Six Months around the World

Bike Trip Photos: California

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:49:00 +0000

For me, the best part of the trip was cycling through the redwoods on July 4th, just north of Orick, CA. There was almost no traffic on this part of the route, and it was even slightly downhill. Here are some pictures of Ryan being dwarfed by the trees:

Soon after the redwoods, we hit the northern part of Highway 1, which was the hardest part of the trip for me. The weather wasn't cooperating, so we had a headwind most of the time. And in addition, this section of the route has lots of small hills, so we were never able to relax at all.

But we eventually reached San Francisco, which was an awesome feeling. (I actually think that was more exciting than reaching Mexico!) Just before crossing the bridge, we saw this depressing sign which told us that we had another 778 miles to go. Fortunately, the sign was talking about the Coastal Trail, and we only had 700 miles left.

After stopping in Berkeley for two days, we headed back out to tackle Big Sur. After completing the northern coast, Big Sur was pretty easy. Here's Ryan at Hurricane Point:

At Pfeiffer Big Sur, we didn't need the tent; we just slept out under the trees. It was pretty awesome.

But the next night, we stayed in the best campsite of the whole trip, at Kirk Creek Campground. Our campground was on the edge of a cliff, right above the ocean. So cool.

Here's Ryan, at the top of the last hill of Big Sur. From here to Mexico, the route was mostly flat, with just one more big hill (the one just north of Gaviota).

If you're a fan of Arrested Development, then you'll understand why we had to stop at a banana stand on Balboa Island, in Newport Beach.

And finally, after 2140 miles, 37 days of cycling, and 4 rest days, we reached Mexico! I was happy just to look at the border, but Ryan felt that he had to go stick his foot (and his bike) across it.

Bike Trip Photos: Oregon

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:45:00 +0000

I still haven't posted pictures from most of our bike trip, so I'm going to try to catch up on that. In this post: pictures from Oregon.

Here's an example of one of our campsites, at Sunset Bay State Park. Here I am, dutifully cooking breakfast, while Ryan is off taking photos. Thanks for the help, Ryan! Just kidding, breakfast was always really easy, since it was just oatmeal.

Here's Ryan snacking on some blackberries that he found on the side of the road.

And here are a couple of Ryan's pictures. Even bicycles get tired sometimes!

Here we have Ryan letting out some of his energy on the beach at Harris Beach State Park, our last stop in Oregon:

And finally, I leave you with a selection of pictures of the beautiful Oregon coastline:

Salamanca, Daytime

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:42:00 +0000

Okay, time for a photo tour of Salamanca!

First of all, here's the view from the balcony of the apartment where I live. Since it's on the top floor, it has a terraza overlooking the city. From here, it's about a 10-minute walk to the Plaza Mayor, which is the heart of the city, and a 15-minute walk to school.

The walk to school is a pretty nice way to wake up in the morning. This is the main street that we take, with the Universidad Pontificia at the end.

We also pass the Convento de las Ursulas (which rents out some of its building to a popular nightclub called Camelot):

And the Iglesia de la Purisma:

But the most stunning sight in Salamanca is the cathedral. You see it over and over again as you walk around the city. From a garden near the cathedral:

From the Puente Romano:

And from the University of Salamanca:

The cathedral and the university both have amazingly facades, and each one has something hidden in its facade: on the university, it's a frog, and on the cathedral, it's an astronaut. (The frog has been around for a long time, I think, but the astronaut is obviously a recent addition.) Here's part of the cathedral's facade:

And the plaza in front of the university, with its facade:

Another building which shows up time and time again in Salamanca is the Convento de San Esteban:

Salamanca also has tons of fountains and statues sprinkled around the city. Unfortunately they're not usually labeled, so I don't know what they are. The last statue is supposed to be a bull, but I think that someone cut its head off in the past year or so...

And finally, the Plaza Mayor during the day, without the giant pumpkin in the middle:

Bilbao

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:10:00 +0000

The only downside to living in Salamanca, I think, is that it's not really a transportation hub. For most destinations, your only option is to take a bus, unless you want to go to Madrid or some other big city first.

So, for instance, I went to Bilbao a couple of weekends ago, which required a 6-hour bus ride each way. It actually wasn't so bad: the buses in Spain are pretty nice, and the bus stopped for 30 minutes in Burgos, so I had a few minutes to check out the cathedral there.

I enjoyed Bilbao a lot. I went there to see the Museo Guggenheim, but Bilbao is actually a pretty lively city, and there are a number of things to see. I went to the beach one day, spent a day in the museums, and spent another day just wandering around the city's parks.

I stayed in a somewhat... interesting neighborhood in Bilbao. It's clearly an immigrant neighborhood—there are a number of halal butchers there, for instance. And it's a poor neighborhood, with people hanging out on street corners with nothing to do. I even saw someone have his wallet stolen while I was there. But the neighborhood is also filled with a number of hip restaurants, galleries, and stores, since it's right across the river from the city center.

I didn't realize this before, but Bilbao is located in a very beautiful section of Spain. The city center is pretty flat, but it's surrounded by hills, so you catch views like this as you walk around town:

And just one more photo of the museum (the Guggenheim is a lot of fun to photograph, but I won't bore you with all of my photos):

The Guggenheim building is pretty cool, and I enjoyed the permanent Richard Serra installation inside, but the art itself isn't particularly spectacular. The city has another museum, the Museo de Bellas Artes, which has an amazing collection of modern Spanish art. (I think that this museum is now one of my favorite museums, as is the Reina Sofia in Madrid.)

The Museo de Bellas Artes also has an outdoor sculpture collection, which includes two more pieces by Serra, as well as this strange sculpture:

While I was wandering around the city, I ran into a tourist office with a lot of graffiti. But it was the piece at the bottom that really caught my eye. SPQR? Does that mean something else in Spain, or is this really a reference to the Roman republic?

Bilbao also has another neat architectural landmark, a bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava. It looks cool from a distance, but when you get close to it, you realize that it's starting to fall apart, even though it's just 10 years old. I wonder if it's a design flaw, or if the city just isn't taking care of it?

There was actually an story about this in the news today: the city added an extension to the bridge recently, and Calatrava has sued them for violating his copyright. Meanwhile, the city claims that Calatrava's design was flawed, because of problems like those cracked glass tiles.

Then, while wandering around the parks in the city, I ran into this sculpture, which I though was pretty neat. If I remember correctly, it's actually a war memorial for the Spanish civil war.

Pictures from Spain

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:48:00 +0000

I'm a little more than a week into my classes here in Salamanca, and everything is going well. Spanish is hard, especially since we're learning things so quickly, but I'm dealing with it. I'm making lots of friends here, too, but the problem is that most of them aren't staying as long as I am, so they'll be leaving in the next few weeks. Oh well, I'll just have to meet some of the new students!

Anyway, time for some pictures from Spain. When I was in Barcelona, I visited many of Gaudí's works, of course, and they're a lot of fun to photograph. My favorite spot was the roof of La Pedrera, which has beautiful chimneys sprouting up everywhere. I was there pretty late in the day, when the sun was low, which meant that the light was perfect for photographs.

I also went to La Sagrada Família; I have to say that I actually liked some of the more recent additions to the building more than the parts that Gaudí designed. For instance, they have some amazing stained-glass windows now:

I took a day trip to Segovia and Ávila this weekend with a bunch of other foreign students. Segovia is really cool because it has an aqueduct that dates from Roman times which towers over part of the city:

And then finally, some pictures of Salamanca. These are all in the Plaza Mayor, which is a great plaza in the heart of the city, about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. When you want to meet up with someone in the city, you almost always agree to meet here, under a clock in the plaza:

At the moment, there's a giant inflatable structure in the middle of the plaza that looks like a pumpkin. It really doesn't fit in with the rest of the city, but it makes for some interesting contrasts in photographs:

Myanmar, Part V

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:19:00 +0000

Our last major stop in Myanmar was Inle Lake, which is quite large (about 45 square miles) but relatively shallow (5 feet on average). We spent half a day motoring around the lake, visiting monasteries, local craftsmen, and other sights around the lake.

The first thing you notice about the lake is the traditional boats that people use on them. The boats look ridiculously unstable, and the villagers tend to stand way out on one end while rowing them. There are many fisherman on the lake, but we also saw many boats loaded down, like these:

The villagers collect weeds from the bottom of the lake, then use them to form floating gardens where they grow crops (apparently tomatoes are a popular choice).

Many people on the lake, in houses on stilts above the water. This is one of the villages that we visited while we were there:

In this village, they weave cloth from silk and from the lotus plant. (I had no idea that you could do that!) Lotus cloth is even more expensive than silk, because it takes an extraordinary amount of time to make---but it doesn't seem as nice as silk to me. Here's one of the villagers boiling silk:

And another one weaving it:

In another village, they make cheroots, which look a lot like cigars. Apparently the villagers make 1 kyat for rolling a single cheroot. It takes about 30 seconds to roll a cheroot, and apparently they make about 1000 kyats per day, which is less than one dollar. It's amazing how little that is; but on the other hand, they seem to have all the basic necessities for life---food, shelter, water, etc. Their lives certainly aren't as easy as our lives in the western world, but I wouldn't say that the villagers are living in poverty.

There's also a very strange monastery on the lake where the monks have trained cats to jump through hoops. It's now a popular tourist attraction. They don't jump horizontally through hoops like you might expect---the trainer holds the hoop directly over a cat's head, and he jumps straight up through it:

And one more picture that I really liked:

Myanmar, Part IV

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:34:00 +0000

Before I get back to Myanmar, a digression: How did Dunkin' Donuts become so ubiquitous everywhere in the world but the West Coast? I ran into them all over the place in Bangkok, and they have "Dunkin' Coffee" here in Barcelona. Of course, they don't have any locations in Myanmar; instead, Yangon had "J' Donuts," which was definitely a Dunkin' Donuts ripoff. It seemed to be the cool hangout for kids with money in Yangon.

Other than the lack of international brands, the most obvious difference between Thailand and Myanmar to me was in the vehicles that you'd see on the streets. In Bangkok, for instance, the taxis tend to be fairly new cars. By contrast, here's a couple of pictures of a pickup taxi that we used in Mandalay:

In addition to being a heap of junk that's about to fall apart, this truck has a subtle problem: the driver sits on the right-hand side. It's hard to tell from these photos, but they drive on the right in Myanmar. Practically every vehicle in the country has the same problem. So, for instance, the doors on every bus open out into the middle of the street, instead of onto the sidewalk. Also, most buses have to carry a "co-pilot" to help the driver pass other vehicles.

Why are all the vehicles backwards? It's the government's fault, of course! They used to drive on the left in Myanmar, but then in 1970 the government decreed that everyone would switch, so now they have a bunch of backwards vehicles.

Another factor is that Myanmar gets most of its vehicles from Japan and Thailand, where people drive on the left. Often, they don't even bother repainting the vehicles after importing them---I think that every bus we rode in had Japanese writing all over it, inside and out. Sometimes you could identify exactly where the bus came from---one bus that I saw said "Holiday Inn Narita" on the side.

Okay, on to more sights. This looks like a fairly typical village scene in Myanmar, right?

Well, sure. Except for all the macaques hanging out on the left-hand side... This is the base of Mount Popa, which is a shrine to nats, or animistic spirits. It's about 777 steps to the top of the mountain; along the way, these macaques try every trick they can think of in order to steal food from you. One jumped on the back of one of our group members; another grabbed onto a girl's skirt and wouldn't let go. It's pretty funny, as long as you're not the target!

After Mount Popa, we headed on to Kalaw, where it only took about a 10-minute walk to get out of town and into the countryside:

Then we went on to Pindaya Cave, which houses more than 8000 Buddha images. Whoever designed the cave floor should be fired; they didn't think very hard about the fact that tile is a really bad idea in caves, where it's usually wet and slippery. This picture shows a few of the Buddhas:

The Buddhas get kind of repetitive after a while, but there's a "meditation cave," which was pretty cool. You have to crawl through a small tunnel to get to it, but it is very peaceful. Here's Daina and Kathy in there:

Closing thought for this post: You've got to love it when a government tries to censor the internet; they never realize just how hard it is to plug every hole. Right now in Myanmar, Gmail is blocked, but in a really stupid way. If you go to http://www.gmail.com/, you get an error message. But if you use https instead of http, it works fine! Morons.

Myanmar, Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:50:00 +0000

After Mandalay, we took a boat down the Ayeyarwady River to Bagan. For me, Bagan was definitely the highlight of the trip. The area around Bagan is littered with temples---more than 3000 of them in 16 square miles. You can climb up on top of many of these temples, and when you look out over the plain, you see hundreds of temples in every direction.

Here's Jake looking out over the temples:

Mary and Anne, on top of the same temple:

This is a fairly typical temple in Bagan. Like most of the temples in Bagan, it's not covered in gold:

Shwezigon Pagoda is covered in gold, but the way that the gold is peeling off on the lower levels makes it look pretty cool:

We had our first experience with flooding in Bagan. Over the course of the three days that we were there, the river slowly rose until it flooded the main road through town:

It wasn't too deep, so people could still get through it---but there were a bunch of houses between the road and the river that were flooded, too. Of course, they build their houses on stilts to deal with this, but I'm sure it's annoying to have to wade through the river to get to your house.

The flooding also gave us an adventure one night on the way to dinner. We wanted to go to a riverfront restaurant in Bagan called The Beach, but we couldn't get to it since the surrounding streets were flooded. So the restaurant sent motorcycles to come pick us up and drive us through the water, two at a time! We took a boat to get back, which was also pretty cool, although we still had to wade through a few feet of water at the end.

I'll end with a few random pictures from Bagan:

Myanmar, Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:26:00 +0000

After seeing Kyaiktiyo, we went back to Yangon, then caught a 15-hour train up to Mandalay, arriving at 4am. In Mandalay, we had some our most amazing meals. At one Burmese restaurant, when we sat down, 10 waiters immediately swarmed around our table, dropping off about 15 bowls of condiments. We got rice before we even had a chance to order, and when we did order, our curries came out in just a few minutes. As we ate, anything that ran out was immediately refilled---if there was a limit, we certainly didn't run into it! And at the end, the food cost just 2000 kyat each, or about $1.50. Completely amazing.

Mandalay is also home to "chapati corner," where three of us went one night for a dinner of chapati and curries. And then one morning, eight of us skipped our western hotel breakfast and went out for roti. These meals were delicious, and each one cost less than $2. Total. For everyone at the table!

In Mandalay, we went into a marionette store that made for a nice photo:

Near Mandalay, in the British hill station of Pyin U Lwin, we visited the Kandawgyi Botanic Gardens, which was created by the British and was apparently modelled after Kew Gardens. It's been maintained surprisingly well since the British left. Some readers might be excited to note that they claim to have slow lorises (although I never saw any):

Also, they have an elephant, which Daina rode with the two Austrian girls in our group (Irene and Julia):

Near Mandalay, we also visited U Bein, the longest teak bridge in the world, where Daina was accosted by vendors:

Myanmar, Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:12:00 +0000

Well, Daina and I made it out of Myanmar with no problems, and now I'm in Barcelona. It certainly looks like we chose the right time to go to Myanmar! I don't think that the protests by themselves would be much of a problem (there were protests going on while we were there, but we never saw them), but the nighttime curfew in Yangon and Mandalay would certainly have been annoying.

Anyway, we were traveling on a group tour (Burma Adventure, run by G.A.P Adventures), and it was definitely the best group tour that I've been on. The group was a good size (10 people) and we all got along well.

One of the first things that you notice about Myanmar is that everyone seems to be in the money changing business. Our taxi driver exchanged some money for us, our hotels were able to exchange money, and whenever we walked through a market, we had people come up to us asking if we wanted to exchange money.

The currency in Myanmar is the kyat (pronounced "chat"). There are no coins, only bills. The simultaneously great and terrible thing about the currency is that the largest bill is 1000 kyat, or about 74 cents. It means that everyone has correct change when paying the bill at dinner, but on the other hand, when you change $100, you get a huge stack like this:

Another thing that you quickly notice about Myanmar is that many propaganda signs are helpfully color-coded in a very friendly white-on-red. Here's a sign in Yangon about the "People's Will":

Don't worry, if you ever forgot what the "People's Will" was, and you couldn't find the nearest gigantic red sign, the government helpfully publishes these slogans in the newspaper every day. Here's another sign that we saw, this one in Mandalay (the Tatmadaw is the name for the Myanmar military):

Okay, on to some stories. The day after we arrived in Yangon, we left for Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, which is on top of a mountain near Yangon. It was pretty much an all-day trip to get there. First, we spent 5 hours on a bus which took us to the base of the mountain. Then we bounced up a twisty mountain road for 45 minutes in the back of a pickup truck that had 4x4 wood beams for seats. (For added fun, it rained on us for the first 20 minutes of this part!) Finally, we had a 45 minute hike up the mountain into the fog to get to our hotel, which was just a few minutes' walk from the pagoda.

The pagoda is built around a golden boulder perched precariously on the edge of a cliff. (Another thing that you quickly notice in Myanmar: they love coating religious objects in gold!) In the fog and mist, the pagoda was pretty awesome:

Yangon, Myanmar

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:57:00 +0000

We're in Yangon now, and everything has been going smoothly so far.
Yangon is much more laid back than Bangkok, which is really nice.
There's a number of reasons for that; for one, I think that Yangon is
less dense than Bangkok. But also, the government has banned
motorcycles in Yangon for security reasons, so you're not constantly
dodging them like you are in Bangkok.

The trip has been great fun so far; we have a good group and a good
guide, and Myanmar is a really interesting place. Unfortunately I
don't have time to write more about the trip right now, but I'll fill
in more details (and post some pictures) later.

Pictures from Koh Tao

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:51:00 +0000

I'm back in Bangkok now, waiting for Daina to show up. I thought I would take advantage of my free time to post a couple of pictures from Koh Tao.

First, here's the view down the beach from Big Blue, where I was staying:

A classic tropical view from the same beach. The palm tree was obviously planted like that on purpose; it's just there to attract attention to a beach bar.

And this is me with the hawksbill turtle! I never got the chance to do any underwater photography myself, but I did buy a video of the last two dives in our Open Water course; this image is taken from that DVD. I guess you'll have to take my word that the guy in the picture really is me.

Koh Tao, Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:26:00 +0000

I'm now in Thailand, on the small island of Koh Tao, in the Gulf of Thailand. The island is only a couple of miles on a side, so you can walk most places pretty easily---although most people who live here have motorcycles for getting around. They don't really have much respect for pedestrians, either, but I think that's par for the course in Southeast Asia.

Anyway, I got into Bangkok a week ago, and it was pretty crazy---I stayed in a simple room that cost less than $7, and slept on the hardest mattress that I've ever seen. Well, actually, I had to lie there for a few hours before I could fall asleep---I think it was a combination of the mattress, jetlag, and the heat in Bangkok, since it doesn't cool off much at night.

I decided to get out of Bangkok and head down to Koh Tao, so on Wednesday, I caught an overnight train from Bangkok to Chumphon, where I got a boat to Koh Tao. It was the first time that I had ridden in a sleeper car, so that was cool, but again I didn't get too much sleep, this time because the train got to Chumphon at 4 in the morning.

Koh Tao is really beautiful; I'm staying about a minute's walk from an awesome beach, and the island is completely covered in trees. There's lots of palm trees, of course, but not the retarded kind that you find in California---the trees here actually give you shade and their fronds aren't nearly so deadly when they fall down. Of course, you do have to watch out for coconuts...

The most exciting part about Koh Tao, though, is the scuba diving! I started working on my PADI open-water certification as soon as I got here, and I finished on Sunday. Of course, that only took three-and-a-half days and it only involved four open water dives, so I had to do some more; now I'm working on my advanced certification. It's probably a good thing that I'm leaving on Thursday; otherwise I might spend way too much money on diving... Hey, at least everything is cheaper here, right? (It was so nice going from Scotland to Thailand, from a country where I rarely spent less than $20 on dinner to one where you can get a great meal for under $3.)

The diving has been lots of fun... The water here is warm and clear, and it's amazing how many fish you can see. On one of our dives, we even got to watch a hawksbill turtle feed from the reef for a few minutes. He didn't seem to mind us at all, just kept eating away.

We also see tons of jellyfish here. There are these tiny clear ones that end up all over the beach; they're not bad, since they don't sting, but it is a creepy feeling when you swim through a bunch of them and feel them brushing against your skin. Today, though, during our deep dive (to 30m), we ran into a bunch of jellyfish near the surface that did sting. They were actually a lot prettier than the other kind, but I ended up getting stung 3 or 4 times before I was able to reach the boat. Sure, it was somewhat painful, but the pain wears off pretty quickly.

Tonight, we're going to do a night dive, and hopefully we'll get to see some bioluminescence (but no more jellyfish!). We'll do two dives tomorrow, and I'll be done with the advanced certification. On Thursday, I'll catch the boat and train back to Bangkok, where I'll meet up with Daina; then it's off to Myanmar on Sunday!

Edinburgh, Scotland

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:31:00 +0000

Time for pictures!

I'm in Edinburgh now, in the middle of the festival period, which means that the city is packed! But it also means that there's lots of shows to see.

So far I've seen a show about a couple of florists who don't have any flowers; a comedy reenactment of the first 6 Harry Potter books in one hour; and a strange performance-art meditation on the strange origins of Christianity by the guy who did MacHomer. They've all been entertaining, although the HP show was clearly the best so far.

Anyway, as I said, pictures! There are tons of castles sprinkled across Scotland, and I've had a lot of fun exploring them. Here's a few:

Doune Castle, the main castle used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Castle Stalker, another castle featured in the movie:

Dunollie Castle, a decaying castle perched on a hill overlooking Oban:

Here's the view that I had from Gartmore House, the first place that I stayed in Scotland. There were tons of sheep grazing in the fields below, and I could hear them bleating every once in a while from my room:

Here's another awesome place that I stayed, right next to Smoo Cave. The cave is a sea cave that has a river running out of it now; there's a sinkhole off to the left where the river drops down into the cave, forming a dramatic waterfall that generates tons of spray. Unfortunately, that makes the waterfall hard to photograph, but it was really cool. The hostel that I stayed in is in those brown and green buildings in the background.

This is a pedestrian bridge in Glasgow, near the convention centre. When it was built, it was probably nice, but the windows are made of plexiglass, so they've become scratched and cloudy with time. Still makes for a cool picture, though.

And finally, a great view of Edinburgh from the top of Arthur's Seat, the 800-foot hill that rises up over the city, right behind the Scottish Parliament building.

Glasgow, Scotland

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:49:00 +0000

I've been in Glasgow for the past couple of days now, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm staying in a dorm room at the Glasgow School of Art, which is really convenient since it's within easy walking distance of everything you'd want to see downtown.

Supposedly, this is a 2-star hostel, but if that's true, then I don't really understand the rating system here. Here I get my own quiet room, with my own (albeit small) bathroom. I stayed at a "4-star" hostel in Inverness, and it was much worse. Of course, I was sharing a room with 5 other guys, and the bathrooms were shared, that's to be expected---but the walls were incredibly thin and you could hear things going on in the rooms next door and above and below. I really don't see why it should be rated higher than this one. Oh well!

As I was saying, Glasgow has been pretty cool---lots of neat museums, lots of good places to eat. I ate at a noodle bar called Wagamama last night, and really enjoyed it. Okay, I'll admit, it's actually a chain, they're all over the UK and even have a couple of locations in Boston. Doesn't change the fact that my noodles were excellent.

I ran across a really great exhibit today by an artist named David Rokeby. It's the first "new media" exhibit that I've seen that I really enjoyed. (Normally I cringe whenever I see a piece of "video art.") His works are all computer-driven, and they're usually interactive in some way, usually through a camera somewhere. One piece is an "interactive audio environment" that responds to your movements. Another has a camera that automatically follows people around inside the room and projects their image up onto a large wall; sometimes it mixes it up by showing a random assortment of people who have been in the exhibit recently; sometimes it even starts putting random adjectives under people's photos. Whatever it's doing, it really draws you into the exhibit. The other pieces are probably best described by the show website. Anyway, it was cool, I really liked it. And it's only a couple of blocks from where I'm staying.

In current events, Elise pointed out to me that there was a protest in Myanmar today... Hopefully that won't cause any problems for our trip. I'm certainly not going to try to join any protests while I'm there!

And finally: rant alert: Normally I don't like to rant about our president. Yeah, I think he and his administration have done some awful things to this country, but I feel powerless to change that right now, so I don't see the point in complaining. I'm basically just waiting it out, knowing that I'll get a choice next year, and that we only have to suffer through another year and a half until he's gone.

But sometimes---the nerve! Claiming that it was a mistake to withdraw from Vietnam, and using that to justify not withdrawing from Iraq? If only it were that simple! If only I could believe that Iraq would settle down to be a peaceful nation if we withdrew our troops! W's ignorance of history and the situation in Iraq really astounds me sometimes. Of course, if he knew anything about those topics, then we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place... Sigh.

Ullapool, Highland, Scotland

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:24:00 +0000

So far, so good! I arrived in Scotland on Monday, and the trip has been great so far.

I'm driving around in a manual, which is a blast when you're driving on the left. Everything's fine as long as I'm driving forward, but I still want to look over my right shoulder when backing up...

I find it kind of amusing that they have signs all over Scotland reminding you that you're supposed to drive on the left. Even up here in the Highlands---you'd think that everyone would have figured it out by the time they made it up here!

The highlight of the trip so far has been a hike that I took in Glen Nevis, a valley at the base of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the British Isles. Unfortunately, I couldn't see Ben Nevis, since it was obscured by clouds, but the hike took me up through a narrow gorge to an open valley with a beautiful waterfall at one end---not to mention the numerous small waterfalls that I passed on my way up. I'll need to post pictures of this soon.

Another great sight was Doune Castle, which is where many of the castle scenes were shot for "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." The exterior looked familiar from the opening scene in the movie, but Doune was used for many different castles in the movie---I really need to go back and rewatch the movie now so I can pick up on all of them.

Tonight I'm staying in the Achininver hostel, which is apparently a 300m walk from the nearest road---sounds like it should be cool!

Ryan: Second Breakfast

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:49:00 +0000

In my last post, I walked you through the beginning of a "typical day." The post consisted mainly of falsehoods and gross hyperbole, but that is beside the point. Now that the trip is over (yes, we ran into Mexico today, and are currently on a train back to Santa Barbara), I have time to continue the story, with the same high standards of journalism. In this installment: second breakfast.

Second breakfast, as the name suggests, is typically our fifth or sixth meal of the day, following midnight snack, pre-dawn boost, second pre-dawn boost (optional), wake-up meal, and breakfast (covered in my last post). Yes, we eat a lot, and for good reason: we've both become bulemic. It's really the way to go for true food lovers. And second breakfast is a critical part of our daily meal plan. We now take it for granted to the same degree that we do midnight snack and pre-dawn boost. But what is second breakfast, really? It's hard to say, because second breakfast cannot be defined. Like birds. What are birds? Ding!

We typically stop for second breakfast at the first market that we encounter on the day's ride. This can be anything from zero to 15 miles down the road. Counties in which the first market is more than 15 miles down the road are cited and their courthouses peed upon (*echem* Mendocino). Counties with two citations (very rare, as the courthouse peeing typically gets the message across) receive a faintly audible verbal warning and two bad cases of malnourishment at the county hospital. Anyway this is a rare occurrence, and we usually obtain second breakfast without a hitch.

Depending on what is available at the market, which could be anywhere in size from Ron's Pickup-truck-on-the-side-of-the-road Market and Tchotchky to Safeway Deluxe, we eat anything from cinnamon shoe laces and Ron's special wood chips (don't spring for the footlong redwood carving of an eagle, even if Ron insists it was made by a real "engine"... as hungry as I was, it was too much food) to milk, orange juice, six donuts, pita chips, a whole live rabbit, and Safeway's special 86,000 Calorie muffin. You may find that last sentence hard to swallow (ha ha pun), hyperbole gone out of control, but I'm not joking: Safeway really does have a 7,645,001 Calorie muffin. It's quite incredible, and it really gets us from point A to point B without fail. Unfortunately, a typical day's ride goes all the way to point J, which is why lunches one through 140 (covered individually in future installments) are so important.

Before I wrap this up (again with the puns! Just kidding, there wasn't a pun there), I just want to thank all of the readers out there in readerville: thanks readers. Threaders.

That's second breakfast. An excellent tradition, though I'm not sure how to adapt it to normal life without requiring liposuction every other day. My next post, if I find the time, will describe a typical day on the road.

See you then!

San Clemente State Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:46:00 +0000

We're almost done! It's only about 90 miles to the border, so we should be able to reach the border and then catch a train back to Santa Barbara on Wednesday.

Big Sur was awesome---we took it pretty slowly, but the hills weren't actually very steep, at least compared to the hills in northern California. On our second night in Big Sur, we stayed at Kirk Creek Campground, where we had an amazing campsite on the edge of a cliff right above the ocean. We had a great view of the sunset, and then we slept out under the stars, which were just awesome since it was so dark and clear out.

The next day, we randomly saw the King of Jordan---he and a some of his friends were apparently taking a tour of Big Sur on their Harleys, escorted by the CHP and a bunch of Secret Service agents. We were pretty confused when his motorcade passed us on the highway (and of course the police wouldn't tell us who it was), but the internet is really, really great (for... never mind), and we were able to piece it together after the fact.

Today started bizarrely, though. When we woke up (in Manhattan Beach) we found that it was raining! In July! We certainly didn't expect that... But the rain stopped before we left the house, so it wasn't a problem.

We stayed with our friend Daina last night, and she joined us for the first 27 miles of our ride today, until we reached her office. Unfortunately, that meant that we had to get up at 6:30, which is really early for us. (On a typical day, we probably wake up around 8:30 and then leave camp around 11.) It worked out pretty well, though, and once we reached the office, Ryan and I grabbed an early lunch (or second breakfast, depending on how you look at it) at the nearby In-N-Out. (Amazingly enough, this was the first In-N-Out that we had seen on the trip.)

We took the rest of the day pretty slowly, but we still reached camp around 5pm, which was great because it gave us plenty of time to go swimming. The ocean was quite warm today, so it was really comfortable, and the waves were even pretty good for bodysurfing. We spent a good hour or so in the water before cooking dinner. The only downside to this campground is that it's right next to the freeway (interstate 5), but it actually hasn't bothered me at all.

Total distance so far: 2098.6 miles

Carmel, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:44:00 +0000

Whew! We just did our first century of the trip today! We started up in Half Moon Bay, and the conditions for most of the first 50 miles of the ride were just perfect---small rolling hills, perfectly clear, with a tailwind. We reached Santa Cruz much faster than expected, so we just decided to keep going, and we biked the entire 112 miles to Carmel today.

Ryan's dad joined us for almost 20 miles of the ride today, including the last few miles, where we biked along some of the golf cart roads at Pebble Beach.

Tomorrow, we're going to start attacking Big Sur---we're going to take it pretty easy tomorrow, but hopefully we won't regret biking so much today!

Total distance so far: 1646.7 miles

Ryan: the day begins at dawn, and other tales

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:32:00 +0000

I'm sitting in a cypress tree, looking out at the ocean. Some old dudes just walked by speaking German, discussing, as far as I can tell, shit. Or maybe my German vocabulary is just too limited. Regardless, I can hear a fog horn blowing in the distance, and I'm not lying, two little brown rabbits just hopped by. It's nice, it's tranquil. It's blogging time.

This is Ryan, by the way, the oft mentioned but seldom heard from member of the cycling duo. I've been trying to coax Ben into writing an action-packed I-hope-you-brought-your-Depends-,-grandma-,-because-this-is-so-damn-exciting-you-are-going-to-wet-yourself blog post, but alas, he has not been obliging. Have no fear, faithful and likely bored-by-the-slow-pace-of-this-page audience of Ben's. (Tired of hyphens? In German that whole sentence would have been one long word.) I am here to add some pizzaz, to tell, nay, show you what it is like on the inside.

A typical day on the road begins either at dawn or, if we have slept outside the tent and a dense fog rolls in and starts misting on our faces at 2:11AM, 2:13AM. At this time, we either notice that we are wet and promptly (and in retrospect, ill-advisedly) fall back asleep or notice that our fellow bicycle campers have already left the campsite to cycle in "daylight," an enigmatic substance of which they speak very highly and we see very little, and promptly fall back asleep. We wake a second time at around noon, and then a final time at approximately 11PM, at which time another set of campers has moved in and gone to sleep. Ben and I emerge for beakfast and light my jet engine powered stove, the sound from which causes several of our fellow campers to lose control of their bowels and a symphony of car alarms to fill the campground. Breakfast consists of outmeal: delicious, healthy, full carbs, just add water. The water, unfortunately, takes roughly six days to boil, as Ben has decided to boil 14,000 gallons of water, even though we only need two cups. Ben doesn't quite have an eye for these things yet.

After beakfast, we clean up camp, by which I mean Ben is somehow magically ready to go instantly, while I spend a year collecting my things from all corners of this and the three previous night's campsites. Once all is collected and mounted on the bike, we get on our bikes to depart. But we don't depart just yet, because we are clatsops*, and we forgot to fill our water bottles/my camelbak. Ok, let's go... wait. I have to pee. Ahhhhhhhh. Ok, let's... wait. Sunscreen/jacket. Finally, we depart.

Ten minutes later we stop for our second meal of the day, which we affectionately (but not too affectionately) call: "second beakfast."

More on that in my next post: "The 10,000 Calorie muffin, or, How I learned to stop worrying and mmmmphmmmmchomp."

Berkeley, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:05:00 +0000

We're in Berkeley now, and we should be leaving for Half Moon Bay tomorrow. No time to write more at the moment, but I did put together a simple map to show where we are at different points in time. You can also find the link on the right-hand side.

Elk Prairie Campground (near Orick, CA)

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:43:00 +0000

Whoo! After 20 days on the road, we're now halfway done with our trip! We're currently aiming to reach Berkeley in a week, on July 11, and then it's just 11 days of cycling to reach the Mexican border.

We crossed into California today, and the ride turned out to be fantastic. The Oregon coast is quite beautiful, with its dramatic cliffs and rocks jutting up out of the sea---but the northern California coast has those, too, and it also has redwoods!

We had to climb a couple of 1000-foot hills today, but they were up into the redwoods, which made them completely worthwhile. The second climb was especially rewarding, since we climbed steeply for about 3 miles, then spent the next 6 or 7 miles cruising slowly downhill through countless redwood groves, with almost no traffic to distract us.

One thing that I noticed when we crossed the border today was the ice plant---I don't know if Oregon tries to eradicate it, but we didn't see any along the coast up there. As soon as we got to the coastline in California, though, there it was again! It doesn't seem to have taken over completely up here yet---there's still a lot of grass along the coast, unlike in southern California.

Total distance so far: 1104.7 miles

Depoe Bay, OR

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:01:00 +0000

Argh! After a few days of absolutely beautiful weather and scenery, Thursday was another day of constant rain---and this time, we had to deal with a headwind, also. On the bright side, it was warmer than the other day of constant rain that we had, but it still wasn't much fun.

Anyway, Michael Forte's parents have a place in Depoe Bay, so we're spending two nights here recuperating and drying off. It also means that I finally have real internet access, so I can post some pictures...

First of all, here's the current Ben Mathews look. Ryan and I both shaved our heads before starting the trip, which turned out to be a great decision, since we don't have to bother with our hair at all. (Of course, it does mean that we have to be sure to apply sunscreen to our heads, but that's not too bad.)

Some people want to know what our bikes look like with all of the gear loaded onto them, so here are some examples:

Some random images from the pirate festival that we went to last weekend:

Here's a small sampling of the beautiful scenery around Cape Disappointment, at the mouth of the Columbia River. (Despite it's name, it was very beautiful. Our campsite had some incredibly ravenous mosquitoes, though...)

And here's Ryan trying to imitate one of the Oregon Coast Bike Route signs. (We're roughly following this route, but occasionally we do stray from it if our book or maps tell us to.)

That's just some of the pictures; if you want to see more, check out Ryan's gallery.

Twin Harbors State Park (near Westport, WA)

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:46:00 +0000

After riding for 9 days, we have finally reached the Pacific Ocean! We've been following bodies of water for most of our ride so far---mainly the Strait of Georgia and the Hood Canal---but from this point on, we pretty much follow the coast all the way to Mexico.

Over the past few days, we biked around the east side of the Olympic Mountains, since it's supposed to be drier than the west side. We cycled past Anacortes, down through Port Townsend and Hoodsport, and then over to the ocean.

Nature has certainly thrown a few impediments in our way: On Thursday and Friday, we had pretty significant headwinds all day, and we've had to deal with rain every day, but the rain has been intermittent, much better than what we had to deal with on our second day.

Now that we're back to camping, we've started to run into other people who are also biking down the coast. On Friday we camped right next to a middle-aged couple who are on their way down to Monterey; today, we ran into two cyclists our age and a whole group of high school students who are heading down the coast.

The coolest event of the past few days has to be the pirate festival, though. We took a rest day today and biked a few miles to the nearby town of Westport, where there was a pirate festival this weekend. Apparently there are these pirate clubs up here, which seem to do a mix of social and community-service activities. Anyway, the local pirate club was having a festival this weekend, so there were lots of people dressed up as pirates, there were pirate ships in the harbor having mock battles, and there was even a dress-your-dog-like-a-pirate contest. I wish I had the ability to post pictures now, but that will have to wait until we stop at an internet cafe some day.

Total distance so far: 528.1 miles

Friday Harbor, Washington

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:16:00 +0000

On Tuesday, after Ryan ordered his replacement gear, we left the awful city of Nanaimo. It was amazing how many stories of theft we heard about in Nanaimo: For instance, while Ryan was in the library using the internet and I was waiting outside with the bikes, this guy came up to me and told me that I needed to be careful with our bikes; apparently he had had his rear wheel stolen while his bike was parked outside the library!

Anyway, we finally got out of there. Unfortunately, we were stuck on the shoulder of a busy 4-lane highway for the first 10 miles or so, but once we got off of it, the ride was quite nice. We took a ferry to Salt Spring Island, which was great because there weren't too many cars, and then we took a ferry down to Sidney. Like many other towns on our route, Sidney was pretty dead after 6pm, but we found a hotel and then went out for Greek food.

The next day, we caught the ferry from Sidney to San Juan Island, back in the US. Ryan was able to get through customs with his driver license and a copy of his passport, which was good. We spent the whole day cycling around the island, where we saw alpacas (Ryan tried to confuse them by making chicken sounds at them) and bald eagles! Apparently the San Juans are one of the best places to see bald eagles in the US.

We got a room at the Wayfarer's Rest hostel in Friday Harbor, then went out looking for food. Ryan asked a random girl at a real estate office where we should eat---apparently the best pizza place on the island was in the bowling alley.

We went there, ordered our pizza, sat down, and started talking to the three old men at the next table. Apparently one of the guys has way too much money (apparently it's from a trust fund), so he decided to pay for our pizza!

After the men left, we learned that one of them was gay, so Ryan thinks that we got a free pizza because they thought we were a gay couple. My favored hypothesis is that it was just because the rich guy was drunk. Oh well, it doesn't really matter why; we got a free pizza!

Today, we're taking the ferry over to Anacortes, WA, and then we're going to bike down to Port Townsend, where we should be able to pick up the replacement gear.

Total distance so far: 337.5 miles