I've finished culling, sorting, and organizing the photos that I took during our trip. There are 339 photos, 132 of which are in the "60 mi Gallery" and probably not all that interesting except as a curiosity. That leaves 207 actual pictures of potentially interesting things.

USA Southwest 2005 Photo Gallery

Enjoy!

We finally made it to Canada! We're now in Vancouver at my brother's place on the 17th floor with a lovely view of the mountains. Well, it would be a lovely view if it weren't overcast!

I think we left off the last entry in the San Francisco area. We drove north and stopped in Ukiah and Eureka in California. (Once we hit Eureka the weather turned rainy and there hasn't been a single day without at least some rain since then.) The Oregon coast was really cool but windy and rainy too, so we just stopped in Coos Bay there. Then we spent two days in Portland, then two days in Seattle, then arrived in Vancover a couple of days ago.

Major things we saw and did were:

- Fetzer winery where we picked up a few bottles of wine
- Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka, for lunch, dinner, and then breakfast the next day (because it's so good)
- Redwood National and State Park
- Devil's Punchbowl
- mini-tour of local breweries in Portland
- Multnomah Falls
- Pike Place Market
- Seattle Underground tour
- original Starbuck's location
- Museum of Flight

I've probably forgotten some stuff again. It happens. We have pictures, somewhere. Once we get to Victoria (our final destination for a while), I'll set up my desktop machine and start working on getting everything into our photo galleries. That will no doubt keep me busy for a while!

It's been nearly two weeks since my last update! Yes, I slack. But then again, internet connectivity has been sporadic for us here in California. Since my last update we have done no less than the following (I've probably forgotten something):

- visited the Chinese Theater in Hollywood
- driven Mulholland Drive
- stayed with my friend Scott and his family in Bakersfield, CA
- fixed the cruise control on the car
- ate at Mclintock's in Shell Beach, CA
- missed riding ATVs at the Pismo Beach sand dunes because of time constraints
- visited Montana de Oro State Park
- had some great hot dogs in Morro Bay, CA
- visited Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA
- drove across the San Joaquin Valley to Yosemite National Park
- hiked up to Vernal Falls
- hiked in to Mirror Lake (which isn't a lake at all this time of year because it's dry)
- drove up to Glacier Point
- missed seeing a bear and two cubs at Glacier Point by mere seconds as they went over a ridge
- left Yosemite a day earlier than planned so we could pack our tent up while it was still dry (it rained that night)
- drove back across the San Joaquin Valley to the coast
- visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium
- didn't drive the 17 Mile Drive because they wanted $8.50 just to drive it
- met thomasj in San Jose
- visited the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA
- had some great sushi at Totoro Sushi
- visited the Big Basin Redwood State Park southwest of San Jose
- saw Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
- visited Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco
- ate clam chowder from a sourdough bread bowl at Boudin Bakery
- stayed with our friends Eric and Sarah in Hayward, CA
- ate Dim Sum in chinatown
- skipped riding on a cable car because $5 per person, one way, is a bit steep
- walked up to Coit Tower to take pictures
- stopped and watched some setup for filming of the movie Pursuit of Happyness

We now have put at least 6720 miles on the car since we left. Having the cruise control again is so much nicer, and sure helps with the fuel efficiency too.

The one thing we had booked ahead of time (back in august) was three days of camping in Yosemite, so most of our trip up until then had been roughly scheduled in order to put us in Yosemite at the right time. Now we have no more hard commitments, so depending on how soon we feel like getting to Canada we might be on the road for as little as a week more.

Once we get to Canada, the first order of business will be to collect all the paperwork necessary to send to the New Zealand immigration office so they can start processing my actual application for permanent residency. Depending on how long the paperwork takes, we expect to leave for New Zealand perhaps as early as the new year, or a month or two later. We would like it to be sooner rather than later, so we can catch the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. We plan to do this same sort of trip around New Zealand once we get there so we can figure out where we want to settle down.

We visited the San Diego Zoo on saturday and spent nearly all day there, and yet only saw about two thirds of the zoo. It's huge! There was low cloud the whole day so it was kind of chilly. After spending a couple of weeks in the desert, this was quite a change in weather.

On sunday we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which is really huge and would also take days to see. The weather was playing tricks on us again, starting off cold, then getting sunny and warm, then cold again with rain and thunderstorms. But we did the whole monorail tour and saw most of the animal exhibits.

Since it was raining, we decided to head north out of San Diego to the Los Angeles area. We're staying in Laguna Beach, which if you know LA, is way way on the south end of the sprawling metropolis. So what did we do today? We drove all the way to Hollywood (60 miles) to have lunch and visit the Chinese Theater. Then we had to head back south to Huntington Beach for a chiropractic appointment. Finally, we had some excellent sushi in Newport Beach, watched the full moon rise, and came back to Laguna Beach.

Tomorrow we're going to head back north through LA, stop in the Hollywood area again, then further north to Bakersfield.

We just arrived in San Diego from our previous stop in Yuma, AZ. We spent the last few days seeing much of the state of Arizona, from Sedona north of Phoenix to Biosphere 2 north of Tucson and all the way to Tombstone in the southeast.

Since we totally missed everything south of Flagstaff and north of Phoenix due to the state having no vacancy (see previous post), we were glad to be able to go back to the Sedona area for some sightseeing. We camped in the valley north of Sedona (and shared our campsite with a skunk!), and did some short hikes around the area.

Biosphere 2 is essentially a big greenhouse, the most airtight building in the world. In the early 90s after it was built, two teams of people lived inside the closed environment, breathing recycled air and drinking recycled water, for two years and six months respectively. Since then it has been a research center for such things as carbon dioxide studies, since it is the only place in the world where you can accurately control the amount of CO₂ in the air.

Tombstone is the site of the famous OK Corral shootout and is now a tourist town. We saw a corny reenactment of some shootouts from the wild west, wandered the streets where they still do horse and buggy tour rides, and saw the Boot Hill Cemetery where the victims of many shootouts are buried. Apparently they filled up the cemetery in just a few years!

Tomorrow we're going to visit the San Diego Zoo and around Balboa Park.

We intended to stay in Flagstaff last night, but every hotel room within a 100 mile radius is full for some reason! Since Phoenix was our eventual destination this week, we continued and finally at midnight found a place with a couple of rooms left.

I've also updated our trip maps. In particular, the USA map shows the most detail, but it's getting kind of crowded. I need to do at least two things: (1) add state boundaries, and (2) do something about the text. I'm also recording pretty much every step we take via the GPS - I have 3.5 megabytes of GPS track logs already and more to come. When we're done I'll plot those on a nice detailed map of the USA so it will be easy to see where we've been.

09/25 - We went into the Needles area of Canyonlands National Park today. We did a hike around the top of a mesa, seeing several viewpoints along the way. The Colorado river does flow through this park, but it hasn't carved quite as gaping a hole as the Grand Canyon. The canyons are nevertheless quite impressive. We hiked around the top of a mesa which was hot, dry, and rocky. We then continued north to the town of Moab.

09/26 - We went into Arches National Park and saw many of its famous features including Balanced Rock, North and South Windows, Double Arch, Landscape Arch, and the venerable Delicate Arch. We didn't hike the full mile right up to the arch itself, but instead went to a viewpoint just south of the arch. Using my binoculars as a makeshift zoom lens (holding it up against the camera lens), I got some nice photos of the arch.

09/27 - Since Moab is one of the best (or at least most popular) places in the (continental) US to 4WD, we decided to rent a Jeep and explore the trails. We got off to a late start around noonish, with a 40% chance of rain in the forecast. Most of the day it was beautiful weather, but we ran into some rain right near the end of the day. It certainly didn't spoil the day, we had a great time climbing steep switchbacks and bouncing along trails.

09/28 - We left Moab and headed toward Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol Reef is one of the lesser-known national parks in Utah, and it's mostly of interest to geologists. But it has several interesting narrow canyons, and some historical significance such as the "Pioneer Wall" where early explorers and settlers etched their names into the rock. We hiked up to a formation called "The Tanks" where rainwater collects in deep pools in a staircase-like arrangement.

09/29 - Next up was one of the places I really wanted to see - Bryce Canyon National Park. We did a few short hikes there and took lots of pictures, but decided not to camp because the altitude is pretty high and it was forecast to be cold that night. Instead, we decided to head toward Kanab, UT.

09/30 - We talked to some Germans a couple of nights before and they told us about a sandstone formation called "The Wave" in the Vermilion Cliffs wildnerness area. Apparently since this area is quite delicate, only 20 people per day are issued permits to hike into it. They told us how to obtain a permit, so we woke up at the crack of dawn and drove from Kanab to the ranger station. Ten people per day can get permits online six months in advance, and the other ten are picked in a lottery from whoever shows up in the morning. We decided to give it a shot. We showed up and found that the lottery is for the next day's permit instead of the same day. Regardless, about thirty people showed up and we didn't get in. So, we continued to the uninteresting town of Page, AZ and saw Horseshoe Bend. We had considered also going to see Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon in the area but we would have had to book tickets for the next day and we didn't feel like staying in Page any longer. So, we continued on to Zion National Park.

10/01 - Zion is pretty cool. One of the interesting things to do is "The Narrows", which is to hike up the narrow canyon through which the Virgin River flows. There is no specific trail, and the river occupies the canyon from wall to wall, so one must hike in the river itself. It's pretty cold! The deepest part was right at the beginning, about chest deep depending on where you step. We spent about two hours hiking upriver with no specific goal. Every turn revealed more canyon and more river. Finally we decided to head back and do something else (rivier hiking is tiring). We did one other short hike and then relaxed for the rest of the day.

10/02 - We did one more short hike in Zion before leaving. It seems that the hikes are either short walks up the side of the canyon, or long walks up the canyon itself. We then left Utah, passed through the northwest corner of Arizona briefly (we will return), and headed into Las Vegas one day early.

10/03 to 10/08 - In Vegas, we walked a lot, ate a lot, spent a lot, walked a lot, saw three Cirque du Soleil shows (Zumanity, O, and Mystère) and Danny Gans (not the best way for us to spend $200, don't bother unless you're over 60), played some blackjack, walked some more, then finally got the hang of driving where we wanted to go. Driving in Vegas isn't so bad really. Did I mention we did a lot of walking? We have had our fill of this crowded fantasy city and are ready to leave. Next up is the Grand Canyon and Arizona!

Wow, it's been forever since I've actually sat down and written a livejournal entry. I know I should do it more often, especially when you people are trying to follow our progress, but we never seem to have enough time. We manage to get internet connectivity every few days, but I'm a slacker and fail to update. How about this: Whenever we get net connectivity, I'll at least update and say where we are. Would that work?

Anyway, here is the daily summary of the whirlwind Colorado part of our trip.

( read about colorado )

Our adventures in Utah are coming up in the next post.

Last time I updated we were still in Houston. Since then, we went north to the Dallas area and stayed for three nights in Irving with Amy's friend Shannon. We saw some things in the Dallas area, including the place where JFK was shot and the Highland Park Village (which is apparently the first shopping mall in America). And we had some Steak 'n' Shake too (mmm, steakburger).

We left Irving on sunday and drove north to Tulsa to see Amy's mom. We saw a bit of Tulsa including some areas with huge multi-million-dollar homes. On monday we left Tulsa and visited Bixby where Amy's great-grandmother was buried a few months ago (she was about a week away from 105 years old when she died). We then took Route 66 to Claremore (a few miles northeast of Tulsa), just so we could say that we saw some of the famous road. Then we headed north through the backroads of Oklahoma, and then into Kansas, to Eureka where Amy was born. We visited the community hospital which was pretty quiet on a monday evening.

We had originally considered staying somewhere in Eureka, but we didn't see any place that really jumped out at us. So we continued west a bit more until we got to the El Dorado State Park, on the shore of El Dorado Lake. We drove around the campsites and selected one that was reasonably flat and quiet. Unfortunately, it was also fairly unprotected and there was a constant wind coming from the southeast all night. We had set the alarm for 6:45 in order to get up to see the sunrise at 7:05. All night the wind was blowing and rattling the tent around, and we also had to reinflate the air mattress several times during since it seems to have a leak in it somewhere (it didn't leak the last time we used it).

When the alarm went off this morning, we also heard a rumbling in the distance that didn't sound like traffic or a train. We found that we were indeed still in Kansas and it was a thunderstorm! The lightning was incredible and we got several great pictures. But it was certainly going to start raining any moment so we quickly packed everything in the car and got the tent down just as the rain started. It's a good thing we decided to get up early otherwise everything would have been really wet!

We continued west to Wichita, got gas for $2.65 per gallon (the cheapest we've seen so far), and stopped for breakfast. There is no wireless available in this Denny's, so I'll save this for now and post it later when we have a net connection.

Now we're in Dodge City, KS and found a nice dry motel for the night. With internet. The weather report shows thunderstorm and tornado warnings around where we were last night, so it's a good thing that we got this far west when we did!

Tomorrow, we're off north to meet up with I-70 and perhaps to camp in Goodland, KS. If the weather cooperates. If not, we figure it's not worth potentially getting drenched, just to camp.

We're finally on the road. The house is empty (it's still on the market!), some stuff has been shipped to my parents in Canada, the car is packed to the gills, and the new cruise control system is working great.

We spent last night in Houston (actually near Conroe) at Amy's dad's place. Tonight we're staying at Amy's friend Shannon's place in Dallas, where they have a fast fiber connection to the net.

I don't think it's really hit me yet, that I've actually left Austin, without plans to come back. Before it does, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a bunch of people who deserve it. In no particular order:

• decibel45 for letting us borrow the Suburban for a couple of days to move around all kinds of stuff
• nugget for providing SlackerNOC hosting for my computer that receives weather radio streams (although the machine is set up, the streams are not yet active)
• bovineone for letting us store a few boxes of our stuff in a corner of a spare room of the cowhouse
• bumpertx, cowquat, _fool, ivo, lucky_mcgee, moonwick, snaxxx, Moose, and many others for buying stuff from us through gbay

I'm going to miss everybody who I've met over the last several years in Austin. But I would rather look forward to the future than dwell on the past. I'm really looking forward to this road trip, I'm looking forward to spending a couple of months in Canada, and I'm definitely looking forward to starting a new life on the other side of the planet with Amy.

We will try to keep the amyrtw.com maps page updated as often as possible, so you can follow our journey! We will also be updating our respective journals with stories from our trip.

I've been promising to post about our upcoming road trip and subsequent plans for a while. Now that it is about a week until we leave Austin, I figure I should send out an update to let everybody know what's going on.

The plan is to leave Austin by september 7 at the latest. By that time we will have sold everything we can, through either gbay or a garage sale, packed up and stored the stuff we eventually want to ship to New Zealand, and packed the Insight with a small amount of stuff for the road trip. The house will sell sometime (soon, we hope).

Our itinerary is roughly:

• Dallas, TX
• Tulsa, OK
• Eureka, KS
• Denver, CO
• Zion/Bryce Canyon National Parks, UT
• Las Vegas, NV
• Prescott, AZ
• Phoenix, AZ
• San Diego, CA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Bakersfield, CA
• Yosemite National Park, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Eureka, CA
• Portland, OR
• Mount Saint Helens, WA
• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, BC
• Victoria, BC

We expect this to take just over two months and be about 5000 miles distance. We'll be camping and/or couchsurfing and/or staying in hotels. If you're on or anywhere roughly close to that route, let us know (some of the destinations above are already on the list to meet specific people). We'd love to stop by and say hi.

As mentioned, we're taking the Insight which should get a good solid 60 miles per gallon on the freeway. If the gas prices go up in Katrina's wake, the interstate freeways might be pretty empty. But, that's not a bad thing for us. Last week our predicted fuel budget was only about $300 so it won't matter too much even if it doubles.

Once we reach Canada, we're going to hang out at my parents' place in Victoria until my New Zealand paperwork is complete. Our current estimate for that is around december. When that is all approved, we will head to New Zealand to enjoy the rest of the summer there!

When we reach New Zealand, we will travel around the country for a couple of months and figure out where we want to live. Currently, Wellington and Christchurch are high on the list but we don't really know for sure yet.

I'm really excited about this trip and I'm glad I get to enjoy it with Amy. I'll miss everybody in Austin, but there are some things I won't miss very much (the heat, the traffic, the sprawl). The internet makes the world smaller, so nobody is ever more than an email away.

While driving to get lunch today, I saw five instances of the flag of the United States being flown at the top of the mast. The offenders were an apartment complex, a car dealership, an office building, a small business, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Section 175 (m) of Title 36 Chapter 10 of the United States Code states in part:

"By order of the President, the flag shall be flown at half-staff upon the death of principal figures of the United States Government and the Governor of a State, territory, or possession, as a mark of respect to their memory."

I hope that news is disseminated quickly enough these days such that everybody in the country has heard about the recent death of President Ronald Reagan. If you care enough to fly the flag, you should also care enough to lower the flag to half-staff when appropriate. I wonder how many will continue to fly the flag at half-staff for the required 30 days.

I read karl's post this morning and was suitably frightened at the proposal the FBI has put forth. For a long time, law enforcement has had the ability to wiretap conventional phone lines with an appropriate court order (more recently, the requirement for a court order has been dismissed by provisions in the PATRIOT act). In 1994, the CALEA act was passed which gives law enforcement the authority to eavesdrop on all types of communication, but not necessarily the ability. Now, the FBI wants to take CALEA to the next level and implement that ability. They have been somewhat left out of the explosion in electronic communications services, and now they're fighting back.

The FBI's proposal for easy electronic surveillance can be interpreted to extend to all types of electronic communications. This could include voice-over-IP, instant messaging, email, online games, IRC, and any other service where you might expect a reasonable assurance of privacy. They would mandate that all electronic communications offer an eavesdropping back door for use by law enforcement, with a time limit of 15 months for existing systems to comply.

I can hardly imagine a world where new electronic communications applications must be approved by some government bureau before they can be deployed. And the potential for misuse of systems which have poorly implemented back doors is mindboggling. To strain the analogy, most systems can't get their front door security working perfectly, which doesn't bode well for the back door. I spent about 10 years of my professional career building systems that enable people to communicate (and expect to do more in the future). I believe it's a critically important facet of society that people be able to communicate freely and privately. This sort of bureaucratic bottleneck would severely impair the development of new communications services, not to mention threaten the reasonable assurance of privacy that I consider a basic human right.

Practical considerations mean I have neither the time nor the energy available to fight this sort of totalitarianism myself, so I support, through donations, organizations which are equipped to stand up for the rights of the people. I made a donation today to EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) in support of this position. I believe they will take a reasonable stance against this new proposal.

While I was writing this post, I got an IM from my friend Sam who also just started his Politics page, which is about his own advocacy efforts. It is indeed a good time for advocacy.

In other news, I also joined AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) today. I support their advocacy efforts in ensuring that general aviation is available to everybody. And I renewed my ARRL membership, they do good work in ensuring that radio communications is available to everybody.

Well that was by any measure, a completely successful trip!

bovineone and cowquat and I left bright and early last wednesday for Denver. Perhaps it should have been a bit earlier, because we sort of forgot about early morning traffic and showed up to the airport a bit late, but walked right onto the plane just before the final boarding call.

After arriving in Denver, we met up with Dave Avery (daa from distributed.net) who works at the United Airlines training facility in Denver. He graciously took a few hours out of his day to show us around the facility, which mostly consists of a lot of simulators. Dave knows everything about these systems, as he is one of the technicians who keeps them running, and some of them are old (expected service lifetime is 30 years - we even saw one system with a paper tape boot loader!).

For those of you who may not be familiar with the concept, an airplane simulator is an exact replica of an airplane cockpit, right down to the identical switches, instruments, displays, and controls. The "external" view out the window shows a very realistic computer generated display of what a pilot would see outside a real airplane. The whole thing, with room for about five or six people, is mounted on huge hydraulic legs that move the simulator in a way that approximates the motion pilots would feel in a real plane. To even compare these devices with something like Microsoft Flight Simulator would be sacrilege.

Most of the simulators were in use by real pilots for real training, but there was one (a Boeing 777) that was reserved for engineering department use. Which means we got to play with it! (See Jeff's pictures.) I won't bore you with the details, but I got to do taxi, takeoff, landing, stalls, aileron rolls, engine fire simulation, and all kinds of fun stuff. When Dave simulated a fire in the left engine while I was messing around at 9000 feet over Los Angeles, I managed to get the plane on the ground but veered way off the runway because the left gear failed to deploy and the nose gear collapsed on landing.

Flying the simulator was easily the most fun I've had in a long time. Thanks Dave!

The remaining days (thursday through saturday), all we did was ski. Ok, that's understating it a bit, let me try again: For the next three days we had a great time skiing in fantastic conditions at Copper Mountain.

Going into the trip, I had myself convinced that the cards were stacked against me with respect to being able to actually ski. I was just recovering from a nasty cold that had me stuffed up and headachey for a week; the base of the mountain is over 9000 feet altitude with the peak at about 12000 feet (for comparison, when flying an airplane, supplemental oxygen is required at altitudes over 12500 feet for more than 30 minutes); and I am somewhat out of shape in the endurance department. However, luck smiled on me and my cold cleared up; the altitude didn't bother me (probably spending a day in Denver helped); and I guess I'm in better shape than I thought.

We had great conditions each day. On thursday it was snowing on and off all day, on friday we had about 4 inches of new snow in the morning, on saturday it was much windier at the top but nothing that more clothes couldn't handle. The snow was very dry and powdery, much lighter than the wetter snow I'm used to on the west coast.

For those three days, we didn't do much else. Like my mom says, "eat, sleep, and ski". That pretty much sums it up.

I just finished filling out the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates from the National Science Foundation. Somehow they decided to pick me as a respondent, even though I got my degree in Canada and have never attended school in the US.

The survey asked a bunch of questions about current employment, recent employment history, education, demographics, etc. The accompanying documentation said that the results of the survey will assist the NSF in deciding how to invest in research and education. I believe both these things are of critical importance to society, so I was happy to take the time to fill out the survey.

Hopefully this will help somebody, somewhere.

I flew out to California earlier this week to visit my brother who has been essentially slacking on the beach in Los Angeles for the last couple of months. On Friday we went surfing, my brother has done lots of surfing but this was my first time. It was fun!

I think it's time to go catch a plane back to Austin. Cheap flights means crappy travel days, I'd love to stay another day. On the other hand, I can fly (gliding) tomorow. :)