Virginia

Yesterday I spent the morning with two couples on Goldwings from Montreal riding the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. This has to be one of the best and least developed stretches of road along the East coast. And they should stay that way because of their protected status.

The Goldwingers stopped at the same hotel to get out of the rain the night before. By chance I got the room next to them and was walking in as they were going to dinner. I asked if I could joiin them at the Tastee Freez next door. After a dinner that bounced between French and English, they invited me to join them early the next day.

We set off around 8:30 for the last 85 miles of the Skyline Drive. We rode along the ridgeline for a several hours with occasional fog and rain. As lunch approached the weather cleared, yielding great views, many from above the clouds. I certainly didn’t expect to have clouds in the valleys below from an elevation of 3,000 feet.

You may think a Goldwing with a trailer looks pretty funny, but when it comes to space, they have a ton. In my bags I have enough room for a Camelbak bladder and some Powerbars. These two bikes had large coolers that were powered by the bike, so they didn’t have their food swimming in melted water. When we stopped for lunch they set up an entire picnic buffet on the wall of an overlook with a valley below. With self-service sanwhiches and Hall and Oates on the bike stereo, we all enjoyed a tasty sun-filled lunch.

Still having a ways to go to get to my 49th state, I set out on my own after lunch. Without a passenger I can go a little faster. I drove for another 9 hours or so to the end of the Blue Ridge in Virginia. I stopped for BBQ in Galax, Virginia and had the best homemade banana pudding I’ve ever tasted.

This morning I’m about 100 (twisty) miles from my goal, Kentucky. After I cross the border and take a picture, I’ll be able to point south again. I have a couple more parks to hit before this adventure winds down.

Another 1,000 miles down

I crossed the 20,000 mile mark today after reaching my 48th state on the trip. The last 1,000 miles have taken me from Maine through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Conntecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, West Virginia, and finally to Virginia. This has been a crowded area of the country and I’ve ridden more big roads than I like.

Today I started the 100 mile Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park which connects to the 460 mile Blue Ridge Parkway, so at least half of the next thousand miles will be twisty, two-lane, truck free roads. Plus the next thousand should put me very close to home.

Portillo Chile

After a great drive from Maine to DC, I took a pause from Ginger one last time before going home. I’ve now visited 47 states. With Virginia and West Virginia left, I’m on track to drive through all 49 drive-able states.

To celebrate my friend’s Zach engagement and to have one last hurrah with the boys, Zach wanted to ski. The summer is a bad time for skiing in the northern hemisphere, but not in the southern. Matt knew of a resort in Chile for us to visit called Portillo, 100 miles from Santiago on the Argentina border.

The two hour drive from Santiago started in a valley surrounded by mountains and slowly progressed into arid desert-like mountains. The newly repaved four-lane road eventually turned into two-lanes which later on lost the line. We began to see snow covered mountain tops as the cacti disappeared. The steep sharp turns really gave us elevation as we approached the resort. The last few miles were slow as our intrepid driver took his half out of the middle pushing our minivan to the limit. He took turns as fast as possible occasionally passing the semis three wide with other cars.

Starting at 9,000 feet, Portillo is a single lodge mouintain with a reasonably large ski-able area. There are two main parts, the left and the right serviced by several lifts and some

Our room in the employee quarters is dorm style with 4 bunks and less than a bed’s width to the other wall. Our roommate Mike is a firefighter from New York and dedicated skier. He’s definitely in good shape and hiking has been no problem for him. A short walk down the hall yields the bathroom with frigid tiles.

The weather here is rumored to be 80% sunny; we’ll have more data soon. After our first day was very snowy and overcast, we’ve had a couple of clear days and even a snowy one.

Gridlock

After heavy rains in Manhattan, a number of subway lines are closed, limited, or flooded. In a city where public transportation so often functions like a well oiled machine, hiccups can derail the busy system. Whenever there’s rain or when work gets out, getting a taxi becomes impossible. So when there’s rain and limited subway flow, you can imagine the city gets busy above ground.

When I decided to head downtown, I thought I’d try the bus. Unfortunately so did everyone else. Adding to the gridlock streets, completely full busses only stopped when requested and even then only let a few passangers switch with crowd on the street. I eventually got on a bus only to ride in front of the white line in the doorway with 6 other people. I had to wondering about the engineering and testing of busses. Do they fill them so full that everyone is touching his or her neighbor?

I got off the bus after 20 blocks after feeling like walking would be faster when throngs of passing feet filled my view. I was neck and neck for a few blocks, until the traffic cleared and the dinosaur-wine drinking bus pulled ahead to a clear lead.

I overheard throughout the day that a number of people were hours and hours late getting to their destinations. In a Lush store near Union Square I overheard the manager talking to a worker from another store who couldn’t get in because the boss hadn’t shown up. At the “They Might Be Giants” show the frontman said it was a good thing his master plan included being two hours late today, so the delays didn’t cause him trouble.

All-in-all it was a hassle, but I really enjoyed my walk through the southern half of Manhattan island.

Maine and Montreal

Over the weekend I drove with my dad and stepmom to the French speaking part of our continent, Quebec. Even after years of French class, I somehow missed that French is their primary language. It certainly has a strong accent to someone who is used to the French French accent. The difference reminds me of British English compared to American English, only less extreme.

The Circuit (French for track) Gilles Villeneuve (a famous Canadian driver) is usually used for Formula 1 and thus is not the usual NASCAR turn-left oval. I really enjoyed the first turn which would look like what would happen if you or I tried to take a 90 turn at full speed without thinking it out in advance. Right after the start-finish line a gentle left turns into a very sharp right arc, perfect for slinging an inexperienced driver into the adjacent wall.

With a day in Maine on either side of the race, I got a chance to review, sort, and begin to tag the few thousand pictures from the last few months. While I still have a long way to go, I made some serious headway. I did enjoy the brief rest in Maine, but my bike called from the garage, ready to head south.

GPS

My buddy Kal is also a techie so when I mentioned not bringing my GPS, he said I could use his. Google Maps doesn’t show much for Bulgaria, but at least you can get an idea of where we are in Eastern Europe.

Central Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, sits in a large valley ringed by mountains on all sides. Both the heat and scenery remind me of the one that holds Salt Lake City in Utah. The brightness, dryness, and vegetation remind me of the south of France near the Mediterranean.

Lindsay and I flew in on an Air France flight direct from Paris. It was only slightly delayed due to a scare at the airport which ened in the Police-led explosion of an unattened briefcase, according to the late passengers who sat behind us. I saw a number of US passports in line and was two for two talking to Americans seated near us.

The passport stamp you get when entering Bulgaria looks just like the other EU ones (they want to join as full members) with stars surrounding the Latin character abbreviation (why is this word so long?) of the country, in this case BG. The airport name is also given in Latin characters, Sofia. (My Blackberry can’t write the equivalent in Cyrillic, so I’ll let you figure out what they are.)

The Cyrillic overload gently began at the airport with all of the normal airport signs being in Latin (English) and Cyrillic (Bulgarian). The Cyrillic alphabet lesson I took last summer with my grandmother in Russia slowly came back giving me a slight feeling of comfort. Of course I’ve forgotten most of it and at best sound like a 4 year old trying to make the sounds corresponding to the somewhat foreign shapes. The taxi was about the same with both languages, except the driver didn’t speak English, but did understand Bus Terminal (Kal emailed me the English spelling of the word in Bulgarian). We were greeted with a taste of home as our taxi driver enjoyed a frequent export of the US, pop radio.

The overload kicked in full force as the doors to the newly constructed bus terminal slid open. We were greeted by a waiting area and ticket sales bonanza. There were slots for 40 companies to sell tickets for their buses under small plastic banners and all with laser printed city names taped to the sides of the windows. I took it as a good sign to see about 35 in use. Apparently Latin character using passengers are rare because all of the signs were completely in Cyrillic, and I didn’t recognize our destination, <a href="http://maps.google.com/xhtml?q=gabrovo+bulgaria&site=local#query">Gabrovo</a>. I had to curse Saint Cyril for a moment before Lindsay pointed out that the Departures monitors had magically switched to English, for a moment I felt like I had the Babelfish from "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in my ear. We figured out that there was a bus to Gabrovo at 4, but had been warned of a not so nice company running at that time.

When I saw Information written in English and two pretty girls, I ambled over and began to ask for Gabrovo. I was ready to have to awkwardly repeat my destination to a blank stare with the eventual recognition and cracking of a smile that often follows an interchange of two people without a common language. Instead I was met by a shaking finger, like you would at a bad dog or child, and a stern "No". Apparently I had interrupted some important reading. Both girls returned to their reading as if I wasn’t there at all. It was almost as if they were just passengers who managed to get behind the giant Information sign. My text message to Kal must have gone through; he appeared at an opportune moment on Google Talk and offered the guidance I needed. It turns out that Union is a good line, so I made a peace sign for two tickets and got the locals price, about $10/person after a little confusion.

We walked out to Sektor 39 to find a brand new bus already cooling in the shade. Once we got moving the flip-down LCDs started an American movie that I don’t recognize with Bulgarian subtitles about some rappers and their exploits. I wander what the rap audience is like here? Even though I can’t hear it at all, I can tell it’s in the good old USA. I’m now sitting on the bus looking out the window at the undulating hills of the countryside.

Looking out the window it’s interesting to see the foreign brands with their regular logos and colors. We passed a street in Sofia that appeared dedicated to car repair because the storefronts were all covered with giant logos of popular European and Japanese brands. I wonder if the ones with dozens of duplicates are the place to go? I say service because there were no shiny new cars in sight, these were just small store fronts. Shell seems to have a strong presence too with a number of stores on both sides of the road.

I’m really excited to set out and see a country that has thousands of years of history.

New Wave still rocks

Over the weekend Lindsay and I went to a real French wedding. Bertrand, my high school exchange student, married Marie, a fellow French professor from Nantes. We had heard that French weddings were a big to-do, experiencing one in person confirmed it.

The wedding took place in the very large and very old Gothic-style church about 3 blocks from Bert’s house. The nearly 2 hour service began at precisely 3 pm. The first half was devoted to the actual marriage, which seemed to follow the same pattern as an American wedding with the typical "I do" replaced by a series of "oui" questions. After several readings, some singing, and a point where the bride and groom left the stage with the priest, the ceremony turned into a regular Eucharist, which reminded me of the ones I used to attend in elementary school. Since I’m not a frequent church go-er, I was surprised by the cute boys who carried baskets by each row jingling them whenever someone put change in. I heard a wise person point out once that people tend to give more when everyone’s watching, hence open baskets.

After the ceremony the newly weds greeted the waiting crowd under a clear sky that had, at the beginning of the ceremony, threatened rain. The array of vibrant colors was great. I felt right at home with my bright blue bowtie and belt.

From the reception a loose-knit caravan of cars, including the vintage Daimler limo that carried Bert and Marie, made its way to the center of the Muscadet wine area. We all met for cocktails under a broad leafed tree in a courtyard of a beautiful chateau. I was surprised that they didn’t call the little snacks that went around "hors d'oeuvres" although I didn’t catch their name.

After everyone had a chance to drink several glasses of champagne, we moved into the hall where the tables had literary terms for names (very appropriate for French professors). We found ourselves at the table Metonmy (referring to a part to represent the whole) amidst a sea of other important terms. We dined with a number of other people our age including two of Bertrand’s classmates who also came to Jacksonville in 1999. Dinner only lasted about 3 hours starting with a seafood salad, continuing with magret de canard, pausing on a cheese plate, finishing on an assorted dessert plate with coffee to re-energize everyone for the impending dancing. Between the courses there were a number of toasts with a variety of presentations ranging from a simple speech to a homemade video projected on the wall to a remake of Yellow Submarine with appropriate characters added performed with a live guitar and about 10 singers. The cake was a traditional pastry creation standing about 4 feet tall composed of at least a hundred brown-colored, tennis ball sized spheres with a light cream inside.

Starting at 11 music and flashing lights emerged from the adjacent room that I hadn’t noticed. After dinner someone asked "do you dance the rock?" (Dansez-vous le rock?), to which I responded "yes" (oui) and thought, is there a real style of "rock" dancing? It turns out there is. Imagine an amalgamation of various dance moves like an evolution of the dances our (grand)parents did. There was plenty of what in a photograph would look like old fashioned dancing which in reality was turning, twisting, spinning, and smiling. All of the movement was helped by the low lighting and flowing champagne. Not having fun would have been difficult.

When I heard the music go off at 3 I was totally surprised that the wedding and party had actually lasted the alloted 12 hours.

IPhone

While in New York, Lindsay and I stopped at the main Apple Store to play with the new iPhone. No, I didn't buy one on the spot, as a number of you may have expected. I do however think it has some fantastic new features.

Design-wise the iPhone is a beautiful machine. It has hand-friendly corners, the biggest display I've seen on a phone, a unique interface, and a good weight. After writing this and a number of other posts on my trusty Blackberry, the touch screen keyboard lacked the feedback a real keyboard offers. I'm not quite to the touch typing level with the BB, but I'm pretty close, which I'm not sure how a screen keyboard would compare. There was a suggestion feature that tried to guess the correct word from the letters used. Perhaps the click feedback of a button could be mimicked by a slight vibration, like a video game.

The ability to view entire webpages with zoom is nice. That is to say, the phone loads whole web pages zoomed out so you can see the whole page, to read the text you zoom in by drawing two fingers together over the part you want. To compare the web browsers of the iPhone and Blackberry is like comparing the Gopher browser on the original AOL and the newest version of Safari. Both do use the Internet, but in a completely different way.

I certainly see myself as a candidate, so it's more of a when question than an if question. I'm composing this message while listening to my iPod Nano. Having one less thing to carry, charge, and worry about is valuable to a frequent traveller.

The iPhone also has the ability to use 802.11, increasing the speed when WiFi is available. I wonder how long it'll take someone to write a VoIP client (lSkype, maybe) to bypass the cellular (and much more expensive) network when there's a WiFi signal.

Lemonade

On the way to Paris Lindsay and I spent almost as much time in airports as in the air. From Jacksonville we had a three hour delay causing us to miss our connection to Paris, which put us a day behind. Continental’s flights leave at night so we had a day to kill. We took the train into NYC, found a place to stay, and made a few calls.

I stopped at Viand, my favorite 10 minute breakfast spot, with my cousin to catch up on his recent departure from a family business.

Almost everyone I know in NY has a day job so finding people to visit proved interesting. After being totally moved by the Richard Serra pieces I saw with Matt at DIA:Beacon and with Andrew in Seattle, I knew I was going to see his solo MoMA exhibition by hook or crook. I called my aunt with whom I regularly visit the museum to see if she could break away. She found an hour in her schedule and met us there to catch up in an ever-changing, unique, beautiful, pristine space.

In my usual compressed time fashion we bolted downtown to meet Zach and Nina for a coffee before they disappeared into the kitchen working on the city’s best meals of the night. Zach described the heat of working in on of the top rated restaurants. Even with a professional culinary degree and amazing talent he makes less than two times minimum wage in one of the countries most expensive cities. Along side him are a number of volunteers who work for free just to be able to add this restaurant to their resume. Talk about supply and demand, with free workers it’s easy to pay the ones who need to eat peanuts.

Continuing the art experience we followed the High Line (which will be a beautiful park in a few years) from the start up through Chelsea stopping in the high-tech, new-media gallery Eye Beam. I played a reprogrammed original Nintendo with a game called I Shot Andy Warhol, you can guess why it had the Duck Hunt gun. We walked into a few more galleries before stopping to see a fellow CC alumnus at the James Cohan Gallery. They were taking down an old show and putting up a new one, so the gallery wasn’t in its usual state. In the back Laurie showed us several binders with photos of works that had passed through since I last visited. She suggested we visited the Roxy Paine tree in Madison Square garden on 25th, so we let her finish her lunch and walked cross town to see the life-sized stainless steel trees. The sculpture garden I mentioned above in Seattle with Andrew also had one of these trees, so I knew it was worth the walk.

We worked our way back to the airport only to find our flight to France delayed an hour to start. After the delay put the pushback later than the next flight out, we decided to take our carry-on only luggage and jump ship. We had to wait as Standby passengers which I thought meant they’d be happy to give us two middle seats between either fat people or babies, maybe both, after everyone else got on. Once the waiting area cleared we got our seats to my surprise, A and B, and aisle and window. When we got to the exit row bulkhead, I thought it was too good to be true. Not only did we have an aisle and a window, but we also had extra legroom and no one in front of us.

All-in-all we squeezed the lemons of the delay into lemonade.