So Nina and I went to Tracy's parents' place in North Liberty, Maine and used it as a base camp for a trip to Mount Katahdin in central Maine. At 5,268' it is the highest point in Maine and the AMC refers to the knife edge route on Katahdin as the "most spectacular mountain climb in the eastern US."

Tracy and I along the Hunt Trail ridge

Katahdin sits in Baxter State Park, a very large and intentionally primitive forested area in central Maine. In order to keep impact low, there are very few campsites within the park and trailhead parking is limited. There is a reservation system for campsites which allows you to register for a spot 4 months in advance. For almost all sites and days, all spots fill up the day reservations are first taken. Nina called the park repeatedly asking about cancellations and managed to snag one for a single night at the Katahdin Stream Campground.

Katahdin Stream is on the Appalachian Trail (whose northern terminus is the summit of Katahdin) and is an excellent campsite. By some extreme luck, the campsite with the cancellation was actually the best one in the whole campground. If you ever get the chance to use this campground, we highly recommend Lean-To #1. Unfortunately, Katahdin Stream is on the opposite side of the mountain from the knife edge, but the 5.1 miles to the summit are still really beautiful and fun trail.

We summited in about 4.5 hours on the mostly class 2+ trail with some limited class 3 scrambling. The summit was a zoo with at least 30 people up there. Most people took the Abol trail, a more strenuous but quicker ascent than what we did. Some took the knife edge from Cathedral Peak. The view of the knife edge was spectacular. Definitely Colorado-caliber roughness, though decidedly more oxygen. I'll have to come back some time and hike that route.

On a nerdier note, this was my 30th state highpoint and 91st county highpoint. With 4,150' of vertical gain from the campsite, this was the most gross gain I've undertaken on a single-day trip.

For Dan:

Seen during a test drive to Al's Pizzaria in Millinocket, Maine.

By pure accident, I find myself in New England again on the occassion of the Lanza family reunion picnic in Long Island. Nina's parents drove down from Boston and picked us up in Middletown. We drove down to Bridgeport to catch the ferry to Long Island. At the port, I saw this sweet one-man police hovercraft:

Ford Escort for scale

There was a surprising amount of security at the port; national guard, police, lots of guns, radiation detectors, the works. There was even an escort by a two-man split-hull fast boat with flashing lights until we got out of the harbor. The ferry trip was pleasant if somewhat unnoteworthy. The long island harbor had no security at all, as far as I could see; the contrast was really odd.

We went to Nina's aunt's place, where I learned that her uncle was the first person to fly solo across the Pacific. Now his son is the president of the Explorers Club. They showed us a copy of a "Wine Spectator" magazine that included this interview with megaexplorer Richard and his wine interests. The funny insider info that I'll let you in on is: Richard doesn't drink. Read the interview again with this in mind and have a good laugh. I have yet to meet Richard, but I get the sense that he's a huge smartass and he is certainly an interesting guy. He's on my list of people I hope to meet sometime soon. Check out this trailer for his upcoming TV show (WMV only, sorry).

Anyway we all packed up and headed over to the picnic. It was at the same place as the one I attended

Some rest stop in PA to Middletown, CT
~400 miles
6 hours driving

The Long March, cont.
This is really just an extension of the previous day, as I only stopped to sleep at some rest stop. I picked up a chicken sandwich at a truck stop Burger King in the middle of the night and got myself one of those kids meal crowns that BK gives out. I wore it for the remainder of the trip. I got lots of funny looks for that, and a car full of girls found it enormously humorous.

Got to see the sun rise nicely as I drove into New York and over the Hudson. Made it to Middletown without incident and arrived at Nina's place. We drove in a caravan to Hartford, where I dropped off the Impala. In the end, I had put over 3,300 miles on it in 8 days of driving. It was a good car for a road trip--especially when I was only charged for the compact I reserved. Not a cheap way to go across the country anyway, but reasonable.

The rest of the day I spent loafing around in CT recuperating from my weird night of driving.

Chicago, IL to some rest stop in PA
~900 miles
~22 hours driving

The Long March
I left Chicago at about 9:30, later than I was intending. Said bye to Dave, Jen, and Amber, and headed south through Chicago on the interstate. The traffic was pretty crappy all the way to Indiana, then cleared up abruptly. I headed toward Fort Wayne then south to the Indiana state highpoint--Hoosier Hill. It's just a small hillock on some farm, but the farmer has a nice signed pull-off for it and a short trail. The "summit" is in a small patch of forest and features a picnic table, a register mailbox, and a small sign. A pleasant place, if not a monumental climb...

From there it was east across the border into Ohio to Bellefontaine. Here I found the Ohio state highpoint, Campbell Hill, which is a radio antenna site on top of a reasonable hill within the campus of a community college. I parked by the cosmetology building and walked up. I had arrived about an hour after the campus usually closes (it is fenced in and the gates are usually closed at 5) but there was some special event going on that kept one of the gates open.

This was my 29th state highpoint, which puts me finally on track for my stated goal of having as many state highpoints completed as I am years old through age 50. Now the question is, can I keep this up for the next 21 years?

From Bellefontaine, I drove to Columbus and tried to call my Uncle Bob, who was going to meet me somewhere in PA for a bite to eat. Unfortunately he was working in the steel plant and couldn't get cell service. I left a message but he didn't get it until I was well past Pittsburgh. As he was the only reason I had to stop driving, and because I seemed to be oddly awake, I just kept going. I drove more or less all night and into the following morning. I took a brief nap for about an hour at around midnight, and a longer nap from 3:30 to 7:00, but otherwise drove straight through to Middletown, CT.

Cedar Rapids, IA to Chicago, IL
250 miles
5 hours driving

I futzed around with the network in Chris' place again in the morning and got it working fine just by cycling the power on the cable modem. No idea why it wouldn't give me DHCP packets earlier. Chris showed up at 7 and we went out for breakfast at Denny's near Quintrex. I left him all of the MP3 CDs from my truck. The feds still have all his stuff, and he missed out on the last two years of music (and our tastes are silimar) so I figured it would make a good gift. After breakfast he went back to work on his last day as a half-way-house-bound semi-con and I drove to Chicagao.

Even though the distances are getting shorter on these trips, I'm spending the same amount of time in the car because the speed limits are really coming down. Despite this, it didn't stop the Illinois state troopers from pulling me over for doing 72 in a 65. 7 over?? Anyway, they only gave me a warning. But it was instantly the weirdest traffic stop ever.

So the guy explains that he's going to give me a warning and I'm happy, but then tells me that I should come back to his SUV cruiser while he writes it up. So he clears off a space for me in the passenger spot of his truck and then goes around and gets in the driver's spot. I sit sorta half in and half out of the truck, and notice that it is a K-9 unit and there is a large german shepphard right behind me. Another cop shows up and appears beside the driver's window. The first cop gets out and they talk outside for awhile, so I hang out with the dog.

They ask me to get out, and tell me that the new cop is going to complete filling out my warning. Meanwhile, the first guy gets the dog out and asks me if there is any reason why a drug sniffing dog might alert on my vehicle. I said no, and he lets the dog into my car. Meanwhile, the new cop is confused about my strange itinerary, and why I'm driving one way and flying the other. The dog doesn't alert on anything, so he asks if he can search it "for contraband." I agree and give him the key for the trunk. He spends about 5 minutes working in there before the new cop is done asking me about my schedule and goes to help the first guy search my car. They spend at least 15 minutes in there going through everything. I'm surprised they didn't start ripping off door panels.

The search reaches new levels of rigor, as they begin going through my crumpled gas receipts and quizzing me on why I was in Minneapolis, etc. The new guy finds my hotel receipt from Nebraska (which has my address at the top and only mentions Nebraska in fine print at the bottom) and asks why I have a hotel receipt from Los Alamos if I live in Los Alamos. I have to show him how the address he's looking at matches the one on my license, and that the bottom of the receipt mentions "Sidney, NE." He apologizes and returns the receipt to the floor of my car.

Then, amazingly, the first cop finds the same receipt and brings it to me asking the same questions. Luckily, I didn't have to go through the same embarrassing explaination to him as the second cop took care of that. "Sorry, I'm thick-headed," he said.

At this point, the second cop was going through my trunk. In retrospect, it was humorous that I happened to have Nina's copy of "The Great Influenza" along with a copy of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" in the trunk right next to each other while these guys (who were clearly very jazzed about the Patriot Act) were going through my stuff. Oddly, the cop didn't notice the irony and was more interested in the details of the story in the influenza book. By the end of the conversation he was talking of picking up a copy for himself.

He began asking me about my work and schooling, etc. When it came out that I worked on Department of Homeland Security stuff they were suddenly very polite and friendly, and the search ended abruptly. It was the weirdest traffic stop ever.

Anyway, I got back on my way and made it to Chicago without further incident. Even though I was arriving in Chicago at 2pm, there was still a huge inbound traffic jam on the interstate. What's that all about? Found Jen's apartment and spent the afternoon hanging out with her and Amber, and watching Gangs of New York. Amber is talking now, and despite claims that this was highly unusual, she spent a good portion of the time I was there screaming. When Dave showed up from work, we got some Thai delivery.

I called up a friend from College, Sarah Nicholaev, and hung out with her in Lincoln Square for the remainder of the evening. She has become the world's expert on what to do if your feet start turning black. Just call her at work and ask. We had a great evening and it was wonderful to see her again.

I had to drive to Lincoln Square, which was bad because what had been a very pleasant parking situation at 2pm turned into an impossible parking situation at 10:30. I seriously drove around in an expanding search pattern for 45 minutes before finding a spot for the Impala, and then had to walk for about 15 minutes to get to Jen's apartment. I would have saved time just walking all the way to Lincoln and back.

St. Paul, MN to Cedar Rapids, IA
300 miles
5 hours on the road

Got up early and had a quick breakfast with mom, then headed south towards my alma mater, Coe College. I went a different route than the one my parents always drove down (I didn't have a license throughout college) and made it in under 5 hours. My memory is that the dad route took 6. Maybe the interstate speed limits have been increased.

Anyway, since I graduated in 1998, Coe college has almost doubled in size. They bought up a few blocks of residential ghetto adjacent to campus and leveled it, building 4 new dorms and 2 new administration buildings, as well as a new quad even larger than the original. The campus is really looking great.

Coe Physics has also expanded. They've gotten so many students and new instruments that they've converted a few classrooms into lab space to make room. They're at the limit of available faculty now, and are campaigning for a new full-time faculty position. They've got a ton of reserach money, are taking a lot more trips to exotic locations (just got back from a conference in northern Italy), etc. They're doing very well for themselves. All of the new publishing they've done netted me two more journal publications (not primary author, of course) so I got copies of those.

Doc and Mario are doing very well. Doc took me to a fancy hot dog place called "The Flying Weenie." Mario has a 2-year-old daughter now. The students are as precocious as always, and somehow all of them seem to have heard of me. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with Doc and the next generation of physics nerds. Got the latest physics club t-shirt (harmonic oscillator joke) and got invited to come back and give the keynote at a phi sigma phi banquet.

After leaving Coe, I went over to Qunitrex Data Systems (see: Initech, Pentatrode, etc.) to pick up Chris. Having just graduated from a 2-year prison program, he is still in a halfway house and could only get a 3 hour furlow to hang out with me. I was going to buy him a fancy get-out-of-jail dinner at a new Japanese steak house in Marion. Unfortunately, they decided to have an all-hands meeting at the half-way house and he had to be there... unless he was at work.

So we went back to Quintrex and hung out in his cubicle for a couple hours. I got some Chinese take out. Less than optimal, but good to see him in good spirits and nearly a free man again. His last day at the half-way house is Saturday. He has already procured an apartment, which he let me stay in for the night. Spent most of the night listening to cheesy dance tracks on one of the cable music channels and trying to get my computer to talk to his cable modem (failing miserably).

Stayed in the Twin Cities area.

Went back to the hospital after breakfast and hung out with dad; he's doing a lot better. Was up walking around, was in very little pain except when he coughed, and very alert. By the end of the day there was discussion of sending him home as early as tomorrow or the next day. So he's recovering very rapidly. This is probably due to his excellent overall physical condition.

Now normally, people who are in great shape don't need heart bypass operations. Unfortunately for me (and dad), this procedure was to fix an aneurysm which was brought on not by poor physical condition, but by a hereditary heart disorder. So yeah... I need to go get myself checked to see if I have it. And if I do... well that would be a bummer. :) Apparently the procedure for looking for these things is called an "echogram," where they drop you in a tank filled with angry dolphins and you try to communicate with them via morse code.

After visiting dad I went to Brent's place in Osseo and we played some "Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo."¹ This is sort of a Tetris-style game, but head-to-head 2 player and extremely addictive. I got a good look at the inside of his MAME cabinet (the parts for mine arrive as soon as I get back home!) and also at his console emulation station, both of which are really well done. Very excited to get this stuff up and running at my place.

Afterwards, I picked up Brooke [my prom date from high school, who I haven't seen in 11 years, and who is still ravishing] and we went to dinner at an Irish pub near downtown St. Paul. It was great catching up with her and hearing about what all of the people I knew in high school are doing now². In a series of unanticipated events, I helped install some fence posts, watched fireworks from a much closer distance than I would have liked, and some guy from a Best Buy conference (??) touched my back (???). It's a long story. However weird the evening was, it was great to see Brooke and meet her friends. Now I've got to get to bed; early start tomorrow--have to get down to Coe for lunch with the infamous Doc!

¹ NOTE: There was never a "Super Puzzle Fighter I," nor is there a "non-turbo" version; the game title is pure Engrish.

² working on kid #3.

Lincoln, NE to St. Paul, MN
500 miles
6 hours in the car

Quick breakfast with a-ron, then on the road at 8. Went via Omaha, Sioux City, then diagonally up to the Twin Cities. This route took me within 1/4 mile of the Iowa state highpoint. This was a total coincidence, I swear. And the car swerved off the road and I was ejected and landed right on the highest point. Otherwise I never would have gone there, I promsie. No really.

Actually the lady who owns the highpoint was really nice and came out to talk to me for awhile. 4 people had been there the previous day, one of which was doing his 49th state (only WY left). I was the first today.

From there, I stopped by the town of Grogan, MN, but couldn't find a sign to photograph. Then on to my parents house in St. Paul. Hung out with my mom for a bit then went to visit dad in the hospital. "He's more machine than man, now." He's doing really well and looks like he's recovering pretty fast. I gather that the surgery was less extensive than they were anticipating it would be, which is great news. I left him a Richard Rhodes book to read.

When we got back home, we made dinner (salsa chicken and green salad) then I went off to a bowling alley in St. Louis Park to roll with Brent. Got two simultaneous multiballs on Simpsons pinball while waiting for him, then rolled a 107, 123, 85 series. When we were done, we found a *6* pound ball and decided we had to play a game with it (note that regulation pins are 4 pounds each). The holes on the ball (made for kids) were so close that they were unusuable, so we had to palm it. It was pretty silly.

The sad part is that we both scored a 76. While this is dramatically worse than Brent's 183 average, it was not all that far behind my 81 game from yesterday. What the hell. How can I suck so much? Yes, it is impressive, I know. :)

Tomorrow: Arcade games at Brent's. Woo!

Sidney, NE to Lincoln, NE
350 miles
4.5 hours on the road.

Short, uneventful drive today. Got a late start on account of the time change (car-lag?). Arrived at Aaron's place at 2:30pm. Haven't seen him since his wedding in Spring of 2004. Tina was gone on a business trip, but this time I got to meet the dogs, Alien and Dorkus. They're Boston terriers and there's a good chance at least one of them may be not right in the head. Anyway they look like Cheshire Dogs and are 100% hilarious. I got some audio recordings of one doing the "Death Shake" which involves a tennis ball, rapid head movement, and lots of slobber.

We went bowling, and I proceeded to have my worst game ever (81). Then we ate at a great Indian resteraunt and got hit on by the help. Rented a good movie, Shattered Glass starring Mannikin Skywalker. He actually does a good job with the part, which furthers my theory that all that is bad about Star Wars III is purely writing. Thanks, Lucas, you hack.

Anyway, it was a good visit, if somewhat brief.

Los Alamos, NM to Sidney, NE.
640 miles
12 hours on the road.

Highlights:
Giant storm localized right on Pike's Peak prevents me from driving up and bagging two county highpoints. Storm chases me all the way to the Nebraska state highpoint. Went to a rodeo in Pine Bluff, Wyoming and hung out with cowboys. I don't get it, but it was sweet anyway. Found this free wireless connection in Sidney, Nebraska, where I think I'll spend the night.

Budget Rent-a-car recently went from all-corporate to a franchise model, which has interesting side effects for one-way travelers like myself. For starters, you pay for your car at the end of your trip--so the destination rental franchise gets the $$$ and the source franchise gets bubkis. Furthermore, they are basically giving away one of their cars to the destination franchise. For smaller outfits like the Los Alamos franchise, this is a significant issue, as not too many people travel one-way to Los Alamos.

The end result of all of this is that a given franchise will try to give you their worst vehicle for any one-way trip you take. Los Alamos sources so little one-way travel that they only had one beater earmarked for one-way giveaways when I arrived this morning. It was a not-entirely-new Chevy Cavalier with some minor body damage and about 30k miles. I'm sure they were excited by the prospect of sticking me with this thing.

Luckily for me, it turns out its registration had just expired and they couldn't release it for travel. So they were scrambling through their available cars to find the one with the most miles. Their options were to rent me some full-size car for the price of a compact, or to give me a relatively new Impala. They went with the Impala, which is currently the workhorse of their mid-sized fleet.

I estimate that losing this car to the Hartford, CT, franchise represents a reduction-in-force of about 20% of their available mid-sized vehicles. Ouch. And odds are no one will be one-waying a mid-sized car into Los Alamos any time soon, so they'll probably have to buy a new car to replace it.

nyuk nyuk

I made it back from Phoenix, and somehow the 93 degree weather in Albuquerque seemed really mild and nice compared to the 116 I left in Phoenix. Yowch. Anyway, my talk went quite well and I really enjoyed the conference. Met some great people and had a lot of fun. Also managed to get some important elbows rubbed that shouldn't cause my near-term carreer any harm.

I'm at home just for tonight, unpacking my conference attire and expo winnings and repacking for a week of road-tripping and a week of goofing off in New England. In the morning I'm swapping rental cars (from the deluxe lab-funded one to the tiny corn-burner that I'm renting to drive across the country). Next likely internet connection will be from Lincoln, Nebraska, courtesy of Cap'n A-ron.

Could the gas prices suck any more for a cross-country road trip? How about the heat index? Damn.

My dad is going in for emergency triple-bypass open heart surgery Friday morning. This may have implications for my trip itinerary; I apologize in advance.

So today was the first of three days of the Institute of Nuclear Material Management's 46th annual meeting/conference/expo. Watched some colleagues give their talks, met some sponsors and "important people," and generally enjoyed being the least dressed-up person in the whole building. But most importantly, acquired a ridiculous amount of expo schwag:

I've filtered out the CDs, business cards, and product literature.

The best-in-show award for expo giveaways was definitely the 4-port USB hubs (grey thing bottom-center) offered by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They also gave out the USB retracto-extension cord things (which are oddly USB-A male on both ends (??). Also of great value is the "We're not all nerds. Just me." pocket protectors.

All in all, I got three squishy things (hacky sack, football, and semi), 6 pens, about 10 CDs (6 of them mini-CDs or business card CDs), four keychains (one digital clock, one bottle opener, one fancy metal one, one cheap plastic one). two edible things (mini jars of honey and atomic fireball candies), two magnets, a shot glass, a biking water bottle, a lanyard, two pins, what appears to be a photo ID for GWB, and some post-its. Woo!!

So I've arrived in Phoenix without incident. According to my watch, the trip took -3 minutes. The conference is at the nicest hotel/resort/spa I've ever been to. A hamburger costs $17 here. So while the palatial resort is nice, I'll probably eat a few meals across the way at In-n-Out.

The view of the rising moon from my private balcony. This is actually the view of the parking lot; the more expensive rooms look out the other way towards the pools.

My talk isn't until Wednesday, so until then I'm on autopilot, enjoying the way nice accomodation and blast furnace weather. :)

Coming out of 31 flavors with Mikki last night I saw this jacked up Jeep Grand Cherokee in the parking lot.

But what is that sitting on the windshield?

OK... it appears to be a vaccum gauge duct taped right to the center of the outside of the windshield. Two half-inch tubes run down from the gauge and underneath the hood, blocking at least one of the wipers. Wow that's ghetto. Perhaps this is the work of MidWest Coast Customs' new show, "Pimp My Lame." Here's the inside view:

Nice.

--Attention people who make the weird videos found on the internet--

I would like to see the following: a video called "The Tronic," featuring guys dressed up in lightsuits from the movie Tron, whipping glowing frisbees around and rapping lyrics from Dr. Dre's album, The Chronic. Can we do that? Do we have the technology?

"You tuned to the sounds of the MCP..."

My current laptop was top-o-the-line in January of 1999, which means by now it is somewhat of a dinosaur. Today my new laptop for work showed up, and I once again have a laptop I can be proud of. :)

The extent to which laptop technology has improved in the past 6.5 years is quite impressive. It has lots of cool features my old laptop was lacking, perhaps the most interesting of which is the fingerprint reader. I can log in just by swiping my finger over a small sensor on the wrist rest. How cool is that? It's extremely fast, and probably an infinitely better means of authentication than any password could be. Can we put these on ATMs and everything?

Over the extended holiday weekend, I went up to Colorado for some mountain climbing. On Saturday I climbed Castle Peak, my 14th 14er.

Resting on the ridge leading to the summit.

While doing so, I met some aerospace nerds from Denver who invited me to go whitewater rafting with them on the following day. The beauty of travelling alone is the complete and total malluability of one's schedule. I decided that rafting (which I had never done) would be more interesting than climbing another mountain, so I took them up on it. The water in Glenwood Canyon was really high (4500cfs) so the usually class III rapids were now class IV. Quite the introduction to whitewater rafting.

That's me in the back, next to the very-easy-on-the-eyes guide.

After the rafting, I said my farewells to the Denver folks and drove back towards Los Alamos, stopping to camp and climb another 14er (Mt. Princeton) along the way.

He'll eat your head.

I had way more fun than I anticipated, and I really enjoy the rafting. May have to make some trips to the Taos box one of these days...