Windows
After a four year hiatus i’m setting up windows XP on an old laptop in order to work out some IE6 bugs in one of my sites. This makes me sadder than anyone could possibly imagine.
Epicness
I have relationship with lightning that could be characterized as decidedly unfriendly.
To be fair i think that most living, breathing creatures that want to remain in the practice of inhaling and exhaling, are not really too cool with bolts of electricity shooting from the sky. But it really seems to have it in for me personally and my dad as well, by association, I suppose. The reason being, lightning – and really the whole New Mexican system of monsooning afternoon thunderstorms – is out to thwart us. I have been rained on, snowed on, pummeled with hail (thank god for bike helmets), and oh yeah, I’ve gotten that little tickling feeling while standing on the side of the highest point in the state, 500 feet from the top, as all the hairs on the back of my neck went vertical – that special sensation to let you know that Zeus is taking aim (we tactically-withdrew, booked it, scampered, retreated, fled, monty-python-ran-away (take your pick) that particular time).
Smote by the weather gods – a series of abortive hikes that my dad and I have attempted, and for the past four years been turned back from our destination.
This year, though we finally made it to Lost Lake, a spot I hadn’t been since i was at least 14-years-old. As hikes go it’s kind of a classic – rockslides, switchbacks and of course, kick-ass views. And the best part – thunderstorm free for once. We didn’t go all he way to Wheeler, the aforementioned highest point, but we’ll chalk it up to a scouting mission for next year, maybe an overnight excursion – it’d be pretty amazing to watch the sun come up over that lake.
The other bit of epicness on this trip was, of course the South Boundary. Read more →
Dr. Horrible
A musical (sing-along blog) from the mind of Joss Whedon
There and Back Again
The American Roadtrip. I’m not sure if other countries have this – it seems to me that Europe is too close together, and to interconnected with highly sensible trains, and the rest of the world can’t afford to be that extravagant. Maybe in China, but I’m not Chinese so I don’t know.
Regardless, the summer tradition – load the car and head west, an unconscious tribute to the days of taming a wild continent (genocide of the natives is kind of over looked for the sake of the kids here). The drive to New Mexico is something else. It’s 12 hours, 34 minutes and 24 second from my parking spot to downtown Red River, nine hours of which is spent getting out of Texas. It’s a big damn state folks. We opted for the previously mentioned stopover in Amarillo, complete with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and angry English people. Amarillo has always been best described as “rode hard, put up wet,” a phrase that nicely captures its western cowboy roots and its utter craptasticness, although given the number of spanking new wind turbines up there (it looks like a strange forest), there could be something bright on the horizon for them.
Another fine thing about the road rip is the early morning roll out. Given Amarillo’s previously mentioned status, there’s no reason to hang out for the continental breakfast. 5 a.m. finds us on the road, watching a grey sunrise of the panhandle. Then it’s across the state line and up the flat plains of the Canadian river valley, screaming across pavement that has its origins in the Nixon administration.
This is the West as I like to see it – empty. You can drive for five hour and maybe pass three people on the road (who will of course give the requisite two-fingered steering wheel wave). Then, in Springer, you catch your first glimpse of the mountains – the distant purple lumps on the horizon, little teasers as if the guys who built these roads knew you’d been driving through the panhandle with nothing but flat cornfields and a game of highway alphabet that is indefinitely stuck on ‘x.’
Finally, your brain thoroughly unplugged after 11 hours from the driving motions of 20 mile stretches of flat, straight highway, you hit the first canyons in Cimarron, and from there you’re rewarded by 45 minutes of downshifting, hair-pin turns, mountain passes, gorgeous scenery as you wind your way up to 10,000 feet.
In short, we made it.
That New Yorker Cover
My name is Wolf Blitzer, take me to your situation room (The Daily Show explains).
48 hours
Exactly 48 hours ago, I was screaming down the South Boundry Trail on my bike, making my way from Angel Fire to Taos through pristine stands of Aspen, with Elk running through the valley below me. The bike was running flawlessly, the air was cool, the views spectacular.
Now I’m at work, sitting at my desk, going through the 500 emails I got last week. Oh, and it’s going to hit at least 100 degrees today.
Dammit.
In Amarillo
The best converstation I’ve heard in long time – we’re checking in to the lovely travel-lodge in Amarillo, and in walks Winston Churchill’s long-lost younger brother who’s apparently been wandering around the Texas panhandle for the past forty years. He rolls up to the the kind of sad, emo-Amarillo-hotel-clerk:
WCYB: You’ve got be bloody kidding me…
Clerk: Uh, sir?
WCYB: You’ve got a huge bloody sign out there saying you have rooms for $39.99 and you’re charging me sixty dollars.
Clerk: Sir those rooms are for the upstairs singles, and as I told you, the Jehovah’s Witness convention is in town and has all the rooms booked.
WCYB: Then why do you still have your big bloody sign up (no shit he said ‘bloody’ that many times)?
Clerk: Uh, it’s a big damn sign.
WCYB (turning to us as Liz is signing the bill): And you, you got the $39.99 rate?
We kind of had to leave before we started laughing uncontrollably.
BLM + Solar
The BLM removes it’s head form it nether regions and lifts the Solar Project Moratorium.
Road Trip
Tomorrow we hit the road, bound for New Mexico in the annual sojourn to get the hell out of the absurdly overheated Texas summertime. If all goes well, tomorrow night we’ll be in scenic Amarillo, and Friday morning we’ll roll in to Red River just about the time the Fourth of July parade starts.
I’ve traveled to New Mexico by car more times than I can count – from the early morning rollout in the family mini-van to last year’s solo subaru excursion. The packing, the driving out from town, making coffee by the side of the road, new-and-scenic Texas panhandle gas stations, books-on-tape, that really inserting musty small your car gets after being driven for 10 hours, and best of all, the first faint outlines of the Sangre de Cristos on the horizon as you barrel west on sub-standard New Mexican asphalt – all part of the fun.
Texas Map
They should call Rand McNally and get this version put in their sorry excuse for an atlas. Probably discourage a lot of the yankees too.