I've also been getting asked by a lot of people to get off my ass and finish posting about the Japan trip, Kyoto leg!
So yeah, I'll get on that this week and back date it. I promise! Really...
Monday, June 22, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Los Angeles
Laura asked me to post about my epic trip up the west coast. Over about three weeks, I'll be taking a train and various cars from San Diego to Seattle, then a plane back down. Much of this will be spent working (boring!), but it's the closest I've gotten to a vacation in a while, so the vacation-ey parts should be fun!
Highlights so far:
I took the Amtrak up on Monday. This is not in itself unusual or terribly exciting. However, the trip was. About five minutes after I board the train in Oceanside, there is an announcement that we'll be sitting there for, oh, ever. Turns out some pedestrian was "on the tracks" (the noncommittal way of saying that the person committed suicide) and was hit by the train in front of ours. (I later found out that someone I know was on that train. Small world.) We had to wait for the cops and coroner to come do their thing. It was the longest two-hour train ride ever. Had it been daytime, it would've been really pretty, at least -- the tracks go along the ocean much of the way -- but darkness means we were pretty much just hanging out inside a long, isolated cylindrical tube forever, with occasional breaks of moving between long pauses.
I ended up sitting next to a 19-year-old who'd just finished his first year of undergrad at UCSD. He asked if I was a first year (which was cute) and then, upon finding out that I'm in grad school, grilled me about that for quite a while (which was fine, imparting wisdom and all that). Seemed like a nice kid. And it gave me something to do on the train -- my original nap idea went out the window when we kept getting delayed. I was tired by the time I actually got to LA, but at least I made it! And the delayed train was an adventure, I guess. Just not an exciting one.
Wednesday night, we partook in a practice that I termed "very LA." My friend Abby knows of a truck of Korean BBQ tacos and burritos (yes really) that stops at different places around the city every night. The only way to find it is to follow their Twitter feed or the listing on their website. This involved randomly showing up at a streetcorner where, lo and behold, the truck (and a line of people) was waiting. It was actually pretty fun. The truck couldn't start, so we were shooed to the other side of the street (I'm not sure why, but heard something about how they can't operate within 200 feet of another restaurant) while they tried to jump it using a couple different cars. The sedan didn't work, but the Honda Element got it going...and then it stalled out. After that, the line was moved back across the street and they opened for business. One nummy tofu burritto (and a giggle at a Maserati with a parking ticket) later and we were loaded up on food to take back home.
Next: driving up the coast, part one.
Highlights so far:
I took the Amtrak up on Monday. This is not in itself unusual or terribly exciting. However, the trip was. About five minutes after I board the train in Oceanside, there is an announcement that we'll be sitting there for, oh, ever. Turns out some pedestrian was "on the tracks" (the noncommittal way of saying that the person committed suicide) and was hit by the train in front of ours. (I later found out that someone I know was on that train. Small world.) We had to wait for the cops and coroner to come do their thing. It was the longest two-hour train ride ever. Had it been daytime, it would've been really pretty, at least -- the tracks go along the ocean much of the way -- but darkness means we were pretty much just hanging out inside a long, isolated cylindrical tube forever, with occasional breaks of moving between long pauses.
I ended up sitting next to a 19-year-old who'd just finished his first year of undergrad at UCSD. He asked if I was a first year (which was cute) and then, upon finding out that I'm in grad school, grilled me about that for quite a while (which was fine, imparting wisdom and all that). Seemed like a nice kid. And it gave me something to do on the train -- my original nap idea went out the window when we kept getting delayed. I was tired by the time I actually got to LA, but at least I made it! And the delayed train was an adventure, I guess. Just not an exciting one.
Wednesday night, we partook in a practice that I termed "very LA." My friend Abby knows of a truck of Korean BBQ tacos and burritos (yes really) that stops at different places around the city every night. The only way to find it is to follow their Twitter feed or the listing on their website. This involved randomly showing up at a streetcorner where, lo and behold, the truck (and a line of people) was waiting. It was actually pretty fun. The truck couldn't start, so we were shooed to the other side of the street (I'm not sure why, but heard something about how they can't operate within 200 feet of another restaurant) while they tried to jump it using a couple different cars. The sedan didn't work, but the Honda Element got it going...and then it stalled out. After that, the line was moved back across the street and they opened for business. One nummy tofu burritto (and a giggle at a Maserati with a parking ticket) later and we were loaded up on food to take back home.
Next: driving up the coast, part one.
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