California: Death Valley and the wiggly road

After the bright lights of Las Vegas what do you do? San Fransisco of course. There are three routes, the normal route, the one via death valley and the one through death valley and the 'short cut' after that. We took the third option, as it had a nice looking wiggly road, and here is the way google tells you to go. This is the first time we got lost.

Actually we were not lost there, this was taken just after the superman pants picture. The drive was lovely through the deserts and we got to Death Valley safe and sound. Loz even got asked to settle a argument on how the 'British' say vi-ta-mins (vit-a-mins), by a gas station clerk. I was the one sweaty my ass off outside pumping the bloody gas, anyone would think he was on holiday....

We definitely visited at the right time of year. There was even greenery in places.

It is such a stunning landscape

The elevation extremes are crazy. Within hours we were 6000 ft above sea level.


Quite scary that it goes up to 55C

The second lowest point in the western hemisphere.

A little more like a desert now.

Furnace creek

I imagine in the summer not the coolest place on Earth but in march, crows and camper vans co-exist quite peacefully

My attempt at an Ansel Adams type photo......

This is actually part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I think the mountain shown here is about 12,000 ft, crazy.

This was taken near the start of the wiggly road as dusk. We are sure it was beautiful, it was a lot of fun going up and down the hills in the mustang, that made up for it.

We hit 6000 ft above sea level and back down to 200 at Fresno. Me being the geek I am opened the bottle at the top. The fiver makes it's first cheeky experience. This was a grueling 12 hour day. I racked up about 300 miles and Loz about 150, he drove a lot longer than I did.

This was an absolute awesome experience. California has some fantastic mountains and deserts, that isn't even the half of it. You could spend weeks just exploring them. I really do recommend it. Next stop San Francisco.

Las Vegas: How I beat Vegas

After the red rock canyon we decided it was time to get back to Vegas and have some fun. It was an interesting drive back into Vegas from the north. We got to see where all the 'real' people lived. It was just like any other city in the US with its strip malls and normal housing. We even drove down the strip. The north part is so seedy and dirty, but what can you expect really. A bit of advice if you do drive down the strip, don't go in the mirage valet area as it will take you about 10 minutes to get out of. It's a bloody maze. Well here are some sights of Vegas. You have the Eiffel tower.

The statue of Liberty


The Bellagio
Hooker flyers....

So here is how I beat Las Vegas. Loz went for a 'rest'. While waiting for him as I was in Vegas I decided to put a dollar in the Kenny Rodgers 'the gambler' 5c slot machine. With a surprising stroke of luck I got the bonus feature and I just kept on winning, as you can see below. The moral of the story, get your friend to drink lots so they keep on going to the bathroom and you win in Vegas.

After that we just had to gamble... this is whats left of our $40 on roulette.

All in all I came up about $30 from Vegas. Which is not bad as I did spend quite a bit of time gambling. Here is another arty shot of Vegas.

Las Vegas: Outside of Vegas, the red rock canyon

After the Hoover dam, we decided a jaunt to the red rock canyon on the outskirts of Vegas was the order of the day. I found this lovely sign while trying to find our way there (if you see if you are going the wrong way).

What we did find were the power lines leading from the dam to Boulder city.

I have to add I was driving, and I did get us there. It was worth it.

I even got to practice my GCSE photography. Get me.

There is a lovely little loop you can drive round. We even saw some fluffy bunnies on the way round.

Another one for the GCSE scrapbook

Here are some Joshua Trees with the characteristic layers rocks in the background. The red is due to iron.

You can just about see Vegas in background. We shall get to that next.

Las Vegas: Hoover Dam

Instead of wasting our day in Vegas gambling we decided to go on a little trip to one of the greatest feats of modern engineering, the Hoover dam. It was pretty fantastic, even though i spent half my time terrified due to the bloody big drop.

Here is a view of the artificial lake, Lake Mead, that was formed when built the dam. This was taken from Boulder City, NV. Which is the only place in Nevada that you can't gamble.

Here is the beast. Obviously not taken by me as I was too scared.

Another view of Lake Mead. The white line is the salt deposit from the highest flood. It didnt go over the dam itself but I bet it was bloody scary.

I actually managed to do the power plant tour. This involved descending about 500 ft in 70 seconds in a lift. It was surprisingly smooth. They are absolutely massive (ca. 300 tonnes)

Here is the outside of the power station. Again not taken by me.


I love these water inlet towers. A really classic art deco design and they do look so cool close up.

Here is a new highway bridge they are building. It looks totally insane, but I bet you are gonna get a fantastic view. You can actually drive across the dam at the moment, which wasn't that scary.

Here is the dam from the Arizona side. You can see the crazy power lines. Also how they actually made a good job of the visitors center. It was refreshing not to see people selling tat.

California: The Road to Vegas

It has been a while since I have updated but have I got some updates for y'all now. For the past two weeks I have been on a road trip round California including Las Vegas. I went with Lawrence (Loz) from school. Loz had never been to the states and I thought it would be a good idea for us to road trip round California. We had a bloody good time. Here are the pics. First off I know y'all wanted superman pants, well here they are!

That picture was actually taken later in the trip but I couldn't resist putting it in. Below is the car we got. I thought it was a bargain @ $350 for 10 days.

This was the beast we got. A 4.0 litre V6 Ford mustang. We knew we were gonna be spending on the gas but it was so cool to drive. The engine sounded great and we were doing a road trip in the states. We actually got almost 30 mpg that first day. It took us about 65 miles to get out of civilization. LA is massive. The total journey was about 300 miles (give or take a few errors, I was kinda navigating at first), here is on a map.

This is actually the point where I took over driving for the first time. Loz managed 200 miles, fulled on by great American fayre; a breakfast of pancakes and a Barstow dinner lunch. I was pretty nervous as the mustang was a beast and I hadn't really driven much. After a few minutes of panic it all came back and thanks to the automatic transmission and cruise control we were eating up the miles with ease. It is great just driving a long listening to classic songs on the radio.

I took this photo because years ago I saw a series of photos by an American photographer with the Union 76 gas stations as the subject. Alas the iconic ball is no longer there but it is cool that something so mundane can be beautiful.

After a nerve wracking journey through Vegas in the rush hour we finally got to the hotel. it was a pretty cool trip to have on our first day. From the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, through the fantastic mountains and deserts, to the neon of Vegas. It's easy to forget that Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere, you can see in the background of the picture the mountains that most people just forget about as all they think about is the money.

Here is one of the lions that live in the MGM grand in Vegas. It is just that kinda place.


It is so bad I do love it.

The first night we were pretty tired, but we managed to gamble a bit, I was even up $10. We just wandered round looking at the sights and even got some all-you-can-eat ribs for dinner. Ah Las Vegas the place of excess.

Check back for more adventures tomorrow!

NYC....well airports!

As I mentioned in my last post I was planning a trip to NYC to meet up with my sister for her birthday and see Shannon. After a rough few weeks this was going to be fantastic. I had booked the flight so I had a few hours to get myself sorted before I met my sister. I had looked at the weather and knew it was going to be snowing in NYC so I had packed warm and even a jumper in hand luggage. Not just a pretty face, eh? I called Shannon from the airport and she said there had been snow but it had stopped and some flights had been canceled. I was looking at the board and a few had been but not mine so I was in luck!

About 20 minutes before the flight they were asking for 9 people to consider getting bumped to another flight. All the passengers looked round as if to say 'not me buddy'. 10 minutes before the flight was set to leave they announced it was canceled. Bugger. So I jumped in the queue to get another flight. I was two from the front, which I thought was quiet impressive and cat like of me. They said they had nothing for today, tomorrow was the best they could do but I could try getting a flight to DC and getting a train.

I really wanted to see everyone in NYC and I would only have a day that way. Also I had tickets for the NY Knicks for that evening. So I though I might as well go for it instead of just going home. So I got booked on a flight to DC. The waiting started. I was quite looking forward to a nice train ride.

I later learned that over 1100 flights were canceled that day. When I got into DC it was pretty easy getting to train station. Oh the joys of a public transport system. Unfortunately lots of other also found it easy to get there too. Upon my arrival there an announcement that no trains had spaces going north till Saturday. Bugger.

After a few phone calls I admitted defeat and made my way back to the airport. I could have tried the greyhound/Chinatown buses but I feared the same would happen and by then I would probably not got into NYC till late Friday early Saturday anyway. Also I have been to the area of town in DC where you get the buses from. It is bloody scary in the day.

I managed to get on a flight home to Durham, and back only 13 hours after I left. While it was a pretty miserable day it did get me away from it all and gave me time to chill out and get some much needed thinking done. I am happier than I was on Thursday. I even got a John Grisham book who I have never read before and am enjoying it.

When I got back I didn't do the sensible thing and go to bed. Nahh dancing in Chapel Thrill with Nathan in Mina was the order of the day. I even got my revenge by giving them shots of Ouzo. He He. Looking for that link I found this page. It's pretty geeky and involves small angle neutron scattering and papers from Langmuir (which I have been published in no less) about the ouzo effect. The aniseed separates when you add water causing it to go milky.

Anyway the moral of the story. Traveling in the US can suck but at least it wasn't the wrong kind of snow.

Plans

A quick update. I am off to NYC tomorrow for the weekend. Where I will get to see my wonderful sister for her birthday and to hangout with the lovely Shannon in Brooklyn. I have been stressed with work these last few weeks so I am really looking forward to it. Hopefully I will get some cool shots for the blog too.

Also a week later I fly out for a jaunt in California, with my old mate from school Laurence 'chief' Wall. So expect real blog updates in the next few weeks.

I will try and get the NYC stuff updated ASAP but you know what I'm like.

Catch y'all later

Bob

Chinese New Year: Not Lost in Translation

Being in the most international lab on our floor does have a lot of perks. One of them is you get to have lots of celebrations. Our latest lab outing was to celebrate the Chinese new year at Tao's house. Tao is my fellow postdoc in our lab and was very kind to prepare a feast for us on the Chinese new year, for the year of the Rat.

We had some great traditional Chinese food, obviously washed down with Coca-cola. Damn westerners.

and a good laugh playing table tennis after. Not shown here is Tao kicking my ass at table tennis.

All in all it was a great evening and it reminded me why science is a nice field to work in, because it truly is a international field. Anyway to the second point of my post; not lost in translation. As part of the celebrations, Tao, his wife and those originally from China tried to explain what was going on to those not from China. Firstly the food was all explained, although I was slightly disappointed that the promised goat actually turned out to be lamb (do like eating new animals). After this the bread was passed round. One bread roll contained a red bean, the person who found this would have to tell a love story.

As the bean wasn't found the first time round we started to talk about new year in our different countries. Andres playing the wag asked what I did. Obviously not wanting to regale people with my ASBOesq antics I did eventually get round to Big Ben. Tao, then told is the story of why there is no year of the cat. We then played a little game of guessing what brings or chases away good and bad luck. Not good news if you bought shoes in the last few days. While Chinese characters baffle me, one of the things cool things is that they all came from pictures originally. Here are the symbols for the animals for each year, you can sort of see em, well kinda.

Anyway I digress. Back to the bread. We were on the second round and still nobody had got the bean. It turns out Tao had forgot which one it was in and not cooked it. So we all made Tao tell the story of how he met his wife. Well actually Tao and his wife had to tell it. The story goes. Tao and his wife both helped the same person out on the same day but in different ways. So the person took them to dinner and after they played poker. Tao lost and had to make breakfast for his wife to be. As the dorms were not co-ed he had to drop it off with the porter, but saw her at a bus stop the next day, they had a drink and hit it off. The best bit was them telling this story. Tao's wife was telling it in broken English (she doesn't get to practice very much) and Chinese (we had lots of translators) but you could tell how embarrassing it was by the look on Tao's face. This was especially apparent when she let slip that during all this Tao had a girlfriend. Communication is not always verbal.

Superbowl

I am really looking forward to the Superbowl. After a few failed attempts of trying to see a Duke 'football' game. Mainly due to hangovers. I also tried to watch a few other American football games, including the one from London. I was pretty much confused by the whole thing. Then I watched the NFL playoffs a few weeks ago with my mate Nathan. Finally somebody explained the bloody thing to me and it's actually damn good to watch.

I kinda got all that malarky about touchdowns and field-goals etc. I was just generally confused about why it took so long for anything to happen and why they kept stopping. Then the simple rule of you have 4 tries (or downs) to get it 10 yards or you have to kick it to the other team was explained. Then it all made sense. It's just about moving the ball forward. Things like penalties change this. Also the clock is important. Now I kinda understand the basics it is a lot of fun to watch. It's violent, but also has tactics. I had the same thing with cricket a few years ago. Never understood that, then one day somebody explained it and I loved it.

I want the Giants to win tomorrow. So go Giants!

Adventures with the DMV

After months of abuse by the door staff of NC I decided to breakdown and get an ID. I wanted originally to get my drivers license converted to an NC one. This is not an easy task. Firstly to get a license you need a car. This is because you need auto insurance to get a license. The flaw in the system is that to buy a car...... you need a drivers license. So I got a lovely ID instead. Ah the joys of the NC Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

The DMV office in Durham is pretty bad. When we first got there, the guy giving people their ticket was also the guy taking the photos. So there were two big queues. It is painful watching somebody who is a stickler for protocol doing their job badly. Also notice the expiry date. It better bloody work after all that.

rant over.

P.S. I saw the fattest person I have seen in NC at the DMV. I felt bad for him as he had to try and squeeze into a horrible little plastic chair.