from each other. We could all benefit by working together. I wish we had community run conferences like PyCon that catered only to the language developers. Wouldn't it be great if Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby (and any other language) developers got together to share war stories, learn about things that worked and things that didn't. I'm not talking about a love-fest. I want to learn from other smart people doing similar things. I don't want to make their mistakes. I want to learn vicariously. I'm sure I won't agree with all their decisions, but if I could understand why they made the trade-offs they did, I can make a better decision.

I fully intend to learn Rails. I have a little experiment I hope to continue. I have been documenting what it takes to setup the same web app up and running and how long it takes. I only went through setting up the databases (Postgres and MySQL) and Rails so far. Hopefully there will be more later in 2006.

One final, unrelated thought. Maybe we should really work to get the syntax for dropping explicit self. I think Guido wants to keep it explicity in the signature. Though I recall either a do statement that allowed not specifying the object (self generally). There's also the seemingly general agreement that .attr (ie, leading dot) should reference self. Maybe we should push for these in 2.5. There is now a critical mass of Python developers with enough time to make this happen.

It's late I wrote way too much. If you read this far, I'm sure it says a lot about you. I'm not sure what, but it must say something! Now I need to do more listening, since that's what this world needs more.

Blog is all caught up

2005-08-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hey!!! This is the first entry that isn't back dated.

I made it through my first week of work. I am totally and utterly overwhelmed. I love it! I haven't found anything bad about work. Ok, I suppose there is one thing, but it's probably best not to say and every other company has similar problems. Google seems to be doing a very good job from what I've seen so far. I have no doubt I will find things I don't like or could be improved. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to make changes. Being an employee hasn't been as weird as I thought it would be. After over 10 years of kinda being my own boss, I thought it might be a bit uncomfortable. So far, it's been the opposite. I've been more comfortable doing things when they tell you to. Since there are always customers, you're never really the boss of yourself anyways.

Damn Comcast. They are making me drive into work Tuesday. How? It took less than two weeks for them to screw up my internet connection. Bad signal levels. Sometimes it works, like right now. I only lost one post due to the bad connection. I need to get back home quick when they come out to fix the problem, so it's best if I use the car. They also made me turn on the TV for the second time I was here. The first time was to verify they installed cable properly. Since I wasn't planning on watching anything, I unplugged the TV. When the internet went out, I figured it best to verify at least the TV was working. Of course it was, just internet was out.

The rest of these notes are my feelings towards my new home. I walk too fast for a Californian, but I ride my bike too slow. They should balance each other out. I'm in no hurry when I ride my bike (ok, I'm pretty lazy), so there's no need to go faster. OTOH, I jaywalk all the time. I'm guessing it will take less than a year to get a ticket. What a useless law to enforce. Which brings up something I've found to be quite odd here. California is known as being this liberal haven. I find it peculiar that they seem to be so into Law and Order. Not the television show (maybe that too, I don't know), but everything. There are so many signs, it's dizzying. Do this, don't do that. This is how much it will cost if you do this.

So many people water their lawns. I realize I'm in NorCal (Northern California) where there aren't as severe water shortages. However, they complain about not having enough water, then they waste it. I know at least some of the water is reclaimed which doesn't seem as bad, but I'm sure a lot of it is also clean drinking water. I have to say it is kinda funny to see a sign that the sprinklers use reclaimed drinking water, don't drink it. There are a lot of homeless people around. I was surprised at how many are here. There seem to be as many as in DC.

One other annoying thing is that as much as California is tolerant, there seems to be a huge gap between Latinos and everyone else. It's worse than the gap between black and white in the east. I was talking to a guy from Peru about it. His opinion was that it was primarily a workforce issue. The Latinos have a particular set of jobs they typically perform and so there isn't much intermixing. That does seem to be true. I don't know if that's the cause or effect.

It's still a very nice place, just some observations I've noticed so far.

I like that there is a fair amount of ethnic diversity. Lots of Asians from all over. The restaurants reflect that, which is good for me since I love Asian food. I've seen mostly Indian, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese.

Almost through the first week

2005-08-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting to mention. I've never worked at a place with so many conference rooms! I guess I kinda had the expectation that there weren't many (I forgot about when I interviewed apparently). It's not that communication isn't important, it's just that I was thinking that it was different. Well what's different is that there aren't that many big conference rooms like other places. There's a bunch of very small conference rooms. It works out pretty well actually.

2005-08-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

Nothing much to mention today. Today's word of the day is the same as yesterday, ontology again. I magically got approval to work on pychecker. It was really difficult. I sent an email yesterday and got approval. Seems we are still working out how to announce this stuff though.

I think I can say this. I was reading the style guides. I finished the C++ guide and opened the Python guide just before heading off to dinner. I didn't really read it, but I did see that at the very top was a summary and happened to notice that the #1 entry was "PyChecker: required." I thought that was humorous (in case anyone doesn't know, I wrote pychecker). Now I really got fix all those bugs that have been in there for quite some time. I did add my key to SF and was able to cvs co pychecker.

I did the weekly walk and tried to get someone interested in documenting pychecker. I'm sure many people would appreciate it. In case that was too boring, I tried to sucker^h^h^h^h^h^h offer the Python docs up for enhancements. I read the rules on blogging, hence the verbiage at the bottom of the page.

Oh there's something I keep forgetting to mention. I feel like I'm back in DC. I've heard so many languages being spoken and even more accents, it's really quite nice.

Huh?

2005-08-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

It's 4 o'clock?!? What the hell have I been doing all day? I got in before 8 am and the next thing I know it's 4 pm. Things are moving so fast I kinda lose track of time.

Still getting access to more systems, etc. Got my tetanus shot today. Signed up for the weekly walk reminder and the gym. Of course, the doctor said no strenuous exercising for the next few days. I'm assuming riding my bike isn't strenuous. Although on the ride in I remember the problem with not riding one's bike very often. Let's just say it will be much nicer when I develop some callouses. At least my hands are fine.

Word of the day: ontology

Yesterday's word of the day: cacophony

These are words that you don't typically hear engineer's use in their everyday language. I'm going to keep a list of all the interesting words that are not particularly common. It was funny to hear these words used in a presentation.

One really nice thing I haven't mentioned so far is that people are encouraged to bring pets (really dogs) to work. At least dogs that are nice and quiet.

I find it funny that my desktop computer has a Microsoft sticker on it. So Google paid for an OS that was probably immediately wiped from the disk and will never be used. How much is Google subsidizing MS because of its (MS's) monopoly?

This is really stupid (like the rest of what I wrote isn't?). At any rate, I really like the bathrooms. They are kept very neat and clean, but that's not what I'm talking about. All the bathrooms have shelves that you can put books, etc. Lots of big shelves right when you walk in. It's very convenient not to have to hold something while you're peeing. There's even little shelves over the urinals. (I think one of the bathrooms in a lobby didn't, but I noticed it after I wrote this.)

No, I still haven't learned how to use the toilet yet. Today the seat was heated. If it takes me this long to learn to use the toilets, I don't even wanna guess how long the phone system will take.

Day 2

2005-08-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I rode my bike to work. For the last time in my life, I rode my bike to work. Just kidding. :-) It took me less than 20 minutes door to door and the drive takes over 10 minutes, so there really isn't much difference, except that I enjoy riding my bike tons more than I enjoy sitting in the car.

First thing in the morning, I got annoyed at the idiot that was calling me at 8 am. I had only been at work for 15 minutes and it was bad timing. I wanted to get busy reading/learning. Who was it? It was the damn alarm clock I set and forgot to turn off. Oops.

I'm still not sure which group I'm in and who my real manager is. But there seem to be several of us that are confused. I guess possession is 9/10ths of the law, so I'm going with those who claim me regardless of what the computer says.

Lots more learning today. Get mail setup and add myself to a few groups. Read various things about culture etc. Orientation classes are now fairly short, not the full day thankfully. The full day was really helpful. It's just really painful to be in meetings/classes all day.

The comment of the day was: "Since this is a place of business, by law we aren't really allowed to provide beds, otherwise we would. As long as you can go without sleep, you are welcome to live here." That's a slight paraphrase, but the idea is the same.

No free dinner for me tonight, I didn't feel like waiting the extra 10 minutes. Besides, I just bought a bunch of food for home. I gotta use it or lose it.

I was really planning on leaving at around 17.30, but I started talking to another noogler and his buddy. That lasted for almost an hour. So far, it's been pretty easy to have interesting conversations there (or here, whatever you get the idea).

I might have lined up 2 projects to work on and the balloons haven't even dropped yet. Oh, I didn't tell you the balloon story. When I get to my desk I get lots of kisses. No, no Hawaiian beauties waiting with leis unfortunately (I guess they gotta draw the line somewhere). These were the boring Hershey's type. The kisses are weighing down several mylar balloons to announce to the office that a newbie works here, use caution. My mentor told me that I had until the balloons lose all their helium and drop to the ground to decide what project(s) to work on. If I hadn't made a decision, I'd be fired. Ok, not really fired, they'd just work to find me something.

The first project doesn't really count, since it's pychecker. I know something about that. At least I used to know something, I'll have to check if there are still any marbles rolling around upstairs though. The second project seemed pretty cool. It dealt with improving hardware defect management. Man, it sounded much cooler before I sanitized it.

Step 6 -- Goto work, so you can pay your bills

2005-08-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

First day at Google. I expect some confusion since I received an email last Wednesday asking me when I was starting. I originally was supposed to start on Sept 6, but I moved up the date. I figured 2.5 months of vacation should be enough, even for me. Time to get some work done. I would have responded to the email, except I was in LA having too much fun. I didn't even think to look at email.

So I arrive and sure enough my name is not on the list. The receptionist says don't worry about it, I'll add you to a list and they can deal with it later. Damn, that was too easy. I get my picture taken for a badge. Man, haven't had one of those for quite a while. I'm supposedly in one system, but not in another. So they can't decide if I exist or not. Better than the guy I sat next to in orientation who really didn't exist. But he still got to enjoy all the "fun". (Later he found out he did exist and got his badge too.)

We go to setup our passwords. Since I'm not in the write system, they fix the problem and tell me to setup the password later. It didn't matter at this point, since there weren't enough computers for me in the orientation room anyways. I just sat in the back with a dumb look on my face like I always do.

We go to lunch. I must say, I'm really disappointed. I keep hearing about how awesome the food is and how you can get 3 meals a day for free! (Yeah, yeah, there's no such thing as a free lunch, but I ask you, what about breakfast and dinner, huh?) So we get lunch. The food was really good, better than most restaurants. But there's way too many choices. I'm assuming all are as good as the next. It sucks to have all that food there and you have to limit yourself to only a few options. Dinner was just as good.

Orientation lasted most of the day. Lots of interesting people there, but I only got to meet a few so far.

At the end of orientation, I call the help desk to setup my password. That takes a bit, seems there are still problems. My machine arrived only 10 minutes before I did, which is apparently not good by Google standards. Most companies would love to have the apparent efficiency and organization I've seen so far. After some delay, I get a password, but my machine isn't in another database, so that's gotta get done. That gets done, but won't be ready for a while, so that was when I left for dinner.

Tomorrow, I'm going to ride my bike to work for the first time. We'll see how that works. (Unless I get lazy and this is the last entry. :-) )

Oh!!! I completely forgot about the toilets. Now I admit I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, but how the hell do you work those things. It's got way too many controls. I was afraid of pushing the wrong button and getting squirted in the face. Americans should never use a bidet unless they really know what they are doing. I thought it would flush automagically. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. I did make sure to move out of the way of the IR sensor, in case you think I'm totally losing it. I finally pushed the button at the top. Imagine that, a toilet that flushes manually. Most other toilets I found in the buildings don't have all this fancy shmansy crap. Even I can work them. I just get up and they flush by themselves. I can do that!)

I forgot the funniest and most embarrassing story of the whole day. I was so nervous and had so much energy that I peed all over myself. I started laughing at the urinal and I'm sure everyone around was wondering what that wacko was thinking. Ok, it didn't really happen, but while I was standing at the urinal I thought that would be incredibly funny if it did.

One of the great benefits of being indoctrinated into old fartdom is that there's no need for nervousness. I was very comfortable the whole time (except after lunch since I drank too much and there was an interminable cycle of people telling us one thing or another that I'm sure was very important. But I had more important things on my mind, like making sure that my bladder didn't explode raining yellow droplets on everyone.) I stopped waiting for a break and just left. Of course, this episode was after my image of creating a Picasso on my pants leg.

I also didn't try to remember one bit of information. I know there's going to be way too much to remember. Easier to not try. I'll learn what I need to learn later.

It was a very enjoyable day.

Just in case, for those of you wondering, no I didn't wear a holy shirt (ie, shirt with holes). Well, maybe one or two small ones, and I think there was a stain too. But it was a newer shirt (ie, definitely than 10 years old, maybe less than 5). [It was the shirt with all the kiwis on it. I'm sure my mom will tell me exactly how old it is, since she was the one who got it for me when she went to New Zealand. Give 180,000 miles and get a couple of shirts.]

Step 5 -- Get more stuff

2005-08-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

I start doing some real shopping and buy a bunch of different stuff I need. Furniture, food, etc. The rest of today's entry is apparently just miscellaneous notes I typed in earlier.

After nearly 3 months off, I forgot how to save a buffer in emacs/gnuclient. For some reason I kept thinking it was M-x #. Of course it is C-x #. See, this is what happens when you take off for too long; your brain turns to mush. And when it starts that way, let's just say it's not a pretty cite.

My pulse is already 10 beats lower than before I left. I'm quite comfortable here already. In 2 years at my old house, I managed to buy one picture. It never got hung. I did hang one picture, but that was only because there was already something to hang it on. And in case you are still wondering what my pulse is (why the hell would you want to know that useless bit of information), it's around 60. The lowest I counted was 56. Maybe with exercise I can get it down to under 50. Then again with all the free food at Google, maybe it will become a nice round figure like 100. It would be really nice if I could get my pulse down to my age (mental age, that is). However, 5 seems like an unrealistic goal for my pulse rate.

Step 4 -- Return to Mt View

2005-08-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

I gotta go back and start getting ready for work. I still have a bunch of things to do to the house, etc. I use the opportunity to do some more fun driving. It was recommended that I take Sunset Blvd all the way to CA-1. Awesome choice, Holly! Sunset was so much fun and a very pretty drive. It was weird (no idea why) driving past the Beverly Hills Hotel. I recognized the sign with its distinctive font when I drove past. CA-1 was fun up to Oxnard. But at that point it really went inland and I should have stayed on US 101 until San Simeon (Hearst Castle). At San Simeon CA-1 got fun to drive. It was slower than I thought. I didn't get back until pretty late. I want to head back to all the places that I missed, at least: Big Sur, San Simeon, and Monterey.

Step 3 -- Road trip!

2005-08-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've been here for 2 full days, that's long enough. Time for a road trip to Los Angeles. Take US 101 down, that was pretty plain. But it was a lot of fun to head down there. I really like LA for some reason. I think it's because it's a little more East Coast-ish than the rest of California. It's a little faster.

I have a great time in LA. We had some really good Indian food and it was fun to hang out and meet some new kids (of a friend).

Step 2 -- Move in

2005-08-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

It's been less than a week and I'm already in my own place. The movers show up before I do at a little after 8 am. That's a good sign. The unload all the boxes. There were about 37 numbered pieces. Most of those were boxes, but a bunch were things like: 2 chairs, bike, bike rack, mop, lamp, laundry basket, etc. I don't have a whole lotta stuff. :-)

Time to start getting new stuff. So I shops around and sees what I can find. There's plenty of choices between Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale. All are very close.

Ikea and Best Buy aren't very far. I had already picked up a nice 19 inch LCD and I got a chance to unpack it. But no internet until tomorrow.

Step 1 -- Find a place to live

2005-08-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

I've been here for a full day and 2 nights, it's about damn time I find a permanent place to live. Sure, it's real nice getting maid service in the Residence Inn. But living out of a hotel gets old real fast. I went out with the guy setup to help me find a place. I really had so little work to do in this move, it couldn't have been easier. The second place we looked at (out of about a dozen) was the best. I went back and talked to the guy and got the lease. I signed and delivered it the next day. Yeah, I got a place. Now what do I do? I have 11 days before I start.

Time to learn the area, go around, hang out in the downtown area (Castro Street). Downtown, all 3 blocks of it, is only a few blocks from the hotel (and the new place too!). It's an easy and convenient walk. I don't really remember what else I did, but the time went fast.

Cultural Adjustment--A New Beginning

2005-08-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

The cultural adjustment begins. Like all good Easterners I walk too fast and cross the road whenever it's clear. We don't need no stinkin' crosswalks or signs to tell us when to cross. It's odd to see people wait until the red hand becomes a white walk ok sign even when there's no traffic. I like being able to walk to many places. It was particularly weird to go to a bank for personal use. For the last 10 years or so, I've only done business transactions at a bank (well, used business accounts even if I had to cash a personal check).

I was somewhat familiar with the pedestrian friendly attitude of California drivers, so this wasn't a shock. Though it is still a bit weird for me.

It seems like a bunch of the things I need are either in Palo Alto or Sunnyvale. Which is no big deal since it took about 5 minutes to go from PA to Sunnyvale with Mt View being in between.

That's the end of my written notes--all 23 pages.

There were a few things I remember that I didn't write down. 2 humorous signs I saw along the way. The first was just a misspelling of Famly. The second was "Kids for Sale". I know lots of parents want to give their kids away from time to time, but selling them? Come on! This sign, however, was selling young goats, ie kids.

California Coast

2005-08-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

The fog was dense when I left so there wasn't much reason to stick around. I left before 9 am. US 101 turned into a real freeway with 65 mile per hour limit. So I made really good time. I decided to take a scenic route through Humboldt State Park on Avenue of the Giants. Very glad I did. It was an awesome, immense forest. I visited a tree that was estimated to be 1,000 years old. The fog was still think here, so I didn't walk at all. I need to return to this excellent locale.

It looks like I'll easily make Mt View today at this rate. I wanted to stay along the coast (CA-1) which is a slower, longer route, but should be scenic. I'm so glad I did too. Immediately after the split from US 101 onto CA-1, the road changed. There was a sign that said it was curvy for 22 miles. I figured this was like the deer crossing signs that say 22 miles and you never see a deer along the stretch. Holy shit, this was the opposite. There were hardly any straight stretches. It was awesome The funnest road I've ever driven. Thankfully there weren't too many people slowing me up. The few slow drivers usually pulled off the road pretty quick when they saw the Tasmanian Devil 6 inches behind them. It's not just lots of curves that have you slow up. (They may say you should slow up, but who ever does?) The signs were usually to slow down to 15 or 20 miles per hour. Sometimes even 10 mph. There weren't just the curves but switchbacks going up and down mountains. So I got to change gears a lot too (manual transmission). There were bonus points for targets (ahem, bikers) on the road. There wasn't a shoulder for the most part. The end of all the curves is the Pacific Ocean. From what I could see at 90 mph it was beautiful. Okay I was really doing 60, but the fog was pretty think, enough to obscure the best view.

I'm less than 200 miles from San Francisco and it's a little after 1 pm. I finally had to stop to eat. Man that was a fun drive. Before I turned onto CA-1, the temperature was at least 80. It had been up to 86 at least. By the time I neared the coast it was 60. Can't wait to see what's left.

The rest of CA-1 was also a lot of fun. There were a few more slow drivers. I hit some traffic going over the Golden Gate Bridge and in a few spots on US 101. I guessed right and found the hotel quite easily. I got here about 7.17 pm. Only took a little over 10 hours to get from Redwood Parks to Mt View including about an hour of stops. I made it all the way across the country without a ticket. Woohoo! I didn't get pulled over for slowing and didn't witness any accidents this time (unlike my trip 6 years ago). Although I did have a cop pull up behind me on Interstate 5 in Seattle. I had pulled onto the shoulder to talk on the cell phone. She just wanted to make sure I was alright and was very nice. I'm known for pretty short phone calls, but that one was especially quick when I saw her pull up behind me.

Total travel time was 9 weeks, over 7,000 miles. Google Maps says it should have taken about 2 days 0 minutes and 2,862 miles. Oh well, I preferred my itinerary. This part of the journey is over.

Oregon Coast

2005-08-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

I made it all the way down the Oregon coast today--all the way to California in the Redwood Parks. I had a campsite, I didn't, and then I did. I pulled into the last site (this is a recurring theme). There were no envelopes to pay, so I walk to the entrance which was probably about a mile--no envelopes. I go back to the camp host. He says everything is reserved. I must be in someone's reserved spot. Does that mean I would have to leave? Of course I had already setup everything for the night. And there were supposedly no state parks in the area with vacancy. I thought I'd have to sleep in the car, which really sucks. (I might have to do that tomorrow (my last day) since I only $17.41.) I start packing everything up when I see the boss go by. I had to verify that the site was really reserved. Of course the host wife said it wasn't reserved so it was fine for me to camp there. As usual, the wife is always right. Good for me this time! Now I just get to "worry" about my lack of cash. I think I burned about $600 in a little over 2 months. I have no idea how much is on the credit card.

I made much better mileage today. I had to or I'd never make it out of Oregon. US 101 wasn't as nice today. There were large sections that didn't hug the coast. All that changed around Port Orford. I really enjoyed the curvy road and seaside rocks. The trip from there to California was a lot of fun.

As soon as I made it into California, the fog/clouds were really thick. I saw the sun set below clouds, but not the horizon. It was kinda neat to keep going up and down through the cloud layer.

I've got over 300 miles left. But I'm definitely nearing the end. Very nice to finally be in California. It sure doesn't feel like home, but I haven't had one for a long time, so who knows.

I'm tired from not walking enough, so I'm going to spend more time hiking tomorrow and less driving. Unless I have to make it to Mt View due to lack of dough.

The night sky is clear and awesome as usual. I can see the Milky Way which is still a treat for me. I never saw it in Maryland.

Zen

2005-08-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

I wound up getting the last hotel room for the next 40 miles west towards Astoria on the coast (according to the guy at the hotel). I returned to the monastery at the anointed time of 10 am. Not that the time was written anywhere (I asked) it just had to be the time. What happens at 10? Service! Wouldn't ya know I'd get roped into that. I was looking for a change of pace and I sure found one! But me in a religious ceremony is mostly comical. I suppose it was fitting that I ran out of clean shorts, so I decide to wear black jeans and a black shirt. I look presentable, at least as presentable as I get. (Send smart ass comments to /dev/null, you know who you are!)

After mass, I received a class on "Introduction to Meditation," which had exactly one student--me. Then back to more service. Followed by lunch. Now that's what I'm talking about. The experience was very nice and refreshing. I got some info about places in Mt View and San Francisco. Who knows what I'll do.

I've been here for two weeks now and I haven't done anything. Big surprise, but there's so many other things to do. It will take another few weeks until I've really settled in more I think.

All this and I just wanted a quick tour. :-) It was funny when I first arrived they asked if I knew where I was going. I'm not sure if I looked lost or if I looked like I was gonna try and rob the place. I really think they were just being nice. It was a very nice group of people I met there. And I'm not just saying that because they may be reading this blog. :-)

I finally had ripe blackberries. There were so many blackberries on the Olympic Peninsula, but they were never quite done. Same at my friends place in Eastern Washington. Lunch at the monastery was good and so were the blackberries. Now onto the coast, only about 3 days left.

I finally started making my way down the coast for the final leg of my journey (this part). I looked on the map and it appears I've effectively gone about 70 miles down the coast from South Bend, Washington to Barview, Oregon over the last 5 days. I think I could have walked that far, that's only 12 miles per day. Of course, I actually travelled a lot further, but that was East, then back West. I hit a bunch of beaches down the Oregon coast, including Del Ray, Cannon, and a few others before stopping for the evening. I just missed the sunset. Only caught the last glimpse of the sun before it dropped below the horizon. Still very pretty and the night is looking quite nice, though cold. It's already about 58 F at 9.30 pm. The moon looks like Pac-Man eating one of the planets.

What started with lots of time has dwindled down to just a few days. I barely have enough time to make it down the coast at a comfortable pace. (Ha! read on.) It looks like I've got at least 700 miles to go (8+ degrees of latitude). I suppose that's good. What should have been a 300 mile trip has turned into a 6000+ mile trip and counting.

Damn, there are LOTS of waterfalls in Oregon

2005-08-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

Oh man, if you like waterfalls, this is the place. It's just spectacular. I think by 4 o'clock I only drove about 10 miles. I may have hiked that far. There are a bunch of waterfalls right on the old US 30, a scenic highway. (Vista house is on this road, which is also very curvey and fun to drive.) The area is mostly run by the forest service and is a National Scenic Area right along the Columbia River in Oregon. You can hike to get to more falls and just beautiful areas. (Some of the names that I recall were Horsetail Falls, Multnomah Falls, Latourel Falls, Del something.) The Oneaton Gorge was really cool. There was an enormous salamander (10+ inches and fat) eating a dead bird in the water at a log jam. I took a picutre, but I don't think it will show up with the sun and shadows. I wanted to take a bunch of pictures, but the phone has too few left. The only other picture I took was from under some unnamed waterfall along the path.

I finally left the area around 8pm to go towards Portland. I couldn't find any decent places to stay. I was in Portland around 9pm. The drive reminded me a bit of Phoenix how all the towns merge into one. That wasn't good. I walked around the city center for a while. It seemed very bland. I guess it's like DC where all the interesting stuff is going on in other places (like Adams Morgan), not the city center. Of course I managed to find the titty bars without even looking.

So after walking around and finding the only action was in the titty bards, I decided to continue west towards the coast. I thought US 30 would be a nice drive, but there were a ton of factories (at least that's what they looked like). The road is a ways from the Columbia River. I made it to one town that I thought about staying at. I figured finding a skunk was an omen that the town was stinky and decided to move on.

I found some small town (Skalkamie?) that was far enough away from Stinkyville that I decided to stay. There were 2 hotels at the edge of town, but I decided to drive through the town center. That took about a minute and I came to crossroads. I was about to turn around when I saw a sign to a Zen Monastary. I just had to go there. I got there at 12.10am Sunday morning (just after midnight). The sign said closed until Sunday. The smart ass part of me was about to demand that they open up, but decided it best to stay at a hotel. Good thing too, the residents are supposed to wake up at 3.50 am. I don't think they would have been happy with my sorry butt on their doorsteps at midnight.

Disappointment, Cape Disappointment

2005-08-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

Started the day a bit earlier. Drove into Long Beach and walked on the beach for a bit (boadwalk too). Couldn't see almost anything since it was so foggy. The beach was huge. It is supposedly the worlds longest beach. Drove back to Ilwaco to go to the light house and Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. The lighthouse was awesome. I talked to a Coastguardsman for quite a while. He talked about how there was a ton of activity there, many Search and Rescues (SARs), hence the name Cape Disappointment. It's a very dangerous area to navigate and there are many shipwrecks strewn about. The guy had just got here from Conneticut and Baltimore of all places. There was an incredibly awesome cove on the way to the lighthouse. There were signs saying not to go there. So of course I had to go. If you follow the rules, you miss the best parts of life. I wanted to take pictures of the cove from where you were allowed to be, but the phone apparently does have a limit of about 90 pictures. I still have more territory to cover, so I save room for a few more.

The Interpretive Center was ok. I drove down US 101 to Astoria, Oregon. It was a nice drive. I'm eating lunch now and headed back up to Washington so I can take WA-4 and US 101 (the fun section) in sunlight. Then down to Portland.

Wow! Southwest Washington has some fun and beautiful roads. I am very thankful there were very few slow people in front of me. And the few there were, were kind enough to pull over. I guess they preferred to pull over rather than have a heart attack with me on their tailpipe.

I tried to make it to Portland before 5pm to get some money. Since that didn't succeed, I headed out WA-14 along the Columbia River to Bonneville Dam. It was closed of course. I headed into Oregon and found some camp site off US 30. Looks like a nice place so I decide to stay and put in early. I'll head back US 30 towards Portland. There are a lot of waterfalls apparently.

Mt. St. Helens, Take Two

2005-08-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

Since I heard there was an earthquake at Mt St Helens while we were there and we all missed it, I decided to check it out again. Supposedly the crater changed a bit. It didn't seem as flat the second time which was 6 days after the first trip. Since I got there earlier this time, I was able to do more, including taking a walk on Hummock Trail. It is a short (2.5 mile) loop around hummocks (hills caused by volcanoes). There was a bunch of signs describing various facts. One sign mentioned frogs. I wondered if there were frongs around. A short while later a frog jumped off the path in front of me. Then I thought, "If there are frogs, I wonder if there are snakes to eat the frogs." At this point, I tripped from too much day dreaming. But further along the path I did see a small garter snake. Later, I was walking around Coldwater Lake and I saw a bigger garter hunting in the water.

I decided to head back towards the coast. I took a very nice route (WA-4) along the Columbia River which runs between Washington and Oregon. This hooked up with US 101 nearly where I camped the night before. I turned south towards Ilwace. The road got really fun and curvey. I think I'll have to do it again in the daylight.

Washington Coast

2005-08-03T20:02:00.000-07:00

Today was much more relaxed. Slept off of some logging road in a little alcove of trees. It was extremely quiet. The ground was a little sloped. I only slept okay. And I got up way too early (6am). Got an early start at the Hoh Rainforest. It was a nice walk aon 2 short trails. The signs were fairly nice and informative. Didn't do much else today. WOund my way down to Aberdeen where I am now. I stopped at Ruby Beach. It was nice and very large, though not too crowded. It was too cold until afternoon (low 50's). Then got up to 80 or so and stayed there. Since I'm eating dinner early enough (7pm), I hope to catch a nice sunset on the Pacific.

It was very nice--cold and windy as hell, but nice. I caught the sunset in Westport, then headed south down US 101. I found some little county campground late at night. It was south of SOuth Bend. It was on some body of water. Even though I got in late, I had to check out the water. After pitching the tent which a raccoon oberserved, I took a walk towards the water. The walk was very long. I heard a big owl fly away, but unfortunately didn't catch a glimpse.

The niught was extremely clear and I could easily see the Milky Way. I wonder what the sky looks like in a very dimly lit area?

Hot Springs

2005-08-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

Finally catching up with the journal from the last 3 days (writing on paper that is, since I'm typing everything in at the end of August). I did the hot strings at Sol Duc in the morning. I figured it was as good a way as any to get clean. Unfortunately they didn't have a cold pool like Ainsworth (in Canada, Finland and Russia just use ponds/lakes/streams). There's nothing as refreshing as jumping in a pool at 40 - 50 F (4 - 10 C). I guess I should leave out the rolling in the snow stories, that was a long, long time ago.

Hiked to some Falls. Drove out to Mora and west to Rialto Beach. Couldn't see anything--fogged in and cold! Went to 1st beach--cold and windy. Skipped 2nd beach. I almost skipped 3rd beach given how bad the first 2 were. (There are those original English names again.) Very glad I didn't skip 3rd beach. It's a mile plus hike to get there, but well worth it. The beach is very sandy and walled in on the north and south by steep rock cliffs. It's fun to hop along the rocks. There were tons of starfish on the rocks. There was a very nice waterfall on the south end. Unfortunately I couldn't get around enough rocks to get under the waterfall which was probably over 100 feet high.

I forgot to mention a few short hikes near Sol Duc. In the Ancient Grove and Salmon Cascades. Both were very nice.

I'm still waiting to see a good sunset on the Pacific. I was hoping for 3rd beach, but the sun set over land which juts out. I'm gonna find a place to camp and try to hit the Hoh Rainforest tomorrow. (There are a bunch of rain forests on the Olympic Peninsula.) It was recommended and very interesting.

NW Washington

2005-08-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

I hiked to Cape Alawa (I hope that's spelled write, my handwriting gets worse and worse all the time). The trail starts at a lake, goes through a forest, and ends at the coast. I got lazy (I was way too hungry) by the time I got to the coast. It was only 3.3 miles, but I skipped the 6 mile return hike over the Sand (? or Sad or Sail, damn handwriting) Point trail so I could eat sooner.

I was so glad to camp at Ozette. It was raining very hard that night. I thought for sure that it would be pouring down and no camp sites. I lucked out. Although the many frogs I ran over on the way might feel otherwise (so there are some vermin in WA).

I drive all around the Northwest corner (of the US). I go to Neah Bay to try and find an awesome campground Karent described near a pier where the whales come. I couldn't find it, though I did see several piers (see explained it in more detail later. Still not sure I could have found it). I went to Cape Flattery at the NW corner. Interesting rock formations due to the ocean pounding the coast. I drive back to pick up US 101 and see Lake Crescent which I missed since I took WA-112. I end up camping at Klahowya. It was recommended and was avery nice place on a river. I wished there was a bigger clearning because the night was clear and beautiful.

I did see a few satellites though. (I always long to see the Milky Way which isn't visible from near cities. It's such a different sky between the "city" and country and I much prefer the country.)

Onwards through Washington

2005-07-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

I hiked to Klahhane Ridge. It was an awesome view. Fiarly steep hike, 1,600 feet up over 1.6 miles. Up was nice, down was hard on my knees. I should have a bunch of pictures. I don't think I took a picture of the deer tha wouldn't get off the path. It wasn't even afraid of me when I clapped. I think the roundtrip took about 1.5 hours. I drove up to Hurricane Ridge for lunch. Nice view, too many people. I drove out US 101 and WA-112 which is on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Very nice drive. I camped at Ozette Lake. Also nice, but no particular memories. (Of course, I forgot something. When I got to the hiking trails, there were two eagles flying around.)

Break in Washington

2005-07-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's been over a month. It looks like I left some stuff out from the last entry when I left Glacier and headed to Colville, Washington through Canada. I was only in Canada for aoubt 1 to 1.5 hours, but it was interesting. I stopped for a flagman and the first thing he mentioned was how far away from home I was. Had a friendly chat with him, until it was time to move on. There were some massive mountain passes that I went up and down. Hard on the brakes, but a little fun.

Entering Canada was easy, getting back into the US was a bit annoying. Which is in stark contrast to the last time I went to Canada. In all my travels, I was only detained once, in you guessed it, our friendly neighbor to the north that goes shopping in a backward country south of the border. Their reason for detaining me was because they could, NAFTA gave them the right. Oh great reason. Once the Canadians at NavCanada (almost a gov't organization) produced the contract, I was released.

I was talking about the annoying Americans this time, not the Canadians. I don't mind Customs/Border Guard doing their job, but I don't think being rude is in the job description. Perhaps I'm wrong. But they could have been nicer.

Did lots of stuff with my friends of course. I also returned east for 9 days to visit family and friends over Independence Day.

Note remember to talk about building house. And get pictures.

The last thing I did with friends before breaking off was to go to Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens Parks. Mt St Helens was interesting in several ways, but I'm too lazy to write about it now.

Ok, I guess what was interesting was the uniqueness of a volcanic area and its evolution. I hadn't ever witnessed it before and it's different from anything else I've seen. It's funny that while we were at Mt St Helens, there was a small earthquake that none of us felt.

We went to Seattle after Mt St Helens. I'm surprised I actually liked the city. Didn't do too much. Aquarium (it was decent), Pike Place Market (no biggie), and walked around that area. Had a very nice lunch before saying goodbye. Of course, since it was the last day with friends I had to wear my Google shirt. I was glad we were in Microsoft country. :-)

My friends played a very funny joke on me as we were leaving. They aren't religious (they are too nice for that), and I'm areligious (used to be anti). We were saying our goodbyes and Dave goes to clean out my car in case they left anything in there. Karen and I hug goodbye and Dave comes back. He telling me all this religious stuff about how everything will be ok and that Jesus will watch over me. Then he hugs me, which he's never done before. I figured they were just being goofy, as we all are when we get together. After a living together for a month, it was just releasing some of the silliness. So I get back to my car after this odd encounter, and sure enough, Jesus really was watching over me! Hallelujah!!! Praise the Lord!!! Dave had bought a little Jesus statue and put in on my dashboard. I just sat there and laughed my ass off. Y'all are probably just shaking your head, but it was very funny at the time. They should have come back and checked on me. We had many laughs later. But I think Jesus is pissed at me. For the first day, I let Him sit in the passenger seat. But then I cleaned up and locked Him in the glove box which is where He rests to this day. Oh no, mr. bill!

I drove around Seattle a bit. Unfortunately there was a Mariner's game that let out around the time I was trying to get on the ferry. Traffic in the area was a mess. The ferry to Bainbridge Island was pretty short, only half an hour. Now I'm eating dinner and heading out to the end of the Olympic Peninsula.

I spent the night at Heart O' the Hills. AFAIR, it was nice, but that was 3 days ago. I need to make entries more often. I really like the Olympic Peninsula. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what I like. It reminds me of Alaska. The trees and mountains and water. The mountains are steep and flow right into the water. The coast is very interesting with how craggy it is and the trees go right up to the ocean.

Glacier National Park

2005-06-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

I couldn't find any decent campground or hotel that was open. So I headed into the park. I think it was after 11pm, but I found a pretty good campground. I went eastward through the park. The scenery was very beautiful, but not a ton of wildlife. WHy do they call this Glacier National Park? There are so few glaciers and they are so small (at least compared to Alaska). It's still nice though. Hit Many Glacier which is on the east side of the park. I had to leave and return. It wasn't worth it though. I'm eating lunch (ok, I've already finished). I'm headed back through the park and westard on to Washington.

Oh I forogot to mention the garter snake and the mountain goats. I wasn't sure if the garter was alive until I got pretty close and it scooted away. The mountain goats were pretty funny. In a park, you aren't supposed to molest or otherwise torment the animals. So a bunch of people coming down the mountain stopped their car to watch the mountain goats. I was headed up and also stopped. Eventually the goats were on the side of the road and I couldn't pass. I think a bunch of people got pissed. I thought it was just fun to watch the goats and the people.

I didn't really put it in my notes, but there are many waterfalls in Glacier and they are quite nice. But I had so much of that from Yellowstone, I probably needed more of a break to appreciate Glacier more.

Last of Yellowstone

2005-06-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

Went through Yellowstone for the last time (on this excursion). I saw a black bear today. No more grizzlies though. Not as good as yesterday. Still a really great park. I've liked it the best of all I've been in so far (about 15, maybe more). I saw a mother moose with her baby (what are they called?). This was right after breakfast in Montana (I think, yup it was). I kept criss crossing the state. I wasn't always sure where I was (the story of my life). Nothing else (beautiful, I just noticed a typo in my notes, what's an esle?) particularly remarkable in Yellowstone today. Oh wait (I'm writing this a day later). I did see a heron. I love them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get close enough for a picture or at least a decent picture. I also saw a very strange and interestingly colored bird near Undine Falls. It had a red head, yellow body and black wings. I got a picture or two, but they probably suck like all the rest (I can only see a 1+ inch picture). The camera on the phone is just too weak. I should have listned to everyone that said I should get a real camera. I wonder how many pictures the phone will hold.

I get into Montana and visit Livingstone and Bozeman. Find places. In Bozeman I get scenic directions to Kalispell so I can get to Glacier National Park. I've now been across Montana West to East and South to North. I've had the same impression each time--a very nice, pleasant place. Serene. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. It is not inspiring. I don't think this opinion is just because I came from Wyoming.

Side notes: What is it with all the turtles in Nebraska? What is it with all the butterflies in Montana? There are a ton of them and they are plastered all over my windshield.

More notes: It was interesting that through Montana, up until Idaho or Washington, there were so many bugs that went splat on my windshield. I had to clean it every time I got gas or it was a bit difficult to see out. But between Washington and California, there were very few bugs.

Someone I was talking to in Washington (IIRC) mentioned how the west had so much less vermin than the east. It was pretty funny because we were also talking about road kill. Things like frogs, snakes, raccoon, etc. There seems to be many more dead animals strewn about the road in the east than in the west.

(is this the 18th?) more Yellowstone

2005-06-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Drive back into Yellowstone from the west. Thoday was really spectacular (see, there's that word again). Went through the central part and out the east exit. The recent fires in the east seem to demonstrate the Park Service hasn't learned. (Or maybe this is just a result of their activities from a while ago.) The forests around Yellowstone are in pretty good shape. Hit the upper and lower falls and many others. Took more picture today than any other day. Went through the "Grand Canyon". I liked it better than the one in Arizona. :-) I really need to return to Arizona and see more. Same with Yosemite which I will probably get to in Aug. (Not!) Yellowstone is by far the best National Park I've been to. It's more like a National Forest than any other Park which means it is used for multiple purposes beyond just preservation. I pref the conservation approach.

Shoot. This next paragraph is an entire page of notes! The east entrance is all screwed up. Not sure why. The Shoshone Forest is pretty nice. I'm spending the night here in a better part. I spent the evening in Cody. Went to the museum because my mom insisted. I really thought it would suck. It wasn't bad at all. The worst part was that I got there late (like 6.30pm) and it closed at 8pm. I didn't get to see everything I wanted, but pretty much. Cody is a nice town. Although all these tourist towns are getting on my nerves, reminds me of Florida.

(I broke up the paragraph from my notes.) I thought I was going to have to take a very round about route to come back to Yellowstone through the North East entrance. But I found a sign to Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. Sounded good, so I took it. (I don't think it was on the map. The only map I took was of the Western US. It didn't have lots of roads, but it's good enough to get around. Last time I had a map of the entire US. I take the position you can't be lost if you don't care where you are or where you are going.) Very good choice (taking Chief Joseph), cuts off a lot of time and mileage. It was beautiful while it lasted. Unfortunately I didn't get on it until 9.30pm or so. Not enough daylight to really appreciate it all. Tomorrow should be nice though. I was bummed that I only saw one bear, a grizzly, and that was very short (mostly just saw its butt as it walked away). Hopefully my wish doesn't come true tonight since I'm camping in bear country. :-) (Unlike some people, you know who you are! I slept quite fine and didn't chicken out and go sleep in the bed of a pickup or my car. :-)

I put all the food in the trunk. Hopefully no bears tonight, but plenty tomorrow in the Park. I also hope it doesn't go down to 50 degrees F again. That's too cold for my skinny ass. I've already had 2 of those 50 degree nights and I'm bracing for a third. (Funny how after a couple more weeks I wasn't comfortable unless it was 50. In Mt View, it only goes down to about 60 and that's still a bit warm for me.)

More Wyoming

2005-06-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Damn, I didn't think I wrote many notes, but I've been typing and typing and there's still a ton more to transcribe. You people better like this crap! Though quite honestly, I don't think there's much interesting in the notes. It ought to get a bit funnier when it gets into August and I'm finally moving towards a destination, rather than rambling about the country. OTOH, if you want to know my views on the scenery of the US, then by all means read on, read on.

Go through Jackson Hole. I kind o flike it, even though it reminds me of Sedona, Arizona a bit (which I don't like). A little too artsy for me though which is similar to Sedona.

Tetons are a bit disappointing. The trip through the forest was nice, even though it was at a distance. There isn't much difference in the park close up. Nice place so far, just not special.

Go into Yellowstone National Park from the South. I think this was on the 17th (Friday), so I think I lost a day in these crappy notes. The devastation from the 1988 fires is amazing. Very appropriate given how much they (National Park Service) screwed up (by their attempt to control fires/nature). Saw lots of bison and some elk. I think they were elk. It was a long way off, could have been mule deer or even moose. (Damn, what was I smoking that I couldn't tell the difference!) I visit Old Faithful and the geysers. Ok. Interesting. Good walk, but that's all. I exit through the west into Montana. The drive out is very nice. Lots more animals. Spend the evening (night) in Idaho at Macks Inn.

More Black Hills, then on to Wyoming

2005-06-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

Drove around more of Custer hitting more tunnels. Fun driving. Saw a bunch of bison and other wildlife. (Note: buffalo and bison are the same thing.) Got into Wyoming in the morning. Drove through the Big Horn Mountains and National Park. It was really beautiful. I took a picture at 9660 feet elevation. I'm wearing flip flops on the snow! Seems like a strange sight, but it was quite comfortable.

The whole trip is nice. After Riverton, the scenery gets really spectacular (damn, I'm really starting to over use that word). Reminds me of the painted desert, but much larger and nicer. This isn't even in a park! just along the road. I think a lot of it was in the Wind River Reservation. After being in awe of the scenery fro hours, I decided to settle down. I found a Wilderness Management Area way off some gravel roads. Somewhere around Beaver Creek near Dubois. Nice location, made a fire which was nice. Mule deer welcomed me as I entered the area.

South Dakota

2005-06-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Wow. Did a fair amount today. Lots of South Dakota. Badlands reminded me of the Painted Desert in Arizona. Badlands was very nice and much larger, but not as spectacular as I had hoped. Same goes for Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. The Black Hills are nice, but they are so broken up with private land. There are a lot of tiny towns in South Dakota (like Inferior, population 67).

I was looking for a campground and met Marla, a camp host, between Custer and Jewel Cave. She recommended Needles Highway in Custer State Park. She was right, it is spectacular! I plan to hike in here tomorrow. I'm spending the night at the upper Center Lake Campgrounds, since everywhere else is full. I got a very funny picture of a buffalo. The sign says "Official Vehicle Use Only". That's a funny interpretation this bull had. I doubt the picture will come out well. Really should have gotten a real camera. So all those that told me, now you can say "I told you so!" (BTW, the bull was mounting the sign so he could rub his genitals on it.)

Saw a bunch of buffalo and deer in the park. The Black Hills are really incredible in this park.

The Midwest

2005-06-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Iowa is not as flat as I expected. It also has more trees. Very pleasant, though not much to hold my interest. Lots of little parks, most of which I can't find. (I have no idea what that means. IIRC, there were many signs on the road for parks, but when I tried to follow the signs they wouldn't lead me anywhere.)

Walked around Sioux City a bit (during the day, my notes are all screwed up here). Spent the night in Spencer (I think) in a motel since it was raining so much. I guess not everyone knows, but for the most part I camped in a tent as much as possible. I did the same (camped) the last time I took a trip around the US 6 years ago. I need to find those notes/pictures and post them too.

Glad I did (spend the night in a motel), since it was raining (and cool ~60 F) in the morning.

Oh yeah, there are a ton of windmills. Not in Nebraska though.

Nebraska continues to nice tradition. Very pleasant, but nothing exceptional. A little flatter perhaps. I took 2 pictures of the road and sky. Show how straight the roads can be (and this wasn't the straightest). The clouds just go on forever. The picture doesn't show them that well I fear. Oh well, still fairly interesting. Stopped at a fossil park. Ok, nothing to write about. Plan to go to a state park in Valentine based on a recommendation. Right before I took the pictures, I passed a turtle on US-20. I was going West and he was going North. He made it half-way. I wonder if he completed his journey.

I'm not seeing so many red-winged blackbirds any more. Thank goodness, they kept reminding me of Sasha and his comment about how English is so original with how it names things (e.g., can you guess what a ringneck snake looks like). I'm glad that amount of reminding is done for now. :-)

"Chicago" (11th thru 13th)

2005-06-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Spend time in Naperville, IL with a very old friend (our friendship is old, not him). Man, Jyoti (his sister), and Jasraj (her son). It was fun to see her after so many years. I hadn't met Jasraj before. It was fun to hang out with all of them and pack Manu up so he could move east as I move west.

All along the way, especially at this point, I always got a smile on my fact when I saw a street sign that said "West". I kept thinking, "that's where I'm going, it's going to be home". If I ever had to travel east, it always felt like I was going backwards. North and South didn't have any significance.

day 2

2005-06-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Go back to the beach. Nearly empty. Beautiful though overcast. Goto breakfast at Sammie's in Bridgport. Awesome. Gyro meat, eggs, hash browns, onions, and green peppers.

For some reason, I'm really into American breakfast food at this point. It eventually changes to wanting a more Asian breakfast with rice and miso. When I started work, I've been eating fruit, berries, and bread. The strangest part is that I've never really eaten breakfast because I don't like it. Go figure.

ok, the trip really begins

2005-06-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

Drove out I-68 and used GPS to hook back up with I-70. Didn't think I'd have a use for GPS, but it was a fun toy. Since it's dangerous to use while driving, that makes it even more fun! It's worse than a cell phone.

Lots of driving, finally get into Michigan. It's still a very Eastern-like state. The clouds are slightly different. I took a picture of the clounds and it promptly started to rain (lightly).

Arrive at Warren Dunes State Park, Michigan on Lake Michigan around 7pm. Watched the sun set on Lake Michigan. Very nice. It looks like an ocean it's so big.

travel begins

2005-06-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

Stop in Hagerstown, visit Lew (friend from College) for a bit. Fun to catch up on old times and new. Interesting how fast 13 years can be caught up. :-)

Stayed at Rocky Gorge State Park, MD. Nice area with a decent sized lake that I walked around. Nothing special.

Note: man that was one weak entry. But it really didn't last that long.