Visited States Update

After another 2 years of aimful (the opposite of aimless) travel, I've created a new visited states map. Note my artful dodge of the central states, which is both incidental and intentional. I've also created my visited Mexican states map, which is somewhat less inspiring.

A comprehensive tally of where I've been in the U.S. of America.

A comprehensive tally of where I have/haven't been in the U.S. of Mexico. Mexico supposedly has states, by the way.

Utah

Here's a picture from my first day out here in Utah. I took it with my phone at the top of Deer Valley. I wanted to take real pictures with my real camera, but the batteries somehow slipped out of it when I took it out of my pocket and then fell 40 feet below into the snow while on the lift. Oh well.

a weekend in the city

I'm headed to New York tomorrow for the weekend. I haven't been up there since last February I think, and I remember it was utterly frigid. I always complain that it's always cold when I'm there, and judging by the snow squall outside, this time will be no different. Fortunately, my winter jacket is out for repairs, so all I have is my Fall/Spring jacket. Looks like it'll be a weekend of the collared-shirt-under-sweater nights for me, as if that'd be different anyway.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, meeting my friend's new kid, and going to my cousin's BBQ restaurant in Crooklyn (Fette Sau).

<>L<>A<>

More notes from the road...sort of

I was in the process of putting together a follow-up to my wildly successful "Notes from the road" whilst in Geneva, Switzerland when a microbial interloper interloped. My guess it was the bouillabaisse I had at the cafeteria that did it, and having ignored my own cardinal rule of no sea-based foods in cafeterias, come Thursday night (two Thursdays ago) things started to go south. By that Friday morning, it became pretty evident that I had eaten something that didn't like me very much, and it was tearing me up. My flight was set for the next day, Saturday, and as the day wore on it became pretty evident that wasn't going to happen, so I had to change it to Sunday, which cost me about $200. Of course, what guarantee did I have that I'd be ready for a 15-hour day of air travel with no control over what I could eat? So, for another $200 or so, I had a Swiss doctor call on my hotel room and check me over for about a half hour. She told me I probably had bacterial food poisoning and it had set up camp in my intestines. Pretty sweet stuff. She gave me a prescription for 3 different meds, one of which was a strong antibiotic which ended up killing the bugs off. Of course, getting to the pharmacy, which isn't 24-hours like CVS by the way, was a bit of an ordeal itself, considering my state. She also told me what I could only eat bread, plain rice, and plain pasta for the next few days. If I could find a brothy soup, that would be okay too, but good luck finding a non-cream-based soup in a city that borders France. Anyway, I was able to find a Vietnamese place that had a chicken noodle soup, and get my meds, without too much issue. My ritual of getting Wingos the minute I get back home from a trip had to be put off a week, and I lived on soup and crackers for about 2 more days after getting back. It's amazing how much you miss solid food and things that taste like things after only a few days.

Anyway, there's a few more little tales I wanted to share while in Geneva that were either pretty funny or interesting.

Auf gut Glück!

So the first night I'm at the hotel I call down before I get to sleep to ask for a wake-up call at 7:00am. The standard practice of performing the wake-up call is to call said hotel occupant at the requested time in order to wake him/her up. Around 5:05am I woke up in the middle of a dream about Erika Christensen (just kidding) to a repetitive knock on the door. It was still pitch black outside, and I thought the cleaning crew was going around a bit too early. It's Europe, so you never really know what's going to happen in hotels. After throwing on my jeans to cover up my huge dong I go and open the door and there's this hotel employee who says, "Bonjour! Bonjour! Wake up call! Wake up call!"

Naturally, I'm perplexed, I look at my watch, and sure enough it's 7:00am. But seriously, what the fuck? How confusing is that for someone who just woke up? Couldn't they just have called me, as the name "wake up call" implies? Silly Swiss. Of course I couldn't have that weird scene happening every day, so I had to rely on just waking up on my own and therefore ended up being about an hour late every day.

A big 450-foot jet of water coming out of Lake Geneva known as "Jet d'Eau," or "Jet of Water."

Another little observation of mine was that no matter where I went, I was known and referred to as "the American." At a restaurant, one waiter told another that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." At the hotel, "the receptionist told the other that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." When the doctor came to my hotel room, she called someone and asked a question because "the American blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." Obviously I don't speak any French whatsoever, Spanish is my game, but no matter the language the word "American" is still pretty much the same. Take note, my Swedish friends!

This is not Epcot Center, actually, this tram is part of Geneva's excellent public transit system. The woman in white ended up getting hit by the tram, by the way.

At the conference I went to I met people from all over the world. The most memorable interactions were with representatives of Lesotho, one of two countries enclaved within South Africa (just because of novelty), Iran, Syria, Palestine, and North Korea. I was particularly amazed to see anyone from the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" at all. You hear and read so much about these places, so that when you actually meet someone on a personal basis a lot of your preconceptions are challenged. Of course, the people I met aren't responsible for the massive human rights abuses in most of the countries I listed, so it wasn't too difficult to have a conversation with them. In general, I did notice that most of the Arab countries' reps never said "thank you" for the complementary materials they took, they just kinda walked away. Having sat in on one of the general sessions, which looked exactly like a UN meeting with translators in overhead booths and earpieces so you can understand what everyone is saying, I was able to pick up that "shokala" or similar meant "thank you" in Arabic. So even a simple "shokala" would have done.

A big, fancy, important building somewhere near Lake Geneva.

notes from the road

A couple funny things have happened during my trip tonight, and when you're traveling alone on business in a foreign country it doesn't take much for something to be funny, by the way.

Eurocar and Eurodude.

So I went to this Indian restaurant on Rue des Pasquis tonight on a whim; don't ask me why I wanted Indian whilst in a country composed of an odd French-German culture fusion. It was delicious, so eat me. So I got the check, and asked if I could pay with credit card, which for some reason is not as commonplace as it is in the States. The guy shook his head no, I looked in my wallet: no cash. I shrugged and he looked at me and yelled in French, probably saying something like "you goddamn Americans!" As he turned away from me I dashed for the door but the bartender saw me going for it and locked it electronically. As the waiter turned around to grab me I drew and put one between his eyes; his suddenly lifeless body cut his legs out from under him. Patrons began screaming. I fired another few shots toward the bartender before he unlocked the door to let me leave without hurting, or killing, anyone else. I wasn't planning on killing anybody this year, but I got carried away and walked up to the bar and plugged him in the back a few times. A few children got in the way and are on the news now. The American flag that came out of my pocket as I initially drew my firearm hit the ground just as I exited the restaurant, the smell of lead thickening the air as I bowed my head and walked into the sunset, the fatally-wounded still falling to the floor. God Bless U.S.A. So I had to check out of my hotel and am now in a hostel in Cartigny, just over the border in France. I'm writing this because I need someone to Western Union about CHF 1,640 to bribe the customs people in Marseilles and then in Tunis. It's an odd amount to request because we all know that Western Union screws you royally on money transfers and I need about CHF 1,500. After that I'm out of your hair. Please send your donations to endthecolawars at gmail dot com. I'm standing by. And please don't report these slayings, I really didn't mean to increase Switzerland's annual homicide rate threefold in one evening. You would've done the same thing if some brasserie didn't take VISA.

The getaway car. Sam drove. I didn't get his last name.

THE REAL STORY

...which is nowhere near as entertaining. So I put my credit card down for the meal, and the Ukranian waiter who spoke great English says, "oooohhh, uhhh, hmm, is that American Express?" First thing that crossed my mind was, "Shit, you have to be kidding me; those commercials can't be true." I say, "No. It's VISA." Him: "Oh okay, good, that's fine." And he ran off with the bill. Goes to show you what a bullshit slogan like "Don't leave home without it" gets you in real life. Fuck AmEx. Then I started shooting.

You can just hear a crow cawing, can't you? You'd better pick up that whip extension or you'll never make it past the gargoyle at the entrance.

Geneva

So I'm going to Geneva next week for about 6 days or so for work. If anyone has any suggestions about what to do, where to eat, what to see, etc, I'd appreciate your advice. That is, unless your advice sucks.

Damn Richers

So I took my little jaunt to Southern California this weekend for work; I got back yesterday evening. The being in SoCal part was good and fine. I took an afternoon drive on Sunday down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Laguna Beach and then turned around and went up nearly to Long Beach. It's a good place to drive, though it can be pretty trafficky, which detracts from the Hollywood image of freely cruising up and down the idyllic Pacific coast in a convertible. Oh, and portions of it are flanked by oil derricks on the right and offshore oil platforms on the right. Pretty scenic stuff.

Speaking of cars, I saw possibly every major brand and model of luxury car while in and around the 5-star Newport Beach hotel in which I stayed. Upon pulling into the hotel the first night, there was a yellow Lamborghini just sitting there. Next to it was Bentley and a MB SLR McLaren. The next evening there was a Ferrari parked on the curb outside of the restaurant we went to, which is really intelligent since that's the place it's most likely to get hit. But hey, what's a couple hundred thousand dollars? The next day I saw one or two more Bentley's, a Rolls Royce, a Maserati, and another Ferrari. Aside from the superstar sightings, there were, of course, an innumerable quantity of Mercedes SLs, BMW 7-series, Land Rovers and Porche Cayennes. I'm not counting the Orange County Lamborghini dealership (next to a yacht dealership) that I passed, either. I'm not so impressed by the cars themselves but by the amount of money it takes to acquire said cars. Where the hell did these people get so much money, and why are they all in exactly the same place? Should I have answered that Nigerian guy's email afterall? I thought it was a scam!

The people who were driving these cars were a REAL interesting breed of rich douchebag scum, by the way. It looked like were really trying to pull off the West Coast vibe and the Long Island daddy's boy look at the same time. For all their real estate profits I guess they still couldn't afford a decent image consultant. You might have seen some of them featured on Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

So as I pull up into the big fancy hotel lined with big fancy cars in my rental Nissan Sentra whose stated color was "Sparkles", you can imagine what the valets are thinking. On the contrary, however, I gave them $2 instead of $1, except I only tipped them when they went to get it, not when I dropped it off.

Travel

Fall's always a busy business travel time for me, but this year is looking to be unusually busy. As it stands right now, I'll be traveling a total of 26 days between now and the end of the year. Eep.

My travel schedule is roughly:
Late-Sept: Southern California
Late-Oct: Geneva, Switzerland (you can hate me for this)
Early-Nov: Southern California
Mid-Nov: Detroit, MI (you can pity me for this)
Mid-Dec: Southern California

I usually enjoy traveling for work, but it is tiring and can get boring and lonely. If I have any free time and have a car at my disposal, I like to drive around a place for a few hours to get a feel for what everything looks like and how the people are, and take a few pictures if anything strikes my fancy. I've been fortunate that my job has taken me to a lot of places I doubt I would see otherwise.

This year I've been particularly fortunate to go abroad to Spain and Switzerland for work. I've never been to Europe before this year, but counting my honeymoon next June (Greece), I'll have gone to Europe three times within the span of 11 months. That ain't so bad.

So if I had to give you the top 5 destinations I want to see before I die, as of right now they'd be (not in priority order):

1. Japan
2. Southeast Asia (Laos, Thailand, Vietnam)
3. Antarctica
4. South Africa
5. Saharan Africa

Maybe five isn't enough, because I really want to see China, New Zealand, Peru, Scandinavia, and India as well. Hmm...I'd better start saving.

Anyway, enough daydreaming. I actually have an entire label on the blog devoted to travel; my expeditions are loosely documented here. This includes New Mexico, Colorado, Spain, and a hodgepodge of others. Looking back at this I obviously haven't posted a lot of my photos from various other trips like Seattle, Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, and Santa Barbara. Maybe I'll do that later, if only for my own edification.

My visited U.S. States (35/50). Airports exluded.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

The Spanish Exposition

However belated, I put together some final thoughts, observations and impressions developed during my recent trip to Spain. This was the first time I'd ever been to Europe, and the first time I'd really ever been to a truly foreign country (not counting Mexico and the Caribbean), so whatever I write may seem pretty obvious or self-evident to those of you who've had the benefit of traveling abroad, but this is my goddamn blog and I'll say what I want, alright?

The Royal Palace in Madrid

1. Pickpocketing is rife, especially on heavily-trafficked streets and plazas. Maybe I was a little paranoid, but anytime I walked through large crowds I'd casually put my hands in my pockets. But hey, I didn't get my wallet taxed, did I? I actually stopped on the side of Las Ramblas a few times to watch the people watching the pea game to see if I might spy a pickpocket on the job. The best thing you can do to protect yourself from these people is to know all their tricks and keep very aware of people around you. This isn't always easy, because...


2. The sense of personal space is VERY different than the U.S. I found myself saying "pardón" a lot when I'd rub against someone or nearly knock into them when I first got to Spain, but then I realized that they never said it back. People constantly bump into one another, cut each other off, and dodge in and out of pedestrian traffic. Aside from the obvious language barrier, this was probably the hardest thing to get used to.

LEFT: The Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, in Barcelona.

3. Some people in Barcelona know English well enough to communicate, but many in Madrid definitely don't. I found myself needing to use my Spanish far more often there than in Barcelona, though I always tried to speak Spanish regardless.

4. Servers at restaurants are definitely not very friendly at all, possibly because they're not really working for tips and thus have many more tables than they do here. It was actually kind of annoying dealing with unfriendly waiters constantly, I definitely enjoyed coming back to the States and having friendly service, even if it may be put-on a bit.

5. Madrid quite literally shuts down at 3:00pm for siesta, though Barcelona pretty much stays open throughout the day. This is probably because Barcelona is about 10-15 degrees cooler than Madrid.

The Toledo cityscape.

6. Traffic laws are more like suggestions, particularly in Barcelona. Rush hour in Barc. was an amazing site. In one cab ride home I saw two people riding a large ATV in the middle of the city, cutting back and forth across lanes, cleverly dodging the countless dirtbikes, motorcycles, and scooters. The whole scene looked like some sort of varied vehicle race.

7. I'd like to know why the DC Metro can't work the way it does in Spain. In both cities, trains came every ~2.5 minutes. I really never waited longer than that, and there's no such thing as off-peak. The trains just keep going and going and going.

8. Prostitution seems to be A.O.K. in Madrid, where you can find hookers lining the streets and sketchball Spaniards sidling up to them once the sun starts to go down.

9. The beaches are topless, which in my opinion is most triumphant. It's actually kind of interesting, too. Since Spain is such a vehemently Catholic society, you'd expect them to be more conservative, but of course my definition of "conservative" as an American clearly differs from theirs. Kudos to nudity.

10. I saw a lot of Yao, LeBron, and Iverson jerseys while over there, which was surprising.

11. As beautiful and awe-inspiring as the palaces and cathedrals are---particularly in Madrid and Toledo, respectively---I can't help but think the Monarchy and Church completely fleeced the people to build these things, forcing everyone but the elites to live in abject poverty.

The Cathedral in Toledo. Yes, that's all gold.

I guess that's about it. Now leave me alone.

More to come...

I survived my trip to Spain and am back on U.S. soil, I'm happy to report. The fiendish pickpockets of Barcelona's Las Ramblas and Madrid's El Rastro Sunday flea market, Toledo's 104 degree heat (one degree above being "Hot-Blooded", even), and the 6.5-hour U.S. Airways Customer Service desk line to rebook my cancelled flight home were not enough to defeat me.

I haven't posted anything in awhile, but will follow up with my final impressions from Spain, a couple hundred photos, and maybe even some candy.

Voy a España.

No viajé Europa nunca, incluye España: un país que quiero visitar. Afortunadamente, por mi trabajo, voy a Barcelona para asistir a un simposio. ¡Qué bueno! ¡Me divertiré! Después de Barcelona, nosotros visitaremos Madrid. Dije "nosotros" porque mi prometido Marroquí estará conmigo. El viaje será diversión, pero en Barcelona especialmente, debemos guardarnos de carteristas.

Hay muchas problemas con carteristas ("pickpockets") en Barcelona. Tan muchas problemas que Web sites advierten a turistas de los peligros. Mirar este video del trabajo de los carteristas.

Me iré para Barcelona el sábado y mi prometido se irá el lunes. Nosotros seremos en España por 10 diás. Hasta que volvemos, ustedes sean excelente el uno al otro.

Para una traducción, ir aquí.
[For a translation, go here. Requires some copy and pasting.]

Whoosh

My cell phone's camera apparently has remarkable resolution.

I snapped this shot of a commercial airliner landing on runway 1/19 at Reagan National Airport from my camera phone when I biked down to Gravelly Point on Sunday. I had no idea this place even existed until I stumbled upon it while winding through the Mt. Vernon Trail on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Planes land on this runway---thundering in just ~100 feet overhead---about every 3 or 4 minutes, and in between landings 2 planes would usually take off. Seeing how little margin of error there is for take-offs and landings made me realize why it's safer to be in the air than on the ground.

Fun Fact: Gravelly Point is built atop a garbage dump, which explains why part of it is known as "Roaches Run." Big angry rats like it here, too, and I've heard there's even a foursome of highly-trained turtle ninjas running around. Kids are discouraged from playing near Roaches Run.

KevinC fronts amazing effort to clinch Expedia Challenge

Newcomer KevinC has all but secured the title of Expedia Challenge champion with an impressive entry:

Leave Washington-Dulles (IAD) -> Chicago O'Hare (ORD) -> London (LHR) -> Islamabad-Rawalpindi (ISB)

Total duration: 51 h 38 min with connections

For the sake of fair competition, I'll give the peanut gallery 24 hours from 9:30am Tuesday to find a longer flight. Barring that unlikely outcome, I think we've found our winner. Nice work KevinC.

A new leader in the Expedia Challenge!

I've heard from a lot of people that they've tried to beat adspar's time in this contest, but just couldn't breach the 48 hours mark. Well, this marks a welcome sea change in adspar's impregnability. He can kiss that free case of beer goodbye.

Clocking in at a particularly grueling 48 hours and 30 minutes, beating the previous leader by 20 minutes in his trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, is Brice Lord.

The trip:

Washington Dulles (IAD) -> Chicago O'Hare (ORD) -> London Heathrow (LHR) -> Islamabad-Rawalpindi (ISB)

48 hours 30 minutes

The proof:

Since I don't want to win my own game, I'll give everyone until Monday to beat my time. If no one has beaten me by then, I will receive a free slap on the back and a night of self-stimulatory romance. Let the game continue! (If you're new to the game, scroll down for the gist, etc.)

Note: All new entries will require a screenshot as proof. Just hit the PrintScreen/SysReq button and paste the image into a powerpoint file, then email the file to endthecolawars at gmail dot com. Also post your trip time in the comments of this post or the original post. And good luck fuckers.

The Bored at Work Challenge #1: Expedia

It's no secret that we get bored at work, and it's not a secret that we fill countless hours finding novel ways to occupy our time so as to avoid both work and the inevitable boredom both work and not doing work create.

Sometimes I go onto Expedia and just check out how much flights to London, or Barcelona, or Shanghai, or Tokyo, or Santiago, or Johannesburg cost just to give myself a little thrill. Out of this little exercise, I created a fun game. Please interpret "fun" loosely here.

THE EXPEDIA CHALLENGE

If you want to kill some time, I challenge YOU, the reader, to find the longest travel time for a one-way trip you can on Expedia. We'll have a few basic guidelines:

1. The trip must originate from Dulles Airport (IAD)

2. You must use Expedia. This is to account for possible discrepancies across websites.

3. Layovers are allowed, but stopovers are not. That is, you cannot make the trip go from IAD -> DEN on May 15 and then DEN -> SFO on Sept 20. That's stupid.

4. You must post your itinerary in the Comments section with some basic info, e.g. March 28, IAD -> FRA -> GVA (8 h 43 m)

5. Multiple entries are allowed.

Other than that, you're free to roam.

The winner of the competition gets a free case of beer. I'm going to check your work, so don't cheat.

I'll start off the competition, and I'm also going to participate. Check the comments section to see who the current leader is.

CURRENT LEADER: Brice Lord, IAD -> ORD -> LHR -> ISB (48 h 30 m with connections)

Vail

I went skiing out West for the first time over President's Day weekend, and despite delicious steak dinners, nightly hot tub dunks, perfect ski conditions, beautiful weather, and gorgeous scenery, I can say I absolutely loved it. I hope that sentence was as confusing for you as it was for me.

If you missed the title, I went to Vail. It's an amazing mountain (actually 1.5 entire mountains). I think it's only drawback is its relative difficulty to get to from the East Coast; between winter snow storms in the West, Midwest, and East, and the 2-hour drive through countless mountain passes to the resort, the stars pretty much have to align for you to make it there without any hiccups. For instance: my flight out of Dulles was cancelled. Also, beginner skiers might be better served to build up their confidence at other slopes; Vail is massive and quite technically challenging, and a wrong turn could leave you stuck on some frightening terrain as 65-year old men whisk by in tight flourescent suits.

One thing you always hear people talk about is the powder out West, and how skiing in powder is far superior to the groomed runs we're so used to. Well, for those who have only ever skied on groomed runs, I have some words to heed. Skiing in powder is fucking hard, it's also really fucking tiring. You see those videos of people that look like they're jumping out of the snow to make each turn, well, they are actually jumping out of the snow; you have to actually jump out of the snow to make turns. If you don't do it right, you lose your ski, maybe a pole, and fall into the snow. And getting your equipment back on after wrecking in powder can be a 20-minute ordeal. Not only are you 2 miles up with a bunch of awkward, rigid ski gear attached to you, but you're also struggling in waist-deep snow, which tends to suck you in the more you struggle, like quicksand kinda. The only benefit of powder is that when you do fall you don't have to worry much about hurting yourself, that is, unless you hit a tree, which of course are naturally drawn to areas with a lot of powder.


Vail offered the most tiring and challenging skiing I've ever faced. For starters, the altitude really effects your performance. The various peaks at Vail are all around 11,200 feet (Blue Sky Basin is ~11,500), and you can really feel it when your pushing yourself around and starting off a run. Your legs burn more, your heart races, and you just get out of breath fast. You need to drink a lot of water to keep from getting a headache from dehydration. Altitude also has some weird effects, like tripling the effect of alcohol, and giving you really strange dreams. One of my dreams the first night at altitude featured a naked woman with what looked like Mordor script being written across her chest. Further, the vertical drop between the peak and base is about 3,500 feet, which makes for some damn long runs, particularly the winding catwalks.

Aside from the physical challenges I endured, Vail has the most variety of runs I've ever seen. If you like easy cruising down groomed runs, hopping through powder in the trees, mogul-pocked fields, or picking your path anywhere along the face of a mountain, it's there waiting for you. And if you find a chance to stop, you can enjoy massive vistas of the Rockies fading into the horizon a 100 miles away.

All in all, it was an incredible trip.

Some More Travel Photos---New Mexico

I've never been to the "Great American Southwest," but I've been hoping to get to go there for work sometime soon. My deepest wish came true and I visited the Very Large Array in Socorro, NM in mid-October. You may know the VLA from such movies as Contact, Armageddon, and generally any movie where they show a bunch of big telescopes all turning simultaneously.

Here's some photos from that trip. I had a day off on the tail end of the trip, so I decided to drive around the state for 8 hours. I chose to go toward White Sands National Park / Missle Testing Range. I took a bunch of photos along the way.

Seeing New Mexico left me with the impression that there will be no shortage of available land for humans to populate within the next few centuries. There is so much open land it is nearly incomprehensible. It's also very neat, topologically; tall ranges of mountains are bounded by vast, flat plains and steep rolling hills. It actually looked a lot like Rohan from Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, here's your goddamn pictures.

The Very Large Array itself, pointing to the heavens.

Another angle of the Very Large Array.

A view skyward, from inside one of the dishes in the previous shots. Yes, I stood in the dish. The lack of a natural horizon made it feel like the clouds were stationary and I was whizzing through them.

En route to White Sands, the Town of Truth or Consequences has an interesting history. It was originally named "Hot Springs," but changed its name on a dare made by a 1950's radio show host. The name change has survived several public referendums.

The actual town of Truth or Consequences, viewed from a hill.

Still en route to White Sands; I took this shot white driving. Notice the road bends left. I did not notice that at the time. Driving and shooting is dangerous.

STILL on the way to White Sands. This is one of many endless, flat stretches of road that disappears into a point in the distance. I'd never seen that before. A really cool shot would've been through the power lines on the side, but the weather was uncooperative and I had to pee at this point pretty bad. This is the stretch of road between Las Cruces and Alamogordo.

The sky opened up for a combined total of probably 3 minutes during my entire time at White Sands. It was disappointing, because the whiteness of the sand didn't present itself as eery as it otherwise would, but when the sun did come out, it offered really a neat contrast between the sands and the blue sky peekign through above.

Half of the park was flooded, so I had to walk for two miles through a flooded desert roadway. When the sun popped out, it gave me a few chances to catch some cool reflections. This one looks like an alien planet, or some Buddhist vision of serenity.

Speaking of serenity, White Sands was the quietest place I've ever been in my life. Since the park was flooded, no one (except me) was willing to walk the two miles further up the road. The only noise I heard was the light breeze, and when that died down, and I stopped walking, the only thing I could hear at all was my own breathing. It was an outdoor sensory deprivation chamber. No wonder the aboriginal inhabitants found this land so spiritual.

A F117-A stealth fighter patrolling the area. National parks are known for their surface-to-air capabilities I guess.

I changed filters and out came some shots that looked straight out of an inspirational poster or the game Myst.

Same pic, camera rotated.

SOME PHOTOS

The house I grew up in had miles and miles of forest behind it, and I spent many a weekend day mastering it; perhaps that is why I like to explore.

Until recently, I didn't travel that much. I had a few jaunts here and there, but had never been to any states west of the Mississippi (except part of California). A new job provided me with this opportunity. Here's a map of the states I have been to now (not counting airports).

In a few months I'll have knocked off Nevada, New Mexico, and Minnesota as well.
I've enjoyed traveling and getting to know the "world" outside of the Mid-Atlantic corrider. Being exposed to different people, settings, and lifestyles is important to understanding ourselves, it expands our frame of reference and helps to build empathetic connections.

I also like to travel because I enjoy taking photos of the places I've been to; partly because it reminds me what they looked like, and partly to help remind me how I felt when I was there. For that reason I don't Photoshop my pictures, I guess.

Here's a few pictures I've taken over the past ~1 year since getting my digital camera. The location of each picture is also given.

Kihei, Maui, Hawaii


lava tube, black sand beach, Hana Hwy, Maui, Hawaii


Francis Scott Key Bridge, Georgetown, Washington, DC


The Breakers Mansion, Newport, Rhode Island


Rt. 36, Boulder, Colorado