Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Guilt by asociation: I am in Prague with a bunch of Americans who are generally speaking the definition of Ugly Americans. Loud, Arrogant, Rude and Drunk. Still, I'm managing to have a great time, and see quite a bit of Prague, which is a truely phenomenal city. Absolutely gorgeous. I have a zillion photos to come. I'll be heading to Vienna, probably tommorow.

Thursday, September 20, 2001

Inertia, thought natural, has dire consequences. To avoid it, it is necesary to do something different every day, even if it is as simple as taking a different route to work, or stopping at a different coffe shop, which necesitates talking to someone new, and risking a potentially unfamiliar situation. Has world war iii started yet? I have been generally avoiding the issure, but had a nice conversation with a Pakistani cab driver last night about the whole issue. He didn't think bombing the Taliban would accomplish much other than inciting more rage against the US.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

I am in London now, managing to stay busy working without the distraction of the San Francisco office. It's a pretty amazing place here. Still watching the news daily for any sign of impending apolcalypse, so far not too worried.

Thursday, September 13, 2001

I feel as though I've just watched a particularily spectacular movie, and wandered out of the theatre only to find that everyone else saw the movie too, but it still seems like just a movie.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

The Day After... I honestly didn't have much to say yesterday, at least nothing that hasn't been said a hundred times. My main originaly observations are that life on haight street was pretty normal yesterday, tourists walking around, punk-kids asking for money. There wasn't much in the air, except a few hushed conversations at the cafe that would have let you know anything was amiss in New York. Even the guys at the bike shop where carrying on as usual. But, I guess that's a good thing, life goes on, no point in making yourself miserable I guess.

Here are some wierd coincidences I've found: This discussion thread is dated almost a year ago and this R&B album came out over a year ago, apparantly.

Monday, September 10, 2001

Saturday was Haight Street day. I am almost never here on the weekends, and if so, I tend to avoid my own neighborhood due to the throngs of tourists who descend here. But this saturday I decided to stay right here and wander up and down the street. It was actually a lot of fun, though I didn't actually buy anything except a single spoke for my bike! I intended to ride the grand-prix race course Sunday morning (it was open to anyone prior to the race), but I couldn't be bothered to get up that early, so I hiked up to pac heights and watched LAnce Armstroing et all race by at the top of the filmore st. hill.. pretty cool, but a bit anti climactic. I went home and watched the rest on TV.

Wednesday, September 05, 2001

Yosemite: This weekend's trip to Yosemite was pretty epic. There were 8 of us, and we arrived late at night at Tuolomne meadows, then proceeded to Ireland Lake, about an 11 mile hike out. We stayed there for 2 nights and had a little day hike during our stay, then walked back the way we came on the third day. Highlights were Dan's fearless catching of 4 small trout which Charlie cleaned, (an equally fearless task) and we fried up and ate in tortillas. We managed to make a bit of a mess of them, but they were pretty tasty. We also decided to make pizza on the last night, which was pretty hilarious, and ended up beind a bit of a contest to see who could make the most creative one. Tortillas replaced pizza dough as the crust of choice and a folded-over 'empanada' style technique was ultimately deemed the most worthy, although Brian came up with a revolutionary system involving frying all the topings into a stew in the pan then slapping the pan onto the tortilla... that seemed to work pretty well too. Our little day-hike went well too, and we wound up on a remote ridge overlooking some more lakes and Half-Dome, far far in the distance. There were an enormous number of grasshoppers (saltamontes as Pablo explained) fluttering around, and Charles and Pablo cought several dozen in an ill fated bait caputuring scheme, but since we didn't go fishing again, they were released, rather dazed, into the field. The single most amazing thing however, was probably the moon-rise, which took place over Mt. Amelia Earhart with such speed it looked like a speeded-up film. The light was so bright you could literally read, even inside the tent. I think everyone secretly hoped we'd see a bear, but there was no sign of them. Even the several times I awoke in a paranoid state, it always turned out to be someone rustling around in their sleeping bag in the other tent. I suppose it's just as well. Click on the little pictures for bigger images.