The Joy of Seth

The one with tonight's experiment

2009-03-11T21:07:00.003-05:00

So that I have a record of what we did:

1 lb bowtie pasta

In the wok to start:

2/3 of a (big) red pepper
1 (big) bunch of kale, in 1" strips
1 can quartered artichoke hearts (in water)

added near the end:

about 1/4 lb sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
a small~ish container of kalamata olives

add it to the pasta, mix in

juice and zest of 1 lemon
capers
some tbsps olive oil

top with

freshly grated parmesan, a decent amount

Really good. We liked the way each of the elements stands on its own. That is, you can taste each, but they mostly work well together. Jill's favorite part: the sun-dried tomato. Then the cheese, then the red pepper. Mine: the artichokes with the capers.

It's already share-worthy. But next time:

the kalamatas are a bit overpowering. Maybe slice, and press/drain
use garlic, black pepper, a bit more oil, more cheese

That is all.

The one where the Olympics rocks

2008-08-16T04:50:00.005-05:00

While watching the Australian Open I made the observation

"If she ever gets some focus, Na Li will win a major".

(Or, her name may properly be written Li Na...I've seen it both ways, and I don't fully understand Chinese names...) I'd only seen her play a doubles match, lackadaisically, and they lost in straight sets, but apparently I still have my eye. This week she beat the world No.3, Svetlana Kuznetsova, in the opening match and an American named Venus Williams in the quarterfinals, coming back from 1-4 in the first to win in straight sets.

She just lost in semis to Dinara Safina--she lost the first set tiebreak, then served for the second at 5-4 but couldn't finish and lost 7-5. But she's still in the hunt for the bronze, and if you get a chance sometime you should watch her play. Apparently she's kinda old (26), so maybe a major is unlikely, but I've never seen a woman who so consistently hits her spots, with unbelievable angles and troublesome depth. Such nice strokes!

Speaking of the Olympics, I just watched the end of her match live. The streaming video is awesome. And does anyone have any idea how Phelps won the race shown above? And I thought tennis was a game of inches?

The one with another AB

2008-08-05T10:11:00.001-05:00

Odin's birth story is up on the Africa blog.

Pictures are on my latest crossword blog entry, his first picture is at Phil's photo site, a few more at his brother's photo site.

Now they go north, and I get lonelier,
sg

The one with PMTB

2008-07-20T09:58:00.006-05:00

Paige and I went to the Twins game last night to do crossword puzzles and watch baseball with some friends. (Phil was off wedding photographering...)

We parked on Franklin and took the light rail down to the stadium; it's really convenient, but the trains were packed. Heading back after the game we wound up in the middle of a train car as we pulled up to our stop. We started to push our way through the crowd when someone yelled out "Her water just broke, let 'em through!" Everyone laughed, and we escaped fairly easily.

I think she really needs to play the pregnancy card more while she still can. (She'll have a different card soon.)

Anyway, today marked my debut on Rex Parker's crossword blog. I wrote about today's New York Times puzzle (don't read it yet if you do the puzzle in syndication!) and the game.

I'll have more guesting soon, and of course I'll let you all (both) know when I do.
chao,
sg

The one with Chinese cookers

2008-07-15T10:39:00.002-05:00

My parents had a $50 gift certificate to JCPenney, and there was nothing they wanted from JCPenney. Same for me and Snu. But then I remembered that I was thinking about buying a wok, and they had a stir-fry skillet available for ~$45.

Two weeks later UPS showed up with a really big box. I figured they'd just over-packed, but it was really heavy. I opened the box to find a case of woks.

There was no packing slip, no phone number on the shipping invoice, no indication of who it was from, so I couldn't figure out how to even try to return it. And my parents had used a gift certificate, so there was no chance that we'd been overcharged for the extras.

Maybe mom just didn't notice the "Buy 1, Get 5 Free!" sign?

The one on Saturday

2008-07-13T20:47:00.003-05:00

Phil's visiting his mom, so I got to hang out with Paige all day.

We started early. The Lifetime Fitness Triathlon, with a $250K prize pool, takes place about a mile from my house. The pros started at 7am, so Sarah W came by around 6:45 and the three of us headed over.

Didn't make it quite for the start, but wow are those people fast. The pros race Olympic distance, which is 1.5K swim (just under a mile, under 20 minutes), 40K bike (~25mi, a bit over an hour), 10K (6.2mi, a bit over 1/2 hour) run. And the fastest men do it in about 1:48; the fastest woman in 1:58.

We watched the pros finish their swims and run off to transition, then headed over to watch some more normal people start, then the transition area for the pro bike to run, then watched men and women at the half-way point of the run, then finally over to the finish line. (We weren't actually going around too far--all that we watched took place in a fairly small area, with each race segment leaving from and then finishing back near the same point).

I think someone said there were 10? Olympians competing? Anyway, it was pretty exciting, and I'll do what I can to convince cousin Deb to come out to run it next year. (That's a LOT more likely than me running it...ever.) I'll maybe post my pictures soon.

A bit before 10 we left to head over to Firefly for some breakfast and cribbage, after which Sarah went to work while Paige and I went to play some more.

Afternoon, we headed over to the Richfield public pool. We read, lied in the sun, maybe laid in the sun if I have the wrong transitive case, played in the pool, Paige swam laps while I went down the big slides. It's kinda expensive to get in , but it was a pretty big place so there was room to not be anywhere near teenagers, and it was a really nice day.

We finished at the pool and went to Edina to buy cute pregnancy jeans. Paige is Very pregnant, but these are a gift for her also pregnant sister. Her pregnant sister-in-law can buy her own damn jeans, or maybe can just borrow from her was-pregnant-now-has-toddler other sister-in-law. Lotsa new grandkids for the Andersons!

Finally, we went to see Iron Man at the $2, which is now apparently a $3 theater. I liked it.

Thanks Paige!

More crossword and other news soon, in the meantime I'll try to keep this updated more often.
Hasta,
sg

The one where Carey and I are famous

2008-06-25T14:15:00.001-05:00

The one where my fame continues

2008-06-20T13:16:00.001-05:00

Hey, Joyful regulars. Sorry I haven't posted in a while... But I just found out that people I like actually do read this thing, so I promise to start doing interesting things and to then write about them. For now, you get this.

I guest-blogged again over at The JimH Crossword Blog (yesterday and today). And today I wrote about a bunch of music, and instead of linking to all of it on Jim's blog I'm doing it here.

I am reminded of Pet Shop Boys' WEST END Girls

and Roxette's JOYRIDE

Of Bill Haley & His COMETS

the Nitty GRITTY Dirt Band

STYX

or
,

and SUZANNE VEGA

Of Adam ANT

and TRIP Shakespeare

YES

once subbed for SLY and the Family Stone

We've got Sinatra

and Previn

and we've got TANTO

and the CMA

So enjoy, all, and I'll talk to you soon.

chao,
sg

The one where they did

2008-05-20T12:48:00.000-05:00

So I says to Troy, "Will you?" He says to me, "I do."

I says to Channa, "Will you?" She says to me, "I do."

With those rings they thee wedded, and I pronounced them.

[picture by Perry]

Congrats guys, and thanks for letting me be a part!

The one where, uh, what?

2008-05-20T09:39:00.008-05:00

I feel like I'm not overly materialistic. But I like money, and I especially like it when people give it to me, so I was at first excited to receive IRS Notice CP 13xx:

Understanding Your Economic Stimulus Payment
Please keep a copy of this notice for your records.

Dear Taxpayer:

Your Economic Stimulus Payment

You are entitled to an economic stimulus payment of $600.00 as provided by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. You can expect you payment by 5/23/08. If you do not receive...

How We Calculated Your Payment
...

Your Stimulus Payment Calculation
...
= Your Calculated Stimulus Payment: $600.00

Details of Your Stimulus Payment Calculation
We calculated your stimulus payment based on the following rules.

Filing Status
Based on your filing status, the amount of your stimulus payment is $600...

[all emphasis in the original]

Gee, it's almost enough to make a fella think he'd be getting a payment. But the letter goes on, without ever saying it in, you know, English, to give reasons why I think I'm not eligible.

So I'm very confused, but pretty sure I won't get anything. Why, they're treating me as if I'd married a foreigner...

But thanks for getting my hopes up!
Bastards.

The one where I'm Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving

2008-05-09T01:38:00.003-05:00

Haven't updated in a while. I thought I'd tell you a bit about myself. And by "myself", I mean about what some Jungians think about people who think about themselves similarly to the way I think about myself.

INTPs...

...are known for their quest for logical purity...Clear and quick thinkers...able to focus with great intensity on their interests. They appreciate elegance and efficiency in thought processes and require them, even more so, in their own communications....do not like to deal with the obvious. They are at their best in building conceptual models and developing unusual and complex ideas.

...are relentless learners in areas that hold their interest....often seem 'lost in thought'...go to great depths in their analysis....contribute a logical, system-building approach to their work. They like being the architect of a plan, because of the scheming and thinking involved, far more than being the implementer of that plan. ...the hours that they spend are not what is important to them, but rather the completion of their thought process. When their projects are of interest to them, they can become mesmerized and may even work through the night. when their projects are not intriguing, their work is considered drudgrery, and the INTP finds it difficult to stay motivated....usually find a place in their work for using their logical and structured thinking. They enjoy work that allows them to abstract, to generalize beyond the data, and to build models

...live rich worlds inside their minds...are not likely to have a very large circle of significant relationships in their lives...a few very close relationships, which they hold in great esteem and with great affection...primary focus and attention is turned inwards, aimed towards seeking clarity from abstract ideas...be difficult to get to know well, and hold back parts of themselves until the other person has proven themselves "worthy"...once committed to a relationship, very faithful and loyal...no interest or understanding of game-playing with regards to relationships....usually pretty easy to live with and be around, because they have simple daily needs and are not overly demanding of their partners in almost any respect...internal life is highly theoretical and complex, external life in comparison is usually quite simple...very creative person, who has vivid imaginations.
Natural partner: ENTJ or ESTJ (or ENFJ).

Read more by Joe Butt or Paul James or BSM Consulting or Wikipedia if you're interested. (Or find out your type on Facebook...)

Uh, yeah. I'll have more SethG news...soon.
chao,
sg

The one that's seriously off-topic

2008-04-24T17:50:00.013-05:00

To continue a discussion started elsewhere...

TV Themes
Someone I trust more than myself said the theme to Sanford & Son is the best TV theme ever. (Or this version...)

Others on my good list include Barney Miller, M*A*S*H, Fame, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, The Muppet Show, and All in the Family.

(Update: How could I possibly have forgotten Fraggle Rock?!?)

The bad list includes Small Wonder (though maybe it's just that the show was so bad), anything by Alan Thicke or Sherwood Schwartz, and something called Cleopatra 2525.

Worst song lyric phrasing ever
"Electrically they keep a baseball score", from Sonny & Cher's "The Beat Goes On".

Second worst is a tie between "there ain't no one for to give you no pain" and "there were plants, and birds, and rocks, and things", both from America's "Horse With No Name".

Single unexplainable word in a song
The second 'I' in Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia": "I fall on the floor and I laughing".

Random rhyme in a song
The Turtles.

So happy together
How is the weather
So happy together
We're happy together
So happy together
Happy together
So happy together
So happy together (ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba)

Most random title of a well-known popular song
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35. Definitely.

Maybe more later,
sg

The one with the anniversary

2008-04-06T10:53:00.003-05:00

Happy Half-Day!

Yeah, I'm not sure what to call it; I made it up. But I'm celebrating anyway.

I believe I moved into my first college dorm (Musser, room 202) on Sunday, September 2, 1990. Which means that as of today, Sunday, April 6, 2008, I have lived away from home for exactly half my life.

Yes mom, this does mean you're getting old. But I still love you,
sg

The one with a title

2008-04-01T08:16:00.006-05:00

And that title: General Manager!

I’m employed!

All I can say is…life is strange.

Most of you know the story of my last job: I knew nothing about marketing, but when I met an executive recruiter at a job fair he took one look at my resume and said “I know a marketing research company that needs you, even though they don’t know it.” He’d just placed the general manager of the company and knew it well, and knew they’d be more effective if they had an analyst with my skills. Four days later I was hired, and I moved to Minneapolis and spent almost twelve years tracking the coupon industry.

This might be even more random! My friend Timmy writes me and says “You know you are in Montana when you can walk by a bulletin board and see: Wanted 1 or 2 male goats... Well, it turns out he knows the guy who put up that billboard.

~~Tim~~ er, Doctor Murray finished his degree a couple of years ago, and he and his family moved to the Bitterroot mountains, in southwestern Montana, where [Major Drug Company] has a research division. And one of his co-workers has a ranch on the side, and they have a goat trading business.
Yes, that’s what I said.

Somehow, they were seeking someone with exactly my skill-set to oversee various properties. Which include the GoatFinder.com, the "Internet's #1 Source For Finding Goats Online", and its partner site, GoatWanted.com, which provides a simple interface to find goats that are currently available for sale. I'll be working mostly by phone and email, so I can work almost entirely from home.

My primary responsibilities will include:

Develop and improve the database software that lies behind the site(s), storing information about the vendors, ranchers and breeders and their respective inventories
Implement a probabilistic matching algorithm to pair offered and requested Goats along 29 dimensions of compatibility (they currently use just one dimension!)
Organize a Scientific Board of Advisors, maintaining relationships with external hircine researchers from institutions worldwide working in areas related to Goat breeding and cloning
Manage the external team of programmers who work on the front-end design and third-tier architectures that hold everything together and make it work (unfortunately, I probably won’t get to go to Bucharest or Mumbai to meet them, at least in year one)
Evaluate new business opportunities (the idea I offered in my phone interview, to which they were immediately receptive and which will likely be my first major project, is to match ranchers with active herds to institutions needing innovative solutions in the areas of brush and scrub control)
Additional responsibilities as required.

I start next Monday, and I’m super excited about this opportunity!

Coupons, goats, all I can say is life is weird, but wonderful,
sg

The one where I'm famous

2008-03-29T17:29:00.003-05:00

SethG's hit the big time!

I've bored you before with crossword puzzle talk. Well, The JimH Crossword Blog is required reading for all serious crossword ~~nerds~~ afficionados. Jim and I have exchanged some notes in the past, and he liked the neutrino joke I told him.

Long story short (actually! my first time ever!), Jim published a short profile of me Friday night, then I was his guest blogger today, writing about today's puzzle and Jewish holidays.

Now I can just sit back, relax, and wait for the crossword hotties to start beating down my door!

The one where you can play along at home

2008-03-26T17:08:00.000-05:00

"Mustang, this is Voodoo 3. Remaining MiGs are bugging out."

You remembered that this was Merlin, Tom "Maverick" Cruise's RIO in the final battle scene in Top Gun. But did you remember that Merlin was played by Tim Robbins?

Thank you sir, may I have another?
Do you know the Kevin Bacon movie game? The goal is to connect KB to a given actor in the shortest number of movie links. For example Robin Watts was in Juno with Jason Bateman, who was in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium with Dustin Hoffman, who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon. So Robin Watts' Kevin Bacon number is 3.

Well, from the people who brought you FishWar, I'd like to announce a new SethG creation.

How it works in my mind...
Some day I'll actually get seated next to Kevin Bacon at a dinner party. Well, I'm coming prepared. We'll be talking, and I'll ask "And what do you do?" When he says he's an actor, I'll look at him for a second, and as the look of recognition slowly dawns across my face I'll say, "I know you...you're that guy from...{something}!"

The question is, what should it be? My idea here is to pick an actor who's famous, and a role for which he is very much not famous. And for Kevin, I've got the perfect one in mind. I'm sure he gets recognized every day, but how many times have people remembered him from his role in Pyrates, in which he co-starred with real-life wife Kyra Sedgwick?

When they met on a crowded dance floor, it was a combustible experience and the fire has continued. Everywhere they make love, they start a fire. Clubs, closets, even in a tepee. They leave a smoldering trail wherever they go. Not even ice can keep this hot couple from burning down the town.

Yes, they made a movie about a couple whose attraction to each other was so intense that things would spontaneously combust when they got it on. The movie's actually decent, but let's just say it's not the role for which he's known best.

The game has its roots in the spring of 1996. I was sitting in my apartment, watching Vision Quest (the 1985 Matthew Modine wrestling movie) with Laura and Helena. And I stared for like an hour at the woman who moved into his house, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn't figure out who she was. Finally I got it: It was the same woman who played Sasha in Gotcha! (the 1985 Anthony Edwards spy thriller). Later I looked it up: turns out, it was Linda Fiorentino. Who at the time was much more famous for her work in Jade, The Last Seduction, and Unforgettable. And we owned a copy of Pyrates, and the rest is history...

And, as the Kevin Bacon game, sometimes called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, is named after the concept of six degrees of separation, we'll pick something that rhymes with obscure. Got it: Julianne Moore!

And she's perfect--Julianne Moore is a celebrated actress who's starred in many Oscar nominated and winning films and been nominated for four acting Oscars herself. But before that she had a bit role in Body of Evidence, about which all that can be said is that it wasn't Madonna's worst film. Just something to keep in mind when you run into her.

The Julianne Moore Movie Game! Pick up a copy today!

The one where I'm it

2008-03-14T16:50:00.000-05:00

Whit tagged me on his blog, (my first!), so I guess it’s my turn to do a little post. Here are 8 Random Things about me.

1. When I was maybe 12 we saw a hit-and-run accident in Philadelphia. Dad said "Seth, remember this license number", so I did. It was PTG 704.

2. Russ, who runs the Math Skills Center at Carleton, retired my name tag ("Officer Seth") after I left. It usually lives in his desk drawer, but when he thinks one of his tutors shares the qualities (?) he associates with me they have a ceremony and he grants them the use of the tag until they graduate. I do not know if there's a current holder of the Officer Seth Name Tag.

3. (Semi-)recent Halloween costumes have included Rollergirl, David Bonior, Mini-Me, Jared, a Seven-Card Stud, and The Milkman.

4. Snu and I were given free sundaes once to pose for pictures for an ad for Paces, an ice cream place, because our red hair was so cute. The ad appeared, in black-and-white.

5. Matt Bahr, who won a Super Bowl ring when he was a rookie kicker with the Steelers, once signed my stomach.

6. I name things. My first car was a 1989 silver Dodge Shadow named Big Bertha. Then I had Blue, now Roberta (but you can call her Bobbi). My flash drive is named Gordon. I have computers named Erdos and Ricki on my household network, Mortimer.

And I always bowl under H-names--Hank, Hal, Hubert, Herb...

7. If you count all words, not just the ones no one else had, I scored 250 points on a boggle hand this morning.

8. I'm an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church (of Modesto, CA). My credentials are on file with the State of Minnesota, and I will soon officiate at my third wedding ceremony.

I've also been awarded a Doctor of Metaphysics degree, for which I paid the church $20.

You can call me Reverend Doctor Seth. I'm Jewish.

The one where we're in Cope's Cabana, sure we are

2008-02-27T20:43:00.013-06:00

We're gonna talk about the Steelers game from A to Zanzibar

My parents weren't given to pronouncements. There was nothing we used to hear regularly around the house, no "Dad always said..." in my life. But there's one voice I recall vividly from my childhood, one iconic sound.

When I was growing up we'd regularly come home, my sister and I side-by-side in the back seat of dad's enormous '72 Impala, park in the garage, turn the engine off, and sit in the car listening to the end of Myron Cope's call-in sports talk show, the aptly titled Myron Cope On Sports.

Myron, pronounced "Mahrn", had let's say a distinct voice. He had that show for 20+ years, and for 35, starting before I was born and up until just a coupla years ago, he was the Steelers' radio color commentator. His was the voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and of Pittsburgh. Half the people watching at home would turn the sound off on their sets to listen to him instead, and plenty, like my dad, even listened while watching in the stadium just to hear what Cope would have to say.

He was, says Wikipedia, "known for his distinctive, nasally voice, idiosyncratic speech pattern, a Pittsburgh Jewish accent and a level of excitement rarely exhibited in the broadcast booth." He's a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame (the only football commentator in there) and an award-winning print journalist. He invented the Terrible Towel (the first of the things-fans-can-wave gimmicks) and named Da Bus.

Anyway, Myron died today, and a not so little piece of me died with him.

For a sample, click PLAY on the radio I stole from the Radio Hall of Fame. If you like what you hear, there's plenty more sound bites at Arlin's page.

Full coverage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is here.

Finally, like with all these other links, I can't watch the attached video (from last year, talking about the Towel) without getting chills. If you grew up with me or spent any significant time in Pittsburgh in the same era, I'm guessing you can't either.

I'll miss you, Mahrn,
sg

The one where I try live blogging

2008-02-24T23:32:00.002-06:00

I've seen exactly 2 Oscar-nominated films this year, and we'll just say they're not up for Best Picture. And I will see some of the others, but for now I'm just gonna watch the Oscars and predict who will win, picking based on what I want to pick on. And while I watch I'll keep some notes, hang out with Finn while Trish makes dinner, work on this week's homework assignment, Gchat with Becca and Jill, who knows what else. We'll start (a maybe late start) with E! on the red carpet.

6:05: RS asked Kelly Preston/Travolta about her dress color. She said it's an orange, he said "No, it's stoplight yellow." Then he repeated it several times.

6:09: Anne Marie Duff (?) has _way_ too much eye makeup. I do not know who she is.

Gary Busey molested Jennifer Garner, who didn't appear to know who he is. Her purse looks like a clarinet case.

6:28: 'Insipid', in case you didn't know, means lacking significance or impact.

6:30: There’s another text messaging commercial, but not the one with granny saying "IDK. It's my BFF Rose." They should show that one.

6:36: Cameron Diaz: "Who are you wearing?" Dior. "And the jewelry?" CD turns around to find out.

6:48: fashion review. The French one up for Best Actress "looks like a fish on the red carpet." "But the most beautiful fish ever," they added. And they're actually kind of right.

There's a little person standing next to Ryan Seacrest. E! keeps showing him, I think because he's a little person.

And Harrison and Calista came together.

6:57: Becca reports that "michael moore is rectangular" I tell her that they should show him with Calista, who "is 2-dimensional." It's a bit disturbing--you can actually identify bones in her shoulders that I didn't know existed.

Ryan Seacrest just gave Katherine Heigl a baloney sandwich on a Ryan Seacrest plate. Here’s a picture of her wearing her PETA shirt.

7:02: Off to ABC. Regis Philbin might have a cold. Permanently.

7:18: 11:23 left on the countdown. Daniel Day-Lewis' wife has a black dress with bright red straps and an enormous, uh, plastic-crystal Christmas-tree-star broach? mounted front and center. Um, ugh.

7:25: Becca notes some more messy ponytails (Jennifer Garner, Cameron Diaz, Ellen Page), which she calls the theme for the night. To any ladies reading this, I'll just say that I have no problem with that.

I wonder who's hosting this year? Did I mention I haven’t been following this too much?

7:30: Good, it's Jon Stewart.

He starts with a lame joke, then tells some more. I think they're throwaway lines, but they get huge laughs.

7:36: First Clinton joke.

Re: Norbit's nomination in some random category: "too often, the academy ignores movies that aren't good."

My stripper name is Opie Linden.

7:39: First Republican joke.

Then he compares the name "Barack Hussein Obama" to "Gaydolf Titler".

7:43: …and, I'm 0 fer 1. Sweeney Todd didn't win costume.

But I can't wait for Get Smart! ...to be available at the library!

1 for 2, cause Ratatouille won. The guy gave a bad speech, and they started the music on him.

They started the music quick on some Best Art Direction woman, and she just talked right through it.

Amy Adams is pretty, whoever she is, but I totally forgot about having to listen to all the songs. Hello, mute button.

8:04: Turns out, TV sucks.

8:10: Cate Blanchett is pregnant, and they had her enter the stage by emerging from a giant tube.

Oscar's salute to binoculars and periscopes had some Fletch. So sadly overlooked.

Now there's a montage of bees appearing in movies to introduce best animated short. Peter and the Wolf won, and they brought Peter up on stage.
She said "This is for everyone," and CY said "Yay! My first!"

Tilda wins. She's kinda freaky. Which I thought before I saw the long, flowing curtain/sleeve on her right arm balanced by a bare left arm, or listened to her thank George Clooney and talk about him in a nippled batsuit.

The probability of getting two pairs if you roll five fair dice appears to be 1800/7776=25/108.

Ooh, now we get to find out who the accountants are…it's PWC again!

Full house odds: 300/7776.

Kristin Chenoweth's dress is solid, and doesn't fit her very well. And she's singing in a different dress than she arrived in, which also rode away from her bust. And she's 4'11" in real life, 5'7" in her Oscar shoes.

Bourne Ultimatum wins sound editing and mixing. I picked them for mixing, had No Country for editing. Now 4 right, 8 wrong. I suck.

9:15: The beautiful fish pulls a huge upset. "apparently Americans can's act very well," says chatting Timothy.

And, another montage. Whatever happened to Tom Hulce?

Counting the gems in Nicole Kidman's necklace is like those contests where you need to estimate the number of jelly beans in the jar. That thing must wrap around her neck like 9 times. To use a word from today's puzzle, she's engulfed.

The last achievement shown for the guy who won the honorary oscar was his work in Dragnet, which starred Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd and Christopher Plummer. He's 98.

I looked it up: 1399 carats. Which puts the value of her necklace at something like the gross national product of the island nation of Tuvalu.

Penelope Cruz announced best foreign language film, I think in a foreign language.

Who is that? And why is he wearing a polka-dotted tuxedo? He's Jon McLauglin, and remind me not to pick up his album.

John Travolta's hair is maybe made of plastic, and his tie is pointing up and to the right.

The best song won best song. And we got to see the real life couple accept their award. He's 37, she's 19. And they started the Leave Now music as she approached the microphone. So she did. But Jon brought her back after the commercial. And she proceeded to ramble, but she's a Czech who speaks English with an Irish accent, so it was okay.

10:00: Who died: Jack Valenti, the director of Monty, lotsa people who get no applause, the Cinematographer of Karate Kid, the director of A Christmas Story, finally _some_ applause for Suzanne Pleshette. End with the big names, Ingmar Bergman and Heath Ledger. Did they show that other director who died the same day as Ingmar? Maybe I missed it.

This is maybe the most forgettable Oscars I've ever seen, though by definition I might have forgotten the others.

I have to double-check, but I think there are 8,401,680 different 8-digit numbers that can be formed using the digits {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} if no digit can appear more than twice.

Diablo's up, and Harrison Ford gives it to her. The Oscar. He gives her the Oscar. She's wearing an animal print nightie that's slit up-to-here. A floor-length nightie, but still... She seems happy.

Three categories left. So far, I got TY to make me dinner, 8 right, 13 wrong, 3 chat windows, lots of IMDb/Wikipedia research. My picks: Daniel Day-Lewis, the Coen Brothers, and No Country for Old Men.

DDL does win, and he knelt before Queen Helen to be knighted. Which is good, because I got to see more of his wife’s dress. It’s…indescribable.

Speaking of Helen, her dress is weird too, mostly its sleeves, but she’s gorgeous. And if you go to her IMDb page, you can click to get a coupon for a free small Coke with purchase of a Jalapeño Thickburger at Hardee's at the regular price.

Coen brothers. Tim says "And the winner for best impersonation of Seth G
The one coen brother who did not say much". Which might be true, or might seem weird if you've actually read this far.

10:47: good night from Jon.

Now: good night from me.

The one that's not as good as it looks, but boy does it look good

2008-02-06T14:31:00.001-06:00

The one with the dawning of the aged rodent

2008-01-29T14:33:00.001-06:00

It was amazing just how bad bad karaoke can be.

It was Meghan's birthday, and I guess mine too, so we went to the Chatterbox. Good times were had by most, maybe even all.

Despite the karaoke. There was a tableful of regulars who dominated the singing, and none of them were any good. And they weren't bad in a good way, they were just bland with no personality. For example, some mousy girl sang Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows, which the New York Times described as "a bleak prophecy about the end of the world as we know it" and which at the bar sounded like an instructional video for convenience store employees.

The worst performance was some death metal dude, at the end of which the karaoke guy said, and I quote, "Jesus Christ." I got some video, but with my crappy handheld point-and-shoot they're kind of dark and you can't really hear that well...I'll see if I can find a way to make them watchable.

I think the karaoke dude was really happy when John came back. He was the only member of our party to perform, and we all waited around for him to come back because he rocks. And he rocked. Yes John, we should Get It On.

Pictures are here, including some friends with different sized heads, Jillie O, some interesting random karaokeers, and pictures of me.

ta,
sg

The one where I missed my chance to defenestrate

2008-01-27T08:25:00.000-06:00

I am less than a man. I am excessively icked out by things that are icky, and scared by those and more.

And this shouldn't have been too icky, but when a bat the size of a pterodactyl flew into my bedroom last night (from the hallway, not the window), I had both heebies and jeebies.

I ran out of the room. Tried to open a window, but I couldn't open the screen. Though I did knock a lightbulb off a shelf, so now I had a bat flying around and broken glass everywhere. With images of squirrel cop (at 19:50, and you should totally listen) in my head, I had to go back into the room to grab my phone or computer, to call for help or at least look up what I should do. The phone was more easily portable, so I grabbed it and ran. I called TY. She was dismissive of my complaints.

Went back upstairs with a broom, and...couldn't...find...Battie...anywhere.

I slept downstairs, on the sofa.

Went upstairs this morning to find...a cute furry nothing asleep on top of my door.

He looks a little bigger when his wings are spread, a lot bigger when they're fully spread, and his teeth are
ferocious.

I wrapped him in the towel and threw him outside. I thought I might have hurt him because he didn't move for a while, but I went back to check on him and he was gone.

Then, while I was making breakfast I heard a knocking--he was trying to get into the window on the basement staircase where my dryer vents. So we might see Battie again, but in the meantime, Na na na na Na na na na Na na na na Na na na na, I am Batman.

Switching to the non-mammalian, Duck lost to Rocket, 11-9. I played one and a half points, did nothing wrong and something very right, and had a +1 differential.

See you tomorrow at the Box,
sg

The one where I'm coffee shopping

2008-01-22T10:23:00.000-06:00

But no cribbage until after I do a bunch of work on my resume draft. But later...

Snu's birthday was yesterday (Happy Birthday Snusie!), which means mine's coming up. Not quite ready to have my house party yet, and I don't usually care about it, but I'm trying to live The Opposite.

So, I might have a gathering at a bar or something. Probably last minute to make it easier for people to invent excuses not to make it (and of course harder for people who do want to come to make it...)

Or, I'm thinking about going to Vegas with some friends this weekend. I could get a ticket for under $300, or use my USAir mileage to come back Sunday evening and avoid the redeye.

Or, I'm thinking about buying me some kittens, theoretically to be named Myron and Gail, though that could change after I meet them.

Or, more than one of the above.

See, old Seth would have done none of these things, whereas new Seth is at least considering them!

Oh, and did I mention I'm a grad student now? Starting today, with just two (really 1+) classes to see if I like and want to stay in the program. It's at Colorado State, not Harvard, and I'm not moving anywhere--I can complete virtually the entire degree, I think all except my project/thesis defense, from literally anywhere. But it does mean my coffee shop time will probably not decrease for a while yet...

ta,
sg

The one where I'm FINALLY getting faster

2008-01-20T22:00:00.000-06:00

4:30! On a Monday puzzle, but still, it's a big improvement...for me... Hey, I need to be excited about _something_ in my life.

Instead of trying to remember my best crossword times for each day from the past, I decided to set goals for each day and then start keeping track once I get them.

My initial goals:

Monday - 5 min
Tuesday - 6 min
Wednesday - 10 min
Thursday - 12 min
Friday - 20 min
Saturday - 30 min
Sunday - 30 min

I got the Friday in 18:xx a couple of weeks ago (Jan 4, 2008), so now we're gonna go with 16 min. And last Sunday (Jan 13, 2008) was 29:58, so the new goal is maybe 25 min.
As for Monday, I'll catch Bannister yet!

sg

The one with hits

2008-01-19T09:19:00.000-06:00

Welcome, tennis fans!

A year ago today I saw my first match of the 2007 Australian Open, Richard Gasquet over Gael Monfils in 4 sets. I mention it now because the 2008 Open is going on right now, and I've been getting some hits recently from tennis fans who find me on yahoo or google. Recent searches that found me include

Feel free to link to this post so google likes me even more.

Anyway, I'm sure you're really all here to find out about week three. Duck took on Lady Zerks last night. At 11pm--I took a nap first. And _really_ thought about not going...did I mention it's a bit nippy out right now?

The team won, I dunno, 13-6 or so. No big runs, we just kept scoring about twice for every one they got. We had 6 guys, 3 or 4 women.

My game....was a very mixed bag.

For example, I skied a 6'6" guy (I cut deep just as TO got the disc, had a 5- or 6-step lead, the throw floated, I slowed, he caught up but let me keep my position, I let it come directly over my head and went up at the right place to catch it near my peak, which is probably right about level with his chin...). Landed about 5 yards out and threw an easy score to Jill when she and Cristy split him.

Then, the very next point, we forced backhand and I had no idea. Isn't it always force wall in indoor? They scored very easily.

Overally, I played 9 points with a +3 differential. Did have my first turnover of the year, a backhand to Charlie that was a bit behind him. Okay, he was 10 feet from me, and it was 8 feet behind him. Caught a goal, threw a goal.

Went to the bar afterwards, got home about 2:20. It was -15, and windy.

Today I wanna head over to Lake Nokomis, where the US Pond Hockey Championships are going on. Less than a mile from my house is a hockey tournament that ESPN called one of the "101 Things All Sports Fans Should Experience Before They Die". There are 225 teams on 26 outdoor rinks. Which would be awesome if it only felt sixty degrees warmer out, (which would still put us just below freezing), but it is what it is.

And what it was, and what it shall be,
sg

The one with invested powers

2008-01-12T15:56:00.000-06:00

No job yet, but I did land a consulting gig. Of sorts--on May 18th, I'll officiate at my 3rd wedding. If you or someone you love wants to get hitched in Minnesota, check with me to confirm scheduling--I have very reasonable rates, must less than the other guy charges!

I should have a tag line, but "Reverend Doctor Seth, for all your nuptial needs" is lame, inaccurate, and the only thing I can think of right now. You work on that, I'll get started on my logo and look into ad space.

In other news, we're 2-0 in the big winter league season. The schedule toughened up a bit as we played the "Alumni from the other school in Northfield that plays ultimate, but never had any success". Kind of a weird team name. They had Trueslut, Schmelzle, BK, Solarz, some others. We had I think 8 boys and 9 girls, perfect numbers for playing 3/2 on a Friday night.

The game was close for a while, I think they were up 3-2 at one point. Then I had a monster (er, I mean phantom) d that sparked a decisive 9 point run to let us put the game away. This was kinda an ideal winter league game--we started at a perfectly reasonable 8pm, and with our numbers I didn't really need to pay that close attention...I guess we were up 11-3 at one point, a point at which I don't think I could have told you whether we were winning or not. I think it was 13-6 at the end, good enough to vault us in to 2nd place in the league standings for now.

My stats, again, were very unimpressive. 6 points played, +2, 1 goal, one lucky assist. I had a bad position at one point to let my defender get an easy poach.

Now I'm supposed to discuss best/worst vs worst/best, but I won't do that for fear of finding out where I stand. Though I assume in my case it's more middling/average vs average/middling.

chao,
sg

The one where I'm a driver, I'm a winner

2008-01-05T14:34:00.001-06:00

Hey, I've missed you guys. Happy new year!

Sorry about my absence. I was planning to write up the trial for which I actually served on the jury, but never did. I will now, if you're interested, though I assume no one reads this anymore so I won't unless you ask for it. But I don't mind, and I've got notes, so feel free to ask away.

Then I was gonna post a note about the Irony Of The Year, an actual irony and not just an Alanis thing that sucked, when I saw this lede: "BELOIT, WIS. (AP) -- Ken Hendricks, a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his roof."

Then I think I was gonna post something else, or maybe it was some other thing, but I didn't. So now we're here.

The end of last year was...inauspicious. But, like Beck says, things are gonna change, I can feel it. This'll be a busy month, with lots planned. Accomplishments so far include

broke the 20-minute barrier for a NY Times Friday puzzle (by a bunch, and I should have broken 15)
called a girl
installed my cd/dvd player
bought dining room chairs

Stay tuned for an end-of-month fiesta to rock G's house.

In ultimate news, Wanna Buy a Duck is off to a strong start in Friday night winter indoor. Now 1-0 on the year. We beat Christian Science Reading Room, 21-0. (In 50 minutes, and goals count 1 pt each.) Thanks to the vagaries of our system, we're currently ranked in 4th place in the league.

Anyway, to the game. I played awesome. I was just so stoked to be playing ultimate frisbee again. I was +5 (only played 5 points). I had 1 goal, 2 assists. No turns, as Dave caught the one shitty pass I threw. For some reason we used a Wham-O, which my experienced hands sensed immediately.

K, I'm audi. Betcha I know what responses will focus on! And I of course mean the Steelers game.
Here we go, Steelers, Here we go! (4X),
sg

The one where I'm bored on a Monday

2007-12-03T12:35:00.000-06:00

THE JOY OF SETH INDEX

Average number of cases in the Hennepin County Court system scheduled each week : 200.
Number of cases in the Hennepin County Court system scheduled this week : 25.
Average number of cases scheduled each Monday : 65.
Number of cases scheduled for this Monday : 21.
Number of cases settled or postponed so far this morning with no need for a jury : 11.
Number of cases scheduled for Tuesday : 3.
Number of cases scheduled for Wednesday : 1.
Number of cases scheduled for Thursday : 0.
Number of cases scheduled for Friday : 0.
Number of people who spent all morning in the jury room with me : 250.
Number of people who have so far been excused from jury duty : 0.
Length of my required jury service, in weeks : 2.
Combined number of words I've exchanged with others in the jury pool : 10.
Percent chance that I'll be required to complete my service, roughly : 0.
Minutes until I need to be back in the room so bye for now : 12.

The one where I found an income opportunity but I'm gonna keep looking

2007-11-15T11:31:00.000-06:00

On Zanzibar, the spice island of Tanzania, I went on Mr. Mitu's Spice Tour. We tried lotsa kinds of Zanzibari fruits.

And while I was there the PABs were in Thailand, where they ate some of the same fruits. I was jealous when I saw Phil's picture of the mangosteen 'cause my shot hadn't come out.

Then, a couple of days later there was a note in the NYTimes saying that mangosteens, which "had been barred as imports from Thailand because they could harbor harmful insects...will be allowed in when irradiated at low doses to kill or sterilize the pests."

So when I saw the poster in the library advertising a meeting to learn more about mangosteens I thought I should go. Hey, I left my house!

The meeting...was not about the fruit.

Turns out, if you take the fruit and mash it up, then mix it with apple juice concentrate, pear juice concentrate, grape juice concentrate, pear puree, blueberry juice concentrate, raspberry juice concentrate, strawberry juice concentrate, cranberry juice concentrate, cherry juice concentrate, and some other ingredients to make juice, you can sell it for $25 per bottle, buy by the case! Mangosteens contain xanthones, so they call it XanGo.

The meeting was led by Brian and his ?assistant distributor? Keith, a pharmacist. We wore name tags and told our stories. The other people were old and talked about health problems, I talked about discovering the fruit on an island off the coast of Tanzania. I knew more about the fruit than Brian or Keith did.

Brian kept joking about his inability to spell when filling out people's name tags. One Asian woman walked in (with her Caucasian husband) and Brian said "Well, I just know I'm gonna have a problem with your name." Her name was Jenny. There were about 8 people total, and the meeting followed two paths.

First, if you drink a couple ounces of XanGo a day (or even rub it on) you can reduce inflammation, maintain intestinal health, support the immune system, neutralize free radicals, support cartilage and joint function, and promote a healthy seasonal respiratory system!

Second, if you sell it to others, and have them sell it to others, who sell it to others, you can make a lot of money!

Keith, told the story of his friend, who fell off a roof and broke both heels. Ibuprofen wasn't helping enough with the pain, but after drinking just an ounce of mangosteen juice three times a day for just a month the pain was virtually gone! He didn't even need the Tylenol anymore! (And yes, I know that Tylenol isn't ibu, but Keith seemed confused...)

The meeting leader, Brian, did some math on the whiteboard. See, if you tell someone about XanGo and they buy it you get 30% of their initial order. And 5-15% of other orders you or they are involved in. So you recruit just one person per month to buy just one case, and each of them recruits just one person each month to buy a case, and each of them recruits just one person each month to buy one case...

After 12 months of this, assuming everyone continues buying and recruiting, your network will be buying 2048 cases per month. That's 5% of $204,800, or $10,000 per month!

I didn't point out to him that under the same assumptions you'd make $20K in month 13, $650,000 in month 18, and $4,000,000 in month 24.

They probably didn't break the fraud laws against pyramid schemes since they're selling a real juice, even if it's at really inflated prices. They probably did break the laws against making health claims for a product that they say isn't subject to FDA approval, but who am I to say. (The FDA issued a warning letter last year, though the company would probably claim that the people at the meeting were independent distributors who weren't strictly following company policies.)

I didn't bring this up at the meeting because some of the people there were really sick (congestive heart failure, lung cancer) and I didn't want to take away their hope that this really is a miracle product. But maybe I should have.

In any case, we're gonna pass up this opportunity and keep looking.

Sorry about all the exclamation points,
sg

The one where I _really_ need to get out more

2007-11-13T17:09:00.000-06:00

NBA stars are playing Family Feud against their moms all week.

Richard Jefferson's mom is named Meekness LeCato.

Harry Shearer beat Isaac Mizrahi and Soledad O'Brien on Celebrity Jeopardy.

I need to get out more.
sg

The one where it's November

2007-11-11T08:32:00.000-06:00

There're too many people involved and too much time to go for me to really get too interested at this point in the presidential primaries. And I know that I won't vote in mine until February, or offer housing to some RNC protesters until next summer.

And sometimes you see election results from a couple of random races around the country on some random day in April. I usually figure it's just a primary somewhere with a weird schedule or that someone died or something. So that's what I thought of this week when I saw that Haley Barbour romped again in Mississippi and that the Democrats picked up a governor in Kentucky.

Turns out, it was a normal election day, and I completely missed it. There was none of the stuff you need to pay attention to on off years (or at least I didn't know about it). We just had our city races in 2005, and I don't randomly come across the STrib's election supplement in the lunch room anymore to find out about the park board or library council candidates and remind me it's time to vote.

It's been years since I've missed an election. And I didn't even realize I'd missed it until I happened to glance at the header while reading paper this morning, the first time I'd gotten an actual newspaper in weeks rather than just reading the e-version. Uh, it's November 11th already.

Even the fact that it's Veterans Day didn't clue me in--I just thought I was confused about Memorial Day when I heard people talking about it coming up. (Apparently very confused--I had to mix it up with Labor Day first before I could confuse it with this one...)

So vets, thanks for your sacrifices. Sorry I haven't been honoring them and have been completely unengaged,
sg

The one where we lost again

2007-11-04T11:40:00.001-06:00

Just got back from Sarasota. Welcome back to long posts about Ultimate!

With the Masters division format, the 12 teams are split into two 6-team pools. Each team plays each of the other 5 teams in its pool, then the top 4 teams in each pool move on to the quarterfinals against each other (1A vs 4B, 2A-3B, 3A-2B, 4A-1B) while the others go on to play games no one really cares about to rank the bottom finishers.

In the Open division, where I used to play with Sub-Zero, there are several tournaments throughout the year where the top teams go to play each other. For example, this year Zero played tournaments against other elite teams in Denver, Seattle and Chicago, and in previous years in Boston and Santa Cruz, too. The end result is that by the time nationals rolls around most of the teams have already played several times against the others so the nationals seedings can be largely based on those tournaments' results.

The Masters division, in which I played this year with Surly, ain't like that. A few of the teams play and practice together through the year, though most of the tournaments they go to will tend to be against middle-level Open teams, often with just a fraction of the players that will play with them in the fall. Other teams exist only to compete in the Championship series. They're usually based on a core of players who've played together a lot in the past, sometimes _way_ in the past. It's hard to know which teams will be particularly strong in any given year other than by looking at the roster and guessing how in-shape some stars from the past will be today.

This year's Surly team was much different than those of the past, with some overlap but with a large influx of fresh talent. We wound up entering the tournament as the 7 seed overall, ranked 4th in the A pool. And while seeding is a challenge, we knew our pool (with winners of 4 of the 6 regions) would be tough.

This year we've had trouble at the start of tournaments, and we had trouble at the start of this one. It didn't help that some of us (like, say, me) had had about 4 hours sleep the night before. We started at 9:30 Thursday morning facing the tournament's 6 seed, Mileage (Dallas). They have a really good tall guy and one or two other good receivers, and their offense is to throw them a lot of long passes and let them jump up high to catch them. Which they do very well, and we had trouble getting into synch offensively. So we had several leads in the game, but we kept letting them back into it, in the end losing 17-16.

Next up was the tournament's 1 seed, Troubled Past (mostly Bay Area). They'd won the Northwest Region, home of both of the finalists from last year, in their first tournament, and some of the players hadn't been able to make it, so Nationals was their first time together. I think they were still learning each others' names. But they have several players who'd competed at the top levels of the game, and they were also able to come back after we'd opened up a lead. It was tight through most of the second half, and at 14-13 they intercepted a pass in our own end-zone for the 15-13 win. 0-2.

The third game finally went better. Boneyard (NC) was apparently pretty weak in past years. This year they'd picked up a couple of big-name former Open players, but they were pretty old, most of them 40+. Apologies to any actual grown-ups who read this...I'll just point out that the Masters age in swimming is 25+... We were in control the whole time and beat them 15-8 (which turned out to be their worst loss of the weekend). We ended the day 1-2, but still in okay position for a spot in quarters.

Dinner back at the condos, we grilled out and looked at the ocean (bay, gulf, whatever). I slept.

Friday morning was against Ironwood (CO), the 5th seed in our pool. They weren't very deep, and their uniforms were ugly. Bright yellow? We didn't have much trouble beating them. 2-2.

Our final game in the pool was against DoG (Boston). The core of the team had won six straight national titles in the open division in the '90s. And they'd won all of their games so far (17-16 vs Troubled Past, I think 15-13 against Mileage). At this point they'd clinched the top finish in our pool. And we'd clinched a spot in quarterfinals as at least the #4 finisher in the pool. To move up to #3 we'd need to win and get help--Ironwood would need to beat Troubled Past, which seemed pretty unlikely. Each team's reserves (including me) got a lot of playing time while we saved our stars' energy for the next round, and everyone was pretty relaxed. They won.

2-3, fourth in our pool, we get the honor of facing the top finisher in the other pool in quarters on Friday afternoon. Old And In The Way (CO) had finished in the top 3 in this tournament for 9 years running. They were not psyched to have to face us in the quarterfinals.

With good reason. We started out trading points for much of the first half, then we got a break at the end to go into halftime up 8-6. Or 8-7, but definitely up a break in the worst conditions so far in the tournament. And we came out strong to start the second. We score on O, then PBo had a layout D where he beat his guy to the disc by at least a yard to give us a short field. Then another break to go up 11-7. It's kinda cold (well, for Florida) and it's raining. We exchange scores, give back the break, and they get a D and are on O when the lightning break comes with us up 12-10. The weather cleared pretty much right away, and I went to hang out in the pavilion while we waited the mandatory half-hour. After about 15 minutes to warm up again they score. But then I think we got two in a row to 14-11, they got two for 14-13, and we receive the disc for the win. Turtle had the disc about 45 yards out and makes eye contact with Boardman. They mark him with two guys, but he finds some way to get off an inside out huck that's _high_ in the air. Then....silence. Everyone figures there must be a call, and no one's moving. Dave's defender is on the goal line, with Dave about 15 yards behind him in the end zone. The defender looks up, hangs his head, and Dave patiently waits for the disc to come down for an easy catch. Surly's in the semis.

We were happy. And, better news, we got the rematch we'd hoped for. As suspected, the A pool had been tough--DoG, Troubled Past and Mileage had all won their quarters as well. Yeah seedings. But we get to play Mileage in Semis, and we were confident we could play better. For now, back to the condos. We'll grill out, and we've got 2 massage therapists coming by for the evening. Fifteen minutes on the table did wonders for my calves--turns out, my ankles don't bend far enough to stretch them out.

Saturday was...less exciting. We led the whole way in the semis and it was never close. We were glad to win (15-10), but we'd expected to all along. We popped over to watch the end of the DoG/Troubled Past game. DoG had been up, TP had come back, then they traded points to 14-14. Then, after some sloppiness from both sides, TP has an unforced error on game point and DoG punched it in for the 16-14 (or 17-15) win.

Several hours later, we play DoG in the finals. We play on the showcase field. Lots of people went to the beach or the beer garden, but there's still a crowd (which grows after the Open semis end) and they're filming the game for the DVD. But I didn't really notice.

Unfortunately, we played pretty flat. We had some unforced errors, and DoG got some Ds. And, well, they didn't give us the disc much. They jumped out to an early lead. We got back a few late in the first half, but still went into half down 8-4 or 5. And more of the same in the second half. I think they had a total of 5 or 6 turns in the whole game, and we weren't nearly efficient enough to counteract that.

I got in on D in the second half. I get down on the pull quickly and shut down their first throw. I'm covering the dump, and they don't get it to him at all. They wind up on the line about 25 yards out, and my only goal is to prevent an up-line throw. My man goes back for the dump, I follow, then he cuts up-line. I can't recover in time and I'm nowhere near him when he gets the disc and throws a continue for the score. Because I'm that good.

They wind up beating us 15-9 or so. So no World Championships next year for us. But we still had a fairly successful year, and we still have a lot of good beer to drink. We drink it. We actually wound up winning the Spirit award, too, which isn't that big of a deal but is still kinda neat. In every other division it went to the last seed in the tournament, so it's nice to win it while not sucking. Kinda like, say, DoG, who was known for being gentlemen during their 90s run.

Not much else to report. The finals in the other divisions were not that exciting either. Open was a close game, but really sloppy. Sammy actually dropped the pull on game point, but Bravo's first throw got D'd. Mixed started out 5-0. There were a total of 55 turns, which was actually way under our projection. I think 3 points had no turns, 1 point had 13. And the women's final score was 15-6.

Halloween was okay, nothing special. Most of my ladies are or were recently pregnant, so I only had a couple to hang with at the bar, which was packed with annoying young loud (mostly Zero) guys. After we left I tried to find Ellie's team's party but failed.

Hope all is well. Next installment: the G bar mitzvah!
Ta,
sg

The one where someone else was piqued

2007-10-31T11:05:00.000-05:00

I hab a cold. Probably from getting to sleep really late for a couple of nights in a row in Florida, followed by waking up at 4:55am to catch my flight home.

This comes just in time for this weekend's trip to see the whole G family.

I'll post an entry about nationals in the next day or two (short version: we finished 2nd and won the spirit award.) For now, there was an interesting article in this weekend's Play Magazine about a travel writer's Mt Kilimanjaro climb. If you recall, I climbed in June, and my account is here.

ta,
sg

The one with Ultimate Christmas Crosswords

2007-10-24T00:25:00.000-05:00

Ultimate

It's time for Nationals. I don't play for Zero anymore--I moved up to the old(er) man division.

We leave tomorrow and play Thursday, Friday and Saturday. See results here (they should be updated after each game), or read about the action at this page.

Masters is definitely different--tonight we had our only team meeting of the year, which was entirely about the logistics of getting more than 400 pounds of Surly beer to Sarasota.

Christmas

Houston, we have a problem. I have no idea what it is, but The Christmas Cottage has been delayed until 2008.

Actually, I assume the problem is just that the movie sucks.

Crosswords

I'm okay, getting better, at doing crossword puzzles, or at least the New York Times'. (Different puzzles have different styles, conventions, etc. Once you do them for a while, you even get to know something about the different constructors...I'm not there yet.)

But I'm slow. I recently solved a Saturday in about 40 minutes (they get harder throughout the week, and Saturdays are the hardest) , probably the fastest I've ever done. If I finish one of these in less than an hour I think I've done well. Fast solvers are in a whole nother world; for example, the fellow Carleton grad who's one of the best there is did it in under 6 minutes, faster than I can do even the easy Monday puzzles.

I am trying to improve at least a bit, and I've started following some bloggers (Carleton woman, a slightly more mortal SUNY English Prof) who write about each day's puzzles.

Note that I generally enjoy the puzzles a bunch, but if you read this on Wednesday, October 24 (or December 5 if you do the syndicated puzzle) I hope I haven't inspired you to try it out. Today's was dumb, unless you're the type who happens to remember that the Latin term for 'the die is cast' is ALEA IACTA EST. Trust me, that's not normal.

Go Surly,
sg

The one where omigodimsoexcited

2007-10-02T11:44:00.001-05:00

The Steelers were just like Homer said. But at least I got to watch it among fellow fans.

Headed to Tulsa this weekend for regionals. It would take some work for us to not win. Thankfully, they've backed off the original forecast--now it looks like it might only be in the low-to-mid 80s instead of the 90 they originally called for. And, not sure if this fits CY's schedule, but we should be done in time to catch the game at Cowboy Sharkies.

I'll be in Sarasota for Nationals at the end of October, Philly for a bar mitzvah the next week, and home for the holiday, which in my family means Thanksgiving.

Finally, and here's what's so exciting, this year's presumptive Best Picture comes out November 30. Anyone want to see The Christmas Cottage with me opening night?

bask in the light,
sg

The one where it be September 19th

2007-09-19T17:50:00.000-05:00

Ahoy, mateys! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

My Pirate Name Is...

Privateer Mad Tongue

What's Your Pirate Name?

Since we last talked, I bought a car. Her name is Roberta, but you can call her Bobbi. And I've done...not much else. Hopefully I'll have a resume soon, because I probably need to unretire at some point.

But I'm not feeling overly ambitious yet, so give me a call if ye wanna hang out.

yarr,
sg

The one where I should date more beauty queens

2007-08-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

My trip probably gave me a better sense for the geography of the world than the average American. Here, as pointed out by a Freakonomist, is an average American.

Anyway, I've made at least a little bit of progress.

I helped Dave make a turducken (chicken in a duck in a turkey) and a turcordon bleu (ham and cheese in a Cornish game hen in a turkey).
I met Peter. He looks like his brother.
I ran 60s and 90s. (This week is 50-50-60-60-70-70-80-80-90-90-100-100, rest, 100-100-90-90-80-80-70-70-60-60-50-50.)
I've done some car research...maybe a '94 Plymouth Colt wagon!
I'm probably gonna to buy a laptop tomorrow so I'll be able to do work without being stranded sitting on my floor in the corner, which will hopefully motivate me to do more work.
I'm gonna devote 2 hours a day to stuff around the house.
I'm gonna start yet another new blog. It'll be just for me for a couple of weeks. Then, if I'm happy with where it's going, I'll open 'er up. Tentative name is Math in the Media, but that's the name of an existing column so I might have to think of a better one.
I made my first Tom Yum Gai. It was okay, and will be better next time.

chao,
sg

The one where I am like Costello

2007-08-23T15:58:00.000-05:00

I'm a b-a-a-a-d boy. And, like Chuck Berry and MC5, I'm back in the USA.

Hey, I'm home! I just neglected to tell you that...

I'll write lots more about the trip (and more) in the near future. In the meantime, in no particular order (well, a particular order, just not the one in which I'll do the stuff), here's some of the stuff on my to-do list:

buy a car
buy a mounting bracket for my bike lock
calculate some travel statistics
create a map of the places I've been
decide how to support myself
emails to people I knew before
emails to people I met
frame some pictures and posters
gather the stuff people brought home from Australia for me
get a cat
get Colleen to make me dinnerware
get estimates for a new bathroom
give loads of stuff to Goodwill
have a Welcome Home/Housewarming party
help Dave and Charlie make a turducken
learn to make tom yum, dolamades and more
meet Allison Joy, Bart, Bella, Echo, Henry, Kristina Jr, Leo, Peter
name my last ~500 pictures
play for Surly
replace the pot I ruined
run a 60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90-60-90
spend more time with 3 Ys
tell you why you should never fly Olympic Airlines
track down the $840 Olympic Airlines owes me
work on my house
write a resume
write about Athens, Istanbul, Meteora, New York, Santorini

Sorry about the lack of entries, and thanks to those of you who prodded me to get moving. I'll keep working on this stuff, and if you wanna help, or want my help, or just wanna say hi, give me a call. We can hang out--I'm pretty much free any time!

ta,
sg

The one with the weirdest dream yet

2007-07-28T02:45:00.000-05:00

No reason to think it's from the medication, but I had another weird dream.

28 July 2007, 3:30 am, Perissa, Santorini, Greece
The Dream:

I'm driving along on my way up nort dere. When I get to Analfi, MN, I see a series of signs along the road commemorating the highest scorer each year on AHSME, the American High School Mathematics Examination.
One sign has a bunch of flags around it. I stop to check it out--it turns out that this was the guy that set the state record, and I'm surprised to find that I know him. It's Virgil Amundsen, my friend Christine's dad.
As I'm looking at the sign Virgil walks over and says hi. He's old, and he's wearing an eye patch.
He shows me some recent press clippings from some newspaper in Pennsylvania, I didn't catch its name, that just did a story about his accomplishment. The article also mentioned that the other person on the math team the same years as Virgil was Nelson Muntz, who barely qualified but of course went on to become a famous comedian.

I wake up.

Some notes: Christine is from North Carolina, and I'm fairly sure her maiden name wasn't Amundsen--her parents are Korean. I don't actually know anyone named Virgil or Amundsen. I don't think there is an Analfi, MN, and if there is I've never been there. Nelson Muntz is a character on The Simpsons who once said "That's like asking the square root of a million. No one will ever know." And, in case you didn't know it, I was myself a high school mathlete.

Snu, you never got around to analyzing my other dreams, but feel free to have a go at this.
sg

The one where I leave in one week

2007-07-25T11:33:00.001-05:00

Greetings from Santorini!

Since we last talked I've visited Alexandropolis, Istanbul, and the monasteries of Meteora. All of which I'll tell you about...later.

It's been really hot--CNN reported that Athens hit 107 the other day, while other parts of the region have been even hotter.

So I mostly stayed in my room, which had air conditioning, for a coupla days when I first got here. Now it's cooler, so I've been able to get some beach time in. Today I moved to a (much cheaper) campground, and tomorrow I'm gonna rent a car or an ATV and spend another couple of days exploring the island. (I wanted to get a scooter but I've never ridden one before, I have skin, and I'd like to keep it.)

Then, Tuesday I'll catch a ferry back to Athens. Wednesday and Thursday I'll finish up my tourist stuff, and I leave for the airport at 5am Friday morning. Let me know if you want anything (small) from Athens!

I was thinking of having a get together at some New York bar next Saturday, but I think the only people I know in New York right now are Andrea and Snu. But the G parents will be in town, so let me know if you'll be around and wanna hang out.

Okay, off to dinner. I'm gonna try rabbit for the first time.

αντίο,
sg

The one where I'm in Ελλάδα

2007-07-08T15:05:00.000-05:00

I was in Αθήνα
I spent a couple of days in Athens, wandering around some of the historic sites, eating gyros, and practicing my reading skills on every sign I saw.

Overall, Athens is beautiful. Every time you turn a corner you hit some other ancient ruin or something. And from all over the city you can see the Acropolis (a collection of temples and such, including the Parthenon, atop a hill--acropolis means "high city"). And the taller hill in town, Mt. Lycabettus. And from the Acropolis or Lycabettus you can see the surrounding mountains and islands--I always forget, or never knew, that Athens is right on the sea.

At night, they light up all the historic sites. Very pretty.

I saw the Parthenon!

Oh, sorry, that's the replica in Nashville. What I really saw was a whole mess of people and construction.

The historic sites, especially the Acropolis, were extremely crowded. And everything is under construction--the old stuff is still okay, but the repairs they made in the 1920s (or even 1990's) all need re-repair.

I also saw a Putzmeister.

I also saw the changing of the guard. (Hey, I took movies of that, too, which you can watch at my new video site!) When they've changed, they wander off down the street. Not sure how they do it in England, but I always pictured them just walking inside or something.

I am in Θεσσαλονίκη
Thessaloniki is second largest Greek city and the main center of Macedonia. It's also called Salonica, as in Gardens of.

Took the train to get here. Decided to take the overnight train so that I could avoid a night in a hotel and have all day Saturday if necessary to find a place to stay here. Turns out, I didn't have a seat. Spent some time in a virtual cattle car. Saw Greece on fire. Standing all night wasn't really an option, so I eventually made my way with some Spanish students to a car where there was some room on the side to lay down in the aisle. Right under the air conditioner...brr.

I'm Jewish (and a Sethicist!), but I don't get so excited about Jew Tours. The Jews of Central Australia or such just doesn't interest me. But, and I didn't know this until I got here, Thessaloniki has a fascinating Jewish history--apparently, this used to be Hymietown.

I went to the the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. Some facts:

In 1492, 60 years after it was conquered by the Turks, the total population was 11,000. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, 15-20,000 moved here.
By the 1870s there were 70,000 Jews in town, half the population
In August, 1917 a fire wiped out much of the city. 31 synagogues were destroyed and 54,000 Jews were left homeless
There were 50,000 left in 1940. The Axis powers occupied the city in 1941.
From March-August '43, 19 train "shipments" carried most of the Jewish population to Auschwitz/Birkenau. Over 95% of the Jews of Thessaloniki were killed.
Today, there are about 1000 Jews here (out of a total population of 800,000)

Also, I think every American Jew in Greece was at the museum while I was there.

Language
My reading is getting better. I still wind up having to sound out a lot of words, but I'm getting quicker.

Basically, Β is 'v', Γ is 'g' or 'y', Δ is 'd', Η is 'ee', Θ is 'th', Ι is 'ee' or 'y', Λ is 'l', Ξ is 'x', Π is 'p', Ρ is 'r', Σ is 's', Υ is ü, Φ is 'f', Χ is 'ch', Ψ is 'ps', Ω is 'o', MΠ can be 'b', TZ serves as a 'j' in foreign words and names, and the rest are pretty much the same. And of course some letters look a bit different in lowercase than in the block printing on street signs, where A is α, Γ is γ, Δ is δ, Z is ζ, H is η, Λ is λ, M is μ, N is ν, Ξ is ξ, Σ is σ or ς, Υ is υ and Ω is ω. This should all be familiar to you if you studied math or science or went to a school with fraternities.

Tennis
I went to T.G.I. Friday's to watch the Wimbledon finals. It was the only place I could find a tv. I have _not_ been to the Applebee's or Ruby Tuesdays that are just around the corner--it's great to be back in civilization!

I showed up to see that Venus, who I was expecting, was playing someone named Bartoli. She looks awkward, but gets great depth and placement, especially with her backhand. I haven't seen enough of her game to judge, maybe, but it seemed like she should be more active in approaching, especially with the deep up-the-lines. I'd never heard of her before...wonder if we'll see her for the next ten years or never again...?

Overall, not too exciting. Especially the maybe the 15 minute break where they both got medical treatments.

The men's matchup was what I expected. My overall impression: Roger Federer is a god, and I'm not sure Rafael Nadal is mortal either. They're so quick, and move so well, and get great placement and pace and hit such impossible angles. Federer's serve is more dangerous, and that helps him most here. But the rest Nadal's

Best Wimbledon quote:
"I saw Pierce Brosnan in the crowd, one of my favourite actors. I said to myself, it's not possible I play so bad in front of him. Because he watch me and I play so bad, it was unbelievable. So I try to feel it a bit more the ball, play more smartly. I saw he was cheering for me. I kept going and I won, so maybe a little bit for Pierce Brosnan. I was focusing on Pierce Brosnan because he is so beautiful."
-Marion Bartoli (the 18 seed), on her comeback to win the semis over the Justine Henin (the 1 seed) after losing the first set 6-1.

Best tennis quote ever:
"Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis seventeen times in a row"
-Vitas Gerulaitis, on beating Jimmy Connors after he'd lost their previous sixteen matches

What else to do in Greece
I showed up in Auckland at the end of November with a ticket out of Christchurch a month later and no other plans. I went to the tourism office the first day and they were super helpful--the woman basically sat down with me and we mapped out a month's itinerary.

I went to the tourism office in Athens. I said "I will be here for one month. Where should I go?" and the guy got mad at me for asking such an idiotic question. How should I know where you should go? It's a big country. How could you ask my favourite place? I like them all. Here, here's a stack of brochures. Go away!

There's too many islands to see them all, or even each island group, but I know I want to spend at least a little island time. And not sure where to go on the mainland, either. But I found a postcard stand today that had a bunch of cards of places that looked nice, so I bought cards for where I want to go, and I'll plan my trip around those.

Hey, it's no more random than why I came to Greece in the first place. Have I mentioned that? I was on the phone with the travel agent, giving him my itinerary. I was eating hummus, and thought "I wish I had some olives right now". So, while he was pricing stuff anyway I asked what it would cost to add a stop in Greece. He said the flights would be $100 more, I said "yeah, let's add a month there at the end."

Okay, it's really late, I'm off to bed.

ta,
σγ

The one where I'm in Greece

2007-07-03T14:38:00.000-05:00

I'm in Greece.

No flight problems other than the fact that I didn't get here until 23 hours after I left there.

I've eaten gyros and some hummus, but no olives yet.

ta,
sg

The one with piscine crania

2007-07-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

I have a coupla random things for you. And in my mind, and I'm pretty sure nowhere else, they're both related to Fish Heads, a wonderful novelty song from my (and Erin's) youth.

They can't play baseball
But maybe they can play cards. Paige and I have invented a wonderful game: FishWar! And it's certainly roly and poly.

You start out by playing Go Fish. Each time you successfully get a pair you add the cards to your pile. Then, once you've worked your way through the deck you use your piles as your starting hands for a game of War.

The strategy elements (having a pair of aces is good, having a bunch of 2s, 3s, 4s and such doesn't do anything for you) add a fascinating layer of complexity to your game of Go Fish and truly invest you in the outcome of your game of War.

You scoff only because you haven't tried it.

We're working on a drinking game version and will let you know when it's complete; for the basic version, patents are pending.

They don't wear sweaters.
But you know who does? Evo Morales, el presidente of Bolivia. We were sitting around the lunch table today and I opened a copy of The Economist to a picture of EM. He was just wearing a shirt, but I told Phil and Paige about seeing a recent press conference of his.

FIFA, the world soccer governing body, had decided that international matches could no longer be played at altitudes over 2500 meters. La Paz, Bolivia is at 3600 meters, and soccer's hugely important throughout South America, so it was a big issue. They called a special cabinet meeting, and at the ensuing press conference his cabinet ministers, wearing suits, lined up behind Morales, who was wearing jeans and this ugly sweater.

I described his sweater as something I wore in 1988 or so. And I'm not now, and certainly wasn't then, known for my fashion sense.

Turns out, he really likes the sweater. And I'm not the first to notice--I started laughing so hard I had trouble breathing when I saw that the BBC website had a slide show of him wearing it on normally formal occasions.

I've gotta tell Bad Sweater Guy about this...

Okay, tomorrow I leave for Greece. And I'll be home in 36 days, so if you have any ideas about what I should do with my life you could maybe let me know?

Eat them up yum,
sg

The one where I commuted with wildlife

2007-06-22T03:20:00.000-05:00

I went on a safari.

It's impossibly expensive to go alone; I needed to join a group. So I went to the Tourist Board--there's a bulletin board with lists of partially filled trips that need more people. I called around and wound up choosing a 5 day, 4 night trip. I think I would have taken a 4/3 trip if I'd found one, but I certainly didn't want to come all the way here and not see what I should so I went with longer rather than shorter.

And, unlike Kilimanjaro, I was quite confident that the group existed--I paid $110/day, which is about what you'd pay to rent a car. And, like Kilimanjaro, the park fees eat up much of that cost, so if I'd been alone the company would have surely lost money.

I got paired with Brad from Vancouver. His wife was planning to join, but they're traveling with their 11-month old so they decided that he'd go alone. Our vehicle was a Land Cruiser with removable roof sections. While in the parks, we could stand up to watch (or catch a breeze) while guide Frank drove around. And any time we saw something interesting, we'd pull over to park and watch. Also joining us for the trip was cook Isaac.

Our first morning we headed to Lake Manyara National Park. And, after having done some game walks and drives before, I think the topless Land Cruiser is _totally_ the way to go. (And it helps that the animals in these parks are pretty used to traffic and gawking tourists so lots of them aren't too shy.) About two minutes into the park, we sat and watched a baboon troop from about 20 yards away. Lotsa babies. Pretty awesome.

We went on to see elephants, impalas, Masai giraffes (noticeably different than the ones in Kenya). And two lumps that I'm told were lions.

Then, after lunch, lots more elephants, giraffes, a herd of buffalo, vervet monkeys, dik diks, and more impala.

Camp the first night--we weren't exactly roughing it. They set up my tent for me, and the site had hot showers and a bar/restaurant. We ate Isaac's food on a table set up out back, but still.

The next morning we were joined by the last member of our group, some Swedish guy whose name we never learned. He had all sorts of safari clothing and about $4000 of camera equipment with him (the special bag alone had to cost more than my camera), and much of the rest of our trip became a quest to search for photo opportunities. He was kinda a tool, but one who spent 20 years in the Special Forces (I resisted the strong urge to refer to the Very Special Forces!). We ate breakfast and headed off for the Serengeti, about 6 hours away.

On the way we stop at a Maasai village. The lands they've historically tended are disappearing (or being turned into protected conservation areas) so many Maasai make a living by selling their culture. They ask for $50 per car to come see their village and take pictures, which apparently lots of people actually pay. I know Björn would have paid his share; I just laughed. Brad and I started reading and acting disinterested while Björn negotiated. I spoke up and said I'd pay 5000 shillings, $4. Brad said he'd pay the same, and we wound up settling for 20,000 shillings total, with Björn kicking in $8. In real life the Maasai herd cattle, but this is sort of a demonstration village where they jump up and down and sing songs. Our Maasai guide took us around, showed us a home, tried to sell us jewelry and made us promise not to tell anyone what we'd paid. Oops.

Also, the Maasai wear tire shoes.

We get to Serengeti National Park and do a game drive on our way to the campsite, somewhere inside the park. Now, the park is about the size of Connecticut, so we don't even try to cover the whole thing. Instead, for the rest of the time we, and most of the other groups, drive around an area that seems fairly large but is surely only a small percentage of the park area. You can only drive on the roads (that decently criss-cross the area), no taking off cross-country.

The campsite in the Serengeti was more basic, with pit toilets, no running water, and a bunch of other safari groups.

We did game drives in the Serengeti on our way to the campsite on day 2, in the morning (sunrise - lunch) and evening (3pm - sundown) of day 3, and in the morning of day 4.

There are a couple of places that we can go to try and see certain animals (the hippo pool, a shady area where lions sometimes sleep, etc.) but mostly we just drive around and hope to spot something. We keep a lookout for animals, and for other safari vehicles--when someone sees something particularly interesting word gets around (Frank spent a lot of time on the CB) and everyone descends.

One constant theme was our search for the leopard. One of the classic "Big 5" (along with elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo), we spent way too much time trying to see one. It was like a game of telephone--we'd pull up to a large group (more than 10, we saw as many as 26 vehicles gathered) where someone said that someone had seen a leopard in "that tree over there". We'd spend a half an hour sitting around, seeing nothing, before finally convincing Frank to move elsewhere. Once, after looking through binoculars for about 10 minutes, I was finally able to make out some paws hanging down from a branch in a dense tree about 100 yards away.

We saw a lot of antelope (impalas, gazelles, dik diks). Lots of zebra and lots of wildebeests (aka gnu) and some of the other beests, the harte.

The zebras and wildebeests are buds. Zebras are really smart, and maybe like to hang with the wildebeests because they are dumb as shit--if there's a predator about, odds are it catches a gnu. The wildebeests maybe hang out with zebras because otherwise they'd have no idea when there were predators about. They don't smell, hear or see very well. They tend to follow each other in single file lines when moving, unless one gets spooked, in which case they take off in all directions. We'd frequently come across zebras and gnus in the road--the zebras would get off the road, and the gnus would run down the road away from the truck. Zebras are pretty. Wildebeests are ugly and they grunt incessantly. It was hard to fall asleep in what sounded like a hog farm...

On the morning of day 3 we saw a bunch of lions fairly far off. After watching for a while we realized there was another road that went right by where they were sitting. There were several sitting around, and one male was still working on the wildebeest that the rest had had their fill of. He went on for a while, and was still going when we left. And the birds of prey were gathering, waiting for the scraps... (There are some cool pictures, though vegetarians might want to stay away.) We found another lioness eating nearby, soon after we left the first.

There's no way to tell if the lions had killed it--despite their reputation, lions steal about 2/3 of their meals from other predators. (And hyenas, who have a scavenger reputation, are actually fierce group hunters who kill about 2/3 of their own prey and only steal 1/3.) We never did see the "action" of an actual hunt.

Magnus threatened me at breakfast on day 4--I'm pretty sure he didn't hear Brad and I talking about him and instead misinterpreted something completely innocuous that I'd said. Frank didn't understand what he was talking about either. Frank talked to him, Brad avoided him, I turned on the charm, and the detente lasted the rest of the trip.

After lunch day 4 we headed back to the Ngorogoro Crater, where we stayed at a campsite (hot showers, zebras grazing, but not much else) on the crater rim. It was really cold. And instead of grunting gnus I got to fall asleep to the sound of a zebra chewing grass about 20 yards away.

The crater itself is about 2000 feet deep and covers about 100 square miles. The sides are very steep so for the most part animals don't just pass through. Apparently, almost every type of animal in East Africa can be found in the crater. Except my favorite, giraffes.

We woke up early (~5:45) to get there in time to maybe see some of the normally nocturnal animals. But it was really foggy and we couldn't really see anything. We wound up finding a black kite perched near the road at about 7:45, and it was almost 9 before we saw any animals, a lion from a distance. At 9:30 we finally came across the density Ngorogoro is famous for--a small lake with storks and flamingos and hippos, with zebras and gnus grazing and hyenas hanging about looking for an opportunity.

About an hour later came our most surreal moment--two male lions were walking down the road. We, and a veritable host of others, followed. We jockeyed for position, with one truck speeding ahead and waiting, then hurrying to follow when the lions got there. At times, the lions needed to weave between stopped vehicles to continue on. This lasted for almost 20 minutes. And I think our truck took more than our fair share of viewing opportunities--for quite a while we drove along, right next to one of them, matching his pace.

After some more driving around we stopped to eat our box lunches. They were mostly inedible, just like virtually all the other food we were served. We headed out, and finally, on our way out of the crater, we found a rhino, the last of the Big 5. We left and headed back to Arusha, arriving about 5pm yesterday.

This time, I tipped 10%. Again, I have no idea if that's right. I know that Brad paid $780 for the trip and Leif paid $560 for his 4 days. I "only" paid $550 (which I didn't happen to mention to them...). I gave the cook $20 and the guide $35. Frank had to work much less hard than Rafael (my Kilimanjaro guide) did, the food was terrible, and they were getting tips from 3 of us so I think I'm okay with it.

I have no contact info for Brad or Gunnar, which I'm fine with. I do wish I'd gotten info from the Canadian trio on a trip that largely matched ours--our table was next to theirs at the Manyara campsite, we ran into them quite a bit arriving at and leaving the Serengeti, saw them again in the crater, and I chatted with them for a bit just before we left for Arusha. They're climbing Kili starting tomorrow--good luck, Canadians!

Pictures are up. There's a lot, and the best have been added to my group of favorite shots from my trip so far.

Next for me: Rwanda. God forbid I'd be healthy at any point while in Tanzania--now I hab a cold. So, to avoid 2-3 (or 4 or 5) long days on a bus, which I wouldn't love even if I felt great, I'm gonna fly. I leave Arusha Monday, probably in Rwanda just 'til Wednesday or Thursday, then back to Kampala to say bye. And a week from Monday I'll leave Africa. Next stop: Athens.

Kwa heri,
sg

The one with some random stuff

2007-06-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

Hey, just got back from safari. Five days, four nights in Lake Manyara National Park, Serengeti National Park and the Ngorogoro Crater. I'll write it all up for you tomorrow, but the highlights: we saw lions eating lunch, saw other lions at _extremely_ close range, giraffes are awesome, wildebeests suck, a Swedish guy threatened to maim me.

Before I left I had dinner with some interns. As promised, here's a shout out to Ting Ting. TTC is in the hizzouse!

For now, I'm back in Arusha 'til probably Saturday, when I'll head west towards Rwanda. I'll soon circle back to Uganda, and July 2 will leave Kampala for Greece.

Where I will stay (with a side trip to Turkey) until Friday, August 3, when I'll head for New York. I think all my NY friends will be out of town, but if not there'll maybe be a small get together on Saturday night. Come see me, and meet the G family! If not, maybe I'll just take my sister out to celebrate her new job.

On Monday, August 6, exactly 9 months after I left, I'll return to Minneapolis.

Where I'll be staying... Some of you seem to have an idea that I'm moving to Boston to study Metabusiness. I dunno, kinda sounds like something someone made up on April Fool's Day.

So if you have any ideas about what I should do when I get back, let me know. Did I mention I'm broke and unemployed?

Okay, more soon.
chao,
sg

The one where I'm piqued

2007-06-13T04:06:00.000-05:00

Er...I mean I peaked.

Helen (Allen's second cousin, my new favorite elephant, travel companion and pillow) and I climbed to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro last week. Yeah.

I've got some travelogue for you, some random thoughts, some whatever, but I'll just throw it all in here and let you deal. Grab some popcorn, it's pretty long...

The trip:
I didn't sleep that well the night before we started, and I had some stomach issues. So I didn't eat any breakfast, but the first day should be easy. They picked me up at 8am. We go to the company offices to drop off some of my stuff and pick up stuff they're gonna lend me--a coat, gloves, boots. Tour company woman never asked my size, and they just had two pairs for me to try, but she'd done a decent job estimating and thankfully one of the pairs fit okay.

As we left the guide gave me the day's schedule. I asked when we'd meet up with the other hikers in our group. "It's just you." "But Joanne said there were two others." Blank looks. "Oh, yeah, they cancelled." Or, I'm thinking, maybe "didn't exist". So it's just me, a guide, a cook, and two porters.

It takes 'til about 1pm before we've gotten to the park and everything's organized for us to start. We start out at Marangu gate at 1970m (6500 ft). The first day's walk is only about 8km (5 miles) and takes you up to the Mandara Huts at 2700m (8900 ft), about 3 hours total. A nice easy walk through rain forest. It's just the guide and me--the porters and cook walk separately, and on the first day they even have a road to walk up while we take the "tourist" route.

By the end of the first day, even though it was easy I was tired and sore, especially my left knee and right ankle. And my right elbow, which I'd SMASHED in the shower that morning...

The only book I brought with me was David Copperfield--lotsa pages, small print, I figured I could make it last for several days. At dinner I got about 25 pages in...not so promising. I would read no more over the rest of my trip. Does anyone actually enjoy Dickens?

Dinner was pretty good--cucumber soup and beef and potatoes with a vegetable sauce. I was asleep about 7:30.

Day 2 we walked about 5 more hours up to Horombo Huts at 3700m (12000 ft), and that's when the altitude hit me pretty hard. I had mild Acute Mountain Sickness. Thankfully, even though the 'A' in "Acute" is capitalized the "mild" is more important. I had a headache, no appetite, nausea, and lotsa trouble breathing.

I started taking the pills I'd brought (Acetazolamide) to help with the altitude. I'd have started before we ever started climbing, but some people recommend you don't take them if you don't need to as if you react poorly you're not really near any medical help. In retrospect, what I should have done is taken a couple of doses back while I was in the States to see if I had a problem and started taking them before I climbed anywhere. In any case, I was a bit off kilter for most of the rest of trip, and my contemporaneous notes stopped.

Luckily, my itinerary called for an extra day for acclimatization then. Day 3 I woke up and it still really hurt to breathe, but my headache was better so I had hope. We left around 10am to walk up to Zebra Rocks at 4000m, just an hour and a half or so. Hung out there for I'm not how long--I took a nap--and headed back to Horombo Hut about 1:00.

Day 4 we walked from Horombo up to Kibo Hut at 4700m (15,400 ft). I spent much of my time daydreaming about marrying Julie née Holland's kid sister. I went to college with Julie, and we weren't exactly close--we maybe took a class or two together but I probably haven't seen her or had any contact since graduation, and I have no idea if she has any siblings. Well, guess I'll email her now...

Kibo was, well, cold. The best part: the 7 kids from UNC-Chapel Hill. Philip and six women, all seven of them attractive, came to Tanzania to spend several weeks doing environmental work and then climb Kili. One was named Zina (I'm spelling it like Garrison instead of Warrior Princess but I'm not sure...), the other 5 names, not sure. I heard them but couldn't keep track. Not sure why I liked them so much...

all were cheerful and bright and bubbly, not just cute
they're maybe who I wish I'd been at that age (if not today)
Philip is maybe in training to become a Sethicist. And if he's hetero and all the women are in serious relationships with others, he's already there

We spent the day resting at Kibo Hut. I had that gawdawful Together Forever song (Rick Astley, from the bus in Nairobi) going through my head all afternoon while trying to sleep and at dinner. A Chapel Hillie suggested Alanis Morissette instead, and I spent much of the evening trying to sleep but instead thinking about the meta-irony of her song about things that suck.

We left Kibo at midnight on Day 5. The walk goes pretty much straight up a hill to Gilman's Point at 5685m (18,650 ft). We stopped twice for water, for less than two minutes each, and got to Gilman's at about 4:15. Our pace totally reminds me of walking my grandmother down the hall at her nursing home when she was in her late 90's. To Gilman's is supposed to take 5 hours, then another 1 1/2 to Uhuru Peak, so we kept going really slowly to get to the peak just before sunrise so we wouldn't have to stand around for too long.

We did, reaching the peak (5895m, 19,340 ft) at 6:15. It was clear. Maybe 5-10°F. We hung out for a bit. Took some pictures of me and Helen at the peak. Then we left.

Ah, Sensei, the master becomes the student. I could see where I was going, and there was no longer any need to go slowly. But Rafael, my guide, has only been on snow the 10-15 times he's brought people to the peak. Hello, I live in Minnesota! I give him my walking poles, told him a few tips, and took off, looking back every once in a while to make sure he wasn't falling too far behind.

We got back to Gilman's Point and take our first real break. We look down: "Hey, that's Kibo." Sure doesn't look like a 4-5 hour walk... The hill was scree so we took our time, stopped to chat once or twice, and maybe two hours later get back to Kibo to take a nap.

After climbing, some people leave equipment behind for their guides and such. I wasn't exactly in position to do that--Rafael had been worried that I'd be too cold so I'd borrowed wind pants from one of my porters. Maybe he would have been right in worse weather, maybe he was even right here. But...they didn't breathe. I took off the wind pants in the hut and found that my long johns, and my (only!) pants, were SOAKED with sweat. Same for both of my long sleeved shirts and my sweatshirt. Yuck, and brr.

I ran into a Chapel Hillie--I think six of the NC7 made it. One of the women got really sick, threw up 4 times at 5300m or some such thing. I felt really bad for her, but she didn't seem too depressed or was covering it pretty well.

We walk down to Horombo. Very slowly--my knee is almost useless by now. My guide kinda wanted to head all the way down to Mandara so it'd be a shorter walk out the next day, but Horombo it was.

We get in about 2:30. I head to sleep. They try to wake me for tea, but I sent them away. I think that's when they sing the Kilimanjaro song to you. Shit, missed it.

I looked for Chapel Hill at dinner but didn't see them so I went to sleep early. Day 6, didn't see them at breakfast, either. We left at about 8:30.

At 8:40 we passed CH--they'd been there after all. Back to Mandara at about 10:45, back to park HQ just before 1pm. They gave me a certificate, a garland, a bottle of champagne and a nice lunch. Then we headed back to Arusha.

Tips:
I've seen recommendations ranging from 10-15% of the trip fees for tips. But I paid $1000 for my trip, and of that

$360 park fees
$250 camping fees
$ 20 rescue fee
$ 3 some fee
= $663 went to the park.

That leaves $367 for salaries for the guide, the cook, and two porters, transportation to and from Arusha (about 80km), food for all of us, equipment rental, champagne, overhead, other expenses...

It wasn't my fault I was alone, but I felt really bad about these guys waiting on me for a week for peanuts. And they haven't worked in a coupla months as it was the rainy season and they had no bookings. And I'd have paid another $100 for my trip without batting an eye. And I didn't have the right mix of change with me as I thought I'd be in a group and had planned to give them less.

So I maybe overtipped. Or maybe I undertipped...who knows what's right but here's what I gave them, which was almost what they'd asked for:

Albert, a porter, who I'd seen only when Rafael introduced me after bringing up the subject of tipping on day 3 and again on the evening of day 5 when he came to say goodbye and get his money (he had to leave really early on day 6) got $30.
Elisante, the porter and waiter who brought me water to wash each morning and after each hike, woke me up every day, gave me a hug when I'd finished and lent me his pants, got $40.
Emanuel, the cook/porter, who spoke good English and had a sense of humor, got $70.
And guide Rafael got $100.

Almost 25%.

General comments:
It's really funny to see the porters, like lots of other people in Africa, balancing stuff on their heads. Some are really large or bulky packages, but some are standard(-western)-issue internal frame packs with support straps, hip belts and the like, and they probably weigh almost 30 pounds.

I really felt like crap on day 2. I had continuing stomach issues at night, and no-to-not much appetite during the day the whole time. I thought I might have lost some weight. And I probably did--both Rona and Nushin commented on it when I got back. Andre didn't seem to notice.

Final Thoughts:
(On my way up) I heard a bunch of people (on their way down) talking at Horombo about how the climb had been "mentally challenging beyond what we could have ever imagined." For me, the peak was a bit anticlimactic. I almost felt cheated--was my route too easy, the weather too perfect for me to get the full experience?

I'm maybe more equipped than many for long hours of trudging on, alone, just footstep following footstep with only my own thoughts to keep me company. But it didn't seem that hard.

Don't get me wrong--the altitude is hard to deal with, and something over which we have no control. If I had been on a 5-day itinerary instead of a 6-day I would surely not have made it. The Chapel Hillie who failed was totally sick, puking her guts out at 5300m. But the walk itself, I just kept going. Once I wasn't sick there was no doubt in my mind that I'd make it.

And the peak isn't the standard cartoon mountain where you get to the top and look down around you. It's just the highest point on a large plane--the views from there aren't that spectacular (and it was fairly clear and we got there at the perfect time). And we'd gone from gaining 1000 meters in just over 4 hours to gaining 200 meters over the final 2 hours, so the last while of the walk wasn't challenging, it was just finding our way (and, thanks to our perfect weather that just meant following a well worn path--we didn't even need our lights to walk it in the dark) over to the right spot.

Still, I'm definitely glad I did it and, while it maybe wasn't the hardest thing I've done this trip it was definitely one of the highlights. And I can now use the phrase "back in ought seven, when I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro..."

Okay, if you've made it this far, pictures are up.

Next up: safari.
sg

The one where I spent time with people

2007-06-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

My second night in Nungwi, on Zanzibar island, I walked into the restaurant at the same time as another guy who was alone. There was one table left overlooking the water, so we ate together. He's Andre, from California, traveling with girlfriend Nushin but she wasn't feeling well.

I traveled a bit with them (and with Nushin's cousin, Rona(sp?)). We were in the same van back to Stone Town, stayed in the same places (or together) in Stone Town and Dar Es Salaam, and rode the bus to Arusha together--they'll be working here for a coupla months while law student Nushin interns at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

My first night in Arusha I stayed at a campground. I was the only person there. And, in fact, I was the first person to sign the registration book since April 9. So after a day I moved to a hotel across town. My room is essentially a closet, but it's really clean, the bathrooms are really clean, there's free breakfast at the pretty decent bar/restaurant on the roof, and it costs $5 per night.

Since we got to Arusha I've run into Andre and/or Nushin basically everywhere I go. And then yesterday I walked into a cafe and a guy who sorta looked familiar said "Hey, I know you from Upper Hill in Nairobi. I forget your name but I remember you play ultimate and worked with coupons. Oh, yeah, and you're older than you look, something like 34?"

I am, in fact, 34. Kyle, who's maybe a bit too much into trivia, is also an intern at ICTR. So I've been hanging out quite a bit with all the interns. (And today, I went with Andre to watch some of the testimony of Dr. Casimir Bizimungu, the former Health Minister of the Interim Government, as far as I know the first genocidaire I've ever seen in person.)

Yesterday, I was in the office yesterday of the Tanzanian Tourist Board when a guy walked in wearing a shirt that said "Da Burgh". I said "I'm from the (Pitts-)Burgh." He bought the shirt in Kenya or something, but he and his wife did just move to Pittsburgh.

Then, at dinner last night with the interns, we're talking about random people coincidences. I tell about seeing this guy. The intern across from me said "I'm from Pittsburgh." Usually that means somewhere in some town in southwestern PA, but in this case it meant that she lived maybe 150 yards away. We went to the same high school, just 10 years apart.

I came to Arusha to try arrange a trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. It's really hard to do research here because _everyone_ wants to give you information. For example, the Tourist Board found me a group leaving tomorrow through Shidolya Tours. And when I got to the Shidolya office (right at the Arusha International Conference Center, same place as the ICTR, so I ran into Nushin in the lobby) there were 3 guides from competing tour companies in their lobby trying to
steal me away.

I wound up joining the group. Which is I think two other climbers, plus guide and cook and porters. The woman said the others speak good English so she thinks they might be Australian, or maybe English, but that's all I know about them. In any case, tomorrow morning at 8am I'm leaving to climb Mt Kilimanjaro! We're doing the Marangu route, which isn't my first choice but I didn't want to keep looking for a group and working with all the companies (and street touts.)

Two posts today, but definitely no more for the next 6 days, 5 nights!

_sg

The one with speling arrors

2007-06-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

One thing I forgot to mention about Zanzibar: spelling on the menus.

I find (and I'm sure make...) spelling errors all the time, anywhere, but in East Africa they're everywhere. My favorite might have been the Grossary store I passed in Uganda, but two of the restaurants I ate at in Nungwi had some fun ones.

At the Paradise Bar and Restaurent things on the Barbercue menu come with barbicue sauce. There's a Bolognesex pizza. And the Non Alcohol Coctails include spirits such as

Vordika
Johnnie warker (black and relebble)
Jack Deniels

And at the place I ate the next night, drinks included

Milk Sheak
Vagine Bloody Mary
Vaginepina Coleda
Daqure

Anyway,
sg

The one with symptoms

2007-05-31T10:06:00.001-05:00

Around here, you're supposed to assume that flu-like symptoms are caused by malaria. But sometimes, like in my case, flu-like symptoms are actually caused by flu-like illnesses.

Actually, I think I had neither--Dr Omar thinks I had some sort of bacterial infection. And he may be right--whether it was the antibiotics or just the natural course, I feel much better now. The fever broke, my headache is gone, no sore throat, stomach fine, I have some appetite back, I only napped once today.

So my stay on Zanzibar got extended a bit.

Zanzibar is the Spice Island. (Actually, it's an archipelago, and is apparently not to be confused with the Spice Islands.) Off the coast of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, about an hour and a half by fast ferry--it's not that far from the coast, but it's a bit north of Dar. It's part of Tanzania (in fact, the ZAN part) but I still had to pass through immigration and get my passport stamped when I got here.

The most exciting thing I did is Mr. Mitu's Spice Tour. (Not to be confused with the other Spice tour.) Basically, things that grow where it's really hot and wet grow here. We sampled 11 kinds of citrus and I ate un-ground pepper.

Other than some fruit we ate on the spice tour, the food in Zanzibar has been uniformly bland. And I've tried Zanzibari, Italian, Indian, Chinese, generic Tourist, etc...

I spent my first couple of days, and again after I got sick, in Stone Town, the historic part of Zanzibar City where no one speaks much English, the streets are alleys that do not go straight, and it's dangerous to be walking around alone at prayer time, when everyone but the criminals is in a mosque.

I spent two days in the middle in Nungwi, a theoretically paradisical resort at the northern tip of the main island. It was sorta pretty but nothing fantastic. The surf was really choppy. Lotsa guys wanting to sell you art, sunglasses, jewelery, drugs, all of the above. I was gonna head down to Kendwa, about a 30 minute walk south, which is supposed to be idyllic, but that's when I got sick. And since I got back to Stone Town it's been raining pretty much every day, so today I'm going to head back to the mainland instead of extending my trip even further to head to the beach.

Hey, I used to play Ultimate with some guys who are pretty good. Congrats to Heijman, and Q and Shane and Drew and other Hodags,
sg

The one where I'm dreamy

2007-05-23T05:27:00.000-05:00

Yeah I am!

(Though that might be more a side effect of my malarial pills than a judgement about any particular qualities I might have.)

21 May 2007, 12:41 am, Mombasa, Kenya
The Dream:

I'm flying somewhere. The plane has some problems, but I wasn't scared. We come in to land but touch down briefly and take off again. The sign says we'll be landing in 342 minutes. Everyone groans. Changes to 40 minutes. Then 6 minutes.

As we approach again, I overhear the flight attendant ask if we'd lose power again. Sure enough, the power goes off as we hit the landing tunnel. The cockpit disengages, the main body lands fine. I'm immediately in Rik's car on my way into town (though we're actually on the Parkway going the other way past downtown Pittsburgh). We see the cockpit fly past, flip over and crash just ahead of us.

I should call my parents and sister to tell them I'm safely off the plane. Mom first, turns out she and Snu are at dad's office. I tell them to wait there and head to the office. Dad, the only one there, is on the phone, helping arrange a job for me. He asks if I'd be willing to teach temporarily, I tell him I'll try out anything as long as its temporary.

While he's on the phone I wander over to Lewis Taffer's office down the hall, maybe to ask him about a possible job? While waiting outside, 'cause he's in a meeting, I glance out and seek Kristie R smoking on the porch roof. She's wearing gray cords and a burgundy turtleneck, which seem very dowdy.

The door opens, a guy comes out of LT's office. Turns out, the meeting was about a crossword newsletter and competition for July. Lew points out (I hear--I only see the anonymous guy) that the guy should remember to include that there were three perfect scores on puzzle A3, including two from the people that tied for 1st, and a perfect A2 from the 2nd place guy, in the last competition.

I wake up.

Some notes: The last time I actually saw (or had any direct communication with) Lew Taffer, a high school(?) friend of my dad's, was maybe in 1991 when I was in NJ for my cousin's wedding. The office was dad's, though the suite it was in and the smoking area on the roof weren't his. I met Kristie one day last week, and I never saw her smoke and she seemed fairly stylish.

23 May 2007, 3:15 am, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
The Dream:

I need to run home from work 'cause I forgot something. The home: 505 S. Linden, but it's mine. I drive past Sarah and Dave on my way and wonder if they'll ever stop by to see the house. When I get out of the car in the driveway, they're standing there, having passed while walking their dog, who doesn't seem to be around.

I explain that I'd love to show them the house at some point, but I only had a minute and had to rush back to work. Russ walks by. We all talk for a minute. I say I gotta go, but if they wanted to help run my errand they could at least sneak a peek inside: turns out, a bed and mattress for Snu had been delivered and needed to be carried inside. Don grabs the bed, Sarah the mattress, I go to unlock the door, Russ follows along.

Turns out, the front door is unlocked. Sarah looks around, sits at the piano, and comments that the house is in a style called "standard" rather than the "pre-modern" or whatever that I thought I had. I usher them out, but it seems like someone left the radio on in the kitchen. I go in, and the back door is standing wide open. The radio on the wall is BLARING a Monday Night Football game. There's a lot of crowd noise and Al Michaels is giving Dan Marino's stats from the game

I start to leave with Sarah and Dave. Russ seems to have wandered off upstairs, but I'm just gonna leave him wander as I need to get back to work.

I wake up. And as I'm waking up, I think that if George is looking for projects to work on around my actual house to work off some more rent, and if Bridget and TY think that it's a good idea, if he hasn't put in glass block to replace the basement window at the foot of the stairs, when he does that he can also use glass block or something like it to replace the doggie door in the wall of the kitchen.

Some notes: I actually lived in that house, which is in Pittsburgh, from when I was 10 'til I left for college; my parents moved out about 10 years ago. The radio on the wall in the kitchen is the only detail that's different than it actually was. Sarah and Dave are friends from college--in the dream they lived a couple of doors down in the house where I babysat once or twice. They actually do live around the corner from where my parents do now, and I spent some time with them in Sydney in February. Russ is a friend of mine in Minneapolis, a former (and future?) teammate. He doesn't know Sarah or Dave. Snu is my sister. Dan Marino is from Pittsburgh but I don't think we've ever met. He quarterbacked the Miami Dolphins from 1983 'til 1999 and appeared in glove commercials. George and Bridget are living in my house while I'm gone, and TY's helping them decorate it and hopefully avoiding paint fumes.

My other thought as I woke up was that this dream seemed much more innocuous than the first one and that I hope that doesn't lead Susie to give me a much less informative meaning for that one.

Snu, go to town!
sg

The one where I was with Dorothy

2007-05-23T03:33:00.000-05:00

Wait Dorothy was in Kansas, not Kenya. Sorry, I was in Kenya, in the Rift Valley.

I left Nairobi and headed west to Nakuru. On the bus, it was 80's Saturday on Classic 105! Jungle Boy (Baltimora), Like a Prayer (Ciccone), Abracadabra (Miller), Together Forever (Astley). But then we left town and they switched to REALLY LOUD NEWS. Spent the night in Nakuru in a suite on the roof of the Mt Sinai Hotel, across the street from a "Subway" restaurant. Note that Dar Es Salaam has actual Subway franchises--can't wait to try the pressed beef sub!

In the morning I got a ride out to the Menegai Crater. It's...a crater. I took some matatus up to Lake Bogoria. I wanted to camp at the Fig Tree Camp. From the map in the guidebook it looked like it'd be about 6 miles. But it's not, and since I didn't think I'd be able to walk the 18 miles to the campsite in the 3 hours left until sundown I wound up heading to the campground at the hot springs. About 8 miles in, past flamingos and ostriches and a coupla zebras and hydraxes and antelopes.

I stayed just one night. My tent pole broke, and I went to borrow some tape from the other people at the campsite--Barbara (Swiss) and Karsten (German) and their dog Mali (Malian) had what looked like a very well stocked van. They volunteered to drive me out. And since they'd take me all the way to my next destination, saving me a 8 mile walk and three different matatu rides, for each of which I might have had to wait some hours, I accepted.

The next night was at the Flamingo Camp at Lake Elmenteita. There was no one else at the Flamingo Camp at Lake Elmenteita. And not many flamingos. But it is beautiful, and the lake was totally reminiscent of the lakes in New Zealand famed for the mountain reflections.

Turns out, the millions of flamingos are now at Lake Nakuru. But that's in a national park that you can't go into without transportation, so it would have been _really_ expensive to rent a taxi for a day and pay the park fees and such to see them. But at several viewpoints from the road back from the crater and in Nakuru town you can see the pink shores.

Next stop was Fisherman's Camp on Lake Naivasha. Which I visited to go to Hell's Gate National Park, just across the way. I decided not to camp in the park--I figured at night, when the nocturnal animals were active, I'd be huddled in my tent rather than wandering in the dark looking for lions and leopards. I rented a bike and headed off to the park.

Which was really neat. As I entered, some of the park rangers were burning trash, right next to the sign indicating the current fire danger level: EXTREME. There isn't a huge density of animals, but the ones I did see I saw with literally no one else around. No guide, no other park visitors, just me and the mostly antelopes and zebras (and two giraffes, but at a distance). And the animals are used to humans, and there was no engine noise to scare them off. At one point I looked up and there were zebras maybe 25 yards away that I hadn't noticed until then.

The other park attraction is the gorge. The ranger tries to get you to pay $15 so a guide can take you in--"otherwise you can easily get lost." Which is kinda like getting lost in a tunnel, and not the confusing Boston kind of tunnel. You're going in, or coming out, but you're just following the river in one of the directions. As I was eating lunch a Canadian woman walked up, and we decided to walk in together. One of the Maasai guides followed, and we agreed to have him show us the way in return for a tip, but certainly not $15.

We took the 2 hour walk, which took about 30 minutes, ending up at the path to take back to the ranger station and our bikes. We gave the guide a coupla bucks each and decided to continue on to the hot springs, another coupla hours. We went not quite all the way to the hot springs before we came to a section that would have been hard to get through without getting quite wet. And we'd each seen enough hot springs to not need to see these, so we headed back. Biked back out to the road (5 miles to the park entrance, 2 to the main road), I went left, she went right, I headed the 3 more miles back to the camp.

The next day, Thursday, I headed back to Nairobi.

Friday I got a new tent--the pole had broken all the way, it couldn't be fixed until Monday, and I paid about $40 for a much better one than the one I'd had. It'd been used, but pretty lightly. It's much bigger (I think it'll sleep 4) but only weighs a bit more. Gave my old tent to the guard at the campsite in Nairobi, along with explanations about how to get it fixed, which hopefully he can do and then sell it to someone. Or use it, but I'm betting on the former.

Saturday headed to Mombasa, to see somewhere else and break up the bus trip a bit. Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast, is really hot. And a bit disturbing--it's the first place I went where the street beggars are really in-your-face, and I felt a little unsafe for the first time this trip. I stayed a day and then headed down to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

Where I've been for a day and a half. It's supposed to be safer than Nairobi, but still feels more like Mombasa. And, unlike Kenya (and certainly unlike Uganda), most people do _not_ speak English. Finally! Of course, I don't speak muck Kiswahili... In any case, I'm off to catch a ferry to Zanzibar, the Spice Island!

Ta,
sg

The one where Nairobi's nice this time of year

2007-05-11T05:07:00.000-05:00

Which is a good thing, as I've been here for a couple of days longer than I'd planned.

I hung out with some Canadians for a bit, spent a day waiting around to meet a friend of a friend who came six hours late and left after 20 minutes, and spent more days than you'd think it would take trying to change my flight.

Now, I've finally changed my flight--I'll head to Greece on July 2, and probably get home in the first week of August--and will leave town this afternoon, heading off to Nakuru. Either today or tomorrow, depending on timing, I'll head out to Lake B?--I forget its name, but its hopefully got millions of flamingos.

For the next week or so I'll be around the B? Lakes, Nakuru, Naivasha and Hell's Gate National Park in the Rift Valley. I'm especially looking forward to Hell's Gate, where you can rent a bike and pedal (or walk) freely through the park--hopefully, the cheetahs and lions and leopards and such are used to such things... Then, back through Nairobi on my way to Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar!

Flickr (the host of my photos) reports that you can now view slideshows with titles. Haven't tried it, but it might now be easier to view my pictures (and know what you're seeing) of Nairobi. Which include shots from Nairobi and the running, screaming mob I ran into just after arriving, Nairobi National Park, and of me with Laura (including a hopefully not too explicit photo of our first kiss!). And my photos from Sipi Falls in eastern Uganda are up as well.

And a generic note--Flickr shows photos in the reverse of the order in which they were loaded. So it's kind of a pain to make things coherent for you as I need to load them one-by-one in reverse order so you can see them properly, but it also means that you can always just go to my photo link and easily see my most recent pictures if you've been hankering for some Joy when I'm not obliging.)

ta,
sg

The one where I went east

2007-05-06T02:56:00.000-05:00

I went to Sipi Falls in eastern Uganda. It is pretty, but probably isn't worth the trip unless you're in the area anyway.

Which lots of people have reason to be as the falls are right outside Mt Elgon National Park, Mt Elgon being one of the highest mountains in Africa. And, like Kilimanjaro, it can be climbed in a coupla days without any specialized skills or equipment.

I was in the area because I was gonna pass close by on my way to Kenya.

Now I'm in Kenya.

I've started my eastern swing. For the next, I dunno, six to eight weeks I'll be in Kenya (Rift Valley, Kakamega Forest, maybe Masai Mara and a treat for Kristina), Tanzania (Zanzibar/Dar, Kilimanjaro, Karatu/Ngorogoro, Serengeti and Mwanza) and Rwanda (Kigali and maybe a park).

The trip here:
I caught a bus to Nairobi. Which means I'll have to backtrack west quite a bit, but there were no better transportation options. The bus left Mbale, Uganda at around 5:30pm. At about 7:30 we got to the border. We pull up to Ugandan customs. I follow everyone out of the bus and into the office, fill out a form, wait in line, and officially leave Uganda. I went outside and there was no one on the bus (and bicyclists were fighting for my attention) so I figured we were supposed to walk over to Kenya. I did.

Passed a gate with soldiers on each side wearing different uniforms. I guess the border. Crossed a bridge. Walked past a building with what looked like lots of closed offices that should be full of customs agents. Then through a gate.

Wait a minute...I'm in Kenya. Where's the bus? I went back.

I said to the guard at the gate "Do I need to show my passport anywhere?"

"Welcome to Kenya. Jambo!"

I turned to his friend. "Jambo!," said the friend.

Went over to a small building nearby. A guy in a suit said "Jambo!". "Sijambo," says I, "where do I go?"

Apparently, it's around back, behind the original dark building. There are no lights, no signs. He sent someone to show me the way, and we walked through two unlit corridors to get to passport control.

I waited in line, and the bus came by. Good, at least I'm on the right track. My turn at the window. "Hello, I need a visa to enter Kenya."

Man flips through passport. "You do not have a visa." He flips through again. And again. "I need a visa." "You don't have a visa." "I know. I need one."

Finally, he asks me for $50, which is a good sign again because I know that's what it should cost. He takes my money, slides it into a drawer, stamps a page in my passport with like eight different stamps, and writes in yet more details. He proudly shows me the results, turns it several different ways and asks for my opinion. I take back my passport and turn around...to see the bus leave.

I follow it down the road, it stops a bit later, and when I get on my stuff is even there--I'm on the right bus! That's another good sign.

Twenty minutes later, we get stopped at a checkpoint. We all get off, with all of our stuff, and line up by gender. They search lots of bags. When it's my turn I give him my passport, which he doesn't even open. I'm thinking it's gonna take forever to go through my pack as everything inside is also inside a translucent pack liner in case it gets wet. But he asks me what's inside and cuts me off when I say "a sleeping bag, some clothes, some...". I get back on the bus.

At about 1:30am, I think slightly before Nukuru, this happens:

I was awake, trying to shut the window and stop the draft. I'd just put my book away (The Mill on the Floss) and was thinking about going back to sleep. A pretty big bang, but it was obvious pretty quickly that I was fine. Not even sure that the seat belt, which, Mom, I was wearing, stopped me. It probably did, but I know most weren't wearing them and I think no one got hurt.
We climbed out of the only slightly collapsed driver's side and got on other buses as they came past. I got into Nairobi at about 6:30am, by which time it was light, so thanks to the crash I didn't need to wander the streets of "Nairobbery" in the dark with no Kenyan money.

I hung out at the bus station until the currency exchange opened, got a bit of money and took a MUCH needed shower, and headed off for breakfast.

Now, I'm off to Nairobi National Park.

ta,
sg

The one where I took after my friends

2007-04-28T15:48:00.000-05:00

So it's April 28, and even today I got a coupla notes and comments that brought back some memories.

Last year my friends Brian and Becca traveled around the world. They didn't hit Africa, but overall it was a much more extensive trip than mine and I'm still jealous.

Their blog is well worth reading, but for now you should really read some musings they posted while in China:

Read this
Then read this

Once you've done that, this might make more sense.

ia,
sg

The one with no associated holiday

2007-04-26T17:47:00.000-05:00

When we left off, I was heading to Semuliki National Park. I headed to Semuliki National Park.

Semuliki is an extension of the "vast Itumi forest" of DR Congo. It's in extreme western Uganda, contiguous with the DRC border along the East African Rift Valley.

The drive there is absolutely gorgeous. I was in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains, but if the road had been paved and if I hadn't been in a matatu with 23 others I might have thought I was in New Zealand.

Semuliki park itself is renowned for its diversity of flora and fauna. There are over 400 different bird species and 63 different mammals (including 9 different primates). And almost 400 different butterfly and moth species, most of which I bet I saw--they were _everywhere_. And I don't have numbers, but I know I saw oodles of lizards. Unfortunately, most of the park isn't really accessible to most visitors. Most of it is lush tropical forest--there are no roads or paths through it, and it's maybe not safe in the lowlands because of those darned Congolese rebels. So for the entirety of my visit I was within a mile or two of the east edge of the park.

There's a pretty big security presence in the park--only once did I walk between the main gate and the campsite (about 3km) without an escort. At one point several soldiers suddenly appeared in the campsite. Most had rifles but at least one had an RPG. They talked to one of the rangers and then disappeared back into the woods. I wanted to take a picture but really didn't want to ask them for permission (I wanted to keep my camera) so I did what I could on the sly. Then I altered the settings on my camera so there wouldn't be an audible click when I took pictures in the future...

I did see lots of different primates, especially colobus (black-and-white and red) and red-tailed monkeys. And baboons, though it might have just been one baboon that I saw several times. The monkeys hang out in the trees. And they're pretty shy, so they take off when they see me around. To travel, they take these flying leaps from tree to tree, grabbing hold of whatever leafy branch they happen to jump to, or the one below it if it's not sturdy enough. And these are big leaps, like over my head across the road, not just gingerly hops to the something a foot away.

The other thing the park has: hot springs. I took a nature walk with Bosco, who was born on 7/7/77. But we basically just walked to the springs. Did see lots more monkeys, lots of agama and monitor lizards, our baboon friend, and some birds. Didn't see any of the elephants, leopards, crocodiles or buffalo that are deeper into the park. I almost fell into boiling mud.

I left the park and headed back into Fort Portal for yet another night of transit. I stopped in Hoima the next day, and the day after that finally reached my final destination on my tour, Murchison Falls National Park. Murchison is Uganda's biggest park. It's bisected by the Nile and is named for the falls, where the Nile is squeezed through a channel about 20 feet wide. The water doesn't fall very far, but the resulting pressure creates what's said to be the most powerful natural water flow in the world.

My intention was to head first to Kaniyo Pabidi, close to the park entrance, where the forestry department offers the cheapest chimpanzee tracking in Uganda. I got to Masindi, the nearest town to the park, and hung out by the side of the road trying to catch a ride--it's about 35km to the park entrance from town, then another 8km to Pabidi. I thought I had a chance,
especially 'cause it was Friday afternoon so I figured people would be coming through on their way in for the weekend. But...nothing.

A motorcycle driver asked where I was going. I said "Too far. There's no way I can afford you." He insisted. I told him. I asked how much. He said "80,000 shillings." Almost $50. I laughed. "I might give you 10,000." "Okay." The other guys thought he was nuts, but he apparently wanted to drive the white man.

But when we got to the park gate they told me the campground at Pabidi was closed because there were a lot of lions there. And the huts had burned down and they hadn't built the new ones yet, so there was nowhere there to stay. My best option was to hang around and wait for a park vehicle that'd be coming through to take me to the campground by the main park headquarters at Paraa, about 80km away. So I did that. There's essentially no way to do the chimp tracking if you don't have your own transport. Rode the 80km in the back of a pickup, watching hundreds and hundreds of monkeys and antelopes scatter as we drove down the road.

I stayed at the campsite. Met some people who were there as part of a group tour--one was originally from Minneapolis and knows some people I know. The next morning I hung around the campsite and did some laundry. While the group tour people were on a nature drive--most of the animals are in the part of the park north of the river, while the campground is just south of it. The park has a huge number of leopards, lions, elephants and giraffes, but you can't really see them without going on a nature drive.

I did see an awesome spider (I think...it's called a velvet mite) all over after the rain. It looked like a raspberry with legs. (Even if you normally think spiders are icky or don't look at my pictures you should check these out...)

In the afternoon I went with the group on the boat trip up the river to the mouth of the falls. Just like on the other boat trips (Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth National Park) I saw lots of birds and animals during the 2-hour trip to the base of the falls. In this case, storks and geese and kingfishers and bee eaters and hippos and baboons and buffaloes and crocodiles.

I left the group when the boat dropped me off near the base of the falls so I could hike up to the top. Only about 40 minutes, but it was really hot out. Much sweat ing. I spent the night (alone) in a campsite near the top of the falls, much of the time huddled in the gazebo avoiding the big storm.

The falls: wow. It's pretty impressive. The total volume of water that passes through is tiny compared to something like Niagara Falls, but Niagara Falls is I think more than 20 feet wide. Well, I've heard--never actually seen it...

I went back to the falls in the morning when the tour group came through. And here's where I'm really an idiot: I'd left a bag at the main campsite so I wouldn't have to carry it with me up to the falls. So instead of being able to catch a ride to Masindi, or maybe even Kampala, at 9am on Sunday, I stayed around the top of the falls waiting for a way to get back to Paraa.

At 10:15 one of the rangers got a call that there was a morning boat trip. "What time does the boat get there?" "Oh, any time after, say, 10:30." So I hiked (quickly) back down the to the base of the path and waited for the boat. It came by about 15 minutes after I got there and picked me up. A small one this time, just one family, but they were nice enough to let me stay on instead of having to transfer to the really crowded big public boat. The ride back took about an hour. We did spot some elephants, but otherwise uneventful.

I got back to the campsite and grabbed my bag and ordered lunch. After lunch, maybe 1:30 or so, I headed over to the park HQ to wait for a ride. The HQ is right by the ferry, so any park vehicles or any others that are on game drives or such would have to pass through. But, yup, no ride. I waited until about 5, when a HUGE rainstorm came by. I moved inside and waited until about 6:30, by which point the rain had let up.

The park guy told me there'd be a park vehicle heading to town in the morning so I should try again at 9am. I headed back to the campsite, set up my tent and had some dinner.

In the morning I ate breakfast and went to the park office at 8am to be sure to catch whatever I could. The 9am truck left at about 10:30. We got about 20km out and...broke down. I dunno, something about a pickup truck carrying 23 people up some big hills... We all got out and they sent some students to find a water hole. When the truck cooled, the driver headed back to HQ while the rest of us hung out. A couple of us started walking towards town--a couple of miles ahead were the turnoffs to the top of the falls and one of the lodges, so we wanted to get on the other side of those to increase our likelihood of finding a ride as quickly as possible. The new park vehicle got there about three minutes after we'd stopped. On our way out we passed Pabidi, and what looked to me an awful lot like several tents in the campground...

The park guy let me off in Masindi and I headed to the taxi park at about 1:00. It was probably 3:00 by the time we left. We went about 25 miles (in two hours) to get to the main road. Then waited another 45 minutes or so for another taxi that was heading to Kampala. I got to Kampala at maybe 10pm, then had to get all the way across town to PABs' house. I arrived, probably 32 hours later than if I'd come down Sunday with the tour group.

So now I'm back in Kampala for a little bit, planning my swing east through eastern Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania and Rwanda and maybe even Burundi.

For now, pictures are up of Semuliki, Murchison, and my entire swing through the southwest.

Hasta,
sg

The one after Passover

2007-04-16T02:14:00.000-05:00

Saturday, April 7:
In the morning, I had this weird sense that there were people standing around talking about me outside my tent. Not so weird: there were people standing around talking about me outside my tent.

The tour bus that was staying at the same hotel/campground I was had arranged a show for 8am, before they left town. Basically dancing, singing, native dancer orphan fundraisers. The show field was to be where the manager had had me set up my tent, and they got there an hour early for the show.

Wound up taking a motorcycle out to the park in the afternoon and I camped right outside the park gates.

Sunday:
Turns out, I'm very irresponsible. Remember Allen E., my favourite travel companion/pillow? I left him on Peak 2 on our way down.

I climbed Mt Sabinyo in extreme SW Uganda. At the top--the junction of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To get to the top--not easy. Through acacia forest, really cool bamboo forest. Totally steep in parts and the ladders, OSHA may not approve. Plus, we're at altitude. We (me, Mike the Canadian medical student, a guide, a guard) start at about 2300m (7500 ft) and climb to 3669m (1200 ft, more than 2 miles up). And with three different peaks to get to, there's a bit of down, too, so the total amount you need to climb is almost a mile.

We went up in about 4 hours, which I guess (and I think) is pretty quick. We went slower on the way down, in about 3 hours. With time at the top, the total trip length was about average. I had not the easiest time, and I was pretty sore.

And, again, I left Allen E at the top of Peak 2.

Headed back to town. I finally met Joseph, the local tour guide who Lonely Planet says can be found around town--it took him a full day to find me. I didn't have time to do some much needed laundry, but I got a room anyway to sleep in a bed, which cost me an extra $7.50.

Monday:
The bus picked me up at 5am. We got to Mbarara at about 11am, right about when Phil and Paige passed through on their way back from Queen Elizabeth National Park but we didn't connect. I checked my email to get some financial details from George and filed for my tax extension--I hope the Uganda postmark shows the date... I bought some groceries.

Took a taxi to the town near the main gate of QENP. Up to 22 people, with bags, including 7 people in the first row of benches. The chatter, with thanks to Gary Larson: "blah blah blah mzungu [laughter] blah blah mzungu [laughter]". And "mzungu", for those who've forgotten, is me.

Then I got a shared ride to the park. Nine adults and one baby in a compact hatchback. Including 4 in the front (bucket) seats. For just $3, instead of $17 for a private hire.

It's kinda weird bargaining with a guy, saying you can't afford $17, or even $12. Then, when you agree to pay $3, the whole carload of people has to wait around while I paid my $40 to get into the park--they all probably work there for like $2/day and get in free.

I was alone at the campground. Briefly. Then, just as I was figuring out where to put my tent a busload of 14 year-olds showed up, I paused in my deliberations and let them set up first.

I had a fight with a warthog who smelled bread in my bag. I won the fight, then threw out the bread.

At night I finally did some seriously necessary laundry using some tubs the ranger left for me. I looked over--there's a hippo! Wandering RIGHT by my tent! Hippos look a bit ridiculous, but they weigh about four tons and run faster than I do. They kill more people in Africa than I think all other animals combined--both upending boats and accidentally trampling people when they get freaked and try to get back to the water. (And if you don't die, they may spray dung all over your tent.) So I was a bit nervous camping in their path.

I headed to the bar to ask someone whether I should be worried. The bar was closed, but I got there at the same time as three Ugandan guys.
Ug: "Hey, aren't you that crazy mzungu that walked from Bunyanyi last week"
sg: "Uh, yes. Should I be worried about the hippos?"
Ug: "No."
Ug (to friends): "blah blah mzungu blah Bunyanyi"
friends: [laughter]
sg: "Okay, thanks. See you later."

So I went back, and went to sleep. Fitfully.

Tuesday:
I kept hearing animals grunt, walk past, etc... I assumed it was the warthogs.

At, I guess (from phone records) 4am, I heard more. I peeked out: "hey, that looks like a feline, with babies." I pulled out the Lonely Planet, turned on my headlamp, and looked at some mammals. No spots...nah, couldn't be. LP again. "I think it's a lion." LP again. Peeked out again. Lay down.

Now they're playing with my laundry tubs. Hey, those are, like, four feet from my head....

I tried to take a picture through the ceiling webbing, but it didn't come out.

I saw the campground manager in the morning. "Yeah, it's probably a hyena." "I don't know, it looked awfully feline." "Well, there is a lion around with two cubs." He finds the second tub off in the grass, with bite holes. Lion bite holes.

Wow.

Oh, in the morning I heard the "warthog" grunt again: Nope, they were mongeese.

I wrote some postcards, some with diagrams, some with a list of my activities in a busy first part of the week.

In the afternoon I took a boat ride in the channel. Not overly exciting--I saw some birds I'd seen before, and LOTS of buffaloes and hippos. Some kob. Some waterbuck.

I ate two dinners, and drank a lot so I could maybe actually fall asleep. Then I had to find someone to drive me the 200 yards to my tent because there were four hippos in the road...

Wednesday:
I caught a ride out to the main road with some local university students. They dropped me on the main road. I caught a taxi to Kasese, then a taxi to Fort Portal.

Thursday:
I saw a really nice bus, the nicest I've seen in Uganda, full of Japanese tourists. They came to the restaurant where I was eating lunch and were all dressed in identical jacket/vests and hats. Weird.

Then I took a taxi out to the Rwaihamba market, wandered for a bit, and walked the mile back to the Lake Nkuruba Community Camp Site on one of many nearby crater lakes. (And, as I write this Pastor Bosco is sitting next to me, so here's a link to the orphanage's site...)

Friday:
I'd planned, tentatively, on a (5-6 hour) walk to Muhoma Falls. But I was tired, so the walk was easily abandoned in the (at times heavy) rain.

My tent, which we're calling Doogie, he is not so waterproof. And thank god for earplugs--loud rain in a tin-roofed building, with school lessons for the orphans that seemed to involve a lot of screaming, was not that conducive to reading.

Saturday:
It started raining in the morning again at about 6. I quick grabbed my stuff and ran it to the covered area, then went and grabbed my tent and did the same. Then I hung out there until about noon, by which time the tent was dry, I'd eaten breakfast, and I'd finished my book. I packed up my stuff, slowly, and about 1pm started the 20km walk back to Fort Portal.

I got about half way, by which point I was close enough to feel not too bad about paying ($1.20) for a motorcycle to take me the rest of the way.

Sunday:
I took the day off to stay in town, maybe avoid some rain, make some plans, do a bunch on the internet, and maybe help TY with her taxes. (She didn't need the help.)

Monday:
I finished this entry and loading the pictures I've taken so far on my southwest swing. Now, I'm gonna grab lunch and catch a taxi to the Semuliki National Park.

This coming week I'll see monkeys, hopefully chimps, maybe giraffes, and the most powerful waterfall in the world.

Chao!

The one before Easter

2007-04-07T02:05:00.000-05:00

Have you been to Kisoro, Uganda? I didn't think so. I'm stranded here for a day, so I have time to write this, knit a sweater after learning to knit, whatever.

I started my swing southwest on Monday, catching a bus to Kabale. I sat next to Phionah, who's now sent me six text messages, in none of which do I have any idea what she's talking about. Got a hotel room in town (for $4) and went to sleep.

Tuesday I headed out to Lake Bunyonyi, a "magical place" with "beguiling beauty [that] defies description". I walked the 9km, more for the walk than to save $2.50. Camped out for two nights on the shores at the Bunyonyi Overland Resort, for which I spent $25 including food and drinks. On Wednesday I joined some people (Leonie, Louise, Tobias, someone else) who were on a group tour--we rented a boat and headed across the lake to Kyevu market, where we all shared 6¢ worth of sugar cane and sat there for an hour entertaining the villagers while we waited for the boatman to return. Leonie and Lou and I played cards (Five Hundred) that night. I lost, badly.

Thursday I walked back to town. I dawdled a bit and missed the bus to Kisoro, so I got my hotel room again rather than try to get a taxi. Friday I woke up too late to catch the first bus, and the second one was full (FULL), so I didn't actually leave town until 1pm. On another bus that was pretty full--maybe 80 people, and a LOT of stuff, on a 50 seat bus. As crowded as any bus or subway I've been on...I stood in the aisle, one foot on the ground and my other knee resting on my bag. For 65km, which took about 2.5 hours. Unfortunately, Kisoro is 80km from Kabale--we got stranded for hours when a truck got stuck across the road. I finally pulled into town at about 7pm.

So today I have all day to get out to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, about 14km outside of town. (I may pay $6 for a ride, I may walk.) This is the one of the parks where the mountain gorillas live, and is contiguous with Parc National des Virungas in DR Congo and the Parc des Volcans in Rwanda. Tracking the gorillas is really expensive and you need to plan ahead, so I'll be climbing a volcano. The park has three, and I'll probably climb Mt Sabinyo (3669m)--Mt Muhuvura (4127m) is higher and might have slightly better views, but the peak of Sabinyo is where Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda all meet. So when you wake up Easter morning, I'll be in one of those places.

Chao!
sg

The one where it's coming together

2007-04-01T02:31:00.001-05:00

So one of the things I've been trying to figure out is what I'll do when my trip is over. Now, finally, I've got plans. (You know I love it when those come together...)

A few of you know that before I left I, because there clearly wasn't enough going on already in my life, spent my last week frantically scraping my act together to finally get people to write me some recommendations for graduate schools. Then, I spent much of my early time in Australia finalizing my applications. The results are in, and I've accepted an offer!

For a while I've been fascinated by the Metaphysical (and meta-Metaphysical) ideals of the pre- (and post-) Aristotelian Utopia(s), but I had a hard time understanding how to apply my ideas to my work and my life in any meaningful way. Well, starting this fall (late September...) I'll be attending the brand new program in Metabusiness at Harvard Business School! That's right, I'm moving to Boston!

And I'm super-excited about it. I'll surely miss Minnesota, but for now at least my intention is to come back at the end of the program. (Probably just the Masters to start, so just 2-3 years, though who knows what'll happen once I really get into it...) Robin's sister, the fool, agreed to live in my house while I'm gone, once Bridget and George go off ...wherever... for his program. Soon, my debt status will approach Andrea's!

In other, less exciting, news, I'm taking off tomorrow on a trip through southwestern and western Uganda, starting down by Lake Bunyonyi and hopefully ending up in a week or two or three at Murchison Falls. Then, I'll head back through Kampala to plan a more extensive eastern swing through eastern Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and maybe Burundi (if it's safe) and Rwanda. I'm not sure how the timing will work out--there's probably a pretty good chance I'll wind up extending my Africa trip, especially as I don't really need to be back now until September.

And, finally, there's no coherent story they tell but there are lots of Kampala pictures up for mom.

Chao!
sg

The one with the Disney song

2007-03-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

So I’m sitting down to write an email to Megan on her birthday. In the background I hear what sounds like an ice cream truck (which may have been that, or may have been an army transport vehicle...really) playing “It’s A Small World”.

When I pull up Megan’s contact info Google automatically shows me our communications history. Sure enough, last year, when she was about to run in the Walt Disney World marathon, I sent her an email suggesting that she sing “It’s A Small World” the whole time.

I’ll spare you a spiel about the probability of improbable events (with the implied Douglas Adams digression) or about correlations, coincidences, or any other co-s. Instead, I’ll just comment that it really is a small world.

My dad has maybe never gone anywhere without running into someone he knows. St Louis? Sure. Jerusalem? Why not. And it’s starting to happen to me.

My first night in Sydney we went to some bar. A guy said “hey, you played in Perth for Sub Zero, right? I did, and apparently I’d played against him. And last night, at pickup, Matt showed up. “You play for Sub Zero, right? I used to play for Union Crew, from Chicago.

Laura works in the home office of Paige’s organization. We both went to school in Northfield at about the same time. As we were driving to Ssembabule last week I was discussing my plans to possibly visit Madagascar. Said Laura: “A friend of mine just returned from several years in Madagascar.” Replied Seth: “Scott? I ran into him just before I left town.” And Laura went to grad school with some other friends of mine, and we were both at Nina’s party last year.

On Friday we went to the market. I bought an elephant, whom I named Alan, who will be my traveling companion for many of my onward journeys. That night we went to a party, and when we walked in the host introduced us to his father-in-law, Alan.

In early October John and I, on our way to Madison for the night, stopped in at a gallery in Hudson, WI to see an exhibition of stuff by my friend Brita. Turns out, Brita’s stuff was in one gallery, while stuff from Nick was next door in another. He and Brita didn’t really know each other, but I’d met Nick earlier last year at the Excelsior Art Fair--he and my friend Phil are friends through skiing and woodcutting and such, and his booth at Excelsior was on the same row as my friend Colleen’s. When we got to Madison we described the coincidence to Kate and her roommates. Said a roommate: “Nick? I know Nick...”

Oh, and I think Laura knows Nick, too.

The one with festooning

2007-03-11T14:47:00.000-05:00

Apparently, my house was recently festooned with rose petals and candles. Congratulations, Bridget and George!

In other, less dramatic, news, the workshop is over now. I'm leaving tomorrow to visit Paige's field site in Ssembabule District for a couple of days, my first visit out of the city to a place where there's nothing touristy, just Ugandans living their lives.

When I come back to Kampala, I'll start making plans for the rest of my time in Africa. I''m not sure what comes next, but at some point I want to see (and climb) Kilimanjaro, I want to see animals, I want to see places. I might visit some of the people I met at the workshop, I might explore on my own, I just know I shouldn't treat these months as a Kampala retirement.

And on another note, the pictures are up for Fox Glacier, Copland Valley and Wanaka.

L8r,
sg

The one where I rafted and rafted again

2007-03-10T10:21:00.000-06:00

I left Sydney a day earlier than I'd originally planned, intending to go rafting on the Nile with PABs and some friends. We wound up going to Lake Mburo instead that first weekend.

We went the next Saturday instead. Phil already wrote about it, and what he says is true, and he was there, so I don't need to repeat his stuff.

My experience: We start out with a Class V right away. And it was no problem--we hit it, we stayed in the boat, it was great. Mostly because of the guides--the Nile is one of the safest white-water experiences you can have, but the guides aren't shy about telling everyone to "GET DOWN...GET DOWN", so for some of the most turbulent stuff we're crouched down and holding on while the guide does all the work.

The second rapid was only a Class III, but we went in and flipped immediately. The raft landed on my head, but it wasn't too bad.

The third, "Total Gunga", another Class V, was the only time all day I was a bit nervous heading in--it looked rough. And it was. The first big wave threw me and two others out, and the raft landed on my head again. We were quickly swept down to the bigger wave, "the G Spot", where the raft jumped and threw someone else out. I'd just come up for air when the raft landed on my head again, this time with me getting stuck underneath and needing to find my way out. I was in a bit of a daze for a couple of minutes, but after that I wasn't scared and I attacked and enjoyed each wave.

For a long stretch just before lunch we didn't even raft--we just jumped in, body surfed a light rapid, then floated our way down the Nile while throwing water hyacinth at each other.

After lunch we started by going over a ~12 ft waterfall, which was underwhelming as the raft's longer than that. We didn't lose anyone at the biggest of the Class V's, "The Bad Place", which I think may be the biggest commercially run eddy in the world. (And, of course, that's the only place the videographer failed to capture our ride...)

It was fun, and I even entertained the thought that I might want to go back later on before I leave Africa. We spent the night at a camp across the river and came back to Kampala early the next morning to get to work.

< insert week at workshop >

The workshop participants have Sunday off. On Saturday, when people were trying to figure out what to do the following day, Paige tells some people about our rafting trip. Sarah and Martha want to go but are a bit scared. Martha came to me to find out what it's like and for reassurance, and while I maybe failed to convince her not to be scared I did offer to go again to keep them company.

Paige spent all night working her network, trying to find us a 4th. We found a couple people who were interested, each of whom wound up not being able to make it. I headed over to meet Sarah and Martha in the morning, trying to formulate a backup plan if it was just the three of us. Luckily, Amini, a friend of Sarah’s from D(emocratic)R(epublic of the)C(ongo) whose name I surely misspelled, was gonna come with us. He doesn't know how to swim, and doesn't speak much English so he couldn't understand the guide that well, but there are lifejackets and he was willing to try.

This time, we were the only raft going down. (Though still with the safety raft, the kayakers and photographer.) The start of our introductory training on the water was fine, but the practice flip, not so much. Martha and Sarah were definitely scared and Amini was terrified. (As I imagine I would be if I didn't swim...) Martha begged the guide, Jared, to do it just one more time for practice but he refused.

So we started out, with me kind of excited, Martha and Sarah really nervous, and Amini in the safety boat, which at least takes the least turbulent line, hanging on for dear life.

I still wound up enjoying the day. Amini calmed down after a while and joined us in the raft for some of the smaller rapids, and seemed okay in the end. Martha kinda wanted to join him in the safety raft by the end but knew she'd regret not trying if she did. We flipped I think three times, with the one in the Bad Place being the worst. I'm not sure if "fun" is the right word, and I don't think they'll do it again too soon, but I think overall they're glad they at least tried it and everyone was at least sorta smiling at the end.

I have a DVD of trip the first week, and we got photo CDs for the second trip. So many of the pictures are up, most of which, including the one above, were taken by the rafting company photographer, though this one was all me. Sorry if they’re a bit jumbled—I still can’t figure out how to make Flickr display in the order I want.

chao,
sg

The one where I wrote a lot

2007-03-07T13:37:00.000-06:00

So here's one way to catch up on my blog entries: I've temporarily unretired to, last week and this, coordinate the Basics of Community-Based Family Planning and Program Design, Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop. Paige is one of the facilitators and the host; I am her errand boy.

I’m sitting in on some of it—especially the Design, Monitoring and Evaluation part. Otherwise, I work with the hotel to make sure lunch is on time, track down missing luggage at the airport, arrange cars and drivers for our site visit, find and remove the cricket that’s chirping in a box in the corner, provide general organizational and technical support (i.e., collate papers and plug in the lcd projector), and schmooze a bit with some of the participants. (Inside note: including Ophelia '07.) In other words, I spend most of my time sitting outside, reading. And, when I can borrow Paige's computer, playing solitaire, trying to fix a problem with her network card, and—and here’s where this is going—writing stuff to upload later.

(And, last week, I helped the hotel security team catch a suspected thief who tried to join the conference under false pretenses. This man is no longer welcome at the Hotel Africana.)

So, New Zealand! Yeah, I hope my notes were good, because this stuff happened two or three months ago. But I had a fantastic time in New Zealand, and feel kinda guilty about not telling you about it. I’m sure I won’t do it justice, but I know that all (six) of you reading this will forgive me. The New Zealand posts are as follows (in the order they happened):

Adventure day in Rotorua (posted earlier)
Tongariro Crossing (posted earlier)
Wellington-Picton Ferry
Abel Tasman National Park
Lake Matheson and Fox Glacier
Benjamin and Elianna
Queenstown (posted earlier)
The trip through the South

Also loaded today:

Lake Mburo
A contest
Driving in Kampala
Wreading and Writing

Sorry to dump this on you all at once, especially because some of them are really really long... Soon to come: Rafting on the Nile…Twice.

ia,
sg

The one where I rode and met

2007-03-07T13:12:00.000-06:00

So I was talking to a cutie in the hostel in Wellington while we waited for a bus to the ferry over to the South Island—she’d recognized me from the Tongariro Crossing walk a couple of days earlier. Then she sat down near me up on the top deck, and again when it got windy and we both went inside. Then, (and here JohnJohn will be mad at me but I think it worked out for the best), I abandoned her to sit with a coupla nice forty-somethings.

Beth and Lourdes are profs in the States who were in NZ for a conference. Beth, especially, knows LOTS of people around the world, and especially in Greece (which is why I went to talk to her) and, it turns out, Uganda and Kenya! She gave me several people to contact when I got to East Africa, and at one point even took my journal, opened her address book, and started writing down people and places.

(Lourdes knows more people in Central/South America; Beth’s computer is named Leroy, not George. They’re also recruiting—they think I should teach when I get back to the States…)

Anyway, I left the ferry and caught a bus to Nelson. It’s a nice small town, lots of artists and galleries and cafes and such. And the Museum of Wearable Art and Classic Cars, which I really wanted to see (for the Art, not the Cars) but didn’t get a chance to.

Pictures from the ferry are here.

The one where I paddled and walked

2007-03-07T13:04:00.000-06:00

[From The Joyous Journal]
12/8

I’m on a boat in a storm!

Yesterday was great. (Or at least good enough to miss Wellington for…) Went sea kayaking in Abel Tasman Park, up in the north of the South Island.

Group of 7. Holly, our guide, who kind of doesn’t like tourists but was pleasant enough. A nice family from Holland, mom + dad+ two sisters. My kayak was w/Caroline, from ~Paris. (27, in NZ for 1 year, used to work Paris/London@[her company], now working for a room at [her hostel] in Nelson)

My original tour was only me so I got ‘upgraded’ to the “seals + otters”, or something like that, tour. Started by catching a water taxi north to Onetahuti Beach/Big Tonga Bay in the Tonga Island Marine Reserve. Had breakfast (we’d all eaten, but it was part of the company’s ‘experience’), got instruction, then headed out to Tonga Island. Slow going at first—had trouble adjusting the steering to stay in a straight line, C + I weren’t in synch, whatever… But the island was amazing—seals just hanging out, catching some rays or cooling in the water. Some of the kids came over to play w/us + show off—I could have easily reached out to pet a couple of them. Hard to take pictures—unbind camera case, remove camera, wait to start up, find the mode, take picture, reverse, all while making sure not to splash at all.

Then continued down the coast, exploring lagoons, stopping for lunch (good sandwiches, hot coffee, muffins, juice, fruit…), eventually making our way to Anchorage to end the day.

Stayed on a boat.
Aquapackers is a floating hostel aboard a 22m. WW2 Navy patrol boat. Just 6 of us; me + C, Amy from San Fran, Adam/AJ from Wellington (by way of London and 26th + 6th), a German guy. And Chris, the innkeeper. We’re anchored 60 yards offshore (at low tide). Had a barbie—cole slaw (good w/ no topping!), a veggie casserole, sausages, steaks. Same meal for 9 mos. straight for Chris but I liked it. Beer + wine in the fridge.

Went to sleep about 10 and woke up to a storm. Surf’s not too bad (would kill a kayak, but the boat can handle it…we’ll see about the raft trip over a bit later…) but it looks yucky out there—sideways winds, pouring rain. (Okay, but you know what I mean). And yesterday was 25º, sunny, and really calm! But we only have a 3-4 hr walk through flat ground to do by 3:30pm today—even if I have to get soaked + be miserable for a coupla hours it’ll be fine.

We’ll see if I walk w/C, alone, or with the whole group…

(Oh, and…)
Swam over to the beach + took a walk last night (~6pm). Loads of cool shells, and the west end (we’re anchored on the east edge of this N facing bay) had this amazing area where the beach met the forest with lots of caves. And [a giant rock with a hole through it:]

I thought—wow, I’ll have to come back tomorrow (w/C) to explore + take pictures…lots of pictures…

Today, back to Marahau, then Nelson. Tomorrow, bus to Punakaiki. Need bus next day to Glaciers, and to hike one of them, then to Wanaka to relax for 1-3 days,…

[journal entry ends]

We all walked together to Cleopatra’s Pool, then Caroline and Amy and I went south while the others went north. C had to be sure to be back earlier and Amy and I turned out to have some common acquaintances and she’s in graduate program I was really interested in at one point so I stuck with her. She turned out to be just one of the awesome people I’ve met along the way, nearly all of whom I’ve had no further contact with since…but maybe I’ll send her a link to this entry… Pictures of Able Tasman are here, including the group from the Anchorage.

sg

The one with ice

2007-03-07T12:59:00.000-06:00

[…]

Pictures are up of Lake Matheson, and will be soon for Fox Glacier.

The one with Benjamin and Elianna

2007-03-07T12:30:00.000-06:00

At home, it’s usually pretty easy to identify others who play Ultimate. Even when meeting in a complete different context, you can often just tell. (Ultimatedar?). But backpacking through New Zealand made it tough—most backpackers look like typical Ultimate players. So at breakfast, when I saw this woman who really looked like one, I was still too shy to say hi. Even though she was wearing an REI sweatshirt, so I knew she was probably from the States. Even though she was wearing the same shorts I was—shorts that Patagonia gives to Sub Zero and other Ultimate teams. In some ways, I’m really quite lame.

I left to go on my day-long glacier hike. When I returned to the hostel that evening I walked in with Søren. Breakfast woman was sitting on the couch, talking to Ben. I know Ben from Minneapolis—he played for another local Ultimate team, one of his roommates is one of my teammates, and he was there when we made the Turducken. But I didn’t know he was even gonna be in New Zealand.

We hugged it out.

Ben introduced me to Ellie. They’d met at a tournament in Nelson, which I’d apparently missed by 2 days. (She’d played for a coed team in Perth.) They’d made plans to meet up at the hostel and hike for a bit together. They invited me along on their hike the next day, a planned overnighter on the Copland Track.

We pick up with my journal, with a few red clarifications:

“Ben had to work at the hostel, so Ellie and I planned to hike in to the Welcome Flat Hut and meet him there later, then we’d hike out the next day.

WOW

So the Track, or at least the one-day section we’d done, was AMAZING. Ellie’s guidebook described the walk as ‘superb forest, river and mountain scenery…includes the natural hot pools at Welcome Flat.”

As Danny Devito in Romancing The Stone once said, “understatement of the year, asshole.” The first hour or so, once we’d crossed the river (cold water + sandflies suck) was along a path through a forest. There was some mud. (I stepped in to my calf. Ellie laughed. For a while. She went the other way and…stepped into mud.) We scrambled over trees and around streams and through very narrow cut paths. Then we walked along the Copland River. Absolutely beautiful blues and greens and greys in the water. We stopped for a long time just after the dog rock, by a small little beach w/ thousands of unique stones—reds and silvers and blues and blacks and greens, quartz and metallic flecks, sometimes all in the same rock. Some had multiple layers, and on lots of them the layers weren’t parallel or even crossed each other.

Then, scrambling over boulders. Then, along a shelf above the river. Then, a hundred yards up for a while, meandering along, crossing lots of streams and creeks. It started raining.

[Note that the entire time, we’re in this valley between two absolutely gorgeous mountain ranges, walking along the brilliant blue Copland River.]

A couple of creeks we had to take the flood bridges—ridiculously unstable 1-person-at-a-time contraptions that were often basically a coupla two-by-fours bolted together w/ some underwires for support and some netting or fencing for safety—_had_ to hold on the whole way across.

We sat for a while under one of the giant rock bivvies discussing Halloween costumes and such.

Eventually, Ben caught up just before we crossed the last creek.

We went up a hill. There was a phone there to ring the warden for some help w/ your bags.

Get to the hut—a big old [well, new] house. We’re all alone. Pay the hut warden. Just one other person there.

Hot pools: WOW. The source spring is probably 70º (which means 160º) at least. Burnt our feet a bit, but got in + it was incredible. We’re sitting in hot pools, in the rain. At one point I looked up—HOLY SHIT. Apparently, we’d been sitting basically a coupla hundred yards from huge mountains with jagged peaks, glaciers, 7, 8, 9, maybe 10 waterfalls, all hidden by the cloud cover. I’m pretty sure it’s the coolest place I’ve ever been, w/ awesome people.

So we decide to stay for an extra night. We probably have –just- enough food.

Next day we dawdled. Went to the springs—apparently, you can walk all through the area without walking through the red streams…

Went for a day hike towards the next (Douglas) Hut. Got stopped by an impassable creek so we sat by the riverside. They each napped. I read. We snacked. Took some pictures. I went for a swim in the Copland. Ben took some pictures of my willie. [Note: you will not see these.]

Went back, through the meadows and over the bridge. Now lots of people (lots of Israelis) in the hut—maybe 20 overall; it holds 31 or something and it was hard to tell.

Some time in the pools. Some reading by the river. A late dinner (more instant mashed potatoes in the dark!).

Went back the next day. Left the hut about 9am. Ate _all_ the food. Finished, just as my camera battery died, at 3pm. Waited for the bus a while, back to Fox and the Ivory Towers. Dinner in town.

Kereru all about, hanging out + posing by the garbage cans.

And then they invited me to spend another day with them. I cancelled my Friday reservation in Queenstown, tomorrow Ellie and I will bus to Wanaka; Ben will try to hitch and meet us later.

[journal entry ends]

We woke Ben when we left. Bus stops at every scenic overlook. Stops for lunch. Ben’s hoping to get there, if not he’ll e-mail and maybe leave a message on my cell. We get in at 2:30. Ben sidles up—he’s been there an hour after getting a ride from an Aussie and his Slovakian private guide.

We hung around town, made an awesome curried vegetable stir fry. We drank some, and went to bars.

The next day, Ellie and I went to…Puzzling World!

First a giant maze, with 1.5km (a mile and a bit) of walkways, each of which I probably hit at least 2-3 times.

Object: stop in each tower on the corners, then find your way out.
The “hard way”: yellow tower first, then blue, then green, then red.
Me: B-->G-->R-->G-->Y-->G-->B-->G-->R-->Y-->B-->exit.

Ellie was looking for red by the time I got to yellow, but it took her 45 minutes to find the exit so we wound up finishing together.

Then there’s a hall of illusions, including

- Holography—some pretty good ones
- 3-D faces that follow you—hard to describe but eerie and way cool
- a room at an angle—an effect used in LOTR!
- an awesome slanted room where it was hard to stand, balls rolled uphill, and chairs slid the same.

Finally, we took some pictures at the Leaning Tower of Wanaka, then headed back to town so I could catch my bus to Queenstown.

Pictures of all of this will be up...sometime... In the meantime, Ellie provided the picture above, and Ben's blog entry is here. Traveling with them was definitely a highlight. Hopefully for them too—the South Island of New Zealand sure beats Schenectady!

sg

The one where I saw The Penguin

2007-03-07T12:13:00.000-06:00

I took 10-day trip through the south part of the Southern Island.

With me:
Another American, an Aussie, three Swiss Germans, three German Germans, a Vanuatuan Dutch, an English, and André, our Kiwi guide. Ages ranged from 18-40. We were all attractive.

We rode in a 12-seater van, pulling a trailer that was specially customized with spaces for bag storing, food storing, preparation, and serving, boot drying, other stuff doing, ...

Day 1: We met on a Sunday morning in Queenstown and immediately took off for Fjordland National Park. One nice thing: I’d volunteered to be the group banker. Which was nice, because I got a pre-printed sheet with everyone’s name so I could keep track of who’d given me money and what we’d spent and such. By referring to the list as we drove, and taking advantage of the fact that our names were listed in the order we’d signed up so couples were listed next to each other, I learned everyone’s name that first morning. (Which is unusual for me—if you recall, I made it to Day 6 of my trip to the Outback without learning any of my fellow travelers’ names.)

Our walk the first morning was a “3 hour” return at the very beginning of the Routeburn Track. The walk wasn’t that exciting, and our pace is s..l..o..w, but we wound up in a beautiful place between 5 mountain ranges. Not overly challenging, but our guide was testing us to see what the group had.

We headed off to a Gunn’s Camp, an old (miners’?) site, for the night. We made dinner, ate, and introduced ourselves in one of the cabins.

Through the week we all had our chores--I held the money and kept the books, others made sure there was always soap and water available for washing, kept the water jug filled, the van clean, stuff like that.

Each meal, there were people responsible for cooking/prep and for clean up. Our menu (and associated shopping lists) was predetermined. Breakfast was usually cereal, fruit and yogurt. The lunch spread generally included bread, meat, cheese, veggies and condiments for sandwiches. Dinners included pastas (pesto & sun-dried tomatoes, marinara sauce), rice with chicken and vegetables, fish and chips and the like.

{anchor: Day 2}: We drive down into Milford Sound to kayak. We’ve got an odd number of people (and we’re in 2-person kayaks), so I join John from New York, who’s been traveling around for a coupla weeks with two co-workers. (Angie is cute, and she calls the boys Ace and Gary.) We all shared some potato chips.

Our weather: sunny and calm most of the morning, in one of the rainiest places on earth. At one point mid-morning, our guide said “At 11:20, a breeze will come in and it will get a bit choppy, but nothing too bad.” The breeze and chop didn’t actually get there until 11:25.

We didn’t see much animal life until the end—we saw 4 seals eventually, playing or napping. But our guide convinced the other group that we’d seen a shark.

My overall impression: it’s very pretty and the scale is impressive, but I don’t need to be there for days on end. It would be neat to see it from the air, and when it’s raining and the cliffs turn to waterfalls.

Then we drove (and I slept) to Monowai. We expected rain, so instead of camping we stayed in what I can only describe as a miniature village with shacks from the 1950s. They were $15/night, and I had my own.

Day 3: The weather report was bad, so we changed our plan a bit. We walked about 7 miles in to the Green Lake Hut and dropped our gear.

The hike alternated between beech forests and low plains called Tussock Basins. (The party walks through these in The Fellowship of the Ring.) I stepped in mud up to my knee a coupla times with each foot. There was one tough ascent (I was carrying about 30 lbs), but overall it was pretty easy and the weather held off.

We took the entire 12-person hut. After dropping our gear, most of us went out for an easy ~2 hour walk up to the ridge to eat some chocolate. It’s there that we saw something I described in a bunch of postcards—a rainbow, sitting over a verdant valley with a lake on one side, mountains and forests and plains on the other. By any reasonable standard it was gorgeous, buy my response was “unhh”. New Zealand is chock full of those places, and I’d seen the something better the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that…

On the way up, Mike (a chemical engineer from Chicago and my science buddy for the week) asked if I know what “triskadicadecaphobia” is. I’m confused, but it turns out that he’d just gotten the word “triskaidekaphobia” slightly wrong. This starts a discussion in which I try to remember the word “sesquipedalianism”. But I can’t think of it, and it bothered me for days until I finally got a chance to look it up.

Day 4: We hiked out and drove east, leaving Fjordland and heading along the southern coast.

There’s a town near the coast called Tuatapere, or something like that. Population about 15, probably all in their 70s, but they had a Beth Shalom.

We stayed in a backpackers on a working sheep farm, about 4 miles from the southern point of New Zealand mainland. Our host, Justine, made us muffins.

Day 5: We visited Porpoise Bay (Curio Bay?) looking for dolphins. We didn’t see any dolphins.
We went to Slope Point, the southern tip of the South Island.
We stopped at a petrified forest. Okay, but neater than the pre-historic relics were the giant sea kelp attached to the rocks
We visited a forest and walked along the beach
We camped near another beach where there were supposed to be sea lines.

Dinner was a hangi, a traditional New Zealand dish where we buried our food in a fire pit with hot rocks. While it cooked, we headed off to see a spot where the penguins come in at night. It was pretty awesome—we saw 6 or 7 come ashore and…wander off into the woods in the sheep farm, as if they had to run to the store to pick up some milk or something. Eventually, they appeared up on the hill, where the sheep and the penguins just ignored each other. I kept thinking about how the sheep had no idea that most sheep would live their entire lives without ever seeing a penguin. So sad.

After dinner we took an awfully long walk through an invented path to finally find a sea lion. By the time we got there, it was too dark to see him. The walk back, over a previously existing path, was much quicker.

There was no hiking, but doing 10 small things in a day was much more exhausting than doing 1 big hike.

Day 6: We drove. Ate lunch and packed. Drove. Sprinted up a hill. Drove. I dozed off, most of the time.

Eventually, we arrived at Lake Ohau, near the Southern Alps. We hiked up about 2-3 hours to the campsite, during which Mike and I discussed googols and plexes and I tried to explain Graham’s Number. I carried lunch for the next day, for a total of 33 pounds. André said he had a surprise waiting at the top—it turned out to be a pot with a view. They’d built a toilet back in the woods—no walls, but great views of the mountains.

Day 7: A really cool hike.

We hit the bush line just above camp. As Mike said, “[I think] every state in the US is in New Zealand, too. We’re in Utah now.” We walked through desert, scrambled up rock and gravel faces, avoided the avalanches, hit the top. The weather—perfect. We had lunch on the top with incredible views of Lake Ohau, the Southern Alps, Mt Cook, Mt Tasman, etc… Came back down, broke down camp and came back to the bottom. It took all day; could have been 4 hours quicker if we’d hurried but that’s fine.

My trip down was the lightest yet—I’d had to carry lunch to the top, while most people just needed water, but without the food I only packed out about 24 pounds.

We camped for the night on some dude’s lawn. The dude was Tony, the place (Buscot Station) was weird. It’s like this stately (-looking) mansion on another sheep farm, but one that seemed to ooze Southern nobility. We were in the yard. Inside were Tony, a guy named Sam from Santa Barbara, an Israeli, an Irish guy, a Welsh~ish, and some of unidentifiable accents. Sam gave me a lot of whisky. The Israeli led…wait for it…a Havdalah service! (The ceremony to end the Jewish Sabbath.) It was my first in, like, 17 years, since my last time in youth group. Tony explained Sukkoth (the harvest festival) and Hanukkah to the Irish guy. We just missed Laura Veirs’ parents, Leslie and Val by a couple of days. It felt like the Twilight Zone, and not just because I drank a lot of whiskey.

Day 8: We drove off to Mount Cook Village for some day hikes, though first we stopped for supplies, and coffee and a bakery, in Twizel.

There was a hard walk and an easy one. I took the hard, which wasn’t that bad—something like 1200 steps up to the Sealy Tarns. From the top, great views of the Mueller and Tasman glaciers. With 20 minutes at the top, it took about 3 hours return.

Then, off to Fairlie. We stayed in rooms at a mobile home site, the Fairlie Top 10 Holiday Park. I did laundry while others cooked Christmas Eve dinner—spicy beans and rice with overcooked green veggies—spinach, broccoli, zucchini, bean sprouts, celery. The beans were too spicy for some so I finished 3 people’s dinners. Anita and Johannes made glug wine and we had a Pavlova for dessert.

Day 9: Off for our final hike, an overnighter up Woolshed Creek (by Mt Somers) to the Woolshed Creek (or maybe Pinnacles or Mt Somers) Hut. We walked up through the creek valley—a fun couple of hours of crossing back and forth as we worked our way up the valley, walking through water that hit waist level or higher at some crossings. We could have gone much faster with a smaller group.

Then we walked up to the crest(?) of the valley—we could have gone much, much, much faster with a smaller group. I got pretty frustrated, which definitely detracted from the hike. It’s kind of the nature of going on a group trip—you can’t go any faster than the slowest person, and if some people cross creeks slowly and others walk up hills slowly, the group will be even slower.

Dinner was the worst food yet, a pretty awful tuna-and-black-(Spanish)-olive-pasta. But, we had
-appetizers! Seaweed Rice Crackers w/cheeses (Brie, Camemberts, Blue)
- wine! André carted up a box.
- dessert! A cheesecake with chocolate.

Day 10: An easy hike out. We spent time cleaning the van, drying the tents, repacking all of our own stuff. Then we made our way back to Christchurch for the end.

We stopped at a bar for a beer (and to complete a survey, and have André sell us some shirts…). Then we got back to town. André drove off, to see his dad or his girlfriend or just get away from us. The rest of us had dinner together. (Most of us stayed in the same place, Linda was only two blocks away.)

Day 11, that’s when we scattered. Linda and Mike flew north. Caroline caught a ride west with Anita and Johannes. Hannah made her way to Nelson to do another trip. (And she’s in Uganda now, but I’m not sure where.) And I spent one more day in town before flying off to Sydney the next day. I walked around town, bought some gifts (cds for André (Garden State soundtrack, Laura Veirs’ Year of Meteors, Lou Reed’s Transformer), fur warmers for the Ys (penis, nipple)), sat in the awesome Botanic Gardens and wrote postcards, and had dinner at a fancy restaurant with Sascha. (Who might still have your postcards, Julie and Susan and Kate and Sarah and Mike…sorry if you never got them…)

So, sorry that was so long. If _anyone_ is still reading this and is truly a glutton, my pictures from the trip are here.

(or just Milford Sound or just Lake Ohau)

Ta,
sg

The one where I don't get no respect

2007-03-07T12:02:00.000-06:00

Which is a good thing. According to the East Africa edition of Watching Wildlife,

"territorial male [hippopotami] back up and shower each other with urine and faeces as a sign of respect...".

They also

"mark territories and grazing trails by spraying dung and waving their paddle-shaped tail at the same time, spraying it all over the place..."

The book goes into more details, which you, gentle reader, will thank me for skipping.

My first weekend here, Paige had Monday off for Presidents Day, so we went to visit the Lake Mburo National Park, a small park about 150 miles southwest of Kampala (and on the other side of the world--we're 20 miles north of the equator, the park is in the south!). It's a pretty area, but, as PABs (Phil Anderson Bowen; Paige Anderson Bowen) often say, "we live in a zoo." So we were basically there to see wildlife, and we did.

We hired an armed guide (mandatory) to take a walk in the woods. We saw African (obviously) buffaloes, zebras, and a whole bunch of antelope--waterbucks, bushbucks, impala, duikers, oribis. One impala had just lost an antler in a fight that day—he had one antler, and one bloody stump. Also mongeese, the aforementioned hippos (though just in the water), and warthogs, which look exactly like Pumba from The Lion King.

We didn't see any monkeys on our walk; those were hanging around the snack bar. There was an olive baboon, and there were lots of vervets--the males have very distinctive bright blue or turquoise scrota. (I guess this post can't be in a children's book anymore...)

And...birds. It's pretty hard to be around here and not be amazed and fascinated by the birds. The standard work is Stevenson & Fanshawe's _Birds of East Africa_, and the PABs and lots of others have copies and many guidebooks include references to the proper pages when discussing avian life. We took a boat trip on the lake Monday morning, along with some Dutch doctors who came to Uganda specifically to look at birds and a Japanese boy who never spoke and wore serious mountaineering boots. We saw African (obviously) fish eagles, pied and malachite kingfishers, green-backed herons, and a African (obviously) wattled lapwing.

The big find was the African (obviously) finfoot--it's apparently not easy to find, but we saw several, including a family with mom feeding her two kids while dad hovered (well, floated) nearby.

Most of my animal pictures aren't great, so here's a picture of me at the equator instead.

sg

The one with a prize

2007-03-07T11:57:00.000-06:00

A gift from Uganda (eventually) for the best answer to the following question:

This statue is available for sale at the equator. What is it supposed to be?

The one where driving in Kampala is quirky

2007-03-07T11:41:00.000-06:00

In Melbourne, at some intersections you can only turn right from the left lane. In Kampala, you can turn anywhere, from anywhere, at any time.

There’s at least one, maybe two stoplights in Kampala, a city with about a million people, but sometimes there’s just no power. There are no lane dividers, and, if there’s no median, no directional dividers. Passing is always legal, maybe even encouraged. So if you want to pass a car, and there’s no one within 20 yards coming towards you, feel free to just veer into oncoming traffic and you might wanna maybe hit the horn in case they don’t notice you. (You wouldn’t want to pass on the other side because that’s where the bikes and the pedestrians are—there are generally no sidewalks.) And if there’s someone passing _you_ at the moment, that’s fine—they’ll just move over further.

All the while, there are boda bodas (motorized scooters, many carrying a passenger or two, or three or four, along with bags, beds, whatever) passing in and out of all available spaces from who knows what direction.

Phil’s favourite phenomenon is the jailbreak—once someone gets through turning right, other cars will join in, following closely enough that cars trying to go straight can’t get through the line. This continues until someone isn’t aggressive enough, allowing the cars coming the other way to sneak in and break the line. When turning, Phil will never be the one to end the break.

Oh, also, when a cop pulls you over (by flagging you down) you give him a ride over to the police station so he can write you a ticket.

The one where I read good

2007-02-21T09:43:00.000-06:00

In White Teeth, Zadie Smith quotes P.G. Wodehouse: "...Samad was like Jeeves: if not exactly disgruntled, then some way from being gruntled." Or paraphrased, actually--PGW said "far from being". I know because I wrote that line down in my journal when I came across it in January. (Of course, maybe _I_ got it wrong…)

I was quite mathy in high school (no, go on, really, I really was), and pretty much in college, too. But, probably through a combination of living with Rocket for a couple of years and my more recent cruciverbalisticism (I do crossword puzzles), I've been concentrating more on my word side. So this might seem familiar to many of you who had to muddle through my early entries about Ultimate—a long entry, chock full of stuff you could probably not care less about. Here's some stuff I've read and thought about this trip, with some random observations thrown in:

Other Wodehouse lines I liked:

"He did what is known as struggling for utterance."

"Bertram Wooster is a man who knows when and when not to be among those present."

I read some W Somerset Maugham, too. A couple of times he amazed me with his ability to paint an incredibly nuanced impression of a person, or describe a situation or feeling better than I ever could, with an economy of words. Obviously a skill I don't have, but here are some examples:

"She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty."

"It was the kind of party which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled to bid her guests, and why the guests have troubled to come. There were ten people. They met with indifference, and would part with relief. It was, of course, a purely social function. The Stricklands 'owed' dinners to a number of persons, whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them; these person had accepted. Why? To avoid the tedium of dining tête-à-tête, to give their servants a rest, because there was no reason to refuse, because they were 'owed' a dinner."

Anyway, here’s what I've read, or at least most of it:
- A guide to grammar for English schoolchildren published in 1882
- Honor Among Thieves (Jeffrey Archer)
- Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader (Ed: John Morthland)
- The Rule of Four (Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason)
- The Final Solution (Michael Chabon)
- Summerland (Chabon)
- Red Rabbit (Tom Clancy)
- Red Storm Rising (Clancy)
- My Many Colored Days (Theodore Geisel)
- Neuromancer (William Gibson)
- Carter Beats the Devil (Glen David Gold)
- A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby)
- The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
- Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
- Freakonomics (Steven Levitt and William Dubner)
- On Human Bondage (W Somerset Maugham)
- The Moon and Sixpence (Maugham)
- The Razor's Edge (Maugham)
- The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
- White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
- On Beauty (Smith)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
- The Two Towers (Tolkien)
- Return of the King (Tolkien)
- The Hobbit (Tolkien)
- Bluebeard (Kurt Vonnegut)
- The Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse)

What I tried to read but _despised_, and still shudder when I think about:
- The Unconsoled (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Other Notes:
- the grammar book included 'beeves' as an example!
- Number of times I'd heard (and noticed) the word 'impecunious' before this trip: One, from Rocket
- Number of times I've come across it in my reading: Three, two from Maugham (including 'impecuniosity'), one from Smith

Some Movies I've watched:
- Touching The Void
- The Godfather
- Scarface
- The 5th Element
- Thank You For Your Consideration
- The Valet
- Casino Royale
- The Karate Kid
- Good Will Hunting
- The Fellowship of the Ring

Some Movies I've watched on busses and planes:
- Thank You For Smoking
- Thank You For Smoking
- Thank You For Smoking
- You, Me and DuPree
- Thank You For Smoking (I saw it several times)
- Miracle on Ice
- The Queen
- The Devil Wears Prada
- The Departed
- My Superhero Ex-Girlfriend
- The Incredibles
- The Queen (I saw it twice)
- The Robin Williams One Where He Runs For President

Words I've coined:
- Misgerunding

Words TY's accidentally coined:
- Wasier

Words I Dislike:
- Monosyllabic ('cause it's not)
- Palindromic ('cause it's not)

Words I Like:
- Beeves
- Eleemosynary
- Googol
- Heteroscedasticity
- Polysyllabic
- Sesquipedalianism
- Wasier

Frequent Advertisement For My College Radio Show
- Fidda Fadda Fud Fud

Jeopardy Category I Should Submit: Musical Material
- This type of picture is sometimes called a "velvis". (What is a Velvet Elvis?)
- Mel Tormè. (Who is The Velvet Fog?)
- This Alannah Myles song about Elvis Presley hit #1 on the charts on March 24, 1990. (What is Black Velvet?)
- Isabella Rossellini performed this song in the David Lynch film of the same name. (What is Blue Velvet?)
- Originally, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Angus MacLise. (What is The Velvet Underground?)

The one where I'm a millionaire

2007-02-21T07:37:00.000-06:00

I went to the bank and took out some money--one million Ugandan Shillings (Ush). Which is worth about $550US.

There are bills for 1000, 5K, 10K, 20K and 50K, and coins for 500, 200, 100, 50, 10 and 5Ush. The 50,000Ush note is worth about $30, the 5Ush coin about 1/3¢. And for some tourist~y things, the standard is US dollars--I don't think you can even get a Visa to enter Uganda using Ugandan money.

Some prices are extremely cheap by US standards, and many people make very little money. You have to try to make sure you use big bills where possible so that you always keep little ones available. For example, I tried to buy a Coke for 1000Ush using a 20,000Ush note, and the guy looked at me like I was mad. "I am sorry, I do not have change for a bill that large," where "that large" is worth about $12.

In a sense, though, I'm living like a millionaire--other prices are similar to what I'm used to, meaning that most packaged goods and restaurant meals and such are largely reserved for foreigners. A sampling, using rough exchange rates:

Soda (pint): 60¢
Beer (pint): $1.20
Gasoline (gallon): $4.50
Loaf of bread: 50¢
Eggs (dozen): $1.30
Water (5 gallon jug): $3
Latte: $1.50
Spanish "Omullet" with potatoes: $1.50
Ride in a matatu (shared taxi minibus): 40¢
Ride on a boda (scooter): $1
Night at a hostel: $4
Night at a nice hotel: $104
Monthly wage for a gardener (city): $100
Monthly wage for a gardener (country): $40
Daily wage for a former coupon industry analyst working as a flunky at an international health conference: $60
Mandatory Mastercard joke: Priceless

_sg

The one where I flew safely

2007-02-15T09:24:00.000-06:00

Ma and Pa,

I flew from Sydney to Bangkok to Dubai to Addis Ababa to Entebbe. I have arrived safely in Africa.

I didn't read much on the flight--the entertainment console at my seat for the first two legs offered more than 600 different options. Hundreds of films on demand, many in a host of different languages. I watched The Devil Wears Prada and The Departed and a coupla others (all in English). Hundreds of musical choices. Run DMC's Raising Hell? Had it. And hundreds more currents and classics. Prefer Mozart operas? There were three. Every Billboard #1 from the UK charts from 1952 til now? Yup. Audio books. Video games, some of which could be played against others on the plane. A flight status monitor. Cameras with live feeds looking forwards and down. You can make phone calls, including to passengers in other seats.

Okay, that may sound like an airline press release, but it was pretty impressive. And the food was edible, too.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I got here.

The Anderson Bowens say hi,
sg

The one with no lions or tigers

2007-02-12T02:51:00.000-06:00

So I don't think I'm supposed to tell anyone yet, but I've never been good at keeping secrets and I'm really excited--Guinness is gonna list my record for Cleanest Windshield Ever in their next edition!

Turns out, the confusing part about driving on the other side of the street is driving on the other side of the car. I had no problem remembering to stay to the left, maybe because I've been over here for 3 months already, so I'm getting used to looking the right way when crossing the street and such. But shifting gears with the left hand while steering with the right took some getting used to. I washed that window every single time I changed lanes for two days...

As planned, I rented a car (it's cheaper with advertising!) and drove along the Great Ocean Road. Like the Pacific Coast Highway, except with the Southern Ocean and you drive on the other side of the street.

Much of my trip was spent scanning the radio stations, trying to find a channel. What I listened to:

- Cricket. And I even understood everything.
- Smack That--if I ever have a date, I hope to take her back to my place so we can kick it like Tae Bo.
- Maybe she'll be Fergalicious--D to the E.
- Some lady reading the newspaper. I think she was Christian.
- And once, a This American Life story on PRI.

I saw...koala bears, oh my! There were a bunch of people pulled over to the side of the road, so I pulled over to the side of the road. "Look, there's a bear in that tree!" And so there was. And another in the other tree, and two more in another. And another in another, and another, a total of twelve bears in all.

Also, many many kilometers of pretty coastline and curvy wooded roads.

Now, I'm back in Sydney, getting ready to leave Australia. Sorry about all the exclamation points in this post.

chao,
sg

The one where I'm still in Melbourne

2007-02-08T02:19:00.000-06:00

I'm in Melbourne.

Still.

I originally came for the tennis. It was scheduled to end on the 28th, so I pretty much arbitrarily decided to stay until the 30th.

By happy coincidence, Laura Veirs had a show here while I was here. Laura lived down the hall from me my last (and her first) year at Carleton. I went on to count coupons and then retire, while she is now a somewhat famous (and really good) singer and songwriter. I just missed meeting her parents in central New Zealand.

So when I first got here I went down to the venue (the Corner Hotel, in Richmond) to buy my ticket to her show. Turns out, the Violent Femmes were gonna be playing the same venue on Feb 1. Heck, I've gotta stay for that--I'm not a huge music guy, but I've liked the Femmes since Mikey Bails introduced me in about, well, a really long time ago.

And now, probably a combination of enjoying Melbourne and not having any specific plans and being a bit tired of always being on the go in search of my next stop, I've just kinda stuck around. I'm not being overly touristy. I just spend most days...living. I walk around downtown. Maybe head to the botanic garden to read. (For a while, I was reading at a rate of almost a book a day.) See a movie. Sit in a cafe. That sorta thing. I'm not sure where all the time's gone, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

There's no overarching theme to my visit, or story to tell, so I'll just list some factoids, in somewhat random order.

Food: The Victoria Market is right across the street from where I'm staying now, with sections for meat/fish, deli foods and baked goods, fruit and veggies. And it's open on Wednesday nights with food stalls, music, artisans and such. Last night, for example, there was a row with stands where I could eat Chinese, Dutch, Ethiopian, German, Greek, Indian, Indonesian, Irani, Italian, Japanese, Latin American, Malaysian, Mexican, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese... Or burgers, fish and chips, pizza,...

In heavy rotation for my normal days are
- sushi rolls, which you can buy every 100 yards or so for $2
- kabobs
- pho/ramen
- bread, cheese, hummus...

- Super Bowl: Watched in a bar on Lygon St with Scott from Melbourne (a 49ers fan), Manning from Melbourne (Bills), Ben from Chicago and Macalester (Bears), Lonnie from Vancouver (Canucks). It wasn't overly exciting, and now we're no longer the reigning champions.

- Melbourne is nice. There's lotsa art about, on the street and in parks along the river and such. There are lots of nice areas to wander about and streets full of cafes and the like. I've hung out in Richmond, Carlton, Fitzroy, Southbank, and the CBD, and been around several of the outlying areas at least once.

A lot of types of businesses are heavily concentrated, which I guess isn't that uncommon. There's a Chinatown and a Greektown, but also a block with all of the camera stores and a block with the car rental agencies and so on and so forth...

- I talked to my parents on my birthday, around 11pm my time. Dad asked how I secure my stuff in the hostels. I told him I didn't really need to. When I woke up the next morning, my camera was gone. So now I'm on to camera #3. I'd just loaded many of my Outback pictures, so all I'm missing are the less important Outback pictures and the first stretch of time in Melbourne, which unfortunately included the LV show and the tennis. Oh, and the camera. What I've taken on #3 have been loaded to the picture site.

- That day, I started talking to a guy in my hostel, a musician from Hobart, Tasmania. Brian Ritchie (of the VF) lives in Hobart now, so he invited Martin (the hostel guy) and a coupla other Hobart guys to play the Melbourne shows with the Horns of Dilemma, the revolving cast of "[s]upplemental musicians who appear on stage with VF." I got him (Marty, not Brian) to sign my journal. I was gonna call him when I got to Tasmania, but I don't think I'm going to Tasmania.

Other bands that I haven't seen while I've been here:
Music Versus Physics
The Walkmen
Beasts of Bourbon

- I have a new life goal: someday, the evening news somewhere will lead off with Exclusive Pictures! of me with someone.

- Starting tomorrow morning, I'm planning to rent a car and drive down the Great Ocean Road, the Australia equivalent of the Pacific Coast Highway. I'm a bit nervous about driving--I haven't driven on the left before, and there're some quirks about Melbourne driving. Note that I've planned to start this drive every day for the last week or so, but I think I'll actually do it tomorrow. I wasn't sleeping well for a while and was a bit sick, so I think I lost some time there. I can't name anything specific I've done in the last week or so, but I've felt pretty busy with I'm not sure what.

- This delay means that I probably won't be able to get to Tasmania. There are great swaths of Australia that I won't have seen during my trip, but I'm not going to second guess the choices I've made.

- When I get back from my road trip it'll be time to head to Sydney. I leave for Africa in less than a week. I mean, !

Okay, I'm off to eat a kabob. If you're interested and didn't notice, note that I also just loaded entries on tennis and driving. Soon, maybe, might come the ones on reading and words and such. And New Zealand...

Chao,
sg

The one where driving in Melbourne is quirky

2007-02-08T02:17:00.000-06:00

So traffic in Melbourne can be a bit weird.

An example: I think I've only seen a couple of these, but I might easily be confused and it might be unique. But there's at least one intersection where the cars heading north/south have stop signs, while the cars heading east/west have a light. I've walked past this several times, and the drivers at the stop signs are uniformly confused about what the other cars are doing.

A better example: At some intersections in the city, cars can only turn right from the left lane. To turn right, you

- start in the left lane (like the blue truck here)
- pull forward and to the left, right next to the crosswalk
- wait until the light turns red, while everyone who's going straight passes you on the right
- when the light turns red (and the cross traffic gets a green...), make sure no one else is coming on your right and turn quick, across the entire intersection, hoping the cars coming straight the other way know that you're there

Anyway, I just thought that was weird.

The one where I watched tennis

2007-02-08T02:16:00.000-06:00

If you like the game, tennis can be one of the greatest sports to see live. Now, the atmosphere is very different than that at, say, a Steelers game, where you're surrounded by tens of thousands of screaming fans. But the ability to get close to the action in an intimate setting, the breadth of the offerings, and the value for your money are all incredible.

Melbourne Park, the site of the Australian Open, includes
- the Rod Laver Arena, the primary show court with 15,000 seats
- the Vodafone Arena (10,000 seats), a secondary show court (and general arena venue the rest of the year)
- A couple of smaller show courts (Margaret Court Arena (6000), which should really be called the Court Court, and Show Court 2 and 3 (3000 each))
- about 20 more outlying courts, with seating for anywhere from 50 to maybe 500 people

To get into the Rod Laver Arena, you need a ticket for matches in the Rod Laver Arena. The Vodafone Arena has a reserved seating section, for which you can buy seats, and a general seating area, which is first-come, first-serve (no pun intended) for anyone with a grounds pass. All other courts are first-come, first-serve. And, especially at any of the smaller courts, you're right there with the players. If you speak in a conversational tone, they hear you. And what makes a tournament such a great spectator experience is that (especially in the first coupla days of the tournament) there are just way too many matches going on to play more than a small fraction in the primary courts, so you're guaranteed to have quality players playing on the smaller courts. Especially.

On day 4, for example, for a $29 all day pass (~$24US) you could have seen Martina Hingis (the 6 seed), Andy Murray (15), Maria Sharapova (1), and Nikolay Davydenko (3) play singles matches in the Vodafone Arena, or you could watch other top seeds like David Nalbandian (8) or Dinara Safina (9) from the first row on a smaller court. And you can go back and forth between these, popping in to see a coupla games on one court, a couple more somewhere else, then grab a beer and sit on the grass in the central courtyard and watch the featured match on a large screen.

And the $29 is negotiable...

sg (asking about a featured match): "What would that cost?"
ts: "Well, the student price would be $94."
sg: "I don't have my id with me."
ts: "That's alright, mate, I believe you."
sg: "I think I'll just go with the grounds pass."
ts: "That'll be $19."

I wound up buying grounds passes on 4 or 5 different days. I saw some singles early, and then lotsa doubles later on when there were fewer singles matches going on so most of them could be on the primary courts. For example, I watched the men's doubles semis with the Bryans vs Knowles and Nestor. If you watched it on tv the close-ups you saw is what I saw, as I was sitting next to the camera in the first row. I was rooting on the Bryans, not catcally or anything but enough that Bob turned and nodded to me as he left the court, and smiled at me when he came back a bit later for the mixed doubles quarters (in which he and Lisa Raymond were awful).

For most matches, I took notes. TY wants details, so here're some examples. If you're not a tennis fan, you probably don't need to read the rest of this post...:

from Richard Gasquet vs Gael Monfils (GM upset Baghdatis in rd 2--I saw the end on tv and he was beating his chest a lot, so I thought it would be fun):

"RG whooped him but good in the 1st, and I really started to like his game so I started rooting for him right away (though GM is the big crowd fave). He anticipates and moves pretty well, while GM hits a lot of lazy shots--if he's on his winners are great, but he has no patience and will never have a chance if he's not on
[...]
why does RG return from that far back?..."

from Ashley Harkleroad vs Daniela Hantuchova:

"15-40 at 5-6, AH wins out w/ some great down the line inside-out forehands. Up 5-2 in the tiebreaker, down 6-5, gets lucky on a return, then has 2 great points to win 8-6. But DH is moving her well around the court--she's not overly quick, and isn't getting the depth that DH is. Up a set, but needs to pick up her game...she did, up 4-0. But, serving at 5-3, she lost at love. And again at 5-5. 16 of the last 17 pts in the set..."

About Vince Spadea during his doubles match against the Bryans:

"looks like a chump in the park. shorts longer than everyone else's, shirt just kind of draped, trucker cap, black shoes, long, shaggy hair w/highlights. Maybe a touch of a belly, etc...
...Played like one, too. Bryans, 6-1, 6-2. 45 minutes. No sweating involved."

from women's doubles semis, Chan/Chuang vs Yan/Zheng:

"packed a good lunch, camera dude gave me an Evian.
The short one on the cute team w/ matching yellow/green outfits (YZ) looks like Lucy Liu, if LL had Boris Becker's quads and hamstrings
tennis: uninspired. At 4-1, I've seen maybe 2 good shots.
LZ game: lobs, like 10 yr olds. But CC always has, well, C back, so they just switch sides and wait for YZ to hand them an easy one or mess up. And C crosses at the net, opening the court, and YZ hit a lob so the other C can just walk over, instead of hitting it up the line for an easy point. CC, 6-3.
Next game--first time they hit a lob with C and C at the net, and first time they went up line w/ C crossing.
--taller YZ needs to be _much_ more active @ net.
Alas, 6-3, 6-4. CC in finals."

Some general comments:
- Roger Federer is a god.
- I like it when the doubles teams wear the same outfits
- Lisa Raymond is really short
- Victoria Azarenka is really tall
- the Adidas players, men and women, wore (really ugly) shirts that looked like either sports bras or the harnesses worn by kids on leashes
- If she ever gets some focus, Na Li will win a major
- I can't wait to go to the other majors

Anyway, seeing the Australian Open was an awesome experience. To see my tennis pictures, click here.

ta,
sg

The one where I Outbacked

2007-01-27T22:51:00.000-06:00

I went to the Outback.

I signed up for another small group tour. I'd have preferred to not be with a group, but it was probably cheaper for me to take the tour than to rent and do it myself, and I didn't need to drive or be worried about being all alone in the middle of actual nowhere.

My group: the 23 yr old guide, me, a Polish woman and her German boyfriend, a German woman and her German mother, a German woman, and a Swiss woman who spoke German. All except the mother spoke English, but it was easier for them to just stick with German and I got to spend most of the travel time reading by myself.

On day 6 our guide had to leave us to move or something, so for the last 3 days of our trip we hooked up with a different group on a 3 day tour that happened to match the last 3 days of ours. Well, you know what I mean. So we switched guides and added an English guy, 2 Aussie girls and another German couple. Our new guide had us all introduce ourselves at dinner, so I finally had to learn the names of the people I'd been travelling with for almost a week.

While hiking in New Zealand (which I really will write about at some point...), a friend said "[I think] every state in the US is in New Zealand, too. We're in Utah now!" My overall impression of the Outback? It's like Arizona, if Arizona were really, really big.

As requested, here's some details, with apologies for inconsistent tenses and sentence fragments and stuff.

First day: Drove from Adelaide to the Wilpena Pound. We stopped at a winery in a monastery, and maybe somewhere else. Camping on a site in a resort area. Kangaroos start reminding me of the Quokkas from Rottnest Island--the first time we saw one in the wild was really cool. The novelty kinda wears off when there are five eating the grass by the pool.

Next day: Hiked up the trail to the peak to look out over the pound. Pretty, but not spectacular. But I took a nice walk back by myself--I wasn't "lost", I just wasn't on the trail. I saw oodles of roos in their natural habitat, some giant eagles, and, on the way back, a miserable looking group with 2 guides and about 25 people. We drive to Angorichina to spend the night in a motel of sorts on a sheep farm.

I buy some beers and head off to find the water hole, about 30 minutes away. I find water 10 minutes later. Not sure if that was what I was looking for, but it got me wet when I fell in. Saw sheep, goats, and accidentally killed a crab trying to move a rock to get a picture. I also came across the one area that reminded me most of my preconceived ideas of what the Outback looks like. Which come, of course, from Crocodile Dundee. I and II, thank you.

Dinner is steaks, chicken, kangaroo fillets, steamed vegetables...we're not exactly roughing it.

Next day: Rent a bike to check out the Parachilna Gorge. It's a very bumpy 45 minute ride, but no one else rented so I was able to be all by my lonesome. Gorge is pretty. And when it ends abruptly, there's a flat desert.

We drive. Stop in to visit Talc Alf, a nut and tourist attraction. He gives a spiel on the origin of words based on his ideas of what some letters mean. In explaining the origin of "Israel" he asked me rhetorically what "Is" means. I said "It's the present participle of 'are'". One of the Germans started laughing, then coughing, then choking (actual present participles...). Alf took a liking to me, and I had to change my shirt after he put his arm around me for some pictures.

We drive to William Creek, population 8, and sleep in a parking lot.

Next day: Drive to Coober Pedy. I've been trying not to duplicate on my blog what I've said in postcards, but I'm not sure how better to say it: CP is where they film bad movies that take place in desolate climates. We take an awful tour, then go learn about opals. In my free time I try to play golf, but the place to rent clubs is closed by the time I get there. We stay in a suite of rooms underground. It's really quiet, completely dark, nice and cool, and I have my own room as there's room for 42.

Next day: Drive almost 500 miles. We meet up with the new guide and new people. It's raining so we stay in some permatents near Kings Canyon.

Next day: Walk Kings Canyon Rim walk. There were some pretty cliffs. The Garden of Eden wasn't so delightful, and the pool is this stagnant water that's kind of nasty so I didn't go in. We drive to Yulara, the Uluru resort town. Stop by the Uluru Cultural Center, which is fascinating. Back in time to check out sunset at the rock. Which is gorgeous, though you're not exactly seeing a sight that few get to see...the tour buses are lined up, and many of the companies have tables set up for the "champagne at the rock" part of their itineraries. For dinner, I cook fried rice and a potato casserole and steaks on the barbie.

Next day: Get up early (4am?) to get breakfast and head to the sunrise viewing area. Also pretty. Also more buses lined up. We take a walk around the rock, which takes about 2 hours. I totally want to climb it, but the Aboriginal peoples who consider the rock sacred ask you not to. We spend some more time at the Cultural Center. We hang out all afternoon, going for a swim at the pool and walking around the town for a bit before heading to a different sunset viewing area.

Next day: We get up early again. Head to Kata Tjuta/The Olgas, a spectacular series of rock formations near Uluru, for the Valley of the Winds walk. This was an awesome walk and by far the prettiest thing we saw. Finish up and drive into Alice Springs to end our tour.

I only spent one day in Alice as I wanted to fly off to Melbourne to see some tennis. What I saw: the Todd River. The Todd River is usually dry. When I saw it: not so much. And there were great storms as I was leaving, so I'm sure the flooding got even worse.

So anyway, if you're still with me, selected Outback photos are up at my picture site. I'm taking lots of pictures but many are duplicitive or may be meaningful only to me so I decided to just load the highlights. As with the content of my entries, let me know if you want any changes to my picturedom--more, fewer, of different things, etc. All I know now is that the most viewed picture I have, by far, is this.

Now that that's off my chest, I'll write about Melbourne later.

ta,
sg

The one where I'm heading bush

2007-01-09T14:06:00.000-06:00

Monday night, I came to Adelaide to start a trip to the Outback.

Tuesday, I booked a trip to the outback. (I don't know whether it's Outback or outback, so's I'll alternate.)

Wednesday, this morning, I start my trip. Which lasts about a week, so there'll be no blogging for a bit.

I also booked some other stuff for Melbourne and such. I ate lunch at an awesome market in the center of the city called the Central Market. I, yes, wandered around the city. It has a C(entral)B(usiness)D(istrict), which in American is "downtown" (or "dahntahn" in Pittsburgh), completely surrounded by parkland and set off from the suburbs. Like you can see here. I like that.

I took the tram to Glenerg to swim in the Southern Ocean, which didn't exist when I was young, and watch the sunset--now I just need to change my trip to hit the Arctic and I'll get them all!

Since I'm leaving, New Zealand info will have to wait some more, but Australia pictures are up: Sydney, Katoomba, Canberra, Adelaide.

chao,
sg

The one where it's Elvis' birthday

2007-01-07T08:16:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday, Elvis!

Yeah Wally, Andrea, Kimberly, you know who, I missed your birthdays but caught his. (Though Andrea, I did try to call a couple of times but couldn't get through...) Deal.

Oh, and Happy New Year! To everybody.

I think I need to blog more, because otherwise there's too much in each entry. Or maybe I should just say less.

I'm obviously still behind on New Zealand, but I've just loaded entries (Sydney, Katoomba, Canberra) from my first 10 days in Australia. Maybe too much detail, maybe not enough, but let me know. And don't worry, I won't always give you details of every place I go. But anyway,
sg

The one where I'm in Canberra

2007-01-07T08:15:00.002-06:00

I'm in Canberra.

I came in for the weekend to play in an Ultimate tournament, at which I met some people, saw some people I'd met in the past, finally learned the name of the Aussie woman I've not quite interacted with for several years, and learned that I'm in horrible shape.

I rode a cab with guys from Oz, Switzerland and Ireland, and India if you count the driver. I wore almost the same shirt as Andy to the party. He's 18, so maybe I'm cool.

I stayed on the tournament director's floor for the weekend, and now I'm at a teammate's parents' house. Which reminds me--I've taken pictures of everywhere I've slept, which I'll post at some point. That'll be great fun for all.

Tomorrow or the next day, I will probably fly to Adelaide.

ta,
sg

The one where I was in Katoomba

2007-01-07T08:15:00.001-06:00

I was in Katoomba.

I spent much time doing nothing, and it was good. By which I mean I read (Tolkien, Chabon), saw some movies (Godfather and Scarface, but also Fifth Element and something I've completely forgotten four days later), watched some tv (Simpsons! "It's 80 past 2 on April 47th").

My hostel was kind of exciting pause not. But it didn't really matter--the town's pretty laid back, and it was an easy place to be for a coupla days. I took some short day walks along the edges of Blue Mountain National Park. Mostly on the outer cliff face, but also a couple of partial descents into the valley.

One day I walked over to the next town over, Leura. Which was extremely cute. And there seemed to be a rule requiring pfunny store names, which is really why I wanted to write this entry.

Hasta,
sg

The one where I was in Sydney

2007-01-07T06:58:00.000-06:00

I was in Sydney.

I got in from Christchurch on the evening of the 28th. I spent a coupla days wandering, exploring the city. Nice, but I don't think I've hit the parts yet that excite everyone else so much. On the 30th I wandered around a bit and found a nice park in which to watch the fireworks. Sydney had 24 viewing sites set aside, and I thought this would have a decent view but not a hundred thousand people like the primary areas.

On the 31st I wandered a bit more. Went to a museum by some of the popular viewing areas--when I left, at about 3pm, the line to get into Mrs Macquaries Point in the Royal Botanic Gardens, which was supposed to be limited to 25,000 people, was well over a mile long. I sat in the park and read a bit (finally reading Tolkien, K!), then went to the grocery store to buy dinner. Wine (to smuggle in), hummus, olives, seaweed rice crackers, a salami, some cheese (brie? I think it was, though that doesn't seem to go with the rest)... Headed for Embarkation Park in Kings Cross, just across the bay from Mrs Macquaries Point, which was scheduled to open at 6pm. Posted limit: 6000 people.

I expected to get a good viewing spot and hang out, eat, talk to my neighbors. Instead, the site had maybe:
- ~50 security people
- ~20 people cleaning up
- ~15 cops
- ~10 selling food and drink
- ~400 people watching the fireworks

I had a decent view, though it was partially obstructed by some trees. And, depending on where I was standing, by light posts and navy ships. I found a spot where there was a gap in the trees...no one else was within 30 yards of me. I ate, read, napped, watched the 9pm show, read some more, napped some more, watched the midnight show. Which was pretty awesome, though it was hard to see it all--there were fireworks set off from several different sites, and I couldn't see them all at once or from the same place.

I felt pretty isolated and alone. Last year for New Year's I was with Dara and some good friends at Paige's family cabin, and in other years I've also been surrounded by friends at parties or Omar's family cabin. Here, I didn't know anyone and the streets weren't a fun, Happy New Year's!-y place to wander...where I was, it was mostly drunk assholes shouting at strip clubs.

Here are the conversations I'd had as of 3am:

12:41am:
Security guy as I left the park (pointing to my water bottle): "Is that just water in there?"
sg: "That is just water in there."

2:15am:
sg: (points at computer)
Convenience store guy: "Three dollars"
sg: (digs in bag, hands him two coins)
Csg: "Thanks." (points to computers in back of store)

2:20am:
Another convenience store guy who saw me sit down at computer: "Three dollars"
sg: "I paid up front"
Acsgwsmsdac: "Okay."

I wasn't feeling great about me in Sydney, and my couch provider was definitely not happy that the space she'd generously offered a friend's friend for "a few days" had turned into 4 days (or that I'd turned out to be American...), so I decided to leave as soon as possible.

I booked a hostel for a few nights in Katoomba, a small city in the center of the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours west of Sydney, and left the city at noon on the 1st.

ia,
sg

The one where I'm in Australia again

2006-12-29T23:39:00.000-06:00

G'day!

After seriously considering extending my New Zealand trip, in the end I decided to follow through on my original plan to head over here for New Year's Eve.

Thanks to the lack of any available beds anywhere near Sydney, the persistence of Becca and Brian, and the generosity of their friend Jenny's friend Corinna (and the fact that Corinna didn't realize I'm from the States), I've got a couch all my own for a coupla nights.

So far, I've spent a coupla days wandering the city, which seems like...a city. It's much smaller than I thought, but it could still take me a couple more to see all the highlights. Right now I'm at the famous Bondi beach, which is, uh, underwhelming.

My plans for the rest of my time in Australia are mostly tentative: I'll stay in Sydney until Tuesday or Wednesday (and watch some fireworks along the way), then maybe head over to the Blue Mountains for the rest of the week. Friday I'll leave for Canberra to play in an Ultimate tournament next weekend, assuming there's still room for me. I'll be in Melbourne roughly January 16-28 to hang around the Australian Open and see some Laura Veirs shows.

Other than that, probably some combination of traveling the coast from Melbourne to Adelaide, heading up to Alice Springs/Uluru/the Outback, maybe down to Tasmania, maybe something else someone tells me I should do. I'll make my way back to Sydney to fly off to Africa in mid-February.

Sometime in the very near future, maybe the next rainy day, I'll spend some time catching up on my backlog of posts and loading some of my ~1000 pictures or so from New Zealand (and setting up some favourites so only the diehards among you need to look at ~1000 pictures). In the meantime, I hope your holidays, whatever they were, went well. And if you want to celebrate New Year's with me, most of you may have to remember to start pretty early.

Hasta,
sg

The one where I am alive and well

2006-12-16T03:49:00.000-06:00

Hey, sorry for the dearth of posts. I've been busy, and it's been good.

I'm now in Queenstown, New Zealand, but very briefly. Tomorrow morning I leave for a 10-day hiking tour, starting here and ending in Christchurch:

This safari takes you to areas of New Zealand seldom visited by other travellers. It starts with 4 days hiking and kayaking in Fiordland National Park. We then head to the Catlins, famous for its beautiful beaches and abundant wildlife - Hector's dolphins, New Zealand sea lions and yellow-eyed penguins. The Dunstan Trail is an old goldmining route that takes us across the Central Otago plateau. Then it's on to the Mount Cook region to view our highest mountain. In South Canterbury we hike to an old musterer's hut.

I'm scheduled to head to Sydney very shortly thereafter. Hey, by the way, HELP! Do any of you know anyone in Sydney on whose floor or sofa I might sleep for a couple of days...? Say, any time period between Dec 28 and Jan 5 or so? That would kinda help me a lot right now...

When I get a chance, I've got some posts to write, though it might be a coupla weeks before you actually see them. But I've got good notes and lots of pictures:
- Staying in a hostel
- Abel Tasman Park kayaking and hiking and boat sleeping
- Glacier hiking
- The coolest place I've ever been, and how I wound up there with a real cutie and Truesdale's roommate

Unfortunately, that's all for now. (But I'm serious about needing a place in Sydney...)

Happy (C)han(n)uk(k)a(h) all. And, if I don't get a chance to talk to you before then, have a Merry Christmas, a Joyous Kwanzaa, and, most importantly, a Happy Festivus!

-sg

The one where the best was less than the best

2006-12-04T23:38:00.000-06:00

The Tongariro Crossing is called the best one day walk in New Zealand.

From the NZ Department of Conservation website:

The Tongariro Crossing track passes over varied and spectacular volcanic terrain. In the presence of active volcanoes you can experience some of Tongariro National Park’s special gifts. A cold mountain spring, lava flows, an active crater, steam vents, emerald-coloured lakes and magnificent views combine to make this an enjoyable and memorable trip.

So I wanted to walk it.

(And for you Lord of the Rings fans, (ahem, K), the walk traverses the areas filmed as Mordor and one of the volcanoes you pass was Mt Doom.)

I was running a bit late in the morning so I jogged/ran from my hostel to the depot where I was supposed to meet the bus. I made it and we took off. First stop: my hostel.

Anyway, I was first off the bus and onto the trail (7:25am) so I could avoid the crowds--it's a hugely popular walk and the busses pretty much line up. It was really foggy and hard to see much. I decided to take pictures every 15 minutes of whatever I could see to have a better record of what I expected to be one of the best days I'll ever have hiking.

As we (by an hour or so in, I'd caught up with some others) were starting the hard bit the weather rolled in. A heavy drizzle mostly, which wasn't too bad (other than the realization that my raincoat wasn't keeping out the rain).

But by the time we got to the steepest section, it was not good. By which I mean REALLY BAD. The winds were maybe 40mph or so, gusting much higher. Visibility was about 50 yards. It was sleeting. At one point I found a big rock to hide under while I dug out my gloves (thank god I got gloves...). I put them on and frost immediately formed. I never even saw the sign for the side trek I was going to take to the peak of Mt Tongariro.

It cleared up a bit on the other side of the ridge, but it was still pretty yucky along the Emerald Lakes/Blue Lake region. Which looks fantastic in the postcards.

So I was using the alarm on my cell phone to tell me my 15 minute increments to take pictures, which I hadn't taken in a while because of the weather. But my raincoat, remember, she is not keeping out the rain. So the phone started going nuts--it, inside my pocket, kept beeping and turning to camera mode and taking pictures. I had to finally take the battery out. And the camera, that stopped too. No beeping, no nothing.

Finally, after we passed the North Crater we could see what we came for: mountains, with big lakes set in the background (Lake Taupo, that smaller one I don't remember the name of) against a fierce land. I had views of the lakes and Mt Rotopaunga during the entire descent to the Ketehai hut.

Without the side trip to the peak I had some extra time so I ate lunch in the hut. Then, we descended to a rain forest for the rest of the trip back to the parking lot.

I bought a new camera in Wellington, so pictures will resume shortly. What I do have from Tongariro will be up in a couple of days...

Good: The sights of the mountains with Lake Taupo in the distance
Not: I no camera for most of it
Good: What I could see of Emerald and Blue Lakes
Not: I don't like windy sleet
Good: The volcanic activity in the Ketehai Hot Springs
Not: there were lots of people and no animals (well, I saw one bird)
Good: The running commentary with Amanda and her husband as we jockeyed for position.
Bad: My raincoat didn't work
Good: That weird plant where the leaves line up on each branch/stem (see the 4th one on this guy's site).
Bad: Irish eyes smile. My ankles weep and moan.
Good: I saw snow. And in December at that!

Joy,
sg

The one where I swooped

2006-12-01T21:24:00.000-06:00

And zorbed. And flew. And rode in a really fast boat.

So, New Zealand. I wound up not renting a car. It'd probably be easier, but
- the economic advantages are less clear when travelling alone
- I signed up for a tour that will cover basically my last 10 days here. This would have shortened the rental period (higher rates) and changed the drop off location from Christchurch to Queenstown (extremely higher rates). Instead, I've got a bus pass for something like 50 hours of travel.

After Auckland I went north up to Paihia. From there, I took a full day bus tour up to Cape Reinga (essentially the tip of the island). It's where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific ocean. Which would have been neat, but it was pouring rain and really windy while we were there so we couldn't see much. We got there by driving the tour bus a significant distance along the Ninety Mile Beach, a 55 mile long beach on the north western coast. That was neat. We also stopped at gift shops and stuff, which was not so neat. I think it'll be the last of my group-on-a-bus tours, especially if I don't go with a friend.

After I left I came down to Rotorua. In the morning, walking into town, I came across a farmers market with a stand selling really cheap Roti with Chicken curry. I went, then went back twice. As I left the market I entered a park--apparently Rotorua is one of the big areas of thermal activity, cause there were bunches of thermal pools in the park, some really hot and roped off and some more suitable for human contact.

But I really came to Rotorua to see the Agrodome, a working sheep farm/agricultural expo/adventure experience site. Really.

I was gonna zorb, but I ran into Diane and Hannah (from Wales and England, or maybe the other way), who convinced me to do it all.

- I swooped. That is, I got into a hang gliding harness, had a crane lift me up to 130 feet, then pulled a ripcord and swung like a pendulum.
- I flew. That is, I was lifted in the air by a giant wind tunnel blowing me up at 110 mph.
- I agrojetted. That is, I rode in a 450-horsepower, jet-propelled 13-foot Race Boat that went from 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds on a small, man made course.
- And I zorbed. That is, I rode down a zig-zag hill inside what is essentially a 10 foot tall padded water balloon.

And it was good.

Rotorua pictures are up.

Joy,
sg

The one where I got my blog back.

2006-12-01T21:16:00.000-06:00

I got my blog back.

The one where Sub Zero played at worlds

2006-12-01T21:08:00.001-06:00

Pictures are available at my picture site.

The one where I can't read kanji

2006-12-01T21:07:00.000-06:00

In which: I sat down at my favourite internet cafe in Perth and went to write about something or other.

In which: The language setting on Blogger was Japanese.

In which: Trying to figure out how to change it to English, I deleted my own blog.

In which: I've asked tech support for help to recover the missing entries, but if anyone happened to save them they should send me a copy.

In which: I've now moved on to Auckland, New Zealand.

In which: Today's plan is to maybe rent a car, get a new SIM card for the phone, buy a guidebook, figure out where to go tomorrow, and maybe introduce myself to the woman from the 6am airport shuttle if I run into her again.

chao,
sg

The one where I ripped a goofy-footed tasty curl

2006-11-24T17:42:00.000-06:00

We drank and surfed and were merry.

We drove down to wine country. The Margaret River area has a winery every couple of hundred metres. Some tours (like Wine For Dudes™) hit six or seven in one day, though we weren't quite ready for that.

Stopped at the Wine Info Centre in the town of Margaret River to make some plans for the evening and grab lunch. We decided to go to the Leeuwin Estate ('cause Doug and Kyle liked the label best--is there a better way?) and then head over to the beach. We tried eight wines--started at the dry whites (Riesling) and worked our way to the Cabernet/Merlot. They had a Chardonnay that sells for $85/bottle that was pretty good, but I think you'd have to appreciate it a bunch more than I did to pay that. My favourite was the Sauvignon Blanc--the berry really lingered.

We stayed at Margaret's Beach Resort. Checked into our two-bedroom condo, rented some surfboards (and wetsuits) and headed to the river mouth at Prevelly Beach. In two shifts--we had three surfboards, but only two would fit in the car at the same time so Doug had to drive carpool for us kiddies.

We, uh, fell a lot. Dinner back at the condo--Doug grilled some steaks and chicken, whilst we ferried out gin and tonics.

Early to bed--we had to catch the waves at first light.

Late to rise--we watched cricket on tv, trying to determine if it's really like a baseball game where each inning lasts a couple of days. We eventually headed back to the beach for another try.

It was really windy and we had to fight like hell to get out to the waves. We moved over a bit and were able to sorta walk out far enough to get started. After a number of tries, I was finally able to stand on the board. It might not have counted in rodeo, but it was at least a couple of seconds. I immediately headed to shore, done for the day (or "ever").

We returned our stuff and headed back up to Perth for the night, stopping at Valle Felix winery (taste 8 more (the Sauv/Semillon was my favourite yet) and call mom for her birthday), the Bootleg Brewery for lunch, and the Margaret River Chocolate Company for a free samples dessert.

Margaret River pictures...

ta,
sg

The one with lots of wallabiettes

2006-11-21T20:05:00.000-06:00

So we (Doug & Andrew Brown, Kyle, Jeremy, me) headed out to Rottnest Island, just off the coast of Fremantle. After throwing down $56 for the ferry and $25 for the bikes and $16 for the snorkels we were set.

Rottnest is like 7 miles long and 3 miles wide and has about 60 different beaches. We spent a day and a half biking around the island, snorkeling and wandering in secluded bays and our own private beaches. We rode up to the NW shore for another Indian Ocean sunset with some fine Little Creatures Pale Ale and yet more cheese and crackers and pistachios.

Rottnest is also home to (and was originally named for) the quokkas, cat-sized marsupials that the Dutch originally thought were rat-like. The first time we saw one it was quite a novelty--we stopped our bikes to look and take pictures. The novelty kind of wore off when another one came to sit with us as we ate lunch in our hotel's courtyard, and then hundreds more were wandering about as we hit evening. Also: pheasants, peacocks, crabs, and many, many fish. No dingoes.

Yesterday afternoon we caught the ferry back to Fremantle and drove down to Bunbury on our way to the Margaret River wine country. Dinner in our hotel's cafe, which reminded me a lot of my grandmother's nursing home if they'd had a bar.

First pictures should be up...soon(!), if Flickr likes me, I think at www.flickr.com/photos/joyofseth/.

ta,
sg

The one where the Browns are not good

2006-11-21T19:55:00.000-06:00

Well, the Steelers might not be either, but we definitely have better fans.

See the Star-Trib article.

Back to the trip,
sg

The one where we didn't win

2006-11-19T01:37:00.000-06:00

We didn't win.

Semis against Buzz Bullets (Japan). We played quite well in the first half. They broke us early, but we broke back. We ended the first half on serve, up 9-8. Then, well, let's just say they went up 15-9. We couldn't put together any offensive rhythm at all. We had no answer for their quick, efficient offense, especially when we gave them the disc near our own goal. We scored a meaningless point at the end before they closed it out, 16-10.

Buzz went on to destroy Thong (Aus) in the finals, 17-8.

About 45 minutes after our loss we had to play Chilly (Aus) for the bronze. We came out flat and let them jump out to a lead. We closed it in the second half but couldn't pull even in the end, losing I think 17-15. So no medal for Sub Zero.

So now disc is done and I get to start thinking about how to get to New Zealand (I'm guessing flying is the best bet) and what do do once I'm there.

Hasta,
sg

The one where Seth has internet access for the first time in a while

2006-11-16T02:53:00.000-06:00

Gentle Reader,

I am alive and well.

Sorry for the scarcity of posting and email responses--I'm sure you've been checking thrice daily, hoping for word, but the internet service available at our field site is pretty horrible and we've started most days at 8:30am, so I didn't really feel like hitting an internet cafe before we caught the 6:47am bus...

Note that this first week of my trip is mostly about playing in the World Ultimate (Frisbee) Championships. So if you're not interested in that but want to hear more about my travels, be patient, they'll start soon...

We came into the tournament as the #1 seed (after finishing in 10th place at the US national championships...). A full Sub Zero squad might have been that, but we only brought 11/26 of our team. With 5 friends who weren't playing with us this year, but 16 people is still pretty small and it's been hot--into the low 90s some days. The UV index ranks as "Extreme Danger", but the tournament has lots of free sunscreen.

I woke up Sunday, along with everyone else on the team, at about 2:30am. We beat BOUHSEARS, the #3 Japanese team, in the morning. We lost to Thong, the #3 Aussie team, in the afternoon. They were tall and had some big throwers, we are short and had a lot of drops and throwaways. We were in it early, but they took control in the middle and we couldn't put together any momentum to make a comeback.

Monday we had just one game--our 17-4 victory against Too Bad (Canada) was their closest game in the initial pools. That put us at 2-1 overall, good enough to move up to the power pools. Our first team dinner--we (by which I mean "Charlie") made some legs of lamb with roasted potatoes. And others added some rice and veggies and chicken.

Tuesday was tough. We started out against the Buzz Bullets (Japan), the #2 seed overall and probably the favourites. We stayed even 'til 6-6, then they beat us 17-8 after they took a big league and we loosened our lineup to conserve our energy. Second game was against Doublewide (TX-yee, hah). It was close, but they held a 2-3 point lead most of the way. But we started to gel and fought 'til the end--definitely our best game yet. We (by which I mean "Charlie") turned the leftover lamb into a curried lamb stew.

Yesterday we beat Nomadic Tribe (Japan #2) to clinch a spot in the quarterfinals. In the afternoon we had a great win against Clapham (UK). They were up 9-8 at halftime, but we went on a small run to pull ahead in the second half and held on for a 14-12 victory and a more favourable seed heading into the quarterfinals. Dinner in Chinatown with Truesdale and JohnJohn and the Browns, pere et fils. We told our waiter we wanted spring rolls, fried rice and food for 5 and he took care of us--sweet and salty squid, duck with mushrooms, a baked chicken dish, prawns in a spicy bean sauce, peppercorn steak...

Today was quarters against Fakulti ("faculty", from AUS). We started strong and went up 5-0 quickly. They brought it back to 11-9, but we pulled away again for the 17-10 victory. So tomorrow at 12:30 we'll play the Buzz Bullets again in semis, fighting for a right to play the winner of Chilly (AUS #1) and Thong in the finals. Tonight Naz' dad is gonna make a paella dinner for all.

Tomorrow will be tough--the Bullets are pretty short but extremely quick with good throws and a defense unlike anything we've had to face before. They're too athletic for us to just throw jump balls to our taller players and when they get the turn they move the disc very quickly and really well. So tonight we'll strategize and ice.

Anyway, sorry to drone on about Ultimate. If you emailed me, I'll respond soon. If not, I might send something anyway.

The one where the terra-ists didn't win

2006-11-08T23:35:00.000-06:00

I had to go through security twice at LAX.

On my way to the airport I stopped to buy some clear plastic bags. I put all of my and gels and stuff into a couple of them--I've got a decent assortment of stuff with me and I didn't want to check my pack if I could avoid it. But I saw a sign in the security line that you could only carry one clear bag, so I consolidated some of the stuff I didn't want to deal with replacing in one bag and just put the bag with my other stuff back in my pack.

They stopped me because the bag I did show them was a half-gallon bag rather than the allowable quart-sized bag. Never mind that I had some eye drops, a mini-tube of toothpaste, many sporins (well, a small tube of polysporin) , a tube of chapstick, and almost 2 quarts of empty space--security escorted me back to the ticket counter so I could check my bag. Instead, I bought a quart-sized baggie at the newsstand, put my two-quart bag inside of it, and went through security again. With no problem, despite the gallon or so of contraband that was still in my daypack.

Anyway, now I'm in Sydney. I've got a 7 hour layover before heading to Perth. I think it's Thursday afternoon here, but I could be wrong.

chao,
sg

Where where?

2006-10-30T13:04:00.000-06:00

This is a new post.

The newest of the new posts.

But...there's no there there, yet.

Soon....