wender bender

for now, cheapest plane tix are on tuesday and wednesday

2011-01-31T09:28:00.001-08:00

good article on the dynamics of airfare pricing (something i was just
*barely* aware of).

and a good teaser question to see how travel-smart savvy you are ...
before you read, take a guess on the *average* price of an airline
ticket orbitz sells on a saturday (US national and international), and
guess too about how many percent higher that is from a ticket sold on
friday.

{this URL is auto-generated on my hiptop. you many have to strip it
down to the second http: to get it to display in your world.}

http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/article.php?CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704062604576105953506930800.html?

Budget Travel Slide Show - What's the Worst Thing That Could Happen to Your Suitcase?

2010-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

some good ones on here. i was on a BA flight out of london once while
we waited for ground crews to blow-up a brief case on the tarmac ...
resulting in a nice display of flying underwear.

http://www.budgettravel.com/bt-srv/gallery/1011_Suitcase/index.html?jumpToPic=0

quote of the moment

2010-12-02T12:18:00.001-08:00

"There's really very little disease you can get from (germs on) an
inanimate object. Any time you have a lot of people crammed into a
small place, like an airplane, bus, or subway, your risk of acquiring
disease is somewhat higher, but most of the diseases people get when
they travel come from contact with other people directly—not
indirectly."

-- Dr. Ronald A. Primas, TravelMD.com

new snack on jetblue ...

2010-11-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

... "kettle popcorners" (popcorners.com).

never heard of 'em ... will try 'em on this FLL -> LGB flight.

the seats on an american airlines super 80 ...

2010-11-03T11:00:00.001-07:00

... seem really small after flying on jetblue for so long.

When the blue turns to black

2010-10-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is an open letter to Jetblue airlines and Morgan Johnston (aimed primarily off the Twitter accounts of @jetblue and @MHJohnston). For everyone else, you'll be able to get the gist of what's going on from what you see here. And for those who know me, this letter will surprise you none.

Folks,

You may not remember me, but I'm an All You Can Jetter from last year, who is doing it again this year. I met the keyboardist of @jetblue at last year's mid-AYCJ meet-up (http://wenderbender.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-you-can-jet-day-24-new-orleans-la.html).

Simply put, I'm writing to you because I'm trying to score a jacket for myself and my traveling accomplice.

From a raw propaganda point of view, the biggest difference between this year's AYCJ, and last, is your addition of Facebook (FB). Last year the public side of AYCJ was almost entirely Twitter, but it's become clear to me that much (if not most) of what you're doing this is based on Facebook.

I'm not a fan of FB and I don't use it -- there are several reasons, but these are the core.

* I run my technology, I don't let my technology run me. I refuse to keep adding things to my life under the auspices of making it "better" when it's simply making it more complicated.

* I don't trust FB. I don't like the way they handle data and information.

* I don't like exposing myself to the public in extremely easy to search ways. I'm an old skooler in that I hold a fundamental belief that there is such thing as privacy.

* You have to be a member of FB to see anything involved in FB.

* I know several of the top FB people personally and I do not like them, nor the way they view their subscriber base.

To be clear, I'm not some 20-something jetter who thinks he's got some sort of divine inside line on the world; nor some retiree that isn't sure what the relationship is between jpeg and html. I'm both more different and more scary than that. With a 25 year background in the Silicon Valley that includes many years at Apple, development of the T-Mobile Sidekick, and creating the bidding schema that eBay uses today; it's very possible I have a closer association to technology than anyone you've ever known.

So when I say I have my reasons for not using Facebook, for goddamn sure I have my self-righteous reasons.

When I saw you were going to use FB this year, I fired a tweet off right away saying I don't use it. I got a response back from @jetblue right away (thanks) that said there would be other forms of communication.

Which would have been great if it were true, but it's not. As near as I can tell, all the meet-ups of this year's AYCJ (including last night's party in Las Vegas -- ironically the city I now live in) have been directly promoted by FB.

This is problematic for me in two ways. One, I don't know what the hell's going on -- and I've pretty much made it a point in my life to not be the stupidest kid on my block. And two, it makes it damn hard to score swag.

Now it could be that your response is: Here's the deal, punk, you have to be on FB or you can fuck off -- which has been your de facto operation for the last three weeks. That's fine with me as long as you openly admit it.

I'm a huge supporter of Jetblue. Go back and look at my Twitter stream (redelvis) and dive deep. See how many tips and answers I've given. Look at the t-shirts I did for last year (and consider that I donated all the money from them to carbonfund.org). Promotion is in my blood -I was an evangelist at Apple, for chrissake- and I'm like a walking billboard for you guys. I've got not one, but three people -strangers mind you- that I'm notifying about if/when your passes go on sale next year. (Morgan, you partied with @isawyouonjetblue last night -- I arranged a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge with him last year http://wenderbender.blogspot.com/2009/09/all-you-can-jet-day-6-jfk.html.)

You should hear the way I talk about your airline -- every day. It's embarrassing. I'm like a walking, zombied, commercial.

All right, all right. Just forget everything I've said to this point. I see this whole deal falling one of two ways.

* You hold back two jackets for me, if for no other reason than to get me to shut the hell up. I feel like I've accomplished my big goal and everything's fine.

* You ignore me -- which is collectively what's been happening since about September 10. I'll escalate this letter campaign to people you don't want me to escalate it to, and to give you an idea of what I'm capable of, have a look here: http://continualcar.blogspot.com/2009/12/and-rain-came-down.html).

I can't believe I'm sitting here writing this, literally, in the shadow of Chichen Itza, while Morgan is 20 miles from my house ... but if there's anything the Maya can tell you it's that the world sometimes doles out unusual forms of justice. If they could have written self-serving 'blog postings, maybe things would look a little different down here today, eh?

Thanks for reading,
b1

PS I'm way behind on posting for this year's AYCJ. It'll all get finished a couple weeks after the trip itself is done.

trivium of the moment

2010-09-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

the number of people working in MS today is the same as 1996. seasonal
unemployment is at 10%.

another 24 hours of TV ...

2010-09-23T20:27:00.001-07:00

... except this one's not gonna be TV.

as part of my all you can jet (AYCJ) trip, special K and i will be
riding the staten island ferry for 24 hours straight ... it all starts
day-after-tomorrow from roughly 16:00 september 25 to 16:00 september
26.

we'll be writing about it all here:
http://24HoursOfTV.com

join in if you care.

dinner

2010-09-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

catfish po boy, mac & cheese, catfish bites, hush puppies, mashed
potatoes, broccoli.

-- soulfish cafe; memphis, TN

quote of the moment

2010-09-23T08:21:00.001-07:00

some rules of life

1. wake up. show up. pay attention.

2. be happy and have fun!
(life is a trip - enjoy the journey.)

3. learn, master, and play by the rules.

4. get an education.
(knowledge & wisdom are the key.)

5. work hard. work smart. never quit.
(nothing good comes easy.)

6. the "circle theory" is in effect.
(integrity. never lie, chear or steal, especially yourself.)

7. know your weaknesses & overcome them.
(power is when you ask for help and use it.)

8. learn a skill, trade or profession you love and master it.

9. deadly sins
(pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust alcohol / drugs, doing
wrong when you KNOW right.)

10. don't judge and learn to forgive.
(surrender to win.)

11. never sweat the small stuff.
(most of it is small stuff.)

12. treat all with dignity and respect.
(especially yourself.)

13. acquire patience and serenity.
(learn to be still, be quiet, be at peace and meditiate.)

14. make a negative a positive and learn from the past.

15. to thine own self be true. develop self discipline.
(do what you're supposed to do, not what you want to do, until what
you're supposed to do is what you want to do.)

16. YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!

drew brown - (a regular customer)

-- from the front page of the "blue plate cafe" menu; memphis, TN

all you can jet 2 - day 8 - washington DC

2010-09-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

the red-eye from DEN crushed me ... i had trouble falling asleep on the plane and am dead on my feet as i meet my accomplice in JFK ... i'm so far gone, in fact, that i stretch out and sleep on the floor of the terminal waiting for the connection to washington DC.

we're headed to bogota, colombia, but the flight schedules are such that the jump from DEN to BOG isn't easy and essentially forces an E coast stay-over. BOS, JFK and washington DC are all possibilities ... we've got a BOS one-nighter later in the trip and my accomplice has just been there, so that's out ... NYC is always interesting, but we're relying heavily on family crypto (as always) so that doesn't seem like a great idea ...

DC, however has a two good friends that're both worth a visit.

one is mini-mario (MM). i rode across the US on my bike with him a decade ago ... pushing, probably 350 pounds, he was the true anomaly among the riders. shunned, or openly laughed at by the hammer heads of the ride i had a huge amount of admiration -bordering on awe- for him. it's one thing to ride 3200 miles in an el nino year if you're 170 pounds, in shape, and riding a $3000 road bike; it's quite another if you're twice that and on an upright that's a step above a huffy.

a greek national and obsessive fan of strip clubs (a place i've never been -- although i live in vegas) we struck up a friendship. the absolute high point of the ride was when he asked if he could ride into DC -his home- with me on the last day. i still consider that to be a huge honor. (and, let's face it, the ride was not without high points -- like the bear chewing on the head of that mennonite kid, for example).

a few days after my birthday this year, mini mario gave me a ring -- insisting that if AYCJ happened, that i stay at his place. so we'll be doing that.

d4rw1n is here too. high powered international trade lawyer (and devoted reader of this 'blog), he's may well hold the highest (person i like to see) / (amount of time i actually see them) factor of anyone i know. we've got lunch with him -- assuming i'm sentient.

we fly in. get a fucking expensive rental car (cheapest thing i can find is $85/day) and head to d4rw1n's office ... he works right next door to the FBI and i park at what may well be the best parking meter view in the US. i swear to you i took these shots leaning against the parking meter -- 180 opposite from each other.

d4rw1n's in high spirits -- as well he should be for divorcing his hellion wife and having a new spinner girlfriend. we stop by his office:

and i'm just a little under-impressed. is it a nice office? yes. is it the kind of place where you rule the world and have minions do your bidding? no. let's face it, when you're an international trade lawyer, and you spend the majority of your time checking the work of the people who work for you, that's essentially what you are: a world-ruling-minion-barking kind of guy.

"pinhole" for extra effect here

the view from the balcony of the conference room has the right idea, though ... let's look at a mural of the world with DC as the center and everyone else an also-ran ... and the place itself is a powerful room. US$1000 chairs around a $50k table. it's not the kind of place where you talk about what's right and what's wrong. it's the kind of place that just screams "do what we say or we'll CRUSH you!" and then whispers, "and don't spill anything because i need to have sex with my secretary on here afterward."

lunch is great. we hit a local cuban place.

i have a cubano with chips (something very very close to taro, but i can't remember the name -- i'd never heard it before), washed down with an excellent limeade. my accomplice has a fancy version of a grilled cheese sandwich and d4rw1n tries, to get them to re-create a sandwich they used to have on their menu; but fails when they think he's not actually an important guy.

i'm so tired i'm flickering in and out of consciousness through the meal. fortunately the conversation is strong -as it always is with d4rw1n- and when the meal ends we get back to the super scenic parking meter our two hours lapse just i fire up the ignition.

a quick drive to baltimore brings us to the building that MM owns. this is one of those urban areas that's fighting to get some life back in it. MM's place is only half a block from lexington market -- once a cultural hub and center it's now become more inner-city compressed. under heavy fatigue i declare it as "a one-time town center that's now become a place where koreans sell food to blacks." MM refers to it as "the building that time forgot."

as MM shows us around his place (he owns the entire building -- maybe eight units or so) we get to a point where we overlook the next door neighbors ... the building has burned -but is covered- and scores of cats now inhabit the place. you can see the wheels in mario's head spin as he looks -- he clearly would like to own the place and bounces the idea of me possibly buying-in just to see how the concept tracks.

throughout the mario mansion he's has added touches of grandess. forever haggling with home depot and lowe's to get outrageous deals on everything from appliances to door knobs; he's built everything up for pennies on the dollar. the building, and all the things inside, look really nice -- it's clear that no matter what happens he's going to do very well here.

if the neighborhood picks up -and my guess is it will- he'll make a killing. very very impressive for a greek immigrant, who probably started off speaking no english, and put his foot in the economic door by running a falafel joint in the basement of a post office.

mario gives us some bonus coins (of course) for the laundry he owns and bids us farewell.

my accomplice immediately crashes hard and i follow suit after getting some laundry detergent at the market across the street (but forgetting to actually start the wash once i do).

we sleep for 16 hours. i don't move an inch the entire time.

all you can jet 2 - day 7 - denver, CO

2010-09-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

we lay around and watch a little TV since it's the only break we'll get once we start goin'.

first stop is the cafe by the river. my brother has his favorite stand-by, french toast; i have an omelet (i shot a pic of it, but can't find it on my drive). as always, the food is great -- the service comfortable (although, as throughout our lives when in WY, we get stared at the entire breakfast by two older local men).

then a couple of things for you, dear reader.

first, a shot of the hotspring ... we'll stop by here later tonight, but it's easier to get a pic now during the day.

and you have to LOVE saratoga, WY for this, if no other reason: the "hobo pool" is free and open 24/7, 365 days per year. there's a toilet, shower and changing room, all attached. i donate $5 every year to the upkeep of this place:

i have something else to show you ...

just north of saratoga you can clearly see the scars left by the wagon wheels on the overland trail.

this exact spot would have been a pretty damn happy place for travelers to reach because you're much less than a day's worth of travel -even by wagon- to the N platte river from here (the only river in N america that flows to the north). there are several crossings not far from here.

if you poke around the trail and the associated river edges you can still find bits and pieces of lost/off-cast material -- especially fabrics and (for some weird reason) pieces of coffee pots. and here's a trivium most people don't know: well over 85% of all people who came across the overland trail eventually returned back east.

my relatives on my mom's side didn't come this way. we were irish immigrant labor, and by default, railroaders ... in fact, we didn't make it this far west until about the 1930's ... my great grandfather was made section foreman of tie siding, WY -- the first section east of laramie -- and camped permanently by default on the WY high desert.

it may not be immediately obvious, but this is a damn foreboding place.

right here today is about as good as the weather gets -- 70 degrees and slight wind with no rain. however the winters are brutal, the summers can fluctuate between smoldering hot and night-biting cold. to give you an idea of what can befall you, a freak summer storm cost one family friend their life and another their legs. wind is a near-constant and can polish rocks to a fine patina.

the tenacity of people crossing and surviving here is huge. i'd also add that none of them were probably full-to-the-brim smart.

our target is a set a beaver dams stuck in the middle of the plains here. the drive out shows the wildlife still in very good stead ... this is the sweet spot of the largest antelope herd on earth and in many ways, this is the N american answer to the serengeti ... i have never passed through this part of the world without seeing large wildlife -- always antelope, often deer and in the higher realms, elk.

two are obvious ...
... but can you spot the third antelope in this photo?

we're one week into hunting season, so the game are pretty spooky, but they're there. we see probably 50 head on the way to the new place. i stopped on a high spot to take this panoramic series. (you can tell it's hunting season, it's really really crowded out here right now.)

these photos give some hints to the true nature of the landscape ... if you look at it from the sky it's actually a striated series of river and glacial valleys. nearly all of those that have water of any kind also have beavers and that is our fishing specialty -- the water contained in beaver dams.

the new place

it's my understanding that hardcore fisherman consider it to be some of the very hardest water you'll ever fish -- because it's very difficult to cast without making your presence known. however, it's quite literally the way we were raised.

in gambling parlance an over/under bet is a point total that, in theory, would divide the betting action in half ... 50% of bettors would think the point total would be less, 50% would think it would be more. i ask my brother, "so what do you think the over/under for us combined here today is?"

"well, let's see. we'll probably hit the water about 3:00. we'll have to leave about 5:00. we'll put you on the good spot and i'll take pictures for about half an hour. i'd say ... 45."

i think about it. we talk about it a bit. i pick over. remembering that we've caught two fish between us in the last two days of fishing.

due to lollygagging and side explorations, we end up hitting the water about half an hour later than we'd planned. my intent is to photograph every fish i catch, so i rig a piece of fishing line around my neck to hold my camera. having to handle a slimy/live/kicking fish, an antique fly rod and a digital camera with no hand strap -- in the middle of a beaver dam up to my knees in fine grain mud and waist in 60 degree water -- is just asking for trouble ... but it's worth the effort.

in the amount of time it takes me to get everything set up in a way that i think i have the greatest chances for success, my brother has already caught seven. he's also had first time on the water which will make my catching slightly more difficult -- even though i'm headed to what we know already know to be is the best spot.

in fairly short order i catch my first:

but the combo of shooting pix and having any chance of releasing my fish alive and having my camera come back functional is pretty small. i decide not to photograph any more, with the exception of the biggest one of the day, just to give you a comparison.

these are brook trout, by the way. there are also some albinos in here (my brother ends up catching two during the day) and i've had rainbows out of here before as well, although we don't see any today.

90 minutes of furious fishing and i catch 26 from the best spot. my brother wanders back and forth between here and a larger dam below that has the ability to grant much larger fish.

his total? 39. between us we catch 65 in 90 minutes.

and in a rarity, i decide to keep one for you, dear reader.

why?

because i'm going to cook it on my car engine.

preparation is simple.

* clean the fish.

* coat it in bisquick. (in this case i use betty crocker cornbread and muffin mix because i'll have to throw less away.)

* wrap in tin foil.

* store in center console until you're on smooth pavement.

* wire to exhaust manifold once the bumpy roads are gone.

there's nothing in the rental contract that says you can't cook on the engine

as we head back into saratoga i come across the largest flock of sage chicken i've ever seen -- there are at least six ... but b1-67er scares 'em to flight after i whip the car to a stop and before i can get my camera out. they belong on the endangered species list, but for political reasons aren't being included. a sighting like this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime -- thrilling to see it.

we take a quick dip in the springs to shake off the cold water shivers, then make the push to denver international airport. our timing is such that i should be able to walk out of the rental car and onto the plane -- as long as there's nothing weird along the roadway.

after about an hour we check the trout, but it's not done enough.

no problem, we'll give it another hour.

the sun gets ready to set ...

... and we check the fish again. it's not getting hot enough, so we move it off the exhaust manifold and onto the valve cover.

while i'm driving, my brother does a series of time-lapse shots with my camera.

we stop and shoot off our firecrackers. they're great, just as black cats should be, and the gunpowder smell lifts my already jubilant mood (of course).

... but that's about ready to get ripped from my being ...

we check the fish again AND IT'S A DISASTER.

the engine isn't getting hot enough to cook the fish ... something i find bordering on the unimaginable. i've done this, probably, a dozen times in my life ... (dr. bob and karpov both consider it their favorite way to prepare blackened catfish) ... the thing you have to watch out for is an engine that gets too hot -- not one that's not getting hot enough. goddammit.

that little bastard brookie died in vain. in vain!

i un-wrap it and leave it for the skunks just south of ft. collins, CO.

we shoot down i-25 and drop me at the airport. as planned, i walk out of the rental, through security and on the plane.

excluding the non-heating engine, it's been a very very good day.

i hook back up with my accomplice tomorrow. we're staging in DC before colombia.

which means it's time to breathe in.

all you can jet 2 - day 6 - saratoga, WY

2010-09-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

all you can jet – day 6 – saratoga, WY

for a couple of weeks now i've been waking up, unprompted, about 06:00 – regardless of time zone. i did it again this morning, even though i'm running the personal battery well-low, and took awhile to drop back off.

neither my brother, nor i, watch TV, but we consider it to be part and parcel of the WY fishing experience. we watch an excellent show about the history of the US along with a side of “pickers” while intermittently making the plans for the next two days … there's a small menu of fishing spots available to us ... and as i do with my friends, we refer to nearly all of them by nickname – so much so, in fact, that my mom (born and raised in WY) will often have no idea of places we're talking about in casual conversation. we're spinning through the possibilities as we make side comments in the TV shows we're watching ... the new place, the red meated dams, mcclain creek, jack creek, mcclain creek II, and hey look how cool those animated buffalo look.

we're definitely going to hit the new place. it's a spot where it's possible to catch a staggering amount of fish, and my brother believes the fish activity there is mildly different. throughout the entire front range of the rockies, nearly all wildlife are most active in the mornings and evenings – going into a rest, that sometimes seems to border on a torpor – in the middle of the day … this goes right on down to the fish in the streams. except my brother believes that the fish at the new place are actually more active in the middle of the day and settle down toward the end.

of course the one wild card that is never fully predictable – no matter what meteorologists say – is the weather. we know for a fact that the weather is good right now. the clouds are back, thank god, i have no idea what happens with two cloudless days, but it's gotta be the absolute worst of omens. just as importantly, there's no wind right now. it takes awhile for the wind to work up, and this is a part of the world where the wind can whip the flesh right off your bones … i've been out here this time of year when the wind was blowing so strong that my fly line wouldn't go down to the water.

we decide on the new place for tomorrow, and although i'm curious to see what the current situation is mcclain creek today (a spot that i have long, and very good, relationship with), my brother's got an itch to go back up to the snowy range. i'm fine with that. the WY rockies are about as far removed from airline travel as you can possibly be in the continental US … it makes a nice counterpoint to my trip.

we eat at mom's, in violation of the rule that says not to – but in saratoga you don't have a lot of options, and mom's is actually pretty good. the proprietors, once again, do not recognize us – even though we've eaten here multiple times per year for the last 20 – which means that everything's as it should be.

we make our way back up to the snowy range, stopping to look at several watersheds along the way. the water level is a little low, but we're here about a week later than usual, and it's been hot the last few days. they've had a lot of snow on the front range this past winter, which can be problematic in any number of ways – but everything aquatic looks right. bugs, plants, shoreline. it's all the way it should be.

in the WY back country it's obscenely rude not to speak to anyone you happen to run across ... so in the parking lot of the upper set of snowy range lakes we strike up a conversation with an australian microbiologist. he's studying microbes, DNA and their relationship to the weather pattern. this is something b1-67er and i both know a little bit about and my brother uses the word nucleation in passing, the aussie lights up like a christmas tree and we end up talking for a couple of hours.

we'd planned to head to the upper lakes, but you don't want to get caught out after dark up here ... black body radiation absorption at this latitude and altitude is tremendous -- you can go hypothermic if you're not careful -- and we've burned a lot of time just standing here in the parking lot ... so we decide to stay lower.

my technique for this kind of water is better than my brother's, so it's not surprising that i catch two and he gets skunked.

both of us get a bit chilled, so we drive immediately to the hot springs and soak for a good half hour.

we're fully crashed before midnight. there's a lot on the plate tomorrow.

pic of day 5 -- AYCJ2

2010-09-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

no photoshop here -- that's my shadow during golden hour

all you can jet 2 -- day 5 -- saratoga, WY

2010-09-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

traditionally my brother and i go fly fishing in the wyoming high plains and mountains sometime close to every labor day. by choice, b1-67er lives in a vortex of complete insanity and for reasons i don't even want to delve couldn't make labor day this year.

but he could go now. we nearly always spend four days together fishing, and in fact he set up four days out of his schedule before the AYCJ pass went on sale.

BUT, jetblue doesn't fly to WY. AND with a jet pass in your hand, you don't want to spend too much time in one place (especially if it's a place you've been before), so i cut back to three days. sorta. my plane will leave about 01:00 tuesday morning, which will actually cut out one of the evenings for the drive back to DIA.

i'm flying early enough that i'm up at 04:45 – a time you'd be much better off staying up until, not a clock setting you should wake up at. i've only had three hours sleep. the grind of not getting enough has me pretty ragged … i'm way way behind on writing here – and that'll almost certainly get worse.

of course the good news is when it's this early, everything for me is just on autopilot. i don't feel pain. i'm not crabby. i just flow.

i sleep the hop to boston and walk right on my denver plane with practically no wait.

the denver flight is fairly open. after some more sleep, a super-nice flight attendant strikes up a long conversation with me, having spotted my AYCJ pin from last year. he thanks me profusely several times for being a jetter.

“listen man, the favor you're doing me by offering this pass is FAR bigger than the favor i'm doing you for buying it. you guys don't have to offer this, i'm sure as hell glad you do.”

“you don't understand. last year was the first time jetblue showed a profit for september. it has to be because of all-you-can-jet.”

whether or not this is true, i couldn't tell you … but it doesn't completely surprise me. aside from the raw money the sale of passes would bring, jetblue uses a stepped pricing structure. AYCJers must get their tickets at least three days ahead of time and most of them actually plan more than a week ahead of time (planning a whole schedule, like i do, is common). if jetters take enough seats, the prices on that flight go up. most people flying during the shoulder season are business people and they don't give a damn how much they pay for their tickets … so … ka-ching, jetblue makes money.

toward the end of the flight, the guy across the aisle strikes up a conversation with me. he too is a jetter – headed toward boulder – and i spew a ton of information about all the places he's going and is interested in. i've met a lot of jetters, and aside from their collective built-in age bias (it freaks them out that the old guy travels like this), all but two of them have been really nice people. here's a binding sense of adventure, not unlike people you find on a eurail pass, and it's nice to be part of that fraternity.

on the ground my brother picks me up in his $25/day rental jeep. (we both use tricks i won't share here for getting cheap rental cars that go well beyond priceline and hotwire – i'll give you the smallest hint … two of the rentals i'm getting on this trip i'm paying for in british pounds, and are less than 50% of what i could get using hotwire.) this is a mistake on the rental company's part. we come from a l-o-n-g line of men that are infamous for abusing rental cars in the wilderness. i've driven a sedan into places that have, literally, caused ranchers to spew their coffee when they saw me. having a two-wheel drive doesn't keep me from driving on any given road, but it does make me drive with a great deal of forethought. with the 4WD, the technique is a little different: shove it in low and punch it.

and there's the added bonus of covering the entire vehicle with an infinitesimally fine layer of WY dust.

if i was staying for one extra day, this vehicle would never be fully functional again. pity that it's not.

in my largest crime against humanity yet -and i'm sorry to say it's up against a fair amount of competition- i don't even do the 35 mile detour to stop by my mom's house and say hello. i was there a little over a month ago, so as long as nothing happens between now and whenever i see her again, i'm fine. if she kicks it in the meantime, i'll carry an anvil for the rest of my life.

but, by not stopping by, we'll get a chance to fish today and wouldn't otherwise. unlikely lifetime anvil versus definite fishing, the choice is pretty easy.

time spent alone with my brother is very rare. we get, maybe, 30 waking hours this way a year. i really enjoy it, he's fiercely protective of it.

we stop at jim's burger haven for “a square meal on a round bun.” good, huge, thin, burgers.

and push our way across to state line and talking about wildlife, engineering, his family's madness, how the hell i manage to keep going without working a day job and firecrackers, stopping for the latter as we cross stateline.

i buy a license and a few flies in laramie and then we headed up the snowy range. the idea is to fish on the way in to saratoga.

i've never written about fishing before and i'm not sure i want to start now – especially when you as a reader don't actually care about it. but to be very succinct, my brother and i both use a technique that is completely antiquated called “wet” fly fishing. the exact manner and style we use hasn't been practiced by people in well over 50 years.

aside from fleeing from a burning building, fly fishing is probably the thing i do the best with the least amount of practice. even so, our stopping at the timberline lakes of the snowy range is an iffy proposition as far as actually catching anything goes. the water is pure and crystal clear – giving fish maximum visibility at preditors. the lakes are fairly accessible, giving them a high amount of pressure. and we're late in the season, meaning the little fishies have become beyond wary.

oh yes, and in one way this is the strangest day i have ever seen in the rocky mountains. i was born and lived in the front range for almost 30 years and for the very first time in my life, i haven't seen a single cloud – not one – in CO or WY. all things atmospheric have heavy influence on fish and the lack of clouds definitely is not a good omen.

the front range of the rockies as seen on wide-angle from denver.
no clouds. all day. completely unheard of.
(snow fence runs to the right)

we see a couple of people as we hike to the upper lakes, which for wyoming wilderness is damn crowded (but not that uncommon for this particular area), and work our way around a few lakes. i raise two, but don't catch either. my brother gets no response … he would have been better off trying the bathtub, at least you can take a good scrub that way afterward.

we're staying at the “sage and sand” motel in saratoga – what my brother and i call “the high plains drifter” because it's painted entirely red. dinner is whatever we choose from the kum & go convenience store across the street (_your_joke_goes_here_). there's a loose affiliation of multi-millionaires that occasionally hangs out in saratoga who in their self-serving grandeur, call themselves the conquistadors del cielo, which roughly translated means people who have no business being in wyoming, but act like they do. they're in town right now.

i'm so wiped from the last several days that i don't even go to the town hot springs, instead i crash hard hard for the night.

lots of high altitude work tomorrow, i need the rest.

day 5 AM -- AYCJ 2

2010-09-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

pic of day 5 -- AYCJ 2

2010-09-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

all you can jet 2 - day 4 - buffalo, NY

2010-09-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

up and out of the euro motel 6, we need to push across the border and make it to buffalo tonight … and have a couple of things to do along the way.

we stop by a local pasta place. i get a whole wheat penne carbonara, my accomplice gets a chicken parmesan sandwich with a caesar salad; both washed with bottled soda because we can.

we're closer to the border than i realize and i actually have to scramble to get my passport. a few surly questions from the border patrol (who is clearly not impressed, nor happy, about the fact i've driven around lake ontario – and then heading out) and i'm welcomed back to america.

i'm writing this on a jetblue flight, so i can't go back and look at my older posts, please forgive me if i've mentioned this before … one of the nice tricks we've done here is the owners manual is still in the car, so as soon as we hit canada i was able to switch all the gauges over to metric … at the same time i switched the GPS over as well, so the distances and timings have all been clock-perfect against the canadian national signs … as soon as i cross the border i switch 'em back. fairly easy. really nice.

even though we're driving a land shark of a car, we've managed to not burn a whole tank and roll into the nearest station on fumes. we pay a touch over $3/gallon instead of the nearly $5 that it would have been in canuckland.

one of our reasons for circumnavigating the lake – maybe the reason – is to see the thousand islands. but when we pull into the nearest tourist stop to do so, it's clear that things have already ramped down for the shoulder season. the next tour doesn't launch for a few hours and we've got tons of things to do … so we skip it ... the very nature of all you can jet isn't to fret your failures -- it's to look forward to the next success ... and there's a lot left to do today.

we head into rochester, NY to see the strong museum of play.

a place that was started by a woman who was a rich kid … when she'd travel with her parents, she was allowed to fill one shopping bag with stuff, so she learned early-on to get small toys … these items became the backbone of place that's half toy museum, half exploratorium.

we played some games, looked around and burned a couple of hours. mr. crypto would be pleased knowing that i nominated the magic 8-ball to the toy hall of fame – in his name.

there's one activity with a double-sided velcro board. the idea is to build a design on one side and then describe it to the person on the other to have them duplicate it.

my accomplice built-and-described first …

i did my attempt in response ….

and when we compared, it was only then that we realized that our sets weren't exactly the same (one purple parallelogram is a mirror image on the two boards).

we did the experiment again. this time i built and described …

and this is my accomplice's attempt at re-creation.

NOW YOU TELL ME WHO THE WORLD'S GREATEST EXPLAINER IS. (and they said my math degree would never get any use … please.)

they also had a great little garden outside. of course i'm a huge sucker for flowers, so i had to burn a few pixels.

it's late enough for food (as if it's ever too early) and we happen to be stepping into a hotbed of local dishes:

the garbage plate. a conglomeration with beans, potato salad and hash browns on the bottom. a cheeseburger and hot dog slathered with mustard in the middle. and what i think they term “sauce” on the top.
fish fry. this is that catholic-induced thing that some east coast cities have. to a westie it would be indistinguishable from fish and chips.
buffalo wings. those crappy little things that only a godforsaken part of the world could think of to be proud of.

we're going to knock off the plate and the fry simultaneously, but our restaurant choice has been economically down-turned (as have a shocking amount of this area).

{oh god, i'm listening to XM on my jetblue flight and they're playing stevie wonder covering “blowin' in the wind.” i have a lot of time and respect for stevie wonder – i even met him once – but this song is beyond terrible. fortunately i'm able to wash it down with an extended version of the brothers johnson “get the funk outta ma face."}

by sheer chance we drove past nick tahou's the place that invented the garbage plate – so we'll just go to the rich man's first place choice. when we pull up, the place is desolate, weird and rust-industrial enough that i leave the keys with my accomplice in the car and lock it as i exit. i want to make sure that: A) this is the right place and B) i come out alive. for anyone who doesn't know me, i'm not a guy who scares easily, if at all, so that should give you an idea of how gnarly i perceive this place to be. my last words, “if you don't see me in three minutes, drive away from here immediately. then call 911.”

but i take a step in and can see that it's the right place. and it's still scary. like blues brothers scary. my accomplice nailed it and i would just steal the phrase, but it's so good i can't without attribution:

bus station scary

and even though the woman working the place looks like she was a fight-extra for “coal miner's daughter,” she's super-nice. “we're here for a garbage plate. we've never had one. tell us what we want.”

“oh, darlin', you want a combo plate.” i ask for macaroni salad instead of potato salad and no beans. she fussed none and was so upset that she couldn't conjure a cook that she stepped back into the kitchen (actually crossed the magic line separating the register from everything else) and made us the plate herself.

it's a gigantic amount of food. splitting this is easily enough food for two people. the “sauce” on the top tastes strikingly close to the “chili” used in the ohio joints.

i go back to the bad-bad-greyhound quality bathroom and notice that the lottery vending machine at the end of the room still has two credits on it.

hell ya. gimme two quick picks and ten million bucks. i move so quickly and naturally by the machine that i'm certain no one in the joint even saw me do anything there.

back at the table the food is weird. i know this is going to sound like an insult, but it's the only way i think i can describe the taste accurately. now, before you read this, you have to remember that i was a guy who ate only one food at a time on my plate until i was about 25 … so the idea of mix/match in the food world is not my native taste environment. remember that as you read this (and my accomplice has never heard me say this before, so this will be news):

it tasted like vomit.

but in a good way, or i guess in the best possible vomit way. no stomach acid and nothing in there that was poisoning you. so tasty vomit. think about the last time you threw up after eating anything that had potatoes in it. okay, now think about how that would taste coming back up if it was really good – like the best possible vomit. it tasted like that.

i got a re-fill on ice tea.

“how do you like it?” the proprietess/mine worker asks.

me: “it's a full-on assault.”

she nods in complete understanding. “i know. it is good.”

i tip her a dollar. it's really really important to reinforce behavior you like from the rest of humanity. if you do it often enough, eventually the entire world does what you want.

we finish the garbage plate, but we're not done with eating for the night. we track down our third choice for fish fry and get a piece of unbelievably crappy haddock and yet more macaroni salad.

if there's anything living in the bay area for 20 years did to me, it was make me fussy about the fish i eat – but even as an eight year old kid in denver, i would have considered this far less than half assed.

it's getting late, as we roll into buffalo. the anchor bar isn't the best place to get wings, but it is the place that invented them, so we go there.

even at 22:00 they're jammed, but there's first-come space open near the bar.

in the name of not weighing more than 200 pounds due to eating nothing more than crap, i make the smallest order possible – six wings (which in buffalo, apparently means “seven”), medium hot.

the wings are actually really good. best thing of the unholy food trinity this evening -- but let's be honest, the competition hasn't been that stiff.

we go cross town and check into the millenium. they've got a gym (which is actually a bunch of barely functional equipment) and sex-segregated saunas (which are probably actually murder sites) buried in the corner of every-swingers-room-looks-out-on-the-jungle set-up. for $40 for a night, and spitting distance from the airport, it's just fine.

i sweat by force, then sweat by choice, and crash. denver tomorrow. early.

goddamn early.

miscellaneous pix of the day

whoa -- canadian prison

surprisingly, these aren't bull testicles

time lapse video image

my hand and camera on sesame street

shooting an air blaster across the room -- damn hard to get the impact photo -- this is a touch early

day 4 AM -- AYCJ 2

2010-09-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

i can't even begin to tell you how many times in my life i've been the last car in a motel parking lot.

all you can jet 2 - day 3 - kingston, ON

2010-09-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

(pix when i get a better 'net connection.)

my first good night's sleep in many days, and even though i don't feel rested, i am ready to go. our first stop in hamilton is small diner near downtown: steve's open kitchen. there's continual reference to “peameal bacon,” but for the life of me, i can't remember what it is … i ask the mildly over-tasked waitress and then i remember … this is essentially back bacon and it's where we get the american term “canadian bacon” which is very similar, but not exactly the same.

i order a peameal and cheddar omelet, my accomplice gets peameal and scrambled eggs. and of course in a country like this you order “brown,” not “wheat” toast.

yummy food and on the way back to the car we stop by an art gallery that was promoting “the arctic experience.” in this part of the world, natives are known as “first nations” and there's far more attention and seriousness paid to the “indians” of canada by the country of canada, than those of the united states by the country of the united states.

the gallery is a strange mix of semi-impressionist paintings (mostly of meadows in bloom) and hardcore eskimo-like carvings. i made an endless stream of arctic experience jokes to the cute and tolerant gallery attendant until the manager couldn't bear it any more and came out and talked to us as well.

back on the road and we continued to make our way around the lake. we spotted a couple of wal-marts and on the third one i pulled in to grab my much-needed set of headphones.

as long as we stopped, i just had to get that staple of canadian junkfood, tim horton's. i don't like their damn donuts but in canada, goddammit, you do what the canadians do. i got a raspberry bearclaw like thing and my accomplice got a buttermilk donut (that looked suspiciously like a glazed old fashioned). were they crappy? of course they were.

back on the road we stop off at an obvious tourist trap, “the big apple.” there's a big fricken apple out front with a sadly pathetic miniature golf course and a closed go-kart track to the side. the main spread is a factory/cafeteria where they crank out apple pies.

you'd think, “a place like this has gotta have bad apple pie. or at least not good apple pie,” and you'd be right. we chase our may-or-may-not-have-machine-grease-on-the-crust pie with a crappy cup of foam-like vanilla ice cream. as you would guess, chasing bad pie with bad ice cream actually makes the whole experience better, making it worth the stop for pure grandma-touristy reasons only.

(fittingly, the apple was closed and you couldn't go on top)

needing nature, we continue to push forward until we get to sand banks provincial park. we're starting to run low on light, but still have enough to make a quick hike through dunes near an inlet that was cut-off by sand bars to lake ontario long, long ago.

panoramic shot from the lake ontario beach

back in the car we're trying to get as far as kingston, ON to keep tomorrow reasonable. the quickest way from where we are is to take a ferry, but it's not clear how much the ferry's gonna cost. really if it's anything, we'll just backtrack and go the longer, non-ferry route.

as we get close we start getting instructional signs of which lane to be in to board the ferry and eventually get to a point of no-return … still, with no indication of whether or not we have to pay, but i'm guessing the answer will be "no."

in fact i'm right. a dozen cars roll on and we take the smoothest of smooth rides across the tiny channel.

on the other side, we still don't have a room and after running around kingston a bit (as well as haggling with, then abandoning, an inn keeper), we call and get a room in the nearby motel 6. a bit pricey at C$80.

we stop at a chinese place that's open late for some better-than-you-would-guess food and then it's on to the motel.

(this is canada -- of course the chinese fortune cookies [invented in the US] are in french)

once we get to our room we realize why it's a tad pricey for an M6 -- they're using the new euro-style design here, and hey, something's gotta pay for cool tool racks.

check out here is 11:00, instead of the standard american noon for this chain. i could use the extra hour's sleep and 'net time, but i won't be getting it.

the drive, so far, has been fine -- i just wish the weather were a bit better ... and i still don't feel rested.

pic of the day 3 -- AYCJ 2

2010-09-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

day 3 AM -- AYCJ 2

2010-09-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

AYCJ 2 -- day 2 -- pic of the day

2010-09-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

all you can jet 2 - day 2 - hamilton, ON

2010-09-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

(my current 'net connection is too flaky to bring in more pix ... i'll publish with many more later)

my accomplice and i both slept solidly, but that's not saying much when you consider the flight east was less than four hours and combined we'd had less than five hours of sleep the night before. there's gonna be a hard burn on this day, for sure.

walking into JFK felt like old home week. having traversed through this terminal several times last year, i felt like the sheriff returning to once dangerous town that i managed to put down so many years ago.

there was just enough time between flights to set up a rental car for buffalo. our plan is to drive around lake ontario for the next few days. my accomplice is familiar with the “thousand islands” in this area and our ultimate plan is to visit them. i like the occasional long drive and i'm looking forward to it.

the flight over is again uneventful and we pick up our car in the buffalo airport. although we ask for an economy, we're given a new and spotless mercury milan … i've never driven one of these before, but i like it very much. the handling is responsive without being overly tight – the ride smooth as glass. the seats are cool two-tone leather with overt stitching.

first order of business is food. buffalo has a few claims to fame in the food world – we plan on having them all – but the one i'm most curious about will be the starter of this leg: beef on weck. for those of you who don't speak english (i'm in bogota as i type this, so these kinds of phrases are overly funny to me right now), “beef” means roast beef and “weck” is a caraway seed pinwheel bun. and if you're hunting for beef on weck, probably the best place to go is a joint known as “bar bill.”

the handy GPS whisks us quickly to hollywood parking spot and we're lucky enough to get the last table just before the lunch rush.

i order a beef on weck. my accomplice doesn't like caraway seeds and opts instead for bar bill's version of buffalo wings.

the sandwich is fine, but even with au jus and horseradish, it doesn't really jump out and grab you. not that it's bad -and i'm certainly glad we made the effort to eat it- but if i lived in buffalo, this wouldn't be one to the things i eat very often … if at all.

the wings, on the other hand are interesting. the menu said “italian” spices, but i hadn't read that … when my accomplice said, “what's this taste? it's familiar ...” i knew it immediately – the wings had been marinated in italian salad dressing. several years ago i used to regularly eat halibut that i'd marinated in paul newman's salad dressing and the taste here was similar. let's face it, by default buffalo wings are fairly crappy food … the woman who invented them was asked to come up with food on a moment's notice and instead of putting chicken wings in her stock pot, she served 'em to unsuspecting customers.

having said all that, i liked them very much … i thought they were better than the beef on weck. and everything got washed down with birch beer on tap – so you know things can't be that bad.

the combo of lunch and very little sleep started to put us down almost immediately … we used the GPS to drive to a nearby park -which actually was a farm museum- and slept in their parking lot for more than an hour.

we're in striking distance of niagra falls, so niagra falls it is. both my accomplice and i had been there before – we both had loved it – and i was looking forward to doing the once-again touristy thing of riding the “maid of the mist.” i mean, come on, you get to ride a boat into the bottom of a waterfall – much closer than what you think is safe – what's not to like?

we had to tool around niagra falls, ON a bit before we got a super-great parking place on the street. a quick walk down and we managed to snag two places on the penultimate boat of the day. as before, it was thrilling and very wet … my arms and face got drenched, it was way fun.

using our AAA map, we drove the scenic route to niagra-by-the-lake and got a view from the point.

not knowing how far we might go, we hadn't set up a room in advance so we called ahead to motel 6 to book a spot and went to a restaurant that was highly rated in the AAA guidebook for the area: treadwell. they're the kind of place with a lot of wood, a few candles and breathless descriptions of how pure their ingredients are.

at about US$50 an entree, it was more than we were expecting and we weren't that hungry, but rather than dive back out into the ontario night, we decided to go ahead and order. i got lake ontario perch on fettuccine; my accomplice ordered two starters – prosciutto with arugula and a cheese similar to marscapone, and gnocci with local wild mushrooms.

as a lagniappe, we were served shots of cold ginger and carrot soup, which was exquisite.

my fettuccine had been advertised as having truffle oil, but what i wasn't expecting were sliced black truffles the size of the palm of my hand. the truffles were so big, in fact, that at first i thought they were taro root. the perch was fair, the truffled pasta, amazing. the bread served on the side was stunning caraway-poppyseed and staggering zucchini (and i HATE zucchini bread), accompanied with local cold pressed canola oil and raspberry-infused balsamic vinegar.

the food was astounding. one of the best meals i've ever had in my life. strangely the very best thing on the table may well have been the bread.

in fact the meal was so good that we went ahead and ordered dessert anyway. they mentioned homemade ice cream and this well could be a place where their touch could be amazing.

we had molten chocolate cake with raspberry sorbet. to check things out a bit more we also an ice cream duo of vanilla and lemon curd along with a scoop of blackberry sorbet.

the sorbets stood up and had very interesting flavor palettes – long, lingering tastes as flavors as they melted on your tongue. the cake was a chocolate so deep as dark that it actually held a bit of gritty bitterness.

the vanilla was good, but not as good as a place like this should be. great vanilla should make you laugh, cry and want to have sex at the same time.

to my tongue, though, the stand-up winner was lemon curd. a little sweet, just a tang of sour, and a cold-cream smoothness.

all in all, a great, great meal. and a good finish to what feels like the first “true” full day of all you can jet.

quote of the moment

2010-09-08T08:58:00.001-07:00

"you got any deer out there? my dad will go out and shoot 'em if you
want."

-- 30-something white bartender, talking to a patron; E aurora, NY

AYCJ 2 -- day 2 AM

2010-09-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

AYCJ 2 - day 1 AM

2010-09-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

parking garage, LAS

all you can jet 2 -- day 1, san jose, CA

2010-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

my accomplice decided to fly back from boston to join me in las vegas for the start of AYCJ. that's fine, i certainly enjoy the company, but it's meant pushing a lot of my normal trip preparations (i.e. laundry and other dumb stuff). we've also decided meet friends in two different spots in CA before our red-eye to BUF. those two things together mean i get almost exactly one hour of sleep before the first AYCJ flight.

(same view from the LAS parking gararge ... one with 15 seconds of exposure)

even though we're starting on the tuesday following a three-day weekend, the LAS airport isn't very crowded and things move smoothly. the gate agent is clearly brand new so when i go effusive about this being the start of AYCJ his reaction is something along the lines of “oh, oh yeah, that's right” while he's clearly thinking something like “i wish i could remember how to fill out this screen.”

we had a reservation, but couldn't book seats without paying premium for more legroom. when we got to the gate my accomplice is given a free upgrade to extra legroom, i get an asile seat toward the back.

almost immediately i notice the first “mistake” of the trip. i pulled out my swanky headphones, only to leave them on my dresser. jetblue is an entertainment-intensive airline – direct TV and XM in all seats – so i'll need to pick up a set on the road.

the jump to LGB is quick and easy. the steel panther picks us up (her: “you know, i don't drive hardly at all any more, THAT is how special you guys are.” me: “shut up, we've got places to go.”) and in the briefest of times we've got the best possible seat (right across from the fireplace) at roscoe's house of chicken and waffles in long beach. chicken and waffles is a soul food combo from the carolinas, but the premier version on the west coast is here. i slightly prefer the one in manchester – especially if i'm trying to make a statement (AYCJ would count) – because i'm often the only white guy in there, but i'll settle for any of them in the name of a jet pass.

the chicken at roscoe's is good, but you can find better. the waffles are to die for.

i order the sausage special with a waffle. the panther gets a sausage special with grits (she doesn't like their waffles – i won't get into that here). my accomplice gets a thigh and a waffle (that might be a #18). we also order a side of mac and cheese – wildly variable at roscoe's, this is sometimes the best dish; but can be disappointing.

i explain to the hermaphroditic server, and for the 500th time explain AYCJ and say, “we flew here solely to have your waffles. we fly to SFO in four hours.” he/she/it is truly impressed – but it doesn't get us any extra food, nor a visit from the suspiciously don cornealius-like manager.

the food is exceptional, of course. the mac & cheese is on the mark – maybe the best i've ever had at a roscoe's. conversation ranges from the differences in black and white mac & cheese to iron man south africa to, of course, the band “white snake.”

we get done and have a little time to kill so we go back to the panther's lair. as we sit talking i'm flickering in and out of consciousness … the combination of one hour of sleep and having just eaten is taking its toll. even now i can't tell you what we talked about.

the panther drops us at LGB and a gate agent picks up on the fact that we're not only AYCJers, but also AYCJ alumni. we score a set of AYCJ luggage tags without asking. i'm ecstatic.

the jump to SFO is uneventful, but my phone dies as we get to SFO. this causes a bit of a burble in getting hold of bo3b (sic – the “3” is silent) – made worse by the fact that 14:30 is pretty early in the day for him and he's had to get up for this run – but we're picked up and go back to his overlook in san carlos. some conversation, a pepsi throw-back and a replacement battery for the hiptop gets us going. we're having dinner party with a collection of pals in the evening, but that's not bo3b's thing. he drops my accomplice and me at the mountain view caltrain, we take that to san jose and then light rail to campbell. it's here that my accomplice's parents pick us up and get whisked to los gatos.

everything is like precision swiss clock work.

the meal of the evening is “fast food potluck.” stop by any fast food place of your choosing and bring enough for yourself and something to share. i hit taqueria eduardo and get two carnitas tacos. i through in a piece of apple pie i bought specifically for this party at bake and broil in long beach. while we're setting up, my accomplice drops by a local thai place and gets pad thai and satay.

a dozen people eventually show up.

ms. animae brings chinese chicken salad. my accomplice's parents bring take out from whole foods, along with a mcdonald's shake. zz and his spinner girlfriend bring chinese chicken salad from another place. the continental dividian brings two pizzas from costco. special K has mini-corn dogs from weinerschintzel. solid goldstein wanders in with two lasagnas from pizza hut. ficus arrives late (as self-predicted) with mcdonald's. the instigator brought something in a bag i can't remember. (which is horrible since he's one of only half a dozen or so people that'll actually read this thing.)

the funniest thing about it was nearly everyone apologized for the food they'd brought before they sat it out. as if you have to actually apologize for fast food … aside from my carnitas tacos, i was surprised that my favorite thing was the pizza hut lasagna. i ate a lot of it and felt no remorse.

a weird assortment of people, i spent the majority of my time talking to solid G, the animae character and ficus. i would've talked more to both zz and special K; but i'm transversing the atlantic with Z in two months and special K and i have something very, very special going with him before the end of AYCJ.

it seemed like everyone had a good time.

people left, the table got swept, goodbyes were said, and solid goldstein graciously drove us to SJC. we set out of the new terminal on a full flight. you better believe i'm gonna sleep, but the flight's not that long.

miscellaneous pix

AYCJ 2 - day 1 - pic of the day

2010-09-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

all you can jet 2 - day 0 - las vegas, NV

2010-09-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

it was just a couple sundays ago that i was talking to the robot about jetblue's "all you can jet."

"jetblue hasn't said that all you can jet is not going to happen and they've already given a couple of honorary passes away, so i'm expecting all you can jet. soon."

"how will you find out about it?"

"well, last year cap'n happy was the guy who told me about it in the first place and i had a bunch of friends following the trip along on my 'blog, so i'll bet you everything i own that when all you can jet starts, i won't find out about it by myself first ... i'll be told."

two days later, on august 17, whammo.

i wake up at 09:30 and my accomplice has already sent the big news to my cell phone three hours earlier ... AYCJ is back on. i get the newspaper, eat some cereal and my accomplice has sends me a second TXT message: "we need to talk about AYCJ."

okay, fine.

i review some of my finances, call a business partner of mine, mull a few ideas we've been talking about and as soon as i hang up, i have an incoming call. it's my accomplice. "ALL YOU CAN JET! ALL YOU CAN JET! ALL YOU CAN JET! WE NEED TO BUY IT NOW OR IT WILL SELL OUT,"

jesus. just settle down already. "the pass hasn't even been for sale half a day yet. it's not going to sell out in a day."

"but what if ..."

"but what if the vikings suddenly emerge from their graves and start killing everyone?"

i wasn't 100% sure i was going to go again, but even if nothing else makes sense, my accomplice is wound so tight there's no way i can say "no."

things are mildly different this year.

there are two flavors of passes; one for $700 that is all you can jet (the "working stiffs pass"), the other for $500 that is all you can jet WITHOUT flying on friday or sunday (the "cheapie pass"). it's an interesting play because at $700, the pass is actually $100 more expensive than last year, but at $500 it's $100 less.

the pass is also one day shorter, running from 9/7 to 10/6 this year when it was 9/8 to 10/8 last.

what's interesting is the mainstream press -- which is getting less informative almost by the day -- has failed to mention both these details. in fact the one article that i have seen mentioning the increase has said that at $100 more the pass is actually a better deal than last year because the price of travel has risen more than enough to offset it.

intentionally, or unintentionally, the pricing they're doing this year is a stroke of marketing genius.

working around fridays and sundays isn't that big of a deal -- in fact i like the idea of restriction having to work around -- it makes me feel "tricky." the side-effect, though, is it may well make travel on saturdays much weirder than usual ... saturday is traditionally the s-l-o-w airport day, but if you're bookended by not being able to fly on fridays and sundays -- along with the working stiffs who slack and fly on saturday -- the situation may be different.

14:00 rolls around and the instigator sends me an email ... he assumes that i already know, but wants to be sure i'm aware that the AYCJ pass is on sale.

14:30 i buy a pass for myself and my accomplice (the accomplice's credit card is at some kind of ceiling).

15:00 cap'n happy writes me to make sure i know the pass is on sale.

which means all my intelligent agents are all doing their job.

as expected, passes sell out a few days before end of sale. the slow, dim and uncertain all miss out and, as expected, whine. of course this year the naysayers and bad-newsers are disappointed because, in fact, AYCJ was a huge success last year.

even though we can start booking flights on 8/23, we wait for four days before we grind through it. the booking process is different -- all online versus the super-great agent that we used last year ... but that's not the delay ... the delay is due to having to be in the right state of mind ... you have to think "travel, serious and fun" all at the same time, and it takes mental stamina.

when we finally sit down it takes two and a half hours to figure out what we want.

we have a few pivotal spots. my brother and i are going to fly fish in WY over the weekend of 9/12. there's a film festival in austin from 9/21-28. we'll try to return to bogota, and see if my accomplice can actually manage to walk down the stairs without falling this time. and we want to end in new england for fall color -- something i've never done, and we skipped last year.

we churn and churn. there's some strangeness in travel because the long night hops can only be done from west to east. a resulting side-effect is that you can sometimes travel one-way (say LAS -> CUN) but not in reverse (CUN -> LAS). then too we have the self-imposed artificial restriction of the cheapie ticket in that we can't travel on fridays.

we come up with the list and it's good:

LAS -> BUF (drive around lake ontario)
BUF -> DEN (fly fish WY)
DEN -> IAD (pals -- layover for the CUN jump)
IAD -> BOG (bogota -- hopefully without the blood this time)
BOG -> MSY (i'm going to memphis, dammit. i don't care if JB doesn't fly there)
MSY -> JFK (special 24 hours enterprises event with special K)
JFK -> AUS (film festival [and bats!])
AUS -> PWM (fall color)
PWM -> CUN (mexican pyramids)

but wait ... we can't fly CUN -> LAS directly; so we tack on a final night in BOS specifically for steamed cheeseburgers and candle pin bowling ... and hey, since our first flight is a red-eye anyway, we can tack LGB (roscoe's chicken and waffles) and the bay area (our old pals) to the start with no disadvantage.

so add

LAS -> SFO; SJC -> BUF
CUN -> BOS

packing is easy. so easy, in fact, that i don't actually pack until 02:00 on the day we're leaving ... it takes 15 minutes.

my packing list is nearly identical to last year, which is to say nearly identical to any trip i have of five days or more: three long sleeve shirts, one sweatshirt, one (reversible) t-shirt, two pair of pants, five pair of underwear, five pair of socks, a track suit, wide-brimmed hat, pair of binoculars, whiplock, bandana. i'm also bringing the travel towel from the guy i met last year.

i also shaved off my beard

i have a small change in that i'm exercising more now, so i pack travel shorts that can also be used as a swimsuit. i'd like to take my running shoes, but they're a little too nice for day-to-day wear, so i'm taking my glow-in-the-darks from last year, along with my kangaroo leather hiking shoes.

my eagle creek travel bag had developed a tear along the outer seam (should've taken a picture of it, but didn't), so a fortnight before the start of AYCJ i sent it back to them with exacting details of what i needed and when. two business days before our departure it was returned, complete and correct -- a relief to see it on time and a bit of a surprise that they didn't replace it (i'm glad they didn't, i really like that bag).

one weirdness is having to leave a house for a month ... since moving, i'm now a home owner (which, by the way, is a complete crock ... americans [and me] have been duped into thinking this is important) ... and it's one thing to leave your world behind when an apartment full of people are (unintentionally) watching over it, it's quite another when you're leaving everything in an american city with the largest unemployment statistics.

morning calls soon. i'm ready, but my mood is a bit off ... and i'm not sure why.

quote of the moment

2009-12-05T13:58:00.001-08:00

"if road trip were a formula, it would be:

RT = (freedom + adventure) - (gas money) x (anticipation)"

-- eagle creek propaganda

from karpov

2009-11-27T22:00:00.001-08:00

Subject: Double Downer
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:28:21 -0500

Sad report…

Is it possible that that my sights were set too high, or worse that I am
just being contrary? I don't think so…I really wanted to like this
sandwich. Unfortunately though, my experience tonight was the
antithesis of yours during AYCJ.

I got a bit of a thrill when I saw the Double Down poster in the window
as I walked in. That turned out to be the apex of my meal.

Your counter girlie was 'super cute'. Mine…

Karpov: "Hi—I just drove all the way from New Hampshire to try out
the Double Down!"

Dour pudgy Hispanic counter female with all the charm of Bill Mertz:
"Do you want a meal, or just the sandwich?"

I get my sandwich, and snap a couple of pics. I can tell something is
wrong when I open it up. I think 'this does not look that great,
something is off.'

My sandwich had all the requisite Double Down ingredients, but it is
hard to imagine a worse assemblage of them:

Chicken (bun): Both pieces are room temp. I expected them to be
somewhat hot, or even lukewarm…hell, refrigerated would have been more
appetizing than room temp. It is like the chicken had been sitting on
a shelf (sans heat lamp) for 3 hours since it was fried. It has been a
while since I ate at KFC, but I used to like the spices/flavor of their
fried chicken. These pieces seemed pretty bland, with only a hint of
the KFC spice. The meat was a bit stringy.

Cheese: White American, completely unmelted. The cheese in your pic
looks mostly melted, (due to heat of chicken?) Mine is just slices of
unmelted processed American cheese.

Bacon: One small piece, seemed to have been cooked yesterday.
Crunchy, consistency of a giant bacon bit.

Sauce: No complaints.

I took a bite, and my first thought was 'no way am I going to eat all
of this.' I was right…I ate half, and threw the rest away.

Better than lobster? Uh, no. Not mine…in fact I think I would have
had a better meal at the Subway one mile from my house (and I hate
Subway.)

I can't imagine that you would have had the reaction you did if you
were served my sandwich. I can picture that with hot and better spiced
chicken, melted cheese, good bacon, this could be much better (not sure
I'd like it as much as you did, even with all that.) In retrospect,
I should have gone back to Ms Sunshine and asked her to try again,
harder this time.

I will say that one thing I liked was the mind trick—this contraption
has stuff in the middle of a top and bottom, and my mind thinks
'sandwich' despite the lack of bread.

dinner

2009-10-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

seafood appetizer for 2 -- i'm eating it as a main course ... harrah's
rincon, near san diego.

trivium of the moment

2009-10-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

52,000,000 gallons of fresh water are used for each transit of a large
vessel through the panama canal.

trivium of the moment

2009-10-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

560 people died for every mile of the panama canal.

from here, forward

2009-10-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

okay,

i'm officially off AYCJ now, so don't expect daily updates ... or even updates about things that happen everyday ...

here's the itinerary for the next 14 days:

Cruise Itinerary:

11 OCT

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA

12 OCT

AT SEA

13 OCT

AT SEA

14 OCT

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA

07:00 - 15:00

15 OCT

PANAMA CANAL (CRUISING)

06:00 - 18:00

16 OCT

AT SEA

17 OCT

PUNTARENAS, COSTA RICA

07:00 - 19:00

18 OCT

AT SEA

19 OCT

HUATULCO, MEXICO

12:00 - 18:00

20 OCT

ACAPULCO, MEXICO

09:00 - 18:00

21 OCT

AT SEA

22 OCT

PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO

08:00 - 16:00

23 OCT

CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO

08:00 - 16:00

24 OCT

AT SEA

25 OCT

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

07:00

the ship's 'net connection is butt expensive -- $100 for four hours, i think is the "best" rate -- so i'm not going to be connecting from there ... and there's so little land time that i'm not going to be sitting in a internet cafe typing away ...

AYCJ was an experiment in mass broadcast communication for me, but it's not the way i think of writing simply for myself ... or putting it another way, AYCJ was showing off and what follows isn't.

i picked up art supplies today so i can continue drawing ... i'll be doing some writing about poker (and some other writing about poker) as well. don't expect to see those updates while i'm at sea.

if there's anything in particular you're curious about in my travels, or you'd like to see me write about, let me know ...

i'll still post an AYCJ summary at some point ... i'm still digesting what it all means.

pax.

taking down the cafe press site tomorrow @ 17:00 ET

2009-10-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

if you want an AYCJ t-shirt, click on the link in the right.

all profits go to carbonfund.org

the last photo from flight #47 ...

2009-10-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

... and my last AYCJ flight.

pic of the day (30) -- AYCJ

2009-10-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

escalator MCO

the last photo from flight #48 ...

2009-10-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

... and if you're seeing this posted before 13:00 ET on 10/8, that means
sending in tmail is fixed too.

all you can jet - day 30 - orlando, FL

2009-10-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

well, AYCJ has 31 days ... don't ask me how the hell i wasn't able to count from 1 - 31 ... i guess i can always fall back on a line of my dad's "your degree is in mathematics, not arithmetic."

even though this is the last day, the flight leaves past noon ... that means we can sneak something in this morning ... so it's up at 06:00 to head to orlando wetlands park.

it's actually a water filtration system for the city of orlando; a series of very large cubed ponds, not unlike an ice tray, if each cube space was 200 acres.

spot the alligator

spot the baby alligator

like nearly every wilderness adventure we've had, we only saw two non-park people, and that was on the way out.

this is a great way to spend time before the last flight.

we head up to MCO. the chaos at the rental agency before is replaced with order.

and everything just works.

the catch of the day was i had to go from FLL to MCO -- 200 miles by land -- but jetblue doesn't fly that way ... so i had to go up to JFK, just to turn around and come back ... 2000 miles by plane.

i watched my accomplice head off to SJC, then turned around and headed back to fort lauderdale. i'm here for three nights (free in the four-star and fairly swank hilton fort lauderdale marina because i booked the cruise through priceline). my mom comes in day after tomorrow.

all-you-can-jet -- day 29 -- orlando, FL

2009-10-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

as far as looks go, the worst seems to be over for my accomplice. the subcutaneous sub-continent has moved on down the face ... the black eyes and bags have been replaced by a minor amount of jowlieness.

and this means things can move slightly higher speed.

dr. bob may be a chowder head in many, many ways, but he's also a timeshare savant. many times in my life i've had a call from the good doctor that goes something like this:

"b1! how're you doin'? anyways ..." ... he always starts his pitches with that exact word ... "... i've got a time share in lake tahoe this weekend, you want to use it? or how about santa fe? i've got one in pocatello too."

"all three on the same weekend?"

"yes. turns out i can't use any of them."

which means i've got a little timeshare credit that can be burned. so of course i do and we move from our great comfort suites $26/night room (free internet and jacuzzi) to a super-swank timeshare ... we'll end up burning a night we don't even use.

we both slept in, merely because we could, and then went to giordano's for pizza. there mere fact that you can get what many people consider to be chicago's best pizza (i like lou malnati's better -- although i used to pick up a G's any time i was in ORD [you can't buy that way any more]), 2000 miles away, shows how weird things have truly gotten.

[as a side note -- chicagans are extremely proud of their pizza ... i guess that's what you focus on when you're forced to live in a hell hole like chicago ... but it's not really pizza ... it's casserole.]

and yes, it was the full-on real mccoy. the only difference was the crust wasn't quite the right combination of flaky/chewy and i'll bet you anything that's due either to the water or the humidity here. the pie you see above is for "1-2" people. the my accomplice and i, as a team, were able to eat 2.5 slices of six.

on the way out i stopped by a place to see if i could get any park/hiking information ... they advertise themselves as tourist information, but they also have this sign, which should be a clue.

in fact, it was a clue, but i wanted to go in anyway.

i'll keep the synopsis brief, but here's the brunt ... if you go into a place that advertises tourist info, to a place that is, literally, one stone's throw from walt disney world, you will draw blank stares when you say, "no, not theme park, national park." you'll also be given the opportunity to attend a timeshare.

the clock still wasn't running full on, so we went back to the place to nap for 20 minutes before, that's right, going to the tie dye activity at the time share. for me, tie dye is just like pinhole photography ... somehow i managed to dodge it my entire childhood (no intentionally, unlike circuits and animal classification in biology), so i wanted to do that.

the "helpers" were teenage women, a korean and a chinese national. they wanted to do the entire tie dying process themselves but my accomplice nearly bitch-slapped them into next week and they backed off. i went at it with the kind of furor and venom an 8 year old boy can pack into a midlife over-weight body. when they wrapped the t-shirt in a towel and said, "jump on it hard ten times," my accomplice only had just a chance to say "oh no," before i blew die half- way across the floor of the "activity room."

i got a swell $8 shirt along with conversations like these.

korean woman, "why don't you speak korean?"

"two reasons. one, for the same reason i don't speak hebrew, there aren't any of you, really. you guys like to think there are lots of koreans, but there aren't. if you're a dumb ass american, you should learn a language that has a little weight and practicality to it. like chinese [score one point] or spanish, which i do speak. two, as long as you have our missiles for protection, you have to speak my language. as soon as we use your missiles, i'll learn your language, i promise. i have one korean friend. i force her to speak english for missile reasons. she understands."

i'm guessing the number of non child-molesting mid-life men who show up for tie dye class is small -- probably something like only me -- so you could see the wheels turn as they were trying to decide "is he serious?" or possibily, "how about a little A+ red to go in that shirt?"

the outdoors beckons so we head to the tibet-butler nature preserve. like bayou savage, this is a tiny little hunk of nature still left in the middle of development on all sides.

a couple pix.

really nice preserve ... there was only one other person in the entire area.

they closed at 16:00, but there was still daylight, so we went to lake louisa state park. with only an hour of daylight left, it'd essentially be a sprint-hike. my accomplice battles hip problems (not related to, but probably exacerbated by, the fall), but motion actually helps considerably.

these are the biggest damn ant lion dens i've ever seen.

big spiders (i think these are banana spiders, or a very close relative).

we closed the park -- getting mildly chewed by a park rep.

and then it was on to the one thing my accomplice and i kept coming back to ... miniature golf with an active volcano ... we go in, coupon in hand, and the proprietor is clearly ready to deal. there's only three groups on the 36 holes and they pretty much just need money. i don't even remember what we cut -- i think we paid $18 for the two of us for 36 holes. and you and i both know it's a big kahuna bargain.

i must have mixed up the hard and easy courses because the easy one seemed hard. we played super hardcore rules (penalty strokes and the works) in and around the volcano.

but the star attraction, by far, is the volcano. "it erupts every ten minutes" the proprietor said, almost sounding like it wasn't the worst question he was asked every day.

and it does. but what i wasn't expecting was the raw shock of it going off. it emits two fire balls, separated by about three seconds, that would make even the wizard of oz proud. big, long, rollers with just a whiff of hydrocarbon afterward. but they're pushed out with such velocity that the pipe howls as they're emitted. and the great balls of fire are big enough that you can feel the heat from anywhere on the course.

it turns out that the inbred human wariness mechanism for things that will scare the hell out of you is about seven minutes. so at ten minutes, every single damn time that thing went off i needed a new pair of shorts.

which is to say it was great.

now you may think i'm exaggerating, but let's look at it from the point of view of the people across the street. they're out on their balcony watching the nightly finishing fireworks at disney world. the kids cheer and applaud as they go off.

and then the volcano pyro-belches.

and the kids get real quiet.

and one them them says, almost in a whisper, "oh my god."

and the other says, "that was awesome!" (which, by the way, was the exactly correct use of the word.)

they didn't applaud fireworks after that. they did wait on the balcony for, yes, three more eruptions.

this photo is actually shot about 1/8 of a second too fast. i was actually waiting to shoot the volcano and the first eruption scared me enough that i fired on the second blast too fast.

we ate leftover giordano's and made plans for tomorrow. the last AYCJ day.

pic of the day (29) -- AYCJ

2009-10-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

sunset; orlando, FL

(this shot actually prompted my accomplice to say, "what a great fuckin' camera.")

pic of the day (29) -- AYCJ

2009-10-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

(this shot actually prompted my accomplice to say, "what a great fuckin' camera.")

pic of the day (28) -- AYCJ

2009-10-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

sunset; new smyrna beach, FL

(this pic is actually a bit of a cheat ... i went to shoot the sunset on wide angle and had pulled the camera from air conditioning to the outdoors so quickly that the lens fogged a bit ... so this isn't "just" a point-and-shoot shot, but i like the way it looks.)

all-you-can-jet -- day 28 -- orlando, FL

2009-10-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

as far as looks go, today is definitely the worst for my accomplice. full-on black eyes with extreme puffiness as the subcutaneous fluid continues its gravity ooze downward. the look is, very much, of being worked over in a prize fight.

it actually reminds me of being a kid. when i was 5, my dad drove the family car off the embankment of larimer street in denver into the cherry creek river ... conservatively speaking, it was two stories, straight down ... and of course he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. his only injury, really, was a severe compound fracture of the arm -- that's what happens when your arm decides to battle a steering wheel (and yes, it breaks the steering wheel too) -- assuming you don't count breaking the windshield with his head (something i know he did four times in his life, for certain, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was twice that much).

he was in the hospital when my mom, my brother and i went to see him. my mom went in, but my brother and i weren't allowed entry to the room.

i've never been a person who has taken "no" well, and since my mom was a nurse i'd spent lots of time in hospitals, so i just went the secret backway and walked into my dad's room. when i saw him his face was severely swollen (probably twice normal size ... which says a LOT, because the entire b1 series have gigantic heads). he was fully bruised in black, blue, red and yellow. he had many facial lacerations.

i took one look, turned around and threw up in the trash can of his room.

this, in turn, brought a litany of swearing and blasphemy from my dad "GODDAMMIT! I SAID NOT TO LET HIM IN HERE! WHO THE GODDAMN HELL LET HIM IN?" two slaps to the head, a spanking and a chewing out by three different members of the nurses' staff.

i'm proud to say that i've learned from that experience. i didn't throw up when i saw my accomplice's face this morning -- but did have to spend a fair amount of time saying everything was going to be okay.

a slow start eventually took us to JB's fish camp in new smyrna beach. this is a place i've been before (it woulda been hard for me to remember had i not put the name on the posting in the arch) and i was looking forward to eating there again.

i ordered the turtle mound combo with clam chowder.

the chowder was as lackluster as unpeeled potatoes in chowder can get, but the combo was, once again, astounding. from left to right: clams, rock shrimp, crab, shrimp and oysters. sauces are tabasco, horseradish, butter and crab boil.

the rarity in this set are the rock shrimp -- for the most part they're only served shell-on in about a 100 mile radius of the fish camp. they're known for tasting like small/sweet lobsters. there's no question they were good, but the stand-outs here actually was the crab -- very possibly the best crab i've ever had (and i forgot to ask what kind it was).

weirdness at the side of the restaurant

view directly out from my table

the lunch was long and leisurely and toward the end i saw that something large was swimming underwater along the walkway i have shown above ... i pointed it out to my accomplice and we tracked it as it swam ... and when it surfaced, it was a manatee ... we walked the pier immediately after lunch and saw a dolphin.

come on ... you gotta love a lunch place where for $20, you get a plate overfull of seafood and views of an endangered species.

the afternoon was going to be low key. we drove to daytona, and then drove the beach. it's 10mph of pure bliss.

my accomplice loves that fact that the GPS shows the car in the ocean

it's not everyday that you drive in front of a lifeguard stand

dinner was pecan encrusted catfish

and so ends the penultimate day of actual AYCJ activity. we'll have one more tomorrow, and then it's all flying on the last day.

day 28 AM -- AYCJ

2009-10-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

all-you-can-jet -- day 27 -- brooklyn, NY

2009-10-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

about an hour's worth of planning over haagen daz dark chocolate in the early AM gave rise to the plan of the day ...

... i've been in NYC something like six times on this trip and still haven't had great pastrami ... we decide to wake up early, plan in two hours of delay and go to the 2nd avenue deli (now moved to 3rd) for what solid goldstein believes is the best pastrami in new york, possibly the world.

oddly we were able to clear all the necessary stairs this time (possibly because *i* was carrying my accomplice's fricken extra bag this time) and left castle crytpo unscathed (assuming you don't count me leaving my travel hat behind).

our subway plans worked with swiss precision and we arrived at the 10:00 dead time. the old host welcomed us warmly ("josiah, please make a table for these two wonderful people who have just arrived in person") and we had run of the house. very nice considering we had our luggage with us.

i sat below a signed photo of dustin hoffman with the owner and decided i would have a of motza ball soup with noodles now and a pastrami on rye toast to go for the plane.

(note the gribenes [fried chicken skin and onions] at the 11:00 position to the bowl -- exceedingly rare)

they serve motza soup a great way here ... they actually bring all the goods dry in a bowl, then add the broth at the table. it was very good, extremely dill-y, but not the best i've had. the ice tea was spectacular, but served in small buy-every-glass portions.

after brunch we made our way to T5 and my accomplice, not fully confident with having luggage in bins overhead, checked our first collective bag of the trip. we also scored super-coveted #AYCJ luggage tags.

for the flight we were given the ultimate (non-reclining) row on the plane, which could have been disastrous if not for ... well, let me tell it this way ...

before the flight got underway, a flight attendant said, "... and we want to give a shout out to all our all you can jetters ... where are you?" (my accomplice and i raise our hand, but so does the guy to our right) "there they are in the back ... who are flying all the way to bogota today."

before i can say anything to him he fires a line out to me "you have a pass too?"

"yeah, yeah."

"where have you been?"

and so begins the conversation. it winds, it bends and it turns. we talk about this and that ... but mostly he's asking me questions about me. this, in itself, is unusual. almost everyone i ever meet (and i meet and talk to a lot of people) are far more interested in talking about themselves, or something else, than they are me. which is fine. in fact, it's what i'm used to, and the way i like it.

so i say a few things, he asks me a few more. i talk about the usual stuff: my upbringing, how water purification works in the bermuda and why i like puerto rico because it feels like what the US would be like if mexico won a war against us ... but i need to shut him down.

"you know, it's very unusual for me to sit next to a stranger and have them know more about me than i do about them ... in fact, i don't really like talking about myself that much."

and i open the question barrage. all my dear readers who know me (and there are a surprising number here, actually) have been subject to this ... so you know what it's like.

and this guy is very circumspect in his answers, which of course, only brings on a more intense barrage.

he hems and haws around giving me partial answers, near answers and changing the subject answers, but i'm getting places and i'm trying to put the puzzle pieces together ... he's a middle aged guy, he's traveling all you can jet, he's going to colombia and has been to puerto rico, bermuda, costa rica and the dominican republic already ... his name is george ... he's price sensitive, so didn't stay around in bermuda (and is impressed that we had stayed as cheaply as we had [in fact, we stayed cheaper than he did everywhere we crossed paths, but hey, it's me doing that, right?]) ...

but it's not making sense. because he has the intentions, airs and behaviors of a rich guy, but clearly isn't. he also is extremely nice, bordering on warm, which is damn near unheard of for someone who is truly new yorker male.

people are puzzles. you can figure them out, but you can't ignore anything they tell you. there are no red herrings, only quirks, tendencies, weaknesses and personality traits. for this guy, it adds but is incomplete.

then he says, "i do this ..." and hands me a lightload towel ...

(lightload towel in the lower left here)

... and he might as well have handed me a live rattlesnake.

"i know this! you're the towel guy? are you the towel guy?"

he starts laughing as i go into full wind-up. "yes."

"remember, i said i went to morocco with my pal entropy dave? WELL, I TOOK THESE WITH ME. THIS IS WHAT I USED."

"really?"

"what? you think i'm going to sit here and lie to a stranger? of course i took them ..." i spin it around in my hand. "... but it had different packaging."

and this throws him back. "what? what's that you say? how was it different?"

and i point to a sub-logo on the package. "it had this design."

"whoa! whoa! that is an early one."

"of course it's an early one. what? you think i'm some sort of idiot? you think i'm a guy who travels in the back seats of planes just to lie to the potential towel guys i meet?"

"how'd you get it?"

"entropy dave is a way harder core traveler than i am. he's been to georgia ... and georgia? it has no hotels. and he's a jew and he's been to iran. that really says it all. and he's also a fricken east coast supremacist - he thinks everything on the east coast of the US is better than the rest of the country ..." george nods his head in approval so i tap him repeatedly (and hard) on the left shoulder with my towel "... WHICH IT'S NOT ... but one of his east coast pals picked it up somewhere ... that's how we got 'em ..." i'm still putting pieces together.

"how old are you?" i ask. and again he hems and haws around. and i hate that. you're either the age you are, or you're dead. come on. this conversation is going to take forever. i'm not even a new yorker and i'm finding this borderline intolerable. "okay, you're 55 so that makes you ..." and before i can finish ...

"WAIT! how did you know i'm 55? how do you know that?"

"oh jeez, i don't know george, from all the conversations we've had over our lifetimes. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK? i write books about poker. if you do that, you need to be able to read people. poker is a game of playing people, not a game of playing cards on a table."

and i've got him. he's dangling in the pscyhological wind. whatever i want to know, i can get now.

"so you would have graduated in 1972 ..." he shakes his head in wonder, "... so you're a little too early to have followed the beatles path through india, but you're essentially on the hippie trail."

and off we go. he's a hardcore meditator. we talk about buddhism and christianity. we talk about the difference between old style and new style dill pickles. we talk about walking the florida trail. we talk for two and a half hours. we talk from the time the wheels leave the ground until the wheels touch again.

"have you ever seen fight club?" i ask.

"no."

"in it, brad pitt, who is essentially a psychopath, meets ed norton who essentially travels too much. ed norton has the idea of 'single serving friends,' like a sugar packet that you use once, these are people you meet once and then they go away. ed tells brad pitt's character that he's his favorite single serving friend ever ..." george nods, he's with me. "you are my favorite single serving friend ever." he's truly touched by this.

(FL's equivalent of the barrier islands)

we reach the airport and go our separate ways, but not without a parting comment.

"george, you might think that i like you, but don't take that too far. there is a part of me, a small part, but a real part, that hates you because you are taking the trip that i planned on, but then couldn't."

the rental car place was apparently just inside the boundaries of the land inhabited by the damned because people there were surprised by things like having a $350 hold put on their credit cards and you weren't allowed to do things like jump your car off a two story building without possible repercussions. it took over an hour to get through the line.

but it was cheap.

my accomplice was feeling the burn so we got to our hotel ($26/night, free internet) and both napped.

on waking we decided to go to my penultimate favorite southern chain, waffle house where i had a double pecan waffle and my accomplice had an all american breakfast (bacon, hashbrowns, eggs, waffle raisin toast). apparently it was the perfect choice. my accomplice was fired up enough to tip the server, ms. donna, 50% ... and the total was still $20 (i'll leave it to the instigator to figure out what the original bill was -- i won't be home for a fortnight, that might be enough time).

but all is not well for the accomplice. last night as i was typing here i noticed a swelling of the brow ... today that subcutaneous fluid has move down my accomplice's face and has created puffiness around the bridge of the nose and what was earlier extreme flaming redness and puffiness around the eyes has turned to something more fully evil and dark.

my accomplice's left eye is now swollen about half shut with full-on black eyes on both sides. it's possible (although i don't think likely) that my accomplice's eyes could be swollen shut tomorrow.

having a mom as an emergency room nurse, a grandfather who was a doctor, a scout master that was a green beret and having worked in a pharmacy myself, i know about as much as you can about medicine without actually, oh, being accredited ... and i can say with fair certainty that there's nothing wrong here. it may not be the way you want to look as you wander through the world, but as long as the fluid doesn't try to fill the ocular areas, everything's fine.

it's definitely, definitely, tapping my accomplice's energy, but spirits are high. ice, jacuzzis and slow pace all help.

we'll probably have half of a true travel day tomorrow, but hey, we're movin' ... and it's easy to imagine worlds where that might not be the case right now.

day 27 AM -- AYCJ

2009-10-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

empire state building

the last photo from flight #1783

2009-10-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

all-you-can-jet -- day 26 -- brooklyn, new york

2009-10-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

essentially today was entirely a day of recovery for my accomplice from yesterday's slide park ...

the day started with the best bagel i've ever had (mr. crypto had rustled it in from the bagel hole). so pretty much whatever happens from here out, including direct meteoritic strike, this is going to be a good day.

family crypto went to atlantic antic and suggested that my accomplice and i might want to tag along ... but on their triumphant return, it seemed like a damn good place to get a butterfly painted on your face, but perhaps a bit lackluster in other ways.

instead we collectively napped, sat around and then took a medium length walk to the brooklyn fish camp. i had a lobster roll, my accomplice had a bowl of soup and crab beignets. (the latter being horribly mis-named -- they should have been called "crab fritters" -- insisting on calling an item something "cool" to make it sound better is a terrible disservice if it isn't actually that item.)

... and we split an ice cream sundae for dessert. tasty, but expensive. $85 including tip.

but it's not all boring news from the day ...

my accomplice is doing very very well -- almost suspiciously so. full mobility. remarkably little bruising. razor edge sharp. only a very small amount of ominous swelling on the brow (oh, and the genius surgeons actually missed a two inch contusion further back on my accomplice's scalp, which would be easy to do if i hadn't told them that they missed a wound -- which i did, goddammit).

so this means traveling tomorrow is a possibility.

we looked at the map. anywhere outside the US is out in case something odd suddenly happens to my accomplice. sure, at this point the mexican medical system is better than the US (and no, i'm not being satirical), but if you're stuck for an extended period of time there it becomes problematic.

portland and seattle seem like possibilities, but they're too far (meaning we don't feel like hauling all the way out and back and i'm not convinced a long jet ride for my accomplice is a good idea right now). denver's a possibility, but i'm seeing my mom in a week anyway and that lessens my wanting to go there. salt lake city isn't that attractive. we've both been to austin too recently.

(don't you just love problems of the rich? i have to hear my friends sniffle about crap like this all the time, although theirs tends to be more in the category of "i don't know what kind of tile to put in the second bathroom of my other house," or, "my maids never put things back where i want them.")

the two things that look good are going back up to burlington, because the color change is full-on right now. and orlando because there are some florida possibilities -- including driving on daytona beach, which i love. we talk 'em over, and even though emotionally i lean toward seeing the color change and i'm already burning a couple of days in FL before the cruise, i still vote for orlando. it's warm. it's nice. it's cheap. it's shoulder season. and the food's better.

but the jetblue pass essentially has two rules: you can't fly out of the same airport on the same day; and all reservations have to be made or changed at least three days ahead of time (elseyou risk a $100 penalty). and the pass ends 10/8, so playing inside the rules doesn't work quite right here.

i come from a school where i believe anything is possible. and if there's anything i can do, it's reason, connect with other people and emote in a way that gets a sympathetic response.

{as a service to everyone involved, i need to be very careful what i say here, because there are a ton of angle shooters in the world -- especially on the internet -- and i don't want to give them fodder.}

so let me just say i have a 35 minute call with jetblue that was remarkably impressive -- tomorrow we make our ultimate all-you-can-jet leg.

no, i don't think orlando is a replacement for bogota, but throughout life you play the hand your dealt. focus on the downside, you torture yourself ... and i've given myself enough of that kind of pain in this lifetime.

tomorrow i move again ...

... i welcome it.

all-you-can-jet -- day 25 -- new york, NY

2009-10-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

everything was running on perfect clockwork. up and out the door and in less than 12 hours we'd be in bogota ...

there's only one catch: to get out the door, you've got to go down the stairs of mr. crypto's house. and to go down the stairs, you have to walk. and it turns out, that's not always so easy.

my accomplice lost footing while turning a corner on the stairwell landing and went face first down a flight of stairs. once it was clear that physics was going to take total control of the situation, my accomplice decided to surf the bag-in-hand down the stairs. and that worked damn well. the kevlar/boyt combo is a good one for body riding ... assuming, of course, that you keep your head away from all objects as you do.

if you can't do that,although your ribs and legs will be fine, i'd say it's likely you'll get: a y-shaped slash the size of my index finger on your head, leak about a pint of blood out of your body, get 20 stitches (complete with a dozen injections into your wounds so there's, ahem, "no pain"), an insider's look at a CAT scan, your scalp lifted so far off your head as it's cleaned that your eyes get drawn closed as the swabbing happens from that oh-so-popular plastic-surgery "windswept look," a test to see if jetblue charge you for hospitalization cancellations (they don't) and six hours in a waiting room where you get to watch clint eastwood in "pale rider" with the sound off.

which, it turns out, is what happened here.

of course, once you've surfed enough stairwell feet, had several mainlines of novacaine and really have no idea of the concept of "fear," you're nothing but go-go-go, right? which means now that we've got a free night in NYC, we figured, hey, why not head back to di fara's for some pizza? our timing would be perfect to get there just as they opened at 18:00 ...

when we arrive, there's a sign on the door "out of dough, will open at 7:00." how you run out of dough before you even open is a little beyond my basic understandings of business and pizza, but what do i know?

remembering that we've had nothing to eat today (assuming you don't count a few aerosol A+ red cells) this was less-than-spectacular news. we headed over to the baskin robbins/dunkin donuts combo to get a scoop of ice cream and finally finally finally get a free hash browns coupon honored (they give us these coupons on about half our jetblue flights and all three times we've tried to cash 'em, they've been denied).

we're back in queue for di fara's at 18:30 and already there's a new york style line (which means everyone's jockeying for position well before the doors even open). 50 minutes later, at 20 minutes past 7:00, they open -- we catch one of the few seats, but i then have to wait another 40 minutes to get a slice a pizza. yes, yes, yes, it's a damn good slice ... but nothing's worth the kind of torture we've had to endure to eat this damn thing (and no, i don't mean stair surfing).

my accomplice wants to get right back on the flight path tomorrow, but there's no way we're doing that ... head injuries can get you in the strangest of ways. (just ask natasha richards or billy mays.) in fact, i'm surprised they didn't ask for a night of hospital observation ...

... but this leaves our AYCJ future in serious question ... there's an unwritten, but well-understood, rule that all-you-can-jetters watch out for each other ... that means i'm on duty here ... bogota is now officially out -- and, ironically, it was the only place we had made both firm plans and reservations for ...

i'm not sure what's in.

goddammit.

you know what i believe this is a result of? this is a luggage accident. my accomplice insisted on carrying two bags -- one as a small backpack and another as a duffle. because my accomplice actually travels lighter than i do (which is almost unimaginable), the combo in those two bags is almost certainly lighter than my travel pack, but the set definitely has more bulk ... if you can't see the stair you're stepping on, it's not inconceivable that you may have to suddenly practice new forms of transit ... and this is never a good idea without either a helmet or a seatbelt.

remember, i said years ago that great luggage can keep you from death ... now do see what i mean?

(and one thing's for damn sure ... this fall could have been much, much worse ... it's not that hard to die in this type of accident.)

[for those of you keeping score in the home version of the game, please chalk up two bonus points for mr. crypto who when told, "put direct pressure on the wound" didn't even think twice about it, or put on sissy rubber gloves, or even flinch at the idea. if you have a bad accident around mr. crypto, and your life can be saved, he will save it (and after the fireworks were over he hung tight at the emergency room while i spooled red travel tape). that's pretty damn nice for a guy whose house has just been permanently stained. in the words of my dad. go mr. go crypto. go, go, mr. crypto.]

all-you-can-jet -- day 24 -- new orleans, LA

2009-10-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

i wanted to get one more good food experience in new orleans before blast-off, so we headed over to an old favorite of mine, mother's, for breakfast.

and the food was ... terrible. the service, unattentive and snide. but what's more, i couldn't even "place" mother's in my mind ... it didn't seem familiar ... and then i realized ... i had confused it with the clover grill and ate at the wrong damn place.

dammit.

so we hopped on the plane and flew to JFK. the timing was such that we were to show up during the all you can jet happy hour that jetblue were throwing. i figured i'd eat an hors d'oeuvres, have a can of coke, and head along my way ... it was anything but that.

it turns out that the people who have an all you can get pass fall into two broad categories: people who have a lot of time, but almost no money; and people who have a lot of time and a hell of a lot of money.

i hobnobbed with the rich, twitter famous and jetblue employed. the most impressive hit was a long conversation with the man behind the keyboard of @jetblue.

but that's not who impressed me the most ...

what did was a very interesting conversation i had with @jetnathan.

my accomplice was under the impression that he was just trying to weird people out, but as my uncle once said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro ... and i've had my union card for awhile now.

nathan and i talked about burlesque, barbecue, barb wire and why should someone get permanently marred for life by someone they don't even know.

the reason that came up was @jetnathan has been getting a tattoo of every airport code of every jetblue city he's been to on his pass.

(when i took this photo he said, "you make me look like i have a big fuckin' arm."

i said, "i have a bracelet. it says, 'WWJND.' what would jet nathan do? and you know what he'd do? he'd shoot a shot like this."

nathan agreed.)

my accomplice plowed through three glasses of wine and was in the bag by the time we left ... but not before we both scored an AYCJ t-shirt.

i was hoping to hit di fara pizza, since we missed it last time we were in town, but it got late enough that i figured we'd be in line for forever and a day over there ... so instead we headed to junior's, a place that makes a cheesecake my accomplice is obsessed with.

the food was truly unremarkable -- including the cheesecake -- but hey, i don't like cheesecake that much anyway ... and i've been shoving so much food of my choosing down the throat of my accomplice, i can hardly complain for the very smallest amount of turn-about.

we come back to burn some late night oil. tomorrow's bogota -- our ultimate all-you-can-jet trip -- and we need to be on our marks for this one. if you exclude salt lake city, bogota is as scary a place as jetblue flies ...

... and i am pysched for it in a big way.

the last photo from flight 118

2009-10-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

day 23 AM -- AYCJ

2009-10-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

this is a faux italian square that was stuck in the middle of downtown new orleans in the 80's.

(god knows why.)

all-you-can-jet -- day 23 -- new orleans, LA

2009-10-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

although i'm not sick, i'm not quite away from illness, either. my sinus tapping of yesterday has turned into a chest cold today. at least i think that's what it is, because i'm also clearly allergic to something in this area (it might be mold), so it may be nothing more than just weird offsets of allergy. i had bad allergies as a kid, but they've gone totally away as an adult (which, by the way, is a possible indicator of severe arthritis in old age), so who knows?

the important thing is i'm running under full power ... so as long as i have a kleenex, i'm set to go.

first stop, cafe du monde. the new orleans place so famous that even anne's heard of it and been there.

from there it was out for a swamp tour. as hard as it is to believe, i actually do do some regular tourist stuff ... as long as it's interesting and fun. (for the purists, this is the honey island swamp.)

this is a shot of the boat moving forward -- these are tiny water plants on the surface, not grass.

cypress knees -- canjuns tend to use these for electric lamp stands

overall a good, but not great, tour. the cajun steering the boat wasn't fully swamp knowledgeable -- he'd spent several years as a firefighter in new orleans ... i got spoiled several year ago when i was on a fan boat with a cajun that was so hardcore that, really, he preferred to speak french -- he was also only one of two people i've ever met that could spot wildlife faster than i do (the other was in kaziranga -- a displaced nirobi tribesman).

we had evening plans and just enough time to take a side detour to the original abita brewery ... pretty much everywhere they're well known for their beer, but that's not why i'm interested in going ... they also have a sugarcane rootbeer that ranks up with the very best softdrinks in the world.

we were both a bit peckish, since all we'd had was sugar-covered fried dough for the day, so we split a catfish po' boy as well.

but the key point of the day was to be rock n' bowl. this is a place from the 40's that was completely destroyed by katrina, only to be re-established elsewhere. it's a bowling alley, yes. it's a concert hall, yes. it's both, yes. but it's more than that. depending on the music of the evening, it can be the very core hub of all things that are new orleans, but not obvious ...

the thing you want to look for at rock n' bowl is zydeco night because new oreleans is the very core of this sound. a musical style that's essentially ignored or unknown by the rest of the world, you know this place is hardcore when you walk in and see a larger-than-life cut-out of clinton chenier (you can think of him as the bob marley of zydeco).

nathan and the zydeco cha chas were to be playing and this is a band to see because they're on the way up (as much as any zydeco band ever is) and will be playing at the grand ole opry next month.

now, i was on a big 8 team in college, which is to say i've spent way way way too much time in bowling alleys. i'm certain that i've bowled more than 15,000 lines, at more than 100 lanes in my life. and i can tell you, with absolute certainty, that i have never bowled at an alley that not only doesn't have a step-down from the lane to the score-keeping area, but also immediately becomes a dance floor ... and that's exactly what happens at rock n' bowl.

nathan and the cha chas rocked and rolled. they played well more than three hours with no breaks. my accomplice and i both bowled three games (which was the first time in a l-o-n-g time that i not only used a conventionally drilled house ball but also house shoes) ... for the most part, college kids bowl and older white canjuns dance.

(the band had the best frottoir player that i've ever seen.)

just a tiny bit hungry, we went once again to get small dishes at angelo brocato's ... and didn't have a full meal all day.

spectacular day.

pic of the day (22) -- AYCJ

2009-09-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

all-you-can-jet -- day 22 -- new orleans, LA

2009-09-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

my sore throat's gone with only a tapping reminder of things not being "quite right" in my sinuses. even on waking i can tell that i'm running full power ... an all that jazz sandwich from verti marte will do things like that to a person.

first up, lunch at commander's palace. ten or 15 years ago many considered this to be the best restaurant in america, but since then the majority of the snooty have moved on.

not me.

remembering that i've never eaten at the french laundry, i consider this to be the best restaurant in the western hemisphere (assuming you consider spain to be in the east). not only have i never had a bad meal here, i've always had something at a sitting that made me wince with pleasure as i ate it.

it was a spectacular day in NO, so i opted to sit outside.

after mulling over the menu for at least ten minutes, i chose shrimp and tasso henican as an appetizer

and LA softshell crab as an entree

the waiter had pimped the appetizer as "possibly the best shrimp dish ever created." i don't know if he's right, but it is the best thing i've ever tasted with shrimp in it ... the glassy sauce is hot and sweet, at a perfect balance ... and with the super hardcore nod to LA, it uses crystal (the preferred hot sauce here) instead of tabasco.

the crab was very good, although the shell was just a little deep into the season -- by just a few days ... it should have a smooth and quick bite -- maybe something like a thick and wet potato chip -- and this was just a tad more crunchy than that ... the flavor was spectacular.

my accomplice ordered a soup tasting as a starter, getting "the best turtle soup in the world," seafood gumbo and chicken and black eyed pea.

all of them were good with the black eyed pea being commit-a-felony-for-it incredible. my accomplice doesn't like heavy seafood tastes and i was offered up most of the gumbo. it was rich and thick stick-it-to-your-ribs. THE great thing about good LA food is you can actually taste the history in it -- it's not something designed to slap you on the face and call you daddy (in the way, say, a steamed cheeseburger does), but rather it sits with you and tells a long story -- like a good friend you haven't seen in far too long. no spice on first or second taste, but a long, slow, back of the tongue burn a minute or so later.

for dessert i had the house specialty, bread pudding souffle with whiskey and cream sauce. three words: in cred ible.

my accomplice had pecan pie and it was absolutely as good as pecan pie gets, which is to say, not very good (even our server hates pecan pie).

the only down-side of the meal was a full-on attack by a large swarm of flies with red eyes the size of golfballs when the seafood hit the table (my accomplice had black pepper shrimp). they were so ravenous that we were forced to retreat further back in the patio. the hyper attentive staff went into paroxysms of apologies, but as i explained to them, "when i'm offered indoors or patio, i know it's a calculated risk."

including tip, the meal was a cool $90. and so very worth it.

stepped into the cemetery across the street, snapped this pic (five minutes after close)

then it was off to the sculpture garden.

unfortunately it was being renovated (one of the very few downsides of traveling in the shoulder season is stuff like this happens sometimes), so we walked around the perimeter ...

... and then went to the botanic garden across the street.

this isn't a label-everything-in-latin-and-write-cards-you-never-read-so-you'll-feel-bad kind of botanic garden. it's just a pretty place ...

then it was off to the bayou savage national wildlife refuge -- within the boundaries of N.O., it's the largest urban wildlife refuge in the US. immediately you're struck by how remote it feels (even though this shot was taken within 50 yards of a US highway).

lots of hurricane damage still in evidence, not only in homes an buildings around the area, but with hardwoods such as these:

still, beauty is where you find it -- just look at the pic of the day ... as are gators ...

(this shot with digital zoom)

evening draws close, but neither of us are too hungry so we opt for verti marte leftovers from last night and some ice cream from the legendary angelo brocato's.

i chose strawberry ice and zuppa iglese (rum and cream with chocolate chips -- which tasted more like egg nog).

spec. tac. u. lar.

when i'm in N.O., i'm traveling on my stomach. which is to say, my traveling is always growing.

i'm sorry your day wasn't as good as mine ... no matter how good yours was.

day 22 AM -- AYCJ

2009-09-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

restaurant patio; new orleans, LA

pic of the day (21) -- AYCJ

2009-09-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

MSY terminal

all-you-can-jet -- day 21 -- brooklyn, NY

2009-09-29T21:28:00.001-07:00

my accomplice and i have been i NYC and twice we haven't had a decent meal yet. to make up for this, mr. crypto has suggest having breakfast at shopsin's general store a quirky place that dodges the restaurant health authorities by selling a few goods (and thereby becoming a store). the proprietor has a reputation for being soup nazi-like. the food runs the range of sublime to bizarre.

it sounds like a good idea.

when the alarm goes off at 08:00, the stuffy nose i had from the night before has turned into a sore throat. it's not a bad one, but sickness is very unusual for me. i can tell it's tapping my energy a bit as we put the pieces in motion to get going.

of course it doesn't hurt that i take a shower in the crypto's greatest set-up in the world:

(they also have the smallest bathroom in the world -- be sure to check out the chair ... this pic taken outside the bathroom

)

we get to shopsin's first. the menu is voluminous (and i have it on good authority that sometimes stuff is thrown on just to fill up space).

i got yelled at for taking this picture

(by pure chance, one of the big investors in full tilt poker is in the foreground)

i go for the strange-yet-famous mac'n cheese french toast. it's a little better than i expected (and i was expecting good) and gets a half point extra for being served with real maple syrup.

my accomplice went for a spectacular corned beef hash. mr. crypto (who is clearly well-known here) opted for latkes.

we parted ways with mr. crytpo and headed over to a place i'd seen on the travel channel on one of the jetblue flights ... the doughnut plant ... legendary for spectacular (if not downright odd) doughnuts.

i got a blackberry (it even has seeds still), my accomplice got a triple chocolate.

a few quick transit connections and we were on the flight to MSY. i slept almost the entire way.

once in, we got a car, dropped our bags at our room, and headed to the verti marte deli -- the place that makes my favorite sandwich in the world, the all that jazz -- ham, turkey, shrimp, cheese and mushrooms.

(this shot looks directly into the front door of food paradise.)

my accomplice opted for a stuffed pork chop. (which brought on instantly blasphemy when taken a first bite of.)

i have a lot to say about new orleans, but i'll leave it for later. for right now, i'm catching up ... which i've done.

for the moment, laissez les bon temps roulez.

day 21 AM -- AYCJ

2009-09-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

buildings; brooklyn, NY

the last photo from flight #119

2009-09-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

pic of the day (20) -- AYCJ

2009-09-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

JFK terminal bridge

all-you-can-jet -- day 20 -- las vegas, NV

2009-09-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

after three hours of sleep i'm up and out at 05:15 on nearly full auto-pilot. although my flight's at 07:10, i make only with enough time to sit, literally, less than a minute before i board.

i sleep or am zombified until i get to JFK. my accomplice bagged out to CA a couple of days ago and we're going to meet back up here. i thought i was going to get in first by about three hours, but i think i confused it with another plane schedule and in less than 15 minutes we had reconvened and picked a strategy ... we were going to be spending the night with mr. crypto, so we'd take the subway to his place, drop our bags and head to di fara for what is supposed to be the best pizza in NYC.

quick conversations with mr. and mrs. crytpo and the obligatory subway ride lead us to discover, that's right, di fara are closed on monday and tuesday.

so here we are, sitting in NYC, one of the truly great culinary cities of the world and i feel so broken that i suggest grabbing yogurt and fruit at the local market and taking it back to the cryptos. my accomplice grudgingly accepts and back we go.

that's the bad news.

the good news is we had a really nice conversation with the cryptos (including things like recalling, in detail, the double down sandwich).

short day today because of all the raw body movement.

tomorrow will be the same as we head to new orleans.

day 20 AM -- AYCJ

2009-09-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

casino entry; las vegas, NV

the last photo from flight #190

2009-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00