How to Avoid Bringing Too Much When Traveling!

A huge fan of the "rolling clothes" WITH RUBBERBAND (Huge tip), I kept all my clothes like that even while at home!! I actually just stopped recently keeping all my clothes and rubberbanded AT HOME, but will likely do that on a trip.

My biggest problem is the "what if the opportunity arises for xyz?" and xyz could be "wearing a suit", looking sharp, that random sporting event that pops up, using a laptop need (bring laptop yeah/nae?)

I think one of the most outrageous "OVERPACKING" trips was a trip to Santa Barbara I took to see afriend, not knowing if i'd stay a night or a week, and knowing that we talked about surf I brought something like

• a laptop and bag
• a surfboard
• wetsuit
• suitcase with week's worth of clothes
• swim bag and suit
• formal dress clothes (collared shirts, ties (hanign in car))

Guess what, I didn't even stay ONE night, I drove back that same day. -_- LMAO!!!

This was great advice

Hi Mike.. :-)
The reality is that we all overpack…
We’re all thinking in the back of our minds, what if I need to be more formal ? What if something get’s soiled ?
Put that out of your mind..
If you really want to pack light, just pack the stuff you you wear every day…Your favorite Ts…That couple pair of jeans that fit perfect…
In an actual emergency, there’s always a laundrymat down the street.. :-)
In packing, just realize that less is more…You know what you need and that in a pinch you’ll figure it out…
Just take a step back, realize what you’ll actually “need”, and go from there.. >>

Conclusively, even when I went to Hawaii I was lugging around an entire extra suitcase I didn't need (I would've been fine with just a backpack). My best packing job was when I lived in the Yucatan in Mexico. WHY was the packing so good? Because it was a highly specific trip and we needed highly specific things (gators, bug repellant, jungle clothes) living in tent. So It was all laid out checklisted and whatnot.

I think the BIGGEST problem of packing is simply not enough planning. When I've overpacked it's been because I always throw in at the last minute..."oh dang I might need that..couldn't hurt to add that one other thing!" (repeat a dozen times with 12 other things!) And THEN the problem with "last minute chuckins" is that you don't have a cognizance of what you're bringing and a part of your brain knows you have this amorphorous blob of stuff you're hauling around and it truly DOES drain the vacation, the actual travel experience.

You're traveling to see/experience a different place (and time? ooo dr. who lol :D). Clumping up your travel with excess belongings seriously obscures and creates interference with connecting with the travel! In other words you aren't really traveling if you bring ALL your stuff you need, may need, and may/not need for xyz random occasion "if it arises". In many cases, I think if you travel and realize you forgot something but will have to make do without it, you're 50,000 times better off on the other extreme of having brought something that you realize you won't use!! ;). I think the best illustration of bringing "too much stuff" is picturing a travel carrying a 4 suitcases, clothes, various odd-sized items all in front of him so he can't even see what's in front of him. THAT is the gross exaggeration of what we're like when we overpack. We can't see and sensually experience the environment we're in. As a result, a lot of the value and peace of travel is burdened and hazy or partially lost. So I guess the bottom line with this fact is bringing less leaves more cognitive room for savoring the experience of actually traveling!

So I think the good rule of thumbs are:

1. 1. Overplan the packing. Checklist it. Stick to the list, so you have cognizance of what you're bringing and don't fall into the "ambiguous amorphorous blog of stuff" that you'd haul around.
2. 2. You're traveling to see/experience a different place (and time? ooo dr. who lol :D); bring the bare bones minimum of what you'll need so the purpose of travel is most rich and alive.
3. 3. Bringing less leaves more cognitive room for savoring the experience of actually traveling!

("Note: If you're a HUGE Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth, maybe Star Wars fan....look closely at the decals on the suitcase graphic! Victory! ;D)

Tuesday News Blip: Phoenix Lander!

Astronomy: The Phoenix craft of the "Mars Scout Program" to mars is a $475 million mission to launch and land the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars and explore it. When you consider the massive undertaking of such a project, NASA's slim budget of $475 million is extremely frugal, pennies really, but despite it's relatively slim budget, it's been an incredible success. The Phoenix lander was set to explore Mars for 90 "sols" (Martian days, or about 92 earth days). But instead of lasting a mere 3 months, it lasted almost 5, and only lost transmission to the approaching harsh Martian winter. Phoenix broke the barrier setting a lot of discoveries in previously uncharted territory.
The Phoenix included a set of ovens to heat minerals and materials it picked up as well as an electronic "wet chemistry lab" to run various experiments on the substances it sampled. Phoenix was the first spacecraft to ever "break the surface" (pun somewhat intended) and dig beneath the ice of another planet. This technological advancement revealed that the northern plains of Mars are more habitable for life than expected. Instead discovering inhospibility soil acids, Phoenix discovered alkaline soils, which could be actually conducive to potential plant life!!! It may not be green aliens with three heads and phasers, and rather possible microbes, but the Phoenix has come the closest mankind ever has to discovering life on another planet!

The Future of the Mars Scout Program will include an exciting "SUV-sized" Mars Science Lab (MSL -- and yes, and actual "laboratory") hehe. Like its predecessors Spirit  (January 4, 2004 landing) and Opportunity, (January 25, 2004 landing)  the MSL will have vehicular mobility.

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding "magnetosphere". Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic "umbrella" that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say.
The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants.
Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
Astronauts' risk
Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun's surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space.
As well as this plasma, or "solar wind", high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy.
The Earth's magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest.

The first time we switched it on, it worked
Ruth Bamford
International space agencies acknowledge that astronauts face a significant risk of ill health and even death if they experience major exposure to this harsh environment.
And even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan's mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
But researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have shown how it might be possible to create a portable mini-magnetosphere for spaceships.
People scale
In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the "hole".
It was not initially clear the idea would work, said Ruth Bamford, who led the research.
"There was a belief that you couldn't make a little hole in the solar wind small enough to do this at all," Dr Bamford, from RAL, told BBC News.
"It was believed that you had to have something very large, approaching planetary scale, to work in this way."
The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple $20 magnet.
"The first time we switched it on, it worked," said Dr Bamford.
What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. "It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating, just like the Earth's magnetosphere is," Dr Bamford explained.
"When it gets a strong push from the solar wind, the bubble gets smaller. The video shows us increasing the pressure of the solar wind, and the shield gets smaller but brighter."
Power issues
Many more experiments are needed, Dr Bamford admits, to understand how best to harness the effect; and a practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away.

The approach mimics how the Earth's magnetic field deflects cosmic rays
To protect a spaceship and its crew, she said, the craft itself might carry the magnetic field generator. Alternatively, it was possible to envisage a constellation of accompanying ships dedicated to the purpose of providing the umbrella where it was needed most.
The approach will probably also work with a field that is not on constantly, but cycles on and off - conserving the power that is precious on long-term missions. The details of how to cycle the field and control its shape must be hammered out, however.
"There're a lot of things to work out, like control, reliability, weight to launch, and so on," said Dr Bamford.
"I don't think it'll come down to as little as sticking fridge magnets on the outside of the spacecraft."

Tuesday News Blip: Crappy News, Genetic Mutations, and Greenhouse Auspiciousness

Legal Crap and Frightening News: There's a lot of lame crap going on in the legal world. The attorney general of California sued three small trucking companies for violating labors to avoid paying payroll taxes. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on 7 counts of corruption and should serve 5 years for each count, but apparently may serve much less. On a much scarier note, the Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms bureau successful stopped anotehr school killing spree before it started. Some idiot neo-nazis had some heinously inhuman plan to decapitate African Americans and assassinate Barrack Obama. Wow. It's times like these where corruption, illegal earning, and racist brutality seem to clog the news that you feel pretty pathetic calling yourself American. At the very least it certainly doesn't make you feel safe! In fact, the news in America has gotten so foul and disturbing (I can't believe there's still racist neo-nacist hate group buffoons still around), there's really no point in continuing to cover it. But just the fact that dangerous hate-group racism still exists in America really causes you to scrutinize that irrationality. The opinions on slavery from the Civil War really might have left a scar and some racist people remain dangerously confused and primitive, but this chunk of news just reeks of a lot of fear. Jeez, just the thought that if Obama gets elected he could be under the threat of a racist assassination is, well, a sad sign that maybe some haven't evolved as much as they should have. Fortunately, tomatoes have evolved!

Bottom-line: Sometimes current events are so atrocious, at times it's good just to not pay attention to the news.

Health: Interesting news, very intriguing. The genetically modified research has sprouted a new invention: purple tomatoes cross-bred with a snapdragon flower. The resultant creation is jacked with antioxidant and supposedly has huge cancer-prevention properties! The combination of snapdragon with the tomato produces anthocyanin which is an extremely antioxidant-rich pigment.

Bottom-line: New snapdragon genetically-infused tomato may help cure cancer.

Environment: Good news on the horizon of environmental conservation, specifically emissions control! While,

"there is currently no agreed method of allocating international emissions to individual countries"

, members of the British Parliament are

"determined that international aviation and shipping should be part of a comprehensive approach for tackling climate change"

. I guess you never factor in exhaust from airplanes polluting the atmosphere contributing to the green house effect, but it's good to know that emission control standards on that form of communication are being set in place.

Bottom-line: Airplanes' emissions control will help environment.

Tuesday News Blip

Transportation: Interestingly enough, local Californians and many other commuters have grown a liking to the public transportation method of commuting they adopted to deal with outrageous gas prices not too long ago. Now that gas prices have dropped, many commuters still prefer the public transportation method. Hey, better for the environment, less pollution, and cheaper; they just have to make sure they get a good bus driver!

Real Estate: Californian real estate continues costs top dollar, especially compared to other places around the U.S. Take La Jolla's average house cost of $1.8 million compared to Sioux City's average house cost of $133,000. You'll get comparable actual houses for 13 times more or an additional $1.67 million in California. One small factor is unemployment in some mid-west states like Ohio or Michigan, unemployment rates have slashed home values, but that's not the bulk of the price variation. So what's the deal? I think local home owners would agree that mountains, ocean, surfing access, and perfect year-round whether is well worth 20 times the amount of paying to live in a place with no ocean, no mountains, and colder temperatures half the year. So in a sense, CA real estate is a bargain! Going international, however, it turns out Dubai, United Arab Emirates takes the cake for most expensive home, costing $2.5 million, or a 1/3 more than the average La Jolla cost. However, some east coast places like Greenwich, CT ranked in at comparable prices to the expensive California coast cost. While on the other end of the spectrum, the study showed house prices like Jackson, MI, Akron, OH, and Arlington, TX as the lower end prices, but obviously, that cost cut reflects the cut in climate quality and environmental resources.

Technology: Google plans on ousting Microsoft's Internet Explorer with its own browser, Chrome. While Microsoft remains convinced its newest IE 8 will hold the market, Google's browser undoubtedly will be tough competition given their dominance in internet searches already. The announcement could've effected stock prices already as MSFT dropped a few cents while GOOG jumped over a $1 but those prices could have been coincidental. Some features of Chrome are going to be tough breaks for Microsoft though. Like "protected tab surfing" or "crash control" where (not unlike the protected memory feature of Mac OS) if one tabbed page crashes while surfing only that single tab will restart, not the entire browser, making for much less glitchy web surfing. And features like "incognito" which keeps hidden your Internet navigation history as well as an auto-updated list of top site visits. It's quite possible that the introduction of the iPhone, Bill Gates' departure, and now Chrome poking tough competition at IE 8, could have started a slippery slope for Microsoft, inhibiting it from holding the monopolizing technological stance it once had. However, it's important to point out that most all features present in Chrome alreasy existant in Apple's Safari browser.

Immunology: New discoveries in the origins of poison ivy reveal insights into developing an immunity to the plant, but a consistent cure remains to be found.








Science: Oh...and there's just one more thing. The Large Hadron Particle Collider could change the way we view the entire universe, gravity, and our relationship between matter and energy. Just one last tidbit to throw in there. I found this little rap pretty convenient and instrumental in explaining all the fine details of the process:

LHCB is where the antimatter's gone. ALICE and ATLAS looks at collisions of lead ions. CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind. They're looking for whatever new particles they can find. The LHC acclerates the protons and the lead and the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It's like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It's amusing how much irrational fear this amazing scientific breakthrough has caused. Talks of "the end of the world", "silly Jesus stuff", "recreating the big bang's destructiveness" are just ignorant and irrationally loony. It's astonishing how far ignorance and blind naivety will allow people to take them; some people even went as far as trying to have a legal barring of this incredible and fantastically monumental breakthrough in science. But people always fear what they don't understand albeit one the biggest cosmological breakthroughs ever, so hopefully the above rap will eradicate that fear with a simple explanation:

size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts

but a complex explanation could be even more enlightening, but this inside look is what really takes the cake for being the most helpful. Of course, learnign something about Higgs boson and the Standard Model couldn't hurt either. This is a the collaborative product of over 8000 physicists and 85 countries. It's a grand uplifting event not a destructive one! The collaborative efforts of that type are second only to things like the Olympics. This most certainly is a fine day for the world and for science.

C to the E to the R to the N

...ahh that's the best part of the rap.

Conclusively, I say:

The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It's like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It excites me and most scientists, too, though!

Recent Celeb Scene and Global Positioning

Heath Ledger might win the oscar for his maniacal Joker character, making this the second posthumous "Best Actor" award in over 30 years, the most recent (hardly not recent) went to Peter Finch in Network in 1977.

Also, I noticed the ever-growing "I hate Paris club" has continued to spawn. Disdain for that woman -- who, imho, is not really that bad, and in some areas, quite likeable, like her ability to handle media and magnetize press to her image (that also, of course, is the same reason why so many loathe her) -- has become a "fad" a trendy thing to do. Even actresses I admire, like incredibly talented Tina Fey appear to loathe her: "She's so unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hair looks like fraggle." What really stumps me is how she so effectively gets under the skin of so many successful people. Does she threaten? Are they confused by her success? If she was a nobody they wouldn't bother commenting about her. Anyways, that ridicule, no doubt, satisfies Ms. Hilton's image agenda rendering her more successful. Bad flack or Good flack still registers as some kind of attention, so if you objectively seek attention, she's got it!

In other news, Matt LeBlanc's former "Friends" agent, Camille Cerio (not to be confused with pregnant Camilla Alves, McConaughey's girlfriend, of no relation) is trying to sue him for $1 million in unpaid commissions. He actually EARNED $1 million per show, though! And considering that the Friends' series tallied NUMBER episodes, he should have no problem covering that, but gotta pay those dues!

That about raps it up for celebrity gossip, other than the usual -- a lot of babies, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of marriages, and a lot of trips to the beach! One question, do they "time" these things. It just seems like babies are popping out all over the place in the summer with Pitt-Jolie's twins and McConaughey-Alves's expecting and more, it seems that way.

I also just noticed Gyllenhal's been practicing swordsmanship for "Prince of Persia". I've played almsot every video game in that series, so that video-game-to-movie conversation definitely pops onto the "Must-see" list.

I don't like to focus to much on these people because they already get so much flak, but oh, one more thing I noticed is Jolie has some longitude and latitude coordinates tatooed on her left shoulder.



Navigation (along with precision and freedom) stands as one of my three core values, so anything with coordinates and nautical precision gets an A+ for cool in my book, but as a tattoo? That's a pretty intellectual ink-skin maneuveur, especially when compared to a lot of the 2am drunken-stupor tattoos people get permanently emblazened onto their epidermal layer. 4 sets of nautical global coordinates -- you can tell a lot of thought went into that -- very cool. It turns out the represent the long. and lat. of the birthplace of her kids.

Cambodia (N11 33' 0" E104 51' 00")


Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (N09 02' 00" E038 45' 00")


Swakopmund, Namibia (S22 40' 26" E014 31' 40")


Vietnam (N10 40' 00" E106 41' 40").



This dude wrote an entry on finding these out.

Very impressed, Angelina. Awesome work with the nautical alignment. Sure, the ink might have been a bit much, but solid precision.

On the note of awesome navigational nerdiness, is this amazing hack for google maps. Maps doesn't allow you to see Longitude and Latitude, but if you copy this bit of text into the URL field an instant detailed longitude and latitude will pop up detailing the corresponding longitude and latitude of the center of the map! Here's the hack code:

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Try that hack out! And if you want to brush up in meridians and parrallels, I think if you understand everything in this page, you've got a great foundation of the fundamentals.

Along the lines of global positioning, here's an awesome nifty site, too, that calibrates using Geotagged points any spot on the our Earth that you click with corresponding longitude and latitude I calibrated the link to a "starting base of sorts". Greenwich is 51° 28' 38". With that sequence of getgags. Negative (-) = S latitudes or W longitudes, respectively and positive (+) = N latitudes or E longitudes, so for examplle, Los Angeles is lat:34, long:-118. It's awesome to flip the symbols. Turns out the west coast of Australia is exactly on the complete flipside of the globe at lat:-34, long:118. Sure, you could go crazy with Google Earth, but I found the above tricks, the nifty-geotagged site and the google maps .getCenter() hack very fast and accessible.

After some tweaking, I discovered some cool navigational facts.

The closest spot to Greenwich's 51° N latitude from Los Angeles's -118W latitude is close to Calgary, Canada, so Greenwich (and London) is a bit further north than frequently, thought. I've been into Jules Verne, recently, so to have contingency with said author's pin-point pecision-wisdom, here's some other "longitudinal and latitudinal matchups):

Exactly one half-globe's worth of latitude (-34 or 34°S) still at -118 (or 118W) longitude is smack dab in the center of the South Pacific, about half way between New Zealand and the South American coast of Chile.

The southern tip of Algeria is located along the same parrallel as Los Angeles, but at the Prime Meridian. That sparked fascination.

And, finally, as a tribute to Philleas Fogg, it's interesting to note that the furthest south he went (which holds quite a distance) ended up at at Singapore after passing by Malaysia and before curling up the east coast of Malaysia and Vietnam before Reaching Hong Kong (22,114). His latitude at Singapore was about 1°N or slightly above the equator, a huge variation from London's coordinates at (51°N) nearly 50 degrees difference in latitude, so maybe he did travel a bit further than simply "around the world", well he stayed close enough to the equator in any case.

Just to provide some scope of how far Hawaii is from the US's west coast, it's coordinates are 20, -158, making it, 14 degrees of longitude and 30 degrees of latitude away, and slightly south from southwest US coast. New Guinea is 9,-82, or only 11° latitude and 70° of longitude away, which means that although Hawaii is part of the 50 states, in terms of latitude and longitude, it's closer to New Guinea's parrallel and if you add up the differences it's 44° versus 81° from New Guinea. Just interesting views of proximity.


Head west (or east, you'll end up in the same spot each way) one half globe from Los Angeles along the same 34°N line and you'll find yourself in Nanjing, China, which is slightly Northeast of Shanghai. I can instantly see

If I commented on the number of births, marriages, and baby-gossip, this post would be about 20 times as long, so that's it for now!

Around the World in 80 Days

135 years ago, Jules Verne Published Around the World in 80 days. The geography of the globe is roughly the same, but the economy and global boundaries have changed.

Phileas Fogg navigated the globe with 20,000 pounds or roughly $40,000 with currency conversion. Factoring inflation, however, one realizes good ol' Mr. Fogg circumnavigated with the equivalent of #### modern pounds or $$$$.

Great. Now that we are up to speed on the economics of 1873, we can launch into the story.

Los Angeles Facts

In the United States

#1 Largest County

#2 2nd Largest City

Zip codes in CA run from 90000-96199. If you're outside of that range, you're in the wrong place!!! Haha!

Alcohol Spirits

I Never Knew the Difference Between all these so here's the skinny on the spirits of the world.

Wine and beer are fermented, but All Hard Alcohol == Liquor == Spirits is DISTILLED, not fermented. Therefore, all the hard alcohol listed below are made through a distillation process. What is being distilled (potatoes, grains, corn, sugarcane, or plants) is what determines the hard alcohol.

Vodka comes from potatoes, grains, or sugar beets.

Whiskey is distilled from grain mash and aged in wooden casks (Irish and Scottish).

Brandy is like the distilled form of wine (but it has hard alcohol content of 40-60%). It comes from grapes, pomace, or fermented fruit.

Rum is distilled from sugarcane or sugarcane juice. Cool! Plays a large part in the west Indies and naval life and Buccaneers, Piarates . Horatio Nelson's body was preserved in a cask of rum, but drunken by sailors, and Stevenson's Treasure Island introduced rum to naval literature. In australia, Captain William Bligh (Mutiny on the Bounty) started a Rum Revolution as Governor of South Wales by banning it which caused a revolt. Spiced Rum.

Eau de Vie is a colorless French fruit brandy, fermented and then double-distilled; served cold. Sounds cool!.

Tequila is distilled from the Blue Agave plant.

Gin is distilled from a white grain and always flavored with Juniper Berries. Well used in london and if it's distilled very well, it will be "dry" meaning lacking a sweet taste.

Worst Running Weather in the History of the World

Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it was pretty insane.

First, all three types of precipitation – rain, hail, and snow. The only thing missing was cats and dogs.

Secondly, all of that lovely precipitation was blowing nearly completely horizontal with high wind gusts.

Thirdly, it was freezing, 5:30am, and the Lakefront was exploding up on shore a good 20 to 30 splash zones.

Finally, the range of sight in weather like this is already pretty obfuscated, but I ran with my specs on, so my glasses were fogged for almost the entire run making visibility almost 0%.

It was the craziest amounts of precipitation, the worst wind conditions, and the most horrendous horizontal blizzard situation I’ve ever encountered. Ah, you gotta love it though. I remember at Colorado College, some runners preferred the colder, icier weather because they didn’t over heat, so to most of the population this is atrocious, but the sparse few, it could be the best running weather.

Hawaii and Punta Laguna, Mexico

The 2007 Hawaii journal is from February, 2007. It consists of the adventure experience visiting Waikiki, Waimea Bay, and the North Shore of Oahu, the surf heaven. While it was short and you always can "catch just one more wave", it was certainly exciting.

The Punta Laguna, Mexico journal is from Summer of 2002. This was a tropical conservation project in the Yucatan jungle. The group I was with studied spider monkeys with 2 PHd scientists, lived and played soccer with the local Mayans, visted archaeological sites, and studied the botany and ecology of the local Punta Laguna rainforest. There was also an anthropological, linguistic, and cultural exchagne in this amazing adventure as well.

A Traveling Graduation of Sorts : 48 Hours of non-stopTravel, 5 Hours of Sleep

There's only one bottom line here: this trip was NUTS (but highly productively itinerant)!

This is the photo album, journalized, recorded anthology of my most recent (and quite scintillating, expansive, and gloriously beautiful, I might add) trip up north from Santa Barbara, CA to Stayton, OR. This illustrates the visual (via photographs) and written (via journals) component. I couldn't find anyone to travel with so when I wasn't calling friends or kin, I recorded most of the new mental territory covered. Those recordings can be accessed soon.

Considering that it was my first road trip, I (without speeding) moved at an extremely fast pace, making excellent time, covering 2.045 miles in 48 hours (3pm November 14 - 3pm November 16, 2006) from Santa Barbara, CA to Stayton, OR. Covering major ground and visiting the Google Campus, San Franisco, Pacific Heights Health Club, Redwood National Forest, (outlying towns of Humboldt, Eureka, and Miranda, as well) The NW/SW Coastline, Coos Bay, Eugene, and finally Stayton.

This whole travel album, mind you was in 48 hours! I had tremendous gratitude for being able to call and be in touch with friends and family via phone, but if I actually had passengers along for the ride, I think they would have hurled (if not, give me a call for the next road trip!). I just like to cover a lot of ground, with comprehensive expediency.

Staying at my grandmother's has been a very different culture shock with the three meals a day, constant temperature control, and all the cards, scrabble, and talks! I actually can't wait to go back to Stayton!

Mode of Transportation
Whole lot of driving. Awesome 2005 Chevy Equniox:


Mental Map Navigation (along with some maps and GPS)

A whole lot of traversing on foot (especially in San Francisco) when not driving:

Google Campus

Pretty frickin’ bland compared to the rest of the trip, but still dandy to see this gem of a campus. Wasn’t exactly the flolicking campus of brilliant einsteins playing volleyball and skateboarding everywhere. Funny how the mind elaborates fantasies so that when reality hits, it can be quite different!

Here’s some construction that was going on.


Here’s some conference rooms – a lot of these around the “campus” (didn’t seem erudite/academic more than business-like, but still root for, utilize, and can appreciate their products sometimes)


Finally a blurry shot of some chem. Labs. Distinguishing feature so you can tell it’s not just a business, possibly. Hopefully

Juxtaposed to the Google Campus was the Intuit HQ. Here's a shot from the fountain, main area of Intuit:



San Francisco
Pacific Heights Health Club
Here’s me before the yoga, treadmill, lifting, shower workout.


Here’s me after all that workout.

Car Search
I then proceeded to look for my car for the next 4 hours (a little bit of my father's blood taking the wheel, no doubt!), about. Yoga class ended at 7:30am (I took a four hour nap at a rest stop the night before), lifted a LOT quickly which felt AWESOME, then got out of there probably 8:30 and found my car after loops and loops around Pine, Bush, Buchanen, California, Sacramento, Webster, and other streets. It was outside the hospital on Sacramento between Webster and Filmore.

A little reminder keepsake of the auto-search:


This massacres any of my dad’s often ridiculous (like leaving a car at the airport because he couldn’t find it and having to pay someone to take a cab there and look for it for him, well, it probably contends, maybe beats that) lost car stories.

A modernized version somewhat of Public Transportation that could pass, in part, as the "Rice-a-Roni" train:


Some of the omnipresent, classical Victorian San Francisco architecture:



Golden Gate
The famous bridge. Here it is:



Here it is with me infront of it. Pretty cool going across. No tolls, which rocked and it has epic references in movies and whatnot, but other than that, “no biggie”. Cool experience that I am incredibly grateful, though, is this Redwood-like countryside-like drive, baby!

Redwood
Redwood National Park

Here’s the shot of the famous tree trunks. Again “no biggie”. A little dark saturation in this nocturnal shot, sorry about that:


And some odd stump conglomerations:
Pic

The Confusion Tunnel

Apparently you throw golf balls out windows and they come back and you look tall or short in some places. So, an elaborated land-locked Redwood Bermuda-triangle type o’ place with that fun house twist most likely. Definitely has that mythology, legnendary “is-it-real” hoax or reality gimmick or natural creation backstory with it.



I needed a stretch so I did some FAST, and quality sprints in the parking lot area, and some across a panda (probably not the “Sexual Harassment Panda”, but who knows) outside the Confusion Tunnel.


And a totem pole in the same area.


Miranda
This city was fun. It’s so small, but so complete! 6 miles from Redwood National Park they had a gardenshop, market, inn, pizza parlor, and library. The elevation almost beat the population!!! And this is sea level, people!

Here’s there Garden store:

I was a wee bit freakishly serrindipitiously jolted because I had just talked with Miranda about 2 hours ealier at length and then was “in Miranda” just about 2 hours I spoke with her! Definitely funny stuff. Great rides. At the very least…a LOT of flavor of fairly big in population (San Fran) big in space (Redwood and preceding cow-grazing rural land) and small in population (Miranda) in the past few hours of this action-packed awesome day!

Redwood Reststop
I stopped at reststop at about 3am but was too charged and excited, having hit all the milestones I needed to, to sleep, so I walked around in the rain, drank some water from the drinking fountain, found out it tasted almost metallic (like it had lead in it), puked a bit because I felt nauseas, then went for a run directly on the 101 in pitch dark. Afterwards, I stretched at this table that said "Huckleberry". Very cool reference to the Twain tale, and got in this awesome conversation with a man who was enjoying the early early (4:30am) hours. We covered everything from how most Afghanis were not Kamikazees, the uniformity of all religions, the grace and ancient beauty of the 400 million year old shark (even though he thought they were "buzzards" of the sea, which I stronlgy disagreed with -- they're living dinosaurs!), the local towns of Miranda, Eureka, and Victorian San Fran, of which I had all visited. Also touched on fat-conscious habits of long-distance runners, how perfect the rain was for running, and some crazy story about some friend of his shooting his brother, and all in all it was covered massive ground and was a cool conversation. He reminded me of the psychologist, Bill Dove, I saw at Colorado College.

Northwest CA Coast/Southwest OR Coast

This coast was magnificent. It had been a LONG time since I've seen real ocean coastline. The stuff I'd been seeing in Santa Barbara was blocked by the channel islands. This was the "real" stuff. Undiluted, salty as heck, and rolling, raging sets! I probably would have gotten hypothermia, but having my board is a definite must next time I travel up along the coast!

Here's a beautiful fog photo in the early morning hours, Thursday.

Here's a sequence of this beautiful nook I found that had some amazing surging breakers against massive boulder-rock mini-islands:


This is a sandbar duneI pulled over on the side of the road for. Massive waves are crashing way in the background. Amazingly beautiful. Thank Tao I drove this instead of via plane.


Oregon

Prehistoric Garden

I think this was in the movie Tommy Boy". Nevertheless, the gigantic dinosaur sculpture displays make a great idea.

Here's some of the Prehistoric Garden photos.



Coos Bay

The legendary home of Prefontaine! I tried to observe most of these little towns I went through and got a glance at Coos Bay, but didn't stay long. I had just gotten that bloody ticket (my first and most likely, only).

Here are some Coos-bay elk I saw there:


Eugene

The even more legendary Hayword Field track of Prefontaine! He was a major inspiration so I did a tributory couple of miles on the track here. Got a few shots of....

The "cruise boat" track (reminded me of tracks I run on during cruises):


The locked off main track:
PICS

The entrance way to Hayword field:

A map of the track and field area:


Looking at the field, the main entrance had coaching history, bios, and profiles on the left (kind of like the directors) and the prefontaine, athlete history, bios, and profiles were on the left (kind of like the actors).

Here's the coaching half:

And the athlete half:


The rest of the photos can be accessed here.

On the nature of Roadtrips
I did a journalized photo-album very similar to this one almost exactly a year ago. Last year, December of 2005, it was friends, family, and relatives in chicago for a graduation party. This year it was me calling those friends, family, and relatives while traveling through some of the paramount sites of The Great American west countryside. Both experiences covered a lot of ground and involved a lot of great intellectual travel. I'm certain these "exploratory journeys" will get better and better, infusing more intellectual territory and gorgeous sights, every time.

I am also beginning to see the power of reciprocity . The best years of my lives were 98 and 99. Friends took me to see BNL, I dated beautiful women, I got into the most rewarding awesome classes. That was the "payday" from doing a lot of love-giving with Alexa and doing beach walks, surfing, reaching out to meet new people, too.

I read very little books, drank a LOT of alcohol and strongly just "gave" to people. Not in a deliberately entertaining way, like telling a lot of jokes or something, but, rather, in a was an asset in the asset loop. So with karma earnings, I need to realize that computer usage and TV watching are border asset, if you use it for what I do, notes and publishing it's giving back in a HUGE way, making it a major reciprocating gesture, but nothing is as powerful as raw human interaction.

In the past 33 hours I've been awake, I've run 14 miles, biked 14, ran 1 mile with weights, hiked 2 trails (about 1.5 miles), grocery shopped twice, dropped off four application/resumes and met up with a restaurant owner, neighbors, and totally gave successful to these people like my parents, beating them finally and fully at their own game.

How is this possible? For me, this may be for others, too, I get energized when I exercise. I feel more "rested" and ready to get at them and tackle any challenge after an hour of running than an hour of sleeping. In fact, my energy level after an hour os sleeping is 2 and my energy level after an hour of running is 10 on a 10-scale! Physiologically, it gets hormones pumping, circulation strong, you're more fluid, you have more connection after running, you think more clearly and better, and stronger, whereas after sleep it just doesn't work out that clearly.

Okay, it's VERY clear to me what running and intense breathing exercise like that does for me. It slows me down, not an encumbrance, though, but so that my body can keep up with my mind. Normally it can't. Normally my mind and body are out of proportion. My mind isn't fully awake and I'm trying to do stuff or my body is shut-down with an alert mind, it creates mind-body connection simply generates a huge feeling of peace.


9/28/06
What the heck is going on? There's been some kind of hostage situation, or cop-shooting each day the past few days at noon. It's like the mid-day drama, terrorism episode.

Ah, now the bush "administration" (bit of a misnomer considering it is really just a shamnistration for looking like leadership). My bubble has burst. For years I've been reticent about Bush saying that I simply "don't think that much about him" and that he's an "actor" and that "he doesn't want to be doing what he's doing" (presidency). All of those are true, but I've never been critical of his intelligence, and I will continue that as well. However, there has a been a clear shift in the perspective of his adminstration. The big guns have begun to laugh at him -- Clinton's back.

Clinton, now that dude is a real leader. He's got the ubuntu, humanity, compassion ideology and practice down, but he's not some irate, angry, afraid preaching brainwashing religious freak (all those cultists are really just afraid, angry idiots). Clinton is warm, he's a people person. Most importantly he's a frickin' player! And he's not afraid to hide that even in the oval office! His sincerity is effulgent. Now, the bush "administration" is the worst set of terms served in our nation's history. It's already beginning to get chewed up in the historical meat-grinder for it's indifference, cheesiness,, inertness, and efforts to utilize fear (plugging in TSA protocols in the airports creates fear, it doesn't diminish it, so that people than revert to, all though american people are not idiots, "their" leader). Usually it takes a decade for a presidential term to become examined with disdain, like Carter's "malaise speech" (which wasn't even that bad) or Hoovervilles from Herbert, but only in the Bush administration is it beginning to look like a blemish in the vicissitudes or our country's brilliant sequence of leadership, and Clinton is the perfect pointman to not just pick it apart, but to just laugh at it, compared to his solid leadership in the 90s.

Harmony

I have realized the power of accessing the realization of choice. We all always have the choice to cause certain outcomes. For a LONG period of time I have been trying to make people aware of their limiting belief systems. I would try to be a "Tony Robbins" or some motivational coach that I wasn't. I would provoke people and respond in ways they weren't used to be having people respond. When a security officer would tell me to leave, I would say I would prefer to stay where I was. I would be obdurate obstinate, non-compliant, but never attacking. This shocked some people who were so programmed and patterned into having people respond a certain way because it zapped their life methodology -- their proclivities and tendencies in life. I would basically get people to an aggressive point from which they would try to attack me or bully me. An example is that at a party, I called one kid a pizza face, a dapper dresser, and porcupine head. He didn't even acknowledge the last two things I was saying, but became enraged, saying I didn't respect him, waving his hands and getting viscerally upset about the first observation. I told him that we all have our minds to observe and speak. That's exactly what we must do. We shouldn't hold back our observations -- we have such observations for the purpose of sharing them. However I shared them in ways that got me thrown off a ship, booted off a basketball court, forced to leave a coaching seminar, kicked out of an improv class, booted from a car while driving from Denver to Colorado Springs, the list goes on. The point is that I had such a fervently strong conviction to change people's limiting beliefs that I'd do anything. This was not operating from a safe atmosphere because it created outcomes that I sincerely did not want. I did not want to have an egg on my head after getting punched. I did not want to be put into a cop car. I did not want any of those painful reactions to occur. I realize now my goal is to protect myself, be compliant with people, but be much much much more responsive to their boundaries and to read when they are getting pissed to a limit. I still have a strong desire to have people remove their limiting beliefs (and for me to remove my own limiting beliefs) but to do so in a milieu of compassion, exchange, certainty, safety, and grace instead of just raw effort in challenging belief. Love life to the fullest.

Graduation Party

Well, I graduated and am officially psyched to say that I am now an alumnus of The Colorado College. Wow, so much work for that little sheet of diploma paper, but I didn't do it for the degree...for the experience, of course.

I just had the most eclectic and scintillating parties of my life. Complete with elementary school, high school, and college friends, godparents, relatives, family friends, neighbors, professors, the principal of my elementary school, and immediate family, it was an amazing celebratory congregation.

Here is a shot of me with four of some of my best friends bringing back the elementary school days!

(Left to Right: Jimmy Davis, Jeff Zheng, myself, Kira Hesser, Anna Morro. Jimmy and Jeff are math geniuses, Kira and Anna really know how to paint the town read, and as as for me, I'm just happy to be in there presence.)

Me with my two hysterical and fervently alive God parents, Sally and Denny Parsons. Warning: Sally and Denny really know how to paint the town red, too. Hey, they kind of have to have an expertise in "living it up" being godparents and all.


Denny and myself:


Finally, the cake. My brother, James, has a notorious piece of celebration cake that he has saved, thankfully wrapped in SaranWrap, ever since his 6th grade "HMS Pinafore Celebration Party".


He's 20 now, so the well-preserved and petrified slice of cake, still in our freezer, is over 8 years old.



Here are some shots of the graduation cake and a slice of the cake that, albeit overly-ambitious, I hope will top James's legendary record some day.



It was by far one of the most enlivening and fun parties I've ever seen. And as for the gifts...I brought in the loot! Just kidding. Seriously, though, I was shocked because I thought I'd just experience everyone's presence, but everyone brought presents. It was a fanstastic and memorable experience.