AskHoyle

Category: Travel

  • Flight to Atlanta

    Slowly rolling backwards again… That unsettling feeling of airplane mass compressing, of wings bobbing, heavy with fuel. Of the straining motor in the little tug. Its sticky wheels slipping on the wet tarmac. Tar MacAdam, that. The first brand name of roads. A style, a certification, a qualification. An approved method of assembly, specifying layers of differing sizes of rock, smaller rock, and smallest rocks, all covered by tar, when specified as in the above tar-variety. Pre-tar, McAdam’s roads were still the best in the world for carrying carryiages. Carriages. Cars, such as they were and became. But not Countachs. You need tar for them.
    Discovery is beautiful. I’m surrounded by kids on this flight, but for many it’s their first flight, and the cheers and exclamations remind me that, yeah this is pretty awesome. Buddha called this Child’s Mind. Seeing the world for the first time. The things in the world. All the things. New angles on things. Down.
    Our brains’ evolved programming seeks novelty and quickly gets used to anything repeated. Its a defense mechanism, of course. To conserve attention, cerebral blood flow, and calories. To seek efficiency. To save the squeals of wonder for the truly captivating. After all, a puma might hear and eat you.
    It’s interesting when we decide to give attention attention. Lots of people do that for a living. Nothing triggers more squeals of joy from advertisers than the vacant eyes of a consumer pointed at their message.
    Attention is the most coveted and therefore most valuable commodity. It can be extracted directly and remotely from minds through ever more efficient media, with increasingly blinken lights. The popcorn of instant novelty. The pulses of light which don’t stop when they hit your retina. Wiggling your optic nerve, the tail that wags the dog, and keeps it from dozing off. “Tiny danger! Tiny danger! Tiny danger!” The neurons scream in a rhythmic beat. A carefully chosen tune of light and sound. We squint our ears and try to ignore it. It’s a habit.
    It should be, of course, coveted. Or at least valued. Exactly because we seek novelty, connection, conversation, communion.
    A waggle dance communicates danger, but also sweetness, in the flowers to the left left left.
    The berries in the bush by the river which are ready for picking can please many if the birds are bested.
    Four score and seven.
    Communication is what makes us a human organism. A community. A badly distributed hive mind, with a bandwidth deficiency.
    It’s the moderator, the mediator of the moot. The words spit instead of bullets, to stop that other ape from tearing your face off. It is all things with meaning. It gives meaning to all things.
    Without words we wash in oceans of open interpretation. We wrestle with recollection, losing the last light of a murky memory in a morass of muddle. We warn of danger, but the wild waving weaves a wrong warning and we wish we remembered the Neanderthal word for wildebeest.
    The past couple of days I’ve attended to my attention, and unwound my unintended fingers from my phone. Intention overrides recent regulations, though, so I type this text on the object of my objection.
    It’s not the tool, it’s the trifling. The tiny blinkenlight of timely notification. The squeal of corporate joy as my brain is reattached to the pulsing warning. That’s what I’m attempting to unplug from.
    I’m rethinking my perception posture, and passing on passive absorption.
    It’s hard. I’ve reached for my phone five times as often as I expected. I’m not going cold turkey, just lukewarm turkey. I’ll let you know how I smell as the turkey ages. For now it’s totally been worth the effort. It’s easier to find time when we don’t let it all leak between our scrolling fingers.
    My current plan is to limit social media and web “browsing” to a few minutes twice a day. I set a timer.
    It’s been like being on a plane for two days in a double edged way. More time to think, to connect with other minds in longhand, long form and slowly. More time to fight the discomfort of drifting attention. Of boredom.
    I won’t say I’ve “been bored” since I’ve had plenty to do. Reading, writing and role playing are the three Rs of dominant attention so far. I’m not sad about that. And work of course, which has been better. Between conference calls I have a thinkle while I tinkle, digesting words while I expel the waste of digested matter.
    I don’t avoid web USE, just the browsing. The rabbit hole of all knowledge, beckoning like a siren who knows everything and everyone. Also hard.
    Email is allowed too, since I can’t avoid it, and I can interact at my own pace. The Digital Minimalism book I’m reading coaches a full purge of everything digital before letting anything back in 30 days later. I am trying my own path so far, and still reading the book on my Kindle. I don’t know if my approach will stick or not, but it’s been interesting so far.
    Sitting in the airport without the phone was different. I noticed a beautiful couple feeding their little girl pork buns. His style was impeccable, every crease planned, tailored, designed, from his black hat to his red converse sneakers. She was simply but nicely dressed, wearing most of all the smile she showed her daughter, whose curly blonde dandilion afro wiggled as she laughed. I wanted to take their picture but I failed. Not for lack of ability but of asking. Of interacting in a waiting area in any way unexpected. As I thought about the how and when of asking permission, my heart was racing, which is my number one symptom of fear.
    Social rejection can be deadly. Alone we get lost and puma-eaten. The tiny danger of, what, a rude response? No, of puma. Of being the last to eat, of being left out of the fire circle. This is where the fear comes from. That must be the next thing that evolved after language, the fear of sucking at it and getting your face torn off. Or sent through Puma Valley, now that it had a name.
    I shouldn’t have mentioned food, my stomach is listening. 42 minutes to go. Blue chips are tasty but not very filling.
    I do have my headphones on, just to cancel the noise. I’m long forming this post to talk to you, not my planemates. It helps with the pressure of the sound, the mental draining of chatter incompletely heard.
    I shouldn’t have mentioned peeing. 19 minutes to go.
    The ground appears as we descend beneath the duvet covering the Eastern seaboard. The seatback screen trace turns from green to yellow, our path slowly changing future to past. From then to this. Patience, we only get that minute once.
    Someone yawns as the pressure changes. Everyone yawns. Communication. Not all of it is words, but this post is.
    Landed.
    “I want to do it again!” “That was an adventure!”
    H
    .

  • Dicetower con to BDL

    Five days if board gaming really ended up being four, since past me decided getting home earlier in the day was a good plan, for some reason. My flight was scheduled to board at 10 and even though I had precheck I still was worried about getting to the airport early enough after the July 4 holiday weekend. I figured a lot of kids would be returning from Disney with their genetically obligated caretakers and wranglers.
    I was right. Airports are not great places to find joyful people in general, but parental units who have spent days trying to corral their rug rats are particularly unpleasant. One fatherly pack mule was alternating between trying to get his kids out of the way of everyone in the gate area and swearing as his roller bags repeatedly tipped over, top-heavy with dangling souvenirs. He looked like an awkwardly mobile human version of a junkyard, reattaching fallen items every time anyone in his family moved. His kids moved a lot. No one was happy.
    I ended up getting there way too early, since I woke up before my alarm after a fitful hour and 45 minutes of sleep. Late Saturday night I checked on my flight time and discovered the Sunday-gaming-quashing travel planning of past-me. Better to discover this than to sleep in and miss my flight, but not by much. Upon realizing that I was standing in the enormous gaming hall for the last time of the year I allowed my arm to be twisted into more games and socializing with a friend of mine until the wee and less wee hours. This morning I was tired enough to sleep on an airport bench for a while before consuming caffeine and food units.
    I have a pretty sizeable number of “con friends” which means that even though I arrived alone I generally had someone I knew to game with. It’s also pretty easy to play with new folks, since the large “Players Wanted” and “Teacher Wanted” signs are like candles for gaming moths such as myself. I responded to both of these frequently.
    This year I had several meals with said friends, and got to know some new ones. A couple of them are local to my home base, so I’ll be making efforts to remove “con” from the above phraseology over the coming months.
    It’s been several years since I have had a consistent board game schedule. I’ve been running and/or playing tabletop RPGs weekly, and that has consumed much of my time. This means that I lit the “Teacher Wanted” candle more often than I responded to it this year, since I was unfamiliar with many of the New Hotness games. I did get to learn some good ones including Wingspan, Underwater Cities, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Crown of Emara, Hadara, and Pulsar 2849. The Hot Games area stays set up with these, plus many others I didn’t get a chance to try, which means more people get to play them and they’re easy to find.
    There’s only so much time in a day, or 4/5 days, or any other frame of time, since that’s how math works. I think non gamers are frequently surprised that there are so many games. There are around 2000 new games published each year, and due to the momentum of the hobby hundreds of them are very good. Even if you spent all your waking hours playing games you wouldn’t be able to play all the new ones. Best of all good games from prior years are still really good. If treated carefully they will last decades, and I still very much enjoy many older games.
    This trip I played Navegador after a seven year gap from my last play. I introduced friends to several others I enjoy, such as Jaipur, Las Vegas, 10 Days in the USA, Chopstick Dexterity Mega Challenge 3000, Kings of Air and Steam, Koryo and Hue. All very different from each other! I feel like there is a game for everyone now. There are so many different kinds of games, from deep strategy to tactical take-that, route building, economic or dexterity. I’ve even played a dexterity word game called Konexi wherein letters must be physically stacked to form ever longer words! The creativity driving the evolution of modern gaming is really fantastic. I’m preaching to the choir with most people reading this, but if you are someone who hasn’t tried some of the games that have come out in the last decade you really should find a gaming cafe or a group of friends and try it out.
    It takes less time to fly back from Florida than my mental Mercator framework predisposes me to expect. Cartographic privilege means most of us grew up with the seemingly rational notion that our birthplace is the center of the world, and disproportionately important. It also means that many have irrational attachments to arbitrary lines in the literal sand and the control of human movement across them. How many millions have died over the temporary control of a few hundred yards of dirt which existed long before our ascent from the oceans and which will remain long after the last stories are told of our species?
    Still, I am not immune. I’m rooting for the successful sportsing of the women playing for the bordered region within which I have lived nearly all of my life. Ten minutes ago I didn’t know they were sportsing, but there was random applause on the airplane, and I figured it out and tuned in. Instantly I became invested in “my” team, because of the Louisiana Purchase or whatever.
    I don’t actually like soccer much since it films poorly due to the scale of the field and speed of the ball. On this tiny screen the players are blobs of pixels colored white and carrot. We’re rooting against the carrots in case you are playing along. Granted, there are still other colors of carrot but the fact you know what I mean is also an artifact of cartography, or at least geopolitical line-affinity. It is in fact this very jersey color, worn by the ladies of the Netherlands team, that is responsible for the preponderance of orange carrots. A farmer once bred Netherlands orange carrots specifically to honor a cartographical anniversary, which resulted in their popularity. Every time you eat an orange carrot you’re subtly participating in a cartographical celebration hundreds of years old. I expect they would be proud of their legacy.
    You will not, however, gain improved night vision. Yes, carrots have vitamin A, which is good for you in moderation (and toxic not-in moderation), but the idea that this improves vision traces back to propaganda created by the British-bounded folks to convince the German-bounded folks that the reason the air war had turned against them was due to excessive consumption of carrots rather than the invention of radar. Whether or not the German intelligence service was convinced I’m not really sure, but if it caused the Germans to spend any effort farming carrots this is significantly better than pretty much anything else they were doing at the time.
    Hey congratulations to the soccer ladies! They won 2 to nothing, which by now everyone who cares knows, and everyone else mostly lives in the USA. I don’t know if this is the final game myself, but I think it might be. I didn’t see a single ridiculous flop, which indicates that “whiny bitch” is a misgendered term. Bad whining-acting is the most significant reason why I can’t stand to watch basketball or soccer (men’s, apparently.)
    At least the World Cup is actually teams from around the world, as opposed to the World Series, which is one Toronto team away from being an antinomer.
    Oh yeah this is definitely the final, there’s a ceremony. I can’t believe how unsweaty these ladies are. I get sweaty putting on my socks.
    The hug/handshake/french kiss protocol is an odd phenomenon. (I mean the other kind of French kiss of course, though the ladies haven’t completed their circuit yet, who knows?) Autistic people must have a hell of a time with that. It’s a subtle exchange of body language negotiating mutual consent (hopefully) which happens in a fraction of a second. Plus now we have added the high five, the low five, the fist bump, the bow/curtsey, the chicken dance and the ear wiggle. It’s enough to confuse anyone.
    Now they are going through again getting medals from the exact same people. Do they do the same thing again or different? I’m really hoping someone noogies Macron, if only because I don’t recognize anyone else.
    Long shake plus second hand clasp that time… Way to mix it up Macron! Avoid that noogie!
    And now the group jump up and down photo opportunity while surrounded by falling tiny pieces of paper, none of which are carrot colored. I wonder if there is a bucket of unused carrotfetti in a back room somewhere and what will happen to it.
    We are a strange species.
    H

  • Going to Orlando

    If I could figure out some artificial way to periodically limit my internet access, in a way that I couldn’t immediately hack, I think I’d do so. I’m on another plane, and though I’ve had a lot to say lately I haven’t been blogging, as you may have noticed.
    Mostly lately I’ve been busy learning about, buying, fixing, learning about, driving, learning about, fixing, and driving my new RV. It’s a 2004 Pleasure Way Plateau, which is a honking big Sprinter van. It’s “looking down on F350s” big. It’s “being able to see really well off of bridges and get slightly nervous at how high they are” big. It’s “gotta circle the parking lot to find two spaces in a row” big. It’s “I can see over traffic” big. It’s “better slow down early” big. It’s “I don’t think anyone would notice if I weren’t wearing pants” big.
    Really though it’s quite small as RVs go. I can just barely fit sideways on the bed in the back, but not quite comfortably. So I’ve slept lengthwise, or diagonally depending on how level I could get the thing with the Anderson levelers, which I totally didn’t invent. They are super clever though, a curved ramp with a matching chock. They only go up to about 4 inches though, and the site in Andrew Jackson State Park was significantly unlevel even with the levelers. I blame that for the coffeepocalypse, which is now in my autocorrect choices, and is the best thing to come out of that incident. French presses full of boiling water don’t like to balance on sloped propane stoves. Just in case anyone asks.
    I’ve been experimenting with using small amounts of power and water, less than is actually reasonable and available. I see it as a resource management game and though I can’t trade wood for sheep, I don’t like sharing my bed with sheep anyway, and I can’t eat a whole one before it goes bad. Managing the solar input, the battery charge level and depth of charge, the fresh tank, the gray water tank, the black water tank, the propane, the food, the wifi, the 4g, and the sanity of traveling alone is a whole new game. Mostly fun, coffeepocalypse aside.
    Yesterday after work I added my second Renogy 160 watt solar panel in parallel, feeding my Victron smart 100/30 MPPT into my Battleborn LiFePO4 100AH battery, none of which would have made much sense to me 6 weeks ago. In the interim I’ve learned about all these things.
    The Battleborn is really the star of the show, it’s a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, which you already knew if you took chemistry and we’re paying attention. I’m not sure what advantages it has over lithium ion, but it’s what all the cool kids are using now. It replaced what was supposed to be a 100AH AGM, which is a lead acid deep cycle battery with fancy geometry. But by “deep cycle” they mean you can safely go down to 50% depth of charge (i.e. 50 amp hours) which means your battery is half as big as advertised. The LiFePO4 can be fully drained, especially since the Battleborn (brand) has a built in BMS (battery management system) which cuts off the charger if the voltage gets too high or low. This makes it a “drop in replacement” for a lead acid battery, supposedly. It has been good so far though I have heard several cautions around how the internal resistance is low (good) that it causes it to pull a lot of current to charge quickly (good) which might overload your wires (bad) potentially melting them (really really bad). So far I’ve been keeping an eye on the charge rates, and since my power converter and MPPT are both 30amp, I think I am ok. It also charges from the van’s alternator, and there’s some concern there. I may need to add a current limiter, or upgrade the wiring.
    The reason for that is that electrical power (watts) is the product of volts times amps. So if you need 700 watts to run your Instant Pot Mini Duo like I do, you need 700 divided by 12ish volts or 55 to 60 amps. In comparison if you pulled 60 amps on your 120 volt house you’d be talking 7200 watts, enough to power your whole house. Big amps need big fat expensive wires. So there’s a scaling factor that works against low voltage systems. This is why it generally makes sense to run higher voltages, such as the 24 volts which Tesla’s batteries supply.
    So let’s about Tesla batteries and why they are interesting. Or rather I’ll talk, or write, and you listen, or read, or not, if you’ve given up by now. Tesla seems to make the best battery module in the business. There are 15 modules in a model S comprising basically the whole floor of the vehicle, with seven to a side and one more up front. Enough of these cars have been scrapped that the used modules are available on the secondary market (eBay). If I recall correctly they are around 250 AH each, more than twice the rating of my Battleborn. They do have a built in BMS, but it’s proprietary and hasn’t been hacked yet. Also as mentioned it’s 24 volts and the van wants 12 to run most things, so I didn’t go that route. They also have built in liquid cooling and heating plumbing to interface directly with the vehicle’s corresponding systems, to keep the passengers comfortable. If it gets too hot or too cold the battery will either blow up or be ruined, so this is pretty important, and a good reason to go with the Battleborn instead. Still I am tempted to get a couple of them and run a 24v inverter so I can run the air conditioning off grid. I would have to dedicate a significant portion of the storage for that, which is another reason it hasn’t happened. Yet.
    Mostly my plan is to go places that aren’t so damn hot during the summer. So far that hasn’t worked out, since on our maiden voyage we (the van and I) visited NC and SC, both of which are Satan’s armpit in the summer. Still the trip was good overall, a great learning experience to get used to RV travel, and a generally leisurely journey. I can work from anywhere so I’m trying to do that.
    I took conference calls in the Shenandoah National Park, with a 50 mile view out my window. It’s cooler at higher elevations (3 degrees F per 100 ft , which is 1 degree C per something meters for those of you who live literally anywhere else). The 22 foot long van is plenty maneuverable to scramble up any sort of normal road.
    I drove a National Forest road in Uwharrie without issue, albeit slowly. There I hiked a 6.7 mile loop, encountering only 5 people all day. I returned to the RV, sweaty as hell (see: Satan’s armpit) and luxuriated in a cold shower in the “wet bath.” A wet bath means the floor next to the toilet has a drain in it, and the whole thing is meant to get wet. There’s a shower curtain (which was missing prior to my purchase) which keeps water off the vanity cabinets and GFI outlet. (GFI means it will probably not kill me if it gets wet, but it’s still best not to.)
    I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the shower. When I could I used the shower at the RV park and later at my parents’ place, both of which are significantly better than the one in the RV. The same can be said about the toilet, both my preference for and use of terrestrial facilities given the option. Still having the shower and the toilet give more options, and they work fine. By the way, the shower would be warm if I turned on the propane 6 gallon water heater but my thermodynamic objective was decidedly exothermic at the time. I felt so deliciously comfortable afterwards it made the whole day worth it.
    I’m not really in shape for hiking right now. Neither am I in shape for swimming. But I did both on this trip, and wasn’t horribly sore. Investment in exercise over the last few years has been very valuable. The past 8 months I haven’t really been very mobile though. We are what we repeatedly do, and I’m pretty sure I’m an internet.
    I’m in a strange relationship with the internet right now, codependent probably. I am hyper connected, gathering enormous amounts of knowledge about anything and everything, but also wasting hours on nothing.
    One recent focus has been dating sites. I’m newly single-ish, having seen the end of a nearly seven year relationship at the start of the year. So I’m more active in that respect, but due to the aforementioned travel and indecision I’ve not had any dates, per se. My life’s pretty atypical, so “per se” is the operative term.
    The RV scene seems pretty incompatible with dating so far. It’s mostly retirees or couples, and at least till now I’ve been unable or unmotivated to meet any of them. Ideally I think it would be cool to share an RV journey with a partner, but for now it’s a solo adventure. Honestly this is probably a good thing, or at least not a bad one. I think it’s good for me to take some time to figure out who I am again. People change in relationships, and I need to take some time to reset my level. Fortunately I have leveling blocks. Also a sweet app and corresponding Bluetooth sensor which can help with that. Or not.
    Anyway this need for reinvention is what spawned the name I gave the RV: Metamorphose. Specifically the directive form of the word, a command to myself to dissolve into goo and reemerge from my chrysalis with some shiny new wings. So far I’m not doing any flapping, but a shakedown cruise does not a Marco Polo make.
    I wonder how he would feel knowing his name became a game of aquatic tag? We can’t choose our legacy but we can try to live our lives with import. So far I feel like I have just been getting ready. Preschool prepares for elementary school which prepares for junior high, for high school, for college, for a career, for a house, for a … What now? Kids are a cheat code for a legacy, I think, provided you don’t totally fuck them up you know your influence will live on. But I’ve never been interested in having kids. I am interested in figuring out what the last half of my life will look like. I figure I’m about half way now, if I get pretty lucky I’ll double my current age. Maybe I’ll live longer, but that would be above average, and assumes I don’t get eaten by a Grue, which is no sure thing.
    So what am I getting ready for now? When I scratch my nails across this world, what sort of mark will I leave? I always figured I would invent something. No one knows who invented the wheel but they have impacted countless generations. I don’t need to be famous but I want to have mattered.
    The older I get the more I realize my brain is pretty special. Don’t get me wrong, I totally suck at a lot of things, but I’m also really really really good at some things. I once read a one page of summary of some self help book (my work used to subscribe to a service that provided them) and it said that if you work really hard you can get pretty OK at things you suck at. Or you can focus on being the best in the world at things you are good at. It’s probably important not to completely ignore things you’re bad at, since many of them facilitate aspects of success, such as public speaking and not being a fuck head. I’m still working on both of those.
    Mostly I’m good at understanding complex systems and troubleshooting what’s wrong with them. If my resume were one word it would be “Troubleshooter.” I’m glad to have found a position in IT that pays well, but if computers didn’t exist I would be fixing motorcycle engines or building factories. As it is, I play a lot of board games in my spare time. Mostly I enjoy learning new games. I love it when I unfold a new board and it starts as complete nonsense, with icons and words everywhere, and over the course of a few minutes explanation everything falls into place. It’s like learning a whole new language in 15 minutes. And then you use your new skill to fight your opponents to a bloodless victory.
    The other games I play a lot of are role playing games. I’ve talked about this before but not lately. I’ve always loved stories and I think I’m a good story teller… when I don’t perceive it as public speaking and get nervous. The difference is when I’m playing an RPG I don’t know how the story ends, and I’m not the only teller. Sessions run as a give and take, an improvisational melody. Really at its best it’s less a game than a performance, each of us performing for each other, playing off the energy of the group. The rules are there to guide the tone and help add some randomness via dice rolls. That way none of us know what will happen or how the story will end. This sense of adventure and discovery is one of my favorite feelings in the world. It’s why I hate to watch movie trailers. I want to be told a story without foreknowledge, as the author intended, even when I’m one of the authors.
    I’m always bothered when something is called an RPG that isn’t. Computer games are not RPGs, since there is a story to be discovered, not created. I suppose there are MMOs with some amount of speaking in character, but it’s not even close to the same experience. While dungeons and dragons is the most popular RPG by far, it is not representative of the landscape of tabletop RPGs. It can be a mechanism for telling a cool story, and if you have fun doing it don’t let me stop you, but I’ll never play it again given the option. D&D and Pathfinder are so focused on maximizing your character’s stats that the story is often lost. People hack and slash and kill the faceless goes and take their nonsensical loot, and pretend that’s interesting, when mostly it isn’t. Would you want to watch it as a movie? Probably not. Granted some movies suck too.
    My favorite games are those that leave players speechless. Or laughing until they can barely breathe. Or both. With people pulling impossible faces, or affecting personalities worthy of an Oscar. Or sacrificing themselves for the peasant everyone loved. Or betraying their Lord because of their own moral code. Or affixing scuba gear to a kobe cow to avoid robotic killer koi in a sewer escape, while stealing it from the Japanese emperor to make a meat cake for the wedding of Ian Anderson and Patty Hearst at the haunted Mansion at Disney world. (Naturally our spiritual advisor had plenty of hallucinogenic drug pills to scatter over the water to drug the unsuspecting koi.) I’m going to remember that scene forever, which is a lot more than I can say for SuperDude Punches Some Other LessSuper Dude Repeatedly Before Predictably Winning In The End Part IV. Not that I don’t enjoy that sort of thing sometimes too.
    I’ll be landing in Orlando soon, then off to the hotel to rest up in preparation for five straight days of gaming. This is an atypical year for me, as I’ve neither played very many games not followed any board game podcasts. In prior years I’ve frequently been the one to teach the newest games, or know which New Hotness was up my alley. This trip I really have no plans beyond learning Wingspan, because I heard it was good. I’m also back to flying solo. The past few cons I’ve had roommates that I knew and we spent a lot of time gaming together. This year I will know plenty of people I’m sure, but a few of my con friends won’t be attending. All my early convention experiences were this way so I’m sure I’ll manage.
    Really I do enjoy solo travel most of the time. I like being able to make my own decisions and travel at my own pace. Whether picking a board game or deciding when to stop on a hiking trail in the woods, or sitting on a thousand year old temple in India for an hour just because it felt like the thing to do, it always is calming to set my own pace and direction. The RV is a new mode, but the same idea. Point it and go, and stop when I feel like it, and see things as I am inspired to. Every con is different. They say you can never step in the same river twice, and I think accepting that everything changes is a real key to happiness, or at least freedom from anxiety.
    So, onward I go. Wish me luck.
    H

  • ORD to BDL

    Layovers and Overlays are completely different things. I was expecting the former and got neither.
    Instead I got the aforementioned brisk run, followed by shin cramps, followed by more running and some light sweating. I actually made it with plenty of time to spare, scoring coveted overhead space, this time normally sized. Thanks past-me for staying in decent shape!
    I even had time to take a selfie with a dinosaur and find out who O’Hare was. Sort of. Butch O’Hare was either a pilot or a really big fan of looking like one, complete with leather helmet and goggles. At least that’s how he’s portrayed on the “show your flat Butch for a discount” sign, which means something different than I thought it did.
    Flat Butch is flat
    Tallosaurus Airportus
    I’m stuck next to a kid so I probably won’t be sleeping. Instead I’m inhaling jet fumes which is probably my least favorite thing about taxiing other than sitting next to kids.
    And by taxiing I mean sitting on the taxiway burning precious emergency fuel which we probably won’t need. Probably.
    Listened to podcasts the rest of the flight and made it home safely. Posting this a few days later…

  • Returning from Paducah

    Paducah is in my autocorrect now.
    I’m in the tiny regional jet on the way back now. We were delayed because the incoming plane lost a wagon wheel in Chicago. From the air it’s basically farms, but I can see the river which defines the border between Kentucky and Illinois I think. Or rather what on a map is called the river but is really just a temporary definition considering all the wet land and scour marks on both sides. Right now there is a giant whorl indicating the indecision shown by the now-anthropomorphised river as to which path it feels like taking this decade. Lately it has been influenced heavily by a flood wall built by Paducah which basically doomed Wherever Illinois to being part of the river.
    A rare bridge looks exceedingly fragile among a giant wash of indecision. A barge looks anchored for all it’s upstream movement but the white and brown churn behind it suggests it will get somewhere eventually. A power plant and settling pond are on some future headline about being overcome by an “unexpected” flood.
    I ate the pretzels this time, and since the plane is basically empty the cute flight attendant gave me the cookies too and this turns out to have been there right answer all along. They’re maple and crispy and probably don’t contain any more calories than I will burn off running through the Chicago airport, or at least that’s what I am telling myself. They claim to be Byrd’s Famous Cookies and who am I to argue with them? Especially when I don’t have internet or their current marketing data.
    Regardless, they get 2 Maksas up. I had to think for a while about the appropriate amount of Maksas, and exactly how many represent the available scale. I’m still undecided. It might be 50.
    Last week my friends (hi!) surprised me with Maksa Chaksa which they found at an Indian grocery store. Also another thing whose name I forget but am totally looking forward to trying. Probably Tuesday.
    Today we went to a western store in search of a fantastic shirt. We found instead fantastic boots and saddles and all sorts of things which were not shirts, among some pretty OK shirts. We went there on the direction of a girl who saw me trying on a fantastic shirt in an antique shop. It was a tiny bit too small in the forearms else I wouldn’t have been seeking the opinion of a teenage girl and her mother and would be telling the story about buying the shirt instead.
    Which would just be “I bought a fantastic shirt”
    Instead I have the same number of shirts I came with.
    I did buy a lamp that’s a robot. Or a robot statue anyway. But I’m going to have to have them ship it for me since it won’t fit in the tiny overhead bin.
    Speaking of the overhead, I’ve been wearing a thumb brace all week. I badly hyperextend my thumb jamming my bag into said bin on the way here. Fortunately I was able to with it on and managed to get a lot done this week. We shared lunch which was salmon and tacos and burgers and hot dogs. Not all at the same time.
    After all four of us finished working we sat down to play Charterstone. We played all 12 games of the series, which took all week. It’s a legacy game which means there are components that change along the way. Stickers that get applied, things that get named, hidden boxes that get opened. At its heart it’s a worker placement game where each player has a part of the board they can influence to help build an “engine” across the story arc of games. Even the rules change pretty significantly, and player choices determine what is available. It requires a lot of attention but if you like this kind of game and can dedicate 12 games over a reasonable period of time with the same players, I do recommend it. I won’t spoil any of the surprises but there are some clever ideas

    We flew DIRECTLY over downtown Chicago which was cool, then looped around a baseball stadium where the Cubs or White Sox are playing.

    Landing soon. I think I am going to make my flight but it will be tight.

  • Today 2, sparkworks boogaloo (or: arriving in Kentucky)

    There was far less OJ than advertised. The web site suggested it was a different terminal, but it wasn’t far.
    My pants (both of them) are basically dry. These are made of scholler dryskin, which is sort of like wearing a really nice soft shell jacket on my legs. Except that the inside is a very light fleece. They’re also 4 way stretch and shed water that you’re not sitting in. Lucky me.
    Shoe guy is at least 100 yards away. The tiger could find him, but I can’t smell him anymore. Instead I get the not-quite-distinct food and cleaning fluid smells from the terminal-centriscribed sushi bar. I made up another word, I googled it this time.
    I suppose I should say that I know that planes often have WiFi, but I like to assume it isn’t and disconnect for a bit. I find it a lot easier to write when I don’t have the world’s largest repository of pretty-much-all-the-information to distract me.
    Boarded again. The Red Oxx baaaarely fit in the overhead bin. They’re tiny! I think there is more space under the seat. I tweaked my thumb a bit stuffing the bag into it. I hope I put it handle size out.
    First stop Paducah, next stop Cape Girardo, which, not gonna lie, sounds nicer than Paducah. Branding matters. This flight is shorter. The pilot looks like he just got out of the air Force. They had the cockpit door open during boarding which seems unusual now.
    Back on airplane mode now, and unable to be distracted by the ball-of-all-knowledge. Sure, there’s some stuff which isn’t there yet, but a lot is. This is a big contrast from the Traveller RPG I’ve been running for over six years. Traveller is about spaceships which travel freely within solar systems but must isolate themselves in a pocket universe for a week as they “jump” from one star system to another. This means there is no Ansible of Ender, and no holographic communicators from Star Wars. If you want information to travel outside the system you have to pay someone to carry it as digital “mail” in their cargo hold. This means that each human has access to a miniscule fraction of all human knowledge compared to what you hold in your hands now. As far as we know.
    Narratively this does interesting things, as players can outrun their reputation, or jump into a war which started 2 days ago in this universe but not at all in their cozy dimensionally isolated one. One type of story that’s harder to tell is that of an ongoing relationship with anyone outside the ship. Players frequently leave plots behind, or must wait months of real time to hear the echo the fictional universe makes in reply to their missives and misadventures.
    We have been taxying 400 miles. I think we should have brought more wagon wheels. I think it’s probably “taxiing” but again, no internet in this dimension. Both words look broken.
    We crossed a highway. Chances of ground based plane crash increased.
    We finally took off after driving to Minneapolis on the taxiway. I expect the flight will be quicker than the taxi

  • Today (or: Stuff, and Travel to Kentucky)

    I spent a lot of time on the fish tanks today. I’ve named one of them Baitfish. By the time I saw he was in trouble he had a big chunk missing from his belly. He lives in the bathroom now. On the plus side, for him anyway, he gets hand fed. He now associates me with food so he doesn’t hide from me. The automatic feeders are costing me valuable bonding time with my fish.

    The software put too many people in the back of the plane and the pilot had to move them. Apparently the weight balance matters. This is a 737-800. Not a Max 8, the ones that have been crashing lately. I forget if these were the carbon fiber ones I saw at the Boeing factory tour. They had a cutaway of the outer skin. The window holes were larger, and though the plane was longer than the last model it got better fuel economy by like 25% (? don’t quote me?).
    Someone took their shoes off. It smells terrible. Folks, if your shoes make me gag from an indeterminate number of rows away, you need an interventshoe.
    I’m flying to Paducah, because my friends decided to move to Paducah, and I like them, and when they asked me to come visit I didn’t expect to pay 600 damn dollars for an airplane ticket. Not a ticket, two tickets… or four if you count getting back to not-Paducah, since I first have to fly to Chicago (and laterly, after, the aforementioned Paducah). I could have flown to Europe for this price, possibly twice, if I were to agree to fly with less than 37 grams of clothing and/or possessions, and help serve drinks.
    It’s a bit rough going up. There is a family with kids flying for the first time. They’re whooping like they’re on a roller coaster. It’s endearing because it’s daytime and I’m not trying to sleep.
    But yeah… I like them (the Paducans, not the kids), and they promised board games and craft beer, and I’m not a complicated man. So, Paducah.
    I can work from anywhere, so it makes sense to do so while I am able. I’ve got a laptop and a second screen as well, so I’ve been able to be productive, like when I visited Seattle. I enjoyed seeing several friends and making some new ones. Ceila is in a really nice place with a guest room, which includes a desk, so it was great to work there. I started at 6 and was done in the late afternoon after which I took a nap and shower and it felt like a new day. I could get used to PST.
    I think that lake is frozen. We’re pretty high, and it’s hazy so maybe it was a reflection.
    One thing about planes, as they’ve gotten better they can pressurize the cabin better. These new materials make everything stronger and lighter, a good combination when you want something to fly.
    Really it’s just two bags of fuel here, with a tube full of people between them. Later in the flight, not so much. I wonder if they have baffles.
    I really enjoy not being connected to the internet, since it helps me sit here with myself and the 21st century version of a cuneiform chisel. I bet you’d think a lot on what you were about to write if you had to chisel it.
    It’s like two blah blah hours to Chicago, but then I have less than an hour to get off this stagecoach and on to the next one. Because Paducah. That’s in O’Hare, which is an airport I generally have avoided. I have flown there from Midway, in Microsoft Flight Simulator for the Apple ii, so I’m pretty familiar with it. I had a joystick and everything. A good one, like a fighter jet, later, but our first apple one was pretty basic. Basically a box like a squished rubix cube. Did I spell that right? Was there a Mr rubicks? Rubix? I’ll never know, because I don’t have an internet connection.
    I’ll probably know. Because I will Google it when we’re taxying. (Taxiing?) I turn my data back on as soon as I feel like we’ve slowed down enough that I feel like I would survive the plane crash. Is it actually a plane crash if you are on the ground when you, you know, crash?
    United’s uniforms for male attendants are quite sharp. Epulets and a matching striped tie. The bearded ginger man looks handsome in it. Shirts that fit are key, people-who-wear-shirts.
    The seats are quite comfortable, relatively speaking. Free pretzel sticks and water for me, though, not buying dinner. I had a Turkey Rachel from Two Roads.
    Ah shit, I spilled my drink on my tray and into my lap. Thanks to past-me, I had a paper towel in my “underseat backpack” so I was able to absorb most of it from the pleather seats under my ass. Which is soaked. My ass, I mean. Is soaked. Crotch/ass area, generally. Liberally. Fortunately I am wearing the best pants. And underpants. Or just “pants” to you British dialect folks. Regardless both pants and pants are damp. But it’s just water. And 17 months of other people’s ass sweat and baby pee. It’s probably fine. I can’t lick my own ass anyway so I’m pretty sure I’ll survive. yay, skin!
    If you’ve made it this far I’d like you to take a moment to say “thank you” to your skin, for steadfastly protecting your ability to be a functional organism, distinct from the abyss of the Destroyer. Which sounds pretty awesome, but is probably just fungus and worms.
    I hate it when people cough in planes. If you have a cough you should get a free mask. It should drop from the ceiling with the oxygen. Covered in oxygen actually, but mostly Nitrogen. The Natural History museum had an exhibit about infectious disease, and I learned one flight killed like 29 people plus lots of their doctors. I forget which disease it was.
    Curing disease is super important. It’s like the most important thing after feeding people.
    This guy’s feet really stink. The guy next to me sneezed. I need to stop thinking about plane crashes or pandemics. I’m probably just trying to quell my excitement for my upcomingng O.J. Simpson impersonation (pre double-murder) across O’Hare airport.
    I don’t have any idea who O’Hare was. I assume it’s a was, because people usually don’t get airports named after them till they’re dead. It helps avoid controversy when they turn out to be assholes.
    Here’s the thing guys, change your damn socks every day. Air out your shoes, use foot powder, spray the shoes like a good assistant manager at the bowling alley (where everyone who isn’t the Manager is an “assistant manager”). You can wrap them in plastic and freeze them, sometimes that works. If not try to bake them in the sun in your car. Or throw them in the wash, without the laces, probably. Or take out the insole and see what died, and make it not be in your shoe.
    And not-guys, this could still apply to you but probably not because you wear WAY more shoes than Stinkfoot McGee here.
    Is horrible stench considered PII? Will this post be GDPR compliant? I bet a dog could ID that guy. Before he Shoe-demics all over another airplane.
    I haven’t opened the pretzel sticks. I don’t have anything to drink them with. Because of the water which is in my pants and not in the tiny top-heavy plastic cup. One demerit for United, #tippycups.
    I am thirsty though, despite having two beers at Two Roads, including Igor’s Dream, a Russian Imperial Stout, which I lamentedly chugged as my flight was boarding. There is an open seat between me and sneeze-guy which is nice. The plane in general is mostly not crowded regardless, so I had plenty of time to board and plenty of room for my primary bag, a Red Oxx Sky Train. It’s built like an ox and is a great suitcase and a mediocre backpack.
    I haven’t used it since I went to India. It’s strange how for a shorter trip (than Seattle) I’m carrying a bigger bag. It’s because I knew I would wash clothes for a 2 week stint, whereas 6 days is “bring 6 underwear” territory.
    I pushed the call button to ask for another water. It was there in like 15 seconds. 300 points United. I drank most of it “I’m mediately” (so claims my autocorrect). Immediately. Jesus. I had to delete like 5 other suggestions. I actually had it spelled correctly, but without the crutch of autocorrect how will I know if I’m blogrificating propondously.
    I just made up two words in a row and you can’t stop me.
    The kid walked too far on their way back and now they’re excitedly telling their mother a story about what it was like to use an airplane bathroom for the first time. I put my noise cancelling headphones back on. Because of GDPR and probably HIPAA.
    I saw a tiger the other day. I am not a tigerologist, but I feel like the zoo put the sign there for a reason.
    They hide at the back / top like the male lion did. In the lioness slice of the circular big cat exhibit, the ladies basked in the sun on the bottom “step” by the “river”. Except for one, the upstairs sentry, looking hungrily at a newborn in the crowd on our probably-lion-proof walkway.
    The tops of the enclosures have only a short cement wall, unlike the crowd-facing side’s 15 foot moat-based one. The thing is the top of the low wall isn’t far up and there is only a construction style orange barrier fence over it. I assume it’s electrified because the various felines could easily bound the wall, then walk down the top of the wall as it arcs down to the walkway full of newborn babies. I’m not a tigerologist but if there’s a tigernomnomnomee it’s because the power went out on the fence. I should say something about that.
    I also should have said something to the dude who made my Turkey Rachel, a turkified Reuben, which actually was pretty good, except for the middle of the meat being fridge cold. Ok Google, remind me to email feedback to two Roads about the coldwich, to tell them it would be way better if it were not-cold in the middle.
    When you type voldwich it’s really hard to get it to correct to coldwich, but now both words are saved in my autocorrect, so they exist alongside such as “I’m mediately” which is still the first correction of “I’m media” which also means nothing or everything.
    I stashed the pretzel sticks in my bag. Whoever chose the highest bidder didn’t have “packaging appeal” in their rubric. I’m not hungry on account of the Rachel coldwich, which is a two word phrase by which this post will always be googlable.
    Vint Cerf meant all web browsers to be web servers. Content equally created and consumed. But his vision has been corrupted for reasons boon and bane. Mostly boon. The fact that my internet is your internet is THE internet is pretty amazing, considering all the stuff that has to go right to make that happen. Trust me, I know.
    We’re coming in for a landing soon. I don’t know if I will upload this or not. If I’m implanting (another word autocorrect fought with) this in THE internet for eternity I better get it right. We can only hope, right?
    We just crossed the “beach” to fly over lake Michigan. It’s great.
    Landing gear going down. OJ (non-stabbing) moves prepared. Putting the chisel down.
    -Hoyle

  • Experiments in Minimalism

    I’m a frequent reader of the Onebag subreddit, which discusses minimalist travel, and the idea that one can carry anything needed to travel the world indefinitely.  I also read various other minimalist blogs.  But, you wouldn’t know it from a look at my office or my house in general, as I’m a bit of a pack rat.  Hopefully a recovering pack rat, but nonetheless I have a lot of stuff.

    I’m a problem solver, and I like to be prepared in case of any eventuality, so that means I have a lot of stuff.  I’m also a maker and fixer of things, so it’s very hard for me to throw something out which isn’t working perfectly, with the idea that I will eventually fix it.  I’m working on both of these tendencies.

    So, I guess I’m sort of a minimalist-in-training.  I don’t claim to be any good at it, but I did make some efforts on this trip to take a limited amount of stuff.  I had a pretty small pair of bags, to the confusion of many hotel staffers and drivers, but still I brought a bit more than I used, or needed.  These photos were before I edited out a few items.  I’ll discuss some of these things individually in future posts but for now here’s the list of what I brought.  I added some sandals in Goa, but otherwise this was everything.

    Tom Bihn Pilot

    Tom Bihn Pilot –  photo, Top row:

    Reeses and Candy Canes for gifts (Big hit with the team)

    Packtowl XL (did not bring. Regretted once, but made do)

    REI lumbar and cheap inflatable neck pillow (Replaced with Sea To Summit Aeros Pillow Premium Traveller, which was AMAZING on the plane)

    mesh electronics bag and carabiner (used carabiner with clothesline)

    Grayl water filter and bottle (mostly unused except for the night of digestive disaster.  I could have gotten away without it, but it was MUCH better to have it than not when I was sick and unable to leave the room)

    Tom Bihn Pilot bag (Used daily while working as laptop bag. Used as airplane bag)

    2nd row:

    Wurfel Bohnanza dice game (replaced with No Thanks, which I did show to some coworkers and would have played but the bag of chips broke open and I forgot to keep them with the cards. oops. )

    Starbucks Via coffee (Didn’t use, but thought about it a few times while suffering through crap coffee)

    Earplugs (didn’t bring these, instead had disposable ones in with my headphones)

    Sleep mask (did not use, the plane supplied them, and I sleep OK with lots of light usually.  But I’ll probably leave  this in my kit)

    Asthma inhaler (India is smoky, I needed this daily.)

    cough drops (did not use, but probably should have while teaching)

    breath strips (did not use. possibly should have, after the bus ride)

    Samsung GT-E3210 (spare world phone) (did not use)

    Sea2Summit Aeros Pillow Premium (Used in Goa and Hampi)

    Camera bag (Did not bring this bag.  DID miss having a lens cloth once)

    Panasonic Lumix FZ35 camera, charger, extra battery (needed the battery once)

    Joby Gorillapod Micro 800 Gp20 (tiny tripod) (Missed this a few times and discovered I did actually bring it while I was unpacking! oops)

    LightMyFire spork (did not use)

    Zebra F701, Pencil, Sharpie (used the pen)

    Patagonia Houdini jacket (used on the plane on the way home)

    Intocircuit 11200 mAh battery (used heavily)

    Kindle Paperwhite (did not use, I chose passive entertainment for the plane)

    Bose QC25 (Used heavily on the planes. Earbuds hurt my ears)

    Bottom row:

    Terrifying public bathroom Bag (Eagle Creek small) – packtowl personal, wet wipes, hand sanitizer (in 311 for flight)  (Used sanitizer once but wet wipes would have worked, didn’t use nearly as many wipes as I expected.  didn’t need the packtowl, but that was luck, as I found paper towels most places)

    AMK Travel first aid kit (did not need, had pills in my main kit)

    Small Spool of Kevlar cord (did not use)

    3 to 4 usb cables of various lengths (used the 10ft and the 4ft, probably don’t need the shorter one)

    extra AAA batteries (headphones and flashlight)  (needed for headphones)

    Pebble Charger (used)

    Car usb charger (not shown – ended up not bringing but any time I’m driving I will bring this)

    Doberman door alarm (did not use, all the door hasps were quite secure.  Will I bring this in the  future? probably, it’s tiny and light)

    Plantronics Voyager BT headset and usb adapter (did not use, the headphones worked for conference calls. Will omit from future trips)

    Anker dual QC2 charger (used heavily)

    311 bag (see below)

    Dell E5470 laptop and PS (not shown) – (used only for work.  heavy)

    Microsoft Travel Mouse (used heavily for work)

    Wrist pads (used for work and to pad a gift I brought home)

    Worn clothes, plus contents of Red Oxx Sky Train

    Left side Worn/Carried:

    Thunderbolt pants (wore these a bunch!)

    Icebreaker LS merino (wore only on the way there)

    Icebreaker LS Departure dress shirt (wore only on the way there, was too hot for long sleeves)

    Smartwool light hiker socks (Wore there and back)

    Clarks Cotrell Walk Oxford shoes (wore daily, worked great!)

    Slide Belt (wore daily)

    Tilley TH5 hemp hat (wore during Goa/Hampi daily)

    Pebble Time (wore daily)

    Leatherman PS multitool (no blade) – (Should not have brought this, I need to find something which is 100% plane safe which can trim my whiskers)

    ThruNite Ti3 keychain flashlight (aaa battery) – (Used often, love this thing)

    Car key, house key (can’t leave these  behind)

    money clip: cash, 2 CC, debit, ID (didn’t need much for cards, but still figure this kit is required)

    Eagle Creek “undercover” money belt (Did not use, my pants and bags have good pockets)

    passport

    Samsung Galaxy Note 4

    Handkerchief/bandana (used a couple of times, was very useful when I needed it)

    Insulation: (leaving from and returning to a cold area)

    Kuhl Revolt jacket (Pertex/Primaloft One)  – (I love this jacket, needed on the bus and when I got home)

    EMS Windpro lightweight gloves – (Did not use)

    Smartwool beanie smartwool buff – (did not use)

    Marmot Precip rain shell – (Did not use, no rain)

    Clothing:

    1 Outlier New Way Shorts (wore these for basically my entire Goa/Hampi week. love them)

    1 Thunderbolt pants (2nd pair) – (Wore these  a lot)

    Bluffworks pants (only brought the khaki ones – I like these, they have good features and are dressy, but I don’t like the feel as much as the stretchy Thunderbolts)

    2 Shirt Icebreaker SS merino (worn as undershirt or T shirt) – (Wore one, didn’t wear undershirts, still will probably keep 2 in my kit)

    4 SS shirts (2 Icebreaker departure II, 1 Ibex Jackson, 1 Kuhl Stealth synthetic) (wore all of these. The Kuhl looks nice but I wore it the least, since it’s not wool)

    5 smartwool PhD Running Ultra Light Mini socks – (Cut to 4.   Shorts and black socks was tacky, but functional)

    5 ExOfficio boxer briefs (Cut to 4, which felt like a good number)

    Red Oxx Sky Train (Good carry-on size, but I had to check it because of the Leatherman, and because of the “one bag” policy on the way out. will re-evaluate whether a smaller bag could work for me instead)

    Eagle Creek specter large/med (these were pretty great)

    Swim:

    Speedo Endurance+ swim trunks (these are great, swam a few times)

    Speedo Vanquisher 2.0 mirrored goggles (not shown) – (New to me, these were great, glad I got them vs my un-shaded ones)

    Sea to Summit sil-nylon day pack – (Used in Goa and Hampi as a day bag)

    Platypus bottle (did not bring, did not need)

    Flexo-line clothes line (used frequently to dry clothes)

    Sink stopper (not visible) (used frequently, indispensable)

    Garbage bag and Ziploc – (used the ziploc)

    311 bag (minus the hand sanitizer)

    311:Certain-dri deodorant (2 part)

    Calvin Klein Euphoria cologne – (used up)

    Dr Bronner’s – (Used up, mostly washing clothes, may need to bring more next time, or more detergent packs instead)

    Hair stuff

    Toothpaste – (used up)

    No-ad Sunscreen – (Used up, no burns in the desert!)

    Lip/skin balm (vaseline) – (used frequently)

    antiseptic ointment – (used once)

    Clubman mustache wax

    Hand Sanitizer (moves to bathroom bag on arrival) – (did not use)

    Detergent pack – (very effective, mostly used Dr Bronner’s, but I think this was better)

    Antifungal

  • Tantra in Anjuna Beach

    This is the bar/restaurant/hangout spot I visited in Anjuna Beach.  They had  free wifi, which was a huge bonus.  I presume they must close entirely during the monsoon season, since everything is fabric and exposed to the elements.

    My little “room” on the 2nd level
    The view of the beach from the shade.
    Note the non-osha approved ladders, but the very-welcome fabric under each to avoid dropping sand on others.
    Tantra on the right, some kind of imposter to the left.
    Yummy Lunch

  • Hoyle goes to India – Day 21 -heading home

    ​I slept a little and watched David Attenborough on planet Earth 2.  

    The b777 has little mirrors built into the large overhead bins so you can tell if there is something at the front edge.

    We are leaving via stairs behind me

    We boarded a series of buses, clearly labeled Emirates First Class, Emirates Business Class, and Dirty.  I was on Dirty.

    We were on it entirely too long, like 20 minutes, and when I got through security I found my gate was in a different terminal. Following the signed I ended up running through the whole airport, but I made it to my gate and free wifi. Posting before boarding.