We wanted to leave our hotel room as soon as possible, so we ended up getting on the road out of Louisiana at around 9:20. Our first stop of the day was Vicksburg, Mississippi, which we arrived at around 11:00. We entered the visitor center and watched a short movie detailing the events of the Vicksburg campaign before going on the auto tour around the battlefield. Vicksburg was a stronghold along the Mississippi River and widely considered the key to holding the river by both Confederate and
At 10:00 we left Wausau bound for Minnesota. By 10:40 we made it to Abbotsford, the first city in Wisconsin. The sky was overcast and very cloudy. We passed farms and saw various farm animals as well as various farms and silos. While different, the sameness of the road was tiresome after a while. We were surprised to see signs warning of Amish buggies, and saw a farm animal pulling a plow, but did not see any horse-and-buggy combinations then. Each small town we passed through on the route fea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDcHnKh2Ouc Lowell Liebermann is a modern pianist-composer from New York. His music, a blend of traditional structure and profound invention, has made him one of the most popular and most often-played of modern-day classical composers. As a pianist, a good chunk of Liebermann's works have been for or include the piano, including three Sonatas, eleven Nocturnes, and his most famous piece, the epic Gargoyles. His fourth Nocturne is one of my favorites - although
My grandfather died today, four days shy of his 92nd birthday. It wasn't by any means unexpected - he had cancer that had progressed into his bones - but it's still sad.
Our first stop of the day was Scotts Bluff. Because of a scraping noise that we had heard emanating from somewhere within the vicinage of the front wheels, we took the shuttle up there. We saw for a long way up there, across to some small badlands that are around a portion of it, as well as all the way to Chimney Rock, which was small and barely discernible from the sky, but we saw it nonetheless. The bluff, while not the highest thing that we've seen, was stunning in the fact that it rose up ou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L5nc_G9Gus Kaikhosru Sorabji was a composer who was known for writing long and technically demanding pieces, mostly for solo piano. His early music blended styles from well-established virtuosos. His later works use dissonant polyrhythms and vague tonalities and is generally inaccessible. Most people who have heard of him know him solely for one piece - the four-hour, twelve-movement Opus Clavicembalisticum. (Opus Clavicembalisticum is not even Sorabji's longes
We had a filling breakfast of eggs Benedict far surpassed last night's dinner in terms of flavor. The storm system that had pasted us last night was still in the area, but had moved past far enough for us to make good time west across North Dakota. Our first stop of the day was the geographical center of North America at a town called Rugby. We took US 2 all the way there. We saw a bunch of red-winged blackbirds. It was raining intermittently and gusted indefinitely. The record rains North Dak
Slowly gettin' through the pictures, over a month afterwards. As always, hover for information. Day Twenty-Two | | | | | | | | | | Day Twenty-Three | | | Day Twenty-Four | | | Day Twenty-Five | | | | | | Day Twenty-Six | | Day Twenty-Seven Day Twenty-Eight | | | Day Twenty-Nine | | | | |
Our alarms went off at the unholy hour of 4:00 in the morning. Since we'd prepared everything the night before, it was a slightly faster process in getting out the door than usual. We hit the road at 4:40, when the sun had not yet risen, but its light was reflecting off of the cloud cover of the west. Our first destination: the Beartooth Highway, which crosses the Beartooth Pass in the Beartooth Mountains near Beartooth Peak. (A lot of different names to take in, I know.) The road climbs up to
After awakening in Charlottetown, we headed downtown to see the sights and nab some lunch. We got to a parking deck - they call them parkades in Canada - and walked around the downtown, although it was somewhat slowed by accounting for road work. We stopped in to exchange some more money at a bank since we were down to about twenty cents of hard Canadian currency. Charlottetown is a really interesting city - it's not a big city by any means, so it's basically a big small town. Charlottetown's
-----Though many bags were packed and many items checked off many lists at the close of Tuesday, the final steps towards getting out the door still lingered as all items of importance were verified in triplicate. All said, our journey began a little before noon, and we took the road north to Wytheville, Virginia. -----But we had, since 2013, made a vow to ourselves not to go through the treacherous mountain roads of West Virginia unless absolutely necessary. It was in Wytheville that we turned
-----A requisite 7:00 wakeup meant we got out of the door at 9:00. We exited Kentucky and entered Indiana for approximately a mile before going back into Ohio, then finally going into Indiana for good. -----While on the way, we contacted the office of the Indianapolis Indians and inquired about the possibility of purchasing a pennant. Although they sell them, they were currently out of stock, which was alright by our itinerary. The traffic around Indianapolis was bad enough; downtown was no
I forgot to mention that yesterday, as we entered Yellowstone, we saw a number of people pulled off the road with their binoculars and short-range telescopes out. A nice lady let us use hers, and through it we saw a mountain goat making its way across the sheer rock face. Breakfast, not a usual meal for us on this particular trip, was necessary given the desolation we were to traverse. I had a delightful dish known as breakfast pasta, which consisted of cheese ravioli in a jalapeño sauce (with
-----The weekend meant that the Beloit Snappers were closed, which eliminated our first stop of the day before we even got up. In the course of our drive, Illinois soon gave way to Wisconsin, where the drivers were an extra helping of nuts. -----It wasn't just that the drivers drove with impunity towards life and property, but the real surprise was in that there were simply so many of them. There is nothing of note for long stretches; not even occasional small towns with highway-side gas stati
We got on the road a little before noon after sleeping in a little bit. Leaving Fredericton was much easier than getting in - just a few merges and we were on the Trans-Canada Highway, first westbound and then northbound to Québec. We crossed many small brooks and paralleled the St. John River all the way up. We were never more than a few miles from the border with Maine, and made excellent time up the highway. We pulled into a gas station in Woodstock, which was, to our surprise, full-servi
We slept in a bit more today and headed out at 11:00 in rain. We were going up the Bow Valley Parkway, which parallels the Trans-Canada Highway to Lake Louise northwest of Banff. Instead of trying to go on the fast-paced highway, given the amount of precipitation, we decided to take the Parkway for a smoother, more wildlife-filled ride. By 11:15 we'd seen an elk eating and walking over large downed branches on the side of a steep hill. We still could not see the tops of the mountains due to
-----Though Minot is remote, our day's journey was to take us even further afield. Our first stop of the day, after a brief currency exchange, was to the Scandinavian Heritage Park. The Minot area was settled by many Scandinavians, and the park contains statues and buildings erected to honor them. In front of the welcome center—shaped like a large log cabin—was a marble design sprawled across the landscape, showing the five Scandinavian countries and their capitals. Statues of Hans Christian And
I have recently been informed that people have been PMing various people about the current state of BIONICLE: Year One. I'd like to clarify a few things:
1) It's still going.
2) My acquisition of more memory or a better computer is the only thing stopping me from starting the actual game work.
3) If you have any questions or concerns, PM me. I'm more likely to know what it is you want to know about Year One.
That is all.
