Travel – Zing Blog 2

Here Comes that Rainy Day

Well summer had begun in earnest, but so far the weather had been mainly cool and rainy. I don’t think we’ve had more than two days in a row without rain since April. Despite that I’ve been getting most of the yardwork done, and even went biking on the rail trail two weekends in a row. This last weekend I did my usual sixteen miles. The weekend before I did nineteen, my best so far this season.

Last week Jeannie and I went camping with Michelle, and with Kathleen and her kids, a bit of a mini vacation before Michelle starts her job. Martin and Kathleen have been going camping with us every summer since they were dating and our kids were little. Michelle first went camping when she was three months old. Last year we had to cancel our plans, so it felt good to reestablish the tradition. The year before that we had torrential rains and had to break camping and leave the last evening instead of the following morning. Michelle didn’t come with us that time, so when Jeannie and I arrived home unexpectedly late that night, she was all like “I didn’t know that was a thing you could do!”

The weather was great for this trip, the only three-day stretch with no rain so far this summer. It even got hot the second day, as we all went for a long hike up to Bad Man’s Cave. It was a little over four miles but very hilly and rocky, and took a bit over three hours. We went mid-week, so alot of the other campsites were empty. And, going early in the summer meant the creek was full and gurgling along. We brought our bikes up, and I biked around the campground with Charlie, Matthew and Abbie. In the mornings and evenings we made campfires and cooked and hung around played games and just talked. All in all a very nice trip.

Back at home, Michelle and I have been watching the Avengers and the other early Marvel superhero movies from that era – Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and all that. It’s hard to believe they’re all around fifteen years old, and amazing how well they hang together and still hold up. I guess enough time as gone by that I can appreciate them.

I’ve been doing more origami the last few weeks. I’m currently perfecting my Dimpled Icosahedron, which resembles a great dodecahedron with the triangle facets sunken. This is an inverse or complement to my semi-sunken Icosahedron, which resembles a great dodecahedron with the pentagon facets sunken. However it involves a completely different geometry and folding sequence, and starts with a pentagon instead of a hexagon.

I’m also doing and Origami Connect event this coming Saturday, June 14, at 2pm Eastern time. I’ll be teaching my model Gladys the Platypus. You can go to the Origami USA web site (orgiamiusa.org) for more details.

Life is a Series of Hellos and Goodbyes

Just got back from a road trip up to Buffalo, for Michelle’s graduation from college. She got a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, and has a job lined up starting in a couple weeks working on train bridges in the Bronx. We’re all very proud and she is quite psyched. Now she’s moving back in with us for the summer and maybe beyond.

We did a few things on the trip. Jeannie and I left New York on Wednesday night and drove up to Ithaca, so we we could do some hiking on Thursday. We picked a hike called Buttermilk Falls, which was quite scenic, and the weather was perfect, sunny and warm, after a long run of cold and rainy days. We arrived in Buffalo Thursday evening and went out dinner with Lizzy and Josh, and met Josh’s parents Rita and Ryan. They’re very nice people and we all got on well; it was alot of fun. It seems like this means Lizzy and Josh are getting pretty serious. He just graduated with a second degree, and tomorrow they’re going on vacation together. I wonder if he’s gonna propose to her soon.

Friday we kinda had a day off. Jeannie and I went to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens, a place I’d heard of but never been before. It’s a 19th century greenhouse modeled after the famous Crystal Palace of Victorian London, all glass with great domes and galleries. Lots of tropical jungle and desert plants, palms and cacti, and an impressive array of carnivorous plants. Afterwards we went up the Michelle’s apartment to help her pack and bring some things back to Orchard Park. That evening we met up with Larry and Jackie for the Hamburg Music Festival. Larry is a band director at Hamburg High School and some of his students were playing in small woodwind ensembles in a park right downtown. Afterward we walked around the neighborhood, where various bands were playing in all the bars. We ended up in a park with a beer tent watching a The Tragically Hip tribute band. Fun night.

Saturday was the graduation. There was a bit of last minute drama that Michelle might not be able to walk with her class because of an AP class that she never got credit for. But it all got straightened out. Technically she’s not graduation until September because she switched majors and needs to complete the last of the electives this summer. But she did the ceremony, and it was great and the Engineering and Applied Sciences school is huge, over 800 students graduating. Beforehand we went out to Board Point and took a bunch of pictures. The weather was windy and threatening but it didn’t actually rain. Afterwards we took Michell, Lizzy and Josh to a nice restaurant downtown.

Sunday morning we spent some time talking with my Mum. She’s been feeling kinda down, knowing she and my Dad are getting older, and wondering how much longer they’re going to be able to keep driving and doing other things, and what that will mean for their ability to get around and all that. No easy answers, I guess. Then we went up to Michelle’s apartment and helped her pack and load up all her stuff into her car and my SUV. It was a long drive and by the time we got home and unloaded it all, it was late and we were all pretty tired. Luckily we all had today off to relax and unwind and get ready for the next adventure. Today Michelle is looking to buy furniture.

Here be Dragons

It’s been another busy couple of weeks. When we last left our intrepid hero protagonist, he was on the eve of a jazz gig at a club in Mt. Kisco. Here’s how that went.

I hadn’t been to Mt. Kisco in a while, and it was a bit further than I remembered, out past Bedford almost to Katonah. The club itself was in this funny little pedestrian mall. Inside the place was nice, with a bar, a dozen or so tables, and a stage with a grand piano and drum kit, and a PA and mixing provided. The club owner was the bartender, sound engineer and host for the diners. He was a bit fussy about the setup, and insisted the bass go direct and not use his amp or effects. I guess he was afraid of the bass being too loud. However, we had trouble hearing the bass thru the monitors, which affected our performance.

Still overall it went well. The energy and playing were good. We had a decent crowd and they seemed to really dig us. Robyn sat in with the group, singing a bunch of standards. We had more of a chance to rehearse the arrangements since her last gig with us, and it felt more together. The show was a single long set, so we did about half songs with Robyn, and half our originals, and one or two standards. The food there was pretty good too, and the cocktails too.

That was Wednesday night. That Friday evening Jeannie and I drove up to Buffalo for a visit, leaving home right after work and arriving after midnight. The motivating event behind this trip is was wanted to have Charlie go on a tour of UB, his first college visit. We figured it’d be good to do while Michelle is still a student there. Saturday was rain out, and was a chill day without any plans, the first in a long time. I’d been thinking of buying a new bicycle, so we went to Burt’s Bikes, a big bike store up there. Our local bike store is small, and I need an extra tall sized frame and would rather test ride a bike than order one unseen. I looked a few bikes, but due to the rain wasn’t able to ride them outside. So they said come back the next day if the weather is better.

We also went to the Walden Galleria mall. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to any mall, and the last few trip the mall was always pathetic and mostly empty and on the verge of closing down. But this mall was really hopping, full of people and stores. There was a gaming store where I looked for a new D&D module and Jeannie bought some dice. There was an anime store, a Lego store, and Apple store, and even a Spencer’s. Wow, throwback to another era. That evening we took Lizzy and Josh and Michelle out to dinner at a nice place in Allentown. Before and after we hung out at Lizzy’s apartment. They have alot of legos in their place. Everyone is happy and doing well. Lizzy and Josh just got back from a min-vacation to Washington D.C. Michelle and Josh are both graduating in May.

Sunday morning I went back to bike shop and auditioned several bikes. In the end I bought a Trek Dual Sport, which is a hybrid trail and road bike. It has an aluminum frame and carbon fiber front fork, and disc brakes and a single ten-speed derailleur, as is the modern way. It also has more comfortable handlebars than my current bike, is more curvy looking and is a nice shade of blue. When I got it home I saw that the proportions and dimensions are almost identical to my old bike, a Mt Trek 850 I bought in the 1990’s when Google was just a small startup with their office above Palo Alto Bicycles and a handcrafted neon sign on the door. (I talked Jeannie out of applying for a job there, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story.) Sunday afternoon Kathleen and kids showed up. I took them for a walk out to the local playground. In the evening we played D&D.

The D&D campaign had reached the big climax of the adventure. By now all the characters are third level and are gaining some good fighting and spellcasting abilities, and the players are learning how to use their characters well. And the monsters and bad guys are getting tougher and more fun to run. The module we’re doing is called The Sunless Citadel, and the big boss is an evil druid doing unnatural experiments with growing plants underground without sunlight, aided by evil animated plants and a plant-zombiefied Paladin and his Cleric sister. In the middle of the cave is the tree of evil, so Charlie (playing Luna, and Elfin Ranger) decides to climb it to try and pick the white apple of pure evil, and finds a host of monsters up in its branches. At some point the rest of the party realize that if they destroy the tree it may break the spell of the zombified NPCs, so thay start hacking at it with their weapons. Charlie’s cousin Rylee (playing Nyx, and Elvish Fighter, rolls a natural 20, so I have Charlie roll a dexterity check to see if he falls out of the tree. He failed his save and so fell and took enough damage to reduce him to 0hp.

Charlie was revived, but was really upset and decided to attack Nxy with an unarmed strike for revenge. (All of these characters are neutral to chaotic, but I figured it would have been Matthew and Abbie to come to blows first.) I guess to his credit he used is second attack for this. Rylee retaliated by swing her sword at him, and Charlie was reduced to 0hp again!

All that was the week before. This last week they spent mopping up and making their way back out of the dungeon. I give them some magic beans of levitation, but they never figured out what they were and spent a good deal of time climbing up a shaftway and falling repeatedly. At last they made it out, only to be ambushed by a White Dragon Wyrmling they encountered earlier. It had escaped when Abbie tried to charm and befriend it while Matthew tried to kill it, and an altercation erupted between the two of them. This time the dragon incapacitated most of the party instantly, and soon the only ones left standing were Nyx and Luna. Nyx had climbed a cliff wall and jumped on the dragon’s back, and was attempting stab it in the neck but rolling low, when it dove out of the sky to lunge at Luna. Charlie delivered the killing blow, which caused the creature to crash into the earth rather than veer back skyward, and so Rylee had to roll a dexterity save or take massive damage from the fall. Fortunately for her, but much to Charlie’s chagrin, she made her save and took only half damage, and survived the ordeal with 2hp remaining.

Monday morning was the campus tour. Jeannie went with Charlie and Kathleen, since she’s an alum of the engineering school, which is where Charlie’s interest lies. I took Abbie, Mathew and Ellie on an informal tour of the campus of my own basically walking around. We went to Baird Point, where Abbie found a strangely crafted and polished stone block. She and Match developed a theory that there were five of them hidden around the campus, so she was on the lookout the rest of the morning (she’s a bit of a collector) but found only a random brick or chunk of wood or metal. We walked out to Ellicot complex and across the terrace and ended up at Goose Poop Island. There was sort of circle in the ground like a giant seal, probably where people did tai-chi on the weekend. The kids surmised that if you brought the five stones together in that spot and stacked them in the shape of an Inukshuk, it would grow to enormous proportions and re-arrange Ellicot into the shape of a normal, rectangular building! Meanwhile Charlie enjoyed the tour and both he and Kathleen found it informative.

Wow, I’ve been going a while. Gonna hafta call it a night here. Next up: the new stuff at work, progress on the Spellbound recording project, and defragging the studio part II.

Windin’ Up the Main Spring

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Our band had our gig at the Green Growler a week ago Saturday. It went great! The band is playing at a really high level, together and free at the same time. We debuted two new originals. One was What You Bring to the Table by Rick, which has undergone considerable evolution since he brought it to the group. The other was mine, Son of the Sun, replete with meter and key changes, and borrowing from the prog idiom. I’m impressed the group wanted to learn it, and stuck with it until we got it together. Of course it evolved alot too as this group made it our own. We rounded out the set with a mixture of originals, jazz standards, and funk and rock covers. We had a good crowd, including Michelle who was home for spring break, and Nick and Giovanni came up from Long Island. Giovanni was fascinated by playing mainly improvised music and how it works, asking me what I had written down on my charts and that sort of thing.

And hey everybody – we have another show coming up two days at Jazz on Main in Mt. Kisco. This one features special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals, so we’ve been learning a whole ‘nuther repertoire for that one. The band songs are mainly our originals since we have alot of them now, while the vocal songs lean heavily into standards and vocalese. Lots arrangements with dramatic beginnings and endings. Should be an excellent show.

And right on the heels of that my team at work had an onsite in the Manhattan the better part of the week. Lots of people came in from out of town. I took the train in to Grand Central, and each day walked one way down to or back from Union Square. It was an excellent week to be in the city, with the beginnings of spring stirring. We had a few meetings in the park or just waking around the neighborhood. I the middle of that I met Jeannie after work on evening to see Kurt Elling at Birdland, doing a tribute to Weather Report. Kurt remains one of my favorite jazz singers, and has such a great voice and phrasing and a unique take on things, and rock-star level cha-rasma.

The Innovation Lab as grown to twelve people, and we have alot more confidence to think big this year. We also have a new CEO, who met with us for an extended roundtable discussion and asked us what resources we need, and what new ideas we have cooking. Nobody really knew what he’d be like until he arrived; it turns out he’s friendly and bright and sees his charter as turn-this-ship-around, and signaled he’s willing to to put some resources into it. My VP used the phrase tip of the spear to describe our role this coming year. I’m in sort of transitional phase right now because the two main projects I’ve been working on the last three years have successfully transitioned from R&D to production, and the challenges with them are to make them scale up and be cost effective. Indeed three of our new hires this year are involved in that endeavor. So I successfully lobbied to be a sort or researcher-at-large for a while. My boss said I should look around and think about what I want to work on next. I haven’t had that luxury since the 1990’s. And, on the train ride home the last day, I thought of an idea that looks promising. It cut across several things we have going on, and would move our agent AI work forward to enable productization at a multi-dimensional level. But first, to understand some critical technical systems. So this week I’m starting to talk to the other engineers and managers about what it would take to pull it off. Wish me luck!

And then this last Saturday, spring arrived in earnest, if only for a half day. It got up to seventy-five degrees. Jeannie and took our bikes out in the morning to the local trail. I’ve been biking most of the winter when the weather permits, but mostly short rides (five miles or so) on the streets near my house. This is the first time I’ve gone a long distance straight and flat. I did sixteen miles in a little over an hour. Not bad for the first real outing of the season. Last year it took me until May or June to reach that distance. Last year my longest ride was thirty miles. This year I hope to reach forty or even fifty.

Also over the last two weekends I started the spring yardwork cycle, clearing out nine cans and bags worth of leaves and trimmings and other debris, plus a big bundle of sticks and branches. And, I took the Mustang out for the fist time of the season. It started right up and ran just fine. Woo-hoo! Of course by the time we were on the way home I was anxious to beat the gathering rainclouds.

Next up: the D&D adventure comes to the final boss!

Sailing Away to Key Largo

We’re into the second half of winter now. The days are starting to get a little bit longer and the sun is inching higher in the sky around midday. Still, we’ve just had another good wallop of snow and we’re starting to think about our next ski trip and whether to combine it with visiting friends upstate.

But that’s getting ahead of the story. Jeannie and I took a nice break from the winter weather. Took in some warmth and sunshine and got to rest and recharge. Every year this feels like more of a necessity. After maintaining complete focus on work and all my other tasks the entire month of January, I was ready for a break.

This year the destination was south Florida. We flew out early on Saturday morning and got into Fort Lauderdale mid-morning. Our first stop was Key Largo, and we were there on the seaside by lunchtime. They upgraded our rental car to a BMW convertible roadster. It was a very powerful car and alot of fun, although we could only fit one carryon-sized suitcase in the trunk. The rest went in the back seat, which was just as well because it was too small for passengers.

Anyway, we were at our hotel by lunchtime. It was a charming, sleepy kind of place right on the ocean, with a garden and pool, and surrounded my mangrove forests. Our room wasn’t ready yet when we arrived, but right next door was a beach bar and restaurant. So we got a table outside and enjoyed some frozen drinks and yummy seafood dishes. My favorite drink was made of bourbon and peaches and crushed ice, with jalapeño salt crusting the rim of the glass. Ah, perfect. Jeannie was enjoying Key Lime Coladas. They had a guy singing and playing guitar, and it was only two or three songs before he played Margaritaville.

That afternoon we went on a boat cruise around the Florida Bay, out among the mangrove groves and sandy shallows covered with seagrass. Saw some dolphins and lots of different kinds of birds, and an amazing sunset. Afterwards we went back to the restaurant next to our hotel for dinner. One of the specials on the menu was a whole fresh caught snapper, complete with corn on the cob and taters and veggies. It was yummy, but they should have warned us that it was sized for two people! No matter, I ate half of it and we had the rest for lunch the next day. That evening they had a full rock band, who were excellent, with strong vocal harmonies and great guitar player, and songs from bands like Santana and Sublime. I had a dream about Martin that night, waiting for him to come home but he never showed up. Very sad.

Sunday we went on a kayak trip out among the mangroves, up a channel into progressively smaller bays and inlets until we ended up in a swimming hole, which was lots of fun too. Saw some sharks and more different kinds of birds. That afternoon we put the top up on the car and drove all the way out to Key West on the water highway. Got the car up to 100 mph on the seven mile bridge. It was a long trip, almost two hours; Key West is closer to Havana than Miami. Key West is a cute little boating and tourist town, good for walking around in. We went to the southernmost point in the continental U.S., visited the aquarium – sharks and sea turtles were the top attractions, watch the sun go down over the Gulf of Mexico, and had dinner in a place that used to be the original headquarters of Pan Am Airlines, which got its start in the 1920’s flying to Cuba and back.

Monday we visited the Everglades. Took a boat tour around the swampy backwaters, saw lots of crocodiles and yet more birds, as well as lots of different kinds of mangrove trees and other plants. We went on a couple hikes in different parts of the park with different ecosystems, including a knot of forest in a sea of marsh grass. All in all a fascinating place, I dubbed it America’s ultimate swamp walk.

From there we drove back to Fort Lauderdale to spend some time at the beach. We got to the hotel well after dark, but they had a tiki bar right out on the beach that was perfect for dinner and drinks. Next day we spent the whole time lounging about, going back and forth between the ocean and the tiki bar, with a side trip to the pool. Aaah, vacation! That evening we went out the Benihana, which was just up the road, for Jeannie’s birthday.

Wednesday was our last day, and we had to check out of the hotel in the morning but our flight wasn’t until the evening. So we decided to go check out Miami Beach. Miami is a big city with lots of freeways, and the vibe is alot like the New Jersey turnpike. But once we got there it was great for walking around, another beautiful sunny day. South Beach, Ocean Boulevard, all the old fancy art deco hotels, even a little art gallery. There’s the beach with a park and bike path, and a beautiful botanical gardens a little ways uptown.

The flight home was smooth and uneventful. I feel like we’ve had a run of good luck flying the last few years. No major mishaps in the last dozen flights. Of course we came home into freezing rain turning to ice, and woke up the next morning with snow on the ground.

Oh What Fun to Ride and Sing a Slaying Song Tonight

We’re in the midst of a long and languid holiday break. I’ve been off work for a whole week and a day, and don’t go back until Thursday. I finished off work on a high note, having successfully merged my R&D branch of the codebase back into the main branch, deployed it and all. The project is turning the corner from R&D into productization, always a fun part of the curve. Also lots of planning meetings for big ambitious new features and new R&D threads in the coming year. After a long uphill slog into strong headwinds I now feel that the tide has turned, the wind is at our backs and filling our sail, and we’re gaining momentum as we cruise downhill.

Michelle came home from school a week before Christmas, and Lizzy a few days later along with Josh. We even got snow a couple times and it remained cold enough for the snow to stick around for a white Christmas. We did Jeannie’s family party the Saturday before Christmas, and went to Mary’s on Christmas day. In between was lots of food and drink, movies and games, music, wrapping presents, opening presents, hanging out and getting things done at a relaxed pace.

We’re shaping up for a new release of the Global Jukebox in the new year. Nick has come up to speed as my new second software engineer, which is great. I still miss Martin whenever I work on the jukebox. He wrote so much amazing code and did so much of the devops stuff too. I’m always inside his thoughts and mind when I read thru the code. Anyway, Nick is now filling that role and bringing his own approach and perspective. The major new feature we’ve been working on converting the existing Cantometric codings for all the songs to a new simplified schema, to make it easier to train new coders and to eliminate some ambiguities in the original system. Nick wrote the script to do the conversion, which required understanding alot of domain knowledge as well as the architecture of the web application. Meanwhile I created the spec for the new schema and did all the UI and UX work on the client side. Now it’s all on the staging server and we’re looking at finishing off some P2 features to get into the next release.

I bought a drum mic kit as a present to myself. It’s bundle of eight microphones for all the different drums plus overheads, along with stands and cables. I’ve decided I want to use more real drums on my next record (more on that soon) and so it’s essential to be able to mic it up. Next step is to get it all set up and learn how to use it. Oh, and I’m going to upgrade to a 16-input preamp/DAC unit as well.

Oh, and Jeannie got a Nintendo Switch, so I’m gonna get some games for that too!

We went up to Buffalo for a few days after Christmas. They had a ton of snow when we arrived, but while we were up there it got warm and started to melt. Kathleen and the kids came up too. It was a little sad because we all felt Martin’s absence, but we also felt his presence. There was coming together and healing energy, and it was good to see everyone. I’ve been trying to bond with the kids and get closer to them. I took them out for a long walk around the neighborhood one morning to the park and the lake and all the local playgrounds. Played some chess with Match and Abbie. We also had dinner with Larry and Jackie and place in Allentown called Mother’s which was really good. To top it all off, the Bills demolished the Jets on Sunday. Looking good for the playoffs.

I’ve started a D&D campaign with Martin’s kids as a fun way to try and be a presence in their lives. We’ve had three sessions so far over the last three weeks. The first week we rolled up characters, the second we did a warm-up wilderness encounter en route the the start of the main adventure, and this last weekend the party got the the base town, met some of the locals, stocked up on provisions and all that, and set out for the ruins of the Sunless Citadel, where the adventure begins in earnest. They climbed down into a ravine and are now at the front door of the main dungeon (where a trap awaits, unbeknownst to them). The party consists of the three oldest kids, Charlie, Matthew and Abbie, as well as their cousin Rylee, all aged 12 to 16. Also joining in are Michelle and Jeannie. It’s a good mix of races, classes and alignments. Rylee is and Elfin Fighter, and Charlie and Elfin Ranger. Match is a Dwarven Barbarian, and Abbie a Gnomish Bard who rides around on a giant rabbit. Michelle is playing a Halfling Cleric and Jeannie a human Sorceress. I’m DM’ing, which is something I really enjoy. Everyone is first level, and their alignments are centered on chaotic neutral, which fits with their general attitude.

We’re using a combination of software. It’s amazing how all this stuff has advanced since I first started playing D&D online twenty years ago with Nick. We’re using google meet for the video conference. This mostly works great by the call only lasts and hour, so I have to start a new meeting halfway thru. We’re using DND Beyond for the character sheets, stats, and related stuff like spells, weapons, bonuses, modifiers, and hit points. And we’re using Owlbear Rodeo for maps and combat. All free apps that run in the browser, very convenient.

So far it’s lots of fun, and good to be able to spend time with everyone in a casual, semi-structured way. They’re all definitely enjoying it. My plan is to keep it going thru the winter at least, and maybe longer if everyone remains into it.

Comings and Goings

It was another busy week. We got home from our trip Monday morning and it was straight to work. Wednesday evening we went to see a rock show, Cyndi Lauper at Madison Square Garden. Had dinner in the Persian place Jeannie likes before the show. Cyndi put on an excellent show. The band was great, and so was the light and video show, and she can really still sing. There were lots of costume changes, and a fair amount of long storytelling intros to songs. Between the two, they rarely played more than two or three songs without a pause. Ah well, she’s got alot of great, fun hits.

Friday night we went up to Boston for the OrigaMIT convention, which was on Saturday. It’s fun to be able to say I teach a MIT every year, even if it’s just origami. This year I taught my Flying Fish, since I recently folded a bunch of the for the OUSA holiday tree, and made some improvements to the design along the way. This year’s convention seemed a bit more low key than other years, and the only person I really ended up talking to in any depth was Brian Chan. Erik Demaine did his usual lecture on his research, and this year seems to have made good progress in cracking the layering problem, which central to the whole question of modeling origami in software. After the main classes were over, there was a group activity, a design challenge. For the prompt “things you find in a kitchen” I folded a cake with a slice cut out, and the missing slice out of another sheet of paper. Interested 3-D geometry challenge.

We drove Saturday after dinner. It was good to get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning, and finally have a low pressure day off. The weather was nice so Jeannie and did a bike ride, maybe the last of the year. I went sixteen miles in a little over an hour. Also took the Mustang out for a ride, and raked up the leaves in the yard, which we hadn’t done since before our trip.

Monday came and I was pretty exhausted today, and also feeling out of sorts with it getting dark so early now that the clocks have shifted. Ah well, looking forward to not having to do any traveling for a while, and get some things done at home.

Way Out West, Part II

Wednesday we got up early to watch the sun rise. Then we drove out of the Grand Canyon to the east, crossed the Colorado River somewhere around Antelope Canyon, and swung north into the legendary realm of Utah, a place I’d never been before. The maps app said the trip was about five hours, but for us it was more like eight, because we kept stopping for scenic overlooks along the way and doing short hikes to the local vista. It was amazing to see the way the landscape changed over the miles. The Grand Staircase with its layers of all different colored rocks was particularly amazing.

We got to Bryce in the late afternoon and had time for a hike around the rim to a place called Sunset Point. We dipped into the upper part of the canyon, then back up to the top to watch the sun go down. (Fun fact: the sun doesn’t actually go up or down, or around the Earth at all. It’s the Earth spinning that creates the illusion of the sun traveling across the sky!) We were staying at the lodge in the national park here to, and had drinks dinner at the restaurant there. Very yummy. There was no TV or wifi in the room. Next morning we hiked into the canyon. Bryce is much smaller than the Grand Canyon and you can reach the bottom in an hour or so. But the rock formations are the most amazing to behold that I’ve ever seen! So we spent at a few hours hiking around the canyon floor and eventually up the other side at Sunrise Point.

We had lunch there before we took off, then it was another drive across the mountains and desert to Zion. This one was only two hours or so long. Coming into Zion from the east, we had had to drive thru a long tunnel and down an intense series of switchbacks to get the main canyon. We weren’t able to get a room in the park lodge here, so we stayed in a hotel a little ways outside the park gate. We had dinner at a really good Mexican restaurant that from the outside had a vibe like From Dusk ‘Til Dawn before things turned weird.

Friday we hiked around inside Zion, which was really beautiful like everything else, and had looked alot like Sedona actually. Walked along the river at the bottom then up a side canyon to a series of pools and waterfalls. All of these hikes were pretty big – over five miles and 1,000 feet vertical. We ended up at a saloon in the village right outside the park gate having a couple drinks and a late lunch.

Saturday we drove from Zion to Las Vegas, Nevada. This was a short ride by this vacation’s standards, only a couple hours. On the way we stopped at a dinosaur discovery in St. George, Utah. The main attraction there was a giant slab of natural rock which had been cleaned up and had a roof put over it. The rock reveal thousands of dinosaur footprints and told the story of how it was once a sandy beach and shore of a shallow lake.

In Vegas the weather was hot for the first time since we’d arrived out west. And unlike everywhere else we’d been, everything was very crowded and noisy. Last time I was in Vegas was in the 1990’s, so it was interesting to see what has changed. In the afternoon we walked along the strip and got as far as Caesar’s Palace, about halfway up. In the evening we went out to dinner with Jeannie’s cousin Lynda and her husband Carl, who moved to Vegas some years back. It was an Italian restaurant in the part of town off the strip where people actually live. That gave a different perspective on the city. Afterwards we went back to the strip, and starting at the Luxor worked our way back to our hotel at the other end, stopping occasionally to rest and have a drink and take in the sights. The highlight was at the Parisian, where a Moulin Rouge style burlesque show appeared right at the bar where we happened to be lounging. A troupe of cute dancing girls in corsets and fishnets shaking their thang, and a self-aware singer who broke the fourth wall to tell us all she thought the lyrics to Roxanne were really repetitive. We looked for opportunities to play some blackjack or roulette, but the tables had all been replaced by machines that made it feel like self-checkout at the supermarket and didn’t look like very much fun. Jeannie found an arcade of vintage slot machines and spent some money there but didn’t win anything. At least people don’t smoke indoors anymore.

The last day was the drive back to Phoenix to catch our flight home. We did this trip in the opposite direction thirty years ago. Back then it was mostly a two-lane country road across the dessert. I remember a sign in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Arizona saying “No gas next 150 miles.” You couldn’t even tune in a radio station. Well now that middle part of the trip is mostly a divided four-lane highway heavy with traffic, and the no-gas zone is more like 100 miles, and by the time you pass thru you’re in the sprawling exurbs of Phoenix. Compared to the other drives on the trip, it was pretty flat, mainly desert with groves of Joshua trees and Saguaro cactuses.

Our rental car, a Nissan Rogue, kinda sucked BTW. The flight home was uneventful, except that getting in an out of Kennedy Airport is a nightmare these days because of all the construction.

Way Out West, Part I

We just got back from a a great trip out west to Arizona and Utah. Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and 24 hours in Las Vegas. Lots and lots of hiking. A good deal of driving. Epic scenic vistas galore.

Part of the purpose of this trip was for Jeannie and I to celebrate out thirtieth wedding anniversary, which was earlier this month. (We had thought we might do some kind of party or dinner for family and friends, but as it happened we weren’t much in the party spirit in the late summer and early fall. I ended up making a toast to Jeannie and thirty more years when we were visiting my parents a couple weeks ago.) In any event, Jeannie and I had taken a trip to Arizona the year we got married. It was our first vacation together, and my first time out west. So we visited a couple places we’d been to before, and some new places too. It was a good opportunity to reflect on our lives together so far and the way things change and stay the same across the grand passage of time.

The first stop on our itinerary was Sedona. We flew out Saturday morning. Our flight landed in Phoenix, and by the time we got our car and drove up there, it was late afternoon. We took a sunset hike up a nearby mountain, the first of many. It was only about two miles and maybe four or five hundred feet vertical, winding up from behind the local high school, which was across the street from our hotel, and took a little over an hour. But the view was amazing, looking down into the valley and across to the mesas and rock formations all around. Went out to dinner for Mexican food.

Next morning we explored the town a little more and did a little shopping because I needed new hiking boots, and we got some groceries too. Sedona has a vibe very much like a ski town because the main activity there is hiking. It’s pretty small with just one main drag, full of shops and restaurants, quite nice. If you leave town in any direction you’re five or ten minutes away from an epic hike. We chose one called Fay Canyon, which had a side quest to a natural stone arch, and a good scramble up the cliffside at the trail’s end to some great views. That one was maybe three or four miles and a thousand feet vertical. We followed it up another shorter, steeper hike to the top of another mesa, called Boynton if I recall.

When we were up in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, Chris and Mark told us that our old friend Keith, the crazy talented guitarist for Event Horizon, was living in Sedona, and gave us the name of the band he was in. We tried to find him but he didn’t have any gigs the weekend we were there. Nevertheless, we had dinner at a bar where he was scheduled to play the following weekend, and left a message. He was always a difficult one to get a hold of. It would be amazing to hear from him.

Anyway, Monday morning we lit out for our next destination, the Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, after several hours of winding thru very scenic canyon and mountain roads. This is something we both had always wanted to see. Percival Lowell of course was a famous astronomer who discovered the once and future planet Pluto, mapped the famous canals of Mars, and contributed in many other areas. Other astronomers there mapped the moon in the 1960’s and discovered the cosmic redshift that led to the expanding universe model of cosmology. The tour was fascinating; they showed us several working telescopes and explained about their history, construction, operation, and how astronomers use them in their research. We would have liked to have been there at night to look thru the big telescope, but Flagstaff is very remote and we would have had to spend the night. As it was, we got to look thru a few ‘scopes in the daytime. One was trained on the sun and had filter at the alpha red wavelength emitted by hydrogen. As a result it showed mainly the surface of the sun and not the white and yellow light blasting from within. The sun actually looked like a ball and not just a disc, and was covered with the hairy fuzz of solar flares, each much larger than the earth. Another ‘scope showed Venus, which is apparently visible in the daytime if you know where to look and can block out the light of the sun.

After several hours more of driving thru very scenic mountains we arrived at the Grand Canyon, shortly before sunset. We were staying in a cabin at Bright Angel right in the park, at the very edge of the chasm. This was something we’d done thirty years before, and was a special memory for us to revisit. The room had a view looking right out over the canyon, and a fire place which was now gas but thirty years ago had been wood-burning. That evening we had dinner at El Tovar, the fancy classy restaurant there. When we were there the last time I declare the steak I ate that night the best I ever had, and over the years it has gained legendary status. I ordered the steak again, and I must say it was a damn good steak. But I supposed I’ve had plenty of great steaks over the last thirty years. For dessert the chef spelled out Happy Anniversary in chocolate on the plate, which was quite nice.

Tuesday was the biggest hike of the trip, down into the canyon itself. It was a beautiful day for it, although they’d had snow just a couple of days earlier. (We had perfect weather the whole trip, although the air was very dry and the elevation made the sunshine extra strong.) The trip was three miles in, going down more than 2,000 feet in elevation. It was basically endless switchbacks scratched out of the cliffside. But you know, breathtakingly beautiful, and fascinating to see the shift in perspective that came with the descent.

A word about the colors. Everywhere we went out there the rocks were really red, to the point where it affected the way you other colors. Basically all the colors were really vivid and seemed to pop. You’ve never seen a more intense blue sky (maybe that was the elevation too) or greener scraggly desert shrubberies. The pants I was were appeared tan under normal circumstances turned green on the trail. And Jeannie’s hiking boots, which were normally grey, turned blue. Totally wild.

It took us a little over two hours to get to the three mile point, which was about halfway to the bottom in terms of both distance and elevation. After we paused for lunch, it was the long slow climb back out, relentlessly uphill for three miles. We were told to plan on taking twice as much time to climb out, but for us the total trip was right around six hours.

After a rest we decided to walk along the rim trail to a vista point to watch the sunset. It was a bit further than we expected, another two miles or so, so we ended up taking the bus back to the village.

A word about sunrises and sunsets. You can really appreciate the optical effects of the earth’s atmosphere at the tops of these cliffs cuz you can see for miles and miles and miles (oh yeah). It’s best to look to the horizon opposite the sun. You can see the shadows climbing up the rocks in the opposite side of the canyon, and really get a feel for the earth turning. You’ll see a blue zone in the sky that creeps up underneath the pink. After the sun set it continues to rise, as the pink begins to fade. This is actually the shadow of the earth itself, causing the night to fall.

At the end of the night we went out a dark place at the end of a parking lot to watch the starts. Amazing, clear skies, just tons and tons of stars. I don’t think I remember ever seeing the Milky Way like that in the fall.

Next up: Utah!

On the Way Home

We finally got a weekend at home to relax. This week we passed a big deadline at work, the release of Permission Slip 3.0, delivered on time and without any major problems. I also finished re-architecting and deploying the key generation and storage mechanism for OSIRAA, the API compliance test tool for the Data Rights Protocol, after a long and deep debugging adventure, thus unblocking the road forward to testing. And, I submitted Plutonium Dirigible to get CDs made and put on streaming services, so that project is officially completed.

Last weekend we were traveling again, this time up to Buffalo. It was good to see Mum and Dad and talk about things. They are doing basically okay, very stoic, which I guess is not too surprising.

I also saw old friends Mark C. and Chris S. I hadn’t seen either of them in many years, although we used to be very close, so it was great to reconnect. Mark and Chris were the drummer and piano/synth player in Event Horizon, our prog jazz fusion band that was together for a number of years and was the vehicle for alot of musical growth. We were in several other bands together around that time, and both of them stood up at my wedding, which, by the way. was thirty years ago this week. Chris has a new wife and baby. Life has a way of moving in circles sometimes, and after many adventures they’re both back living in Kenmore, just a few blocks apart, in the neighborhood we all grew up in.

After that we went to visit Lizzy and Josh at their new apartment in North Buffalo, just a few block on the other side of Kenmore Avenue. They have a very nice place, and the main decorating them is legos galore. I always admired that neighborhood when was growing up, with it’s tree-lined avenues and well-kept Victorian houses; it’s good to see the neighborhood is still that way. They’re right near Hertel Avenue, with a district of restaurants and shops.

Back home Michelle is home from school visiting. The weather remains nice. It’s been a super pleasant autumn so far, with mainly warm and sunny weather and beginning to get cool at night. Haven’t really turned the heat on yet. Much better than last fall, when it rained pretty much every day. I’ve been continuing to do alot biking. This weekend I went twenty miles on the local rail trial. Hope to get a few more long rides in before it turns cold, and get up to thirty by the end of the season.

This week I’m trying to finish up some origami Flying Fish for OUSA’s holiday tree at American Museum of Natural History. I also have some ideas for a couple new models that I hope to complete for a convention coming up in November. So watch this space for that.