travelogue
i’ve gotten ahead of myself, as usual, delving into the specific without giving my reader the outline. Our trip’s framework:

Wednesday the 25th
We left Louisville in my MINI for our non-stop flight out of Indianapolis. Whitney’s a bad flyer even under the best of circumstances, but her months of nightmares about our doom on our flight to Denver had her on a razor’s edge the whole day. Two hops to Tampa earlier in the year had nearly undone her, so I found a non-stop flight to Denver on upstart Frontier airlines. A discount carrier like Southwest or JetBlue, Frontier has new Airbus A318/319 planes with only coach-class seats. I was only impressed with their service, professionalism, and price.

Imagine a place with the best water you’ve ever tasted, not bottled, but flowing from every tap.

Imagine air, crisp and devoid of humditity. Imagine the most scenic vistas imaginable, of mountains and wildlife surrounding you in 360 degrees of God’s creation.

Imagine all this, and you’ll have Estes Park, Colorado, the place I’ve shared with elk, gray jay’s, fat chipmunks, and my darling for the past few days.

Yes, folks, I’ve been on VACATION! Having done the sea-level thing just a few months ago, we decided to try the opposite: Where St. Petersburg is developed, hot, and sea-level, the Rockies are wild, chilly, and relatively untouched. If you like nature at ALL, then go there.

Sour grapes, table for one?

I think you’ve hit the nail. I consider myself lib…

Argus - Sep 3, 2006

I think you’ve hit the nail. I consider myself liberal and do agree with your description of the different mindsets.

fascinating summary of the liberals -v- conservative perspectives:

Red Brains vs. Blue Brains:

In my mind, the main difference between liberals and conservatives is a preference for nature or nurture. This ties in to your idea abou the loss of free will. Disclaimer: I consider myself a conservative, athough I think I have a good understanding of how liberals think because a lot of my friends are liberals and I like to talk about politics. I’d love to hear feedback on this idea to see how valid it is.

I don’t know if I just have something for women with techno-orange hair, but Run Lola, Run was an amazing movie. Shot in realtime, we experience a frenetic run through the streets of Germany, following the main character as she tries to save her boyfriend from his destiny.

go here and set your faces to stunned (SFW):

Mat e a Car

If my splitting headache this morning is any indication, it’s going to rain today. Alot.

We had our monthly meeting of the Central Kentucky Region of SCCA yesterday, down at Jim Sawyer’s Bar and Grille, downtown where the old Civic Center shops used to be. These days, it’s mostly known as “That place at Main & Broadway where there’s a Starbucks”.

Sawyers is a great place, and the CKR members are great people. Mike Janssen is getting married to his sweetheart on Sept 3rd. There’s an Autocross on Sepetember 5th, so the honeymoon will likely be short. He’s trying to get his performance parts business off-the-ground, and he was trying to sell me some camber plates for my MINI, which would kick me out of stock and land me smack into STS or F Street Prepared, if I decided I still wanted to run on R-compound race tires.

Just because what the world really needs is Caffeinated Soap:

For the historically inclined, there’s a wonderful article in this Week’s (8/23) “New Yorker” by Adam Gopnik entitled “The Big One” that gives a magnificent precis of the First World War, current views on its causes and results, and a bit of editorializing about the nihilism of history.

World War One was always a mystery to me, with no definite cause, no real “course of battle”, nor any real finish except the British + French exhaustion, Germans suing for peace, and the Russian Revolution. It’s like a three-million-death sideways step in human history, a transition between the Victorian to mechanized age, the time when mankind found-out how horrible war could really be. Americans had known this since the Civil War, of course, but Europe, as ususal, needed remedial classes.

I’m reading Evan Thomas’s eponymous biography of John Paul Jones (“Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy”) and came across a passage that reminded me of the phrase in English that I hate most of all:

Elders and Betters

As in, “Respect your elders and betters,” the corollary to the phrase “Children should be seen and not heard”.

I have no problem with the ‘respect your elders’ piece, but ‘betters’ irks me. I hold, and always shall hold, that there is no one in this country intrinsically ‘better’ than anyone else–No lords, laidies, dukes, vicars, or kings, nor pope.

Most useless food on the market:

Not filling.
High in calories.
Not healthy.
Expensive.

I mean, I ate four of the blasted things yesterday…that’s like 600 calories! Ugh…they’re tasty, but ultimately very empty.

The second day of olympics coverage and an interesting conversation with my beloved kept me up WAY past my bedtime, and caused me to be very tardy to work today–9:45.

The olympics coverage has been excellent, though for once, I wish I had cable (MSNBC, CNBC, and Bravo) so that I could watch some of the other events. I’d really like to see some of the equestrian stuff, and I’ve heard good things about fencing this year. Matt Fagenbush (sp?), one of my autocross buddies, is a competitive fencer, and after he explained the sport to me (3 blades–foil, epée, and saber), seems like it’d be amazing to watch.

Stayed-up WAY too late last night watching the Olympics coverage. I’m having a very productive morning (after blowing-off my 8am VC with India)

* Went by the post office to return Whitney’s too-small hat that I’d bought for her. Typical 15 minute wait.

* Went to the credit union to deposit a check from the Breathitt County Public library. Seeing a 5-car line in the drive-thru, I went inside, hoping it’d be faster. It wasn’t.

Had a wonderful, restful weekend up in Louisville. Got more than 10 hours of sleep each night, played a little tennis on Saturday afternoon, and had some amazing food: Bourbon-flavored pork chops, some yummy pizza, and today a good meal with Whitney’s parents over some lasagna.

Overall, it’s just what I needed after all the recent craziness.

Okay, Pulp Fiction: What’s the big hairy deal? I mean, it’s okay, but why edify the movie?

• Quentin Tarantino is Martin Scorsese on bad drugs. A true movie nerd, he packs more inside jokes, puns, and movie references into this profane, unintelligible pile of self-aggrandizement than any director has a right to do, save Francis Ford Coppola. Ballsy, but somewhat hollow.

• Uma Thurman has never been more unattractive. I mean, we’re supposed to believe this drugged-out waste of 6 feet of bone is sexy enough for a man to die (or, get thrown out a window) for?

This is how addicting autocross is:

I would like to modify my MINI. Specifically, I’d like to put a different wheel and tire combination on it (some 15x7 wheels with some WIDE Hoosiers) and a rear swaybar, and maybe some suspension work (a slight lowering)

If I do that, I’d be in FSP, the same class my friend Russell Long is in in his Morris Mini Cooper S, a 1967. It’s kindof a ripe class for picking around here. No one who’s nationally competitive seems ot be running in that class. I’d probably get beat alot if I went anywhere else, but…on the bright side, I’d be out of HS class for good. One rear swaybar and that’s it.

This is just INSANE:

Watched Stargate last night. I’ve seen it before, of course, but it seemed like a neat addition to my Netflix queue.

I watched the ‘Ultimate Edition’, and it should’ve been called “They didn’t edit anything” edition. Scenes dragged on and on, but overall a very worthy movie to watch if you happen to come across it on basic cable.

Side note: You can see the wires they used to “fly” the model flying machines around during the blue screen scenes at the end.

From the horrible names file…

You know, I’ve never met a girl named “Chastity” or “Chasity” that was chaste. Not in the slightest.

During my cool-down from my evening jog, I happened to see front license plate like I used to have on Little Green (but in an even more gaudy gold/bronze finish), and the thought struck me.