Note To Jon

Google, you have failed me

2009-05-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, when I started this blog, I made a bet. I made a dollar bet with Darren that by the time I needed more than the 1 GB of photo storage that Picassa offered at that time, Google would have upped the limit (after all my GMail limit has gone from about 2.5 GB to 7+ GB in that time). And yet here we are over two years later and I have the following message at the bottom of my Picassa account:

You are currently using 1022 MB (99.84%) of your 1024 MB.

That's pretty much Game Over, and it means that the next time I want to post photos on here I will owe Darren a dollar, and the far more costly admission that he was right and I was wrong (actually he has a pretty good track record of winning these bets--the initial cost of the Playstation 3, whether there was one or two TV "seasons" per year--actually if the current fall and spring trend for shows like Heroes continues I may be right after all on that one).

What that means is that unless I decide to pay up (or the hand of Google reaches in and saves me in the final two megabytes) you may be about to enjoy the final post on this blog. And let's be honest that's probably better than continuing this fade-out process anyway. I clearly have been spending my time elsewhere, and I might as well just admit it. If I was giving this blog the time it deserved, I would have been railing against the DC parking policy that requires me to register with the DC DMV every six months to prove that I am NOT a DC resident, or bemoaning the loss of some of my favorite ways to enjoy summer outdoors in DC--R.I.P. HBO's Screen on the Green and The Shakespeare Free-for-All at Carter Barron (no free indoor Shakespeare in the fall does not count). Heck, I even forgot our blogiversary this year. No, I haven't been a good blogfriend at all lately. You deserve better.

And so let's part as friends, with two short slideshows of great traditions that we've documented before, Gold Cup and Bike to Work Day.

Virginia Gold Cup 2009

Bike to Work Day 2009

Roadtripping to Cheerwine Country

2009-03-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

Clearly just admitting my blogging problem has not helped to solve it, so for at least one more post I'll be embracing the double slideshow format. Today's double-header consists of a last minute road trip to Charleston, SC over President's Day weekend followed by last weekend's visit to Shenandoah celebrating Jeff M's birthday, which included my first trips to Stony Man Mountain and Luray Caverns.

Charleston, SC Road Trip

Stony Man and Luray for Jeff's Birthday

Notes to Jon:

The food in Charleston was as good as I remembered. We had lunch at Magnolia's where I enjoyed the Shrimp and Grits and especially the House Made Potato Chips which I still remembered from my previous Charleston trip years ago. We also ate at 82 Queen which was equally fantastic and had the greatest sorbet I have ever tasted, order the Pear Sorbet for dessert if you are there.
In Charleston we found signs for Elizabeth, Ann, Pitt, Mary, and Jo(h)n Streets, and a Biggs Restaurant. There is even an intersection of Elizabeth and Jo(h)n St. but the Elizabeth sign is missing from that corner. I expect it to be fixed by the time we return to Charleston for a beach trip, possibly to the Pelican House.
Thanks to Brian who took several of the photos which I appropriated for the slideshow (basically any photo I am in and the ones inside the house are his).
Connecting the two trips was my current drink of choice, Cheerwine, the cherry soft drink from NC which was available in Charleston as well as at a gas station in Luray. I took full advantage to restock my depleted supply.

At the Rink

2009-02-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

Clearly I am shirking my blogging responsibilities in 2009. I’ve been procrastinating posting a couple of slideshows in the hopes that I would actually write something up about them. That hasn’t worked too well. Admitting that I have a problem is the first step. Recruiting guest bloggers may be the second. For now we’ll just have to settle for the captions in the slideshows…

DC Roller Derby

Harper's Ferry Hike

I do have to make two quick notes:

Get to the Roller Derby early (like 45 minutes before the match starts) and grab your food and drinks. The line to get through security stretched from the DC Armory back to the metro… and the concessions lines were even worse, hopefully they’ll have more security and concessions personnel next time.
As for the Harper’s Ferry hike… we never did find the trailhead despite walking past where it was supposed to be once and driving past it twice. I assume that it may actually be the path directly out of the parking lot (despite the guidebook saying 0.3 miles up the road).

O-nauguration!

2009-01-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

Since I live just over the river from D.C. and was obviously pleased with the outcome of the election, it was pretty much a given that I'd be out with the masses last Tuesday. Thanks to Sara—and her cousin who mailed the tickets, and my Dad who waited at the house for them to arrive—Mimsi and I actually got to watch from the Silver ticketed area (once we finally found the security gate!).

It was the perfect culmination of a thrilling weekend (well, election campaign, or even lifetime for some) which kicked off with a dry run of maneuvering around the mall amongst the throngs, to see the star-studded lineup of the "We Are One" concert, and continued on Monday with an Education Equality rally, which for me contained the equivalent star power of the concert since I've been hearing and reading about all of these education policymakers.

Apparently blogging more was not in my New Year's resolutions (or "decisions that just happen to be made in January", as one of my volleyball teammate's would say) but you can at least enjoy the photos.

Plenty of Play(s)!

2008-12-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

No matter how I choose to interpret my New Year's resolution, 2008 was wildly successful. So successful in fact that I'm not entirely sure what I should resolve for 2009. Between reading Crossworld, Wordplay, a visit to Stamford—former home of the American Crossword Championship, and my Christmas gift subscription to the Times crossword archive, I am tempted to resolve to submit a crossword to the Times. But I've still got a couple of days to finalize my resolution (and having two punny ones last year worked out quite well so maybe I'll double down). Do I need to have some cross words with someone (or rather let them have some with me?)... yeah maybe.

While our circle of friends didn't formally continue our tradition of swapping mix CDs, I did receive the fantastic ABCD 2008 (A.B.'s CD of course), and I will once again post my own year's soundtrack to accompany the photo slideshow above (or for the resourceful—and bored—to create your own copy of my CD). One of the few things that got worse this year was my internet access at work—they blocked NPR's Discover Songs—but I still found plenty of new music listening to KEXPlorer. As a result I decided to include only songs which were released here in 2008. I believe I succeeded—with one exception that I couldn't pass up.

My Year In Lists by Los Campesinos! - A fun, poppy Welsh (despite the name) band that easily had the most appropriate song for starting a Year's Best Music List.
Journey of the Featherless by Cloud Cult - My band and album of the year for 2008. They score bonus points for being great live, having two artists doing realtime paintings during the show, and printing all of their CD materials in a sustainable manner. They also offer great advice if you happen to be flying anywhere: "If you ask a goose a question he never shuts up".
Too Drunk to Dream by The Magnetic Fields - Another phenomenal band that I didn't discover until this year. Their 69 Love Songs is a true classic, and this pick from their Distortion album helps inject some humor to this list (and irony, since I don't drink). In addition their concert was truly magnetic for my friends as we saw AB, Melissa and Chad, and Jon Wye (who makes great belts!). One final thing that makes them great? They wrote the only song I know of about my city, Washington D.C.
Old Old Fashioned by Frightened Rabbit - Serious contender to take my album of the year from Cloud Cult. I'm psyched (that's relatively Old Old Fashioned slang now) for their show next month... except that it is the night before inauguration and getting to and from the show could be an adventure.
I Love the Unknown by Eef Barzelay - Made the honorable mention list last year and released a great new album in 2008 with this track as a bonus from the movie Rocket Science. The chorus was stuck in my head at various times throughout the year and particularly memorably during my Century ride as I passed mile markers 70, 80, 90 and 100 for the first time ever.
Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur by Sigor Ros - While I didn't take my Recession Vacation to Iceland like I considered, I did find the new more-upbeat-than-usual album from these Icelanders.
Jocasta by Noah and the Whale - Perhaps it's because the vocals reminded me of another favorite band I found this year: Neutral Milk Hotel (they haven't made new music in a decade so I'm not including them but you should listen anyway if you don't know them)
Lolita by Throw Me the Statue - One of two overlaps between the ABCD and my list. Some of their songs have a hint of The Postal Service to them, which as you'll see I am clearly craving.
North by North by Faded Paper Figures - I found these guys in the last few weeks and their songs remind me even more of The Postal Service. Why oh why is there not a follow-up yet!?!
Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend - Overhyped? Perhaps, but it's a fun album nonetheless and this song was wonderfully influential in my life this year.
Oh My Heart by James - The best show of 2008 (even sweeter since I'd waited 14 years to see them again). Between Flight of the Conchords, The Magnetic Fields, Bishop Allen, Cloud Cult, and James all of my concert dreams came true in 2008. The only problem is that I couldn't pick a song from their album. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of any songs on this album... but amazingly I loved those same songs live. So this song is mostly here as a placeholder and I recommend catching them on tour instead.
Now by Mates of State - I thought I'd remember this band mostly from the sadly humorous experience we had losing the tickets to their concert in November, but as I reviewed some of my favorite music this year I found I loved several of their songs (without realizing it was them). I'll be much more ready to hear them when they come back around... and much more vigilant about the tickets!
Little Boxes by Persephone's Bees - Supposedly there was a Mates of State recording of Little Boxes from this year but I couldn't find it, but while searching I found this version... in Russian! One of many versions recorded for one of my favorite shows I found in 2008—Weeds—when I heard them say Krasnaya (Red) I knew I had to include this version... even if it was from 2007.
Vanished by Crystal Castles - The second overlap with the ABCD marks the second half of my list where I am including individual songs I enjoyed this year without necessarily getting into the band.
Taking the Farm by The War on Drugs - And someone accused an Arcade Fire song I played last year of sounding like Springsteen...
More Bad Times by The Presidents of the United States of America - Yes, I guess they are the same ones who made Peaches and Lump so long ago but I really like this new one... especially because it's a cover from the under-rated Ed's Redeeming Qualities.
First Sight by These United States - A local band I need to investigate further... especially since they also remind me a little of The Postal Service
Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti and Spearhead - Just a damn happy song by a favorite of mine from Def Poetry Jam.
Sax Rohmer #1 by The Mountain Goats - With all the new music I've heard, these guys have one of the few sounds that I can always pick out.
Tree Hugger by Antsy Pants - Can you tell I had a sickeningly sweet upbeat year? Get used to it (and check out the video link for the song)
Write it all Down for You by Elliott Brood - One of the very few non-electronica songs to get a positive comment from Darren so it's got to have something going for it.
Lost Coastlines by Okkervil River - Not much to say except I can't believe they actually started their show on time at 8pm... causing me to miss most of my favorite song: The President's Dead from last year's list.
Where You Belong by Kael Alden - So I found this song while researching Faded Paper Figures. This was a side project for one of their day jobs for a Lexus commercial, but I really liked it so I'm closing out the list with this last favorite song I found in 2008.

Here's to 2009 finding some way to surpass 2008 :-)

White Elephant leads to Airing of (rhymes with) Grievances

2008-12-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

Let me just state that there was NOT an official theme to this year's White Elephant gift exchange (in fact a look at last year's photos should show things weren't any more risque than usual). It is possible the profusion of penis gifts was the result of the many happy couples (some of whom met at our parties) passing them along to the many eligible ladies in attendance—perhaps as a not so subtle way of letting Darren and I know that the matchmaking reputation of our parties will diminish significantly if we can't get more single guys out! While several have fled to the West Coast, we've still got a few locals who just failed to show up. However, as I think the photos will attest, no one's enjoyment was significantly diminished.

Special Thanks to:

Diana for reprising her role as the Cookie Baking Goddess, slaving away in our tiny kitchen to provide hours of decorating fun and desserty goodness (we're working on a new kitchen for you for next year).
Sara for taking Jan Louis' role as honorary Cuban and provider of rice and bean sides for everyone (and for cleaning up afterward... even without a Porcupine scrub brush)
Everyone who brought food, decorated, or helped with all of the endless tasks that come up during a party (and for keeping the regifting tradition alive for so many past favorites)

When it comes to posting photos online, I try to err on the side of... humor, so if you are uncomfortable with any of the photos of you on here please do let me know and I will be happy to take them down without harassing you... much :-) You can also find additional photos (and a few which I borrowed for narrative purposes) from Carmel and Brooke, or by friending Mary, Denise, or Linny on Facebook.

White Elephant stats and awards:

43 Participants (though Darren's numbering may have thrown off the official count :-) )
Running time: Just about 2 hours
Gifts stolen the maximum number of times: ABs CDs, the Cookbooks and Apron, and I feel like the Ice Cream maker was stolen 3 times but I can only remember 2.
Regifts from White Elephants past:
Four Years: Joanna and Pete's Smiley Clock (a record)
Three Years: Sarah's Oklahoma guidebook with Candy Panties, Diana's photos of past owners (now in album form), Carmel's Personal Jesus
Two Years: Snow Job (after a year hiatus I believe), CharAnn's Boy Band CD (in the Lost and Found gift), Darren's Twin Peaks (which he finished watching just in time!)
Best Wrapped Gift: Sara for the "Cucumber" Pokey, though runners up to Ehren's Trader Joe wrapping and Candice's White Elephant logo.
Best Gift Combination: Perhaps the "Cucumber" Pokey as well, or Carmel's "How to Find the Love of your Life" book and Jesus, but I'll go with the Joy of French Cooking books and the Apron.
Best Gift for Photo Blackmail: The Cucumber Pokey could sweep these but I'm spreading the wealth. Sorry Kristin :-) Enjoy the Bachelorette Party Baking Tray
Most Illegal Gift: Ehren's Lost and Found Cellphone. Hopefully it has a SIM card to swap out.
Best Cookie Decorating: Candice's gingerbread Shark.
Best Beer Decorating: Candice's six-pack of ReinBeer.
Winner of this year's Lost and Found gift: Elizabeth (how did I not let her know ahead of time which one it was!?!). She got bowls, a jacket belt, a Papa John's pizza case, a Boy Bands CD, and a sippy cup, but lost most of the "good" stuff to Kevin who had left a bag of clothes and schwag with Darren after their duathlon this summer.
And the 2008 Gift of the Year: I still can't decide between the "Cucumber" Pokey and Candice's Holiday Sweater, so I'm taking bribes.

Notes for year 6 (should one or both of us still be in the house next year):

For about 50 people the 9 chickens cut into 8 pieces was about right, as was 12 cups of rice, the black bean recipe serving 20, 9 sides of Yucca may have been about right, but we should get more than the 9 sides of Plantains.
Santa stayed on the roof this year (through the party at least), but he needs his own timer.
The backyard circuit is the same as the one along the back of the house so run the front left off of the Santa circuit.
Don't have Darren set up the numbers (alternately it could be a fun new tradition to leave out 20-25 and have two 43s and 44s)

Feliz Navidad

2008-12-19T14:33:00.000-08:00

In keeping with the Spanish theme (and Darren's 1/4 hispanic heritage) there was really only one option for this year's "Manly Craft Project". You see ever since we spent all afternoon putting out Christmas decorations five years ago only to have our neighbors out do us by simply tossing out two giant inflatables, the holiday competition has been on. While our neighbors proved no match for us, we have continued the tradition of adding some new holiday flair each year. The first couple of years it was always a new inflatable, but those became so common that it was time to create something unique. The result was last year's custom crafted Festivus Pole. In solidarity with Darren's hispanic brethren this year it was clear we needed a giant Feliz Navidad sign!

While it is looking increasingly likely that our time in this house may be drawing to a close, I'll make some notes to guide future owners who may wish to carry on the tradition...
Notes to Jon:

We need one more timer for the outlet upstairs which runs the rooftop Santa

The back circuit is getting overloaded but the outlet by Santa is separate so run some of the power to the front off of that

The 3M adhesive clips don't stick in cold weather and take an hour to fasten so find a day in early fall to put a bunch of them around the windows

The additional rebar that the Festivus Pole attaches to (or the tension that Jeff put on the rebar inside the pole) has fixed last year's problem of a spinning pole

¡Olé!

2008-12-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

It was an improbable run—especially considering we still don't know how we ended up making the playoffs—but after four years in the league 60-Finger Sanchez won the volleyball championship... and we have the t-shirts to prove it!

We entered last week's match and saw that we were tied for fourth (the last playoff spot) with one other team. Our matchup was against the 3rd Place Buddha Pat while the other team faced off against a 2-19 team. We figured we needed to go 3-0. We went 0-3. And yet miraculously we had an email from Sportsplex the next day announcing that we'd made the playoffs. We can only assume the other team forfeited their 10pm games and we'd won the head to head matchup to break the tie.

In the semi-finals we faced off against the 1st place Block Heads. Thanks to the best all around team play we've had, we managed to win the first two matches to advance to the championship game (where we'd lost last season). Our opponents in the finals? Buddha Pat. The team we'd gone 0-3 against the week before. We lost the first game in a close contest, then opened the second game strong on a 10-3 run. But they called time out and rallied all the way back to lead 19-16. We fought back to win the second game and even the match at 1-1 to force a tie-breaking game to 15. It was back and forth to 10-10 and then they broke it open to get a 14-11 match point. We managed to win a long rally to get the serve back and close the gap to 14-12. Despite the pressure of a single fault ending our season, Sara served four straight points for us to take the decisive match 16-14... and to claim our first t-shirts. Did the mention the t-shirts :-)

Painting the White House Green and Red

2008-12-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

Our holiday decorations will be unveiled shortly, but in the mean time I did get a chance to tour another local house making a noble attempt to spread holiday cheer (despite the glaring absence of a Festivus Pole). Hopefully this post won't hinder my chances at serving as holiday consultant for the '09 Obama decorations (I was careful to avoid molesting the portrait of Hillary).

Somewhere "Hoh River" the Rainbow...

2008-11-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

For my birthday this year I was given—in addition to a Blue Virginia(!)—a trip to Washington (the State)! I can neither confirm nor deny whether this gift may have been in any way related to a job interview my girlfriend had at the same time in Seattle :-p This was my first trip to the Emerald City (or the Pacific Northwest in general) and it definitely lived up to its nickname: While the first days were greyscale (although only outside) this was soon replaced by blue skies and a trip following the not-quite-yellow-brick highway 101 around the Olympic Peninsula—ultimately winding up at the end-of-the-rainbow (literally).

Thanks to Lonely Planet studying on the airplane flight and my relentless travel pace—which I hopefully managed to moderate fairly well—we packed in much of what we wanted to do over the four day trip. The highlight for me was our day driving the Olympic Peninsula and visiting the Hoh National Rainforest (thanks to Jeff for the suggestion) and it earned its own slideshow (so at least skip to the bottom if you don’t feel like reading). I won’t detail every moment as I did for Russia or West Africa but here were some things I learned from the trip:

Lowell’s in the Pike Place Market has a great view over the Sound on the third floor and good, cheap food to boot. Also at the market, Beecher’s handmade cheese is delicious.
Try to see Frank Gehry’s E.M.P. building in sunlight (which is also probably a good time to visit the Space Needle next door)
The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) is free on the first Thursday of the month and is open until 9pm. Highlights included the Aboriginal artwork of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and helping some scavenger hunters track down the title of Katharina Fritsch’s Mann und Maus
Lola’s in the Hotel Andra offers delicious cinnamon donut holes with Mascarpone cheese
One of the best tips we got was to call 206-553-3000 (Seattle Metro) and tell them where you were and where you wanted to go and they would tell you what buses to take and when to catch them. We used this all the time to get around the city on the public buses. The buses also get you downtown from door 00 of Sea-Tac airport for $1.50.
We loved the Argosy Locks Cruise (my birthday present within a birthday present), which takes you from the Seattle Waterfront up the Puget Sound, through the Hiram Chittenden Locks and into Lake Union (right past the floating house from Sleepless in Seattle)
On the cruise our guide Aaron taught us that the Columbia building has one of the nicest women’s restrooms in the world with each stall looking out the glass window onto the city below (it’s the tallest building in town so nobody should be able to see in… theoretically). He also told us that when it came time to film a scene at Tom Hanks’ floating house it uncharacteristically failed to rain so they had to use a fireboat to create fake rain (supposedly, while the paid extras were dressed for the fake weather, you can see some locals in the scene dressed to enjoy the sun)
Fremont was my favorite neighborhood with its host of fanciful sculptures including a giant troll under an overpass literally holding a VW Beetle. It’s also home to the Fremont Bridge which I read about in the Lonely Planet. Apparently it was originally painted an uninspiring green but when they went to repaint the bridge it got a primer coat of orange. Some people liked it so much that they just left the orange. Of course some other people dis-liked it so much that when it came time to repaint again they had a vote (and didn’t put orange on the ballot). Blue won. But those orange-lovers were not so easily dissuaded and added orange highlights to the blue bridge. The result turned out to be a happy compromise and they’ve painted this pattern each time since (although Elizabeth and I agreed when we passed under it on the locks cruise that it is due for another repainting)
We do better at trivia on the East Coast. We tried our hand at the Monkey Pub’s Friday night pub quiz and finished next to last. I guess these folks are serious since they charge $3 per person and the emcee stopped midway through trivia to break up a table of 6 people (there’s a limit of 4 per team). Still we learned some interesting facts including that while Obama will be the 44^th President there have only been 42 different presidents before him—thanks to Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive terms as both the 22^nd and 24^th presidents. Also, we are terrible at obscure TV theme songs. We couldn’t pick out “Double-Dare” and I misremembered that the Bloodhound Gang were part of the Electric Company—should have put 3-2-1 Contact.
If you are looking for a (long) day trip outside of Seattle head to the Hoh River Rainforest. While the clear-cut trees in some sections of the drive are saddening, there are plenty of spectacular views (Lake Crescent in particular) and the actual Rainforest is like no place I’ve ever seen before. It’s certainly the closest I ever expect to be to an elk. Try to go when the days are longer so you can enjoy the views of the Pacific Ocean on the ride home (it’s a powerful feeling standing there even in the dark).
We met the ranger at the visitor center, Jon Preston, who wrote a great essay in the book on sale there Fast Moving River: Images and Essays from the Hoh River
Enjoy the Hoh River Slide Show which inspired the blog title (hey, it’s my blog so I’ll have punny titles if I want to. According to the vampires in True Blood, puns were once considered the highest form of humor—since replaced by Darrenisms)

Thanks to my family, AB, Jeffrey, Cam, and Laura for all the great suggestions, and of course to Elizabeth for a lovely birthday week.

Blue Virginia

2008-11-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Thank you everyone. This really was the perfect birthday present :-)

Fire it up! Ready to go!

2008-11-04T07:35:00.000-08:00

Historic. That was definitely the feeling at Obama's last rally before election day, and I'm so grateful that, despite the late start and traffic, my mom, sister, and I got to be there. From beaming to "Beautiful Day" before the show, to seeing a stranger walk over and hug my mom after the speech, I am filled with Hope. From now on I'll hopefully think of Manassas as the place I first heard President Obama speak (instead of as the home of Lorena Bobbit). And if someone from Centreville can have some love for Manassas, then you know we may really be on to something here...

So from one voice from Greenwood, South Carolina to the entire world:

Fire it up!

Ready to go!

Tour the Grape Life

2008-11-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

Despite the shouts of the crowd, I was not the Fruit of the Loom guy in the Leesburg Halloween Parade. I was “Chardonnay”, the bunch of green grapes, promoting Virginia Wine Adventures, the wine touring company started by Darren’s sister Deidra. In addition to playing the critical designated driver role, Deidra’s company provides gourmet lunches and knowledgeable guides of the Virginia wineries that you visit on the tours. While I didn’t do as well promoting the company as my compatriot “Merlot” did (according to him), I definitely had fun and like to think I warmed up the crowd for Darren’s—I mean Merlot’s—pitch that followed. I couldn’t get over how excited the kids were to get a “High Four”—our giant white cartoon gloves only have four fingers—from an over-sized bunch of grapes. That was definitely the highlight of the experience for me, although Merlot and I doing the Do-Si-Do dance with our lovely wine bottle girlfriends was definitely up there… as was literally running several hundred yards to close down the gap that had formed between the floats as we got carried away high-fouring the crowd (try to imagine a man running up the street, balloon-sized grapes bouncing all over the place, and giant white cartoon hands flailing wildly—you can see why the “Fruit of the Loom” comment was made quite a bit!).

Here are some Notes to Jon (well actually to Deidra) for next year’s parade:

Keep a wine bottle with each grape bunch to cut down on the Fruit of the Loom confusion.

Make Virginia Wine Adventures labels to put on the wine bottle costumes.

Have one person giving out candy on each side of the street to make sure the candy lasts all the way to the end of the parade—the kids at the end looked like they were ready to riot after all the floats were out of candy by that point.

More giant white hands. Those were great and really engaged the crowd when we were over interacting with the kids.

Purple and green afro wigs for the grapes, and corresponding light-up sunglasses.

Try to get behind other floats with walkers. We were all behind driving floats which led to the huge gaps when we tried to walk and interact with the crowd.

Go early to Idle Park and bring chairs to relax and tailgate while waiting for the parade to get under way.

Now THAT's a Better Bag!

2008-10-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

They're back! My blog post about the demise of the Whole Foods retro bags looks like it was thankfully premature. Not only did Whole Foods return to my favorite style of reusable bags after nearly a year, they actually improved them! While retaining the look and feel of the original retro bags, the new Better Banana bag is made of 100% recycled materials. The cool new black background is also a welcome change from the perky Apple "Better" bag that caused me to launch into this subject in the first place. The new look got favorable comments from both the men and women in my focus group—by which I mean my friends who were over when I got home and found the bag that Jeffrey had brought me. While the color is different, the great graphic design is back, and the size of the bag (and most importantly, the straps) exactly match the previous retro bags. For me the long stretchy straps are the key because they stay firmly planted on my shoulder, and are long enough to turn the bag into a backpack—as I jokingly did while getting lined up for my Century bike ride, and then found I needed to do when I had a bag of clothes to bike across town last week.

See the new bag really would have matched my black and yellow bike kit for the ride! Alright, that's getting carried away and I'm even scaring myself now for noticing that, but thanks to Jeffrey for bringing me the new bag, and thanks to my favorite reusable bag designer "Anonymous" for designing these great bags (and posting comments about them here!), and to Whole Foods for continuing to provide the best line of reusable bags!

Retaining Joel

2008-09-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

I generally try to avoid business trips, but I figured heading to San Diego would give me a good chance to handicap the odds on when Joel will move back east. It's still a tough call. From the scenery and activity standpoint he may never be back. However, his foray with foster dog Fiona (who's not a bad dog... once she gets over her fear of water and relieving herself outdoors) made it clear just how hard it will be to replace Reagan. I think an over/under of a year is still about right.

Note to Jon:

The Jamba Juice at the Chula Vista Center has a $1 deal on a delicious hot Parmesan Pretzel with the purchase of a smoothie. Ever since my Whole Foods got rid of Jamba Juice I've been craving some and made up for that all week in San Diego.

If Joel asks if you can jump up on a retaining wall in his backyard (and mentions that he can)... don't try it, at least not in flip-flops. Ouch.

Side-view Century

2008-09-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Usually when a biker gets hit by a car, the biker takes more damage than the car. Thankfully, I was the rare exception to that in my head-on collision with a pick-up truck about 40 miles into my Century ride. I’d like to think I was just that determined to finish the 100 miles, but it probably had more to do with getting hit by the one part of the truck which would give way before my arm did—the side mirror.

Even before the collision it was an eventful morning. No more than five miles in I discovered the flaw in my plan to pre-hydrate for the race. I felt the call of nature and had another 22 miles until the sanctioned rest stop. The problem is this area is not populated enough to have a gas station or restaurant I could pop into, but populated enough to have fences and houses discouraging me from stopping just anywhere. By mile 13 I knew there was no way I was making it all the way to the rest stop and my standards for a bathroom had diminished considerably—from isolated woodland to anywhere without a fence. I was seriously considering Tour-de-France-style (i.e. while riding) but figured I wasn’t skilled enough to stay on the bike let alone avoid pissing off the neighbors (or on myself). So you can imagine my joy when I found a ten foot gap in the fence above a dry culvert with a few trees beyond. I practically leapt off my bike and ran to the first tree. I was safe. And then I looked up. Directly above my “urinal” was a wriggling mass of bees. But by now I was… committed. And vulnerable. As the first bee flew from the tree and landed on me I prayed that my yellow and black jersey would convince it that I was a friend. My disguise worked as the other bees left me alone. By the end I felt so comfortable with my new friends I decided to document them. What I hadn’t anticipated was… the camera flash. Needless to say I ran back to the bike even faster than I had run from it.

After that everything was perfect until the fateful curve I took at 11:00. As the truck and I approached the curve on Meyerstown Road I could see that he was turning farther and farther into my lane. At first I assumed he was just taking a tight turn and I hugged the right side of my lane. By now he was entirely in my lane and I assumed he was trying to scare me (I’ve heard bikers aren’t well loved in these parts). But when he didn’t veer off I was sure he was trying to run me down. Before I had a chance to abandon the road altogether and careen into the fence, there was a thunderous (to me anyway) smash as the side mirror exploded off of my arm and shattered on the road. Somehow I managed to keep a grip on my bike and coast to a stop. Apparently the driver hadn’t noticed me biking towards him, and it did seem from his reaction that he was oblivious rather than malicious. I was shaken up but otherwise uninjured and after a discussion with the driver I cruised to the next rest stop powered mostly by adrenaline. I’m sure the mirror-less driver and I were both considerably more vigilant after that.

Thankfully the second fifty miles started with seeing my family at the midway point and were mostly memorable for the bucolic scenery, the delicious food served at the rest stops, and my amazement that I felt as strong at mile 85 as I had at mile 45, despite having never ridden more than 65 miles. I even sprinted the last two miles in an effort to finish in under 6 hours and 30 minutes on the bike (I did succeed even though my bike computer kept counting an additional two seconds once I had stopped!). Despite the close calls described above it was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone and when combined with all the post-ride celebrations it was one of the best days of my life. Thank you to everyone who supported me in accomplishing this (specifically the Potomac Peddlers Touring Club for putting this Historic Back Roads Century on, Darren for inspiration, my family for support, Mimsi for many of these photos, and of course my post-ride masseuse—I am not even sore today!).

PPTC Historic Back Roads Century at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

Quarterbacks for sale

2008-09-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

Well the air conditioning was certainly better for this year's Fantasy Football auction, but with Doug earning his new team name, Too Cheap For WiFi, I actually had better internet access last year drafting from the Dakar airport. It's possible my brain wasn't acclimatized to the colder air because I kept drafting quarterbacks that I felt were undervalued... and ended up with seven of them on my roster (you can start two). Hey, I was burned a couple years back when Aaron Brooks and Jake Plummer—who both lost their jobs a few weeks into the season—were my starting QBs. I am already working the trades.

The auction ended in record time this year so I had Sunday evening free and decided to fully devote the day to Fantasy Football by downloading my friends' new documentary on the subject called 10 Yards. My college buddies Hunter and Josh are documentary filmmakers who you may remember from their excellent movie 10 MPH about riding a segway across the country. If you haven't seen either of these films you can download or stream them from OurStage.com. For the next couple of days 10 Yards is free to download and as a bonus, registering for OurStage through their link will provide $2 for Hunter and Josh to continue their film-making careers.

Last year's team—African Safari—had the best record in the regular season but managed to finish just out of the money in fourth place. We'll see if this year's team—likely to be named Seven QBs—can fare better:

Remaining Salary Cap: 3000
Total Salary Used: 997000
~~QB Carson Palmer~~ (Traded to Flea as part of the Lynch Package)
~~$90 000~~
QB Kurt Warner
$11 000
RB Joseph Addai
$320 000
~~RB Larry Johnson~~ (Traded to Flea as part of the Lynch Package)
~~$205 000~~
WR Andre Johnson
$180 000
WR Anquan Boldin
$56 000
~~TE Kellen Winslow~~ (Finally gave up on him and grabbed Tashard Choice)
~~$30 000~~
~~K Mason Crosby~~ (Dropped for Tony Scheffler's second signing on my team)
~~$1 000~~
~~Defense/Special Teams Seahawks~~ (Dropped for TE John Carlson after week 6)
~~$1 000~~
QB Matt Schaub
$16 000
~~QB David Garrard~~ (Dropped for cap space to fill my 4 empty roster spots)
~~$12 000~~
~~QB John Kitna~~ (Dropped for WR Devin Hester after week 6)
~~$9 000~~
~~QB Jake Delhomme~~ (Dropped for the Saints Defense... who play the Lions championship weekend)
~~$11 000~~
~~QB Matt Leinart~~ (Traded to Flea as part of the Lynch Package)
~~$1 000~~
WR Roddy White
$16 000
RB Ronnie Brown
$36 000
~~RB Kolby Smith~~ (Traded to Flea as part of the Lynch Package)
~~$1 000~~
RB Dominic Rhodes
$1 000

----- Added -----
Preseason
$300,000 RB Marshawn Lynch (Acquired for Palmer, LJ, Kolby Smith and Leinart)
Week 3
$6,000 TE Tony Scheffler (Free Agent, shocked he was available considering
his 2 TDs last week and the potent Denver passing game) (Dropped Week 5 after he sprouted crutches from a groin injury)
$3,000 RB Fred Jackson (Acquired as a Voodoo Doll, he is killing
Lynch's production by stealing receptions. Outscored Lynch 17 to 13 last week)
Week 4
$1,000 Def Tampa Bay (Seahawks on bye and TB has been better so far anyway,
although it's starting too look like I might rather have gotten my second choice of Eagles
Defense last week instead of Tony Scheffler)
$1,000 WR Bobby Engram (Lost out on all RBs better than Fred Jackson so I grabbed Engram,
and will be starting BOTH Bills RBs this weekend. Ouch.) (Dropped week 7 for Kevin Curtis)
Week 5
$6,000 RB Kevin Smith (Beat Swag's bid of 5k, I figured 6k is a good investment in a RB getting regular carries, even if it is for the Lions)
Week 6
~~$2,000 WR Devin Hester (Injured himself after amassing a whopping 4 points for me... which still was more than Engram who I would have started in his place)~~ (Dropped week 7 for David Akers)
~~$1,000 TE John Carlson (Insurance against Elephantitis Winslow--now supposedly a staph infection--thankfully I didn't need to start him)~~
~~$1,000 K David Akers (Bye week fill-in for Crosby, of course now I don't know which one to keep)~~ (Dropped to pick Crosby back up when I realized he was the #1 kicker in the league... and that the Eagles had completely fallen apart)
~~$3,000 WR Kevin Curtis~~ (With Winslow down I needed more TE options)
~~$1,000 TE Tony Scheffler (Back for his second stint)~~
$1,000 QB Matt Leinart (with Schaub out and Delhomme unproductive, I am getting nervous about having my season undone by a Warner injury... plus I felt my team name required more QBs)
~~$2,000 TE Kevin Boss (dropped Scheffler yet again in my quest to get production from the one position I hadn't thought would be a problem)~~ (Upgraded to sudden TE stud John Carlson)
$2,000 TE Tony Scheffler (third time's the charm?)
$2,000 TE John Carlson (Loves Seneca Wallace)
$32,000 RB Tashard Choice (Wish I'd started him against the Giants)
$2,000 D Saints (In case I can't resist their matchup against the winless Lions)

In honor of Josh and Hunters' film 10 yards, I'm going track my fantasy season on here this year. I'll try to give a status on Monday mornings and then update with the final result later in each week. I'll also be tracking how the Carson Palmer/Larry Johnson for Marshawn Lynch trade is looking each week...

"How many QBs do I have?" 2008 Results

Week 1: Monday morning: Things are looking good for a 1-0 start. I hold a 110-50 lead over "And Larry" (there's another team called Chuck). "And Larry" has both running backs in the early Monday Night game left to go (Adrian Peterson and Ryan Grant) but unless they go Willie Parker and Michael Turner (combined for over 350 yards and 5 TDs yesterday) on me, it shouldn't be an issue. He also has the Raiders defense while I have the Packers kicker Mason Crosby.
Trade update: Palmer scored a grand total of 2 points for Flea. LJ had 9. Despite resting most of the 4th quarter, Lynch had 18 for me by himself. Winner so far: Me!
How many QBs do I have?: 5 (Kitna, Warner, Delhomme, Schaub, Garrard), down from the 7 I drafted now that Palmer and Leinart are gone.
Result: Win 117-72. Puts me in third place after week 1.
Next up: A match-up against "Whack-ass", current league leader and owner of the suddenly formidable RB duo of Willie Parker and Michael Turner.

Week 2: Monday Morning: Currently beating former #1 "Whack-Ass" 166-101. The effort was solid all around (with every player chipping in at least ten points) but it was the 3 TDs from Warner to Boldin that have me looking at first or second place after week 2. Barring a 65-point outburst from Dallas kicker Nick Folk tonight, I'll be 2-0 and the only drama is whether Donovan McNabb scores 31 points (about 3 TDs and 300 yards passing) for "Chuck" to prevent me from taking first place. Some other notes from this week:

In week one, "Whack-Ass"es running backs (Turner and Parker) combined for 66 points. In week two (against me) they combined for 15. Thank you scheduling gods.
Hurricane Ike tore the roof off Reliant Stadium forcing the Texans and Ravens to have their bye week unexpectedly moved to this week. Hardly the most significant result of the storm but this actually helped me because two of my receivers shared a bye week... now if I can get my RB bye week conflicts resolved without a natural disaster.
At one point (before the Warner/Boldin show combined for 70 points) I thought my week hinged on a series of plays in the Indy/Minnesota game. "Whack-Ass" had Peyton and Wayne. Peyton threw a long pass to Anthony Gonzalez... who lateraled to Reggie Wayne who scored a TD (Equaling 2 TDs for "Whack-Ass"). But the play was challenged and Wayne was ruled down at the 1 yard line. After Peyton was stuffed several times they finally handed the ball to my RB Addai who scored... perhaps. That play was also challenged but the TD stood so it ended up being a 3 TD swing in my favor.

Trade update: Larry Johnson is out on passing downs and quoted as saying he doesn't see a future with the Chiefs. He scored 2 points yesterday. Palmer scored 1. Lynch scored 13 for me (and Kitna who was in for my empty Palmer spot scored 17). Wow does this trade look good for me through two weeks. Amazingly it may look even better for Flea who has since traded Palmer (and Jerry Porter and Todd Heap) for Trent Edwards, Santonio Holmes, Jason Witten. After yesterdays games this trade looks absurd.
How many QBs do I have?: Still 5, though one is likly to go this week as I clear some cap space.
Result: Win 168-115. 2-0 and in 1st place with a 7 point lead over "Chuck"
Next Up: A match-up between the top two teams in the league. I wish I'd played "Chuck" this week as I'd have beaten him 168-167. While the other half of this dynamic duo "And Larry" is busy making Flea competitive again (by taking Carson Palmer off his hands for the #1 TE, a WR2, and a potential QB upgrade in Trent Edwards), "Chuck" has a QB duo in Donovan McNabb and Jay Cutler who look every bit as imposing as my opponents RBs Turner and Parker looked coming into this week. It will be a tough match-up and most likely comes down to whether New Orleans can keep Brandon Marshall out of the endzone... gulp.

Week 3: Monday Morning: Chuck put things out of reach this week so the Monday night game didn't matter.
Trade Update: I don't have the exact scores but Lynch had his best game yet with 2TDs and Larry Johnson and Palmer were better than past weeks but neither did anything to indicate this wasn't a great trade for me. Unless things change I'll probably declare this a win and stop tracking it.
How Many QBs do I have?: Down to 4, and only Warner is looking solid. Kitna and Schaub may lose their jobs if they don't turn it around in the next couple of weeks and Delhomme hasn't played well yet.
Result: Loss 139-112. 2-1 now and in 4th place. Actually I am glad he won by quite a bit because the strangest result in the NFL this week was my backup RB Ronnie Brown scoring 5 TDs against the Pats... on my bench. Thankfully I would have lost even if I started Brown over Addai so it wasn't a coaching decision (of course if I started him over Kitna, or started him over Addai and Roddy White over Andre Johnson... oh well, at least it looks like Brown may be able to help by the end of the season)
Next Up: 5th place team "Hey Rookie!" who may be tough since I am down a second QB and RB and starting Delhomme and Fred Jackson in their places. Basically I need a down week from Drew Brees and Reggie Bush and I have a good chance (as long as Buffalo scores on the ground with either of my RBs and not through the air to his Lee Evans)

Week 4: Monday Morning: I was busy.
Trade Update: My first loss regarding this trade. Larry Johnson went off and outscored Lynch by himself (Carson Palmer was injured and didn't play). I don't feel too bad though because LJ was on Flea's bench.
How Many QBs Do I Have?: Same 4, and Schaub and Delhomme finally put in good performances.
Result: Win 137-114. 3-1 overall and back in third place. My free agent acquisition of the Tampa Defense and garbage time points from Warner and Boldin won this one for me. Now only Chuck remains undefeated (after beating up on his winless lover's team "And Larry").
Next Up: Flea! The head-to-head matchup with my trade partner. Here's hoping that Larry Johnson got his good game out of the way last week... and that the Cardinals don't give up 6 TDs to Flea's Trent Edwards the way they did to Brett Favre!

Week 5: Monday Morning: I've still got a chance, but I'd have to give the edge to Flea. I have a 15 point lead 118-103 (but I lose a tie) and he has WR Lance Moore going for the Saints tonight. In a points-per-reception league like ours, 15 points is a pretty average WR performance, but if they keep him out of the end zone and under 100 yards I can hold on. A win would put me in 2nd place due to the previously-undefeated Chuck's (embarrassing) loss to Whack-Ass. The only more embarrassing loss this week was Swag's 65 point effort against the formerly winless "And Larry".
Trade Update: In the head-to-head matchup, Lynch disappointed with only 9 points for me. However, Flea started Larry Johnson against me instead of Clinton Portis (and his 23 points). Larry Johnson rushed 7 times for 2 yards (and zero points). Here's what Rotoworld had to say about him today: "Hope you sold high on Larry Johnson! Has their ever been a bigger one game comedown that doesn't include an injury than 198 yards to two? ". Since the 9 point swap would mean I'd already lost to Flea, I will credit the trade with putting me in a position to win.
How many QBs do I have?: Four. But only 2 that finished games on Sunday. Warner seems to be my only reliable starter at the moment, although Delhomme had another solid effort.
Result: Win 118-111. Both the Redskins and I sit at 4-1 now. The trade (and Flea's decision to start Larry Johnson) proved critical in this victory. I'm in second place overall, 10 points behind Whack-Ass who knocked off Chuck... and did quite a bit of bragging about it (actually offering himself up as a paid Fantasy Football consultant). Still he did lose a game 168 to 115. Who was that to again?
Next Up: McCray (3-2) brings Rodgers and Romo to challenge me, but I'll finally be starting Wildcat Ronnie Brown so I'm feeling pretty good, as long as McGahee and Ryan Grant don't choose this week to break out of their season long slumps.

Week 6: Monday Morning: Trailing 145 to 153. Everything hinges on how big Kellen Winslow's balls are. Literally. My tight end was hospitalized from Thursday-Sunday with nuts the size of grapefruits. He's in my starting line-up and my only chance at getting those 8 points back, but he's got less than a 25% chance of playing. I suppose I should have some perspective and just be grateful that I don't have a job where people are blogging about the size of my testicles.
Result: No Winslow = No Win. I fell to 4-2 and into second place despite having the second highest score of the week. Of some consolation is that I have the highest powered offense in the league with 797 points for so I'll likely continue to win any tie-breakers.
Next Up: Doug's (1-5) team which should be an easy win on paper but he has the potential with Tomlinson and Eli Manning capable of big weeks at any time.

Week 7: Monday Morning: Leading 121-91. I'm taking solace in the Red Sox failed ALCS comeback with another fantasy win (assuming Denver kicker Matt Prater doesn't have the greatest fantasy game ever by a kicker and score 30 points against me).
Trade Update: Larry Johnson was suspended this week and apparently beat on another woman at a night club so he may well be completely done in KC. Palmer is also out with an arm injury which doesn't have a clear timetable. Lynch hasn't taken the next step up like I'd hoped but he's been consistent and the trade is looking critical to my success right now.
How many QBs do I have?: Three. Kitna was placed on IR last week (supposedly for his balky back but mainly because the winless Lions want to go in a new direction) so I am now down to a fairly standard number of QBs on my roster. I may need to petition for a new team name soon. At least Warner and Schaub both seem to have solidified themselves as every week starters for me.
Result: Win 119-92. Now 5-2 overall. Not sure where they subtracted my two points but glad I didn't need them. Thanks to a strong Monday night effort by "Chuck" and a ridiculously lucky tie by "Whack-Ass" I remain in 3rd place despite maintaining my lead in total points scored. Most importantly I have worked my way through all of my major byes and aside from potential issues my biggest problem going forward may be deciding who to bench between Kurt Warner, Matt Schaub, Andre Johnson, Anquan Boldin, and Roddy White (this week it looks like Boldin, until he shows he can take a hit again)
Next up: My rematch with Flea whose team has come on strong lately thanks to Kyle Orton, his trade for Jason Witten, and three top 5 RBs in Barber, Portis, and the surprising Matt Forte (who thankfully has a bye this week). Hopefully Marshawn Lynch uses this week to seek his revenge against his former owner who thought so little of him that he traded him for LJ and Palmer.

Week 8: Monday Morning: Won 153-104. Currently high-scorer for this week despite having Boldin on the bench. With "Chuck" and "Whack Ass" facing each other I am guaranteed to move into second place now (likely behind "Whack Ass"). And I swept the season series against Flea. Next week I have to bench one of Warner, Schaub, Andre Johnson, Boldin, or Roddy White. This week they all scored between 25-31 points.
How many QBs do I have?: Three, and likely to remain that way from here on out unless I make a trade.
Result: Win 153-104. 6-2 and in second place behind Whack-Ass. I've noticed my record keeps matching the Redskins.
Next up: A rematch with Chuck who handed me my first defeat in week three.

Week 9: Monday Morning: Won 126-99. It was a team effort with everyone going into double digits except for Schaub and Lynch who both left their games with injuries. My team also played solid defense, managing to hold Steven Jackson and Brandon Marshall to uncharacteristically bad weeks (combined 5 points). This win will put me in first place over Whack-Ass if Willie Parker scores less than 28 points tonight.
How many QBs do I have?: Three, although Schaub sprained his knee so technically only two healthy ones. Looks like I may start all three of my star WRs this week instead of two QBs.
Result: Win. 7-2 and in first place.

Week 10: Monday Morning: The bad news is that I am trailing Whack-Ass 148-88. The good news is that I have my two strongest players Warner and Boldin going tonight along with the Cardinals Defense. Still a 60 point deficit is tough to overcome.
How many QBs do I have?: Three, but at this point I am really only using Warner. It took seven selections but I may have selected the league MVP with one of them.
Result: WIN! 155-148. Now 8-2 and still in first place. Despite the Cardinals only scoring 3 TDs, my team gets credited with 5 since Warner hooked up with Boldin two more times. They combined for 61 points and the win for me. Of course it helps that Whack-Ass decided to leave Peyton Manning on his bench. Thanks for that. I've now swept the season series against Whack-Ass who earlier in the season was offering his consulting services to the league—when he only had one loss (against me).
Next Up: My matchup with Swag and his host of Redskins (Campbell, Moss, and Cooley). Warner has now moved into the fantasy points lead and will win me $25 if he finishes the regular season that way.

Week 11: Monday Morning: I'm trailing Swag 111-106... but I've still got Lynch and Winslow going tonight. If they can't combine for 5 points I don't deserve to win and will consider this a gift to Swag who will be recovering from a root canal... and if I win he probably won't even notice the additional pain.
Result: Win 148-111. 9-2 overall. Lynch had his best game of the season with 100+ yards rushing and 10(!) receptions. Winslow came back to earth after his breakout week 10 performance. Overall I'm in first place and will likely win any tie-breakers with over 120 total points over the next highest team (strangely that team is ranked 6th). Warner still leads the league in fantasy points and his biggest competition looks like it could actually be Boldin despite him missing two weeks.
Next Up: The less dynamic of the "Chuck" "And Larry" duo who I last played in week 1. A win there should clinch a playoff spot for me.

Week 12: Monday Morning: Leading 139-77 with Mason Crosby going tonight vs. Greg Jennings and Jeremy Shockey. Unless Jennings and Shockey are throwing TDs to each other (tough to do since they are on opposite teams) I think the lead is pretty safe. It was a solid effort across the board with only Kellen Winslow failing to produce. Warner only had 18 points but should maintain his league points lead.
How Many QBs do I have?: Back up to 4 with the re-addition of Leinart as Warner insurance. All 4 QBs on my roster are from the original 7 I drafted.
Result: Win 142-111. 10-2 overall and clinched a playoff spot.
Do I own the Fantasy MVP?: One of the things out league does is award bonus money for having the highest scoring player for a week, highest scoring team for a week, and highest scoring player for the season. I'm not looking too good for the first too but Kurt Warner is currently the leading point scorer for the season. He has a one point lead over Drew Brees and a slighter bigger lead over Philip Rivers. Over the next couple of weeks I'll track whether he holds on and wins the prize money for me.
Next up: "Too Cheap to Pay for the Keg" who lost last year (thus requiring him to buy the keg for this year's auction) and failed to fulfill his keg-buying duty. At 1-11 he looks set to have a chance to redeem himself next year... or to repeat his team name.

Week 13: Monday Morning: Leading 87-76. Clearly my team took advantage of the pressure being off and rested this week. This is my worst performance yet, somehow I may still wind up with a win thanks to "Too Cheap to pay for the Keg" clearly aiming to repeat as the last place team. All I have to do to hold on tonight is not have Andre Johnson (#11 overall) get outscored by Marcedes Lewis (#211 overall) by more than 10 points. It should be easy... of course this game shouldn't be this close either. A win will guarantee me first place in the regular season and the top seed in the playoffs (in which case I can't imagine how few points my team will score next week when there is even less to play for).
How Many QBs do I have?: Still 4, although I may be lobbying to become team "How many times I have I resigned Tony Scheffler?" (3 times so far).
Result: Win 107-79. 11-2 overall and clinched #1 seed in the playoffs which start week 15.
Do I own the Fantasy MVP?: So far. Despite a mediocre performance (for him) of 21 points, Warner gained on all three of his closest competitors: Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and (sadly) my own Anquan Boldin. It all comes down to this week, and basically it will be determined by whether Brees (who I happen to be facing head to head) outscores Warner by more than 4 points. Technically Warner could still lose if he is outscored by Aaron Rodgers by 17 points.
Next up: "Hey Rookie" who's fighting an uphill battle for a playoff spot. He needs to beat me and have "Whack Ass" lose. Frankly I am rooting for "Whack Ass" whose team currently looks far less imposing than "Hey Rookie's"

Week 14: Result: Ouch. Lost 134-94. While I still end the regular season #1, with the best record at 11-3 and the most total points at 1841, because "Whack-Ass" lost his way out of the playoffs entirely by going 0-3 the past few weeks and losing this week by 1 point... I now have a rematch against the team that just crushed me by 40 points. Well, here is my chance for immediate redemption at least. If this loss wasn't enough motivation, his QB Drew Brees also managed to edge out Kurt Warner for season MVP by 2 points and steal the $50 bonus that should have been mine. My team—RBs especially—was asleep this week and resulted in my team scoring the least of any team in the league, so we clearly have something to prove, and it starts by holding Drew Brees to under ten points tonight!

Playoff Semi-Finals: Friday Morning: We get an early update to this game with my opponent "Hey Rookie" starting league MVP (bitter!) Drew Brees and dangerous PPR RB Reggie Bush against me in the Thursday night matchup. Total damage 23 points. I'll take it! Perhaps more importantly it is looking like Addai will be out for Sunday's game, which might seem like bad news for me except that it means I can start Dominic Rhodes against the Detroit Lions (23 rushing TDs given up this season!), and not worry about split carries. Of course I'm not sure what it says about my team that here I am in the playoffs and I'm planning to bench 630K (Lynch and Addai) of my million dollar salary cap!
Monday Morning: It's looking like I picked the right week to lose to "Hey Rookie" last week (when it didn't count). This week I've got a 134-107 lead thanks to Rhodes' as-advertised performance against the Lions and Andre Johnson's timely 200+ yard outburst. This is good because otherwise I'd probably be kicking myself for starting Ronnie Brown's 8 points over far better performances from Tashard Choice, Kevin Smith, Marshawn Lynch, and even Marshawn Lynch's backup Fred Jackson! Now barring a half-dozen 50 yard field goals from Phil Dawson tonight or the Philly Defense outscoring Donovan McNabb by 30 points, things are set up for the finals next week between myself and #2 ranked Team Chuck.
Result: No miraculous kicking for Phil Dawson on Monday so I won 134-110 and am guaranteed to at least make my money back ($100 entry and $200 for 2nd place or $500 for first place). I face Chuck in the finals, who I split my season series with. I've got some lineup calls to make. Do I bench Warner or Boldin because of weather and the fact that Arizona has already clinched? Do I bench Andre Johnson against shutdown corner Nnamdi Asamougha? Tampa D or Saints D (against Detroit)? And which two RBs to pick from: Lynch, Addai, Rhodes, Tashard Choice, and K Smith (I am eliminating Ronnie Brown from consideration).

Playoff Finals: Ugh. I hit a season low (by nearly 20 points) of 77 points, while Chuck fell one short of the season high of 176 points. Normally, as coach I would step up and say that it starts with me, that I made the wrong calls, benched the wrong players, didn't make the right trade or free agent move... but I lost by nearly 100 points. If I'd have been able to start all 18 players on my roster I would have lost. I was smart enough to bench my team MVPs Kurt Warner and Anquan Boldin and to start waiver pickup Tashard Choice. But frankly none of that mattered. I'm pretty sure it was the largest margin of victory all season and likely in playoff history. I got crushed and there is nothing to do but collect the $100 that I did win as 2nd place and settle in for the Fantasy offseason. After two years in a row finishing in first place in the regular season and with the most points but then losing in the playoffs I am going to rally for bonus awards in those categories. Thanks to Hunter and Josh for the inspiration with their movie 10Yards, maybe I should go back and study it some more for next year, this was still my best finish yet in this league.

“And I would bike 100 miles”

2008-08-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Well that’s the plan anyway, and I am now officially registered for my first Century ride on September 21^st. My training has consisted of biking to work (20 miles round-trip) 2-3 times a week since May and then doing increasingly longer rides with the Potomac Pedalers each weekend for the past month. Below is a map I will update with my training rides and then finally the Century itself:

Century Training Rides at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

Even without riding it yet, the Century has been worth it simply because it got me biking to work (well the Century and Darren showing me the direct route). If you live close enough you should definitely try biking to work, and if you don’t live close enough… move! Humor me for a moment with my bike-to-work spiel:

No gas: In addition to the monetary and environmental savings, there’s just a rush you get arriving at work knowing that the trip was completely on your own power

No traffic: It takes me 10 minutes longer to bike each way than it does to drive, and few things uplift the soul more than biking across the 14^th St. bridge next to a line of stopped cars

Free exercise: Since it only takes 20 minutes longer to bike I get a 20 mile workout in 20 minutes

Time outdoors: Even with most of my commute in an urban setting, I still get a couple of miles along the Potomac with views of all the monuments

Free parking: Once I’ve biked to work, I can easily get to any events in the city (happy hours, Artomatic, Fringe, Jazz in the Sculpture Garden etc.) and have free rock star parking wherever I go

And the three most common arguments against biking debunked:

“I live too far”: You can always pick a parking lot that is close enough to bike from and drive your bike there and still get most of the benefits

“I’d get to work all sweaty”: If you have a shower at work then you are pretty much out of excuses, but even if you don’t, as long as you can keep a change of clothes at work, some deodorant, and a towel to wipe down with, sweat’s not a problem

“What if it rains?”: If it’s raining on the way to work, wear rain gear, don’t bike that day, or think of it as extra sweat you wipe down before changing at work. If you get caught in the rain on the way home… well it’s the way home, who cares? If you do care then you can take your bike on metro (outside of rush hour) or put it on the front of a bus, or worst case leave it locked up at work and taxi home

Most importantly though, wear a helmet. As you can see from our photo from the Safety is Sexy blog, “You’d look hotter in a helmet” anyway.

Notes to Jon:

Hunter’s Head Tavern in Upperville, VA is a great post-ride or date spot with covered outdoor seating and delicious (and reasonably priced) organic meals with ingredients from the owner’s farm.

There’s a dog on Box Factory Rd near Berryville that loves to chase bikes. It’s unnerving but, at least in our experience yesterday, he was more interested in chasing than attacking. I believe the Century goes along this route so hopefully he won’t be in an attacking mood on the 21^st (or at least all the faster riders will have tired him out for me!)

Of BBQs, Bags and Boyfriends

2008-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

This is how Natalie showed up to my most recent BBQ. If you read the Better Bag post, or are otherwise familiar with my ridiculous obsession with collecting the Whole Foods retro bags, you will appreciate what a perfect and unexpected gift this was. This bag is out of print and was only available in Ohio and yet in her infinite resourcefulness (I can neither confirm nor deny whether she simply emailed Whole Foods!) Natalie managed to get me a brand new Buckeyes bag.

All I got her was a boyfriend: the bag was presented to me on the same porch where Natalie met her boyfriend Matt at our BBQ just over a year ago. I like to think of it as a magical matchmaking porch since I just returned from Ohio where our good friends Jamie and Kevin—who met on that same porch four years ago—were married. And thanks to Natalie, I was able to spend the whole weekend celebrating the wedding rather than stalking Ohio Whole Foods stores trying to trade for a Buckeyes bag :-) Thank you Natalie!

I'll soon update this with a slideshow of photos from that BBQ and the wedding

Darren Decrees

2008-08-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

The future of America is at stake. While I jokingly endorse Colbert/Stewart ’08 and seriously endorse Obama/(preferably Richardson or Warner), I suppose it is only fair to let you all know that in the end it won’t matter because the Revolution is coming. See most of you probably think of Darren as my fun-(and-bike)-loving friend (who quite often takes humorous liberties with the English language). But what you don’t realize is that for some years now he has been developing the decrees that he will issue once he becomes our benevolent dictator. After his recent ~~dream~~ vision that Castro was his great uncle, we should assume that the time for the reign of Darren is drawing nigh. While his rise to power is inevitable, in the spirit of the campaign season and as a gesture of his benevolence he is presenting his platform:

Decree #1: There shall be a new Department of Servings. Restaurant portions and supermarket serving sizes will be reconciled to a reasonable moderate size. In addition, the size of a serving shall be printed on menus alongside the prices.

Decree #2: Women’s pants’ sizes shall henceforth be designated with length, hip, and waist measurements.

Decree #3: No church shall sponsor a sports team (Darren doesn’t believe God should take any one team’s side in sporting competitions).

Decree #4: Mondays shall now be a day off of work. However, unlike weekends (which Darren believes should be reserved exclusively for leisure activities like biking), Monday is a day to do chores at home, or volunteer. You may choose to go to work instead but you must pay a fine which is donated to charity. The “chores at home” option will be enforced by random home inspections on Tuesdays, violators will be shot—or fined the same amount as those who went to work.

Decree #5: As evidence of Darren’s benevolent nature and responsiveness to his subjects, he has accepted the petition put forth by Sara requesting a new definition for a condiment: A condiment shall be a food topping that can be squeezable. (This has the added benefit of eliminating salt and other spices from consideration, which Darren declares are not condiments).

Decree #6: Tom Collins shall be the official summertime porch drink of the kingdom. Supermarkets shall be required to stock Tom Collins Mix (so that it isn’t so rare that Darren must purchase three bottles when he suddenly finds it on a trip to Assateague after weeks of fruitless searching…)

Decree #7: All Olympic broadcasts shall be required to display the title of the current event at all times (so that when watching on the Royal Tivo, there is no confusion about whether Darren is watching an event final or a preliminary race that can be safely viewed at two times speed)

Decree #8: The Facebook "Friend" Decree: If you see a Facebook friend in public you are required to go over and say hello, otherwise they must be stricken from your friends' list. Let this be your guide when deciding whether to friend or accept a friend request from someone.

Decree #9: No private company shall be permitted to make a profit operating a toll road or a traffic violation camera. All revenue from traffic cameras will go towards education or road improvements in the county where the camera is located.

Decree #10: The sweeping smart growth mandates will be unveiled at the proper time, but for now let it be known that all culs-de-sac and pipe stems are forbidden. (The building in Ballston which is blocking our HDTV reception is also in serious jeopardy).

Decree #11: All Olympic medals shall be made entirely of the metal they represent. (Chairman Darren does not approve of the "white jade" medals being pawned off on our gold medalists. Gold is valuable and we have the trade deficit to think about!)

Stay tuned for updates on what our future holds as Darren documents his campaign platform, rides a socialist revolution into power, enjoys the Divine Right of Kings, and rules as our benevolent dictator…

Don't Push Buttons on Turtles' Bellies

2008-07-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

Next year could be interesting. So far I’ve about doubled my attendance at Fringe shows each year of the festival, from three to five to ten. The madness will have to end though as I’m on pace to see all hundred or so shows by 2011… unless the festival keeps growing—not unlike Telly the Turtle in Prototype 373-G. Telly began as a tiny turtle transported in a leftover Lo Mein box… and ended the play as a stage-filling Tortuga bent on world domination. That’s basically what my Fringe experience was like this year…

It started out all fun and innocent with the funtastic I Like Nuts! (the musical) and Love in the Time of GPS in Ball & Chain. Then somewhere between Through the Looking Glass and Power House: The Disco Energy Dance Along Show things got a little strange—just like when the protagonist in Prototype 373-G, Belly, finds a button on Telly the turtle’s tummy (you know the button that unleashes the evil—and hilarious—space turtle Shiggles, and gives him mind-control powers over Belly... who then becomes an interesting “Tube of Flesh” to pave the way for total-tortuga-domination, by readying her apartment for her insemination at the ~~hands~~ tail (I think) of Shiggles; He likes to munch on leafy greens during coitus, so in preparation Belly’s apartment is soon filled with plants, giant bowls of salad etc.… and an ever expanding Telly the turtle who Shiggles will eventually inhabit.) So yeah, it’s sort of like by going to Power House I unknowingly pushed a button that triggered me to become obsessed with Fringe shows and they took over my life this weekend (though hopefully without all of the insemination and turtle-takeover parallels). Well, something possessed me to see six more shows from Friday to Sunday.

Suddenly everything about my life related to Fringe, thanks to the next show I saw: Tales of Doomed Love. Tales and the next show Children of Medea each had links to the story of Medea, as did Argonautika from a few months ago. Tales also retold part of the Oresteia which I saw recently by Constellation Theatre… with the actress from Tales. Finally, Tales had the story of Tristan and Isolde which I was relieved to have no connection to… until it was the topic of a lecture I heard on Saturday! Tales definitely wins the award for most connections, but I wasn’t in love with the show. I found it most compelling when both actors were interacting to tell a story… unfortunately that only happened in one of the five tales.

The connections weren’t finished after Tales though, they kept going with Children of Medea which was the best (if not fringiest) piece that I have ever seen at Fringe. Among those connections:

Recurring scenes set in Wonderland (just like Sunday’s Through the Looking Glass), including a memorable scene where Alice meets the March Hare…a character I played in High School
I saw my favorite Fringe shows alone since Darren had opted out of both Nuts and Children of Medea… and would do so again the next day with another favorite, Gilgamesh (no protest by me since I’d picked up the trend and knew it would be good!)
Darren and I always check our programs for artists whose credits include our favorite TV show, The Wire. Since it was filmed in Baltimore nearly every show we see includes someone (although no one we ever recognize). Medea did not. However, in the audience for Medea was none other than Delaney Williams who plays McNaulty’s boss Sergeant Jay in all five seasons of The Wire. Now I knew Darren would be pissed he hadn’t stayed!

Friday’s final show Lebensraum was good, and the fact I don’t have more to say about it is not a reflection on Lebensraum but rather just how amazing four other shows I saw this weekend were. Children of Medea was the first of the four and was the clear winner for me… until I saw the next three. Now it’s all muddled again. Gilgamesh for example is exactly what I go to the Fringe festival hoping to see: An ensemble show like my high school theatre teacher Mr. Maiden used to take to the one-act competitions. I loved the rhythms the ensemble pounded out during the fight sequence, the interactions between the actors and the projected shadows, and learning about lacunae (gaps in a manuscript such as the epic of Gilgamesh… or detail about Lebensraum and Power House in this blog post).

Sunday broke the curse and I closed the Fringe out with two more fantastic shows… this time with Darren in attendance! We saw back-to-back shows at the Source Theatre: Prototype 373-G and Born Normal. In addition to having the best costumes of any Fringe show (and just about any other show I can think of) Prototype also included a reference to some of my favorite books growing up: The Choose Your Own Adventure series. The characters had a game of taking turns reading the adventures to each other and swapping when one’s choice led to death… unless they died on the very first decision which would trigger the controversial “Too Young To Die” rule!

If you decide to read more about Prototype 373-G, turn to page 1.
If you decide to read more about Born Normal, turn to the next page.

If I thought I was all laughed out after Prototype 373-G (and I should have been) I was quite wrong. There were still some connections to be revealed as well such as:

Both shows featured new kinds (well names at least) of cancer: Ass cancer in Prototype and Wing cancer in Born Normal.
Sitting down in Prototype 373-G I joked with Darren about whether there were any Wire cast members in THAT audience (he was, as expected, bitter to have missed Delany Williams on Friday). I turned around jokingly to scan the audience… and of course, Mr. Williams was once again in attendance!
Not only that but between shows we went to St. Ex where we met a chatty drunk woman who was there with her gay husband and his gay friends (no typos in there, just a unique woman). And while she was not at all interested in theatre (making snoring noises each time we discussed shows with a Fringe volunteer who we also met at the bar) her friends did seem to know Delaney Williams who came in for drinks as well!
The connections also led to a new friendship with Fringe volunteer Elizabeth at the bar who: gave us our tickets at Prototype, had been in the audience of Children of Medea with me, also had tickets to Born Normal, and is moving just down the street in September.

Oh yeah, I was talking about Born Normal; In which most of the characters are not born normal:

There’s the mother with wings
The older sister who can heal animals—provided they a) died of natural causes and b) are under 18 pounds, leading to such lines as “I’ve got a stack of parakeets in the corner I’ve been meaning to get to”
Younger brother Martin who’s born able to talk and therefore able to answer his mother’s question about his gender: “While I lack the manual dexterity to fully investigate the matter, I believe I am a boy”
And Sunshine… whose name might be a bit too “on the nose” as the mother would say since it is just a burning glow within swaddling clothes

And then there is daughter Jane who actually is born normal. It’s hard to say if I was more impressed with the cast’s acting which was, along with Medea’s Sue Jin Song and Prototype’s Hugh Nees, the most impressive of the festival (well my 10 show sampling of the festival), or the script which was written by Stephen Spotswood who is an MFA candidate at Catholic University. I will definitely be on the lookout for more work by all of them, although with 12 shows in 10 days (including Not the Messiah! at Wolf Trap and my sister Mimsi's terrific turn as Frog in Frog and Toad) I am officially going to take a break from theatre… for at least a week.

Notes to Jon:

If I hope to get to 20 shows next year I will need them to add shows back on Monday and Tuesday nights, which they took away this year (my biggest disappointment with the festival)

Supposedly my Fringe button is good for discounts at local eateries all year long and not just all festival long (I’ll let you know when I test that)

I walked up and purchased tickets to all three shows on Friday (despite rave reviews for Children of Medea) and Gilgamesh on Saturday night, but found many times that I wished I could have changed the tickets that I had already allocated from my 10-ticket passes. So my lesson for next year is to risk the sell outs and allocate the tickets from the passes on the day of the show (and frankly after I’ve read some reviews).

If I’m ever pulled on stage at the end of Power House, refuse to dance until they try “Contingency Plan 10” on me (aka seducing the dancer into continuing to produce energy). Other than "Contingency Plan 10", the highlight of the show was the Dharma-initiative-esque video in the beginning explaining how they now breed humans who can dance longer so as to generate energy… from the seismic energy produced by the feet, thermodynamic energy from body heat, and hydroelectric energy from collecting sweat (lovely)

Drama is harder to pull off than comedy (probably because it requires the audience to be fully invested) but Berlin in Ball & Chain and Children of Medea nailed it

Great comedy is still a hell of a lot of fun to go see and I Like Nuts, Love in the Time of GPS in Ball & Chain, Prototype 373-G, and Born Normal were all exceptional comedies

I’ll never think of the March Hare the same again after Children of Medea. My portrayal in high school was G Rated. Whereas Sue Jin Song’s NC-17 March Hare sung “You put the right ear in, you pull the right ear out… you put both ears in” etc. Quite the naughty hare.

Medea also contained other favorite scenes about expectations on children, where “Alice” has a nightmare in Wonderland about the SAT and is running across a giant scantron trying not to be sucked into the reader, and how parents named their children Yale, Princeton, and Harvard… and their fourth kid Bob. Sue Jin Song was at her strongest when switching into the character of Julie Ann, who was her family’s “Bob”.

I wish Darren got to see Gilgamesh, because it was like the theatre we did in high school, but also because it included the story of Shhh… or how The Flood was sent because humans talked so loud they woke the gods.
Most of the embedded photos are from the Fringe's official Photo blog and clicking on them will link to the photo blog for that play.

Go see any show with costumes done by the Crafts Action League. It’s tough for costumes to steal a show as good as Prototype 373-G but they nearly did: from the green dresses Belly wore, to the green underwear everyone wore, to the pull off shirt-pants-and-tie worn over identical shirt, pants, and tie, to the leafy green costumes of the ensemble in one scene, and most importantly to the turtle costumes of Shiggles and the ever expanding Telly—who at the very end got to be nearly as big as this blog entry… somebody get the water

You are not "A Better Bag"!

2008-07-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, on the way to see Lighting to Unite, we stopped by Whole Foods to pick up dinner. I didn’t have a grocery bag with me, and decided to purchase the latest reusable bag I had been seeing around: the Oysters bag… but they didn’t have it. They only had a slippery and obnoxiously-colored Apple bag with the pronouncement “A Better Bag” on the side.

Better than what? Definitely not better than the perfectly designed retro bags that Whole Foods has been selling for several years. Those retro bags are huge and they stretch, they have the perfect handle length and are durable (my Sack-o-Potatoes bag has already served me well for a couple of years), and the designs are fun, yet neutral enough that anyone could be happy to carry one around. Not so with this new plasticky sack. The “Better” bag doesn’t stretch and more importantly neither do the handles so they aren’t the right length for carrying on your shoulder. But even if the unpleasant feel and improper proportions were fixed, this bag would clearly never work. Look at it. The bag is way too perky. I can not walk around carrying that.

Hopefully this was just a one-off bag created to satisfy the niche market of overly-perky people. Surely the retro bags aren’t being replaced by this “Better” bag… then I remembered this is the same company that closed down my beloved Jamba Juice bar inside their store. They really could be that stupid. I turned to the internet to find out; convinced there would be hordes of outraged shoppers like myself. I’ve never felt more alone. Even people who are looking for someone to eat can find likeminded nuts on the internet, but no one was talking about the potential demise of the polyfabric Whole Foods bag. In fact, no one seemed to have talked much about them at all. I couldn’t even find out which ones were out there. People had talked about an “I am not a plastic bag” designer bag that had caused riots and was selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, but really all that could be found about the retro bags was that the Reusable Bag Lady sells them on eBay.

So I am apparently the only person on the planet who cares about this, but I do have a blog so I decided to have some fun. My goal is to catalog all of the bags in the retro series… which means that I must first collect all of the bags in the series. A quick inventory indicated that I had Potatoes, Clementines, Lemons, Flour, and Grapes (which had even served as my extra luggage to bring back gifts from Russia!). I knew about Coffee, Honey, Apples and Oysters. Oysters was easy since it was still for sale at some Whole Foods (thus giving me hope that the series would continue).

Next was Apples (the cool Anniversary retro Apples, not the wannabe Apples on the “Better” bag) which turned out to be the most enjoyable of all. I mentioned my fun little obsession to Laura at a performance of Prairie Home Companion and she joined in whole-heartedly (see how angry she is about the impostor Apple "Better" bag!). We started noticing just how many of the different bags were represented there on the picnicker-packed lawn at Wolf Trap. Towards the end of the show we stood and sang the Star-spangled Banner… and as we did a Honey walked by! Resisting the unpatriotic urge to rush after it, we waited until the song finished… but couldn’t find Honey anymore. Then suddenly Laura was up and running after an Apples she had just spotted. A minute later she came back to grab the Oysters we had brought to carry our picnic. Apples was willing to trade for Oysters! Laura really came though and as much as I enjoyed getting Apples, I think the family we traded with were just as excited to be helping in the quest to collect them all. We talked to them for quite a bit afterwards; about the bag quest, about their recent trip to Italy, and we found out that they received news during the show about the newest addition to their extended family (and even managed to get Garrison Keiller to announce it during intermission).

Turns out we were right to continue singing the National Anthem as I was doubly-covered on Honey when the very next day my sister (who was now also in on the hunt) informed me that she had a Honey she could give me, and at virtually the same moment I received a text from Laura that she had managed to get Honey off of a customer at Starbucks. Only Coffee remained.

That same night at Jeff’s block party, Mattalie showed up carrying a Coffee that belonged to Jeff. Since Jeff had forgotten he’d left it with them in the first place, he eventually decided I should have it to complete the collection. Finally, Sara came through with a refresh for my Clementines which had sat out in the weather for the past two years as the official Bocce ball carrier. The collection was complete.

Thanks to all of you who played along with me in trying to document these great bags. That basically wraps up the standard collection which I have documented below but I’ve since learned about an insulated Pickles bag, a Banana-Split cooler, and the limited-edition Ohio-only Buckeyes bag! While I could “Buy it Now” for about $20 from the Reusable Bag Lady on eBay that seems like cheating so I will instead rely on my friends or try to hunt down the elusive Buckeye on my own when I attend a wedding in Ohio in mid-August. Update: And of course I chose wisely!

Sadly, my hopes that the “Better” bag was a mistake that Whole Foods would abandon in favor of continuing the superior retro series were shattered at Jazz in the Sculpture Garden last Friday. I saw the new I-used-to-be-a-plastic-bottle “Better” bag. Thankfully the colors are not as obnoxious, but I still feel much cooler carrying around the retro bags (what do you mean they all look like a purse on my shoulder anyway… and that I’ve never looked more foolish than when I brought one to carry my lunch on a climbing trip—before learning I’d need to have both hands free to hike to the base of the cliffs—hey, I looked stupid alright, but the stretchy straps do allow it to be worn as a backpack! Try that with the “Better” bag).

Why am I so vehemently against the “Better” bag? Well, mainly because it is fun. But also because I really did find the old bags more versatile and fashion-acceptable and don’t care much about the supposed improvements of the “Better” bag:

It is washable: Frankly I’ve never felt inclined to wash the old bags, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they held up just fine too.

It is made from recycled bottles (well 80%): Great, no wonder it feels like a plastic bottle—which is not a pleasant feeling for a bag. For the number of times I reuse these bags, it’s more important how well they work than how they are made.

But for all my mock hatred of the “Better” bags they are much better than disposable plastic bags (which Whole Foods has stopped using) and that really is the most important point. If you don’t know why check out the plastic soup that’s twice the size of the continental U.S. Thanks to my friend at Ocean Conservancy (do I have the updated name right Sarah :-) ) for pointing that out.

Below are the fruits (and other assorted foods) of our labor. Ideally I’d like to include the order and time period that each of the bags was released, so if any readers have that information please pass it along. All I know is that Potatoes was first, I think Clementines was second, Grapes was next to last and Oysters was last.

Viva la Whole Foods retro bags!

#1 Potatoes (Released 2005)

#2 Flour (Released 2005)

#3 Apples (Released 2005)
Bag provided by Laura

#4 Coffee (Released 2005)
Bag provided by Jeffrey

#5 Lemons (Released 2006)

#6 Pickles (Insulated Lunch Bag-smaller) (Released 2006)
Bag provided by Mimsi

#7 Clementines (Released 2006)
Bag provided by Sara

#8 Honey (Released 2007)
Bag provided by Laura and Mimsi

Still looking for #9, the Banana Split cooler and limited edition place mats!

#10 Grapes (Released 2007)

#11 Buckeye (Limited Edition for Columbus, Ohio only) (Released 2007)
Bag provided by Natalie!

#12 Trick or Treat Bag (smaller) (Released 2007)
Bag provided by Mimsi

#13 Oysters (Released 2007)

#14 Earth Banana (Released October 2008)
Bag provided by Jeffrey

Virile as a particularly attractive mountain lion

2008-07-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

It’s generally a good thing when you leave a musical and find yourself singing the closing number as you exit the theatre. It can be a bit disconcerting though when that theatre is near Dupont Circle and the chorus of the song is “I like nuts! I like nuts in my mouth”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not the attention I am looking for.

So what had me singing in the streets? I like Nuts! (the musical). The first of three Capital Fringe Festival shows I checked out this weekend. Nuts was my favorite and only a notch below last year’s favorite Cautionary Tales For Adults and the Many Adventures of Trixie Tickles. For me, Nuts was basically Trixie Tickles without the clever props and my audience crush on the lead actresses. Featuring a quest for Nutty Knowledge to secure a job in a nut factory, the cast included two angry squirrels, a pirate, a robot, and a vegan vampire—and the show was just as delightfully ridiculous as it sounds. From a staging perspective, it was one of the few shows I’ve seen that was in the round, so between laughs I was fascinated to see how they set up the blocking so the entire audience could enjoy the show (exit aisles in each corner are key). While I can’t say I gained any enlightenment (other than some useful trivia regarding legumes, drupes and seeds) I was laughing hysterically for most of the hour. That’s well worth the price of admission and probably a much healthier way to spend an hour than at Anger Therapy—which the squirrels want to start so they can share their hatred with the world.

Saturday night was Journeymen Threater’s Ball & Chain at The Universe, which as the house manager stated “is warm” and he was glad to see we had all received our “fans” (the programs) at the door (The Universe is the basement of a church without AC … and highs on Saturday topped 100°). The show was actually seven mini-shows which had been written about the theme of love and marriage, and while not all seven lived up to the caliber of the hilarious introduction by the house manager (technically I believe I recall he was Marketing Director Matt Dunphy) a couple of them more than made up for the rest. Michael Harris’ Love in the Time of GPS highlighted the humorous side of love. Illustrating what might happen if your GPS was in love with you and got jealous of the new girl—[Proceed straight for 100 yards, and drive over that pulsating red mass in the road… that is my heart]. Or if you threatened to toss the jealous GPS (which has been bitterly insulting you) right out the window and she needs to recant she might say—[You are virile as a particularly attractive mountain lion]. Admittedly I have a much higher standard for enjoying a dramatic piece than a comic one but as I failed to get drawn into some of the more dramatic mini-plays in Ball & Chain, I wondered if that standard was unrealistic… until the final piece, Emily Steel’s Berlin, restored my faith. This poignant piece juxtaposes a girl’s obsession with Berlin with the divisions—and hope for reunification—of her divorced parents. It was a simple but powerful connection. Playwrights outnumbered actors in Ball & Chain 7 to 2 and I fear that ratio may increase if they don’t get a new costume for Krista Cowan (there is a legitimate danger that The Universe will melt her in that sweater). While I still yearn for a piece to rival Journeymen’s 2006 Fringe entry Bartleby, those two sections made Ball & Chain worth enduring the heat (plus, unlike the actors, we were given fans!)

Omniumgatherum’s Through the Looking Glass rounded out the weekend. I had mixed opinions about this show. On the one hand it was an ensemble piece where the actors create the set pieces, which is the type of theatre that I particularly enjoy (and don’t get to see much of outside of Fringe). In addition I have fond memories of bounding around stage in a six-foot rabbit suit as the March Hare for our high school production of Alice. Unfortunately the show was rather short and not as whimsical as I had hoped it would be (most likely because my Alice impressions are colored by Disney more than Lewis Caroll), but mainly I found myself frustrated by the blocking which left me craning to see a scene in the center aisle (while the stage behind lay empty) or staring at the actors backs. Nonetheless, there were plenty of interesting moments to sooth my initial terror when I realized from the program that everyone in the production seemed associated with University of Maryland Theatre. While I am sure they have a great program, my only association with their theatre is the 2006 Fringe show, The Play About the Hurricane, that Darren and I use as our baseline of unpleasant theatre-going experiences. This was no Hurricane and had plenty of fun moments including:

Representing Alice’s reflection by pushing a mask into an elastic silver cloth creating an effect reminiscent of the water creature from Abyss.

Two Wonderland creatures do battle by contorting themselves around each other without touching until one loses their balance and falls over

Having the cast create a door where two members represent the frame, one the door in the middle, and another sticking an arm though to serve as a doorknob which Alice turns

An exchange along these lines between Alice and talking flowers in a garden:

Alice: How come you talk and other flowers don’t?
Flowers: Feel down there
Alice (feeling the dirt): It’s hard
Flowers: Yes. Most flower beds are soft… so the flowers are asleep

I’ve learned some more lessons about how to better enjoy the Fringe festival but I’ll save them for my conclusions after next weekend’s round of shows.

60-Finger Salute

2008-07-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to 60-Finger Sanchez (Mary's volleyball team that I've been subbing for) for not only making it to the playoffs for the first time in their storied franchise history but for advancing all the way to the championship game (what happened after that is sort of irrelevant). The victorious season was not without consequences though as both Mary and Aaron now share matching fractured ankles :-( I believe Sanchez plans to revel in this season's success and regroup for another run at the championship in the fall. In the mean time we've got plenty of work to do to get Casual Sets into the playoffs in our Wednesday league on the Mall. While I won't claim any credit for being the reason that Sanchez got to the championship game this season, I also won't take any blame for the discovery yesterday that my former softball team (Raising Arizona) is now suddenly in first place in the Congressional League... the year after I stopped playing!

Enjoy a few of Mary and Sara's photos from the Pat Powers clinic and Sanchez's run at the title (note how I move so fast that the camera can't even keep up with me :-p) Ole!

Team Extreme at Assateague

2008-07-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

We’ve returned from the annual camping trip to Assateague National Seashore and I can report that the bathrooms are getting better and the mosquitoes are getting worse. Everything else is as good as ever. The biggest change this year turned out to be that we arranged meals with our carpools rather than as one massive group of 30 (or one year 80) hungry campers. That had to be easier on trip organizers Jamie and Krista, and it was perfect for the Saturday bike riders because we missed breakfast and lunch last year anyway. It did mean, at least in our case, that you spent more time with your carpool than the full group. Hence as you can tell from the photos it was the weekend of Jon, Sara and Darren… not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Highlights included spending Friday night at Ocean City which Darren and I had last visited in 1994. We found Hooper’s Crab House which has a $28 all-you-can-eat crab/shrimp/chicken dinner. This was the exact same place we had eaten 14 years ago… except that from a newspaper clipping on the wall we learned that it had completely burned down and been rebuilt in that time!

On Saturday a group of us set out on various bike rides around the lovely town of Berlin (which has a billboard advertising that it was the town where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere filmed Runaway Bride). I did the same 30 mile loop as last year (though I felt considerably faster) but I definitely have some serious riding to do to get ready for my first Century in September. Gulp. I am sure I can ride the 100 miles though if it is followed by a meal at Saturday’s lunch spot Rayne’s Reef (aka The Falcon Diner in Runaway Bride). You can’t beat a post-ride burger and milkshake at this establishment in the heart of Berlin. Too bad my century finishes hundreds of miles away from there…

Saturday afternoon it was back to the beach for some sun, sand, and small-court volleyball. We’d forgotten to pack the volleyball net that Joel recently left with us but another group had set one up and Sara, Darren and I decided to crash their court. It made for a memorable afternoon. The net belonged to a group of hilarious Marines from Philly who dubbed themselves “Team Extreme”. Team Extreme sported torso-covering tattoos and invented force-of-nature names for their serves. While attempting some sort of arm/chest roll they would warn us to “Beware the Hurricane!” (sometimes they called the exact same move “The Tornado”). Other times they pantomimed drizzling lava on the ball. Of course we had secret-weapon Sara who combined her sizzling softball serve with a blue bikini that proved far more distracting to the Marines than any of their natural disaster antics did to us. Although we won all but the first game it was more about having fun than playing volleyball and we definitely accomplished that. After all you have to understand that the court was about one-quarter regulation size and it was necessary to engage in a lengthy discussion with Team Extreme to reach agreement that a team would only be allowed three hits per side…

Notes to Jon:

Wear Aqua socks when playing sand volleyball. I survived Team Extreme’s serves but thought I broke my big toe by slamming it into Darren’s heel. I guess I could also try to improve my “periphial” vision.
Cambridge is the town that has the shopping center we always stop at with a Food Lion, Liquor store, and Taco Bell/KFC.
The waitress at Hooper's made my weekend by delivering a basket of what she called condiments, which included (drumroll please) BUTTER! You of course have to understand that Darren, Sara and I have had ongoing debates over the past month regarding the question “Is butter a condiment?”. Resolved that butter can be a condiment!
The joys of condimentary butter aside, I prefer crab dipped in vinegar.
Don’t be suckered in by the heaping plate of corn, hush puppies, chicken and ribs that is first delivered to the table, they are just trying to fill you up so you won’t eat as many of the delicious shrimp and crabs!
The port-o-potty and wooden shower stalls at the Oceanside group sites have been replaced with concrete buildings and real doors. Sure there’s no electricity or hot water but it feels much classier.
Jeffrey and his magical packing powers once again defeated us and despite our own personal best time for departing Assateague on Sunday morning (8:36 am), their car rolled out before ours. I blame my busted foot for forcing me to limp my luggage between the tent and the car…

Darrenism-a-Day 2008

2008-07-14T13:12:00.001-07:00

Darrenisms abound. Perhaps it is because I’ve fallen behind on my blog, or maybe Darren is making them deliberately in an attempt to reclaim the #1 ranking (thanks to a link in a DC art forum, Darrenisms have fallen behind my Artomatic post), but I think the reason for the recent Darrenism surge is simple: I’ve hired a new assistant to track Darrenisms. Darren thinks of Sara as his girlfriend but really that is her secondary role, her primary responsibility is to inform me of any new Darrenisms that slip out. I believe she has caught the last nine of them, so clearly we have the right woman for the job(s).

As a result of this new arrangement (and my tardiness in posting as Sara reported them) we can now celebrate this week with the inaugural Darrenism-a-Day campaign! These Darrenisms run the gamut from the original word-mash Darrenism (e.g. Astrocity) to celebrity Darrenisms, mixed idiom Darrenisms, and we’ll even be introducing slang Darrenisms.

To start things off we’ll show that Darren doesn’t limit his Darrenisms to the English language and will happily skewer some Hawai’ian words as well… each day’s Darrenism can be found at the bottom of the Darrenism archive (to ensure that it regains the lead from the Artomatic post!)

Two-bing

2008-07-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Two speeding tickets, two rainstorms, and two hours longer than usual on the river... and we had a great time. Like they say, even bad tubing is still pretty good... or is that something else.

Notes to Jon:

Bring a mini-squeegee for the lens on Darren's waterproof (but clearly not fog proof) camera.
Watch out for the Rappahannock County "toll booth" on Rt. 211 between Warrenton and Sperryville. It's generally hidden behind a hill just inside the county line. 66% of our caravan paid a visit. At least Mary and I have the same court date if we decide to make a day out of it. Happy Fourth of July officer...
When sunglasses get sacrificed to the river (as they have on at least four of our trips), immediately look at the banks to get a bearing of where they were dropped. With your face close to the river you can see the bottom so if you note the general area you'll be able to get them back. I didn't do that this time and hence my once flawless record of sunglasses recovery has now dropped to 2-2. I did however recover two pairs of sunglasses that previous tubers had dropped, so overall we have dropped 4 pairs and recovered 4 pairs. Which leads me to...
Sunglasses that have been in the river for a little while really smell like fish... and it's entirely possible that disturbing their sacrifices angers the river gods enough for them to call down their rainstorm wrath.
It took the rainstorm about 10 seconds to move across the river, so we had plenty of time after hearing the screams of the first victims on the far bank to watch the rain splashes make their way inexorably toward us.
Don't tie all 11 tubes together to float down the river unless you don't care that it will take six hours (at normal water height).
This year the trip was from mile marker 16 to 19. A little way after marker 17 is a rope swing and "rapids". The river was slowest between marker 17 and 18, and fairly fast (maybe 45 minutes) between 18 and 19.
We met at 7:30 and were on the road with the coolers arranged and packed with ice shortly after 8, but due to an extra pickup at the Vienna metro our car wasn't back on 66 until 8:50... and we managed to pull into Shenandoah River Outfitters at 10:31 (despite about a 5 minute stop at the "toll booth"). On the way home we left about 6 and got back to Arlington at 8:10, which gave us just enough time to shower and bike down to Iwo Jima to see the fireworks. Of course we had a much more luxurious view this year thanks to Kristin's parents roof deck (thank you!)

Ba'rack Climbing in Franklin, WV

2008-06-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

I missed out on Jeff's Obama fundraiser but it was worth it for a perfect day of climbing out in Franklin, WV. My two month layoff definitely showed as I had to "take" on Belly of the Whale and realized I wasn't ready to lead Jump Start but I made it up both and I felt great flashing Anchors Away. Most importantly my finger and foot injuries weren't a problem, so I am all clear to get out and do some more climbing!

Hail Deer

2008-06-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

Depending on whether it takes deer longer to eat dinner than it takes our family, we saw between 48 and 66 deer tonight. You see, having lost the past two deer counting games by guessing way too low (20), I went into this game with the highest deer count of the family (45). Not coincidentally, this year the car (with me at the helm) took an unorthodox route that went past Big Meadows (dining spot of a large number of deer) both on the way to dinner and on the way home. We saw 18 deer in the meadow area on the way to dinner and well over 20 on the way home. It's not entirely clear how many of those seen on the way home were just the same slow eaters we saw on the way in, hence the controversy between 48 and 66 deer. Either way my 45 deer guess was the closest...

EXCEPT that in a completely unprecedented move, my father (whose day we were belatedly celebrating) used his celebratory powers to award Mimsi a second guess (as a purported bonus for having spotted the first deer) and so at dinner she revised her initial guess of 20 up to the winning guess of 50. I am filing a protest.

The family is also filing a protest against Aramark which is attempting to ruin this family tradition by drastically reducing the quality of our dinner (I'll save the full review for the notes). Although I haven't figured out how yet, I also believe Aramark is responsible for the intense hail storm that forced us to pull off the Drive for a few minutes. Their plan was foiled however when the weather cleared up by the most important point of the trip when we stop to say hello to our grandparents at Cresent Rock overlook. And as you can see from the count, the hail certainly didn't scare the deer away...

Notes to Jon:

Deer Game Results

Mimsi (20)

Mom (33)

Dad (41) ... and 2 bears

Jon (45)

Mimsi #2(!) (50)*

Actual (48 to 66) ... and zero bears (sorry Dad).

Even more controversy on the deer count when Mom and Mimsi tried to include deers 67 and 68 which we saw just outside the entrance for Skyline Drive. As stated last year, deer outside the park do not count. For clarity that statement needs to be revised to "Deer outside of Skyline Drive do not count" since technically the park doesn't end until a sign at the bottom of the mountain, even though the game (in my mind at least) has always ended once we pass the Ranger station.

For the second year in a row we have been noticeably unimpressed with the food at Big Meadows. They have taken the menu and price upscale, while the serving size and (most importantly) taste has gone downhill. Worst of all they are starting to run out of things, including the most important dish of all: their Blackberry Ice Cream Pie. They were also out of the gumbo I ordered. The Brunswick Stew was a small $20 crock which consisted mostly of a large dry chicken leg. The Sheppard's Pie had an unusual flavor, but not necessarily in a good way. My Ratatouille was decent and the New Deal Turkey which my mom always orders was smaller and with less stuffing than usual (but at least it was still on the menu). They reminded me that I hated the Creme Brule there, so I tried the Bread Pudding which was ok, and probably a bigger hit than the Blackberry Ice Cream sundaes. Next trip we'll try Skyland for dinner. On the bright side, we got a seat by the window for the first time :-)

Artomatic final floors! ...a week too late

2008-06-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure nobody was waiting on my review before checking out floors 4-6 at Artomatic, but if you were I apologize because well, the show ended last week. These floors had plenty of great individual work but I wasn't captivated by an entire exhibit the way I was by Chris Peloso and Tracey Lee on my first trip or Heather Bartlett and Patrick Wilson on my second. But there was still plenty of art that interested me:

John Pack had a whole series of mouth-watering food creations made entirely of sea debris. The ice cream and toppings were various corals and the cone was a seashell. Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette put together my favorite installation in 1,584 Bottles of Beer on the Wall (I've had my share). It was a testament to her grandfather "Sarge" who gave up drinking cold turkey at age 60 (saying "I've had my share") and who left her two coffee cans full of nails which were used to nail 1,584 not-necessarily-beer bottle caps to the wall (several were from my favorite IBC root beer)

I previously joked that BRASH was putting a poem up for every artist. I believe I have to revoke the joke. As far as I could tell, by my final trip on closing weekend BRASH had left a poem for all 1,000+ artists. Amazing. Congratulations. One of my favorites was her interpretation of Sabrina Cabada's Outside Looking In. I believe it was a fairly different interpretation than what Sabrina intended, but it made the piece for me. BRASH also had a great poem for another of my favorite pieces called Roadmap to Spring by Susan W. Holland. The trunk and branches of the tree are all made by exposing the bottom layer of the painting to reveal a map of the DC area.

For the most part I don't tend to be a fan of abstract art. Kay Layne and Pilar Jimenez's work was an exception for me. I think I liked Kay's work because the titles gave me a concept I could grasp onto. The subject of her painting was a simple red square (or should I say Krasnay a Ploshad! yukyukyuk). In the case of Corralled there were some circles surrounding the red square and as you can see on the left, here the red square is Waiting in Line. I have no idea what appealed to me about Pilar's work but it did. Maybe the background reminded me of a photo I had just accidentally taken of the concrete floor? Nope I have no idea.

While I wasn't sucked in for quite as long as I had been upstairs, two artists did have a number of different works that appealed to me. JD Yezierski had a series of photographs of nudes "painted" with projected images. I love the three-dimensionality that this gave to Mona's eyes. Other humorous ones included Ass on Ass with a projection of Rummy, and Jerry Fal-well endowed which I imagine you can also picture. Finally Nancy Daly had a broad range of fun pieces: from her commentary on men and women with strategically placed hearts, to a rolling office chair made entirely of post-its, and from a "Support our oops" photo of a burned out neon sign, to a blue bower bed with clever story which asks the question "Are good things a good enough replacement for good genes?"

Looking back, the highlight of the show for me was Tracey Lee's Refused: Return to Sender which used several pieces to tell the heartbreaking story of her relationship with her alcoholic parents. What I may remember most from this Artomatic experience though was getting so much feedback from the artists to my first blog post, and especially finding out Joseph Merchlinsky had made my favorite piece from 2004. Now if I can just figure out who made the Converse sneaker color study from the year before...

While I begin the wait until the next Artomatic and Darren and I continue to debate our mantle options I'll be keeping my eyes open for a glance like Cristin's...

The 500 Club at Fenway South

2008-06-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

We’ve got it easy. Jump on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, grab free parking (or worst case $2), buy cheap food from the vendors in front of Pickles Pub, and scalp prime seats to the game for well less than face value. That’s the routine for most of the nine games that the Sox play here at Fenway South each season. Really I feel bad for the fans in Boston, the families we meet at each game who have realized they can fly the whole family down for a weekend of Sox games in Charm City for less than it would cost them to stay at home and watch. That’s the great thing about Fenway South, it’s not just geographically-challenged fans like Jeffrey and me making the O’s feel like they have 9 extra road games a year, the seats around us are usually filled with extended families of vacationing New Englanders. Ironically, I’m pretty sure we get to see more Sox games than they do each year.

I got an early start on my Sox watching this year with the trip in April to Yankee Stadium. That was quite an experience. I was in section 39 of the bleachers out in right field. It’s the home of the “Bleacher Creatures” and many of the Yankee fans there wore “Section 39” t-shirts. The “Roll Call” originates in this section, where the fans chant each player’s name during the top of the first inning until they get some acknowledgment from that player and move on to the next. The few Sox fans (at our game exactly 4 in the whole section) are generally welcomed with a collective chant of “Ass-Hole… Ass-Hole” as we walk to our seats (or in any way move around or draw attention to ourselves). When YMCA plays on the sound system, they encircle a Sox fan and sing “Why are you gay?” Nonetheless, I proudly wore my Sox cap the entire time.

That’s not as bold as it seems because of one important development in recent years: the bleachers are now alcohol-free. The Yankee fans I was with told me stories of the good old days when a Sox fan would be ruthlessly confronted by the chanting fans and often kicked out of the bleachers by security “for their own safety”. The situation has mellowed and I never felt any genuine hostility. That’s probably because I was with several Yankees fans, cheered for the Sox but not excessively loudly, and because two vocal Sox fans a few rows in front of me did an excellent job of drawing all the wrath in their direction. At one point the fan behind me tapped me on my back and asked “How is it that everyone is leaving you alone?” Even the Ass-Hole chant I got en route to my seat died half-heartedly after a couple of rounds. Even still I was a bit nervous as Joel took a photo of me after the game in front of the Yankees logo… giving a big thumbs down. With some drunken Yanks fans around I’d likely have been taking a rather different route out of (well over) the bleachers. It probably helped my cause that the Damn Yankees had crushed my Sox that night and everyone (but me) was feeling festive… But scoreboard aside it was a fun trip to Yankee Stadium and I thank Joel for organizing it. I especially enjoyed learning about the boltbus service which I rode home from Penn Station NYC to Metro Center D.C. for $15 (it could have been $1 if I booked far enough in advance)

I expected a better result for the Sox on May 13^th at the Fenway South season opener. After all Jeffrey and I had never witnessed a Sox defeat there since our tradition began a couple of years ago. I should have known something was amiss when we had to pay face value for our tickets ($50/$50 for Sec. 34 Row JJ Seat 5 - Home Plate) and for once there actually seemed to be a few more Orioles fans than Red Sox fans (quite literally, we usually outnumber them considerably). Beckett got shelled, Manny stayed stuck on 498 HRs, and—other than it marking our first defeat—the most memorable thing about the game was that someone had followed through on the idea of a Fenway South poster that Jeffrey and I had often discussed but never executed.

Two weeks later the Sox were back in town on Friday May 30^th. I made the mistake of assuming that $55 tickets would have to be good seats and snagged them for $20 a piece ($55/$20 Sec. 43 Row J Seat 8 - Press Box). They weren’t horrible (behind home plate next to the press boxes) but they were considerably farther away than we were used to. I did determine that it is easier to scalp tickets for the weekend games for some reason as there were far more sellers in the designated scalping area than there had been for our Tuesday night game on the 13^th. Our seats may have been worse but the results were much better. It took 13 innings but the Sox finally broke it open and Papelbon locked down the 5-2 win… probably because by that time we had moved all the way down to the second row behind the plate. After managing only a single HR in the past two weeks, Manny was still stuck on #499 and stayed that way through this game.

We nearly skipped Saturday’s game. The forecast was for storms and Sarah was having a dinner party. We went anyway. We might not have forgiven ourselves if we didn’t. The evening started well, with second row seats just past third base for $30 ($32/$30 Sec. 62 Row BBB Seat 8 - 3rd Base), and it kept getting better. No rain ever came, the Sox won again, and everything was completely overshadowed by Manny finally crushing HR #500 in front of as noisy a crowd as he’d have found at Fenway (North). After taking photos of nearly every pitch Manny had seen for the past two days, the one pitch he finally got a hold of turned out to be the one that my focally-challenged camera managed to blur. But we were there for the memorable moment, probably the most historic sports moment Jeffrey or I have witnessed (though I did see Big Mac’s final four homers in his record-setting 1998 campaign—that might have won out had Barry not broken* that record only a few years later). Fans were so excited we were literally clamoring for the ball girl to toss us the piece of trash that Manny had dropped on his way into the dugout (we assumed it was a sunflower seed bag or somesuch—the zoom on my camera revealed it was only a crushed muddy cup that had gotten stuck to his cleat)

At this moment the Sox hold the best record in the AL East with a 7 game lead over the last place Os and Yankees. Hopefully that’s how things will look at Fenway South when the Sox return to finish the season series in the middle of August. Until then, Go Sox!

Geotag This!

2008-06-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

I am officially not a fan of the current state of geotagging tools/websites. It would be hard to suck all of the fun out of the phenomenal hike/swim that is the White Oak Canyon/Cedar Run hike but Flickr and EveryTrail nearly accomplished it. It seems like a fun little idea to give you a map as the backdrop to the slideshow (and I basically went out and purchased a GPS in order to do just that) but the tools just aren't ready yet. Here is a short list of the problems I have now had with this process:

Picasa can't read the geotags in my photos edited by WWMX Location Stamper (Solution: Batch edit the version number with an Exif editor or switch editors)
Picasa photo maps can't be embedded in a blog (Solution: Use EveryTrail.com which creates the embedded code)
EveryTrail simply fails to read half of the photos uploaded from my PC and can't link to my Picasa photos (Solution: Use Flickr for my photos since EveryTrail can link to them)
Flickr limits me to 100MB/Month... and the photos from a single hike are 125MB (Solution: Change the default preferences in Flickr Uploadr to resize your photos to 1600—or smaller—and realize that it will still tell you that you are about to upload 125MB)
Flickr uploads photos and throws away the geotag data (Solution: Change the default setting in your Flickr account profile that disables importing of location data!)
Flickr Uploadr puts photos in reverse chronological order and only lets you reorder one at a time... and the photos don't go into the set specified (Solution: Use the Organizr in the web interface to place the photos in sets and choose Arrange to reverse their current order)
When Everytrail imports from Flickr... it only succeeds in importing half of the photos! (Solution: Import the other half manually from the computer a couple photos at a time)
Once they are all uploaded and you are about to manually readd the captions to the ones that didn't import from Flickr... realize that the photos are out of order and EveryTrail doesn't give you a mechanism to reorder them (Solution: Get pissed, write a seething blog entry about your frustration, post the slideshow in its traditional mapless form, get some sleep and try to remember how much fun the hike was instead of how frustrating embedding a geotagged slideshow into a blog currently is)

Oh yeah. Did I mention we had a fun hike returning to White Oak Canyon and Cedar Run yesterday? Enjoy the slideshow :-)

Note to Jon:

Stop at the Sheetz on the right-hand side of 211 in Warrenton instead of the Wawa on 29 in Gainesville (gas was 6 cents cheaper than Wawas morning price... which went up an additional 8 cents while we were out hiking!)
Plastic bags full of water apparently keep houseflies away. We saw several bags hung around Burgers 'n' Things and admittedly didn't see a lot of flies hanging around
Order the Dreamsicle Milkshake for the post-hike treat
Hike stats:
Length: 8.1 miles
Duration: 5 hours, 56 minutes, 9 seconds
Average Speed: 1.4 mph
Vertical up: 4193.4 ft
Vertical down: 4218.6 ft

Artomatic 2008: Round 2

2008-06-07T18:02:00.000-07:00

Well it took two trips but I explored the next three floors of Artomatic (7-9). I was on my own for these visits which meant I could go at my own pace... which I discovered is really slow. I was taking nearly an hour and a half per floor. Hence the second trip. I am primarily chocking that pace up to getting absorbed into two exhibits: Heather Bartlett's Skinny Jeans exhibit space and Patrick Wilson's wall of diary entries and paintings.

Like Tracey Lee's Return to Sender, discussed previously, there wasn't a great deal of visual appeal to Heather's skinny jeans, but they provided a springboard for a lengthy mental conversation about self-image. On the jeans are a variety of weight-loss advertisements, barbie images, and most poignantly, posts from girls in online forums setting absurdly unhealthy weight goals for themselves and describing how they are staaaarving but aren't going to eat any dinner and are looking for support. It was truly frightening, and even more disturbing because I felt partly responsible. I'm attracted to skinny women. Perhaps it's driven by the same societal paradigm of beauty that has twisted these women's perception of themselves, but the fact remains that I don't find myself physically attracted to larger (or sadly even normal sized) women, and I'm not sure there is a way for me to change that. It was a sobering journey through the exhibit, which was greatly enhanced by thoughts and responses posted on the walls by viewers. While these issues are hardly new, it is rare that I stand in one area quietly reading and contemplating the issue as Heather's exhibit compelled me to do. The thought I left with was to be healthy and to take pride in yourself, not your body, and don't try to change for people like, well ...me.

Now to dispel the impression that I only like artwork without visual appeal or with plenty of prose, I present Eli Halpin's hugging octopus which caught my eye without reading the title or artist's statement. Of course I did like it more when I read about the inspiration: scientists' discovery that octopi can hug sharks to death. Deadly hugs. Maybe Shel Silverstein was wrong and we would rather play at tug-o-war than hug-o-war.

Ironically, from a visual standpoint my most memorable piece of the show so far is probably one of the most traditional. Joe Granski II's portrait of Cristin, Candlelight is mesmerizing and we stared at each other for an unhealthily long time (Cristin and I, not Joe and I). The poem Glance left by BRASH was the perfect complement for me. You can read it alongside the painting if you click on the photo.

BRASH is another of my favorite parts about Artomatic. BRASH is a mysterious poet who, for at least the last couple of shows, has been secretly leaving poetic additions as responses to various artists' works. This year "she" (gender based purely on a rumor I heard last year) seems to have somehow found the time to leave a poem for every single artist! Perhaps not quite but she seems much more prolific than at past shows and it was quite often that I would go 4 to 5 booths in a row which each had their own poem. Like the artwork, some of BRASH's poems worked for me better than others. Cristin, Candellight and Glance were a perfect pairing as was this How I Know It's Reality response to Deborah L. Brooks' wonderfully whimsical In Dreams All Things Are Possible.

One advantage to exploring Artomatic on my own is that after Darren visited these same floors we could compare notes (and photos) and see which works struck us both without any influence from each other. Two examples of this from these floors were Brandon Wu's I Don't Want to Go! which perfectly captured how I (and it) felt about them ripping The Awakening out of Hain's Point and shipping it off to some place I'll never visit in Springfield. Boo to the Parks Service for not doing whatever it took (spending my tax money presumably) to keep it there! The other piece was Patrick Wilson's FOVULATION, which was part of the second exhibit space (after Heather Bartlett's) that monopolized my time.

Darren and I were both drawn to Patrick Wilson's work. In addition, Darren and I both assumed they were by a female artist (which in hindsight seems odd since the subjects are pretty much exclusively partially-clothed women in science-fiction settings). The wall where Patrick's work is exhibited is completely filled. Surrounding the half-dozen or so paintings are countless pages of his journal entries, which are usually accompanied by a colored sketch of a potential piece, some of which are shown alongside the final work they evolved into. It was amazing to see how many sketches there were and fascinating to read the journal entries. Some of the entries which stood out to me were his confession of feeling ashamed/embarassed as his artwork became more sexually explicit, detailing his struggles with alcoholism, and the thought-provoking line "so many people tried to love me out of alcoholism but it didn't work. At first." Even more than most, Patrick put himself out there (including daily calorie counts!) for the world (well the DC area) to see, and I certainly appreciated it.

Without too much commentary I'll share some of my other favorites from these floors:

Charles Hansen's gorgeous photo collages which brought back memories of Jazz at the Sculpture Garden (which is back!) and hiking Old Rag

Tinaseamonster's random thoughts laser etched on wood, which I later found throughout the Clark St. Playhouse... except they didn't have my favorite one about maracas

Darren Smith's Cross and Ladder photo series commenting on symbols of faith vs. logic
Jack Whitsitt proving that a computer scientist (like me!) can be an artist as he wrote a Python script to build a mosaic of his face
Jose Piedra had several paintings that I loved but I got a good laugh out of the Washington Condiment which—whatever its relevance in his painting—just reminded me of the metal "condom"—as my friends and I referred to it—that the monument actually wore several years ago during repairs
Van Nyugen's Peace series delighted my eye...
While Solomon T. Wondimu's Protest tricked it. I initially saw it from so close that it looked exactly like the abstract swirls on a kitchen countertop I remember growing up and it wasn't until I looked back from across the room that I saw the faces
Darren also managed to trick me when he showed me his photo of Masai Conversation by Mitra M. Lore on his camera's LCD screen

I'll be back with the final three floors hopefully before the show ends next weekend (I'll get to the floors it's just a matter of whether I'll get a chance to write them up). Thanks again to the artists who found themselves referenced here and took the time to let me know they appreciated the mention.

Memorial Day Hike 2008: Much Less Water

2008-06-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Last year we found the rock slide on Cedar Run Trail which is still my favorite hike in the D.C. area. I'd have been happy to return this Memorial Day but I've been accused of being too rigid in my traditions, plus one of our merry band of hikers doesn't like water... or it might have something to do with the fact that we already had plans to hike Cedar Run again later this month :-)

Instead we selected a hike through Little Bennett Regional Park in Clarksburg, MD for Memorial Day. The hike was an easy 9.1 loop around the perimeter of the park, which made for pleasant hiking through mostly shaded trails but not so much for spectacular views.

Notes to Jon:

If you don't print out a trail map at home you can use a photo of the park signs as a digital map

We finally remembered to look up local ice cream spots before the hike and ended up at the quite satisfactory Country Cone Cafe in Germantown, MD

Country Cone Cafe was perfect for this hike because the lactose intolerant among us could eat their frozen yogurt
Looking for tether ball? Country Cone Cafe has you covered there as well

While no one got any we certainly saw plenty of Poison Ivy (and spent quite a while debating what it looked like—are the leaves always shiny? Find out the way we did...)
Hike times: Total time about 7 hours. Hike and lunch 4 hours 45 minutes. Left Ballston just after 10am. At trailhead by 10:45. Finished hiking about 3:30. Ice cream at 4:00 and home by 5:00
The tool I use to geotag my photos—WWMX Location Stamper—doesn't play well with Picasa and requires the additional step of running something like Exiftool to adjust the version numbers
I investigated embedding a geotagged slideshow in the post but haven't found a good option yet (I'd like something more interactive than the interesting solution Rocky found). For now I'll link to the new capability in Picasa and Google Maps which is fairly good and just lacks the ability to show a GPS track and easily embed the result in a blog

Refused: Return to Artomatic

2008-05-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

My favorite art show has returned. For the first time, Artomatic is back after only one year (I’d previously seen it in 2002, 2004 and 2007). The schedule has been somewhat erratic since Artomatic is free and takes up a lot of space (1000+ artists tend to do that). Lots of free space is a tough order though, so it’s usually in a building being renovated or demolished (an old Hechinger’s, EPA building, DC Children’s Museum, Patent Trademark Offices). This year it’s the brand new Capital Plaza I… before the interior floors are drywalled and decorated. Capital Plaza I is located just a block from the New York Avenue metro and an easy bike ride from my office so while it can’t quite compare to last year’s Crystal City location, there’s certainly nothing to complain about.

I’ve been accused of enjoying traditions (I do) and with this being my fourth show and last year’s lessons fresh in my mind (and blog) I feel like I am close to perfecting my system for experiencing Artomatic. Here are the key components:

Bike to the show – Not so critical but part of the tradition and a good way to balance art and athletics (plus, unlike last year, they have bona fide bike parking)

Go on a weeknight – Sadly it’s closed Monday and Tuesday, so Wednesday is the golden time at Artomatic. It’s quiet and the artists aren’t usually around… which means Darren and I can discuss the work candidly (and it’s easier for me to bring you some photos)

Plan multiple trips – This is the key. The show lasts four weeks and I plan to go once a week.

Plan short trips – After a couple of hours I start to lose focus which makes it hard to…

Pay attention to the details – Some of my favorite work didn’t mean anything to me until I read a title or the artists statement

The Flight of the Conchords show (deservedly) won out over Opening Night at Artomatic this year so the first trip was the following Wednesday and starting from the top we hit floors 12 thru 10. Here’s what I found there…

I was a little concerned that after only one year much of the artwork would be the same work I saw last year (and likely the pieces that weren’t good enough to have been sold yet!). So far that hasn’t been the case. I saw several artists I recognized and all of their artwork was new to me this year. For example Emily Greene Liddle returned with a new entry in her food-on-a-hook temptation series (incidentally she’s also the most searched for artist on my blog… or at least the most searched for artist whose seekers end up at my blog!). This one is titled (or not): Untitled (Jalapeno). I don’t know what to make of that. It’s not really untitled because of the (Jalapeno)

But that does segue into a rant that Darren could really handle better than I. When Darren becomes our benevolent dictator (more on that in a future post) I expect a “Darren Decree” along the lines of “All artwork shall have a title”. Since I haven’t created art since high school I certainly won’t tell artists what to do but I will point out that quite often the title makes the piece for me. Here are two examples. Sanjay Suchak’s photo of the pigeons by the river took on a completely different tone after I read the title. I’d say that tone was ominous except that they are pigeons so whimsical is probably a better description of how I felt about… Battle of the Potomac. Likewise I took another look at Alexandra Zealand’s geometric relief when the title Addiction, Part 3 clued me in to the fact that it was composed entirely of used coffee filters (it’s much more obvious what they are from the shot I took than it was straight on).

Other pieces I liked because they triggered particular memories for me. Joseph Merchlinsky’s possibly political “Kill” actually didn’t do anything for me, but it did remind me of the much subtler work I mentioned last year as my favorite piece from the 2004 show where the artist (who I'm happy to have now found out was also Joseph Merchlinsky!) used “I Voted” images in Red, White, and Blue and Green, Black, and Red to create the vague silhouette of the infamous hooded Abu Ghirab prisoner. And taking me even farther back in time was Tim Grant’s Hording Beanie Babies. For some inexplicable reason I am about to admit that a decade ago my girlfriend at the time and I actually enjoyed driving around and collecting them. In fact if I remember correctly (and I hope I don’t) that Stegosaurus and Inky the Octopus were actually fairly valuable. To this day I believe there is a trash bag full of them somewhere in my parent’s basement… and now if Tim’s work sells for $900 I may have just found out how they can actually have some value again! In case I still had you fooled into thinking I had good taste, I imagine that façade has been completely demolished now so let’s move on…

Yes, let’s shift the focus to Darren… who apparently had a dream about Fidel Castro shortly before this trip to Artomatic. Who dreams about Fidel? Actually not only was Fidel in the dream… he was Darren’s great uncle! Anyway he was telling us the story of his dream just before we came across some of his comrades. He’s even got the right color scheme going, almost like he planned it… hmmm perhaps he really is plotting a socialist revolution to become our benevolent dictator!

One goal of the trip was to find some artwork that we could put up over our mantle which has now been blank (well except for a wreath around Christmas) for over four years (and we’ll consequently become the only straight men to ever purchase artwork for their mantle). We’ll keep looking through the rest of the floors but we definitely found a strong candidate. Tiny Ghosts produces a series of works that consist of two framed photos with a handwritten story beneath them. As you can see, the text usually contains an unexpected twist beneath the second photo. Tiny Ghosts has a coffee table book of the first 100 pieces which we’ll buy and probably select three of our favorites ($60 a piece framed) to hang over the mantle.

Sometimes even a good title isn’t enough for unsophisticated art viewers like myself, and that’s why I love the Artist’s Statements at Artomatic. For example, I learned that Brian Lusher had taken a mass produced bust of Jesus (shown unpainted at the top) and shown the wide range of expressions that can be painted on. He also had an interesting write-up on how his intention wasn’t to blasphemously (to some) portray Jesus as a drag queen, but instead to show the idea that Jesus is in everyone (including drag queens). Without the artist statement and blank bust I doubt I would have even realized what was beneath the makeup. Chris Combs (or as I remember him, Chris Cones) had a series of seemingly subjectless photographs where even titles didn’t help me, until I read his artist statement which begins with him saying how he keeps seeing cones everywhere. I went back and looked over his photos again and it all clicked. Each photo contained an orange traffic cone somewhere and the title referred to the cone, as seen in my favorite one Lurking.

And in the case of Tracy Lee’s Refused: Return to Sender the art basically was the artist’s statement. Darren and I both nearly skipped right past the exhibit that seemed to contain nothing but pages of slides hung from the wall and a small collage of family photos. There wasn’t much there visually to be called art and I can’t really think of any other art venues that would have shown the “work”, but that is the beauty of the unjuried nature of Artomatic. As Darren and I walked away Sara had taken the time to read the artist’s statement, and she called us back to read it. I nearly missed my favorite piece of the day, and also the most thought provoking. Read the statement, then look at the collage titled 80 Proof Childhood (doesn’t everyone drink beer for breakfast?) and the return letter which gave the exhibit its name. Powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing Tracy.

Finally, the peep-o-ramas returned for the second time and there are plenty of fun ones. My favorite this year (though it makes me sad) is ‘The Apeepening’ Leaves Hain’s Point. And that’s what I’ve got so far, but I will soon Return to Artomatic…

Nothing to do with Russia...

2008-05-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

...and not much to read either. Just enjoy the photos from Gerry Hofstetter's "Lighting to Unite" at on the National Cathedral. The DCist ran some less egocentric photos including ones of the front of the cathedral.

Note to Jon:

My friends hate it when (or at least how) I take photographs.

Russia Reflections

2008-05-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

I realize that not everyone (anyone?) has the time or interest to read through the world's wordiest travelogues. Others (or at least Joel) get confused reading them out of order because the last entry is at the top. Just for you I'm providing a couple top ten lists and adjusting the post order so you don't injure your scrolling fingers.

Top 10 Least Favorite Things about the trip to Russia:
10) You can't enter or exit the Kremlin on the Red Square side
9) Despite numerous attempts I never found a Russian Asterix comic to add to my collection
8) Separate stairways for each floor of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory
7) Having to buy your playbill at ballet and theatre performances
6) Nobody will actually take credit cards in Moscow (regardless of what the signs and window stickers might imply)
5) Lack of english in most museums and tours (granted we have even less Russian in ours)
4) 3 o'clock canal tours that leave at 2:55
3) Frustrating visa process. Unless you are on a tour or in one hotel the whole time, spend the $30 for a support letter from waytorussia.net
2) April renovations!
1) Having a broken metro escalator be a life-threatening experience

Top 10 Favorite Things about the trip to Russia:
10) Learning Russian replaces Hs with Gs. As in Gamlet, MakDonald's Gamburger, Gary Potter and Alkogolic.
9) Soups! Horcha and Borsch
8) Continuing the odd travel tradition of finding someone holding a chicken (in this case a Nesting Doll)
7) Free student admission to the Hermitage
6) Learning about Love Locks on the Patriarchal Bridge
5) Portion sizes (grams or mL) are displayed on the menu next to the prices
4) Most pleasant souvenir shopping experience abroad at Ismailovsky Market
3) Figuring out how to buy train tickets to St. Petersburg without using English
2) Aesthetics and efficiency of the Moscow metro (when escalators are operating)
1) Discovering Russian artists at the Tretyakov Gallery and Russian Museum

Still curious (and easily confused like Joel)? Here are the links in chronological order:
Day 1 - Moscow. Ismailovsky Market
Day 2 - Moscow. Lenin, Kremlin and Red Square
Day 3 - Moscow. Buying train tickets
Day 3 cont. and Day 4 - Moscow. Novodevichy Convent, Matryoshka Museum, Don Quixote, Pushkin Fine Arts Gallery, Tretyakov Gallery, Eugene Onegin
Day 5 - Moscow. Kolomenskoe Reserve and Metro Tour
Day 6 - St. Petersburg. Hermitage, St. Isaac's Cathedral, Swan Lake
Day 7 - St. Petersburg. Peter and Paul Fortress, Canal Tour, Russian Museum, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

If for some reason you still want more, here are three final slideshows covering:

Russian People

Church Domes

Recognized Brands

Russia Recap: Day 7

2008-05-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

Friday April 25th

Having only two days in St. Petersburg did not deter us from trying to see everything on our tourist wish-lists. Thursday had been productive but we still had to mail postcards, visit the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Russian Museum, The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, take a canal tour and catch our train back to Moscow at 9:30. I also promised to let us fit in three full meals, since I discovered Thursday that Kristin’s body is not a fan of my trademark two-a-day big meal plan (apparently most nutritionists aren’t either).

The hotel’s breakfast buffet took care of meal number one, and there was a post office on the second floor of the building across from the hotel (the one with an advertising jumbotron on top). That went smoothly and, unlike my lost postcards from Africa, I have confirmation from most recipients that they have actually arrived (which is a good indication that it is taking me too long to post these recaps!). After a brief rendezvous with Joe to make sure he was ok (he’d had a rough trip digestively speaking) we were off to the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Due to renovation work (shocking!), the gate nearest the metro was closed, forcing us to circle the perimeter of the fortress in order to enter. As a result we witnessed someone climbing the wall into the fortress—odd because it’s free to enter, but it was in keeping with an invasion theme that played out all afternoon—and we passed by many sunbathing Russians whose techniques (usually standing) and swimwear choices (thongs… on men) I found perverse and often baffling (listen to act 4).

We arrived at the Nevsky Gate and learned that one-hour canal tours launched from their pier every hour on the hour. I was excited because this tour option combined a canal tour with our transit back from the fortress. I did some quick scheduling in my head: Noon-3:00 fortress, 3:00-4:00 canal tour, 4:30-6:00 Russian museum. Suddenly it seemed possible that Kristin and I would each get to visit our top priorities for the day (the fortress for her and Russian museum for me). All we had to do was catch the 3pm boat... Entering the fortress, we heard a thunderous explosion, which I realized was the daily noon cannon (well, artillery now) that I had thankfully read about. I took it as the starting gun for our three hour tour of the fortress.

The race started smoothly enough, with a trip to the Boat House that held the small sailboat Peter the Great learned to sail on—and which is now surrounded by the ticket office and gift shop. Then into the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where we tracked down the relatively understated tomb of Peter the Great. Surprisingly, his tomb barely stood out from the others in the cathedral. Off to the side, the only differentiating mark (unless you can read the Cyrillic name) is a bust of Peter placed on top.

Next stop was the St. Petersburg history museum in the Commandant’s House. As Kristin will tell you, don’t stop after the first two relatively uninspiring rooms on the first floor. The bulk of the museum is on the second floor, and the exhibits seem to get more and more impressive with each room (that may be biased because there was also more and more English as we went along). I enjoyed the scale model depicting how the Alexander column was erected. Held in place by nothing but gravity I was impressed it wasn’t swept away by the tidal wave that engulfed St. Petersburg a few years later (which was depicted in a panoramic painting in the same room).

It was lunch time and we set off to track down the café in the fortress before finishing our tour at the Rocketry museum and a walk atop the fortress walls. Here’s where things got interesting. We got directions to the café and set off to the east side of the fort… which happened to be under construction. In Russia it would appear there aren’t the same liability issues we have here in the U.S. and you are basically at your own risk. So nothing prevented us from picking our way through the ongoing construction (the workers ignored us completely) and making our way to the café. The café however was closed. As was the restaurant. As was the Rocketry museum. So we nimbly navigated our way back out of the danger zone, while I wondered why Russians couldn’t be as polite as the New Yorker I’d recently heard make the following statement to tourists in Manhattan: “There’s nothing for tourists on 9^th Avenue, for fuck’s sake!”. Today, there was nothing for tourists on the east side of the fortress!

It looked like Kristin was doomed to a snack lunch again, or else we’d have to cut our visit to the fortress short. But she was resourceful and managed to determine that the small snack kiosk offered a microwave-heated personal pizza which provided the required sustenance. We ate lunch on top of the fortress wall at the only spot which was available to sit, right on top of the stone commemorating St. Petersburg’s recent 300^th anniversary. Without spilling too much on the stone, we finished lunch and walked the rest of the fortress wall taking in the views across the Nevsky river, as well as an unusual event going on at the fortress: periodically a skydiver would appear from the sky and land (as far as we could tell) in the fortress. First someone scaling the wall and now paratroopers were attacking. It must not have been much of an issue because the soldiers manning the artillery that had welcomed us at noon seemed more concerned about me photographing them than they did about the intruders. No one seemed to notice when the helicopter swooped in later (I can neither confirm nor deny whether it was a helicopter gunship)

The prison section of the fortress was also closed for renovation but we did find a torture exhibit that had a separate entry fee. Since it was 2:30 and we couldn’t envision what would be in the exhibit to justify the separate charges we opted to head to the dock early… right after we visited the restrooms. It turned out the only thing worse than the food situation in the fortress was the restroom situation. No one seemed to know which ones were open and we got conflicting directions, none of which matched up with the map we had. Our search eventually took long enough that we were in danger of missing our tour (and more importantly to me our chance to visit the Russian Museum where I was excited to find the rest of the works by my favorite Russian artists I’d discovered at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow). Eventually we crossed the fort to a temporary restroom we’d seen by our lunch spot. From the line we found there, I am certain it was the only working toilet on the island that day. The problem was that it was a pay toilet. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t have the money… it was that the woman taking the money felt she needed to clean the restroom between each customer! We’d be on a boat for an hour so forgoing this pit stop wasn’t an option. Clean faster woman! Mercifully she skipped a couple of cleanings and we got through with about seven minutes to run (and run we did) back to the pier. We arrived to watch the three o’clock tour pull away from the pier… at 2:55. Our pleading to climb aboard was fruitless and the next four o’clock tour would leave less than an hour to see the Russian museum. I felt defeated. There would be no more sublime moments appreciating a wall-filling Ivanov, or sharing what I’d found at Tretyakov with Kristin.

But then there was hope. A previously unmentioned 3:30 tour. That might just give us time. The price was higher but I was just happy to still have a chance at seeing the Russian Museum. I relaxed and enjoyed the tour. It was in Russian so it was more about being on the water and seeing the city from a different perspective than gaining any trivia or historic insights into St. Petersburg. As advertised we disembarked at the Admiralty at 4:30 and set off briskly for the Russian Museum. We got there before five… but couldn’t find the main entrance. Screw it, we saw a door and went in. We weren’t supposed to be there but we found a woman who found a woman who found a woman who spoke English and relayed back to the first woman that we wanted to enter the museum. She looked concerned and kept mentioning five o’clock, I kept saying “The museum closes at six right?” (according to the Lonely Planet). She led us around the building and to the main entrance and indicated that we needed to run. It turns out the museum stops selling tickets an hour before closing. We ran. At exactly five o’clock we rounded the corner into the Kacca room, to find the ticket seller… surprised to see us but willing to sell us tickets. I didn’t even think to ask for Kristin’s student discount. We bought the tickets, checked our bags and set off in search of my favorite Russian artists.

The experience didn’t replicate that from the Tretyakov because we were considerably more rushed (I feared each room we entered would have the exit door shut and we’d be forced to backtrack out of the museum). Still we did manage to find all of the artists I hoped to and Kristin got a feeling for what I had appreciated so much about the galleries of Russian artists. After about 45 minutes we had skimmed through the entire collection, including the temporary exhibit of landscapes which contained a new favorite painting of bears in the woods…which I later discovered I’d seen painted as the backdrop for the bear trainer at Ismailovsky Park a week before. Success. I was happy and relaxed.

And then I saw the sign for the exit out of the wing we were in. Of course we couldn’t go out that way because our bags were checked back at the main entrance. The museum closed in less than 15 minutes. Could we still get back to the main entrance?!? Or were we about to be ushered out the nearest exit as the museum closed? I suddenly had visions of a desperate conversation with Russian security along the lines: “Museum closed” “But we have to get our bags!” “Museum closed now. You can get bags tomorrow.” Tomorrow, when we’d be in Moscow boarding our plane home… without our jackets or bags! The race was on again. Back through the halls, again hoping we didn’t find our way blocked with a closed door. On several occasions doors were indeed shut directly behind us… But we got through. And now, outside again with our bags, the race which I’d felt began with the noon cannon was finally done.

I would certainly recommend more than two days in St. Petersburg, but with a bit of a frantic (or perhaps fanatical—sorry Kristin) schedule we’d managed to do everything that was on our wish list. We were left with plenty of time to take photos at the St. Basil’s-inspired Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, finish off our shopping list at a mini-market near the church (well except for my never-to-be-found Asterix comic book), and eat a leisurely dinner at Gastranom (get the beef stroganoff, not the stuffed pike), before we caught our overnight train back to Moscow.

The trip back was a mirror of our trip up except that Joe and the empty bunk were exchanged for some quiet Russian women in our cabin. We went into a café in the Moscow station for breakfast… and quickly left when Joe was told that a coffee and scoop of chocolate ice cream would run $32 (thankfully they told us up front rather than surprising us with an absurd bill). Instead we found the cafeteria style breakfast spot where the food was more realistically priced. After a metro ride to Rechnoy Vokzal station at the top of the #2 line, and a two dollar mini-bus ride to the airport, Kristin and I were soon flying back home, passing over Greenland, and passing up the opportunity to buy the Duty-free Delta Doll. It was an amazing (and long-winded) trip. I may put together some top-ten list recollections, but for now the only thing to say is: Thank You Kristin!

<-- Day 6 ---- Reflections -->

ConGRADulations

2008-05-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Mims, you are now officially more educated than your big brother :-)

Russia Recap: Day 6

2008-05-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

Thursday April 24th

During the night, our fourth bunk was filled by a guy who got on at one of the intermediate stops (which explains why the conductor was so adamant that we not set any of our bags on that bunk back in Moscow). While it would have been fun to check out the first class Spalny Vagon, the goal of having a good quiet night’s sleep from Moscow to St. Petersburg was achieved. Well it was achieved to the extent that you can get a good night’s sleep while having to get up at 5am (something neither Kristin nor I excel at) in order to be off the train when it arrived at 5:30—they don’t seem to like you hanging around the train once it arrives, so I guess sleeping in isn’t much of an option.

We were immediately grateful for our choice of hotel, Hotel Oktiabrskaya, which is right off the square in front of the train station. The main hotel dominates the square nearly as much as the train station, but we stayed in the smaller (and cheaper) filial branch of the hotel on a different side of the square (and I definitely recommend that approach to anyone making a similar trip). As expected, we couldn’t check in at 5:30am, but there were no problems checking our bags in their luggage room (including Joe’s who didn’t have a reservation at the now full hotel).

Baggage stowed, we followed a recommendation Joe had for a breakfast buffet at Marius Pub, which did an admirable job of replacing the breakfasts we’d become accustomed to at the President Hotel. It probably helped that it was the restaurant attached to a hotel whose price may have rivaled what we paid at the President Hotel. We scanned the Lonely Planet over breakfast and I confirmed my suspicions that none of the places we planned to go in St. Petersburg opened before 10am, including all of the theatre kiosks where we hoped to get tickets to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. After having Gamlet sold out in Moscow I felt we needed to get those tickets as early as possible, but the Lonely Planet was adamant that in order to avoid the Hermitage lines you needed to be there an hour before it opened at 10:30. We had a conundrum but eventually chose to avoid the Hermitage lines and try our luck with ballet tickets in the afternoon.

Joe set off to find himself a hotel while we leisurely explored Nevsky Prospect and the canals to fill the hours before the Hermitage opened. We eventually settled in “line” (a group sitting around) out front of the museum. As we waited, a man walked up to us—directly to the two of us—and said he had two tickets to Swan Lake that night that he needed to get rid of and did we want them? Too good to be true? I was skeptical, having bought counterfeit tickets to a Jaguars/Ravens game years ago, and having read Lonely Planet’s section warning about ticket scalping. It described foreign theatre-goers being embarrassed as they were forced by zealous babushkas to pay the difference between the Russian price and the foreigner price when they were caught with Russian tickets. My skepticism grew when we mentioned that we were actually looking for three tickets (Joe planned to rejoin us that evening) and he said he had a colleague that he could swap tickets with to get us three together. I examined the two tickets he had and felt they were legitimate at least (and confirmed the date, time, and show etc.). He was asking 500 Rubles (~$25) per ticket which was between the prices I’d paid for Don Quixote and Eugene Onegin. Eventually, we decided it was worth the $25 for us to know we had the tickets and not have to spend any more time that day dealing with them. We agreed to buy them and he went to make the trade with his colleague.

Being April tourists may have hurt us at several locations, but nowhere did it help more than the Hermitage. The lines discussed in the book never really formed and we were able to enter the museum quickly (after our ballet scalper found us inside at the ticket window with our three tickets). We felt even better about buying the ballet tickets when it turned out Kristin saved nearly $20 on her admission to the Hermitage. Most places had discounted admissions for students (and Kristin took advantage of them with her GW card as a doctorate student), but the Hermitage had quite a discount indeed. Free. I paid about $20 (and it was still a bargain) and Kristin paid absolutely nothing. Best deal in Russia. Photos are allowed in the Hermitage... but not coats. Every theatre and museum had a complimentary (and tip-free) coat check, but this was the first time I was turned away at the entrance and forced to check my coat. Photos for coats was a fair tradeoff, and if I'd been made to walk around barefoot it'd have been worth it. Like the Moscow metro, photos are the only way to capture our three hour tour (sans shipwreck :-p) of the Hermitage. As you’ll see, it was as much about the art of the Hermitage as it was the art in the Hermitage:

Hardly satisfied that I’d spent all the time there that I wanted, I knew I would have to save a deeper exploration for a future trip. We had time for a short excursion before we needed to get back to the hotel to check-in/shower/get presentable for the ballet. Kristin had been hankering to climb something since we arrived in Russia and we’d finally found an opportunity, the colonnade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I feared the view would cost nearly $16, but Kristin correctly surmised that the we could skip the $11 museum fee and go straight up the colonnade for $5. 262 mostly spiral stairs later, we had our view. St. Petersburg is compact enough that we could see nearly all of the main attractions from the top and get a good sense of the city layout.

Back at the hotel we met up with Joe so he could pick up his bags and learned we’d been wise to book our hotel in advance. Joe had spent all morning tracking down a room (ultimately ending up at an unmarked B&B up Nevsky Prospect). We planned to meet back up at Café Idiot for dinner before the ballet… but we never got there. Dinner and the theatre were a long walk back near St. Isaacs and we were running a bit late so we decided to take the metro. That was a bad idea. While less extensive than Moscow’s, St. Petersburg’s metro runs just as frequently is seems to be just as crowded per station. They also have the same problem if an escalator breaks down. And one did. We discovered this as we entered the large room at the top of the escalator. The usually empty room was overflowing with people, all funneling towards the two-by-two entrance to the escalator. Turning around wasn’t an option as the hallway poured people into the room behind us. The room couldn’t grow so as more and more people flowed in we just got cozier. The funnel soon felt more like an evil tube of cake icing with the back being squeezed and pushing us with more and more force towards the one narrow exit. I started to consider what might happen to us “icing” as we shot out of the tube and onto the top of an escalator. It wasn’t a pretty image, though perhaps not inappropriate if someone tumbled at the top. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay standing (or to breathe) as each surge threatened to send us to the floor. It felt like only a matter of time before a squeeze from the back would come with enough force to topple those of us now in front. It was really starting to feel like that surge would be timed to coincide with our arrival at the top of the escalator. But we had to focus on standing, breathing and holding on to some bit of one another. Just before we reached the nozzle our grip on each other was broken. I watched one girl ahead of us get pinned to the metal railing leading to the escalator. It was all we could do to resist the surge just long enough to let her slide loose and get onto the escalator. Breathe. Stay standing. And then we were out. On the escalator. The pressure was instantly released and we were sliding safely away from the chaos. Mercifully, the escalator rode out horizontally for a good ways before descending, so in hindsight it was unlikely anyone would ever be the first domino to topple the whole set of us down to the bottom, but the danger of being trampled in that room was very real. We didn’t hear anything behind us so I can only assume that no disaster occurred but honestly I don’t know how.

As a result we missed out on Café Idiot and had to call Joe (kudos to Quad-band phones and AT&T for enabling them to communicate) to change our meeting to the theatre. No fast-food options presented themselves so Kristin and I found an Irish Pub next to the theatre and asked for whatever food they could have ready in ten minutes. Perhaps the Washington Redskins and William and Mary memorabilia above the bar was a good omen because in ten minutes we were splitting a delicious plate of that Irish speciality… Spaghetti Bolognaise. Still, we were cutting it close and the lights were flashing us to our seats when we arrived in the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. That wouldn’t have been a problem if there were ushers to help us to our seats. There weren’t. When our seat numbers were taken in the Orchestra we realized we needed to be up in the balcony. Except we couldn’t find the stairs. We ran in and out of the orchestra and the lobby and pretty much everywhere we could find before at last coming across the one stairwell off in the corner. Up we went. Out into the Mezzanine. Which weren’t where our seats we either. We could see the balcony we had to get to one level higher. It’s just that the stairs didn’t go there. We puzzled over the M.C. Escher-inspired staircase for a bit before deciding that stairs did go up there… we just couldn’t get to them from the Mezzanine. No, to go up you have to go down. Back at the bottom of the stairwell, there was a separate stairway that intertwined with the first, skipped the exit onto the Mezzanine and led finally to our seats… at the very back row of the entire theatre. That section was pretty much empty so we opted to sit down at the front as the ballet got underway after waiting for the frantic Americans to find their seats. Watching this ballet made me realize how much storyline there actually was in Don Quixote… and confirmed what I had suspected: I’m not a fan of ballet. Rather than complain about wanting a story I should really just go see a play (or at least an Opera)! Still it was a worthwhile experience, if only to discover this peculiar stairway design—which incidentally had those of us on the balcony descending to ground level and then halfway back up again to the Mezzanine where the refreshments and restrooms lived during intermission. Hopefully you didn’t down your liquid refreshments on the way back to the balcony and then realize you now needed to go back to the restroom. You’d never make it. Might as well just piss off the balcony. Anyway did I mention the stairway they had in this place?

After the show it was still light out, despite being past 10pm. As we took a sunset walk home past all of the day’s monuments, I realized it was the latest that it had ever stayed light where I was at. That record wouldn’t be broken by the next (longer) day because I’d be headed back on a train to Moscow by that time. But before then Kristin and I still had full tourist wishlists for Friday. Probably too full… As an early birthday present to Kristin (and yes, because I wouldn’t have been there without her) I figured her wishlist took priority. What? You think I made that up just because today happens to be Kristin’s birthday? I can neither confirm nor deny that. But I can wish Kristin a very merry birthday. Happy Birthday!

<-- Day 5 ---- Day 7 -->

Russia Recap: Day 5

2008-05-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

Wednesday April 23rd

On Wednesday I explored outside of the city. Well at least on the outskirts of the city. The metro came above ground to cross the Moskva River, and I passed soviet-era cookie-cutter apartment complexes. I’d originally hoped to work in a day trip to a Golden Ring town during my time in Moscow, but settled for my friend Dana’s recommendation to visit the 4-acre Kolomenskoe Reserve overlooking the river.

The novel I’m rereading, Edward Rutherfurd’s Russka, refers to it in one of its stories:

…Cossacks rode out to look at the tsar’s country residence at nearby Kolomenskoye. Sited by the Moskva River, it was a curious jumble of buildings—some wooden, others of brick covered with white stucco. Its tent roofs, onion domes, and towers flanked by ascending pyramids of kokoshniki suggested a silent, powerful peacefulness like an Indian temple. They returned to the city feeling refreshed.

I’d say refreshing is a good description. It helped that I didn’t have an agenda of things to see there and simply wandered the park for a few hours. Apparently it is frequently used as fairgrounds and I could see some of that infrastructure (including some quaint carnival rides). With no festival underway, most visitors (on a Wednesday afternoon at least) were women with strollers. Strollers, pigeons, and construction. Have I mentioned Russia tends to get renovated in April in preparation for May tourists :-p This time I didn’t care because I’d planned to enjoy the admission-free park, river views, and finally lovely weather and to only admire the buildings from the outside. Construction was no problem for any of that… so long as I avoided the benches with the “wet paint” (I assume) sign on them. I returned to meet conference-completed Kristin “feeling refreshed”.

On the way back to the hotel I made a detour to the Okhotny Ryad mall. It’s an underground mall near the Kremlin which Lonely Planet describes as “catering to all income levels”. In my international travels I try to collect foreign language copies of the French comic series Asterix the Gaul. I was excited to get one in Russian and having not walked by a single large book store I decided a mall was a likely spot to find one. I was wrong. I don’t know about the variety of the prices in the stores, but one thing Okhotny Ryad does not have is a variety of merchandise. The entire mall consists of three kinds of stores: clothing, shoes and fashion accessories. Aside from a food court there is literally nothing else. Nothing. Not that it’s small. Okhotny Ryad is three stories… of nothing but clothes, shoes and accessories. Okhotny Ryad nearly sapped the refreshment I’d soaked up at Kolomenskoye.

The one last thing Kristin wanted to be sure she did in Moscow was to tour the metro stations. That may seem strange in some cities (actually every city that I can think of)—some metros are worth riding once for the experience, but none that I know of are worthy of a station by station tour. Moscow is the exception. Absorbing Ivanov’s masterwork in the Tretyakov Gallery was my favorite moment of the trip, but the Moscow metro was my favorite thing about Russia.

The photos tell the story of the individual stations better than I can. Even beyond the aesthetics the metro system is impressive and I compiled some notes as well as a 10 top ten list of what I liked about it:

First, my few gripes:

They do not let people walk stationary escalators as we do in DC (they are just closed off—and they got pretty upset at one guy who jumped the barrier and walked up).

Unlike DC trains, they have no ceiling bar to hang on to in the area by the doors (where you are most likely to wind up standing when you get on a packed train). Hope you’ve got good balance.

Escalator breakdowns are a serious issue. Chaos ensues. The remaining working escalators can get so backed up that entire rooms and hallways quickly fill with people. The force of the crowd pushing for the escalator can be terrifying, as well would learn…

And some random recollections:

Each platform services only one line. That means lots of walking between platforms but less confusion.

We saw workers with scrapers riding the escalators to remove advertising stickers that had been slapped on (we also saw a guy riding the escalators slapping them on).

We ordered fare cards by going to the Kacca and holding up fingers for the desired number of rides.

And finally my top ten favorite (non-aesthetic) things about the Moscow Metro system:

10) Their lines have both a color and a number associated with them. They may not be friendly to those in wheel chairs (tons of stairs and escalators) but they take pity on the color blind.

9) If it isn’t so crowded that the escalator is packed two-abreast, they follow the (non-tourist) DC convention of stand right, walk left.

8) They do a fairly good job of crowd control by splitting walkways into two “lanes” either with separate hallways or temporary fencing. This works as long as the escalators are all functioning.

7) The metros have public trash cans. Well none on the platforms, but they have small ones right after the turnstile to deposit spent metro cards. They were the only public trash cans I saw in the city!

6) Many trains had an electronic station meter that would fill up as you passed each stop and blink to mark the upcoming station.

5) All the fare cards work like Smart Trip cards, just tap it on a pad by the turnstile to enter (and a handy display lights up with the remaining number of rides on the card).

4) The price is right. If you buy a 10-ride pass, each ride costs 17 rubles (about 70 cents) and all trips cost exactly the same, no matter where you go.

3) The escalators move fast. I’d say twice as fast as DC. Since the majority of their escalators are long enough to make Rosslyn’s seem ordinary, that speed is a good thing (just be careful getting on and off!). According to the Wikipedia, Park Pobedy has the longest single escalators in the world so we made a special tour detour to ride it.

2) Trains move fast too and we never once had to wait in the tunnel while a train ahead of us cleared the platform or because they were single-tracking.

1) Most impressive to me (rivaling even the aesthetics) was the frequency of the trains. Each track has a clock at one end of the platform with the current time and elapsed time since the last train left. During rush hour the average time between trains seemed to be 45 seconds. 45 seconds! At almost all other times it was between 1 and 2 minutes. The longest time by a considerable margin was one 5 minute wait on a Sunday night.

I ♥ Moscow Metro

Dinner at Café 44 was decent (but credit-card unfriendly—despite the sign in the window!), and after a fruitless search for Asterix in a huge bookstore that Kristin found near our Polyanka metro, we set off to test how well I had done buying our train tickets to St. Petersburg. We managed to navigate the rush hour metro with all of our luggage by utilizing the relatively emptier first or last metro cars, and got to Leningradsky Vokzal about a half hour before our train left. Well a half hour before we thought our train left. We found our train number on the wall-size electronic board, and with some improvised translating we decided the time was still 9:30, but we couldn’t identify a platform number. One other thing troubled me. There was one column we couldn’t identify. In that column was a single word after each train. I assumed these words meant things like “On-time”, “Delayed”, “Boarding”. Our train had a word that wasn’t on any other train on the board. Well it was in one other place: Next to our same train over on the arrivals side. I’m usually optimistic, but one terrifying likely translation popped into my head: “Cancelled”. That’s not good. Kristin turned to the information counter for an answer while I turned to the Lonely Planet. At about the same time we found out that unknown category was Frequency, and the words were “Daily”, “Odd-numbered Days”, “Even-numbered Days”, and yes “Cancelled”. But our train was chyotnye (Even-numbered days) not otmenyon (Cancelled). Phew. Before my mind could dwell much on the fact that our tickets were for Odd-numbered days… I got the thumbs up from Kristin who had been so friendly with the information lady that she actually led us all the way to the platform and our train (which had a different number than we thought, and this one did run on Odd-numbered days). This was typical of the trip where we’d stay true to our gender stereotypes: when in doubt I looked to the book/map and Kristin asked for directions.

Aside from not being able to translate our tickets well enough to know which car we were in (and therefore having to stop and check at every single car down the length of the train), our tickets and passports passed inspection and we found our cabin just fine. Joe had the same problem translating his ticket and actually ended up in the wrong cabin initially—where he made friends and was given a beer. When someone showed up to claim that seat, Joe found his real seat and as I’d hoped, Kristin, Joe and I were “vamistya” in the same cabin (and it seemed the fourth bunk was unused). I decided I liked the top bunk where both my luggage and my person were up and out of the way. As the train rolled out of the station we settled in and headed straight to bed to cram in as much sleep as we possibly could before our scheduled arrival in St. Petersburg… at 5:28 am.

<-- Day 3 and 4 ---- Day 6 -->

Happy Blogiversary to me!

2008-05-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

Don't mind me, just wanted to take a short break from recapping my Russia trip to pat myself on the back for documenting the past year of my life. I know my mom appreciates it (Hi Mom, happy early Mother's Day), and I imagine it'll be a nice (or embarrassing) time capsule for myself someday. It was exactly one year ago that I posted this note, and so like my favorite retired blogger might say, Happy Blogiversary!

Since you've had the opportunity to learn about me this past year, I figure it is only fair for me to disclose what I've learned about you. Some of it is a bit disturbing (read on to see some of the searches that have led here). That's right, since about September of last year I have been tracking you while you read about me! Could you sense Google ogling you? They have a free Google Analytics service that has recorded the following:

Since September, 1,630 of you have visited 4,360 times and viewed 7,173 pages. You stick around for an average of 1 minute and 53 seconds.

Other than the main page, these are the pages you've read most often:

Note To Africa	246
Darrenisms	225
Facebook Freefall	122
I'd Climb the Highest Mountain	122
Gauley Lama	80

You've come from 699 cities (in 55 countries), with these being the top 5 (who do I know in Montreal anyway?):

Arlington	1047
Washington	879
San Francisco	186
Montreal	110
Falls Church	107

These were my biggest days and the posts that caused them (congrats Joel, your disaster Date Lab takes first place):
2/13/2008 Joel's Date Lab Debacle 74
12/19/2007 Holiday Party 62
1/2/2008 New Year's Cabin Camping 51
9/17/2007 Gauley Rafting 49

Those of you that don't know me most likely found this blog searching for something else (sadly there's nothing remotely useful here on anything but perhap the last item on this list):

1) 36 times you've wanted to know about "driving cross country"
2) 36 times you've asked about "Facebook's geography quiz" (with many of those asking how to cheat!—shame on you, learn some geography!)
3) 29 times you were looking for "skydiving shoes". My Keen's worked, but my one jump hardly qualifies me to recommend skydiving shoes.
4) 28 times you were searching for "behr deck stain". Again, a sample size of 1, but it's been a disaster for us. We stained it two years ago, then touched it up last fall, and this spring it's an embarrassment (I should post new photos)
5) 28 times you were looking for the quote "The Lord said Peter, I can see your house from here". This one baffles me. I know it as a line from a Roger Waters song, can that really be the source of all these hits (relatively speaking)
6) 27 times you came here for information on tying a "safety knot". They're important, keep searching
7) 23 times you wanted to find out about Hassan Bah in Doucki, Guinea. He's great! If you are in Guinea make the effort to visit him in Doucki and spend a few days hiking with him. My experience is here.

But the real reason I enjoy Google Analytics is because I can see what you searched for that got you here, and there are some funny ones (several frankly that I have no clue why they would link here). Since I'd rather not reinforce some of these searches I'll be posting a photo of this list:

Let's see what I learn about you before my second Blogiversary...

Russia Recap: Days 3 and 4

2008-05-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

Monday April 21

With my one assignment complete, I had two and half days (and evenings) to kill before Kristin finished earning our hotel room by attending her meetings. I’ve always admired people who travel on their own, but felt it wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy. Therefore with the exception of a day in Dakar on my way home from Africa I’d never really traveled alone. Now admittedly that was one of my best days in Africa (which probably should have served as a clue) but I still wasn’t sure how I’d adjust to solo travel in a country where I’d just barely managed to buy train tickets despite all my carefully prepared paperwork.

As you may have noticed, I enjoy theatre, and figured it would be a unique opportunity to experience some Russian style. With the help of the Moscow Times (the couple of links on the left bar below “Calendar of Events”) I’d researched what shows I could catch during my free evenings. I’d brought a list of my options with me to the theatre kiosk which can be found in most metros. My second ticket purchasing experience of the day was considerably easier than my first, but only because the woman spoke English (she had a daughter living in Miami)… because all of my top choices were sold out (I’d figured I’d go see Hamlet hoping my familiarity with the storyline would help offset my unfamiliarity with Russian, but it was not to be). After some wrangling, even in English, I wound up with tickets to see the opera Don Quixote at the theatre inside the Kremlin (for $35) and a one-act play of Eugene Onegin (for $15) at the supposedly controversial Taganka Theatre.

Feeling thoroughly accomplished at ticket purchasing, I set out for my planned activity of the day: exploring the Novodevichy Convent. After a rainy Sunday at the Kremlin I was hoping for sun shining on my outdoor activities today. It rained. I guess it was appropriate for a convent, especially one that had served as a sort of prison (and now tomb) for Peter the Great’s sister and first wife. I was particularly excited to come here because the Peter the Great miniseries I watched during high school had left me with vivid memories of the treachery of Peter’s sister Sophia who’d been confined here. In fact the miniseries basically had the theme that it was Peter vs. the women and the church. Well today it was me vs. the rain and the construction. The main building (and resting place of Tsarevna Sophia) is the Smolensk Cathedral. It was closed for renovation when the Lonely Planet book was published (2006). Turns out it is scheduled to open…May of 2008. Still there are dozens of other buildings, churches, and bell towers in the convent so I figured I’d explore them. I figured wrong. I spent the afternoon photographing puddles and pulling on locked door after locked door (one that did open I realized quickly enough was leading to the nuns’ private quarters). Basically there were two buildings open to me (and the lobby of one church) and neither were particularly historic. They each held exhibits of religious artwork, which was quickly holding little interest for me. I had my lunch of bread and water (seemed appropriate) and set off for the cemetery around back. It was raining harder and I think I was almost relieved when I approached the gate and an extremely serious looking guard made an X with his arms and shook his head at me. I tried to signal “Do I need to go around to another gate?” and he made it pretty clear that whatever was going on in there today (there were some fancy black cars out front) I was not welcome inside.

Next stop was the Matryoshka Museum (the famous Russian nesting dolls). The museum was free, which frankly it should have been since it consisted of exactly one room with no English, and the oldest doll was from… 1950. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy checking out the dolls that were there, and I realized that the set from 1950 with a woman holding a chicken under her arm would be perfect for me. In Indonesia one of my favorite photos is of a boy holding a chicken under his arm, and on my favorite day in Guinea I have a photograph with… a woman carrying a chicken under her arm. Not surprisingly the set in the museum was not for sale (that I could tell) but there were replicas in the extensive gift shop downstairs (it was twice the size of the museum). The prices were higher than Izmaylova market but not unreasonable for what I was willing to spend. Unfortunately the cashier said they didn’t take credit cards but I splurged and purchased my chicken-woman set with my dwindling cash. After I paid, I noticed the sign on the counter. The sign for Visa and Mastercard! I called her on it and she said the women who knew how to work the machine didn’t work that day. This was a common refrain. Lonely Planet may say Moscow is credit card friendly, but it sure wasn’t to me.

I had just enough time to swing by the hotel and change into some theatre appropriate clothes before setting off for Don Quixote at the Kremlin. Knowing how sensitive they were about photos of Lenin, I feared there would be issues bringing a camera into the theatre so I left it at the hotel… which proved to be my loss (and yours) as I missed some beautiful photos of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s at night (and if I was as bold as some other audience members, maybe even photos of the show). Inside the enormous soviet-feeling State Theatre I found my seat (once I deciphered the words for row and seat in Russian). It was actually in the 13^th row in the orchestra… and the absolute last seat in a row that probably spanned nearly a hundred seats. Still it wasn’t too bad and I settled in for the opera. It turns out the opera I was there to see was no opera at all. I was watching the ballet of Don Quixote. I’d wikipediaed the storyline at the hotel but I learned quickly that at best the ballet was loosely inspired by Don Quixote. Since I’m a fan of storyline, the second act was easily the best. Let me show you what I mean: The second act opened with more dancing in a tavern where Don drives away an unwanted suitor for the innkeeper’s daughter. He leaves for more adventures and ends up watching a play-within-the-ballet in some village. When an unwanted suitor emerges in the play, Don charges the actor, then the audience, then a windmill (the windmill wins and a—presumably stuffed—Don comes flying off the blades). Injured, Don heads home and collapses in a forest where he dreams of fairies… who dance. The act ends when Don awakes and some nobles show up. Here’s what happens in the third act: Don watches dancers at the nobles’ court. That’s it. That was the end of the show. Of course it is my fault for wanting a ballet to be an opera. Still it was a fun experience and I learned some things about Russian shows:

People still call Bravo here

There are encores and curtain calls at the end of each act (and even at the end of some dances)

Many in the audience rushed to the edge of the stage during the standing ovation

You have to buy your programs

They broke the cardinal rule of encores! They returned once the house lights came on (and it was like their 4^th or 5^th curtain call at the point). This rule really should be universal (as should a limit of at most 2 encores). I’ll bring these up with Darren who is compiling a list of decrees he would enact if he were a benevolent dictator (maybe I should start documenting those along with Darrenisms).

Here’s the problem. When I was on my own I took far fewer photos so I decided to combine the photos for days 3 and 4. I use slideshows because Blogger’s photo insertion capabilities are unacceptably pathetic (all photos insert at the top and must be excruciatingly dragged down into place, no easy way to do captions, preview mode doesn’t match how it gets published etc.). As a result I only have one slideshow and planned to make one entry for both days (and that’s after spending a whole entry on the ticket buying). So. Consider this the end of act one (and as you’ll see it would be just like a Russian one-act). Go get some snacks, use the restroom and come back for act two (aka Day 4) when you are ready. Deep breath. On to day four…

Tuesday April 22nd

The sun came out! And I had a whole day planned inside at art galleries… I did walk to the first gallery, and I was rewarded. I crossed the Patriarchal Bridge behind my hotel and started photographing the Peter the Great statue, The Church of Christ the Savior, and the Kremlin Cathedrals in the distance. Then I glanced down at the bridge and noticed a huge padlock attached to it. Then another. Then I realized there were dozens if not hundreds locked all the way up and down the bridge. Many had names and dates and I began photographing them. Another photographer joined me shortly and asked me something in Russian. Since he also spoke English I found out he was asking me if I knew about the “lovelocks”. I didn’t and he provided me some background. He said the tradition started in some European country… maybe Paris, maybe Italy. It started in 1993 (the date was specific… if not the location). Couples would place locks on a particular bridge (or two bridges in the case of Moscow) to commemorate their love or marriage. It turns out the man I met, Alexander, goes around photographing the locks and has a website (http://lovelock.ru —which Google will translate for you) devoted to them. He seemed like a good guy (he tried unsuccessfully to adjust the settings on my camera to take a photo with both the lovelock and Kremlin in focus) and I’ve enjoyed exploring his website and seeing many of the locks that I remember from the bridge. It was the perfect start to what would be my best day in Russia.

I eventually found the Pushkin Fine Art Gallery (which has split into two galleries since the Lonely Planet was written). The Kacca woman was helpful and let me know that the Impressionists that I probably wanted to see were actually at the other museum next door. The highlight was finding my uncle’s favorite Renoir, “The Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary” and being reminded of the vast range of Picasso’s styles. I spent several hours enjoying room after room of artwork that I didn’t recognize by artists who I certainly did (Renoir, Picasso, Degas, Gauguin, Cezanne).

From there I went straight to the Tretyakov Gallery with room after room of artwork I recognized (well the styles at least) by artists I had never heard of. The Tretyakov has only artwork by Russians, but the styles are familiar, with portraits, landscapes, Impressionism, Cubism, etc. The Tretyakov also has laminated English pages in each room to carry around with you. I was engrossed. I spent all afternoon discovering new favorite artists and artwork. This gallery would only be in Russia, whereas the works in the Pushkin could be in nearly any major city. At one point I walked through an entire room of portraits, including several identically posed paintings of different people. I was confused until I came into the next room which had an entire wall filled with Ivanov’s masterpiece “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. All of the life-size portraits I had seen were merely studies for this larger work. I sat in the middle of the room to take it all in and looked at face after face that I recognized from the study portraits. The overwhelming size of the painting screamed “Russia!” to me, and quite unexpectedly I found that this was my favorite moment of the trip. In a photograph the scale and detail are lost and the only way to experience this colossal piece of art was to come to Moscow and sit in this room. I experienced that moment several more times through the gallery, seeing Surikov’s “Morning of the Steltsy” depicting a graphic scene from the miniseries (and history), and finding my two favorite artists Vereshchagin, with his photorealistic depictions of scenes of travel and war, and Serebryakova, whose candid scenes of her family life stood out from the rest of the modern works that I didn’t connect with.

I ate a solo dinner at the Russian chain Yolki-Polki, which was good, and a fun atmosphere (they decorate it like a Russian country cottage and the staff wear traditional outfits). It was gimmicky but I went with it since I was having such a great day. After dinner it was off to see the one-act play Eugene Onegin which I really hoped would not turn out to be a ballet in disguise. I guess it seemed a bit strange to watch a play in another language, but I remember seeing Peer Gynt at the National Theatre in Oslo during high school (granted what I remember is some of the staging where Peer escapes from the first act by climbing up the set which is built like a giant computer motherboard… perhaps it wasn’t the original interpretation of the play). Eugene Onegin (or Yevgeny Onegin in Russian) did not disappoint. While I barely picked up a word, I won’t forget the staging. The stage was a grid of eight rooms covered with curtains. The curtains served as screens to display the actor’s silhouettes, as musical instruments (when they slid them rhythmically during songs), and everything from togas to turbans to carriages (hard to explain) wrapped around the actors. One actor wore an “I ♥ Pushkin” shirt and delivered his lines while balancing atop a ball.

On several occasions the actors came into the audience. In fact Eugene Onegin himself (well if I understood who the characters were at all) came into the audience. I don’t mean he walked down the aisle. I mean he started shimmying down a row. My row in fact. He squeezed past person after person until he was 5, 4, 3, people away from me. Oh no! Did he somehow know I was the silly American who was sitting in a play without understanding a word? He had come to expose me. I prepared my “Ya Nye Pyenemayo Parusski” (I don’t understand Russian) response, and prepared for the humiliating laughter of the entire audience. I had survived the “Ass-Hole” chant as a Sox fan in the bleachers of Yankee stadium but how would I handle this? 2 people away from me. He spoke. The women next to me answered. Then he returned to the stage. I was not to have a part in this odd play after all.

The show sort of jumped the shark (as if I could tell) midway through when there was a crazed man draped in a polar-bear fur lashing out from a table in the middle of the stage. The second half dragged since the novelty of the staging was wearing off and I was now just not understanding the increasingly longer monologues. If it lasted as long as an American one-act, it would have been the best show I’d seen this year (nudging Argonautika which had a weaker second act) but it was a Russian one-act, and as such it went on for over two hours! By the end I found myself translating the program I had bought, which listed their other repertory shows… including “Gamlet” aka Hamlet. There is no “h” in Russian (there is a “kh”) and so they replace Hs with Gs. This can be pretty funny. As we learned at various points on our trip, Russians watch Gamlet, read Gary Potter, order a Gamburger at Makdonalds, and may be an alkogolic if they drink too much vodka…

<-- Day 3 Train Tickets ---- Day 5 -->

The Mission: Two train tickets to St. Petersburg

2008-05-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

A short diversion before I continue the photo-accompanied daily recaps (I’ll document a couple Darrenisms to compensate for this photo-free post)…

On Monday, Kristin and I went to work. Kristin began her three day conference and I went to work on procuring train tickets for us to St. Petersburg. I clearly had the shorter and presumably easier (at least if I spoke Russian) job. We’d planned to purchase the train tickets before the trip, but I was unthrilled with the travel agency’s attempts to tie my visa support to the tickets (from which waytorussia.net liberated me), and then we were told by another agency that “all tickets on all classes of all trains are sold out” (which made me question burning bridges with the first agency…apparently I am not at my most cordial when I get up a 4am to have an email exchange during Russian work hours), so we were left to try our luck purchasing tickets in country.

I was well prepared. Joe let us copy his train tickets and I wrote out a note asking for two more tickets exactly like his, which the front desk crew was kind enough to translate and transcribe for me into Cyrillic (so what if you have to iron in the maid’s quarters with a friendly staff like that!). I followed Joe’s map to the Kaccas (ticket windows) in the Belaruskaya train station and was feeling pretty good as I handed first the note, then the tickets, and then a copy of each of our passports to the ticket woman. Everything was going so smoothly in fact that I felt emboldened to try to confirm that the tickets were first-class “spalny vagon” tickets with only two beds in a cabin. It worked. Not only did she understand my request (well, on my third pronunciation of “spalny vagon”) but I understood her confused question “vamistya?” (together with? if I remembered the lessons correctly) and was able to explain that yes Kristin and I would be “vamistya” in a two-person car but not “vamistya” Joe obviously. This was too easy!

And it was. After some clicks on the keyboard, her face registered there was a problem and she began explaining the situation to me. Shortly, it was clear I had no idea what she was saying (I got lucky with “vamistya”) and I sheepishly asked if she spoke English (at least I asked in Russian). She didn’t. This was going to be fun. In a mix of English, Russian and charades, I found out “this train no spalny vagon”. Joe’s first-class tickets weren’t as classy as he’d thought. Kristin and I really wanted to get the best night’s sleep possible on the leg of the train to St. Petersburg since we’d be busy touristing all day. To us this meant avoiding sharing a cabin with some of the boisterous vodka-fueled cabin-mates we’d read about before the trip (on the way back to Moscow we had no such qualms and had planned to get third-class platzkart tickets before we found they actually were sold out). I got across that I wanted to consider other trains that did have “spalny vagon” cars. She understood and spun her screen towards me. My consideration didn’t last long as all of those tickets were 25% more for one way than the round-trip tickets I was trying to buy. The ticket woman solved the problem by showing me the beds available on Joe’s train and pointing out that Kristin and I could travel in the same cabin “vamistya” Joe. Sold. We’d only have one stranger with us. One Russian couldn’t be that loud… right?

She went on to purchasing the return trip. Click, click, concerned face. We knew each other well enough now that I got a single word and a hand gesture instead of a string of Russian. I didn’t know the word but the gesture said “higher”. I guess the price had gone up since Sunday. She spun the screen to show me the new fee. God bless the Russians for using the same Arabic numerals that we use because although I couldn’t read much on her screen, I could see the new higher price and more importantly I could see what I was pretty sure was the date. 25.05. May 25^th. Not April 25^th. Now that would be a problem. Of course seeing this issue and conveying it to my charades partner were two very different things. I tried the most direct route of contorting my arm through the hole in the ticket window and pointing to the error. My Go-Go-Gadget finger wasn’t working though and I came up a couple feet short. Thankfully we had a good rapport by this point and she didn’t feel threatened by me reaching through the window at her (in hindsight that could have been a bad idea). What followed was a string of me saying “four” or pointing and saying “not four” (I couldn’t remember “five” in Russian). The problem was she took this to mean I didn’t want four people in my cabin! This was not going well. I smiled apologetically at the growing line of Russians behind me… and proceeded to spend the next five minutes looping through the number for four, the hand signal for five, and the arm signal for I-want-to-point-to-something-on-your-screen- but-can’t-twist-my-arm-through-your-window. Then I remembered the word “Date” in Russian was something like “Datee” (only afterwards did I learn that April and May are equally close cognates in Russian and English!). I tried that. Success! She fixed the date of the request and viola, the price matched Joe’s ticket once again. As I learned throughout the trip, the tourist season starts in May and therefore a May ticket is more expensive than an April one.

I purchased the tickets with the cash I’d brought (6,600 Rubles or about $280 total for the two round-trip second-class tickets). Like the rest of my experience in Moscow, they didn’t take credit cards. Tickets in hand I spent five minutes next to the counter matching every single name and number between our tickets and Joe’s until I was convinced that we had the right tickets (or that they were at least as right as Joe’s). Of course you’ll have to read the future entries to find out if the tickets actually got us to St. Petersburg and back… or if we wound up getting a tour of all those Russian territories I only know from playing Risk (Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Kamchatka anyone?)

<-- Day 2 ---- Days 3 and 4 -->

Russia Recap: Day 2

2008-05-02T17:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday April 20th

Sunday was Kristin’s only full day (as a tourist) in Moscow. As such, we had a rigorous sight-seeing schedule to cover it all. Not that I’m a demanding travel partner or anything… :-p Thankfully, like the National Mall here in D.C., Moscow has all of their top attractions packaged in one convenient spot. In Moscow that’s The Kremlin and Red Square (which lives directly outside the Kremlin’s east wall).

After the President Hotel’s bountiful breakfast buffet, our first stop was Red Square, or as the language courses taught us Krasnaya Ploshad, which frankly was pronounced in the lectures as “Krasnaya bullshit” (I’m sorry, it sounded exactly like that to both of us). Needless to say we got some laughs out of standing in Red Square and telling each other Krasnaya Ploshad izdees (Red Square is here!). It’s here that Lenin lays embalmed waiting to greet us. He gets tired though so he’s only available between 10am and 1pm, and on Monday and Friday he’s out of the office altogether (it’s my understanding that’s when they wipe him down and touch him up). Apparently there is usually a horrendous line and we were nearly suckered into hiring a tour guide who supposedly could get us right to the front of the line. As it turned out the line was only about 10 minutes (on a rainy April day at least) and we actually were in line next to two guys who had been on the vodka tour with us the night before (perhaps they were actually hired to follow us… or we were hired to follow them). At any rate Lenin is looking pretty good; embalmed, but not as fake as some writings implied. There’s no talking (to him or anyone else) and they move you through pretty quickly so it’s only about a 15 second experience. He’s free so at least it’s a good value.

Next stop was the Armoury, which is essentially a history museum inside the Kremlin. You can’t enter or exit the Kremlin from the east side so we had to walk all the way around the Kremlin, past the tomb of the unknown soldier, an old looking section of wall, and the Alexandrovsky Gardens (which like most things in Moscow will probably look much better… and be much more crowded… next month). “April renovations bring May tourists” was a common theme throughout the trip, as you’ll see. But the Armoury was open and we made our noon timeslot (although Kristin was forced to forage for nourishment since I wouldn’t stop for lunch—she ended up with a ketchup-soaked hot dog that was none too appetizing). Like the rest of Russia, there was very little English in the museum, but you go through the gift shop on the way in (and out) and they sell an English book on the Armoury for about $8 (and they actually take credit cards!), so I recommend buying that as a guide and souvenir. Some of the more exciting items here were the actual throne where Peter and Ivan were anointed co-tsars, along with the crowns they wore (all of which was shown in the Peter the Great miniseries that planted the seed in high school for me to eventually take this trip). The Faberge eggs and Elizabeth’s 23 horse carriage also made this one of the highlights of the trip. When you go, explore the room of outfits worn by the clergy and look for the one which we swore was decorated with South Park-style people (sadly this one is missing from the Armoury guidebook). Maybe it really is from the South Park folks and they have it there like we have the Colbert painting at our National Portrait Gallery.

The rest of the time in The Kremlin was spent dodging the rain, ducking from one cathedral to another (half of which wound up being closed). Everytime we entered a building we hoped when we left the rain would have stopped... it was always raining harder. We did come across the impressive Tsar Bell (largest in the world), but failed to find a way to exit the Kremlin out onto Red Square (there were plenty of guards around to stymie each attempt down a new path we thought might get us out that way). So we did another half-lap around the outside of the Kremlin walls, where we worked up an expensive appetite.

After a $50 snack at GUM (the boutique mall that lines the whole east side of Red Square) we wound our way through St. Basil’s Cathedral. The outside is far more interesting than the inside where the highlight was probably realizing that there were multiple exits which meant they were forced to have multiple mini-gift shops to catch you on your way out. Each time we went a different way inside to be sure we had covered everything we wound up in a different gift shop.

Our last tourist destination was the State History Museum. Kristin and I were both uninspired by this museum and the highlight hands down was bumping into her co-worker Joe who had just bought train tickets to St. Petersburg… at the exact times we needed to buy ours for. I formulated a plan of getting a copy of them to take with me to the train ticket office on Monday. Kristin and I were so bored of the English-free second floor of the museum that we decided to skip out on the first floor (which we learned later from Joe actually had information in English!). Therefore it was all the more ironic to us when we exited the museum and heard a speaker enticing tourists inside… in English. In the museum’s defense it had been a long day and I’m sure had we hired a guide, or bought a guidebook, or started on the first floor(!) we’d have enjoyed it more.

Dinner was at the Lonely Planet’s second successful recommendation. This time it was the Uzbek restaurant “Eastern Quarter” just off Ulitsa Arbat. Their Plov was second only to Saturday’s Horcha on my list of top Russian meals. In addition to being delicious, dinner was cheaper than our afternoon snack! But I’ll admit that sitting at the café in GUM was a nice break from the non-stop tourist-a-thon… and from the rain. Since I’d be outside all day on Monday I was really hoping for some sunshine…

Kristin on the other hand had to prepare for her conference on Monday. An $800 a night hotel in Russia may have a spectacular view and great breakfast, but there are some things it does not have. A clock. An iron. No worries. Kristin called to have an iron brought to the room to undo the wrinkle damage that a 9 hour flight will do. The response: "No". And then instructions to go down to some other room number, where there was an iron. It turns out it was the maid's room, so Kristin ironed away while we looked around at all of the random knick-knacks (a table-top tree with fake $100 bills as leaves) and potential freebies (extra hotel slippers—which we passed on because President Hotel was written in English—but sadly none of their $150 bathrobes).

<-- Day 1 ---- Day 3 Train Tickets -->

Back in the U.S.S.A.

2008-04-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

I have returned from an amazing week in Russia and am working my way through my photos and stories. Kristin and I combined to take about 1500 pictures, which I’ve whittled down below 300 (you're welcome) and have broken into (hopefully) manageable sections, so I am finally ready to begin the recap (the delay in getting this started actually had nothing to do with jet lag, which we managed to avoid both ways, and more to do with spending the past three days with lawn mowers—breaking two, failing to fix them, buying a new one, and finally mowing the jungle of plants that was swallowing the house).

Before I recap day one, I have some thanks to give.

Much like my Africa trip wouldn’t have been possible without Chris, I wouldn’t have gotten to Russia this year without Kristin who brought me along on her business trip (and I surely would never have traveled there in such impressive accommodations). I can’t possibly thank her enough for this opportunity and for putting up with me as a travel partner! Thanks also to Dana, Erin and my uncle for great advice on what to see in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As you’ll see from the recap your input guided the itinerary.

For future travelers I should also give a shout out to www.waytorussia.net. For U.S. citizens, Russia requires an invitation letter… in order to get a visa… which then has to be registered at a hotel upon arrival. It’s not a terribly tourist friendly system (though probably easier than what a Russian wanting to visit the U.S. goes through). Hotels and travel agencies in Russia will issue an invitation letter… but as I found out, they would only issue an invitation for the exact dates that you booked accommodations with them. This can be a problem when your final night is on an overnight train and the travel agency will only offer visa support through the day before your flight home (it’s apparently a very bad thing to overstay your visa, even by a single day). www.waytorussia.net on the other hand is an online site where you can pay $30 and they will get a Russian agency to issue you a visa invitation for whatever days you request (up to the tourist visa limit of 30 days). Initially that seemed about as legitimate as a Russian-mail-order-bride site or the emails that I observed the young African man “Edith” send to all of the 60-year old men on a German dating site. But in the end it was $30 well spent. I got an invitation letter that covered my entire trip and it was legitimate enough that I was issued a visa which didn’t lead to any problems entering or leaving Russia (it may actually be a sanctioned way of ensuring that we fund the Russian travel industry). There’s also lots of other good travel advice on the site including a language section that I used to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, which proved extremely handy (like for deciphering their invitation letter which doesn’t come with any English instructions!).

Day One (which in this case was from about 10am Friday to 3pm Saturday east coast time)

After an uneventful Delta connection through JFK (skipping the iPod vending machine there) we arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport along with all of our luggage! I even had my name on a sign for a car at the airport (a first I believe). We got to the (five star!) President Hotel shortly after noon and were able to check in immediately. After getting over my shock about the view from the room (in one direction we could see right into the Kremlin) and getting clean we set off to Izmaylovo market. Normally I wouldn’t advise going souvenir shopping immediately upon arrival, but this market was supposedly the best deal in Moscow and it’s only in full swing on the weekend. Since we’d be touring the Kremlin and Red Square all day Sunday, this was our only chance to visit.

On the way in we passed a bear show. I realized when looking back through the photos that the painting in the background was actually one of my favorite paintings that I saw a week later at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (Ivan Shishkin’s “Morning in a Pine Forest”). One of the other things we saw throughout the trip was a T-shirt aimed at tourists that says “I’ve been to Moscow… there are no bears”. It lies.

The market lived up to the hype because not only was it our best shopping experience in Russia, it was probably my best foreign shopping experience ever. There’s an endless supply of the usual souvenirs (as well as unusual ones like Boston Red Sox nesting dolls which I had to resist), the prices are the cheapest we found on the trip, and the vendors are helpful but not pushy (well as you see in the picture we did have hats pushed on our heads—but they took the photo and didn’t get particularly upset when we moved along without buying anything). The bargaining is mostly a game here where all the vendors seem to have a starting price and a “minimum price” (about 10-20% less) which they sometimes offer in the same breathe. It’s probably possible to bargain some down further (although on several occasions they truly didn’t seem interested and were happy to let us walk away) and in general the prices are reasonable enough that it’s not really necessary. If our flight had been later the next Saturday I definitely would have come back here then once I had a better idea of what I wanted to buy and how much money I had left.

Also inside the market (but not included in the 40 cent entrance price to the market) was the Vodka History Museum. We jumped on a group tour (in English, which turned out to be quite rare in Russia) and Kristin sampled some vodka included in the admission price before we purchased yet more souvenirs. It was a bit hard to follow but I know the funniest part of the tour for me was when the guide explained how three people would pool their money for a bottle of vodka and needed a way to split it evenly. They determined that vodka bottles make 21 “blurps” as they are poured (she made the sound effects). Each person got seven blurps. Blurp, blurp, blurp…

Still managing to stay awake we tracked down the Georgian restaurant (or PECTOPAH as it’s spelled in Cyrillic—PECTOPAH is pronounced Restoran, isn’t Cyrillic fun!?!) called Dioskuriya that was recommended in the Lonely Planet. Thankfully it was still there, still cheapish (I think $40 for the two of us), and the best food I had the whole trip (particularly my favorite dish Horcha). I also noticed the handy requirement that menus in Russia print the serving size (in grams or mL) along with the price. It’s a little hard to find because the “street” it is on looks more like a driveway going through a gate in a building along Novy Arbat (walking from the Kremlin if you get to T.G.I. Friday’s—yes T.G.I. Friday’s—you’ve gone too far). It’s well worth seeking out though and was the perfect cap to our first day in Russia!

Day 2 -->

From Russia with Love!

2008-04-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

Day four update, probably the last of the trip since we won't have internet access unless we go to a cafe. Today the sun finally came out... and I was inside at museums! The Pushkin Gallery and the Tretyakov Gallery. Tonight I saw Eugene Onegin performed in Russian. Oh the bit of news I forgot from yesterday is that I got our train tickets to St. Petersburg so the trip will continue!Here are a couple more photos:

Update through day three: I have limited internet access so I won't write much but I will try to post a few more photos. The last two days have been rainy but I've still enjoyed seeing Lenin, the Kremlin (with the world's largest bell), St.Basil's, Novodevichy Convent, The nesting dolls (Matryoshka) museum, and watching Don Quixote (a ballet I thought was an opera) at the State Kremlin Theatre. My favorite part of Moscow so far though may be the Metro. More on that later. Here are some more photos.

One day done and everything has gone smoothly. Other than meager success on the airplane I haven't slept in two days so I won't be writing but I will post a couple of today's photos. Enjoy!

Dosvedanya Yankee Stadium

2008-04-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Joel is leaving the East Coast and the Yankees are moving out of Yankee Stadium (they're going to the new stadium right next door). That made it the perfect time to finally catch a game at Yankee Stadium and of course that game needed to be a Sox/Yankees game. I have plenty to say about the experience of being one of four Sox fans surrounded by a horde of chanting "bleacher creatures"... but unfortunately that will all have to wait until I return from Russia since I leave in less than 12 hours and have just barely packed. For now I will just have to give you this picture worth 1000 words... or at least two words... and those words of course are "Yankees Suck!"

Hopefully the next post is from Russia!

Paintball Haiku

2008-04-14T22:00:00.001-07:00

Mission Accomplished:
I didn't eat any paint...
But that shot still hurt!

The Rite of Spring

2008-04-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

Spring has finally arrived. I know because this was the first Friday that Darren and I ate our weekly burrito lunch outside, and because NPR’s All Songs Considered previewed the spring music releases. Since I didn’t blog about anything else this week, I figured I would take after my friend Chris, who likes to make top 10 lists, and preview the top 10 events I am most excited about this spring and summer.

I had a hard time paring the list down so I’ve cheated by grouping some activities together and by disqualifying the long-standing annual traditions which would show up on this list every year (e.g. croquet at Screen on Jon and Darren’s Green, Gold Cup, Tubing on the 4^th, and the CSC Invitational). It’s going to be a busy spring and summer. Which reminds me that Darren and I have a debate about whether I like to be busy. For the record, I don’t like to be busy. I like all of the individual activities that I do, and I don’t mind that they make me busy. See the difference? (Somehow that always reminds me of the SNL debate skit during the 2004 election where “Kerry” says [see when I was for the war I was speaking to a pro-war audience, and when I was against the war I was speaking to an anti-war audience. That’s not flip-flopping. That’s pandering. And you deserve a president who knows the difference!])

10. Kevin and Jamie’s wedding: There is no safe spot to put them on the list so consider this event unranked (or if you prefer, they are at the “top” of the list). I’ve been to a Match wedding, but this will be the first wedding for a couple that met at one of our BBQs (the BBQs are indeed magical as I can envision at least one more SOJDG wedding).

9. Hamlet at the Shakespeare Free for All (May 22^nd-June 1^st): It’ll be hard to surpass Love’s Labor’s Lost but I’ll be there to see if The Shakespeare Theatre Company can do it. Technically, this should be disqualified since this is my fourth year going.

8. SilverDocs (June 16^th-23^rd): One of the few things that irritates Darren more than me saying “I don’t like to be busy”, is how much I like documentaries. Although, I only got to see Chicago 10 last year, I intend to see plenty more this time around. Maybe even my friends' second documentary, 10 Yards, will make the cut.

7. Artomatic 2008 (May 9^th- June 15th): For the first time since I started going, Artomatic is showing in back-to-back years. I still remember last year’s show well so it will be interesting to see how much of the artwork is recycled. Hopefully I will finally find a piece to go over the mantle (otherwise the Dr. Dremo’s sign may have found its new home).

6. Wolf Trap: The greatest concert venue on earth (and not just because I performed there) and the only National Park for the Performing Arts. I’d see anything at Wolf Trap (ok, that’s a lie… I won’t see the Backstreet Boys) I already have a stack of 28 tickets at home for my friends and me to go see Prairie Home Companion, Pilobolus, Tcheers for Tchaikovsky, Not the Messiah, ‘H’ is for Hitchcock, and Hawaii Revisited.

5. Concerts: It’s a good summer when three out of the top four bands I want to see are all coming through D.C. Thanks to AB, I’ve got tickets to see The Flight of the Conchords. I’ll get to see my second favorite band, Bishop Allen, for the first time, and my favorite band, Modest Mouse, for the second time (with the ridiculous lineup including The National and R.E.M.). Now if James would only announce a North American Tour…

4. Red Sox Games: I’ll be going to enemy territory for the first time next Wednesday to watch the Red Sox win at Yankee Stadium before the Yanks move to their new home next year. And of course Jeffrey and I will be following our flawlessly refined routine for catching nearly every Sox/O’s game over at Fenway South.

3. Capital Fringe Festival (July 10^th-27^th): While I don’t participate in theatre anymore (that’s how I managed to perform at Wolf Trap… it was at the Barns and our High School’s production of Terminal was selected to perform) I’ve been known to watch a play or two. Will this be the year that someone tops Journeymen Theatre’s Bartleby?

2. XXIX Olympiad (August 8^th-24^th): Host-country controversy aside, I love the Olympics (only surpassed by World Cup Soccer) and can’t wait to watch some hard-core table tennis again (yes, I’m completely serious – and yes, I’m hooked on Curling in the winter Olympics).

1. RUSSIA! (April 18^th-26^th): That’s right, the main reason I haven’t written much lately is that I am getting ready for my trip to Russia one week from today. Most of my free time has been spent studying Pimsleur Russian courses, listening to Russian music lectures, rereading Russka, and rewatching the Peter the Great miniseries. Well that and trying to get a visa (check) and train tickets between Moscow and St. Petersburg (not-so-much check). Let's hope this trip makes the blog a bit more entertaining!

National Mall and Nationals Park

2008-04-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

Spring weather may not have arrived last weekend, but that didn’t stop the arrival of the Cherry Blossoms, the kite festival, Opening Night at the Nationals new stadium and (as I had to take metro to see all of those) the tourists.

At the kite festival the weather was colder and less windy than last year (not an ideal combination for kites), but Ann and I persevered and by some measure this year was even more successful; that measure would be the ability to fully unwind the kite string (with the kite in the air), which I accomplished twice Saturday vs. once in 2007. Despite flying last year’s model, I was happy to see my 3-D pirate ship kite received an ample share of compliments (it may be developing a bit of an ego).

Thanks to Joel I scored a ticket to the Nats opening night game on Sunday (as opposed to the game on April 7^th that I bought tickets for thinking it was the home opener. Doh. Seriously who has a one game series on March 30^th!?!). They rolled out the red carpet for us… to stand on while we waited in the metal detector lines (which had better have been a one-night deal on account of POTUS first-pitching). We explored the stadium and my initial impression was favorable, but as I’ve analyzed it I don’t know why (probably it was the atmosphere of being there for opening night). Nationals Park doesn’t have the unique touches of some of the new stadiums, or any interesting landmarks in the background—like the Bromo-Seltzer tower which used to be visible (bottom of link) at Camden Yards. The food and drink policy is the same as RFK where you can bring food and one sealed bottle of water in, but there are currently no vendors outside the stadium (at the metro entrance at least) which is a disappointment. And just like so many games at RFK, around the sixth inning I found myself futilely hoping that a pretzel vendor would walk by. Regardless it was an exciting night at Nationals Park, capped by Ryan Zimmerman’s walk-off HR. I was grateful to Joel to be there and I will give the stadium another chance on Monday with those tickets that I thought were for opening night!

Notes to Jon:

In case any of the random people who came up and asked where I got my kite stumble across my blog (or more likely so I have an answer when they ask next year). Ann found Whistle Stop Hobbies in Old Town Alexandria for us last year.
They did include local restaurants inside the stadium but the prices are marked up accordingly ($8.25 for a cup of—admittedly delicious—gumbo from Cantina Marina and $7 for Five Guys fries). That didn’t keep the lines from being out of control…until they cleared the area for fireworks. Rumor has it that Five Guys will be putting in a custom kitchen soon to increase efficiency and also lowering the price on the fries to $6. Hopefully Cantina Marina will increase the size of the gumbo cup.
George Washington won the first President's Race at Nationals Park (while Teddy abandoned the race to dance in Center Field)
Metro worked well for the game, we took the yellow line from Crystal City to the green line at L’Enfant. And most importantly we didn’t lose any keys!
Although it has nothing to do with this post, I did go to Jammin’ Java on Monday to hear Eva Castillo and I need someplace to make a note of how delicious the Sausage Tomatillo Chili is so that I remember to get a bowl of it next time I am there.

Photo Recipe #1: Chebu juen

2008-04-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

Damn. Why didn’t I think of this before. Take pictures along with my notes in cooking class! I don’t cook much (I reluctantly accept that cereal doesn’t count), but I have taken several Indian cooking classes, however I cook the meals so rarely I forget how things are supposed to look. Well I won’t have that problem with the Senegalese national dish of Chebu juen thanks to my detailed photo log (phlog?). It’s a stewed dish of fish, rice and vegetables. However it is not a stew. The ingredients are cooked and removed from the stew until finally the rice bit is cooked in the broth and soaks it all up, then the fish and vegetables are served on a bed of stew-infused rice.

Having first learned about this dish in the African Voices exhibit at the Natural History Museum, Darren and I used it as a clue in the Trivia Scavenger Hunt we organized. Then on my trip to West Africa last summer I had the opportunity to try Chebu juen (however it is spelled) in the fishing village of Ndangane (now that’s some fresh fish!). Along with Yassa Poullet it was my favorite food from the whole trip, so I was excited to see that Arlington County was offering a class dedicated to this specific meal. The result tasted nearly as good as it had in Senegal (the fish wasn’t as good, but the paste which the instructor stuffed in the fish was the best part and it wasn’t in the original dish). We also made the bissap drink which I had enjoyed in-country. It’s a tea made from dried hibiscus flowers, mint leaves and sugar to taste. If you happen to live near Arlington, I definitely recommend taking the Adult Education cooking courses that the county offers. For those of you outside of the area you can check out the photos and recipe (at least until I am asked to remove it). Now if they’ll just teach a class on Yassa Poullet…

Chebu Djeun (Senegalese rice and fish dish)
Adapted from Khady’s recipe
Serves: 12 people
Ingredients:
1 large grouper or blue fish, or red snapper (about 5 lbs) cut in 2” to 3” thick steak size
3 medium onions chopped
1 big can of crushed tomato (~28 oz), one small can of tomato paste (6 oz)
Stuffing paste consisting of ½ cup parsley, ½ cup scallions, 3-4 garlic cloves, salt, Mrs.Dash, and one small habanero pepper blended in food processor
2 cups canola oil
5 lbs jasmine rice bit (may also be called broken rice)
3 small hot peppers (optional)
Manioc (yucca root) peeled and cut in 3’’ sections
2 lbs carrots peeled cut in half
1 small cabbage cut in four
4 eggplants (mini ones)
Spanish squash (calabaza) cut in 3”
2 turnips cut in half
3-4 Tamerind seed pods (optional)

Directions:
Heat oil in a heavy-bottom pot
Cut slits in fish steaks and stuff with parsley paste
Brown stuffed fish flesh side about 45 seconds set aside
Put chopped onions in oil cook 3 to 5 minutes
Add cans of crushed tomatoes and paste + Mrs. Dash, for approximately 10 minutes stirring occasionally
Add 2 cans of water (use the empty crushed tomato can to measure water)
Put all vegetables in and cook until done (about 30-40 minutes), then take vegetables out of stew and keep warm in oven set to 200° (remove Tamerind seed pods from their shells and add them for the last couple of minutes before removing vegetables if desired)
Add fish to cook for 5 – 10 minutes, take fish out and keep aside
Wash rice bit, drain water, microwave 5 minutes and pour into stew broth; bring to boil, cover, reduce heat to medium cook for ½ hour, turn rice and cook for 10 or 15 more minutes
When rice is done, serve fish and vegetables on bed of rice

Bissap (sweet drink from dried hibiscus flowers)
Serves: Well it makes about two liters
Ingredients:
A handful of dried hibiscus flowers
A handful of mint leaves
A quart of water for tea
A quart of water for diluting
Sugar to taste

Directions:
Boil quart of water in dried hibiscus flowers
Cook tea for about 5 minutes and turn off heat
Add mint leaves and leave to cool for several minutes
Strain into pitcher and add another quart of water
Add sugar to taste

Notes to Jon:

Rice bit was purchased at asian food store in the Eden Center, fish from Slavin and Sons, and all other ingredients from Shoppers

The stuffing was especially good so don’t skip that step

I preferred the turnips and carrots to the Spanish pumpkin, cabbage and eggplant

The dried hibiscus flowers came directly from Senegal (and she gave us each a couple of handfuls to take home) but I don’t know where to get this locally
I believe she said that she makes it the night before for guests and then just cooks the rice in the broth and serves it

Stuff White People Like: Road Trips

2008-03-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

While it’s not (yet) recognized on the official list of “Stuff White People Like” (a damn funny blog making fun of well…basically me), I expect road trips to be added soon (unless they are held back to be part of their new book deal—congratulations!).

Here’s an example of a hypothetical White People road trip: Shortly after watching their local basketball team get knocked out of the NCAA tournament and screw up their brackets (thus preventing them from raising their status among other White People by showing how much smarter they are at guessing who will win games that no one pays attention to before March), a group of White People decide that they need to do something to make themselves feel good again.

In this case, despite the fact that it is after midnight on a Thursday in Washington D.C. they want… Philadelphia Cheesesteaks. Generally something non-organic topped with Cheese Whiz would not be considered traditional White People food (therefore finding a local late-night restaurant or picking up a cheesesteak Hot Pocket at a 24-hour grocery store—although cheaper and far more sensible—is not an option). The spontaneous road trip fixes that problem. In this case a middle-of-the-night-road-trip-to-Philadelphia meets the following White People needs:

Authenticity: As documented extensively on the official list, White People thrive on seeking out things that are considered authentic by other White People (like Pat’s and Geno’s 24-hour cheesesteak stands—Pat’s wins since it is older and therefore more authentic… and White People hate Vegas-style neon decorations unless they are gambling or enjoying the irony)

Expensive Sandwiches: While cheesesteaks on their own don't qualify—without seitan and organic local goat cheese—between gas, tolls and the cost of the sandwiches themselves that’s about $25 a cheesesteak.

Eating Local Food: Or in this case driving two hours to change which food White People are local to

Toyota Prius: Were it not for an onimous check engine light that change in locality would likely happen in a Prius... you know, so that it would be "good" for the environment

Traveling: Just like overseas travel, spontaneous road trips make White People look adventurous and fun and raise their status among other White People

Hating Corporations (except Apple): Despite aborted franchising attempts and minor family disputes Pat’s King of Cheesesteaks is a genuine family business

Asian Girls: At least when one of the White People also happens to be half-Asian

Indie Music: What’s a road trip without music after all, and music on a White People road trip is Indie music (Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse), unless they are being ironic and listening to music that would be heard on 80s night (Air Supply... ok so that was a previous road trip)

Outdoor Performance Clothes: Worn just in case the spontaneous road trip to Philly suddenly extends into a “kayak then camping” weekend

Making You Feel Bad About Not Going Outside: Or in this case at least making you feel bad about being boring and going to sleep at midnight on a Thursday instead of taking a road trip
Dogs: Dogs make any White People experience better. In addition they provide a way for White People to feel clever by using an extension cord as a leash, and prove that the road trip was too spontaneous to allow a detour to pick up a real leash. White People treat dogs like people. And what is more White People than a dog with a blog!?! As a bonus, they are always photogenic which helps with the last item

Doing things for the stories of having done them: While again not an official entry it is an inherent trait that White People do things mainly so they can have the most interesting photos and stories to impress other people (see Marathons). They will mention these experiences in conversation… or perhaps write a blog entry about them… and you should always compliment them on how interesting and adventurous these experiences make them

As a disclaimer I could have this all wrong because by my calculations I am only 56 out of 92 (60.1%) White. However I think I make up for that by exceeding requirements in the following categories: wearing Outdoor Performance Clothes at my cubicle job, driving the White People car—The Prius—and previously driving the previous-White-People-car—The Jetta, and having officially stated on my blog that The Wire was the best show on television.

I can neither confirm nor deny that the following photos were taken on this hypothetical road trip:

Green Cards and Visas

2008-03-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

That's right. I'll be appearing a little more manly around the climbing gym from now on. No longer do I have to wear a hot pink card on my harness. Tonight I finally took my lead climbing test (and passed) so that I can now wear a more fashion-friendly green card and climb like a man (well an 80s man I suppose since the card is day-glo green). I think it may mean that I can climb in new parts of the gym that don't have top-ropes set up, and also likely take falls that will hurt more... but the important thing is that I can look like a man while doing it! Hopefully my climbing doesn't suffer as a result, since women are better natural climbers...

Now if only applying for my visa to Russia next month were as easy...

"Smuggling Friendship"

2008-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

I was bound to like Saving Luna, the documentary about a wayward killer whale… I mean Orca, that I saw as part of the Environmental Film Festival—after all I have a fondness for adventurous sea mammals, like Chessie the Manatee who used to go on holiday up the Eastern seaboard and bump the sailboats in the Chesapeake Bay around a bit, or more recently Manny the Manatee who decided that it was perfectly reasonable to take a 700 mile vacation up the Mississippi River… all the way to Memphis (just discovered while grabbing a link that there's not such a happy ending there...)—but I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie.

The filmmakers’ website has an overview of the documentary that describes it eloquently, and even has some additional notes that aren’t in the movie, although it does give away the ending a bit (just like my friend from The Ocean Conservancy did for me the night before I saw it, thanks Sarah!).

While just the raw footage of Luna befriending people—despite the best (worst?) efforts of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to prevent it—would be captivating and charming to watch, the filmmakers made an invaluable contribution to Luna and to the storytelling. Husband and wife team, Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm (who were in attendance at the screening), morph a three week journalistic assignment into a three-year biography of their friend Luna who “happens to be a whale”. Despite their eventual bias, the film definitely gives a sense of all of the challenges faced when people encounter a “Solitary Sociable” like Luna, and it’s easy to see how different parties feel that their approach is the right one (although not surprisingly I came away agreeing with the filmmakers in the end!).

Mike Parfit did an exceptional job as both script writer and narrator. I was sure he was a hired narrator, but he wasn’t, and it was so compelling to be able to have the story told in a first-person voice. Although the script could have easily been overpowered by the incredible story itself and its show-stealing star, the brilliant writing was not obscured. Countless times Mike took a behavior or a situation and coined (or captured) a memorable phrase that was later used to cleverly and concisely recall that memory. Here are some of my favorites:

Luna developed the game “Stealth Whale” where he would just pop up next to a boat in response to boats being mandated to keep their distance from him.

Luna liked to “Play Bruno” (apparently based on a character from a TV show The Beachcombers I haven’t seen) and work for the logging company by pushing around 40-foot timbers like his friends who drove the tugs.

Watching the epic “Tug-of-whale” between the “Luna Flotilla”—the canoes of the First Nations—and the Department, who are trying to lure him into a net for relocation back to his pod (or possibly to an aquarium). The First Nations believe Luna is their chief that died the week he arrived (and claimed he would return as a killer whale) and they paddle out every day during the Tug-of-whale battle and sing to Luna as he follows their flotilla for miles… away from his friends in the other boat who are trying to lead him into the net pen.

But these are the quotes, as best I can remember, that really summed up the movie for me:

“Scientists know whales like child psychologists know children, in abstract detail, the people [in the community who befriended him] know him like parents know one child”

“Relationships among Orcas are consistent and they last”, whereas Luna’s interactions with humans were terribly inconsistent, due to the constantly changing attitudes and approaches of the stakeholders trying to save him.
But perhaps most touching was watching Mike and Suzanne, and so many others in the community, who were “smuggling friendship” into Luna’s life.

If you’re in Bermuda, Florida, Texas, or Montana… or if Saving Luna plays “Stealth Whale” in your city, make a point of going to see this great documentary.