im really trying to decide if I start up a blog again.

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]]> http://www.geekpunk.org/blog/index.php/2007/09/24/microsoft-wpf-lab/feed/ http://www.geekpunk.org/blog/index.php/2007/08/29/crazy-crabs/ http://www.geekpunk.org/blog/index.php/2007/08/29/crazy-crabs/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:05:04 +0000 mike General http://www.geekpunk.org/blog/index.php/2007/08/29/crazy-crabs/

Crazy crabs, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

Saw this at the news stand at penn station baltimore… I love this city

got to DC a little earlier than I anticipated (I expected more traffic) so I rolled out to Adams Morgan and the pharmacy bar to see my old friend Mike D. He looked good, we chatted a bit, I left.

I decided to race on my surly. this was a good idea because it was a single speed freewheel so it would give me a chance to rest. I also tend to ride faster on a freewheel than fixed. this was a bad idea because it is geared really low for cross racing. I thought this would be a good training ride to get me used to spinning my ass off.

around 7:20, there were people mulling around dupont circle getting ready for the race. tim showed up on the hottest looking cruiser I have ever seen. A schwinn panther (I think) rad. He was there to take pics. Got the manifest and my number and then we all left at about 8pm. It’s a good thing that I was following the crowd because I would have gone a much longer way to the first checkpoint if I were just doing it solo. Everyone went the wrong way down a one way except for one guy, he made a right. I followed him because I figured he knew something the others didn’t, he was going pretty fast. In the end, it was a good move because we ended cutting some people off.

We rode up the hill next to malcolm x park and had to put some bricks in our bag. One was required, you got a time bonush for each one after. I grabbed two, which was silly because there was no way that I was going to win it or anything.

Next checkpoint was 16th and park. we had to eat a spoonful of some ridiculous hot chili pepper medley paste. It was horrible. I spent the next 10 minutes spitting every few pedal strokes. up tilden lane, which I had never done before, to the next checkpoint. I was running a 2:1 gear ratio and this was the only time that this seemed to help, I passed a few guys on the way up, which made me feel pretty good, but I knew that I probably wouldn’t keep that lead.

I could smell the next checkpoint from like 20 meters away. I bolted down connecticut chasing some red blinkies in front of me when i heard a noise. it was nothing but I realized my GPS wasn’t on my bike. I freaked out and thought I had dropped it, but in fact it was in my pocket. I never turned it on. a few seconds later, I dug it out of my pocket and was rolling again, now totally solo. I figured my best bet was to catch P and take that into georgetown. Right after the bridge, I caught up with a guy but he kept rolling straight on P, I headed towards M. M street was congested enough that I could weave between the cars pretty well. I made it to the exorcist stairs and I had to run up and down them twice. Zach was already there and had finished but was a little unsure of how to get to all the checkpoints so he waited for me. Going up the stairs wasn’t that bad but I definitely couldn’t jog down. They’re so steep and I was just tired enough that I could see myself rolling down them.

hooked up with zach and we did M to wisconsin and then hopped onto (whitehurst?). we definitely didn’t take the fastest route to hains point, but that’s OK. at the southern most tip we had to eat 10 saltines with no water. we made it to the statue but no checkpoint, then I saw a blinking light. it was the literal southern tip, NOT the statue. the saltines were a nice break. I was tired and I couldn’t eat them fast so I got to rest.

next to last checkpoint was east capitol and 11th. run a lap around a park cyclocross style. got some hilarious looks from some random guys hanging in the park and then bolted out on mass ave. I knew it would take us in the correct direction but I couldn’t remember if it would cross 13th north or south of logan circle. I used a few traffic glitches to justify a detour that would put me on a regular east west street. in the end, I ended right back up on mass ave, but the detour wasn’t that extreme.

at logan circle, I had to remove my seatpost and ride up a big ass hill to 13th and clifton. I have never ridden that far north on 13th before. it’s a big ass hill. when i got to the finish, I found out that I wasn’t dead last. roughly 15th our of 26. not too horrible. i didn’t vomit, which someone did at the top of the hill, and it looks like he swallowed the saltines whole.

the flight was on Lan, it was hands down the most comfortable plane I have ever been on. they had the fancy tv monitors in the back of each seat and everything. when we landed it was raining like crazy. monsoon crazy.

there was a short break in the rain and we hoofed it along the coast and ran into our first three moai on the way to the museum. the museum was small but really informative and we spent a lot of time there trying to get a feel for the island. on the way back the rain hit hard and we got soaked.

the next day the rain cleared and we started our quest to see the island purely on human power. we took a pretty long hike up to the orongo ceremonial village. it was cool, but all petroglyphs and no moai.
using the map, we had planned to get to orongo and then walk along the rocky coast to ahu vinapu. we realized that this impossible and started walking along a dirt road. we picked up a buddy along the way (chilean stray dogs are incredibly friendly). i had the fantastic idea of taking a shortcut through the woods. jen and our buddy followed. about ninety minutes later, we realized that I am an idiot. we almost got lost on our way back but luckily our buddy remembered the way better than we did. when we started to take the wrong fork in the trail, he took the right one, stopped and looked at us until we switched. then he told us that timmy was in a well.

we made it to ahu vinapu later that afternoon. we also discovered that seeing the island entirely on foot or on bike would not mean lots of pretty singletrack trails, but long walks along boring dirt roads. on our way back a dumptruck driver named Elias picked us up. we had a brief but funny conversation that ended like this-

-so if you´re from the usa how do you speak spanish so well?
-I lived in Chile for a while and I have a lot of Chilean friends.
-Well now you have a Rapa Nui friend too!

Realizing that we wanted to spend more time exploring and less time walking along dirt roads, we decided to rent some sort of vehicle, plans were underway to rent bikes later, but for some parts of the island, a motor would making things much easier. to rent a scooter in chile you need to have a motorcycle license. so we opted for a four wheeled atv. it was pretty fun, very practical, not that expensive. the downside is that it made me want a motorcycle. I know that I need to fight that urge though. here´s us looking like che and alberto granado

the atv allowed us to make it to all the important ahu and moai on the south coast and to rano raraku, the volcano where they made the moai. breathtaking. that day, we were never around more than five or six people but most of the time it was just us. the last ahu we visited for the day was at the beach, that was alittle more crowded. it was cold enough that we didnt get in the water but it was gorgeous. some people were swimming, but it seemed more like an act of determination than anything.

day three we just hung around town. all the bikes had been rented so chilling seemed like the best bet.

day four had us on bikes. we had some mechanical problems so I ended up going back to the rental place, picking up a new bike and changing a tire. all the rental bikes are very badly maintained because there is no one on the island that knows how to fix them. they ride them until they break and then they have to send them back to santiago, which is usually too much of a pain so they just buy new ones. we rode along the coast and found the cave with two windows. you crawl down into a tiny hole in the ground into a dark, wet, muddy cave. but then you walk about seventy five feet and there are two windows that shoot directly out from the cliff toward the ocean. pretty cool. we pressed on to ahu te peu and ahu akivi. Here´s us being nerds.
” alt=”" /> on the way home, I broke two spokes. rode back with the rear brake off to keep the rubbing down. I didn´t want to leave them with one less bike so I went into their pile of bikes that needed to be fixed, found a decent rear wheel and trued it using the spoke wrench on their multi tool and my thumb resting against the chainstay as the truing stand. I was pround of myself for my in a pinch tech abilities.
that night we caught the matatoa dance and music group. it was pretty cool.

-next day took a tour. the people on the tour were less than interested in what the guide had to say. we thought taking a tour would shed light on things we didn´t learn on our own. We got some new information, but a lot of it was stuff we already knew from the museum or the reading we had done. the weather was also craptacular. it was a semi anti climactic end to the week but the week was so amazing that you really couldn´t complain.

we spent the morning after the drive to chuquicamata exploring the town. chuqui is the largest open mouth copper mine in the world. you can´t even really grasp how big it is, imagine a mountain. now imagine that the mountain is made entirely out of the stuff that has been pulled from the ground that isn´t copper. chuqui is also a mining town, the kind that was built by the mine to provide a place to live for its workers. unfortunately the giant slag pile is unstable and encroaching on the town and the air is full of all sorts of bad things so it is now an unsuitable place for people to live. the town is about ninety percetn evacuated. Rodrigo´s parents have to move out by august. it´s a total ghost town not entirely unlike humberstone but frozen in the present time instead of the fifties.
this graffiti says ¨that the Oclay family lived there from 1968 to 2007¨.
this was inside an abandoned garage. . it was very hard to fight the urge to enter all the abandoned homes, but we didn´t.
we got a ride to calama. calama is the town where everyone from chuqui is moving. it is also the place most people stop at in transit to go to san pedro although now it is possible to get buses direct to san pedro.
calama has changed a lot, for the better. it really didn´t have that much charm when I was there the first time and it really doesn´t have any now either, but now the lack of small town charm comes with sprawl and a mall. Considering that Calama is in the middle of the desert, this is not a horrible thing. caught the bus for san pedro and walked around. san pedro has also changed, i´m inclined to say for the worse, but I can´t feel justified in saying that because hopefully the increased tourism is making things better economically for the people who live there (pop roughly 4000). in 1999, san pedro only had electricity for five hours each day. now there are two french restaurants there. but it´s still a tiny town of five intersecting dirt roads. now, one of those roads is full of germans wandering around with backpacks holding lonely planet guidebooks. It was like that before, but not to the same degree.

things we did when we were there-
rented bikes and rode to pukara de quitor. these are ruins of an atacameño village and defensive stronghold.

the atacameños were subjugated by the inka and when the spaniards came, they fought against them fiercely. the ride was nice but we discovered that the altitude made what should have been a casual ride a little tricky. we were riding at 2400 meters. there were some fairly easy stream crossings and one that was too serious for us to pull off without risk of getting soaked.

-visited valle de la luna to watch the sunset. people rave about this. it´s ok. valle de la luna is awesome. but the sunset isn´t the most amazing or anything like that. it´s called valle de la luna because the wind erosion and evaporation has left rock formations not entirely unlike the ones on the moon. Nasa tested the moonbuggy or moon robot or moonpie here or something. there is a lot of salt in the rocks so it is easily affected by the atacama winter where it rains four centimeters.

-watched the sunset over laguna chaxa. the third larges salt flat in the world and nesting place of a lot of flamingos. salt flat is a misnomer because it´s not flat. same deal with erosion and cool shapes ona smaller level. this was a lifechanging sunset. like the most beautiful one you´ll ever see guaranteed. it was hard to decide which direction to look because the landscape was gorgeous in every direction. i took a million photos. here are some.

-visited quebrada de jerez. it´s a legit oasis. actually all the towns are in oases otherwise they couldn´t sustain life, the Loa river runs through the desert and makes these places able to sustain life. river is a term to be interpreted loosely, at times it´s 5 feet wide and three inches deep. but quebrada de jerez is different. a mountain spring runs through a valley and it´s full of lush vegetation. you walk down through a canyon full of ruins and petroglyphs and then the air feels ten degrees cooler and comfortable. Jen compared to walking by one of the casinos in vegas that has lots of waterfalls.

this is jen and i inside a cave that was used as a storage space for food.

next to the quebrada de jerez is the toconao. this is a llama engraved on the outside of the church.

-on our last day there, jen and i rented bikes and rode to the cuevas de chucacao. it´s largely avoided by the tour companies and that was nice because we got there and were the only ones there. the caves are in the valle de la luna. this is where I was when i decided to go buy jen´s engagement ring (which I bought in San Pedro in 1999) so it was nice to take her there. the salt makes the rocks really unstable. if you are totally quiet, you can hear the rocks all through the caves cracking. it´s a little unsettling but cool.

we arrived in iquique the next day and Carol had prepared a gigantic almuerzo. it was great to see her again, but it was weird because eight years ago she was in college and living at home and now she´s married and making these fantastic lunches. Her husband is a great guy and they are really cute together. we napped a bit after eating and took off strolling through iquique. Iquique is full of really old colonial wooden buildings. things have changed a bit since I was there last. They built up the beach a bit to make it more tourist friendly and they closed the main colonial street to car traffic and put a lot of salt sculptures up.
this is the view from Carol and Rodrigo´s apt.

the next day we woke up early and left for La Tirana. It´s a town of about eight hundred people, but once a year, they have a huge religious festival and roughly two hundred thousand people pass through over a course of about two weeks.

we met up with a bunch of their friends and started the drive in the desert to La Tirana. We stopped first at Humberstone. Humberstone was a Saltpeter mining town. it was built up around the industry and then closed in the forties or fifties. Many things there are falling apart, but for the most part it is pretty well preserved.
we saw businesses, a school, a movie theatre, a pool, a butchershop and a lot more. From there we rolled to La Tirana. I cannot stress how crowded this place was. La Tirana is named after an Inka Princess that killed a number of Spaniards in a rebellion. This festival celebrates la virgen del Carmen and differnent groups organize these big marching band type set ups where people play music and dance. A fair number of them dress up like devils who (I believe) are so moved by the experience that even they are forced to dance and celebrate. You would think that the different groups would organize into one parade or something like that. but they don´t. they are all over the place and sometimes they would run into each other.

for lunch, we stopped at a bizarre resort in the middle of the desert with a restaurant, cabanas and a pool. we made it just in time to watch Chile beat Nigeria four to zero in overtime for the sub twenty division of the americas cup. on to Pica. a nice desert oasis, literally. The ground is rich with water. it hardly ever rains but there is so much water in the ground that lemons, oranges and all kinds of delicious fruits grow there. we stopped for some juice and left right after the entire town suffered a blackout.

we drove home through pintados to avoid the traffic from La Tirana. Pintados is the home of a gigantic petroglyph. unfortunately, you can´t see these things at night. we pulled over to the side of the “road”, turned off all the lights and looked up at the stars. I have never seen so many stars in my life. Here´s a picture of jen and I. Tommy took it. He´s six. I say “road” because it was dirt, it had giant holes in it, and giant sandbanks on both sides. we stopped once to pull a car our of the sand using the handy dandy jeep winch. they drifted off the side of the road driving about mph and got stuck. Rodrigo and friends (all jeep owners and experts) saved the day and pulled her out. the next day we got some chinese food and hopped in the car with Rodrigo´s parents and headed toward Chuquicamata. I could continue, but that would make an already long post even longer. more later i guess.

before we left, we looked into tickets and they were a lot. They´re still a lot if you buy them here but significantly cheaper. we have to make some weird adjustments to our travel plans to pull it off, but it seems worth it. we´re still trying to figure some things out. Here´s what we got so far.

leave tomorrow on a 26 hour bus for iquique. then go to the festival de la tirana. google it. it looks crazy. spend some time with Carolina and her husband (Fernando´s sister, another old friend). overnight bus to calama / a couple days in San Pedro de Atacama. total desert. 5 hours of electricity per day. my favorite place in the world.

return on a plane.

then hop on a plane to easter island on july 24. look at moai, ride mountain bikes, chill on the beach (78 degrees, water is comparable, not the greatest but much warmer than what we got going on here). return on the 30th. and then spend the remaining time split between santiago, vina del mar, and valparaiso.

we´re going to bag a visit to la serena which was supposed to be on the way back from calama but really that´s a small price to pay.

if you are too lazy to check the flickr page. here are some pics from buenos aires and a few from here.

cementerio recoleta

madonna´s grave. well not madonna but the lady she played in that movie Evita.

in a japanese garden in buenos aires

in front of the casa rosada -president´s house (still buenos aires)

La Boca

last one from argentina (until I upload everything at home). an orquestra de tango. they were really good. I bought a cd from them. it´s awesome.

the view from Fernando and Sergio´s fancy apt. this is taken from the window of the guest room.

the hilton santiago…just kidding. it´s their apt!

ipodomatic, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

Ipod vending at oakland air port… What no iphone in a3.