Will's Blog

"Enough"

2007-11-08T01:48:00.000-08:00

Breaking with the travel-blog tradition to link to an interesting speech by the founder of the Vanguard Group, of all folks: "Enough". Crystallizes some thoughts on the value or lack thereof of a predominantly finance-based economy, with bonus prophetic quotes from John Maynard Keynes!

“When enterprise becomes a mere bubble on a whirlpool of speculation,” as the great British economist John Maynard Keynes warned us 70 years ago, the consequences may be dire. “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job of capitalism is likely to be ill-done.”

Hawaii trip, 2007-04-21

2007-04-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day working and playing with Lauren's lovely family.

Lauren and I had breakfast at Grammy's, where she cooked us French toast with Hawaiian sweet bread (extra-sweet! delicious...), and Portuguese sausage. Enjoyed seeing the artwork and all the family keepsakes at Grammy's house.
Then it was on to Donna and Robin's, where Lauren and I helped plant 3 new trees and pull some weeds. We had to be dragged away from our weed buckets after the OCD kicked in ("must ... remove ... ALL ... weeds ...."). After gardening, we had some down-time before heading to the Iolani Family fair for the late afternoon and early evening.

Both Robin and Lauren went to Iolani High, and the fair was a mixture of reunion, community event, and fundraiser as far as I could tell. Robin was in his element, cooking up ribs with his high school classmates in the rib tent. I wish we could have stayed longer, but after snarfing as many ribs as we could, we had to rush away to catch our flight.

The usual whirlwind of baggage, bureaucracy, and bon voyage followed, depositing us safely on a redeye back to San Francisco, and eventually, back home in Strongbadia.

What a trip! I can't wait to visit Hawaii again (hopefully sometime soon).

Aloha.

Hawaii trip, 2007-04-20

2007-04-20T11:28:00.001-07:00

Lauren and I started the day off properly: with surfing on Waikiki beach! I had some trouble at first, but Lauren assured me that anyone could surf as long as the board was big enough. After paying the extra $5 to rent a 10-foot, boat-sized board, I was a natural. I stood up 5 times, 2 of which were legitimately long rides. I asked Lauren whether I should cut the ride short to reduce the time I'd have to spend paddling back out. She replied that the people who were really good do that, but for newbies like us, the successful rides would be so few and far between that we should take full advantage when we do catch a good wave.

After surfing, Lauren and I walked around the corner to a casual, Thai-fusion-y place called Keoni for lunch. My Thai food was really good, and Lauren's grilled cheese was scrumptious as only a morning paddling a surfboard can make it.

At this point, Lauren and Albert split off to go horseback riding in a beautiful state park near the sets of LOST and Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, I went to the Ko' Olina resort with Bill, Kate, Dan, Matt, Maricia, where I did some good reading (Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami -- thanks for the recommendation, Albert!).

We met back up for an early dinner with Lauren's extended family at the Golden Dragon, a formal Chinese restaurant. Matt reported the "best lemon chicken he'd had in his life," and others were similarly enthusiastic. There was a weekly fireworks display every Friday evening, which we caught just as dinner was ending.

After dinner, we had a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of the the Wakiki Beachwalk, which is the development project Donna has been working on for years. The tour took us to a closed-off rooftop for a great aerial view, among other places. There was some confusion at one point ("Where's Kung Kung?!") but we all emerged unscathed and impressed with the scope of Waikiki development.

After the tour, Robin joined "the kids" (minus Matt and Maricia) for drinks at the Lewers Lounge. A really classy piano bar with a dress code and great live music. Hawk had been looking for this place for the entire trip; it was a perfect spot to end our evening.

Hawaii trip, 2007-04-19

2007-04-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

Lauren, Hawk, and I started the morning with breakfast at The Treehouse in Waikiki. This was a second-story loft with all walls open to the air. A stoner dude in a Big Lebowski t-shirt looked surprised to see customers, and was a bit flummoxed at each step in the transaction, but hey, we were all on island time by this point. We eventually got our light breakfasts and sipped our tea slowly on another sunny day.

The main event today was the scuba diving trip I'd put together. Lauren and I were already scuba certified, but the other 7 people got a crash course in dive safety:
On the dives, we saw lots of tropical fish, colorful coral, and giant moray eels. Lauren and I saw three sea turtles, swimming just a few feet from our faces. They were slow, graceful, and timeless somehow. Lauren later said that she'd felt like she was in the presence of something holy. It was really amazing to see them swimming out in the wild, and to be swimming right there alongside them, 30 feet under the water.

Sadly, the scuba trip was not all roses: 2 of the 9 of us ended up not diving, and seasickness was pretty rampant on our small boat in the big waves. And I got a "Hawaiian tattoo" from a sea urchin (stung a bit). But even so, most of our party seemed to enjoy having a new experience.
We took a short rest after scuba before walking 30 minutes down the road for dinner at Ono Hawaiian Food. Terrific! The amount of pork in the Hawaiian diet makes me wonder if the island was originally settled by folks from the South. (Not that I'm complaining). I also confirmed that I really, really don't like poi, which was an irksome thing to admit, but I might as well be up-front about it. Apparently, the more hardcore you are, the more fermented (e.g., rotten?) you like your poi. Our day-old poi was definitely tingling in my mouth a bit. Here's a picture of Bill waiting outside the restaurant (did I mention it was BYOB?):
Inertia was strong as we walked back toward Waikiki with heavy stomachs. We stopped for a breather at the Hyatt overlooking the water. Then after searching for a new spot for a while, we fell back on the tried-and-true Duke's for drinks before bed.

Hawaii trip, 2007-04-18

2007-04-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone slept in this morning. Lauren and I walked across the street for a late and lazy breakfast at the Sheraton Moana Surfrider. (Eggs, fruit, French toast, and coconut syrup!)
The group then reassembled. Hawk decided to do his own thing today. Bill and Kate split off to have their first solid alone-time since getting engaged on Sunday the 15th. The rest of us (Albert, Dan, Matt, Maricia, Lauren, and me) hopped in the van and headed toward the North Shore. Lauren directed us to take the scenic route up Oahu's east coast, which was breathtaking.

The authentic hole-in-the-wall Hawaiian lunch spot we were shooting for turned out to be closed, so we decided to press on. It was at this point that our driver, Dan Fingal, earned the Citizen of the Year award. We were cruising along the highway, and right behind us, a car pulled out into another car, causing an accident. Without a moment's hesitation, Dan pulled off at the next parking lot (for a beach of course), and ran back to the scene of the accident. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Dan stayed on the scene to give his report to the police, and all was well. Go, Dan!

Incidentally, the beach where we'd swerved to a stop was gorgeous, with high, focused waves and some very brave boogy-boarders (local boys, all).
We eventually stopped for lunch at Haleiwa Joe's, a moderately famous tourist restaurant that Lauren had never tried. It overlooked a marina and served (apparently) amazing seafood. I've been asked to specially note the "amazing crab!" and the "moist fish!" Artichoke appetizer and my turkey burger were also very tasty.

After lunch, we went to Waimea Bay, which Lauren called "possibly my favorite place on Earth." The bay was very beautiful, with clear, blue water, perfect sand, and stark rocks marking the edges of the beach. We found ourselves in something of a wind tunnel on this particular day, with some serious sand-blasting and some rain blowing down from up the mountain. But even if it was difficult to get serious beach reading done, Waimea Bay is still a place and a feeling that I'll remember for a long time, a place to which I'm eager to return.
After an hour or two in the sun, wind, and rain, where else could we go but Matsumoto's Shave Ice? An obligatory North Shore stop that claims the world's best shave ice, we had to give it a try. We all agreed that it was tasty, but not as good as Lauren's hometown favorite, Island Snow. Maricia pronounced "too much azuki bean at the bottom." Great t-shirts, though, and pictures on the wall of every celebrity that had ever visited the North Shore, shave ice in hand...

After shave ice, it was getting near sunset. We drove a short distance to Haleiwa State Beach, where we watched the sun set over the water.Night having fallen, we took the quick, less scenic route back to Honolulu, where we freshened up at the hotel. The North Shore group stuck together for dinner at the posh Japanese restaurant, Sansei. My vegetarian sushi was great, as was my sake sampler.

Hawaii trip, 2007-04-17

2007-04-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

After a good night's sleep, our cabin full of snoring hikers woke just after sunrise. We ate a hearty breakfast of chocolate pancakes and SPAM (a Hawaiian favorite), and then went spent a few minutes exploring a lava tube. A lava tube is a kind of cave formed after an eruption. Lava closer to the air cools first and hardens into a shell, while the lava in the interior keeps flowing. Eventually, you're left with just the hard, outer shell: a lava tube:
The cave was very spacious, and we walked about a hundred yards in. No one could resist singing the Indiana Jones theme song.

After the tube, we set off on the hike out of Haleakala.

Today's hike was a shorter distance (around 4 miles), but was much more intense. We spent the morning trudging up switchbacks in rain and mist. The fog was probably a blessing at times, since it tended to cover the sheer drop below.
After finally reaching the top and collecting both cars together, we drove to peak a few hundred yards away, which was home to the highest point on Maui and to the telescope that Robin's currently working on.
We got a guided tour of the guts of the telescope. With so many engineers in the group, there was lots of interest. (We had to drag Kate away).
After the telescope, we had an afternoon to kill before catching our flight back to Oahu. We headed into a small town where it proved surprisingly hard to find food and drink, but eventually persevered at a small, slow tea shop. Dan pronounced the sushi "delicious," and the waitress "tasty."

Mindful of the trouble on the flight from Oahu to Maui, we arrived at the Maui airport early for the return flight, and breezed right onto the plane. Lauren had encouraged us all to embrace the thought of "flying stinky," which we did with aplomb, having not seen a shower since we landed on Maui.

After checking back in at the Beachcomber on Waikiki, a small, hungry contingent walked across the street to Duke's. It's touristy, but hey, we're tourists! The beach food and rummy drinks really hit the spot after a long day on the move. We enjoyed our late dinner on the patio right next to the beach, waves brushing the shore a few feet away, unseen under the new moon.

From Holua cabin, Haleakala Crater, Maui

2007-04-17T05:57:00.000-07:00

[Written in my handy notepad, which later took an unplanned dip in the Pacific...]

We're more than three days into our Hawaii trip, and this is the first spare minute I've had to put pen to paper. I take this as a sign that we're having a very fun (and busy!) time.

We arrived in Honolulu early on the evening of Saturday, the 14th. Lauren's mother, Donna, was at the airport to greet us with smiles and lots of leis.

With checked luggage quickly in hand and with our rental van procured, we met up with Robin and went straight to Lauren's first dinner choice: Zippy's. She described it as "like Denny's, but tastier and more ghetto."

At Zippy's, Bill was delighted to discover that the stories he'd heard about Hawaiians and SPAM were true. But at the end, the pull of the Chili Loco Moco proved too strong for Bill, Albert, and me. Chili Loco Moco... Start with enough white rice to make a meal, and put it in a bowl. Then comes the obligatory layer of mayonnaise. Top this with a burger and gravy and you've got loco moco. Replace the gravy with meaty chili and you've got Chili Loco Moco.
We all felt a little sick afterward.

From there, it was straight to the Beachcomber hotel in Waikiki for some deliciously jetlagged sleep. The time change worked in our favor the next morning, when we all found it took much less effort than usual to "do the Ben Franklin" and be early to rise. Lauren and I walked along a mostly empty Waikiki beach just after sunrise and dipped our toes into the clear, blue Pacific.
We met up with the group at 8:30 and drove to breakfast at another childhood favorite of Lauren's, the Koa Pancake House, which she described as "kind of like Zippy's." (How is this girl so thin?!) We feasted on pancakes, waffles, and a Portuguese pork dish that tastes like equal parts pork and vinegar. Very similar to Dad's favorite kind of BBQ, actually.

From there, we went shopping for beach supplies, spending an hour bouncing between bookstores, surf shops, and similar. It was at this point that I finally noticed the diamond ring on Kate's left hand. She and Bill had taken a walk along the beach that morning as well, where Bill popped the question! We spent a lot of the day congratulating the two lovebirds.
After our shopping spree, we went to Lauren's lovely home in Kailua, where Donna and Robin were ready to greet us. After saying hi to the family dog, and looking at all sorts of embarrassing old childhood pictures, we threw on our swimsuits and drove to a gorgeous beach about a mile away. The water and sand were amazing. We were on Oahu's windward side, and it lived up to its name, with a strong wind making conditions perfect for bodysurfing (and difficult to do much else).

After a couple of hours on the beach, our smiling, sun-pink, wind-blasted crew drove to Lauren's favorite shave ice spot, Island Snow. (I recommend Snozberry/Lime, with a scoop of ice cream at the bottom). Then, it was home to Lauren's for showers and dinner. Lauren's paternal grandmother, Grammy, showed us how to make our own sushi:
...and Lauren's maternal grandfather, Kung Kung, brought the party with singing, dancing, harmonica, and lots of stories:
Dinner was delicious, and at this point the arc of the trip became clear: I was to be fattened up.

Well, all right then.

When no one could eat another bite, we said our goodnights and returned to the hotel to pack for our trip to Maui.

We met in the lobby on the morning of 4/16 at 5:45a.m, still not too difficult for people on California time. There was a lot of confusion and a close squeeze at the airport, but we and our bags made it to Maui in the end.

We stopped to pick up bento lunches and then drove straight up to Haleakala, parking a stone's throw from the big telescopes, at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet. Robin and I dropped one car off at the end of the trail, then returned to the trailhead where everyone took a sunscreen bath before starting off.
The hike to the cabin was seven and a half miles through volcanic landscape. I guess I would call it more moonscape than landscape. Ochers and blacks fought and faded into one another. Jagged rocks scattered over the flatlands, Zen-like. Otherworldly plants (silverswords) threw their startlingly silver stalks toward the sky:
And the clouds beneath us hid an enormous cliff in the distance, looking like nothing so much as the end of the world.
We finally arrived at the cabin, with just enough daylight left to do a quick Waltons impression (Dan chopped the onions, Bill boiled the water, Albert and I lit the wood-fire stove, etc.). After a pasta dinner and a few minutes of the most breathtaking stargazing of my life, we all turned in.
It's now 7a.m., and the bustling sounds of breakfast and packing are all around me. Today, we'll hike four miles up switchbacks on a lush, green ridge. Aloha.

Paris / San Francisco Travel Log 2007-01-02

2007-01-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

Black holes are all fundamentally identical. You can completely describe a given black hole by stating its mass, spin, position, and orientation. That's it. So they're like electrons. Or plane trips.

My plane trip was from Paris directly to SFO.

Departure: 35 minutes late at 10:50am, Paris time.
Arrival: 80 minutes late at 2:15pm, San Francisco time.
Total flight duration: 12 hours, 25 minutes.
Length of my lanky body: 6 feet, 7 inches (or 2 meters if you're so inclined).

There are only three things to note about this trip in prose, then:

I didn't really believe Dad when he talked about Charles de Gaul airport before the trip, but now I'm convinced. It's not just a bad airport. It's not just the worst airport that happens to exist right now. It's the worst of all possible airports. It's some kind of anti-Platonic form of an airport. But hey, I eventually got on my plane. :)
Business or first-class seats have been a decadent luxury in my mind since I can remember. They were just a means for suckers to toss their money away. Honest, smart, frugal folk would never bother with them. However, I've decided that I'm an honest, smart, frugal guy who's taller than Michael Jordan, and the next time I fly across an ocean, you'll find me up front if there's any way I can afford it.
Planes are still amazing. I was in Paris, France. And then 12 hours later I was in San Francisco, California. It's easy to forget that this is probably the greatest time and place in history to be alive.

Since this has ended up being a travel blog, I guess I'll sign off now. Until my next trip then, thanks for reading, and au revior.

Paris Travel Log 2007-01-01

2007-01-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

After eating a quick and tasty breakfast, we headed toward the two chosen sights for our last day in Paris: Notre Dame and St. Chapelle. Both would be repeats for me from my earlier stint in Paris this month, but I was happy to revisit them.

Sadly, it was not to be. The holiday crowds had formed a line to get into Notre Dame that stretched all the way out of the large square in front of the cathedral. The presence of such a line also sent an ominous signal about what the crowd would be like inside Notre Dame. Since we'd all been in the cathedral before, we decided to give it a miss and move on to St. Chapelle.

Nathan had been waiting for a sunny day to go visit St. Chapelle, and on this early New Year's afternoon, we finally had one. However, as we drew close to the chapel's entrance, we were again worried by the line, or more accurately, by the absence of a line. We all guessed what we would find as we rounded the corner: the dreaded ferme sign. Ah, well. One more good reason to come back to Paris someday.

We split into two groups, with Anna and Nathan going the nap route. Lauren and I headed to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore by the banks of the Seine. Very small, very hip, very City Lights. The staff apparently get free board upstairs (and minimal pay) as long as they read a book a day and are writing something. We spent an hour there, partly because I was indecisive about plane reading, and partly because I was just so happy to be around so much English text after more than two weeks in France.

We met back up with Anna and Nathan for an early dinner. Nathan had really wanted to head to Montmartre before we all left Paris, and so we jumped onto the metro for the long ride up to the Abbesses station. Station had been closed for renovation until very recently, and renovations obviously weren't complete. I commented to Lauren that it reminded me of stories of London tube stations used as bomb shelters during WWII. Also worth noting was the spiral staircase we hiked up to get out of the station, which gave no indication of its Dante-esque proportions to the unwary traveler.

Since it was before 7:30pm, many Paris restaurants were not yet open for dinner. So we killed some time with an unplanned stop at the Chapel of St. John right next to the Abbesses station. Church had a red brick facade and more modern feel, but still had many Gothic accents like all the other churches we'd visited in France. Interesting.

From there, we started walking up the steep hill, toward a cluster of guidebook-recommended restaurants. Along the way, we passed the fruit shop that featured prominently in the movie Amelie (a fact that you can't miss, since the shop has dozens of newspaper clippings mentioning it as being featured prominently in the movie Amelie). Anna was tickled and wanted a picture; Nathan was embarrassed and wanted to keep pretending he was a Frenchman and not a tourist. You can guess how that turned out:Finally, we made it to La Maison Rose, a small, quiet bistro where the food was French, but was lighter and simpler than much of the fare we'd had so far. Very tasty onion soup, pastas, chicken, and cheese. Even a slightly gruff waiter couldn't bring down our spirits.

Lauren and I had an early morning of trains, plains, and automobiles ahead of us, so we skipped the hike up to the Sacre Coeur church and instead went straight back to the metro after dinner, marveling as we walked at the crystal-clear view of the city lights below. What a relaxed and relaxing way to end our stay here.

Thanks to everyone who helped plan the trip, who joined us in France, and who sent good wishes from far away. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone.

Paris Travel Log 2006-12-31

2007-01-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

We began the morning with the Rue Mouffetard market just a stone’s throw from the hotel. On each morning except Monday, the entire street gives way to vendors hawking fruit, bread, cheese, seafood, and most other things you could imagine. It looked like a supercharged Whole Foods had been turned inside-out and dropped onto a narrow street in the heart of Paris. Lauren picked up some fruit and we all ate some pain chocolat to tide us over.We then looped back to the hotel to pick up Anna, who’d been feeling under the weather earlier, and it was officially time for Second Breakfast. We walked to the nearby La Contrescarpe café, where I had an omelet and the others stuck to pastries of various kinds.

From there, we walked to the day’s main stop, the Pompidou Centre. This is to modern art (post-1905) what the Louvre is to classical and renaissance art. The museum itself had a controversial design where all the ductwork and such are on the outside. Looked just like a Borg cube to me. Inside, we found that the Pompidou is much like the Louvre in another important way: it’s just too big to take in one gulp. Anna and Nathan, getting hungry, put on the jets and ended up speeding through the museum faster than Lauren and me. So we planned to meet up afterward at a certain bridge on the Seine, which made me feel like a Cold War spy. Which was awesome.

Anyway, the museum contained some art that disturbed, some that intrigued, and much that just confused. I was partial to the Robert Rauschenberg collection that we saw first. We each had our favorites, but all agreed that the massive Yves Klein exhibition was our least favorite (big, blank, blue canvasses; nude women spraypainted as a string orchestra played a single, sustained note; a self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing artist … really, it was like a spoof of modern art).We left the museum around 4pm, and after meeting on the bridge we headed to a nearby creperie for some food to tide us over until our late dinner. We were trying to pace ourselves so that we’d be awake and excited for midnight. The crepes were tasty and wonderfully soporific. We all headed back to the hotel afterward to nap and gather our strength.

After waking up, we drank one of Dad’s going-away bottles of wine in Anna and Nathan’s room (a bit of New Year’s Eve pre-partying; thanks, Dad!). And then we took to the streets to find a late dinner around 8pm. We ended up going back to the Rue Mouffetard that had been so lively in the morning, and found that our top choices from Lonely Planet Paris were sadly ferme. Undaunted, we looked at all the lively activity around us and decided to choose a place at random. So we walked into Sushiko, and I can honestly say that there could have been no better choice in the world.

Sushiko served cheap, plentiful, and absolutely delicious Japanese food. And they had plenty of vegetarian options for the seafood-impaired (me). And they let us crack open the bottle of wine that Anna had brought along, with no corkage fee. And they had the best desserts we’d tasted so far. And they gave us some free sake as we ended the meal well after 11pm, just to say merci and bon annee (“Happy New Year”). They left loyalty cards with our check (“buy 9 meals, get one free”), and we all bemoaned our Tuesday departure. Otherwise, we’d certainly be making some trips back to Sushiko.

Leaving the restaurant, we had only minutes to spare before 2007. We hustled to the small roundabout at the Place de la Contrescarpe, which Hemingway once overlooked from his Paris apartment. We caught our breath, grabbed café tables, and got hold of some beer just in time to toast the new year.I’m not usually one to assume that everything will “just work out,” but honestly, I couldn’t have planned this night better if I’d tried.

Hello, 2007. Bonne année.

Provence / Paris travel log 2006-12-30

2006-12-30T15:41:00.000-08:00

The magic TGV train whisked us away from Provence and back to Paris early this morning. Nathan, Anna, Lauren, and I said our goodbyes to the rest of the group (flying home today), then heard the echoes vanish in Doppler shift and wind.

Aboard the train, we hashed out tentative New Year’s plans and slept. Mainly, we slept.

From the Paris train station, it was a short cab ride to our hotel, the Hotel des Nations St. Germain. Our rooms are cozy but clean, the lady at the front desk is really friendly, and the location in the heart of the Latin Quarter is a big hit with Nathan.

All of us were overloaded on French food, so we decided to go ethnic, choosing a Vietnamese place recommended in my Lonely Planet Paris travel guide. Food was light, crisp, and delicious – just what we were hoping for.After lunch, Lauren wasn’t feeling quite right, so she and I returned to the hotel to nap, while Anna and Nathan made their pilgrimage to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore.

After waking, Lauren and I took to the streets, enjoying the noticeably warmer weather and wandering without much purpose. Paris is a city that rewards romantic aimlessness, and we ended up carrying roses, apples, and large smiles into the café where we ducked for coffee.

As we’d agreed earlier, we met Nathan and Anna back at the hotel at 7pm. Continuing our rebellion against French food, we walked to a nearby North African / Moroccan place. The atmosphere and food were perfect: geometric tiles covering the walls, stewed meats, dates, honey, almonds; hookah bar in front, restaurant in back. Again, just what we wanted.We tried to round out the night with a jazz club visit, but our first choice was closed. After walking further to option #2, we found that there was a cover charge and that Nathan wasn’t feeling quite right. So we said au revior till tomorrow, Anna and Nathan walking home, and Lauren and I heading in for some jazz.

As I write this on my ever-handy notepad, Lauren and I are leaning back in Le Petit Journal St.-Michel, sipping our kir, while in the air above us the sounds of keyboard and bass, clarinet and drum mingle with the half-drunk French and the cigarette smoke. An old man is smiling at me. Life is good.

Provence / Paris Travel Log 2006-12-30 (Lauren)

2006-12-30T10:08:00.000-08:00

Paris Jazz Club: Le Petit Journal

Here is how to listen to Parisian music. Will sits beside me writing the events of the day. We found a jazz club in the Latin quarter playing rolling jazz -- the big, jolly kind. We are drinking kir and the bubbles are rising in crisp sizzles off my tongue.

The woman in front of us wears a thin blue sweaters and the puckers from her bra spread across her back. She is a tiny woman and rounded and softened with her age -- she is moving her shoulders in time to the music. At another booth, a handsome American in a yellow t-shirt loudly tells his friends about the German girl that married his buddy, and in another booth a young woman on a date strokes her young man's hair.

The woman sitting at the table next to us is drunk. She laughs loudly in French and stands to undo the top button of her pants. Will is comforting and warm in his cashmere sweater, and I am luxuriating against the solid mass of his chest. His arm drapes over me and I am blissful beneath the indolent arc.

Provence travel log 2006-12-29

2006-12-29T14:28:00.001-08:00

We left the house early this morning to make the longish drive to the Pont du Gard. This famous Roman aqueduct was the largest of its kind. They began construction in 16 BC, erecting a structure only 2 yards shorter than Rome’s coliseum. Of course, the really amazing thing is that the Pont du Gard has stood for 2,000 years, surviving countless floods, wars, and even stone theft (medieval construction workers couldn’t resist the perfectly cut stones). The pictures really speak for themselves:Afterward, Nathan, Anna, and Mom split off to go wine-tasting and cheese-tasting in some nearby villages. Sam, Dee, Lauren, Dad, and I went the other way to see the Palace of the Pope. After parking near the palace, we first grabbed lunch at L’Isle Sonnante, which was listed in Dad’s guidebook as a cozy, rustic place for a bite. It was so small that they couldn’t even seat us all together, so Lauren and I unintentionally got a romantic lunch date out of the deal. Our main course was pork stew, polenta, and a smattering of veggies. For dessert, I had a chocolate terrine with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. Chocolate terrine is apparently French for “a big pile of the best chocolate you’ve ever tasted.” I shared half with Lauren, and spent the rest of the day bragging about my self-restraint.

From there, it was on to the Palace itself. It was fun and worth seeing, but in this case, Palace is apparently French for “a very large, very cold, mostly empty stone building.” The audio tour also went for completeness over impact, so eventually we stopped neurotically listening to all of the audio tour stops. We instead just enjoyed the view and imagined what the palace must have been like during the hundred-odd years that the papacy was seated there instead of Rome.After the Palace, we reconvened at home. Nathan gave us his most impressive French display yet as he made the dinner reservation on the phone. Then we all headed out to dinner, except for Lauren who diagnosed herself as “over-excited and in serious need of a nap.”

Dinner was 20 minutes from home in a town called Salon de Provence. The restaurant was part of a posh boutique hotel called Maison du Soleil, and the chef was Francis Robin, who I assume is a big deal since his name was everywhere (even painted on the plates). Dinner was the most French meal we’ve had. I had a guinea fowl salad, hearty rabbit in a Bordeaux wine sauce, and then about 5 different sweets. Oh, and a prune.It’s worth noting that the restaurant was way off the beaten path, up a hill in a residential area. It took many tries and wrong turns to find, and we felt like we’d really accomplished something when we made it there. Definitely not the kind of restaurant you could just stumble onto. Hooray for good guidebooks!

Provence travel log 2006-12-28

2006-12-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

This was a day of many small towns. First stop was L'Isle sur la Sorgue, where we marveled at the iced-over waterwheels spinning in the river. Dad says there were originally 64 wheels in the city. They’re still economically important after hundreds of years, though now they generate wealth by attracting tourists rather than grinding wheat.The shopping gods smiled on Lauren, who found gifts for friends and family. After the requisite stop for café au lait and warmth, we returned to our cars.For lunch, we stopped between towns at l’Estellan, which was a random stop and a real stroke of luck. All of us agreed that it was the best meal we’d had yet in France. I had pumpkin soup, chicken, and mashed potatoes. Food was just perfect. As we sat there, we saw that the restaurant was recommended in all of our guidebooks. Based on its location, we also suspect that l’Estellan was the restaurant that Patrice was trying to recommend, but whose name he couldn’t remember. So it was fate that we landed there, I guess.The next stop was the beautiful village of Gordes, a real “city on a hill” that reminded all of us of Gondor from the Lord of the Rings movies. There wasn’t much to do except marvel at the countryside below and the white walls above, but this was exactly what we’d come to do, after all.Finally, we journeyed on to Roussillon, another hillside town whose soul seemed tied to the ochre beneath it. We stood wrapped in rouge: sunset, city, and hill. Beautiful.Lauren was so excited that she celebrated with her new favorite: a Nutella crepe.

From there, we drove back home. Having no dinner plan, intimidated by the cold and dark outside, and frankly sick of driving, we decided to return to House Pizza, the bumpin’ pizza place across the street. Lauren, Sam, and I took care of business, securing 4 thin-crust pizzas for the household and enjoying the company of all 5 young people in Alleins while we waited.

Provence travel log 2006-12-28 (Lauren)

2006-12-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

Gordes perches on the edge of the white cliffs like a city of stories ~ tall and white and proud. Her stones glow in the glory of the afternoon sun, her face turned towards the blaze. It is the stately gaze of a warrior searching for signs of danger that might threaten a beloved land.

She overlooks the intermingled fields of wine vines and olive trees, and her brow is fair and serene.

* * *

Along the road to Rousillon, a line of old trees stands at attention. They reach and arc over the highway with spreading branches, trunks thick and sturdy and fingers bared by the cold.

Looking beyond these stout trees, I see groves of smaller olive trees planted in neat rows. They are lighter in color to the harsh, hearty brown and greens of the larger highway trees and have managed to cling to their leaves despite the cold.

The slender trunks disappear into the ground, and as I lean closer I realize that each cluster of trees is not one single plant but instead a collection of a few. Their feet firmly set into the ground, they lean back as if caught in one frozen moment of a ring dance ~ four or five girls whose reckless circling has caused their hair to fly outwards and their dresses to swirl around them ~ hands clasped tightly to one another's in order to prevent them from flinging themselves to the ground.

I think of Gina. And Nayelli.

Provence travel log 2006-12-27

2006-12-27T12:25:00.000-08:00

Anna has broken free of the Robinson OCD and acquired the ability to sleep in without guilt. So after a leisurely morning spent mostly in bed, Lauren, Anna, Nathan, and I piled into the "late" car and made the trip south to the beautiful fishing village of Cassis.
Undeterred by a few wrong turns and many loops through construction-addled Marseilles, we finally reached our destination just before 2pm. A walk through the stone-and-pebble beach and around the docked boats brought us at last into the hungry presence of Mom, Dad, and Sam. They'd been waiting in the beautiful harbor for quite a while and had the lunch situation all scoped out. First couple of choices were ferme (closed), but we finally settled on L'Oustau de la Mar. We feasted on seafood, salt air, and a view of the shining harbor over our shoulders.
The "young ones" then stuck around and enjoyed sunset at the beach. (Did I mention that the weather was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the beach? Life was good.)
Finally, we piled back into the car and had an exciting time finding our way home in the dark with a barely-adequate map. But we made it at last and were rewarded with a large, Showalter-style "grazing" dinner.

Provence travel log 2006-12-26

2006-12-26T16:15:00.001-08:00

[All of today’s pictures thanks to Lauren. I left my camera at the house! Wish I could take pictures as well and as frequently as she does. –Will]

I woke late this morning to find everyone else already up and about. Lauren was very kind and had a cup of tea and a bit of pain chocolat ready (it’s a croissant-like pastry with a little bit of chocolate in the bottom). As I hopped in the shower and got ready to go, Nathan dutifully scraped all the car windows clear of ice.

After a brief drive through some villages nearby, we made our way to our first stop, Les Baux. The tiny, stone town’s population is numbered in the hundreds. Lunch was the first order of business, and we had savory crepes and café au lait at Sux Santons de Provence, just inside the city walls. Then it was time to explore in earnest.

Les Baux is the area that gives bauxite its name, although all the bauxite mines are history now. History is everywhere aboveground as well, and we spent most of the morning wandering the narrow lanes of the old citadel atop the hill. Lauren, Sam, and I also took an audio tour that had us looking over the breathtaking countryside below and learning all about life in Ancient Les Baux, Very Old Les Baux, Slightly Elderly Les Baux, and Hardy Middle-Aged Les Baux. The bottom line is that the area has been a beautiful, fertile, and eminently defensible place to live for thousands of years, and as a result the hills and valleys were steeped in history.

We were bummed to only get halfway through the audio tour before we had to meet up with the rest of our group at 2pm.

Les Baux was nice, but the Medieval ruins apparently weren’t old enough for Dad. We thus traveled to nearby Arles to take in the really old stuff – ruins of the Roman arena and amphitheatre. Very reminiscent of the coliseum and forum in Rome. Really had a feeling that we were walking in the middle of history; after all, a provincial sandal once trod on the very same stones beneath our feet today. Arena had a wonderful city view from the top, to boot.

(Arles also gave me a great opportunity to practice my pirate accent. Try it… Arrrrles!)

After the ruins, we spent an hour so chatting in a coffeeshop – my favorite French activity. Then it was a brief stop into a church and square before dinner time.

We drove to a Michelin-starred restaurant in nearby Eygalieres, only to find it closed for renovations through May of 2007. Luckily, Provence has more picturesque little olive-producing villages than Carter has pills, so it was one hop over to Saint Remy. The Michelin-recommended Alain Assaud was serving dinner, but not until 7:30, so it was another hour in another coffeeshop in another village, which was just fine with me.

Dinner was very tasty, very authentic, tres French. A tiny place, about the size of St. Sevy near home in Woodside, CA. But on this night at least, it had only one waitress out front and two chefs in back, which was a stretch even for a small place like Alain Assaud. Still, food was excellent, if a bit long in arriving, and the goat cheese was so tasty and so plentiful that Sam was actually refusing it by the end of the meal, something I never thought I’d see.

The late dinner made this our wildest night out as a group, putting us back home in Alleins just after 11pm. Many people are coming down with colds, so we’ll try to get a good rest tonight before journeying southward to Marseilles and its surrounds tomorrow.

Provence travel log 2006-12-26 (Lauren)

2006-12-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Due to some early programming of my internal clock upon first coming to Alliens, every morning I start listening for the church bells, as I have no alarm clock to tell me thetiome. The first bells I count ring at 5:00, and I count each ring; and then I wake again every hour to count the bells until seven.

Upon first awakening this morning, I had the impression that I was looking at a mirror placed at the foot of my bed. The gauzy white curtains that hang on the pretty iron bedframe also hang from the neighboring bed -- they are like twins sitting beside one another in my lavender room; The couple's two little girls must have slept in this room together.

But when I awoke this morning, the symmetrical shape of the hanging set made me think that I was looking at some sort of mirror in the grey light, and thus I began the day with a sense of wonder.

Let me tell you what a frosted leaf looks like. Brown and brittle, it sits so encrusted in ice that its edges end in tiny white points -- delicate, sharp, and lovely.

Let me tell you about the sky tonight. It is so clear that the stars became multilayered -- not a mere flat cloth canopy over the earth, but a collection of candles that range from near to far and thus shine with varying intensities of light -- the brightest stars of Orion's belt and the smallest adding texture.

A night so cold that the people of Alliens have closed tight their windows -- people fall asleep and fall il and fall in love, and you know that if you only watched long enough then you could see a star fall as well --

Provence travel log 2006-12-25

2006-12-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas! We slept in and straggled downstairs one by one, met with the sound of Christmas music and the smell of fresh-baked bread.

A loosely-defined, “grazing”-style breakfast eventually congealed into a spaghetti-and-squash lunch, courtesy of Chef Anna and Chef Nathan. Sated on pasta, wine, and Christmas cheer, we opened our presents.
We’d set up an exchange beforehand where everyone would give and receive one gift, and I was pumped to receive a Puma-style “BERLIN” exercise shirt from Nathan. Here's me with the shirt, "mad-dogging it" as the Alldredges might say:
Throughout the day, we ate, drank, napped, played games, told stories. Lauren and I squeezed in two walks before dinner, one up the hill behind the house, and one on top of the castle ruins in the center of town.

Finally, it was time for a home-cooked frittata dinner, the requisite dishes and dessert, and immediate nodding off.

Joyeux Noel!

Provence travel log 2006-12-24

2006-12-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

I gave myself an early Christmas present and slept in this morning. Most of the others rose early for a trip to the special weekend market three villages away. I awoke around 10:45am, just in time to catch this group returning with a large haul of wines, cheeses, olives, and fruit. Everyone feasted as noon sunlight slanted in from the south.

Feeling criminally lazy for sleeping so long, I did all the dishes, and then after some lounging and talking it was time to make the drive to Aix en Provence, the nearest “big” city. The main attraction there was the Christmas market, and this was of course our last day to see it. Expert navigation by Dad and Nathan saw us safely into Aix. The market was busy and well-lit, and Aix was exactly the kind of provincial counterpoint to Paris that I was hoping for.

Some Aix pictures:

We stopped throughout the afternoon for crepes, cathedrals, and plenty of photo ops. The only hitch was a scarceness of open dinner places, not surprising on Christmas Eve. We finally broke down and gave heavy business to a man running a food stall in the Christmas market. We dug into sandwiches and crepes of all kinds, always accompanied with lots and lots of French fries. (French fries are one of those things that you’d think weren’t really French. But you’d be wrong. French fries are everywhere here. The sad thing is, I weaned myself off them years ago in the states! I’m having trouble reacquiring the taste.)

After dinner, we fled from the rapidly dropping temperature and drove back home to Alleins. We opened some wine, put on Christmas carols, lit the fire, played games, and wished each other Merry Christmas at least five times each. A great way to end our Christmas Eve.

Provence travel log 2006-12-24 (Lauren)

2006-12-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

In the morning, Anna, Nathan, Sam and I went to a small market in a neighboring town. Stalls of food -- cheese, fruits, sausages, Christmas pies -- stood next to other stalls filled with clothing, sunglasses -- it was as if the Honolulu stadium swap dropped down wares into a quaint French provincial village.

We sampled some cheese and some lavender honey. When the honey hit my tongue I could smell the flowers through my mouth. Then the smell lingered even after we walked away.

And when we walked back to the car, the steeple of the town's church rose in creme-colored beauty in the bright blue sky.

Paris / Provence travel log 2006-12-23

2006-12-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

As tiny Anna and tiny Will used to say, voices shooting to truly uncomfortable octaves: “It’s Christmas Eve eve!” Christmas is definitely in the air in France, though not quite in the same way as America. Mom pointed out that only a tiny minority of the shops we’ve entered are playing Christmas music, in stark contrast to the states, where retail employees have sued (successfully!) for mental anguish resulting from the constant barrage of holiday musak.

After a final breakfast at the hotel, we spent much of the day in transit from Paris to Provence. Our first stop was the Paris train station, where we played it very safe and arrived an hour and twenty minutes before our train was supposed to leave. I’m not sure we actually planned to play things quite so safe, but there you go. Anna and I made the most of it, entertaining Lauren and everyone else with stories from our travels together as small children.
Finally, it was time to get on the train, a bullet from Paris to Avignon. I was really surprised by the train, which rode much smoother and much faster than the other trains I’ve known (e.g., Amtrak, Caltrain). Perhaps newly-arrived Lauren’s jetlag was contagious, as I couldn’t help nodding off for most of the train ride.

It actually lent a slightly magical air to the trip. I’d wake up with a start, see the French countryside painted in frost slide silently by the window, and hear the drugged cat in the seat opposite yawn at me. I’d then nod off again, to wake some unknown time later and see the world now covered in snow, or drenched in sunshine. Every so often some unknowable French message would play through the loudspeaker, bracketed with electronic chimes. There were no stops to announce between Paris and Avignon, no stops at all. As near as I could tell, that French woman was just telling me: “Back to sleep. Back to sleep.”

We finally arrived in Avignon, all persons and parcels accounted for. We went through the usual and universal hassle of getting our rental cars, and then set out on the 35-minute drive to Alleins. Although we had multiple maps and direction printouts, we found our small town and our house almost by accident in the end. With no street numbers visible, we were eventually rescued by our landlord/host, Patrice, who said he heard English outside the window and came out to investigate. Here's the view outside our new home:
Patrice showed us around the house, which we’ll call home for the next week or so. It’s a gorgeous place in an amazing location. As Dad noted, three bakeries within a block. And Patrice was kind enough to give us the very detailed rundown: “Go to this bakery for bread. Go to the other for croissant. Never go to the third bakery. They are not good people. Seriously, I must tell you this.” Also had great tips on the Christmas markets and other great things to do in the area. Here's a picture of Patrice and our entire company (sans moi), at the end of the tour:
Although we really appreciated Patrice’s help, we were all starving, having missed lunch, and in some cases, having missed breakfast as well! Once Patrice left us with the keys and a hearty “bon nui,” we headed straight for the pizza parlor next door (there being nothing more French in sight), and had possibly my best meal since arriving in France. OK, so I was starving. But still, the pizza was very good, and the "American" ambiance was unbeatable. Enough seats for about 15 people (we filled the place, more or less), but it had a set of turntables in front, a disco ball spinning up above, and it was playing some light house/techno the whole time we were there.

At long last, we returned to the house to drink a bottle of wine and listen to music. The house has a wonderful old turntable, with some records gathering dust nearby. The records are all older than I am, which is something to think about. We tore through Dire Straits’ self-titled album, The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” and a Bach recording. We finally finished off the evening over wine and laughter with the Charlie Brown Christmas CD playing. Mom had brought it, of course. It’s been the Robinson family Christmas soundtrack ever since I can remember.

We have an early morning tomorrow, when we’ll be making our way to a Sunday market two towns over. Lauren’s eyes lit up at Patrice’s mention of the market, so how can I resist?

Paris / Provence travel log 2006-12-23 (Lauren)

2006-12-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

Today the sleep debt from the two previous days suddenly appeared, like finding, upon standing from a table, that I am strapped to a backpack full of bricks.

Although staying awake was a bit of a fight, the day itself was again full of joy. Simply sitting in my pretty Parisian hotel room with the French sun smiling upon the city was enough to make me happy -- the wallpaper a rich pink brocade and the bedspread damasked with deep red roses.

And again sitting up in the morning and eating breakfast -- small cops of orange juice and heavy cereal and my bleary-eyed Will -- we packed our bags and headed towards the bullet train station.

Ironwork arched above us and the trains lined up, sleek as if molded by the force of the air through which the move. I though instantly of Harry Potter as the people rushed past us, lugging shopping bags and children and small dogs; and wondered if I could reach Hogwarts if only I rushed through one of the walls.

Across from us on the train sat a beautiful French woman cradling a black cat in a blue blanket. Every so often the cat would mew or peer its small head at Will and I; its eyes were weirdly clouded over. The woman would whisper a few words to the animal and cuddle it against her bosom; by the end of the ride, the cat lay unmoving upon its back, its mouth open and its eyes shut. A passing child stroked its chin and belly but the cat did not respond -- I wondered if it were still alive.

Finally, Avignon. I had slept the entire time on the train and awoke to an entirely new countryside. Hills and bare trees in neat rows stretched out in front of us, and I tried to re-orient myself amidst this new open landscape.

Paris travel log 2006-12-22

2006-12-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

Lauren arrived this morning right around breakfast time.
As I already knew, she’s a much better trooper than I am and was ready to start seeing the sights right after breakfast. Mom, Dad, Dee, Sam, Lauren and I took a long metro ride to Montmartre (a hilly neighborhood) and the Sacre Couer (Sacred Heart basilica, located at the highest point in Paris). The view from the hill was spectacular – a bit blinding really in the morning light.

The church itself looked very similar to the other churches we’ve seen in Paris, though it was built much more recently (1870).
The area just outside the church was the most touristy place I’ve seen so far, complete with tacky t-shirt shops. But we made the most of it: Dee had a street artist draw a really neat portrait of Sam. And all of us enjoyed some surprisingly excellent coffee, agreeing that it was the best we’d had in all of Paris.

After the portrait was finished and paid for (“You pay what you like. I don’t know what I do. So if you like, you pay more, no?”), we had a medium-length walk back to the metro, catching glimpses of a windmill and the Montmartre cemetery along the way. Then it was lunch all together in the Bistro de Montmartre, where I had (could you guess) beef and pomme frites (French fries). Then Dee and Sam peeled off to the Picasso museum, Mom and Dad peeled off to do some shopping, and Lauren and I – finally running out of gas – headed back to the hotel for another one of those power naps.

The evening held the only big, planned event: a dinner cruise along the Seine to see Paris lit up at night. Anna and Nathan flew in just in time, and our group was finally complete. Many sights and sounds of Paris looked that much better lit up under the stars and seen from the river, and we were very happy to see the Eiffel Tower sparkling quickly, which apparently it does each hour.

After dinner, Lauren and I briefly headed out to sample some Paris nightlife. The creperie right next door to our hotel handled his crepe-making implements with a flourish. As Lauren put it, “it was like he was a knight going on a quest.” And apparently, his quest involved lots of Nutella, which was just fine with us. After snarfing the crepe, we walked a block further to a busy café/bar, where we had white wine (Lauren) and some unidentifiable Brazilian cocktail that was apparently a house specialty (Will). We laughed, talked, marveled at the beautiful French people, and finally called it a night.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be up bright and early and off to Provence. Au revior, Paris!

Paris travel log 2006-12-21

2006-12-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

Another exciting day that began with the usual continental breakfast in the hotel. Then we all walked to the Musee National du Moyen Age (The Museum of the Middle Ages, also known as the Cluny Museum since it shares space with the Hotel Cluny). Sam had been talking about this museum since landing yesterday, and it didn’t disappoint. Impressive sculptures, paintings, and illuminated books from the middle ages, along with the remains of the original Roman baths and the famous tapestry, “Lady and the Unicorn.” Here's a close-up of one of the illuminated works:

After the museum, we stopped into the nearby St. Severin church for a minute or two, which was lovely and (to me at least) very reminiscent of St. Sulpice.

Then a 10-meter stroll around the corner for lunch at Le Grand Bistrot, which we selected randomly from a street full of quaint-looking places. The food was tasty, and the large display of meats and cheeses in the window had tour groups stopping and taking photos throughout the meal. Mom snapped a good picture of people taking pictures. In the tour groups’ defense, they did have a 100ish-pound wheel of cheese in the window. I would have taken a picture of that, too.

We returned to the hotel to meet up with Pam and Raylene, whose flight had been delayed but who ultimately arrived just after lunchtime. We said our joyful hellos and took some pictures.

Then apparently, Pam and Raylene went to Notre Dame and St. Chapelle, Mom and Dad went to the Notre Dame archaeological exhibit, and Dee and Sam retraced our second-day steps to the Orsay and l’Orangerie museums. I say “apparently” because I spent the afternoon napping. Or to make that sound more heroic: power-napping.

The napping did a body good, as I was feeling very ready to go when I met everyone in the lobby at 6:30. We had dinner at Relais Odeon, another random choice and a great one. Our waiter was very lively and entertaining, and handled our table of seven very gracefully. I made the big mistake and ordered both a salad and a main course, having forgotten to check the price on the salad (which turned out to be a meal in itself). Then my main course arrived, accompanied by a side-salad of course. C’est la vie!

Mom and Dad at dinner. Note Google t-shirt. What a man.

After dinner, Dad, Sam, and I walked further down the Blvd. St.-Germain to have a post-meal coffee and chat at the famous Café de Flores. (Decaf for me. I am a wild and crazy guy).

Looking forward to the arrival of Lauren, Anna, and Nathan tomorrow, at which point all of us will finally be assembled here in France! Tomorrow is our last full day in Paris. We hop the train to Provence on Saturday morning.

Paris Travel Log 2006-12-21 (Lauren)

2006-12-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

Impressions of a Paris Airport:

- Yellow glowing lights. Numbers.
- Moving walkways climbing and falling at impossible angles --
- Rows of signs like a metaphor for something spectacular.
- A lost landing card.
- A lost pink pen -- found.
- Beautiful women in long black coats.
- Languages like bubbles bursting all around -- and I, a silent watcher, understanding none.
- Cigarette smoke.
- Images of Will in my mind.

Paris travel log 2006-12-20

2006-12-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

Although it was a fun and full day, I can sum things up in a few words: Dee and Sam arrived this morning after receiving an expedited new passport for Sam. We then spent most of the day in the Louvre (loved it!), and we saw the Arc de Triomphe just after sunset. A couple of pictures first:

Since we were in the Louvre from 10am to about 5:30pm, I’ll just concentrate on what we saw there. Dad and I walked the few blocks from the hotel to the Louvre at 10am. We entered through the big, glass pyramid in the center. After checking our coats, we sought out the self-guided audio tours, and found that there were two different tours available. We went the classy route and chose the “non-Davinci Code” tour.

We then made a beeline for the three biggies: the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Victory of Samothrace. They were all really incredible, but I don’t have much to add to the mountains of ecstatic prose that have already been written about them. I will say, though, that December seems a great time to visit the Louvre, since we didn’t encounter any of the lines I’d heard horror stories about. There was almost no line at all at the ticket counter, and even a short person who needed to get to the very front of the Mona Lisa crowd could have easily done so after about a minute of waiting.

(Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that there is a man whose full-time job it is to clap at, yell at, and shout angry French at anyone who even thinks of reaching for a camera in front of the Mona Lisa. I’ve been surprised that so many museums here do allow pictures inside, and the Louvre also allows them generally, just not in that gallery.)

So, we’d seen the Big Three and could rest easy even if the museum was evacuated that instant. Time to plan for the rest of the day…

Many guidebooks had warned us that the Louvre will punish you if you approach it with the wrong attitude. Try to see it all, and you’ll just speed along, exhausting yourself as everything blends together. At best, you’ll end up with a camera full of artwork you don’t even remember seeing! So Dad and I took it slow, spending most of the morning in the French and Italian painting wings, sitting down often, and being sure to give long stretches of attention to individual paintings as our audio guide put everything in context. Turns out that Napoleon really, really liked paintings of himself.

We then stopped for a tasty lunch in the museum café, where I had a ham and cheese sandwich and (at Dad’s recommendation) a great lemonade-beer thing (I know) called Panache (Panachet?). After lunch, Mom, Dee, and Sam showed up. We revisited our first three stops with them, and then the guys and girls split up. The boy team spent most of the afternoon on sculpture: ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, and Renaissance Italian. Plenty of Michelangelo in that last gallery, and some really interesting audio commentary to boot. On the way out, we also stopped by a special tactile gallery, where they’d duplicated many of the best-known sculptures from the entire museum so that blind people – or anyone who’d been itching to touch the darn things for the last three hours – could actually feel the sculptures.

Throughout the day, we saw many tour groups going by, working in every language you can name. Guides had little microphones, and group members had earphones, which was a clever way to keep everything quiet and to prevent guides from having to yell over each other. Saw the first white person in a while who speaks Chinese far better than I do: she was a Louvre tour guide. Makes sense.

After reconvening at 4:30pm and refreshing ourselves with glasses of wine in the main Louvre café, we hopped on the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées. Amazing to see such an immediately recognizable monument sitting in the middle of a working (and busy!) intersection.

Finally, it was a rich beef + Bourdeaux dinner at a nearby French restaurant, and then the most crowded Metro ride ever back to the hotel.

Paris Travel Log 2006-12-19

2006-12-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday’s declaration of victory over jetlag was premature. I lay awake until around 6am this morning, before finally nodding off and sleeping through our set breakfast time. Mom and Dad were great sports putting up with a tired and grumpy Will for the rest of the day.

False starts seemed to be the theme of the day. Our target restaurant for lunch was closed, so I had a random club sandwich on our way to somewhere else. Then, the museum Mom really wanted to see was closed. But then it turned out that it wasn’t. But then we found we’d left the address in the room. And so we got directions. But the person giving us directions sent us to the wrong metro stop. So we decided to see the interior of the nearby national opera house instead. But the main hall was closed for rehearsal. And on and on.

Everyone’s had days like this, but it’s a bit of a shame to have one in Paris. And on only a few hours’ sleep, I wasn’t rolling with the punches too well.

Good luck finally started coming our way late in the afternoon, when we just stopped trying to do much of anything. After cutting through some gardens and the Louvre’s courtyard (note bocce balls!):

…we had some delicious tea, hot chocolate, and desserts at the first café we came across, the Angelina. After walking in, we discovered that the Angelina just happened to have been sitting next to the Louvre since 1901, playing host to people like Proust and Coco Chanel. As the waitress told us later, we would have been waiting at the door for an hour at least, if we’d not come on Tuesday – the one day a week that the Louvre is closed. Our luck was slowly changing, as clearly evidenced by Dad’s truly world-class Mont Blanc pastry (think a dash of chestnut, sitting atop a mountain of sugar and cream).

From there, we took a brisk (read: chilly) walk to the Saint Sulpice, a beautiful church that would have been worth seeing even if it hadn’t featured prominently in The Da Vinci Code.

Then finally, it was another walk back toward the hotel and a stop at the third creperie we encountered (our first two choices were closed. Argh!). But the food turned out to be simple, filling, and delicious. The restaurant was also really conducive to conversation: just the right amount of light, the right level of music, no crowd at all, and plenty of tasty Bordeaux. So we ended the day on a high note, sharing the most leisurely meal I think we’ve had yet in Paris.

Overall, it was a day of karmic reckoning. We’d had such great luck and gotten so much done in the previous two days, that I think we simply owed the universe one day like this. Our debts now hopefully paid off, I look forward to seeing what tomorrow has to bring (and to getting to sleep right away).

Paris travel log for Monday, 2006-12-18

2006-12-18T13:35:00.000-08:00

OK, it’s an obligatory Parisian tourist picture, so let’s kick this off right:

Now, about the day…

Completely over jet lag now, Mom, Dad, and I looked pretty fresh at the hotel breakfast at 10am. From there, we headed straight to Notre Dame. Though smaller than other famous cathedrals like St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, it made a similar impression. Gorgeous stained glass, interior and exterior sculpture, and (something I don’t remember seeing much in other cathedrals) large paintings. Took plenty of pictures, punched my way through the entire audio tour, and still had a few minutes to just absorb the good vibrations before noon mass began.

After Notre Dame, we walked toward Paris’s best and most famous ice cream shop, at least according to Dad’s guidebook. Mom had been politely but firmly mentioning said ice cream shop since we landed, cold weather be damned. Sadly, it was closed when we got there, but we promised to give it another try on Wednesday.

We made a random lunch stop at a small, nearby restaurant called Auberge de Deux Ponts. I had delicious, salty onion soup and some pasta carbonara. Mom spent much of the meal discreetly trying to take a picture of the “world’s politest cat” – as she dubbed him – who was perched quietly on a seat at the next table.

After a brief stop at the stark Holocaust memorial behind Notre Dame, we walked across the small island and found the tiny but beautiful Saint-Chapelle. This is a church whose walls are small slivers of stone between giant sheets of stained glass. An impressive sight, even in the light of today’s overcast sun.

Next, at my suggestion, we took our first metro ride to the Eiffel Tower. Mom and I both agreed that it was much taller than we expected. I can see how astounding it would have been when first erected in the late 1800s.

Having read that the tower was an entirely different sight at night, we stopped into the nearest café to wait for sunset. And this café reminded me of something. Did you even notice when the nerds took over the world? Have a look:

Not seeing it? Look closer, above the door:
Now remember, this is the coffee shop closest to the Eiffel Tower. There can be only one such place in the world. It can have only one entrance. And what’s the most important thing it wants to advertise there? “Internet.” “Wi-fi.” Five years ago, this sign would have been somewhat out of place. Fifteen years ago, almost no one would have even understood it.

The nerds took over the world by making everyone a nerd. My own lapsed-technophobe father sent email from his blackberry in that very café. And he didn’t even need the wi-fi to do it.

Who knows what that neon sign will say in another 15 years?

As for myself, the internet has changed how I live, or at least how I travel, in a really subtle and pervasive way: to a large extent, I’m constantly curating my own experiences. As I move through a day in Paris, something in the back of my mind is composing a blog post, remembering to take enough pictures, noticing things like neon signs and deciding how I’d like to comment on them. And that same little brain-elf is also deciding what’s not important, what I won’t be recording, what can be passed by. Missed.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. An intention to record and process really motivates me to get out and do more. On top of that, my attention stays sharp all day, because after all I’m working on something. (You’re reading it now.) And finally, I do believe that there is a permanence and concreteness in a well-recorded journey that one never quite matches when relying on memory alone. However, I can’t shake the thought that if the tunnel I look through now is so clear and deep, it must also be a bit narrow.

Oh well. These are the life and times of Will Robinson, and I have a hunch that I can file this directly under the heading: “Not Better. Not Worse. Just Different.” I’ll close this line of thinking with a link that says it all much more concisely than I can:

http://xkcd.com/c77.html

(And for those of you who don’t know what Livejournal is, it’s a blogging system like the one I’m using to write this post).

Our last stop after a nighttime Eiffel Tower gawk was dinner at a quaint, 20-seat restaurant near our hotel. The pushy but incredibly jovial hostess yelled to us on the street: “And why not my kitchen tonight?” After some charming descriptions of the traditional French treats waiting inside, we all agreed. Why not, indeed?

The food was delicious, the atmosphere quiet and homey, and we had the good fortune of sitting next to Tracy Bank, a visitor from San Francisco. Tracy was in Paris with family and friends, but everyone had been food poisoned except for her! She overheard our discussion of Christmas dinner plans in Provence, and having traveled and rented a house there herself, she jumped in and offered us some great tips. Thanks in advance from all of us, Tracy.

My biggest failure as a self-curator today? I didn’t write down the restaurant’s name. Oh well, it’s just around the corner. I might jot it down tomorrow and then practice some revisionism on this here blog.

Reader, beware!

Au revoir.

Paris travel log 2006-12-17

2006-12-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

The downside to jet lag is obvious: hours lying awake in a dark hotel room. But there’s also a huge upside that’s easy to miss: when you finally do take to the streets of Paris at 7:30am on a Sunday morning, the whole city is yours alone. And when the distant flap of pigeon wings is the only sound accompanying your own, private sunrise over Notre Dame, you’re happy to be alive. Here’s a representative shot of early-morning Paris, with not a car or person in sight:

And here’s a post-sunrise view of Notre Dame from just across the Seine:
A quick note on this last picture: literally five seconds after snapping this shot, while still gawking at the cathedral, I planted my foot in the largest pile of dog poop I’ve ever seen. “Merde!” I said. But the moment made a strong impression. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been so intensely aware of the transcendent and the mundane at exactly the same time. Beautiful cathedral across the river. Smelly glop all over my shoe. There was something profound in it, but I haven’t quite figured out what it was. At the very least, it’s a moment and a feeling that would be impossible to manufacture: if I’d planned to step in dog poop, I’m sure it would not have had the same effect.

After leaving Notre Dame, I bumped into some other early risers – Asian tourists who tried to ask me for some directions in (bad) English. I asked where they were from, and when they said “Taiwan,” my eyes lit up. I’m sure they didn’t expect the stream of Chinese that then came out of my mouth, and I’m really sure that they were a little confused as to just why I was so eager to speak Chinese. But they humored me, chatted for a while about this and that, and ended up complimenting my Chinese. Hooray!

So why was I dying to speak Chinese? It’s hard to explain, but ever since I’ve landed in France, a rather dim neuron has been firing in my brain that says, “I hear language, and it’s not English. Must be Chinese. Bombs away!” And when I don’t then speak Chinese, it’s left saying, “Umm, bombs away? Seriously, man, you can do this!” In other words, every time I say “Parlez-vous anglais?” I have to consciously avoid the impulse to instead say “ni hui bu hui shuo yingwen?” Dad reports a similar problem with his old German skills trying to take over.

After some more wandering around, it was time to return to the hotel to meet Mom and Dad for a lovely continental breakfast at 9am. Mom’s jetlag was expressing itself differently, meaning she wasn’t able to make breakfast. But Dad, being the rock that he is, showed up at 9am sharp. Breakfast included a free history lesson from Dad, who always astounds me with just how much he knows and how quickly he can skip between topics.

Mom finally showed up, and we were off to the Musee d’Orsay, which is best known for its collection of Impressionist paintings. While waiting in the short line outside the museum, Mom spotted TV and movie star Brendan Frasier step into line behind us. He was all alone, and looked taller and a bit older than we expected. He hung around the line for a minute before deciding to head elsewhere, and snapped a few photos on his way out. I gave myself a pat on the back for not yelling something stupid like, “You were awesome in ‘Scrubs!’”

The Musee d’Orsay was incredible. Monet, Manet, Renoit, Degas, Gaugin, and on and on. I figure that if I of all people recognized and remembered details about so many of the paintings there, then the exhibit must be world-class.

After leaving the museum, we stepped next door for lunch at Les Deux Musees (“The Two Museums,” presumably referring to the Orsay and to the Legion of Honor museum next door). My lunch of salad and beef with shallots was tasty but way too big.

From lunch, it was a hop across the Seine (it seems there’s a bridge every block around here) to the Musee de l’Orangerie. The only exhibit on the museum’s upper story is the two-room, circular display of Monet’s water lilies. The lower story contains mainly paintings from an early-20^th-century art dealer’s collection. He was apparently a big fan of Picasso, Matisse, and other amazing artists, which is great luck for modern museum-goers like us.

To close out the day, we took a long walk home parallel to the Seine, eventually cutting through some of the courtyards in the Louvre and snapping some nighttime photos there. Dinner was at a tasty brasserie called Lipp, which specialized in regional cuisine of some sort (all runs together for me).

Then finally, it was back to the hotel to try to sleep off the rest of the jetlag.

SFO to Paris, and first evening. 2006/12/15 – 2006/12/16

2006-12-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

My trip began in San Francisco International on the afternoon of 12/15. After a small flight delay and a couple of pleasant hours in the terminal, it was finally time for a yoga-like folding of my 6’7” frame into the small, blue Airbus seat. Air France doesn’t skimp on the food (or champagne!), but the lack of legroom was surprising, given the number of tall Gallic folks Mom would soon point out on the streets of Paris.

Eleven hours of awkward sleep, deep breathing, and tasty morsels later, my flight touched down at CDG airport in Paris. It was just after noon, Paris time, on Saturday, 12/16. Customs and baggage claim whirled by, but it was all in that peculiar airport non-language. I was happy in a way, happy that “France” and “French” would be hitting me all at once as I stepped out into real Paris air.

All I was missing as I cleared customs were the smiling faces of my parents, who had (hopefully) arrived a couple of hours earlier and were thus (theoretically) going to be waiting for me outside of customs. As I later said to Mom, our “plan” – devised during a hasty cell-phone call just before her flight – had very bad failure modes, and the engineering part of my brain should have known better.

So, no parents. Options were limited. The cell phone that would have solved this problem instantly in America was a sleek, sexy paperweight in Europe. I quickly grabbed my laptop to check my email for word from someone. After 45 minutes wrestling with incredibly flaky wi-fi, I’d revised my plan down to sending the quickest email possible if I could ever connect. It was going to be something short and dramatic out of an old black-and-white. Something like: “Arrived safely in Paris STOP No sign of parents STOP Proceeding to hotel.”

Happily for everyone, Mom and Dad did finally show up. They’d had some minor problems with flight delays, luggage delays, and Air France confusion about where my flight was disembarking, but we had all arrived safely, and we were standing in France together. Bon!

After checking into the hotel, I took an intense two-hour nap before joining Mom and Dad in the lobby and walking down the block to our first French meal. It was at a quaint 101-year-old brasserie called Vagenende, which the concierge recommended. I had French onion soup (just called “onion soup” here, of course), a simple chicken-and-mashed-potatoes main course, and a piece of fluffy chocolate cake to top everything off. Onion soup may have been the best I’ve ever eaten, but then again the cold weather outside and the long day traveling may have influenced my judgment.

We wandered a few blocks each way after dinner, passing many tasty-looking restaurants and Irish pubs(?!). I caught my first glimpse of Notre Dame – from a distance, and at night, which as far as I’m concerned is a wonderful way to see it.

Then it was back to the hotel to pass out around 8pm, with a plan to meet in the lobby at 9am. My internal clock had other plans, of course, sitting me bolt upright a little after midnight. As I write this, it’s 1:40am, Paris time, and I’ve been listening to the nearby clubs slowly close down. (Perhaps I can make the jetlag work for me, becoming the party animal that I never have the energy to be in the US?)

Thoughts so far: The weather is cold but not freezing: my jacket, sweater, and scarf seems to match the standard outfit around here. The people have been very friendly, although my lack of French is so complete that there’s only a 50% chance that my victim will even understand my “parlez-vous anglais?” on the first try!

I look forward to lots more exploring by daylight tomorrow and in the days that follow. Also excited to really catching up with Mom and Dad while we have this unexpected time to ourselves.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/12/2006, 5:30pm PST

2006-02-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

(Writing in Chili's at LAX).

Wanted to jot down last impressions while they're still fresh.

Rose around 9am, packed, checked out, then ventrued to the Playa del Amor ("Lover's Beach"), right next to land's end, and reachable only by water taxi. My taxi took a brief sightseeing trip around the cape. I got to wave at my old scuba instructors, Fausto and Mario, as we passed then, and I snapped some good photos of rock formations and sea lions.

They finally dropped me on the beach itself. My guidebook said that it was one of the world's ten best beaches, and I don't doubt it. Uncrowded, surf the only sound, with towering sandstone and granite formations in striking relief to sand, sea, and sky. I arrived early, beat the rush, and claimed the shade beside a large boulder where I lounged away my last, warm hours in Cabo.

A rush of water taxi, land taxi, and plane has brought me to the familiar, stress-filled cocoon of LAX. But my brows are light, and I smell like sunscreen, and my hands feel like Cabo sand.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/11/2006, ~5pm

2006-02-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

El Quetzal was great! Very laid-back, simple, authentic, and cheap. It sounds ridiculous, but I wasn't really prepared for the amount of Mexican food I'd be eating on this trip. Still, even if you're getting tired of meat, tortillas, and cheese, El Quetzal does meat, tortillas, and cheese better than most. Also enjoyed a cerveza Pacifico with lime. The limes are remarkably flavorful here, as the guidebook predicted.

Now off for a quick splash in the pool followed by a much-needed siesta.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/11/2006, 3:50pm

2006-02-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

After being a beach bum for 3 hours, I've stopped for lunch at El Quetzal. Everyone here is speaking Spanish, which is a good sign! The beach was lovely. Tortilla soup has just arrived. More later.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/11/2006, 11am

2006-02-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

Got lost in Cabo with no sense of time at all (no clock in the room, no cell phone, no watch). By the time I found a beachfront drug store to ask for the time, I was sure that I'd slept through the morning, and that I was wandering during the afternoon.

Returned to The Office on the drugstore clerk's recommendation, where I'm about to enjoy a breakfast of orange juice and huevos con machaca. I'm sitting at a wrought iron table, my chair digging straight into beach sand, with a sea of blue umbrellas above and the Sea of Cortez stretching out before me.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/10/2006, 10pm

2006-02-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

Forgot to mention earlier: animated conversation with Neal Norwitz of Python and pychecker fame at Mi Casa last night. And the fact that seasickness caused me to literally lose my lunch in front of Benjy after stepping off the boat!
---
The Office was a bust; turns out that a private party rented it out tonight. But Benjy, Susannah, Chuck Karish and wife Joanna showed up, and we eventually landed at nearby Raphael's. Kitschy piano bar followed by gorgeous, elegant outdoor poolside seating. Food was tasty but expensive.

Having no desire to go do tequila shots with the boisterous tourist crowd, I'm cuddling up with a good book and turning in early. Tomorrow I'll be completely on my own. I see lots of beach exploring and simple, local fare in my future. I can't wait.

Cabo Travel Log, 2/10/2006, 6:30pm

2006-02-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Arrived mid-afternoon yesterday at the Hotel Tesoro Los Cabos, after uneventful Alaska Airlines flight and harrowing bus ride through downtown Cabo San Lucas.

Relaxed by the hotel pool with the other 21 Googlers on the trip, snacking on nachos, quesadillas, and cervezas of all stripes.

Then, it was off to Mi Casa for a delicious and apparently authentic Mexican meal. I tried some sopes for an appetizer, with three kinds of tamale for an entree, and different flavors of margarita to help the medicine go down.

We then headed to the El Squid Roe nightclub. Benjy and I had booked an early-morning scuba dive for this morning, and Squid Roe was pretty workplace-inappropriate, anyway, so I didn't stay long.

Rose early this morning for my first-ever scuba dive. The one other beginner, a Marin county doctor named Susan, was very nervous, despite the wonderful ministrations of our instructor, Fausto. We did finally get in the water, and the dive was honestly a high point of my life -- peaceful and weightless for a half hour, exploring fish-filled coral down to a depth of 60 feet. At one point, Fausto broke open an abalone shell, and Susan and I fed a school of tropical fish from our hands, just like feeding pigeons in the park.

Mom's genes caught up with me on the short boat ride back to the marina, and I suffered from seasickness for most of the afternoon spent with Benjy and Susannah.

Now, I'm off to meet the remaining Googlers for dinner at a restaurant fittingly named The Office.

Cabo is lovely. Wish you were here.

Cabo!

2006-02-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

The posts that follow are transcriptions from napkins and other scraps of paper I scribbled my journal on during my trip to Cabo San Lucas in February, 2006.

All my pictures are up in my smugmug space.

Attack of the slugs!

2005-11-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

We had several near-slug experiences on Purisima Creek Trail ... like this one, where we encountered a beast whom I quickly dubbed Banana Slug Prime.

The conversation went something like this:

Lauren: A slug!
Hawk: Mmmmm. Hungry.
Will: I for one welcome our new slug overlords.

In addition to hiking with Hawk and Lauren, I also got to meet Hawk's friends Bart, Liz, and Amy, and Lauren's friend Jennifer. What a fun day!

There are a few more pictures of the hike up at my smugmug gallery.

Pictures from PAX

2005-08-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here are a few select shots from our trip this weekend. I've uploaded all of my pictures in my smugmug gallery. Note that the last shot is MC Frontalot, in the flesh!

PAX: Endgame

2005-08-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

The third day of PAX was pretty chill. We slept in, grabbed lunch at a Mexican place, and then headed into the convention.

At Dan's urging, we won another set of passes to the upcoming D&D Online beta. To do so, we had to play through a 10 minute adventure and kill a boss at the end. For anyone else playing this demo adventure, note that when facing the boss clerics need only push "7" for the win. Without that little tip, the guy's actually pretty hard to beat.

After that, we caught the tail end of a "Marketing Games" panel. Dan and Hawk then went off to the team Magic tournament, where they made it as far as the semifinals. Bill and I stuck around and watched the second Penny Arcade panel, where we got to hear the sound of 2,000 people simultaneously cracking their knuckles (don't ask) (it was awesome, by the way).

Finally, we saw the finals of the Omegathon, which was a super-old-school Atari tank game. The winner walked away with an original NES and every single NES game and peripheral ever released in the U.S. He and the runner-up also each got an Alienware PC.

After that, it was dinner at a tasty Thai restaurant and then a speedy limp through the rain back to the hotel. We're holed up with the Simpsons now, drying off, and getting ready for a nice, early flight tomorrow.

If the past is any indication, I probably won't be blogging again until I take another trip. So thanks for reading!

PAX Day Two

2005-08-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

Hawk finished third in a field of 64 in yesterday's Magic tournament. What a man!

We started this morning bright and early, but unfortunately not early enough to get wristbands for tonight's MC Frontalot show. After a quick snack, we went straight to the team Halo 2 tournament. We waited for an hour before we finally had our chance to play. And in five minutes, we got our asses handed to us by guys 10 years our junior, as expected.

We spent most of the rest of the afternoon and early evening:

In console freeplay (some fighter called Guilty Gear X).
In PC freeplay (Hawk and I got in half an hour of Unreal Tournament 2004).
Waiting in lines <=== [this is where we spent most of our time].

That last point deserves some elaboration. PAX is basically a cheap, populist version of E3. Its appeal is in its all-embracing vibe: if you're a 15-year-old fan who lives an hour away, then you can afford to come to PAX. But because of this limited budget (and, to be frank, because of some lousy organization), we're definitely getting what we paid for. In other words, this is an unbeatable place for a giant, nerdy group hug, but it's ultimately a frustrating place if you want to actually do things like play games.

We had an excellent dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery. Then we found an empty table and played my first game of Chrononauts (Dan owned, but Bill and I were about to win on the same turn, so the game seems pretty random).

Finally, it was off to the main event: musical guests Conney Lin, MC Frontalot, MC Chris, and the Minibosses. We had managed to get wristbands early in the afternoon by waiting in a line, and at 9pm we happily filed into the show.

The warmup was the quarterfinal round of PAX's Omegathon, a test of videogame skill and endurance. This was a truly epic battle of Karaoke Karaoke Revolution. After that it was pianist Conney Lin playing arrangements of a bunch of Final Fantasy songs.

And then ... Mr. Frontalot. He was really energetic on stage, and the band had clearly spent a lot of time rehearsing together. Overall, the translation of his beloved studio work into a live format was much better than I'd dared to hope. Especially notable was the performance of that most scatalogical of all Star Wars-influenced raps: Yellow Lasers. Great job, MC Frontalot!

After that was MC Chris and the Minibosses, but Bill, Dan and I were out of gas and called it a night. I look forward to getting the full report from Hawk tomorrow morning.

One random note on the "group hug" comment from above. Here at PAX, you can see firsthand how the internet has transformed (what tech evangelists would call) "sparse communities." I'd put it this way: 15 years ago, these would have been 8,000 people getting their asses kicked by a geek-hating world in 2,000 separate towns. Now, they self-identify as members of an active, growing subculture with market power and even -- yes -- some sort of cultural cachet. It seems that the internet often has this effect: concentrating and magnifying fringe communities.

I think that's exciting in general. But before we get too excited about the dawning tech-driven utopia of universal joy and acceptance, it's important to remember that the internet is just an amoral catalyst for these interactions. It has transformed the hardcore video gaming community in the same exact way that it transformed the nascent terrorist community. It's cliched but true: the internet does little to change human nature. It just magnifies whatever's already there.

Greetings from PAX

2005-08-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm spending the weekend in Seattle at the Penny Arcade Expo (as in this Penny Arcade) with Bill, Hawk, and Dan. If this doesn't mean anything to you, then perhaps you've heard me referring to an upcoming "nerd convention" in the past week.

Well, we are the nerds. And this is that convention.

After catching an early morning flight, we wandered downtown Bellevue for a couple of hours, then hopped into the rapidly-growing line outside the convention center.

Let me digress for a bit to explain that lines were apparently a huge problem at last year's PAX. So this year, they mailed walk-right-in passes to early registrants like us, and they even let us in an hour early. The theory was that no one in their right mind would wait two hours in line to enter a convention 5 minutes earlier.

They obviously misjudged their audience.

As Hawk astutely pointed out, this place is a sea of obsessive gaming geeks. These are people actively looking for ways to be even more hardcore than all their fellow travellers. One way to do this is to stand in a line for longer than everyone else. However, just to add a dash of sanity to today's line, only the first 400 or so folks got tickets to see tonight's musical acts.

So anyway, the line wasn't too bad. We stood next to the guy who runs TalkXbox, and he was very friendly.

Once we got inside, we took a quick tour of the place. Hawk, Dan, and Bill quickly settled into a tabletop game that involved hand-painted models and very complicated rules. ("Confrontation," I think it was called). Not something I'd tried before, but it seemed pretty neat.

After that, we caught a talk on the present and future of online gaming with folks from Sun, Microsoft, (ex-)Sony, and somewhere else. The one thing that really struck me was the Sun guy's repeated mention of cell phones as a portal to some modified version of a persistent online world. This makes a lot of sense. Take Dan for example, whose addiction to World of Warcraft is well-known. Now, Dan can't play WoW on his cell phone, and even if cell phones were capable of running WoW, I doubt he'd want to play it on such a tiny screen. But if you let Dan use his cell phone to trade WoW items, chat with his clan-mates, etc..... I'm pretty sure he'd do this all the time. He'd probably lose his job, but that's a separate issue.

Toward the end of the online gaming discussion, I heard from Bill that MC Frontalot had entered the building and was selling schwag and signing autographs. The Front was actually my main reason for coming to Penny Arcade, so I jumped at the chance to shake his hand, take a picture, buy an autographed album, and -- yes -- geek out just a little bit. Don't worry, I wasn't the only one doing so.

After meeting the Front, it was back to the theater to catch a funny presentation by Penny Arcade's Gabe and Tycho. They were my other main reason for coming, and didn't disappoint. Funny, animated, and very much like their online personas in tone (although they look nothing like their cartoons in real life).

Last but not least, I saw a panel and preview with the Red vs. Blue guys, which was great. Then I wussed out and headed back to the hotel. Bill was about to start playing in the Smash Brothers tournament (I bet $1 that he lost in the first round). Dan's ass got pwn3d in a Magic tournament. And Hawk was doing well in that same Magic tournament, proving once again that he is truly the Alpha Nerd.

I have only four regrets for the day:

I don't own a PSP or a DS. I'm apparently the only one here who doesn't.
I didn't bring my laptop with me, so I had to blog all of this at the end of the day.
I didn't actually play any games today! No tabletop, no console freeplay, nothin'. Bill and I kept saying we'd get around to this, but with all the panel discussions and such, there wasn't any time.
I forgot the cable that connects my camera to my laptop, so I won't be able to post pictures until I get home on Monday. But I'm taking some good ones!

It's this beautiful 35 minutes away from my house?!

2005-04-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

I went for a short hike with some friends in Pacifica yesterday. A beautiful, dog-friendly series of beaches, great weather, and great company. I posted a picture below, and all my pictures from the day are up in my smugmug gallery.

2005-04-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

Serena, Hawk, Maricia, Matt, Luna the Dog, and I on a short hike in Pacifica yesterday.

Posted by Hello

2005-04-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

Look! Doug Beeferman and I are twins!

Nevermind about PyCon 2005...

2005-03-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've been blogging away about PyCon over at the group PyCon blog that Greg set up, and it seems kind of silly to repeat myself here. I might just blast all my free-form notes here at the end of the conference; we'll see.

Another PyCon blog of note...

2005-03-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

Greg Stein set up a PyCon blog, to which he's inviting the other Googlers and hopefully some Python big-shots. I'll probably be posting my brain-dumps here, but I might add summaries there, and if you're interested in PyCon it should be worth checking out.

PyCon 2005

2005-03-22T17:19:00.000-08:00

I've arrived in Washington, DC for PyCon 2005. I've checked into my hotel, where a couple of coworkers will also be staying, along with Guido and some other geek luminaries. :)

The hotel is nice, and far cooler than I am. Trendy bar, employees are apparently required to have a European accent, that kind of thing. Should be a fun time, but at this point I wish I'd brought some nicer shoes...

I'm looking forward to starting the convention tomorrow, to seeing some of the DC sights while I'm here (the WWII memorial is new), and to finally meeting Jeremy from the New York office.