Linkstew

Twenty some odd days of San Francisco, Wofford Heights, Magic Mountain, Korea, a little more SF and many more airports later, and I'm back in Dublin only suffering mildly from the effects of jetlag. With the nap from 1600 to 2230 my first day back and the subsequent waking up at 0400 I've done the last two days -- and with attempts at work feeling like my brain's still in Korea and the latency is terrible -- I suppose arguments could be made that this qualifies as "moderate" jetlag; but I like to think I'm good at traveling, so I'm sticking with "mild."

While rattling off "ICN-NRT-LAX-SFO-ORD-DUB" is enough by itself to make people look at me like I'm crazy, it still doesn't do the two red-eyes plus the overnight in San Francisco that were involved any justice. But really, the flying itself was just dandy: there were 7 lounges involved (look, I had to check out all of the options in NRT, and the lounge with the showers in ORD doesn't have the free alcohol), and even the ICN-NRT segment was sort of upgraded as JAL seemed to be using their business class seats as "premium economy." (And the rest of that itinerary was upgraded with one coupon, so I was well taken care of.)

But I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to talk about Korea, as opposed to the "there and back again." I've been trying to process the pictures since 4 am this morning, but it already seems so far away -- even beyond the 12,258 miles and 40 some odd hours of flying that it literally is distant.

So let's see: I'll spare you the flight delay dramas that resulted in me getting to my hotel at 2am and Rick arriving a day late, other than to mention it meant I was on my own in Seoul longer than planned.

For a few days, I was feeling like Seoul was one of the hardest places I'd visited so far: I was having a hard time with the Korean alphabet (much less the language); when I could read something off of a menu I had no idea what it was; half the time what I tried to order wasn't available to individual customers because it would involve some sort of grill or giant cauldron of boiling red stuff and I had to try to quickly find something else to order; even trying to pick out a restaurant or bar was a problem because thanks to a little more jetlag I was eating at odd hours and the "eat at popular places" rule didn't work since no one was eating; even worse, so many bars and restaurants were either in basements or up off the ground floor that I couldn't even see in them to see if I liked the looks of them; many of them didn't even post menus so I could pre-translate what I wanted to order.

But then I kinda got my bearings and realized Seoul was actually a pretty rad place: I got a bit of a hang of the Korean alphabet (and actually kind of came to love it); I still can't speak Korean for anything but it turns out enough English is spoken that I could skate by like I always do (yes, I am a bad traveler in some ways ;-p); worrying too much about what I was going to be eating was just a waste of time since it was almost all good, and it almost always worked out; even worrying about restaurants wasn't worth it as they were all pretty good, and for the first time on a trip I don't think I intentionally went to a single restaurant out of a guidebook. And then I realized Korea was actually a pretty easy place to visit, all things considered: it's extremely safe, the people were very friendly and nice and willing to put up with my lack of Korean, and there's plenty of English signage if you look for it.

Other things happened: adventures (and moderate success) in deciphering Korean bus schedules before just getting on the next bus that came anyway without knowing where it was going (and resulting success in that it did exactly what we wanted it to do); the most insanely kitschy P.O.W. museum you could imagine on Geoji-do; climbing over some walls, walking across a patch of farm, and discovering a crosswalk that was there clearly for just that purpose; crazy spread of sashimi and other raw seafoods and wait was that thing still moving, I swear it was still moving; climbing halfway up a mountain; yes, it's still moving!!!; hey, it sure is cold here, isn't it? And the DMZ, getting to stand in North Korea, craziness.

The last notable event I'll leave with was that we got food poisoning, both taken out by a mere vegetable bibimbap. We were somewhat indignant about this. "Given all the spicy and raw things we've had, vegetable bibimbap??" Traveler's food poisoning probably isn't that notable, really, but it felt notable to me because -- well, I was going to say this is the first time this has happened to me, but it isn't: I just remembered that awesome day I spent in the hotel in Delhi, the day before leaving India, and I'm reminded there was a bright side to this Korean food poisoning incident: I was actually able to get out of the hotel and see a temple and a museum that afternoon, and was feeling mostly better within 24 hours (Rick was a little worse for the wear for some reason, but he also made a pretty quick recovery).

But then, just as I was thinking about how much I'd enjoyed Korea, and was contemplating trying to learn more Korean, I arrived in NRT: I made a mad dash for lunch in Narita town on my five hour layover, only to be greeted by the lovely smells of so many Japanese foods I recognized, the excitement of a new place with no map and no phrasebook and a goal of finding food, my one semester of Japanese rushing back to me -- being able to recognize words both spoken and written -- and with that all thoughts of Korea left my mind, I was in the middle of a new adventure, and I was left wanting to actually visit Japan more than ever.

This is how it is with me, see: as soon as one trip's done, I'm off to planning my next one. In this case, I've already got a weekend in Madrid booked for February, but that just raises the question: where next?

While looking at a couple of maps of Vegas in preparation for this weekend's trip, I noticed there's a new hybrid view, but I can't find any mention of it on the web yet. It does a pretty awesome job of overlaying information on the satellite view, finally making the satellite view something more than a novelty. I also don't remember google maps including so many landmarks, but this makes finding which casinos are within walking distance of my hotel super easy.

I really need to learn the google maps API so I can just embed a map in the post next time. Too bad your average aggregator probably wouldn't take very well to that.

Update: Oh, they also added a scale!

I finished Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams on the train Friday, and while it was quite obviously popular science, I still enjoyed it quite a lot. I particularly enjoyed all the metaphors he used, and all the time he spent dissecting his personification of the endangered animals he saw. And of course, it also really made me sad that Douglas Adams is gone.

It was definitely a little shallow in the actual science department, but it did serve its purpose of piquing my interest in animals, and obviously endangered species in particular. Once we get DSL (which of course we still don't have), I'm want to go do some research and see how all the endangered species he saw are doing today. And once we get cable (Or Direct TiVo sounds kind of appealing, actually, especially since I'm still mad at Comcast), I think I'm going to start recording some Discovery shows.

And on top of all that, it really made me want to travel. I admit I haven't gone very far: I've never been east of the Mississippi, have only been in Mexico by accident, and have spent about two weeks in Canada total. In back of my head, I've long had a list of places I want to go someday, and now that I have a job, I'll more realistically be able to afford to take some trips some day, so actually writing them down seems more realistic.

• Within the U.S.:
• New Orleans (I should really go there before my sister and brother-in-law move away).
• New York.
• Washington DC.
• Boston.
• Hawaii.
• Alaska.
• International:
• Japan.
• Australia.
• New Zealand.
• England/Ireland.
• Greece.
• Sweden.
• Denmark.
• Hell, most of Europe, really.

I'm sure there's more, but that's a plenty long list considering it'll probably be at least a year before I get things sorted out enough to go anywhere. And that's not even counting all the places I'd like to go snowboarding some day.

Wow, this is right up my alley, and makes me wish I had a car. Hopefully my mom will actually give me some money towards a car one of these days.

(Link via Sumana)

So it's a week late, but here's my Whistler Travel Log anyway. Whew, this was a lot more work to type up than I was expecting. It kind of peters out near the end, because I was just getting tired of typing. And yes, some (lots) of this just isn't going to make sense because I left out details which I assumed were obvious, but oh well. This is probably more for me than it is for you.

• Sunday, March 24
• After a short -- but very uncomfortable -- car ride to Oakland Airport, we boarded our plane with very little incident. Why uncomfortable, you ask? Because I had my head bent at a 90 degree angle because there was a snowboard occupying my headspace.
• Well, boarding the plane wasn't entirely incident free. I was stupid enough not to take off my metal-laced jacket, so I got hand scanned. Of course, my steel toe boots would have been enough to get me hand scanned, but compared to some later incidents, this was nothing.
• We arrived in Seattle a few short hours later, where Rick told us we'd be taking a Limousine to his place. Though it sounded absurd when he told us, it was a pretty reasonable solution in retrospect. It was only $45 for 5 people for a relatively comfortable ride. It would have taken two taxis at about $30 apiece, so it was actually more cost effective to take the limo as well.
• After a brief stop at Rick's, we then went and had lunch at some cafe, and then headed for the University of Washington campus.
• "This is University Way, which everyone calls 'The Ave.,'" Rick told us. "It's like Telegraph." As soon as he compared it to Telegraph, I instantly oriented it as running perpendicular to campus. However, after we walked down it a long ways, Rick finally said "So do you want to see campus now? It's a block over that way..." It was very surreal to realize that I'd been walking parallel to the campus after i assumed that we'd been walking towards it and that we'd dead end into it any second.
• The UW campus was beautiful, with lots of open spaces and trees and green. I liked it a lot.
• The rest of the group decided that we were going to go to a club that evening, so I went along for the ride.
• We took the bus to somewhere in downtown Seattle, found the club pretty quickly, and then walked quite a long ways to find some place to have dinner. Eventually we came across a nice little crepe restaurant that was still open, so there we ate.
• At the club, I didn't know what to drink, so I left myself in the hands of my company. First they ordered me a Mai-Tai, to which Tyler exclaimed "You ordered him a Mai-Tai!?" So naturally, I was a little nervous, but it wasn't bad, just very fruity. After that I had a White Russian, which was also fine. Apparently their goal was to give me drinks that I wouldn't feel while I was drinking but which would hit me later -- only I didn't feel anything from the drinks at all, so I don't know.
• The club was smoky inside. It made me miss California. I also had a headache, I wasn't exactly feeling my drinks, and the smoke didn't help, so I didn't have such a great time.
• And then we went back to Rick's and went to bed.
• Monday, March 25th
• We woke up bright and early and again took a Limo to the Amtrak station.
• We checked in, got our seat assignments, tossed our luggage into the luggage car, and boarded without any incident.
• The scenery along the train was beautiful -- lots of trees and forest with a view of the ocean bay water beyond.
• Getting off of the train in Vancouver went off without a hitch, and there we were in Canada.
• We went and got some funny money and got some lunch, and when we walked back into the train station, Dave (who had stayed beyond to watch our stuff) told us that the bus for Whistler had left.
• We got out the schedule, and sure enough, the bus left at 1pm, and not 1:30 as Rick had thought.
• But not to worry! Another bus left at 3pm, and it was an "express" bus which didn't make any stops along the way, and so took an hour less time to get there.
• So we played Frisbee on lawn of Vancouver's Pacific Central Station for two hours, and then went and got on the express bus, and before we knew it, we were at Whistler.
• We checked in, dumped our bags, and then set out to explore the village for the evening. We mainly went to a bunch of ski shops, because Dave (who had broken his skis a week earlier) needed to find where he wanted to demo skis from. Also, people were looking for helmets.
• We shopped for about 3 hours, went and bought some groceries, got some pizza for dinner, and then went to bed.
• Tuesday, March 26th
• We woke up, had cheerios and bagels for breakfast, and eventually made our way to the mountain.
• We got a late start, and didn't actually get to the lifts until about 9:30am, despite the fact that the lifts opened at 8:30am. A guy at the base of the lift told us that the conditions weren't too good, and that it was going to be very windy on the mountain.
• We took the Whistler Gondola up Whistler Mountain. The visibility was pretty bad at times, it was windy, and there wasn't much powder. All the same, I had fun doing blue runs below the "Roundhouse Lodge."
• Probably the "highlight" of my day was jumping off of a little bumpjump, only to plant the nose of my snowboard into the face of another little bumpjump. I proceeded to carry forward, rotating on an axis around the nose of my snowboard, and finished by slamming my shoulder into the ground. It still hurts a little if I hold my arm above my head. In that fall I also twisted my front knee, and it hurt for the rest of the trip.
• We met back up at the hotel room and then set out into the village looking for something for dinner. Our initial plan was to find some Mexican food, so that we could sample Mexican food "from a place that had no business having mexican food." However, when we asked in a shop, we were told there was no Mexican food in the village, so we decided that we just needed to find Dinner.
• We found that most of the restaurants were a little nicer/more expensive than we wanted to pay, so we were looking for awhile. We found a place named "Caramaba!" which featured mayan decorations, but it wasn't actually Mexican -- it was italian. We almost ate at a Greek restaurant, but then we noticed that they listed Miller as an "Import Beer." Silly Canadians.
• Finally we ended up at "The Brew Haus." Though the wait was quoted at 45 minutes, we decided we'd wait in the bar. Their "Big Wolf Bitter" (which they brewed themselves) was pretty good. The wait turned out to be much shorter than 45 minutes, and after we placed our orders, the food came seemingly in a matter of minutes. The food was also very good. If you're ever in Whistler, I'd recommend this place.
• So after dinner, we went and got some groceries, and then headed back to the hotel, where I went to sleep, while some other people went out to a bar.
• Wednesday, March 27th
• We got a slightly earlier start, and made it to the lifts by 9.
• We went on Blackcomb mountain.
• We went up the Gondola, up the Excelerator chair, down a run, up the Solar Coaster chair, and then across a long traverse to the 7th Heaven chair.
• We went up 7th Heaven, and at the top, the conditions were absolutely miserable. It was practically a white out. Worse, to get to the run we wanted to go down, we had to traverse aways into the wind.
• While going down from 7th Heaven, we got split up.
• While there was powder (which was nice), the powder was govering up icy ungroomed moguls (which was very, very bad for unwitting snowboarders like me).
• While crossing the mountain on my toe edge at one point, my board slipped off of a bump I didn't know was there, and I fell face first onto the bump. My cheek hit the icy bump, which scraped my goggles up off of my face and gave me a black eye. Considering I felt the cold bump push across my eye, I'm just thankful that it wasn't any spikier than it was.
• We finally finished the run and then got the hell away from 7th Heaven.
• Trisha and I did some runs, and on our last run before lunch we swapped snowboards. It was kind of interesting that I could tell the difference between the board and the binding. On the one hand, I liked her bindings much better than mine -- mine feel like they stretch and I was having a lot of trouble turning. Hers, on the other hand, were very secure and I didn't have any trouble turning. Her board, on the other hand, felt a lot more unstable than mine. But then again, that's to be expected when my board is a 156 and hers is a 153.
• After lunch, we went up the Glacier Express, which is almost as high as you can go on Blackcomb. I went down that run a few times, and then I went all the way from the top of the Glacier Express to the bottom of the mountain.
• By the time I finished, my knee (which I'd twisted the day before, you recall) was killing me. The impact of the slightest bump was very painful.
• I dropped by a net cafe and checked my email, and then I headed back to the hotel where I stretched and waited for everyone else to show up, since I was done at about 3:30pm.
• At about 4:45pm Dave showed up, and then Trisha showed up and said that Tyler'd told her that Rick had hit a tree and was at the clinic.
• So we walked over to the clinic, where we were told that Rick wasn't there yet, despite the fact that he'd hit the tree nearly 3 hours earlier. We called the ski patrol and found at that he would be there soon, and that'd he'd broken his femur.
• So we went and bought groceries, and then went back to the hotel room and made Fajitas (did I mention that the hotel rooms had full kitchenettes complete with dishes and silverware?) and had Coronas.
• After dinner, we went back to the clinic. Tyler and Trisha went and visited Rick, and got some instructions from him. He was apparently in a "happy place," so Dave and I didn't bother to go back there. When we saw Rick later, he didn't really remember that we'd stopped by.
• Rick was driven to Vancouver, and then flown to Seattle that night.
• We went back to the internet cafe to get some information we needed, and then went back to the hotel, packed our bags (since it was our last night in Whistler) and then went to bed.
• Thursday, March 28th
• We woke up a little earlier still, since we had to finish packing. We left a lot of food in the room, including a couple of Coronas we left in the fridge. We took our luggage downstairs and put in the back room, where it'd be stored for the day.
• We called Rick's hotel room that morning, but he was in surgery.
• Despite everything we had to do that morning, we made it onto the slopes by about 9:15.
• To account for my sore knee, I put an Ace Bandage on, and it seemed to do the trick well enough.
• We went up Whistler, and it looked like we'd finally have a nice day. It'd snowed overnight and stopped that morning, the sun was shining, it wasn't overly windy, and Whistler's peak was finally open after being closed for the first two days.
• We went up the Whistler Gondola, all the way down the Dave Murry Downhill to Creekside, took the Creekside Gondola back up, got on the Big Red Express, and then got on the Peak Express to to go all the way to the Peak. I did a lot of runs before lunch, including going up to the peak a few more times, and then several runs under the Emerald lift.
• After lunch, I went up Harmony, and then went all the way down the mountain from there, and once again finished kind of early.
• I stopped by the net cafe to check on the train schedules, and then went to the hotel where I changed and stretched and packed my equipment and then lounged around for a couple of hours until our shuttle left at 6:30.
• I was highly amused to note that the two Coronas we'd left in our refrigerator had found their way into the hotel's back room. Nice to know that they'd found a good home.
• We caught our shuttle to the BC Rail train station, and after waiting at the station for awhile our train arrived.
• The four of us got a table, which turned out to have barely enough leg room for two people, let alone four. We then got a complementary dinner of an Orange and a Bagel. The ride wasn't too bad, but we were still sore and cramped.
• At the BC Rail station in Vancouver, we had to wait awhile for a Van taxi to show up, which then took us to our hotel, where we ordered a pizza for dinner and went to bed in short order.
• Friday, March 29th
• We woke up, packed, checked our luggage downstairs, and then enjoyed a very nice buffet breakfast that was part of the hotel package that we had.
• We then took a taxi to the Vancouver Aquarium, which was mostly enjoyable. The highlight of the place was definitely the Sea Otters, though. Sea Otters rock. I think I want to be a Sea Otter.
• Then we took a cab back to the hotel, and from there set out to walk around downtown Vancouver for awhile. Having so amused ourselves, we took another taxi to the train station.
• Getting on the train in Canada was much more complicated than getting on the train in the US. My luggage was run through an X-Ray machine, at which point they pulled aside my backpack and started telling me that something in it was "pointy." I had no idea what he was talking about, and he didn't speak very good English, so I just started digging through my backpack until I found my Screwdriver, which is what he had been talking about. When I asked him what he wanted me to do with it, he told me to "check it" and then waved me through the door.
• Outside the door was the baggage check area, where the Amtrak employees put tags on our luggage. They started to put a bag on my backpack, because the X-Ray machine guy had said "check it," but I stopped them and said "no, I want to carry that on." Since no information about the screwdrivers had been communicated to the baggage check guys, they shrugged and said okay. As I shouldered my backpack, a third security guy came up to me and asked me what the X-Ray guy had wanted checked out in my backpack. So I explained the screwdrivers to him, and he said I needed to put them in a checked bag. So I shrugged and tossed them in my snowboard bag and that was that.
• God it was horribly confusing thanks to the frantic X-Ray guy who wasn't at all clear in telling me or his co-workers what was going on. All he succeeded in doing was confusing me, confusing his co-workers, and saying "pointy thing" and "check it" a lot. Eesh.
• We finally (much to my great relief) got on the train.
• Of course, while sitting on the train I was amused by the irony that I'd carried my backpack -- screwdrivers and all -- onto the plane on Saturday without a problem. I wonder how the Airport security overlooked those screwdrivers despite noticing that I had metal boots?
• On the train, my friends decided that they wanted to get me drunk for my birthday, so they bought me a beer despite my protests. I wasn't going to drink it, but Trisha finally guilt tripped me into drinking it. Of course, I wouldn't have drunk it even with the guilt trip if it hadn't been a beer I liked (Red Hook E.S.B.) They bought me a total of three beers between Vancouver and Seattle, but it didn't actually get me drunk.
• We took a taxi from the Seattle Amtrak station back to Rick's, where we went straight to sleep.
• Saturday, March 30th
• Perhaps foolishly, I slept in the same room as Dave (who'd been sick since Thursday) to avoid Rick's roommate's cat's hair. Of course, when I woke up with a cough which persisted through the day (and for a whole week, as I would late find out), I wished I'd just dealt with the allergies for one night instead. D'oh.
• We wandered out into Seattle, got some breakfast, and then caught a taxi to Rick's hospital.
• Rick told us how he'd hurt himself: He was going towards a jump, and he wanted to slow himself down, so he started carving back and forth. He carved onto his toe, and then onto his heel, but his heel edge slipped and so he went out of control off the jump and slid into the tree with his leg.
• At the hospital, Rick was in the process of checking out, so we sat around and listened to various things he was reminded to do, and then we were off. We picked up his prescription, and then took a taxi back to Rick's.
• Since Trisha had a more transferable plane ticket than Dave and Tyler and I did, Trisha stayed an extra day in Seattle to help Rick out.
• Dave and Tyler and I took the same taxi we'd taken from the hospital from Rick's place to the airport.
• We sat around the airport for awhile, got on our flight, and got home without a hitch. In Oakland, we took a shuttle to Dave's, and then Dave drove Tyler and I home. (It saved $20 to have us go to the same place).
• When I got home that night, I started feeling really sick and feverish, and I proceeded to fall asleep and stay that way for most of the rest of the weekend.

I do believe that clothing may be the world's most underrated packing material.

And the other reason I can't afford that bundle are my spring break plans (which have developed in the last 2 hours).

It looks like I'm going to be going to Whistler to Snowboard. And if I'm going to be doing that, I'm going to buy gear. And between travel, lodging, food, and gear, that's going to be about $1000.

And that makes me feel much better about not buying that computer. (Nevermind the fact that I probably wouldn't use it much even if I bought it.)