That was one heck of an intermission, but I think it was worth it. I played a bit of football, played a bit of basketball, and BOOM!!! I made a super-sweet website:
www.mypinkyup.com
Check it out, it's not perfect, I have a whole list of things to tinker with while I travel like "have the infowindow show a picture on my googlemap" boring, I know, but I need to remind myself. The videos work, I swear, I also need to add download progress indicators to them - I learned how to do that, and I remember it was easy, but I don't know how right now.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Intermission
I'd like to take a moment for a brief intermission between my East Coast Adventures and the West Coast Adventures to follow. I will be adding a few videos in a day or two once I can upload and encode HD video, but until then all I will leave you with are these tidbits:
1) Florida Toll operators are much happier than their peers to the north (until you get to Maine). I would imagine the Floridians are happy due to the weather, their brightly colored, state issued shirts, and the fact that there are a lot of fun-boys in Florida. In Maine, I can't really figure that one out, there are a lot of hippies and Maine is pretty sweet so maybe that's enough to keep the toll-people happy, I don't know? In New York I can see it getting pretty old charging 1,000's of people a day $9 to cross a bridge.
2) God and Jesus must put more marketing $$'s into billboards than any other father-son combo in all of the world. Once you get down to..........ohhhh, let's say Kentucky, those two guys can't get enough of their quotes, miracles, and morals up on the big old billboards.
3) I need to fact check before I write - it was not Dr. Livingstone who was searching for the Fountain of Youth, he was just exploring Africa and found Victoria Falls. It was Ponce de Leon who was searching for it and he landed in Florida. Now we know that he was way off, as he should have sailed up the eastern shoreline to Deleware. Poor Ponce.
4) I also may have given New Jersey a bad rap. It may come as no surprise that I didn't find anything particularly interesting because I spent much of my time in stand still traffic......at least enough time to pull out my cooler, make a sandwich, and eat it while sitting on my cooler right in the middle of the interstate, and then I drove right in to the Power Plant district of New Jersey. It's just power plant after power plant until you drive right in to New York City but with all that power they're making they do have something of note; THE WORLD'S LARGEST INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB. I'm sad that I missed it.
1) Florida Toll operators are much happier than their peers to the north (until you get to Maine). I would imagine the Floridians are happy due to the weather, their brightly colored, state issued shirts, and the fact that there are a lot of fun-boys in Florida. In Maine, I can't really figure that one out, there are a lot of hippies and Maine is pretty sweet so maybe that's enough to keep the toll-people happy, I don't know? In New York I can see it getting pretty old charging 1,000's of people a day $9 to cross a bridge.
2) God and Jesus must put more marketing $$'s into billboards than any other father-son combo in all of the world. Once you get down to..........ohhhh, let's say Kentucky, those two guys can't get enough of their quotes, miracles, and morals up on the big old billboards.
3) I need to fact check before I write - it was not Dr. Livingstone who was searching for the Fountain of Youth, he was just exploring Africa and found Victoria Falls. It was Ponce de Leon who was searching for it and he landed in Florida. Now we know that he was way off, as he should have sailed up the eastern shoreline to Deleware. Poor Ponce.
4) I also may have given New Jersey a bad rap. It may come as no surprise that I didn't find anything particularly interesting because I spent much of my time in stand still traffic......at least enough time to pull out my cooler, make a sandwich, and eat it while sitting on my cooler right in the middle of the interstate, and then I drove right in to the Power Plant district of New Jersey. It's just power plant after power plant until you drive right in to New York City but with all that power they're making they do have something of note; THE WORLD'S LARGEST INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB. I'm sad that I missed it.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Don't Be Like Mike
Things get a little foggy from here. I went to the bathroom, got out of the stadium, paid for my parking, which was up after the game, sat in my car for a bit, tried to figure out what I was going to do for the night...........and in the end I punched "Milwaukee, WI" in to my GPS and away I went. By now it was raining, but traffic wasn't bad........but it must be said that I don't condone these activities.......and I managed to get on the interstate, and just before I got on to the tollway I pulled over in the tollway employees parking lot and went to sleep until morning.
I awoke around 6:00am. My windows were steamed up, which may have been a good thing. I rolled down my passenger side window and there sat a state trooper's car. I rolled down my window, yup, there's another trooper. I opened my door, stood up, looked where I was, as I was awfully confused. Confused about where I was, what I was doing, just about everything. The only thing I knew is that I slept in my car. I was starting to think I pulled right in to the police station where I knew it would be safe. Instead, I never thought the day would come, but this morning I cuoldn't have been happier to see the tollway. I started my car up, cranked up the defrost, and once the windows were clear, I pulled out hopped on the tollway, and with a pit-stop at Cuyahoga National Park near Cleveland, 18 hours later I was pulling in to Kettle Moraine South Unit back in Wisconsin. It was closing in on midnight, so I set my tent up quickly, climbed in, and slept in relief that things turned out just the way that they did.
I awoke around 6:00am. My windows were steamed up, which may have been a good thing. I rolled down my passenger side window and there sat a state trooper's car. I rolled down my window, yup, there's another trooper. I opened my door, stood up, looked where I was, as I was awfully confused. Confused about where I was, what I was doing, just about everything. The only thing I knew is that I slept in my car. I was starting to think I pulled right in to the police station where I knew it would be safe. Instead, I never thought the day would come, but this morning I cuoldn't have been happier to see the tollway. I started my car up, cranked up the defrost, and once the windows were clear, I pulled out hopped on the tollway, and with a pit-stop at Cuyahoga National Park near Cleveland, 18 hours later I was pulling in to Kettle Moraine South Unit back in Wisconsin. It was closing in on midnight, so I set my tent up quickly, climbed in, and slept in relief that things turned out just the way that they did.
Go To A Red Sox Game = SUCCESS
I have no idea how this game got in. The entire time at the bar I was grumbling about how far I've driven and now God was going to get in the way of my Red Sox game. The night before the game was postponed due to rain, so today they had a double header. The first game was called short due to rain, and the exteneded forecast read 100% chance of rain until 5am. Somehow, some way, it rained everywhere but Fenway park for the three hours it took to squeeze the game in and it really turned in to a nice night.
Seven hours at the Irish bar, in a city that is completely unfamiliar to me was a pretty bad idea. Miraculously, I made it to the ballpark in time for the first batter, I settled in my seat and I checked out Fenway and my surroundings. What I really wanted was to just sit back and enjoy the game, but the next thing I knew I was talking with my neighbors, and maybe 3-4 innings in to the thing this plumber in front of me starts buying me drinks. Who's going to turn down a $7.25 beer?? Not me, plus it would be insulting. As the game was winding down we were getting crazy. I started thinking the guys next to me were cheering for the BREWERS, so I joined in their cheer. Turned out they were chanting "Let's Go Bruins!" After the clarification it was decided that I could cheer for the Brewers as they cheered for the Bruins. Anyway, I thought I was fine.......until I stood up. That's when I realized I had a little too much to drink.
Seven hours at the Irish bar, in a city that is completely unfamiliar to me was a pretty bad idea. Miraculously, I made it to the ballpark in time for the first batter, I settled in my seat and I checked out Fenway and my surroundings. What I really wanted was to just sit back and enjoy the game, but the next thing I knew I was talking with my neighbors, and maybe 3-4 innings in to the thing this plumber in front of me starts buying me drinks. Who's going to turn down a $7.25 beer?? Not me, plus it would be insulting. As the game was winding down we were getting crazy. I started thinking the guys next to me were cheering for the BREWERS, so I joined in their cheer. Turned out they were chanting "Let's Go Bruins!" After the clarification it was decided that I could cheer for the Brewers as they cheered for the Bruins. Anyway, I thought I was fine.......until I stood up. That's when I realized I had a little too much to drink.
Ice Cream to Beer
From Vermont, I headed back to the East to Boston. I slept a night in my car and then fought traffic in to the city limits. I had enough time to walk along the river, take a look at the Gold Dome (even though I have wikipedia at my fingertips 24/7 I still haven't cared enough to look up what this building is, I know it's in The Departed and that's enough for me), and a quick stroll by the Symphony before it started to rain.
Chance would have it that I was just outside an Irish bar when it began to rain a little harder so I ducked in and bellied up. After talking with the bartender for a bit, I realized that I was at the most popular Northeastern University bar and these students were just finishing their finals. I thought I understood the calendar, but I couldn't figure out how they were finishing up their second semester this early. A few beers in this guy walks up to the bar. It turns out later that he was of "undetermined" sex, but I didn't think anything of it.......I was too busy concentrating on some ridiculous dreadlocks and an odoriferous funk emanating from his body, much worse than any funk I had produced in the previous 50 days. I began talking to this person, and I must have struck a sweet spot, because the stories just started pouring out of him, one more ridiculous than the last, but all of them with the same ending; someone being pulled out in a body bag. In between the conversation both bartenders were signaling to let the guy go, the smell was effecting business, but I chose to continue talking. I wanted to know how many ways this person knew of ending up in a body bag. Time passed and the unidentified human being left........the thing that was most amazing to me was that once it left, the guy next to me said "it comes in here everyday and it's never said anything more than two words "chicken wings."" Strange stuff.
After that, I became the buddy of this young entrepreneur. It turned out that the kid was running two businesses all on his own and was waiting to meet up with a girl he met the previous weekend. He exchanged a bit of his experiences with me, and I told him what I was getting myself in to, and he admitted that I am thinking things through much more carefully than he has, but look at him, and look at me.......I spent my last night sleeping in my car and I'm striking up small talk with hermaphrodites, he's waiting for a girl as he taps out work related e-mails for his own business. Enough about that, I played the role of his wingman, and things started off well, but then I got stuck on the fact that she was a vegetarian. The idea of life without bacon was the singular subject on my mind from that point on, and after hording the conversation the business owner reminded me that it was time to walk on over to Fenway Park for the baseball game.
Chance would have it that I was just outside an Irish bar when it began to rain a little harder so I ducked in and bellied up. After talking with the bartender for a bit, I realized that I was at the most popular Northeastern University bar and these students were just finishing their finals. I thought I understood the calendar, but I couldn't figure out how they were finishing up their second semester this early. A few beers in this guy walks up to the bar. It turns out later that he was of "undetermined" sex, but I didn't think anything of it.......I was too busy concentrating on some ridiculous dreadlocks and an odoriferous funk emanating from his body, much worse than any funk I had produced in the previous 50 days. I began talking to this person, and I must have struck a sweet spot, because the stories just started pouring out of him, one more ridiculous than the last, but all of them with the same ending; someone being pulled out in a body bag. In between the conversation both bartenders were signaling to let the guy go, the smell was effecting business, but I chose to continue talking. I wanted to know how many ways this person knew of ending up in a body bag. Time passed and the unidentified human being left........the thing that was most amazing to me was that once it left, the guy next to me said "it comes in here everyday and it's never said anything more than two words "chicken wings."" Strange stuff.
After that, I became the buddy of this young entrepreneur. It turned out that the kid was running two businesses all on his own and was waiting to meet up with a girl he met the previous weekend. He exchanged a bit of his experiences with me, and I told him what I was getting myself in to, and he admitted that I am thinking things through much more carefully than he has, but look at him, and look at me.......I spent my last night sleeping in my car and I'm striking up small talk with hermaphrodites, he's waiting for a girl as he taps out work related e-mails for his own business. Enough about that, I played the role of his wingman, and things started off well, but then I got stuck on the fact that she was a vegetarian. The idea of life without bacon was the singular subject on my mind from that point on, and after hording the conversation the business owner reminded me that it was time to walk on over to Fenway Park for the baseball game.
How Far Will You Drive For Free Ice Cream?
For me, it's 182 miles exactly. I knew the Ben and Jerry's factory was in Vermont, I knew that it was free ice cream day, and I knew that I was in Maine. Again, my geography is not good, but I was pretty sure that south of China, and West of Maine lies Vermont. I decided to go for it. It turned out to be a straight shot down an interstate (which means more tolls), but I was more than happy to pay them for free ice cream. I also took a tour, checked out their VW and strolled through the deceased flavors in the flavor graveyard. I can't figure out how "Sweet Potato Pie" was a flop.
Driving Around The World
I left the coastline, and continued my search for a tasty, hot breakfast. I know that I've been driving for some time now, but I didn't really grasp how far I've gone until I got to this sign. I made it to the southside of China. There were a few more trees then I expected, and millions fewer people, but I've never been too good at geography, but who am I to speculate. South China being next to China did make a whole lot of sense to me. I drove around for a bit trying to redeem my failure on the chicken leg front, but I remained without hot breakfast and without hot chicken legs.
Speaking of legs, the first restaurant I passed was on the outskirts of Augusta, but as I slowed down I learned it was a "topless" cafe. I was really looking to treat myself this morning, but I'm not so sure that was the way I was thinking of. I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but I drove past. I drove through Augusta and turned south, which took me deep in to Maine's Desert. Surprisingly enough it was raining in the desert and I couldn't check it out. I ended up in Portland for a delicious breakfast and alas my adventures in Maine have come to an end.
Speaking of legs, the first restaurant I passed was on the outskirts of Augusta, but as I slowed down I learned it was a "topless" cafe. I was really looking to treat myself this morning, but I'm not so sure that was the way I was thinking of. I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but I drove past. I drove through Augusta and turned south, which took me deep in to Maine's Desert. Surprisingly enough it was raining in the desert and I couldn't check it out. I ended up in Portland for a delicious breakfast and alas my adventures in Maine have come to an end.
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