An Exercise in Irrelevance

In an ongoing attempt to tick off as many national parks as possible, we’ve now been to the Petrified Forest. It’s basically a desert with a lot of stone logs in it. This doesn’t quite cover it though; the fossilized remains are so dense at points that you would believe that they have been placed there, but it’s actually natural. Although it was hot (about 36C I think), I seem to have acclimatised now; keeping the air con off in the car helps. This gives you the freedom to walk around at peace, except for the need to consume water and factor 50 sunblock in roughly equal quantities. Ironically, the two best sights, however, were not the fossils: first, newspaper rock which is covered in 1000 year old petroglyphs — there are literally 100′s of them; and, second, the sunset. The sky was deep red, with a cloud just above the horizon, light up with a bright halo.

Now, I am in the lobby of the El Tovar Hotel; 20 seconds walk outside the door is the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I don’t know what to say about this that is not obvious; it’s really big, very colourful and awe inspiring. Walking around it for a day will stay with me for quite a while.

Without wishing to be a party-pooper, I think that Waimea Canyon on Kauai is actually better; it’s 1/20th the size but it’s also very wet, teeming with life.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Well, okay, so actually we drove. From San Diego, we drove straight to Indio, which is just south of the Joshua Tree National Park. Got there to late to do anything; to be honest, the area (Palm Springs) looks like there is little to do except bask in luxury of expensive hotels. The next day, we drove through the Indio mountains; this is edge of the desert proper and was, in a nutshell hot (38C) and dry.

The Joshua Tree park was $15 to get in with a car; money well spent. It’s full of Joshua Trees as you might guess, but also amazing rocks, cactus of all sorts, animals, a hidden valley (which really is hidden, I got quite nervous when the exit was not where I thought, but another 100m on). The sunset was wonderful.

Today, we drove across the Mohave desert, or at least the outskirts of it. The fuel gauge just went shooting down, as the air con fought against the desert heat. We skirted London Bridge (for this is where it ended up) and then caught Route 66 (which isn’t called 66 anymore). Oatman clearly lives entirely on tourism; it’s complete with Tavern, jail with gallows and, bizarrely, semi-wild ex-pit ponies. It was actually less tacky than you might think, and the journey there was fabulous.

After that, we headed to Flagstaff which is where I am now, in a motel. It’s pleasant and cool, being at a little over 2000m in elevation. The motel is on Route 66 again. It’s also next to the Himalaya Grill; no idea why they called it Grill; nor Himalaya as it’s not basically curry, although with anise and a few other unusual spices. Well, suffice it to say, I am now very stuffed and rather happy.

Originally published on my old blog site.

So, two days in San Diego; it was a busy place. Comic Con was on; I’ve never seen so many Jedi in one place, although the Boba Fett’s made a pretty good showing.

Most of the stuff that I saw in San Diego, I’ve been to before; the exceptions was Balboa Park — very nice indeed, lots of museums, including a botanics and a cactus gardens — and Coronado — chilled out, lovely and, no doubt, very expensive.

Also spent 3 hours in car hire places. A throughly irritating and unpleasant experience. I was taking back one car and taking out another. The first car had some bumper marks on the rear; apparently this required urgent buffing to return a hire car with 80,000 miles to full service and this would cost $75. Much arguing with the idiot cliche of a hire man ("is this how you do business?"). In the end, paper and water cleaned it up. I guess that I should not have been surprised by a car hire place called "A1 Budget Hire", but it was tiresome.

The second place, this time Dollar Car Hire, decided that we hadn’t paid them enough and they should charge $200 extra, for a single way journey. This is after an 2 hour wait in the queue; this one, we are going have to take up with the credit card company.

Ah, well, onwards and upwards; we have moved to Indio which is inland and in the desert. No idea what it’s like as it was dark when we arrived except that it’s really hot; yeah, well, I guess it’s a desert.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Yep, so Portland is definately not so bad. We ended up in the Irish pub last night, which was fine up to the point they started the pixie music. Then we moved to a second pub, which was book-lined and made you go to the bar to get drinks. Much nicer.

I hit the sack just after 11 — I was really tired, and unable to count how many beers with the combination of pitchers and variable glass size.

Now in Portland airport, heading south to the hydrocarbon assault of San Diego.

Originally published on my old blog site.

At the interoperability workshop. It’s small but focused. But there’s no network! I don’t know what to do? I might end up even listening to the talks now.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Okay, so it’s possible that I was a bit rude about Portland yesterday. I walked to the meeting today, down the river side past the multiple bridges. It was overcast, warm but not hot. I could have got a bus or streetcar, though; Portland has a good light-rail transit system, but multiple forms of trains, overhead cable cars. There’s also good support for bikes as well, with a few bikes going past every few minutes. Maybe, I was just being a bit miserable yesterday.

Originally published on my old blog site.