travel
Lunacon 51 (2)
Saturday, March 15th, 2008Lunacon 51 (2)
Some thoughts on my second con (should that be “sec-con”?), jotted down at midnight, though they’ll be posted much later.
The first panel I intended to attend was “Yesterday’s Tomorrows”, a documentary on the failed vision of futurists from the 1930s through 1960s. Due to the weird layout and unpredictable spacetime anomalies that [...]
Lunacon 51 (1)
Friday, March 14th, 2008Well, here I sit in the Hilton Rye Town waiting for Lunacon to get started. If you are paying more attention to this blog than you should be, you’ll recall that I attended Lunacon 50 last year as well. This year I managed to reserve early, so I am staying at the correct [...]
Alternate History: The Speech that Wasn’t
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007In preparing my second Convocation speech, I spent most of the summer at a loss. Once I had changed apartments, I sat down in earnest. Eventually, I ended up jettisoning my original effort and producing the speech as given. But in case you wonder what could have been, below I’ll post the [...]
The Mongrel Dogs in Transit Hell: Airline Insanity
Thursday, August 16th, 2007I am currently in LAX International Airport. I’ve been here since 10:30 AM and it is currently 9:00 PM. If you knew my itinerary, you’d see that this is the time listed for boarding Continental Flight 1803, nonstop LAX to Newark/EWR. You can probably guess that I am not actually getting on [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (10): Managed Disequilibrium
Saturday, August 11th, 2007Every night, the crew of the Regal Princess find some live entertainment to put on in the grandiosely-named International Show Lounge. Sometimes it’s in-house, like a crew sing-along. Usually, it’s more like a Vegas revue: Sometimes piano, sometimes comedy, sometimes live performance, sometimes old Broadway standards. For the most part, I’ve [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (7): Maui
Saturday, August 11th, 2007Today was the final port of call in Hawai’i, at the port of Lahaina. It was another transfer-by-tender affair. The seas proved a bit rougher this time compared to Kona; I got bumped around a bit. Nothing serious but a little unnerving.
Lahaina is a cute little tourist trap. I went on [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (6): Security Silliness
Friday, August 10th, 2007I was going to write today about my visit to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials and how moving it was. I suppose I’ll get to that, though maybe not today. Right now I’m going to blog about one of the deepening madnesses of the 21st century, the traveler [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (5): Footloose on Kauai
Thursday, August 9th, 2007We made our third landfall today, on the island of Kauai. For various reasons I had not signed up for any of the escorted excursions, so the day was pretty much my own. I stayed on ship until a little after noon. For the first time this trip I was unimpressed with [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (3): Kona
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 Today we stopped at Kona, which is also on the Big Island. Although I got just as little impression of this town as I did of Hilo, I think I prefer it. It seemed smaller and more relaxed. Although, the hilly terrain would probably spell the death of me.
The Kona Highlights tour [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (2): Island Burning
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 Today I stood on the roof of Hawai’i. Tonight I watched an island burn.
The first was my scheduled tour of Mauna Kea and the observatories perched at 13,500 feet above sea level and, more importantly, above the cloud layer. According to our guide, a “Pacific inversion” ensures that clouds all form below 11,000 [...]