Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

As I mentioned, one of the major reasons for my recent blogging hiatus was the trip I took to Denver for Thanksgiving. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, given the number of people I planned to catch up with, but it was an enjoyable one nonetheless. I got gorge myself on my Mom’s fantastic Thanksgiving cooking, play with my family’s beloved dachshund Wilco (pictured below), chat with my brothers (one of whom left for school on the East Coast at the same I departed for the West), finally see Lost In Translation (which I loved, as expected), have lunch at Qdoba (a chain that, sadly, has no presence in California) with my former coworkers, get a haircut with my favorite stylist (a family friend who, until I moved to California, had been the only person ever to cut my hair!), see some snow (only a little, though, sadly), drop in for Evensong at St. Mark’s Parish, and enjoy an evening downtown with some of my oldest and best friends. Not bad for a mere three non-travel days!

I haven’t really been gone long enough yet to have forgotten much about Denver, but one thing I was definitely more aware of on this visit was the dryness. I’ve always known that Colorado is famous for its arid climate, but I’d never really noticed it until now. Every morning while I was there I woke up with an absolutely parched mouth, and by the end of the week my skin was feeling rather chapped. My friends also thought I was becoming a bit too sensitive to the cold, so I guess my inevitable Californication is well under way!

Mainly for the benefit of my friends and family (and for journaling purposes, and for my fellow “hoont” afficionado nala), I’ve posted a few photos from the trip below (hey, if Mark Pilgrim can do a gratuitous family pictures post, I think I’m entitled to a little self indulgence here!).

Wilco in his favorite chair.

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The October National Geographic Traveler has a feature called “Experiences of a Lifetime,” which purports to explore “120 of the greatest cultural, spiritual and physical pursuits in the world.” Being a person who has always made an effort to do unusual, off-the-beaten-path things in my travels, I kind of enjoyed the article—even if a number of its picks (temple pilgrimages in India, Nepalese treks, etc.) fairly scream “retired bourgeois bohemian.”

Inevitably, though, reading the article reminded me that it’s been about six months since my last major trip (the point at which I usually get a serious hankering for some international travel), and that got me thinking about some of the more interesting, unfulfilled travel dreams I’ve had over the years. Since I’ve become cynical to the point where I consider nearly every thought that crosses my mind weblog fodder, I thought I’d share a few of them with the world.

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After our rather stressful trip back from Ireland (the specifics of which I will relate in a later blog entry) and a strenuous evening spent walking up and down Oxford Street looking in vain for the Eagle Bar Diner, DeLynn and I decided that it might be nice to sleep in and eat a late breakfast at the East End’s famed Brick Lane Biegel Bake.

Having learned our lesson the night before about going out without knowing precisely where we were going, we we were very careful to make sure we knew the Biegel Bake’s exact address and location on a map. All of this was to no avail, however, since we still ended up walking up and down Brick Lane trying to find the bloody place. It finally turned out that we simply hadn’t been walking far enough (having been confused by the disorganized addressing scheme), but during the time that we were walking, we were able to get a very good look around a part of London that few tourists ever see.

Throughought the trip, we have seen a fair amount of civil protest against the prospective war in Iraq (including a rally in front of the US Embassy in Dublin), but as we walked north along Brick Lane, the number, variety and vehemence of anti-US posters, stickers and graffiti really struck us. The fact that I say “anti-US” instead of “anti-war” is, I think an important distinction—most of these messages (from the graffiti calling President Bush a “fascist” to the posters calling Muslim leaders to unite against the West) seemed to go out of their way to advertise their disdain for the United States.

Later we decided to make a visit to the Barbican Art Gallery to view Sebastiao Salgado’s “Exodus” exhibition—a staggering retrospective of one of the world’s greatest documentary photographers. I was so taken with Salgado’s body of work that I decided to purchase his book, Migrations. When I walked into the gallery book store, however, I was surprised to see, alongside the expected photography monographs and postcards, a whole section devoted to left-wing, anti-American polemics.

I’m not exactly a stranger to foreign travel—this is my sixth trip to Europe and my fourth to the UK—but I can say with some certainty that this is the first time I have ever encountered a level anti-Americanism so high as to make me feel truly uneasy. It will be interesting to see what happens regarding Iraq in the coming weeks and months—it is entirely possible that this wave of anti-American sentiment will pass just as criticism of the first Gulf War did—but I can’t help but wonder if increased resentment against the United States is going to be a hallmark of the post-September 11th world.

Whatever the case, this trip has really piqued my interest in the
phenomenon, and I plan to learn more about it when I get back. I think
I’ll start by reading one of the books I saw in the Barbican book store:
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0971394253/qid=1047503905/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-3100322-6224639">Why
Do People Hate America?.

All winter I promised myself that I would make it up to the mountains a lot this summer, but here it is the middle of July and I’ve barely left Denver. Fortunately, this past weekend I was finally able to brave the morons on Interstate 70 and drive up to Vail for a relaxing weekend with my family. After the last few weeks, which have been a bit crazy, the opportunity to simply sit around at my employer’s stunning West Vail home or wander between Vail Village and Lionshead was welcome indeed! I even managed to take a few photos for the weblog while I was there.

Visitors to Vail Village cooling off in Gore Creek

My youngest brother Bobby on the Eagle Bahn lift

Mount of the Holy Cross, one of Colorado’s Fourteeners

Rainer Brockerhoff is back from vacation and he’s penned a surprisingly thorough (and very informative) series of articles about driving in Europe. This just so happens to be a topic that is very near and dear to my own heart (how many Americans, after all, can say that they’ve taken their rental car for a spin on the Nürburgring?), so I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to share a few of my own cautionary tales.

• Be careful crossing borders! Languages change suddenly and people get touchy!

  My friends and I learned this the hard way one time while crossing from Switzerland into Italy. There was a sign, you see, instructing motorists to stop at the border. Unfortunately for us, it was in Italian and looked nothing whatsoever like a stop sign. Needless to say, when my friend Ian (who is, quite frankly, a bit of a speed freak) came to the sign, he blew past it without a second thought. We immediately knew something was wrong, however, because one of the Italian border guards promptly came running out of his little office, waving his arms at us.

  We immediately stopped the car and got out to see what he wanted. Looking at us incredulously, he stammered:

  “YOU DON’T RESPECT THE SIGN?”

  For a few tense moments I thought we were going to be in real trouble (the guard looked pissed), but after searching the car and satisfying himself that we weren’t drug runners or international arms dealers or anything like that, he sent us on our merry way. Still, not something I would recommend doing!

  

• Where maps are concerned, trust but verify!

  During the planning for the same trip, my friends and I contrived a complicated series of car rentals designed to allow us to see a good chunk of Western Europe by car while avoiding the hefty surcharges auto rental companies levy when you return a car in a different country.

  The most ingenious stage of this plan involved renting a car in Munich, driving it through alpine Germany and Switzerland, and ending up at the foot of Mont Blanc in Courmayeur, Italy. The plan was to leave the Munich car in Courmayeur, take the spectacular funicular ride over Mont Blanc, and end up in the French village of Chamonix, where we had a second car rented. We would then drive the new car back to Courmayeur through the convenient Mont Blanc Tunnel, and the aforementioned Ian (who had to head back to Germany and fly out early) would repatriate the original car. The new car, having been rented in France, would be easily returnable in France, and all extra charges would be avoided!

  It was a brilliant plan, but unfortunately there were a few things we hadn’t counted on. The first was that the French side of the funicular was closed due to high winds. You could still go up the Italian side (which, I guess means that the Italians either have better equipment or less concern), but you couldn’t continue down the French side into Chamonix.

  Upon hearing this unfortunate information from a woman at the tourism office in Courmayeur, I was a bit disappointed, but not overly concerned. We still had the tunnel, after all! Just to make sure that we were OK, I nodded my head and said, “But we can still use the tunnel, right?”

  The woman looked at me strangely for a moment—as if I was joking or a moron—and slowly replied, “No—you can’t use the tunnel.” A French couple behind me started to snicker, and I walked out of the office scratching my head.

  It wasn’t until later that we understood this reaction: unbeknownst to us, the route under Mont Blanc had been closed since March 1999, when a truck started a fire in the tunnel that burned for two days and killed 39 people. It didn’t reopen until March 2002, although neither the printed map (which was published in 2001) nor the mapping site we used to plan made any mention of the closure.

  Fortunately, there is another way to get to Chamonix, although it involves a 112 mile detour through switchback-laden mountain roads (see this map), which put us a bit off schedule. In fact, we were lucky to reach Chamonix in time to pick up our car, and we didn’t arrive at our hotel (in Turin, Italy) until around 3:00 AM the next morning.

  

• Driving in Ireland is severely contraindicated!

  To those who are unfamiliar with Ireland, this may sound like a warning not to visit. Rest assured, however, that it’s nothing of the sort! I’ve been to Ireland twice now and it remains one of my favorite places to be (mainly because of its people). After my experiences driving there, however, I would strongly advise visitors to find alternate modes of transport!

  Perhaps this aversion has something to do with the fact that one of my very first experiences in Ireland involved my Dad hitting a curb and utterly demolishing a tire in the middle of Cork. Or maybe it is caused by the speeds at which the Irish seem to navigate unspeakably narrow country roads, or by the confusing signage motorists are expected to rely on for navigation. All of those things definitely figure into it, I think, but I’m pretty sure my association of Ireland with car troubles wasn’t truly cemented until my last trip, when I experienced my first European car accident.

  My two friends and I were in a rented Ford Focus traveling north from Dublin, on our way to visit Newgrange (a prehistoric tomb site—I have a real fondness for those things). Somewhere around the outskirts of Dublin Airport (I’m told it was near a helicopter landing pad), we encountered a very bad situation: the road was wet, and it contained a profusion of what the Irish call “loose chippings.” My friend was, admittedly, driving a little too fast for the conditions, and when he encountered a fork in the road, he followed Yogi Berra’s advice and took it—head on. He tried to hit the brakes pretty early, but thanks to the conditions (I mainly blame the chippings), we were unable to stop and ended up embedding the Focus into a sort of mud embankment.

  Fortunately, a road crew happened along almost immediately to help us out, and a kind Northern Irish gentleman was generous enough to drive us to the Garda Station in Ashbourne, where the local authorities were extremely pleasant (at least Ireland makes up for its lousy driving conditions by being one of the nicest places in the world to have a car accident!). Unfortunately, the rental agency (Sixt Kenning at London Heathrow) was nowhere near as pleasant upon learning that we had wrecked the car in Ireland.

  The UK insurance we had paid for didn’t cover us in Ireland, you see, and, as it turned out, we were liable for all of the damages incurred (which were considerable). For awhile we thought my credit card’s insurance would save the day, but later we found that our claim was denied because Ireland is one of three countries the company refuses to cover (Israel and Jamaica are the other two). It wasn’t until last week that we finally admitted defeat and settled up with Sixt Kenning for the full amount of the repairs—a very painful blow to the old bank account!

  So, then, all grousing about Irish roads aside, the real moral of this story is this: when renting a car in Europe, always remember to tell the company exactly where you are going, and always take whatever extra insurance is necessary to cover you there. Accidents do happen, and when they do, you can’t put a price on the peace of mind being fully insured will give you (particularly when you’re on vacation!).

  

I must say, my longer-than-planned stay in London has really started to give me the feeling of living here—right down to the sort of abject exhaustion and exasperation that rush hour on the Circle Line can give you. Like good Londoners, DeLynn and I decided that the only thing for it was a weekend away from the rat race, so we resolved to head down to Waterloo Station Saturday morning to take a train out to Salisbury.

Much of the impetus for this decision came from Bill Bryson’s excellent book Notes From A Small Island, in which he writes:

There is no doubt in my mind that Salisbury Cathedral is the
single most beautiful structure in England and the close around it the most beautiful space. Every stone, every wall, every shrub is just right. It is as if every person who has touched it for the last 700 years has only improved it.

This raving endorsement, combined with Salisbury’s proximity to two major National Trust sites (Stonehenge and Old Sarum) and the fact that the town is a mere hour and a half from London by train, made it pretty attractive for a casual daytrip.

And the trip was indeed worth it! The Cathedral is lovely, with with exactly the kind of quiet elegance and warmth I have always loved about the English countryside. Its Chapter House happens to contain the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta, which was very exciting to me (I love that sort of thing). Best of all, the weather was sunny (if a bit chilly) and we arrived at the Cathedral (after paying visits to Stonehenge and Old Sarum) just in time for the “magic hour.” After a whole trip spent bemoaning the flat, gray, late winter weather the sudden opportunity to blow through four rolls of film was welcome indeed!

As I write this, I am on a very crowded plane crossing the Atlantic. British Airways heavily overbooked my flight, and my friends and I checked in near the cutoff, so the check-in person had to scramble to find us seats. She was successful in averting the catastrophe of our being upgraded to business class, and all she had to do was split up our party’s seats! There isn’t an aisle seat among us, sadly, and I have the additional misfortune of being unable to stow my backpack beneath the seat in front of me (due to a very unfortunately placed metal box).

Unfortunately, the trip got off to a fairly glum start earlier when Josh was paged at the airport only to find out that his beloved (but elderly) cat had gone into a coma. On the spot, Josh made the only agonizing decision he could: to put her to sleep. Later, disaster was narrowly averted after I boarded the plane, only to realize that I had forgotten my camera bag and the bag containing my headphones and iPod. The airline personnel would not allow me to leave the boarding area to retrieve them, and instead went looking for them themselves. I just about had a heart attack when they came back with my iPod and headphones, but no camera! Fortunately, I really pushed the issue, and they checked again, only to find that some other airline employees had found it and were holding onto it at the gate.

To pass the time on the flight, I’ve done a little bit of work on a Perl-based EXIF parser I’ve been wanting to write for some time. So far it is successfully reading the initial header data, but I’m afraid I’m going to need additional information about the EXIF data format to get much further. How did people ever program without the Internet as a reference?

The lights are out, so reading the copy of the New Yorker I brought is out of the question. My only distraction is Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets, which the flight attendants are showing at the special request of some precocious children on the flight. To be honest, it’s a better movie than I had expected—I think what the Harry Potter movies really have going for them is not their stories (which seem to me fairly pedestrian), but rather the marvelous atmosphere they cultivate. The flying Ford Anglia was also a nice touch.

My PowerBook battery is getting low, so I’d better knock off and try to get some sleep. Only five hours to London…

Dave Walker’s weblog alerted me to an interesting bit or public art that has been planned for London’s Notting Hill neighborhood: a pair of very large, glowing “eco halos.” They look pretty stunning from the pictures, and I really hope they will be up in time for my March visit. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any indication of when (or even if) they are expected to be completed…