Funny how just a slight lack of guardrail changes your perspective...

I've only been to the top of Pikes Peak once in my life, and I rode the cogwheel train to get there. My dad wasn't confident enough in his own driving skills to get up the mountain on the Pikes Peak Highway without plunging the entire family to their death, and after watching this video, I'm not sure I would either. I swear it looks like this guy is going to drift right off the mountain at least a dozen times:

Watching this also makes me really green with envy...

I'm pretty sure one of us has posted or emailed about this guy before, but I still smile and feel happy anytime I watch these videos:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Anyone up for a road trip?

From KOKOGIAK:

I set out to find the longest distance for which Google Maps would give Driving Directions. Now that they've shut down the fun "swim the Atlantic" feature, things have changed a bit. It turns out there are multiple "longest drives", because the Google Maps World is partitioned (many countries don't support driving directions), and sometimes ferries are included, and sometimes they are not.

Unalaska, AK to Southern Newfoundland, Canada = 7,267 miles or about 6 days 15 hours.

Yeah, I might have to stop once or twice on this one.  Imagine the Cannonball Run kind of race you could make out of this, though.

Notes from a Canuck condorcation, Part 1...

Growing up as a kid, you could say I was a somewhat the model student. I paid attention in class, did my homework, made good grades, didn't act up, etc. In fact, I spent no time in detention my entire academic career. Apart from my long absences due to illness (or perhaps a bit of good acting on my part) and a worrisome threat of possible remediation if I didn't get my attendance up (despite the fact that I was well amongst the top 5% in the class), my parents never got any calls regarding my behavior or performance at school. The only time I remember getting pulled for doing something wrong was sometime in my junior year of high school when the assistant principal pulled me aside to comment on the t-shirt I was wearing that day which I had recently bought from Dick's Last Resort during a Latin convention trip to Dallas.

"You can't wear that in school," he said.
"Uh, why not?" I asked in a somewhat timid tone.
"Don't play games with me. You know exactly why. Now go home and change into something more appropriate, young man."

In all honesty, I really didn't know at the time what he was getting at, and I don't think it was until a couple of years later that I finally figured out the more raunchy meaning of the phrase "You Can't Kill a Man Born to Hang!"

. . . .

So last week, the wife and I took advantage of some frequent flyer miles we racked up on Frontier Airlines to take a vacation. My wife was burned out with work and all the things going on with my transitions in life, and I was pretty sure she was going to have a nervous break down if I didn't get her out of town for awhile. I, myself, was ready for a change of scenery, too. Since the tickets were free, we decided we go as far away as our points would allow us, which meant Vancouver.

Flying Frontier is always kind of a nice experience. Every seat has a TV (although you have to pay to watch anything), and every plane is slightly unique with each one painted up with a different animal. Wally the Wolf was our plane on our leg of the trip from Denver to Vancouver. This was particularly exciting to one kid I saw on our plane who enthusiastically waved goodbye to Wally after we reached our destination with his own stuffed wolf (complete with leather jacket) under his arm.

The view from my seat somewhere over the state of Washington. Note Wally on the wing. And that spot in the middle of the photo is not a UFO. I think a speck of dust is trapped on my digital camera sensor. Blurg!

We left St. Louis sometime around 6:00 AM and after changing planes in Denver, touched down in Vancouver sometime just after noon. I thought this was going to leave us plenty of time to enjoy the first afternoon of our vacation, but our bad luck had us arriving with plane loads of foreign Chinese college students coming over from Asia to start the new school year. Add to that, Canadian customs was short-staffed due to the new academic year, as well, as many of their temporary workers had left to go back to school. This left us snaking through a labyrinth of a line serviced by only six custom agents that made anything at Disney World look as short as Gary Coleman in comparison. After about three hours, we finally made it through the imaginary border, and were free to enjoy our vacation.

We were famished, and luckily I spotted a Vera's Burger Shack driving up on our way from the airport to the hotel. Vera's is a place I had read about on Chowhound before I left that was supposed to have some of the best burgers in the city of Vancouver. I don't know if it was our relative hunger at the time or what, but the fresh cut fries were amazing and their Baja Burger was just what we needed. Vera's secret to success is supposedly cooking their food to perfection and using really fresh meat, as they attest to on their logo.

Now perhaps I got too sensitized to double meanings when I got in trouble that day back in my teens, but somehow I think this wouldn't have been appropriate to wear in high school either:

Interpret that as you feel fit.

The amazing adventures of my wife, the international fruit smuggler...

The fruit pictured to the right is the longan, a white, fleshy, almost translucent fruit commonly found througout Southeast Asia. If you ever had lychee at a Chinese restaurant, it tastes about the same--very sweet and refreshing, especially when chilled. My wife loves these and will usually get a whole bagful to snack on whenever we're in a big city with a big Chinatown, as they're pretty hard to find outside of a well stocked Asian market. As you can see, there's a thin outer shell you have to peel off before you eat them, and this becomes a problem. You see, she's kind of haphazard about where she tosses these shells, and those peels often end up in other plastic bags we've got with us carrying various knick-knacks we bought while traveling. The last time we went to Vancouver six years ago, a whole bag full of those peels ended up in our luggage when we were crossing back into the U.S. How they got there is still up for debate, but may have had something to do with our rush to pack our bags as we were running late for a bus back to Seattle. MAYBE it was me who tossed them in a suitcase at the last minute, or MAYBE it was her. Anywho, customs spotted the offending contraband in the x-ray scanner, and my wife has since been fined and blacklisted by border control for trying to smuggle in foreign fruit. After coming back from Taiwan a couple of years ago, U.S. customs gave her the evil eye, a stern questioning of what she was importing into the country, and a meticulous hand inspection of all her baggage before letting her through. Meanwhile, I waltzed right through with a friendly wink and a smile to the customs agent, with my luggage only getting a cursory x-ray scan.

Fast forward to last week when we made our most recent trip out of the country to Vancouver. My wife, of course, bought another bag full of longans, but was very careful not to let any stray peels or twigs end up in our bags this time. Going through customs at the Vancouver International Airport on our way home, she proudly exclaimed that she had absolutely no fruits, vegetables, or any part of such produce in her luggage or on her person. She even remembered to toss out the bottle of water she had in her purse before proceeding through the security checkpoint. We returned home to the States without incident and my wife was satisfied that she was now the model citizen.

And what did I happen to find in one of the shopping bags we brought back from Canada full of macadamia brittle and chocolate yesterday? Well, not a longan, but still some fruit--a chocolate-covered strawberry she forgot she left in there. I guess kleptomaniac is the wrong word, but I'm sure there's some word to describe her penchant for inadvertent fruit smuggling. ;-)

I know this is supposed to be relaxing, but for some reason I just feel like Bugs Bunny...

I really need to plan a vacation to Japan one of these days just to take in all the wacky stuff they've got over there. Here's a spa where you can bathe in your favorite beverage including red wine and sake. Talk about setting yourself up for a major hangover. Please, no peeing in these baths. Alas, the ramen bath is a limited engagement that ends in September.

Sighting #11, in the unlikeliest of places...

So I was in Des Moines, Iowa this weekend for a wedding. This is the second wedding my wife and I have attended in the Hawkeye State--what are the odds of that? Anywho, we were expecting to find some fresh ears of sweet corn, but otherwise weren't anticipating much from our trip to Iowa's state capital. Surprisingly, though, Des Moines was kind of an interesting city. As most other large cities, the downtown core is undergoing quite a bit of revitalization and gentrification, but Des Moines seems to have chosen some interesting architects for a few of their construction projects. Perhaps the coolest thing was the the Des Moines Public Library which had some type of copper mesh within the glass windows that made the building look like it was built out of copper during the day with the sunlight reflecting off of it, but would appear completely transparent at night with lights illuminating the building from the interior. Even the State Capitol building itself was pretty impressive and unique with real 23K gold leaf on the dome.

But all that wasn't what really caught my eye over the weekend. Driving back to our hotel late at night we spotted this around 7th and Locust downtown. We snapped a picture the next day on our way home:

Next Gang reunion? Tunisia!

Apparently, Tatooine still exists. The production crew from Star Wars built the set so well, it remains intact in the Tunisian desert. Well, minus the second setting sun.

The coolest part about this area, though, sounds like the native troglodytes (or cave people) that dig vertically into the ground and build homes. Sidi Driss is the only hotel in the area, which happens to be an authentic troglodyte house, and also served as the home of Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru in the movie.