Category: Travel
June 23, 2008
Anticipated Route
This image shows the route we expect to take on our return trip from CA to NH on an upcoming road trip. Aggressive? Perhaps. Scenic? Definitely. Stopping by to visit folks? Included, but unfortunately minimal. Blogged and photo'd the whole time? What do you think? Geotagged images? If our equipment is all working. Twittered and Qik'd? Probably not -- roaming cell coverage isn't exactly cheap. Sorry. :)
(Click on the image for the full version.)
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(0)May 2, 2007
An Attempt at Time Lapse Video
So, on our trip the weekend before last (you know, the one with the broken car window and the poorly behaving gadgets), I also took many pictures with the Sony Vaio UX280P out the window on the way.
I've turned this in to a simple time lapse video that's about a minute long. Instead of trying to figure out how to do a little embedded Flash player for my own Flash video, I decided to just let Windows Movie Maker write out in WMV format. Then, I uploaded it to cruxy. Why cruxy and why not YouTube (or Google Video)? Well, I might try those, as well. Cruxy seemed like it might be easier to switch to a local version at some point, though. They also provide tools for transcoding video files to and from most of the major, unprotected formats.
So, anyway, here it is (hopefully):
April 25, 2007
A Great Weekend, With a Glitch
So, this last weekend we drove up to Eugene with my Grandmother to join my mom and sister there for my aunt's birthday. This brought much of the immediate family together in a less hectic environment than our wedding celebration last year.
We drove up most of the day Friday and back most of the day Sunday, leaving only Friday evening and Saturday for visiting. This worked out well, though. We went to their shop, had a few really nice meals with them, and played a board game, Cranium, which we hadn't played before. During the day, we went out for a game of bowling, too.
Just as we'd gotten in to the second game and I was waiting in line, which was slow, the one person helping the line left it to announce something. It started with something about an Accord (wait, I can't leave my lights on) but quickly mentioned California plates, which was a give-away.
Outside I go, not knowing quite what's wrong because it had been too noisy to hear well. There, I found the right rear window smashed! A passenger had left a bag on the seat and apparently someone had just walked by, noticed it, smashed the window, grabbed it, and moved on. Nothing else was taken, including items in the front seat, glove boxes, and trunk. We were glad for that, but the bag that was stolen had contained many personal items and keys from a couple of our passengers, so that's still causing a hassle with them.
The whole even was on a security video, which may aunt is sending to me. I'll have to make a copy and edit it up for posting online here. It might be fun. ;)
Cleaning up the glass ended up taking a couple of hours, which was a significant portion of the time we were there. Luckily, that gave some time for my grandma to visit with her daughters.
We taped up some plastic for the 500 mile drive back Sunday. By Monday at 1:00 PM the window had already been fixed. On Tuesday I got to give the list of property damage and items stolen to the police. When I get the security video, I may be calling them back to add some information if there is any detail of use on it.
Some lessons and interesting tidbits learned:
- Don't have items visible in a car, regardless of where you are
- Don't assume a car alarm will attract any sort of attention; it was 30 minutes before the broken glass was reported. In that time, someone could have climbed in and taken other stuff or even the car itself.
- When making a list of stolen items, provide serial numbers, brands, and replacement value for as much as possible. Details such as color and size are important, too, but the other bits of information are more clear for identifying the lot.
- Auto insurance does not cover the contents of items stolen. That's for home owner's or renter's insurance. Keep in mind, though, that filing a claim is subject to deductibles and possible dropping of insurance because home owner's is a loss leader.
- Glass is a special case for repair and insurance. Glass isn't fixed by the dealer and our insurance had a special option for it on their call menu. Other damage that the broken glass does is different, though, but from what we can tell none of the leather was scratched and maybe only one minor nick to the paint was done that we didn't notice until later.
- The police want to know how much it costs to repair the damage done. Theft and property damage are two difference illegal items.
- Don't be scared by filing a police report. In my case, the Eugene officer was friendly and polite on the phone, even though I could tell there was a lot of noise around her making it difficult to hear me.
- Calling 911 for a theft after the fact will get you someone who will give you the local police number. Have something to write on handy so you don't tie up the line longer than needed. (In this case, I used my LG VX9800 for taking notes while talking on the UpStage.)
- After calling 911, my cell phone (the Sprint UpStage, in this case) stayed in emergency only mode and wouldn't go out with a few presses of the end key and confirmation of such an action. This made it impossible to call any other number before getting out of this mode.
- Even though I called with a phone that certainly sent my location to 911, they wanted to know my exact address and location. Have someone around that knows, if possible. The police line won't get your location, either, so you'll need to know. Worst case, use a GPS fix or a map to get an estimate of the street address if you're not actually near a posted address.
- The police don't come out for this sort of event. After calling and giving the location and my contact information, I was told to make a complete list of items stolen and damage done, but that there was nothing else I needed to do at that time. They would call back within a couple of days. The fact that it was an out-of-state cell phone number did not matter.
I'm sure many of you know this, but I've never experience this for myself so I wanted to record some of the details while it was still fresh in my memory.
The photo above doesn't do a great job of showing that the glass was across the entire rear of the vehicle. It must have been hit pretty hard to cause even some large chunks to end up clear on the other side.
April 11, 2007
Beijing: In Retrospect
Well, I'm definitely late in getting out a Beijing post. It's now been about a week over six months since we were there. We were only there for a few days, though, so there really isn't all that much to it.
When we got there, we did the typical: we went shopping! Like Hong Kong, haggling is the norm in Beijing. 
We went to many of the markets, including the famous Friendship market. Apparently, it used to be the only place foreigners were allowed. These days, we can go almost anywhere.
We also went to see Tiananmen Square as well as some of the other nearby sites. Although full of formal guards, we were never bothered.
All over the city were signs and displays for the Olympic mascots. The Olympics are definitely a huge event for any city, but they seem particularly so for Beijing.
On the last day we had planned to go out to the Great Wall. Unfortunately, I got sick. 
We decided that Laurie should still go on her own. After all, we had already scheduled for a car to come to pick us up. So, she did go on her own. She had a really good time, too, even though I couldn't go with her. :o
She did find that it was nice enough that we will return again so I can see it and she can see more of it.
The hotel would give us fruit, which was great. One day we got a piece of fruit that we did not recognize. I spent the next hour searching online for it before we even cut in to it. Eventually, we determined it was a dragonfruit. Turns out that the taste is much less strong than the looks. 
It was like a weak melon in flavor, but stil tasty and quick to eat with a spoon.
. . .
Well, that concludes this series of memories on our trip around the world we took last September for our honeymoon.
I hope this didn't bore too many people, but it has helped both of us remember more of our trip.
March 19, 2007
Journey to Beijing: In Retrospect
Alright, so this is a little silly since we never left the airport on our way from South Africa to Beijing, China. However, the travel time was a good chunk of our trip and is still quite memorable in part because of the length and in part because we have no pictures. (Sounds ironic, huh?)
We left South Africa many days after we had planned on leaving. Our travel changes only included the times of the tickets and not the route. So, our first hop dropped us back in to the Johannesburg airport. We didn't spend much time there and I hardly remember it.
Not long after, we were off on a decent length flight to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Here, we spent about 12 hours waiting for our next flight. We didn't have to leave the secure section of the airport and we decided not to. As it turns out, this was in the middle of the day and Ramadan had just started. Our guide books told us that the most likely place to find food would be in the Chinatown section. Well, see, we were headed off to China anyway, so we decided to go get some slept -- we had already been up a long time.
There was a transit hotel in the security section that rented by the hour, although mostly in four hour blocks. I forget if we stayed four or six hours, but it went very fast and only marginally helped our fatigue -- but we did get to shower, which was nice.
After that, we headed out in to the great KLIA which, like any modern airport, is basically a shopping mall. This proved to be entertaining so we went around looking at things and grabbed a couple of trinkets and ended up with some of the local money.
Our next flight was quite short since it was just going to Thailand. We landed and proceeded to have the next eight hours to wonder around the Bangkok airport. This was not quite as good of an experience as KLIA since we had to exit security, pay the taxes, etc. Then, we couldn't check in right away so we had to make do for a couple of hours on the external section of the airport, which didn't have quite so many shops to kill some time. However, we saw plenty of the military presence we had heard about.
The coup, as it turned out, was mostly non-violent and we probably would have been fine had we not changed our plans. However, there were a few issues that made us very glad we did change our plans. First, banks and ATM's were closed the first few days, so money would have been a problem. Many other shops and sights were also closed. Finally, the weather was absolutely terrible the whole time we would have been there. We didn't leave the airport because the middle of the airport had a very large enclosed courtyard where we could see the massive amounts of wind and rain, even though it was protected on all sides by a many-story building.
Our next flight to Beijing was a bit longer, at over five hours, but that wasn't the interesting part. This turned out to be what felt like a very budget flight. The plane was noticeably old and hadn't been retrofitted with new seats or signage. It still had ash trays on the seats and other signs. This was also a flight between two non-English speaking countries and with a destination that is relatively rare for English speakers. That didn't prevent them from speaking in English on the announcements, when there were some. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we got some needed rest.
I recall choosing the local breakfast rather than the western breakfast that didn't look all that good. As it turns out, it was this huge thing of rice porridge that was both quite good and very filling. I say it was good mostly because I like rice and it can be spiced up some. It was relatively bland, though, but after being in transit (including driving to the airport in South Africa) for over 40 hours, food was food.
We landed and had a decent drive in front of us to our hotel. That's another story, though.
March 16, 2007
South Africa: In Retrospect
We left our friends in Kenya when we headed off to South Africa. They were to spend another few days there and then head either to South Africa or back home. We weren't to meet up with them again, so the rest of our trip would be just us.
I was probably most impressed with South Africa. We were originally only going to be there a few nights to do some wine tasting, see some of the area, and go shark diving. That got extended due to last minute notice of the coup in Thailand and the media black-out while we had to make our decision.
I have a number of good memories from South Africa. We had this great little VW car that had an amenity list that included seat belts and head lights. It had no air bags, no radio, no fuel injection, and pretty much nothing else that you might find in a car these days. And yet, it was a brand new car, although certainly not legal in the US.
Our meal at the top of a hill had a fantastic view and lots of really good meats and foods to eat. It was a bit cold and windy, but it certainly was memorable. I was a little surprised at how empty the restaurant was, but it was a weeknight and not anywhere near town. It looked like it could serve really large functions.
Our drive over to the coast took us through a great pass that was scenic and rocky in much the same way that my drive over Highway 17 in scenic and full of redwoods. It wasn't all that much higher or longer of a pass, either, especially if compared to taking Highway 9, instead.
The coast I recall as being absolutely wonderful and very much like our own coast here in central California. The coast road is windy with lots of great views. Every stopping point has a view south of vast openness of water filled with whales and dolphins. Our own view occasionally has a whale; we've seen one while we've been here, but we've never seen a dolphin from the coast.
The jackass penguins were really quite fun. You walk on boardwalk over their area while they are right under and around you. The only thing separating you from them is a fence with fairly narrow slats. These slats are too narrow for a foot but not too narrow for a penguins beak. I got pecked by one!
Naturally, one of our strongest memories was sitting in our hotel watching TV within about 18 hours of our flight to Thailand. Flipping through the stations, we saw mention of a coup in Thailand! There wasn't much information about it and while we were watching for more information we got word that Thailand had cut off media communications from inside the country. That meant we wouldn't learn any more about it. So, we quickly contacted our travel agent, had our flights moved, and contacted a place Laurie had stayed in her first trip to South Africa, Phantom Forest eco-lodge in Knysna. All of our changes went off without a hitch and instead of heading to the airport the next day, we drove farther our towards Knysna.
This turned out to be convenient since our shark diving trip had been cancelled and possibly pushed off to a date when we wouldn't be in the country because of rough weather. So, we got to stay at the wonderful Phantom Forest that will be my best memory of there. The huts are on a steep hill and partially up in trees. It makes for a very private, very in-the-forest feel. It was very pleasant and truly wonderful.
Our shark diving trip turned out to be shark watching, which still got me seasick. The waters were still filled with silt and had maybe a foot or two visibility. People who did go in the water couldn't see anything where we could see all of the action from the top deck. It was really quite something! I hope to go back sometime and actually get in the water with the sharks. (Hopefully when I go back I'll have figured out my motion sickness issues.)
After our wonderful time in South Africa, we were off for a long journey to Beijing.
March 13, 2007
Kenya: In Retrospect
Following the post on Egypt, I'll be talking about some of the major items that I remember about Kenya, both good and bad. Six months is a relatively long time for remembering details, but they stick around longer on particularly special events.
Many of my best memories still come from the Mara Bush Camp. It was our first stop and our most rugged one, too. It's a real, moving camp that gets set up in a different location yearly. There was no power to speak of in the tents, except for a battery to keep some LED bulbs powered for night use. This probably helped give it some lasting impact.
At the end of the day, we often all gathered in a lounge in the dining tent (there were some power plugs there) and all had either Tusker or Amarula. It was one of the few times during the day that we could actually just relax. Outside of that, we were usually out and about taking pictures and roaming around on the dirt roads, keeping an eye out for critters. This turned out to be particularly tiring. That's part of why there weren't daily blog entries from that time.
During one of our outings, we had a great encounter with a number of baby lion cubs. There were lots of other vehicles around, but that didn't seem to bother any of the lions. They pride had various lions about to watch for food and threat, but the vehicles clearly weren't considered a threat. They walked right in the middle of the autos and even very close to us. They were so amazingly cute. Laurie got some great pictures and we may have even gotten some good video (sure, it's been 6 months, but that doesn't mean we've had time to go through all of our media).
After the Mara Bush Camp, we headed over to Fig Tree, which wasn't far away and allowed us similar routes during our drives. Sitting in the tree patio drinking Tusker, avoiding the monkeys, and watching animals out on the plains are my main memories here. In fact, I almost forgot about them before I went looking through the pictures again.
After we left the Masai Mara, we stayed in Amboseli. My main memories of here were of lots of elephants and mosquitos. It was very odd that our previous camp, which was right on a river, had no mosquitos but in a permanent structure, there were tons of mosquitos. We got to see lots of elephants, including many baby elephants.
Our next adventure was a high-speed convoy between Amboseli and Tsavo. Supposedly, there had been previous conflict in the area which led to a weapons build-up. We weren't allowed to leave Amboseli without being part of the convoy. For most people, this wasn't a problem since they weren't driving themselves. We, however, were the only people who were self-driving. Although it was worth it and no one bothered us about it, it wasn't normal.
The drive itself was uneventful until we missed our turn-off to Finch Hatton's and got ourselves in to some sharp volcanic rock that we could have avoided. This gave us a flat that we had to deal with at the gate. Some people tried to help us with the jack, but it wasn't until someone came up that was familiar with how to fix a dust-caked one that we got it working. It worked as we thought, but being front mounted it got the brunt of the dust and thus got all muddle up. Everyone was very helpful though and gave us better directions to backtrack and get in to Finch Hatton's.
Finch Hatton's itself was absolutely wonderful and is probably my best memory of the whole trip even though we were there alone. It was certainly the best place that we stayed. Our tent was right over a water hole with lots of hippos and crocs. We're hoping to return soon. ;)
The final memory, which still lingers on many of our bags, was the massive amount of dust that was kicked up in many areas. Even with all of the windows and hatches closed, the car would not seal and would fill with dust that got all over and inside of absolutely everything, including out lungs. We can see the color of the dust on many of our bags still. It was truly permeating.
Unlike our feeling for Egypt, where even now we don't want to go back, we've been wanting to go back to Kenya since. That said, we never truly felt all that well while we were there. We were taking all the various medications and such, but whether it was from different food, too much dust, general fatigue, or something worse, we were always not feeling quite right. Maybe next time we go we can spend longer to get more adjusted to the climate and food.
March 12, 2007
Egypt: In Retrospect
It's been six months since we took our honeymoon around the world, going through Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, airports in Malaysia and Thailand, and China. Overall, the trip was absolutely great. We tried to blog through the whole trip, but a number of things got in our way, not the least of which was simply fatigue after keeping busy all day.
The farther away you get from a memory, the more those memories seem to consolidate on just a few moments in time. This time in September, we'd already left Egypt and were in Kenya.
I thought I would share some of my strong, lasting memories of Egypt and perhaps along with a new picture or two. That doesn't mean I'm going to go over everything I remember, but just some of the big, important items. Laurie has also posted her memories of the Egypt part of our trip on her blog, Naturally Speaking.
My main memory of our visit was that everything was very dirty and dusty. 
And by dirt, I mean that there was garbage everywhere, in particular, in the streets and where one walked. This was particularly notable in the markets where you literally had to walk on refuse while looking up out of the throng of people at old, crumbling buildings that look like they would collapse at any moment. The waterways, although covered in filth, also had many egrets in them, as can be seen here.
Also, don't trust what anyone says on the streets. We got convinced to go off in one direction, only to find out they just wanted our money for a camel or horse ride. We didn't want to comply, so they sent us further along only to find out we (supposedly) weren't supposed to be there. On our way back out, guards and others were cracking looks and probably laughing. It was not a pleasant experience but we fully learned that flat-out lies were expected. (And that's isn't of the misleading type of, "Buy this, best quality, real," that we would become so familiar with at the other end of our journey.)
Within the Citadel, I happened across the filthiest restroom I'd ever seen. It was also probably the oldest. Scary, too, was the fact that locals were filling up their water bottles. From the looks of it, it would have been safer to fill up a water bottle from a puddle in an overcrowded cow pasture. I didn't have any small notes on me at the time, so the tip I gave to the attendant was a bit larger than normal (by about 20x), but was barely $2 US. After he realized what it was, he came running out when I was already 100 feet away or so thanking me profusely.
A while after that, we got to hear the call to prayer while overlooking the city. That was an absolutely amazing experience. The sound and enormity of it was profound. It's just not possible to miss the right times with that sort of announcement. Naturally, off in two directions groups of pyramids could be seen through the haze, too, which just added to the mood of the view.
The last impression was the absolute chaos at the airport on the way out. I wrote about that before, so I won't go in to much detail now. Suffice it to say, if there had been a panic from real or a false threat, people would have died. It could have been from being knocked over and trampled during a brief break in the crowd wide enough to fall in to. It could have been from one of those metal luggage carts being dropped, since they would be handed over people's heads when they were in the way. It didn't help that there were absolutely no other white people in sight. We felt very out of place and a bit disturbed by the whole experience.
However, it should be noted, that the people who actually did work there were actually all nice. Sure, they had to deal with the chaos, but we never had any problems with them giving us a hard time, either going through the entrance security, checking our bags, checking our passports, or even at the gate security where Laurie kept setting off the metal detector. (Eventually they let her through after asking if she had a knife or gun because they couldn't wand her because they had no female staff. I suspect if that had happened here and no female was available for "wanding" she would have been held until someone was found.)
Those are my main memories that help remind me that if we ever do go back to Egypt we'll skip out on Cairo and head off to the other sites. Hopefully they'll be a little more official and organized than the pyramids. I'm not counting on that, though.
February 20, 2007
Sometimes the Sun Sets
This was the sunset from last night. I thought that the sunset would have been nicer tonight because there is a fire currently burning to the east of Lahaina on the hillsides. The wind blows down from the hills and you could see all of the extra haze in the air. It just wasn't quite the same as this one, though. (More information on the fire can be found at Honolulu Advertiser, but not currently at Maui News.)
Of course, that's not to say that the one tonight was bad or anything. Laurie caught some great shots of it, too. We were using our Canon SD900 point and shoot for both of these. Clearly, it's not a terrible camera. There are some things missing, of course. I'll get in to that on another post.
Well, that's the end of our short Maui trip. Lots of wonderful food, great snorkeling, a wonderful wedding, a fun hike, and some fun sunsets!
February 16, 2007
An Amusing Hotel Experience
So, we get to our hotel, right? Well, one of the first things we do at a hotel, for some unknown reason, we turn on the TV. This time around it was this dinky little TV of maybe 20" and was just a regular, old tube TV.
One time walking by another room, the door was open. In it we see a nice, decent sized wide-screen LCD TV. "Hey, how come we don't have that TV?" Then a little while later, we see a cart with many nice, widescreen LCD TVs going to upper floors. *Grumble!*
Well, while eating lunch, we got a pounding on the door. Guess what we got?