Nerd Check

So we were somewhere on our way back from Illinois on the recent trip when I saw an interestingly shaped cloud in the sky. I pondered it, pointed it out to my wife, and only then realized I had a camera in my cell phone and might be able to take a picture of it. To make a longer story shorter, I got one picture before it changed shape too much. Here it is. Does it remind you of something?



No? Well, as I say, it was changing shape and I wasted a lot of time. But perhaps if I show you the thing it's supposed to look like (to me, anyway). Imagine this flipped over. You might see it in the cloud then.


Perhaps you recognize that? No? Well, FOX did cancel the show way too soon. I only learned about it well after it was off the air, and even after the movie came out. Any clues yet?

The TV show was called Firefly, and both the movie and the spaceship pictured above were named Serenity. The cloud looked something like the ship if you used your imagination. (And if you're a nerd like me.) The show and the movie were quite good. Go rent them or buy them on DVD if you can. They're well written and fun.

Finally, just because I found it on the net, here's a better picture of Serenity:



She's a pretty ship. Now, go watch Firefly. Please. I promise not to mention it again. For a while.

Vacation Drive: Illinois and The End

Illinois is changing. It's going from yet more corn fields to suburban sprawl at a horrifying rate. No, I don't really like driving through corn fields, but it takes very little time to get from Rock Island on the western edge of the state to the "greater Chicago metropolitan area". About 6 seconds, I'd guess.

What isn't suburbia is still flat and boring, but it is the end goal of these trips. Family lives there, so we go there.

Illinois was home to the worst drivers of the trip, without a doubt. The freeways around Chicago might as well not have speed limits, since none of the locals follow them. 20 or 25 MPH over the limit seems just fine.

And in the 20 years since we moved away from this part of the planet it hasn't gotten any prettier. As mentioned above, the Chicagoland area has become one giant suburban unit - a huge shopping center - from near the Wisconsin boarder all the way down to Joliet. It may go farther south too, and I have no idea how far east it goes. What I know is the farm fields and wooded streets that used to exist are now all built up.

The farmers are (or were) selling out - and getting out - to let contractors build cookie-cutter tract homes by the thousands, and at least three new strip malls per square mile at a minimum. It's actually rather depressing.

One thing they get in the midwest that we don't get at home is lightning storms. True, we get some on occasion, and the most recent did set half of California on fire, but even that storm wasn't all that impressive as lightning goes. They get real lightning out there on the prairie. The kind you watch from your open garage as it advances, bolts hitting the ground all around you. I miss those, and lightning bugs, but I don't miss much else from the that part of the world.

Our path through Illinois along route 88 is about 190 miles long, ending at someone's parent's home - whose depends on the specific trip. Here we rest for a while before turning around and driving back in time to get someone to work - or other commitments - on time.

If you ever take this trip you'll probably have very different opinions about the sites and places along the way. Someone out there must like Nebraska or Salt Lake City, for example, even if we don't. I hope these descriptions have armed you for the drive. Bring a camera for the scenic spots. We forgot to do that this time and I wish we'd remembered.

We find we like this long drive in some ways. It's a few days in each other's company with nothing to do but sit in companionable silence or talk about whatever. We stop every two hours or so, change drivers, and walk the dogs. These little stops are about 15 minutes long each, and they slow us down a bit, but they - and the shared driving - also make it possible for us to go 15 or more hours a day and cover a lot of ground safely.

This time around we noted that traffic was way down. Even truck traffic was reduced. We generally do this trip in the winter - over the holidays - and we expected more traffic in the summer. It wasn't there, and we've seen I-80 carry more traffic in late December. I guess the economy is hitting people pretty hard so they're staying home.

And that's it for the trip description. Sorry, but I'm not to the point were I'm going to document family stuff on the net. For many reasons I think that would be silly.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Iowa

The only thing good about Iowa is that there's less of it than Nebraska.

Yet another state of nothing but corn. 300 miles of corn.

True, the ground rolls a bit more than it does in Nebraska, but there's still nothing to see. And the humidity in the summer... I needed gills whenever we got out of the car. We ran the A/C just to dehydrate the air a bit before we breathed it in.

I'm a westerner at heart. If my liking of Wyoming and California and even parts of Nevada didn't make the point, my dislike of Iowa and Nebraska should drive it home.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Nebraska

Nebraska: 450 miles of nothing. Flatness without end. Dullness personified. Boredom on asphalt.

Yes, Nebraska is dull. Deadly dull. it really is 450 miles of torment.

There is nothing to see but corn, and nothing to do but suffer through it.

The westernmost 75 miles or so gets slightly more interesting, but only because the corn goes away and it's range land instead.

If there are nice parts of Nebraska they aren't along I-80, and the way we do these trips we will never see them. In truth I have a hard time imagining what any supposed nice parts of Nebraska could be like.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Wyoming

Wyoming is a beautiful state. Really. Some call it bleak and think it's too remote, but I differ. There is almost always something to look at, and whatever it may be, it's impressive. The easternmost 50 miles or so are a bit too flat for my taste, but the rest of the state is gorgeous. There are these amazing ridges. From the top of one you can see for many, many miles to the next. The landscape is interesting, full of color and shape, it holds your interest. Near the towns of Green River and Rock Springs are wonderful cliff like hillsides, sculpted by wind and rain and ice over millions of years.

And the city of Laramie is nice. It's a university town with quite a bit of character.

Politically I'd probably be a fish out of water in Wyoming, but if we ever leave California and have our choice of places to go, we'll give Laramie a lot of careful consideration.

Anyway, it's 400 miles from east to west along I-80, but we don't notice the time and distance all that much. It flies by.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Utah

I seem to have been busy with other things for a few days. Oh well. On with the trip description...

Utah presents a very special set of problems for us.

First, there is nothing in the western portion of the state along I-80. Nothing at all. The salt flats go on for miles, and so does the road, straight as an arrow and pretty dull driving.

After that there's Salt Lake City, a place we've loathed for various reasons over the years doing these trips. It all started when we discovered they don't allow dogs in the national forest just east of the city. I've taken dogs into all kinds of national forests in the past and never had a problem, but in Utah they're worried because it's "the watershed for the entire city". Like my dog was a health risk to the city compared with deer and other wild animals that never get a vet appointment in their lives. Give me a break.

And it's gone downhill from there. For many years prior to hosting the Olympics in the area I-80 through SLC was under construction. Every time we'd drive through town they'd route us around the beltway - miles and miles out of our way - giving us a scenic view of the town we hated from the start. We've never gotten over it.

Suffice it to say we despise driving through SLC. To the point that even now, years after the first trip that got it all started, we make it a point to have something loud and rude by Frank Zappa playing on the stereo as we pass through town. If that makes no sense to you, forget about it.

Oh, I do have a family living in SLC now, a cousin and her husband. They are perfectly normal, but they are the only ones we can confirm are sane in the entire SLC region, and it appears they do not set public policy for the area. If the timing allows we stop and see these folks, but it usually doesn't work out. We get there too late on the outbound leg of the trip, and the return trip is a bit variable. Oh well.

A bit east of SLC you hit Park City, where it is (thankfully) possible to find rational people and a place to sleep; even a hotel or two that will accept dogs. The surrounding mountains are quite nice, but in truth it's all too close to SLC for me, so it's only a stopover on our way through.

Utah is about 200 miles across on I-80, and Park City is our usual first stop on the trip east.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Nevada

There's a certain rugged beauty to this state, or at least those portions visible from I-80. Ranges of mountains separated by the valleys. Desert scrub. In an austere way it's quite pretty. Often we drive through Nevada at night and in the winter, but this time we hit it in daylight going in both directions, and the contrast is quite vivid. A bit of snow on the ground and some moonlight can turn the landscape into something almost magical, but it was still impressive this time.

That being said, seeing the view is sometimes a problem thanks to the proliferation of billboards, mostly for casinos. Of all the states we drive through, Nevada has the most billboards by far. Based only on how many exist they must have no regulations controlling them at all, regardless of their location.

Sadly, if you are a non-smoker, you don't actually want to breathe in the state, particularly inside a building. As far as I can tell all residents of Nevada are required by law to smoke constantly, and the result is that I wind up holding my breath every time I go into a gas station. A while back someone told me that Nevada had passed a law making restaurants smoke free, but that the casinos had managed an exemption of some sort. Truth be told I don't know how that law has worked out. We almost never eat in a restaurant here, so I haven't got much direct experience with the smoking ban. I do know that breathing clean air in gas stations is just about impossible, and we've been in a "non-smoking" hotel room in Wendover where the cigarette smoke was pouring through the vent fan in the bathroom ceiling - from the floor above - making the night miserable. As I say, we try not to breathe much while we're here.

There are also some very strange looking people living here. Maybe this is what the west has become, as chaps and cowboy hats have become less and less useful the people of Nevada have taken dress and personal grooming to new lows. Or maybe it's just the residents I see along the I-80 corridor, and I shouldn't be making generalizations about the entire state. Whatever it is, I never seem to get across Nevada without encountering several people who look like they were recently released from prisons or mental institutions. None of them has ever been harmful as far as I know, but if I was only judging by appearances I'd find some way around Nevada rather than going through it.

In any event, Nevada is about 400 miles across along the I-80 corridor, and there are things to look at while you're there. Our outbound trip never stops in Nevada on the first day except for gas, so we just blow on through and keep moving. We try to do the same on the return trip, and that's just fine with us as we have no interest in gambling, which seems to be the only significant industry in the state other than mining.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: California and The Start

We drove from California to Illinois recently (and back) as part of a vacation. We saw relatives in the Chicago area, but we didn't stop for even one attraction along the way in either direction As we've got limited time and tolerance for highway landmarks.

Driving that far may sound stupid with $4/gallon gas, but the alternative was even more expensive. Have you looked at what it would cost to kennel two dogs for a couple of weeks and buy round trip tickets from SJC to ORD? No thanks. We'll drive, stay in hotels, take the dogs along, and still save considerable money.

Our driving pattern is a bit odd, and it would probably make no sense for most people. We stop every 120 miles or so, or about every two hours. At these brief stops we walk the dogs, walk ourselves, gas up the car (or not) and change drivers. These stops tend to be between 10 and 20 minutes long, but they make all the difference in the world. They allow us to go for 15 or 16 hours and cover 900+ miles in a single day without falling asleep behind the wheel. The dogs get a bit bored by it all - particularly the Siberian Husky - but if we remove a day or two from the trip we all do better in the end. We also eat both breakfast and lunch in the car, stopping only for a sit down dinner.

The trip turns out to be a bit over 2200 miles along I-80 between the Bay Area and the Chicago suburbs. (The exact distance depends on the specific route taken at either end.) We do it in three days, and along the way we've developed some opinions and thoughts about the states and sights along the road. I'll share them with you, working from west to east, in separate, state specific posts, beginning (obviously) with California. Sadly, California is the least interesting in terms of our commentary. I hope the others are more amusing.

First off, the bay area is way too crowded. We went well out of our way to avoid rush hour traffic on the way out, but tried a more direct route on the way back. In hindsight I wish we'd gone the long route both ways, but such is life.

The roads in California vary wildly. I-5 between Sacramento and Stockton was very rough, but I-80 in the central valley is fine. For the really awful pavement, through, nothing on the entire trip beats I-80 through the Sierra Mountains. It seems to be paved with tiny cobblestones. It's incredibly loud to drive on, and very rough. Lots of other states get snow and I've never seen similar pavement anywhere, so I don't understand what they were thinking when the road was paved this way.

For scenery, California does reasonably well. The coastal mountains (the Santa Cruz Range in our case) are quite nice, and the Sierras are gorgeous. The central valley is dull, but it doesn't last long and you're fighting the traffic most of the way through it, so you don't have time to think about it.

Our outbound route included 341 miles in CA, while the similar portion of our homeward trip was only 275 miles. That's the above mentioned difference in our routes. At rush hour I think the extra distance is worth it, since it adds less than an hour to the length of the trip and drops the stress levels a lot.

We never stop and stay anywhere in California on these trips. We're too close to home no matter which direction we're going, so we always press on into Nevada or to home itself. That means we don't really know much about anything except a couple of gas stations along the way.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Dogs and Travel

Getting back from a vacation these days means a huge pile of email that you're behind on. In my case, the damages were slightly reduced by the fact that I had connectivity for part of the trip. My wife, on the other hand, came home to 1200 messages needing review. That's after a bunch had already been filtered into various files and others had been automatically discarded.

What I hadn't considered was that dogs fall behind too. We took our usual walk this morning for the first time in 2 weeks. Walking the loop we quickly discovered that the dogs were trying to catch up too. There was much news to be read (smelled) and many messages to be left in response to things other dogs (or cats, pigs, dear, etc.) had left in our absence.

We get behind on email. Dogs get behind on pee-mail.