Checksum Arcanius

Had a big dinner party today, with Scott, Maneesh & Parents, Joel & Family, Amy & Parents, and some ppl from church. Food was good, company was great, had a great time.

Had a great Christmas. Hung with the family the entire day, opened the socks first, as we do, then to the presents. I got, among other things, a big book on FreeBSD, a Best of REM CD, and some very nice clothes from my mom. Played some CS, went on a walk, ate some good food, had a lot of candy, watched Winged Migration (my gift to my Dad) and generally had a great time.

Yesterday, I finished the bulk of my shopping. Now all that is left is misundry items for non-family members, and of course, wrapping. On the way back from Seattle, I stopped by the church where a live nativity was being held. It was interesting… mostly because there was one movement invovled in the entire program, so I’m not sure why it was live. But then a hand bell choir performed, some very good songs including Carol Of The Bells and George Winston’s Joy. I then left to go to Jeana’s party, where a teacher from long ago, Sarah, was. We talked cordially despite my breakdowns and mistreatments of her during my junior year :-/. There were also lts of other people there that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We all reconnected, and some of us stayed at Jeana’s until 1:00. I picked up the album I am now listening too, and decided that One Step Closer wasn’t the right song to start with – its very screechy, but the rest are enjoyable after you get into the paradigm of the string quartet tribute.

Once again, the official log is not entirely accessible, so I will write this from memory and upload the official one later. But really, the official one isn’t so good since only one of us logs anymore. Today we went from Simi Valley to San Francisco primarily on US Highway 101. We stopped at Santa Barbara where there was supposed to be an intersting market, but we couldn’t find it and the entire city was half shut down getting ready for a parade of some sort, so we got out of there and continued on to Pismo Beach. There, we had lunch, enjoyed the waves, took some pictures, and continued on to Morro Bay where Scott took a large format picture and I snapped a roll and a half on the SLR along with some digital photos. On our way to Monterey, it got dark so we bypassed the rest of the coast and went straight to the San Francisco area. Collin’s family welcomed us and fed us well, offered excellent conversation, great music, and a nice place to sleep.

We are in L.A. – or actaully in Simi Valley, just outside of L.A. We drove through L.A. during rush hour, a process which took a couple of hours, not because the traffic was so slow – it actually moved pretty well msot of the time – but because L.A. is so big. The Lakers lost, this is good. Scott’s computer is off, so you’re not getting the “official” log today. But here’s the general idea: Gas here in Cali is expensive, there are lots of wind generators, the smog over L.A. is pretty gross, and Venice beach is quite interesting. We saw Brennan again, and Jim and Pat Chatterly are great hosts and fun to talk to. We will be going to San Fran tomrrow via the Coastal highway. Thats all for now folks!

Here’s our most recent activity – and here’s to more frequent updates! I’m disappointed at GCU’s lack of ethernet in its residence halls, but I will search dilligently for fast internet tomorrow. You all deserve pictures.

Day 10 (Wednesday, December 10, 2003)

11:48 am — 0.0 miles: After showering, reorganizing, and breaking camp, we leave Catalina state park for the Biosphere — the same biosphere that we visited last night and were told by the security guards that we couldn’t even look at the thing from the outside. When I asked for any information, the security guard told me he had none. Way to be useful, foolio. On the way out, the other security guard was at least useful enough to tell us what hours they were open. We pull into Bashas, a grocery store, to get some more food for the rest of the trip.

2:45 pm -19.7 miles: Scott is good enough with the stick shift, and bad enough at logging (I even called him a “lag slocker” — I was trying to say “log slacker,” but that’s not what came out) that he is driving in Tucson while I log. The Biosphere 2 is a grand project still waiting to be made great. Admission was only $6, less that the $13-23 we were expecting, so we were quite pleased and entered without much debate. The entire place felt like it was past its prime, although some construction was ongoing. The Biosphere was built in 1987 with the money of a single man (this is why it is good to have rich people in a society). The original intent of the Biosphere was to seal humans inside to see how they could live within an ecosystem using recycling and so-forth. These experiments ended in 1992, but the information and the guides didn’t seem to care to elaborate as to why. I suspect that it has something to do with a story I heard on NPR a long time ago — that the biosphere was not as self-sustaining as was planned, and that there had been clandestine insertions of materiel from the outside to ensure the viability of the project. When this was discovered, the project came to a dismal end. In 1996, Columbia University took over the management of the Biosphere 2 facility with great plans on turning it into the focal point for environmental research in the world. Recently, Columbia retreated from its plans to buy the center and vastly scaled back its research activities at the site. Financial reasons may be involved, but I personally suspect that the results being produced by the Biosphere were not what the closed-minded liberal environmental research scientists wanted. Most of the “educational” displays on the walking tour were designed to scare people about the dangers of global warming, the drastic effects of human activity on the planet, and all sorts of other unproven or disproved liberal ballyhoo. There was a clear political intent to Columbia University’s involvement at the Biosphere, and I believe that the data the Biosphere produced didn’t fit the wants of those in charge of the University’s involvement.

5:04 pm — 71.7 miles: We stop at a Phillips 66 outside of Saguaro National Park to refuel, having just witnessed a dumb cop make life dangerous for ourselves and several other drivers. We think we’ll be in Phoenix around 7:00. This day seems really short, but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get going until noon.

10:43 pm — 236.1 miles: We are in Phoenix. Since Jeana wasn’t going to be available until after 10 pm, we decided, on the advice of Suzanne who lived in Phoenix for a year, to go to downtown Tempe, the site of Arizona State University. Tempe earns Arizona massive points — it is a beautiful, colorful, lively city that is great to walk around in. It is well decorated for the season, has nice parks, and is full of beautiful young people. Tempe is good. After we got tired of walking around Tempe, we went to the International Airport to recreate the scene from Wayne’s World and other movies of watching the planes land nearby. Our spot wasn’t quite as good as in the movies, but it was still fun. On our way back to Phoenix and Grand Canyon University, we stopped to help a motorist of the side of the road. He had a flat and couldn’t find the jack in his car, which he had just bought. We dug out our jack (in the trunk, under all our junk) and let him use it, then raced against time to get everything back together in the trunk as a street sweeper bore down on us. We returned to Phoenix proper, got in touch with Jeana, and now we await her arrival at the Applebee’s here in Phoenix.

2:13 am: Jeana took her time getting to the Applebee’s, but she finally showed up and we had a joyous reunion. It turns out that we were kind of crashing one of her friends’ birthday party — but they didn’t seem to mind that much, at least not after the Jagermeister shots the four girls shared. Scott and I split chicken wings and each ordered an entre on top of that — I got a mediocre but filling chicken parm and scott had chicken fingers and fries. After Applebee’s we moved to an Irish bar down the street where Scott, Jeana and I caught up while the others enjoyed some more alcoholic beverages. I feel really in my element at bars, let me tell you. Finally, about one o’clock, we headed to Grand Canyon University. Jeana set us up our very own room with mattresses and box springs, a toilet — but no Internet access! We are shocked! It looks like my phone will get to use some more nighttime minutes to upload this.

Woke up late – went to a short opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, then dropped the brother off at the Airport. Next, my dad and I exchanged my V60i phone for the T720, got the wireless internet working – only at 8kbps, however – and then returned home to have dinner with Scott and family, then to talk about the roadtrip. It pretty quickly turned into essentially 5 on 1, with his mom alone. We kept it civil, and I didn’t talk much, not completely unrelated occurences.

It looks like we’ll be leaving Monday morning, and Florida is out. :-/