SXSW hangover

Man, after the orgy of twiterite-blogerati that infested the town last week, I needed a bit of  break from the internets. Typical ranting should resume as normal this week. Topics may or may not include such subjects as Road riding when the windchill is 27 degrees and why that’s a bad plan, or Why do we get less wiling to set ourselves on fire at bachelor parties as we get older, and if I get around to it A cost benefit of riding your bike to the bar – why it might not be the best plan.

2008

I rocketed onto the highway this morning to see this year’s final sunrise exploding behind downtown. A nice, natural fireworks display to close out the year. And wow, what a year. On a personal level, a bit smoother than ’07, primarily due to the distinct lack of divorce proceedings, but at a larger scale it’s been something else.

The election of course, took up a healthy amount of our national attention span. In the end that’s good thing because the right guy won, but we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was finally done and Sarah Palin was sent packing back to Alaska.

The price of gas is one thing that threw me for a loop. This summer, I thought I’d never take road trip again as he cost of topping off the Subaru in west texas broke $60 a tank – and now? I’m glad it’s cheaper now, but having such a basic building block of our economy fluctuate that much leads me to believe that the Lego-set that is our economy is missing some crucial bricks.

And on that note, we found out what many of us had long suspected – that our economy is built on smoke, mirrors and sub-prime mortgages. Losing a house has to be hard but i don’t have lot of sympathy for folks who don’t read the contracts they sign. Even less so when it starts taking down the whole system. The guys responsible for this mess shouldn’t be sent to jail – seize all their assets and drop them off at homeless shelter. Or better yet, make them work a minimum wage job with no health insurance for the rest of their lives.

Then there was our buddy Ike, reminding us why we don’t build close to the ocean. As much as it sucked, it was also  awesome to see Houston cope with the train wreck of the storm – while FEMA dithered, Houstonians got things done – restaurants cooked off their remaining food rather than let it spoil, giving it away to anyone who wanted it. People, by and large, behaved – no looting or gun battles. The Mayor himself even  got out and directed traffic much to the dismay of a couple of truck drivers and the Governor of Georgia. Most importantly for me – my parents house was ok , and 13 days after landfall they were reintroduced to that modern marvel that makes south texas livable: air conditioning.

On a lighter side, Jamaica was pretty awesome. My first real experience with a tropical island  vacation, and I found that yes, in fact, I excel in sitting on a beach and doing absolutely nothing while people make me fruity drinks.

Bikes were of course ridden this year. We averaged about four rides a week this year by my reckoning, as well as handful of races – not to shabby. This year also averaged I higher number of unauthorized airborne incidents, but that’s life i guess. At least we looked good doing it?

One of the big ticket times for me and my family this year was the loss of my godmother, Kris. She is missed and remembered fondly.

I expect, or I hope 2009 will be like the previous trip around the sun – some good with the bad – but here’s hoping we see more of the former this time around.

Happy new year.

Manly Turkey

Of the 22 pounds of turkey consumed this year at my parents house, 12 of them were deep-fried-awesomeness. Nothing says the holidays like a bunch of guys watching meat cook in a pot of boiling oil.

Ike

So if you look at the storm track for Ike, the predicted track runs really close to my parent’s house. It should make landfall tonight and really at this point it’s a matter of whether it hits the west or east side of Galveston as a cat 2 or 3. The Saffir Simpson Scale is honestly a complete pile of crap, because while the wind are only going to be barely a Cat 3, the storm surge is looking pretty tremendous.

So, even though there are other things I should be concentrating on at work today, like planning and printing for self-aggrandizing-fluff events, I think I’m going to spend my day posting hurricane stuff and thinking-quasi-positive thoughts about the storm track veering into High Island.

Live Feeds
Looks like Houston station’s have switched to 24-hour coverage, although they’re hitting some bandwidth issues…

KRTK-Houston | KHOU- Houston | KPRC-Houston

(Yes I excluded the Fox station)

Surfside
Surfside is the island beach community near my parents house. Sometimes home to not the smartest of folks. From the Chronicle…

Two holdouts, Max and Diane Hall, and their 9-year-old dog Sissy, awoke to find the ocean in their yard. They walked out to higher ground, carrying supplies and belongings on a boogie board, seeking to be evacuated.

Diane Hall joked, “we are not the poster children for successful evacuation by any means.”

and a bit more morbid…

Smith said he did his best to convince residents to climb aboard his high-riding Mack truck, but authorities believe about six people are riding out the storm.

“We asked them to write their Social Security number on their arm for us,” Smith said.

Galveston
Looks like Galveston is already flooding, with 4′ of water over the main west side highway. The general consensus, from the evcauees is the Galveston mayor pulled a Ray Nagin and waited to long to evacuate the island. The only non-coastal route to the mainland is the I-45 causeway bridge. I’m sure the delay in the evacuation order had nothing to do with the Cruise ship in the harbor.

KPRC is showing video of a wanna-be Dan Rather standing on the edge of the sea wall while the waves are ripping chunks of asphault out of the road. I really want to see this dude go for an involuntary swim.

Saffir Simpson is Dumb
So now the meteorologist guys are calling for Category 2 winds but Category 4 storm surge. Houston area authorities call evacuation based on wind speed. This scale system is ludicrous. They’re calling for a 20′ surge in Galveston Bay, plus 15″ of rain.

Central Market
The fish guys at Central Market gave my parents a half-pound of boiled shrimp and romelade sauce for free at the evacuee discount. Pretty awesome.

LHC Resources

They’ve switched on the LHC today without destroying the planet (yet) or creating a new, large lake in Switzerland. Here’s a nice resource for checking the status fo the project (make sure to read the url). Or there’s CERN’s Twitter feed. Or this guy from the future who needs some money to prevent the LHC from ending the world.

The T-racer

Back in the day Brian and I both had variants of the vehicle to the right, although never quite as fancy (no racing stripes – probably why we had such a hard time in the College Station dating scene). I had the wagon varietal, with a broken windshield and he had the Mercury version, the Tracer (or Tee-racer as he dubbed it), complete with custom kayak-roof-rack (a wooden pallet tied to the top of the car). Both vehicles saw some completely inappropriate usage (right hand turns at 60mph, baja-rally style driving out to Reimer’s, shoving five kayaks on top for a trip to the river – and more that my lawyer has advised me not to disclose). How we are still alive and not guilty of vehicular manslaughter is often a mystery to me.

Out and About

About 8:30 this morning I heard my phone make it’s pleasant little text message noise. This was a good thing because it implied my phone made it home. By extension, from my position under three pillows avoiding any possible light sources, I could summarize that if my phone made it home, my pants (that normally hold my phone) we’re mostly likely here, which means that against all odds, I had made it back safely from badowski’s bachelor party.

A few notes –

The wine bar, where all this chaos kicked off was lovely, but why the hell did they have the UFC up on the big TV ? It’s a bit of a miss-match (wine bar and cage fighting), and only served to get certain people even more riled up.

JagerBombs are always a bad plan.

Many apologies to the girl who’s foot I ran over with my bike. I’m sure the tire marks will come out of your over priced shoes. Wedges are so last year anyway.

Shots of straight Jager are an even worse idea.

Many thanks to the dude who offered to help us fix the busted chain on the bike that Brian stole from Germ. While your laughter at how incredibly mangled the thing was wasn’t exactly helpful, I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Ok, fine, the JagerBombs were my plan.

I’m not really sure who’s idea it was to buy a massive Braut from the street vendor, but dear god that was good, and probably contributed greatly to our continued survival. May the gods continue to bless the wonder that is german sausage, and all the fine street vendors who distribute it.

And finally, even though we are old, it’s good to see that Badowoski Tim and Rob still posses freakish, near superhuman skills at foosball.

(Also, many many thanks to Kyndal for giving Rob her sunglasses and then taking the picture above)

On the Train

Riding amtrak in New England is like participating in the Italian train experience –  the trains aren’t quite as late, but they are also distinctly less nice ( although i do appreciate the power plug next to my seat).

This really is the way to travel though. I didn’t have to go though security, take off my shoes or even show seventeen types of ID/boarding pass combinations. I just walked on to the train. The drinks are much cheaper too.

Being from Texas  though it’s a bit disconcerting – un four hours I will have gone through four states. I doubt If I could go through four counties at home in that period of time. Seriously, how is Rhode Island not just another county of one of the neighboring states?

The difference from home even is striking, the closer we get to the City the denser things get, all these old buildings with old people in them. The picture on my desktop is this epic shot of the road into Terlingua, with the Chisos basin prominently fixed in the center, while out the window to my right it’s small-windowed houses, aged industrial parks and old mills – remnants of a time when this country made things –  as far as the eye can see. It’s not bad, just different. It’s pretty in parts, quite beautiful, but it’s a very occupied kind of beautiful.

They also talk real funny-like up here.

Mazdar

No it’s not the car company spelled wrong. It’s a city of 50,000 being build in the Abh Dhabi desert with a carbon footprint of zero. Why would a country with 10% of the worlds oil spend $18 billion on a project like this?

“The answer is simple,” says Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., the developers planning the city. “There are two reasons. Number one, because we can. Number two, because we should. And because this is a logical step and a natural extension for our involvement in the energy markets.” – npr

An interesting idea, I’d love to see an American attempt at something like this (we really are smarter than everyone gives us credit for), but seeing as we can’t even put New Orleans back together, that’s probably not going to happen.

70's Music

I had a freakishly realistic dream last night that David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash (Neil Young sucks, it was better when he left), was sitting in my bedroom, having a beer.

I’ve taken it as a sign to listen to more music from the early 70’s.  No Neil Young though. Annoying voice and a silly hat–no thank you.