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August 30, 2006

SF trip rundown/wrap-up ::
travel — tagged , , , and
10:43 am

So, my weekend trip to San Francisco was bookeneded by two extreme travel experinces (I already noted the return trip, and my trip out included a six hour delay at O’Hare) but the trip out to San Francisco to visit Maureen was really fun. I’m glad I went. As I like to do after long trips, here’s a list of the events worth remembering:

1. Landing in SFO after the six hour delay in O’Hare, and being able to get all the way to Noe Valley on the Bart and the MUNI bus system after being awake for something like 18 hours. Then staying up for another three hours catching up with Maureen and meeting her friend Heidi.

2. Driving down the coast on Route 1, visiting beaches that, although they were at high tide, were still beautiful, with a landscape like nothing I’d ever seen before. (It was my first time seeing the non-urban areas of Northern California).

3. Driving further south on Route 1 to buy organic, locally grown strawberries from a farmstand. I also had hot strawberry cider, which was kind of funky and had some serious pulp in it, but it was sweet and I enjoyed it.

4. Driving, somewhat accidentally, all the way to Santa Cruz before heading back to San Francisco on Route 17 (Google map). I remember when I was a skateboarder kid, Santa Cruz stood in my mind as an idyllic, untouchable land where the weather was always warm and the skateboarding was never hindered by winter. Seeing the city was impressive, if only for the realization that it was a real place, with real people in it. Also, there was a nice health food store that carried tasty vegan cookies. And Route 17, with all its twists and turns, is a really fun road to take, especially at high speeds.

5. Making dinner on Saturday night. It included marinated tofu and rice, and was something Maureen put together herself. That always makes me feel better than going out to a restaurant.

6. Walking from Maureen’s place on Elizabeth to the 24th Street Mission Bart station on Sunday morning. There’s something about San Francisco streets on Sunday morning that makes me feel, I don’t know, at peace. I remember feeling the same way the last time I was in San Francisco.

7. Visiting SFMOMA with Maureen, seeing tons of artwork I was familiar with, and some that I was not so familiar with but still enjoyed. There was an extensive exhibit by Matthew Barney (see his Wikipedia article or his flash-intensive website), who is probably one of the most prolific artists I’ve ever encountered. His work, which utilizes all different forms of media, took up almost an entire floor of the museum and included Bjork as one of the subjects/characters, dealt with, among other things, Japanese culture surrounding its whaling industry. I found the whole experience left me numb, but mostly because there was so much to process. Now, two days later, I’m still thinking about it. What that says about its quality, I’m not sure, but I think the exhibit is worth seeing.

8. Taking the ferry to Sausalito. You get an interesting view of the San Francisco skyline that you can’t get anywhere else. Also, I remember seeing the new Bay Bridge as it was being constructed—the new bridge paralelling the old one, extending out only so far into the bay, then abruptly ending. Also, as we got closer to Sausalito we could see the fog come over the mountains, which reminded me of condensed air cascading from the freezer on hot summer days.

9. Being totally exhausted by the time we got back to Maureen’s place on Sunday afternoon. She took a nap, I read a book. Then I got starving and went out for burritos. Came home and dozed on the couch with a cat purring on my lap.

10. Wrapping my mind around the strange weather in San Francisco. There’s no rain there this time of year, just fog. Also, the temperature is actually colder than it is here in Vermont, with daytime temperatures hovering around 65 degrees or so. And it gets cold at night—cold enough for sweaters and furnaces. This is not the California I learned of when I was a child. But of course, you would get out of the city and have to strip all your layers of thermals off start seriously overheating.

And just to give an update on my baggage: as I suspected, it was on the United flight on which I was confirmed, not on the flights on which I flew standby. So I arrived at the Burlington airport at 10 AM today to find my baggage sitting with the others at the airport’s miniature baggage claim area. Not too bad, I must say.

August 29, 2006

Insane travel ::
travel — tagged , , , and
1:25 am

Earlier today I pictured myself in exactly the position I am in right now, awake at nearly 1 AM, typing away on my computer because my body thinks the time is three hours earlier. But the way I got here is totally different than what I had in mind. See, I just got in two hours ago from a trip out to San Francisco to visit Maureen for the weekend. The trip was a lot of fun—I was happy to catch up with Maureen, to meet new people, and to see a part of California I hadn’t seen before, including a pretty long trip down the coast that ultimately landed us in Santa Cruz before heading back North to the city—and getting back home today was a truly and adventure.

It all started when Maureen dropped me off at SFO on her way out of town to LA. I was two hours early for my flight—more than enough time to get checked in, get my baggage checked, and to hopefully spend most of the rest of the time waiting (impatiently) to board the flight. But when I went to check in using one of the computer terminals, I found that my flight had been delayed for so long that I was going to miss my connection. So, the computer rescheduled my itinerary, placing me on a flight that was scheduled to leave at 10 PM (yeah, that’s right. It was six hours later than my original departure time). But the program did put me on standby for another set of flights, the first of which was scheduled to leave SFO at 12:45, which gave me almost no time to get through security and get to the terminal before the plane left.

I made it in time, and I got in on standby. The new plane was a 767, a plane so enormous that looking out the windows somehow made the entire world seem small, even while parked at the terminal. I noted as we taxied toward takeoff that we left SFO late, which meant I had very little time to catch my connection at Dulles. Knowing the connection was likely to be the last one of the day, I tried not to stress out too much at the possibility of being put up in some anonymous, plastic-coated hotel room in suburban Washington, D.C., or worse, spend all night in the United terminal at Washington. So as the plan zig-zagged across the continent, I occcupied my mind by reading, by cataloging the trip, and by trying to find the Clif bar that I’d bought earlier, which had fallen under my seat.

One surreal aspect of flying is that sometimes you find yourself in a city you never expected to be in, that’s thousands of miles away from your planned destination. When you find yourself there, it’s like a vivid dream. Washington/Dulles was like that for me. Also, I wasn’t dressed for the weather. At 9 PM (for me, it was only 6), the temperature was hovering at 90 degrees—roughly 20 – 30 degrees warmer than anything I’d experienced while in San Francisco—and with my long pants and thermal undershirt, I definitely was over-dressed for it. I got off the plane to check the terminal I needed to get to to catch my connection to Burlington, which turned out to be halfway down the next terminal. And the entry was blinking an alert that the flight was boarding. I had to run.

I ran harder than I thought I could. I ran past crew members hustling toward their own flights. I cut between befuddled families who you could swear it was their first time in an airport. At one point, I seem to remember hurdling a roller bag someone had in tow, but it may be my tendency to aggrandize the facts for the sake of a good story. But no matter what, note that nowhere between the C and D terminals in Washington/Dulles are there any fast-tracks, so you must rely on your own athleticism and endurance.

I got to my terminal to find it empty. Desolate. There was one woman at the boarding gate, demanding my name, I told her I was on standby, and then told her my name after she asked for it again. “I called your name, you weren’t here,” she told me. “Late connection,” I replied, feeling oddly like I had something to apologize for. She wrote my seat assignment down on my standby ticket and let me out on the tarmac, where I caught a flight up to Burlington. At the end of it all, I got here an hour earlier than I was originally scheduled to, but my bags didn’t make it with me. I assume, for the sake of my own sanity, that they will arrive tomorrow, on the flight I should have been on had all of this fallen apart at some point. Come to think of it, as I write this, I realize that my bags have just taken off from SFO and are on their way to meet me.

So, earlier today, I thought I’d be in the situation I was in now. But I figured I’d have my checked baggage with me. And that I would have flown through O’Hare, where I would have had a two-hour layover, during which I could have grabbed dinner. So things turned out a little different than I expected—at the end of the day, though, the adventure, and the opportunity to tell the story, made it worthwhile.

August 4, 2006

Pitchfork, the full treatment ::
travel, personal, photos, music — No Tags
10:19 am

So I suppose this post is coming overdue, but since it’s been less than a full week since I went to the Pitchfork Music Festival writing up my lingering thoughts on the event would not be entirely untimely. That said, I should say that, the more I think about it, the more I think that the Festival was one of the best music experiences I’ve ever had. I felt a strange connection to the music, the particular bands playing there, and even the other people attending the performance. I’d never had that before in the musical context—I suppose that means that I’ve found my people, and possibly that I’ve found myself since the last time I tried going to one of these rigorous, multi-day events.

What specifically about the experience made me come to this conclusion? Well, the temperature both days was unbearably hot and humid, the festival took place on an open field in the middle of the city, and the crowds were enormous. But despite all that, I never once thought about going home early. And now that it’s all over, I find myself already starting to plan for next year’s festival (will there be one, I do not know).

With all that, I decided that I didn’t want this post to be a review so much as a description of what I saw there that was worth remembering. Much of the work I put into this site has been an effort to hang on to my ever-fading memories, so I figure that such a memory-driven post would be more consistent with the overall function of this site than a straight-up review would be. And with that, I’m going to take a page from Jeremy’s book of philosophy, and make this into a list of accomplishments.

That said, my musical highlights included: coming off the Red Line at Ashland to hear Band of Horses playing, their now-familiar guitar riffs echoing off the nearby buildings; seeing The Mountain Goats play, and especially hearing John Darnielle sing the quite apropos—the festival being in Chicago and all—“Cubs In Five” (And the Chicago Cubs/Will beat every team in the league/and the Tampa Bay Bucs/will make it all the way to January/And I will love you again/I will love you/Like I used to…); Seeing Destroyer play his songs live (this was particularly cool for me, because his latest, Rubies, was coming off a little flat for me in the past few months, even though I knew it was a good album); seeing Ted Leo live for like the fourth time; Seeing the Silver Jews tear it up during their first tour ever; seeing Tapes ‘n Tapes live (did I mention I started their Wikipedia entry?); seeing The National play live for the first time (their music, and particularly Alligator, has been a mainstay in my musical rotation over the past three months, and has been a soundtrack for me as I’ve sorted through my current life-in-transition); and of course, seeing Mission of Burma—that just speaks for itself.

The non-music memories for me included: riding the El from Andersonville to Union Square park, watching the train fill up with young, sunburned hipsters with Pitchfork Festival programs under their arms; showing up at the park and seeing multiple levels of bikes chained to the fence; watching storm clouds build up around us and then dissipate; looking at everyone’s shoes; watching people in the crowd interact with each other; photographing photographers; hanging out at the record sale, talking with people from Sub Pop, Touch and Go, and Southern Records; photographing people sleeping (is that rude?); and of course, hanging out at Flatstock.

July 31, 2006

More on Pitchfork ::
travel, personal, photos, music — No Tags
12:01 pm

Well, that was a blast. In two days at the Pitchfork Music Festival I think I’ve just about made up for all the live music I missed since I started law school in 2003. It was an overwhelming experience, but for the first time in my life I went to a music two-day music festival in unbearably hot temperatures and didn’t walk away from the experience feeling sick and exhausted. Instead, I was completely psyched about the whole experience. Not sure what’s different this time around—probably it’s some combination of enjoying this music culture, being in better shape, and having a better understanding of how to take care of myself in hot weather (e.g., beer does not count as hydration).

In any event, I made it to Milwaukee this morning after dealing with Chicago construction and rush hour traffic. (After four years in Vermont, I forget to take such things into account when travelling.) I’m on a timed wireless connection—only have an hour—so I’m not going to go too into depth about the whole Pitchfork festival now. But I plan to write something up in the next couple of days. In the meantime, go check out my Pitchfork Music Festival Flickr set.

July 30, 2006

Chicago ::
travel, personal, photos — No Tags
11:29 am


Chicago
Originally uploaded by gjs.

So, I’m in Chicago for a few days for the Pitchfork Music Festival. I took this picture while I was stuck in traffic on Lake Shore Drive; the temperature was somewhere in the high 90’s and getting to the north side of town seemed near impossible at the rate we were going. I’d forgotten what it was like to live—not to mention drive—in a city.

In any event, things have been great since I got here. It’s been nice to catch up with old friends and to see some really great bands. And the best part is that I still have one more day of sweltering heat and great music. It should be fun.

July 5, 2006

Buffalo trip: one final post ::
travel, narrative, personal — No Tags
7:41 am

I find I’m having a hard time constructing a cohesive narrative for the final day of my time in Buffalo, so I figure that, rather than forcing my story into something it just simply isn’t I’d do what comes naturally and just provide some random examples of things that happened yesterday:

Saw two of my cousins, Patrick and Janet. They are siblings. Patrick is moving to the Boston area in a month, and begins law school in the fall. We talked about the law school survival techniques I’ve picked up over the past three years, and how to deal with the unmanageable amount of work and stress that school involves. The way we left it was that I told him I was really excited for him. I hope that was OK —the last thing I want is to make it sound like law school is totally awesome because, really, it isn’t.

Talked with Janet about housing transitions, which we are both dealing with to some degree or another. Different stories, but the feelings are generally the same for the both of us, especially since we both have a particular aversion to moving, it seems.

Saw my cousin Jeff and his new son Sam. I have a particular affection for Jeff because: (1) we were born a week apart and visiting Buffalo when I was a kid was synonymous with having sleepovers at his house; (2) he’s an avid Simpson’s fan, so we can quote obscure lines from various decade-old shows and know what the other is talking about; (3) he’s a CPA, and I’m an attorney (why is this a reason that I like him? Don’t know!); (4) even tough our lives have taken very different turns and we’ve grown into different people, we still have quite a bit in common.

Oh, and lest you think this entire visit was about nothing but seeing family members, here’s one other thing. I saw no fireworks at all this year, except for a few off in the distance as Robin and I were driving out of Toronto. Why fireworks in Toronto, I do not know. Maybe it was some show of support or something. Or an excuse to party. In either case, I say that we start doing something in recognition of Boxing Day. For the sake of reciprocity, you know?

And finally, my plane doesn’t leave until 11:25, so I’m going to be here for quite some time. I have more than enough items on my agenda to keep me busy for the duration, but none of them I find particularly interesting. Why that is, I’m not sure.

Sidewalk bike swap, Toronto ::
travel, narrative, personal — No Tags
6:29 am


Sidewalk bike swap
Originally uploaded by gjs.

So, the trip is over and I’m waiting on my flight back to Burlington. With the free time I now have (missed my flight—first time that’s happened), I’m going to describe for you a spontaneous trip Robin and I took up to Toronto on July third.

You will likely find this hard to believe, but I’ve never been to Toronto. Yes, my parents now live in Buffalo and I grew up visiting Buffalo at least twice a year, but I never made it up there. I don’t know why, really—I wish I had an explanation, or at least something more profound than never making the trip a priority. So, this weekend, with both my sister and I in Buffalo and with a little down time before the small get-together my parents threw on the Fourth (more on that later), I thought a trip up to that city would (finally!) be in order. I even called up a couple of my cousins to see if I could drum up some additional interest. No luck there, but that’s to be expected—people do have lives outside my semispontaneous trips to Canada.

So Robin and I get up there and hit Queen Street and just start walking toward downtown. The weather was beautiful and there were tons of people out. We found a nice Thai place to eat for dinner called Friendly Thai (I took a picture of it but didn’t post it, because I truncated the sign so it read “riendly hai”), and then continued on our walk, not really sure where we were going to end up.

We then stumbled across The Cameron House, a nice little bar/artspace that has a front and back room for bands to play. The owner was working the bar that night, and was quite talkative, first about all the beers he had on tap (of which he had ratherly astonishingly intimate knowledge) and then about the place. He could tell from our accents we were American, and once the news spread to the other four patrons, they erupted in cheers because, well, the Americans were there. It was mostly welcoming , though I did sense more than a tinge of good natured ribbing. That was fine. I told them I was from Vermont, and we all agreed that’s not really America anyway. A house band started playing at some point, and Robin and I sipped beers, not talking too much. I was surprised how quickly I felt at home there.

Other things worth noting about Toronto, which didn’t necessarily fit well in the above narrative:

So overall, not bad. I figure now that if this whole attorney thing doesn’t work out for some reason, I could just chuck everything and move up there and do something. Who knows what that might be. In the meantime, I think just a trip up there in summer and with my bike (of course) for five days or so would be a lot of fun.

July 2, 2006

The things I neglected to mention ::
travel, narrative, personal — No Tags
9:53 am

So, I forgot to post here that last week my car broke down again, after it had been in the shop for an extended period of time. (I did mention that first round of maintenance, however, which took two weeks to complete). Had I remembered to post about that, I would have mentioned that I was on my way up to Burlington to see Devotchka at Higher Ground, and that about ten miles north of Randolph I looked down at my thermostat to find my car was off-the-charts overheating. So I pulled over to find the engine steaming and the fans under the hood still blowing. Oh, and there was rain. And the sun was setting, so we had failing light. Luckily, I had a cell phone and a AAA membership, so I was able to get a tow. And the good news (I guess) is that the only thing wrong with the car (this time) was a blown radiator. So, two days and $260 later, I was back on the road. I am fully aware of the immediate need to make a break with my car and get a new one, but that is something to be dealt with in the near future, not right now.

I also forgot to post about how I was planning on heading out to Buffalo. Well, that’s where I am now, and I’ll be here until Wednesday morning, early. It’s been a nice visit—the weather has been warm and the people generally friendly. My parents live in a particularly hip area of town, with lots of small, local shops, walkables streets, pretty nice bike shop, and lots of youngish people riding around on fixed gear bikes. Things are good here, it’s a relief to have the hyper familiarity of family after two weeks of the completely foreign world of simulated bar exams and post-breakup singledom.

Oh, and I also forgot mention that I found myself at a wedding shortly after I got here. Someone (that is, my sister) said there was going to be this party, and that some friends of ours were getting married. But she didn’t make the connection between the two and, for whatever reason, I was unable to piece together the clues of our conversation to figure out for myself what was going on. Needless to say, I’m glad I played it safe and brought some reasonably dressy clothes.

The wedding was a nice affair. They held it at the Buffalo Central Terminal, the city’s former train station that closed down in the late 1970’s and has since fallen into disrepair since successive owners sold off the fixtures and the plumbing (what you might also refer to as “assets”) and then ignored it after selling the place off for parts. The terminal is currently owned by a nonprofit corporation, which has plans to turn it into a multipurpose public space. The dusty art deco facades and broken out windows contrasted with the strung up lights and wedding decor (e.g., here and here) made for a dream-like, almost science fiction-like setting for a wedding. Oh, and the soundtrack was dominated by quiet, folky love songs by bands like the Shins and Built to Spill, which made for one of the best wedding soundtracks I can personally remember. For my part, I was completely satisfied to be happy for the bride and groom and generally enjoy the scenery.

January 14, 2006

Places in 2005 ::
travel, meta, personal — No Tags
2:47 pm

While I’m at the computer already posting, I learned about the places-visited-in-2005 meme from David, and thought I’d give it a shot myself. Here’s where I went:

I realized as I worked on this list that I lead a really provincial life in 2005, not venturing far from the Northeast United States. At one point in my life, I would have probably found such a lack of travel frustrating, but today it doesn’t bug me so much. In part because I’m older, but also because I’ll probably travel quite a bit more this year.

January 10, 2006

Alabama ::
travel — tagged , and
7:30 pm

Well, that was quite a week.

It’s hard for me to believe that we left for Alabama just last Wednesday. Over the past six days, Jessamyn and I saw a significant part of central and southern Alabama, including the cities of Birmingham and Pelham (day 1), Selma and Montgomery (day 3), and Tuscaloosa (day 5). We saw a lot of civil rights history, including the Civil Rights Institute and Kelly Ingram Park (my flickr photos), the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma (where I got one of my favorite photos from the trip), and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. We also saw much in the way of tourist traps in the state, including the Vulcan Statue in Birmingham and the Old Depot Museum in Selma.

One interesting observation about the two sets of historical destinations: I sensed that at one time there was a substantial disconnect between civil rights history and “other” history in Alabama. (That is, there was civil rights history, which was wholly distinct from economic history or, for lack of a better term, “mainstream” history.) However, those in charge of “mainstream” history seem to be making an effort to connect the two lines lines of narrative. For example, at the Vulcan Museum, which described the iron works in the city of Birmingham, one display talked about how the industry used to force convicts to work in the iron mills as part of their punishment around the turn of the 20th Century. According to the display, that practice was only challenged when the inhumane working conditions led to the death of a white worker. Although the display did not explicitly state that the practice was the result of racial discrimination, I could easily draw the inference.

And to top it all off, we had an excellent time staying with Jonathan and Julie, friends of ours who Jessamyn first met through her international network of librarians. If Jessamyn and I can make new friends each time we venture out of state, then I think that’s more than enough incentive to continue exploring different parts of the United States.

Typeset ::
travel, personal, photos — No Tags
6:50 pm

Typeset
Originally uploaded by gjs.

I uploaded the last of my Alabama trip photos to Flickr (you can view them all as a set, if you’re interested), and this is my favorite from the last batch. Taken at the University of Alabama Library School.

Temporary Lenses ::
travel, personal, photos — No Tags
10:11 am


Temporary Lenses
Originally uploaded by gjs.

While I think over my subsequent post on our Alabama trip, I thought I’d share another of my favorite photos from the trip. This was taken at the Old Depot Museum in Selma, Alabama.

Quick Post ::
travel, personal — No Tags
10:08 am

Writing a quick post from the Birmingham Airport as I wait for our plane, mostly just because I can. Overall it’s been an excellent trip, which I’ll write about more once we’re back and settled in central Vermont. Weather this morning in Birmingham is roughly 60 degrees. It will be just above freezing in Manchester when we arrive this afternoon—if we’re lucky.

January 7, 2006

Edmund Pettus Bridge, through the window of the Voting Rights Museum ::
travel, photos — tagged , and
9:35 pm

Originally uploaded by gjs.

Another one of my favorite photos from the trip.

Dusk at Sophia’s BBQ Pit ::
travel, personal, photos — No Tags
9:07 pm

Dusk at Sophia’s
Originally uploaded by gjs.

A truly excellent place to pick up a meat and three in Montgomery, AL.

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