Norskie's Blog

Sustenance

2011-11-22T11:16:00.001-06:00

A trip to Belgium is never complete without sampling their excellent food and beer.

At the top of the beer list is Cantillon. I didn't get to visit last time as they are only open during normal business hours, and that's when I usually either work or travel. But this time I finished my day early, and on the pretense of saving the customer 100+ Euro I dropped off the rental a day early and booked a room in Brussels at day early.

It nearly without a hitch.

After dropping off the rental at the airport on Friday at noon I also ditched my suitcase in an overnight locker so I wouldn't have to drag it around town. I folded up the receipt and stuck in my wallet, as it has the code I need to get my suitcase back tomorrow (Saturday). Then I buy a roundtrip train ticket to Brussels ($15) and jump on that. Once in Brussels I find a waffle and hop on the subway.

It turns out that my hotel in the Schumann district is half a block from the European Commission, and has a posted daily rate of *gulp* 450 euro (about $510). But I check in at 10% of that rate, without breakfast (+$20) or internet (+$15). Pfft, all I need is sleep ... later.

So ... I pull up my maps and figure out how to ride the rails to Cantillon. Once I get there I'm pretty glad they're not open outside business hours because it is not a good neighborhood. But in the waning daylight hours it's ok.

Cantillon itself is well known for making beer the traditional Belgian way, which is with wild yeasts creating spontaneous fermentation. Try that in Minnesota and you'll have moldy beer. But in Brussels, which is in the Senne river valley, once the beer is pumped into this coolship:

which is a large shallow brass container in which the wort cools. slats in the roof are opened and the local air, carrying the local microfauna, inoculates the wort and starts to make it's magic. The brewery is old and dank, and has lots of cobwebs, which are protected as that's part of dust and trappings which contributes to the flavors of the beer.

And what flavors it has! These brews have dry tart flavors to which they add fruit for sweetness. I brought a few bottles home ... but will have to show patience as they get better with time. I would like to point out that it is possible to get Cantillon in the US, but expect to pay $20-$50/bottle.

While there I talked to a couple to a couple Norwegians while avoiding the "oh my god, there's a cork in that beer bottle!" Americans. Also noticed a flier for a bar downtown called Moeder's Lambic and after buying a couple bottles I set off for that location.

Turns out Moeder's Lambic was just a block or two from where were staying in February, and it also turns out they had 47 belgian brews on tap plus two American smoked porters (Stone and Alaskan). There wasn't much there for food, so I replaced dinner calories with beer calories. Like a monk.

Sitting next to me was Andy Greene, a 22-year-old backpacking through Europe, all by himself. His blog is here. I'll warn you ahead of time: he uses rough language and is getting quite a different tour of Europe than I am. Compared to him I'm a patsy, but I enjoyed the conversation immensely. My regret is that I didn't have enough cash on me to buy his beer to help him on his travels ... on the other hand, when I was 22 I didn't have six months and $6000 to travel on, so maybe I'm not regretting it much after all.

The next morning ... no hangover. That's odd. I had six beers, with alcohol contents ranging from seven to twelve percent (ordinary beer is 5.4%). This is ain't right, but I'm not complaining. Except that I could find any waffles at 6.freakin.thirty in the morning on Saturday.

The next morning I left the hotel and took the trains to the airport and then tried to get my luggage. Now, see, that piece of paper with the code on it to get my suitcase wasn't in my wallet. Dammit. I figure, someone here has to be able to unlock that thing, after all, they said they remove all things locked up more than three days, and there was a phone there for me to call security. At this point I have two hours before my flight, but I haven't checked in yet.

I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get voicemail. Dammit.
I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get voicemail. Dammit.
I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get voicemail. Dammit.
I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get voicemail. Dammit.
I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get voicemail. Dammit.
I pick up the phone, it dials and dial, I get a person!

"Yeah, I lost my ticket, can you help?" Sure they said .. they would send someone. *click*. The next 20 minutes I think "....right away?"... thinking I could leave the suitcase, it would be cheaper to ship it home than miss the plane. But then I'd have to throw away 2.25L of Cantillon or drink it within 30 minutes.

But they did send someone, and then I got checked in and upgraded to Economy Comfort (Platinum membership has it's plusses) and went to the sky lounge and had some pastries and coffee before boarding. After ten hours of flying to Atlanta my butt felt OK the first 6 hours as the Economy Comfort seats do in fact have very nice cushions but then I started to squirm.

The rest of the trip was uneventful except for the snow in Minneapolis which delayed Delta in getting our luggage from the plane to the carousel. It was like the old Northwest Airline days when you stood at the carousel and watch it go around with no luggage for 30 minutes before the luggage came sliding down one piece every 50 seconds. Maybe the luggage cart got stuck in the snow.

But I am home now. Let's see ... where to next?

Crazy @ss European Drivers

2011-11-20T08:28:00.001-06:00

They're actually very good drivers, but they drive with machoism to show how manly they are, because we all know that manliness is linked to the ability to skillfully pilot a vehicle in a way that will scare the panties of the ladies. Especially when the drivers have spiky hair and leather jackets.

Although that doesn't explain why the ladies drive like that too, unless a) they're lesbians or b) european men wear panties. I suspect neither a) nor b) are mutually exclusive.

So hear's the scoop on driving in Belgium:

Cars here don't have many cupholders because you're in the car to drive, not drink coffee.
Learn to drive in roundabouts. Yes, you are supposed to use your blinker. Next time you're in a roundabout ... note how many Americans use blinkers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout
Cars to the right have priority unless there's a sign saying they don't: http://www.transportsfriend.org/int/driving.html#priority
Create gridlock on purpose. You are expected to enter intersections on green and yellow regardless if you can clear it.

Note that in Greece, cars in the roundabout must yield to those entering the roundabout. This is a surefire way to make a traffic jam when it gets heavy, but this appears to be consistent with everything else Greece does and I guess it wouldn't be Greece if they did things rationally, now would it?

And drive fast on narrow roads with no shoulder right next to the buildings. I think the roads are narrow and crooked because they used to be horse lanes. In fact, there are many obstacles created to slow traffic, for example they will narrow traffic to one lane on purpose. This is dumb because opposing heavy traffic you'll never get through the narrow part. Why not post a speed limit and enforce it?

Also, get a GPS. There is very little road planning and you'll find yourself going through little neighborhoods at 30kph to get to a major highway intersection. Then you'll find that some neighborhoods didn't like all the traffic so they put up concrete barriers which means you'll have to find another little neighborhood. The fun really starts when there were multiple construction projects underway and you'll spend an hour finding a way to get the 5km to the freeway. This would be impossible without a good GPS.

Just a tip: if you plan on using your phone's GPS then make sure you have service in Europe.

In the end driving went ok, but it was a relief when I could drop off the car at the airport and ride the rails for a day.

Belgium, Part Dieux

2011-11-20T08:04:00.001-06:00

Alrighty, I am back from another trip to Belgium.

This time I had a load of US cash, which I didn't need. I was planning on flying into Brussels, renting a car and driving to Hasselt. Which I did.

But first I had to visit The Worst Airport In America, JFK.

Yeah, it used to be ORD or LAX that received those honors, but now that I've been to JFK again I realize just how crappy of an airport it is. I don't suppose I have any memories of traveling through there with my mother and brother back in the early eighties, when we used to walk out of planes and onto the tarmac in 95F then enter the un-air-conditioned airport and stand in the wrong line for an hour. That totally sucked. Fast forward to 2011, and it it's the same shitty airport but they now have jet-bridges and air conditioning. The airport is still a dumpy old grimy mess with very poor signage and for all those coming to visit New York for the very first time it may in fact be appropriately setting expectations.

But it was really the signage which irked me. When I disembarked from my MSP flight I knew which terminal (three) and gate (B24) I needed to go to. The problem was that there were no signs for how to get to Terminal 3, like there signs to get to Terminal 2. There signs to get to gates 1-35, but none for the gates that start with 'B'. I found a "terminal map" which did in fact show all three terminals - but they weren't labeled so I couldn't tell which terminal was which. Since I had six hours I just walked around, and laughed at the "business office" which consisted of four telephones in partitioned standing booths. Eventually I found the place to transfer to another terminal and that's how I knew where to go. Then I had to find my gate ... aha, a sign for the "B" gates! As I went to them I passed signs for gate 24 in the other direction. Huh? Yes Dorothy, there's a '24' and a 'B24'. And when you're at '24' there is no indication that there is a 'B24' in an entirely different terminal, to which there is very little guidance to locate. In the end ... I found it.

Ok, thinking about this, I think what happened is that the old part of the airport had "normal" gate numbers like 1-35. When they added a new terminal they started a new range .. B1-B35. Being an old terminal they didn't bother to update the signage or make the old gates A1-A35. Nor does it makes sense that Terminal 3 has the 'B' range, or why bother to actually label the terminals on the map. They should have looked to MSP as a good example ... the 'A' terminal has the A1-Axx gates, the 'B' terminal has the B1-Bxx gates, etc. and there are signs EVERYWHERE showing which direction the terminals are. My hats off to the MSP Airport Commission: They did a great job planning and building and easy-to-navigate airport!

My remaining flights to Amsterdam and Brussels went without a problem. The transportation strikes in Amsterdam did not impact me.

Then the next challenge ... driving.

Green worm soup and pig-sh*t

2011-11-06T00:14:00.000-05:00

Every day we went out to lunch, and the first question was "do you like spicy?" and yes, I do, so that's what we did. Every day we ate something spicy. Turns out they don't like spicy, and when I went for the hot-sauce or chili peppers or curries they were surprised. So each day they wanted to find something spicier!

On the third day we went to a place with traditional Malaysian dishes and it was very good ... Beef masala was the best, and some chicken and tofu dishes which I have no idea was in there but it was good (and spicy). Then for dessert they said "you want green worm?" I explained I'll try anything ... as long as it doesn't move, and at any point I can refuse, and may not eat more than a bite. I figure, might feel gross, taste bad, or smell disgusting, and as long as I don't have to take a second bite and it won't make me sick, then it's ok.

So. Green worm soup.

That's in a coconut milk bath with red beans and I stirred in some coconut syrup (gotta find some of that for pancakes!). It was served cold. The worms did not move. So i took a spoonfull and swallowed ... mmm mmm delicious! They said "let them warm up in your mouth, they will start moving!" uh. ok.

So I did.

They didn't move.

I looked at them closely - I could not discern any legs, segments or hard parts. No eyes, antenna, or feelers. Heeyyyyy.... these aren't real worms! Turns out they are a jelly of sorts, and this is a joke they play on visitors!

They asked whether I had tried durion. Hm .. no... I've heard of it. So we stopped at a grocery store but could not find any. The closest we found was durion cake, and that wasn't bad at all.

But another day, we DID find it!

They don't allow people to eat it in public or enclosed places. Banned on planes and trains. So ... naturally ... I wanted to try it!

Here are various descriptions:

"like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory."

" a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed."

"... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock."

"it is of such an excellent taste that it surpasses in flavour all other fruits of the world, according to those who have tasted it"

The local team found an outdoor vendor selling it. The husk has thick spiny thorns, and inside are compartments with soft yellow pods. Inside the pods is the flesh, which is gooey like custard, with seeds shaped like hemoglobin, about in inch in diameter.

The odor is very strong, smells like warm brie with a hint of musk. I wouldn't call it unpleasant, and it certainly doesn't smell like shit. But it is very strong.

They gave me a glove to wear so I wouldn't have the smell on my hand for a long time ;-) And then I tried a bite ... hmm .... tastes like it smells! It is ... um ... not my thing.

I wouldn't say it is repulsive. I don't think it lives up to it's reputation. On the other hand, I didn't eat much and I don't want any more. I will say it was better than some fruits I've eaten, like peaches or apricots. But I don't like it.

Apparently I was only the second visiting IBMr that has tried durion.

Sweating buckets

2011-11-06T00:11:00.002-05:00

My most recent business trip was to Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia. After some wrangling with work policy, contracts, and customer expectations, I ended up in coach for ten thousand miles. Not just coach .. but "window seats made of flat plywood". I hate window seats, because I have to bother the other two in my row to get up, stretch, pee, etc. and since I can't sleep on planes I get up a lot. To compensate for this I tend to reduce my liquid intake considerably when I am not on the aisle.

So anyway, I have REI hiking seat-pad which is a lifesaver on long flights. But the seats were so bad on these two Delta flights that even with the REI pad I was squirming ten hours into a 14-hour flight. Ugh.

But in the end I managed to arrive, after reading a book and watching four movies.

When traveling internationally I usually make cash withdrawals from my checking card using a local ATM to get local currency. Airports have lots of ATMs. However, one of the things I advise travelers to foreign countries is to carry about $200 in US cash as "Plan B". This should be enough to get you from the airport to a night in a hotel in nearly any circumstance. There are places credit, debit and bank cards don't work. One such place was Indonesia - when I was there a year ago I discovered that American Express was not accepted in the country except at hotels, and then reluctantly. My credit card didn't work, and neither of my debit or bank cards worked in the local ATM's ... all I had to get from the airport to the hotel was the cold hard cash in my pocket which I exchanged to rupiah. Eventually, at a local bank, I found a row of ATM's and tried each one, until the 4th one I tried actually was able to process my card.

But for some reason this escaped my brain when I left home on this trip. I was actually thinking "Good, I don't have any US cash that I need to haul around". Doi. While I was sitting in that hard crappy seat I realized ... crap .. I have no cash with me. And then I recalled a conversation I had with a co-worker about getting to the hotel and specifically asked whether I can pay for the cab using a credit card and his answer was "no, cash only." I had to rely on whatever I could find at the airport. Now I was started to get a little nervous. So when I landed I made a bee-line for an ATM ... and it had a sign that it was out of service. Crap ... well, there are usually multiple ATM's in airports, the Kuala Lumpur terminal proved to be no exception. But the other ATM's were out of service too! At this point I was starting to think about calling the hotel to send a cab the 40km to the airport to come and pick me up. But I wasn't ready to throw in the towel yet. My Nerv-O-Meter was escalating!

I sought out the money exchangers and asked if I could purchase local currency on any of my credit cards. Nope ... they said that between 8pm and 1am (it was 10pm) all the ATM and bank transactions were suspended in that airport terminal. Son-of-a-bitch. Thus I went to stand in line at the immigrations counter and while there I pull up my Sprint phone to call the hotel to send a cab, and sure enough there was no CDMA signal. Ok, no surprise there - Sprint sucks for international travel, which is why I carry a second GSM-based quad-band phone with a pre-paid SIM card. I fired that up, and .... ohuh .... it was asking for a PIN code to unlock the SIM card, which, after two attempts, I resigned myself to not knowing the code. Double-crap! No money, no way to make phone calls, 40km from the hotel on a Sunday night. From the immigration line (which I stood in for 45 minutes!!!!!) I could see that there was a cell-phone store on the other side, I'm thinking, maybe I can use a credit card to overpay for a prepaid SIM card with which I can use. Ok. So I had a plan ... that helps.

After getting through immigration I head towards that cell phone store thinking "this HAS TO WORK!!!" and see another (Closed) money exchanger with an ATM and think, what the hell, I'll try it, and ... sweet mother of mercy I got cash! Yaaaaaaayyyyyy!!!!! Now it was just an issue of getting a taxi to the hotel, which involved going to the taxi desk, telling them where I wanted to go, pre-paying for a cab, and .... wait ... what's that? An AmEx symbol on the kiosk? "Do you take American Express?" "yes we do!" .... hahahahahaahahahah! All that worry for NOTHING! I paid for the cab with credit! (but I will still carry $200 in cash the next time).

For you military folks out there, be aware that USAA bank cards do NOT work in most international ATM's.

In the end, I arrive at the brand new Doubletree about 00:30 and check into the executive suite.

Check out that room - it has a shower with a glass wall so that if you're in the room you can see whomever is showering! The shower is huge too .. you could get a bunch of poeple in there. There is a blind that can be lowered if privacy is your thing, too, as the toilet is also visible from the main living area.

For the hallway outside my room I can see the twin Petronas Towers. Unfortunately they are closed to tourists until December or so.

And this was the view out of my window the next morning, from the 12th floor. Those are monorail lines.

Unfortunately the AC in the room did not work, so the next day I had to switch rooms, and they had no more executive suites so I had to get a "normal" room on the 22nd floor, which was still pretty damn nice. it is amazing what $75/night will get here in Asia.

One last day in Taipei

2011-10-26T07:16:00.000-05:00

This thing was on the side of the toilets in Dave and Yvonne's apartment. We've seen them in other places too. They appear to be butt spritzers of some sort ... streams, showers, etc. Good for diarrahea I guess.

We did some walking around Taipei and find a store named .... fcuk.

And a store called Yvonne - which sold dog cushions.

If you are ever in a foreign country take a stroll through a grocery store! We found Brian Poison!

Not really sure what "Heatiness" is .... Dave explained it, but I didn't get it.

How about some Shrimp with your oatmeal? I think that's shrimp. Maybe not .... ???

There's a space here in my blog. I don't know why. I'll have another beer anyway.

Jenn in front of a memorial to some famous guy. It was a Sunday night and the memorial was open, but there were very few visitors ... except for 40 kids on the memorial ground practicing group dances.

Next to the memorial we found a Chinese garden, and across the pond I managed to finagle the camera to get a night shot of Taipei 101 with the reflection.

We sat in this pagoda and chilled for a while. It was a very nice evening.

And finally ... on our layover in Japan we had to have Sushi.

And that was our trip! Hope you enjoyed the blog!

I'm getting another beer.

Inflatable pink rubber .....

2011-10-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

... canoes. What were YOU thinking?

Next stop was an "Amazing Canoeing" trip into an island. Our speedboat took us to an anchored boat with lots of pink rubber canoes. We got, with guides, and they took to an island.

This island had all sorts of interesting wave-eroded features.

One of those features was a tunnel!

The tunnel brought us to an inner lagoon. Full of Russian tourists.

And here we are going back out. And then we raced back to Phuket.

In Phuket, our driver was waiting with his little girl. She was in her school uniform, drawing, and communicating with Jennifer. No seatbelt and lots of crazy driving.

Once back at our resort we had a quiet final night before our dark-thirty ride to the airport back to Taiwan.

Oh, and we got a bunch of mosquito bites. Yay for malaria medicine!

Lames Bond Island

2011-10-19T07:36:00.000-05:00

We continued our tour. Next stop was a tourist trap where a muslim community made food for us. Everything was good, except the salad, which I didn't try because such uncooked and unpeelable things are rinsed in the local water which contains bacteria my system isn't used to.

There must have been fifty tables here.

These were found on the feet of some Japanese girl ... !

We got the Australian lesbians to take a photo of us, and we returned the favor.

We asked why they picked Thailand, and they said because it is super cheap. They paid the equivalent of $1100 USD each for a week in Thailand ... that includes airfare!

The is that tourist trap. You can see the karsts in the background. The dining area and docks are all floating. Here we're looking at a trapped tuna, about two feet long.

Besides food, the local community of muslims (note the headscarf) sells jewelry, t-shirts, local crafts, etc. It is standard for tours to go to such places, because they get kickbacks. I experienced this in Mexico and Indonesia as well. While it provides an outlet and employment for the artisans and sellers, I usually wonder if it distorts the economy and prevents them from seeking higher education in more skilled work. Or if the mafia (or other organized crime or labor) is keeping them as indentured servants.

Anyway ... the girls being sold to were on our boat and they were from Siberia on their honeymoon. Our boat guide tour guy was Russian, and after he said stuff in English he repeated it (and more) in Russian.

There's Paul and Cresta hiding under a towel as we motor through a storm.

And finally we made it to Lames Bond Island. I bet you're thinking "I know the new James Bond movies are lame compared to an of the old ones with Sean Connery, but why can't Christian just call it James Bond?" The answer is simple. Our brochure said it was "Lames Bond Island". That's why!

Anyway .. in the photo above you can see our speedboat on the right.

And finally ... the geographicaly feature everyone here takes photos of. This is from "The Man with the Golden Gun". I guess the first and last ten minutes were filmed on this little island. Back then all the vendors weren't on the island (which I didn't bother to get a photo of). Nor the crowds, or loud-ass boats with rusty car-motors perched on the back with 20-foot propeller-shafts. This was also when we noticed that our Russian tour guide was carrying a handgun in the back of his shorts. Makes me wonder if he had some enemies on this island.

Misc photos from Taiwan

2011-10-17T18:08:00.000-05:00

I came across some more photos from Dave and Yvonne's camera - figured I'd show them here. These are from Taipei.

Molestation on subways?

No ... this was a sign on the subway which indicated that it was not tolerated. Interesting that they felt the need to put one up ...

Shilin Night Market. The stalls along the edges are legit. The ones with their wares on the ground are NOT legit. At one point they packed up and zoomed out of there within 15 seconds!

After the illegit vendors packed up, this monk was left. She was the only reason I could see for the vendors rushing away ... I guess Karma only counts if a monk sees it?

Lots of Angry Birds stuff here.

Another street of the night market.

A dork outside his regular habitat.

At the Gondola station we found this sign which we found amusing ;-)

Phi Phi Islands

2011-10-15T12:25:00.000-05:00

One day we decided to take a tour of the islands east of Phuket. We were picked up from the hotel and drove 20 miles to the other side of Phuket and got on a speedboat with 20 other passengers and a russian tour guide. The took us to some of the karsts in the Andaman sea.

The rocks stand straight up, and there are some beaches.

We stopped at a national park and puzzled at the muddled engrish.

Pee Pee Island. Seriously. the "ph" is pronounced like "pee". So it is either Pooket and Pee Pee or Fooket and Fee Fee.

We stopped on one of the islands and did a little snorkeling. It wasn't that great - no coral reefs or interesting stuff to look at. But it was nice to get into the salt water and float and look at the colorful fish. I even saw a shark! Granted, it was only two feet long but looked like a great white.

And of course ... we had to get through some rain on the way to the next stop. Luckily the speedboat, with two 225hp Honda outboards, got us there in a jiffy.

Poolside

2011-10-12T21:15:00.001-05:00

We took a couple days lounging by the pool. The weather was excellent, but the high waves kept us out of the Indian Ocean.

And here we have a bar in the pool. We ate and drank there. At some point (it's sort of a blur) we got hour-long massages on the beach for $32, for both of us.

That was before I got a funny sunburn. After the sunburn there was no way I was going to get rubbed down again so I didn't get another one.

Appropos sunburn ... I held the spray too close to my skin and got funny patterns ... don't think I have any photos though.

And swam here.

Right behind there were a couple from South Africa currently living in Forest Lake, MN. A quick chat established that they hate it in Minnesota and of all the places in the world they have lived, Minnesota drivers are the worst - oblivious and mean-spirited. But we did agree that it was nice to not have as many homeless (actual or pretenders) on all the highway ramps.

Phuket Town

2011-10-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

After a day lounging we took off to see the rest of the island. We already showed you the bungie-jumping photos. After that we took the cab to Phuket Town for an afternoon.

Overpasses like these were all over the place. Many depicted the royal family, which the Thai's revere.

These scooters with tops and sidecars were everywhere.

Electrical regulations? We don't need no stinkin' rules.

This kind of wiring is EVERYWHERE!

Our cab driver dropped us off in Old Town where we walked around a bit. Here's a pharmacy.

And some Norwegian dork waltzing around.

Um ... how do we order from a menu like that?

Just kidding .. they had menus in english too. This is when we discovered just how expensive the resort was ... Pad thai in Phuket Town was about $3 / plate. At the resort, $15 / plate.

And finally .. Thailand!

2011-10-06T19:34:00.000-05:00

We arrived in Shanghai for our connecting flight to Phuket. At some point we had lost our itinerary, which isn't a big deal in most cases because the airlines have us on their lists and we can just show our passports. But Shanghai was different. We had to collect our bag in Shanghai, pass through immigrations, walk to the other terminal, check in for our flight to Phuket, check our bag, and then pass though immigration leaving the country. The lack of an itinerary made things worse because we couldn't prove to immigrations that we weren't going to stay in China. Yeah ... as if China was a country people tried really hard to get into. Fortunately I had my phone and my calendar had our Phuket flights ... but not our full names, so we could only show them our first names, and they grudgingly accepted that. An hour later, we had to clear immigrations leaving China ... in which we went through the same rigamaroll. But we made it to our gate (with 30 minutes to spare). We met Paul and Cresta at our gate and settled in for our four hour flight to Phuket.

Dontcha know .. they allow smoking on Shanghai Air. I didn't believe it at first, but there were several instances someone on the plane was smoking. We we were deplaning I asked the stewardess if smoking is allowed on all Shanghai air flights (as I wasn't going to complain if they allowed it) and she actually said YES! However .. after I turned and left, Jennifer (who was behind me) noticed the attendant's "yes" with a smile turned to a look of surprise or horrifcation (is that a word?) ... so I dunno, I guess she may not have realized what I was asking, and just said "yes" and then it sunk in that someone on the flight was smoking? Or perhaps .. that her ignorance of the situation demonstrated her lack of control of the cabin?

Anyway .. we arrived in Phuket safely despite the potential for cigarette smoking covering up other burning materials in the cabin. A cab took us to the Marriot resort. It was raining (as it is the rainy season). They had made an elephant out of towels, and we settled in for the night.

Can't forget about the gecko's .. they were all over the walls outside our room.

The next morning was nice! We enjoyed the clear weather and explored the resort. Like the dreadlock trees.

Jenn found this hammock.

So did Paul and Cresta. I merely found the shutter button.

Te resort itself was impressive - they even had collonaded walkways like that.

Once we got to the beach (which the resort is right on) the clouds started to roll in. This is looking south.

And north.

And Jennifer with the lifeguard. The red flag indicates that it is too dangerous to swim. It was up all week.

Paul made a new friend .. Dumbo. He likes bananas.

Here's another shot of the resort. There were several pools throughout.

It didn't take us long to find a bar ..

When it started to rain, we found another bar. And I don't really remember what we did after that. I think we found a grocery store, where we got some wine and beer and cereal, then we found another bar.

Devotional Belching

2011-10-05T20:40:00.003-05:00

One day we decided to take the Maokong gondola to some shrines and tea houses. It left the MRT (mass transit) station south of Taipei and zoomed on up the mountains. It has four stops, for a couple bucks. That's Jenn posing next to our gondola car.

Just kidding. We sat in a bigger one, with Dave and Yvonne opposite us.

First stop was a Taoist temple - specifically the Chi Nan Temple.

See that worshipper with her hands above her head? She was burping. *burp* *burp* *burp* *burp* ... for several minutes... the kind of burping that leads to puking. Meantime, her kids were running around and wrestling. Establishing Harmony indeed. But she did have melody.

Jenn at a tea-table. Hm. I'd be a little intimidated to get tea here.

We walked a little ways and came to the Linxiao Chapel - these are the front steps. It is set in an absolutely gorgeous hillside above a river, across which is Taipei.

Another shot of the Chi Nan temple.

Finally ... at the tea house .. we had locally grown tea, fried rice, really freakin gross mystery popsicles with mold on them, and this "barley drink". We got that when we asked for cold tea, as it was about 90F outside. The oolong tea was forgettable, but this barley drink was awesome! Served chilled, it was mildly sweet with a soft roasted chocolate barley flavor. I tried to find it in other places to no avail.

Shihlin Night Market

2011-10-04T07:17:00.000-05:00

On one humid evening we went to the Night Market. There are a number of them across Taipei, so just picked one. These are markets which pop up after work (6-8pm). We took the subway.

Snakes. Want snake blood?

The markets sell everything. One shop sold the following:

Shoes and bunnies.

Hamsters.

Cats.

Gold fish.

DId I mention they sold shoes?

Another shot of the market.

How about an umbrella with a gunstock?

The street consists of legit stores in the building, and local vendors who put thier stuff in the middle of the street. At one point something cause them to pack up. In less than 15 seconds (and I mean 15 seconds) they folded the sheets and ran off. All that was left was a monk.

How about some "food" ?

Oddly cut sweaters?

Another shot of one of the market streets ... there was at least five streets like this which makes up the market.

Grilled Squid!

Waffles in goofy shapes!

????

And eyeglasses without lenses.

2011-10-02T07:01:00.001-05:00

That is Taipei 101 - the second tallest building in the world (the first is in Kuala Lumpur). This has 101 floors and stands 508 feet tall. We up there.

While we were waiting for the lift, Jennifer images using an iPad as a phone.

One view of Taipei.

Another view of Taipei, in a different direction. Amazing how the circular polarizer can improve photos ... if the conditions are right.

This is an interesting walking bridge over a wharf area - we saw lots of these "one-armed" bridges.

Here we are again ... following the GPS to get back to Dave and Yvonne's and we missed out turn, being sent down a busy street. Note this is not a walking street, but an actual vehicle street.

The next day we went to see Dave and Yvonne's business, The Burger Stop. It looks great - they have put a lot of time and effort into this. The burgers and shakes are delicious, too!

A sign in the restaurant.

One more example of crappy building codes. "Let's just run the wires anywhere!"

Other Stuff we saw going back to Taipei

2011-10-02T06:40:00.000-05:00

These are Dave and Yvonne's photos. This really shows the extend of the cemetaries... the mountainsides were full of them!

We found some creative back roads on the way home. They are very efficient with space here.

This is not a wedding. Here they take the photos when they get engaged. We saw quite a few of these.

Ok now this is the fun part. We were following the GPS trying to figure out how to get back to Taipei. That doesn't help when the GPS voice says "Turn left on shingshwaychow road" and shows a symbol we can't figure out, and these are the signs we see. So all we do is follow the GPS arrows. That leads us down the following street:

This is where I really have to commend Dave on his patience and driving skills. We slowly inch along, and realize, crap, this is a walking mall! But everyone takes it in stride ... for about 1/2 mile ... yes, a half mile ... people politely get out of our way. We joke that we should open the window and buy something. At one point Dave suggests we open the (tinted) windows so they can see we're just some dumb westerners. They are very tolerant about that here. I think that's a good idea, but none of us actually do it.

After several minutes we see a clearing ahead, and are relieved that we are almost through.

It was a dead end. So we pull an Austin Powers three-point-turn and go back through the crowd....

Well, we got through it, and at one point we saw a puppet theater on the street.

Dogs on Scooters? No problem!

Afterwards we went down to the wharf for ice cream, and Jenn explored the stairs leading down to the water. She didn't know that on the wall directly behind her ....

...were hundreds of roaches scurrying around! ewwwwwww!

And the last one for today ... did you really think I would leave you with roaches? No, instead I will leave you with a male soldier on a scooter wearing a "Hello Kitty" helmet.

Random Explorations

2011-10-01T07:32:00.000-05:00

For much of the way back to Taipei we drove along a causeway on the coast.

There is some rugged terrain here.

There are temples (mostly buddhist) all over the place. This one was particularly grand.

These stone figures have a captive ball in their mouths, to signify luck.

The intricacies of the artwork on the eaves is incredible! And in a coastal climate, they must spend lots of time keeping it clean.

On one of the hills we saw a big building and decided "lets see what that is". It took us half an hour to get there, to find out it was a place to put dead people's remains! This 11-story tower (with two more below ground) is chock full of cubby holes for cremation urns.

This appears to be an prayer altar, and the door leads to a mausoleum.

Note the symbol on the statue's chest ... looks like a swastika, right? I thought so too, but as Yvonne pointed out, it is reversed, also known as a left-facing swastika, which is technically called a sauwastika, which in the Buddhist religion means "benedictive, salutory". That makes sense .. this statue was at the entrance to the cemetary.

Here's the view from the burial grounds, overlooking the ocean. That big building in the middle isn't Scrooge McDuck's money vault, but another big building that holds urns.

This is another burial plot, probably a family plot. Note the sarcophagi in the back, and the large open area in the front with the statues. They have a Qingming Festival where the Taiwanese go and enjoy spring and sweep out the tombs. I can imagine the family have a gathering in these open spaces.

As we were waltzing around in the cemetary, the proprietors invited us in! This is one of several indoor (i.e. air conditioned) shrines on the premises. Note the memorial plaques along the stepped walls.

The urns go there!

How's that for a spider? We saw that from the car, across the road. The body is about two inches long ... it is a Golden silk orb spider. We saw a couple more later, too. Not lethal to humans, they have been known to eat small birds. Dang! I suspect the honey badger can take it.

To the Coast - Yehliu Geopark

2011-09-30T05:23:00.000-05:00

Ok ... made the blog wider so I can make the pictures bigger.

More scooters ... you can see them piling up in the ScooterBox in front of the cars. Scooters are not allowed to make left turns on busy roads so they have to do jughandles, i.e. turn right onto a minor road and then do a U-Turn and cross the intersection. Another interesting safety-law is that you're not allowed to enter or exit taxi's through the left door.

The guy in the foreground has that classic Harley form ... feet forward, slouched back, no protection and a helmet that leaves the most common impact areas exposed (i.e. face). But he looks happy!

Since this was a vacation for Dave and Yvonne too, we went to the coast! First due east, then up and over the top back west to Taipei. Dave took us down the street to where the locals eat breakfast. We loaded up on a large sack of food items, two or four of each. Everything was breaded and fried in a skillet in unhealthy doses of oil. One item was an omelet ... but breaded and fried. The pork potstickers and buns were excellent, the white carrot cake (not like ours) was ... interesting ... had the consistency and sweetness of sticky rice squares breaded and fried. Then there was a leek/onion/spinach cake, also breaded and fried. Total bill was $6 to feed four people, and we ate about half of what we bought.

We were on our way to Yehliu Geopark. Before you enter the park, like in most 3rd world countries, there is a market where the gov't allows locals to make a living by selling wierd stuff to tourists. We were early risers so we had the place to ourselves.

Jenn took a picture of some black slimey things in a vacuum sealed bag. No clue what these are. Cobra balls?

Jenn wanted a photo of the giant squiggly CFL's. I like the dried squid in a bag. Or cuttlefish.

Fish Powder. Get your Fish Powder Right Here! And sardines ... minnows ... plankton?

And here's the actual Yehliu Geopark. It is a peninsula that sticks out into the ocean and has lots of neat geological features. Note the people with umbrellas - they want to stay out of the sun because lighter color skin is considered attractive here. They don't sell sun tan lotion ... but rather, lightening creams! Oh yeah ... we felt like giants. For two weeks we were in the minority, towering over the locals with our freckled skin and non-black non-straight hair. In an attempt to fit in we carries big cameras too.

Jennifer and Yvonne enjoying the hike!

Continuing with my tongue-in-cheek characterizations of differences between the occidental and oriental peoples, we found this bench on the side of the hiking path which was barely a few inches above the path. Yvonne is testing it out.

Give a girl a camera, and she'll take pictures of bathrooms! Im' glad she did, because this illustrates one of the differences of our societies, i.e. how we pee. This is the women's room. That is a trough. One foot on each side of the trough, drop drawers, squat, and pee. Men's rooms have urinals.

This is how they poop. Same concept, except that there are (usually) flushing facilities. In airports outside of North America there will frequently be stalls with these, too. Think about it ... how many women actually sit on the bowls in public restrooms? Don't they all hover over the seat anyway?

This rock formation is what makes the park famous - it looks like a queen's head. I don't know who that guy is ... there was a big line to get your picture taken in front of the Head and we didn't feel like waiting so we cut through the line and took his photo with it. It was about 85F with 186% humidity, so it felt like 95F.

More squid! Lots of squid is eaten here.

This is a squid-catching boat. It has lots of huge light bulbs on it and they go out at night. The light attracts the squid in large numbers, then they lower the nets and hoist it in.

First day in Taipei

2011-09-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

Check out this fantastic photo of our plane in the sunset which Jennifer captured. This is in Tokyo, as we were about to board our flight to Taiwan.

Oh ... the 12-hour flight from Minneapolis went well, thanks to this REI butt pad. On my previous two trips to Asia I was squirming after a couple hours, as if I were sitting on a crappy stock motorcycle seat. So I figured I'd try that there REI butt pad, and it worked great! No butt fatigue at all. It rolls down to less than the size of a can of pop, and I hardly have to put any air into it to be effective. A couple glasses of wine (because the beer on the plane is crap and makes me pee) and I managed to get some sleep when I wasn't reading Susan Collin's "Hunger Games" on my Nook.

On our first day we were going to bum around in Taipei (more on that in later posts) and the first thing we saw was this memorial. We pulled in and it turns out it was Chiang Kai-shek's tomb and war memorials for other Taiwanese.

I don't think there are many building codes in place in Taiwan, or they aren't observed if they exist. I'm all for moderate deregulation, but there some things which are best left for standards organizations to develop and the gov't to enforce. Note how the air conditioners are perched on ledges on the wall above ... and the electrical cables draped haphazardly between units. All of this is right over a busy sidewalk.

Scooters. Lots of scooters here, main the small-wheel variants. They carry all sorts of stuff, even people ;-) Most intersections have boxes painted on the street behind which cars must stop. The box are there for when the scooters filter through traffic at stoplights, and then they race (as much as a scooter can race) in front of traffic. The stoplights have countdown timers so we know how long the red light will last, and on the longer ones (two minutes) we'll see scooterati remove helmets, make phone calls, pet their dogs, eat fruit, drink some water, but the scooter up on a centerstand, etc. Scooters are by far the most efficient means of transportation and parking here, but also very dangerous.

Our first Taiwanese meal was dim sum. I love the steamed dumplings and buns ... I just can't get enough. Here at home I think there's a dim sum restaurant in Apple Valley ....

Phone Photos

2011-09-28T16:57:00.000-05:00

Today I will show you the pictures I had in the phone.

This is a plate of fruit. We went to a local grocery store and Yvonne showed us some exotic fruit. The thing that I am cutting is an apple-banana. It is short and stumpy but otherwise shaped like the bananas we all know and love. Except this one has that slightly tart ester of apples ... and is a little juicier. I wish we could get them here, instead of the Cavendish ones we have.

The star-shaped fruit is Star Fruit. These have a consistency of crispy pineapple, and taste like an apple/cucumber/pineapple mix.

See the white fruit with little black dots? That's Dragon Fruit. It's very moist yet crisp, like a cucumber, and has a mild and neutral flavor.

Dragon Roots. They are purchased with a skin on them like a coconut .. in fact, the dish in the photo to the left has some in it. Once peeled, they look like testicles and are slimy like peeled grapes. In fact that they taste like that too. Grapes, not testicles, unless testicles taste like peeled grapes. I don't know and don't intend to find out. Except they don't have much grape flavor. Imagine eating a grape that doesn't have any grape flavor. Unlike testicles, they have a smooth hard nut in the middle shaped like a kidney bean.

Here we are enjoying a Hot Pot. This is essentially a pot on a heating thingy with boiling water and spices. The red side is spicy, the clear side is not. Then we go to a refrigerated display case and select mystery food to lay in the boiling water to cook, and then we eat it. It was generally very good, except when the dumplings turn out to be full of diced squid or whatever. This is primarily a social event though .... that's Dave and Yvonne socializing with Jenn, and I took the picture. Note that the nastyass honey badger isn't here. He don't care, he's still eating cobra.

Jennifer and I went for a walk, and found this exercise area. Here she's using a lateral back roller. Behind her is the perpendicular back roller. They're just black tubes that rotate on steel tubes, with raised bumps on them. Weird.

We went to Starbucks and there was a bunch ... eight maybe? .... Ferrari's parked out front.

The greater Taipei area has 7 million people. It is the capital of Taiwan (formerly Formosa). It is a thriving, modern and clean city. And nowhere to drive these cars the way they are meant to be driven. I guess going to Starbucks is a consolation.

OH .. on the red apple thing ... see that "Wego" logo? "Wego" is a hotel behind us where the cars drive in and are lifted up to their rooms (I think it has eight - ten floors). Maybe so the boss can take her secretary on clandestine dates.

Not far from Dave and Yvonne's apartment there is a river, and spanning that river is a one-sided bridge. Kind of neat. Along both sides of the river are biking/walking/running trails, with tennis courts and tai chi facilities. We came down here frequently to exercise. Even at 6am there were lots of people here, mostly bicycling. And smoking. We often saw bicyclists in their wicky spandex suits and helmets sitting on a bench puffing away.

On this particularly windy Sunday there were sailboats and "sunfish" boats on the river. They were tacking into the wind up and around some markers upriver.

Under the bridge there were larger boats and little ones going in circles. We think they were learning how to sail. And waaaay over there, under the bridge, was a drum-troupe, which provided us with a soundtrack as we walked.

Boing!

2011-09-27T14:15:00.001-05:00

What to do in a 3rd world country? Attach a rubber band to our ankles and jump off a platform 50 ~~feet~~ meters up in the air!

It was quite a rush ... one of the few times in my life I felt the need to yell at the top of my lungs. I was going to imitate some funny Angry Birds sounds, but what came out was much more gutteral.

The jump included a dip in the lake below. I think I went in far enough to get my chest wet.

Weeeeee!

Paul actually went first (I just put my photos first since this is MY blog!) as it was his idea.

And Cresta went last.

New Posts Coming!

2011-09-27T04:53:00.000-05:00

We have just returned from our four-country Asian tour and will start blogging shortly.

This time my blog will have a different format. I won't detail the mundane boring daily list of things we did. Instead, I'll go through our photos in non-chronological order and describe the things we saw. This will be a photo-heavy blog, therefore, if you receive your updates via email without photos you'll want to click the blog link to see the photos.

Just to give y'all an overview of our trip, the idea came about because Paul wanted to "go big" and decided to use his timeshare in Phuket, Thailand. He invited us to join him, which we emphatically took him up on! Then, since we had friends in Taiwan, we incorporated a trip to Taipei into it. We figured out that the least expensive airfare was not to do a three-stop (MSP->TPE->HKT->MSP) but rather a "trip within a trip". We purchased a round-trip ticket from MSP to TPE via Narito (Tokyo), and then another round trip from TPE -> HKT (Phuket). Paul and Cresta (his girlfriend) did the same ... but instead of Taipei, they stayed in Shanghai a couple days. We managed to coordinate things such that our flights from TPE to HKT went through PVG (Shanghai) and we were on the same flight to Thailand as Paul and Cresta.

I know this is confusing ... so here's the timeline:

Sep. 12: From from Minneapolis to Tokyo to Taipei.
Sep. 18: From from Taipei to Shanghai to Phuket.
Sep. 24: From Phuket to Bangkok to Taipei.
Setp 26: From Taipei to Tokyo to Minneapolis.

The first challenge is that we had to book the tickets in two stages ... i.e. we had to "almost book" the TPE->HKT tickets to see the price ($450 on China Eastern). Then we had to actually book the MSP->TPE tickets and pay for them. Then we had to quickly go back to China Eastern to buy those $450 tickets ... but that's when we ran into problems. We couldn't get them. Their website constantly bailed on us ... and for Paul too. So we tried the USAA (our bank) travel website, and we ran into the same problem. In the end, we ended up paying $800 for each ticket, which increased the cost significantly. Not only that ... since Paul and Cresta were spending more than 48 hours in Shanghai, they needed a tourist visa, at $180/each. This also created confusion for the immigration officials. They wanted proof that we were going to leave China and Taipei, that we had tickets out of the country. However, we had managed to lose our itinerary someplace in Taipei so all we could do was show them my Google calendar on my phone to "prove" we had a flight from Shanghai to Phuket ... and when entering Taipei, we had to "prove" that we were not living in Taipei and that we were flying to the US in a couple days.

Ultimately this worked out well. Stay tuned as we share our trip with you!

Home

2011-08-28T07:31:00.000-05:00

Home again, without any drama. Photos have been uploaded to the Photo Bucket link on the right.

Stupid Wind

2011-08-25T21:46:00.001-05:00

730 am we were on the road. It was cool, but the wind frome the west warm so we prepared for a warm day.

Not much to write about. Colorado interstates have crappy pavement. Avan from Florida blew past us going about 90 in a 75 and was promptly pulled over. Nebraska had better roads, but more wind. That sucked too, but at least it was a constant wind, I.e. not gusts.

Bugs. Lotsa bugs. Had to clean visor at every stop.

Left lane speed enforcers.

we decided it wuld best to be east of Omaha to avoid that mess in the morning, so we ended up in Council Bluffs at dusk, with signs for campgrounds leading nowhere. $70 super 8 it is.

Brother and dad got the new chain installed and were on the road by 1pm, ending up in north platte, they made good time. They will bead north to Tracy tomorrow.

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2011-08-25T07:12:00.001-05:00

$44 for a clean Motel 6 next to a decent restaurant. Not bad, considering that we have paid more for a campsite.

Dad's chain is starting to go. It has tight spots and is lengthening daily. It is a little worrying, we have 1200 miles to go. Øyvind's chain was inexplicably tighter all around but otherwise in good shape. So we loosening one and tightened the other. If a chain breaks it can spit the whole thing out the back or get shoved into the transfer case, potentially ruining the engine. Worse, if it gets caught in the rear axle it can lock up the rear tire and cause a crash. This is important stuff.

Back on the road temps climbed again, into the 90's. The interstate went through some interesting canyons but Colorado is one of those states which drops the speed limit for the lowest common denominator.

In Glenwood Springs we had a great sandwich at Chomp's. The baguette was the best! However, the bad news is my dad's chain. He mentioned that a couple miles ago it started making a clicking sound, so we looked at it... and found that sometimes it tries to ride up on the rear sprocket. That is an indication that some links have worn enough to space the rollers out far enough that they don't fit correctly between the sprocket teeth.

So we had a choice... chance it and ride the remaining 1200 miles home, ruining the sprocket and risking a breakdown iin the middle of nowhere, or get it fixed here. Dad decided to get it fixed. We found a bike shop willing to fix it today but they had no chain, so they ordered one from Denver, for delivery the next day. Dad suggested we ride on without him since we were close to home and his bike wouldn't be ready until tomorrow afternoon. Øyvind stayed with Dad, and Chuck and I rode on over the mountians.

Went went east on I-70 through Vail, Dillon, etc and crossed some high altitude passes. The thin air left the FJR weak and accelerating required a downshift. Again, the speed limits were quite low. Instead of putting up signs suggesting lower speeds in the corners, the statutory limit was reduced. This removes much of the joy of motorcycling in Colorado and reduces the trip to mere sightseeing, and explains why Colorado is not considered a good motorcycling destination unless you are willing to egregiously break the law. For instance, corners which in California would have a 65mph limit and 45mph advisory speed would have a 35 mph limit here. Wewere often stuck behind cars from flat states who abided by these limits, but most Coloradoan's appeared to disregard them and exceeded the limit by 20mph or more. Thus, my recommendation is to save Colorado for the family cruiser vacation.

Not having a GPS, and thanks to poor signage on the part of Colorado's DOT, Chuck and I had a hard time finding our way to Hwy 72, also known as the Peak to Peak Highway. Center City was the worst. But eventually we got on it, and enjoyed the slow ride through national forests and spectacular mountain views. As dusk we found a campsite, cooled our beer in the adjacent river, and made a tuna sandwich for dinner.

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Hidden Beer

2011-08-24T09:10:00.001-05:00

After a day in Vegas at 110 F we took off for home. We wated an early start to beat the heat, but decided that might put usin traffic so we delayed until 9am. That gave me time for a run.

Leaving Las Vegas was easy. Getting out of Nevada required more mettle. The dash temp gauge registered 105 F before we got to Utah, where it vacillated between 104 and 91, with a dip to 79 as we crossed a mountain range. But overall it was a hot ride and every hour I refilled my Camelbak.

I got stung by something in my side, probably a wasp. Could not find the stinger or the culprit, but it hurt like a mofo.

Since we are looking to make up time after spending extra time in Vegas and California we are slabbing it. I-15 to I-70 ad stuff.

The desert is, well, a desert. The Virgin River Gorge was nice. Utah is full of great canyons.

We got a cheap room at the Motel 6 ad Chuck and Øyvind went to get beer. Being Utah, the visible beer is only 4% Abv, so they had to ask the locals where the good stuff is. Turns out they have to hide it in the gift shop of the restaurant at the truck stop. Something about the liquor control board being run by Mormons.

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Over the Mountains

2011-08-22T15:03:00.001-05:00

It was cool in the morning. I tried to run but after struggling for two miles I gave. I am guessing I am not used to such exercise at 7am. But it was better than nothing.

The Sonora Pass, hwy 108, was a beauty. The pavement was near perfect as it climbed from 3000 feet up to 9600 and overlooked a dam and reservoir (I think it was the Hetch Hetchy) and temperatures stayed cool. However, as we dropped into the eastern desert the temperatures climbed into the 90's.

Going south on 395 throught Lee Vining (and lunch) offers fabulous views of the eastern side of he Sierra mountains. In Big Pine we took the scenic, twisty, high-elevation roller-coaster Hwt 168 to the straight and fast 266. Interestingly, the desert brown was interrupted by a green corridor along the road. I wonder if the little rain that falls on the road is concentrated into the ditches?

We dropped back down to the desert floor and temps went up. The road wa straight. We rode straight for hundreds of miles, got gas in Beatty, rode the last 115 miles to vegas in the dark in 97 F.

Once in Vegas we stayed with a friend of my brothers. Here we are taking a rest day before slabbing it the remaining 1700 miles home the rest of the week.

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Frustration

2011-08-22T11:58:00.001-05:00

Another cold foggy morning. We ate our oatmeal and watched our pot-smoking neighbors from Pennsylvania cram themselves into an old crappy van.

Today we were going to ride the pacific coast highway. The road from Leggett to the coast is nice and twisty but from the coast to Fort Bragg it is a straight and boring stretch so we didn't do that. Instead we decided to ride 101 to Willits, then take Hwy 20 to Fort Bragg.

But first the Avenue of Giants. Dwarfed by 250 foot tall (and 15 feet in diameter) redwoods we rode through the groves in awe.
In Willits we had a sammich then got Hwy 20. Once again traffic pulled over for us. We got behind the green van from Pennsylvania, and after a couple minutes driving like a turd (crossing the center line in corners to straighten the road, etc) even they used a turneout to let pass. Then we go behind a Honda Odessy with Consul plates, who was behind two other vehicles. Those two pulled off to let the Honda and I pass. Then the Honda proceeded to go 40mph for the remaining parts of the good twisties. What a total jerk. Perhaps the jackass couldn't read the "use turnouts to let traffic pass" signs. Maybe the idiot didn't understand why others let them pass. "Ooooh we are diplomats, they know we are special and thus let us pass". Yeah, short bus special. They should be diplomats in Chicago where they will fit in perfectly.

In Fort Bragg we gassed up then went south on Hwy 1. This was. Letdown. The cold fog let up for a short time in Port Arena, but then blanketed the coast. Towards Jenner we got a few glimpses of the cliffs but that was all. We hightailed it to Santa Rosa's very clean Travelodge and walked to the Russian River brewpub. Here they serve up incredible ales, fermented with wild yeasts and aged in oak barrels. They are pioneers, and exceed even the belgians in their craft. Apparently many others feel the same way, as it was packed and noisy. This was truly a high point of the trip for me.

Once back in the Travelodge I was quickly asleep.

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Frustration

2011-08-22T10:57:00.001-05:00

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I Wish They All Could Be California... drivers!

2011-08-22T10:56:00.001-05:00

Cool and foggy was the morning on the coast. As I ran along I. found various trails that skirted the ocean. Another runner, about 65, stopped and we exchanged some words. In particular, he had mentioned running a marathon around Crater Lake yesterday... now THAT would be spectacular!

I finished my paltry 4 miles along the coast despite passing blackberry bushes. It was one of those "now I remember why I lived here, what would it take to move back?" moments. A shower, a breakfast, goodbyes and we went south on 101 in the cool fog.

In Eureka we split ways. The Thor's went directly to the campground in Fortuna. Chuck and I went east on 299 to Weaverville, through the Shasta/Trinity national forests. The highway follows the river canyon and is perfectly banked. Not twenty miles from the coast the temperatures had risen significantly and we stopped for a break at a rest area. We chatted with another rider, on a zx10, who was going to Willow Creek for lunch.

Whenever we got on the tail of a car it pulled over to let us pass. Oh why can't all drivers be as courteous? This is a behavior we see all the time in California, sometimes in Oregon and Washington, and never in the midwest.

By the time we reached Weaverville the temperature had climbed to 97F and we stopped to remove layers and rehydrate.

From Weaverville we rode south on 3 to Hayfork. Where 299 was a busy road composed chiefly of sweepers along a river, 3 was a 20 mile stretch of 25mph corners with little traffic, going over a mountan pass. Left right left right left right left right left right left right left right etc... The only drawback was the pavement. It had been recently resurfaced and I didn't entirely trust it and thus took it a slower than usual. Every so often I would see what looked like some leftover gravel in the middle of the lane, but the bike never slipped. This entire area is "twisty mecca". Every car we got behind pulled over to let us pass.

Hwy 36 was going to take us back to Fortuna. More corners... sweepers, tight turns, etc abound as the 70ish mile road follows the Mad River. The western end is a very tight and technical 1.5 lane wide road with no markings. We waited for some construction and a cbr250 pulled in behind us. He got a smoke from the car behind us, demonstrating his death wish. Once past the construction the the cars in front used the turnouts to let us pass and the road went into the coastal redwoods. We increased our pace, yet could not shake the little cbr. Or the car behind him. Or the big ass monster truck hauling an atv. Damn these guys are fast, so we used a turn out to let them pass. The cbr and following car used another pullout to let the truck pass, and that was the last we saw of the truck, as it skittered bounced and swayed through a corner on its oversized balloon tires. Crazy.

California, and to a lessor extent Oregon and Washington, do not drop the speed limits when roads get curvy. They will post recommended speeds, I.e. the yellow 35 or 25 mph signs, but the legal speed limit remains 55 or 65. That means we are maintaining a legal speed most of the time.

It got cold again as we approached the coast so we stopped to add layers. We were getting tired and it was getting dark, requiring us to slow down. We reached the campsite to find my dad and brother and went to the nearby Eel River brewpub for some brews. Their saison was excellent, the ipa not hoppy enough (it was an english style), the porter a little thin, they were out of nitro for the imperial stout, and the old english ale was rich and complex. It was like drinking and old leather couch. It was a great end to a great day!

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Oregon's Beauty

2011-08-22T10:53:00.001-05:00

It was a cool morning in the mountains, so much so that those with inferior gear needed an upgrade. But before we left we stopped by the camp host and got a partial refund since I had overpaid. I had originally assumed that the campsite price included one vehicle, but it included 4 motocycles! Then we forgot to apply my dad's Golden Age discount, total cost was only $6 for the night. Funny thing was that the host though Chuck was my partner. Um... no......

The ride out of the mountains was uneventful and it brought us back to civilization. First town was Prineville, where Facebook has their new data center. Then in Bend we stopped at Target and Outdoor Outfitters, until we got to the McMenamin's and had lunch with Jenn's cousin, Mike. We had a great time catching.

From Bend we rode south on 97 with the stratovolcanoes as a backdrop. Not a cloud in the sky, the air was clear and the three sisters and the bachelor stood out in all their snowcapped glory.

Mike had suggested that we secure a campsite before we got to Crater Lake so we did just that, at Farewell Bend. The Good: It was another $8 site and right on the Rogue river. The Bad: it was close to the road and no showers. After setting up our tents we jumped on the bikes and rode up to Crater Lake with enough light left to enjoy it. It is truly the 'Jewel of the national parks'.

Dinner was simple: Oreo's and beer. After a big lunch we weren't in the mood for a large meal. As the temp's in the mountains dropped we crawled into our tents to rest for the next day.

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Coast and strange people

2011-08-22T10:52:00.001-05:00

Once we reached Prospect, Oregon we had cell service and were able to reach sme relatives in Brookings. We also stopped for breakfast, but as it was lunch time we had to convince the chef to make breakfast for. This was at the Prospect Grill and Trophy Room. The prices were a little on the high side, and the coffee blah, but the portions were twice what they should have been and the food was incredible. This was the best damn french toast I had ever had.

With a full belly we passed through Grants Pass and the boring ride past Cave Junction onto 199 into California. The bug patrol waved us past. 199 is a great road but it has lots of traffic. Fortunately drivers here are very courteous and pull off the road to let us pass. There is none of ego we see in Minnesota, or the "I have to be in front" or "I will enforce what I think is safe" which is so prevalent in the midwest. I had forgotten how nice drivers are here.

We stopped at a rest stop and watched the strange people around us. Homeless, yuppies, rednecks. We must be in California!

As the road approached the coast the heat dissipated but it remained clear. The short ride up to Brookings brought with it more traffic, but also wonderful hospitality from our hosts. We had a nice evening of chatting and homebrew.

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Volcanoes

2011-08-22T10:51:00.001-05:00

There are seeral volcanoes in Oregon, and much of the landscape is formed by volcanic activity. Today we got to see some.

We awoke in the Ochoco Mountains determined that the next night will be in a hotel room with a shower. Going on two days now, and my feet are getting pretty ripe. Fortunately my boots lock odors in as well as they keep moisture out. Without shower facilities I am not contemplating going for a run or getting any exercise.

Riding from our campsite in the Ochoco mountians was a breeze, past Facebook's data centers in Prineville and on to Bend. Traffic was definitely more dense here as we rode to the McMenamins Old St Francis School for lunch with Mike, a good friend and Jennifer's cousin.

During lunch we discussed our plans for the rest of the day. Should we stay in Bend and overpay for a room? Push on to Crater Lake and overpay for a room there? In the end we decided to stay at a campground again... it is hard to argue with $8 night. As this is tourist season in Oregon we decided to secure a site first, then see Crater Lake.

There are no good routes from Bend to Crate Lake. They are straight and their only redeeming qualities are expedience and views of volcanoes. From north to south we could see Jefferson, McKenzie, the three Sisters, Broken Top , Bachelor and Thielsen. We. Passed the Lava Lands cindercone and lava fields. These are part of the eastern edge of the Ring Of Fire.

Once around Crater Lakie we secured a spot at Farewell Bend (on the Rogue river) for $8. After I paid I realized there was no shower. Argh! Three days! We quickly erected our tents and rode off to see Crater Lake.

I won't try to describe the lake. You either know what it is or you don't. You have to see it in person to appreciate it. Besides, my thumbs are getting sore.

After the lake returning to our campsite with beer we washed our stinky feet in the numbingly cold river, drank the beer, and went to sleep.

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Equipment Failure

2011-08-22T10:50:00.001-05:00

On our trips we rely on lots of equipment: motorcycles, protective gear, electronics, etc. Today we encountered a couple failures.

The first was fairly simple, and happened to both my brother and dad. Paul's dad experienced the same failure. It is simply being warm enough at night.

Camping in the mountains is very different from camping in the midwest. The higher altitudes alone will be enough to drop overnight lows to the 30's, and this means that fleece blankets or lightweight sleeping bag just won't cut it. When we camped in the Ochoco mountains last night the temps dropped down to the 30's. Both my dad and brother's sleeping gear was insufficient, thus they had to stop and get additional sleeping bags. Now they both have two small lightweight sleeping bags, which isn't a bad solution. They will be warm enough on cold nights, have the option of using one on warm nights, and it is easier to pack to small sacks than one large one.

Another failure on this trip was my GPS, a Garmin Zumo 550. The digitizer (the layer on the screen which detects finger presses) went haywire, sending random inputs to the unit. this renders the unit useless. The fix is to order a new screen and digitizer from Hong Kong for $50, but won't help me now. I considered simply purchasing a new motorcycle-specific GPS but they cost upwards of $600 (besides being waterproof, they have lots of bells and whistles like bluetooth, cell phone headset passthrough, bike mounts, multi-step routing, mp3 players, etc). But for the rest of this trip we will rely on my brothers unit. So far this is working out ok.

Yesterday morning I experienced a failure in my earbuds. On this trip I am using etymotic er6i buds with Sebote hearing aid tips glued to them. This $90 solution blocks nearly all road and wind noise while comfortably delivering crisp and clear sound. They sit deep in my ear canals. Once before, when removing them, the tip remained in my ear. Paul managed to extract it with a Leatherman tool and since them I have used glue to hold the tips on. Well... yesterday when I tried to remove them, the glue on both of them gave up. This time it was Chuck working a leatherman who extracted them. In leiu of anything better, I resorted to using a pair of MeeTek earbuds designed for use under helmets which a friend gave me. They worked ok for a short period. They blocked enough wind noise such that I could ride 65 mph. Any faster and the wind noise was painful. And the audio quality sucked. This was definitely not a workable solution. So once back at the campsite I dug out the original etymotic tips and used those. They are nowhere near as comfortable as the Sebotek tips and we will see how long I can last with them. One tip came of in my ear again, wich was surprising as these are the tips made for these units. I have since superglued them on. We will see how well this works... for now it looks like I will have to save up and buy custom molded earbuds over the winter.... $400....

For now, let's hope that is the extent of our equipment failures...

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Eastern Oregon

2011-08-16T00:26:00.001-05:00

Shortly after leaving our campsite we encountered more curves. For several miles they switched back and forth down to the Grande Ronde river. Then we leaned our way back up more twisties up to the plateau, 4000 above sea level, overlooking the chief joseph valley.

There isn't much to write about today. We had a good run through the river valleys making our way west. We were hoping to get to Bend but by Mitchel it was getting late. However the cafes in town were closed so we grabbed some cans of soup and found a campsite in the Ochoco mountains.

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Rest Day

2011-08-12T20:06:00.001-05:00

Friday was a rest day. A day to get some oil changed, headlight bulbs fixed, drink some coffee and decide where to go. And attempt to fix a broken GPS.

Looking at the weather for going north, it appeared we would have a nice weekend then a couple crappy weeks. Therefore we made the decision to head south. We will probably angle down across Oregon to Brookings, ride in northern California, and then along the Pacific Coast Highway. We are also thinking about the Grand Canyon... who knows?

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Montana!

2011-08-12T20:01:00.001-05:00

It was a cold morning outside Cody, and the thunder rumbled in the distance. That did not bode well. Our plan was to ride over Beartooth Pass. At 11000 feet it is cold up there and it will snow more likely than hail.

The KOA offered crappy free pancakes with corn syrup and meats for sale. We chatted with a family from Holland about their trip to Yellowstone. Now back to the pancakes.. they certainly didn't like them but were also forcing them down with butter (no corn syrup). And no meats. Looks like the family of six just got pancakes.

After breakfast we packed our tents and hit the road. Chief Joseph Scenic Highway was first and it was excellent. The weather cooperated beautifully, traffic was light and what little there was we passed easily. This is a road we'll suited for spirited riding.

Beartooth Pass follows naturally. The road is tighter, much higher in elevation and lots more traffic. It did not disappoint. The weather was a cool 52F with scattered clouds, and at one point we looked back down one valley we had climbed out of and saw it was raining there. What luck!

From Red Lodge to Columbus we made quick work of the perfect pavement and smoth sweepers of 78. But the ride from Columbus to Bozeman sucked. Strong gusts of sidewinds made it a miserable ride. At least our reward was a Pickel Barrel sandwich!

Next stop was Wheat Montana the a final stretch of broken pavement to Helena. Whew. Tired and beat we arrived at 8pm and met Chuck and his mother, Abby.

Chuck had ridden in from Oregon and brought with him a bottle of Deschutes Abyss, 2009 vintage. He had also stopped at Moose Drool in Missoula and picked up a growler, which was much roastier than the bottled stuff we get in Minnesota. We had a good night of chatting before we retired. As usual, Chuck and I slept out on the deck.

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Flashback ?

2011-08-11T08:22:00.001-05:00

Today was a repeat of last years' ride, and the year before, andthe year before that. Why change something that just plain works?

Since we got in late we decided to stay in bed a little later, especially as we had decent hotel beds. Dad and I were still up 8 though.... so we did some parking lot maneuvers, made coffee, lubed chains, coordinated with Ron, planned the day and left a message for Chuck. By 11 we were on the road.

We left Gillette, then rode to Sheridan via Spotted Horse and had lunch. We ate lunch and got gas in Dayton and checked tire pressures and proceeded to enter the Bighorns behind some really slow poeple. It was raining anyway so we took it easy on those awesome roads. We didn't even hit construction.

As we climbed from 3000 to 9000 feet the temps dropped from upper 80's to upper 50's. A quick coffee break at an alpine lake refreshed us and we continued on across the Bighorns.

The trip remained uneventful... we checked into the Cody KOA, found dinner and went to sleep. The End for Wednesday.

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Are they effin stooopid?!?!?

2011-08-10T09:04:00.001-05:00

We were up at daybreak and rode out early from Øyvind's house in Tracy. It was a cool ride to Sioux Falls where we tried to find a local diner called Marlins but we failed in that endeavor and settled for Perkins. Eh. It is sustenance. It felt good to get 90 miles out of the way before breakfast!

One we got on I-90 we got down to the task of covering distance. Crossing South Dakota is work. It is usually hot, wet, lightningy, sometimes haily, and always windy. Today it was just a windy 73 degrees with fluffly white clouds floating in a deep blue sky. We stopped every 75 miles for either a break, fuel, or both. Other than spending some at a rest stop bantering with church ladies offering cookies and coffee for donations, it was uneventful.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was under way and means finding lodging anywhere within 100 miles of Sturgis was going to be difficult to find and expensive. The problem is that we hit Sturgis at 6pm. It would be too early to stop sooner, and it will be very late to stop later. Thus, we decided to have dinner there then stay in a hotel in Gillette, WY (we made reservations).

Just before Rapid City we got some rain. It was a short burst of medium intensity rain. As most cruiser riders shun protection and dress for the herd they were ill prepared for the rain. Some pulled onto the shoulder to don raingear as soon as any drops fell. Others waited until they were soaked before doing the same. They all crowded under overpasses, which resulted in all traffic slowing down and changing lanes to give them a wide berth. And that's where I saw one of the most dangerous, stupid things I have ever seen.

There were maybe 15 bikes under that specifc overpass, spilling out in front of and behind the covered area. But one idiot had stopped in the lane of traffic. Just stopped. No hazards, nothing. Ok.. maybe he had a lapse of reasoning. He was pulling a trailer, so he wasn't exactly a newbie. There had to be some smart people in the group who could point out just how dumb he is. Maybe someone did and he argued with them... as the semi's few past at 80 mph swerving to avoid him. I hope they all had room to swerve.

We rode on though the rain, wearing motorcycle-appropriate gear that kept us warm, dry and safe.

I had been through Sturgis before but it was cold and wet that year which meant few showed up. It was new for my father and brother. Against better judgement we went to the pirate party. Once downtown it was surprisingly easy to find parking spots. My brother pointed out that his 2000 VFR800 stood out 'like a yellow sportbike at Sturgis'.

We had dinner at the One Eyed Jack saloon and watched (and heard) the crowd. One guy fell off his chair but saved most of his beer. The average age was about 50, most all were men. All dressed alike to show that they are outlaws and not like anyone else in society. Most of women were middle-aged and under-dressed for their condition. There was plenty of eye-candy though... but they were nearly all employed in some capacity, most wore little more than pasties to remain legal. It was fun to see it in full swing, and those in attendance seemed to enjoying themselves immensly as they went in and out of the shops. I wonder if there was a quilting shop there.

The remainder of the day's 100 miles to Gillette was dark, cooler, and tiring. We had a GPS snafu which took us to the wrong side of town where, in a moment of exhausted inattention as we turned around, my dad dropped his bike when he stopped. We helped him up, used my brother's more up to date GPS, and got to our night's final resting place.

It was a 650 mile day, but now we have left the plains behind.

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Back on the road!

2011-08-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

we left home and intended to meet to breakfast in faribault but the cafe was closed on mondays. dag nabbit. off to country kitchen we go.... and we ate.... and then it was revealed that one of us had forgotten our passport. since we were close to home we went and got it. ok... 1pm and we were able to leave the metro.

our intent was to stop by little thors house in tracy on the way, but because of the late start, that is where we stopped. eager for a walk we strolled the mile to the caboose for some burgers only to find they were closed on mondays. not hungry for subway and eager to try a new place in town, we walked another mile to thelma and louis who had a hamburger bar. i think it was thelma who served us... about 90 years old. burgers were good, washed down with fat tire and sam adams.

after dinner picked up a case ot fat tire and made our way back to thors little furnitureless house and made a table out of sidecases and shelving and played cards for a few hours before hitting the sack.

sorry about all lower fase... screwey sorry about the lack of puntuation etc... but this weboage doenst allow or

Big trip coming up....

2011-08-07T21:26:00.000-05:00

....tomorrow!

Follow along my blog and the SPOT GPS tracks ("Where's Christian" on the right side of this blog).

There's also a field where you can get my blogs emailed to you, but without photos. On my blog I will add photos which I will take with my phone.

The "real" photos will be taken with my fancy schmancy camera which doesn't have an email connection. I guess you'll have to wait to see those ;-)

If you don't like the advertising, get AdBlock Plus.

It will be nice to have you along!

Why starting a business in Guatemala is a bad idea.

2011-06-10T07:23:00.000-05:00

The customer picked me up this morning at 8am. Traffic was light and we arrived early at the classroom. The customer's building has three floors - they are on top, a call center in the middle, and common rooms (cafeteria, classrooms, etc) on the bottom. We stopped at the cafeteria and had a cup of coffee until 9am, as the classroom was busy while my host told me a little about this building.

It is close to the university which means that many of the graduates come to work at the call center. They hone their language skills, learn technical skills, and then my customer (a large bank) hires some of them. This is why everyone here was young, and the female / male ratio is about 3:2. An oasis of well-dressed hopeful youth among the run-down streets of the city.

But the real question is: How is the coffee? Guatemala is known for excellent coffee, but they don't serve it in this cafeteria (the Guatemalan-labeled coffee in my room was very very weak, so tomorrow I will have double up). As our class participants checked in (they got stuck in traffic) we learned they were from Costa Rica. We were supposed to have 16 participants from El Salvador and Nicaragua too, but they were unable to get their flights in order in time and had to cancel, so we had a class of only eight. Perfect.

I taught. Language is an issue, but the young Ricky Martin look-a-like from Costa Rica had excellent english skills and was able to translate when needed.

Lunch came up, and we found some "authentic" Guatemalan food. It is best described as very similar to mexican, but not spicy and with less sauce. I had an excellent shredded pollo des rey, marinated in tomato/salsa paste with a 1/4 cheese quesadilla on the side ... and some sort of black bean concoction.

During lunch our Costa Rica'n students discussed differences they saw between their own country and Guatemala, for example how cold it was here. Cold? It was 70, dry and awesome! They were surprised when I told them it was supposed to hit the 90's back in Minnesota.

Anyway, one topic that came up was security, specifically how everyone is corrupt. Nobody wants to start a business because of the "protection racket" just like we experienced in the US 90 years ago with the mafia. The crooks would use public information to find out where the business owners friends and family lived then require a monthly 'fee' to ensure they remained safe. Our hosts pointed out that the only safe job to have is in the government, but the government jobs only go to the friends and family of those already in government or willing to pay to get those jobs.

Afterwards the discussion turned to the drug wars and news articles about last week's six-hour shootout between truckloads of military personnel and a drug gang. The military lost. Our host explained that Guatemala, like many central american countries, are stuck between Mexico and Columbia and therefore become a conduit for drug trafficking. The government spends much of its resources fighting these gangs even as the gangs fight each other, especially on the borders. I can't help but think the root cause lies at the intersection of the United State's hunger for drugs and having the relative wealth to buy them.

I was listening to a podcast about these gangs. The drug industry has profits in the hundreds of billions. They maintain fleets of planes which they fly to Africa and leave there ... imagine disposable DC-9's. They purchase weapons from the Russian mafia. Their profits are larger than the GDP of all the central american countries .... combined. The central american governments simply cannot compete with the drug gangs.

Allow me two tangents: guns and drugs.

Most of the guns seized in Mexico come from their military or the Russian mafia. These weapons (sub-machine guns, rocket launchers) are not legally sold in the us. A fully automatic AK-47 costs $50 on the black market, while the semi-auto version (legal for sale in the US) costs $200. Why in the world would a drug gang buy these in ones and twos from dealers in the US when they can purchase the much more potent and less expensive ones by the planeload on the black market? You may recall Obama's statement last year that 90% of guns seized in Mexico were traced to the US ... but his statement was false. Recently news that the ATF is allowing some weapons to cross into Mexico in attempt to trace them has resulted in the death of a border patrol agent. Furthermore, the lists of individuals who have purchased guns from US retailers have been shared with more than 100 agencies south of the border. It would be naive to think that the gangs did not get their hands on these lists ... thankfully we continue to be successful in destroying firearms registration records after six months despite our elected politician's desire to keep them. There's no denying that the gangs have easy access to firearms, but at this point there isn't much evidence that the bulk of them come from the US.

A word about drugs. Those of you who know me, know that I feel responsible adults should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding drug use. The focus of this debate has been in the realm of liberty vs. effects on your health. Yet this trip to central america has unveiled a new aspect to the debate. When illegal drugs are purchased the gangs are funded. It robs entire countries of their ability to function without corruption, crime, and personal safety. It funds an industry that promotes violence and coercion. Do all drugs come from Mexico and Columbia, via central america? Probably most of the cocaine does. I'm sure it is a conduit for heroin and opium too. What about marijuana ... ? Isn't all of that grown in Canada? Maybe .... but does that mean that Canada does not have drug traffickers who also use violence and coercion to promote their trade? Would legalizing controlled substances result in less violence? Maybe .. it seems that way in California when looking at the medical marijuana dispensaries. But nobody is talking about legalizing anything more than marijuana.

Ok ... that should be enough to think about. Back to Gautemala.

It is no wonder than Guatemalans are also seeking to illegally enter the US, as they have no real prospects to better their lives in their own country without bribes or "knowing someone". Hard work is not sufficient in this environment.

Then back to work and I taught some more. The boring parts.

The drive home had it's excitement as well. Our driver was following a crappy white cargo van too slowly. When the van stopped abruptly we hit it. Fortunately there was a police officer right next to us, apparently not directing traffic, and we didn't hit the van hard at more than 5 mph as we were in stop'n'go traffic. Interestingly the police said our driver had to fix it "like new". Huh? It's a 20 year rusted and dented van !! Looking around, nearly every car was damaged in some way. The Pontiac sunbird we were in was a claptrap, missing seatbelts and the radio was stolen (but it ran OK). I guess that's how things are done here.

Back the hotel I enjoyed the local sushi bar. Some edamamie and a smoked salmon fusion roll hit the spot, flushed down with a bottle of Asahi.

Nothing more to report for today.

Getting here

2011-06-08T19:48:00.000-05:00

Getting to Quatemala City was very easy, other than having to take an early flight (5am) from Minneapolis to Atlanta, then from ATL to Guatemala City. Since I fly often I was upgraded to first class on both flights.

Mindful of the warnings regarding tourists who are robbed shortly after visting ATM's I decided use the foreign currency exchange in Atlanta despite the high fees and bad exchange rates. In exchange for $200 I got 1200'ish GTQ's (Quetzals) ... mostly in crisp 10-GTQ bills. Crap. This amounted to an unfolded stack of crisp bills about one inch thick. I put a few in my pocket and jammed the rest into the bowels of my suitcase.

As we flew over the Guatemalan coast I got a chance to see the famous beaches (probably Belize ... disputed territory) and the interior of the country. What can I say .. I like rugged mountains, and there were many of them, as far as the eye could see, some volcanoes, I'm guessing. This continued all the way to Guatemala City ... which is also nestled in the mountains.

At the very modern (but small) airport I breezed through security and met Angela (GBM sales rep) holding a sign with my name on it. After a quick exchange of names and where I was going I "authenticated" her (one kidnapping trick is to copy the name on a sign someone else is holding). It was a quick ride to the hotel, and from what I can see, Guatemala City is just like Mexico City, just a lot smaller.

An interesting observation is that there are many scooters here, nearly all wear helmets and large numbers on their helmets and jackets. Angela tells me that it the law that a) no passengers are allowed, b) helmets are required and c) they must have their registration on the back of their jacket or helmet. This law exists in response to robberies performed by motorcyclists in heavy traffic, where the passenger often targets tourists who display cameras or phones, grab them, and proceed to scoot through stopped traffic. However, there are still several cyclists who don't wear helmets, have passengers, and don't wear numbers on them. When I asked Angela about that ... she said that the police don't care. Hm.

When I got here, and asked the hotel concierge where I can find a SIM card for my travel phone, I was directed to a mall two blocks away. Since it was about noon they said it was safe, but to be back before 5-6pm and don't carry anything of value such as a camera or a phone. My response was to put money, credit cards and my passport card under the insoles of my shoes, and carry my American Express and a few bills in my pocket, sort of as a decoy should I be mugged. Things went well, even buying a SIM card from non-english-speaking folks.

Usually when I arrive early to exotic locations I like to tour around, but today I was totally exhausted from only two hours of sleep and my work inbox was bulging. I took a nap, did some work, ate dinner in the french hotel restaurant (absolutely faaaaantastic roasted seabass with scallions and chirozo in a ginger/mustard sauce, with an awesomely dry/tannic Argentinian Malbec.

Guatemala

2011-06-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

Going to Guatemala was put on my radar shortly after my trip to Mexico. The odd thing is it was originally supposed to be a trip to Costa Rica, but the company decided that my services (teaching) should be delivered in Gautemala and the participants will fly in from neighboring countries ... such as Costa Rica. I suspect this has something to do with work permits (which is the first thing I need to research when traveling overseas).

The second thing I do before I travel to another country is to check both the state department's and IBM's websites for any information. IBM listed the country as "restricted" as there is no IBM presence there. The state department was more useful. For example:

Virulent rumors of child stealing and murder for organ harvesting continue to be reported in several different areas of Guatemala frequented by American tourists. Frustration over crime and a lack of appropriate judicial remedies have led to violent incidents of vigilantism.

I think I'd like to keep my organs, at least while I'm using them.

Crime itself is a problem too:

Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates in Latin America. In 2010, approximately 55 murders a week were reported in Guatemala City alone. While the vast majority of murders do not involve foreigners, the sheer volume of activity means that local officials, who are inexperienced and underpaid, are unable to cope with the problem. Rule of law is lacking as the judicial system is weak, overworked, and inefficient. Well-armed criminals know there is little chance they will be caught or punished.

The State Department continues:

The number of violent crimes reported by U.S. citizens and other foreigners has remained high and incidents have included, but are not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, rape, kidnapping, and murder, even in areas once considered safe such as zones 10, 14, and 15 in the capital. To decrease the likelihood of becoming a victim, do not display items of value, such as laptops, IPods, cameras, and jewelry. The Embassy discourages carrying large sums of money. Do not resist if you are being robbed. Victims have been killed when they resisted attack. Assailants are often armed with guns and do not hesitate to use them if you resist.

I am working and staying in Zone 10. Here's more info:

A number of travelers have experienced carjackings and armed robberies just after arriving on international flights, most frequently in the evening. In the most common scenario, tourists or business travelers who land at the airport after dark are held up by armed men as their vehicle departs the airport, but similar incidents have occurred at other times of the day. Private vehicles, taxis and shuttle buses have all been targeted. Typically, the assailants steal money, passports, and luggage, and in some but not all cases, the assailants steal the vehicle as well. Recently, many of these attacks have taken place far from the airport, just as travelers were arriving at their homes, or in less busy areas of the city. Victims who did not resist the attackers were not physically injured. If you need to get a taxi upon arrival (particularly in the evening) there is a “Safe Taxi”(“Taxi Seguro”) service from the airport which has been approved by the Guatemalan Tourist Institute (INGUAT). Look for the taxi queue at the airport exit. Coordinate arrival times with those picking up passengers, minimize time spent standing outside in the airport passenger pick-up area, and do not walk out of the airport with valuables in plain sight. Laptops are frequently targeted, so carry them inconspicuously in a backpack or other carry-on luggage. In some cases, assailants have been wearing full or partial police uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles, indicating that some elements of the police might be involved. Armed robberies have occurred within minutes of a tourist’s vehicle having been stopped by the police.

Hm, so even the police can't be trusted. Nice. At least toilets have paper and it can be flushed.

So .. with these warnings in mind, and with the knowledge that I will not be there very long, I decided to leave my camera at home, so no [good] photos. I purchased a small laptop bag which I could put inside my suitcase so I wouldn't have to carry what is obviously a laptop-holding backpack (plus it fits in my motorcycle sidecase).

But, never having been to Guatemala before, I still wanted to go!

Judgement Day 2011

2011-05-19T21:08:00.000-05:00

Oh the world is going to be a better place on Sunday!

http://judgementday2011.com/

On Saturday all the righteous will be lifted from Earth and brought to heaven to play harps and flutes ... and leave the planet for the rest of us. The evangelical republican presidential candidates will be removed, and so will the ardent supporters who force the GOP to cater to the religious nutjobs.

On Sunday we will awake to find the GOP searching for a new identity ... one which eschews dogma for common sense, and seeks to minimize the role of government when private industry is able and willing, and leave us to live our lives as we see fit, without the need for excessive taxation or intrusion into our bedrooms.

But there is an alternative ... we may wake up to find all the wierdos (including Harold Camping) are still here. That might mean that Harold Camping was wrong, but we'd know for sure by whether Jesus was walking around.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see .... if anything, Harold has done a great job building a tautological case for the rapture. And if he's right ... I'll take my severance and ride all summer!

After the Pyramids

2011-04-19T07:33:00.000-05:00

Back on the road .. traffic was light, we were zooming along ... and passed a white van upside down in the ditch. Uhoh. That was the group of folks who left before us! We pulled over, our guides went to help, and came back with three people .. only two fit, so took them with us, and they told us the story of what happened.

They were zooming along too fast, they said, and I believe it, as there is no traffic enforcement in this country. 140 km in a 60km? No problemo .. just wear your seat belt. Or make it look like you are. Anyway... a little car darted in front of them, going much slower, so they slammed on the brakes and skidding sideways and flipped. Nobody was wearing a seatbelt ... and all but one walked away. By the time we had the two ladies in our van, there were no ambulances to be seen, and we were there maybe 15 minutes. I didn't see any police cars either, but there appeared to be someone in uniform there - maybe they pulled off the road instead of using their car to block traffic so they can safely get people out of the van .... and we got to watch the local neighborhood.

Back in the van, the old Dutch guy next to me put on his seatbelt. Good .. that makes four of us (the woman and child from München were the others .. .four out of 11). Not even the two ladys we picked up. As we were driving along the women asked to stop and get some ice and water and we did, and I remember i had some ibuprofen. One of the women suggested turning down the AC .. I'm thinking she's going into shock, and suggest that she find a hospital. She wasn't going to have any of that, while the old dutch guy next to me was complaining about how the drivers didn't ask us if it was OK to bring on new passengers ... sheeesh, give it a break! BTW, This was the guy who, several times today, pointed out thing around the city he was responsible for, art or something, I wasn't paying attention to his bragging. Anyway, we finally passed the ambulance on the way to the scene, by now it was perhaps 30 minutes since the accident. The ambulance was in the toll booth, paying a freakin toll! (Later I learn that these ambulance teams are often parked on a side street and moving among vehicles in traffic begging for money). I also learn that the single payer health care system in Mexico is, like most such systems, overloaded and anything beyond life-saving measures are rejected unless you can pay for it ... which most Mexican's cannot do. The only effective alternative is to find a private clinic where, surprisingly, the cost is about the same as the state-run system, but if you look like you are poor or Mexican you will not be treated.

Well, anyway, the women didn't die. We dropped them off at a taxi stand, dropped off the rest of the folks, and took me to my hotel. I was last because I was furthest away.

After a long day I was back in my room and looked in the mirror ... holy moly was I sunburned! I tell ya, Minnesotan's just don't think about sun block in March. Being short on sleep, and having an early conference call with a customer at 7am, I hit the sack early.

So THIS is what summer is like!

2011-04-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

Today's blog is of another day in Mexico City in March, when I had a day off to wander around like a tourist ...

After a short morning with the client in Toluca, I was free ... Free! Free at last!

So I had my driver take me to the Mexico City Anthropology museum, with instructions to pick me up in four hours. Being a beautiful 70F sunny and dry Saturday of a three-day weekend, everyone and their cousin was out. That included the bloody vendors ... at least these were tent-vendors, not suitcase-carrying vendors who follow you around.

So Anyway ... on the way to the castle I passed what appeared to be a manmade lake, as all the edges were concrete, there was a big fountain in the middle, the water was anti-freeze green and it was chock full of paddle boats.

There were people everywhere - it must be a popular place to hang out on Saturday's.

The Castle itself was neat. They only retained some of the original furniture and stuff, and turned the rest of it into an art museum of sorts, and various exhibits. Nothing was in english, so I was one of those people who zoomed through real fast. The best part was the view - worth the $4 admission and hike.

In particular, there was a mural painted on the ceiling on that held my attention. There is so much detail going on in this mural, depicting the Battle of Chapultapec:

According to legend, the last of the six, Juan Escutia, grabbed the Mexican flag, wrapped it around himself and jumped off the castle point to prevent the flag from falling into enemy hands.

After that I walked down to the museum and got a chance to see about half of it before I ran out of time. Definitely need three or four hours to do this justice. There is some stuff in english, but it is the sheer amount of stuff they have on display that takes time to absorb. I'll just put up a bunch of photos .. .and yes, the big rock heads are 8-12 feet tall!

After dropping my camera off at the hotel I had the driver (Santiago) take up the street to La Calle, a mexican restaurant. There I had an amaranth and tamarind-breaded fish filet. It was good, and I guess I am writing home about it .. but it wasn't spectacular or anything.

After dinner I had a brisk 15-minute walk back to the hotel as the sun was setting. The temperature was just right ... I can't wait for summer!

Driftless

2011-04-12T07:36:00.000-05:00

It was supposed to be a nice weekend and Paul, Brian and I had made plans to have a "guys night out" in Madison, Wisconsin. Unfortunately Brian couldn't make it, so we asked another Brian (known as 'Dave' in some circles) whether he would like to join us. He had just purchased a Buell XB9R from his friend and was also eager to ride!

Our trip was supposed to be real nice on Saturday but the forecast for Sunday was for thumderstorms, hail and tornado's. So we went anyway ;-)

View Larger Map

Our route went through the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, named that because the glaciers did not extend here. There are lots of hills and rock formations, deep valleys, and thanks to Wisconsin supporting its dairy industry, lots of roads through these valleys.

All of this makes for a great place to ride. The pavement is usually pretty good because the large trucks avoid the area. Traffic is nearly non-existant, and since there is little traffic there is little enforcement.

As we rode the sun came out, and the closer to Madison we got, the warmer it was. After about 250 miles we arrived at our hotel, changed out of riding gear into normal gear, and sought places that had good beer. In particular that included the Great Dane brewpub as they have an outstanding Black Earth Porter on the menu (including some dayum good meatloaf). Next stop was the Capital Brewery which didn't have much for a selection and what they had, a Maibock and a Doppelbock, appeared to differ only in gravity and the glass they were served in.

Moving on down State Street we popped into Pau'ls Place, for a Delerium Tremens Belgian golden strong (Paul and Brian compared tequila's ...). We were hoping to find some good music at the student union, but it was decidedly pathetic. I think the audience of five were friends of the band. Eh. And we could have passed for their professor's.

Heading back up State Street we stopped at State Street Brats and didn't have brats. But it was a reminder of what it was like to be in college again, except a) the beer is better, b) the beer is more expensive, and c) not many folks were here. While it wasn't a ghost town, the place was decidedly not hopping. Maybe 10pm was too early?

But our final libation station was Cooper's Tavern. This was apparently not where the college kids hung out as everyone was older and dressed better, and there was a line - we had to wait until someone else left. At least we weren't denied entry, which happened to Chuck and I once in Oslo, because we wore jeans. Cooper's Tavern had a great beer selection too - I started with a sour flemish that was waaaaaay too sweet for the style and nowhere sour enough, and finished with another belgian which I have no recollection of what it was.

Being old farts we made our way back to the hotel around midnight. Paul threw on his swim trunks and went to the pool. After a minute I looked at Brian and said "I'll go keep him company" and Brian pointed he'd be back in a minute, cuz there's a cosmic law that pools close at 10pm. That's when Paul walked in the door. Teehee!

The next morning we were greeted with a hazy yucky day. Breakfast was served continental-style (i.e. bagels, fruit, yoghurt, oatmeal and donuts) by the hotel, with excellent coffee. One step outside yielded a surprise: it was warm! Like, 70F warm. Very humid too, and the sun was burning the haze off, but that nice warm temp had us itching to ride!

And ride we did. We had to jump a couple curbs to get out of the hotel parking ramp (we left the room keys in the room, not knowing we needed them to get out of the ramp).

Having used our fancy schmancy phones to look at the weather we decided to stay south a ways and then go north to avoid the weather.

View Larger Map

That worked great! The temps where about 80F most of the way. After a lunch stop in Richland Center the clouds a bit dark but it never rained on us until we were in Wabasha. Our waitress told us it had hailed earlier in the day.

Just outside of La Crosse Brian and I swapped bikes. I rode his XB9R and he got on my couch-like FJR. The Buell is a very compact motorcycle. Once we got rolling I had a hard time bringing my legs up to the skyhigh pegs, but I managed. Then I bounced the twin off the rev limiter, and couldn't figure out the shifter as it had very little engagement feel. And, yes it shakes. Other than that .. it was a fun bike. The motor, while it has no top end rush, has a solid and flat torque curve and a very "planted" feel. The suspension soaked up all the little road bumps (at the expense of 'feel') without being sloppy. If I didn't have access to Jenn's SV650 it would be a fun 2nd bike.

We took some back roads up to Wabasha and were thwarted by the flooding river ... oh well. A few miles south of Paul's place the temperatures dropped, the lightning started, and rain came down. We waited out the microcell in Paul's garage.

The final leg to Red Wing was uneventful but cold.

And that was our ride.

The Virgin of Guadelupe

2011-04-11T12:17:00.000-05:00

Next stop was the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Outside of the basilica is a huge sculpture of Pope John Paul and his PopeMobile on display. Since he was one of the few popes who visited the mostly Catholic mexicans his popularity is quite high.

While there are many here who believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Miracle of Roses, I call it a cult or superstition. I haven't decided yet.

Our guides seemed to believe in it, and had a couple stickers in the van for good luck, I suppose. I mean .. why should the Virgin of Guadalupe bestow any blessings on people who don't pray to such icons? Anyway .. there was an interesting architectural feature of the basilica, where they had an image of the virgin up high and tilted so the congregation could see it. In the photo below, on the wooden wall by the altar, slightly offset to the right, is a picture.

And up close you can see the picture more clearly.

So how did I get that close to it? There is a tunnel under the altar. An opening with four conveyor belts people could get on, and thus kneel, while looking up at the image, while moving along.

It was somewhat inspiring to see how much meaning and devotion directed towards that image, and other similar artifacts.

Oh yeah .. we also went to where the Miracle of Roses happened.. a priest carried roses in his apron and they left a mark like the virgin mary... y'all know how superstitious Mexican catholics around things that resemble something). I dunno, I sort of spaced out and looked at the architecture.

Of course ... no such tour is complete without a trip to a junk store . .I mean souvenir store .. where I am convinced the guides get kickbacks. At least they had bathrooms.

Then we were back on the road, zooming out of Mexico City, into the northern countryside, along the slums, on our way to Teotihuacan.

Note that the buildings aren't finished. They might be nice inside, but the residents will not be taxed until they finish the home, therefore, they are not painted.

But Wait! There's More!

Our guide promised to take us to an "Obsidian Factory". Hm, a volcano? No, a place where they take obsidian and grind and polish it into art to sell to tourists. "Obsidian is a lower grade diamond" our guide promised. Hmmm... I thought diamonds where made from carbon, and obsidian from silicon?

So we get there .. and get a tour of an agave plant (not blue, i.e. tequila) before they show us art pieces made from obsidian. right ... but where's the factory? They didn't show us that. But rest assured ... each piece had a price label. But no banyo's. I suspect the sad and dying agave plant was a time-waster so they could milk the group before us.

Tax The Rich!

2011-04-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

Our national politicians want to solve our budget deficit by taxing the rich. How well would that go?

Forbes released the list of billionaires so we have some numbers we can use.

Let's see ... if we took ALL of Bill Gate's wealth ($56GB) and applied that to our annual budget deficit ($1600B) there would still be $1544B to pay. We would actually need steal from about 30 Gate's to pay for JUST ONE year of our deficit.

Let's expand our search to the world's billionaires - after all, there are 1210 of them. Combined, they have $4500B. Yup, that would cover the deficit for 2.5 years. What if we applied that to our national debt? Nope, not enough. We're still short nearly ten thousand billion dollars ($10,000,0000,000,000).

Ahhhh.... but the smart people realize we don't tax WEALTH, we tax INCOME!

Check out this article:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/04/why_we_cant_tax_ourselves_out.html

If the highest rate of 35% were raised by a factor of 20% to 42%, then the additional tax revenue would be $43.5 Billion, not much of a dent in $1,665.0 Billion. So, let's raise the rate by a factor of 50% to 52.5%; the additional revenue would be $108.9 Billion. Still nowhere near enough, so let's just tax it at a rate of 100%, bringing in an additional $404.8 Billion. Unfortunately the country is still $1,260.0 Billion in the hole for the year.

There are about a million millionaires in the US. If the gov't took a million bucks from from everyone who had at least a million, that would reduce the deficit to 600 billion.

I guess Obama was wrong ... there simply aren't enough "rich" people out there to balance the budget on their backs. Perhaps that's why he's focusing on the upper middle class - those who earn more then $200k, or or $250k as a family. Or like our Governor, Mark Dayton, who ran on a platform of lowering it to $120k and $150k. At least he is realistic. It is unfortunate that our elected republicans and democrats put us into this mess.

So who else can we tax? Let's see... the middle class? No, then it would like the government is hurting families. Hm, how about the poor? They don't pay any taxes as it is, right? Yeah, YOU go on TV and tell people you'll tax the poor. You won't get a second term.

Ok. We can't tax any more. The obvious solution is to cut spending. Let's see... that didn't go so well when President Bush sat in the Oval Office, and with our current republican congress it still isn't going so well. What did they propose to but? $100 billion? Only $1500 billion to go!

No, we all know who is going to pay for this spending:

Your children.

Teotihuacan

2011-04-05T16:45:00.000-05:00

FINALLY we get to the pyramids! I'll spare the details (wikipedia has lots of info on them) and show you photos, and here's a hint: those obnoxious vendors who try to sell you crap are all over the place EXCEPT on the pyramids! So get up there!

Climbing the pyramids was not difficult, despite the high elevation. This was followed with an ascent, back to the sea of salespeople, and out to the van which took us to dinner. Again ... a place the guide gets kickbacks. Mediocre enchiladas in very good mole and loud American's behind us. They left before us ... apparently our guides knew each other and were in the bar.

First ride of spring

2011-04-03T09:19:00.000-05:00

It was a short ride, but a ride none the less.

It started early in the morning when I took the FJR out from the back of the garage, dropped a battery into it, and it fired up instantly. Filled the tires with air and replaced a burned out tail light, let it warm up, and then parked it for a few hours as I ran errands.

Then Chuck and I hiked up Barn Bluff for excellent views of Red Wing.

We even saw a fox!

Later in the afternoon we were to meet at Smokey Row Cafe for lunch. However, upon arriving there (a few minutes late, too), I attempted to park near Tim and Scot's cycles but noticed that a minivan with a handicap access ramp was right next to them - and Tim's bike was in the way. So was mine. Tim was nowhere to be seen. As I moving my own out of the way, the driver of the van, a young girl with lots of tattoos and clearly out of shape, came up to me and starting shouting that if her ramp knocks over some bikes, that's not her problem. WTF, are they assuming that since I am on a motorcycle, I can just go ahead and move a bunch of other motorcycles? Wasn't it abundantly clear that I had just arrived? I asked her if she could just back up the van ten feet and then load their passenger? While she was getting more belligerent, the older people (of which one was in the wheelchair) agreed with me that was not a problem .. but the young girl continued to be a jackass and refused to move the van, and we should not have parked there in the first place.

You know what they say about arguing with idiots, and I don't want to be the type of macho jerk who links my ego to whether I "win" petty arguments, so I asked Chuck find Tim and ask him to move his bike (I was still doffing gear). While they were doing that, I suggested to the old folks that they put a sign on the side of the van requesting that drivers leave clearance for the wheelchair ramp.

One grilled yellowfin ahi tuna sandwich later (with aioli sauce), spirits unbowed, we had decided on a short ride around Lake Pepin. This past winter in Minnesota the road crews have been using beet juice to mix with salt instead of magnesium chloride, and I suspect they have thus used less sand too. On the western side of the Mississippi there wasn't much sand at all, but on the eastern side, we stayed on Hwy 35 as the side roads were clearly full of sand. Being late in the afternoon, and Great River Roasters not having opened yet, we stopped in Nelson for Ice Cream and then simply rode home.

For a lack of anything else to do, and an abundance of beer in my kegs, the obvious conclusion of the day was for the guys to ride home and get the Fair Marie to haul them back to my house where we viewed photos and videos from prior Walt Ride's (and making a good dent in my IPA keg too!).

On a different note, Brian got for a ride on his new (to him) Buell, and went west. However, he encountered some water.

Numbers: Trying to gain a perspective.

2011-03-31T21:18:00.001-05:00

Our politicians are arguing over $73 billion dollars. Republicans want to cut $100 billion from the 2011 budget, democrats $51 billion. They have agreed to split the difference at $73 billion but not how to reach that number.

Let's put this into perspective.

$6,000,000,000

Approximately Minnesota's budget deficit. If we took all the money from the richest person in Minnesota, it wouldn't be enough. At quick internet search reveals Richard Shulze (founder of Best Buy) is worth $2,500,000,000. Even if we there were two of him, and we could tax their entire worth, it wouldn't be enough to cover Minnesota's budget deficit. Since we tax income, not wealth, we would need many more wealthy Minnesotan's to fix the problem simply by taxing them. The problem is ... there aren't enough millionaires in Minnesota to solve this problem by taxation alone.

$95,000,000,000

Budget deficit in 2001, the last year Clinton's budget was in effect. Some news sources claim he ran a $132,000,000,000 surplus but those do not account for Bush's $38,000,000,000 tax rebates, nor Clinton's borrowing from social security. Keep in mind that Bush and Obama also borrow from Social Security, so we really are comparing apples to apples.

$304,000,000,000

Budget deficit in 2004. Thank you Mr Republican for increasing the deficit ~300% in three years. It wasn't all Iraq and Afghanistan either ... that only accounted for ~ $90,000,000,000 / year. Another record deficit.

$482,000,000,000

Bush's last budget, in 2009. Remember when Democrats blocked his attempt to reform Social Security? If he felt entitlement needed reform, why in tarnation did he sign into law the $900,000,000,000 Medicare Prescription Act? Another record deficit.

$1,560,000,000,000

Obama's 2010 budget. Are you freakin' kidding me? And why aren't the articles touting it as a record deficit?

$1,270,000,000,000

His 2011 budget looks good only compared to his 2010 budget. Didn't we hear about bailed out businesses like GM and some banks paying the gov't back in 2010? Why is it still three times bigger than Bush's last budget?

$1,650,000,000,000

His 2012 budget proposal, which is expected to add $9,500,000,000,000 to the national debt over the course of ten years (it is currently $14,000,000,000,000 and change). Once again, it isn't being called a "record deficit".

Back to my point.

Our legislators are arguing about $73,000,000,000. These amounts are hard to wrap our minds around, so let's see the relative amounts:

A million is a thousand thousand. Most of us will earn a million bucks or more over our lifetime.
A billion is a thousand million. Or a million thousand. Most of us will never see this kind of money.
A trillion is a thousand billion. Or a million million. A million people with a million dollars will have a trillion dollars combined.

Here's another way to look at it:

$1,650,000,000,000
$73,000,000,000

$73 billion is a mere 4.4% of the budget deficit. Not of the entire budget, but of the budget deficit.

I don't know what the solution is. but taxing more and spending far less has to be a part of it. Instead we see our elected representatives bicker over peanuts, passing the problem down to our children (and their children too).

So have a beer, relax, and enjoy the good times while you can, before this ship runs aground.

The Road to Teotihuacan

2011-03-30T19:17:00.000-05:00

The ride over the mountains and to the customer was brisk if uneventful. There was a flipped car in the other direction and we saw a great big snowcapped volcano. That was the height of my day!

The rest of the day went by in lulls and spurts. Mostly lulls. I won't divulge details of what happened between 8am and 5am. Yes ... that was a 21-hour shift, and based on the client's schedule on Thursday I decided there was no reason for me to go to Toluca.

So I slept two hours and went sightseeing instead!

The Sheraton has a concierge desk which hooked me up with the cheapest way to get to Teotihuacan: a tour bus. it would cost > $700MX to take a cab one way, so I paid $650MX (about $55) for the tour. Made sense to me ... add 10% tip, and even the entrance fees are covered.

First I had to take a taxi (free, paid for my the tourbus agency) from Santa Fe to the tourbus agency. But for some reason unknown to non-Spanish-speaking-people, the driver wanted me to get into another cab.... hmmm... no, I don't think so. At the moment I figured that they were trying to kidnap me, as the hotel and agency knows my original driver and can hold him accountable. But in retrospect, maybe my driver had a pre-arranged pickup. However .. in that case he should not have accepted the fare. So then I get to the agency, pay, and wait. In 15 minutes am loaded into a poeple-moving-van with nine other passengers:

One mexican guy in the back with limited english skills
Three girls from Amsterdam and Rotterdam who work for KLM and have a day in the city
A family of three from München
A woman from Denver and man from Amsterdam traveling together
Plus the driver and the guide

In other words, an extensively traveled group. Most of our discussions during the day revolved around places we have been. In fact .. one of the KLM girls (the one from Rotterdam, IIRC) had spent over a month in Thailand and several weeks in Gautemala, so I picked her brain. However, I can't remember names, especially of places I haven't been and can't pronounce, so nothing beyond the following was retained:

Thailand has lots of islands and is a fun place to visit
Guatemala is a fascinating place too, but she didn't like Guatemala City

First stop on the tour were some ruins from the Aztec civilization and a lesson on how Mexico City is built on a lake (which was later drained after the Spanish clobbered the natives and built a bigger city).

In the middle of the city there are Aztec ruins.

Mexico City Redux

2011-03-28T06:48:00.000-05:00

For the third time I am back in Mexico City.

Traffic is still bad, odorous sewage continues to randomly waft, the food is excellent and the people friendly. It is warm and sunny.

This time I am working in Toluca. Flying to Toluca is difficult, despite the international airport. All flights to Toluca connect through Houston, Los Angeles etc. whereas there are direct flights from Minneapolis. Plus it is expensive to fly to Toluca. There's a story behind this airport.

Toluca is about 30 miles west of Mexico City, and the Mexico City's airport is on the east side of town. So ... to get from the Mexico City airport to Toluca, we have to go all the way through town, then over the mountains ... depending on traffic this can take three hours. Therefore, the government decided to expand the Toluca airport to handle international flights, and more flights in general. They expanded the airport, built suspended highways to clear local traffic etc. in an attempt to offload flights from the Mexico City airport. After doing all this work they told the airlines "Ok, fly here!".

You read that right ... they spent a butt-load of money improving the airport and infrastructure without consulting with the airlines. This is important because Toluca lies at 9000 feet ... and at that altitude jets need a lot of fuel to take off. Therefore, very few airlines actually fly to Toluca, and when they do, it is expensive.

Thus, I flew to Mexico City. Fortunately I chose to travel when traffic is light and it didn't take long to get to the hotel in Santa Fe (southwest corner of the City, 30 miles from Toluca). Toluca doesn't have much for hotels or restaurants and I could catch a ride to/from the client with a local IBM'r who goes past my hotel every morning. Perfect!

The morning commute was actually pretty nice, with little traffic and a view of the nearby volcano.

About my blog .. and when I post things.

2011-03-25T15:15:00.000-05:00

For the safety of my family I no longer write posts until my travels have ended. If you don't like this, tough. Deal with it, and read something in the archive. Of course, not blogging doesn't mean I'm not home .. it just means nothing interesting is happening.

Now that I am home, expect more updates!

Mexico City in 2007

2011-03-17T19:50:00.003-05:00

This is a repost of an email I sent on my first trip to Mexico City, back in 2007. No pictures, just text ... since this hasn't been in my blog before, I figured I'd share ...
---
What an odd place this is.

Everyone we have encountered so far have been very friendly, yet we are constantly warned about crime.

I'll spare the cliches about "country of contrasts" and junk and just ramble on ;-)

IBM Rochester as signs proclaiming that they ban guns .. but IBM Mexico City/Santa Fe has security guards armed with shotguns. And the exterior smells like sewage. In the bathrooms there are signs saying something about paper and toilets, and if they have wastebins in the stalls like at Kio Networks, I would have put the paper there .. but since there are no bins, I will assume they want me to flush it down. Yet it appears that the sewage system can't handle it.

So, the crime. The armed guards are evidence of that. So are the guards at Kio Records. To get to the data center, we have to go through a gate manned by two guards in business suits (think Mafia). After we enter, we park and approach the entrance - which is controlled by a guard inside. He has to push a button to open the door for us. This is followed by a metal detector (like at airports). We finally get to the receptionist, where we provide (and surrender) identification to get a badge. Then the guard calls for an escort who (usually) arrives promptly. Again, the door from the reception to the data center is activated by the guard behind the desk ( i.e. you can't leave unless they want you to). The escort takes us through a door into what I call the "airlock". Have to stand in a small (5 x 8 foot) room where only one door can be open at a time - and the guard needs to key a code to open the inner door. This leads us into an office area, but we go upstairs (with the escort) who lets us into the computer room. The computer room is pretty big, with a cage in the middle. The space between the cage and the computer room walls is about six feet wide, all the way around the cage. We walk to where we need to go, and the escort has to get access to cells within the cages using a swiped card and a fingerprint reader. At least we don't have to work here much - we do that in a different part of the building, where there is a lot of construction noise and we are crammed into a desk area like IBM Interns. Anyway, leaving is the process in reverse - out the cage, out of the computer room, through the airlock, to the receptionist (if the guard lets us) and then we get our identification back in exchange for thier badges. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had to register our laptop serial numbers on the way in, and verify them on the way out. And back through the metal detector, car, parking guards, etc.

At least it is easier at the IBM facility - get a badge, swipe and go. And try not to make funny faces at the guys with shotguns.

My guidebook says there are four kidnappings per day in Mexico City and therefore we are to avoid taxi's unless we called ahead, paid at the hotel, and verified the cab number and ID of the cabbie card. Just outside IBM, when I leaving, there was a guy in a red car, no markings, asking if I need a taxi. I suppose this would be a good place to find kidnappable people .. I wonder how many ransom's IBM has paid?

But I think the biggest danger here isn't crime (or the water) but traffic. There are lane markings, but they are largely ignored. There are few controlled intersections .. unless you consider speedbumps to be "control". Right outside the hotel there is a busy intersection, and getting across (by car) involves waiting for cross traffic to slow for the speedbumps. IBM is right across that busy street from the hotel, and there are crosswalks. But there are no buttons to push to stop traffic, and if there were, that wouldn't help anyway, because there are no lights to be activated by such a button anyway. At least there is a large (30-wide) grassy island so I only have to cross three lanes at a time. Oh yeah .. the crosswalks lead to grassy islands, not sidewalks. This is by far the least pedestrian-friendly city I have visited. Oddly enough, this part of town is only ten years old.

There are people everywhere here. Yeah, I know, 25 million and second-largest in the world, but I mean in the service sector. At the gas stations there are two pumps per attendant, in the restaurants there are 2-3 waiters per table, multiple bellhops and there are taxis everywhere. I suspect that labor is so cheap that they hire a whole bunch of folks to do one job. At least they're all very friendly!

So far language hasn't been much of a problem, perhaps because I have been with Jose or Mathew. I find I can read most things and understand them, and my vocabulary is growing exponentially every day. I'm getting better at ordering food (besides cervesa and arracherra!), indicating I am finished, saying 'hello' and 'thank you' etc. But today, at IBM, I couldn't remember which floor had the mobility center so I asked the receptionists - and was met with two people whom I could not communicate with .. so we waited until someone came by with the language skills we needed.

Things are very inefficient here. I am finding it is a hassle to contact the customer, a hassle to get to the customer, a hassle to find a place to work, and a hassle to find food of sorts (especially water). They haven't attached the devices I need yet, so I don't have anything to do. They seem to not care - so we pester them every hour or two. Jose (my host, and IBM'r) explains that's how things are done here.

That should be enough for now ..

Is my governor an idiot?

2011-03-15T18:21:00.000-05:00

Judge for yourselves. He made the following statement:

"Once again, the Republicans just simply can't help themselves at providing the richest Minnesotans with more benefits than they provide to middle-income families, working families."

Mark Dayton seems to be unaware that when taxes are cut, those who pay taxes will pay fewer taxes. Likewise, those who don't pay taxes ... well, they still don't pay taxes. Leave it to NPR (where I heard it this morning) to let this get by without applying their significant critical thinking skills.

Futhermore, note the implication that letting someone keep more of the money they earned is a "benefit". This appears to be Newspeak, much like when spending increases on government programs are less than expected, they call it a "cut". For example, if the department of XZY expects an 11% increase in the next budget, but they only get a 5% increase ... gee, that's a "6% reduction". Any reporter worth their salt should point out XZY is getting an increase in their budget.

Perhaps this mentality is a reflection similar to when Michael Moore recently claimed that money is a national resource and should be distributed. Or when union acitivists educated us that we don't have a right to our money ??? Do these people have brain tumors??

I'm not suggesting that the GOP's budget proposal is a good idea ... Yes, they are cutting spending, but they are also cutting taxes at a time when our state needs the revenue. They claim that will "stimulate jobs" but really ... can you find a single "wealthy" Minnesotan who, with $200 more in their pocket at the end of the year, is going to create any more jobs? This is a symbolic effort, at best. They seem to think that state finances operate like "family finances" (not even going to waste time on that).

Let's look at what we had the past two years:

A DFL-controlled legislature and a GOP governor who refused to work together

What do we have now?

A GOP-controlled legislature and a DFL governor who refuse to work together

Great. Just bloody great.

I know I can't be the only person who thinks Mark Dayton is about to puke (if he hasn't already) whenever he is talking.

Until the snow melts ...

2011-03-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

... check out my previous trips:

From Oregon to Texas ... and back

South to Arkansas, West Virginia, etc.

Another trip out west

Indonesia (no motorcycling content though)

Gastronomical adventures in Hong Kong

Another western tour

And of course, Paul's Blog

Our local riding group's blog (Red Wing Motorbike Club).

When it gets warm I'll, or go to interesting places, or decided to pollute the blog with politics, I'll post more!

Spring is coming! And so are motorcycles ... and inattentive drivers

2011-03-04T08:18:00.001-06:00

Take a look at this YouTube video if you have the guts .. there are many accidents depicted:

Note the level of inattentiveness required to run right through a red light. I'm sure some are drunk, high, sleepy, have the sun in their eyes, etc. but I would wager that many are on their cell phones, talking or texting.

Let's think about these distractions for a few minutes.

I'm sure we can agree texting while driving should remain illegal and we should seek to find ways to mitigate this risk. The user is required to take their eyes off the road for long periods of time to read the text, think about a response, and then again look at the phone while they type a response. Would you read a book while driving? How about type on a laptop? Then don't text either.

How about talking on the phone? Holding a phone next to your head blocks your vision and reduces you to a one-armed driver. "But I have an automatic transmission!" some say ... I call bullshit on that, because driving requires two hands. Cars are designed to be operated with two hands. With manual transmissions the right hand is temporarily used to shift gears - the rest of the time it is there to operate the steering wheel while the other hand flicks the blinker stalk, manages the headlights and wipers and in case of an emergency maneuver is available to steer. It remains easy to argue for a ban on phone conversations, especially without hands-free units.

What about hands-free units? This is better, as it frees both hands, but it doesn't free the mind. Your brain is still listening and thinking about your conversation, not paying attention to traffic. Studies repeatedly show that talking on the phone distracts drivers to the point that their ability to operate a vehicle is degraded as if they were legally drunk. On long interstate trips or when sitting stuck in traffic this is OK, but what about when things get moving? What about when you're negotiating that tight hairpin turn in Wisconsin, drift into the other lane and take out a motorcyclist and his passenger? What about when you don't notice the stale yellow traffic light and can't stop in time to avoid the parent and child stepping into the crosswalk (did you see that in the video ... and the child's balloon drifting into the sky?). Or in Arizona, when the dump truck ran into a group of motorcyclists stopped at a red light killing six? How about on our icy winter roads, you're gabbing away, and don't notice the other knuckleheads sliding into your lane? It might not even be your fault - but your kids in the back seat are equally vulnerable, whether you run into another car, or they run into you. Ever watch traffic in your neighborhood fly down the streets, drivers talking to no-one, oblivious to your kids trying to cross the street to their best friends, or riding their new bicycles? What could be so important that they can't make the phone call before leaving their driveway, or waiting to return a call before they get home to the store or work? Hands-free technology is no excuse for distracted driving, and should also be outlawed.

The danger of inattentive driving is everywhere, and the consequences are great. The mobile revolution is putting us all at risk, and I propose that we support legislation to outlaw drivers from using cell phones, and give the police the ability to pull drivers over for doing so. I would even support increased insurance deductibles, or reporting these offenses to the insurance companies as an incentive to get people off the phone when behind the wheel.

This is not a partisan issue. This is not about "freedom" any more than a requirement to have brake lights on your car is an infringement on your "freedom". It is not about creating a police state any more than requiring you to use your headlights at night creates a police state. It is about public safety, with low costs and high benefits to everyone - especially to those of us who use the roads and are more vulnerable than most, i.e. motorcycles, bicyclists, pedestrians, etc.

So do me, a motorcyclist, a favor. Do it for the safety of my wife, also a motorcyclist. Do it for the safety of your kids as they learn to drive, or the well-being of your own kids as a motorcycling parent. Contact your senator and representatives ... Jim Walz, John Kline, Tim Kelly, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, whomever is your legislator. Give them something useful to do other than bickering along party lines.

Take note of the proposed legislation:

http://handsfreeinfo.com/minnesota-cell-phone-laws-legislation

And if you're a motorcyclist ... pay attention out there, because the other folks aren't.

Ethanol - and where to get fuel without it.

2011-03-02T07:26:00.001-06:00

http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=MN

The Truth about Belgian Beer

2011-02-18T15:52:00.000-06:00

Yes, there is beer in Belgium. It is one of the three beer centers of the world. The other two are Germany and America, and I'm starting to think we should add the United Kingdom to that. Allow me to explain.

Germany deserves to be a beer center not because it is the origin of beer (that would be Mesopotamia) but because that's where lager fermentation was perfected. Since then, they have four distinct styles: Pilsners, Hefeweizens, Bocks and Wiessbier's. Alt's fall somewhere in that spectrum, and there are other minor variations, but in general there isn't a lot of variety amongst German brews. Yes, they are good, but they seek to minimize complexity that would be derived from yeasts and hops and thus become somewhat uni-dimensional.

The United Kingdom is the leader of ales. Stouts, porters, brown ales, bitters, milds, barleywines and old ales. Lots of good stuff there, with lots of complexities. Session beers, strong ales, and everything in between. Various ale yeasts at different temperatures, hopping strategies, barrel-aging etc. all lead to a large variety of flavors. Ok .. I've convinced myself to add the U.K. as a beer center.

What about Belgium? It has often been called the "Disneyland of beer", which it rightly deserves. There are unique flavors here that have no other origin. The wild yeasts are the celebrities here, imparting sour and tart notes and myriad fruit flavors. Combined with dark malts we have dubbels - big chewey flavorful brews with tastes of dark fruit. Pilsner malts create lighter and refreshing blondes - add the right yeasts at warmer temps and we get Saision's. Pilsner malts, clean yeast profiles and candi sugars yield golden strong's and Tripel's. Age them in oak, add oxidized hops, have a secondary fermentation on cherries or peaches or whatever ... these brews are generally strong and designed to be savored. Yet ... there is not much experimentation outside of these styles. Blond's, Saison's, Dubbel's Tripel's and fruity ones. Every bar has Duvel. Every restaurant has a Blond, Kriek or Framboise on the menu. Trappist and Abbey ales add some mystique but they are largely similar (with Orval as the exception). Most have Saison's and Tripel's too. But the only stouts are Guiness, no IPA's or pale ales. No lagers. No Porters or Barleywines.

That's what we have in the US. We have variety. We have belgian's, bocks, old ales and IPA's, sometimes in the same breweries. Not all american brews are light lagers, not all american coffees comes from Folgers or Starbucks. Our land is not a small country with a high concentration of a couple brews. It is a large country with a nearly infinite variety of brews, albeit spread out. There's a lot of crap here too, but due to our size, there are also excellent ones. Want world-class belgians? Try Ommegang, Allegaesh, Russian River, Jolly Pumpkin, New Belgium. Lagers? Gordon Biersch has some very good examples, and in the heartland the traditions continue in little towns like New Ulm (honestly, I don't pay much attention to the lagers, they are too prevalent). Brown ales have taken on a life of their own, stouts and porters are common in most breweries. We've redefined how hops are used. But ok .. let's say you want the "real thing". Yeah, you can get Cantillon and Maredsous and Orval and Rodenbach and Paulaner and Guiness and Heineken in the US.

I think you get the point. Belgium is a wonderful place and I am enjoying it immensly, but if you want it all, the US is Beer Heaven.

Sucky things about Brussels

2011-02-15T15:03:00.000-06:00

First a quick correction .. what I thought was a Liege Waffle was in fact a Brussels Waffle. The Liege waffle is lighter, crisper, more uniform and served with a dusting of powdered sugar (corn starch). Still very good, not like what we Americans think of as waffles. The Brussels version remains my favorite, and I will seek to reproduce it when I get home. Unless I eat so much I can't stand any more.

We've seen some crime around here, like on Sunday morning two guys fighting over a girl and when she tried to intervene they turned on her, chased her away, and continued to fight until someone in a uniform (presumably police) separated them. Our female coworkers generally don't feel safe walking the streets after dark, and when the sun sets the unsavory characters come out. Beggars and bums, peeing, begging. It isn't pretty.

The traffic here sucks too. We've been taking the Metro around and when it takes about an hour to go 10 miles, 20 minutes on light rail for $2 is a good thing. But today they went on strike to protest the lack of help from the police to quell violence on the rails. Thus, we were driven back from the client ... 12 miles, one hour. Yeah, traffic sucks too, all the time.

But that's about it ... not much to complain about, eh? Oh yeah, the weather. Warm (40F) and not snowing, but since I'm complaining, I might as well complain about the overcast skies with light rain.

Also, consider that Belgium has no government. How's that for ironic? They have none, and in the US we have too much.

But I have beer ... a coworker brought in a six-pack of Witcap Tripel which, while good, wasn't as crisp as the more well-known Tripel's but it was still quite good. A little more bitter, a little more yeasty, but good. That was followed by a Rochefort 8 - more in the the style of a dubbel with lots of caramel.

Waffles

2011-02-12T16:00:00.000-06:00

Have you got a Belgian Waffle Maker? I do.

Do you think it makes Belgian Waffles? I used to.

Have you ever HAD a waffle in Belgium? I did this morning.

My initial thought when I had the waffle was OH MY GOD THIS IS GOOD!

then "Belgian waffle makers do not make belgian waffles.".

A little more research uncovered that it was, in fact, a Liege Waffle I was savoring. Freshly made in a fold of waxed paper, no syrup, fruits or whip cream, it had a heavy, crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, caramelized sugar goodness.

Other good eats experienced today were mussels in cream steamed with Bruges Zot Blonde (yep, we went to Bruges). Very very good, with quite a pronounced malt flavor from the Blonde. I paired it with a Bruges Zot Dubbel Bruin, a rich chocolate brown ale with a hint of sourness.

As for Bruges ... more on that in a later post!

Urinals

2011-02-10T16:25:00.000-06:00

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you would know that I have at times taken pictures of urinals. Big ones, little ones, etc.

Sooo.... urinals here are like urinals anywhere else, except for one obvious thing, and a couple special ones I found. These special ones were in an english pub (yes .. went to an english pub in Brussels .. how's that for multicultural? Eh, we were right next to it after visiting a grocery store to buy soap and shampoo.

Of course there was soccer on TV, and of course the beer was warm. Actually, we were given a choice, and my choice was excellent, an Old Ale from Shephard Neame (that is NOT misspelled!) called "Bishop's Finger". It was pretty dang good. Thick, rich, lots of caramel and toffee flavors and a tinge of something else (where DID he put that finger?!?!). Also had a Spitfire (same brewery), and that was like a 'light' version of Bishop's head, finished off with a Aldan's pale ale. All good beer, tons better than BMC.

So anyway, urinals.

This little bar had the CUUUUUTEST urinals EVER! Perched on a tiled ledge at the appropriate height, they were the size of soccer balls! Never seen a smaller urinal in my life! Tried to get a photo, but alas, cameras in bathrooms with other people don't fare well, so I didn't even try (see, I wasn't drunk!)

Next stop was a wonderful Thai place. We walked for half an hour in circles based on seeing it in daylight. Nope, couldn't find it .. until we got back to the hotel and it was right next to it. Doh!

So yesterday for lunch we were at a nice local sandwich shop when I needed to use the facilities. I went downstairs, and into the restroom, and .... um ... there were women in there. Most guys know to look for urinals when they aren't sure if they are in the right place. And yes, there were urinals. And a guy just came out of the stall. Huh ... it was apparantly a multi-person, multi-sex restroom. Eh, when in Rome ... I did my business.

At the client (a large data-center hosting facility) there are multi-person, SINGLE-sex restrooms. But you know how these restrooms have strategically angled doors and such so that people outside cannot "see anything" if the door is opened? Well, that's not the case here. I'm standing at the urinal, doing my thing, and if the door happened to be opened, then, well, I'd have an audience. Ok, no biggie, I do my thing.

Tonight we started at the Monk bar. I ordered a Morte Subite brew based on reputation. What I failed to notice was that it was a "Kriek Extreme". Hm. Too much cherry for me, although there was a nice roasted nuttiness underlaying it. So I gave that to Tim and got a Borales Tripel, which was an excellent brew which I enjoyed much, and returned the filtered H2O back to a urinal. And yes, this dual-urinal was also in public - no door even. I didn't draw a crowd (guess I'm not hung like a horse) so just did my thing, washed my hands, tried to get a photo but too many people around made me feel like a creep, so I went ordered another beer (Burgoyne Flanders ... very dry, brown, seems like it had some fruit flavors once upon a time but they were aged out).

Next stop: Publico for dinner, a French restaurant. I can't pronounce the penne pasta I had, but it had a smoky red pesto sauce with pine nuts. Excellente! And the Ciney Bruin I matched it with was yummy too - a soft, fluffy brown with a hint of tanginess that lingered on the tongue with the roasted barleys aftertaste.

Is Belgium really just about beer, food and urinals? I'll keep researching ...

Belgium: Disneyland of Beer!

2011-02-09T17:00:00.000-06:00

No really, it is a Disneyland of beer here. Go into a grocery store, and there are six-packs of Trappist brews, one bottle from each - not to mention the plethora of other ones we've heard about but never tried back home. Benchmarks from which the beers we drink descended from. The choices are endless, and as I commented to Tim this afternoon, "it must be hard to live here and not be an alcoholic".

The flight across the Atlantic was a money-loser for Delta. We had a couple rows each, able to spread out and actually lie down and sleep. I even slept through breakfast.

We were met by the local account team and spent 90 minutes going 12 miles in heavy Brussels traffic. We should have taken the train! Brussels, like other large european cities I've been to, was large, compressed and mix of ancient and 90's architecture. Out hotel is more like an apartment, but small, with a limited cleaning schedule, one bar of crappy soap, two bottles of non-lathering body wash and no shampoo. It has a small kitchenette, dishes and utensils. But best of all ... it is right downtown, two blocks from the Grand Place, and much closer to awesome beer and world-class cuisine. Being right above the Metro is nice too, but our local contact has driven us to and from the client every day so far.

What isn't so great about Belgium is the occasionaly poop on the sidewalk and pee on the walls - too big and too high up to be a dog. Yuck.

Our co-worker here has an interesting feature on his BMW: When in neutral, not moving, clutch disengaged, the engine will stop. Let the clutch out or shift into a gear and it will start. The idea is to reduce emissions when idling (which happens a lot in Brussels traffic). I always though the starting of an engine introduced significant wear...

Our first challenge in Belgium was to find money. We hit up several banks and a post office, but nowhere did they accept our American Express or Mastercard/Visa accounts. Eventually we found an investment bank that took our personal cards - woohoo! While scouting this out, we found lots of places to eat and drink at later.

Then, later, we did in fact try one of those places, and it was a rude reminder of the fact that europeans smoke like West Virginians. We barely lasted through a glass of Juliper (light lager with some pleasant apricoty yeast byproducts) and went across the street to The Villette, billed as a place with "authentic belgian cuisine". Things got off to good start when we decided to share a 750ml bottle of Saison Dupont organic ale, and got interesting when I realized I had drunk 650 ml of it. This brew is often raised up as the hallmark Saison. Compared to my own, it is not quite as dry and has more fruity peach, cherry and apple esters, which is typical of the Belgian saision strain of yeast. I have been using the French saison yeast, which is very good at drying out the beer but lacks the added complexity. Thus, next time, I will have to brew a 10-gal batch of beer and then split the batch into two, and try a different strain in each fermentor and compare.

What sort of "authentic belgian cuisine" did I find? Why, none other than roasted pork with Orval cheese on top. That's right, the only Trappist brewery which uses brettanomyces in their liquid art also makes cheese. "Delicious" was an understatement. You don't think I could get away without ordering an Orval with the meal, could you? Of course not. The interesting thing here is that we can get this beer at home, but not fresh ... and it is better with a bit of age on it! Still very good, but I will be buying some of these and then aging them in my basement for a year ... yuuuuummmmmmm.

Being tired sucks and jetlag doesn't help, but it REALLY sucks when the mattress is hard. Maybe I'll get used to it? Until tomorrow ... later!

A Political Turn

2010-12-07T08:27:00.000-06:00

Not a Left turn, and not a Right turn. But a change in direction.

With snow blanketing our state we dream about warmer times and plan for the return of ice-less roads while our iron steeds are tucked away in garages or undergoing seasonal maintenance. The lack of riding has me in the gym frequently and there I listen to podcasts of all sorts - motorcycle, financial, political and fun. I read articles. And I frequently hear things that really piss me off and get me thinking "I should blog about this".

So here I am, blogging about it, and it will most likely be political. Politically I am a pessimist because I rarely see anything good come out of Washington or St. Paul, and today's resolution of the tax-conundrum faced by our country triggered this post.

Here's an article that summarizes what our "leaders" have agreed to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/politics/07cong.html

When our politicians act like this I lose what little hope I had.

On one hand, I will agree that it would be devastating to increase taxes and cut off unemployment benefits in a down economy. In a consumption-based economy like ours, we need to find that delicate position between saving for rainy days yet spending enough to maintain modest growth. Raising taxes when most families are on a spending-binge-hangover, and cutting unemployment benefits when there are no jobs to be had, will not get money flowing again.

On the other hand, adding $600+ billion to an already bloated deficit is alarming, clouding your childrens' future. This is "the mother of all credit card bills" which will someday require a lot of pain to repay, and like credit card bills, the deeper you dig the hole the harder it will be to get out of it - until you have to file bankruptcy to get out (maybe that's our leaders' plan?).

While the Democrats are disappointed they weren't able to tax the rich more, the Republicans must be tickled pink at having pulled a fast one on the American people. Not more than a month after campaigning on the promise to cut spending, they hold out for extending tax cuts our country can't afford.

Don't get me wrong, our country should be able to afford these tax cuts. They should be permanent across the board. However, decades of unbridled spending has left us with a huge bill to pay. With a thrifty congress and a political genius for a president, we exited the 90's with a 'surplus' (a fake surplus because we were still borrowing money from Social Security - but it was still the closest thing we've had to a balanced budget since ... I don't know .. the 60's ???). After it was all downhill. Two major wars, generous welfare programs, mismanaged mortgage backers, misguided stimulus funds, etc. have since dug a hole we might not be able to exit from. What I am getting at here is that we have a spending problem, and to solve it we need to spend less.

But our elected officials - Republicans and Democrats alike - have spent ALL of our money (and most of your childrens' money) that we simply can't "un-spend" our way back to prosperity. Our taxes must also increase.

Yet .. as I stated above, this is a bad time to increase taxes. Ideally they would stay low long enough for most of us to financially recover, then they should increase. Unfortunately I have no confidence there is any political will to lay such a foundation for a stronger future. Nor do I feel the average voter has the foresight to understand why this needs to be done. And finally .. just like the 2008 presidential election (also known as the "popularity contest") and Minnesota's race for governor, we clearly don't have anyone who is up to the job.

I told you I was a political pessimist.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that our elected officials are handling our nation's finances the way American's have been handing their personal finances. Josephe de Maistre (1753-1821) wrote: "Every country has the government it deserves."

Indeed.

When we have to choose between "tax and spend" Democrats or "tax and borrow" Republicans there are no good choices (except stockpiling food, water and ammunition).

Epilogue: The sum is greater than the parts.

2010-08-23T08:52:00.000-05:00

I have added photos to most of the blog entries going back to 8/1/2010 - if you don't get the email updates. you may want to visit the blog. I've also uploaded all of my photos to my photobucket account (link on the left ... in 2010_BigWestern).

This was a great trip! Thanks to Paul, Chuck and Ron for making it so. Also, thanks to Deb and Abbie for places to stay, and to Fred's Honda in Corvallis for changing out that crappy Avon Storm rear tire on short notice.

We covered just under 6500 miles, in Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California. We didn't make it to Banff, but we got to hike in Glacier, Yellowstone, Portland and Helena. Temperatures ranged from a low of 41F in Yellowstone to a high of 99F in the deserts of eastern Oregon. Saw lots of roadkill, including a horse. Horses were included in the living, too, of course, along with bears (black and grizzly), elk, deer, antelope, and lots of thrill-seeking chipmunks running into the road in front of us.

We had no accidents and kept the rubber side down the whole trip. We had three bike-related equipment failures: The short-lived Avon Storm rear, the defective Avon Storm front, and Paul's exhaust bracket breaking. Otherwise the machines performed extremely well, providing comfortable and reliable transportation yet responding telepathically to our inputs when pushed close to the limits in northern California.

Which brings me to the question of high's and low's of the trip.

The 'low' would definitely be the hail storm in Wyoming. But what is the "high" ? If I were to list a single item, it would be getting a day and a half to ride the awesome roads between Redding, Eureka and Yreka in California. A close second would be our hike in Glacier. But on a trip like this, the sum is greater than the parts. Looking back there are so many excellent things experienced in the context of the whole which elevates their value. For example, while the roads in California were awesome, they were bracketed by a day of blasting through the hot and dry desert, and a ride up the a mild coastline.

The riding, scenery and all that is one thing. There's also the comaradiere experienced in our group. In particular, Paul and I had lots of time to think about a new business venture. We're still working on the details and feasibility, so I won't say much about it at this time.

Now the planning starts for next year's trip .. initial thoughts are to the northeast.

Back in the Midwest

2010-08-21T20:52:00.000-05:00

I will not turn this blog into a list of complaints about why it sucks to ride in Minnesota and South Dakota. Instead, I will list the "good things" that happened today.

We woke up in Rapid City, SD. It wasn't raining. The KOA had a $3 pancake breakfast. We had lunch at Subway in Sioux Falls. I arrived safely home to Jenn.

Most scenic byway in the US

2010-08-21T03:20:00.002-05:00

Jeebus this Friday morning was even colder! 41f. But that didn't stop us from making coffee, oatmeal, and hitting the road by 7:30am - when most of the parks' visitors were still in their sleeping bags. This was planned - our escape from yellowstone was hampered only slightly by photographers looking to take advantage of the early morning light shining on a herd of bison and a grizzly waaaay off in the distance.
Our exit was via the northeast Cooke City entrance, then over Beartooth Pass again. This was the fourth time over, and it was the most spectacular yet. With a nearly cloudless sky and cool temps, there was nearly no moisture in the air to create haze. We were able to see mountains on the horizon 50-75 miles away which we couldn't see before. The angle of the morning sun brought out the details and colors shrouded later in the day. The views (and lack of congestion) are magnificent. I took a number of panoramic photos i will upload when I have the means.
It remained cool (below 60f) until we reached Red Lodge. My Skullcandy titans were unable to tame windnoise above 65mph and I decided it was better to protect my hearing and listen to podcasts on one ear.
Our planned lunch stop was at Montana Brewing co. In Billings preceded by a trip to Target to get stuff to make the Titans tolerable: different sized tips and a glue gun. The tip modification was OK until we got to Crow Agency but there still too much wind noise. When we left I-90 for US Hwy 212 I switched to the much quieter but one-side-only Etymotics with hearing aid tips.
212 is shortcut to Spearfish,SD. we reached Rapid City as the sun was setting and checked into a KOA. We thought we had hit the jackpot: the KOA store stocked good beer (New Belgium's Hoptober) and ice cream for dessert. Alas as we cooked dinner the mosquitoes came out in force, making it impossible to be outside. We sucked down the opened brews, wolfed down our soups and retired to our tents before 9pm. To add insult to injury, the increased humidity prevented a comfortable sleep until it had cooled off somewhat. Just another reminder that tomorrow's 600 hot and humid and featureless miles will suck even more.

Mt Washburn

2010-08-19T22:23:00.001-05:00

Crikey it was cold! It was also slopey so I didn't sleep all that great.
We're camped on Canyon Village for a night, then grants village tomorrow night. We really don't want to move so we keep checking for cancellations. By 11am we know if we need to move, and filled the morning with a hike to inspiration point and the north rim trail. When we got back a site and become available - yay!
Unfortunately the new site was on the other side of the campground. Ah well, better than 40 miles away. With some creative use of motorcycles and the car of our neighbor campers we ferried our stuff to our new site.
With that out of the way, we got our hiking stuff together and rode to the Dunraven pass trailhead and hiked up to the Mt Washburn watchtower at 10,423 feet. From there we had an excellent view of the entire park. On our way down it was cold, windy and threatening to rain.
We made it back to our site dry, but it sprinkled a little and we smelled bad so it was time for a shower. Since neither of us like cooking in the rain we has dinner in the lodge ... A tasteless Bozone Amber, a decent (but not great) pork chop, and an unassuming IPA from the Red Lodge brewing co. At least Paul's bison asada was excellent.

Yellowstone

2010-08-19T00:21:00.001-05:00

We slept on the porch again. Such a nice evening that cooled down to the 50's with no humidity (i.e. dew) or bugs made it irresistable. If I slept on our deck in August in Minnesota, the mosquitoes would make me look like a teenager with bad acne and I would be soaked from the dew.

Deb made pancakes while we downloaded fresh podcasts and we were on the road by 10am.

First destination was Pickle Barrel in Bozeman. Instead of taking 289 and I90 we took a longer, more desolate route around the Bridger mountains. This is also the more scenic and curvy route. We even got to see a black bear run across the road!

The Pickel Barrel served up an awesome sammich and ice cream. We also got a second one for dinner. There was a carpet retailer with a sign that said '$37 whole house installation' and a block later another sign proclamed 'we fix $37 installations'

The temps went from 75f to 85f over lunch, and they had reached 91f by Livingston. On the way to Gardner they climbed to 95 with a stiff wind from the north. So stiff, in fact, that it overcame the velcro holding the stitch closed. That had a clip holding the wire to my headphones. The hard tug was enough to sever the cord, and now i only have sound on one side.

Once on the park the temps cooled off. We got a site, ate our Bobcat, found some beer, listened to a ranger talk and went to bed.

Mt Helena

2010-08-18T00:23:00.002-05:00

Instead of going to Yellowstone today, we stayed an extra day on Helena. We climbed Mt Helena and downloaded podcasts and made plans to open our own taproom. I also got a call from work, which proves i am indispensible and the corporation cannot survive without me.
Tomorrow we go to Pickel barrel and Yellowstone.

Re-tracing our tire-tracks

2010-08-17T10:09:00.001-05:00

Another cool morning - especially 4am as I had to get up early to remove some excess beer from my system (bridgeport IPA and Moose Drool). I fell back asleep and didn't wake until 8am. It was still cold (55f).

Coffee, oatmeal, yadda yadda, on the road at 9am. Since we had decided to return to Helena we went north on hwy 95. It wasn't as nice as last week due to construction and an angry Lexis pilot, which means i let him pass by. He can go 20 over the limit and rouse the law on us. None the less, we enjoyed the canyon the second time around.

Once again we experienced the 99 miles of Lolo Pass (highway 12) but this time it was in the sun and not hot with less traffic. Then it was through Missoula to Helena for the night.

Left turn Clyde!

2010-08-16T05:12:00.003-05:00

Our campsite from the night before was on the John Day river, on BLM land and thus cheap and primitive. It was cold in the morning; after coffee and oatmeal we were on our way.
Eastern Oregon is dry. Either high desert or arid juniper forests. Following the river through Kimberly then to Long Creek, there was nearly no traffic this Sunday morning. In Long Creek the GPS said go right. Ok. I did and went five miles before I figured out we should have taken a left on Long Creek. No idea why the Zumo decided to ignore all the via points and take us to Baker city... So we turned around and went up to Ukiah on an extremely scenic and curvey river road.

From Ukiah to Baker City we took the back roads which the GPS thought was gravel... A more recent and accurate map showed it to be paved. At first this turned out to be a barren road through a new forest consisting of mostly sweepers. I took this opportunity to work on my form - getting my shoulders off the centerline of the bike and relaxing my arms. By the time we reached the Anthony Lakes ski area the road had narrowed and was undergoing construction, and we were encountering bicyclists. We followed one for a couple miles and clocked him at 45 mph!
In Baker City we went to the Safeway Bakery for bread, then to Fungs for unorthodox chinese. The egg roll was huge, deep fried several times, and then sliced. It had no flavor other than batter and grease. The sesame chicken was breaded and deep fried too. We were not impressed.
After lunch we rode down to Hells Canyon then up ID71, hugging the Brown Lee lake with constant 25 mph hairpins for ten miles. We stopped to read a plaque about gold mining and a ferry. For some reason we just couldn't get into a rhythm like on California - maybe it was the 94f or how the curves were linked. Maybe is the squaring off of tires, or the cupping or pulsing from the front Avon tire, or lack of feedback from the read Dunlop.
When we got to a rest area we turned right and took a break and set our clocks to mountain time and refilled our camelbacks. Leaving the rest area with a left turn, we had more 25 mph hairpins. For some reason Idaho put up a second set of historical plaques about gold mining and a ferry. Several miles later my GPS indicated I needed to take a u-turn - once again it was confused. We crossed the Snake river and were greeted as we entered Oregon. It wasn't until we passed the utility company barracks that I realized something wasn't right, and Paul confirmed I should have turned RIGHT out of the rest area. Doh! So we turned around and went the right way.

We had a route planned out to go across Idaho which brought us through 95 for a second time, which is fine with me as it is a very nice road, and on this Sunday afternoon traffic was light. Traffic enforcement was heavy though, so we took it easy until we reached the Payette national forest, saw a sign for a campground and followed a road full of coarse gravel to a secluded camp. No showers today either, but I can't smell myself yet, despite two hot days of riding.
After dinner we discussed tomorrow's route and realized were within an easy day's riding of the Pickle Barrel... And also Helena, where Chuck, Deb Jim and Ab were. We decided to make a stop on Helena tomorrow night and push the Grand Tetons stop out a day. That would mean we would ride hwy 12 over Lolo pass again, but that is no punishment.

Homeward Bound

2010-08-15T12:14:00.002-05:00

With one week left of our trip, we climbed aboard the bikes and pointed them east. We were going to ride with Ron for a couple days, so we met at his place and he served up flaky biscuits and copious amounts of sausage gravy.
First we rode 224 to Detroit. This is always a great road, despite the elevated levels of lake traffic. Once in Detroit I was happy to see the reservoir was full - when we were here in March it was nearly dry.

Next we rode down to 242 and up to the lava fields, then to Sisters for lunch and gas. The temps were climbing into the 90s and no cloud in sight.
After lunch it was through Prineville, Spray and Kimberly. The terrain is more like the arid southwest than anything else, with few trees and little green. Traffic is light. At the end of the day we stopped at a campsite along the John Day river.

Another day in Portland

2010-08-14T01:35:00.001-05:00

And a hot one at that.

We took the Max from our hotel to Rose's Deli on 23rd for breakfast, then went up to Washington park and hiked back down. Lunch, coffee, some shopping, etc all occurred as the temps rose towards 90f. Since the humidity was low it was quite comfortable. We were going to get sushi for dinner, but ended up at Typhoon (thai) instead, followed by a movie at the mcmenamin's mission pub.

Did you think we went without beer? We had a beer and a sampler at Deschutes. The IPA with Citra hops was excellent. This is a new breed of hops, it tastes like a tangerine with a strong chipotle smokiness. Of the sampler, all the brews were excellent, but the black butte XXII really stood out. This brew had strong oveetones of chocolate, dark chocolate and nibs, orange zest, and some spicey peppers. Truly an exceptional beer!

Windy Ridge

2010-08-13T09:45:00.012-05:00

Behind Mt St Helens is Windy Ridge and there are a ton of great roads back there, so Paul and I met in Randle for lunch and rode them roads.

Unfortunately the roads have deteriorated. There are sunken grades all over the place, including the corners, which made sport riding dangerous so we took it easy. I even had to dial back compression damping to deal with it.
The weather, however, was spectacular. The morning started overcast, then as I rounded Mt. Rainier it cleared up to reveal the giant in all it's glory.

As we headed up forest road 90 a black sportbike flew past us in a corner. we continued to the Spirit lake lookout.
Half an hour later we retraced FR90 to FR25 and saw someone telling us to slow down. Then we noticed a black motorcycle in several parts, and people helping a body on the ground. There was a guy in an orange vest with a walkie talkie ...
In a way I felt guilty just riding by, but since I lacked any EMT knowledge, and they had the communinations facilities, there wasn't much I could do, so I got out of the way.
After a short ride we arrived at Ape Cave, which is a lava tunnel. However, once we descended we discovered our headlamps were crappy and we were unable see our toes much less the cave around us.
Once back in Portland we showered up and headed over to India House for dinner. As usual their tandoori halibut was excellent!
Back in February Rob and I managed to hit four brewpubs in one day. Then Chuck and I did five. Paul and I decided to raise the bar, but by midnight we were only at five. Most interesting was Tugboat and the sour brown they served. Not sure I liked it... It tasted like an uncarbonated Moose Drool with a lot of grapefruit zest added.

Sundry Day

2010-08-10T21:13:00.003-05:00

Not much going on today (Tuesday). Picked up the bike from Fred's Honda, and they even cleaned it! This is the first Dunlop I've run since a d220 I had years ago. The new RoadSmart has to better than the Avon junk I had on the rear, which lasted less than 5000 miles and 4 of 5 front Avons I have mounted have been defective after 2000 miles.
Then it was a quick ride north to Portland for a Santa fe Taquiero caribbean seafood burrito, and on to McChord AFB to visit Jenn working there for a week.

Cat Pee

2010-08-09T23:38:00.002-05:00

Today was not very interesting. Firat we had a good ride down 199 to Crescent City, then 101 north to Waldport. That's where we picked up 34 to Corvallis - a wonderfully twisty bit of tarmac. However, it was ruined by too much traffic.
In Corvallis I dropped off my bike to get a new rear tire... the Avon Storm only has 4500 miles on it and fading fast ... I usually get 8,000 to 10,000 miles out of a rear. The front is wearing funny, but has enough to get me home. So far, four of five Avon's I have mounted have been defective... What can I say, they are crap and I will not buy another.
Oh... Cat pee... We're sharing a Ninkasi Total Domination IPA - good in all respects except that the simcoe hops they uses make it smell like stale cat pee. Time to open the Abyss.

Rode a buncha roads today

2010-08-08T23:57:00.002-05:00

And then I wrote a buncha words for my blog too. Then I got a text message which interrupted my composition and I lost it all. So i woll just say this:
We rode hwy 36 to 3 to Yreka where Chuck split off and went to Corvallis. Then Paul and I went west on 96, north on 41 into Oregon, back to Cali on 199, and found a campground for the night.

A Taste of whats to come

2010-08-08T23:30:00.002-05:00

A cool morning greeted us, and that was the point: to get up early and ride through the desert before it got hot. From Burns to its Junction, then south on 395 the temps stayed below 60. The problem was that we were dressed for a warm day and were a bit cold.
Wagontire is a 'town' in Oregon which is slowly going to dust. I went through it eight years ago on my first sport-touring ride in the pacific northwest, back when someone lived there, sold us gas and let us use the bathroom, while informing us Wagontire was for sale, including the international airport. The town itself is just a couple buildings.
Continuing across the desert we passed cinder cones, alkali lakes and the Abert rim. By 10am we had reached Alturas, were out of the desert, and hungry so we grabbed breakfast at what used to be the Black Bear diner. Great breakfast!
Since we had made such good progress today, we decided to continue to the coast. That means hwy 299! Long one of my favorites, this road from Redding to Euraka is over one hundreds miles of sweepers, twisties, mountains, perfect pavement and 55 mph speed limit, and it is challenging to maintain that pace.
The end of the road came at a campground in Fortuna. To get there we had to go through Eureka, and that appears to be the home of wierdos. The people we saw were either scruffy hippie-wanna-bes, Che Geuvara emulators, homeless, or deranged. Perhaps a combo of them all.
So anyway, the campground was nice and right next to the Eel river brewpub. Besides sampling their beer (the Triple Exultation was excellent - aged in a whiskey barrel) the food was excellent too. Paul and I ate too much of our smoked tri-tip sandwhi hes, while Chuck ate saltines.

On the edge of whitespace

2010-08-08T00:18:00.002-05:00

Friday night there was anger in the sky. The clouds argued and rumbled, lashing out at each other with bursts of lightning. With the arrival of the sun it had simmered to a discussion with occasional outbursts of spittle.
Oatmeal. Coffee. Pack tents, go ride. Today we rode highway 12 across Idaho, in the footsteps of Merriwether and William 206 years ago. I feel sorry for them - they didn't have 99 miles of smooth twisty tarmac. Then again, they didn't have a community organizer for a president.
At Kooskia we had a decision to make: go north through a very hot and direct route to Portland, or go south to Hell's Canyon.

We went south. But then after some discussion and looking at timing with friends in Portland, we decided to continue south, all the way to Ontario, Oregon. On the way we enjoyed a very curvy six miles of highway before laying tracks on Hwy 95. Hot 95. 95f. The highway snakes along the Salmon river, bringing us to Riggins for an elk sammich.
We entered eastern Oregon at Ontario on hwy 20. This roads goes into the wilderness, over some mountains, and traverses the northern edge of whitespace until Burns. Whitespace. Go look at a map of Oregon. Look at the southeastern corner. Hwy 20 to the north, 95 to the east, 395 to the west. South? Nevada. I-80. A great big whitespace in there. 68 miles of hillocks and buttes, streams and marshes, and one home with junk strewn about. And 97f.
Harney county calls most of the whitespace 'home'. Despite occupying 20÷ of Oregon, there are about 2400 registered voters. I don't know why they bother ... Benton an Multnomah counties dictate politics in this state and I bet most of those votera couldn't tell you where Frenchglen is.

As we approached Burns the temps dropped quickly into the 60's and we pulled into the first campground we saw, and paid $29 for site - turns out there was no picnic table there, but they did have showers. No table means no stove which means MRE before sleep.

No pictures?

2010-08-07T00:13:00.000-05:00

There are no pictures on my blog because I cannot upload them from my phone. When I get access to a computer I will go back and insert some ... but Paul can add photos to his blog, so head on over to his blog too - there's a link to it on the left. I mean right.

Purple Mountain Majesty

2010-08-07T00:12:00.001-05:00

The crisp clear mountain air was a pleasure to wake to. With the sun rising in the east, no shadows hid the peaks to the west.
The Moores from Wabasha had offered to percolate coffee for us so we did everything we normally would, except make coffee, which we enjoyed at their site. After that we rode west on the Going To The Sun Highway. Today the mountains were spectacular, with nary a cloud to obscure them. There was some traffic and construction.

From Glacier NP we had planned to go north and spend a day hiking at lake louise. However, the forecast indicated clouds which means we wouldn't be able to see much. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain there, and we had planned a hike, so that would have been a wash. Besides, Paul still has blisters and my muscles are still sore from yesterday's six hour hike.
Therefore we went south instead. First along the western shore of Flathead lake, then south on 93, with the Mission Mountains as backdrop the entire way.
When Lewis Clark crossed Idaho they followed the Clearwater river. So did we. Whereas they sought the Pacific Passage with a mandate from president Thomas Jefferson, 200 years later we sought scenery and twisty roads. They did not succeed; we did.

Highway 12 starts south of Missoula, Montana and follows the Clearwater river nearly all the way across Idaho. On the Montana side of Lolo pass the road is steep, curvey and the speed limit is 70 mph. The only detriment is that it was freshly chipsealed. The chipseal does not continue on the Idaho side of the pass, and neither does the speed limit (it goes down to 50mph). This continues for 99 miles!
But we needed to shower, and the only campgrounds are national forest service which means they don't have showers. However, the lolo pass campground is next to Lochsa Lodge where we paid a small fee for showers. We also had beer and cooked up chili, broke bread, and polished it off with Norwegian candy (seigmenn) sent along by mother.
The mosquitoes fierce so we retired (ie. wimped out) early to our tents. Not long after, a thunderstorm passed overhead, dropping copious amounts of water as I fell asleep.

Ugh

2010-08-07T00:11:00.004-05:00

5:30 came too early. 9:00am would have been too early too, those imperial IPAs last night were that good. But we wanted a campsite at swiftcurrent in glacier and it usually fills by noon, so 5:30 it is.
No oatmeal today. We had pickle barrel leftovers... Just to give you an idea of the sandwich size, half a sandwich is good for two meals. We needed the energy cuz when we left the house at 7am it 58f, it got colder, especially in the exceptionally scenic wolf creek canyon. We stopped to add more layers when it became apparent it was not going to get warmer and the pregnant clouds might deliver.
Back on the road (287 now) Paul noticed Something fly off my bike and didn't think much of it. Then a plastic bag flew off, which prompted him to pass me and pull over and tell me what he saw. I checked my stuff and sure enough, the side pocket of the motofizz bag was open ... Right where i keep my hearing aids. The $5000 aids were gone!
We turned around. As I slowed to get the plastic bag, Paul sped on to where the aids flew off. In the meantime I was thinking about insurance, managing without, getting a new pair, etc. As I reached where Paul was walking through the grass, he bent over and found the white plastic jar I keep the aids in. Whew!
Back on the road to Glacier. We gassed up in Augusta where some friends had a cabin. We passed (slowly) through the Blackfeet reservation where there was a dead horse on the shoulder. Browning came and went. The roads got progressively more twisty, however the road got bumpier too. Besides, the dreary weather and clouds hiding the mountain put a damper on my spirits.
Arrival at St Mary's was welcome. More clothes and less pee was in order followed by a discussion on where to eat. Turns out some friends from Wabasha are camping in Glacier too, with their kids, so we visit with them and decide to stay in the same campground as them. The only problem is that all are full. In fact, some were full at 8am! All the lodges were full too. At any rate we needed food so we lunched at the Park Cafe (two thumbs up!) Our friends offered us to put our tents on their site, but when we arrived there were empty sites so we got our site. YAAY!

The remainder of the day was spent well. We took a shuttle and hiked most of the way to Virginia Falls before dinner, then off to bed.