Returned

I'm back from New Zealand and have many pictures and tales I would like to share. But I'm not ready. They're still brewing inside.

Lane Collins, photographrix extraordinaire, posted some of hers. Her Milford Sound photos are approximately 218.3% better than mine.

You can also see me strolling away after having successfully dipped an entire glacier into my cup of tea.

In doing so, I fared a damn site better in my geologic ambitions than Sutter did when he tried to skip a rock up to the top of a mountain. Silly boy.

The 170-day Weekend

Today marks the end of my long weekend. As I'd skipped the post-high school and post-college trips to wherever, this was the longest stretch of time I'd ever had off.

I explicitly decided not to set a lot of concrete goals for myself ... I wanted to be pretty goal-free for the first time. That being said, there were some things I wanted to get done. Herewith my Lack-of-Progess Report and observations of being a slack bastard:

• Travel: I went to Las Vegas, Big Sur, Chicago, Paris, London, Southwest England, Normandy France, Kauai, Palm Springs, Aruba, and Las Vegas (again). I learned that it's better to spend more time in fewer places and that I don't really go in for the whole luxury resort scene (unless it's in Vegas). I also learned that I love San Francisco enough to settle here and that I want to visit more places soon.



• Poker: I made the leap from limit to cash game no-limit. I'm happy to have ended up in the black, but also learned I'm not good enough to make any real money playing cards. I also learned that Colma can be a bit of downer place to trek out to by yourself. But fun with friends ... especially if you end up sucking out to win a $300 pot against them (as happened last night).



• Games: By far my area of biggest accomplishment. I tore the heck out of the World of Warcraft expansion pack and was the 7th person in my guild to reach level 70. I also was the 2nd to buy the epic flying mount; in my view the best reward in the game. Burning Crusade is an amazingly well done expansion for WoW. With the number of new environments, encounters, character models and environmental details packed into the release, Blizzard completely delivered. In other gaming areas, I definitely under-performed especially with console gaming. But I hope to get a Wii soon.



• Books: I read a bunch. Of particular note are Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Jonathan Lethem's Gun with Occassional Music and Ian Mcewan's Saturday. Nassim Taleb - while a bit of a douche - writes a great book and Fooled by Randomness confirmed a lot of suspicions I'd had about the markets.

I was exceedingly fortunate in that I was able to take this time off without having to worry about how I was going to support myself or a family or a mortgage. However, before I went to work for Blogger I was planning on doing the same thing. Unless you're already in the whole family/mortgage part of life, I found it's relatively easy to save enough money to buy yourself some time off if you make that a priority. Do it!

After a couple years of working it may occur to you "Wow. I'm never going to get another summer vacation. It's pretty much going to be work, work, work forever." Not true! I think this is a particular American deception but the truth is you can quit your job without starting another one a week later. This seemed impossible to me but it's true.

A caveat, however. When you have fewer responsibilities, those you do have take on a disproportionately larger weight. I found that no matter how little I actually had to worry about, I'd find some task or obligation that would become the "one big thing" nagging at me from void. Sometimes this one big thing would be laundry. The point is that you can always identify one obstacle in your life that, if removed, would make everything better (an annoying co-worker, a bad debt, a rash). Turns out this probably isn't true at all.

Taking time off isn't a path to enlightened bliss. But it is a great way to get a new perspective. For me, it meant learning that I want to live and work in San Fransisco for the next long while. And that I definitely will want to take time off again one day.

Tropical ointment

I was in Kauai for 10 days on my first ever trip to Hawaii and I already want to go back. From California, Hawaii is only a 5 hour plane ride away and it truly is as beautiful and amazing as folks say. Some things I particularly enjoyed:

• Kauai was a great fit for me. I was looking to do some hiking and swimming in the ocean and the Garden Island has both in abundance. As the 'back country' of the Hawaiian islands it also had much less of what I'd always feared about Hawaii; gross American tourism. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is there, but it's pretty well contained. The entire west side is rugged and sparsely populated. And the north, with the exception of the planned resort community of Princeville (see below), also feels very downbeat and relaxed.


• In terms of hiking, I can definitely recommend the Canyon Trail in Waimea Canyon which offers breathtaking views of the northern edge. In Poipu, the hike from Shipwreck Beach to Mahaulepu Beach was a great recommendation by Lonely Planet. The big stunner is the 11-mile Kalalau Trail on the North Shore. We had neither the permits nor the equipment for a multi-day hike but doing the full stretch is the main reason I want to return to Kauai. We did hike the first couple miles and took a 4 mile detour to Hanakapiai Falls. This was one of the most rewarding and difficult hikes I've done. The path to the falls is continually washed out and thus extremely slippery (I fell a bunch) but the 100+ foot waterfall that you can swim beneath is definitely worth the effort.


• Surf conditions change all the time and the perfect beach depends on what you want to do. But I particularly liked Kekaha and Kalihiwai for body surfing and Queen's Bath for snorkling. Queen's Bath was a recommendation from Sara and is a tidepool surrounded by lava rocks; very cool.


• In terms of where to stay, I feel that unless you are on your honeymoon the big resorts are probably not a good value. By staying in a condo or house, you can get a bigger place right on the beach. Unfortuantely, vrbo.com is the default resource for finding a place and they haven't even gotten around to offering search let alone stuff like "show me places like this in that area" so it's a bit of pain. Geographically, I'd like to stay in Hanalei on the North Shore when I go back. You're far from Waimea Canyon, which sucks, but it's a great surf town with a lot of good food and friendly folks. It's easier to find a place in Princeville but then you're staying in this giant planned community which feels a little gross to me. If you end up resorting it, I think the Grand Hyatt on the South Shore is much nicer than the over-lauded Princeville Hotel.


• If you don't like fish, and particularly ahi tuna, then the food may be a bit disappointing. For a fish lover, it's great to be somewhere where you can eat fresh, sashimi grade tuna every day. I also loved the smoked marlin which I'd love to find here in SF. In terms of fancy, Tidepools at the Grand Hyatt is worth the price and a visit because of its amazing koi pond setting. The Polynesian Cafe in Hanalei was my favorite restaurant overall; the underground-cooked pork sandwich was the perfect thing at the end of day of hiking.


• We took a helicopter trip which is recommended for seeing the otherwise inaccessible crater of Mt. Waialeale. It's pretty cool to fly right up to a 2000-foot high sheer wall with waterfalls pouring out of it. And by cool I mean mildly terrifying. Were I to go again, I'd try to book on Inter-island Helicopter which lets you fly without doors and offers a package where you land at a waterfall. We also did a 5 hour sailing trip but I can't recommend our charter. Nothing bad happened, but it would be better to find a trip where it was 8 people or fewer and less geared to families.

Kauai is the first place I've been to in a while where, at the end of my trip, I felt it would be pretty easy to just stay and keep hanging out. I feel Hawaii is the sort of place I'll go back to a number of times and I'm looking forward to the next visit.

Impressed

Just got home from Hawaii - turns out it's an incredibly cool place.

Journey's End

The single most enjoyable day of my vacation came right at the end. After a day of visiting the Normandy beaches, we spent the night in the walled town of St. Malo.

St. Malo has one of the weirdest geographies I've encountered. The town itself is a small, walled hamlet right on the coast. The walled portion, the intra-muros as it's known, sits on the northwest side of a set of two, concentric harbors.

If you're thinking about a vacation to Brittany or Normandy, I strongly encourage you to stay in St. Malo. Short day trips to the D-day sites, Mont St. Michel and other sites are all well within reach. I can even recommend a hotel, the Hotel Ajoncs d'Or. The proprietors speak excellent english and couldn't be friendlier. Plus you get to stay inside the walls of St. Malo which is a lot of fun.

That morning, our primary destination was Mont St. Michel. I'd been wanting to visit Mont St. Michel for many years; everyone I'd known who'd gone had raved about it and what could be better than an ancient abbey on top of a rock in the middle of otherwise inaccessible quicksand.

To get up to the abbey you wind your way up to the top through the town below. One of the cool things about Mont St. Michel is that while there is one main route up, you can actually wander a fair bit on your way there. Nelson and I took a less direct path through a graveyard.

As you make your way up, you're continually resetting your eyeline. The rooftops that were above you just a few yards ago are now at your feet. This experience of exploring the space three-dimensionally is what made Mont St. Michel so interesting to me.

This becomes clearer when you make it to the abbey. The abbey itself was built first atop the pyramid-shaped rock of the mount. And, over time, rooms were added below and to the sides based on a complicated system of counterbalancing. I really enjoyed trying to piece together the rooms I was walking through with the mental image I had of the place from the outside (I wasn't terribly successful; that place is complicated).

We spent a good long while exploring the space; stopping for lunch, a friendly chat with some Aussies and a narrow squeeze through an alley. When it was time to leave, I felt that I could easily recommend Mont St. Michel as worth taking a special trip to visit; along with Chartres and Exmoor it was one of the top three things I saw on my trip.

On our drive back to St. Malo, we stopped at Pointe du Grouin to take in the very Californian (to my eyes) coastline. It looked like there'd be a number of interesting beaches to explore should one be spending more time in the region.

We got back inside the walls with a couple hours before sunset and we spent the time walking the ramparts. Another cool feature of St. Malo is that there's a causeway you can take to an outlying island, but this walkway gets washed out at high tide. The combination of old seaside forts, a disappearing road and the putative tomb of Chateaubriand pretty much convinced me that we were going to be attacked by vampires. Instead we saw a great sunset at the beach over an infinite pool.

Sunset over, we headed to dinner at the Duchesse Anne; a recommendation from our friendly hoteliers. Thanks to Nelson, I'd been eating better over the past couple days than I had in quite some time. However, this meal (which featured lobsters with bibs) goes down as my favorite of the bunch.

Nelson deserves special thanks also for planning the entire Normandy/Brittany part of the trip. It was a great relief having planned the first 2+ weeks to let someone else take the wheel (literally as well since he also drove). And we had a jolly good time throughout.

This concludes my European vacation blogging. I took some 1220 photos and uploaded 330 to Flickr. That's a bunch, so there's a smaller highlight set should anyone want to take a quicker fly-by.

Normandy

At the end of my trip, Nelson and I spent a few days exploring Normandy and a bit of Brittany as well. On the first day, we trained to Caen, picked up a car and drove to Bayeux.

Bayeux is the home to the 1000 year-old Bayeux tapestry which tells the tale of the Norman conquest of England. This was fun as David and I had encountered a lot of William the Conqueror history in London (the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, most notably).

Seeing an embroidered representation of Edward the Confessor, whose tomb we had seen a couple weeks earlier, made me appreciate my 10th grade world history lessons all the more. It turns out Mr. Sheppard was correct when he stressed that 1066 was one of only two dates you needed to know for a proper understanding of European history (the other being November 11, 1918).

We spent the night just outside of Bayeux in a classy château (not sure if there are unclassy ones). And in the morning we set off to see the Normandy Invasion sites.

There are a number of places you can stop along the way. At Arromanches you can see the remnants of the concrete blocks used to create the so-called Mulberry Harbors that allowed the transport of men and equipment into France. At Longues-sur-mer you can see a number of German emplacements that were bombarded during the invasion.

Most impressive to me was Pointe du Hoc, the site of a famous Army Ranger assault that took place before the beach landings. The entire site is pock-marked with craters. When you look at the cliffs the Rangers had to scale to assault the German artillery it's easy to understand why so many men died. There's a similar feeling standing on Omaha beach and looking up at the bluffs that would have hidden entrenched machine gun nests.

Visiting Normandy was a great experience. As a California liberal pants-wetter I not only believe that all wars are regrettable but that war-making is something we should be able to transcend as a people. So being at the site of justly-celebrated use of American might made me feel a strange mix of emotions.

On the one hand, I believe that the unquestioning reverence given to the Greatest Generation has mythologized their significance to the point where it is no longer accessible. That being said, I can honestly say that in standing there I felt proud of being American for the first time in as long as I can remember. You're looking at a largely intact piece of German artillery and you know that this was the German Army and not the Nazis who were (you try not to over-dramatize) killing your people and you can't help think to yourself "Yes, this is good. It's good that this was destroyed. The people who destroyed this were right and I'm proud of them for having done so."

There's something both undeniably inspiring and simultaneously tragic in visiting the place that marks the last best military accomplishment of your nation.

Hectic

So, that whole bit where I said it was nice to have the time in Paris to just lounge around ... that was actually a revelation I was forced into after a particularly busy day of sight-seeing.

The weather was fantastic for most of my trip, but one morning it was particularly clear. I decided I wanted to get in as much of the outdoor sights as possible, and this included the gardens at Versailles (a short train ride outside of Paris). I was also keen in taking in the view from the top of Sacre Coeur because of the hazefree skies.

I started the morning, a Sunday, by making it to the top of Sacre Coeur just as Mass was beginning. The place was understandably packed and the line for the sweet-looking funicular was way too long so I ended up hoofing it up the steps to the cathedral and then up the winding staircase to the top.

As I was ascending the steps to the top of the dome, the choir and organ were in full throat beneath me. It made the climb more visceral and more dizzying. I reached the top out of breath and blown away by how much of Paris I could see.

After descending, I fought my way back the Metro (by this time folks were streaming up the streets toward the cathedral) and went to the nearest station where I could hop a suburban rail train to Versailles.

Sunday is one of the busiest days to visit the palace and the line for tickets can be close to 2 hours long. Fortunately, I had a museum pass which allows you to skip the line and gets you into all the major tourist sites in Paris. I cannot recommend this highly enough if you're going to visit Versailles.

I decided to first check out the gardens. Honestly, I had no idea how big they were. I'd heard several first-hand reports that they were amazingly huge, but stories and photos don't really capture the scale. Also, I feel the precise symmetry compounds the effect of all the space. I spent some quality time gaping at the fountains and listening to New Order on my iPod.

Speaking of which, I think you probably get as good an idea of the palace interior from watching Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (I dug it) as you do from going there in person. I agree with Nelson; the overwhelming opulence and over-the-topness of the palace is so ridiculous that it seems pretty grotesque after a while. It is very clear that you are looking at the residence of someone who believed himself to be a god. In other words, a crazy person. Houses of crazy people always feel weird.

So I went back to the gardens and took a long stroll down to the canal. The garishness of the palace notwithstanding, it's worth a trip to Versailles to spend an afternoon watching the boats and exploring the grounds.

Since it was only 3p, I decided not to return to Paris but instead take a train to Chartres to see the cathedral. After some surprisingly difficult linguistic negotiation at the train station (I think used the wrong word for 'return' and ended up saying 'I want to turn around in Paris.') and an hour on the train I was in front of the single-best cathedral I've ever seen.

I saw a bunch of churches on this trip - more than a dozen - but Chartres is special. First off, it's amazingly large. Inside it feels as though whole medieval villages have been swallowed up in its vastness. But it's the outside that really got me. I walked around the cathedral several times and the whole time I found myself on the verge of tears. It sounds silly, but it's one of the most tangible experiences of awe that I've had.

As I was walking away the church bells began to ring and it was the end of very busy but completely rewarding day. (Well, except for the part where I still had to get back to Paris and the trains were late so I ended up watching 24 on my iPod).

City of Light

I spent more time in Paris than anywhere else on my trip; some 6 six days in total. I'd been there once before on my first ever trip out of the country but I only had 24 hours and ended up running around like a madman. It was great to have the option to see a bunch of stuff one day and spend the next mostly reading a book in café.

Paris is also the first city I've visited in some time where I could see myself staying. Not that I'm looking to move to France, but they have a very pleasant pace of life over there. And Paris is both stunningly beautiful and easily accessible at the same time.

Some highlights:

• Most of the time I was staying on the Left Bank near Place St. Michel. I can definitely recommend the Hotel Royal St. Michel which was ideally located and quite a comfortable stay. Staying near St. Michel means you're walking distance from the big destinations like Notre Dame and the Louvre but stuff like Panthéon and Jardin du Luxembourg is also quite close.


• Being able to make multiple visits to the Louvre is a real benefit of a longer stay. I particularly enjoyed a more leisurely stroll through the indoor sculpture gardens, Cour Puget and Cour Marly.


• Ste. Chappelle is worth seeing during the day so you can check out the amazing stained glass and worth a second trip at night when they perform classical music concerts. Hearing Bach in a room that once held a piece of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns is pretty great.


• I was really underwhelmed by the Centre Pompidou, but the free entertainment that goes on outside is highly recommended. Seeing Tuvan throat singing live is like watching an amazing magic trick.


• Get some altitude. Both the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur are among the most touristy destinations in Paris. But whatever, the views from the top are worth the hassle.


• See the catacombs. But be warned, endless subterranean rooms filled with artistically-arranged skulls and femurs turns out be really frickin' creepy.

Finally, I'd like to give a big merci beaucoup to all my high school French teachers. I've lost my intuition for noun genders and don't really remember the subjunctive at all, but I was mostly functional en français. I was even able to give correct directions when stopped by French nationals on more than one occasion. Also, Madame Berk's unit on the geography of Paris may be the most useful thing I was ever taught; good job.

Ponies!

We spent two nights in Exford inside the Exmoor National Forest so that we could spend a full day hiking.

There's a lot of hiking to be had in Exmoor and every local news shop sells an assortment of both glossy, bound and local, raggedy guides. After an extensive perusal I went with the second option as one detailed an 11 mile hike that would start from where we were staying and take us to the highest point in the park, Dunkery Beacon.

I ran into trouble with the guide, not because of poor directions, but because of nouns. An example sentence: "Cross over the stile and strike out across the open moor keeping the combe on your left." Say what now, limey?

Another interesting aspect of hiking in England is that even though this is a national park, you're still crossing through people's sheep pastures. It's quite a different feeling from hiking in California State Parks where its very clear you're on public land (and when cross over onto private land - as I did yesterday - it generally means you've screwed up).

The view from the top of the beacon was well worth the effort, giving us our first ever glimpses of Wales. Also it provided a remarkable and well-documented encounter with the park's famed residents, the wild Exmoor ponies.

David deserves the praise for bringing along sugar cubes with which to tempt the beasts. They, the ponies, proved to be friendly if slightly skiddish.

Following lunch, the weather improved slightly. We had a long stroll through the park, allowing good views of moors, combes and two kindly old folks who provided us with a peak at their map. We weren't exactly lost, but there was a mile or so when it wasn't particularly clear if we were on the path or just wandering quasi-aimlessly in the heather.

In addition to his equine charming skills I must also commend my brother for his good spirits during our hike. This was the most sizable walk he'd taken and, as you can see, he proved himself to be an able bipedal humanoid.

Wessex Bound

Having enjoyed London for a couple days, my brother and I rented a car and set out to explore the West Country (as an aside, good on ya' Enterprise Car Rental for stocking Priuses).

I nearly killed us a couple times by turning into oncoming traffic (turns out it comes from the right over there). And I got an automated speeding ticket for going 36 in a 30 mph zone. I plan to throw my ticket into Boston Harbor at the earliest opportunity.

Nonetheless, it was a rockin' good time during which we saw:

• Stonehenge. Unfortunately, dirty hippies ruined it with some sorta Solstice LoveFest that went awry and now you can't get too close. Also they give you an audioguide with goofy sound effects of druids clanging on stones. But it's mad old and you can totally work on your Nigel Tufnel impression.


• Salisbury Cathedral. A lovely town and a cathedral you shouldn't miss seeing. I saw something like 8 cathedrals during my trip and only Chartres is more impressive. We also stayed for Evensong services and got to hear their choir which was a treat. All this and they have one of four copies of the Magna Carta and the oldest working mechanical clock in the world. All in all, one of the best places I went on the whole trip.


• Corfe Castle. On the southern coast, this is a total wreck of a castle that was already in ruins before I convinced David to storm it. It's also close to Lulworth Cove which is quite the pretty spot. Incidentally, not everything in England labelled "castle" actually is one. Maiden Castle, for example, is what remains of pre-roman hillfort. What remains are attractive sheep, it turns out.


• Bath. This place has english quaintness baked into every georgian stone. It's quite the designed little town. In one night we went to places named The Pig & Fiddle and The Moon & Sixpense. So as a real-life set from Oblivion, it's pretty cool. Also it's got them Roman bathing deals where you can still take the waters. They don't taste too good however.

I skipped over the time we spent in Exmoor National Forest (pictured above) because that adventure deserves its own post. More pictures of David with handsome livestock forthcoming.

Here is London, giddy London

I'm skipping over Paris for the time being because most of the photos are from there. Instead, I give you a fun bulleted list about London:

• I heartily recommend Covent Garden and the West End as a base of operations and place to stay. You can walk to a large number of tourist destinations and it's incredibly lively on the weekends. The Covent Garden Hotel is a phenomenal establishment but is expensive even for London ... which means lodging is only vaguely purchasable with money. I think they'd prefer precious jewels.


• Seeing Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre was a total hoot. We saw Titus Andronicus which the Globe has staged like a slasher flick; blood, gore, amputations and so on. During the rape of Lavinia, someone actually puked and keeled over. Good times.


• Take the guided tour of the Tower of London. Part of the fun of being a Yank tourist is that everything seems very old in London. The Tower and Westminster Abbey are the epicenters of the mad oldness. But only the Tower comes with a tour by the Yeoman Warders. Our guide, Alan, absolutely knocked 'em dead.


• We saw Children of Men in Leicester Square's 2000 seat Odeon Theatre which has both premium and ticketed seating, both of which I love. The downside is that the good seats are like $30 each. Did I mention London is preposterously expensive?


• The Tate Modern is the only art musuem we stopped in and it didn't disappoint. The way they group the art thematically is a lot of fun and, while massive, it's a very comfortable museum to explore. Also, the Tate has the single best piece of video art I've seen, Video Quartet by Christian Marclay.


• Street names basically change at every intersection and there's no organizational scheme to speak of. This can make navigation ... challenging. But it's a fun place to explore in a wandery fashion so this may as well be seen as a virtue.

And we're back

I made my triumphant completely exhausted return to San Francisco last night after a full 24 hours in transit from Paris. I'd been gone exactly 3 weeks, the longest trip I've taken in over 6 years.

I had an amazingly good time and I very much want to do more traveling ... but I'm also looking forward to chilling at home and enjoying the last gasp of summer. For example, today I rode my bicycle to pick up my mail and also bought new underwear. Fun stuff like that.

I took over 1200 pictures during the trip and saw all kinds of noteworthy stuff. Processing the photos is gonna be a fun chore but I'm doing it in parts. Today: the St. Louis chapter. I flew home to the Lou on the day after my birthday. During my couple days there we had some really good dinners and enjoyed the best weather I can ever remember in the Mid-West.

The Moms and I also went out to the Missouri Botanical Gardens to check out the exhibit Glass in the Garden (blown glass by Chihuly tucked in with the flowers). MoBat is one of those things that I never really appreciated when I was growing up in St. Louis. And most of the time the weather is so freaking horrible that a leisurely garden stroll isn't really appealing. But on a mild weekday, it's both uncrowded (except for retirees) and quite beautiful. The japanese garden in particular is a lot of fun as there's a pond filled with overfed fish who will happily pose for you.

We also took a quick peak at the new Busch Stadium which is an unbelievably ginormous pile of bricks. The "neighborhood ballpark" style doesn't really work if you don't have a neighborhood to build the park into or build a quadruple deck monstrosity. Still: go Cards!

In another flyby, we dropped by the Harrah's casino that's all of about 7 miles from my house. It's also quite large (many things are in the Mid-West). The poker room was surprisingly packed for a Monday afternoon, but I didn't play. Additionally, they've got some fun signage there.

Next: Paris.

Status?

In case it's unclear, I'm not dead, just traveling.

Normally, I try to post quite a bit when I'm on vacation but 1) the keyboards are totally hard to use over here (no period without shift key!) and 2) I've been twittering it up instead (some 45 updates in the past 3 weeks).

I've also taken some 700 photos thus far. That's gonna be a bit of a job.

Lakeside

Last week, I had a fantastic trip to Chicago where I visited ex-San Franciscans, Mary and Eugene. While growing up in Old Saint Lou, I'd visited our much bigger brother to the north many times. And I'd even popped in to see the Flacks, but I wasn't there long and Mangina had that whole tubestick problem. This trip, however, was a resounding success.

First, off I had no idea how good the food was in Chicago. It's always a treat for me to be in a town that does bagels well (i.e. anywhere not SF) and Chicago has extended their dough science to improve the whole bread field as a whole. The big winner in this category was the loaf of bread pudding we had for dessert at Rose Angelis. Also, I had the best BBQ veggie cheeseburger ever made at the Chicago Diner. Finally, we had an amazing waiter at Venus who guided us to all the tastiest Cypriot specialties.

Sights were also seen, including the view from the Signature Lounge of the Hancock Building (I actually went twice ... it's a good time.) Flack and I kicked back there after picking up some new duds on Michigan Avenue for my upcoming trip to the Old World.

The following day, we hit the road in the Flacks' new sportsmobile and trekked through the affluent sprawl that is the North Shore. A couple miles from the border to Wisconsin, we arrived at Zion, Illinois - home of the Illinois Beach State Park. The beach here has a number of warnings not seen at your average sandy joint. These include alerts about asbestos sightings as well as some sort of river-geyser that occasionally bursts forth and kills all in its path. Also, Flack made a new friend.

Coming home one night, Flack had the great idea that you could totally sell Ferris Bueller Tours of Chicago. You get picked up in the morning in a sporty car, get lunch somewhere fancy under the reservation of Abe Froman, hit up the Board of Trade, Art Institute, Sears Tower and finish the day either signing "Danke Schoen" on Dearborn or wrecking a really pricey roadster. While Eugene and I didn't accomplish much of this (we did stop to pee in the Art Institute) we did hit up Wrigley in style.

I bought tickets the night before on stubhub.com and was completely shocked when our tickets turned out to: 1) actually exist 2) not be conterfeit and 3) be excellent seats. We were eleven rows from the third base line. In a small park like Wrigely that makes you feel so close to the action that you may be called upon to perform some service in the event of an emergency. And it was a great game featuring a dramatic come from behind victory for the maligned (by everyone) Cubbies over the hated (by me) Dodgers.

But most importantly, they ran a deal before the game such that you could text a message to a shortcode and said message would then be displayed on scoreboard during the 8th inning. I didn't have a lot of time to think, so I just spoke from my heart.

In summary, then: Chicago - a town where a man can eat like a pig for days, visit an asbestos beach and confess his love via scoreboard to a crazy old coot. Recommended.

Departure Lounging

My plane to Chicago is a half hour delayed so I'm cooling my heels in the departure lounge and sucking down the for-pay wireless:

• Every time I use the wireless at SFO I'm amazed at how poorly T-Mobile implemented it. You need an account to use the WiFi and naturally I don't remember my credentials as I use them once every 6 months (at least give me a clue if it's email address or username, people). Creating an account is stunningly painful and doesn't even log you in after you finish. All of this for $6 and hour.
  


• I was up until 4:30a finishing the booking for my trip to England with my brother, David. The trip is going to kick ass. I'm particularly looking forward to Exmoor National Park - (there are wild ponies) and our stay at the Covent Garden Hotel. And I get to drive on the left side of the road again which pleases me in places I like to be pleased (my left-hand side).


• Ok, I wasn't up until 4:30a just because of the trip. I've also been on a Battlestar Gallactica bender and have rewatched the mini-series, season 1 and the first 12 episodes of season 2 in about 72 hours. This is actually why I have my laptop with me - to finish the rest of the second season on the 4 hour flight. Battlestar has a similar multi-narrative, season-long arc style that makes Lost compelling. But unlike Lost, the show actually goes somewhere and you have the belief that there's a real idea of how things should evolve (I'm pretty sure Lost is making it up as it goes along). Plus, it does deliberately paced montage like nobody's business.


• I saw "The Protector" - Tony Jaa's new martial arts movie. The story is porno-quality and allegedly about some elephants that get stolen and need protecting ... or something. I was pretty sure that the main villian was actually an transvestite (woulda been if the movie was Japanese and not Thai) but I think she was just the victim of some husky overdubbing. In any case, there's some decent fighting and you get to hear a character earnestly say, "You killed my father. Now where are my elephants!!"
  

Roll and Rock

Things got pretty serious in Vegas last week. When you're playing low limit poker and drinking domestic bottled water, it's important to play the part of the high roller.

At this point, I feel I've gotten Vegas down to a science. Eat well, see a show, sleep late, go to the spa and spend the rest of the time playing poker. I highly recommend the Cirque du Soleil show at the MGM Grand. Kà is the best thing I've ever seen on stage, and I'd be suprised if there's a more impressive live show anywhere.

The centerpiece of the show is the so-called Sand Cliff Deck - a stage that rests on a gimbal that is itself mounted on a rotating, vertically-movable control arm. This article gives a great technical explanation of what's going on with the main Kà stage as well as a diagram showing the magic. The important thing to know is that at one point, the characters are walking across the sand filled stage and to conclude the beach scene, the stage starts tilting upward. In the end, the sand and one of the characters simply slides off into the abyss; the audience gasps and applauds. The stage later reappears as a vertical face on pegs extend and retract and acrobatic amazingness ensues.

And with all of this technical achievement, I think my favorite part may have been the short shadow puppet interlude. It's a stunner, that Kà.

Vegas done, I was camping in Big Sur over Labor Day Weekend with Lane, Sutter, Melzo and a host of fornicators. Big Sur is also a stunner.

Not to over-superlativate but Pfieffer Beach is probably the most beautiful California beach I've been to. It's strange in that I can't say exactly why it's such a knock-out. In terms of layout it's like a lot of beaches out here. But for some reason the light is a little more intense and everything seems more vibrant.

Over the course of the weekend we pretty much ate and lazed around like pigs. Taking a lesson from Ev and Sara, this was also my first camping trip with a Coleman stove. And when it wasn't spurting gas and catching my foot on fire it turned out to be a very convenient piece of gear.

September's turning out to be a busy travel month; it's on to Chicago this Sunday to visit Mary and Eugene. Last time I went, Eugene's manstick got broken (not by me) and there was some discomfort for everyone (but mostly Eugene). I've been assured that various upgrades have been made that should prevent a repeat incident. Here's hoping!

Rolling

Vegas is as beautiful as I remembered it in my fevered dreams. It's pretty dead here which isn't great for poker. But the lack of players is made up for by their wealth of inexperience. Honestly, I think games of strip poker played by high school students high on E have been played more competently than the $3/$6 at the Venetian.