As one who only spent a mere week mucking about the hallowed halls and entrails of central NJ, I am ill-equipped to make any sort of mention about the qualities that I witnessed.

But let’s suffice to say that I found it to be….less offensive than I was bracing myself for.     In fact, for the most part, I was rather happy and enjoyed my stay.

That all being said, here are some random pics to amuse your eyestalks:

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

The airport walk:  We all adopt a certain pose, a particular swagger, especially once we have gone through the pains of the security checkpoint.    Before, we are mere citizens, lined up like sheep to the slaughter in the queue, downtrodden and dejected.   We are one of the “nots”, on the outside, the unprivileged.

After passing through the crucible that is the screening and pat-down (sighing greatly if we are one of the lucky ones to pass the requirements without a full cavity groping), we change – we become one of the elite, someone with an agenda, a place to be, a flight to catch.   We’ve endured the lash, conquered the mountain, and now we have a 2:34 to LGA to handle.

Even that phrase – “a flight to catch” – makes us all sound like athletes, as if we had to complete a rigorous triathlon and, with crossbow and camouflage, had to track down and bag the wily Boeing in its natural habitat (feeding ever so gently on Jet-A1);  a successful hunt resulting in the hours-long privilege of sitting on our ass in a very expensive, fart-soaked chair in a high-speed tin can.

So we adopt this into our attitude; we have, of course, chucked out gregarious amounts of cash to be here, we have a schedule, we’re being modern and self-reliant, following signs and rules and boarding only by zone, and generally rubbing noses with some High Tech Shit™.

We cop this all around the airport itself, navigating between people in the concourse with barely a nod or a change in facial expression, but carrying it over to the plane itself.  We regard each other gingerly, as if to say, “I have to SIT next to you, but I don’t have to necessarily ACKNOWLEDGE you.”   Nevermind the fact that while you are on a transcontinental flight and you might be thigh-to-sticky-thigh with a total stranger for 8, 10, 15 hours – a position that would normally result in several fruity drinks and music in going untz-untz-untz to achieve —  introductions are right out.

Few other places generate so vast of a cross-section of a fake humanity in such a small space, and yet it is here – day in, day out, in cities all over the world, we do our little dance next to but not with each other, just to get to a new place for little while.    (Assuming no delays.)

Now, if you don’t mind, dear regular citizens – I have a flight to catch.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

One of the big negatives was that Verizon appeared to be the only cellphone provider with any service up there, so my wife’s iWireless phone and my AT&T-powered iPhone were almost useless the entire time, making it incredibly hard to communicate between folks, so a lot of the time we did things by ourselves.   But on the whole that wasn’t bad, either, as it gave us time to go our own paces.

One afternoon, after riding 9.5 miles with my wife and kiddo, while they took a nap I took off for more trail riding and ended up doing about 16.5 miles along the trail going from Preston to Harmony.    I decided to take a video as I was riding to share with you the experience of it:

In short, a good weekend to unplug a bit and spend some time with family.    If you have the inclination to bike and are ever in southeastern Minnesota, I highly recommend the trails; they are all paved, the small towns are pretty and cute and full of shops, the people are uber-friendly, and the lack of technology might frustrate you but it will definitely encourage you to do something else with your time.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

The real key to this is that travelers don’t hate à la carte; in fact, I’d wager that most people really enjoy it.   Today’s modern human likes options — that’s why McDonald’s has something on the order of 18 different meal options and some 35-40 foods to choose from.   We like menus, we like picking out exactly what we want down to the color.  (See: paint chips) People really enjoy things like Dell’s build-a-computer site where you can see exactly what options increase or decrease your purchase price based on how hefty you want to make your new machine.  Most of us really enjoy being a bit picky in our own quirky ways and making it unique.

Choices give us a sense of control and power over a situation.   We like that.

There are two aspects about the current process that really torque passengers into an angry foam:  A) surprises and B) dealing with choices and money at the time of travel.

Let’s face it — travel’s not easy.   Whether in a car or a plane, there’s plenty of hassles to deal with between you and your destination.    Remembering what to pack, how to get there, timing for meeting people or getting to your meeting, hotel and car reservations, meals, kids…the list goes on and on.   People really like getting things buttoned up beforehand and avoiding any issues on the day of travel because one thing piles on another and before you know it, you have a four-alarm fire and no water in sight.

So, along comes the airlines and tosses the ‘pay per piece of baggage’ wrench into the gears of the entire mechanism and fouls the whole damned thing up.   Instead of being able to button yourself up before traveling you’re dealing with having to whip our your wallet and toss cash or a credit card at a frazzled check-in clerk in the hopes of making your luggage problem go away.   You might have known about it ahead of time, but maybe you didn’t — perhaps you thought you were well underneath the weight limit and suddenly you’re above it and dying inside.   And all of this comes on top of pushing the clock to get through security and on your plane in the first place.   In short, it becomes your 7th level of hell in a hurry.

The Way it Should Be

À la carte has the great power to be the next revolutionary thing in air travel provided:

• you can handle all the planning and paying details at the time of booking the trip
• no unpleasant surprises greet you on Travel Day

Just imagine being able to choose all aspects of your trip for an adjustable fee!   I can think of a great number of options that people would happily pay extra for (or be happy to sacrifice for a lower ticket price):

• Comfort – pillow(s), blanket(s), eye shades, hot towels, heat pads, earplugs
• Entertainment – movies, TV shows, Internet access, on-demand video, headphones
• Meals – how many, how fancy, vegetarian, vegan, kosher, snacks
• Drinks – all-inclusive, pay-per-drink, liquor only, top-shelf
• Luggage – per piece or per weight fees, international luggage waivers, delivery to the plane door, first off the plane, personal delivery from plane to you
• Seating – options for no surrounding children, frequent flyers only, sleeping-only seats, awake-only seating, first-on plane, last-on plane
• Assistance – help boarding, ticketing, security, customs  (how many of us would pay to be expedited through?)

There are, obviously, many more options that could be had, but how great would it be to even have such choices to make?   And all it requires is a custom bar code on your boarding pass that instantly indicates what you do and don’t get and some cheap hand scanners to make it all happen.   In the end, a ticket buys you a seat on a metal tube flying from point A to point B; everything else about the experience you have a choice in and, if you choose, the option to get — for a price.

In the end, the travelers feel more in control of their experience and feel they get a better value for their money, and the airlines can better control costs, make some extra cash, and deliver an experience that matches their customers’ expectations.

What do you think?   Would you gladly welcome the “À la carte” option the next time you take flight?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

While I could write a ton about what I did, etc., I’m just going to show you some of my favorite pictures taken and let you fill in the rest with your wonderful imagination. These are all taken with my old 1.2 MP cameraphone, so I apologize in that they aren’t terribly crisp or wonderful, but I think you’ll get the idea.

The view of myself in the DEN bathroom. This is the boredom of a four and a half hour layover, but hey, where else to screw around but an airport?

The bed in the suite I stayed in on the last night, due to an overbooking at the main hotel. It was loverly. (Sheraton Suites, downtown SD)

The wash from the bay tour boat, so beautifully foamy in the afternoon sunlight. I tried not to think how deep the water actually was below us.

Fresh breaded calamari for my appetizer on the first night. Thick as fingers and digit-licking good. Well worth the $23 at the Blue Point Oyster Bar, Gaslamp Quarter, SD

A cookie from a shop at DEN; heaven in a small, squishy circle.

Cremé Bruleé — if you’ve never had one, you don’t know the true meaning of oral orgasm. I could have had twenty of them, but the beauty is that they only give you one and all the time in the world to eat it.

I got a kick out of the fact that DEN had personalized soap dispensers.

Dusk comes to the San Diego harbor, seagulls hover overhead, and jackasses in pimped-out Mustangs patrol the shore.

YO! HOMIE! Have you been out walking in the dark with your sunglasses on? This isn’t Timbuk 3 anymore, man!

The main entreé: Lobster-crusted seabass with black truffle oil. Words fail to describe properly.

At the San Diego Civic Theatre during the intermission for Phantom of the Opera, looking down on all the “Mezzanine Level” people. We balcony folk were much more refined, even if we had bloodier noses.

The Horton Plaza, an open-air mall near the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego. Fun with all its random ramps and escalators and stairs.

What a pretty bird! Not a plane of mine, but I simply adore the machines of commercial aircraft and it’s fun to take photos of them.

The really, really long line to get checked into the United counter at SAN. Incredible…took me an hour-fifteen just to get inside.

The chandelier at the SD Civic Theatre.

Do you know how freaking tall these things are? They’re huge!

A view down the hallway of my main hotel; as you can see, all open-air. No bugs, no snow, no problem!

A view of the marina from the classroom we were in all week. Rough, eh?

The San Diego Skyline from the harbor tour boat. Pretty.

All in all, I have to say San Diego was one of the nicest major cities I have ever been in. The people were generally friendly and helpful, the city was clean and organized, the public transportation was timely, cheap, and fast, and the weather was beautiful. If there was a major city where I could see myself living, SD would definitely be on the top 5 list.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

First up, some shots of the two Airbus 319 jets that I rode on, the first from MSP -> EWR, the second from PHL -> MSP. As some of you know, I *love* commercial airliners, so this is like aviation porn, minus that whole copulation thing:

Next, we have a glass of the “Wee Heavier” Scottish ale that I had at the Nodding Head Brewery in downtown Philadelphia which was, unfortunately, a wholly worthless experience. On Wednesday night I walked 12 blocks at 10:30pm to find this brewery and sample its wares to only be greatly disappointed and leaving after 2 tries. At least the walk was nice.

Next, some scenes from the inside of the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center hotel where I spent one night, a much nicer hotel than the Sheraton Meadowlands in East Rutherford, NJ, but still way overpriced for what you got.

A big-ass clock that they had in the lobby; it wasn’t even running, so it was impressive only in stature.

The dining area of the hotel where they served breakfast, mixed with a kabob of angst:

The entrance, complete with bellhops and smoking hobos:

The lounge with a baby grand piano outside. I thought about tinkling the ivories, but they would have fined me for it, I suspect:

The view of Philly from my hotel room; note the dirty windows and my shitty camera:

The view of the NYC skyline from my corporate offices — mmmm……Jersey:

A really shockingly bad photo of Manhattan at night, taken from the parking lot of the Chart House restaurant in Weehawken:

This, folks, is why memories are not captured with Samsung.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I like to think that I’m rather accepting of the area of the country in which I live and its weather eccentricities, but on the whole I, too, find myself participating in these scathing attacks against Old Man Winter. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the winter — I do. I simply disagree with its tactics and efforts to make even the most simplest of operations outside a complete nightmare to navigate. One doth not understand the agony of winter until you have attempted to safely transport a 3-month-old in a blizzard.

This is compounded by the fact that this year I must make a 42 minute drive to work each way, either by tracing a county blacktop as it winds through the farmland wilderness or via a roundabout way on state highway and Interstate, the latter of which takes me nearly an hour but is by far the preferable in the case of crappy roads. This happens far, far more often than need be, as my more scenic and shorter route takes me through three counties, none of which have mastered the art of running a snowplow. Considering the simplicity of the machine, akin to a snow shovel welded to the bumper of a Jetta, you would really assume that they could make a significant dent in the crystallized water population. This is not the case, however; folks, your tax dollars at work.

So the other day, after Iowa had been calmly slammed to the mat by Mother Nature with near on a foot of white fluffy headache, I trekked northeasterly along the highways to my workplace. After making it to the Interstate and shooting along for some time, I entered a whiteout doing about 45mph or so. When I emerged, the scene before me would have sent sane men scampering for the treetops — three semi trucks side-by-side in front of me, blocking both lanes. Apparently one was already mostly on the side of the highway, another had been passing him, and yet another was trying to speed past on the left.

This was not good.

Imagine the further dropping of my heart as I looked into my rearview mirror and saw two more semis barreling down behind me in both lanes. Suddenly, sitting there in my little econobox, I felt cold, tiny, and very alone.

The thoughts that ravaged (quickly) through my head were storms of expletives, silent urgings to light fires underneath the asses of my angels, and wondering if my underwear would pass my mother’s emergency preparatory test. I started the oh-so-important self-debate of whether I should head for the ditch and turn my car into a four-wheeled flying sleigh from hell or allow the airbags to deploy turning me into a very safe, very snug, and very tenderized chunk of sirloin.

Fortunately for me, the semis sorted themselves out somehow without leaving pieces strewn across the highway and I was able to avoid becoming axle fodder for that day. My morning this enbrightened, I continued onwards to work where I found great solitude in not being behind a wheel for many hours.

Many people have said that if you don’t like the weather here in Iowa, just stick around for the next 5 minutes, but I’d like to cordially add that if you’re not into intramural dodgeball involving vehicular transport, you might consider staying tucked into your beach blanket and reading Cosmo. It is by far the less stressful of the two.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Don’t try this at home, kids.

My Drive Home on Tuesday

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

So, on Tuesday after our lovely biometrics appointment with the USCIS (formerly the INS), we headed to the “Auto Mile” in Des Moines to see what was available. We first checked out the Mazda dealership, because I had looked at Mazda 3s and 6s online and rather liked how they looked. The problem, we discovered, is that Mazdas are a Japanese-designed/built car and are sized for the Japanese people, who are shorter of stature. I felt very much like I had been shoved into a too-small shoe.

We had noticed the Mitsubishi dealership on our way, so we decided to stop there and take a look at what they had. My wife was immediately impressed with a black and very tricked-out Outlander (their mid-range SUV), so we took a gander at that first. We test-drove it but there was something very, very wrong with the accelerator where it would delay greatly before actually applying power, which was a no-no for safety reasons. We then toyed around in an Endeavor, Mitsu’s full-size SUV, of which they had a nice used model. It was a lot better to drive and handled nicely, but I’ve never been terribly fond of SUVs for safety reasons and so forth, so I wasn’t very impressed.

Lastly, we started looking at the Galants and happened across this ’07 Ralliart edition with only 5k miles on it, all put on by their service manager. We took that for a spin and both of us really loved it, so it was a matter of debating amongst ourselves and then having the guy run the numbers for us while we took the car to do some shopping and chat. The numbers turned out in a very favorable way (our payment actually went down by $12/month) and insurance was $1 more a month, so we said to go for it. We couldn’t wait to take it that day as we were in a rush, so we went down on Friday, signed our life and old car away, and brought her home.

Out With the Old

I wasn’t very happy about getting rid of the Eclipse — she was my first new car and what a great car to own — almost perfect in every way. Fun, fast, powerful, cornered like it was on rails, and a stick shift, something I’ve longed after for years. However, I know that this was the right decision at this time, as I’d soon be cursing the Eclipse’s lack of ease of use with our child. Also, my wife isn’t very handy with driving a stick and driving in city traffic, nor did she fit very well in the Eclipse with her short legs, so this is a better fit for all three of us.

I do hope the Eclipse goes to a good owner, as she’s a good vehicle and I wish her well; she certainly was a faithful machine for me for years. We were both pretty sentimental about giving her up, but there was no way to afford both.

In With the New

Here are some pictures of the new Galant Ralliart. The Ralliart trim of this car is their top-of-the-line trim, incorporating a bigger engine, better suspension, nicer rims and tires, and better interior features, both cosmetic and functional. Ralliart is the rally racing division of Mitsubishi and so the style harkens back to the days when Mitsu actually did a lot of rally racing. In short, it’s a sport version of a family car, which fulfills both the “fatherly” and “who’s your daddy” side of my psyche.

Front, Side, and Rear Exterior Views:

Front and Rear Seating Views:

Driver’s Side Viewpoint, Instrument Panel Gauges, Console Cluster, and Shifter:

A view of the 3.8L, 258hp V6 engine and compartment, a side view of the same, and a closeup on the intake of the engine, which is horrifically complex and which I hope to replace in the nearer future with something much more conducive to air flow and sound instead of this convoluted mess:

The Details (for those of you who want all the nitty-gritty):

• 6G75 Engine, 3.8L Single Overhead Cam V6 with 24-valve Multiport Fuel Injection and MIVEC Variable Timing, 10.5:1 compression ratio, pumping out a maximum of 258 HP @ 5750rpm and 258 lb/ft torque @ 4500 rpm; cast iron block, aluminum heads
• Sportronicâ„¢ 5-speed Automatic Transmission with Overdrive
• Exterior: Ultra Red Pearl
• Interior: Black Cloth & Leather
• Dual-Stage Front Air Bags, Seat-mounted Side Air Bags, and Front & Rear Curtain Air Bags
• Daytime Running Lamps
• Engine Immobilizer
• Tire Pressure Monitoring System
• Front slotted (11.7″) and Rear solid (11.4″) disc brakes with 4-sensor/4-channel ABS and Electronic Braking Distribution
• Traction control
• 22mm Front strut tower bar; 21mm rear stabilizer bar
• Sport-tuned suspension; Independent MacPherson Struts in front, Low-mount multi-link in rear
• Front & Rear Stabilizer Bars
• Automatic climate control
• Cruise Control
• 360W Rockford Fosgate Acoustic Soundsystem with 8 speakers, 6-disc in-dash CD/MP3 Player, and Sirius Satellite Radio enabled with 6-month service
• Sport-wrapped steering wheel with audio controls
• Power windows with 30-second reserve
• Color LCD Center Audio, Compass, Temperature, Time, Calendar, Fuel Economy Display
• 8-way power driver’s seat with lumbar
• Aluminum brake and gas pedals
• Heated front seats and side mirrors
• Power sunroof
• Rear spoiler with LED brakelight
• 235/45 R18 94V all-season tires on 18″ 8JJ 7-spoke alloy wheels
• 18 city and 27 highway gas mileage
• 10-year, 100,000 mile Powertrain Warranty
• 5-year, 60,000 mile New Vehicle Limited Warranty
• 3-year, 36,000 mile Bumper-to-Bumper Warranty
• 5-year, Unlimited mile Roadside Assistance
• A link to the YouTube video of the 2006 unveiling of the 2007 model.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Luther alums understand this feeling of returning to the place of your birth; in a sense, it was our place of a second birth, from the life of an uncertain teenager into the fresh yet enthusiastic one of an educated adult. Many of us experienced a great deal of growing pains while in this place; I have had some of my lowest lows and highest highs within my four years living there. How can one place on earth touch so many so deeply?

Both Yolanda and I made the 2.5 hour drive up yesterday, meandering across the countryside on the indirect route to the Oneota Valley, which is the only route to Decorah, given that there isn’t a straight or direct road anywhere near it. We then found the registration desk in the Center for Faith and Life for the event we were attending — the 25th Anniversary of the first-year choirs at Luther, Pike Kor and Norsemen, the former being for first-year women and the latter for first-year men, of which I was a member back in the 1996-97 school year.

We were a bit early, so we took the opportunity to wander around campus a bit and especially take in the changes to the Centennial Union, which underwent a major renovation/expansion since we had been there 2 years ago. It was amazing — walking into that building felt like I was in a completely different place with the shiny new walls, windows, and floors, but only for a bit — the familiar smells and sounds quickly reassured me that I was still in the same place, just with a bit of cosmetic surgery.

Practice for the combined current student & alumni choir started at 4pm, first with a gathering of everyone in the main hall of the CFL and then the men splitting off from the women to go into the CFL Recital Hall to rehearse. We then spent the next 30 minutes practicing The Last Words of David by Randall Thompson, a song that I sang while in the Iowa All-State choir back in high school, but this version was TTBB instead of SATB so I had to relearn a good deal of it anyway. The sound of the combined voices when we hit the first phrase threw me back 7 years and into my seat as this incredible blast of harmony and sound slammed into my heart and hit most of the strings on the way in.

We then recombined with the ladies to rehearse I Dream a World by André Thomas, a song which I loathed from the first note and continued to hate through to the last one in the concert. First off, the selection of this song was a poor one by the organizers. I realize that they were trying to pick something meaningful and yet easy to sing and learn in the hour of rehearsal that we took, but this is a pathetic piece that isn’t worth the ink blobs that it’s made of.

First off, it’s a song that was written dedicated to the “lost souls of September 11th” which sends red flags up immediately. Very little that was written, composed, sculpted, painted, or otherwise produced as a result of this incident has ended up being worth much, because most was done by people trying to express their emotions. While that is not bad in and of itself, it ends up in a bunch of folks who shouldn’t ever approach a piano composing songs because they feel that they must make a statement when all they really need is a good cry and a cappuccino.

Secondly, the song has a very oddly-timed, phrased, and notated score, which means that the choir participants spent most of the time, noses buried in the music, trying to decipher the hieroglyphics in front of us as opposed to making music and an impression on the audience.

Thirdly, Dr. Craig Arnold isn’t (at first impression) a very charismatic director and he was thoroughly unable to inspire us to sing anything at all. As I told my wife on the drive home, some music directors you sing or play for because they’re good directors and they know their shit. Some you perform for because they inspire you to do so. Dr. Tim Peter is one of those directors, the kind that, by simply walking into the room, both commanded respect as well as offering up the warmest of welcomes and comfort simply by throwing a smile in your direction. I have no doubt that Dr. Arnold knows his stuff and is a technically-excellent director and educator, but he inspired nothing within me.

Despite this downfall, we had a good rehearsal and then broke for dinner. Since my wife did not attend a full, four-year college or university and didn’t live on campus, she had never had cafeteria food and wanted to try it out, so we did exactly that and went to the Caf for supper. After wandering around the various lines for food and heaping our trays, we settled down into a long table and had some good conversation and food while we people-watched and I regaled her with stories of years gone by.

Afterwards, we headed to Marty’s CyberCafe and accosted one of the large, plush couches, plumping down and throwing our feet up for a rest while we watched the goings-on of the people around us and chatted. Eventually I had to go and get dressed into my concert gear, so I left her there and trudged back to the car.

The next 15 minutes was spent having a lesson in contortionisms, attempting to get naked and then redressed, all while in the front seat of my Mitsubishi Eclipse coupe, parked along one of the main drives of Luther. It was, to say in the least, interesting, and I’d be amused to know if someone ended up watching the entire procedure as I struggled and sweated and grunted in the front seat, tossing on a button-up black shirt, black pants, shoes, and socks. Halfway back to Marty’s I discovered that, in my haste to get my shirt on, I had buttoned it all crooked and that was causing me to feel very uncomfortable, so I ducked into a corner of Valder’s Hall of Science and fixed it as quickly as was possible with shaking hands.

I left Yolanda then and went back to the hall, had another rehearsal, and then fetched her for the concert. The lineup ended up being the Pike Kor with 5 numbers, of which Mouth Music by Dolores Keane/John Faulkner was most interesting, although their opening number of A Psalm of Praise by Eleanor Daley was exquisite in skill. Norsemen then followed with 6 numbers, with notable performances being Bless the Lord, O My Soul by Mikhail Ippolitiv-Ivanov (in Russian) and Fergus An’ Molly by Vijay Singh, the latter which was complete with choreography and was most entertaining.

Unfortunately, they also attempted to sing Lilly’s Eyes arranged by Peter Eklund, which I’m sorry to report they butchered. Dr. Peter accompanied the song (a rarity) and while that was lovely to listen to, the chorus had tons of synchronization problems and entrance/exit issues, as well as generally lacking a passion for the song which probably could have been better brought out had Dr. Peter actually directed it and left the ivory tinkling up to someone else. I was pretty disappointed, as I love that song and it can be done so well, but this was clearly a swing-and-a-miss.

There were two combined songs with both choirs, of which Finale from The Gondoliers by Gilbert & Sullivan was the best.

The combined students+alumni men did their number, students+women did their number, and we then did the aforementioned crappy combined piece, which turned out ok in the end but is still classified as a piece of trite musical literature. We got a completely-undeserved standing ovation and then we were done.

Yolanda and I grabbed some sweets and punch from the overly-croweded and steaming hot reception in the Union and took them outside into the crisp, nighttime Decorah air, sitting on one of the park benches and watching people walk about in the glow of the streetlights. We then took the scenic walk through campus on our way back to our car, me pointing out the various buildings, where I had lived and studied, and generally just enjoying each other and the lovely night.

We then headed on a quick spin around Decorah, got gas and some snacks at MicDick’s, and headed towards Sheffield, getting home and dropping into bed around 2:30am.

All in all, a successful trip to the Homeland, but one we’ll have to do again when it doesn’t directly involve scheduled activities so we can wander around more, enjoy the natural beauty of the area, and take in some more sights and experiences together.

It had been 2 years since I had been there, but the calling of it still rings strongly, and the air still rings of familiarity — I wonder if that will ever leave me. As Dr. Peter greeted me upon walking into the first rehearsal, he simply said with a warm handshake and a $10,000 smile, “Welcome home.”

And I was.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

There are a lot of great sites out there that appeal to the airplane enthusiast, from the detailed walkings of Wikipedia and their wide range of airplane descriptions to SeatGuru, for those that want to find the best ride, to travel places like Kayak that compare hundreds of airlines for nice prices, and my newest favorite place — FlightAware.

This awesome website tracks all flights over US airspace at all times, 24/7/365. You can look at air traffic over particular airports, you can track particular flight numbers, track all of a particular type of plane, and you can even enter the tail number of a particular aircraft that you want to watch and it’ll plot it out. It shows maps of the airports, maps of current flights both inbound/outbound from the airport as well as flights crossing the airport’s airspace, graphs of flight volumes, flight numbers, plane tail numbers, arrival and departure times and airports, and estimated times in all time zones. How freaking cool is that?

For instance, one of the closer airports to me is KMSP, Minneapolis-St. Paul International. Information about this airport is located here. Want to see all flights in the air that are Airbus A320 planes? Just click here for that information.

Registering on their site is free and if you do, you can see more results on searches and even set up alerts, which will let you know when a particular flight or plane has arrived or departed an airport, etc. For instance, right now I’m tracking Donald Trump and Oprah‘s jets; if they make a move, I’ll know it within a few minutes. (not that I give a smeg about either of them, but I think it’s fun to know something landed and/or took off)

One of the coolest things on there is their 24-hour animation of the flight traffic over the US, which is a Quicktime animation located here. It’s the sort of thing that you’d love to have as a screensaver. If you would prefer to see the current status of flights, you can simply view their live page here.

All in all, it’s a *terribly* cool site and I wasn’t even aware that this information existed in the first place, but apparently it’s all public knowledge and they’re just doing the compilation. Sure, the stats are about 6 minutes behind realtime, but that’s close enough for most people who are curious about such things. I, personally, am going to try using it on days when I hear a jet going over my hometown and I look up to see contrails in the sky; I’ll just head on in, look up the current map for KMCW which is 30 miles north of me, and see what just buzzed my house.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

As such, coming back from an extended time away is always a bear, but it is even moreso when it involves a trip halfway across the world. I think I have mostly recovered from my jetlag and the spinning of brain as it tries to reorient itself on the world of the HereAndNow, so I can write this final chapter in our trip to Australia.

Brace yerself, Effie — she’s a long one.

Short Hops, Matrimony Doings, and Redhaired Angels

Our trip back really started when we decided that, instead of riding a bus for 6 hours from Whyalla to Adelaide, we would ship 2 bags of our luggage on the bus as freight and take 2 with us on a flight on Regional Express, which would involve a scant 35 minutes in the air instead of a quarter of a day in a hot vehicle with a bunch of potential nutters.

The check-in for REX was smooth enough, although we were 6kg overweight and had to pay A$18 extra to put our bags on — nothing, really. We boarded and got up into the air and were having a completely lovely flight over the ocean — smooth, no bumps — if you couldn’t hear the engines, you’d never know you were 14,000 feet in the air. In fact, I was going to state that I had about the best flight ever on a small plane when the descent into Adelaide started and things got much, much more interesting.

Apparently, there was a crosswind going parallel to the shore, so the pilot couldn’t come straight in, but had to make a wide curve down the coast by Glenelg and then sharply bank back to get back to the airport. This resulted in the plane dipping down from 14K feet at an angle that makes you wonder if you actually boarded Space Mountain instead of a passenger flight. Ontop of that, the turbulence from the shore winds increased — so we were bumping, stomachs in our necks, diving towards a dark blue body of water, and then banking sharply (while still in this dive), to try to get back to the airport. I was sure I could see the little man in the back of my brain rifling through the stacks of videotape, ready to load the projector in case this was the final moments, so he could play back The Best of Things Encountered in 29 Years.

Fortunately, the ride came to a good stop ontop of a long piece of concrete at the Adelaide airport, where we were met by Mel and her cute-as-a-button 18 month old girl, Lara. This kid is like sunlight dancing on the waters of a happy ocean. She is curly and cute and spunky and completely adorable. If the ultra-saccharine-laced cherubs peering up from the front covers of Hallmark cards had names, they’d be, “Lara”. I had a ton of fun hanging out and playing with her during our short stint there.

We got back to Mel’s house (whom she shares with her hubby, Dale) and got settled in and then made some tea and generally relaxed.

Bless her heart, Mel braved traffic and hassle and took us into Adelaide to a few of the local sights, namely Tea Tree Mall, Rundle Mall, the Central Markets, and the University to try to catch the museum before it closed. Alas, we were unable to do so, but we had a look around at the architecture and the people. There was a really cool digeridoo player in the centre of the street, playing 5 different digis at once in a sort of trance-and-dance style. It was very groovy. We saw amazing amounts of fresh veggies, fruits, meats, nuts, olives, candy, and tons of souveniers and other things in the Central Markets. I was ever so annoyed that I couldn’t take any of it back with me, given the amounts of lovely meats and cheeses that I wanted to try.

Wedding Bells are Ringing in My Head

Our time was soon taken up by helping my brother-in-law, Matt, get ready for his wedding. I went and helped set up before and get the decorations configured and then did the wedding rehearsal, and then helped out a lot before the wedding itself and during pictures and after. The wedding was very nice with a outdoors ceremony and an indoors reception. I ended up giving a speech and I think I pulled it off rather well, if I must say so myself. We had some marvelous food — oysters three ways, grilled sea perch, and crispy berry baskets for dessert. I had never had oysters before, at least, not on-the-half-shell, and they were….interesting. The kilpatrick ones were by far the best (bacon, cheese, and wirchestershire sauce on them and then broiled); the “thai infused” and natural ones tasted like the sea smells — kinda like seaweed and salt. It wasn’t one of my most favorite flavors to experience, but was interesting nonetheless.

The beer, a nice pale ale, flowed very generously down my neck as well. We did a little bit of dancing, but not much, as it wasn’t that sort of wedding. I made good friends with one of the bridesmaids who was pretty fun, but there weren’t a lot of people I knew there otherwise (other than my family). We did leave after a time, said our final goodbyes to Mum, Sam, Shayne, and Peter and then got dropped off to Mel’s by Danja and Conrad.

One Last Chance to Say Goodbye

The next day, Mel and Lara took us to Victor Harbor, which is down the coast to the south and east. We first went to a fauna park where we got up-close-and-personal with some of Australia’s incredibly varied and strange wildlife. I had a parrot on my finger, shoulder, and head; I got to take pictures of wombats sleeping (my favorite!); I saw a great many snakes, lizards, crocs, and similar; I got to feed the kangaroos and pet them (will post pictures of these soon); and I got to pet the koalas (who aren’t as soft as you’d imagine, but are still pretty cute and terribly languid). It was a great park and well worth the A$10 or so it cost to get in.

Victor is well-known for its penguin population that comes home to roost on Granite Island each night. We did not, as such, see any penguins due to the fact that you have to be there at dusk and after and on a special tour, but we had a great time nonetheless. We got some KFC as we were desperately hungry and ate by the sea, then we went on a bit of a walk and canter about since Lara was tired of sitting in her stroller. We then walked the bridge over to Granite Island and checked out the breakwater where the large waves were crashing against the gigantic rocks. It was one of those “pre-storm” sorts of winds blowing, kicking up spray in semi-aggressive fashions, making you think that disaster is looming in the distance but hasn’t quite gotten here yet. I loved it — I could have sat on those rocks and just felt the emotion of despair wash over me for a long time.

We returned to the mainland and prepared to leave, but on the way caught some incredible sunset pictures as the sky was emblazoned in these amazing displays of natural artwork. Mel took the “scenic route” out of Victor so we could get as many scenery photos as possible — we got some really incredible shots that will very possibly make it up onto our walls.

It was a bittersweet time for me, leaving Victor, as I knew it’d be the last of my exposure to the ocean for a long time to come. I do very much love the water, the shore, the seagulls, the view…so much of it bodes of serenity and calm and fierceness and the unknown; I’d be very much a beach bum if we lived anywhere near it in Australia. I tried to catch as many glimpses as I could as we drove out…

The Trek Back Through Wilderness

The rest of the night was spent packing and rearranging said effort. The problem was thus: We had too much weight in our luggage for the Virgin Blue flight. They only allow 1 bag and 20kg per person, and we each would be carrying 2 bags of around 15 to 20kg apiece. My mission was to try to play the game with their Overweight Luggage Pricing Scheme and see if I couldn’t get them to be lenient enough with the charge — we were fearing upwards of A$250 just to get our luggage on the plane.

I spent a long, long time with the bags and our stuff and a bathroom scale, constantly shifting things back and forth, weighing, then shifting them again, re-weighing, etc. I eventually ended up putting many of the dense objects (children’s books, magazines, etc) in my carryon bag (since they never check that anyway) and got our bags to 20kg, 20kg, 15kg, and 16kg.

The next morning we arose and said our goodbyes to Dale and then Mel and Lara took us to the airport. My packing and shifting had worked in our favor — the lady said we should be charged A$80, but only charged us A$50, which we most happily paid. We were running a bit behind, though, so right after we got checked in we had to say goodbye, get hugs and wet kisses from Lara, and head through security.

I got stopped for a random check of my carryon luggage by this terribly nice and friendly security lady. She asked about where I was from and was most amused that I already had my liquids in their little quart bag; she noted that Australia would start the same sort of nonsense the next month. We got to our gate, bought a water, and got on the plane a bit late in different rows because of our late checkin.

The flight was nice; I really can’t complain about it, and the plane (a 737-300) was much nicer than the previous Virgin Blue flight I had taken 3 years ago. They served drinks and snacks, which you had to buy, and during this the stewardess came up and said, “Hi. Your wife wants money.” with a big grin on her face. I laughed and asked for my carryon, which she happily got for me, got out a 50 and handed it to her, telling her to tell my wife I loved her. They were terribly amused by it all. I ended up getting a Sprite for my trouble. The stewardesses were really friendly and happy — must have been the day for it.

We got to SYD and disembarked, got our luggage off the carousel, and then headed for the trains to transfer to T1, which I had never taken before, but the signs they had seemed encouraging. It cost us all of A$9 for the two of us, I think, and we rolled our bags all the way to the train, got on, rode to T1, and then worked our way via a series of lifts to the ticketing level of the T1 terminal.

We got in line and got checked in by a very nice woman who tagged our bags all the way through to Minneapolis. Little did I know at the time, but she tagged my bags wrong — I had flown America West from MSP->PHX->LAX on the way over, but was flying Frontier from LAX->DEN->MSP. She ended up tagging them with the Frontier flight number but the America West code — DOH. This wouldn’t bite me till Recheck in LAX, however.

We got through security and then decided to find some food, something we both desperately needed. So we grabbed a couple of over-priced personal pizzas and some drinks from a vendor, snarfed those down with the gusto of a starved, rabid lion on the Serengeti, and then headed for our gate.

What surprised us is that we had to go through yet another security checkpoint; this one where they patted us down and searched our bags — very strange. Makes me wonder if the US has suddenly gotten all huffy about passengers on US-bound flights and are making them double-check everyone. Very annoying at that point, really, as it was a pretty small area around the gates.

Our plane was the typical 747-400 Longreach, but we got one with the Aboriginal markings all over it, which was pretty cool at first — it turns out that the painted ones are the older models, which means they have certain — oddities. For instance, our entertainment system went on the blink about an hour into the flight and we lost all ability to start/stop movies on demand, something that really cut down on my movie-watching.

The flight was pretty standard — long and boring. We got almost zero sleep thanks to a couple of drunken assholes that sat in front of us plowing down bottles of wine as fast as they could. They were talking loudly over the noise of the plane — now, if you’ve never been on a BIG plane, they’re quite noisy at cruise. One does not talk over them — you lean towards the other person so they can hear. But these chaps were talking OVER the noise, which resulted in nobody getting sleep around them until one woman ahead of them finally gave them a piece of her mind. Then they passed out and wouldnt’ wake up, even when meal service came.

The meals were ok; the service was all right but not brilliant. It just went on a long, long time in general.

Stateside and Standing Upright — We Think

Upon landing in LAX, we got mostly up to the gate but then they said they had to get a tractor to pull u the rest of the way in, as we were too close for engines. But there was a delay, which the pilot finally came on the radio to say that an Airbus A380 (the largest plane in the world, not yet in active service) had just landed and it’d be a bit to get someone to help us out. Opening the window revealed every single vehicle on the entire tarmack racing off to the far side — it was incredible to watch! Guys pouring out of every door, jumping in trucks and tractors, and whizzing out of sight.

Unfortunately, we never did get to see it — it was on the wrong side of the airport. But Yolanda did, the lucky tart — she saw it from her plane that left LAX an hour after mine. Lucky duck.

Got through immigration just by flashing my passport and Yolanda’s greencard — never did ask for her passport or anything, which was really sweet. Got our bags, made it through customs without a hassle, and then on to recheck. As I said above, the very nice but not very observant woman did my tags wrong, so while we pushed Landa’s through recheck, we had to haul mine one terminal down to get checked in with Frontier.

We made our way back to Tom Bradley, got our money changed over, pulled some more cash out of an ATM, and got some food — I got a burger from the World’s Slowest McDonald’s and Yolanda got some Chinese food. Not only were the employees moving at the speed of butter in Siberia, but they were trying to serve the entire Chilean soccer team. It took….awhile.

We ate, I changed my underwear to a clean pair for comfort’s sake, and we rested for awhile. We eventually made our way to the bus, we went and got Yolanda checked in, gave her a kiss, and let her go into security as I jumped back on the bus and rode it all the way around to T3 and my flight. Up through security and to my gate and then lots of hanging out.

The nice part about that was that T3 has a great view of the runways so I spent a lot of time watching planes queueing and/or taking off and taking pictures — it was great. We finally boarded about 15 minutes late and I got onto one of the nicest planes and flights I’ve ever had — 2 of them in a row, in fact. See my previous blog entry about my airline reviews and read up about Frontier — they’re awesome!

Minneapolis, Which Should Have Been Mega-apolis

So, a brief stopover in DEN where I spent the majority of the time walking around and trying to find a good view of the mountains (which I never did — they’re apparently a long ways away from the airport) and then back on another Frontier flight to MSP. Got in there, landed nicely, and to the gate. Got off, walked to baggage, and Dad was waiting for me there. He gave me a big hug and then said, “Want the bad news?”

I looked at him, “Uh…yeah, sure.”

“Your wife is stuck in Denver.”

I laughed. “Right!” I said, thinking it was a cute joke.

“Nope, really. Her flight got in late and she missed her connection, they’re putting her up in a hotel.”

Turns out that her United flight left LAX 2 hours late and got into DEN just as the other plane was leaving. The airline put the entire flight up in hotels and gave them $18 in vouchers to use as well. So, I got to talk to Landa when I got home for awhile, and then had to run back up to Minneapolis the next night to get her, as she came in on a morning flight the next day.

Thankfully our friend Kath, who lives up there, got her from the airport and they hung out all day and then brought her as far south as Fairbault. We had some Perkins and did a bit of grocery shopping and then went home, absolutely and totally beat — lots of slow blinking on the way home, I guarantee.

The End….Really

Wow….that turned into a really, really long posting, but maybe some of you will actually read it all the way through. If you do, congratulations — you made it to the end. I promise next time will be pictures and much more interesting comings-and-goings.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

For those of you too scared to do it, you really need to educate yourselves as to the safety of modern airliners and the industry in general. You are, statistically speaking, more likely to be struck by lightning than an airliner crash. Heck, you have a 1 in 6 chance of being in a car accident in your lifetime, yet the chance of an airplane crash is almost insignificant. The engineering, safety protocols, and care with which the planes are flown gives me great confidence in this way of travel and I really don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about in this day and age.

I thought I would do a quick rundown of the airline carriers that I traveled with on my trip to Australia, giving kudos and jeers where appropriate. Now, I am fully realizant that most experiences with airlines are unique, and the major factor about using a particular airline is its long-running history, but I also believe in the power of a good first impression, and since I’m an infrequent flyer, that’s pretty important where I’m concerned. So, here’s my views on the various flights I had this time around:

Flight(s): MSP to PHX, PHX to LAX (Feb 13th)

This was my first time on a US Airways or America West flight (my tickets were coded with AmWest, but they merged, so it’s the same company, and my flights were all US Airways flights, codeshared with AmWest) and I have to say I was fairly impressed, although I wasn’t swept off my feet. My first leg was in an Airbus A320 and it was a rather dodgy-looking plane, but the pilot flew it very nicely and the flight was smooth and calming. It also helped that I had an entire row to myself and the rows ahead and behind were also empty. Service was a simple drink only; no snack was served, which I’ve come to expect from USA airlines, given their state of perpetual on-the-brink-of-bankruptcy.

The second leg was on an Airbus A319 which was a better-looking plane, but it was flown like a cow and the takeoff/landing was rough, the flight bumpy, and the seats were stuffed with people. Again, only a drink was served, although some passenger a few seats back bitched loudly about it and the extremely-effeminate steward brought him a packet of chips saying that he, “really shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m a nice guy.” Well, that’s all warm and happy, but where’s my damned bag of chips?

Stewards/esses were nice and professional but not overly friendly, facilities were decent and clean. I would fly on US Airways/AmWest again, but it wouldn’t be something I’d write home about.

Flight(s): LAX to SYD (Feb 13th – 15th), SYD to ADL (Feb 15th), SYD to LAX (Mar 19th)

Qantas is the definitive airline of Australia, and you can tell why. They are, bar none, the way to fly if you’re crossing the Pacific Ocean to one of the south seas locations. The planes are state-of-the-art, the entertainment options appreciable, the staff friendly and courteous and generally fun, the food superb for airline fare, and the prices aren’t too bad, either.

My flight over was simply wonderful, for lack of better words. We had excellent stewards serving our aisle, two chaps that clearly had a lot of fun with their job, yet were professional, attentive, and thoughtful. They remembered what I was drinking, for the love of Pete, and brought me another without prompting. They made jokes and chided with the passengers as they passed, and were fast and accurate with their serving and cleaning.

The plane both there and back was a 747-400ER Longreach, Qantas’ flagship of their fleet, and a damned fine one at that. The one over was the typical Qantas red and white, while the one back was a big older and had the Aboriginal paintings all over it. The entertainment on-demand system was broken on the flight back, which was pretty darn annoying, but they tried hard to correct it, unsuccessful though their efforts were. Seats are comfortable and fairly wide given the economy section.

Qantas food is by far the best I’ve had on any flight. Not every single piece is perfect, but on the whole, it’s really excellent. The other thing is that you get a LOT of it. If you are hungry on a Qantas flight, it is definitely your own fault, as you get drinks, then dinner, then dessert, then hot chocolate, then a goodie bag, then some fruit, and then breakfast. (or lunch/dinner, depending on the timing) Other amenities include hot towels near the end of the flight and typically a Qantas “care” bag, consisting of a sleeping mask, a pair of socks, and a toothbrush with a tube of toothpaste. Strangely enough, I did NOT get this on the trip back, which I was annoyed about, as I had never NOT gotten one. I’m unsure of that reason.

The flight back’s stewards were less-than-impressive, I have to say, probably the worst I’ve ever had on a Qantas flight. (QF11, Mar 19th, in case you’re a Qantas employee reading) They were nice enough, but they didn’t talk much, weren’t very fast, did things in odd order, didn’t come by much, and didn’t take care of the drunks ahead of us keeping an entire section awake through most of the “night” part of the flight. Quite the disappointment, really.

However, on the whole, Qantas is lovely and I’ll be happy to fly them again and again if I’m going that way in the world.

Flight: ADL to SYD (Mar 19th)

The flight from Adelaide to Sydney scared me, as Virgin charged my wife A$110 for excess luggage on the way over, and the woman behind the counter actually laughed at her, which would have caused me to deck her if I had been there. However, on the way back, we got an extremely nice woman who only charged us A$50 when she should have charged us A$80 or more for all 4 bags and was nice as punch. The flight was much improved as well over other Virgin flights I’ve had — the snack was just a drink, although you could purchase food, and since we were seated in different locations on the plane, the stewardesses were even nice enough to come to me to get money for my wife several rows back…it was really cute.

The flight itself was smooth and quick and painless on the 737-300 that we were in. Very good service for the price (A$150 per person or so).

Flight: LAX to DEN, DEN to MSP (Mar 19th)
There are few words in language to describe how great I feel about my flights with Frontier Airlines. I was a Frontier virgin before these two hops, and boy have I missed out on the pleasures of flying with a really excellent company all these years. Starting off, they run clean, well-maintained planes — A319s and A320s mostly. They are decorated with their own signature forest green carpeting and seats, which looks very inviting. Everything is very clean and neat. The outside of the plane has the airline name on it, and the colors are green and white, but there is a different animal painted on the tail of each plane — I flew on “Lobos” (a wolf) and “Lilly” (a panther) and her cub, whom I forget the name of. I thought it was a cute gimmick — pretty impressive walking around DEN and looking at all the animals lined up at the gates.

The seats have TONS of room — more than the Qantas flights! I had tons and tons of room to stretch out my legs and not be crammed next to the guy beside me — I was completely blown away. On the back of each seat is your own TV monitor that displays DirectTV television shows — 24 channels of them for $6 during the flight (free preview while you’re on the ground), and 2 feature-length movies ($8 apiece, free previews). There is one free channel of documentaries and one channel that shows your plane’s progress on a map, along with other fun details like airspeed and altitude. And the headphones are free, and you get to keep them! Mind you, they’re not top-of-the-line by any means — clearly meant to be thrown away — but you get your own pair.

Ontop of having neat, clean, and comfortable planes, the staff is superb. They are fun, happy individuals who obviously love coming to work every day. The stewardesses were cutting jokes both on and off the loudspeaker, laughing and joking with passengers, and even striking up long conversations with them in the rear of the plane. They were quick and courteous with their service and, in fact, rather over-generous with their portions. Both flights served a soft drink or juice or alcholic beverage ($5 extra for that), along with one or two glasses of water, AND a bag of chips. In fact, since I was near the back, they gave me the rest of the can of Diet Coke (“we have to throw them away, anyway”, she said) and gave me two packets of chips since my neighbor was asleep!

The flight itself was heavenly Take-offs were fast and smooth, with lots of power behind them, and cruising was high and fast. Apparently the pilots of Frontier like to run things quickly, as we climbed all the way to 39,400 feet and ran it up to 560mph for the duration of each flight. The landing into Minneapolis was pretty routine, but the landing into Denver was absolutely textbook He came in, 180mph and full flaps, and set it down so softly that I never even felt the wheels hit and he used NO reverse thrust to slow the plane down. How many times can you say THAT about a flight? The stewardesses were so impressed that they came on the loudspeaker and said, “Give our pilot a big hand!” and so we gladly did and gave the man a round of applause for the landing. Absolutely amazing.

I tell you — few airlines come even close to the level of service that I received on Frontier and I’ll gladly recommend them again and again to my friends and family. Just incredible.

Again, if you’ve not flown or hate it, you really need to stsrt looking at it as a great way to travel and experience the world. To be so close to true engineering and technological marvels is something that few of us get to experience, but we can — up there in the air.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

XXXX (pronounced ‘four eks’) is brewed in Queensland by Castlemaine Perkins. It is a clear-ish lager that has a bit of a bitter aftertaste to it and goes down relatively like flavored water. Unfortunately, the odd aftertaste to it leaves it wanting and it lacks any sort of body to it. I’ll drink it (as I did on the plane ride over) as it’s decidedly Aussie, but it’s not a favorite.

Victoria Bitter, most often known simply as “VB”, is, despite its name, a traditional lager brewed by Carlton & United Beverages, a subsidiary of Foster’s Group. It does have a more bitter (hoppy) flavor than other lagers, however, and a thicker body that makes it one of my preferred mass-produced Australian beers. It goes down well yet has that distinctive heaviness of a higher-gravity beer and taste that makes sure that you’re not drinking water. Overall, a pleasant experience for a big-name beer.

West End Draught is brewed in South Australia by Lion Nathan and is a pretty light lager that is served all over South Australia and is almost guaranteed to be on tap at any pub or establishment here. While popular amongst the locals, I’m less fond of it as it has some sort of odd off-flavor overtones in the palate during the drinking that somehow turns me off. However, it’s drinkable and is usually easy to obtain, so one makes do.

Following is a rundown of several beers that I sampled per bottle, as I could pick up each bottle for approximately A$2.50 or so instead of buying an entire six-pack or similar:

Steinlager: While not an Australian beer, I felt I couldn’t forsake one of the largest beers in New Zealand on a fair taste test. Sadly, however, the bottle was horribly skunked and my first impression was skewed because of that. Brewed in Montuek, South Island, NZ, this 5% lager ended up being very watery but had a nasty bite in the aftertaste. It gave more bite than a typical 3.2 American lager, but the finish wasn’t as smooth and I wasn’t very impressed.

James Boag’s Premium Lager: This 5% lager from The Esk River, Tasmania, was slightly skunked but not nearly as bad as the Steinlager, so that helped. It also had more body during the drink and less bite on the aftertaste, but had a sour finish to it, which may or may not have been part of the skunkification. Better than the Steinlager, but not by much.

Cooper’s Original Pale Ale: The 3.5% Original Pale from Coopers (Regency Park, South Australia) was a refreshing change from the previous beers as it wasn’t skunked and had a nice, crisp flavor. However, I felt that they took the “pale” in the title a bit too far and it lacked any sort of interesting aspects to the flavor, preferring rather to emulate a more watery existence. Swing, but a miss.

Cooper’s Mild Ale: Cooper’s Mild Ale was a better shot at a good ale, giving a more thorough shot at the body of the beer and providing a nice, even release on the aftertaste. This one I enjoyed quite a bit and took some time drinking it, so I think that gives it a good review right there.

Toohey’s New Draught: A popular beer here in Australia (brewed in New South Wales), left me with a less-than-impressive experience. The 4.6% lager had a very unique flavor, but not one I’d want to replicate anytime soon. It had a very nutty flavor with overtones of…fruit? I wasn’t entirely sure, but it was at least unique.

Carlton Draught: A pale 4.6% lager brewed by Carlton & United Beverages, was a very enjoyable experience. The brew was a bit carbonated for my liking, but the flavor was really well-thought-out and flowed nicely down my gullet with a thicker taste and nice finish. Something I’d definitely drink again.

Southwark Old Stout: Ah, the stouts, one of my favorite beer styles of all time — the darker, the better, and Southwark Old Stout, produced by Lion Nathan, didn’t fail to please me. Creamy and thick, it flowed down my throat in a lovely way, had a thick, happy head on it, and had great flavor from beginning to end. The bouquet was a bit lacking, but the flavor matrix was polished, so it didn’t bother me too much. A lovely beer, one that I’d be happy to crack open again and again.

Cooper’s Best Extra Stout: I was hoping that the name of Cooper’s Best Extra Stout might really blow me out of the water, given that it was supposed to be “Extra” something or other, but the extra must have been related to the level of carbonation and not the flavor. There was plenty of the former and the latter consisted of the typical, dark stout flavor but it tastes burnt, which is not the sort of experience you care to have. You want dark, smooth, creamy, malty, but burnt is right out, and this one fell short of making an impression on me, to be honest.

So, that’s the Aussie Beer Rundown. This was, by no means, exhaustive, but was a fun trip anyway. Australians certainly know their beers and moreover, really like to consume them, so you have to respect that, no matter what your tastes.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

This consisted of lugging twenty 40kg (88lb) bags of concrete mix into a mixer, adding some water, dumping the sloppy Man’s Playdough into a wheelbarrow, huffing it down a sidewalk, backwards up some steps, and into the house to dump it in the bathroom where it was smoothed by Alex. All in all it went very well, we used up all the bags but got the slabs exactly done right, and the job was finished a bit after lunch.

This all might seem a bit strange for you folk back in the Homeland, as we don’t do this sort of construction for a bathroom, since we have wood beam floors and so forth. Here, there are no basements, and there’s usually little or no crawlspace, either. Rooms, such as this bathroom, are literally built right ontop of the dirt and solid concrete floors are poured ontop of that and tile or other flooring ontop of that. Pipes and wires and so forth are routed inside the slab or inside the walls, which are usually solid brick, mortar, and plaster, if not gypsum board (sheetrock) or cement backerboard.

So, to redo the bathroom floor, they removed all the fixtures and used a jackhammer to break out the old floor and break out the walls surrounding the pipes, then removed it all, replaced all the pipes into the floor (dirt) and walls, and then we poured the cement slab down today, right over the pipes. All the pipes are on the outside walls and head directly outside, where the supply and the hot water heater is, as well as the elbow down into the sewer. Of course, since it rarely or never freezes here, water heaters and piping is all outside the home instead of taking up space inside. You also don’t have to worry about burying pipes deep enough or any of that, as nothing is going to freeze, anyway. (There are also no furnaces in any houses — maybe a gas heater, but not very often. If it gets cold, it barely hits freezing, if ever, and people just deal with it.)

I’m serious — this old boy was BIG. He had MEAT on them there bones. You could have easily skewered him and put him on the barbie next to the tomatoes and mushrooms. Of course, he became mobile almost immediately, crawling down the patio door like he owned the place (which he mostly did, as nobody was about to stop him).

My wife, thankfully, came to the rescue as soon as I got my pictures of him (for evidence that monsters of the jungle really DO exist here in Australia) and bravely disposed of him. You should have seen it — like an Amazon warrior, she first soaked him in a goodly amount of bug spray and, when he tried to escape, nailed him between the eyes with it. (Easy enough to do, given that there were 8 of them, but — still. You have to credit the woman with a fast draw.) He curled up into a ball and I figured him for dead, but our wild Aussie heronie knew better, and knew that if we left him like that, he would only wake up later, creep into our beds at night, and lay eggs in our eyesockets or something equally nauseating. So, with a donated Birkenstock (they’re getting a lot of mileage, I tell ya), she flicked her wrist in a time-tested move and reduced the horror to little more than a smudge on the Astroturf of the back patio. Yolanda: 1, World’s Most Dangerous Critters: 0

(We think it is a Lace Web spider, or maybe a brown “garden spider”, although some people have called it a Huntsman spider, although we don’t think it matches the coloring and shape. However, I think Big Fucking Nasty Spider fits it pretty well.)

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

(At the least, it’ll distract you long enough to let me think about actually composing some sort of writing…)

Australia’s ants are very enterprising. Here some bull ants are attempting to make quick work of a leftover piece of somebody’s picnic; sometime I’ll take a video of the “regular” ants here in Australia, who are all Starbucks addicts as they appear to be very caffinated.

One of my favorite photographs from Paul and Rebecca’s wedding. I really do love black & white photography; you can probably see why.

Not something you’d see on your way to the bathroom — a bottlebrush blossom, one of the native shrubberies in Australia that blooms. I can’t tell where they got the name for it, however.

I like some of dem French-fried pertaters, mmmHRMMM.

The name of this Australian ice cream bar had me giggling for a long time, for all sorts of reasons. I loved putting Giant Twins in my mouth. (So much to write, so few electrons…)

Satin Pillows with Hints of Storms Pending
(on the rocky beaches of Whyalla, by the marina, before a rainfall. OneSteel in the background.)

The HMS Whyalla, the first ship ever built by the Whyalla Shipworks and now permanently drydocked 2km from the shore as a museum of maritime history. Translation: A big fucking ship sitting in the middle of a park.

Australia has all the comforts of home, including combines of a popular green sort. (in Cummins)

Kayla, Rebecca’s oldest daughter, probably protecting her wedding dress from melting to the upper deck of the HMS Whyalla in the 112+F degree heat.

My mother-in-law, Sharon, making a desperate jump to snag the bridal bouquet at Rebecca’s wedding. She’s pretty spry for a grandma.

A Yankie Cat in an Aussie Hat
(modeling a hat in Cheap-as-Chips, a discount store in Whyalla)

Curious Paula, Rebecca’s youngest daughter, and a cute button at that. She’s our godchild and pretty quiet so far, but she gives me shy looks from time to time.

Does this plant make my ass look phallic?

Sam: Conqueror, Hill-Climber, and Dashing Explorer
(ontop of Rocky Hill)

Sausages, fondly known as “snags”, on a barbie. Lovely things, fried to perfection.

This is an almond custard scroll, otherwise known as cocaine-in-a-pastry. I love these things; as you can tell, I had already eaten about 3/4 of it before I got enough sense back in my head to take a picture. I think I’ve had about 10 of them so far. They are lovely, they are sweet, they are….I can stop at any time. Really. I just don’t WANT to.

“Too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns.”
(Yolanda using her fake Scottish thistles to her advantage.)

A fair dinkum Aussie breakfast — eggs over easy, bacon rashers, fried tomatoes, and baked beans on toast, complete with some OJ. The author notes that he had to be rolled off his chair at the completion.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

The weather was foreboding; the reports on Monday morning apparently freaked out my mother who called (while I was in the shower, no less), asking if I had viewed the weather yet. I had not, I informed her, as I had barely managed to crack open my eyelids enough to avoid walls while traipsing down to the shower; news of anticipated precipitation was far from my neurons at that point.

After much back and forth, it was noted that if I wanted to get to Minneapolis, we would have to leave around 10am. This was not within my set plans, as I was supposed to be delivered to the airport around 4am the following morning, on Tuesday, and I had tons of things yet to do. My father, thankfully, stepped in and said he would be willing to leave later in the day, so we decided to play it by ear.

The morning was extremely hectic; work was hell, as I somewhat expected for the day before leaving for 5 weeks, but it was particularly incredible. Long story abbreviated, I got everything wrapped up and written out and checked off and otherwise marked by around 4pm; packing up and getting out of the house took me till 5 and we took off around 6. Dad and I picked up his girlfriend Amy in Clear Lake and then headed towards the Twin Cities in her van.

A stop at Perkins in Owatonna for some sustenance and we continued on. Our destination was the abode of one Kath, friend made through D.A.I.S.I.E. Company, and willing participant in the mission to get me on my way despite the impending onslaught of winter-whipped hydration. After missing the exit twice in St. Paul, we finally found our way to her lovely little cottage and got my bags dropped off. I said goodbye to Dad and Amy and they headed back south.

The evening at Kath’s house was wonderful, hanging with her and her granddaughters, firing the feces, and generally relaxing and hanging out. We never did go to sleep, preferring to stay awake and then leave for the airport around 3:40am.

MSP to PHX: Snow-encrusted plains to Rushed flatness in a whiz

I really thought that the MSP airport would be dead as the wet bar at an Amish buggy convention, but it was teeming with tons of people apparently intent on moving themselves around the world at the hairy, greasy buttcrack of dawn. Why, exactly, I had yet to figure out, but there were more important things to do at that moment, so waiting around to investigate wasn’t going to be on the agenda.

Check-in went great, even though the extremely nice US Airways woman had to work on checking my bags through to Sydney for ages. Security was a breeze and I was through and headed to my gate; I only had a few minutes to wait for boarding…or so I thought.

As I’m sitting there, I could hear the jet radio through to the gate and could hear them talking about some stewardess on the flight who had, “been up all night and was starving, hadn’t had anything to eat in 12 hours”. They radioed back that it wasn’t their problem, as I sat there snickering in my seat, imaging some blonde thinny standing there, about to faint from lack of peanut packs.

After a quick call to Mum to let her know that I was starting my journey, we boarded the Airbus 320 jet and I settled down into my window seat just aft of the wings on the right-hand side. A smooth taxi out to the runway and the roar of the jets and we were airborne and winging our way through the night sky towards Phoenix.

I simply love flying in the dark; it is amazing to look down upon the twinkling lights of the cities you are passing over, the rows of streetlights glowing gently in the night, the snaking lines of the roadways, the glow radiated by areas as a whole onto the sleeping earth. I think it’s one of the most serene views one can have of a normally chaotic and rushed existence. I sat transfixed by this scene until the plane climbed above the cloud layer, where I was treated to an unfettered view of the starry jewels of the night sky, resplendent in their night-blue evening wear.

The flight was sparse; I had the entire row to myself, as well as empty rows fore and aft of me. A corpulent man snoozed off right after boarding and slept almost the entire flight and a very nice family with 2 kids boarded, cute as can be, and I joked with the mother about the kids a bit. The flight staff, after serving us a meager ration of Sprite and crackers, spent the majority of the time jawing in the back few rows about whatever gossip was relevant. “Did you hear that Janet made it to the Mile High club on top of the drink cart???”

The landing into Phoenix happened just a bit after dawn, concluding after a rather quick drop through thick cloud cover and a few bumps on the way, but ultimately touching down at what has to be the flattest airport in the world.

PHX to LAX: Hollywood Never Had it So Good

Phoenix was incredibly rushed, as by the time I got off my plane, I had less than 45 minutes to the next one, meaning that I had to move my tush to get to the right gate in time. As it ended up, PHX is laid out in several different concourses, and I was in the one farthest from the one I needed to be at — naturally. A series of peoplemovers and much quick walking around the various grannies and other slowpokes and I arrived at my gate, huffing and puffing, and really needing a muffin and a sit-down.

As it proved, the rush was worth the time as I had a bit to sit and relax. The muffin was not forthcoming, even though there were plenty of overpriced juice bars around me, I wasn’t about to give them a shot given the short amount of time till departure. Instead, I wandered around my gate a bit, shooting the stern business suits cheesy grins as I beamed from behind my “travel best” of an orange t-shirt and purple, faded sweatpants. When I travel, I don’t just dress for comfort, I dress for shock-value.

The flight in the Airbus 319 was annoying at first, as we had apparently been downgraded from an A320 and numerous seats had to be reassigned, which meant lots of hassling and calling back to the gate desk of the staff as passengers arrived with outdated boarding tickets putting them in row 23 when only 21 rows existed. I was half-tempted to suggest that Row 23, Seat A was the saddle on the tail, and would they be so kind as to shut the door on their way out? Humor, unfortunately, is not regarded well by airlines in any circumstance, so I kept my musings to my own enjoyment. The other thing that was unimpressive was that the plane I was on looked much nicer than the previous bucket of bolts I had been on (really…upgrade your interior, US Air, it frightens the hell out of people to see stains on the seats), but flew much worse in my opinion. Looks like a fish, steers like a cow.

The best part of the takeoff was the fact that we were in a literal lineup of approximately 10 to 15 different aircraft, all taking off from the same runway in the same direction, about every 2 to 3 minutes. I got to observe a lot of A320s, A319s, B727s, and B737s from US Airways, Continental, Southwest, and America West all queuing up like kids in a cafeteria on make-your-own-pizza day, engines barely turning over such that you could still see the individual turbofan blades. It was really impressive. I kept wondering if the ones behind us were shaking their fists, yelling at the others to, “…get yer asses moving, ya lazy bums!” or similar rush-hour epitaphs. Nudging bumpers was not something that happened, thankfully.

During the flight we got served drinks (again, meager quantities of Sprite for me), but the guy behind me asked for a menu — ha! Where have you been? Food on airlines went out with the dodo, but apparently the memo had escaped this man and he queried anyway, sounding very disappointed when he was informed that shitty, pre-packaged food was not to be found on this flight. Much to my surprise and irritation, a few minutes later the overly-effeminate steward reappeared with a packet of peanuts for Mr. Curious and admonished him greatly that he was, “…really being a nice guy, as we don’t do this on these flights.” I was enraged; what if someone else wanted some crappy peanuts, too? The nerve, indeed.

Phoenix is really bloody huge, as it turned out — did you know that? I mean, you don’t hear it in the news. “Man really damned impressed by size of Phoenix; New York jealous. Film at eleven.” It just doesn’t occur to you, but it is so freaking flat that it stretches out for miles and miles, making even Los Angeles, with its houses winding in and amongst the hills surrounding it, look somewhat ordinary by comparison.

A nice landing in LAX and an exit to the smog and smells of the city and we were off to the next terminal.

LAX to SYD: One small hop for a kangaroo, one giant leap for a 747.

My ticket said Terminal 4, but I had always gone to the Tom Bradley Terminal to fly out to Australia before, so I was pretty determined to get off the shuttle bus at that point; luckily I had the premonition to check out T4 anyway just in case, as it was exactly where I needed to be and I got checked in with no waiting time at all and a no-questions, no-hassles check-in and security scan.

While putting on my shoes after padding through the metal detectors, I got talking to this very nice older gentlemen from Los Angeles who was headed to DFW and then to Philly later that day. We got talking about my trip to Australia and he commented that he had been there before, and we wished each other luck on our trips. He would come by once more while I was waiting to board my plane and again wish me luck; what a nice guy!

My gate was one of the first ones, so after checking that everything was on time, I headed to the bathroom for a cleanup (quick face wash, teeth brushing, new deodorant, etc.) and then some horribly overpriced lunch at a place called “Chilistogo!”, where I mowed down a large helping of steak fajitas and called various people to let them know how I was doing.

Stalking up and down the corridors was my next entertainment, as I figured I had better walk and stretch as much as possible while I had the opportunity, before sitting on my ass for the next 14 hours straight. During my wanderings I was able to stand and take a good long look at the pretty bird that was to cart me to the Land of Roos, a lovely Boeing 747-400 ER Longreach, a truly magnificent machine. She looked “airworthy” to me, so I kept on trucking around the airport.

Eventually I boarded, standing in the wake of tons of other Australians and a few Americans going along for the ride, and got settled into my seat in row 60, seat H, which was the right-hand aisle seat on the right-hand side. Almost right after I got seated, I introduced myself to my seat mates, two very nice-looking gals of a younger age. I personally hate being on an “inside” seat and having to bug the aisle person to get out and wanted to let them know right away that I didn’t mind it at all and I was happy to move.

After introductions, we found out a lot about each other. It turns out that the two girls were American college students, headed to the southern hemisphere for study-abroad programs. Becky was from South Carolina (with a cute drawl), going to school at Presbyterian College, majoring in Christian Education, and was headed to Townsend, Qld. Christy (I think that was her name…) was from Minneapolis, MN, was a student at some college (can’t remember), a comparative sociology major, and headed to Christchurch, New Zealand. Both were juniors in college.

We had some good conversations at various intervals during the flight and I learned that neither had been out of the country before and so this was a pretty big leap for both, so I tried to tell them any relevant information about Australia (and to some extent, New Zealand) that I thought might be helpful during the travel. They also indicated that they had planned to stay at the Sydney airport overnight, which I already knew wasn’t straightforward (as the airport shuts down), so I offered to hang with them until we could get transferred to our flights the next day, as I was staying over. They happily agreed that that’d be good.

The flight was very, very smooth, one of the best I’ve had for the trans-Pacific flight. There was a bit of turbulence for a few minutes in the middle, but it wasn’t too bad all in all. I was able to get up and walk around a bit, although being in the middle I felt a bit more conspicuous standing there stretching, so I tended to do less than what I usually do when I’m near the rear and can get up and wander to the back of the plane.

The food and service were, as usual, wonderful. Qantas has by far been my best experience for flight service from any airline, period. Lunch was a fish and vegetable dish, roll, tea, a can of XXXX (4X, an Aussie beer), salad, and other things. I also had 2 cans of VB (Victoria Bitter, another brew from the Southernland), the second can brought to me because my steward remembered that I liked it a lot. Supper (tea) was a Mexican chicken dish, salad, roll, more tea, etc. A dessert served between was a wonderful honeydew-flavored frozen fruit bar, I believe called, “Melonama”, but I can’t find it anywhere and nobody seems to have heard of it. We got 2 of these, in fact, as they came around a second time. The girls and I were quite fond of them.

Of course, we got the usual Qantas “goodie bags”, filled with pretzels, mints, a bottle of water, and some other things. New on the experience was a hot towel just before we landed in Sydney, which was ever so appreciated, and Cadbury’s hot chocolate! They actually came around and we got lovely-chocolately mugs of Cadbury’s hot chocolate, complete with a little white marshmallow floating happily in its brown swimming pool. Divine.

Our stewards (yes, both were men) were the funniest and most attentive I’ve had. They were Sydnians with broad accents and a lovely flair for their jobs — you could tell they really enjoyed serving people and making their trip good. They’d chatter back and forth to each other and to the passengers as they moved up and down with their little food carts, cutting jokes and generally having a good time. “Oi, mate, I wanna chook!” “Yah? Where ya wanna chook?” “Ri’ here, mate!” And a chicken meal would go tossed playfully over the cart and onto the waiting tray of the next waiting person.

Of course, not everything is rosy on a long flight. The couple across the aisle were these old bags that were cranky and kept giving me daggers for talking or breathing or existing, I really couldn’t tell. There were also a couple of guys that got pretty darn drunk across the aisle and a row back and were always talking loudly, even when the lights were out and people were generally trying to sleep or at least doze. Also, the guy ahead of me kept dropping his seat all the way back and extremely annoying times, and bounced a lot on it, making my screen jump around. But, apart from those few instances, most people were very pleasant. I even chatted to a Sydnian who had been in Chile running a marathon and training and was on his way home (ripped like a washboard, of course, lucky bastard). Nice guy.

We touched down after flying over a very prettily-lit Sydney in a textbook landing. Going through immigration was a breeze; in fact, they were strangely silent, not saying a word to me about anything. The luggage wasn’t the first off the rack, but me and the girls eventually got all of our bags and headed to customs. Becky somehow got questioned early about her bags and got to go past the scanners; Christy and I had to go through, but they didn’t even look at my bags, although they did stop Christy, open a bag, and pull out a pair of flipflops that had a bottle opener built into the bottom — I guess they’re a fairly popular brand in the USA. The customs guy was so impressed by it that he asked if he could show his coworker and proceeded to show the flipflops off to all the workers on the line. We were highly amused. It is a night-and-day difference between the customs and immigration of Australia and the USA, where the US definitely feels like you are a criminal trying to pass enemy lines, and Aussies are just glad you’re there.

We all got through that, and then we piled up the bags and made phone calls home to family, friends, etc., then headed to the corner on the one side of the terminal to set up camp and stay the night. They came around and checked passports and tickets to make sure we were legitimate, which was different than last time, but there were probably 30 or more people staying there, including a fair cadre of Russians and one Greek man who was ranting and raving about the Russians taking up all the seats to sleep on, but he didn’t get much action out of the guards who shrugged him off and gave him a first-come, first-serve sort of speech.

The girls cleaned up first while I watched the luggage and then I went and gave myself a thorough cleaning in the bathroom, changed clothes, and got my Birks on, as by that point my sneakers were reeking from being worn for over 36 hours straight. We eventually all settled down and fell asleep on our luggage in various odd positions but got a few hours of sleep before being woken up by the rattle of the gates being opened again.

SYD to ADL:   Goodbye Opera House, Hello Heat 

Around 5:30 we decided to part, Christy for the upstairs to catch her flight to New Zealand, and Becky and I to the Qantas transfer station down the hallway. Unfortunately, the transfer was closed and wasn’t due to be open until 6:00, which was too late for Becky to get checked in and transferred before her 6:50am flight to Townsend. So, we headed to look for a transfer bus, but they didn’t start running until 6:50, so that was out. We eventually found a barely-English-speaking taxi driver and he loaded us up and took off for Terminal 3, the Qantas domestic terminal.

The next few minutes my life flashed by as our driver ripped through the pre-dawn streets of Sydney, driving at a pace that an F-14 would have trouble matching and doing corners that few vehicles on Earth could probably match. However, we arrived in one piece and did our first pre-checkin and got in line to get officially checked in. It turned out that Becky’s flight was actually being serviced by JetBlue, although it was co-coded as a Qantas flight, so she was supposed to be in Terminal 2, not 3. We parted ways with a friendly wave and she went to walk over to her flight, as I continued to check in without any problems.

Before we parted ways, I gave each girl my webpage address on a piece of paper and said that, if they felt like it, they could look me up and I’d love to get an email from them, letting me know how they made out and how their new school was, etc. But to date I haven’t heard from them, so either they lost it or decided not to contact me. I was hoping, but….oh well. They were terribly nice people and I’m glad they were there to hang out with, it helped make a solo trip much more enjoyable.

I walked around a lot, as I was butt-early for my flight, due to worrying about getting Becky to her flight first, so I walked and looked at all the closed stores in the terminal and eventually placed phone calls home to my family to let them know that I was ok and so forth, as it was about lunchtime back in America.

I changed over my money to Aussie funny-money once the place opened and the nice Oriental woman assisted me. (Why are all money-changers Oriental? Even in LAX…) Eventually I had to get some food, so I first bought a latte for about $4 AUD and sat and people-watched while that cooled off, and then paid $10 AUD for a crappy roll with some bacon and egg on it (looked nice in the case; no such luck with the reality) and bought a Lift out of a machine. Lift is an southern-hemisphere drink, which tastes a lot like lemonade and but is carbonated and is quite nice, and I’m terribly fond of it and its sister product, Solo.

The flight to Adelaide on a Qantas Boeing 737 came soon enough and it was a nice flight in a seat on an exit row (more footroom) and a nice breakfast. The lady next to me, I noticed, was a Ruby-level OneWorld frequent flyer, which means she was pretty well-traveled (she looked pretty good for it, too.) Also, much to my amusement, one of the very funny stewards from my international flight was on mine, as a passenger. He saw me, but I don’t know if he recognized me or not; he didn’t acknowledge it if he did.

Yolanda’s brother Matt and his fiancee Nadine and my two nephews, Kailum and Reiley, picked me up from the fancy, brand-new Adelaide airport, and we headed first to the bus depot to put my bags on to Whyalla (too expensive to send on the Regional Express flight) for $26 AUD and then to their house, where I got to know the kids a bit and got fitted for my tux for Matt & Nadine’s wedding by a man named Harvey. We hung out there the rest of the day, me trying to upgrade Matt’s network setup and breaking his Internet connection completely (no clue how) and generally talking and so forth.

ADL to WYA:   Touchdown?   Check.   Sweetheart?   Check.    Luggage?   Uh…. 

That night, we had a rushed trip to the airport, as we were running behind, and I gave a hurried goodbye and sprinted to my checkin and gate for my REX flight to Adelaide.

The flight was on a Saab 340 turboprop jet and we had a smooth takeoff and a very bumpy trip to Whyalla. The guy next to me on the jet was a teacher from St. John’s College in Whyalla (a private high school, the one my brother-in-law, Sam, goes to, incidentally) and had a convention in Adelaide the whole day. He was a really nice guy and we had a good conversation on the trip there, although he squeezed a lot of juice out of the armrests as he hates flying…I was pretty amused.

We had a gentle touchdown and I finally go to see my love after going through the gate, as well as Sam and our friend Mel and her daughter, Lara. It was very nice to see some familiar faces after all the traveling and we headed out into Whyalla to start my official holiday.

Another successful trip, and I’m always grateful to wind up where I am supposed to be, even though I know I will. If you were someone that I saw or met or somehow whizzed by on my trip, I hope I left a positive influence on you, even if just for a second. To all the pilots, steward(esses), and airline people, thanks for helping get me all the way across the world to reunite with my loved ones and friends. I know, I paid you to do it, but I still appreciate it. We’re all in this big boat together, I guess.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Many of you know that I'm now in Australia (and have been since the 15th of February). I am now just finally able to start catching up on my blogging and other online work; it's been very busy here so far and I've gotten precious little computer time. I promise to write a lot more "contextual" posts soon about my travels and doings here, but first I'm going to make a picture post so you have something to gaze at while I get my other things in order.

This is a "flora and fauna" post, with pictures of plants and locations around my wife's hometown of Whyalla, South Autralia. I'm trying to take more pictures of "typical" Aussie plants and views, as now with digital photography I don't have to worry about wasting film! So…enjoy.

A pink flower on someone's front yard down the street from Yolanda's Mum's house.

Australia is literally covered with bushes and trees of the eucalyptus persuasion. People usually think this means one particular species, but there are over 700 different variations in every size and shape that are grouped as, "some type of eucalyptus" by the locals.

A purple flower on a local's roadside bush.

Many of the plants here are succulents, with the enlarged, bulbous leaves and stems typical of desert and other arrid-area plants. This creeping plant used by many as edging in their gardens has these adorable little red flowers.

The ubiquitous salt bush, properly known as Atriplex, a short, shrubby plant that nearly covers the landscape in undeveloped areas around here. Salt bush is called such because it can grow very well in salty soil and water and actually retains that salt in its leaves, making it have a very salt flavor, if you can brave the tough branches and tiny leaves to try any. This is the defining plant of the "bush" regions of Australia (semi-desert regions) and no doubt responsible for that name.

An unknown bush that I call 'snake bush' as it looks like it, but I really don't know the name and nobody else seems to, either. This isn't as common as salt bush but grows pretty often and in large sizes, some spanning upwards of 8 to 10 feet wide. One has to wonder if one of the 10 species of poisonous snakes is living underneath. <shudder>

A few of the tops of the trees in the "ship park" (the park where the ship H.M.S. Whyalla is permanently drydocked).

A white flower on a tree bordering someone's yard, unknown species.

A yellow canna in Mum's garden.

A view of the city park up the road from Mum's house. That's my brother-in-law Sam and 'Pup' (his new dog). While this is a park, it is really just a section of the outback captured within the city limits, as this is pretty typical of what you would see were you to walk outside the city borders and into the bush itself.

Another picture of the trees and bushes of the park.

The park, again, from a different angle. There are some jungle gym pieces in here for kids to play on, although they don't dare do it after dark, due to the large numbers of mozzies (mosquitoes) and questionable sorts wandering around.

Me, in the city park, doing one of those touristy-type photos.  The smirk on my face is probably from ants crawling up my ass, I suspect.

I had to take a picture of their electrical poles. Unlike the poles we have in American (wooden, creosote), these are steel beams in a triangular shape with concrete in between. The lines also carry 220 volt, 50Hz electricity vs. our 120v, 60Hz and are uncovered, aluminum lines (vs. our copper, covered lines)

A few down Sampson Street, the street on which Yolanda's Mum lives. You can see Rocky Hill in the distance at the end.

Looking across Norrie Avenue towards Rocky Hill

Rocky Hill is a block up the street from Yolanda's Mum's house and is a pretty large hill that houses the water tower and water tank for the town, with very large supply and distribution pipes coming out of the bottom. The tank is supposedly topless, although I've been unable to look inside as you can't get up high enough.

A beautiful sky from the top of Rocky Hill, with the town water tank on the right. This huge tank acts as a storage buffer for the town's water supply that is piped in from the Murray River, hundreds of miles away. (local aquifers are brackish due to seawater, and undrinkable)

A stormy sky over Whyalla, with another water tank on the horizon. That night it poured down rain after dark, but only for about an hour; rainstorms here only last a few minutes at most, usually, in an area that only gets 10 inches a year total.

A view of Whyalla from the top of Rocky Hill. You can see houses in the foreground and the OneSteel plant in the background. OneSteel is a division of BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, and Whyalla's steelworks is one of the primary steelmaking facilities in the country. During WWII, it was also one of the largest shipyards in the country, responsible for most of the destroyers built, but that has ceased operations since the 1970s. OneSteel is the primary employer of this city of 32,000 people (or so) and it is really booming right now, but as my brother-in-law says, it's both the thing keeping the city alive and killing it, as the dust and chemicals thrown off by the plant are suspected to be causing one of the highest cancer rates in all of Australia for the town's residents.

Me with Whyalla in the background, standing on top of Rocky Hill after climbing it with my brother-in-law, Sam.

Another shot of Whyalla from the top of Rocky Hill, with the ocean on the left.

A sunset over Whyalla, from the top of Rocky Hill.

This is a sunset over the ocean and Whyalla, taken from another hill in town, Hummock Hill. The ocean (hard to see) is on the left past the city lights. This hill has a drive to the top where locals go and look over the town (and teenagers attempt to generate romance)

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Rebecca is one of Yolanda‘s best friends from Whyalla and is getting married on the 17th of February, 2 days after I arrive. I get to be one of the ushers for the wedding, and Yolanda is the Matron of Honor. It should prove to be a really good time, getting ready for the celebration and then having fun with everyone involved. The couple appear to be really happy with each other, and although I haven’t met Paul yet, he seems like a really nice bloke, and that’s exactly what Bec needs, someone to always be there for her and be a partner rather than a drain. Seems like Paul is that sort of guy; I hope to get to know him better.

At any rate, after the wedding they are going on a 2-week honeymoon, the first week being spent on a houseboat on the Murray River, which is apparently a pretty popular vacation destination. However, the second week they’re going to be going a few hours down the coast from Whyalla and staying at a place called Tumby Bay.

Now, this is one of the things that’s so charming about Australia — they have the most entertaining names for things. Just navigating around a city can be an exercise in linguistical enjoyment, a tourist trap for your mouth and phonetic synapses. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out how masses of letters, thrown (seemingly) randomly on signs and establishments, are really pronounced, attempting to do so, being laughed at by the locals near you, and then being kindly yet chidingly corrected with a smile. I cannot see “Tumby Bay” and not think of Pooh. Likewise, “Coober Pedy” sounds like it requires a urinary tract condition to visit, and “Whyalla” is almost a question. “Whyalla? Why not alla?” It’s a fascinating journey.

Back to Tumby Bay: Bec and Paul are going to be spending a week there (or around there), relaxing, sunning themselves, seeing local attractions, etc., and they’re taking us along! Apparently they had a talk together and decided that they’d like to hang out with us more and, since the place had room for it, invited us along to share in the experience. At first we refused because we didn’t want to encroach on their honeymoon (seems…tacky), but they insisted that they’d enjoy having us along, and so we are, most thankfully, joining them.

The place seems extremely nice, with pretty beaches and water, cute little businesses downtown, and lots of local fauna and wildlife — they even have PELICANS! Of all the birds in the world, you have to appreciate a pelican (whose mouth can hold more than its bellican — apologies to Shel Silverstein).

Another aspect I’d like to walk through is the mangroves, which are these dense stands of trees that grow along the water’s edge and provide a rich and diverse mini-ecosystem for the plants, fish, crabs, and other animals near the shallows of the ocean. They are extremely adapted to the environment, forming entertwined masses of roots that hold air during high tide and branches that form nooks and crannies in the water for fish to hide in while they grow. The town (or someone) has built a very nice 70m boardwalk through the mangroves so you can check it out without trudging knee-deep in the mud, something I am forever grateful about.

Other than that, the seafront apartment where we’ll be staying has a full kitchen and is just a stone’s throw away from the ocean, which sounds like my ideal environment to be a complete and total bum. I suspect we’ll be spending a lot of time just enjoying the sun and forgetting about the world in general so, hey — if someone blows up something big during that time, send me a letter, eh? I might forget I’m anywhere but paradise.

All in all, we’re extremely grateful to Bec and Paul for hauling us along on their holiday. It’ll be nice to break up the time we’re staying in Whyalla, get away with some friends for awhile, and see some places that we haven’t before. How nice are they???

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

Bent Over the Turnstile

If you are ever considering taking Virgin Blue airlines as a connection off an international flight, don’t, unless you travel lightly. Yolanda finally got to Adelaide, but she got raped at the ticket counter because they have a silly 20kg limit on baggage, and she had 2 bags, both over 20kg each, so she got charged $110AUD to get them on the plane, essentially nullifying the price advantage of taking VB in the first place. GAH! So much for spending money for the next couple weeks. I think it’s idiotic for them to screw over international travelers like that; domestics, sure, but…*sigh* It was my fault for misreading the information — I thought it would be 20kg per bag, not total, and so I screwed it up. Lovely.

It sounds like she’s making the rounds of everyone so far, catching up with our friends Mel and Dale and their cute little daughter, Lara, and she also saw Simon and Lou and their two kids, Geordie and Taevey, so I’m a bit jealous about that, because we’ve been watching these kids through pictures and webcam for the past three years and now they get to meet up. All in good time! I’ll get my chance in awhile. The only frustrating part is that her family seems to have gone into high gear and want to see her all at the same time and it’s overwhelming her right now, as she just needs some time to recover from the jetlag and needs to get to everyone on her own time. It’s not like she’s going to ignore them while she’s there, but they seem pretty insistent to see her as soon as possible, no matter how she’s feeling.

Crossings of Postage

I have a bunch more postcards to send out for Postcrossing. I haven’t done this in a long time, but I picked it back up again about 2 weeks ago and since have been sending cards fast and furious; as soon as one is registered and I’m allowed to send another, off it goes. My theory is that I can stop in about a week and then get postcards from others for about a month or so, give or take.

Today’s postcards (if I get stamps and get them going) are going to Ayumi Oda in Japan, Paola Papen in The Netherlands, Pip Wilson in New Zealand, and Kirsten Schauble in Germany. All of the cards are the same one — the custom-made cards I had made at VistaPrint with our house and our picture on the front. I figured if I was sending so many cards, they might as well be personalized, and it keeps me from having to find stores selling cards. Plus, they were 100 cards for $10 total — who can beat that? Not with a stick this side of the Mississip’, by gum.

Code Mania

I have a lot to write about with programming and coding but haven’t yet found the time to congeal my thoughts about it and put it down in some sort of concretized fashion. I’ve been working steadily on HooDaHek, improving it as I go and debugging things that go wrong. I really feel like a schmuck about it, because I wrote this program, released it to the open-source community, and then got too damned busy to keep it up. Now it’s sorely out of date and my next version will kick some serious ass, but I have to get the features done and out there.

I have also recently purchased a copy of AJAX for Dummies and PHP 5 and MySQL 5, so I need to get reading on those for my next personal project (yet to be revealed to the breath of the baited world). Essentially, the only way I can learn programming languages is to make a project and then do that project in that language, so I have created a project that I think will benefit a lot of people in the world and am going to force myself to write it in these technologies so I learn them. I may very well end up taking both tomes to Australia, either as in-flight entertainment or as something to read on the back porch whilst I listen to the birds chirp and the spiders inject horse-killing poisons into the local ant population.

So much to do…so little time left to think to sort it all out. I’ll get there, one way or another, by gum.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

So, we got up to MSP a bit later than we had hoped, mostly because we had to screw around with baggage and so forth, but we got there around 12:30 or so, parked, and headed in, upon which my wife rolled her ankle when her big-ass pullman twisted on the escalator and landed on her calf. I went and quickly pulled some cash from the ATM for her, then headed up to ticketing.

Got 2nd in line and got to the counter pretty quickly and she did the electronic check-in dealy. After which we threw our bags on the scale and asked the United Airlines woman if she’d check her bags through all the way to Sydney so she didn’t have to handle them again. She asked who we were flying through, and we told her, “Qantas”, and she asked for her tickets. She then did a tappity,tappity thing on the computer for a bit, then looked up and said, “I can’t do that. You don’t travel until tomorrow.”

Our jaws dropped. “WhaaaaaaAAAAAAATTT???”

“Yeah,” she said, “you fly out of LA on the 29th.”

Five people in line, including the TSA security guard, simultaneously said, “It IS the 29th!”

She looked very befuddled for a minute, then shook her head and said, “Oh, right, yes, of course. I was looking at something else,” and carried on checking in Yolanda’s luggage. I could have strangled her. I’m like, “I know this is right, I booked these myself!” The guy behind us in line gave me a wry smile and said, “Nice way to start a vacation, eh?” I could only nod in disbelief.

The goodbye was quick and painless, thankfully, mostly due to the fact that by the time she got checked in it was 1pm and she had to board at 1:33, so I walked her directly down to the security line, kissed her quick, and sent her into the line. To make it easier, I just walked off and out of the airport right away, as we had agreed to make it quick and simple for the both of us.

I then spent a long time driving home in the crappy weather; thankfully, barbershop rehearsal was cancelled so I didn’t have to turn around and go back up to Mason City, but I wouldn’t have, given the weather. Of course, that means that Wednesday I have practice to make up for it.

Yolanda then called me from the Denver airport, and then again from LAX, mostly to let me know she was ok and to burn up time between flights. From her blog entry, sounds like she had a pretty good international flight, which is great to hear. I hope mine is equally good.

Now just another two flights to go and she’ll be in the care of one of her friends, so I won’t have to worry anymore.

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I’m playing the Airline Ticket Game.

Now that we’ve secured a good, solid $2,500 to start spending on our airline tickets for our upcoming trip in Feb/Mar, I’ve been on the prowl for the past week or so to find the sweet spot in this incredibly convoluted and asinine industry so we can fly to Australia without losing body parts to loan sharks in the process.

The Long Kiss Goodbye
In planning an international experience such as this, the first step is to get the biggest step done first — the long leap over the ocean. Once that one is in place, all the little flights to/from the major destination points will have to be filled in, but since they’re more flexible, they’re easier to do later.

The big problem with the “large” flight is that it’s fucking expensive, and, apparently, February/March must be an ideal time to fly to Australia, because NOTHING is turning out to be cheap. Let’s see what is available, shall we?

• LAX to SYD on Qantas – $1254 – My preferred airline for weathering the 15+ hour flight across the Pacific just put up a sale, but not for the dates we want/need, of course. Yolanda would like to leave on the 4th of Feb, but the sale is either for the 3rd or 6th, and the flight on the 3rd is a night flight into Sydney, meaning that you get into SYD around 10:30pm and have to either find a hotel or stay at the airport in a locked-off section for the entire evening until flights start up again in the morning. I am happy to do this, but I suspect My Sweet Love™ will not look fondly upon this idea. The bonus of both of these flights (mine and hers) is that we CAN book the same flight back to LAX on the 19th of March, which is what she’d really, really like to do.
  
• MSP to HNL, HNL to SYD – $1200ish – This is an odd one; JetStar, a “discount” airline (on the order of JetBlue, etc.) has $550 flights to Sydney from Honolulu, direct. It’s a hell of a deal. The problem is getting to HNL, which, to get a decent price (read: below $700) so far consists of 15+ hour flights across the USA, stopping at anywhere from Seattle (very much on the way, but still incurrs a NINE HOUR layover) to some crazy, shitty route like the one I found: Minneapolis to Phoenix to FUCKING LA GUARDIA to HNL — you must be joking. Once you then GET to HNL, you have to spend the night, somewhere, and then board another 9-hour flight the next day to Sydney. All in all, you’d end up spending twice as long to get to Australia. Screw that, I’ll pay an extra $100 for the convenience of…uhm…NOT.
  
• LAX to ADL via Air New Zealand — You just have to appreciate an airline that paints its planes with images from The Lord of the Rings. And their flight specials, starting Feb 01 (according to their website) are pretty damned good, too. In fact, they have a kickass flight that goes LAX to AKL (Auckland) and from there the ADL (Adelaide), which is where we have to go anyway, all for $1300USD. That’s an incredible price! A pity that once you actually search for a flight you can’t find anything prior to Feb 16th as a departure date. Thanks, ANZ, for getting my hopes up high enough that they’ll splatter nicely on the rocks below.

This is just a rough sample, and I won’t bore you with more, but you get the picture.

NOW — one important thing to note is that this ONLY applies to today! Yes, tomorrow, or even tonight, these could all be different.

This is my biggest gripe about the game — the prices change, seemingly by random, as flights are added and dropped, routes are changed, stopovers manipulated, and price points shuffled. Airlines are some of the largest consumers of mathematicians doing things like statistics, probability, and econ. In fact, I suspect many econ professors around the world spend their off hours masturbating to the mere thought of being employed by an airline and asked to figure out their pricing scheme. It’s an incredibly complex exercise in coercion, manipulation, and shuffling.

For the consumer, it’s an effort based mostly in persistence, patience, and guts. You have to know the territory — if it looks like a great deal and IS a great deal, you have to know that, and you have to whip your card out, snap it down on the desk, and buy that damned thing before it evaporates into thin air. But one must not be too hasty, no, bourrum, otherwise you might miss out on the next roll of the dice that would have netted you a much bigger fish for far less dough.

It is similar yet not to buying computer hardware. You do your research, long and hard, and then make your purchase. Invariably, the hard drive/memory/monitor/printer will be cheaper and better the next day, and yours obsolete in the same time frame. Airline tickets are a similar phenomenon, except they might be more or less expensive any give day of the week — indeed, any given HOUR of the day — depending upon the whims of the airline and her cadre of spud-spanking scientists.

I try to be diligent, but this is wearing on me and will until I get everything bought. So much money, and so little time left. We have to be smart, smart, smart about it in order to have anything at all to travel on. I guess that’s where the research will, hopefully, pay off.

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