Category Archives: Travels

Flying to San Francisco

Posted on by

Saturday early morning just might be the best time to catch a flight.   The America West ticket counter was almost deserted when I arrived at 5:10 this morning.  It took me about 30 seconds to check my bag and get my .  I got selected for “additional screening,” meaning that I got to participate in a little training exercise for the TSA staff.  They gave me a card that I had to carry through and set off the metal detector.  Then they ushered me over to the pat down area where a too-chipper young TSA employee (I hesitate to call these folks security officers) went through the routine of wanding me, giving me the pat down, and going through my carry on.  I was surprised that he didn’t look everywhere.  All he did was run the nitrate test and check that the laptop was real.  Five minutes and I was done.

Somehow I managed to lose the rest of this entry.  I’ll have to reconstruct it.

Canon’s Digital Rebel

Posted on by

Dean, Paul, and I took a walk this afternoon down to the beach and around the point to view Randy’s house from the bottom of the cliff.  Unfortunately, we were only able to see the back fence and a small part of the roof.  The back yard is approximately 85 feet above the shore and the house sits quite a way back from the edge of the cliff.  My little digital camera doesn’t take very good pictures at that distance, but Randy got some very good shots of us with his 6 megapixel camera.  Some samples (warning, large pictures):

Climbing to the shore, about 200 feet away.
Standing on the rocks, about 400 yards.

The camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel.  Very slick.  The unit goes for under $1,000 ($200 less if you get just the body with no lenses) and allows you to use Canon’s SLR lenses.  I just might have to get one of those.

Hanging out in Laguna Beach

Posted on by

The primary purpose of this weekend is a reunion for five of us who hung out together back in the early 1980s in Grand Junction, Colorado.  My friends Randy, Dean, Mike, and Paul had known each other for several years before I met them in 1982 when I wandered into Randy’s computer store and TV repair shop.  (The TV repair business paid for his computer habit.)  The five of us did a lot of things together for the two years I lived there, and we’ve kept in touch to varying degrees since then.  By this evening, everybody had arrived and we started talking over old times and discussing the things we’ve done in the past 20 years.  The beer flowed and the puns flew, and we had a grand old time playing poker and Mexican Train (a dominos game that I’d never played before).  I’m not sure what our wives and the children thought of our antics, but we sure enjoyed it.

Tide pooling

Posted on by

Debra and I got up this morning to go tide pooling.  We walked down to the beach and then out onto the rocks to view the sea life that gets left in the holes, nooks, and crannies when the tide goes out.  There’s always a wide assortment of sea urchins and sea anemones, plus rock crabs, striped crabs, hermit crabs, mussels and barnacles.  Limpets, sea slugs, and starfish are less common, but we saw a few of each.  The thing in the picture at left is a limpet, or so Randy’s Audubon book leads me to believe.

The tide pools are protected by law, but that doesn’t stop people from picking things out of them to take home.  Taking shells and other dead debris is one thing, but many take crabs or small fish for their aquariums and some even pull off the mussels and other shellfish to make fish stew.  While Debra and I were hopping from rock to rock trying to avoid stepping on anything alive, others were running straight through the mussel fields, stepping in the pools, and generally destroying the sea life wherever they tread.  I even saw one guy trying to peel a starfish off a rock.  Sometimes I wish I could just smack some sense into these people. 

Settling in

Posted on by

I always like to fly west.  We left Austin at noon today and arrived at John Wayne airport (Orange County) about 3:30.  By 5:00, we were kicking back on the porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean and sipping a cold Corona.  This should be a relaxing few days.

I’ve always liked the weather in southern California but I seriously dislike the traffic, smog, overpopulation, and weird politics.  It’d be different if I could afford to live in Laguna Beach where the population density isn’t nearly as high as other parts of southern California and the sea breeze blows the smog inland.  I’d seriously consider moving out here if I didn’t have to get up and fight the traffic every morning on the way to work.  There’s still the weird politics to contend with, and I’d have to spend a little more time before deciding whether I like the people.  I’ve been spoiled by the casual friendliness that’s part of central Texas culture and I don’t know if I could give that up.  Most of the people I met “on the street” in Laguna weren’t very friendly at all.  I realize that the 4th of July weekend is the height of tourist season and the locals are tired of all the transients clogging up the streets and the beaches.  Still, that’s no reason to be surly and downright rude.

On vacation

Posted on by

Entries will be infrequent or non-existent here for the next week.  I’m off to Laguna Beach, California with Debra to visit with some old friends and, although I’ll have access to a computer, I probably won’t want to spend the time required to write here.  I am going to take my SuSE Live CD and thumb drive, though, to see if I can boot my friend’s computer and simulate doing some work.  I considered taking the laptop, but it’s too inconvenient to lug around considering how little I’ll probably use it.  Now if I had one of those tablet PCs…

The movie people are in town

Posted on by

The crew for the movie Chrystal, starring Billy Bob Thornton, has been in town for a month or more.  My understanding is that the man himself is around, although I haven’t seen him.  I had drinks with some of the production crew the other night, though.  Their take on the small town life here is quite humorous.

When I got back to my truck yesterday after my ride, I found that the production crew had taken over the parking lot near the ball fields.  They had rented part of the park to shoot some scenes, and the parking lot was filled with all manner of trucks:  rolling bathrooms, catering trucks, lighting dollies, and who knows what else.  Those folks were busy!  I walked around the encampment once to see what was going on, but tried to stay out of the way.  They weren’t too happy when I pulled out my camera, either, so I refrained from snapping any pictures.  I guess I could have stuck around to watch the filming, but I figure movies are like laws and sausages.  I probably don’t want to see how they’re made.

Besides, I had some ticks to remove.

World Juggling Day

Posted on by

Jay had a bunch of paper work to catch up on today, so Jerry and I left him alone and walked the mile and a half into town.  Today is World Juggling Day, so we took my juggling balls along.  We loitered in front of shops and in the park, juggling and making stupid jokes, talking to the tourists as they walked by.  Several stopped and asked to practice their juggling skills, and I even got to give a few ad-hoc lessons.  We had a good old time joking about juggling for food, talking to people, and generally just being goofy.  It was good to get away and just waste the day having fun doing nothing in particular.  The walk back up to the house was more difficult, though.  They really should have built this town on flat ground.

Climbing the tower

Posted on by

This Canon PC-Cam is okay for most things, but it’s terrible for distance shots.  The tower you see to the left is an old Forest Service fire watch tower that now sits in the middle of Pine Mountain Village—a little strip mall development adjacent to the Pine Mountain Jamboree here in Eureka Springs.  From the top of this 100 foot tower (132 steps, by my count), you have a commanding view of the area, and even a good view of the Christ of the Ozarks statue I mentioned the other day.  I could see the statue clearly enough, but this silly camera didn’t do a very good job of picking it out.  It’s better than one of those throw-away vacation cameras, though.  I also tried to get some pictures through the telescope up here at the top of the tower.  Yes, you guessed it.  If you don’t get the camera perfectly aligned, all you get is a picture of the telescope’s insides.  In the dark.

Do you have any idea how much cell phone reception improves at the top of a 100 foot tower?

Passion Play / Christ of the Ozarks

Posted on by

The Great Passion Play is a nightly drama show here that relates the story of Christ’s last days.  It’s the oldest show in Eureka Springs, dating back some 30 or more years.  I haven’t had a chance to see the show, but from all reports it’s quite good.

The Passion Play grounds also contains the New Holy Land—a re-creation of the Middle East from 2,000 years ago.  I wandered around a bit to get the gist of it.  It’s colorful, but I wonder a bit at the historical accuracy.

Finally, there’s the Christ of the Ozarks statue.  This statue, erected in 1966, is visible from many places in Eureka Springs.  It, too, sits on the Passion Play grounds, on a ridge overlooking the “old town” part of Eureka Springs.  The grounds around the statue are nicely manicured and well kept.  It’s a fine place to sit and meditate, although they could turn down the music a bit.  It’s soothing enough, but just a bit too loud.