Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

The story now is not of blustery explosion but of a beautiful desolation caused by veritable storm fronts of billowing ash. Ash everywhere. In my socks. In David’s eyes. In the air filter of our rental car. Black and deceptively gorgeous, the ash, when airborne, brought visibility on roads down to near zero and is going to make me blow black snot for some time to come.

I owe an update. Boy howdy, I owe an update. Where did all of those days just go? Gone. This past week has been one of the more blistering ones of late. I spent five days in San Francisco attending DrupalCon and suffering from massive camera equipment misplacement (about which I have already lamented) and a visual migraine aura so long-lasting and freaky that I had to seek medical attention.

I’m going to skip to the chase: I left my camera, a Canon 5D Mark II, and a Canon USM 17-40mm lens under seat 1A of Horizon flight 2609 PDX -> OAK yesterday. I’m busily trying to expand my professional and technical horizons at DrupalCon San Francisco at the moment, but I’m dolorously heartsick.

I have all sorts of good excuses about how this happened: bulkhead seating, my camera getting separated from the rest of my carry-on items by a helpful flight attendant named Cliff, a good conversation partner/someone I know next to me in 1B. But still. I feel like a daft moron.

Photo of Canon EOS 5D by Thomas Hawk

I’m going to go ahead and say it. The Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, Terminal C, architecture circa a long ass time ago when it was apparently in vogue to make things look and feel unpleasant (I think maybe of the Fluorescent Tube and Beige School, Low Ceiling/Concrete genre) is, for its size and class, the ugliest airport structure I have endured in recent memory. Of course, I’m not exactly an expert on the subject. But I know what I (don’t) like.

This past weekend has been almost unendurable in its pleasantness. Staying at my in-laws in Arroyo Grande, I woke each morning with a dumb grin on my face, bouncing against walls and windows like a terrier until I was allowed out to the beach or hillside. Two birds of paradise bloomed in the front yard. There were palm trees. Boing boing!

It was Sunday today and I went for a hike with David and my mother-in-law, Cathy, to Oso Flaco Lake and then on to the seashore here on the Central Coast of California. Oso Flaco Lake is spring-fed and outflows in a robust channel to the ocean. The stream-channel-outflow-thing has tremendous velocity and changes course in front of your eyes, eroding micro-cliffs of sand and curving tighter and then looser again.

I am seriously pro-food. I like to think about food, read about food, gently prod food, ferment food, garnish food, smell food, buy food, seek food and experience new food. I regale the difference between 6-month and 12-month Manchego, care whether asparagus is in season, and am honestly fond of (not just making a point of) eating sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas, usually, of calf), bone marrow, squid and fermented fish sauce. However, my upcoming trip to Iceland is making me gustatorily anxious.

Icelandic food specialties read more like grievous and fatal fraternity hazing rituals than anything that a human with extant taste buds and olfactory capability would submit to willingly. The regional recipes manage to get an F- on each of the rough trinity of food-is-yummy criteria, offending the user psychologically, aesthetically, and sensually.

I have a habit of, when I travel, absconding immediately to the nearest art museum. I neglect even the most vital tourist activities (various towers, mountain peaks, cathedrals, piazzas, antiquities, Disney parks, stadia, canals, funiculars, and botanical gardens), often at great experiential expense.

Simply put, here is a list of notable (note that I’ve excluded the Portland Art Museum and anything billed as an art collection in Las Vegas, et cetera) art museums I have visited. You will find reading a list of notable art museums I have visited interesting. You will.

And then you will tell me your favorites.

A stray inspiration from Autumn last week turned into a full-fledged planned exodus: The Pencils are going to I*eland. That is, both Iceland and Ireland (and also France (and also the UK (well, me at least (David is going back to the US earlier than I am)))).

We are going in late May. The prices on non-stop Icelandair flights out of Seattle seem too good to be true. David’s round-trip ticket was $553.67. Mine was costly enough that I’m embarrassed to disclose the total: I’m flying first class.

Photo by Cristiano Corsini

During a recent trip to central California I learned several key life lessons: Nissan Versas are staggeringly dull, things like to fall over when blown on with 60MPH winds, Hoizon’s CRJ-700s can land in essentially zero visibility, and the OLCC will let you drink awfully early at the PDX airport as long as you can cough up a boarding pass.

I’m traveling this weekend on the Central Coast of California. The weather is making a turn for the worse now, but the five-hour drive from Sacramento to Arroyo Grande in our bizarre and effete rental was not too bad. I’ve highlighted some other photos from this trip on my photos page.