Category: Travel

Weekend in D.C.

Over the weekend we went to Washington to visit my friend John, who is an accomplished origami artist. It was a really fun trip.

But first the part about danger and adventure. About a month ago, after all our summer travels were over, I took my car into the shop for an oil change, tire rotation and new front brakes. Since that time, I’ve only driven to the train station and back, and have not taken the car about 30 mph (48 km/h). The kids had a half day of school on Friday, so we lit out for DC about 2 in the afternoon. The trip was great, the traffic smooth and light, and the weather turned from cool and cloudy to mild and sunny. But I after I got on the highway I started to notice a vibration in the front end, and as the trip went on it got worse. By the time we got off the Beltway it was pretty bad, and soon the front brakes were smoking! Luckily we made it to John’s house and there was a garage just a couple blocks away.

It turned out one of the tires was seriously worn along the outside edge, to the point where it was ready to blow out! I think the garage last month must have screwed up with the tire rotation, cuz this was not normal wear. On top of that the rear brakes were shot. So I got new back breaks and ended up getting four new tires, cuz one other tire was pretty badly worn and all of them were more than five years old in any event. Ah well, it was an expensive hassle, but I would have had to get this work done at some point, and all in all we were pretty lucky.

And it didn’t even slow us down very much. There are a lot of good restaurants in John’s neighborhood and Friday night we got Mongolian food. Saturday I got up early to deal with the car, and then we all took the train into downtown D.C. We went down the Mall to the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. I haven’t been there since high school, so it was interesting to see how the place had changed. For on thing they put up a slightly incongruous World War Two memorial right near the Washington Monument.

It’s also interesting how some thing haven’t changed. It’s a long walk (4 miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and back), and you’d think they’d have trams or bicycles or something for the tourists in this day and age of fat America. It would also come in handy for people with kids or a bad ankle, or people who don’t want to walk the whole length of the Mall twice. Also the food selection is pretty meager, just a single concession stand with bad pizza and hot dogs and soda. You’d think there’d be row of places to get lunch.

The highlight of the day was the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. This is a fantastic place and I’ve been to it every time I’ve been to Washington. It’s full of spaceships, including such legendary craft as the Apollo 11 Command Module, and of a more recent vintage Spaceship One, and storied airplanes including the original 1903 Wright Flyer plus hundreds of later models from every era of experimental, military and commercial aviation. There used to be a Space Shuttle but that’s now gone. I understand they moved it to a new museum hall out near the airport.

The kids really loved it (as Jeannie I both did at that age), and I don’t think they ever really thought to spaceships as something real before, only an idea out of movies. I grew up in the 70’s and I remember the waning days of the Apollo program, Skylab, Viking and Voyager, and the development and debut of the Space Shuttle. All that stuff was really cutting edge back then; now it seems almost nostalgic. I mean, my 41-year old classic muscle car is built of the same technology that took humanity to the moon! I read in the paper today that the US will not have manned space light capability for the next five years and will have to pay Russia to send up our astronauts like dotcom zillionares do. Sigh, yet another failure of our government.

In any event the museum was a blast and it was a great day. When we got back to John’s neighborhood the garage was still open and I picked up the car. We get Peruvian food for dinner and played Settlers of Catan after. (It seems John always wins.)

John has a grand piano. It’s been a few years since I’ve played a grand. I used to play one a lot when I lived in California and hung out at my friend David’s house. My own piano is an upright, and it’s good for what it is, but a grand has a faster, better action and much more definition in the sound, especially in the bass registers and the very high end. So it was very enjoyable to play on that.

And of course we spent a lot of time talking origami. I folded some models out of his forthcoming book, a magnum opus of polyhedra and geometric origami. He has a chapter on polygons, including a regular pentagon and a golden rectangle. His pentagon is (folded from a square) is a very accurate approximation, but the golden rectangle is mathematically exact, which is very interesting because it’s only a few steps; the golden rectangle is latent in the square. I have been searching for year for a method to fold a regular pentagon (or a 36 degree angle), and his is the best I’ve seen. But it doesn’t beat the method I’ve come to prefer, which is basically to eyeball it, because I’ve gotten good at it with practice. In any event, since the golden ratio is expressed everywhere in pentagonal symmetry, I feel intuitively that there must be a way to develop a mathematically perfect pentagon from a golden rectangle. I plan on investigating this.

We spent some time considering the Archimedean Solids and their duals. I developed and folded a Truncated Octahedron from a square sheet of paper. This a really interesting shape, composed of eight hexagons and six squares and has the property of being able to tile space. To my surprise and delight, my design mainly worked, right up until I got closing the model and locking the last face in place with it’s neighbors. This ending stuff can be tricky but is essential to a nice model. My current design wants to spring apart, but it looks like I can get make it with stiffer paper and a slight adjustment of the layout of the faces on the paper.

Back in the office today I got a demo to Flash 10 from an Adobe evangelist. It has a lot of cool new API for doing 3D. My friend Veronique turned to me and said this would be cool for my origami software. She’s totally right, but this had the effect of making me sad because I’d love to have the time to work on that project again. I started it back in the dotcom bust when I was out of work and got a lot of design work done and start on a demo, but it would take months of full time work to get to the next level with it. Ah well, with the economy going the way it is maybe I’ll get my chance. Heh!

Road Trip 2

We were unexpectedly back in Canada last week. My grandmother, Lenka, died at age 88. I talked to her just a couple weeks ago and she was in good health and great spirits. The end came suddenly which I suppose was for the best. She was a remarkable woman in many ways and lived a long and full life. She had a strong personality and a big heart and liked people and was good at listening and giving advice. She loved having company and was a fabulous cook and her home was centered around her dining room table. There were over a hundred people at her funeral, a testament to the impact she had on people’s lives which is all the more remarkable in that she outlasted almost everyone of her generation. We will miss her.

So for me and Jeannie it meant another big road trip, even though it feels like we just got home. I’m actually surprised about how well the kids were about the whole thing. We left Wednesday after work and arrived around midnight. Thursday was the wake and Friday the funeral. In between time we hung around my uncle Ron’s house because he lived only a few minutes away. My cousin Tom and his wife were there with their kids, who are about the same age as mine. So they all hung out together and got along great, and that made things easier on everyone. Also Barb and Al and their kids Ryan and Curtis.  It was in fact a great chance to see lots of relatives and catch up with everyone. The Singer cousins were there, and they have some new kids I haven’t met yet. And Peter from Florida, and Bert from Chicago, and the list goes on.

We were supposed to go camping that weekend from Friday thru Sunday, and so we left early Saturday morning to try and make the best of it. The camp site was in the Catskills, on the way back to New York City. Of course, being in Canada the day before, Jeannie thought it best that we bring some Canadian beer with us. We were camping with a few other families. Every year we get a bunch of sites together right on the lake. This time it was Nick and Lisa on one side and Seth and Cathy on the other. It’s a very nice scene. We weren’t able to pack a lot of things we normally would like coffee or our camp stove, but we were able to get our little canopy shelter in the car. And it’s a good thing too, because it rained hard for about and hour Saturday afternoon. Apart from that, though, the weather was great, and we did plenty of canoeing and barbecuing and just relaxing and having fun.

Monday morning back to work, the train was late, the web site full of problems. Cosmic Monday in the city.

1585 Trip Miles

We just got back from a trip upstate to see family and friends. It was over a week, a double trip split between Western NY and the Adirondack mountains. It was a very nice time, relaxing and invigorating.

First stop was to visit my parents. We drove up Friday and spent Saturday relaxing. My brother and his fiancé came over for a barbeque, with their dog Loki. Did a bit of fishing and took the girls on a hike along the creek in the park near their house. Sunday we went up to Canada for a family reunion. Good to see all the cousins and uncles. Martin blogged about it too and put up some pictures here.

My grandmother told I should take a trip to Hungary. This is something I’ve been considering doing in a few years, when the girls are old enough to handle a big international trip. There is an origami conference each year in Budapest, and it might be a cool thing to check it out. I had already talked to my mother about the possibility of coming along, as she is fluent in the language, and she likes the idea. So one step closer to reality and added to the list of destinations. With luck the next few years will be a good for traveling with the family.

On Tuesday we went out with my Mum and Dad to my Dad’s woodlot. It’s a piece of land he has out in the countryside with a meadow and a creek and a forest. He goes deer hunting there in the fall. It’s a beautiful place and it was a perfect sunny day. We had a picnic there with bacon cooked over the fire, then went for a hike in the woods and let the girls splash in the creek and try and catch minnows in cups.

Wednesday we went out to Victor, NY to visit Jeannie’s brother and their family. Carrie was delighted to have Michelle over and they played together. But the big news is they just had a baby! Little Anna, only a few days old, and as tiny and cute as can be. A very peaceful baby.

Then it was on the Saranac Lake, NY, in the very heart of the high peaks country of the Adirondacks. We stayed with our friends Mark and Kelly. It was great to catch up. They had just bought a new house and have been busy fixing it up: drywall, paint, a pretty big amount of work. Alot of it was done but the place was not yet ready to move into.

On Thursday we went for a hike up nearby Mount Baker. It’s about a mile up the hill and then again back down, and the kids complained a bit because whenever we stopped the mosquitoes came at us something fierce. But the view was great and it was worth it for the character-building. Later that day we went to a place called the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, a sort of natural history museum of the region. They had had a big hall of exhibits with native plants and animals including frogs and turtles and salamanders and fish and even an otter. They also had some (taxidermically) stuffed fauna including a loon. I must admit I’ve never seen a live loon, and when I made my origami loon it was based on pictures from Google image search. So I kind of have this thing about loons now, trying to get to know them. The bird was a good deal larger than I expected (almost 2 feet long), and wider. I think I did a pretty good job at capturing its essence.

Went to a great restaurant in Placid called The Caribbean Cowboy that night. They had all kinds of good stuff I had some seared tuna over a bed of jambalaya.

Mark works at the Olympic center in Lake Placid, and Friday we took a tour. There was a triathlon in town that weekend so the roads were all full of cyclists, and the town it itself was pretty packed with people. First we went up the car road to the top of Mt. Whiteface. We had to drive around to the far side of the mountain and put up with the kids clamoring to stop at Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, NY along the way. And when we got to the toll we were told the top of the mountain was shrouded in clouds and visibility was zero. So we turned back. This might be a good time to mention that we used to come up to the Adirondacks alot in the days before we had kids, and in three trips on three different winters I went up with the intention of skiing Whiteface and the mountain was closed because of extreme cold, extreme wind or a combination of the two. So this really came as no surprise.

So we spent the morning at a place called High Falls Gorge on the north fork of the Ausable river. It’s a neat little canyon with some falls and rapids and some nice hiking trails including some bridges and catwalks that let you get in close to the action.

By the time we were done there, the weather was clearing so we thought we’d get up Whiteface while we had our chance. Rather than motor all the way back to the north face, we decided to take the gondola, which was nearby. The ride up was pleasant and soon we arrived at the top of Little Whiteface (elevation 3900 ft), which was just as well, as Big Whiteface (elevation 4700 ft) was still obscured by clouds. After hanging out in Tahoe and the Sierras for a few years these peaks don’t sound that high, but it’s about as tall as it gets on the east coast! The view was great, of the surrounding peaks and lakes and the sky was properly dramatic.

Maybe a bit too dramatic at that. We’d had a good look around and were ready to come down, when all of a sudden up came a fierce wind and pelting rain. A dozen or so people up there all went into the ski patrol cabin to wait it out, as they stopped running the gondola. After a short while the rain stopped, but they were reluctant to start the gondola up again, cuz another storm was on the way. Finally there was a break and they decided to get everyone down at once. The ride up took 18 minutes but the trip down took maybe 5. And not a moment to soon. By the time we got back to our car it was raining again, and minutes later it there was hail and rain so hard I had to pull over.

We went into Placid and got some lunch. By the time we were done the storm had passed so we went to check out the ski jump complex. Boy ever neat. There were guys practicing acrobatic jumps and landing in a pool, which was fun to watch. Then we went to the main tower. It’s amazing how tall that thing is. And it’s built on top of a mountain! You have no idea seeing it on TV; you really have to check it out in person. I don’t think I’d ever have the fortitude to be a ski jumper. In fact when I go to the gate where they start the run I got a but spooked. On the way down –- you have to take a chair lift up the hill to the tower — I noticed it was one of the highest lifts I’d ever been on, and there’s no kind of seatbelt to keep little kids from falling out. But we all landed safe and sound.

The last stop of the day was the ice skating center. They have 2 rinks there, one from the 1932 games and one from 1980. On the older rink was a figure skating show, featuring girls from all over the northeast. A girl who did a Tinkerbell routine won. Michelle, who had taken ice skating lessons last winter, absolutely loved this. She has been thinking of ways to pretend to practice ice skating since we got home, mostly sliding around our wood floors in socks.

There was also a “Virtual Reality Simulation” ride there, which took you down the bobsled run, luge, ski jump and some other events. It was pretty cool except for the heavy, clunky, lo-rez, 15-year-old headmount displays from VPL which didn’t even do any motion tracking. They would have been better off (and I’m saying this now as a former professional VR software and systems developer and designer) with a big screen in the front of the room for everyone to look at. The fans were a nice touch I’ll admit. Also they could’ve used Adirondack chairs. That would’ve been cool.

Saturday was much more mellow. We went swimming in Middle Saranac Lake, at a tranquil little beach accessible only be hiking trail. Twice it started to rain, then rained hard for a minute or two, and then cleared up again. Crazy mountain weather. Later that we took a really nice canoe ride around Lake Flower, and checked out all the cottages. It really reminded me a lot of when we used to go up north in Canada as a kid. Mark’s landlord, also name Mark, was a really nice guy. We struck up a conversation and he offered us the use of his canoe. He also gave us a ride in his powerboat to take the girls for ice cream.

Mark had spent most of the day working on his house and missed all the fun. Saturday was big painting day for him, so I went over there and helped him out for a few hours. He had a They Might Be Giants boxed set on his iPod, which made the whole experience pretty pleasant.

Sunday it was pouring rain from the time we got up. We went to brunch in town, and the place was packed, but the food was good. It was also triathlon day so we decided to take the scenic route home, via Tupper, since the roads would be closed near Placid. Drove a good 100 miles in the rain on the mountain roads. The weather finally cleared as we got on the Northway. Almost as soon as we got past Albany the Thruway slowed to a crawl, so we took an alternate route home.

While we were on the road, my car passed 90,000 miles. Woo-hoo! I put more miles on my car on this trip than I have the whole year before that. While were on the road, I listen to the girls sing songs from Hannah Montana. I now have every song memorized even though I’ve never heard the CD! Also Lizzy and I concluded that an RV that turns into a house boat and then turns into an airplane would be a really cool thing to have. I have it all worked out in my mind. Remind me later and I’ll make some sketches.

Coming soon: Pictures!

Caribbean Blue

You might think all I’ve been doing this winter is working extra hours and complaining about the cold. But no! Last week Jeannie and I managed to sneak out for a long weekend getaway to Nassau, in the Bahamas. Four days of lying on the sand, sailing sailboats, swimming in the ocean and pools, eating lots of seafood and drinking fruity rum drinks, and checking out aquariums full of sharks and manta rays and exhibits on pirate history. Aye me hearties!

We stayed at a place called Breezes on Cable Beach, which was very nice. The flights were smooth both ways. It was a much needed break, and our return to the winter is mitigated by a warm spell this week.

Here are a handful of pictures. A full gallery will be put up at some point in the future.

Life’s a Beach

Today is the first day of school again for the kids, but we ended the summer on a high note. We spent the better part of last week in Ocean City, MD. It was a great trip: fun and relaxing and action-packed and low-key all at once. The town of OC is very nice, and family friendly. Not so crazy and built-up as say Virginia Beach or Daytona, but nicer than places I’ve been to on the Jersey Shore. We went swimming in the ocean every day right outside our front door, visited the wild horses on Assateague Island, spent a whole day at a great water park, checked out the amusement pier, went out to some breakfasts and nice seafood dinners, ate funnel cake and lemonade on the board walk, and even had a shot of having a shot of Tequila with Jeannie to celebrate our twennyversary. I’ll be putting up a full photo album sometime, but for now here are some of the pics:

Summer Camping, Part II

We just got back from another weekend of camping, this time in the opposite end of the Catskills, with our friend Seth and his daughter Erin, and our friends the Blickers, and bunch of friends of theirs. We’ve been doing this a few years now, and it seems to get larger every year, so we’ve dubbed it Blickapalooza. More hiking, canoeing, hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. How can you complain? Well this trip was too cold for swimming, and hikes we took were kinda short, but we had lakeside campsites and I got to do a lot of canoeing with Michelle and Lizzy. And it rained Friday night, but at least the fire kept going and then the stars came out and our new tent stayed dry, so now we know it rocks!

Also, after years of never practicing guitar and having only a basic knowledge of simple chords and a repertoire consisting mainly of Neil Young songs, I’ve decided for what I do it actually sounds pretty good, and it might be worth it to learn some more chords and some new songs, so I’m thinking of getting a new acoustic guitar to replace the one I got for trading an old boom box years ago. That guitar is amazing in that it has almost no wood at all in it, but it still has a great bright tone. Unfortunately neither the action nor the intonation is very good, so it’s a bit hard to play.

We took tons of pictures. I think Lizzy took about 20 just of Erin’s feet. Here are a few to start with; a more complete gallery will follow on sometime later. Most of the feet pictures will be removed as part of the curating function.

Summer Camping, Part I

We just got back from a weekend of camping in the Catskills with our good friend Nick and his family, and my brother Martin and his girlfriend Kathleen. The weather was great (no rain!), and we got to do some good hiking, swimming and canoeing, and lots of hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. Ahhh, good times.

Double Feature: Road Trippin’ *and* Fun With Shapes

Part 1: Road Trippin’

You may be wondering why it’s been over a week with no new post. Well it’s because I’ve been on vacation! I just got back from a trip to upstate New York and Canada to visit family. Lots and lots of family. Four towns, two countries.

Saw my brother-in-law and his family on the 4th. We had hoped to spend the day in his pool, but the rain gods had other ideas, so instead we visited the Strong Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. The kids had fun there, but the part that was most interesting to me was a hall of old toys from the 19th century. No plastic in anything. It was all tin and wood, glass and leather. And perhaps obviously, no electronics. Plus there was a whole gallery of obsolete household items like inkwells and oil lamps. Makes you wonder what things we all have around the house that’ll be in a museum someday. Plus there was a fun area to play with shapes. More on that later.

Visited my parents, had some barbecue, did some rollerblading. One day we took the kids and my Mum up to the Falls. Pictures below. Visited my brother Martin in his new house. Lots of very nice woodwork. In addition to remodeling the place, he’s also in the beginning phase of an internet startup company, so life is interesting for him. Perhaps the highlight of the trip was the cousin’s reunion from my grandmother’s side of the family on Sunday in Port Colborne, Ontario. Lots of people there I haven’t seen in a while, including my cousin Barb, my cousin Peter all the way from Florida, and all my motorcycle riding, building and racing second cousins. All in all very fun and relaxing. More pics to come.