Art about consumerism and waste

Incredible images: http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php

Which I learned about from Chris Clark’s blog.

Mini-Med on U.S. Health Care System

Pnina and I have been going to a series of lectures at the University of Washington called Mini-Med. Each Tuesday, a few med-school faculty members are invited to do a short presentation to the general public on their area of focus.

Until now, most of the topics were about the science of medicine. For example, last week we heard an interesting lecture about a kind of super-bacteria (MRSA) that has developed resistance to all known kinds of antibiotics. But yesterday the lectures were about the US health care system; they were much more focused on statistics and on the social and political issues surrounding medicine.

There were three speakers: Stephen A. Bezruchka, Benjamin Danielson, and Jeffrey Huebner. They were all great, and they all had a similar message. It’s hard to summarize it all here, but I’ll try to pull out the points that made a big impression on me…

First off, a lot of money is spent on health care in the US. In 2005, it was about $2 trillion, enough to make the US health care system the 6th largest economy in the world (by GDP), ahead of countries like Italy, Canada, and Spain. With so much money spent on health care, you’d expect that we have the best health. We don’t.

There are various measures of health that you can take. Two popular ones are life expectancy and infant mortality rates. In both, the US is far behind other developed countries. Although health care has been getting better in the US over the years (e.g. life expectancy is growing), other countries have far outpaced us. In particular, in countries like Japan, England, Norway, and Sweden, the average person lives 1-3 years longer than in the US. The US is now ranked about 30′th in the world in overall health, or worse, depending on which study you look at.

So, the big question is — why?

One aspect that comes to mind: how well do we take care of ourselves? If Americans have unhealthy habits, it makes sense for us to live shorter lives. This is true when it comes to obesity — Americans are some of the fattest people in the world. It’s also interesting that immigrants quickly pick up this bad habit; the longer they live in the US, the more likely they are to be obese.

However, this is not true when it comes to many other habits. For example, Japan has the highest rate of adult male smokers in the world, and yet Japan has the healthiest population.

The speakers argued that habits only go so far to explain the health differential between the US and other developed countries. For the rest, you need to look at socio-economic issues. The quote that summed it best: “more egalitarian societies (e.g., those with a less steep differential between the richest and the poorest) have better average health”. This came from an Institute of Health publication called The Future of The Public’s Health. There have been lots of studies that prove this point over and over, and we saw various graphs from those studies. We also saw a graph that compared each of the US’ 50 states to one another, as if they were independent countries, and the same point applied again — states that have a smaller gap between the rich and the poor have better overall health. Incidentally, the states that did worst are in the southeast: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. The states that did best are: Utah, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Idaho, Iowa, and others (they tended to cluster in the midwest).

At the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor in the US has broadened since the late 1970’s, largely as a result of lowered taxes on the super-rich. In 1980 the top 0.01% of the US citizens owned 1.3% of all assets. In 2005 they owned 5.1%. At the same time, the bottom 90% of the country went from owning 65% of all assets to owning 51%. Dr. Bezruchka called this “Hood-Robinosis” — taking from the poor and giving to the rich. And the decline in health in the US correlates very closely.

Another problem is that there isn’t enough focus on primary care, and in particular on early-life. Lots of studies have shown that it’s much more cost effective to spend money on preventative care than to try to cure an advanced-stage illness. Studies also show that investments in early life (e.g. pre-birth to age 3 or 5) pay the biggest dividends. There are four countries in the world that do not give guaranteed paid maternity leave: Papua New Guinea, Lesotho, Swaziland, and the United States of America. That means that mothers-to-be are more likely to put their bodies under stress, and less likely to get the care they need, especially in lower-income brackets.

In addition, there are fewer primary care (e.g. family-practice) doctors to be seen. In 1997, about 2300 medical students said they were interested in pursuing a career in family medicine. That number has dropped gradually over the last 10 years, such that in 2007 it was only 1100 students. There’s a stigma against this branch of medicine. Dr. Huebner said that he was told many times “you’re too smart to go into family practice”. Of course, family practice also offers the lowest salaries. “It’s still plenty of money”, said Huebner, “but it’s the lowest-paying kind of medicine.” Incidentally, Dr. Bezruchka said that in Sweden a doctor and a teacher get paid the same amount. He drew a mixed reaction for this comment from an audience that was otherwise very supportive

Dr. Danielson also pointed out that health care in the US is very divided along race lines, that there are differences that can’t be explained simply by economic level. He showed one particularly convincing graph that illustrated infant mortality rate as a function of the mother’s race and education level. The good news is that infant mortality goes down as mothers become more educated, across all races. However, the most educated black mothers (college+) still see a higher rate of infant mortality than even the least educated mothers of all other races (< high school). Native Americans also see much higher rates of illness than most other races.

So, what all these speakers were pointing at is that we need some kind of social health care system.

Next question — how will we afford it? The first assumption people make when you talk about socialized mecidine is that we’ll need to pay a lot more in taxes, and how are we going to convince the public to put up with that? Well, the speakers argued that this is a false assumption, that the cost for most people may end up being the same, or perhaps slightly more. They didn’t get into a lot of specifics, which was disappointing. But they did illustrate ways in which money is not being spent very wisely today. For example, the pharmaceutical industry spends $7 billion a year on drug marketing to MD’s ($13,000 per doctor). This includes salaries for 90,000 sales representatives (about 1 for every 5 doctors).

The speakers all mentioned the upcoming elections and the various solutions that will be talked about, but they didn’t get into details, which again was disappointing — I was hoping to hear them dissect the Obama plan and the Clinton plan and to point out the pros and cons of each. They did indicate that our current health care “non-system” is so broken that any of those solutions would bring us a big step forward.

They also talked about previous attempts to legislate socialized medicine and how they failed, including the famous album: Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine, which you may have seen mentioned in Michael Moore’s Sicko.

One person from the audience asked: “if we had the political will to create a socialized health care system today, how long would it take us to catch up to other countries?”. Dr. Bezruchka guessed that it would take about 30 years. Why? Because it took Japan about that long to go from being one of the less healthy countries after WWII to being the most healthy country. He argued that Japan can thank the US for taking many steps towards making health care in Japan better, including some non-obvious things like making war constitutionally illegal and breaking up the largest monopolies.

For more info, Dr. Bezruchka recommended a TV series that will air on PBS in late March called Unnatural Causes.

Dr. Huebner recommended looking through the Washington State report on health care and costs from 2006: Blue Ribbon Commission. He also asked for support for HB 2536, which would give money to analyze several health care solutions and make a proposal. Finally, he mentioned that drug companies today have the right to look through records that specify which drugs were prescribed by each doctor, which allows them to do more targeted marketing at the doctors. He argued that this is a conflict of interest that should be disallowed, and in fact there’s a bill that would disallow it, though it’s unclear whether it’ll pass: HB 2664 “The Prescription Privacy Act”.

Update: One counter-argument is found on Free Market Cure.

Update: A comparison of the different candidates’ health care reform plans: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803443.html

Toad Sucking Dog

“We couldn’t keep our dog’s addiction a secret any longer,” Laura Mirsch says. “The neighbors all knew that Lady was a drug addict, and soon the other dogs weren’t allowed to play with her.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6376594

The transacript is available, but I recommend listening to the story.

Puget Sound Technology Family Tree

My friends Jasmine and Ankush work for a big umbrella company, Danaher.  Danaher is one of the most successful big companies you’ve never heard about.  They have a market cap of something like $9 billion.  Their strategy is to go around buying relatively small companies and to make them efficient by instilling the Danaher Business Process, which involves a lot of ideas borrowed from Toyota.  The particular business where Jasmine and Ankush work is Fluke, a company that makes the Cadillac of digital multimeters.

Not long ago, Danaher made an unusually large acquisition — they bought Tektronix.  I heard about this acquisition a lot because my parents live in Portland, which is where Tektronix is based, and to them Tektronix is a very big deal.  It’s kind of a matriarch for the technology industry in Portland.  Lots of smart people “graduated” from Tektronix and went off to start their own successful businesses.  My dad works at a company called Planar, which spun off of Tektronix years ago, so this issue is pretty close to home for him.  The big question on his mind is whether Danaher will continue to foster the culture of innovation that was a staple at Tek, or whether they will buckle down, kill frivolous projects, and in general turn it into a less inventive but efficient machine.

To illustrate how important Tektronix is to Portland, take a look at this poster that shows a kind of family tree of the Portland technology community.

Now some people at the Washington Technology Industry Association are trying to create a similar poster for the Puget Sound technology community.  The poster is obviously going to include some well known companies like Microsoft, Expedia, Amazon, Boeing, etc.  But they now have a list of some 170 smaller companies that, I’m sure, have roots in the big ones.  I know that most of the engineers at Redfin are either ex-Microsoft or ex-PlumTree.  My friends at JamGlue have roots in Expedia, Microsoft, and Amazon.  It’s all pretty connected.  Can’t wait to see how the poster will look.

BTW, I learned about this on John Cook’s blog, where else.

Gabe & Max’s Internet Thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPsUmhqncAg

MySQL to Postgres

I wrote an article on the Redfin devblog about our switch from MySQL to Postgres.  If you’re into databases or contemplating your own switch, you may find this interesting.  If not, you’ll find it very boring (except, perhaps, the pictures).

http://devblog.redfin.com/2008/02/mysql_to_postgres.html

Doot, doot, doot…another one buys a Mac

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new computer:

 

 

Yup, it’s a Mac.  I get a strange feeling of rebelliousness saying this, considering that I worked at Microsoft for 5 years.  And I know I’m totally jumping on the bandwagon here — my friends Divya, Gautam, Casey, Marques, and Eric all switched to Mac over the last few years, and a few of my coworkers at Redfin are pretty gung-ho about their Macs.

 

But for me, this is the first Mac I’ve ever owned.  It’s even the first Mac I’ve used at all in about 10 years, ever since my freshman year C++ programming course at the University of Michigan (and that experience, BTW, was not a great one — we used Code Warrior and it would cause the machine to hang regularly).

 

So why did I decide to switch?

 

 

1. Form-factor became a priority.  I’m not just talking about style/industrial design, I’m talking about size.  I live in a small condo in Seattle, a condo that’s become more cramped over time.  The situation was exacerbated recently when I purchased a rather large filing cabinet, a cabinet that happened to only fit in the space where my PC used to sit.  I tried to move my PC around to various locations but nothing worked well enough (e.g. the bluetooth keyboard’s communication was spotty).  I started warming up to the idea of a small form-factor computer like a Mac Mini or an iMac.
2. I upgraded my old computer from XP to Vista.  This was painful.  First off, a few of my peripherals weren’t compatible: my external hard disk, my scanner, etc.  After replacing those peripherals, I found that I also had to upgrade my memory from 1 GB to 3 GB in order to get reasonable performance, and even then it felt more sluggish than with XP.

So, it’s true that I could have reverted back to XP.  I could have purchased a small form-factor PC.  Or I could have switched to a smaller form-factor filing cabinet.  But I decided to give Mac a try.  This was not a 100% rational decision.  There was definitely an impulse-purchase factor.

 

Buying the Mac

 

Before heading to the apple store, I made a big list of all the things I would need the Mac to do before I’d consider it:

1. It must be compatible with all my hardware
   1. monitor and bluetooth keyboard/mouse (if I decide to go with a Mini)
   2. printer: HP Deskjet 3520
   3. wireless router: Linksys WRT54G
   4. scanner: Canon CanoScan Lide 70
   5. speakers: Klipsch
   6. external hard disks (3 of them)
   7. video camera: Canon Elura 20 MC
   8. still cameras: my Panasonic DMC-FX9 and Pnina’s new Nikon D80
   9. iPod nano
   10. cellphone: T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6 (this is where I expected the most trouble)
2. It must have enough hard disk capacity for all my data, and there must be a relatively easy way to move all the data over.
   1. music: 40 GB
   2. photos: 40 GB (and growing fast)
   3. video: 50 GB (and plenty of scratch space for projects while I work on them — each MiniDV tape is 10 GB!)
   4. other: 10 GB
3. It must have software that lets me do all the things I do on my PC
4. The price has to be reasonable

I spent about 1.5 hours talking to one of the Apple store representatives about all these things, item by item.  He was awesome.  I won’t mention his name here because he deviated from Apple store rules by telling me about some 3rd party software I could use to accomplish some of the things in my list.  I find it a little bit obnoxious that Apple instructs their sales reps to only discuss home-brewed software.  But whatever.  At least this guy was cool enough to give me the information I needed.

 

I pretty quickly decided that a Mac Mini will not work for me.  The main reason is that I couldn’t get one with a big enough hard disk for my needs (160GB was the max).  Also, I discovered that by the time I upgraded the Mini to the version that includes the larger hard-disk and the DVD burner, the price was not that far from an iMac.  And the iMac includes a new monitor, a built-in video camera, and other goodies.  So, I decided to go with an iMac.  The base price was $1200.  By adding $50 I got got the wireless version of the keyboard and mouse, which is good in my case because my cats like to chew cables.  By having Pnina buy the computer for me, I got the student discount of $100.  My (I mean her) final price after tax was about $1250.

 

There was no way for the sales rep to prove to me that my peripherals would be compatible, so he suggested for me to take the iMac home and try it.  Normally, if you return a computer to the Apple store, you have to pay a restocking fee (something like 10%).  But this sales rep spoke to his manager and arranged for me to be able to return it within 24 hours with no fee (I ended up keeping it anyways).

 

Setting up my iMac & testing my peripherals

 

I bought my Mac just 2 weeks after Leopard was released.  The actual computer still had Tiger on it, but the box included a DVD to upgrade to Leopard.  Instead of simply doing an upgrade, I decided to do a clean install.  I did this for two reasons: 1. prior experience has taught me that clean-installs are a great way to get rid of cruft, and 2. the sales rep tipped me off that you can save a few gigs of hard disk space by doing a custom install and only picking the printer drivers you need.

 

Leopard installation took a couple of hours and it was pretty smooth.  The one tricky bit is that if you do a clean install, you wipe out all the add-on applications, e.g. iLife.  You then have to go back to the box, pull out the “other stuff” DVD, and re-install these apps.  Only now you have the Tiger version of these apps, and if you try to run them you may not get the desired results (e.g. when I ran iMovie, it crashed upon startup!!).  But if you then open Software Update (equivalent of Windows Update), it will upgrade to the newer version of these apps and then you’re good to go.  I’m a little annoyed that Apple didn’t make this process smoother, and I’m disturbed that the QA folks at iMovie didn’t take the time to check the scenario where a Tiger box is clean-install-upgraded to Leopard.  But I recognize that this complexity will go away as Apple starts shipping computers with Leopard pre-installed.

 

Most of my hardware connected without a hitch: the printer, speakers, all external hard disks, the video camera, the still cameras, and the iPod.  For the Canon scanner I had to download a driver from the Canon website.  The Linksys router required no special drivers.  The Mac wireless client (“airport”) picked up my network and allowed me to connect with the WEP key.  It occasionally displays an “unable to connect” message, but this message appears to be incorrect — I am able to connect to the internet even when this message is displayed.

 

The only hardware that presented a real challenge was my T-Mobile Dash smartphone.  Windows comes with the drivers to recognize my T-Mobile Dash and with the software to sync my important data (address book, calendar, etc.) to the computer.  The Mac comes with none of that.  I found that the Mac was not even able to recognize my phone at all, not through bluetooth and not through the USB connection.  I had to go online and do some research.  I ended up buying a 3rd party program called The Missing Sync.  It cost $40.  I had to use the special Leopard-ready version of the program which is currently in beta.  This program seems to work — I’m able to sync my data and view it in the Mac Address Book and iCal applications.  I don’t use those applications too much, but it’s enough for me to know that I have this data backed up and that I won’t have to manually retype this data next time I switch phones.  By the way, there are other ways to sync a smartphone to a Mac besides The Missing Sync, and some of these ways are free, but all of them seemed to be more complex (e.g. by setting up an Exchange server as a middle-man).

 

Transferring my data

 

Since my external hard-disks were compatible, transferring the data over was pretty easy.  I did one final backup of all my data from the Windows machine, and then I plugged the hard disk to the iMac and copied everything over.

 

One question was: where do I put everything?  On my Windows machine I hard two separate physical hard disks — one was the C drive and the other was D.  I put all the data I cared to keep on D (D = data), whereas C contained the OS and apps.  This made it easy to do backups — simply copy over everything in D (no need to fuss with “My Documents”, “Local Settings”, etc.).  On the iMac, things are arranged in Unix-like fashion.  Under the root (/) you have a folder called Users, and underneath you have a subfolder for each account.  So, I simply copied all my data into the appropriate subfolders under /Users/shahaf.

 

After copying the data, I had to do some cleanup:

 

1. Music.  While I tried to stick to MP3 in all situations, there were a few WMA files that snuck through over time.  I used a free program called Switch to convert these to MP3.  When I imported the converted files into iTunes, I found that all their metadata was stripped.  What a pain!  I ended up assigning artist and album to these tracks through iTunes, one album at a time.  My friend Justin would frown at this, but for me having artist and album info is enough.  After converting all these WMA files to MP3, I also went through and cleaned up some of the other random files that Windows created (e.g. JPG’s for album artwork).  I then let iTunes import the artwork for all my albums.  This worked to a large degree, but not completely — some of my albums still have no covers.
2. Photos.  Windows creates Thumbs.db and similar files in various folders.  I went through and cleaned them up using shell commands like find . -name “*.db” -delete

Getting used to Mac applications

 

Here’s a list of the applications I would use regularly on Windows, and the comparable program I now use on Mac…

 

Work.  I regularly need to work from home.  Sometimes I only need to check email, something I can do with a browser.  But sometimes I need to connect to the work network (VPN) and open a remote desktop session to my computer at work.  On Windows this was pretty easy.  The Windows network wizard has VPN support built-in, and Windows ships with the Remote Desktop Client.  On a Mac it took a little more setting up.  First off, I had to install the specific VPN client for our VPN server, which happened to be a Cisco variety.  Then I installed the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client for Mac, which is currently in beta but works without a glitch for me.  I found that it’s most convenient to run the remote desktop client in full-screen mode — that way I can see the maximum amount of the remote computer.  For this to work, I had to change the dock to auto-hide (the dock is the Mac’s equivalent of the start bar).  I’m still getting used to controlling a remote XP machine using a Mac keyboard and mouse.  This wireless keyboard looks great but lacks some keys I’m used to.  The delete key acts like a backspace and there’s no button that acts like a delete key; there are no page up/down buttons; the function keys are set to do various tasks like pause music; and the ctrl/shift/alt/fn keys don’t always do what I expect them to do.  And the mouse looks nice too and even supports left-right-middle buttons; but the little ball on top is not quite as comfortable to use as the full scroll wheel on my old mouse.  On the plus side, Mac comes with a great virtual desktop feature, so I can have my remote desktop session running in one virtual desktop and a bunch of Mac applications in a different desktop, and I can toggle between them with super-quick control-arrow combinations.

 

Of course, I use Office — Word, Excel, Powerpoint.  The iMac comes with a 30-day trial version of Office.  I’ve used it a little and it basically seems to work.  I’m planning to ask one of my friends back at Microsoft to pick up a copy of Office for Mac for me.

 

Music.  On Windows I used iTunes to import, browse, and play music, to download podcasts, and to manage my audible book collection.  Yes, iTunes works on a Mac

 

Photos.  On Windows I used a program called XnView to batch-rename my photos and Adobe Photoshop Elements for basic editing.  I now use a free 3rd party app called Metamorphose for doing batch renaming and iPhoto for browsing and simple editing.  iPhoto does support batch renaming, but this operation only works on the “title” of the photo, which is not the same as the filename (the title is probably stored in some iPhoto-specific database).  Metamorphose allows me to be just as anal-retentive as I want to be about how I name my photos (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS Title #.JPG) and it keeps all this metadata in the filename, which is the most cross-platform place to put metadata, IMHO.  To install Metamorphose you need to first get Python and some Python windowing libraries, and when you run Metamorphose you do it through an IDE, which is a little clumsy.  But it works.  iPhoto is great for browsing photos and for doing simple edits (e.g. crop, red-eye, etc.).  I especially like the full-screen view and the ability to compare photos side-by-side when choosing what to keep and what to toss.  But iPhoto is definitely not as rich as Photoshop Elements.

 

Video.  On Windows I used Pinnacle Studio (or occasionally Movie Maker) to edit videos and MyDVD to burn DVD’s with menus (or the new Vista DVD maker, which is pretty awesome).  And for viewing DVD’s I used AVS (I also tried to use Vista’s Media Center, but I wasn’t able to get any audio out of it).  On my iMac I use iMovie to edit, iDVD to burn, and DVD Player to play.  I’ve noticed that iMovie is less feature rich than Pinnacle, right down to the core of the UI.  Apparently Apple thinks that the typical iMovie user would be confused by a user interface that included multiple parallel tracks for different video footage, or even a single track that looks timeline-like.  They might be right, but I suspect it’s a little too dumbed-down for me.  I may end up buying a one-up program for video editing.

 

Web.  On Windows I used IE7 or Firefox2.  I basically needed some browser that supports the websites I visit regularly: gmail, wordpress, flickr, audible, redfin, etc.  I found that the built-in Safari browser works pretty well across the board, but occasionally I revert to Firefox.  For example, with gmail on Safari I don’t always get tab-completion when I type email addresses.  Also, Redfin doesn’t work on Safari (we’re working on it!).

 

Communication.  I would regularly use MSN IM and occasionally use Skype for voice-chats.  The sales rep suggested using an IM client called Adium, which works with many IM applications including MSN.  Skype has a client for Mac that appears to work.

 

Administration.  I regularly use Windows task manager to see what processes are eating up my computer’s resources.  On Mac you have Activity Monitor, which looks very similar.  On Windows I would do backups using a program called Second Copy.  Leopard has a very cool backup application called Time Machine that includes a sweet UI for looking back in time to restore files you accidentally deleted.  On Windows I would use some anti-virus program like eTrust.  On Mac, well, I haven’t installed an anti-virus program yet.  The sales rep at the store made some pretty bold claims like “you don’t need an anti-virus program” and “Macs have never hard a virus”.  It sounded pretty suspicious to me, but it’s possible the dude was not that far off.  One thing I will admit is that Macs are a smaller overall attack surface and therefore less appealing to black hats.  I still plan to install some protection on my machine, but I haven’t figured out which yet.

 

Other.  On Windows I used Turbo Tax to do my yearly taxes.  I haven’t tried it yet, but there is a version of Turbo Tax for Mac.  I also used the Google Screensaver to automatically display the latest photos I post on Flickr.  Mac has a similar RSS-feed screensaver.

 

You probably noticed that I didn’t mention any games here.  I’m not much of a gamer — occasionally I get super-addicted to some game (e.g. WOW), but those phases are short-lived and far between.  I am totally at peace with a computer that doesn’t serve as a gaming platform.

Performance

 

My old computer was a PC running Vista with 3 GB of memory, and it felt sluggish.  At the Apple store I looked at the iMac stats and noticed that it only comes with 1 GB of memory, and I grew concerned.  I asked the sales rep about this and he said “give it a try”.  Well, I did, and yeah, it’s fine.  My iMac with 1 GB of memory is definitely zippier than Vista with 3 GB.  Of course, this is not a pure apples-to-apples comparison.  My old computer had a slower single-core processor and a couple of years of installed cruft on it.  But at any rate, the iMac can perform well even with just 1 GB of memory.

 

I noticed that the biggest memory hog is the remote desktop client.  It can easily eat up half my memory.  Also, when I do big operations on iPhoto (e.g. importing lots of images), it can also grow to hundreds of megabytes.  But I don’t often find myself going around killing apps to conserve memory.

 

Final thoughts

 

I’m surprised at how relatively easy it was to switch from Windows to Mac.  You could almost say that it was easier to switch from Vista to Leopard than it was to switch from XP to Vista, at least as far as hardware compatibility goes.  I won’t pretend for a second that switching is completely free.  I probably spent a good 30 hours setting everything up, and I’m still finding my way around this OS.  I still discover things that delight me and things that annoy me.  Overall, if you’re a Windows user and you’re wondering whether to try a Mac or not, the basic message you should read is: “it’s not that hard to switch”.

 

Cliffs Notes to Sarah and Tyler’s World Trip

My friends Sarah and Tyler recently came back from their 7-month trip around the world.  The trip spanned these places: Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Easter Island, Tahiti, New Zealand, Tasmania, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Germany.

While they were traveling, they wrote updates from their trip in their blog: Strange and Benevolent.  This blog is long.  It’s 136 detailed entries.  If you were to, say, copy and paste it into Microsoft Word, you’d find that it has 138,985 words and spans 305 pages; and that doesn’t even include the pictures.  So, while originally I intended to follow their stories as they happened, I quickly fell way behind.  It took several train rides from Seattle to Portland and back where I did nothing but read their blog before I was caught up (thank you Google Reader!).  Yes, I’m a slow reader.

While I read their blog, I copied aside my favorite quotes.  I had a plan that in the end I would write my own blog entry as a sort of tribute / cliff’s notes to their trip.  Well, my little blog entry mushroomed into something bigger than I intended it to be, but here it is anyways.  Also, some of these quotes may not make sense out of context, but I think you’ll find them amusing nonetheless.

—

Sometime, in ancient history, the entire world got together and decided the “Rules of the Road.” After the Rules had been carefully laid out, America implimented them. And, to this day, we still follow them to the letter. Meanwhile, the rest of the World shrugged, said “meh” and threw them out the window of their car. “Let America follow those rules” the rest of the World said, “I´ve got somewhere to go.” Stoplights? Optional. Four lanes on the road? Perfect for six cars. And while America has only mastered the “I hate you with a passion” style of honking the horn. The rest of the world has turned it onto a subtle instrument that, I´m sure, would allow them to recite poetry if they so choose.

Meanwhile, the only accident we´ve seen is what appeared to be a fender bender between two sets of Americans in rental cars. I´m sure there is a message here somewhere.

—

(in Peru)
…the sand cliffs of the (oddly named) Yitzhak Rabin Park where we could look down at the surfers below us…

—

…really, really epic billboards. One billboard was a massive six-story tall woman who appeared to be standing next to the road, looking at her even more mammoth shoe closet. Another was a pair of thirty foot tall flip-flops rising from either side of the highway. And a final pair of signs featured dozens of male mannequins in matching blue or red jump suits hanging from it by hooks. Surreal.

—

And, luckily, I didn’t get pooped on again.

—

it is actually a drink made from fermented purple corn, with cinnamon, pineapple, clove, sugar and lemon juice.

—

The lines were everything I´d hoped them to be, and pretty much everything you´d expect giant drawing in the desert to be…Unfortunately, the tour was also over by 9am, leaving Sarah and I with a day to burn in Nasca, a place which even the owner of our hotel described as “a dusty, half horse town with nothing to do.”

—

Finally, imagine having a guy sitting in the row behind you throw up. And then having him spend the next two hours locked in the bathroom, vomiting loudly the whole time.

—

…because nothing says “Peru” like crepes, right?”

—

That night, we were awoken by another small earthquake. I get the feeling they are a little more common here than in Seattle

—

…we weren´t sure when to go from Pepto and some Immodium to the hardcore stuff. Turns out that was today.

I got to experience something that I’m pretty sure had gone the way of the dodo even before my parents time: A doctor’s house call.

The doctor was everything you could hope for from a Peruvian doctor. A short, professional man in a dark suit who asked me a number of questions in a clipped, attentive manner that stopped just shy of ending each sentence with “idiota turista.”

“Did you eat anything from any street vendors (idiota turista)? Did you travel along the coast (idiota turista)? Did you drink water from a mud puddle (idiota turista)?”

—

the graves were often struck by lightening because of the metal objects buried only 1 meter from the surface

—

Apparently the name “Sarah” is “muy bonita” …but the name “Tyler” is pretty much incomprehensible. Here’s a normal conversation:

“What is your name?”
“Tyler.”
*Blank stare*
“Ty-ler.”
“Ty-lor.”
“Si. Yes. Tyler.”
“What does Tylor mean, in English?”
“You know the things in bathrooms? The little plates on the floor and the wall?”
“Si.”
“Well, in English, those are tiles. So, Tyler means someone who puts in tiles. A Tile-r.”
*Blank stare, as they ponder the ramifications of being named after someone who installs things into a bathroom.*
“But, honestly, in the States, our names don’t mean anything.”

—

Then, as we made our way to the next ruin, a car drove by and a water balloon hit me square in the chest! Punk Peruvian teenagers!!!

—

After that, we made our wat to the final site: Sacsayhuaman. Now, pause for a second, and say that name outloud, and you´ll see why its the one name on this trip that might make me giggle more than “titicaca.” As we made our way to the site, I let Sarah walk a little ahead of me, and repeatedly said: “I think I see Sacsayhuaman ahead.”

—

There is no “@” sign on the Spanish keyboard, which makes emailing difficult

—

Most houses and buildings also have this halfway finished look about them, with rebar sticking out of the roof or a half built upstairs

—

BOLIVIA

And, we even saw a lunar ecplise while eating dinner the first night

—

since it was an island with limited contact with the mainland, there were basically three choices for dinner in each restaurant: trout, omelettes or spaghetti. We did see one place advertising hamburgers, but when we sat down and looked at their menu, “hamburgers” had been crossed out, leaving (you guessed it) trout, omelettes and spaghetti. To be fair, their spaghetti was very good

—

Our first stop was to go to the salt flats. In the dry season, they must looked like a big field of dried salt, but during the rainy season, they get about two inches of water covering them which leads to a surreal and magical look where the sky and clouds reflect in the water and from a distance, piles of salt and mountains appear to levitate above the surface.

—

Interestingly, the three ‘couples’ all had different foods we were avoiding to avoid illness. Tyler and I wouldn´t eat the raw cabbage/tomato salad at dinner. The Israelis would’t eat the yogurt that had probably never been refrigerated, but that was all over Peru and Bolivia, and weren’t sure about the eggs (also sans refrigeration). Julia wouldn´t eat ice cream in case it had water in it.

—

First off, if any of you were wondering what Smokey Robinson has been up to recently, apparently he´s moved to southern Bolivia, where he is a driver for tours on the Salar de Uyuni.

—

CHILE

Oh, and a flag that is disconcertingly like the the Texas flag….

—

We did find an internet cafe, but after typing for roughly 10 minutes, the girl running the cafe walked up to us and asked us questions we didn´t understand. It was only after a larger man came, stood behind me and said “bye bye” menacingly in English that we realized it was time to go.

—

When they told us that Isreali´s have a bad reputation abroad, I didn´t immediately believe it. That is until at the border between Bolivia and Chile when our bus driver started yelling at them, saying “you Isreali´s better not be trying to sneak some cocaine across the border!”

—

It doesn´t help that the exchange rate for the US dollar to Chile peso is 1 to 525. So, a the bill for a $12 meal reads as $6300. Also, we´ve seen Dollar Stores in Chile. They are “$500 Stores.”

—

The weird side effect of this is that while the people in Seattle used to only have a 1 hour time difference from us her in Chile… you now have a 3 hour time difference. Crazy, ain´t it!

—

last time I was in Santiago, I remember thinking to myself while I was at Cerro San Lucia: “If that girl I just started dating, Sarah, was here, I´d totally make out with her here!” And now, three years later (and thanks to the wonders of allergy medicine) I was able to make that dream a reality.

—

But I will mention one thing: If you are ever hoping to watch a dramatic sunset behind a line of Moai on the beach… just make sure there are no female dogs in heat present. Having two male dogs begin fighting next to you is less than a romantic.

—

The bus ride (which was maybe 45 minutes long) reinforced the fact that the rest of the world considers sometime around the year 1984 to be the apex of American Music

—

pretty much every American we’ve run into on this trip seems to be from Seattle. I’m convinced that only Seattlites travel abroad

—

Unfortnately, when it came time to actually buy them, our bank card was denied. Several increasingly desperate phonecalls to the bank later, it was determined that our card had been put on hold because the bank had grown suspicious of all the purchases made abroad.

—

At the end of their last email, they told us rather cryptically “we will leave you a little something something at the iSite in the international terminal in auckland. check behind the “City Life Hotel” pamphlets in the Auckland hotels section.”

—

Another fun thing about the spaceship is it’s a little like you’ve joined a little club–we’ve had a few other spaceship sightings, and there’s always lots of waving and light-flashing, which makes for fun moments on the road.

—

Glowworms are strange creatures. They only live in New Zealand and four states of Australia, they live about 11 months, most of the time spent as a pupae, and once they become a full-fledged insect, they live for 1-5 days, mate, die and serve as food for other pupae. But they are fascinating! They glow in order to attract water bugs that wander into the caves. The bugs get attracted by the glowing lights, thinking that it’s the way back out, but instead they get trapped in the multitude of mucus strings that the glowworms “spin” to catch their prey.

—

Even though I enjoyed the three Lord of the Ring films, I was actually planning on ignoring their connection to New Zealand in the same way that I was planning on ignoring Bungee Jumping and Zorbing

—

Now, I must say, the Kiwis know how to do camping and road trips. The campsites we’ve stayed at so far have been incredibly well-equipped. At a minimum, they all include a nice “amenities block” which includes a kitchen with sinks and stoves/burners and bathrooms and showers–with hot water!

—

we continued on to Whakapapa Village (pronounced, as you might have guessed, “Fakapapa”

—

And though I hadn’t put two and two together, the golden sand is what leads to the amazing green color of the water. (Yellow and blue make….ah!)

—

We spent the first part of the morning arguing over steering and then our speed (the slowest in the group) only to find out that Tyler had been holding the paddle backwards. That helped things a bit. I think it suffices to say that we could both benefit from some core and upper body strengthening

—

mountain passes that seemed to be impersonating the intestinal tract of a contortionist

—

they had the convenient hours sign of “11-4PM Most Days;” apparently our day swinging by wasn’t one of their open ones.

—

One of the funny things about travelling is that, whenever you meet someone, the first thing you ask is where they are from. After that, you usually ask them where they’ve been travelling. Then you ask where they are going next. Then, after that, you ask them their name… maybe.

—

we have no idea what this switch does, but occasionally we just have to “turn up the Japanese” a bit.

—

Though the blowholes weren’t active (it needed to be high tide), the “pancake rocks” were alien and fascinating

—

We were just a few minutes out of the town of Haast, doing about 110 kilometers an hour, when something that sounded like a feathery hackey-sack hit our windshield

—

That gave us the excuse to put our X-Treme LifeStyle™ on hold. So, while we had initially planned on driving a para-gliding jet-boat attached to bungee-cords off a waterfall into a field of Zorb-balls, instead we decided to sleep in and enjoy and extra cup of tea before exploring the village.

—

Apparently, the third eye no longer works, and is only really visible when the tuatara is young but still… it has a third eye!

—

it seems to combine our favorite elements of both Soccer and American Football. (oh, and they had commercials for sheep medicine during the advertisment breaks

—

Kiwi’s seem to be fond of hiking straight up hills… no switch-backs here

—

I don’t care where you are in the world, but I want you to drop what you are doing and run (don’t walk) to Puzzling World! Now!

—

And, if its not sheep its cows. Or deer… yes, they actually farm deer here. There is nothing more bizarre to see a pasture filled with a herd of deer

—

I’m reminded of a conversation Sarah and I had with a beer producer in Haines, Alaska. We asked him if he exported his beer much, and here basically replied: “Not at all. I believe that beer should be a local thing. Not only does it help give a region its identity, but also allows travellers to experience something new when they visit.”

—

“ALL SHURIKENS AND NINJA STARS MUST BE DECLARED AT CUSTOMS.” Awesome!

—

Earlier this week, when I was unpacking in Hobart, I noticed that the head of my shaving razor was missing. Well, today I found it when I plunged my hand into my bag and proceeded to shred the end of my right middle finger on it

—

As you probably all know, Australia started out as England’s penal colony. Well, during that time, Port Arthur was Australia’s penal colony. So, to end up there, you had to mess up bad enough to get shipped to Australia… then mess up again to get shipped to Port Arthur

—

It was also called the Silent Prison because prisoners (and even guards) weren’t allowed to talk. In fact, guards even went so far as to cover the ground with turf and wear silk slippers over their boots so that not even their footsteps made a sound

—

when we got back from the hike we discovered that a tour group had basically taken over the rest of the bunk rooms, and had completely filled one of the kitchens in a cacophony of “bro”s, “dudes” and “can I bum a smokes?”

—

First, picture the largest race you can. Something like the Boston Marathon.

Now, picture that race occuring on every street of the city at the same time.

Still with me?

OK, now give each runner a moped.

(Saigon)

—

First up, we navigated a narrow river that took us to a coconut candy “factory” where they showed us how they made the candy. This was followed by the obligatory chance to buy some candy. But, it was quite good, so we obliged.

—

A meat stand at the market… yep folks, that meat up front is rat.

—

(motorcycle trip in Vietnam…)
Literally the whole trip, there were these pale yellow butterflies everywhere.

—

When I went to show them their picture, most of them ran away.
(A group of boys at a school)

—

…we met the matriarch of the group. Our guides told us she was 104 years old, which makes her probably the oldest person I’ve ever met

—

generally Sarah and I can create and edit blog entries… but are unable to view our own blog (and our friends blogs) most of the time.

—

As some of you probably know, Southeast Asia is somewhat of a Mecca for cheap tailoring. And, if Southeast Asia is Mecca, then Hoi An is the Masjid al-Haram.

—

Young people in Vietnam seem to look extraordinarily young for a long time. A group of giggling girls I took for 13 were 18.

—

I imagine now there’s a family in Saigon or Hanoi looking through a family member’s pictures saying, “Look! White people looking at rice! How funny!”

—

There are about four channels most Vietnamese families get: VT1, VT2, VT3 and apparently the Cartoon Network. They often show American movies on the national channels, but they are always dubbed. By one women. In a monotone voice.

—

Let me first start by saying that the ledge we were jumping off was really slick. Let me follow up by saying that, when I hit the water, fifteen-odd feet below, I was effectively doing a reverse belly-flop.

—

Still, there is something entirely different between seeing a cow crossing a rural road. And suddenly coming across a herd of cows in a crowded downtown Dehli street. And every street in Dehli is crowded.

—

(fucking india…)
for every location of note he brought us to (the old fort, the President’s house, the India Gate), he’d take us by one shop where we’d be stuck having people try to hard sell us Inidan handcrafts for 15 minutes. When we complained about the shops, he’d plead back to us: “But they give me gas vouchers. Please, do it for me.”

—

But then, one teenage girl got up the courage to ask: “Can we take a picture with you?” This opened the floodgates. Next thing Sarah and I knew, we were being swarmed by Indian tourists who all wanted their picture with us. Bizarre, yet soft of flattering, Sarah and I made our way across the complex stopping to have our picture taken every couple of meters.

—

We’ve probably totally forgotten how to have a conversation that isn’t about travel.

—

Note: After typing this all out the first time, Blogger decided to eat my entry. I’m sure that there is some Buddhist message about patience I should have learned. But sadly, instead, I just threw a massive fit…

—

(in Ladakh)
In addition, the roads generally aren’t paved, but the Border Road Organization (or, humorously acronymed “BRO”) is fond of putting up signs touting its own greatness or just providing road safety advice in a broken English that we’ve taken to calling “drunken Confucious” (for example: “Be Mr. Late, Not Late Mr.” or “Drive with Safety, so you can have “safe tea” at home.”

—

The gonpa itself was closed, but a monk that was hanging around outside let us into one room where we could see a number of statues. Interestingly, the faces were covered on all the statues and would only be shown once a year.

—

Tibetan Prayer Flags – its amazing how something that looks so trite hanging from a college students dorm wall can look so cool in the right context.

—

Apparently all that exists between Leh and Manali are mountains.  We climbed up and down mountains for almost the entire journey. At one point, we saw a sign at the pass saying we were at 16,500 feet!

—

You do have to admire their fortitude for skiing without a chair lift.

—

we’re tempted to leave here early to have more time at Dharamsala/Mcleod Ganj, but that would mean more conversations with the travel agent. There is still sexism here, and sadly it is better for Tyler to deal with most issues, and he’s getting pretty sick of talking to them.

—

Everyone says–even we said–that India is the hardest place to travel in. That you’ll experience high highs and low lows. I just didn’t expect the lows to be so low and the highs to be so few and far between…We were supposed to be smart, seasoned travellers. And now it felt like India was kicking my butt.

—

So, apparently, our bus to Dharamsala thought that it was good enough just to get us within 15 kilometers of Dharamsala and ditch us on a corner in the middle of the night.

—

“Screw that noise. We’re going to McLeod Ganj.”

—

she and her husband can have the cooking school since it’s in their home, but they can’t open a restaurant since they don’t have passports. Some local Tibetans find Indian partners to be the owner in name, but they often have trouble with the police. As she put it, when the policemen want to drink, they’ll go around and ask for passports and basically scare the refugees into paying them bribes to stay out of trouble.

—

Buddhism rests upon the concepts of the Four Noble Truths. Which read as follows (Tyler paraphrased version):

1) Life is suffering.
2) Suffering is caused by desire or craving.
3) To cease suffering, you must cease desiring.
4) See the Eightfold Path for more details.

Now, in our case, I think it bears looking at the Second Noble Truth. Basically, we were suffering because of our desire to have the travel agency provide us with a good vacation. Now, obviously, they seemed to be incapable of delivering what we desired. So, in order to stop suffering, it only makes sense that we cease desiring their assistance.

So, to those ends, we’ve told them we wish to cancel our agreement with them. At first they were resistant. But, through our persistance we’ve finally gotten them to agree. Unfortunately, even having cancelled our agreement, Sarah and I were still suffering a bit. Why? Because now we desired our money back. This was something that they’ve also been resistant to…

—

…a flower-bedecked groom on horseback, followed by lots of children holding glowing lanterns. The lanterns were actually all connected and electric, so they in turn were followed by a truck towing a humming generator

—

And, of course, the auto-rickshaw broke down halfway there. I’ve come to realize that, in India, pretty much everything just barely works

—

two corners later, my bag goes flying off the roof of the van and tumbling across the (thankfully) empty intersection

—

Pushkar actually has a ban on alcohol (as well as meat, including eggs).

—

suddenly, as the singing and music faded, we saw a sight that we’d be told about, but which still made our eyes grow wide: Thousands of bats filled the sky

—

Sarah and I have both been getting sick about once a month from one thing or another

—

When we first arrived in Delhi, there was unrest in Rajasthan, the area we’re in. Unrest as in policemen being killed, police stations being burnt down, roadblocks and tearing up railroad tracks. The best we could figure out about the situation when asking around had to do with the still existing caste system. There are a group of people in Rajasthan called Gujers. Apparently, they were tribal people outside of the government caste system and were quite well off. But times have changed and they want some of the protections and benefits of caste status. Like American affirmative action, government jobs are doled out in percentages to different groups, and the Gujers want a piece of the action. Ironically, this seems to mean being downgraded to a lower caste than they would be considered now. And the existing castes don’t want to lose any of their benefits, so it’s a difficult situation. The riots were called off when the government agreed to have talks about the Gujers status. And, apparently, those talks are happening today. In Pushkar. While we didn’t see anything too out of the ordinary on our way out of town, 2500 policemen were being shipped in, and our guesthouse owner said she saw Gujers arrive with guns.

—

Oh–and when I was sick and thought about talking to a doctor, I couldn’t see the nearby doctor because he was busy treating a guy who’d been gored by a bull in the market that morning. The local cows seemed a lot less docile the rest of that day. (And I’m still curious what they do with a bull that’s gored someone. They can’t kill it–cows are holy–but it can’t be safe to leave them around town. We still don’t know the answer…..)

—

Sheesha, the sister, invited us to join the family celebration the next night for her nephew’s fifth birthday. Just a small party, she said, 40 to 50 guests, with traditional Rajasthani food. We were delighted.

—

Now, we’ve run into several people who have been to Agra and only looked at the Taj from the view across the river, and said that it was all they needed to do. Their argument is that the entrance cost to the Taj itself is too high. And, while I agree 750 Rupees (about $18 US) is a lot, comparatively; Sarah and I also knew that we had to go in. I mean, we’ve payed thousands of dollars to get to this point. To stop and only see it from across the river seemed a little goofy. Like climbing Everest, stopping 100 meters shy of the summitt, and going “y’know, the views good enough from here, I’m going back down.”

—

That evening, we had a pleasant meal on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Taj. Around us, hundreds of people mysteriously were flying kites, the city sky filled with them

—

Now, losing a hat might seem like a little thing, but it was a big thing for me. After Sarah, that hat had become my constant companion and best friend on the trip.

—

So, let me just tackle it head on and make one observation: The white people here are really white. I mean, their complexion is so pale and their hair so blond that they make Sarah look like she’s from the Mediterranean. In addition, they are very… well… preppy…

And what about the blacks? The other 80% of the South African population?

Well, as a white tourist, its a little more difficult to meet and get to know them. The closest analogy I can make would be to Latinos in LA. On an average day, you see black Africans but generally working in service positions – waiters, cooks, parking lot attendants, etc. There is a general sense that things have improved since the Apartheid, but for the most part whites and blacks seem to live in seperate, parrallel worlds.

—

We realized when we returned that night that all the Americans had ended up in one jeep together, so we jokingly called ourselves “Team America.”

—

(chimps in a reserve in S. Africa)
They’re pretty sad stories. One was used as a gimmick in a bar and was addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. Another was tied up outside a petrol station. Some were family pets who got too big and strong for their owners.

—

While New Zealand might be the King of Campgrounds, South Africa is the King of Rest Stops. Their Rest Stops are these enormous and elaborate affairs which generally include, but aren’t limited to a gas station, a small store, a fast food place, a play area and park, an ATM and the largest bathrooms I’ve ever seen this side of Vegas.

—

This is ostrich country. Big-time.

—

It was the Cape Mountain Zebra. And there were three of them. They are endangered, and it’s rare to see them, especially three. When we told the woman at the guesthouse, she said she’d never seen one in this area as long as she’s lived here!

—

You had to be under 75 kilos though to ride one, so that ruled out the well-feed South African family that was on the tour with us. So, it fell on my shoulders to demonstrate the fine art of ostrich riding.

They put a bag over the ostriches head while you climb on.  Ostriches are so massively stupid that they basically can’t function when they have a bag over their head.

Once the bag comes off, the ostrich suddenly realizes it has a human sitting on its back, and takes off running.

—

they are called Jackass Penguins because the sound they make sounds almost exactly like a donkey braying.

—

“Warning, please look under your vehicles for penguins.”

—

These spdier crabs creeped me out. They’re huge. Their main body is, like, the size of my head.

—

Since we left on our trip, we’ve been holding what we’ve dubbed the World Dominos Championship. Several times a week, on a slow evening or afternoon, we play dominos. We generally play to 100 points. But, in addition, we also have a running score with both country winners, continent winners and -eventually- a grand champion. Currently, I’m winning overall but Sarah has the lead for South Africa.

—

Several years ago, when people asked Donald what he was doing in Kenya, he’d give vague answers about how he’d “started a film production school in Nairobi.” But, I think it was safe to say that my friends and I generally had sort of presumed that it was a crackpot scheme… the sort of thing that many of my friends seemed to get mixed up in the years immediately following College. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was, well, a real, legitimate school!

—

Vincent, two wives and fifteen children live together in the boma

—

The family then had us go into the cattle enclosure for a photo–cows are incredibly important in traditional families

—

Then we noticed that all the black dots we had presumed were rocks on a distant hillside weren’t rocks… they were more wildebeests. Thousands and thousands of other wildebeests.

—

Since he’s Maasai, he’s not supposed to be afraid of lions. I, on the other hand, can be as afraid as I like.

—

Donald’s friend had just found a place, bought half a goat, and invited everyone over to celebrate in the Kenyan way. Except that he didn’t really know what to do with the goat.

—

Sarah’s camel, who’s head was effectively right next to my head, was nothing but burps and gargling bellows.

Meanwhile, my camel enjoyed letting out dusty farts every time it sat down for me to dismount.

—

The tunnel into the pyramid was narrow, and angled down at something like a 30 degree slope. Making my way down, I had to scramble with my knees almost to my ears, with other tourists directly in front and behind me.

—

Since that time, the Egyptian government has all but eliminated the group, but to this day tourists are still required to travel in convoys through certain portions of Egypt.

—

The entire Abu Simbel temple was cut into pieces, and rebuilt 200 meters back (and 65 meters higher). And then a small mountain was built around it.

—

One thing to know about Egypt before coming: everything is more expensive than you expect because of baksheesh, or the culture of tipping.

—

One thing you notice right away is that it is incredibly green and lush by the banks of the Nile, but it rapidly becomes sandy and arid away from the water

—

But the Brazilians were not pleased, demanding that they get a refund. Their logic was that if the boat would be shared by more people, the cost to each of us should be less.

—

One thing that did grab my attention was the mummified crocodiles on display in part of the ruins. I mean, Mummified Crocodiles!!

—

“No, you don’t have malaria. You have amoebas.”

—

“And the waters. Of the Nile. Burst forth. From my sandals.”

—

“See! This is you stomach! And here, your kidneys. Good kidneys. And your bladder. You ate about two hours ago, didn’t you (which was true). And here… here is your heart. Nice heart.”

I’ve never had the opportunity to see my heart before. Frankly, it was pretty darned cool.

—

And you know what I like as much as Istanbul? Whirling Dervishes.

Random person: What are you doing?
Sufi: I’m spinning.
Random person: Why?
Sufi: To get closer to God.

Who am I to argue with that logic?

—

I was totally fascinated by the chandeliers in the blue Mosque. The ceiling was massive and domed, yet they hung to barely above head level, giving the place the feeling of being both giant and intimate.

—

Yup. In addition to it being our first full day in Turkey, and our 6 month travel Anniversary, the day also marked the completion of our second year of marriage. And what a happy and amazing two years its been!

—

I’m still enjoying our journey–we’re incredibly lucky and blessed to be doing this–but my thoughts are more often turning to Seattle

—

Things got off to a rocky start when our guide stepped on a bee and got stung right before we were about to leave

—

Um… yeah. There’s no way to photograph those without them looking phallic.
(fairy chimneys in Goreme, Turkey)

—

Back at the hostel, while the British girls washed the dust off themselves and examined imaginary thistle wounds in the mirror; I grabbed a beer and Sarah and I headed for the rooftop pool

—

Flames appear to come out of the earth due to methane leaks, and it’s fascinating to see the fires that have no fuel source and have been burning for centuries

—

I quickly learned that the Mediterranean is incredibly salty…   By the end, our towel felt a bit like cardboard and all our clothes looked a bit ashy. I always thought the phrase “salty sailor” was a euphemism for the attitude; now I know it came from a real physical state!

—

So it is now that we will go to Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary for the final two weeks of our travels. That’s definitely one thing I’ll miss when we’re back State-side–being able to decide on a whim to travel through places I’d never even considered before, just because we have the time and they’re there and we can.

—

I mention this only because the thought passed through my mind several times during our walk to the next site we were seeing: Mary’s House. And, by Mary I mean *the Mary*. As in the person who changed Jesus’ diapers.

—

The city is modern, but in that sort of dorky Eastern European way where people dress like they’ve discovered every single fashion statement from 1950 to 1990 all at the same time (which, in some regards, is the case)

—

I was fiddling with the pesky curtain so I could look out past the walkway through the window at the countryside. At some point, though, my efforts pulled the curtain and rod off the doorway and into my lap. I sat a bit red-faced, then Tyler and I managed to re-connect it. I finally looked around at the others in our car (now including the husband) who were smiling in amusement.

(on a train in Romania)

—

Bran Castle has a reputation as being “Dracula’s Castle,” but the history doesn’t hold up, despite all the tacky souvenirs with Dracula-inspired themes (and excuses to include scantily clad women in distress).

—

Then we wandered down to find Rope Street, so called because it is one of the narrowest streets in Europe, less than 2 meters wide.

—

“gah!!” Why was Sarah attacking my feet!? But, it turned out it wasn’t Sarah. It was Darko, the hostel’s kitten.

—

The mud on the trail was almost clay-like though, building up on the soles until you felt like you were wearing uneven platform shoes.

—

He was very forward with both us and the hostel staff about the fact that he was a Lonely Planet writer. No, “secret shopper” routine.

—

Only then did I realize: She wasn’t asking us for directions… she thought we were lost, and was trying to give us directions.

—

Sit in a steam room and sweat, plunge breifly into a cold water pool, relax for a while in a hot pool, and repeat. Leaving the baths about two hours later, we felt like neither of us had a muscle left in our bodies.

—

When the original opera house was burning down, the firefighters tried to get beer from the neighboring beer hall to use to put out the fire. The people in the beerhall refused. So, the new opera house was built using money raised from taxing beer.

—

At the edge of the park is a section of river where the current forms a perpetual wave that surfers visit from miles around to try.

—

A large beer at the Hofbraeuhaus: 1 liter!

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As I lay there, two thoughts kept going through my mind:

1) Why can’t they just turn off the lights and go to sleep!
2) They are going to hate life when Sarha and I get up in an hour and a half and start packing our bags to go.

Clearly, seven months on the road has made me a more compassionate person.

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Sarah and I have made it back to the States safe and sound. Since then, we’ve been busy getting caught up with friends and family, and generally just getting used to “normal life” again (in my case, “normal” loosely means “being a 31 year old, unemployeed, married male, living at his parents house”).

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Hot Air Balloon Video

I recently posted about the hot air balloon ride that Pnina and I took in Oregon.  But it took me a while to finally edit the video footage I shot that day. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZv_XlLgf2c (WordPress won’t let me embed the video for some reason).

By the way, the music is “Walken” by Wilco, off their Sky Blue Sky album.

I haven’t done much video editing in a while, at least not since installing Vista on my machine.  I’ve had a string of annoyances with various things not being compatible with Vista: my scanner, my external hard drive, and now also my DVD editing program (MyDVD version 5.2).  However, I finally had one really pleasant experience.  Version 6.0 of Microsoft Movie Maker is not bad at all, and it comes with a great DVD menu editor as well.  It takes very little time to make a slick interactive DVD, like this:

Bike Ride around Oxbow Park

Last Sunday Pnina and I went on a bike ride with my uncle Ron near Portland.  While the rest of the family took their time getting up and preparing stuff for a picnic at Oxbow park, the three of us headed out early for the bike ride.  This was our path:

I chose this path pretty randomly — I wanted to avoid having to go and return in the same route, and I thought it would be cool to cross the river twice.  It turned out to be a beautiful ride:

 

But it also turned out to be more of a challenge than we bargained for.  The map above has hillshading (thanks to Brad Snow and the rest of the gang at Live Maps), so it gives you a rough idea of what we were up against, but of course in real life it felt much harder.  Ron had a GPS that showed us the amount we climbed or descended as a function of time.  Here’s how it looked after one of the rougher climbs…

When I drew this path in Live Maps, it told me that the total distance is about 27 miles.  Ron says that his GPS clocked more like 35 — I guess it’s hard to track all the little twists and turns in the road.

By coincidence, the Portland Century happened to be going on the same day, and the path we chose overlapped with a section of the Century, except we were going in the opposite direction.  At first we didn’t realize it was a race; we just thought “huh, I guess we happened to pick the place that all bike riders around here go to”.  But after a few hundred of them went by, and after we noticed that they were all wearing numbers, we put 2 and 2 together.  Also, as luck would have it, we happened to pick the toughest part of the Portland Century.  Here’s what their website says:

“For the most part it’s a flat loop but the hills, and some of the greatest parts of the ride, come around Bull Run (Portland’s drinking water source). This is extreme climbing with fast descents on narrow, winding roads. You’ll want to take those descents slowly, even if you’re an experienced rider, for the sake of safety.”

By the way, this was literally Pnina’s first bike ride in 9 years.  She’s a champ!