Disorderly Content

Not sure how I got started, but the last few years I find myself taking on missions. It might have related to all the travel I was doing for work, and the way I'd race around in whatever free time I had (and sometimes I had a lot), photographing and otherwise documenting places for my website and then my blog. At some point I got fascinated with Route 66, and took quite a few trips to explore the remaining bits of the Mother Road in Arizona and California. That led to the first mission I put into words: to visit every town named in Bobby Troup's immortal song. Accomplished that a year ago in January, flying to Oklahoma City and then driving to Joplin, Missouri one day and Amarillo, Texas the next. Which of course left me missionless. But not for long.

My new goal was to visit all fifty states. I'd already been to quite a few: thirty-eight between work and all those endless car trips from New York to Charleston and Savannah to visit family. But now it was a mission, and I had a plan. Phase one got delayed a month, when my mom died the night before I was to set off for Idaho and a bunch of states in the upper middle. But I rescheduled, and I persevered, and I knocked five more states off the list. And then this month I got to four more, leaving only Maine, Vermont and Alaska yet untrod.

So now I'm making plans for New England in the fall, in hope of getting some pretty color pictures. And either before or after, I'll do something about Alaska. Which will leave me sadly missionless once again.

All of which leads me to ask the question: do you go in for missions, or do you think I'm some nutso travel version of a packet? Or both; I suppose both could be true.

There's something fascinating about ghost towns. California and the Southwest are riddled with them: places that thrived once but now are either empty or a shadow of their former selves. Bodie's an extreme example; it was once the second or third most populous city in the state, but went into a swift decline after the silver mines turned unprofitable and shut down completely after a couple of fires took out most of the place. Now it's a state park, and well worth a visit. There are also the towns that avoided what seemed inevitable, former mining towns like Bisbee, Arizona and Eureka, Nevada that prosper at tourist attractions to a greater and lesser degree respectively.

I was on tour on the South Island of New Zealand when I encountered Avoca, a town that was down to one long abandoned house. It was on the route of the Tranzalpine Railroad, and was built to serve the railroad workers. As each section of the track was completed, the town and all its buildings were moved on to the next location. Finally it was done, and the remains of the town were dismantled. All but this one last house, which I guess nobody thought was worth moving. So it serves (or served) as a flop for the occasional squatter, and a reminder of a place that used to be.

Southwest may just be my favorite airline. Which surprises me, since the kind of travel I enjoy is just the kind they don't do: international, in Business or First Class. But there's more to travel than comfortable seats and actual food.

On Tuesday, while enroute to a customer across the bay, I got a call from another customer in Seattle. A miscommunication had delayed a visit, so as soon as I got home that evening I booked a ticket for Thursday (yesterday as I type this), returning Friday night. The next day, before heading to San Francisco for yet another customer meeting, I got on Southwest's website, intending to print my boarding pass. Imagine my surprise when it showed only my return from Seattle, not my outbound flight. After a couple of minutes of panic, I realized I'd booked the wrong days: out Wednesday and returning Thursday instead of Thursday, Friday. My incorrect outbound flight had already left, which on another airline would have meant the forfeit of most if not all of the price.

But not Southwest. First I rescheduled the return to Friday. Then I booked a new outbound flight, which was exactly the same price as my original, and which I was able to pay for with the credit they'd issued for the flight I missed. So within another couple of minutes I had the correct flights, at a net increase in cost of zero.

And this is why I love Southwest: when things change, or when I screw up royally, they don't use it as an opportunity to shake me until my pockets are empty.

Now about those international flights...

Been a while since I've blogged. Not because I haven't had anything to blog about, goodness knows. Quite the opposite in fact. I've been traveling, first to New York for Thrillerfest, then to Chicago for a team building exercise with my day job coworkers (a little awkward, what with the salescritter layoff just a few days before), then to Columbus, Ohio to teach a class and help get a product installed (the class went okay, the install not so much), and finally to Monterey to enjoy the company of a couple of my Scaper buds. So it's been a busy time, and now I'm getting used to being home again.

So what's Columbus like? Surprisingly nice, even if the heat and the humidity had me wilting. The food was good, including Schmidt's Sausage Haus, yes, that very same Sausage Haus that John McCain visited as a way to neutralize Barack Obama's advantage in going to the Germany that isn't in the Midwest. I like the architecture in Columbus as well; lots of brick, which we don't see so much in California, what with earthquakes knocking them to bits. Granted, I'd probably go crazy if I had to spend too much time there, but four days went by pretty quickly.

And then there's Monterey, where we visited the aquarium, and a few wineries (I guess not all the good ones are north of the Golden Gate), and the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, and took a drive down the coast. Most relaxing, even if the mellow didn't survive first contact with that darn day job. Reality really does bite, you know?

As I type this, at gate B36 at Logan, it's four hours after my flight home was supposed to depart. The latest estimate is that we'll leave in another hour, assuming the replacement plane arrives from San Juan on schedule, unloads reasonably quickly and doesn't develop any gremlins. I feel like hell already, and I have another eight hours minimum before I can get home and crawl (quite possibly literally) into bed. There was a time when I looked forward to air travel. Today is not that time.

Update 06/25: A quick update: we left the ground another hour later, and reached San Francisco six hours and change after that. I'm functioning on two and a half hours sleep, plus whatever dozing I did enroute. I feel like hell, but at least it's a hell that's free of airports and aircraft. That was one long day...

Spring is late in Alberta. As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent last week in Calgary for the day job. Nice town, Calgary. But the weather... You see, I decided to take a day off to drive out to Banff National Park, an hour and a half west in the Canadian Rockies. Unfortunately, what started as cold but clear weather turned into pearl gray skies and a bit of snow. Not enough to make the roads treacherous, but enough to turn my color pictures rather more monochrome than I'd planned. As I looked out of my hotel room window at the snow blowing around, I wondered if I was crazy to head to the mountains. But the weather service said it would be okay, and when are they ever wrong? So I got pictures of gray rivers and white snow and off-white skies and gray-green trees, or at least that's what my camera captured. And listened to the locals complain that they were sick of winter. I can of course relate; winter in the Bay Area sucks. Having to wear a sweater. Having to carry an umbrella. Awful.

Last week I was in Calgary for work. It was my first international trip since I got my iPhone, and only my second since I started carrying a smart phone (the dreaded Nokia E62). Not wanting to get slammed with roaming charges, especially given the amount of surfing I do on my phone (not just email, but maps and weather, and browsing - lots of browsing), I forwarded my phone number to my BlackBerry and left Data Roaming turned off. And for four days I lived in a colder, less interactive world. Turns out there are a couple of interesting problems with the BlackBerry. Like the fact that it doesn't come with any ringtones at all, so I had to feel or hear the vibration when a call came in. And worse, voicemail doesn't work at all outside the US of A; when I tried retrieving voicemail, it would just hang up on me. I had the same problem with an older phone in Australia; apparently, AT&T doesn't believe the phone is really mine when I call in via one of their partners. Fortunately, there was nothing critical in the two messages I received. And even more fortunately, I'm back in the Land of the Free, where my unlimited data plan really is unlimited. Not that Canada wasn't nice and all, but it can't compete with an iPhone and a good data plan...

As much as I like to think otherwise, I am in many respects shallow. One example is my choice of travel guides. I have many volumes produced by Dorling Kindersley. Not, I hate to admit, because their guidebooks are the best, but because they're so pretty. Shiny pages with lots of pretty, pretty pictures. As a photographer, I guess I got sucked in. And usually it's not a problem, given the degree to which I depend on guidebooks. But every once in a while...

Like this weekend. I had an about-to-expire free ticket on Southwest, which I used to fly to Phoenix. But what to do when I get there?, I thought. And then, the day before, I went to my DK Guide To The Southwest, which told of the wonders of the Apache Trail, a road that winds its way through the mountains an hour or so east of Phoenix. Perfect, thinks I; that's where I'll go.

And it started out pretty well. Lots of twists and turns through hills full of saguaro cactus (cacti?) and yellow spring wildflowers. Some nice vistas, when I could find a place to park that wouldn't risk losing the car, or me. Until... about an hour in... there was a sign. With words. The kind of words to give one pause:

Pavement Ends 500 Feet

Ulp. Okay, so now what do I do? I wasn't ready to turn back, but did I really want to risk whatever lay ahead, especially in a rental car, especially in a place with no cell service and maybe not that many passing cars? I suspect a wise person would have done exactly what I didn't do. Me, I forged ahead. Slowly. Over a combination of corrugated dirt road and what must have been pavement a long, long time ago. Twenty-two miles of it. Up and down and up and down again. And, although I certainly enjoyed the views, and got some good material in my camera, I have to say that I was more than a little pleased when the asphalt reappeared at the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Which, if you will pardon the pun, I was dam glad to see.

Oh, and later I checked my guidebook to see how in my enthusiasm and my carelessness I missed the warning about the unpaved nature of most of the journey. There was a simple explanation, as there often is: they didn't see fit to mention it.

Air travel sucks, which is hardly news. Between the gauntlet we call airport security and the understaffed and unready for the slightest disruption airlines, what used to be a tedious but sometimes pleasant experience has turned into something even Dante would have had trouble describing. But, as the title says, it could always be worse. At least I've never had to fly Skybus. Read this account on Consumerist and see if you don't agree that even United doesn't get this bad.

They say New York is an adventure, but I wasn't prepared for this. I'm at the Grand Hyatt, conveniently situated on top of Grand Central Station. It was storming this morning, complete with some impressive sound effects. So I didn't think too much about the noise while I was relazing back in my room this evening. Then I noticed that there was a kind of consistent rumble. And then I realized that there was a vibration up here on the twenty-third floor. That just didn't seem right.

Getting down to the lobby, my plan was to head over to Times Square, find some dinner and then catch a play. But there was a problem: it seems all the exits from the hotel were blocked. True, we could leave by an elevated exit on Park Avenue, but a distinct lack of sidewalks and an abundance of taxis made that an unappealing option. But it did give me a fine view of a huge column of white smoke or steam coming from the building across the street. It seems a steam pipe had burst, killing one person and injuring a bunch of others.

In the meantime I had two choices: stay trapped in the hotel and hope things didn't get worse (a choice that didn't work out so well for World Trade Center workers a few years back), or keep looking for another way out and, assuming the subway wasn't available, walk to Times Square. Eventually a couple of tourists and I got a hotel employee to show us a hidden exit through the bar, which dropped us into the subway concourse. We found a way out of the station, around the building, under the yellow tape and through all the onlookers, many of whom were taking pictures of the scene with their phonecams. Me, I kept walking.

Got to the theater, had a nice meal at the Japanese restaurant across the street, enjoyed the show (Curtains!, starring David Hyde Pierce, which was good but not nearly as good as Spamalot) and then walked back to Grand Central, wondering all the way if I'd be allowed back into the hotel. Which, happily enough, I was. And where I am writing this tale. Or at least I was.

Okay, not really. Not even tragedy averted; just a major inconvenience that turned into a minor one. Let me 'splain:

I spent most of last week in Chicago, doing some customer training. We finished up early on Thursday, so I headed over to O'Hare, turned in my car, got my boarding pass and went through security and over to my gate. I had about four hours to kill, so I settled into a seat near an outlet (one of a very few), connected to the airport's not-overpriced WiFi and got caught up. And once I'd run out of work-related email and work-unrelated surfing, I pulled out my iPod and started listening to podcasts.

I kept waiting for the display at the gate to show flight information. And began to get nervous, since gate changes in Chicago are about as common as indicted politicians. So when it got to an hour and a half before the flight, I thought I'd better investigate. That's when I got my first indication that something was wrong: the departure screens didn't have my flight listed. Not delayed; not cancelled; not there at all.

An in-transit flight attendant looked up the flight and confirmed what I'd feared: it'd been cancelled, presumably due to bad weather somewhere. Why they hadn't announced it, I didn't know. But what I did know was that I was in trouble. That was the only flight to San Jose. Or it would have been, had it still existed.

Next stop was to call American's AAdvantage desk. Which found me a flight the next morning by way of Orange County. It seems with all the overbooked flights and all the cancelled flights and the stranded passengers, I was lucky to get that. And of course figuring out where to go for the next fourteen hours was my problem. The agent's only other suggestion was that I try to find an actual person to talk to, something that's damn near impossible in these days of reduced service.

But I lucked out; I walked through the terminal until I found a gate with an agent and not too long a line. She found me the last seat on a flight to San Francisco, a mere thirty miles from where my car was parked. I raced to the gate for that flight, got on ahead of the hordes (a benefit of having flown a lot of miles on American over the years, which also explained how I beat out a bunch of other stranded passengers for that seat) and settled in. We had to wait a long time to take off, but eventually got airborne. And spent the next four hours wishing I'd eaten something at O'Hare; turns out that even the overpriced and unappetizing food available on the flight had run out several rows before they got to me.

Still, could have been worse. I got to SFO only a half hour later than my original San Jose flight was supposed to arrive, hit an ATM for a large wad of cash and then took a long and very expensive taxi ride down the Peninsula to pick up my car. (Turns out they're doing construction on the highway at night, which played havoc with traffic.) I walked in the door at 11:30, a mere twenty hours after I'd gotten up that morning. And thought that it could have been a whole lot worse. Heck, for a lot of travelers that day, it was.

I like to think I'm both a reasonably savvy traveler and an accepting one. I don't demand that everything be the way it is at home; I mean, what would be the point? And I don't expect people to go out of their way for me either. My best tourist experiences are generally the ones where I get to experience real life. (Preferably somebody else's real life. Again, what would be the point otherwise?)

Anyway, I was moderately interested when I read about this new Skywalk that had just opened at Grand Canyon West. I've been to the South Rim twice now, both times for very short visits. I'd like to see the other parts of the canyon, so both the difference in views and the specifics of the Skywalk sounded like a big deal. Alas, it appears that reality is both less and more than my expectations. Read about one visitor's experience at this new tourist site, and be grateful it wasn't you who traveled all that way.

I wonder how much of the problem relates to the Native American connection, and their desire to take tourist dollars while giving back as little as possible. I've been disappointed by visits to Native lands in the past, particularly by high fees to take pictures (that being a big part of my tourist experience) and an insistance that I not do anything commercial with the pictures I take. We're talking rocks and buttes here, not people or their artifacts, understand. So all in all, I'd rather go somewhere with a little more freedom to spend my hardly earned dollars.

As for the Grand Canyon, I guess I'll stick to the South Rim. And maybe try the North Rim if I can get time off during the right part of the year.

There's a song we sing at Passover (well, we used to sing; I haven't been to a Passover seder in years) called "Dayenu". It translates to "It would have been enough", and recounts all the things God did for the Israelites in their trials in and then escape from Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments. The point of the song being, if God'd done just this much and no more, it would have been enough. But he didn't, which leads to the next verse.

I mention this because it came to mind as I thought of all my troubles during this week's business trip to that flower of the Midwest, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Going to Iowa in winter might strike you as the height of lunacy. Yeah, me too. But it's not like it was my idea.

So what went wrong, but could have been a lot worse? Well, it started when I booked my flight a few days earlier. The only seat choices on the long outbound from San Francisco to St. Louis were middle seats. So I decided not to select a seat. After all, how much worse could it get? (Foolish question. The answer: a middle seat in the rear of the plane and a connection time measured in small numbers of minutes. Do the math.) Anyway, that meant that when I got to the airport, I had to get in line to try to get a seat assignment. Along with crowds of other people, most of whom were trying to make alternate flight arrangements due to delays, missed (or soon to be missed) connections or outright cancellations. Thanks to my AAdvantage Gold status on American, I got to use the First Class line. It took just 45 minutes to get to an agent, compared to over two hours for people in the regular line. But no joy; they still couldn't assign me a seat. So off I went through security and over to the gate, where I discovered my flight was delayed.

Eventually we were boarded. And had to wait; it seems our real flight crew was late arriving from another flight. But we took off, made okay time and got to St. Louis a few minutes before my Cedar Rapids flight was scheduled to leave. But not to worry, I thought; given the choice of holding the last flight of the night or paying for a hotel for me (and, I assumed, others), American would hold the flight. Which they did. An hour later I was in Cedar Rapids. And discovered that my bag wasn't.

But it could have been worse. Fortunately, I had a change of clothes in my carryon. And I begged the American rep for a toiletry kit to replace the one in my checked bag, may the UK terrorist plotters rot in hell. So I was covered for the moment, and if it took longer than a day for my bag to be found and delivered, I could use the hotel laundry and/or buy an extra outfit or two.

I was awakened at 6:45 the next morning by my phone. Turns out my customer contact had developed a bad cold and wouldn't be available to work with me. I was informed there was no one there to replace him, which meant cooling my heels for the day. Oh, and the hotel's Internet access, which wasn't working when I arrived, still wasn't working. Which caused a panic among my cohorts at The ScapeCast, who needed me to record and upload a couple of pieces for the next episode of our podcast, but hadn't gotten the text to me before I left home. All of which meant a pretty boring and useless day. But, as I said, it could have been worse. I had a change of clothes, the hotel had power (which had been out all over town the day before I arrived and was still out for thousands of people in the area) and I had an iPod full of entertainment. And both the hotel WiFi and my errant bag arrived that day. Things were looking up.

I'll spare you the details of the work part of the trip, in part because my employer wouldn't appreciate having their business discussed in this forum. So let's jump to the day of my return flight. I woke up, got ready and then examined the bill the hotel had slid under my door. Problem. Turns out I'd prepaid the room on Orbitz, but they'd charged me anyway. So I had a nice conversation with the desk clerk, who had no record of the Orbitz prepay. Fortunately, I was able to use the hotel WiFi to show her both my reservation email and the credit card charge. Unfortunately, she didn't have the authority to make the correction. Her manager, who did, wasn't due in for another hour or two. Fortunately, I was able to print both documents to PDF files and put them on a flash drive, so she could print them as evidence. And, from the call I received later, it was sorted out.

After a quick breakfast and a fuel stop for the car, I got to Eastern Iowa Airport more than two hours early. I turned in my car and got in line for the counter just seconds before an agent put a Cancelled sign next to my flight. Fortunately, there was a flight an hour and change earlier that: a) had room; and b) was delayed to just about when mine was supposed to leave. So while I waited, I decided to tackle another credit card problem I'd noticed when I was looking for the hotel charge. It seemed my last cell phone bill was about double what it should have been, the result of three strange looking charges that date back to my trip to southeastern Arizona in January. I got on the phone with Cingular, discovered that they were three six minute calls to Malaysia, swore that I've never called Malaysia in my life, and have never made an international call from my cell, and had the charges reversed. Then I waited. And waited. And eventually we boarded. And rolled over to the runway. And waited. And waited. Finally we got clearance to head for Chicago. Where I discovered that my SFO-bound flight was about as far as you can get in the American terminal area (G12 to K18, in case you were curious). Checking another monitor along the way, I noticed what I'd missed: an hour and a half delay. So I took the time to get on the phone with American to find out why my upgrade request didn't show up on their system (no joy, although I later learned that making the request isn't enough; you have to renew the request at the gate to prove you really, really meant it - and no, I didn't get the upgrade) and then headed back to the gate to see if there was an agent to talk to. Only to discover that we'd changed gates; K18 had become H6. (Which isn't as bad as going back to G concourse.) So I went in search of some lunch, since they don't feed you on flights any more, had a really mediocre burrito (Mexican food in the Midwest? Always a bad idea) and sat down to wait for the flight.

Eventually we boarded, where I found myself next to a young mother and her eight month old offspring. Which turned out not to be a problem at all; said child was playful and happy for most of the flight, and even pretty quiet when she got cranky. So aside from being trapped in a little tin can for five hours (the wait for the runway was the usual O'Hare in bad weather experience), it wasn't awful.

And that was mostly it. I got off the plane, got my bag pretty quickly, got a shuttle to the garage that had my car and drove home. And it only took fourteen hours door to door. As I say, it could have been worse.

I'm typing from Eastern Iowa Airport, waiting, nay, hoping for a flight to Chicago and then home to the Left Coast. One benefit of Cedar Rapids (there may be others; I couldn't say) is free WiFi at the airport, which makes the waiting and the wondering a little less tedious. I even found a wall with a bunch of outlets, so I don't have to worry about battery life. But I digress.

Anyway, after leaving my hotel I went looking for a gas station. I always fill up the rental car, rather than sticking my employer with the $6 a gallon the rental agency charges to do it. Imagine my surprise when I saw that premium unleaded was ten cents a gallon cheaper than regular. At first I thought it was a mistake at that station. But the next station I went to (how can I trust a station that can't even get its prices right?) was the same deal. So I filled up and wondered what the heck was going on.

Arriving at Hertz, I asked the guy checking me in about the strange pricing. "We're in corn country," he explained. Apparently, premium is an ethanol blend in these parts. And to encourage the use of ethanol, the state doesn't tax it the way they do petroleum products. Hence the good stuff being cheaper than the cheap stuff.

Don't you feel better for knowing that?

Occasionally things work out. Ages ago I'd signed up for a lighting seminar at Keeble, the expensive camera store in Palo Alto. With all my photographic experience, I'm blissfully ignorant about lighting. Most everything I shoot is either outdoors, relies on an on-camera strobe or, more recently, was shot in my little light cube. So when I saw this seminar, I thought it'd be a nice way to dip my toes in the water.

Then things got complicated. The original seminar was cancelled when the presenter had another commitment. They rescheduled me for one a couple of months later, which was last night. And I thought I was set, until a Southern California customer meeting that had been cancelled and rescheduled several times fell on the same day. Given the time of that meeting and airline schedules, there was a small chance I could get back in time. Too small to count on, so I put myself on the later flight and hoped against hope I could get to the airport and catch the early one.

Which - surprise, surprise - I did. I got dropped off at the terminal, raced through security, went to the gate and got added to the standby list. Which, this being a full flight, seemed a waste of time, not that I had anything better to do at the airport. And I guess they had a couple of no-shows, 'cause I got on. And there was at least one empty seat, between two large and unpleasant looking people. (There's a lesson there: if you want to keep a seat free on a mostly full flight, look large and unpleasant.)

So I made it to the seminar with minutes to spare. And learned all about softboxes and kicker lights and even, I'm ashamed to admit, light meters. Even got a little hands on experience with some of the gear. Now if I only had the room to set up a studio. Just think of the fun I could have! And the gear I could buy!

No, not literally. I'm only indirectly responsible for aviacide (or whatever the proper term is), and only the ones I end up eating. I'm talking about killing metaphorical birds.

Here's the thing: the combination of work, illness and mildly icky weather has left me mostly indoors lately. So I decided that yesterday was the perfect time to head out, especially with predictions of precipitation on the (again, not literal) horizon. My destination: Lake Tahoe. I thought I'd enjoy the long drive, the chance to get some wintery photos (not much snow, but there was bound to be at least some and some time in the car to draw down the backlog of podcasts in my iPod. Heck, I was sitting on the last four episodes of The ScapeCast, and I'm in those!

So off I went, getting out the door a little after eight in the ayem. Traffic was mostly manageable, there was a little snow on the mountains around Tahoe and I enjoyed the drive. The photo taking was another matter; whether it was the light, the position of the sun or my own ineptitude, I didn't get anything stockworthy. Still, it's good practice, which they say makes perfect.

A little before 2:30 in the afternoon I decided I'd had enough. And being so close to Reno, I figured I'd head over to Boomtown and their weekend all-you-can-eat lobster buffet. I may feel guilty about killing birds (the literal, not the metaphorical), but crustaceans, not so much. I arrived around three, only to discover that the buffet didn't open for another half hour. So, thinks I, I might as well spend the wait at the slots. (Gee, d'ya think that's their plan?)

I started losing, slowly, which is what happens when you play penny slots. Switched machines a few times, generally any time I was down another five bucks. And then started to win/lose/win/lose on a game I like. Keeping an eye on my watch, I was just about to leave when said machine decided to pay off. Not a lot, but enough. For only the second time, and strangely enough, again in Reno, a penny bet made me five thousand pennies. Which was, conveniently enough, enough of a profit to pay for dinner. And the tip.

Quit while you're ahead. And when you're comfortably full. And when it's early enough to get home at a reasonable hour. Yep, that's a few birds knocked down. Oh, and my iPod's considerably emptier. A pity about the photos, though.

In my last post I mentioned my visit to Bisbee, Arizona. How and why I ended up there is a possibly interesting story, one which you're about to read.

I think I discovered Bisbee in an airline magazine, although it may have been a travel mag instead. Whichever it was, I read about this old mining town in the southeastern corner of Arizona that had been given new life by an influx of hippies and artsy people. It sounded interesting, so I kept it in the back of my mind for a year or so. And then, late last year, I started thinking about those free Southwest tickets I was accumulating. This last holiday weekend seemed like a good time to check the place out, and maybe get a few photos for my portfolio.

Bisbee is an hour and a half south-southeast of Tucson, so I flew to Tucson on Friday night, stayed near the airport and made the drive down in the morning. Tombstone is on the way, although the websites I read weren't wrong in describing the site of the OK Corral as being a lot less interesting than you might think. Even the original Boot Hill was a disappointment, what with all the grave markers being replacements. Guess the townspeople didn't realize the tourist value until it was way too late.

But Bisbee was another story entirely. The historic part of the town lies in a north-south canyon, with one street along the canyon and a bunch of smaller ones trying to head into the hills on either side. The town dates back to 1880, with the opening of an incredibly productive copper mine. And it almost ended in 1975 or so, when the last of the mining activity ended. Fortunately, those hippies, artsy people and other folks looking for a nice place to retire showed up in time to rescue Bisbee from the brink.

After driving the length of the town and then discovering the nervous-making joys of driving into (and out of) the hills on two way streets that aren't wide enough to be two way streets, I headed out on foot to explore further. I spotted a building that had the word Theatre painted on it and a banner outside announcing a show that evening. It was some sort of homegrown musical revue, so I noted the phone number and debated attending what was likely a cringeworthy way to spend an evening. Still, it was a dinner theater. And I had to eat somewhere.

In the meantime I needed entertainment. And at the south end of town I'd spotted the entrance to the Copper Queen Mine, which advertised a museum and tours. So off I went to buy my ticket, sign a release that absolved them of any responsibility if I were to, you know, die or something. And waited for the tour to begin. First of course I had to be outfitted: miner's helmet, raincoat of the type I haven't worn since elementary school, and a big belt to hold the heavy battery that would give me a little light. Although, being a "curse the darkness" kind of guy, that seemed superfluous.

And off we went, 1500 feet straight into the old copper mine on a little train that went through a tunnel just slightly wider and taller than said train and its passengers. Our guide was one of the old miners, whose talk about equipment and working conditions was fascinating, albeit a little hard to understand. Although I certainly got the word silicosis clearly enough. That's the local equivalent of the black lung disease coal miners get, better known as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis by school children who are unimpressed by antidisestablishmentarianism. But I digress.

Meanwhile, back to the dinner theater. While waiting for the tour, curiosity won out over inertia and I called the theater to see about getting into that night's performance. Which I did. A few minutes after being seated, I was asked if I'd mind sharing my table with another single. Turns out Joy is sort of a force of nature in town: owner of a B&B, past owner and restorer of two classic hotels and involved with most everything of significance in Bisbee. I learned a lot more about my surroundings than I'd ever have discovered on my own, including the fact that the theater had once been the town's Baptist church, the original theater having been turned into a real estate office. I also got an invitation to breakfast at the B&B, where the other guests and I learned about restoring hundred year old buildings, before being taken on a fascinating tour of the town's architecture, history and culture. (Oh, and the theater performance? Both it and the dinner that preceded it were very good.)

I spent the rest of the day photographing all the sites Joy had pointed out: the local cemetary, a trailer park that was full of vintage vehicles, and more colorful buildings hanging on to the hills and accessible only by long stairways than I'd have imagined in a town ten times the size.

In brief, Bisbee was well worth the journey. As was the most-of-a-day I spent in Tucson before my flight home. But that's another story for another time.

I'm suffering from a bit of the above-entitled ailment. Spent last weekend in Bisbee, Arizona, about which more shortly. I got home late Monday night, only to have to return to the airport way too early Tuesday morning to go to our Chicago office for a meeting. How early? And how late? Let's just say that there were 6.5 hours between my arrival home from one trip and my heading out the door for the next. And let me add that I don't function at all well on 4 hours of sleep.

Anyway, I'm home now, and slowly trying to catch up. Still have a couple of hundred photos to retrieve from my camera and examine for good candidates for my stock portfolio, my Flickr gallery and of course this place here. Oh, and go through the mail, and do my expenses, and pick up some groceries.

By the way, in among the traveling and the exhaustion I managed to finish reading the manuscript for my friend Barry Eisler's latest John Rain thriller. Suffice it to say that the rest of you are in for a wild ride.

I drove back from my Vegas adventure on Monday, and had to turn around immediately (okay, early Tuesday morning) to fly to Seattle for work. After worrying about driving through northern Arizona and southern Utah in almost-winter, how ironic to have weather related problems in San Jose? But it's twoo: our 6:30 AM flight was delayed almost two hours due to ice on the wings. It seems the deicing crew doesn't show up until between 6:45 and 7, after which we had to wait our turn. Just as well my other colleagues were all scheduled to arrive later, so we all got to the customer on time.

The return was rather a challenge as well, albeit for different reasons. A combination of bad weather and wholly inadequate roads had me crawling and parking all the way from Redmond back to Sea-Tac; it took two hours to go all of 25 miles. Good thing my colleague's flight was delayed a couple of hours. And mine? Well, that was already scheduled to just make the San Jose Airport curfew. Which it did. Barely.

Coulda been worse, though. Those poor Denver travelers...

I'm on another road trip, burning the last of my vacation before my employer's "use it or lose it" policy kicks in. The last leg of the trip starts tomorrow, when I arrive in Las Vegas to meet up with some of my Scaper friends for a few days of eating, drinking and maybe a wee bit of gambling. Although I've already had my flutter at the casino, thank you very much. Dropped a whole five dollars into a slot machine in Laughlin, Nevada, played twenty cents at a time and somehow managed to win a nice little bonus game. Not life changing money, but more than enough to pay for the trip.

After Laughlin I headed east to Flagstaff and then north to the little town of Page, Arizona. Page is a young city; in fact, I out-age it by a couple of years. It's home to Glen Canyon Dam, which turned a chunk of the Colorado into Lake Powell. I imagine it's a mob scene in season, but in cold weather (like now) it's nice and low key. And to show you how my good luck isn't confined to the slots, I showed up at the dam's visitor center at 8:27 in the ayem and discovered to my surprise that they had one of their four-a-day tours starting just three minutes later. Just me and the guide. Doesn't get much better than that.

This morning I drove from Page to St. George, Utah, my last stop before Vegas. It's a nice drive that goes through Zion National Park. A beautiful place in winter; not at all crowded and, as long as you watch out for ice, pretty easy driving. And tonight I finally caught up with Casino Royale, the best Bond since early Connery. Heck, maybe even better than that. Although I'd have enjoyed it more with a crowd; on a Tuesday night in a quiet place like St. George, I practically had the place to myself!

Anyway, lots of pictures. Including some wildlife: longhorn cattle, buffalo, wild deer. I even saw an honest-to-Washington bald eagle, although sadly he was long gone before I could stop the car and get out my camera. Still, quite a thrill.

Sad thing about vacations: they end. But that's still days away...

I have another road trip coming up, built around a Scaper gathering in Vegas. It's my last chance to burn my remaining vacation time, before my employer's "use it or lose it" policy kicks in. So when I was asked to schedule a meeting in Los Angeles the day before I was to be off, I took advantage of the timing and planned to drive down, have the meeting and then start the vacation trip.

So off I set to Orbitz to find hotels for an extra couple of nights. And there things might have stood, had the customer not cancelled the meeting. With nothing else calling me to L.A., I went back to cancel the hotel rooms. Pretty straightforward, or so I would have thought.

It wasn't until the next day that I looked at the two emails Orbitz sent regarding the cancellations and discovered that one of them was for the wrong hotel. I went immediately to the site, verified that they still had the reservation I wanted gone and had cancelled one I still wanted and went back in to try again. Only to discover that they had yet again cancelled the wrong hotel!

Now I was starting to get upset, especially out of concern that one more attempt would lose me my Vegas reservation. And that one was at a rate I wasn't likely to find again. So I got on the phone with Orbitz's customer service, who cancelled the right reservation. And then I went back to re-reserve the two hotels they'd unreserved on me.

Of course, now I have to wonder if they'll see the multiple reservations and the cancellations and come up with the wrong conclusion. Who says vacations are relaxing?

Next time, Travelocity. Definitely.

Doesn't happen all that often, but occasionally things just go so right. Like today, which may be why I'm telling you the story... ummm... today.

It began a couple of weeks ago, with a customer meeting tentatively scheduled for this afternoon. The meeting was in Burbank, so my salescritter decided to arrange lunch for today with another customer who's kind of in the area. And, not being a last minute kind of person, I decided a week ago to check on flights. I found a doozy: just over $100 roundtrip including taxes. So I booked it, secure in the knowledge that even if I had to cancel, I'd get credit on another flight. And the way things are going, I was sure that other flight wouldn't be long in coming.

Then things went a little bit wrong; the customer postponed the meeting. We still went ahead with our lunch with cust #2, but now I was facing several hours before my return flight. So back I went to Southwest, which wanted seventy-five bucks to make the change. That's when I took my small gamble.

Thinks I: What if I just leave the flights as they are? Chances are, I'll get back to Burbank Airport with hours before my flight. And unless they're completely booked, I can slip onto whatever the next San Jose flight is. So I'll have to pay the extra, or hang out at the airport for a few hours. Not my money, you understand, but I hate spending the firm's cash almost as much as my own.

Anyway, I'm back at the airport around 1:30. And my flight's at 6, which is way too much hanging out time for me. So I switch to the 1:55 flight, get through Security and go to the gate to pay for my change. Only to be told that, because my original flight has been delayed (I didn't ask by how much), they'll wave the change fee. So I walked onto a mostly empty plane, listened to my iPod for a while and got home four hours sooner than I'd expected.

And it didn't cost the company a dime. There's a moral here somewhere.

Today's excursion was to Sedona, home, as you will see if you look a little to the right, of some very red rocks. Also big, which, I grant, is harder to tell from the picture. But trust me, they're both red and big. And the sky is very, very blue, at least if you don't look in the direction of the Forest Service's controlled burns. Amazing how quickly that new car smell disappears when you drive through a controlled burn area. Also how well satellite radio doesn't work in those narrow canyons they like to put highways. Which wouldn't be a problem if I weren't listening to an old time radio episode and the signal didn't fade out just as the plot was being explained.

No matter. What counts is that I got a nice ride on unimproved roads in a hot pink jeep to see some rather spectacular scenery. Not this shot; this one I took from a more accessable location after the tour, although if not for the tour I wouldn't have known about it. I'm gonna hate to leave in the morning, even if the extremes of temperature (low 30s when I left Flagstaff this morning and what felt like the low 80s in Sedona a couple of hours later) are a bit, well, extreme.

When is a screwup not a screwup? When it gets you a better deal, that's when.

And so it was with me yesterday, sitting in my hotel room in Needles, California (home of Snoopy's brother, Spike) and looking for a hotel in Flagstaff for the next leg of my road trip. My company uses Orbitz for its travel, so I went there first. At least I would have, but every attempt to get more information on one of the places they recommended took me back to the "enter your travel info" page. Eventually I gave up and tried Travelocity. Which didn't just work; it offered me $50 off a two-day hotel stay courtesy of MasterCard. Which, given the price of hotels out here, is a pretty big discount! Even better, I can get the same deal on the next leg, which'll put me in Gallup, Mew Mexico, before I have to turn for home.

Much obliged, Orbitz. I couldn't have done it without you. (And possibly Firefox 2.0, which may be what's giving Orbitz heartburn.)

I heard a recent story, I think it was reported on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, about a driver in Germany who followed the directions of his navigation system right into disaster. Today I had such a moment. Well, I would have, if common sense hadn't prevailed. For once.

I was driving on Route 66 from Kingman, Arizona toward Seligman and eventually Flagstaff. My navigator wasn't pleased with this route; it kept urging me to turn back to Kingman and get back on the Interstate. Eventually it accepted that I wasn't going to obey, so it began looking for the fastest way to get me to Flagstaff. At a not-town called Hackberry it told me to turn off 66 onto Hackberry Road. So, having done the 66 route twice before, I figured why not?

A moment later I saw why not. Just before crossing the Santa Fe Railroad's tracks I saw a sign about the road not being maintained, which would have been a concern if there was even a hint of rain. It was what I saw on the other side of the tracks that... ummmm... stopped me dead in mine. It seems that the road wasn't just unmaintained; as far as I could see it was also unpaved. So once again I showed my car who's boss. I can only hope it's learned its lesson.

...but that doesn't mean we don't try. Which is what I'm doing for the next few days. Not going home exactly, especially since home isn't there any more. But back to college, for RIT's version of homecoming. It's my first time; I figure once every thirty years is just about right.

Anyway, after spending all day flying across country by way of Dallas, I arrive to discover that dinky and overtaxed brick terminal building that had served Rochester for decades is no more. Now there's a real terminal, one with jetways and all the other comforts of civilized air travel. Like free WiFi, which I may try out on my way back home. But first I had to wait for my bag, which arrived rather quickly, and get my rental car and find my way to my hotel. I had foolishly not printed the map I'd found on Orbitz, but I knew the hotel was close to the airport. Sadly, the rental agent didn't know the street I mentioned. Fortunately, the agent who gave me the keys did. And wasn't that funny: the street in question is the one that leads right out of the airport!

Needless to say, finding my way to the hotel took about three minutes. And then I had a new problem: for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to open the hatch on the Dodge Magnum they'd given me to get my bags out! I tried everything I could think of with no success. There's no trunk release inside the car. And even the owner's manual didn't help. Until I put two and two together and guessed that the hatch release was tied to the door locks. Unlock all the doors and you unlock that fifth door. Obvious, at least once you know it.

So now I'm in my room, enjoying the free WiFi (aren't those two of the most beautiful words in the traveler's vocabulary?) and wondering how long it'll take me to get to sleep, what with my body being on Left Coast time. Also wondering whether I'll know anybody when I visit campus tomorrow. Or if I want to. After all, they'll just be a reminder of all those years since my first visit up here...

After spending a few days early last week at a golf resort in Scottsdale, Arizona (which would have been a lot more fun if I had interest in any game of golf that doesn't involve windmills and pirate ships), I got to spend yesterday making a day trip to Seattle to meet with a customer. Even in the days before air travel sucked, this wouldn't have been a lot of fun. And even in those days I might have been stuck next to a fortysomething seminary student who seemed determined to win over my immortal soul, although in truth that never happened before. There's a lesson here: if my seatmate isn't both female and very attractive, the earphones go in at the earliest possible moment. Cuz having to listen to this jackass expound on the evils of Democrats, Hillary Clinton and the abomination of homosexuality ought to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Assuming of course that the Convention survives the machinations of that other jackass, the one somebody elected president.

But I digress. I arrived in Seattle to discover that Orbitz lied about my rental car. Okay, they didn't exactly lie. They said that the agency I chose was situated in the terminal, which was in fact the case. What they neglected to mention that the cars were somewhere else. So after finding their shuttle and a couple of long delays, I finally got in the car, met my colleague's plane and we headed to meet the customer.

That part of the day went very well. Then it was back to the rental agency, back on the shuttle and back to the terminal. Where I discovered that my flight home, the last flight of the night to San Jose, had been cancelled. Waiting on line at Alaska's customer service counter, I discovered that my phone had received a message, after which it locked itself up. Pulled the battery to get it working again, listened to the message and learned that my flight was merely delayed an hour. Then finally got to the front of the line to discover that that was old news; the cancellation was reality.

So I had two choices: take a flight to Oakland or stay overnight in Seattle. At my expense. With no change of clothes or toiletries. The good news was that they'd provide some kind of transport from Oakland to San Jose. So I took my new boarding pass, went through security, grabbed a sandwich from a snack bar and went over to ask the gate agent about that shuttle. Which was news to him and which, once he checked, really was his responsibility, at least to get a count of displaced persons. With that settled, I grabbed a seat, ate my sandwich and waited for my flight.

At Oakland we had to wait for the passengers with baggage to collect their stuff. Which was a problem, as a bunch of them had bags that were somewhere other than Oakland. But eventually we were delivered to a shuttle. And thence to San Jose Airport, where my car was waiting patiently. I arrived home sixteen hours after I'd left, tired, cranky and not exactly thrilled with the whole experience.

But I gotta say, it was a big improvement on the God Squad.

...and darker than... well... something really dark. I just got back from Reno, where I didn't shoot a man just to watch him die. No, this was about fun. And photography. And not gambling, at least not much gambling. This past weekend was the 25th annual Great Reno Balloon Race, which isn't so much a race as it is a chance to see all kinds of hot air balloons doing whatever it is hot air balloons do. And also getting up way too early in the morning, so we could be onsite when the festivities start at 5. In the morning.

Nothing better than standing around a frozen field in the dark, waiting for something to happen. Fortunately, something did happen pretty quickly, as commercial crews from Wells Fargo, SBC and a few others inflated their balloons for a little light show. Things stayed on the ground for this phase; it'd be another half hour before we got to the good stuff.

In phase two we got five intrepid balloonists who launched their craft into the moonlight. The whole thing is unreal, with these brightly colored vessels floating in the darkness like giant Chinese lanterns. Beautiful, if incredibly difficult to photograph. Fortunately, I'd bought a monopod to help stabilize me for the attempt. One day I must learn to use a monopod properly.

After the sun came up began the mass ascension, as one by one, and then a few at a time, all 106 balloons inflated, moved from horizontal to vertical and then took off. And to my great surprise, there was nobody to stop us from wandering among the crews. It was all so cheerful and mellow, if not exactly quiet. Those big fans they use to cold inflate the balloons are loud!

And now I'm home, and enjoying the ability to sleep in after two 3:30am alarm calls. Can't wait to do this again, maybe even in Albuquerque, home of the biggest balloon event of all. Oh, and I have a few more pictures over on Flickr, as well as some more waiting for review on Shutterstock.

Forgot to mention the latest wrinkle in airport security: Not only can't you carry any drinks on the plane, but if you buy one to consume before your flight, they'll take the cap off the bottle at the register. Makes carrying things just that little bit more awkward, but anything in the name of airline safety, right?

Right?

Fort Lauderdale's airport is kind of a good news/bad news story. The good news is that they have free WiFi, which would have been even better news if I hadn't discovered that fact just as my flight started boarding. The bad news is that it's still in Florida. Which means that the storms I encountered last night could and did make a recurrence just as we were trying to get the hell out of Dodge. That meant sitting on the tarmac for most of an hour as we waited for the weather to suck enough less that it was safe to take off. Which also meant I managed to get to Philadelphia in slightly less time than it would have taken to drive.

Okay, that's a lie. But between dropping off my rental car, dealing with potential problems getting through security, delays getting off the ground in Fort Lauderdale and on the ground in Philly, to say nothing of waiting for my bag to be delivered by dogsled and then a taxi that took me to the city center by way of Trenton (okay, another lie; besides, it's a fixed fare from the airport to town), I managed to arrive at my destination a mere nine hours after setting out. Coulda flown cross-country in that time.

But no matter. Here I am in the City of Brotherly Love, or more accurately twenty-four floors above it. And hoping the weather forecast is wrong and morning thunderstorms don't keep me from getting some pictures. More as it happens. Or doesn't.