8 posts tagged “travel”

I was pleased to see that in this latest release of Vox was a new theme of one of my favorite cities (Sydney, Australia) by one of my favorite Vox designers, Tiffany Chow (.tiff.)

If you've never been to Sydney, I highly recommend it. It's one of the great Pacific cities, like San Francisco with better weather, Seattle with much, much better weather, or Hongkong without totalitarian oppression. The food is tasty, cultural institutions at a surprisingly high level, hotels and restaurants are reasonably priced, people are friendly and Australia is one of the few countries left in the world where Americans are held in somewhat high regard--they especially love Bill Clinton who apparently made quite an impression during his visits there, not the least of which is that he actually bothered to do so, which few US presidents have.

Anyway, kudos to .tiff for her latest contribution to the Vox canon of theme designs. I look forward to the next one.

I'm currently in Ridgecrest, CA, a fairly non-descript California desert city, though a bit more prosperous than some, perhaps because of the China Lake Naval Air Station, which is right next door (though not very active, since I haven't heard any planes since I got here.) Why does the Navy need a base two hundred miles from any substansial body of water? Because the US military is set up with multiply redundant air power, so that each branch of the military has their own air units.

But that's not important right now. What is important is that I'm about to leave for Death Valley, where there will be no internet, and thus no Vox for three and a half whole days! There will, however, be abundant scenic beauty and good times with my dad and half-brother Jonathan. I'm bringing my camera, so I will be taking pictures, which will eventually end up on Vox, though not in real time.

Some pictures from my stay in Lost Hills Thursday night.

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The Poker & Powder weekend is over, but it's a beautiful day so no reason to be in a hurry to get back to the bay area. I'm currently sitting outside at a $$$tarbucks in a runt mall in Rocklin–but at least I'm outside. It's absolutely a perfect temperature right now. To give you an idea how unusually warm it is, I drive over Donner Summit with my sun-roof open.

I'm thinking about heading south from here, than across the central valley and coming into the east bay via 580. Hopefully I will avoid the end of the weekend traffic jams on I-80 that way. I would do pretty much anything to avoid driving I-80 across the central valley and into the bay area–it's so tedious and crowded.

I'm in Truckee this weekend, hanging out at my friend Joe's family's cabin in Northwoods, for the second annual "Power 'n' Powder Weekend."

It's warm up here--I just walked from the cabin down to Truckee in just normal street clothes and was quite warm, even hot. There's a lot of snow on the ground, but it's quite dirty and old. It's still pretty here, though.

Right now I'm waiting for my friends to pick me up on their way back from skiing, so I don't have to walk back to the cabin, which is a long uphill slog. Then it's time for beer, pulled pork and poker.

Had lunch at the In and Out Burger at the I-5 March Road exit. In 'n' Out Burger is so canonical. It might be the most canonical fastfood restaurant of all time. Now I'm at $$$tarbucks, taking care of some last minute internet things before heading up state highway 88 up into the mountains, via the Gold Rush town of Sutter Creek, which I've heard good things about. Once I finish my email and my frappucino, I"ll get back on the road. Except first I have to hit up Bevmo and provision up for this weekend. Because that's how I roll.

Courtesy of world66.com . I've traveled a lot of places, for which I can mostly thank my globe-trotting economist parents, who took me to Peru, Bolivia, Isarel and all over Europe as a kid. As as adult I've done a lot of road trips, which accounts for my near-total domination of the lower 48 states. South Dakota, you have been warned.

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Amoeba Records in Upper Haight. Plus they could go to 710 Ashbury Street and see where the Dead lived when they still had indie cred.