June 13, 2008
California Trip: Yosemite
So I spent last week in California with A, going to Yosemite, then up to Sonoma, then San Fran and back to LA. It was a long trip but very awesome. I got to catch up with my friend Mike, but sadly missed the other West Coasters. I also got to abuse my CHDK (Canon Hacker Developer Kit) scripts to take some HDR shots, which I'm still tweaking but seem good.
Yosemite was insanely crowded and also wet; which sucked. Fortunately once you get out from the vehicle-accessible spots, the crowds die down immediately, so it wasn't a disaster, and the weather improved a bit. Besides, the clouds make for dramatic HDRs:
(viewing those at full size is much more awesome)
The redwood grove was nice, but I remember Muir Woods as being more dramatic overall, but lacking redwood cameltoe and snowplants:
We hiked to the fissures near Glacier Point, and had to deal with lots of snow; for which I was not really well prepared for.
But the clouds did mask the really really really long way you fall if you misstep there. Which was nice. This was about as clear as it got:
(that's half dome in a cloud)
Sonoma was nice, but parallel to Yosemite you had to get out of the town, which was itself quite the tourist trap full of.. well, tourists. We drove up to the Russian Creek Valley and had a great time -- basically hitting the wineries I didn't make it to last time I went winetasting in Cali (on a bike)
San Fran was challenging because we really hadn't planned it and A was having a problem with her hip making it hard for her to walk a lot. We managed to walk most of the Embarcadero/Chinatown/Nob Hill area and used some MUNI bus/subway/things. We still managed to have some awesome food (tho my attempt at Mexican food was thwarted, we stumbled on to an amazing Italian Place, Caffe Delucchi) The Sushi place (Koo) was good, but not life-changing.
Posted by griffjon at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2008
Travel
Not much travel of recent. I flew out to San Diego to present at the Youth Service Institute in late December, but barely saw anything outside the hotel. A and I did Texas for the winter holidays -- but West Texas just doesn't change much, which is both frustrating and relieving.
Coming up: A trip to LA to visit A in April, perhaps a longer trip in the summer to the West Coast to do San Fran, wine country, and so on.
We're planning some form of international jump in the late fall when she's back in DC again -- maybe a Europe trip, maybe Argentina.
Posted by griffjon at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2007
Granada and Las Isletas
Granada's a beautiful, chill city that's being slowly re-invaded by Gringos buying it up. Huge numbers of expats walking the streets. 
We got to see a funeral procession:
We climbed a belltower for a great view of the city:
At dusk, we took a boat around "Las Isletas" - a group of ~365 islands formed when Volcan Mombacho erupted a few hundred years back:
Posted by griffjon at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)
Nica 2007: La Boda De Chana y Jorge (Managua)
I'm holding off on posting too much about the wedding to try and give Chanita some time to go through all the photos A and I gave her and post them herself. Until then, some photos from our first couple of days in Managua and Granada:
Managua:
Managua has some of the best street art / graffiti / murals
The Parque de la Paz was a huge bonfire of weapons used during the Sandinista revolution, burnt and concreted over:
It's a country in a big hurry to forget it's troubled past. This is the Somoza family grave. The Somozas rules Nicaragua for over 40 years, bleeding it dry (they had some great friends, too)
The shadow of Sandino on top of Tiscapa:
Posted by griffjon at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2007
More India: Best photo from India
I so envy Audrey for being the one to capture this moment (by explicit and almost forced request of the village elder, in the glasses, mind you)
Posted by griffjon at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
More India: Jain Temples in Jaisalmer's Fort
Another case of words detracting from the photos:
Posted by griffjon at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
More India: Jaipur's Jantar Mantar (Observatory)
There's not much text I can throw in here to really explain or improve the photos, so here's an eruption of photos from an astronomical/logical site in Jaipur:
Each of these "small" tools was aligned for its specific zodiac, you can guess ours?
This is a REALLY LARGE SUNDIAL:
This was a fancy star chart/calendar:
And a planet chart:
This smaller sundial could get within 20 seconds accuracy, the large one had 2 second accuracy:
Posted by griffjon at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
More India: On Public Tranist
If you haven't seen Wes Anderson's latest; The Darjeeling Limited, I highly recommend it. Standard Anderson, people dealing with distant/absent parents and their own messed up lives, but filmed in India. Not really India-accurate, but hilarious nonetheless, and some awesome shots/scenery. If only the trains were actually remotely like that.
The main for of transit is autorickshaws, which I blogged about from India with my "three riddles" :
1) What's the only thing scarier than an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a shaky transmission?
2) How many autorickshaws does to take to get you to where you want to go?
3) How many lanes does an Indian road have?
(answers at the bottom)
So, what IS an ARS anyhow? It's a three-wheeled gocart-type affair, with a pull-start motor and motorcycle-like handlebar controls. They're about 1/2 as wide as a normal car, and very dexterous moving through traffic. Here's some visual explanation: 
not enough?? Fine. Here's a video of a normal, calm ride in a rickshaw. The (unusual) blasting bollywood tunes help you imagine you're a dashing hero out to save a modest female!
So while ARSs are the best in-town transit, it's the trains that get you between towns. Now, you have to fill out forms for everything at the train station; to get tickets, to request information about what ticket to get, to store your luggage... You even have to sign a log book if you wait in the waiting rooms for the reserved-class cars (the ones where you have a reserved seat, as opposed to the "hope you can squeeze on" style. Fully in line with the standards of bureacracy one comes to expect, we discovered where these forms go: 
note that this was taken at a chest-high window into a room filled with piles of old forms. I'm sure there's a 27B/6 in there somewhere....
You spend lots of time waiting for trains. We had five train rides, 2 of which were 5+ hours late, 2 ~1 hr late, and one on time. You discover all sorts of things while waiting or riding, such as new flavors of chips (warning, may cause mischeviousness):
And you remember why you're paying exhorbitant amounts for a reserved seat:
Excuse me, conductor, this cow doesn't have a ticket:
Rickshaw Quiz Answers!
1) an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a *good* transmission
2) One more.
3) One more. Tags: delhi indi
Posted by griffjon at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)
More India: Hidden Delhi
A and I finally merged our massive photosets, took out exact duplicates, and did some work to pick the best couple of hundred photos, so if you ask us for an in-person slideshow, you know what you're getting yourself into. In the meantime, I've updated Flickr with the missing photos; Jama Masjid, a hugemongous mosque in Old Delhi, more Delhi shots, Jantar Mantar, a huge stone astro-nomical and -logical observatory, and some other random shots.
Jama Masjid
We went there because my finely-honed "late afternoon tropical thunderstorm" senses were tingling, and we figured we could find refuge. After wisely toting our shoes (you can't wear shoes in mosques), the sky broke open and deluged the less fortunate:
After the rainstorm we slipped and slided and clammered up a tall and steep minaret/tower to get a view of the city; it was... harrowing, unlit, narrow, and super crowded with 2-way traffic up a 1-way staircase. We survived, with some great shots. 
Some pictures of India Gate, government buildings, and the presidential house:
A Hindu temple, and the Bahai temple:
There are three more choice photos from our morning at Humayun's Tomb that I must share. First:
There is one parrot, and five ninjas, in this photo.
Second, I come halfway across the world to find a country overrun by mesquite trees? Next time I'll save money and jetlag and go to west texas:
Third:
Important lesson for female travellers: don't get your picture taken with men outside of family groups. That shit-eating grin on the guy's face? Yeah, he's grabbing Audrey's ass. Not that I can blame him, really, but still.
Posted by griffjon at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2007
Desert Safari
In the middle of our time in Jaisalmer, we went on a 2 day, 1 night camel safari. We never got that far away from civilization, but far enough to see some nice stars and feel far away.
The first day we got up early, jeeped out an hour, and met our safari. We went with a hippy from Germany. Three Indians were with us, Suban the guide, a camel driver, and "the boy" (who was a guide in training/internship). We each had our own camel, plus one camel which was in training (and not very happy about it)
Riding camels is smoother than horses (as long as they're not running!), it's a weird side-to-side, forward and back sway (camels move both feet on each side simultaneously). Getting up and down is a bit difficult, as they have a multi-step sitting process. As long as you're ready for it and holding on, it's no problem. Up on top, you realize that camels are TALL.
We cameled it from just past dawn until lunchtime, going through a few villages along the way. The desert was mostly scrublands, where some villagers were raising crops (mustard, millet, melon) and/or goats and sheep. They lived in thatch and adobe-style huts mostly, and many of them are Hindu refugees from Pakistan from the Partition.
From noon until almost 5 we just camped in the shade of a tree. We started with chaye and lunch, then chilled out for a while. A hunter came by and we made more chaye to share with him and the guides chatted with him for a while. Suban and Audrey played with their cell phones, though were still unable to download any free Indian ringtones to her phone :(. In a word, it was hot, with very little breeze. We drank lots of water and waited, then got back up and went another hour to camp.
Camp
We camped on a set of dunes, free of insect problems (except for lots of dung beetles) and grass burrs. After the sun set, it cooled down until it got a slight bit chilly late at night. I tried to take some star pictures, but my camera doesn't seem to allow for more than a 15 second shutter time.
We arrived just in time to catch sunset 
We had dinner, and I played around with my new Indian jews harp, and taught "the boy" a bit of it, but Suban was more interested (and skilled at) playing midi tunes on his cell phone.
Day 2
Really, more of the same; walking around on camelback, exploring villages, waiting for the sun to cool, then at dusk we jeeped back into Jaisalmer and returned to our hotel for a much-needed shower.All in all it was very pleasant. Sleeping under the stars (though, BFE Texas locales still win for stargazing) was nice, riding a camel was certainly an interesting experience, and our guides were great (And great cooks)
Camel Videos
The view of the scrub from the back of the camel - the bells are on goats, the grunting noises are from the camel driver, "Uh!" seems to be the way to say "Hey, pay attention, keep going". Other noises were a cicada-sounding chirp and a lop-lop-lop sound, which I think both were speed-up-a-bit sounds. There was a sound to tell the camel to get up/down (jhyu jhyu) and to drink (sounds like a camel/horse drinking sound, verbalized).Also, here's a video of a camel walking. They're odd creatures. In heavy sand, their back feet step in the same place their front feet just left (they walk lopsided, both legs on one side moving in unison).
Camel noises while getting saddled:
Posted by griffjon at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)