Ryan's Journal – Page 51 – "My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?"

The Beachmasters Will Eat You

Posted from South Plaza Island, Galapagos Islands at 6:25 pm, May 6th, 2006

Day two started out with food poisoning on the plane – an important note for those flying Tame, there are no barf bags in the seat pockets. As quickly as it hit my time getting to know my breakfast was over, and we arrived in the Galapagos to meet Greg and board the boat. A bit of choppiness during the voyage to South Plaza Island allowed a couple of other passengers to join the upchuck club, but once we arrived on the island everyone was feeling fine and most people jumped in the water for a quick snorkel. Aaron and Scott of course literally jumped in the water, and a photo exists somewhere of the two of them doing tandem ninja kicks off of the boat’s second deck. Greg refused to even call this a snorkel, and instead described it as a “swim”, but a few sea lions playing with banana peels and several fish made for a good time. The day’s only hike was a three hour jaunt around North Seymour where the red-billed tropic birds wrecked havoc on my sanity by refusing to stay in focus, and the sea lions and land iguanas entertained everyone else. A good start, and everyone seems primed for tomorrow.

Land Iguana on South Plaza Island.

Imbibing

Posted from Quito, Ecuador at 12:35 am, May 6th, 2006

Day one has brought with it little sleep, good times in first class, an enormously enjoyable (and late) evening at the hotel’s bar, and not one, but two lost luggages. With luck American will come through and get the bags to the boat quickly, but aside from this snafu the trip is off to an excellent beginning.

The Lizards Can Swim

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:55 pm, May 4th, 2006

Galapagos III kicks off tomorrow with a 4:30 AM wakeup followed by a flight to Miami and then on to Quito. It’s a bit of a struggle not to get too excited already since the last two trips have been such good ones:

Galapagos I: Photos
Galapagos II: Photos | Journal

As always I’ll keep a daily journal, but it will probably be a couple of weeks before ‘net access is again available and everything can be uploaded. Should be fun.

Son of Suby

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:40 pm, April 25th, 2006

Almost exactly seven years ago my Geo Prizm chugged up the Dumbarton bridge in rush hour during the height of the dot-com boom. She never made it back down. The backup supposedly went eighteen miles, three traffic helicopters were eventually circling, and I’m told I was on the evening news. It was a fitting end for my first car – we drove across the country together, the speedometer broke and I drove for six months with no idea of how fast I was going, and I learned about car repairs since I didn’t have the money to fix things at a shop.

The Prizm was replaced in 1999 by the Suby – I picked the car out based on the fact that I could stretch out full length in the back to sleep. During our time together the Suby and I took a 13,000 mile roadtrip to Alaska, we traveled all over the western United States, and as of yesterday we’d spent over 145,461 miles together. The Suby took great care of me and deserved an end at least as glorious as what happened to the Prizm, but I’ve gotten older, and the idea of breaking down in the middle of the desert a hundred miles from civilization was too extreme for my 31 year old sensibilities. As a result the Suby will soon be in a new home, and the Son of Suby is parked in the garage. More than likely SoS and I will be off on our first road trip shortly, and hopefully junior will live up to the grand legacy of his predecessor.

The Suby and me on the Dalton Highway in Northern Alaska.

More of the Same

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:30 pm, April 22nd, 2006

I just pushed a bunch of updates onto rodplanck.com, specifically several new photo galleries. Rod and Marlene are best described as super-awesome, and Rod’s photos are pretty special and definitely worth checking out – I was standing next to him for a bunch of his recent Antarctica shots, so looking at his stuff provides a great example of how beautiful the place really was and how the photos should have been taken.

The Galapagos trip sets sail in just under two weeks, so a new batch of stories and photos on this site should be forthcoming. I may also try to head out on a short road trip just to get back into travel mode, although I’m mildly concerned that the Subaru, with just under 150,000 miles on it, may be getting ready to explode, so that’s putting a bit of a damper on the prospect of heading hundreds of miles out into the desert. Only a bit of a damper.

Same

Posted from Culver City, California at 5:55 pm, April 6th, 2006

Not much excitement recently. Final details for the upcoming Galapagos trip have been taking up a good deal of time, and I’m writing a lot of code trying to update a software package called VQWiki to work a bit better and do some things I’d like to have on this site.

The “big” events during the past week or two took place in Hollywood. LA obviously has good film options, and the Arclight is probably my favorite theatre in the country. Every few weeks they show a movie and then have the director or someone else involved in the production answer questions afterwards, and so Audrey and I caught a showing of Lonesome Jim and then listened to Steve Buscemi and three members of the cast answer questions. Unbeknownst to us, the other perk at these showings is free drinks and appetizers, so for $9.75 we saw a movie, listened to one of the weirdest character actors in cinema history, and then joined the cast across the street for drinks.

A week prior to seeing Steve Buscemi we went out for drinks with one of Audrey’s old friends who had done some recurring TV work. I love repeating old lines from movies and such, mostly because I’m not funny enough to come up with original material, but it’s way cooler hearing the actual actor fake like he was smoking and then deliver a line like “Oh dark mother, once again I suckle at your smokey teat.”

And for anyone who’s never seen a bulldog ride a skateboard, check out Tyson, the Skateboarding Bulldog, originally discovered by Aaron.

Skateboarding in Huntington Beach, taken from skateboardingbulldog.com.

Hoosiers

Posted from Culver City, California at 1:40 am, March 27th, 2006

Having made the brilliant move of picking UCLA to make the Final Four, my ranking in ESPN’s NCAA Tournament Bracket has risen from it’s low of being in the bottom 2.7% to my current ranking in the bottom 16.2%. The meteoric rise from the gutters stops there since I don’t have any other teams still alive and I’ve picked UCLA to lose their next game (to Duke), but at least now I can mock all of those people in the bottom ten percent for their lack of basketball knowledge. Amateurs.

I Was Thinking… In My Head

Posted from Culver City, California at 11:25 pm, March 20th, 2006

The ongoing series of memorable Audrey-inspired experiences continued this past weekend, with a trip to see Safari Arnie. When she was a kid she was co-anchor on a show called Elementary News, and Arnie was a weekly guest who would show up with snakes and lizards and whales and stuff. We visited him at his home in the hills on Sunday, and it was a pretty unreal experience – walking up to the guy’s house is like walking through a rainforest, with giant palm trees, vines, and even a huge stand of bamboo planted outside. As soon as you enter the house you cross a small river with fish on one side and turtles on the other, and a giant cave bear skeleton stands eight feet tall to greet everyone. He’s got vines, bones, and all sorts of other wackiness on display, and is a really cool guy to boot. There were several highlights to the evening, but foremost amongst them was his story of how a robbery of his home many years ago was thwarted when the six alligators he was keeping in his yard started roaring. I only wish I could make something like that up.

Call My Bookie

Posted from Culver City, California at 3:45 pm, March 17th, 2006

Despite knowing almost nothing about college basketball, I put together an NCAA Tournament Bracket. You can win $10,000 if you guess right, so why not? As of right now, I’m ranked #2,423,844, placing me squarely in the bottom 9.4%. I’m guessing that there’s probably a group of monkeys in the San Diego Zoo, a blind Pakistani two-year-old, and fourteen people currently in persistent vegetative states that are ahead of me…

Holy Schnike Edition

Posted from Culver City, California at 5:25 pm, March 13th, 2006

There is a “Holy Schnike Edition” of the Tommy Boy DVD. It is truly a wonderful world in which we live.

There hasn’t been a lot worth noting lately, although on Saturday Audrey took me out to help with jobs at two of her client’s houses in Malibu. I am forbidden from naming names, but the first house was unreal — huge, tons of land, and a private beach. The guy was turning the basement of a second house into a giant studio, so I got to play lifestyles of the rich and famous while Audrey took measurements and chatted with the recording engineer. The second visit was to another Malibu home to deliver and install some stuff, and we did so while the studio’s owner fooled around on the piano and sang a bit. A cool guy, and a very surreal experience.

My own work is much less interesting at the moment as I’m playing around with a couple of software packages and making some updates to Rod Planck’s web site. The Skipper suggested adding the ability to change the delay in the slideshow in my photo galleries, which is now done — anyone else with suggestions, please let me know. And for no reason at all, here’s another penguin picture:

King penguins in St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia Island.

Double Down Redux

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:25 pm, March 5th, 2006

Tuesday

I dropped Audrey off at the airport so she could catch her flight to do a job in Las Vegas, and then I started off in the car for… Vegas. Yeah. I probably could have flown, but wanted to visit Mojave National Preserve along the way, so figured driving wouldn’t be such a horrible thing. The preserve isn’t bad, and I need to go back and explore a bit more. I arrived in Sin City around nine o’clock, the third visit in the last month.

Wednesday

Spent most of the day in the Monte Carlo hotel room, then Audrey and I spent the evening roaming around trying to find the dumbest slot machines possible. She actually won some money on the mermaid machine, the shark game ate us alive, the old prospector took my five dollars, and Rocky came through and gave me a couple bucks. Most importantly we signed up for one of the casino’s player cards, so there should be hundreds of comps coming our way any day now.

Thursday

Scott and Anna arrived in the evening to celebrate Scott’s thirtieth birthday, but the flu bug hit so I spent the evening passed out in bed.

Friday

Fully recovered, Scott and I investigated how best we could lose our money by playing Let It Ride. My theory when it comes to gambling is that the casinos are always going to win, so the goal is to have as much fun over as long of a period as possible before they take all of the money — basically make the casino suffer a bit before it bankrupts me. During the day I managed to stay even, but a $10 minimum in the evening had me sweating. Cashing in $60 and getting six chips turned my stomach to acid, and while the game moves slow enough that the cash wasn’t burning up in front of me, it was still a pretty painful experience. As my chip pile slowly dwindled Audrey came over to watch the carnage, and I was dealt two aces. She then said with utmost certainty that one more was forthcoming, and a short time later I walked away from the table noticeably richer.

Saturday

Spent the last day in Vegas with Scott and Anna before heading off on my own to visit Wynn (wow) and then picking up Audrey for the ride home. The evening’s excitement was crossing back into LA county and passing a car chase going in the opposite direction — three cop cars and a helicopter all barrelling down the road.

About Time

Posted from Culver City, California at 12:10 am, February 24th, 2006

The Antarctica photos are finally all online. Audrey gave them a thumbs up, but be warned there are a lot. It has already been suggested that I add a slideshow feature to the photo galleries, but if anyone has any other ideas of how to make the gallery easier to use please let me know.

Some of my favorites from the latest batch:

Chinstrap penguins at Baily Head.

Weddell seal in Paradise Harbour.

Clouds over Neko Harbour.

Double Down

Posted from Culver City, California at 11:50 pm, February 16th, 2006

Last Friday night Ryan Sutherland, Aaron and I headed to Vegas to celebrate Aaron’s birthday. The trip started with Sutherland’s primordial response upon hearing the cost of a hotel room for the evening (“Goo”), was followed by much Beastie Boys music along the way, and culminated with an appearance by Charlie Chisel and a journey led by the ouija beer. The night ended late, and the following day we hit the Bellagio for brunch before heading home by way of the Mad Greek in Baker.

Audrey and I headed out to the desert two days later for some camping. Death Valley is a good bit cooler in the winter, and we had some good hikes in between coyote and kit fox sightings. Highlighting the differences between someone like myself who prefers the outdoors, and someone like Audrey who has spent almost all of her life in cities, the wind picked up Tuesday night and lulled me to sleep, while Audrey was up most of the night wondering if the tent would blow away (it didn’t). We headed to Vegas Wednesday to catch the Blue Man Group show (it ruled), lost some money on a baffling video slot machine involving an old prospector and Q-Bert, and finally headed home this afternoon after visiting the Mirage’s pool and jacuzzi.

The slow push to get through the remaining Antarctica photos continues, although I should be able to get most of them online tomorrow. As to the rest, at the rate I’m going it may be several more years…

Golden Canyon Landscape

Golden canyon landscape in Death Valley.

Procrastinization

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:30 am, February 10th, 2006

I took about a billion photos during the trip, and despite locking myself in the house for the past week I’m still far from done organizing them. For the twos of people who want to see trip photos, give me a few more days to get something online, and at least a week for the full trip gallery. In the mean time, here are a couple of the non-rejects:

Fur seal in Right Whale Bay.

Salisbury Plain king penguin colony.

King penguins in St. Andrews Bay.

I'd Rather be a Hammer than a Nail

Posted from Culver City, California at 12:30 am, January 31st, 2006

A brief update:

After a quick two days in the Bay Area I’m back in Los Angeles now, trying to catch up on the past month and unpack.
It’s gonna be a few more days before the trip photos are online. Using the logic that given enough opportunity even a monkey can shoot a decent photo I took a lot of photos. The downside of that approach is that it takes forever to sort through and delete the crappy ones.
Two spots have opened up for this year’s Galapagos trip in May. Cost is $3400 per person for two weeks, not including airfare to Quito. Email me if you’re interested.
Shameless pimping: visit Rod’s web site, sign up for his workshops, and buy his book. They’re all worth it. Then visit Hugh’s web site (especially the aurora images) and Tim’s web site. These guys make it clear why I’ll never be a professional photographer.