SIMON'S DREAM PROJECT

 Z-GATTS' CYCLING ODYSSEY

EXPERIENCE HUMANITY

NAME THE COFFEESHOP

 STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND

TYING THE KNOT!

TRANSCENDING MATERIALISM

THE SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL

THE LADYTRAP MANIFESTO

  VOYAGE OF THE SUPERNOVA

PEOPLE

TRAVEL

RECIPES

COMMENTARY

PHOTOGRAPHY

THE ORIGINAL LADYTRAP

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1/25/07:

Greetings from the Bay!

You may have thought that, like my many nebulous interests, my zest for my website lived out its full cycle and gave way to some less-public musing of mine, never to return.  You were partially correct; I haven't given much energy to this game in the past three years.  Since March of 2004 I have been living an adventure-ridden, transient life, without the sort of regularity (or internet connection) that facilitates constant near-obsessive updating of a log of my own life.

Throughout these recent years of exploring the watery and dry parts of North America I have been in what I call Absorption Mode, concerned more with the gathering of data from the universe.  Very recently the pendulum has swung back into Production Mode, which finds me ready and willing to reverse that flow and to create new data for the universe to absorb from me.

I have a home now.  The luxury of unpacking my bag and having more than two shirts with me feels very empowering, and I am encouraged to take advantage of this.  I don't think I'll be putting the energy into the Ladytrap that I did in 2003, but you can expect at least regular updates and an eventual appearance of images from 2006's foray into the United States and Canada.  The gallery is broken right now but do come back in a bit to see what I've seen across this great continent.  If you're itching for immediate images you can see the older stuff.  I resurrected my dream project on January 25th.

I now live in Berkeley, California with an incredible woman named Wendy.  We met a few years ago during the anti-Bush bicycle trip in Arizona, and we sporadically kept in touch over the months.   She invited me to substitute-teach a week of high school with her in DC this past summer, and now we have found a home in each others' hearts.  She was already exploring the idea of moving back West again, and I have been toying with the idea of moving to the Bay Area for over a decade now.  When my travel fund ran out and Wendy realized (after a visit here) that her time in DC was done, we decided that Berkeley was the perfect place to dig in for a while.  (Plus, I also have to acknowledge Pete and Brea... for over two years they lobbied hard to get me here!)

Please do come visit us; our little house in the pine trees is warm and open to all guests!  I've got a tiny little sailboat called the Batabano and I'll take you out on the Bay.

I told myself I would only return to engineering if it was for a company I believed in, and within days of our arrival I found a position with a place called PowerLight, which does large-scale solar energy installations.  It's a wonderful company and I am somewhat bewildered to find myself excited to show up in the morning.  That (and the fact that it's a five minute walk from my house) helps fight the shock of being a 9-5 working stiff once again!

(Fear not, I still don't intend to be in an office my whole life!)

I'm still singing the occasional doo wop gig with the Alley Cats; my next show with them is in Las Vegas over Presidents' weekend; we're the opening act for Jay Leno's standup routine at the Mirage.

It's finally time to resurrect my dreaming project where I left off three years ago, so look there if for twisted reasons (or legitimate ones!) you want access to my subconscious.

After so much time spent abroad, I dedicated 2006 to exploring bits of my own continent.  Here is a quick summary of what I found.

To see the website dedicated to my recent Latin American sailing trip, cruise over here.

Oh, and have you seen Stefan's website?  It's full of his climbing adventures (including many with me): NEONECTAR

Hey, how about a little bit of science fiction?  Heather gave me a book of short stories from 1937ish - 1942ish.  Wonderful look into the speculative mind of authors writing during world war and pending space exploration!  I have written up summaries of them as I read them.

3/24/07:

double sunset

I witnessed an event last summer, on a flight from DC to San Diego, which many years before I had conceived as possible, and had watched and waited all those years to eventually see.  The phenomenon is as such:  From inside an airplane on the taxiway, you see the sun set.  Then the plane takes off, the sun comes up again, and from the air you see your second sunset of the day.  I had been able to simulate once this by running up a sand dune by the sea, just after the sun has set into the ocean, but really you only raise a quick snippet of the sun, and you are laughing and too out of breath to really sink into it. 

Every time since that conception many years ago that I've had a flight near sunset, I've patiently waited for the moment to be right.  Many factors have to line up in your favor.  Timing, of course, it critical, although since the plane rises so high so quickly it's not nearly as tight as the few-seconds you get with the run-up-the-hill technique (this is on the order of several minutes).  Secondly, you have to be on the proper side of the aircraft to actually see the sun from both locations, and then the weather has to be clear enough, of course.

The first time I saw this I was delighted!  It made my week to check something celestial off my life's list, like seeing the total solar eclipse.  And it was downright beautiful to dance with the motion of our earth like that.

I've been traveling a lot this year to sing in Las Vegas, and I always fly out on Friday after work.  Which puts me in a good position to see this dance again... which happened just a few weeks ago.  While it was just as momentous as the first time, it wasn't as spectacular.  The sun set behind some nearby mountains (on the peninsula) and wasn't really below the horizon when we took off. I watched it, craning my neck, through the windows on the other side of the plane.  Secondly, the sun set almost directly behind the plane, and the final moments were witnessed with my face pressed awkwardly against the glass (I had to wait a long time, too, wince the sun hadn't even really set down below when we took off), watching the reflection on the wing.