Jacob and the Amazing Technicolor Skippy

Visted States

2007-06-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

I wound up visiting 20% of the US states and Mexico on the trip. Of the states I went to, I had only ever been to Massachusetts, Illinois, and Utah before. Everything else was a new experience for me. I made a map at douweosinga.com. I love these little graphics generators. Aren't they cute?

Working stiff

2007-06-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

12:05PM EDT | N42°21'48" W71°9'58"

I've made it back to Boston and I'm sore. Most of my muscles are a little achy and sore and my neck is really not too much better than it was after surfing. I'm not sitting comfortably at my desk, and sighing in relief of being still. Every time I got away I think, it'll be nice to get away from work. It'll be nice to change pace just sort of recoup. This feeling is always double in the opposite direction when I get back. I'm excited to get back to work and believe me, there's a lot of it. Some pretty exciting projects are coming down the pipe line and I've got a lot of code reading to do before I can tackle them. Once I can bend my neck down far enough to look at the monitor.

Sunday afternoon is the new Saturday night

2007-06-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

12:15PM EDT N42°21'56" W71°0'37"

So Amy, my wonderful roommate, picked me up from the airport so that I wouldn't have to take the T home; it was very much appreciated since I haven't slept and my neck still hurts a lot. We chatted a bit about my trip as I got home and put my stuff away and then I ran right out the door to catch the show.

The show was really small as a result of being Sunday in the middle of the day, but there was nice little crowd, predominated comprised of members of the earlier acts. As Danny put it, "I guess Sunday afternoon is the new Saturday night." I got a short video of them playing Bile them Cabbage Down, complete with Doug wailing away on his sweet foot-pedal cow bell.

After the show we went out to Dan's brother's place and had a BBQ out on the roof. It was a really neat deck out on the roof of his building. I had to fight the urge to climb out on to a billboard mounted on building, which he said would get him evicted.

I sat around and ate lots of food and listened to funny tales of twelve musicians and artists driving around Mexico in a van covered with bones. All of which you can read about on their blog Danny and Dan played a little bit in the kitchen and since I'm addicted to my new camera, I got another video.

So that's the end of my trip. Back to work tomorrow.

Forty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere

2007-06-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

9:46AM EDT | N33°'38'29" W84°25'39"

So I'm in Atlanta now. I bet you didn't see that coming. Here's the scoop on how I got here: I knew I'd be taking a flight from San Diego back to Boston on this trip, Atlanta is a major airline hub, and I have a friend that lives in Atlanta. So, I figured I'd check for flights that laid over in Atlanta and I called Jess. "I was able to find a five-hour layover, but the catch is, it's at 4:00 AM. Want to come to the airport and hang out?"

As we were driving down i85, lost and looking for food, I made the near fatal mistake of letting it slip that I had rather big family news. You see Jess is a long-time friend of the family and is always excited when there's big dirt. Well this one was pretty major so I figured I'd tell her when she was sitting down. Make that when she was sitting down with out a steering wheel and our lives in her hands. "Oh just tell me" she demanded.
"No no, let me just wait 'til we're at breakfast."
"Oh my god did Michele get engaged!" she probed.
"No. I'll tell you when you're not driving." I said, in earnest slightly scared of her driving habits when excited.
"Oh my god who's pregnant?"
"I'll tell you the news soon." I mumbled, cleverly avoiding a confirm or deny of the validity of her question.
"Holy crap, who's pregnant!" she guess, easily able to decipher my evasive language, which, it turns out, was not nearly as clever as I'd lead my readers to believe in the previously line of this narration.
"Lindsay." I said plainly, with no way out.
"Holy shit!" she changed lines. "Lindsay's pregnant!?" she changed back. "Oh my god"
"Yup." I confirmed, knuckles white, clenched to the door handle.

We went on to talk about the family's reaction and my reaction, which has thus far been limited to "Woa." "Really?" "Woa."

We got to breakfast alive and ate at a place call the Huddle House, just down the road from her apartment. And for the first time in my life* I ordered grits, a well known southern delicacy. I have to say it was rather bland.

Later we headed down the road to Jess's apartment and we sat at talked about various things not of interest to the road-trip-blog readership. I attempted to fix her virus-infected computer, got a drink, and then head out to catch my flight.

I got in passed security just barely on time and sauntered slowly down to my what I thought should be my gate. I sat down to relax and notice an unfamiliar town name on the gate sign. "New Orleans? Who the hell wants to go there?" I said to myself and then I got up to inquire with the attendant. She informed me plenty of people did and that I now needed to go to the furthest gate in the airport from the one we were at. With that, I was off tearing through the escalators and moving walkways, yelling to small children to clear the way, and stiff-arm tackling little old ladies. I was doing to make my flight... And just then I looked up and saw it.

I saw the sign. And it opened up my eyes. I saw the sign. No one's going to drag me up to get into the light where I belong. In fact no one's even going to tell me where said light is either. At least not if they use air-port LCD screens running Macromedia Flash.

You see in my mad dash through the airport I was naturally wondering two very important things. Where are airport concourses and what does their info display's code look like if they accidentally cast an identifier to a string when outputting. The answer, of course, is that the concourses are over to the left and _level0.panel4 is the identifier they used to contain data that they accidentally don't display.

Yes, it's true, not even my heart-pounding, I'm-going-to-miss-my-flight adrenaline rush could keep me from taking a minute out of my frantic run to grab a couple quick snap shots of this sign.

I'm now sitting, sweating, and breathing heavily on a plane bound for Boston, the end of my trip. I will be landing 45 minutes before The Can Kickers first Boston show in nearly six months. You may think it's a bad idea to attend such a show considering I haven't slept and my shoulder is in a considerable amount of pain. I might agree with you too, but I'm going. Their good friends, I haven't seen them in a quite a while, and I want to hear about the Mexico tour.

* And the last time.

Bird Vs. Squirrel

2007-06-08T19:43:00.003-07:00

9:34AM PDT | N32°56'14" W116°34'36"

We left last night to go camping at the fabulous Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and Casino last night well after the sun had set. When we got there, everyone had gone to sleep so there was no one manning the sign-in desk. Fortunately for us, they allow you to camp and pay when you check out. We set up the tent in the dark which proved to be a little tricky since it was Joe's tent and he'd never seen it put together even in the light.

We fumbled around with it for a while and got it to stand. Right or wrong, it made for a fine place to sleep. We sat and drank and played games and had a lengthy discussion about issues far to unimportant to remember several hours later when I have access to my blog.

In the morning we made oats and watched the birds fly around our camp hoping for some food. This was the kind of place that people camped at often so all of the animals were pretty brave around people, seeing them as their ticket to an easy meal. Afraid of what revenge they might seek if we didn't comply, we broken out the walnuts and the camera. I set up my camera on the large rock near our campsite and put the food out to see if I could get some close-ups of the birds. What I got a battle scene.

Turns out a militant squirrel by the name of Colonel Spotty Fregan, lives underneath said rock and knows full well that a large congregation of excited birds means food is not far away. As soon as I backed away from my offering to the bird community, the birds swooped in and got their fill. But shortly there after, Colonel Spotty Fregan made his way over and cleared them out, taking what remained for himself and that little tummy he was named for. After more iterations of this than you might expect (and certainly more than my edited video indicates) Joe and I got bored and went hiking.

The hike was really pretty; it went up to a rocky peak in the middle of a burned-down wooded area. It's the second time I've been through the site of a large forest fire on this trip and I must say it's pretty stunning. The pictures don't really ever do it justice. Something about the parallax movement of the endless rows of leafless wood is really beautiful. I can't quite put my finger on it.

When we got to the summit we could quite a ways around in all directions. The landscape was a pretty baron forest that we were told was once full of amazing foliage in the autumn, but was now gone due to the fire. We could see a long winding road coming up the hills bellow us that were rather steep. At one point we watched a long traffic jam unfold before us as a sixteen-wheeler tried desperately to break the 30mph mark as it chugged up the hill. I got several pictures as more cars pilled up behind him.

I got a picture of my self up at the summit looking surly. Truth be told I'm quite a bit of pain right now. My shoulder hasn't gotten much better, I haven't been sleeping much, and when I do it's out in the woods on the ground. It's all worth it though. Only two more days to go.

Surfing: "Yata!"

2007-06-08T19:43:00.001-07:00

7:34PM PDT | N32°47'54" W117°15'32"

Joe and I went surfing today. It was Joe's first time ever and my first time in about ten years. I was pretty psyched that I actually got up and road a wave in on my first try, but my luck didn't last that long. I ended up getting up on the board maybe about five good times before two hours was up and we decided we were pretty hungry.

After Joe put his wet suit on the right way he was also able to ride a couple of waves in himself. I mean he's no big-time, five-waver like myself, but he had a pretty good run for a guy Boston boy in Pacific waters. It's unfortunate that my camera is not water proof and could not come with us but I did make a short intro clip in case surfing ever becomes my super power and I need it documented.

After surfing, Joe and I went to In 'n Out burger. In 'n Out is like McDonalds only Christian. They have a disproportionately cheery staff and the names of bible verses on the underneath of their cups. I wondered out loud why they didn't just print the verse itself. What good does the name and some numbers do me? Oh well.

While we where there it was totally packed, likely due to the very large JESUS IS LORD bus parked out front and the millions of kids wandering around, each of them just a little too social awkward not to be part of a Christian youth group. We both ordered a burger and a shake and they were divine. This place is definitely where I would purchase all of my hamburgers if I were the one true god.

About a week before I came to San Diego I pulled my shoulder playing baseball. During surfing it happened again it is really hurting at this point. When we got back to Joe's I went in the hot tub to see if that would help. It did, a little. I took a nap while Joe went to work to gear up for my next two days. Tonight we're going camping and then after that I'm taking an over-night flight to end my vacation. Let's hope I make it.

You boys like Mexiiiiicoooooo?!

2007-06-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

1:30AM PDT | N32°31'29" W117°1'4"

This morning I went downtown with Joe to get lunch. The he left me there while he went to work and I had a nice long walk. I strolled all around Balboa park, along the water front, across the San Diego River, through several urban parks, and wooded areas. I went to a few stores to look for fun things to bring home for friends. I walked for quite aways, probably about 5-10 miles that day.

I later found myself in a suburban combat zone of highway on ramps, eight-lane roads, shopping malls, and humongous parking lots. It was pretty difficult making my way though there on foot but luckily Joe got out of work shortly after I got there. I recounted my travels to him on the phone as he attempted to retrace my steps. Much to my surprise, as I got to the last thing I remembered, he drove up next to me.

We left for Mexico to go to Tijuana for the night after we got back to his place and I took a lot of photos on the ride down to try out my camera's night-scene option. It accentuates light, as you might expect. It's like over exposing the film if it were not digital. If any of you were wondering what San Diego looks like at night at 80 miles per hour, wonder no more.

After a short 20 minute drive we were at the boarder, right across the river from Tijuana. Tijuana, for those of you who don't know, is Spanish for 'city of bars'. We parked in a parking lot in the US and walked across the boarder. I figured it would be easier getting into Mexico than into the US, but I didn't expect it to be an unmanned turnstile. We just walked right through one of those metal revolving doors that only go one way just like you find in the Boston subways. And with that we were in Mexico.

Immediately after we got there, we were offered taxi cab rides and were told it was too far to walk. One by a guy who knew where "best place" was and one by a guy who knew where "a better place" was. Six more offers followed before we walked through towards the strip. As I walked down the strip I lamented the fact that Jacob was not there with me to see this. If he thought Vegas was open about its sex industry he would have been baffled by Tijuana.

As we walked down the strip we were followed by men outside bars trying to stir up business. We were followed at times for a few blocks and insistently asked to patronize their establishment. "No cover charge.", "We have the prettiest girls, amigo.", and few other things I'll not repeat since children under thirty are reading this blog. One man, not confident enough in his English, just cupped his hands a foot from his chest, smiled, and pointed in side. I began to wonder if any of the women behind the doors we saw were wearing clothing.

We pressed on, bound for Plasa Rio, an area a friend of Joe's pointed us to. Plasa Rio is Spanish for 'plaza of bars without naked women and considerably less pushy bouncers'. Once we got there we found the area lived up to its name. We got a nice meal at a bar and had some drinks. I attempted to use my high-school Spanish skills to get some dark bear to no avail. "Servesa moreno" I said. "Lagar?" the bartender said. Which sounded pretty good but as it turns out Dose Equis Amber Lager is not very dark, or very good. I don't even know if the word moreno can apply to a bear, or if it's just for complexion.

We went bar hopping a little more and came to a really packed bar with loud music and a one-dollar cover. It was pretty fun and the strobe like was a nice touch. Then we saw some pretty bad live music after we were encouraged to check it out and we left before ordering a beer. We decided it was getting pretty late and we planned to get up early the next morning to go surfing so we head out to the road to find a taxi.

Getting processed on the way back was pretty simple as well. There was no line and the attendant asked me for my license. Asked me if I was a US citizen and then where I was born. With that we were on our way and so ended our night in Tijuana.

We are not as far west as you suppose we are.

2007-06-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

Jacob and I were careening downing i15 readying ourselves to enter Nevada when something rather surprising got in our way.

click to play

No meaning yes?!

2007-06-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

4:22PM PDT | N32°48'21" W117°13'57"

I've been in San Diego for a little more than a day now staying at Joe and Eliza's apartment on the most indecisively named street in town and it's been a lot of fun.

Yesterday Joe and I went to the the 976 Cafe, a nearby, hip, vegetarian-friendly eating establishment with free wifi and a large Paul Simon collection. I got a really good Soy Chorizo breakfast burrito. Later we went for a stroll on the beach to check out the sights. The beach was nice and breezy and I was still craving cold after being in the desert for a day.

After Joe left for work I rode his bike up and down the coast line look entertainment or logic puzzles written in the sand. I found neither but I did happen upon a lovely little board walk shop which was nice enough to give me some ice cream in exchange for pictures of their favorite presidents. Later I sat on the beach for a few hours intermittently reading my current reading material: Kevin Mitnick's the Art of Deception, X-Men: From the Ashes, and the latest issue of 2600 magazine.

I continued on to Mission Bay Park, an amusement park surrounded by many beach-front homes rented out by families on vacation. I then rode around a body of water which I presumed to be the park's namesake though didn't look much like a bay from where I rode and it gave little to no indication of having any kind of a mission.

This morning, Joe and I went for a hike in Torrey Pines which is a scenic nature preserve by the water. It was different from most places that I've been hiking, coming from the east coast, where all the hiking is in the mountains and under fairly dense tree cover 'til you hit the alpine zone. Here, there was most bushes and sand and rock over which we could see the ocean for most of the time. The view was really nice and I took several pictures.

After a few hours we headed out to get some lunch before Joe had to go to work again. We went to a sushi place down the street which had some really cool rolls with one kind of fish in side and another laid on top. I called it nigiri-maki. Joe's lunch was on fire.

Road Trip Map

2007-06-05T14:46:00.000-07:00

I've made a map of the trip and I'm putting each of the blog posts up there so you can see the route, etc. Enjoy.

What's over there?

2007-06-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

One interesting thing about traveling is that it makes you aware of all of the things that you take for granted about the place where you live. Living in Chicago and Boston, Jacob and I just sort of assume that department of transportation knows where everything is. This seems not to be the case out in Fredonia, AZ.

Bye Jacob

2007-06-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

1:30AM PDT | N32°48'21" W117°13'57"

Jacob and I got to Irvine at around five o'clock and ended the road trip and the first half of my trip. We met up with Molly and went out to dinner at the Vegetarian grill down the street which was pretty good. We later went to the beach and walked around a treacherous peer lined on both sides with people fishing. At one point a fishing rod snapped back over our heads making a loud noise and swinging a hook over our heads. After Jacob and I got out from behind Molly she explained that this place is always like this. I notice there is a conveniently located sushi restaurant on the peer itself and it made me wonder if that's possibly where they get their fish.

Joe drove up from San Diego to pick me up and begin the second part of my journey. One that will undoubtedly find me marooned on a boating dock yards from civilization with no clothing or any memory of the prior 15 minutes. I look forward to such time with excitement and hope you'll all stay with me though the good times and the bad. Unlike that no-good Jacob who stayed in Irvine.

The water

2007-06-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

6:42PM PDT | N33°36'28" W117°55'46"

Click to play

As the San Bernadino sky showered over you

2007-06-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

1:56PM PDT | N35°11'24" W116°9'16"

We're 73 miles from L.A. and I haven't much to write. I spent most of
the past 100 miles writing the previous blog post. We're now back in an area where much like Nebraska, I have to remember to get the camera out for a shot to go with the post. It's very sandy with mountains off in the distance and the highway has been lined with billboards, power
lines, and numerous businesses and small communities. We're passing through San Bernardino right now so Jacob and I sang the lyrics to a Mountain Goats so which makes mention of the town until we could make an accurate guess as to which song it was or which album it was on. I
ended up finding it and playing that and also Jacob's traditional entering L.A. song, Los Angles, I'm yours by the Decemberists, per his request. I really need to pee. I hope we find a rest stop soon. Looks like we're also running a little low on gas.

(Entering Las Vegas) * -1

2007-06-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

12:25 PM PDT | N36°6'41" W115°9' 45"

Last night Jacob and I rolled in to Vegas and looked for a place to stay. It wasn't long before Magellan suggested we check the fabulous Super8 Motel and Casino just blocks from the strip. We got a room and then headed out looking for excitement and quickly found the Paris hotel and casino. We wandered in and ogled the millions of slot machines, card tables, and well undressed waitresses.

We soon decided we couldn't really continue on with this until we ate. So we left for the large mall next door and found Cheeseburger Las Vegas which earned it's name.

Later we went to the Bellagio and decided we'd try to find some game to play. We settled on Big 6 mostly because of its low minimum bet. If we were going to keep under raps our well know playboy higher-roller reputations, taking a $500 blackjack table for all it's worth was certainly not the way to do it.

We stood and watch for a little while to get the idea of the game. There were spots on the table to place bids marked 1to1, 2to1, 5to1, 10to1, 20to1, and 40to1, named after their pay offs and a large wheel several notches labeled in the same way. A one comes up, the 1to1 bets pay off 1to1 and everyone else is screwed.

So we hopped in and placed our bets on the 1to1 square hoping for the highest probability of getting any kind of return since we were both only betting with $20. I noticed that the 1 notch was nearly every other notch on the wheel so I was playing on the 1to1 and 2to1 so I'd have a better than 50% chance of making some kind of pay off, which made the game a lot more fun. I was actually kind of surprised I only needed to play on two squares to do this.

So then I wondered what my actual expected return on the bets were so over then three or four rounds I counted the number of notches on the wheel and Jacob and I calculated the expected value. There two 40s on the wheel and between them two symmetric half wheels with 27 notches, 10 ones, and 7 twos. Placing the same amount of money on both means when a one is rolled I've broken even. 7/27 times I get 50% back and all the other times (10/27) I loose my two bets. $0 * 10/27 + $1 * 7/27 - $2 * 10/27 = $-13/27 = $-0.48. So I expect to lose 50 cents every time. This is unfortunately pretty consistent with the fact that we both left with less than we came. When all was said and done I left with $10 of my $20 and Jacob only $4.

Later we went to the Rio, where we heard the week-long World Series of Poker was just beginning. We went for a little while and checked it out. On the way through the Rio casino I found a guy carrying a brand new World Series of Poker t-shirt, so I asked him where it might be. He seemed to know and lead us around the casino back and forth looking around and later realized he was drunk and really didn't know at all where he was.

He was there for the week playing the satellite games trying to get into the full World Series. We walked shoulder-to-shoulder aimlessly around the casino, Jacob five feet in tow, and he explained to be the the mathematics of poker tournaments.

"You see I just came with $125 for the lowest bracket buy in, and I won my first games" he said proudly. "Ten players and me and the last guy split, so I got $500 after the casino rakes the pot." And then came the tricky part. "Now, I can take that $500 and buy into a bigger game with a $500 buy in. I win that I can get into a bigger game." I soon learned that if you do this enough you will, in fact, have enough money to buy into the World Series of Poker. Jacob later pointed out how little his monologue was dependent on any displays of interest coming from me.

Much to our amazement this walk lead us to the floor of the World Series and we checked it out. We stood idly by various tables and realized just how many games are determined before the flop. I was thinking in ten-player games we'd see the flop quite often but that was just not the case in the games we saw.

Jacob mentioned how very bored he was. I seconded and we left and wandered back to the strip to see Caesar's Palace, which was pretty much exactly like the Bellagio and Paris except a lot more Roman. We wandered around for a little while and found a pretty amusing blackjack installment where the dealers were police officers, only not carrying guns and where much smaller uniforms. The policemen dealt cards and occasionally check over their shoulders to ensure the incarcerated dancers behind them didn't escape their cages.

It was kind funny how blatant they were about how sex sells. The waitresses at the Rio wore bikinis. All over the city in small plastic bins where you'd normally find free newspapers or used car magazines were advertisement booklets for escort services.

In the morning, we headed next door to the Elise Island restaurant and casino for some really cheap breakfast and a bigger piece of ham than I think I've ever seen. We sat and ate and watched the occasional gambler push buttons on the slot machine. It's amazing how pretty much every place in Vegas has a casino. Even the first rest-stop gas station on i15 coming into Nevada was a gas station / casino. I really wanted to stop off at some of the local government services to see if they're the same way. Las Vegas City Post Office and Casino. Vegas Memorial Hospital and Casino. Hurst Family Funeral Home and Casino. But we had little time we have to get to L.A. We'll let yo know how that goes.

Entering Las Vegas

2007-06-03T19:48:00.000-07:00

7:48PM PDT | N36°10'39" W115°9'4"

As it happens, we drove past the sign that marks the Las Vegas city limit at exactly the 100-mile marker since our last post. Nothing really has happened since then other than a really spectacular drive through a mountain on I-15 in Arizona, but we're both excited about getting to see Vegas for the first time. We'll let you know how it turns out.

This is Zion, and we are not afraid!

2007-06-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

7:34 PM MDT N36°56'26" W113°49'20"

You'll be glad to know that we made it to Zion National Park, and as reported it was pretty impressive. As far as sheer jaw-dropping impressiveness goes, I think the Grand Canyon has it beat, but there was much more to do and see. Zion National Park is a really cool region of red, twisty rock formations that's miles wide and filled with neat stuff.

Getting to the visitor's center was probably about half the fun. There are two entrances, and we happened to enter on the side farthest from the visitor's center, so we had to drive through the park through 17 miles of mountain road, around some spectacular mountain formations and through mountain tunnels (twice!). By the time we got there we were already pretty impressed. Which was good, since by the time we got there we didn't have a whole lot of time left before we needed to head out. The Zion people were nice enough to make a "Zion in Under 3 Hours" sign with ideas for quick visits into the park, which we very much appreciated. We decided our best bet was to try and see a thing called Weeping Rock.

The trail to Weeping Rock, the sign informed us, required us to take the canyon shuttle, so we walked over to the shuttle center and got onto the shuttle of a man who announced that he was Dan Dan the Wonderful Driving Man. I did not get the impression that he was also Dan Dan the Wonderful Walking in a Straight Line Man, but he was entertaining. As we drove up the hill, he pointed out that the beavers "live in a bank, but won't give you change," then repeated that, then waited for everyone to groan before continuing. A little later, he informed us that the trail to our right could be used by pedestrians, bikers, pets on leash, and even children --- but they didn't have to be on a leash. He waited for us to groan again.

Things went on this way until we got to the Weeping Rock trail head. Then we got off, and climbed up the trail for a sorta unsatisfyingly short distance until we got to Weeping Rock, which Dan Dan the Wonderful Driving Man had informed us was spilling out water that had actually been inside the mountain for 1,200 years. Very cool. We sat there for a while, then realized that both of our phones were dead and we didn't know what time it was. Another person up there rather confusedly indicated that it might possibly be 5:40, though, so we decided we needed to leave.

We climbed back down and went to the shuttle stop to wait. When the shuttle arrived, it was none other than Dan Dan the Wonderful Driving Man at the wheel. As we wound our way back to the visitor's center, we heard his spiel in reverse, pretty much like a tape played backwards, down to the children not needing to be on leashes and the beavers not giving you change. But towards the end, a conversation between a German family, a New York Jewish woman, and an ex-Army guy who'd been stationed in Germany --- about the Autobahn and its lack of speed limits --- spread to the entire bus, including Dan Dan the Wonderful Driving Man, and so the spiel was cut short.

Then we quickly got back into the car and started towards Las Vegas. At this point we're about a quarter of the way there, and the scenery is changing dramatically, yet again. Just think, only half a day of driving and two states left!

The Grand Canyon

2007-06-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

3:23 PM | N37°0'28" W112°31'39"

Well, we've been to the Grand Canyon now. We got into the park entrance and drove a really long way afterwards, about 25 miles, before we got to a parking lot. We'd been seeing little glimpses of canyon-ey things through trees to our left for a while, so as soon as we got out of the car we headed to the treeline and saw it: an incredible red gash in the ground that was so far across you couldn't really make out the details of the other side, and so deep you couldn't see the bottom. We stood there, mouths open, for about five or six minutes before I noticed a sign that said "Roaring Springs Canyon. Grand Canyon 100 yards to the right." It turns out we'd been looking at a little finger off of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon itself was about ten times larger; I don't think I could even see all the way across at the farthest dimensions. I don't think anything I say can do it justice. Honestly I don't think the pictures we took will do it justice either, but we might as well post them anyway to give you an idea of what we looked at.

We went around as much as we could, though we had to budget our time pretty carefully. Part of this was because we want to get to Las Vegas tonight, and part was because we decided at the spur of the moment to take a detour through Zion National Park, which is close enough to the route we'd have taken to Las Vegas anyway that it doesn't add significantly to our travel time. We've had three people independently recommend Zion to us: my friend Adam before we left, a guy at Arches as we were climbing to Delicate Arch, and the receptionist at the Super 8 last night. Actually, if I'm remembering correctly all three of them told us that Zion was more impressive than the Grand Canyon. I guess we're about to find out.

Good morning Gill. I said good morning, Gill

2007-06-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

10:58AM MDT | N36°29'7" W112°7'36"

We're headed towards the Grand Canyon and we should be there fairly soon. We're currently in Fredonia, AZ. I took a picture of the sign for Sarah who went to school in an entirely different Fredonia.

Last night we pulled into the Best Western in Kanab, UT to find a woman complaining about her room and trying to get her money back. Some of the highlights of her argument: 1) The room next door is being loud and her husband can't sleep. 2) There's something yellow and sticky in the sink. 3) The carpets are dirty.

We left for the Super8 next door since it was mentioned in the conversation that there weren't any other rooms. We went our own little walk for hunger once we got settled in only to find that Kanab closes down at 10:00. It did seem like a pretty nice little town. There were lots of a little closed cafes that we wished we could have eaten at. Oh well. On the advice of our concierge we headed to "the only stop light in town" as it was referred to by three separate residents. Upon reaching the fabled stop light we found a Mexican Restaurant.

Super8 in Kanab, UT

2007-06-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

9:52AM MDT | N37°2'33" W112°31'35"

This is where we stayed last night.

Running low

2007-06-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

8:00 PM MDT | N37°28'48" W112°30'51"

Battery's running low on the laptop and I can't find the power cord, so this will have to be brief. The highlight of this stretch was that we left the interstate system and we've been taking state highways. I remember hearing once that when the interstates got put in, it really hurt the local towns that weren't on them; I don't know if that's true but it's certainly consistent with the towns we've been seeing.

We pulled off to the side of the road at one point when Mike saw a stream, and he took a little swim in it. We've got video, maybe we'll post it. The landscape is changing considerably, from arid to forest, though we're still in very hilly area. We're also still in Utah but we're getting close to the Arizona border, so I think we're still on schedule to be able to do the Grand Canyon tomorrow morning and Las Vegas tomorrow evening.

Mike's swim

2007-06-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

6:15 PM MDT | N38°34'5" W112°15'12"

Click to play

I-70 is totally empty, but rocks anyway

2007-06-02T18:01:00.000-07:00

6:01 PM MDT | N38°42'6" W112°8'36"

Jacob here. We've made it through no man's land, the 110 mile void. I would say that it was scenic, but that's not the right word. A nice park is scenic. Lake Michigan is scenic. This was ridiculous. I-70 winds its way through mountains, but unlike the snowy evergreen sort of things around Denver these are stark, red and tan eroded rock formations that are so imposing you just can't help but notice them. We stopped at a "viewing area" at one point and looked out over what had to be 10 or 15 miles of plateaus, carved out by a long-since dried ocean that once occupied that spot. (I wonder, did the people who wrote the signs telling us that have to have a big political fight to be able to say that the earth is at least millions of years old? This is Utah.)

By the way, we've pretty much ditched the AAA triptik in favor of the Magellan's directions. It's just much easier to have a computer tell you what to do at every turn, and figure out how to get back on track when you do something that's not in the plan. At this point we're completely relying on it, and it is coming through for us. Magellan, Mike and I want you to know that you're our girlfriend now. Sorry, other girlfriends, Magellan knows the shortest time route to my heart, and also the route that uses the fewest toll roads.

Half way to nowhere

2007-06-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

4:23PM MDT | N38°53'29" W110°38'30"

We just left Green River, UT and we are now about a quarter of the way through the 110 mile void that the signs warned us about. Which means we are just about half way to the middle of nowhere.

Jacob and I got lunch at Blimpy's in Green River and took pictures of the actual Green River, sang Green River, and in general had a splendid time.

That's all for now. It's been a while since we've had reliable Internet access so I'm anxious to get this posted up on the web.

Mt. Awesome and the delicate arch

2007-06-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

2:39PM MDT | N38°45'10" W109°44'29"

A lot has happened since our post this morning. We crossed into Utah, leaving behind "colorful Colorado" as the sign warned us. It did seem kind of like a cheap shot on Utah, which in this area is mostly just brown. However, not to be out done, Utah has been quite beautiful as well. Just outside Colorado in the south east of Utah where we are no is a vast expanse of arid mountains. We can see further than we've been able to at any other point in the trip, which has been quite useful to confirm exactly how little is actually out here. Specifically absolutely nothing for hundreds of miles.

This area has a very desert feel to it, though I don't think it's technically a desert because there's a lot of vegetation still. But also lots of sand, rock, and the occasional highway signing warning you that there are dust storms for the next five miles and you are not allowed to stop or get out of your car.

One interesting thing about the area is that despite it being really hot a deserty, I can see snow. A mountain, which Jacob has named Mt. Awesome, has been visible ever since we first saw it driving out of the Colorado rockies. It looms over southern Utah, never really passing out of sight. Mt. Awesome has some pretty big snow caps on it and pictures of it from around here make for a pretty interesting juxtaposition.

We hit the hundred mile mark somewhere inside Arches National Park so we figured we'd hold off on the full blog post until after we got out. Arches was quite impressive. We saw a large, top-heavy rock called balance rock. At a place aptly named Panorama Point I decided to test out my new camera's panorama feature called stitch assist. It basically allows you to see you last picture you took right next to the one you're about to take and line them up before you take the shot. I'm pretty unskilled with it so I don't expect them to come out all that well, but we'll see.

Later along the way we found the Mt. La Sal viewing station where you supposedly can take pictures of Mt. La Sal. Jacob and I wondered how people were supposed to do that with the enormous Mt. Awesome in the way.

Later, Jacob and I went on a hike up to Delicate Arch. It's a one and a half mile hike up to the arch. It was dry and we could have used a little more water but we didn't really know we were going to be hiking and there was no water at the base of the trail. We paced ourselves and took breaks in the occasionally shady spot, which was considerably warmer than in the sun. Delicate Arch was huge and well worth it and we got some pretty good photos along the way.

The funnest part of the hike was the trip back. The entire trail was up hill going to the arch so it was clear sailing back to the car. I ran most of the way back as it was a little easier to just let gravity do the work for me.

We're currently back on i70, stabbing westward towards the Grand Canyon area. We're both famished and Jacob has found the only civilized settlement in southern Utah so I'm cutting the post off right here. You've all had enough of this update by now anyway I'm sure. Oh wow, "Next service 110 miles." Yeah, we're totally stopping. Catch you later.

Inside Arches

2007-06-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

11:45AM MDT | N38°39'29" W109°35'16"

We just hit the hundred mile marker inside Arches National Park. We'll post more when we get out and back on the open road. Namely Interstate 70.

It Just (Occasionally) Works

2007-06-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

9:44 AM MDT | N39°10'13" W108°47'44"

Hi all, Jacob here, welcome to day 3. Quite a bit to report since Mike's last update: after that update, we decided to stop in a town called Parachute, CO to stay at a Super 8, having had good luck with their wireless in Seward. We pulled in and I went to the office, which had no clerk behind the desk; some other people waiting there told me she had stormed out yelling something just before I got there. After I'd been waiting a few awkward minutes, a police car came up to the parking lot, and then the clerk came back, calmly apologized, and informed us that there were no vacancies. It was pretty late, but we'd heard that there were no vacancies in Rifle, the town we'd just passed through, either, so we decided to press on to Grand Junction, about 40 miles further.

When we got to Grand Junction they were pretty booked up as well; we tried the Super 8, and then Quality Inn, but had no luck until we tried the Affordable Inn. Affordable Inn did not inspire me with its competence, or with the non-bitter-and-hostileness of its staff. When we asked about Internet access, the clerk told us in one breath that "we have Wi-Fi and it occasionally works." This proved to be pretty accurate, which is why we weren't really able to do any blog updating last night. Sorry about that.

But they had beds and that was good enough. We got a room, and this morning we got up, tried to update the blog again, with no success, and then set off for Arches National Park in Utah. The plan is to go to Arches and spend a goodly amount of time there, then head down to the Grand Canyon and be ready to spend the morning there tomorrow. Then tomorrow in the early afternoon we'll head to Las Vegas, go to the casinos and see the town, and then get into Los Angeles the next day.

This morning's drive so far has been gorgeous, by the way. It's amazing how much the landscape changes once you get to the Rockies. I hope the pictures do it justice.

Affordable Inn

2007-06-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

9:23AM MDT | N39°6'32", W108°32'34"

Here's where we stayed on Friday night:

Pushing on

2007-06-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

9:06PM MDT | N39°33'42" W107°15'34"

We're a little less than half way from Denver to Utah at this point. The road has smoothed out but it's still rather narrow. It's dark and wet which makes driving on these roads not Jacob's favorite part of his current situation.

We just passed a large traveler-friendly town, named Riffle, CO, with a large number of motels and fast food but we've decided to push on. The goal being to get as close to the Grand Canyon by tomorrow night so that we can spend all day Sunday at the Grand Canyon and Vegas. After that we'll finish the trip Monday with a short four-hour drive from Vegas to L.A. At least that's the rough plan we mapped out at the Denver coffee shop today. Let's see if it works out.

Night Driving in the Rockies

2007-06-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

9:04 PM MDT | N39°27'22" W108°3'6"

Click to play

We know it's hard civic, and we support you

2007-06-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

6:34PM MDT | N39°40'53" W105°53'59"

We stopped in Denver and had a nice walk and coffee break at Metropolitan Mudd, where we upload our recent posts, stretched, and just generally relaxed. Oh, and yes, I did get that cookie.* The geography is getting a lot more interesting. I've been doing little more than taking pictures since we left Denver and head west into the Rockies.

The civic seems quite a bit less than thrilled about the terrain than we are. We just pulled off to get gas and read the car owner's manual for some tips on driving in severally hilly conditions and we learned how to use all of those extra positions on the automatic transmission shifter. Despite our best efforts the car's acceleration is still really bad and going down hill feels a lot like we're falling down a wet mountain in a slightly controlled manner.

We are currently driving through a long tunnel under the mountains. We've been driving up and down the sides of the rockies for the past hour or so now and it's beautiful. It seems now, I can't snap photos fast enough to capture everything I want. It's amazing Colorado borders Nebraska.

* Two in fact, and a strawberry smoothie.

Coffee and the world's first bike

2007-06-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

4:42 PM MDT | N39°45'1", W105°1'1"

We've stopped now in Denver at a quaint little coffee shop called the Metropolitan Mudd. It's very cute and has a nice comfy sofa for cookie eating. We're upload some of our post we typed in the car via the shop's free wireless. It's really nice how so many motels and coffee shops are offering it these days. Road trip bloggers around the word are finally getting some service.

On the way to the coffee shop we took a little walk around and we saw a guy riding a penny farthing down the street. I ran after him whilst unsheathing my Powershot A640 and was able to just barely get off one round before he road off into the sunset.

Did you know the penny farthing is consider precursor to the modern unicycle?

Did you know nerds waste nearly 40% of time they ought to be sleeping on wikipedia?

The most boring excitment I've ever had

2007-06-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

2:51PM MDT | N40°3'1" W104°40'2"

I've been mostly programming for past fifty miles or so. We listened to another This American Life and I've now queued up some Modest Mouse for a slightly less attentive listening experience. Jacob has managed to get us a hundred miles closer to Denver since I last posted and for that we should all be proud.

Probably the most interesting thing we've seen in the past hundred was a tumble weed. Now I know what you're probably thinking. A tumble weed is the quintessential symbol of mundane. It's almost definitively not exciting. It's used in countless movies and cartoons alike to show just how boring a place or situation is. That being said, it is one of the more noticeable symbols of modern fiction and neither Jacob nor I have ever actually seen a real one. The passing of this little bundle of boredom, quite literally crossing our path, was met with much excitement and many various methods of taking the lords name in vein.

We haven't stopped since the last post but things are getting more urban rapidly as we near Denver. We plan to get out and take a gander when we get to the mile-high city. Our plans have changed slightly since we are getting to Denver earlier than we anticipated. We're going to push on in stead of staying in Denver tonight. When we get to the city, we'll take account of where we are, where we should go (wifi permitting) and possibly, just maybe, find some cookies. Things are still pretty flat but I just looked up as I write this and saw mountains straight of the distance. I've pointed them out to Jacob as they are rather faint and look quite a bit like clouds in the sky line.

Things, todotree, denver, when you're dead

2007-06-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

1:29PM MDT | N40°43'28" W103°1'56"

Hey everyone, I'm back in the passenger seat doing my best to give off the impression of a trusty co-pilot while secretly plotting to subvert the trip. As part of this facade I have served up some This American Life on the car stereo while I type to you, my readers, or reader, as the case may be. The exciting news from the past hundred miles is that we are no longer in Nebraska. What this means is that while the vegetation has not really changed all that much, it is now found on a setting of lightly rolling hills and occasionally outlined by little peaking hills miles off in the background. My only regret is I was too busy tending to my co-pilot duties to snap a shot of the Entering Colorado sign.

We've gotten on to i76, which is exciting because it was just about the second turn we've made all trip.* We'd been on i80 for roughly 500 miles and though it was good to us, I'm glad to be off. For starters, 76 is a superior number to 80; it has the higher prime factor. 76=2*2*19 while 80=2*2*2*2*5. At any rate (particularly 82mph) it's good to be making progress and pushing on. Out with East, in with the West, that's what I always say.**

Jacob and I have begun to write a program together that we will pair program for the remainder of the trip. The program is a simple enough idea; we want to create a todo list that acts more like a tree than a list. The basic principal here is that when you have something you need to do, you often divide the task up into subtasks in order to make it more manageable. This can clutter your to do list and also prove disorganizing if you forget to check of children tasks when completing a large project. To combat this in our daily lives, Jacob and I are creating a very simple web service, todotree, that will allow users to do just that.

Todotree will have two views, a complete-tree view and a fringe view. While the complete-tree view shows all tasks in the tree, the fringe shows only those tasks that have not been divided up into subtasks. This encourages you to only look at the things you can accomplish in the immediate future. In the event that there is a large project in the fridge, it encourages you to think about how to subdivide that project.

That's all for now, I need to get back to programming. I hope you're all having an absolutely lovely Friday.

* Excepting a multitude mini-adventures for the purpose of gas, food, and lodging.
** The above comment in no way reflects jacobandtheamazingtechnicolorskippy's view on any global conflct of political power or cultural diffusion

Do you see that truck stop ahead? It's the one that designed my undoing.

2007-06-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

11:33AM MDT | N40 43'22" W98 44'7"

We just entered Mountain Time, and to celebrate, it's Mountain Goats Time! We're listening to "California Song" as I write this. Otherwise, the only real event is that we saw our first real foothill-looking thing. All this talk about mountains, and we've yet to see anything that's not essentially flat. I suspect this is about to change.

Dude, where's my windshield wiper?

2007-06-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

6/1/07 11:18 AM CDT | N41°0'26" W100°23'19"

We've got some minor excitement to report this time. It's been raining off and on the whole trip, and of course this means my wipers --- which I had replaced at Jiffy-Lube the day before we left, two days ago --- have been getting a lot of use. Well, the last time some rain came through, Mike naturally turned on the wipers, and after they'd been going for a few minutes, the right blade flipped over and nearly fell off the car. Not good at all.

So we pulled over and fiddled with it, and not seeing any obviously missing pieces or broken bits, we put it back in its normal position and kept going. Pretty much immediately we saw that it was sliding out of its place again, so we decided to stop at the next gas station and try to fix it properly.

Well, as we were heading to the next gas station the car started thumping like we had a flat tire. We freaked out a little, but we decided to keep going since we were trying to get to a gas station anyway. This was the right decision, since as soon as we hit a section of smoother road the "flat" went away; probably just a really bumpy section of road that didn't look it.

Anyway, we got to the closest gas station, but there wasn't a mechanic there so we thought we'd try to figure out what was going wrong ourselves. We spent the next few minutes closely studying each wiper blade, figuring out how the fastening mechanisms worked and trying to decide whether the one on the loose blade was broken or not. We ended up concluding that it wasn't broken at all, the people at Jiffy-Lube just hadn't been put in properly the first time. So we snapped it in to place and headed off. It seems to have held up just fine since then, so maybe we were right.

George Washington's favorite motel

2007-06-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

9:37 AM CDT | N40°49'5" W97°26'16"

Good morning blogorhombuses. To catch you up to speed: last night we made it into Lincoln a few minutes after I finished writing that last entry, and we had the GPS system find us a restaurant. Unfortunately it could not also find us a parking space, so we ended up parking two blocks or so away from where we wanted to eat; that wouldn't be so bad except that it was pouring down rain at the time. Oh well, though, we ate outside anyway. We were right across the street from a store called "From Nebraska", which was apparently a gift shop where you can get items that will definitively prove to your jealous friends that you were actually, at one point, in Nebraska.

After dinner, we pressed on for a little while longer and ended up at a Super 8 across from a Wal-Mart in the tiny town of Seward. According to its chamber of commerce, Seward is the "4th of July" city. Presumably this is because it's where an important battle in the Revolutionary War was fought. Just to think, Mike and I might have slept in the same motel room as John Adams and George Washington. The mind boggles. Anyway, the motel was all booked up when we got there except for their special, slightly-higher-priced "pet friendly" rooms, but that worked well because I had Mike with me anyway. The room had wireless, so we had a big blog uploading party and then I pretty much passed out from exhaustion.

This morning, we had the motel's free breakfast --- bagels, juice, and some pretty awful coffee --- and then we got back on the road. It's been about thirty miles since then then, and we haven't passed another motel yet, so I think we made the right choice.

Night 1 motel

2007-06-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

8:47AM CDT | N40°52'7", W097°6'1"

Here's our hotel from night 1:

Lincoln

2007-05-31T18:57:00.000-07:00

6:57PM CDT | N40°48'11", W96°42'7"

(click to play)

New seats

2007-05-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

6:00PM CDT | N41°5'40" W96°15'21"

Hi blogophiles, or blogospheroids, or whatever --- Jacob here. I'm now riding in the passenger's seat and my charming, good-natured and helpful companion Mike (about whom I am far too kind to say anything ill, since I'm sure he'd never say anything ill of me) is driving. We switched when we stopped at a gas station just after the last blog post, some desolate station in the middle of nowhere that had cheap gas and, Mike assured me, "lots of porn" as he discovered when he went inside to "get a Coke." That gas station was also the last stop for a hitchhiker we picked up somewhere along the way: a tiny dragonfly that somehow managed to get into the car. Goodbye, dragonfly! I hope you find new friends in your new home.

Nothing particularly eventful happened on this stretch, so I figure I should say a few words about why we're making this road trip in the first place, for the benefit of Mike's friends, who might not know. The short version is: my girlfriend Molly and I have the terrible misfortune to both want PhDs, and that compulsion occasionally demands that you do things like this. The longer story is that we've been dating since shortly after we met, both as undergraduates at Rice University in Houston about 7 years ago. She's two years younger than I, so I graduated two years before she did, and after a year of working as a consultant in Houston I decided to go to graduate school at University of Chicago. Why? I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, I went there, and a couple years later Molly graduated and followed me. Well, almost: she went the right direction, but stopped at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (about 120 miles south of Chicago) to become a grad student in bioengineering. That was less than ideal, but a heck of a lot better than nothing, and we dealt.

But then her lab moved to Irvine, California. Her options were to stay at UIUC and do different work that didn't interest her, or go out to Irvine and have a good lab and a more prestigious name on the degree. So she went, and a year later I'm following. Thus, the road trip.

This will probably be the last blog post for today; our goal for day 1 was Lincoln, Nebraska and we're nearly there. Tomorrow: Denver.

Primal Ages or how to know when you and your girlfriend are a power couple

2007-05-31T17:20:00.001-07:00

5:20PM CDT | N41°40'54" W92°58'54"

I mentioned to Jacob how this year the prime factors in my age are greater now than they were last year. I just celebrated my 2*13th birthday. Jacob then mentioned how he does these types of calculations all the time as well. Particularly that last year would be probably the only time when his ages would be a perfect cube and Molly's a perfect square. I graphed y=X^3-2 and y=X^2 on the laptop and they do indeed only intersect once.

Jacob then decided a more interesting question was when are his and Molly's ages both of the form X^Y and P^Q respectively where X,Y,P, and Q are integers and Y>1 and Q>1. I wrote a program to calculate this for all possible differences in ages so that our readers and their mates can know when to celebrate their own primeversaries.

(require
 (lib "list.ss")
 (lib "etc.ss"))

(define (factors n)
  (let loop ([fact 2])
    (cond
      [(> fact n) '()]
      [(zero? (modulo n fact))
       (cons fact (loop (add1 fact)))]
      [else (loop (add1 fact))])))

#|
(list 'factors
      (equal? (factors 2) '(2))
      (equal? (factors 10) '(2 5 10))
      (equal? (factors 27) '(3 9 27)))
|#

(define (filter-for-prime lon)
  (cond
    [(null? lon) '()]
    [else (cons (car lon)
                (filter (lambda (x) (not (zero? (modulo x (car lon)))))
                        lon))]))

(define (has-one-prime-factor n)
  (let ([prime-factors (filter-for-prime (factors n))])
    (and (= 1 (length prime-factors))
         (not (equal? n (car prime-factors))))))

#|
(list 'has-one-prime-factor
      (eq? (has-one-prime-factor 2) #t)
      (eq? (has-one-prime-factor 27) #t)
      (eq? (has-one-prime-factor 25) #t)
      (eq? (has-one-prime-factor 10) #f))
|#

(define *age-expectancy* 120)

(define ages-with-one-prime-factor
  (let loop ([n 0])
    (if (>= n *age-expectancy*)
        '()
        (if (has-one-prime-factor n)
            (cons n (loop (add1 n)))
            (loop (add1 n))))))

(define (find-differences lon)
  (cond
    [(empty? lon) '()]
    [else (append (map (lambda (x) (list (- x (car lon)) 'at (car lon) 'and x)) (cdr lon))
                  (find-differences (cdr lon)))]))

(quicksort
 (find-differences ages-with-one-prime-factor)
 (lambda (a b) (< (car a) (car b))))

Grinnell, IA

2007-05-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

3:55PM CDT | N41°41'43" W92°49'47"

We just past Grinnell, IA, and thought of our friend Dave. We also passed the Fun Valley Ski Area. How there is a ski area in the middle of flat corn fields, I think I may never know. Jacob introduced me to two albums which I'd never heard. The Thermals - more parts per million and M. Ward - post-war. We are currently listening to Charm of the Highway Strip, an apporopriate title for the times put out by one of my favorite bands, The Magnetic Fields.

"Okay, how many band can you think of with gerrends in their names?" -Mike
"Flogging Molly and Counting Crows" -Jacob
"Nice. Soul Coughing" -Mike
"Wailin' Jennys" - Jacob minutes later
"Traveling Wilburries" - Mike minutes later
"The Rolling Stones" - Jacob immediately
"The Beat Happening" - Jacob after twenty miles of silence
...
"The Smoking Popes" - Jacob several minutes later
...
The Smashing Pumkins" - Mike hours later

Brown out on wheels

2007-05-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

2:32PM CDT | N41°38'1" W90°57'0"

Not too much to report. We stopped for gas and got some drinks. The episode of this American Life featured Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake city vs. Sean Hannity, Fox New Republican propagandist in a debate; it was entertaining. Jacob is still behind the wheel, behind the curve, and behind the times. I am (ab)using my power as documenter to take cheap shots at Jacob as much as possible as I'm sure it will be returned in full when he takes over.

On the car-tech front, we got Jacob's power inverter to work charging the laptop, which is very convenient since we're using it fairly regularly. Jacob has just pointed out how the amount to technology that we have in the car right now is fairly absurd. We have a GPS unit, a radio transmitter, a power inverter, a digital camera, a battery charger, and two laptops, two cell phones, two mp3 player, and a USB GPS device for one of the laptops.* We have only one car power socket. This requires a lot of switching.

*This is not counting Jacob himself, who is actually a robot.

On where our spare change went

2007-05-31T12:49:00.000-07:00

12:49PM CDT | N41°49'24" W89°25'19"

It feels like we've only just left Chicago and yet Jacob's ignorance of the tolls on i88 has been demonstrated four times over. "I think this is the only toll we're going to hit." he told me. It turned out to be the only toll we'd hit for the next ten miles.

We made a discovery that the Megellan RoadMate provides an on-screen keyboard allowing us to type out destination without scrolling through a list of all locations. Jacob now likes the RoadMate a lot more. We are listening to the latest podcast of This American Life for maximum Chicago nostalgia.

I took a picture of the road we're on in accordance with our road trip mandate to create a picture and blog entry for every hundred miles. I get the impression I'll be able to reuse this picture for the next ten entries.

Invocation

2007-05-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

11:01AM CDT | N41°56'31" W87°39'17"

Click to play