Toothbrush support Life Hack

kw: life hacks, toothbrush support, travel

Here is a little item I haven't seen in any of the "life hack" viral videos:

When staying in a hotel, we never see a toothbrush stand. We had been using those flimsy plastic cups to hold the toothbrushes off the sink surface, but they tip easily. Then we hit upon an easy solution: half fill the cup with water. Now the cups are stable.

By the way, we also keep the plastic bags the little soaps come in. (They are behind the left cup). If we like the soap (some brands are too sticky to wash off) we let it dry a little and put it back in the bag to bring home. If we don't like the soap I get out a small bar I carry in the suitcase. The hotel throws the soap away if you don't take it.

I'll often try out the shampoo they provide and if it is good I'll take that also. They are small enough to carry in carry-on luggage for plane flights.

Amusingly persistent TomTom

kw: observations, travel, computers

We spent the afternoon and early evening with our son in Edison, NJ. He is in graduate school at nearby Rutgers. On the way home, I was showing my wife how to use the GPS, a TomTom unit that I really like. Getting there she had learned to program in the address we were going to, and learn to cope with the sometimes frequent admonishments and directions. In particular, today the traffic conditions kept changing, and it offered several times to change the route to compensate, but we know that traffic delays appear and vanish in the Princeton area frequently, so we kept telling it "No" (It is one of the ones that takes voice commands).

The programming for the return trip was totally easy: the first screen had the options of "Home" and "Another Destination", so we said, "Home" and we were off. Or so we thought. After trundling along checking about 80,000 road choices it announced that the quickest way had tolls. There are three ways to get between Edison and Highway 95 near Ridley Park, PA. One is via the NJ Turnpike, and seems to be the way the GPS favors, so when it asked if tolls were OK I said, "No".

Getting down US Hwy 1 toward Trenton was no problem. As expected, the unit was directing us toward Philadelphia on I-95. We ignored that ramp and took the next one, toward I-295, which we always take to US 130 and 322 to cross the Barry Bridge at Chichester, PA. At the time that we were approaching the I-95 ramp, the expected arrival at home was 8:54 PM. Once we were well on I-295, and the unit had recalculated, this changed to 9:02. This seemed about right, but then I saw it was trying to take us off the next exit and make a U-turn. When we passed that exit, it recalculated, and set up a U-turn at the next exit.

It did so for every exit between milepost 65 on I-295 until we got to US 130, where we were sure it would "let" us go the way we were planning, to 322 and across the bridge. But it persisted. I finally realized that the Barry Bridge has a $5 toll, and I had told it "No tolls". It was still trying to get us back to the Trenton bridge, the only one without a toll! By this time it was estimating our arrival home as after 10:30 PM!! Once we were approaching the toll booths and there were no other choices, the GPS finally displayed a path across the bridge and reset its time of arrival as 8:59 PM. We actually drove into our driveway right at 9:00.

One consequence of all this nagging by the GPS, in its neutral female voice (though I began to imagine growing desperation), was that I needed no caffeine to keep me awake on the 2-hour drive.I usually get a large soda, a cola with caffeine, about ten miles into the trip out of Edison, but this time I neglected it, and didn't need it. My wife and I were discussing how persistent the unit was. A naggy GPS may be a wakefulness promoter, but I don't think I'll do this the same way again. Now that I know why, I'd just find it absurdly irritating.

A bit of the big city

kw: travel, sightseeing, photographs

(You'll need to click on all these pix to see them at a nice viewing size.)

My wife and I have wanted to have a day away for some time, so we joined a bus trip to Manhattan yesterday. I'd have posted these images last evening, but events conspired to get us home quite a bit later than we expected.

The bus dropped us all off near Times Square. Most people had come for a show or to shop (I don't understand paying $40 to go to NYC to shop). The two of us went first to the Empire State building. We walked there, which takes less than a half hour from Times Square. We were lucky, the crowds were light Saturday morning, so we were at the 86^th floor observatory within an hour of arriving.

This is one of a number of nadir-to-horizon panoramas I took. Most were three-image groups that I stitched using the panorama stitcher in Windows Live Albums. This one is the best-aligned, and shows the Chrysler Building and its surroundings. You can be sure I had the camera strap firmly locked around my wrist as I held the camera out through the grid to take these!

We spent an hour at this level, then paid the extra $15 to go to the glassed-in observatory at the 102^nd floor. The smudgy glass impairs the view, which is not that different from the view below. It is also a very small space; they only allow about thirty people in there at a time. I did get a better view of Central Park than I'd had before. This is one of those "OK, now I did that, there is no need to repeat the experience."

Before leaving the building, we had a bite in the Europa Cafe, which is very pleasant, and the sandwiches were excellent. It is on the South side of the building at street level.

We took the subway to the 81^st Street station and spent the rest of our day at the American Museum of Natural History. I love NH museums. The entry lobby, on the second floor off Central Park West, features this stupendous dinosaur group. I didn't take quite enough photos to get a clean panorama to the height of the tall Camarasaurus's head. This is a stitch of nine images.

If you look closely, you can see a smaller Camarasaurus to the lower right, and an Allosaur (I don't know which species) to the left. The rearing sauropod is supposedly defending the youngster. This is quite a different view from the way sauropods were depicted when I was a child. They were once thought to be lumbering bags of meat without brains enough to do more than watch stupidly as carnosaurs ate them up, when they weren't keeping half-submerged in the swamps. Now they are known to have had the strength to rear up, and to trot along at respectable speeds.

We quickly made our way through the museum to the back rooms where the geological exhibits are kept. I am a mineral junkie. I'll probably post some mineral photos later. I took closeups of many large groups of crystal druses for wallpaper images.

But one treasure I simply have to show is this trilobite accompanied by a trace fossil. To a paleontologist, trace fossils, or fossils of the marks made by animals walking, are at least as valuable as skeletal or shell fossils, because they show something about animal behavior. In this case, the trilobite was walking along when it must have been overwhelmed by a mudslide, which smothered it in place at the end of its trackway.

In their day, trilobites filled the niche now filled by crabs and their relatives the lobsters and isopods. Did you know that the little pillbugs you find in your garden are isopods, related not to ants or millipedes but to lobsters? Oceanic isopods look a lot like big pillbugs, and just a little like their ancient relatives the trilobites.

We left the museum with just enough time to catch a subway back to Times Square; we actually didn't take the transferring train, but walked the last mile from Columbus Circle in plenty of time to catch the bus home. Upon our return, we found friends in the parking lot who were having trouble starting their car. Another friend had already tried, and failed, to jump start their car. They are not presently members of AAA, but I called AAA and was told I could still have someone come to start the car because we were with them. AAA insures us, whatever car we are in. However, that necessitated our staying with them, so we had a nice visit with them, which got us home an hour later than we expected. It turned out their battery was on its last legs, so they bought a battery on the spot, from the AAA guy, and were good to go.

We went straight to bed, and I also took a long nap this afternoon, so here I am, late Sunday evening writing about our Saturday. Glad to be home.

I didnt get to go

kw: photographs, travel

My father invited the extended family on a cruise to Juneau and Skagway, Alaska. My wife and I had schedule conflicts and couldn't go, but our son went, along with several of his cousins and their parents. This is kind of like, "My son went to Alaska, and I got this ball cap"; he brought us a few small souvenirs. He also brought back nearly a thousand pictures. For the moment, I'll just share a couple that caught my eye as I was transferring the camera cards to the computer last night.

This totem pole assembly is from south of Juneau, and in the "doorway" you can just see on of the cousins. A couple of the stops were places that are famous for totem poles, and the number of genuine poles (not those made just for the tourists to view) is impressive. A postcard he brought me shows around a dozen totem poles.

The little orange thing next to the iceberg is a Zodiac raft with about a dozen people on it. The freight for taking that Zodiac ride was rather steep, so none of "our folks" went on it. But it really is true that glacier ice gets deep blue! They did get a closeup visit to the Mendenhall Glacier later on, and when I locate a picture of that I'll post more.

The hotelkeeper did it

kw: travel

Three days at a fancy hotel that is so proud of their Ethernet-only internet service that they charge $9.95 per day, well, I just decided to bag it. They do have a small wi-fi hot spot in one of the bars, but charge even more for that. The hotel? Jacksonville Hyatt Waterfront. We were at a church conference, which I'll have more to say about once I get to my backlog.

We spent the prior two days in Atlanta at the downtown Days Inn, which had free wi-fi in all rooms, and the bed was more comfortable to boot. Plus, it had microwave and refrigerator in all rooms, while the Hyatt did not. So for double the price, the Hyatt does have a bit more space, but you're mainly paying for granite countertops and a somewhat better TV. (While we didn't actually pay double, because there was a conference special price, the rack rate for the Hyatt is twice that of the Days Inn).

Fortunately, we had a great time in both Atlanta and Jacksonville. I've already posted about our visit to the Georgia Aquarium, in the prior post on the 28th. For now, I'll say good night and get to the 6-day backlog of laundry!

A visit to Hagley

travel, sightseeing, photographs

DuPont employees anad their families get into Hagley Museum and Powder Yard free this month, so my wife and I took advantage of the chance to see it. We haven't been there for several years. We mainly walked along the powder mill buildings.

More than twenty of these blast-resistant structures remain, and another dozen or so are in ruins or just the foundations are left. Most of them are in pairs; the waterwheel or turbine would be between with a shaft going each way to power the mill wheels.

A rectangular building has five "sides", four walls and a roof. Powder mills have three solid walls, about three feet thick, as blast protection for the rest of the powder yard and dwellings that were rather nearby, including the E.I. DuPont mansion, Eleutherian Mills. The fourth wall, facing the Brandywine River, was very lightweight, or that side was left open, and the roof was also lightweight. Thus, if there was an accident, the explosive force would be directed across the river. "Going across the river" was a euphemism for dying in an explosion among the 19^th Century workers in the mills.

The earliest water wheels were "breast wheels" like this one; the water sluice hit the wheel on a level with the axle, at breast height, and pulled that side downward. This view is of the back of the wheel. It is about ten feet in diameter. Later wooden wheels were overshot, with about twice the efficiency of breast wheels. After about 1840 metal turbines, which are more efficient yet, were used.

To minimize the chance of accidental sparks, the walkways and rails in the vicinity of the powder mills were all of wood. Once metal turbines began to be used, they were enclosed in wooden barrel-like structures, and kept wet continually, so no sparks could ignite any powder dust, which was always in the air. Carrying metal on-site, even your wedding band, was grounds for dismissal.

I was told that, at the office and home of Mr. DuPont, there was a wash basin which had to be used upon entry, to make sure no powder remained on your hands. This was particularly important in winter, when anyone in the building might throw a log on the fire; invisible amounts of powder were enough to cause an accident!

Geared mechanisms like this one were used to raise and lower large gates, so you could start and stop the mill wheels as needed. I like mechanical stuff, and Hagley has a lot of it. This particular gate and its lift gears are still in use.

On a later tour of the DuPont mansion (no photography allowed), someone asked why the place is named Hagley. The guide answered that one of the larger properties that was purchased to make up the facility was bought from a Mr. Hagley, and much of the existing area (240 acres out of an original 1,000 acres) is composed of the land bought from him. However, it still could have been called "DuPont Powder Museum" or some such, so perhaps the wishes of company representatives entered into that decision.

Saturday at Rockwood

kw: travel, sightseeing

Saturday afternoon, after the rain had stopped for a while, we visited Rockwood Park, home of the Shipley Mansion, which houses the Rockwood Museum. We've visited before on a couple of occasions for the Ice Cream festival, and had one tour of the mansion. This time, we walked the grounds. I was scouting photo opportunities, because I plan to lead a field trip for a Photography class in July, and this is one place that the grounds are free.

Shipley Mansion at Rockwood Park
The mansion is quite impressive. But I discovered something several years ago when I took my parents on the tour here in the morning, and to Winterthur (the biggest DuPont mansion) the same afternoon. Captain Shipley was decidedly rich. The DuPonts were filthy rich!

HaHa (Recessed Stone Wall)
The Shipley family and those who followed produced an English landscape garden surrounding the house. The landscaped grounds and those further away, left in a more or less open meadow condition, are separated by walls recessed into the land, called HaHa's. The walls can be seen when looking toward the house, but from the house and yard, they are not seen, and it looks like unbroken landscape.

Wisteria Growing Right Up the Trees
There is only one small area of formal garden, in an area that used to be the kitchen garden. the few flowering plants there were not yet in bloom. Dogwoods were the main flowering plant to be seen elsewhere; Landscape gardens are not known for floral beauty, being composed of trees and shrubs. One of the few kinds of flowering plant in bloom, this early May day, was Wisteria. There are a few wisteria vines used on trellises near the house and the carriage house. In one area to the southeast of the main house, wisteria vines have climbed up the trees, reaching fifty feet or more. They are the largest wisteria I've seen anywhere.

I was told by a docent that there will be almost nothing in bloom in July, but that many of the plants in the conservatory will be set out during the summer. There are a number of unusual species, so perhaps we'll have a few exotic views. The main photography venues I could discern for the moment are the house and the various landscape views. No doubt there will be more intimate views to be had; there's no telling what a van full of avid photography students can discover!

PHL Art

kw: travel, art, airports

[The last installment of my Airport Art images from my recent travel.] I came into a different terminal at Philadelphia than I left from, so after I left the plane, I got my camera out, hoping this terminal had some real art to display. I was not disappointed. This is one of two cases of Shelley Spector's figurines. They are about two feet tall. I don't know what they are supposed to represent (I didn't stop long enough to read the case notes). Given the stripey pants, it is fun to speculate that maybe they are golfers checking out the golf course.

I thought those would be it, but before I got to baggage claim, there was this nice surprise:


In the hallway between terminals I found a long display of innovative clocks. I snapped about half of them before rushing on to get my baggage.

Here are closeups (click for bigger image) of three of the clocks.

One thing about the PHL airport: they are pretty quick getting the baggage out of the planes. Sure enough, within a minute of my arrival at the baggage carrel, there was my suitcase.

It is a good thing I went on this trip for more than the art. Between plane fare, hotel and rental car, it had been a $1000 trip. Pretty expensive art venues…

SFO Art

kw: travel, airports, art

On my trip home Monday this week, I had a layover in the San Francisco airport. Terminal 3 is a large, 3-armed monstrosity, and it has been graced with several sorts of art exhibits.


An atrium in the center of the structure sports several clusters of model airplanes. They are three to five feet in size.


One of the long hallways has a large exhibit of Russel Wright's homeware creations from fifty or more years ago. This is but one of more than thirty cases.


This modern, wooden reproduction armillary sphere is found in a bookstore. I didn't get the name. It caters to those with technical interests.

ONT Airport Art

kw: travel, art, airports

I travel infrequently, so there is nearly always new art on display in the airports I use. I try to photograph most or all that I see, because it's the only chance of a lifetime. These days, the only way to get into the exhibit is by having a boarding pass!



The murals at the Ontario Airport in California are an exception. They are part of the structure. This one is at the east end of Terminal 2 (Although I was careful to photograph it straight on, I can see that there is still a bit of keystoning). It shows a view I haven't seen in the Ontario-Riverside area since the 1970s. The orange groves (and vineyards) are all gone, either abandoned or built over.


Other artwork is displayed in cases along hallways between gate sections, such as this fashion art. Most of the display is hats and handbags, but this case of necklaces was the most interesting to me. I like bead work and stone work. These cases were in the western hallway. The eastern hallway is currently blocked off, but usually also has artwork on display.

I like the Ontario airport. It is roomy and usually uncrowded, and is far enough from the built-up parts of LA and Orange counties to be easy to get to, even near rush hour. It is one of the few airports that you can still go to half an hour before flight time and be pretty sure you'll make your plane. I still go 1½ to 2 hours early anyway. It gives me time for photography and a call home before I leave.

On this trip, because my incoming flight had been canceled, and I landed at the John Wayne airport in Orange Country, I found that it is almost as easy to use and is just ten minutes from Anaheim. I guess, since my Dad has moved out of state, I no longer need to fly into Ontario, which is the best for getting to Arcadia and Pasadena. I'll probably be seeing more of JW airport, since I do have an occasional reason to go to Anaheim.

Couldn't eat on the train

kw: curios, travel


While taking a constitutional up and down the block each morning, I passed these boarded up train cars, that used to be set up as a restaurant. This morning I took some pictures. There are six cars, two lines of three, with passageways between them side-to-side, and a building attached to the side that doesn't show here, where the cooking was done.

I was told by a hotel clerk that the restaurant was quite popular, and is an unofficial historical landmark. People loved to eat in the train cars. There was not sufficient parking for both the hotel and the restaurant, so three years ago the owner opened a different diner elsewhere and closed this one down. Many local people hope it will be preserved in some way, perhaps turned into a museum, for it preserves the last remnant of the old Anaheim-Burbank train line. It is walking distance from the entrance to Disneyland.

Arcadia in my mind

kw: travel, reminiscences

When I plan a trip, I "visit" prospective motels via Google Street View. "Driving" down a street and "looking" every which way in Street View gives me an idea what a neighborhood is like. The property may look fine, but the neighborhood makes the difference.

This is a Travelodge in Pasadena at which I've stayed before; I like it pretty well. It is one of three in eastern Pasadena that I've used. Since they are all of similar quality, each time I go I choose by price.

I am gradually losing all my reasons to visit Pasadena. Once, all my family lived in the Pasadena-Arcadia area. Dad was the last to move, to Portland last summer. My niece will soon graduate from Occidental College, a half hour or less to the southwest, so if I don't stay in South Pasadena, I'll probably resort to this Travelodge again…for one last time.

Looking east toward Arcadia after clipping that image, I realized I was looking at an area near a place I used to live. When my parents first moved back from Ohio to California in 1967, we lived at this house in Arcadia. I lived with them there two years; they were there several years longer.

I can only recognize the house by its location. A later resident has walled in part of the front yard, hiding the front of the house. The driveway doesn't seem as steep as it did forty years ago, when I used to back my VW Bug down it, nearly always banging the bumper on the street.

That driveway used to go beside the house, to a garage behind, where Dad and I rebuilt the VW's engine, and my brother took two junked Subarus and produced one running car. None of the houses has a driveway that goes 'round back now. Everyone has added either a side garage or a bedroom. One neighbor even dug out the driveway to street level.

This was the house in which I learned to sleep through cacophony. A family hobby is antique clocks, many gathered while we lived in the Midwest. About twenty or more mantel clocks were kept running in a special set of shelves. By midnight every night, their chiming, along with the cuckooing of at least two cuckoo clocks, fairly rattled the walls. Several were Westminster chimes, with their sixteen-beat tune preceding the twelve sonorous Bongs. One was a Wellington, which has twice the melody!

I retain half a dozen antique clocks, but I keep only one of them in "bonging" trim. My family is less tolerant of midnight music than I.

The journey is the point

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, travel, art, pilgrimages

In the Mojave Desert, about midway between Mojave and Boron, is an eminence named Castle Butte. I have seen it, but never been right up to it…not that I didn't try. It is not hard to get to these days, as suburbs run right up to its base. Forty years ago, there was a maze of dirt tracks. Somehow, no matter which track I took, I'd wind up going directly away from it. I nearly circled it, without ever getting within two miles of it. I sure would have liked to pick over the agates that tumble down its sides. Never happened. So I know how Erin Hogan feels.

Ms Hogan's personal journey "out west" from her Chicago home is chronicled in Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the land Art of the American West. Of six places she set out to see, she got to four of them. I haven't been to any of them, though I found pictures of five. The pix you'll find by clicking on the thumbnails below give only a glimpse of five of these large, and quirky, works of art.

The author set out on a trek that was planned for three weeks, with minimum planning. A confirmed extrovert, she dreaded solitude, but chose to embrace it and see if she could learn to live with it. As we introverts already know, that means learning to live with yourself, with no buffer of other people to distract you from yourself.

Getting to the Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, in the bed of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, was her first test. Firstly, it is a couple days' drive from Chicago. Then, there's the last half-hour on a track that tests your resolve to actually arrive. Once there, she found the artwork smaller than she'd imagined, but after a while realized that it embodied a sense of time. It had been built out into the lake, which later rose to immerse it. Recently, the lake has shrunk away and the earthworks are salt-encrusted and stained with red algae. It wears its history like the heart on a callow lover's sleeve.

If getting to her first goal was difficult, the second one proved beyond her abilities. A Jetta is not much of an off-road vehicle, and you definitely get off the roads in the Lucin area, where Nancy Holt secreted her Sun Tunnels. These four concrete tubes line up with the sunrise and -set on the solstices. That means they don't do much of interest for 363 days yearly.

The author, after a couple hours out of cell phone range, and with the ground continually threatening to rip out the undercarriage, gave up, spent the evening at a bar, declined an offer to be shown the way (by "getting out of Dodge"), and spent the night back at Salt Lake City.

Her next assault proved more fruitful. After a serendipitous visit to Hole N" The Rock, she got up onto Mormon Mesa without destroying her car, but found she was trying to navigate on a featureless plain, with the sun right overhead, and no compass. She finally found Double Negative, which was dug out rather than erected by Michael Heizer, a pair of trenches that align with one another across a large gully. From the satellite photo in Google Maps, I was able to scale the distance across the gully at that point: about 800 feet (240 m).

By this point in her trek, the author was getting more comfortable with herself. The landscaped helped. She couldn't avoid its beauty. I've always loved traveling through the desert West, and it just gets you out of yourself.

James Turrell's Roden Crater, in Arizona, was another miss. It is private, open by appointment only, and all her letters, e-mails and calls went unanswered. She drove through the area, a field of cinder cones, but could not tell which one might harbor the earthworks.

Lightning Field, erected under the direction of Walter De Maria, was quite a bit easier. She had an appointment, and they take you in for a 24-hour stay (at a rather steep rate for overnight in a cabin). On the way from the Roden Crater area, she'd picked up a friend who agreed to experience a couple of the places with her. They were housed with three other artistic souls (women 'of a certain age', it turned out).

This field of 400 metal spikes, that covers 0.6 square mile (1.6 sq km) in a regular array, at first seems unpromising. In the high midday sun, you can hardly see the spikes, though they are around twenty feet tall. Sunset, and later, sunrise, provided the show that made it all worth it. For a short time, the sun zinging through all the poles seems to capture most of the light.

Having survived a couple thousand miles of driving alone, an evening in a sleazy bar, nights in various motels—all obtained at the last moment—a brief, depressing visit to Juarez, Mexico, plus wind, sun and rain, the author now had her friend with her, and their shared memory of Lightning Field. They made their way to Marfa, Texas. This has no large earthwork, but it does have several extraordinary art installations, such as Donald Judd's 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum, shown here.

Marfa is mainly a locale for artistic tourism these days. Throughout the book the author refers to the Dia Art Foundation, which has supported the construction of some of the works she visited. Dia began by helping support Donald Judd's work, but he formed his own foundation after a falling-out (something he did, sooner or later, with almost everyone). Tours of various large-scale works by Judd and others can consume a day or two.

Marfa was the end of the author's artistic pilgrimage. Once you've seen a few larger-scale artworks, art that fits in a "gallery" isn't really the same any more. Sure, it is still beautiful and retains its power to transform, but it is seen as part of something greater. Ms Hogan dropped off her friend at a nearby airport and headed for Chicago, alone. She'd learned to live with herself.

Getting around the long way

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, travel

Behold Steve Hely, who with (sort of) his friend Vali Chandresekaran circled the world. Their book The Ridiculous Race is subtitled, 26,000 miles. 2 guys. 1 globe. No airplanes. It didn't quite work out that way, and you'll find out why as you read the book.

Steve and Vali are writers for TV shows. So they write really well. They are single guys in their late 20s who dreamed up (they say, literally) the idea of racing one another around the world while using all forms of transportation other than airplanes. Ships, trains, autos, rickshaws, whatever, but no airplanes. They decided to race in opposite directions: Steve went West and Vali went East.

There are regular cruises that cross the Atlantic. Not so the Pacific. You just about have to go by container ship, unless you're going to drive to, like Attu, and wait for ice that you can walk or dogsled the 20 miles to Siberia upon. That has been done only once, so far as I've read. Fortunately, container ships will take passengers, so neither of our heroes took that long, icy walk.

Along the way, they also competed in an Awesomeness Contest, to gather memories and stories that would top the other. Both had visions of picking up a cosmopolitan collection of women. It didn't quite work out that way.

What they did pick up was an impressive array of means of transportation. In addition to container ship and cruise liner, they include various trains, jitneys, taxis in various states of repair, motorcycle-shaws (rickshaws with motor power), Segway (one way to see Paris). They also sampled a very impressive array of beverages. They seem to both belong to the "If I don't recall it, I must have had a good time" club.

Halfway through the roughly seven weeks they spent, they met in Moscow for a Truce Day, to see a few sights together. Most of the sights they saw together were the insides of a few bars and restaurants. They did better solo.

Both found they benefited from the kindness of strangers. There are lots of places where being foreign and ignorant of the local language can get you into lots of trouble. Being quite unlike the typical "ugly American" stereotype helped both of them. People everywhere were mostly kind, sometimes heroically kind.

Much of the funding for their trip was paid by the book publisher, Henry Holt, whose editors they sold on the idea before they left Los Angeles. After seeing a lot of the world from train windows and such, both were glad to return to American soil. Steve, in particular, thought about just how different the US is, and summed it up this way:

I got to thinking that America isn't like a bully, or a jock, or a cool kid. In the high school of the world, America is like one of those girls that's just effortlessly beautiful. So beautiful you can't even have a crush on her. A girl like that isn't deliberately mean, it's just that she can't possibly understand how lucky she is. And people always do what she wants, without her even realizing it, so she never bothers becoming smart, or savvy about the other kids in school. Just with her airhead remarks, she's always accidentally screwing up the whole order of things. She doesn't even realize it.

Now, when you have a girl like that, the other kinda-pretty girls sort of like her but sort of hate her. That's maybe Germany, or France. And the ugly girls talk about her in the locker room, but are still totally afraid of her. That's Venezuela and Iran. The regular-looking dudes can't help but be awed by her. Maybe they try to woo her with poems. That's Great Britain. And the real twisted kids develop unhealthy obsessions about destroying her, just because they're so infuriated at how unfair things are.

I may just posterize that for my office door.

Preview the sights

kw: observations, travel

I am a bigger and bigger fan of Google Earth! I am planning a trip to Oregon and Washington, and decided to drive through the Cascades from Portland to Tacoma. Recent versions of Google Earth can tilt the view to horizontal, so I decided to see how the mountains would look from different vantage points.

I quickly discovered that Highway 5 runs through a valley and the mountain views are blocked by foothills nearly all the way. I decided to take the slow way: WA-503 to NF-90 past Mt St Helens on the east, then US-12 to WA-123 and Stevens Cyn Rd past Paradise on the south side or Mt Rainier, before taking WA-161 north into Tacoma. Then I used Google Earth to scope out which sections of these roads provide good views of the two mountains. I clipped images from the screen and pasted them into PowerPoint to make two montages. Click on the images below to see 1200x900 versions (so you can see the roads better).

First, the southern target, Mt St Helens. The montage shows two views (one pretty poor) on the approach, and two as one leaves to the northeast. Together, they provide views covering about 120 degrees of the south and east sides of the mountain. I won't go to Spirit Lake, which is at the end of a very winding road.


This montage shows five views, though I don't plan to go up WA-123 far enough to see one of them...time will tell.

All together, the drive time on this route is more than six hours, compared to 2.5 hours via the highway. It is my hope that the previews will help me plan the trip efficiently. It sure helped me avoid a road or two that would have provided a view of little more than nearby ridges.

Quick trick with the newest version of Google Earth: to tilt the image toward a more horizontal view, hold Shift while scrolling the wheel on a wheel mouse. You can also use Shift plus the Down Arrow to tilt toward a horizontal view, and Shift plus the Up Arrow to tilt toward a more vertical (straight down) view.