Julia's Mexico City

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy and busy with visiting my sister and a new job. I'm in DC now for work for a few weeks and thankfully, have had a weekend off! I have also been blogging on Metroblogging DC while I'm here and so you can catch up with what I've seen there too.

Friday afternoon I walked over to the backside of the White House after work and saw this gentlemen. I appreciated his sentiment.

Here's his site. By the way, have I ever mentioned how much I LOATHE MySpace? Not the idea of it, not the popularity of it, but the ugly, lame, poorly designed layout that (I guess) people build so that you can't see or get a clear understanding of what is on anyone's page. Un-readable!

Back to DC:

Yesterday I spent the morning at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall. Just walking in the door and being presented with the first space capsules from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, then Chuck Yeager's X-1 was almost too much too soon! These are aircraft I've read and studied and watched movies about and here they are! Holy cow. I was blown away by how SMALL the original Mercury capsule was for John Glenn. (Brian would never have done very well in there.) They were truly "Spam in a Can". (Speaking of Mr. Yeager.)

The X-1 (aka "Glamorous Glennis") was fabulous. A man broke the speed of sound in that aircraft. People thought it couldn't be done. People thought you would die, instantly break up into a million pieces, etc etc. But of course not. Awesome. Plus the combination of guts and insanity to be a test pilot. The Wright Brothers were brave since people had barely even begun to understand what flight was all about. But flying is commonplace and you start building aircraft that may or may not stay together in conditions no one has ever been in before, that is what pushing the outside of the envelope is all about.

Here she is in action:


I enjoyed the WWII aircraft and history areas as well. I love going to airshows to see them still fly, nothing like seeing a P-51 Mustang zooming overhead. (Chuck flew Mustangs in WWII. No big surprise!) Here is a restored Mustang that flies in Texas:

Gorgeous!

There was more to the day...I'll get back to it later...stay tuned.

Labels: airplanes, history, travel, Washington DC

I'm here for one day for a work meeting. Then I'll be back in California with my sister.

I always like taking photos from the airplane window. Here are a couple from yesterday.





There was a lot of haze in most spots, plus the window. One of these days I'll be getting a new camera...that I can control better. And then I'll take a photoshop class so I can tweak. So much to do!

Labels: flying, jen, travel

By no means do I consider myself an expert in the world of cycling. But thanks to Lance Armstrong, Kurt and I have been watching the tour every year for about five years now. It is always fascinating to watch the amount of pain these guys go through, then get up the next morning and do it again. They say it is the toughest race in the world and I can't really disagree. The race starts with 189 riders (all on teams) and every day, usually at least one rider has abandoned the race or has crashed and had to abandon. Yesterday was particularly sad as Michael Rogers and Stuart O'Grady had to bow out because of crashes and injuries.

There are still 12 stages (stage=day of racing, there are 21 days of racing, total) to go, so if you are curious, check out the tour on Versus if you get it. (Tivo is a great help when watching.) The scenery is gorgeous, especially now in the Alps.
(Copyright A.S.O. / Amaury Sport Organisation)(used without permission...)

The best part for us while watching is the commentary by Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, Phil Liggett in particular.

Nobody gets more excited than Phil and he has become famous (infamous?) for his great/wacky "Liggetisms" while waching and commenting. Some of our favorites are:
"He'll need to dig deep into his suitcase of courage."
or "He'll need to unpack his suitcase of courage" and "Let's hope he remembered to bring his suitcase of courage." (Oh wait, that was either me or Kurt riffing on this theme.)
"He's exploding off the back of the peloton!" (Because no one ever just slows down or falls behind.)
"The peloton is angry." (We sometimes feel the peloton is merely miffed or peeved.)
and our favorite that we heard the other day:
"These are the boys who refuse to say never say die."

It is a hell of a thing to watch. Check it out if you if you want some true reality drama. Just as a "for example" Vinokourov is riding with stitches in both knees and one elbow after a bad crash in stage 5 and he was (still is?) expected to be a contender for the yellow jersey in Paris. Unbelievable.

Labels: sports, travel

Not long ago I wrote about a sweet little RV call the T@B, remember? It looked like this:


Now the same company has a bigger version called the T@DA (pronounced Tah Dah!) (Okay, that's goofy, but I don't mind.) And it looks like this:

Ooooh. Here's an inside photo:


I still like the original T@B best because it is SOOOOOOOO cute! (OMGPONIES!!!111, etc.)

Then on Boing Boing (I'm 99% sure it was Boing Boing) I read that Airstream has teamed up with Design Within Reach to create a signature series:

Um, totally adorable.
But even better is the inside:

Classy!

Airstream also has a tres tres moderne series:


Really, all of these are much nicer (not to mention larger) than many of the first apartments I ever lived in.

I love road trips but don't love cheap motels or actual camping. These mighty minis could just be the answer. LOVE them.

Labels: dude, travel

We went to La Quinta this weekend to celebrate a friend's birthday. There were nine of us in two rented condos. We got caught up, laughed, made pizza, drank beer, played Wii tennis as well as real tennis. There was a lot of poolside lounging as well.

Here is the view from our condo:


I'm not a huge fan of the desert. There are lovely things about it, but not enough to make me want to live there, ever. Oh, and in the summer it is really hot. I don't like hot. Yes yes, it is a dry heat and that does make a difference. (In August 2005 I spent a couple of days on a location scout outside Richmond Virginia. We walked around Colonial Williamsburg and surrounding fields for hours in the sun. It was probably 90 or 95 and about 3000% humidity. That was just ridiculous and I don't know how people get used to that.)

I did like the look of the sharp rocky hills around the city of La Quinta with the palm trees in front and faded blue sky.




But not enough to live there.

I haven't been out to the Palm Springs area in at least eight or ten years so I had to take the obligatory photo of the windmills. They fascinate me. I could watch them spin all day.


Also on the way we saw this strange beast being towed. Our car expert friend on the trip said he didn't know what it was. Some created race car. Anyone know what this is?



No matter what the temperature, it is always nice to spend time with friends.

Labels: driving, freeway, travel

And super cute!

I read about the T@B trailer in the June issue of Sunset Magazine. I covet it. I am not much of a camper, but I can go and sleep in a tent, that's no problem. However, I'm the kind of camper that likes to have actual bathrooms nearby, a pre-existing fire pit and the car handy. You've heard the joke about how "camping means no room service"? I'm not quite that bad. At the other end of the spectrum, RV's can be fun, too. I went on a weekend trip to Joshua Tree once with four other people in a giant rented RV. It was a blast, but driving that monster around the park was not so much fun. This Tab trailer seems to be the best of both worlds. It's like a huge comfy tent on wheels.


And if you have the right vehicle to tow it, you could probably fit the DutchTub in the back. Oooooh, that would be a great camping weekend! I would totally go. Who's in?

Here's a picture of the Dutch Tub in case you forgot:

Labels: dude, travel

Fellow blogger Will and his wife were recently in Paris and discovered the bookstore Shakespeare and Company. (The store's link is working now.) This brought back memories of my first trip to Paris in the summer of 1989. I had just graduated from LMU and had been planning this trip for a year. Six of us flew over together, back packs at the ready. We spent about four days in London, then two split off to go to Brussels and the core four of us went to Paris.

The trip was a standard backpack-carrying, train-riding, youth hostel-staying, Let's Go-toting journey through most of europe. Our plan was to be there for 2 months and the longest we stayed in any one place was maybe four days. (This is was okay for a first trip, before I knew my travel style, but I don't do that kind of travel any more. I like to go to one place and stay for a while, get a feel for the place, become a local at a food store or cafe, pick up the necessary words.)

In Paris the highlights were:
--The Eiffel Tower -- I was surprised by just how huge it is. I expected it to be much smaller for some reason.
--Getting gassed in the Metro (tear gas or something--never found out where it came from)
--Seeing the scale models of french countryside the attic of the Musee de l'Armee. (I had read this amazing biography of Peter the Great and in it he describes coming to Paris and seeing these scale models. I loved seeing something that Peter the Great also stood next to.)
--Meeting a friend at Shakespeare and Company.

Back in the dark ages--you know, before the internet and cell phones--arranging to meet someone in a foreign place was challenging, especially when we were traveling without specific dates or places to stay. But also so much fun. This friend, Bob, was a teacher at LMU, a young hip guy who was teaching a summer class of some kind in Monaco and would be in Paris around the time we figured we would be there. So we set up a few meeting times and "2pm on July 4 at Shakespeare and Company" was one of those times. The four of us got there and I saw him first and ran over to meet him.

Okay, full disclosure -- I had a huge crush on this teacher. He was funny and a "grown up" and had spent many an hour at the coffee place on campus just talking to me like another grown up. I had told him how excited/over the moon/beside myself I was about traveling to europe. So to meet him, an adult who shared my passion for travel, in Paris was some kind of dream come true. (I am finding it so hard to describe how it felt.) Just being in Paris at all was a dream come true and then meeting up with someone who I had talked to so intensely about how much I wanted to travel and see things, someone who encouraged me and understood this passion, that was not icing on the cake, but more cake on the cake.

But back to the moment. I saw Bob and ran over and probably yelled his name and he greeted me with a huge hug and a kiss. Everyone greeted him and we walked over to Notre Dame to look inside. From my journal:
I walked alone with Bob, John, Katie and Vince went ahead. It was cool to chat with him about traveling and what I'd seen so far. He complimented me (a lot actually) with saying I make a good traveler, not a tourist. Very cool. He also said I was one of the few people he really missed while he was teaching in Monaco. I like Bob, he's quite an interesting guy.

(okay, quick aside to my 22 year old self -- what other compliments did he give me? Why no more detail on that? Sheesh.)

I loved that moment with Bob, that afternoon in Paris. Someone outside of my normal group saw me as a traveler, saw my passion and reflected it back to me, making it all even more real. The moment was significant, but oh so fleeting as soon we said good-bye to Bob and were back onto our trains and off to the next town.

Thanks for that moment Bob. It still means a lot to me.

Labels: paris, travel

From the Badlands I drove to Deadwood where I stayed for one night. I ate in Kevin Costner's restaurant The Midnight Star (anyone know where he got the name? Answer below...) and won $60 from his blackjack tables. Thanks Kevin! Apparently, the Lakota are not too fond of Kevin these days.

These three pictures are from the Deadwood website. (Mine were not so good.) The entire town is a national historic landmark.




The town you may know from the TV series looked like this (photo from 1876):

And most of it burned to the ground around 1879.

The tv show was correct that Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane spent time there. They are also buried there.


I awoke early in the morning, left Deadwood and headed for the Crazy Horse Memorial. Not sure why people decided the Black Hills were great for carving giant statues, but it seems to be the place. I have always wanted to see Mount Rushmore but knew I couldn't go there witout seeing Crazy Horse . Click on the link for more and better photos and info.

Here I am -- click to make it bigger.


Great view as I was leaving:


Have you been to Mount Rushmore? It's seems so small when you've been to see Crazy Horse first. My photos doen't help show the scale.


Okay, the reality is Mt. Rushmore is 500' high and 400' wide. When Crazy Horse is complete, it will be 563' high and 615' wide. Not much bigger, but you get fooled because there is one person/face at CH and four at Mt. Rushmore. Here is a photo of Crazy Horse's face:

and a great site that shows the face in progress is here.

The whole country out there in the land of the Lakota is amazing and beautiful. I can't wait to go back and see it all again and more.

(The answer to the Midnight Star name is from the movie Silverado (one of my favorites) that Kevin had a role in. Kevin Kline's character worked in the bar in Silverado -- The Midnight Star.)

Labels: driving, prairie, south dakota, travel

You have all been so patient, I know you were just on the verge of writing to me about when would I finish my posts about Laura. If you want to refresh, here are the previous posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

So I spent the morning in De Smet, driving around town, taking a tour of the Surveyor's House, even went to the cemetary. But I couldn't put off going to the homestead any longer. I knew there would be no house there (it was long gone) but just being on that spot I had read about over and over made me nervous and excited.

I drove the mile out to the site and again, I was all alone.

The trees were planted by the Ingalls in the 1880s. And the road to town is the road that Laura watched on Sundays when waiting for Almanzo to come pick her up for a buggy ride.

I think what makes/made the trip so exciting is that these books were so a part of my imagination. What were your favorite books growing up? Nancy Drew? Black Stallion? Lord of the Rings? Imagine loving and reading those books over and over then someday being able to go to the places that are locked into your memory and imagination. That's how magical this trip was for me. She was a real person. It was all real and I could go and see where it happened.

Here she is with Almanzo not long after they got married:

(They were married August 25, 1885, Laura was 18, Almanzo was 28.)


This photo was taken right after the Long Winter. Laura is standing on the right, she is about 14. Mary is seated and about 15 and Carrie is standing on the left. Carrie is about 10 and never fully recovered her health after practically starving to death during the winter.


I can't wait to go back.

(more to come on the rest of my trip -- out to Deadwood and Crazy Horse...)

Labels: driving, laura ingalls wilder, minnesota, prairie, south dakota, travel