Take this old picture, for example. This is an average shared office-like workplace from probably about 60 years ago. Look at all the people. They're all pretty visible from throughout the room, but even without partition walls between them, they each have a modicum of privacy. Look at how their tables and desks are all perpendicular to the wall, and not flush against it. Their backs are to nothing in particular. If someone comes to talk with one of them, they only need to look up. They don't need to turn around.

Compare that to the average cubicle of today. The partition separates and isolates the occupant from coworkers. The only privacy the occupant is afforded is from his/her contemporaries. If anyone approaches the cubicle, the occupant's back is to them, which means that while the occupant is working, all they do is visible for any passerby, but especially to management. The occupant knows that their boss can see whatever it is that they're doing, just by approaching the cubicle. This means that the overarching motif is fear. The design goal is for occupants to be productive not for the sake of productivity, but for fear of getting in trouble.

To further reinforce the intent behind modern office design, let's have a look at a typical managerial office.

The door to this room is off to the left, or possibly the right, but certainly in such a position that the occupant of the office can see who's there, and face them with a piece of authoritative furniture between themselves and the visitor. The theme of the manager's office is comfort and authority, as opposed to the theme of the cubicle, which is vulnerability and fear.

I've worked in many cubicles over the years, and they've all been similar enough to the one pictured above that the main points I stressed were consistent. When I worked at Sprint, I remember that I didn't like what I was doing on my computer to be visible to anyone who came close. So I moved my computer to a part of the desk that allowed me to face the entrance of my cubicle. This way, my computer screen faced only me, and I could see when people visited me.

My boss, Barbara, was very opposed to this idea, and cited this rearrangement in a write-up she composed after I'd been there a short time. She didn't like that she couldn't see what I was doing on my computer. She didn't like that she couldn't surprise me anymore. She was very accusatory in her tone. "What are you trying to hide?" she would ask. "It's very paranoid that you would do this." The simple truth at the time was that I didn't like people tapping my shoulder without me knowing they were there, but thinking back I realize that I felt like a subject of management, and not like a valued employee.

Every manager I've ever had has had an office with a desk that allowed them to face the door. In addition, they would always put their computer in a position to allow them to see who was coming at all times. Nobody ever claimed that the people in management were paranoid, or trying to hide anything. Such ideas didn't enter people's minds. Indeed I'm sure they were looking at youtube and facebook too, just like everyone else. But they had no need to worry about whether anyone could see it.

So why does a cubicle dweller not only work in fear of reprisal, owing to the default layout of their allotted work space, but the manager is above reproach? Don't even take into account things like managerial incompetence or hypocrisy, or whatever other charges you can levy against any manager you've ever had. Look past all of that and ask yourself, why don't we ever wonder what they're looking at on their computer? We certainly worry about them seeing what we're doing. Why does the term, "time theft" only seem to apply to cubicle-dwellers? Even the dwellers themselves don't generally think about what their managers are doing, if it doesn't relate directly to what they themselves are doing.

We have an office layout system now that encourages discipline with fear, and work ethic through paranoia. It seems like a problem to me.

On Friday I met a bunch of friends at a park somewhere down south, near the Plaza. The specific meetup time was "eightish," so I hopped on the bus at a little after seven, and got off at 43rd. I had plenty of time, so I decided to walk past the Kansas City Art Institute, as I had never actually seen it before in nine years of living in Kansas City. It was very small but very cool looking. The evening was like what you see in old paintings of people in gigantic clothes: women in dresses made of an acre of silk, and men in three-piece suits sporting chained monocles and top hats. In short, it was perfect outside. The vivid blue of the sky contrasted brilliantly between the full summer leaves of Rockhill and Southmoreland, and a breeze carried the scent of flowers to me from their beds to the conjectural west.

Not so much walking as floating, I wandered into the park and back a a couple minutes after eight. My feet impacted the overgrown lawn of the park as reality set back in, and I made my way the long way around the fence that had been erected around the event. In 2003, I went to Berkeley Riverfront Park with my brother and my friend Stacey for the Tour de Fat, a bike-centered beer event put on by New Belgium Brewing and well attended by all. Dogs and bikes abounded, and a great time was had by all. I watched year after year, and they never came back to do it again. The closest the event ever was to KC when it was held again was St. Louis.

On Friday New Belgium made their eventual return to KC, after over seven years away, for the "Clips of Faith," film festival. A small collection of short, usually humorous, often moving films were shown after the sun went down. Many of them made sure to carefully position New Belgium's products for everyone to see, but even so it was very fun. The sky was clear, the crickets were crackling, and the beer was delicious. I could hardly have thought of a more entertaining use of my Friday night. When the films were over though, the crowd dispersed like cockroaches when a light turns on. We went over to Fred P Ott's on the Plaza for a beer, and went home.

I woke up the next day far too early for how late I went to bed, and communicated poorly with Nick over IM or text about getting lunch at Burger to Go. It's an absolutely amazing burger place at 7th and Central in KCK that used to be a Checkers or a Rally's, or something like that. I wound up going by myself, but I regret nothing about going there. The food is so good that I have to remind myself to chew it. I met Jeff for a drink at the Peanut shortly after that. The 3rd was his birthday, and I didn't want to miss it. At around 7pm or so I rolled over to Grand Slam and picked up a six of Single Wide, clutching my bag of undetonated fireworks from perhaps 2005.

Nick and Anna had a cookout at their house, and everyone made themselves at home while we were there. At around 10pm or so, I got the itch to head home. Nick taught me better of it, and I wound up staying for an additional six hours before I left at bird-chirping time. Before that though, we played charades, some kind of drinking jenga game, and wrought various levels of destruction in blowing up the remainder of my fireworks. The last of these were blown up well after midnight. They either have some extremely patient neighbors, or nobody was home, nearby. Either way, no protest was given to our mayhem.

I slept until noon on Sunday the 4th. I would have slept more if convention had allowed. After sitting for a while weakly sipping water to counteract a hangover that had begun the previous day, I received a message from Nick, inviting me to get some food at Sharp's. I arrived unshowered to find an unshowered ensemble of Nick, Anna, and Daniel tucking into eggs benedict and biscuits and gravy. I ordered some honey mustard fried chicken sliders and drank four full glasses of water before the check came. It was a successful meal on all fronts.

We decided we wanted to keep it moving, so we dropped Daniel off at work, and Nick showed us around his childhood neighborhood, and pointed out no fewer than seven times the school where he served his K-8. As we slowly, creepily rolled around Western Hills and Santa Fe Hills, both Nick and Anna pointed at houses with 87-, 88-, and 89- addresses, and stated the names of people they knew while growing up. Locals!

In response to their familiarity with south KC, as compared to my lack thereof, I spirited them to Raytown. We followed the detour around the missing bridge for 63rd St to the Bickering Tree, a relatively trashy bar that uses hanging helmets of various type and style as over-table lamps. I sponsored a pitcher of Budweiser and we made ourselves as comfortable as we could with the bar's outspoken clientele. We moved on after our pitcher to Highway 40, or as they call it in KC, "40-highway," where we called at the Bamboo Hut. None of us had ever been there before.

We sat outside in their pretty filthy patio. We got a pitcher of Busch and Anna laughed uncontrollably as the bartender poured it all over my legs by accident. The kitchen was closed, as they were cooking out. They had a large gas grill that they were still using fluid to light. With a sharp WOOF the grill leaped to life, scorching the TV mounted right above it with 4-foot tall flames. We had no choice but to buy a plate of food. We had some bratwurst and potato chips, and some baked beans, potato salad, and pasta salad that came from large plastic tubs for $5 a plate. Anna refused to eat any of it, and I can't say I particularly blame her. The bar seemed to have a bit of a pest problem, judging by the abundance of pests.

That said, we had a great time at the Bamboo Hut in Independence, and would happily go again and recommend it to anyone. Just be ready for some grit. We made haste from there to Nick and Anna's house, where I dropped them off. I hurried home and took a 60-90 second shower, rendering myself 3-8 minutes late for a drink at the Peanut. Sunday night went on apace, and I met up again with Nick and Anna for a rooftop party in the West Bottoms. Nathan joined us as well. After the evening of watching fireworks in every direction was over, Nathan and I went over to 1st St by the railroad crossing in the East Bottoms, lit off perhaps two hundred individual pyrotechnic items.

I introduced Nathan to the "sparkler ignition technique," in which a sparkler is laid on the pavement, and a dozen or more bottle rockets are laid along it. The result is a rapid-fire succession of bottle rocket launches and explosions. We scored several direct hits on passing trains, and lauded them with cheers and fists in the air. I dropped Nathan off at his sister's place in the River Market, and went promptly to bed.

I got up the next morning, and went to El Camino Real #2 with Nathan. That was the entire extent of what I did yesterday. I sat at home, played video games, and drank lots of water.

It was a banner weekend.

Nathan and I climbed in my car and we went to the Foundry, where we met up with Nick, Anna, Jim, Jean, Justin, Jonathan, Jayne, and Karen. We talked about effects of drag on mountain bikes and the state of the claymation industry until we decided the Foundry had run its course. We went over to Harry's Bar and Tables and sat outside around the metal tables while we sweated through our clothes sitting still. Justin and a friend took off for something or other. Nathan and Karen went off to get sushi at Matsu, but wound up just getting ice cream at Murray's instead. Those of us that wished to keep things moving did so by way of One80, across the street.

Brad and Jimmy joined us there, and Jim bought me a shot of cheap bourbon that had a rolled-up slice of pepperoni in it, through which I was to suck the bourbon in a slow dribbly fashion. I drank it for some reason, and immediately regretted it. I avoided my famous impression of a human fountain only though a series of deep breaths, to the intense delight of those around me, including the bar's staff. I don't do liquor. I think I need to have that on an insurance card or something.

By about 12:30am or so, the little voice in my head spoke, and I heeded it. It's never a bad idea to do so, I find. I told Nathan the boat was sailing, and he seemed relieved to end the night as well. We stopped at Burger To Go in KCK, and we exchanged curse-filled exclamations of praise for the quality of the food. I was in bed by 1am or so.

I got up the next morning around 9, and enjoyed some alone time in my room for a while before I decided I wanted to get a new debit card. I'd noticed for months that the magnetic strip on my debit card was absolutely demagnetized, so people always had to enter the number in manually. I called the bank to have a new one sent to me. Through the maze of menus all designed to keep callers from talking to a real person, I found that my bank account had substantially less money in it than I'd thought. While I was waiting to talk to someone, I punched up the account on the bank's website and found that Harry's had charged me $15 for my tab, but had entered another charge for over $2000. I was within a pinky's reach of overdrawing my account.

I found that Harry's doesn't open until 5pm on weekends, and that my bank's customer service people don't answer phones after that time, so I have to wait until this week to sort this out. I have a mortgage payment that will overdraw my account, and may even get kicked back, so I need to get this taken care of. The people at Harry's told me that this sort of thing happens from time to time, and made me think that maybe I don't want to go there anymore. I told Karen about all this, and she very quickly and very generously told me that she would cover me that day.

You see, we made plans that week, along with my roommate, Nathan, and our friend Chrissy, to go on a bit of a road trip. We met at noon at Happy Gillis and had some lunch. Amazingly, we got right in and found a table immediately. I was expecting a long wait. The BLT was delicious, and burped well for the next hour or so.

Our first destination for the day was O'Malley's in Weston. It was promising to be a very hot day with unbroken sunshine beating 97-degree heat into our skulls, and because of our reliance on sweet, sweet air conditioning, we felt the heat immediately whenever we went outside. We opted to take the scenic route, and went through Parkville and Waldron to get up to Weston. Through verdant forests and fields we made our way north and west, following the flood-staged Missouri River as closely as we could. Every bridge we crossed looked like it might be carried away at any minute by the roiling brown waters only inches below. I'm told that fishing is at its finest when rivers are swelled like they were this weekend. If it hadn't been so unforgivably hot outside, I would have liked to try.

We passed the McCormick Distillery and rolled slowly into Weston, MO. We, or at least I hastened to the front door of the bar to escape the merciless sun. Stepping into the cave-like earthy depths of the bar did very little to combat the heat. It was still probably in the upper 70s inside. However, it was a lot better than the full heat, and we made ourselves comfortable. We watched the first 30 or 40 minutes of the USA-Ghana World Cup game, and had our first round of drinks. Nate had a bloody mary. The girls had a pair of Connaught Cokes, a mixture of Coca Cola and Bailey's that together formed an unappetizing concoction that Nate described as, "concrete and throw-up." I chanced a house-made hot pepper ale. It was not a good idea.

We wandered over to Pirtle Winery and drank their dry and extremely sweet wines. The port tasted like someone poured fun dip in my mouth. Someone was having lunch or dinner or something across the street, and had left a dog in their black car. It was now well over 95 degrees outside, and getting hotter. We remarked at the cruelty behind such an act, but thought little more of it until we went inside the winery and saw that the staff there were calling around to find the person who owned that car, to get them to kick them out of their business and desist in torturing the dog. We thanked them.

We drove over to Leavenworth. I had a wild hair to show the folks around Fort Leavenworth, so we got in line at the gatehouse. When our turn came, the guy told Karen that since her ID was expired, they'd have to run some kind of a search on her, and be douchebags if there was something on her record. So we opted not to visit the Fort, and instead headed downtown to High Noon Saloon to watch the end of the USA-Ghana game. In the end, I think Ghana just outplayed the USA team. They absolutely deserved the win, in my opinion.

We drove out of Leavenworth on US-73, and covered the 20 undulating miles to Atchison in record time. We decided we had to go to the Duck Inn, at 8th and Commercial, and we weren't sorry for it. There was no entry for the place on foursquare, so I added one. I asked the bartender what the number was, and he answered with only four digits. "Uh, what's the rest of it?" I asked. The people at the bar realized at this point that I wasn't an Atchisonian, and rattled off the area code and prefix that every business there apparently shares.

We went down to the riverfront, and stood in the muck while some guy took our picture. It was actually pretty great. From there we went to get dinner at the Riverhouse Restaurant, located right on the bank of the Missouri, overlooking the River itself and the bridges that span it. We sat outside for the view and talked about our next move. I saw signs that the others were beginning to flag, and I wasn't having it. So I just proceeded to St. Joseph in my conversation. They fell in line. We got some ice cream at a place called Snow Ball on our way out of town, and crossed back into Missouri for the 20 miles to St. Joe.

I love watching guardrails, telephone lines, highway stripes, and railroads from the back seat of a moving car. I love scanning forward and backward on them, as my vision takes on a movement of its own. In this was, the distance between Atchison and St. Joe was very short for me. St. Joe has about 70,000 residents, but I have no idea where any of them are. Downtown, while it's very interesting and architecturally intact, is a textbook ghost town. An abundance of bars occupy what look like derelict buildings, and surprise your ears with thumping music when you get close. We saw only a handful of other cars while we were there, and didn't need to look when we crossed streets.

We found a gaudy cajun place called Boudreaux's and had our last round of the day there. We sat quietly in Nate's car on the trip back home. We were tired, but we all agreed that it was an excellent day. I walked in the door of my place by about 11pm, and fell asleep almost immediately. I look forward to another trip like this.

Enter the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. They offered me a job last week that I will be starting on the 14th. I'll be slinging GNU/Linux virtual machines for them, and dealing with countless customers all over the country in person to find out how they want their data to be collected and arranged in a massive nationwide migration. It's a huge opportunity, and I can hardly afford not to take it.

I tendered my resignation on Friday, and I talked with my boss today as to the why. I've been going through the paperwork that goes into an amicable graceful separation, and I must say, it's all very exciting. I've also been listening to You're The Voice pretty consistently all morning, so that may also serve to account for my cheeriness.

With the new position comes a much greater structure of responsibility, challenge, time commitment, and scale of pay. I have a lot to live up to, and the new job will take all the ability that I can muster, but I think I'll be very successful in it.

In other news, Jenny and I broke up. I wasn't wild about the idea, and it's been tough since then(about 2 weeks ago). Life goes on, I suppose.

But really, this is a very exhilarating time for me.

The whole thing is written entirely by me, including the awful visual appearance. That's something from which I used to derive a great deal of pride. I want to feel that pride again. When I use this site as my social outlet on the web, I always have ideas for improvements to it, whether they're cosmetic, backend, or feature updates. So I suppose I need a project. I need something to pour into this site. I have some things on the burner, and some things I can't really talk about, but that will become apparent soon enough.

I'm still dating Jenny, and she's the best thing that ever happened to me, though lately we're working through the possibility of living in different places, and that's a less than encouraging thought. As you may imagine, a great deal of the relatable events in my life for the last 5-6 months have involved her, so I've been pretty light on updates because frankly, that stuff isn't anyone's business.

I'm still working in Leavenworth, and driving there every single day now, due to a directive from on high. We keep having our work cancelled by customers that aren't that interested in our product, or in devoting the time of their people to learning and using it. As such it's been pretty slow around here. For the most part, I'm driving 75 miles a day to check my email and sign my timesheet. I try to keep busy, but there's just not enough work to do.

My friend Geoff however, is up to his neck in work. Since I left the company for DST back in 2006, he ascended through the company's ranks, as was inevitable, and now he's in a position about three or four levels above me, and actually has people working under him. He's in town for a periodic gathering of the higher-ups, and for just a week, it's like old times again. We're carpooling from downtown to Leavenworth, and eating unhealthy lunch all over town.

We met up last night at the Riot Room in Westport, which has quietly become one of the best beer bars in Kansas City. They have some plans in the works right now to secure their place as being the unequivocal best. We drank some beers that were new to both of us, and talked about things past, present, and future. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the evening proceeded apace as we went to Grinders, El Pueblito, and Chefburger before we parted ways. He and Katie went to the Sprint Center to see Band of Horses and Pearl Jam, and I went home to talk for a while with Nathan and go to bed early.

Hopefully, I can keep up the press on yon website. Feel free, if you're among the 98% of the people that see this through Facebook, to click through and check the site out.

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First, almost fifty people committed to attending on facebook, and another perhaps thirty people responded, "maybe." Now, I understand that these numbers never reflect the actual numbers, but the turnout was truly disappointing by comparison. Lots of people contacted me directly, talking about how excited they were, and how much fun it was going to be. When the day of the event came, most of these people didn't show. Not even a word.

There was a misunderstanding that led one team to go to Westport for the bulk of their bars, and I suppose I'm to blame for not taking them aside and saying that Splutschnik is supposed to be a downtown-only event. But even so, I wasn't upset about it. Unfortunately, others took what they perceived to be my lead, and proceeded to berate the wayward team, to no benefit but the satisfaction of their own sense of self-righteousness. This caused these people, good friends of mine, to leave in a huff, and without a word. I didn't find out about this until today, and I feel terrible about it.

It just puts the whole thing in a bad light and the comraderie that the event is supposed to foster was just spoiled by it. It's put a bad taste in my mouth about what I had previously considered one of the best ideas I ever had. I hate the idea of canceling the next installment of Splutschnik, but that's how I'm feeling at the moment. Maybe I just need some time to think about it.

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The actual exercise didn't happen until Tuesday and Wednesday, the 26th and 27th, respectively. So we spent the abundant time beforehand setting up a bunch of computers, trying local hamburgers, and training soldiers on how to use the software that is used during the exercises we run. Everything went without any problems, and by Wednesday afternoon we were done. My partner Paul took the rental back to New Hampshire and few out the next morning, as he's not much of a fan of extended travel.

So, alone the next morning, I took a cab into Ayer, MA, to catch the 11:43am train into Boston. The driver pointed out various landmarks of the Devens that once was, and that no longer is. It appears that its transformation from Army base to ugly suburban office park was so gradual that nobody even noticed. The train was three minutes late, but I was in no hurry. I rolled into town in comfort, with an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ending right as the train pulled into Porter Square.

I surfaced at Porter Square, and started walking north along Hancock out of Cambridge, and into Somerville. I was staying with Tobias and Tessa that night at their place on the other side of the bikepath. I arrived at their doorstep at about 12:45pm, and saw Tessa striding up the street minutes later. She let me in, offered me food, and made me feel at home. I was anxious to go out and get into the area, so I declined the food and legged it to Davis Square. I found a burrito place called Annie's Taqueria, and enjoyed sitting still with hot food. All week in Devens I had never spent a great deal of time outside, and even doubted my decision to pack gloves, a scarf, and a hat. How foolish it would have been not to, because Boston was cold!

I settled into a stool at the Burren, an Irish bar I remember visiting with Carl some years ago. I began my day. By the time the day ended, there were four reunions, two restaurants, five bars, one dinner, and eleven beers. Needless to say, I woke up on Friday feeling less than amazing. I took deep breaths for hours to avoid getting sick. I breathed so heavily that I made myself dizzy, and dried out my mouth and throat. Eventually I got up and moving. I packed up my stuff, rolled away the air mattress, wrote a thank-you note to Tobias and Tessa, and made my shivering way to Kenmore Square.

I checked in at the Hotel Buckminster, right on the corner of Beacon and Brookline, overlooking the square and Fenway Park. The view from the fifth-floor room was spectacular. I napped the rest of the day and afternoon, until Jenny's flight arrived late that night. We met at South Station after the worthless "Silver Line" bus took 45 minutes to go a mile and a half. We went back to the hotel and found that all the restaurants were closed, so we asked the front desk what places delivered this late, and he said, "Domino's" without hesitation, and with a straight face. Famished, we made the call. We waited for two hours, and they never came. We cursed them and went to bed just shy of 3am.

We still got up before 9am, as we were on vacation, and had a lot we wanted to do and see. We were going to take the train downtown, but instead opted to walk, as it was sunny out, though it was still well below freezing. Jenny's eyes popper out of her head when she saw an H&M store, and we went inside. She kept apologizing, but I assured her that I was expecting H&M insanity, and I patiently wait for her to burn out, getting myself a little something in the meantime.

After that we continued our walk down Newbury Street, until we reached the Public Garden, and walked around on the ice for a while. Lots of sickeningly cute pictures were taken, and fun was had. Jenny bruised her thigh, having lost her footing several times on the non-liquid ice. We pushed on, crossing Boston Common, and officially entered downtown at Park Street. We wandered through non-straight streets until we emerged at Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. We walked from there to the waterfront, and grabbed some seafood lunch at the Chart House, located in an old building right on the harbor.

We took a water taxi to Charlestown, and had a drink or two at the Tavern-on-the-Water before we called a cab and got moving again. We met Carl and his girlfriend Jenn for dinner at Artu, a great Italian place in the North End, and followed that with chocolate-covered cannoli and tiramisu at Cafe Vittoria nearby. They walked with us back to the T, and rode with us to Kenmore, as it was on their way anyway. Jenny and I spent the rest of the evening together, and slept happily that night.

We got up earlyish, but wound up basking around until checkout time. We took the T west until we jumped off at some random stop for lunch. We adjourned at that point to grab our stuff at the hotel, and took the T over to the Institute of Contemporary Art, in South Boston. We passed our last hour there, before hastening to the airport and heading home. We had a great time and a great trip. Jenny was a little disappointed at its brevity, but it was great for me, as I was on the road for a total of ten days, and was very ready to come home.

We'll work out a trip that both of us will appreciate equally. Maybe I'll write a webapp to decide.

Work wound down yesterday by the usual time, and I put on some warm clothes. It snowed all day and most of the night, with the dizzying swirls and lamppost-illuminated multitudes of falling snow reaching fever-pitch at around 9pm. You'd have to be crazy to go out into that. So, I caught the 47 at 10th and Main at 5:45 or so, and alighted at 39th and Bell to join Nicolas and Karen at Gilhouly's for pitchers and popcorn. For over an hour we were the only ones there. We did impressions of each other to waves of raucous laughter until Anna joined us with snow in her hair. Matt appeared soon after. We had a regular night out on our hands.

After perhaps four pitchers, we groped our way across the a street to Fric & Frac for food. I got the sandwich that's named after me, as I always do, and we split some delicious nachos and fries. We're all going to die. We drank some Irish Ales(the first of the season), and agreed that 2010's batch is A-OK. Justin, of course, was there when we arrived. Matt rode the bus down to the Midtown nethers as well, and the two of us watched buses going by, always resolving to catch the next one, and be ready for it when it comes. It never happened. Instead, when Nick, Anna, and Karen were fed up with having a good time and left, Justin graciously offered to give us a ride home in his badass urban assault vehicle.

We picked up some beer for the road and drank it in the car, appreciating Missouri's lack of an open container law for passengers. Justin dropped me off at my shabby apartment, and I was asleep in minutes.

That's it!

Anyway, that was a record. It's been over two months since I wrote anything on this website. I could say I've been busy, but I really haven't. I've had work to do, and things to take care of, as I always do, but the real reason I haven't updated is because I just haven't really had anything on my mind to write about... until now.

That said, hello! How have you been? I realize it's been a while, and I'm sorry about that. I figured that perhaps people didn't want to read about every tiny minutia of my life, and about how I went to Grinders and ate a pizza. Well, from conversations I've had with people, I figured wrong. So, I will make an effort to keep you updated about every boring aspect of my life, asnd maybe even pepper it with some original prose from time to time. Lost Outlines, a short piece that was written to capture a moment in time, has received favorable feedback from the people to whom I have shown it. I assume that the positivity therein is more a direct function of people being excited that a friend made something approximating art, but any press is good press.

I wanted to let you know that I'm seeing someone. Her name is Jenny, and she's amazing. I'm not linking her profile/website or posting pictures, so please don't ask. We've been seeing each other for about two months, and official for one. We get along famously. She lives close, which is handy, as we seem to spend a great deal of time inspecting one another's residences. I've already rearranged furniture at her behest, and she's altered her home electronics configuration at mine. In short, I'm happy in a way I hadn't previously thought possible or even imagined.

That also means that I've been a bit off the radar, and for that I apologize. I will make an effort to be more available, because too often do new relationships consume one's life, and block out all the friendships and commitments of one's pre-relationship life. I don't want that to happen.

In other news, it is a new year, and new possibilities abound. I just completed my extensive employee self-evaluation, and was about to complain aloud about doing it until I realized that I began 2009 with no job at all, and that it would be in pretty poor taste to complain about busywork at my current one. We, meaning my home owners' association, hired a new management company that took over on the first of the year, and barring some sloppiness with the garbage transition, things have been going great.

Money still sucks, but that's the way it goes. I've been struggling ridiculously to pay off the last of the debt I accumulated in my six months of unemployment, and Capital One has taken to using dozens of area codes to try to trick me into answering a call. Pursuant to getting that paid off, I am reinstating my online ledger program, and making some programming updates to it to make it more effective. If you want to try it, let me know.

I think that will do for updates at the moment, but be sure to expect more, because they are coming.

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Though the site survey itself was at a mostly shut-down Army base near Leominster, MA, I was instructed to find accommodations in Worcester, a small city of roughly 170,000 about 15 miles down the road. In Massachusetts, fifteen miles will cover a lot of ground. In my seemingly short drive from Worcester to the site, I passed a half dozen decent-sized towns and three state parks. Massachusetts, though it's small and dense, is a very wild place outside the inhabited parts. Mountains, thick forests, and swamps abound. In late October it's truly a sight to behold. Though the biggest frenzy of vivid leaf colors had passed perhaps two weeks earlier, there was still an abundance of dazzling color in every direction.

People at work advised me that I should avoid flying into Boston, as there's traffic. Instead they recommended that I fly into Providence. I wasn't into this idea, but I did understand the futility of depending on Boston's Logan airport with a car, and instead chose to fly into Manchester, NH. I flew out of Boston to come home though, because I was there anyway, with my friend Karen. I had never used Manchester's airport before, and it was an absolute breeze. From gate to street was roughly three minutes, and that includes a pee. I had no trouble getting a rental, and hopped on I-93 to speed southward to my destination.

About seventy minutes later, I rolled into Worcester, a city named for the British city in the center of the region that gives my father's favorite steak sauce its name. As is the custom in Massachusetts, Worcester has a salad bar of colleges, large and small, and so of course has a significant youthful population. Undulating hills score its landscape. This combined with its considerable age of 336 years (ancient for America) make for an incongruous mishmash of streets that follow no particular pattern and heed no address numbering scheme of any kind other than buildings just incrementing addresses on a particular street. I noticed this on Massachusetts' highways as well. They most certainly do have mile markers, but the exit numbers have nothing to do with them. Anyway, this all comes together to form an excellent built environment in Worcester, and it goes without saying but I'll say anyway that it's an extremely walkable city.

I walked to Armsby Abbey on the advice of the hotel staff, and they instructed me to "have one" for them. They love beer in Massachusetts, and it shows. I went inside and found that the bar had a selection of about forty beers available on draught, including several Belgian flavors. I'm not a big enthusiast of Belgian beers, as they're on average too sweet and bready for my taste, but I do acknowledge that the commitment, both monastic and commercial, to the craft is a time-honored tradition in Belgium, and here in the States, people flap their arms for Belgian beer.

I helped myself to a local IPA and a local Porter, and got a lot of turned heads when my food came. Some kind of gouda-based concoction that featured bacon and potato salad, and that almost made me start looking around for an apartment guide, was dropped off in front of me. It was a late dinner and I was very hungry, but even so it was an explosion of flavor. I asked the bartender who was, of course, from the Midwest, like everyone else in cool coastal cities, where would be a good place to go after this. She recommended the Boynton, but admonished me that without the benefit of a car, it was "a hike." I told her I didn't mind a walk, as it was a beautiful night. She reluctantly gave me directions.

It took me fifteen minutes to walk there with a full sidewalk and respected priority crosswalks on every step of the route. I don't know what she was talking about with it being, "a hike." I walk farther than that in Kansas City all the time, and have to keep my wits about me to avoid getting flattened by motorists who don't take kindly to people walking on their roadway. Anyway, the Boynton had an outstanding draught selection, but almost everyone there was drinking bottled grey beer. The bartender dusted off the 90-minute IPA handle for me, and I watched the Phillies lose game 2 of the World Series. I was back at the hotel by 11pm, and went leisurely to sleep.

I awoke the next morning in no particular hurry, as I had no specific obligations until after 2pm. I checked out at noon, and drove up to the site just to do what database partner Paul calls, "recon," on the location and the route. With an hour to spare, I periscoped for some lunch. After a pretty sad showing (ie. nothing), I finally came across a Wendy's in Ayer, MA. I ate a 99-cent burger that isn't available in Kansas City, while I watched with quiet humor a revolving door of something you don't hear a lot about in the Midwest: New England Rednecks.

I've been to Massachusetts many times, but never before in my adult life had I visited the provinces this extensively. The natives, especially in the country, have the thickest New England accents I could have imagined. My friend Carl told me several years ago that the accent had "left Boston," and removed to the surrounding areas. I had forgotten this until it was brought home to me at that Wendy's in Ayer. After I finished eating I had perhaps twenty minutes to make the five-minute drive to the site, and I got a phone call. It was my point of contact, letting me know that the site survey wouldn't be possible for another ninety minutes. So, I had some time on my hands.

I decided to head into Leominster for three reasons. One, it has my middle name in its name; two, it was very close; and three, it's the purported birthplace and hometown of Johnny Appleseed. So I headed into town and encountered a ridiculous traffic jam just outside the downtown area. I pulled off and found a spot at a Catholic Church aptly named St. Leo's, suited up, and walked into town. Leominster's downtown is a New England-style modern-art puzzle crammed around a sunny lawn with a Gettysburg memorial reverently erected in its center. No fewer than six church steeples were visible over the orange and red treetops. I took a couple of pictures, but realized that really, there's nothing remarkable about Leominster. It was very different and interesting and exciting to me, but to the average Leominister(?) it's just another town. Even so, I wandered around downtown, peeking into shop windows and trying not to act surprised when people smiled their hellos as we'd pass on the sidewalk. It was a very agreeable town.

I got a call from Ed, my point of contact, as I was heading back to the car. He said he'd be at the site in perhaps thirty minutes. We met at what used to be the Post Shoppette (basically an army gas station), but was now just a regular gas station. I got there first, so I used the bathroom, picked up a hawaiian punch, and sat outside and read a chapter of a book I've read a hundred times already. Ed arrived and we made short work of the work for which my employer paid an extensive sum to finance.

My work obligations complete, I had nothing to do but have a good time. So I hopped on Highway-2, and zoomed into Boston for Halloween weekend. The highways directed me toward the Masspike, and soon I was $2.50 lighter, and headed toward the Prudential building to Neil Diamond in open 60mph traffic. It was a very exciting for me. For a moment I forgot about my debts, my obligations, my troubles, and just enjoyed a sublime point in time.

I dropped the car off at the airport, happy to be rid of it, and jumped on the silver line "train" to the World Trade Center stop. Karen was waiting for me there, and we shared a weird sideways hug. Karen and I are two pretty different people. She actually enjoys things that are good for you. To me they're a necessary, but entirely unpleasant aspect of life. When I travel I abandon the pursuit of making myself a healthier person, in favor of enjoying myself as fully as I can. Beer, meat, potatoes, cholesterol, sugar, refried beans, guacamole, loud music, walking at leisure- these are all things of which I usually avail myself fully when I'm traveling for fun, while Karen is more of a mind of staying the responsible healthy course she has set for herself in her daily life, and which she has come to love and enjoy.

I wish I could enjoy that sort of thing, but I just can't. So I chew my greens and wash them down with water to get the horrible unprocessed veggie taste out of my mouth, and press on. But even so, Karen and I got along just fine when we spent the weekend. I think she was being a little more accommodating than I was though, and I feel the need to apologize to her for that. I need to remember to do that the next time I see her, and to remember that she gave up her weekend for me. I'm not sure I ever fully conveyed my thanks to her for that.

Anyway, she walked me back to the hotel, and I did a five-minute unsweating of my face and armpits in the bathroom when we arrived. I had already arranged with Carl that I'd meet him for dinner and drinks that night. (It was Friday.) Karen had an opening reception to attend for the weekend's conference, and said she'd try to meet up later. I had outstanding luck with the trains, and managed to catch one as soon as I arrived at each platform. As a result, I beat Carl to the rally point by a good ten minutes. This was in the middle of Allston, so the streets were alive with beautiful young people. Carl strode up soon after, and we hugged, not having seen each other for the better part of three years.

We went to a bar called Deep Ellum, which as I recall, is the name of an artsy neighborhood just outside downtown Dallas, TX. As such, I had the theme music from Dallas stuck in my head all night, along with images of Charlene Tilton. We shared a table with a friendly couple, had dinner, drank some delicious local beers, and caught up. It was really wonderful to spend time with Carl on Friday, brief as it was. After we'd been there a little while, I got a text from Karen, proposing that we meet at the Publick House in Brookline. We heaved sighs, but Karen had never been there, and it's definitely a place that everyone needs to visit at least once.

I'm sure there were plenty of buses and cabs that would have been happy to carry us the mile and a half that lay between Deep Ellum and the Publick House, but we agreed that it was too nice of a night not to walk it. Even on foot, we still beat Karen there by at least twenty minutes. We grabbed some beers, and wedged ourselves into a window-side table among the spent glasses of the table's previous occupants. Karen appeared in the picture window about halfway into our beers, and the three of us sat and talked for perhaps an hour before other people from her conference that were walking by recognized her, and split us into conversation groups of Carl and John, and Karen and the conference people. It was actually really nice.

The conference people persuaded us to join them at a costume party about a half mile away. Carl excused himself for the evening when we arrived, and after a couple of beers and laughs, Karen and I left too. It was after 1am, so the buses and trains were not an option. We grabbed a cab, and were stunned at the short time it takes to drive from Brookline to South Boston, compared to our previous point of reference: the T. We went upstairs and were asleep in minutes. Karen reported the next day that not only was I snoring loudly, but I was also growling and speaking in complete sentences, presumably, to people with whom I dreamily interacted.

We met Tobias at a bookstore and brunch place called either Trident or The Trident, on Newbury St in the Back Bay. I had an eggs benedict and too many potatoes, while Karen and Tobias each had some kind of fruit-stuffed french toast dish. it was all extremely tasty. We left there and cruised down the sidewalk of Newbury St. We got our hands lavishly and pungently washed at a Lush store, and we browsed the inescapably expensive wares at Louis Boston, which had a Ferrari parked out front. Karen spotted a pair of glasses with wooden frames, ambitiously priced at just over five hundred dollars, not counting the cost of actually fitting her prescription lenses therein, and was tempted enough to talk about them until we were considerably past capable of purchasing them. I suggested she run the search through google.

We wandered across the Public Garden, and found ourselves in Beacon Hill. Tobias told us stories about how this was his first home in Boston, and the place from which he first began to know and appreciate his new home. He pointed out places where he loved to eat, shop, and walk, and had more stories about people that he knew and had known in various parts of the neighborhood. Beacon Hill, clearly, is important to Tobias, and it's easy to see why. It's almost unimaginably scenic, and its location is the stuff of cliche. If the housing stock wasn't protected as historically significant, it would all be towering highrises now. I knew one business in Beacon Hill: the Beacon Hill Pub; a lone cash-only dive bar in the middle of the charming opulence of Charles St, conveniently situated within 100 yards of the Charles/MGH Red Line stop. We drank beer from faux pint glasses constructed of shatterproof light plastic, and talked some more about nothing in particular.

We agreed it was time to head north, so we got on the Red Line nearby, and traversed the Longfellow Bridge with the afternoon sunlight glinting off the whitecapped Charles River as a foreground to the view of the skyline of the Back Bay to the west. Karen looked up at me, smiled, and said, "I think I like Boston."

We got off the train at Harvard Square, and were immediately shocked by the much greater numbers of people on the streets in Cambridge than there had been in Boston. But it then occurred to us that it was late afternoon on Halloween in America's most overtly collegiate town. Of course people would be out en masse. We weren't quite ready to sit down yet, so we walked around Cambridge for a while. It's very surprising how abruptly the commercial storefronts give way to quiet, tidy neighborhoods of immaculate New England-style houses, but it is so. Cambridge is a singularly lovely town. I've always enjoyed visiting.

Again on my suggestion, we went to Shay's, a basement beer and wine bar about three blocks off Harvard Square. We grabbed a table and some beers, and watched the place fill up around us. Probably half the people we saw were in costume. One woman came in, dressed as a flawless Chun Li from Street Fighter 2. Shortly afterward, six men, dressed perfectly as six-foot tall versions of Oscar the Grouch, Bert, Ernie, Grover, the Cookie Monster, and the insufferable Elmo, sat down at a nearby table. We liked this very much. Even so, after one beer, we felt the need to ramble.

We walked for a bit more in Cambridge, and wound up, on Tobias' suggestion, at a fantastic pizza place called Cambridge 1. We shared a pizza with lobster, sorrel, goat cheese, and corn on it. It was delectable. We didn't even leave any crumbs. Out the back window of the restaurant, next to which we were seated, was a centuries-old cemetery. We decided we wanted to have a look. It fronted Mass Ave, but we took an intentionally circuitous route through the neighborhood behind it for aesthetic reasons. We saw 300-year old headstones amid the falling yellow leaves and late afternoon sunshine. We left there and crossed Cambridge Common, for a bar of the same name.

Our waiter was dressed as Marty McFly, so I called him, "butthead," when I thanked him for our drinks. He laughed appreciatively, as there had been few people that had known what his costume was. Full credit must be given to Tobias though, for first spotting the costume for what it was. We had a couple of beers before we set off again, toward Tobias' home of Somerville, where we had planned with Tobias' wife Tessa, and Ted, one of the people that Karen had met at the conference. We hopped on the red line at Porter Square and rode for one stop to Davis Square, and grabbed a table at Damaskar for some excellent Indian Food.

The food, drink, and conversation were delightful. Nobody could finish their dinner, so Tobias and Tessa gratefully and graciously accepted everyone's leftovers. We said good-night to Ted, who had a party to attend, and went to Tobias and Tessa's apartment about 3/4 of a mile away. We watched some football while we talked, and Tobias and I discovered that his mother and my sister attended the same small girls' college in Terre Haute, IN. Tessa brought me close to tears as she played us a beautiful piece on their new piano, and we watched an episode of Saved by the Bell.

By this time, it was about 11:15pm, and Karen and I had an early flight the next morning, so we thanked them for their friendliness and hospitality, and retraced our steps to the Red Line stop at Davis Square. On the way, the weather went from sprinkling to drizzling to raining to pouring. We hastened to put electronics into protected pockets and bags, but everything got wet. We alighted at the T stop bedraggled and soaked, but I still rather enjoyed it. It was certainly wet, but the temperature was very pleasant, and I always enjoy walking in the rain. Also, though it did rain, neither of us made any effort to hurry. I think we had a silent understanding of our mutual appreciation for the simple novelty of finishing our weekend with falling rain.

It had been almost three years since my last visit to Boston, and though the visit was brief, I can't imagine how it could have been improved.

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I've been using gmail for about five and a half years, and Google Talk for a little over four(since it came out). I was talking to Derek this morning about nothing in particular, and it occurred to me that since, by default, all my chats are logged in my gmail account, I could probably find out how many times I've had a chat window open with a particular person. So I started searching. Unfortunately, Google has no reporting tools available to the public, that could probably have compiled in seconds all the information I mined over a period of an hour or two. So, I made do, and forged on.

The results were absolutely shocking. I know I communicate a lot over instant messaging, but I wasn't prepared for the numbers I saw. Just Derek, with whom I was chatting at that moment, accounts for 264 individual conversations, many of which go for hundreds of messages apiece. I decided to dig more deeply, and found that Derek is quite literally the tip of the iceberg. Instead of regaling you with exasperated prose about my internet addiction, I did what any good geek would do. I made a chart. Click it for the full-size image.

This image is a chart of the aggregate total of all the chats I was able to find of everyone in my chat list with more than ten total chats in my history. Sorry, Josh Olsen, but our six conversations didn't make the cut. As you can see, the distribution is pretty one-sided. Mr Jeffrey Denny handily tops out my list, and is followed by Chris Harper, Matthew Staub, and Brad Schmitt before the number dips into the triple digits, of which Nicolas Bock is the chief. In short, I have personally authored hundreds of thousands of words of informal correspondence with friends, relatives, colleagues, and a group I affectionately call, "the ladies."

Speaking thereof, I also made charts that isolated the numbers to the two commonly-accepted genders of our time: men and women. This is all tied together in greater resolution and numeric verbosity in a spreadsheet, from which these quite possibly useless charts are derived.

This all adds up to almost fourteen thousand individual conversations. However, as great is my fascination with these numbers, greater still is my enthusiasm for compiling them for you.

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For example, they don't like it when he disconnects his laptop. I take mine home every night, but Paul usually leaves his docked. This is fine, as he doesn't do any work from home. I do most of my work from home, and well outside business hours. Different strokes, and that's fine. But sometimes Paul travels for work, and needs to take his laptop with him, and DOIM gets very upset when he does this.

The most annoying restriction however, and the reason I'm writing this up on my website (and through the magic of syndication: Google Reader and Facebook Notes) is his USB port, and the fact that he can only use it for input devices, like his mouse and keyboard. USB flash drives are strictly prohibited. The hamper this places on us is that if he needs to copy something to or from one of our network-isolated simulation machines, he has very little recourse.

I am able to take care of it for him, but that's only because I refuse to connect to DOIM's restrictive network, and get my machine locked down. Instead, I tether my cell phone, and use that for my internet access. It obviously isn't as fast as a hard-wired connection, but it gets the job done. I'm writing this blog post through my phone's internet connection right now.

As it is right now, Paul has to ask someone else to move files for him, between the internet and our simulation machines. This is not an acceptable situation, in my opinion. He is not able to complete his job with the tools he's been given. I have a couple of ideas, but I'd be happy to hear yours.

My first major idea is USBnet. Basically, I would like to set up a network connection over USB between Paul's machine and the closest machine on the simulation network. It isn't likely that DOIM is technically adept enough to detect or restrict this, and it's also possible that they wouldn't even have a problem with it, especially if I talk to them first. This way, he'd be able to move files in and out of a non-production staging area on the closest simulation machine, as simply as if they were sitting on his own laptop. This is the ideal solution.

Another idea is for Paul to write to rewritable CDs. This would certainly work, but it would be extremely clumsy, and would still require an inordinate number of CDs. One positive of this though would be that the folks in supply would maybe possibly see that tons of CDs were being used because of an illogical restriction. However, supply and DOIM are not particularly associated.

Basically what I'm looking for is a creative solution for what is an unworkable situation. Any ideas?

In the intervening time, I befriended Karen, through my friend Amanda, through my friend Matthew, through my friend the internet. After some minor growing pains, Karen befriended Nicolas and Anna to an enthusiastic degree, and it was conceived about three weeks ago that the four of us should take a trip together. Without consulting me, Colorado was decided as the destination, and plans were flightily drawn up.

This is fine, because the four of us got along so well that we could have gone to Joplin and it would still have been wonderful. I'm not trying to highlight an imagined negativity about our noble neighbor-city to the south, mind you. I'm just saying that the four of us could enjoy ourselves regardless of the circumstances. And we did.

Karen volunteered her large vehicle as the one we would use for the trip, and on day one she picked up Nick and Anna at their residence at 8am or so. They packed her large vehicle to bursting, and then hastened to my house to collect me. I jammed my effects into the car as best as we could, and we made what speed we could for KCK for some mexi-breakfast at Amigo's on Steele.

We rolled into Denver at around 6pm local time, and met up with Karen's friend Courtney at her place near either Denver University or the University of Denver.(living in the Big-12 world, I have become uncertain as to the actual names of schools because of the apparent resident need to abbreviate the names of local schools in a backwards manner, as if anyone outside the area refers to them as such.) Courtney and her boyfriend Dave showed us around Denver a bit that evening. We went to a bar/restaurant called Steuben's, then to a trendy neighborhood bar called the Thin Man, on the advice of Tobias, a friend that grew up in the Denver area. Both were a lot of fun and had some very good beer.

We relocated back to Courtney's house, and made an appearance at a trashy sports-dive called Smugs, near her house. I remarked once we went inside and got settled that it could easily have been in South KC, if the Broncos material was switched out for Chiefs fanware. We closed the bar and stumbled back to Courtney's house for a light sleep. I awoke at 8am or so, processed my digested goods, and went outside for a breath. I found that Nick was already up, wandering around outside, taking pictures. He captured me in my underpants in the out of doors. Chuckles were exchanged. I walked with him to get coffee, and we sat on the back patio of the house talking idly about history, culture, literature, and boobs until the morning faded into the afternoon.

Anna and Karen soon awoke and assembled themselves, and we thanked Courtney for her hospitality and friendliness. We got breakfast, made a brief stop at REI for fishing licenses and to tie some objects to the roof of Karen's large vehicle, and we were off. As it was still effectively summer, I suggested that we forsake the Eisenhower Tunnel, and instead go over the Loveland Pass. I was driving by this time, and would do so for the rest of the time, until we made the long trip back across the plains to go home on Tuesday.

The others in the car thought that going over the pass was a great idea. I don't think they were aware of how precarious some of the hairpin turns were, and the magnitude of the drops over their edges. Put simply, the pass freaked them out, but it was with good humor that they freaked out. We stood on top of the pass, and climbed a small stair that put us right at about 12,000 feet, and took our first mountain pictures. We were also reminded that there's no such thing as summer at these elevations. We gathered our warm clothes and posed for blustery cold pictures. It was wonderful.

We descended the west slope of the Continental Divide, rolling in neutral past Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, and Keystone before reaching more or less level ground. We circled around Dillon, where we'd planned to make our first stop since Denver, for the Dillon Dam Brewery. After a couple laps we found it, and took our seats. We had a couple of beers, and as we did so two things happened that made us reconsider our plans to drive all the way to Steamboat Springs that day. One, it began raining. Hard. Two, the clock struck 4pm. We had perhaps three or maybe four hours of daylight left in which we could buy provisions, find and set up a campsite, get a fire going, cook and eat our dinner, and sit around the fire wistfully, remarking at our great luck. We paid our tab, and wound up doing all these things in Dillon.

We settled to sleep around 9pm. I awoke about an hour before dawn, drawn awake by cold, hard-grounded discomfort, and tingling excitement to have nothing better to do for six days than spend time with my friends in a grand, beautiful place. I went through my morning motions as my friends snored through a normal night's sleep. I timed things perfectly though, because when I went back to my perch by the side of Dillon Reservoir to watch the line of the mountains on the far eastern side of the lake, I was rewarded with a majestic Colorado sunrise. I watched the sun peak over the mountain-saddle across the lake in a period of about ten seconds. It was humbling and awe-inspiring. It made my own concerns, worries, and problems melt away to insignificance. It was more than my desire.

As if they'd planned to miss the sunrise, the others alighted from the tent within minutes of the sun coming up in earnest. We cooked and ate, had some bloody marys with some fantastic two-years-aged mix that Karen produced from a mason jar hidden among her effects, mixed with crappy Kansas City vodka. It was excellent. We hit the road with a rough idea of where we were going, but no specific plans.

We drove south on state highway 9, crested our second pass, the Fremont, and arrived an hour or so later in Leadville. Anna and Karen saw a thrift store and politely demanded that we stop. I made the best of it, and purchased a lively winter hat, some corduroy pants, and a pair of sunglasses. We wandered around Leadville for a bit, and got some untasty macros at the Silver Dollar Saloon, served by a waitress with a voice just like our friend Terra's. We got back on the road, and headed down US-24 to Colorado state highway 82, where we then crossed the Independence Pass, which is slightly higher than the Loveland Pass, and is too wild and high to keep open in the winter. The summit was well above the treeline, and the approach to it was stark, extremely steep, and very sudden. We wandered around the tundra for a half hour or so before getting back into the car, and enjoying by surprise one of the prettiest descents we'd ever seen.

Within an hour or so we were rolling down the gold-paved streets of Aspen. I once visited Aspen in 2004, to ski over the new year. The contrast between my memory of it covered in snow and its appearance alive and green was startling. I daresay it's even prettier in the summer than in the winter. We gave it a pass in any case, as we're not made of money, and instead drove down 82 to Basalt, where Karen assured us there was excellent fishing in the excellently named Roaring Fork and Frying Pan rivers. We got a bottle of sauvignon blanc and some fish tacos at a patio next to the Frying Pan river, and decided to go fishing for real, and find a place to stay that night.

We got off the highway in Carbondale, and drove south on state highway 135. The Roaring Fork river valley, through which 84 had come since Aspen, was achingly pretty, but the Crystal River's valley was in another league. I've never seen anything like it. It was completely at odds with the nearby Roaring Fork valley in terms of grandeur. It seems to be almost too beautiful. I took up the habit of following my dumbfounded exasperations with claims of, "that's photoshopped." I'll say it again: I've never seen anything like it. Pictures don't do it justice. The place has to be seen to be experienced, and once you've seen it, your mind won't let you believe that it's real. I could die there.

We made our way down the Crystal River valley, on the lookout for a place to camp, but were rebuked at every campground with what we expected for Labor Day weekend: "Campground Full," signs were draped across the fee areas of every campground we encountered. The sun was sinking behind the mountains, and things were starting to look a little grave when we came across a free campground about a mile south of the summit of the McClure Pass on 135. All the normal sites were taken, but since the campground was unpatrolled and unsupervised, we helped ourselves to an as-yet undeveloped campsite.

There was a bit of concrete pavement in one part, and we carried a steel firegrate over to it from a neighboring under-construction campsite. The site was completely surrounded by groves of Aspen trees, and was marvelously sited for stargazing after the sun went down. We sat talking around the fire well into the dark hours, and played cards in the tent until almost midnight. In short, it was much the way I'd imagined the camping trip would be.

I rose first the next morning, but instead of pestering the others, I brushed my teeth and sat down to read until everyone got up. As before, Nick was the next one awake, and he came to join me. We talked for perhaps forty five minutes before the ladies stirred, and quickly broke camp to head out into the world.

We went back up to Redstone, an unincorporated town just up the road that spooned the Crystal River from the east. We got breakfast under the sky at a patio next to the noisy river, and Anna presented everyone with friendship bracelets that she'd just procured at the crap store that was attached to the restaurant. We ventured south along 135 for a bit until we found what we decided would be a good place to fish. We dropped anchor and scurried to the water's undulating edge. Everyone naturally gravitated in various directions under the pretense of locating a good spot to fish, but I think it was mostly for the sake of the singular quiet and contentment that comes from such an activity. Eventually we all rejoined and shared our experiences. I managed to reel in two very small rainbow trout, and must have hooked the first one by the aorta, because it bled all over me as I worked the hook out. I doubt it survived.

We all agreed that the short time we spent fishing was a definite highlight, as the trip was concerned. We grew closer as the weekend proceeded. I found myself putting my arm around Nick, Anna, and Karen at moments when I felt especially sappy, and those moments happened more and more, the longer the trip lasted. I really couldn't pick three people with whom I'd prefer to travel. Nick and Anna really have an eye for this sort of thing, I guess.

We drove south to an unnamed road, and turned on it, because the sign said it led to Crested Butte. Karen said she'd spent some time in Crested Butte, and had lots of good things to say about it, but first we had to get there, and in the way was the Kebler Pass. At just over 10,000 feet, the Kebler Pass isn't exactly scraping the roof of the world, but it's difficult enough due to its complete lack of pavement. It's a dirt road- a well-maintained dirt road, mind you -but it's still a dirt road. Over perhaps thirty miles it traverses some of the most expansive stretches of Aspen-dominated wilderness in the state, and in the eight point four seconds I had to view and admire our surroundings, a deep impression was made on me as well.

When we arrived in Crested Butte I was a bundle of twitching nerve endings. The others were extremely grateful that I took the helm for the mountain driving, and I was happy to play at least some part in the trip's success. Nick, Anna, and Karen were bubbling with excitement when we arrived in town, in time for a public market on Elk Street, the main drag through downtown. I had a phone signal, so I called my dad and talked with him about Colorado for 30 minutes or so while the others browsed the shops.

We settled into a bar nearby and agreed with hesitation that tonight would be a good hotel night. We walked into the Forest Queen Hotel next door, and booked a cubicle with a bed in it with a private bathroom. It was more than we could have ever wanted. We took turns availing ourselves of the wondrous novelty of hot falling water, and took to the streets of Crested Butte as people reborn. We verily inhaled a delicious dinner of chicken and beef tacos and tamales at a Mexican place called Teocali, then went to get beers down the street at a place called Brick Oven Pizza, where they had Boulevard Wheat on tap.

I know that after that we went to a place called the Eldo, but from there, the evening gets fuzzy, as we all got drunk. I wound up doing laps to and from the bathroom for close calls, throughout the night. In the morning we awoke, feeling rather wretched, and set about the slow, hungover business of getting ready for the day. By the time we'd showered, dressed, packed the car up, eaten, and returned to one of the previous night's bars to retrieve Karen's forgotten wallet, my hangover was gone, though I was sleepy all day.

We did some real driving that day(monday). We took state highway 133 down to Gunnison, where we picked up US-50 and started driving east. We had to make it to within swinging distance of Colorado Springs, so as to ease our drive home the next day. We crested the Monarch Pass at about noon, having enjoyed what was by far the easiest pass of the trip. Then, when we reached US-285, we stopped for an ice cream, we decided to correct our course, and head north a bit to visit Florissant, and the Fossil Beds National Monument by the same name, nearby. This would also put us on US-24, which would take us directly into Colorado Springs the next day.

The fossil beds were a little boring, but the short hike we took around the park was very nice for me, and I thought it was pretty cool looking at gargantuan 35 million-year-old petrified tree-stumps. We saw a sign when we entered the park that reported that only 15 miles or so down the same road was the famous old mining boomtown of Cripple Creek. My family allegedly has a gold mine claim somewhere around there. I was expecting a charming mountain town with lots of goofy old west saloons and gift shops. I would even have consumed whiskey.

What we saw though, was an extremely ugly, heavily commercialized gathering of newly-founded casinos fronted with revolving doors of old people spending their pensions and smoking copiously. The downtown strip was half casinos, half parking decks. Tour buses and motorcycles dominated the streets. We got the hell out of town, though it took us three attempts to find the correct way to state highway 67, going north.

We picked up some groceries, beer, and wine that night in Divide, and settled at Mueller State Park for our last night of camping. As it was the night of Labor Day, almost everyone was gone, and we had the park almost entirely to ourselves. Indeed we had the only occupied campsite in the "Prospector" arm of the camping area. We made sandwiches, talked, and played cards until well after dark, then I pulled out Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, and read aloud to everyone. It was relaxing, fun, and comforting to be among friends for such a moment. We slept through a very pleasant rainfall that night, lulled into comfortable sleep by it all.

I awoke first and went for a hike to the end of the ridge on which we camped, hoping against hope to see a black bear shambling through the woods, or scratching its back against a lodgepole pine. Unfortunately, the biggest animal I saw was a squirrel, though we did spot a large mule deer buck as we drove out of the park later that morning. I returned to the campsite to see that everyone was up and about. We struck camp and loaded up the car one last time. For reasons I cannot understand, we breakfasted at McDonald's in Woodland Park, some miles up the road from Colorado Springs.

From there, the trip home was long, straight, flat, and boring. We busied ourselves with music, reading, and reminiscing about the trip. When we finally rolled into Kansas City, we agreed to have one last drink together before parting. We went to the Peanut on 9th for a pale ale and a BLT. I hugged Nick, Anna, and Karen profusely when they dropped me off, and actually felt a little emotional when I went inside, alone for the first time in almost a week.

I had a wonderful time on our trip, and I can't wait to do it again.

3 Comment(s)

What eluded me was the fact that previously I always had a traveling companion, Geoff. Now, Geoff has ascended to upper management while I'm starting over from where I was in 2004, and now I travel alone. Nobody else that attended the training this week, staff or students, had anywhere near as late a flight out as I have. As I write this, most of the people are already gone. My boss Glenn gave me a ride to the airport this morning, and I found that my flight is the first that Frontier has today. As such, there is nobody to receive my bags until 1pm MDT. So I have to keep myself occupied outside security, basically all day. I think I might just eat a cab ride.

One thing that mitigates the boredom very well is the fact that these are some very good people who are receiving instruction alongside me. The company and the program will see noticeable improvement with the integration of this group.

I have three more days here in Boise, before I head home, and then turn right around for another week of training to be held at my office. I look forward to getting back to normal someday.