Results tagged “holiday”

Yes, I owe you some longer blog posts. No, this is not one of them, but I need to get it out of my head. I warn you that this entry contains aesthetically offensive imagery and is not for the design-sensitive.

Muni is the public transport agency for the city of San Francisco, one of the most visually appealing and photogenic cities on the planet.

Muni's logo, as branded on most city buses, trolley buses, and trains, and which you consequently see about every five minutes in the city, is this:

Aaagh, my eyes!

So, if you go to San Francisco, be warned: it's a city that covers random surfaces with the design equivalent of goatse.

In America, I:

• Upgraded to First Class on a Virgin America flight and, for probably the only time, was in the first group of people on and off the plane.
• Ate Japanese food in the Sierra Nevada.
• With the rest of the audience, played like a kid with several kilometers of paper in the Blue Man Group show at the Venetian.
• Got up at 3am to get a bus to get a plane to get a coach. Ugh.
• Flew on a DHC-6 Twin Otter over the Grand Canyon as the sun rose over it.
• Stayed in a huge black glass pyramid with a balcony outside the door that looked out onto the world's largest atrium.
• Picked up John Hodgman's new book, three days ahead of the publication date.
• Shook the hand of Penn Jillette.
• Ate antelope.
• Climbed Sentinel Dome and experienced one of the most awesome, panoramic views I've ever seen.
• Drank my first pumpkin milkshake, which is only available at one place I know about, and then only seasonally. With extreme irritation, I discovered that it was by far the nicest milkshake I have ever tasted.
• Flew back over the Atlantic at the time the British clocks were put back, saving 12.5% of the jet lag. Unplanned, but quite a good idea in retrospect.

Photos are going up at roughly the rate of one a day on Flickr, and further reflections on the holiday to follow here.

Next: ten reasons why you should fly Virgin America at absolutely any opportunity.

Don't know when I'll be back again.

Slim to no chance of blogging for the next couple of weeks... I'm off to the US for my annual fleeting opportunity to stop thinking about work.

On the itinerary this time:

• San Francisco
• Las Vegas
• the Grand Canyon
• road-tripping from Vegas back to the Bay Area
• Yosemite
• Napa
• and, best of all, a burger at Taylor's Refresher

And who knows what else. I'm likely to post photos to Flickr while I'm there, but as I said, blogging will be thin on the ground (bah, and I was just getting the hang of it again).

with the intention that they will come in useful next time:

• Don't walk 17 miles and expect to be able to move tomorrow.
• The 77 Borrowdale bus exists for a reason. Don't be a hero.
• The sandwich shop in Keswick does a special filling of the day that is almost always interesting and delicious.
• In a day's walking on a sunny day more water will be needed than can be comfortably carried, so refill where possible.
• There is no better sight after walking many miles on a sunny day with a heavy rucksack than an ice cream shop or van.
• Taking sunblock, even in April, was very sensible.
• Doing the Castle Crag ascent from Grange 8 days after it's been on BBC2 will not result in a great amount of isolation or serenity.
• A camera with a 28-135mm IS lens attached is heavy and awkward around the neck and will likely remain in the rucksack most of the time as a result.
• A camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens attached is light and unburdensome and results in the free and frequent shooting of many pictures.
• Carting a tripod to Keswick and back without ever once using it is stupid.
• I didn't need to take 3 camera batteries. One would have been okay this time, two to be safe. Wondered if I made the right decision leaving the charger behind, but there was clearly no way I would have ever needed it for this duration.
• 4GB/day is not an excessive amount of CF to budget on days when the camera is pointed at lots of animals.
• Should have taken my iPod charger. Even with the limited need for digital audio while I was there, the travel to and fro still drained my battery.
• The DS charging cable was a good thing to take, to avoid being deprived of Nurikabe and Slither Link.
• A 200 page book is not enough reading material.
• Most useful thing I packed: brimmed hat
• Least useful thing I packed: tripod

Photos from the first day of my Lake District trip are already up on Flickr, with more to follow.