travel

Yesterday I cut out of work a bit early, hopped on a Hawker 800 with my girlfriend and her family, and flew to Las Vegas to catch Cirque Du Soleil’s “O” at the Bellagio. Except for a quick trip to the Green Valley Ranch last year, this was actually my first trip to Vegas since I moved to LA. (We ate at Michael Mina’s — I had the lobster pot pie; it was incredible.) We goofed, though … dinner ran until almost 8 so we missed “O” — we thought it started at 8 but it really started at 7:30. Rather than cry over spilled milk, we decided to make the most of it and just played in the casino for a few hours. Then we jumped on a Citation XL and got home by 11:30. I had a great time; Vegas is pretty cool. Someday I’m going to have to go for a long weekend or something.

Forget what you may have heard elsewhere — the best breakfast in San Francisco is served at Caffe Delucchi Italian Resaurant. And if you’re trying to find a good steak in the city by the bay, look no further than MacArthur Park. I had a mouth-watering NY Strip that forced me to go into the kitchen and compliment the chef. You can’t go wrong at either of these establishments.

Chris O’Brien’s Top Ten First Year in New Zealand Facts

1. This has been the hardest and most stressful year of my life.
2. NZ teachers couldn’t teach a fish to swim.
3. It is harder than you could ever imagine to be this far from friends and family.
4. Even though everyone thinks the US is wrong all the time, everyone wants to be the US.
5. The people here are retarded and couldn’t have a conversation with anyone.
6. The landscapes here are breathtaking but it is cold all the time.
7. Home ownership is great, but alot of work.
8. We are ready to get out of here and start a new part of our lives.
9. NZ is overrated.
10. News updates on TV always have news on music b/c nothing important happens here.

I’ve been to N’Awlins several times in the last decade or so. It’s one of my favorite cities. Part of its charm, I think, is that you can feel the Mississippi River’s omnipotence no matter where you are. Even as you walk along the streets, with the water far from view, you know it’s there. I just read a fascinating - and scary - article in the NYTimes about the problems the city is having trying to prepare for a possible storm surge. Good reading if you’re interested.

Nothing’s Easy for New Orleans Flood Control
A flood wall built by the Army Corps of Engineers to hold back a cresting river - which on normal days moves more than 300,000 cubic feet of water a second past the city at an average depth of 90 feet - raised the levee to a uniform height of 25 feet above sea level, or 10 feet above the average annual high water surface level of the river, when water can rush by at the rate of one million cubic feet of water, or more, a second.
…
The city would be trapped inside the levees, steeped in a worsening “witches’ brew” of pollutants like sewage, landfill waste, chemicals and the bodies of drowned humans and animals.
Bourbon Street could remain under 10 feet of water, with water swirling above two-story houses in neighborhoods closer to the lake.
…
The American Red Cross … has declared it no longer will provide hurricane shelters … saying that placing staff there in a killer storm will represent too much risk for its employees …

The Bucs won. I had a good time. Chris and I played Teras Kasi and MTV Snowboarding and argued at length about logic, infinity, nanophysics, the soul, “dark matter”, and relationships until 4 am. Then we watched the Simpsons. Chris is doing well. He has a really cool girlfriend named Al. She burned me a copy of the Orange County soundtrack, which is just great music.
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I finally managed to finish all my Christmas cards last night. It figures that I would run out of stamps with three left - mom, dad, and Nana Rainy’s. People should start getting my Christmas cards around the first week of January, so that’s always pleasant. And of course I haven’t mailed any gifts yet. Oh well. I’ll try to do better next year. 2001 was pretty whacked for me all around anyway, so this is all par for the ‘01 course.
I’m off to Chris’ in San Diego to watch the Bucs game. While I’m gone, try out the new “dark” theme. I like it. And hey, look! Only about 1200 more entries to put in the correct category and I’ll be all caught up here. w00t!

The airlines are dropping prices like mad lately. I can hardly believe that Delta Web Fares is offering round trip tickets from LAX to Rome, Italy for only $314. That ticket would’ve been triple that a few months ago. I saw a commercial yesterday advertising $99 - $199 one-way tickets on American to anywhere in the continental US. I’ve flown twice since September 11 - well, four times, actually, since they were round trip - but after the most recent New York crash I’m pretty wary of flying. I just don’t trust security at the airports, and I don’t know that it’s going to get any better any time soon. I’m going to have to fly for the holidays, of course. What are you gonna do?

The airlines need to play an especially ruthless game of chicken with their customers since a seat on Flight 3206 from Miami to Chicago, unlike a washing machine, becomes worthless if it isn’t sold in time. So as every flight gets nearer, the airline is willing to accept less and less at the very time some of its passengers are willing to pay more and more. The infuriating rules about Saturday night stayovers and so on are a crude alternative to administering truth serum and asking, “So how much are you really willing to pay?”

This is an excerpt from Consuming Gets Complicated, a link I discovered on the consistently excellent blog Follow Me Here …. The essay makes a reference to how capitalism equates to a game of chicken between the consumer and the seller. A wealth of information on this type of situation, and how often it occurs in everyday life, can be found by reading Prisoner’s Dilemma by William Poundstone. It’s really a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.

The website Ernest Hemingway’s Places hope[s] to celebrate many of the significant literary sites that belong in some way to the legacy of Ernest Hemingway. This site details the life and experiences of the author in respect to his location when he wrote and how his geographical setting(s) influenced his work. Hemingway in the Snow, for example, is an article that describes some of the winter adventures Hemingway pursued and how the effect of these can be seen in his writing.

Can we just talk for a second about how much I hate United Airlines? I would really like to buy a ticket from them. And I want to do it right now. They send me personalized eMails with special discount rates because I’m a “Mileage Plus” member. But y’know what? I can’t. Do you know why I can’t? I can’t because I don’t know my “Mileage Plus” account number. That is just idiotic.

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Orbitz is having a Fall Getaway Sale with fares from $68-$178 r/t. There have been all kinds of great deals lately on airfare, but this is definitely the time to be buying tickets …

So did anyone miss me last week? I have the feeling that nobody even noticed I wasn’t here. It’s okay. As much as I kid, it’s a feeling I know well. Whatever. While I was gone - and my week away from the keyboard was probably the longest I’ve gone without posting anything in almost year - I visited my family in New England. It was more fun than you could possibly imagine. My parents got divorced way back in the mists of time and my mom and my little sister and I moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. That’s where I was raised. (reared? brought up? nurtured? developed?) My dad had visitation rights (or something like that) for a few weeks every summer and Jenny and I would always spend a few weeks there. As I’ve gotten older (and months-long summer vacations disappeared) I haven’t been able to visit as often as I wish I could. (I’m sure there’s all kinds of grammatical problems with that sentence, but I just don’t feel like fixin’ it. I’m sure you know what I’m sayin’. Know what I’m sayin’?) So it was great to see my dad and the rest of my New England relatives. Here’s a quick review:

• Tuesday and Wednesday: Took at 10:30pm pst flight from LAX to JFK, then a shuttle to Logan. Dad was there at 9am est Wednesday and we went to his house in Portsmouth, RI and dropped off the bags and then jumped on the Ferry Schamonchi to Martha’s Vineyard. We had never been to the island and rented mopeds to tour. I’d never ridden a moped before, either! I think it made me itch a little for a motorcycle. It was really cool. We went back to Dad’s house and got some much-needed sleep.
• Thursday: We got up early and drove to visit my little brother Michael. He’s in the Coast Guard stationed in Gloucester, MA. That was quite the exciting trip! We got to ride on a 47′ mega-super-duper rescue boat all around the bay. Mike gave us a tour of the base and we had a terrific lunch at The Gloucester House. Then we returned to Portsmouth for an old-fashioned lobster and clam dinner that was faboo.
• Friday: We visited Newport, RI and some of my dad’s favorite lighthouses, which was hip. Then we packed our stuff and drove to pick up Nana Rainy in Somerville, MA and headed to Uncle Richie’s lake house in Acton, Maine. We stayed at the Mousam Valley Motel.
• Saturday: We spent the day water-skiing and tubing and playing at Uncle Richie’s house. (Here’s an awesome shot of my little sister Michelle tubing.) Most of the family came to visit! It was like a mini-reunion. At night we had a bonfire and my dad played guitar and we all sat around singing Irish drinking songs and talking about … well … everything that’s been happening in the two years since I was last there.
• Sunday: We goofed around some more at Uncle Richie’s and then returned to Portsmouth.
• Monday: I spent the morning uploading all the pictures from my dad’s new digital camera and then packed up and headed to Boston. We met Mike at Nana Rainy’s and then tried to go to the Coast Guard base in Boston so I could buy a cap with “Gloucester Coast Guard” on it, but they were closed for Labor Day. My dad got a great shot of me and Mike in front of one of the big Coast Guard cutters, though. We got to tool around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall a bit, and then jumped on a 6pm est flight back to LAX. Got in around 9:30pm pst.

It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.

I just spent a week telling all my New England relatives how wonderful the weather is in Los Angeles and what a great place this city is to live and work. And then I returned. Dumb move on my part I guess. For at least the tenth time this year the air conditioning is malfunctioning in my office building. My cubicle is only slightly less comfortable than I imagine the burning flames and constant anguish of hell to be. Consider this: I wore a long-sleeve, warm shirt to work today because last week we couldn’t get the thermostat above sixty degrees F.

Or maybe it’s just that everything sucks after a vacation.

Did you know that if you have an extra $35,000 in your pocket you can visit the Titanic with National Geographic? How cool would that be?

“By 1,000 feet, all traces of sunlight will be gone and you will be immersed in total darkness. To conserve power, the MIR submersibles run without external lights, however, the pilot will occasionally switch on the lights to observe passing marine life.”