Some of these are a couple months old, but that’s about how much time I have for editing videos. Enjoy.
Desert Snow, Oliver Lee State Park, New Mexico – outside Alamogordo
Snow in White Sands New Mexico
Playing with Tumbleweeds in a wind storm, Monahans, TX
Hope to have some more soon.
The most we’ve stayed anywhere so far is 2 weeks but Austin is just great enough to stay longer. It’s probably the only city so far I can imagine myself living in for at least a year. There is a pretty decent number of vegetarian restaurants, theater pubs and parks – plus the weather is generally awesome. I’m sure the summers are a living hell and the one day it did get humid here, it was horrible, but no place on earth is going to be awesome and have great weather all the time – that I know of yet.
We went out a few times a week and on the weekend with our friend Olivia who moved to Austin from Portland about 2 years ago. We were lucky to know someone there who knew the kind of food we wanted and places we would like to see.
Brite Wash, Austin Texas - Urban Cowboys
Beer Land Show, Austin Texas
Dont do coke in the bathroom
Zombie Attack!
Swad - cheap indian food, Austin
star wars loteria cards by Chepo Pena
theme song while Ross works with his new music programThis last week we went out quite a bit and I even got to drop off some rolls of film at a lab that actually cross processes slide film, Precision Camera on North Lamar. Of course they messed up and forgot to cross process one roll – but I’ll forgive them since they’re not going to charge me!
Finally having some film to upload will be nice, and I bought several more rolls of slide 35mm, 120 and even a pack of fuji instant. I haven’t tried it yet but I’m sure its just fine. I don’t really see a need to bring Polaroid back – Fuji bought the formulas from them and presumably makes the exact same thing. The name Polaroid is classic but necessary? No. Seems our cultural hangup on brand identity knows no limits. If Coke sold their formula to Shasta Cola (cheap soda), people would still call Shasta cheap crappy soda, even if its the exact same thing as Coke.
Last week I developed some film in the RV. It was the first time I made the attempt on the road and oddly it went without a single hangup. The film even dried correctly with no water spots or particles all over it. I thought for sure my chemicals would have been bad after all the temperature changes they’ve gone through. I keep them up above in the storage area where the heat and cold aren’t really controlled directly but I tested the fixer, it was fine – and the developer didn’t smell funny so I went on with it. To prepare I only had to turn on the water heater and wait a while for the water tank to heat up. Each roll takes about 20-30 mins altogether to load, develop and rinse, then they were hung in the bathroom on the shower pole with shower curtain hooks and weighed down so they wouldn’t curl with paper clips. I only did 2 rolls and still have 3 more to do but I’m making progress on my backlog of film from the trip.
Here’s a few from those rolls, all taken with my big Pentax 67:
Spokane, WA – Benny & Joon House
Spokane, WA – Railroad Collecting
Spokane, WA – Hillyard Ghost Town
New photos should include ones from Salton Sea, Monahans, Llano River, Catalina State Park and more!
- All in one week, Love Sigourney Weaver!Just wanted to mention that I find myself remembering fondly the harder times of the trip. Moving fast across the country, boondocking behind the North Shore Yacht Club while it was being renovated, running our generator in a Walmart parking lot so we have electricity to work while transitioning to another spot, staring at google maps for hours trying to figure out where we’re going next while already driving there. Like a band of gypsys, down the highway we would go. RV shaking and noisy, Chena on my lap – and halfway on the cooler. Things and places to photograph. All the while without running water, showers, predictable bathrooms or healthy food. Sometimes without propane in the cold, sometimes without protein for weeks (it seemed). I miss it. I hate being in one place so long (and only 2 weeks) – yet unable to go anywhere really without a car and nothing close to walk to. There’s a city bus but I don’t exactly feel like going downtown alone in the cold. I also have to work almost the same hours as Ross and by the time we’re done its dark and the only place nearby is a mini mart with a grumpy Iranian guy who doesn’t take debit cards. In his defense he did make a joke tonight after seeing my out of state ID, he asked me why I didnt have a drivers lisence “drinking and driving hahahaah?” – hes ok. It’s understandable why its odd to not have a drivers license here. Nowhere so far has a transit system or bike lane system like Portland.
We go to Austin Tomorrow and we’re tying for a place closer to town, The weather should be getting better next week and I plan to do something with it (and blog more) . Stagnation and stability are my ultimate killer, or maybe just boredom and the lack of someone to meet for coffee?
So when nothing really happens, I dont blog. I suppose I can and should find things to blog about – even though they wont be that interesting to many of you, it will keep me blogging.
The last 2 weeks we’ve been at Travel World RV Park in San Antonio. It’s a pretty regular RV park with some fairly nice to fairly rude little old ladies working the counter. They have a little overpriced store in the office and spots run average $228 a week. They didn’t ask us, so I had to mention – that I read about the economy spots on their website – $150 a week. The lady looked rather annoyed and I asked what the difference was. “Cable” she said, “the economy spots don’t have cable”. I liked having cable at the last place. Having a TV to watch forced me to get away from the computer for 30 mins to watch some cartoons or news but charging nearly $80 a week for cable TV, digital or not = horrible. She failed to mention though that the economy spots also only have 30amp plugs as opposed to the usual 30 and 50 which allows us to (more conveniently) charge our batteries that all the 12 volt lights and car stereo (w/speakers, our house stereo too) use. We also had to buy a new drain hose because there was no way to park close enough to the drain in the ground. This however did not help us much – we bought the 10foot hose for $12 because, although we needed a longer one, the 20foot foot hose was $44 for some reason in their pricey little shop. Neither came with attachments so we also had to buy one of those – and after 2 weeks of stretching the hose as tight as we could, the attachment to the RV broke. It’s now held on with duct tape – they’re easy enough to get and cheaper than a new hose but.. well they’re about 60 feet away and that’s just too far in this cold.
Yeah.. cold. I always thought the south was warmer in the winter, and I guess sometimes it is – of course in the desert during the day, but it has been colder lately than Portland and even the mountain range my mom lives in in New Mexico. Tap is running and going to the bathrooms is a constant battle. We just happen to be parked about as far as possible from the bathrooms, another perk of the economy spot, and the other night when it was about 20 degrees, the locks to the bathrooms – some sort of metal key pad – were frozen and I couldn’t get in till the next day. Ross of course managed to get in somehow – I say he broke a window or used some kind of voodoo magic (I punched and pulled at those doors for 20 mins). Last night, the coldest so far, we were out till 2am eating at one of the several restaurants in town with vegetarian food, then going to a midnight showing of Daybreakers. A movie I would recommend the whole family go see. If you don’t agree, tell the woman with the 3 year old above us in this gore fest of a film (that’s a good thing – the gore not the lady and her kid). I seriously considered yelling at the lady to leave before the film started but really, what do I know about raising kids right. He didn’t cry once is all I can say about that – when I was that age I would have been crying and had nightmares for years. I once saw the cover of a horror movie at a video store when I was 9 – and believed in toilet monsters till I was 12. True story, from just the cover.
So.. speaking of procrastination- New Years. What did we do? We actually didn’t do nothing! We instead took the bus that’s right across the street downtown and walked around the waterfront. The waterfront here is far superior to the waterfront in both Portland and Spokane for many reasons. Although it is practically still canal water, it is accessed by walking down stairs to a water alley of cool old buildings and restaurants and absolutely no railing whatsoever to save you from falling into the cold, bacteria filled cesspool; But it looks cool and that is what matters. Along the canal there are stone bridges above periodically that you can access with stairs in order to get to the other side of the canal – most of the bridges are busy streets in the city above. In the water, there are cute little boats similar to gondolas and how appropriate, because it looks like a miniature Venice. I really have no good photos of this because it was night time but I would have liked for you to get the idea of how fearfully close we were forced to the water in the New Years crowd. A constant stream of locals and tourists shoving past you on a narrow piece of sidewalk and crowding outside restaurants waiting for their names to be called made the experience pretty frightening really. I’m not sure (if) how the night was pulled off without at least 40 people in the canal – especially since most of them were drunk.
San Antonio Water Front
After trying 3 different restaurants and being told that there would be at least an hour and a half wait, we left the canal for less populated eateries. We found Rio Rio – which actually happened to be on the canal as well we later noticed – just on the other side and downstairs. We were surprised it was so empty but after ordering their vegetarian burrito and veggie quesadilla – I mean the spinach on spinach burrito and spinach on spinach on cheese quesadilla we understood. This was the second time we’d ordered a “vegetarian” item in Texas “non vegetarian restaurants” and the second time our food was stuffed to the brim with soggy nasty canned spinach. Apparently Vegetarian and Popeye are synonymous here to restaurants who don’t specifically care about people who don’t eat meat. It’s really a convenient enough addition to any menu, how can they screw it up? food but without meat! What a wacky concept!!!! YET they still cant pull it off. Here is a good veggie burrito for you – Spanish Rice, Beans, Cheese, Pico de Gallo and FRESH spinach – here is a veggie quesadilla – Cheese, Black beans and FRESH spinach. I KNOW that you have those things in your Mexican restaurant kitchen. I think what the problem is, is that they just hate us and want us to never eat at these places again. Done and done.
After that we went towards the funny space needle wanabe thing where the fireworks would be going off, and near our last bus. We made the mistake of asking a police officer where the bus mall is and he kindly directed us to the largest and most packed group of people since Black Friday at a Walmart. It seemed there may be a through way but we were duped and spend the next 20 minutes smelling armpits and stepping on push chairs trying to get out. I cant tell you the number of thick leather, heavily cologned jackets were shoved into my face nor how we survived but eventually we burst forth from the mass. I wanted and planned for most the time to run like hell as soon as we were free but the crowd of people leaving also bogged us down all the way to the bus stop.. which was a block back. The cop made of go through the crowd for nothing.
New Years was also a blue moon I was told. What does this mean you ask? NOTHING of any SIGNIFICANCE! It means there were 2 fill moons in one month, apparently rare, but mind you these are human months – concepts of time written down by man so for nature, its probably no big deal at all. If you told nature “hey that’s freakin cool!” She would say, “oh that? eh, I guess” and not because she’s modest. Nature has no concept of a 30 day ‘month’ nor a 28 day one. (That was an existentialist rant if anyone was wondering what that was).It was pretty anyway, although not at all blue and not at all special.
We arrived home with no problems, except for the lovely man on the bus listening to music loudly on the world’s worst cell phone/mp3 player.
We have since been working and little more. I should write about work more and probably will. I am officially the only one writing blogs so if you all come here for Ross, you will be disappointed. 
