Welcome to America!

Our trains are fucking disgusting!

I took the Newark Airtrain to the NJ Transit station and then waited for something on the order of fifteen minutes for my train into New York’s Penn Station.

The train was gross. The seats were these blue-grey vinyl benches that were visibly dirty where people sat, and probably hadn’t been cleaned in months – I daresay years. The floor was covered in old ticket stubs, used newspapers, spilled drinks and other assorted garbage. The smell was a really weird combination of north Jersey funk (if you’ve ever been there, you know what I mean), body odor, stale beer and hot plastic. The walls were painted in a pepto-bismol pink, the frames for the advertisements were broken and empty, and all was lit by glaring overhead fluorescent tubes.

The only reason I bring any of this up is because I just got off the plane at Newark from London. What happens when international visitors stop on by and the first thing they experience is the filth that is at least that portion of the New Jersey transit system? I can imagine what kind of thoughts that set into motion in their brains. Yuck. Bad first impression. London Connect, Heathrow Express and even the Piccadilly line of the Underground are clean pleasant lines that take you from the airport near the heart of London. Why should NJ Transit be any different?

Also, not all our trains are fucking disgusting. I was being hyperbolic to draw your attention. If you got this far I’m guessing it worked. I’m a big fan of Amtrak’s Acela, the LIRR (certain branches), the MARC and the DC Metro. I’m sure each of these systems have their moments, but overall I’ve had a positive experience on each.

 

Cilantro

They say you either love it or hate it. I fall in to the latter camp. I got some Phở bò tái for dinner tonight and it was particularly delicious – there’s nothing like a hot, spicy soup on a hot, humid evening in Houston. It had some cilantro floating in it though, its only downside.

Anyway, I recently traveled to the UK for business. My adventure to the land of the angles began at one of New York’s premier air travel ports – JFK on a Monday. Okay, it wasn’t that bad. I found the long term parking lot after a bit of driving around, and got to my terminal via the air tram. My flight left on time, and soon I was asleep over the Atlantic, courtesy of my mp3 player. Thank god for that little device; there were three little babies strategically placed around my section of the cabin to give me a total surround-sound angst experience.

I landed in England on a Tuesday, in the early morning. My goal was to somehow get myself to my destination: the customer’s site in London. Unbeknownst to me, the location was in the middle of the downtown, just past the bend in the river. I went to check my UK-ready blackberry. “Emergency phone calls only.” I tried to call my contact, but apparently it wasn’t an emergency, because the call didn’t go through.  Given the situation, I snapped to my normal procedure, found a bus to take me to the rental office, and procured myself an auto.

My car’s steering wheel was on the righthand side of the car,  opened the left-front door. D’oh. I put my bag in the front seat like I meant to do that, then scurried over to the driver’s side door. I sat down and adjusted my mirrors. Looking slightly up and to the left to check my rear-view was slightly disconcerting. I looked down and saw my stick-shift next to my left hand. Great – at least the numbers were in the right order. Foot pedals, from left to right: clutch, brake, gas. Whew, those were in the right order too. I gave a little nervous sigh, turned the car on and started off. After my first clockwise-rotating roundabout, my GPS put me immediately on to M4, the highway which leads directly into the heart of London.

The stop and go traffic on M4 was manageable. I was fine when I had someone to follow. I can’t accurately put into words what it’s like to drive in downtown London in a right-hand drive car on the left-hand side of the road. I don’t like driving in Manhattan. London is Manhattan, but none of the roads are straight and there are roundabouts every other street. People sort of stay in their lanes. Sort of. I learned the hard way that flashing yellow lights mean you can go if nobody is trying to cross the street. I think the guy called me a tosser or something. My bad.

Also, the buildings in London are just tall enough to interfere with GPS functionality. I would drive a few blocks, my GPS would get a glimpse of a satellite it so desperately was trying to communicate with, and it would chirp at me letting me know that I missed my turn, and to turn down the next street. Yep, the one I just drove past. I continued on by Buckingham Palace. Wait, what?! Buckingham Palace? Wow. Cool. I wished I could stop to look and take some pictures, but there was nowhere to park on the street.

Somehow, an hour and a half after I set out from Heathrow, I managed to get to the plaza the customer was located at. Now to begin my quest for a parking spot. I reluctantly drove away from the plaza; there was no street parking to be found. I turned down one street, then another street. No street parking anywhere. Not even a place to stop to catch my breath. Checked the phone again, maybe it suddenly became UK ready. Nope. I looked around and a sense of dread crept over me as I realized the majority of the other vehicles on the road where double-decker buses, taxis, delivery vehicles and motorcycles.

Half an hour later, I found a spot to pull over. I got my mobile wireless hotspot out, which somehow was UK ready, and got myself on the internet. I sent some emails to my contact and my boss to let them know the situation I was in. A few more emails later, and I was on my way back to Heathrow. An hour and a half later and I was back where I started. Some rather nice people informed me of the Heathrow Express – a sort-of-high-speed rail with two stops: Heathrow Airport and London’s Paddington Station. I decided that I didn’t want to take my luggage on the train, so I went to the hotel and checked in, dropped my baggage and caught a shuttle to Terminal 3 – where the express train departed from. Fifteen minutes later I was back in downtown London. I hunted down the right tube stops, got a full day pass and crossed my fingers.

Somehow, I made it to a tube station that was only three blocks from the site. Nearly completely exhausted, I walked up to the security guard and asked to page my contact. A few minutes later, and I was where I was supposed to be.

cruising altitude

the plane was losing the race against the sun. sky faded from blue to yellow to orange to red – the clouds cause the last glint from the star as it sank below the horizon. just as quickly as that crimson hue had arrived, it was gone. no sooner had it faded did the lights of    tiny towns wink begin to life. i need an office like this – plenty of white noise, relatively comfortable seat, air conditioning, three-hour sunsets… though, the desk could be a little bigger.

a long flight is a great place to think. this particular long flight doesnt have any tv monitors, which makes it even easier. no internet, no phone, no email. just a window, a pen and a notepad. and a pretty good view. have i mentioned three-hour long sunsets? even so, i find myself drifting back to thoughts of my job tomorrow. another venture into the unknown, travelling to a place i’ve never been to set up a system unlike any i’ve done before. it’s not the first time i’ve ever gone in blind, and i’m for damn sure it won’t be the last. there’s just no way to hammer out every. single. last. detail. i’m good at thinking on my feet, improvising and learning as i go along. still, some more experience would calm the nerves a bit. the recent memory of my two previous disast- site visits- are still very fresh in my mind. i’d like to have one go smoothly once in a while, and adding unknowns certainly doesn’t help the odds of that happening.

then again, i’m not immediately concerned. while it’s nagging in the back of my mind, my more immediate goal is to make my connecting flight, then find the car rental office and make it to the hotel. it’ll be 3am eastern before i get a chance to get settled in, which leads me to believe that tomorrow will be a coffee day. that’ll be great for the nerves.

fight on the plane! something about a guy who was sleeping and some woman who is a “fucking shit” and more loud noises – cooler heads ended up prevailing and two people got relocated. always exciting!

New Feet

Got new feet today! One of my friends from college wore a pair of these nearly all the time, and he had nothing but praise for these little foot-gloves. My cross trainers were pushing two years, and I figured it was time for some new footgear. Went out on a limb and decided to give these a shot, because, why not?

I’ve always preferred to be barefoot whenever I had the chance. Unfortunately, most places outside of home and the beach aren’t exactly barefoot-friendly, so this seemed like the next best thing. Time will tell.

Guns & Trucks

The deep south is a special place. Everything moves at a slower pace than up north. I can’t even begin to understand why. Maybe the heat slows people down. Maybe it’s the food they eat, or something in the water. I’m sure if I had paid more attention in US History I’d have a better idea, but man, that class was dry.

Most of my waking hours have been spent up north, in New York and New England, and heading on down to the deep south was a first for me. Sure, I’ve been to Arizona – but that’s really just an extension of California – I’m talking about the cotton-pickin’, gun-totin’, deep-fried south. Most of my preconceptions of the south were wildly validated by my recent visit. So; a small glimpse of the south, through the lens of a life-long northerner:

It’s dark out, and it looks just like any city I’ve ever flown into at night: main highways lined with white and red, the orange glow of sodium street lamps, suburban sprawl. Wheels down in Nashville. Almost immediately I hear it: country music. Yup, I’m in the south. There’s a man playing acoustic guitar and singing with that country twang in a bar near the gate I arrived at. He’s not a bad musican. That twang though, is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I move on quickly. Baggage claim, and huge wall sized advertisements for the “Grand Ole Opry” abound. Oh boy.

I make my way down to the rental car agency. The people are nice, and I get my car without much delay. It’s a Mazda 5 with Arizona plates. Ugly. As I’m leaving the airport, I have to get my car checked by the agent at the exit of the rental car garage. He tells me to “be safe ya hear?” and that “he appreciates me”. I say “thanks”.

Speed limit is 70. That seems to be pretty common down here. I get close to the exit for the hotel I’m staying at, and notice all the restaurants. BBQ, Steak and Shake, Outback, Chilis, Pulled Pork… and about ten fast food places. The only fast food place I’ve never seen before is “Waffle House”. It looks sketchy. Check-in at the hotel is a breeze, and the hotel staff all have that southern hospitality thing going on. It’s kind of nice.

First morning of work goes by quickly, and lunch is at a place called Toot’s. I’m apprehensive. One of the guys I’m doing the job for gets deep-fried pickles. I didn’t know you could deep fry those, but apparently it’s a local delicacy. Salty. That’s about all. I can’t eat more than two. Need water. So salty. How can these guys eat a whole basket of these things? I order fried chicken for lunch, because it’s the special of the day. It hasn’t even arrived yet and these guys are getting refills on their sodas. I haven’t finished half of my water yet. My chicken isn’t anything to write home about, average on all counts. The other guys seemingly inhale their lunch. There’s a tv on in the booth, ESPN, showing highlights of all the football games from the week. One of the guys apparently watched all of the games, and says “oh, watch this, this play coming up is amazing” before every clip is shown. Football is big here. I’m asked about my team. I tell them I watch hockey. I don’t think they know what that is.

On the ride back, I notice that pickup trucks and SUV’s outnumber the cars here. I can see why when I look around at all the food options – fast food and deep-fried are king here. I finish my work for the day and head back to my hotel. I’m spent from the day, but I have a good couple hours of paperwork and correspondence to take care of. Hunger sets in. I’m not looking forward to my options. Google maps. There’s a Greek restaurant surprisingly close. I do a little more research, and it seems legitimate. It’s no Uncle Georges, but it’s damn good Greek food.

Day two is more of the same. Chili’s for lunch. The attitude that I saw towards women here is scary. It’s like a high school football boys club. And the scarier part is that the women don’t seem to know any different. Every single interaction that I witnessed involved the women acting subservient to the men. I was uncomfortable. Lunch conversation centers around football again. Half an hour spent discussing the intricacies of the NFL draft. I remain mostly quiet, because I am bored to tears.

Wheels up. On my way to Charlotte, and then on to JFK. Wheels down. Five minutes to boarding. “Attention passengers for flight 374 with service to JFK. There is an Air Traffic halt at JFK. We will be boarding in four hours. We apologize for the delay.” Great. How many babies are going to be on this flight? Looks like six. Better go eat. I wait at the gate across the terminal from mine, because my gate is packed, there are no free outlets, and the babies are getting pissed.

Finally, we land at JFK. We’re on our way to the gate. “Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. There’s uh… no easy way to say this… because of the air traffic halt, there are no free gates, so we’re going to have to wait here on the runway for… looks like thirty minutes.” An hour and fifteen minutes later we pull up to the gate. Lights go on. People stand up. Nobody’s moving forward. “Attention passengers, it looks like there’s a problem with the jetway, we should have you off the plane in about five minutes.” Okay. Sure. In the meantime, one of the ground crew opens up the back door of the plane and starts to load food into the galley for the next flight. Since we aren’t technically at the gate yet, the engines are still running. The entire back of the plane is quickly filled with jet exhaust: instant headache.

Fifteen minutes later, finally off the plane.

I hop on the AirTram to Jamaica and get on the LIRR. No more southern drawl. No more babies crying. Just NYC commuters headed home.

It’s good to be back in the north.

Decemberfest

After months of procrastination, I drove up to East Hartford to begin what’s hopefully the beginning of a new culinary adventure: homebrewing. I’d been doing research for a few months and toying with the idea of making my own beer, but last weekend finally invested some time and money into getting a starter kit. The hardware includes a fermentation bucket, a bottling bucket, a thermometer, a hydrometer, some tubes, an auto-siphon and a brush. I got an ingredient kit to make an Oktoberfest, and it came with malt, malt extract, grains, hops, sugar, a bottle capper and bottle caps. Like a little kid on Christmas, I unpacked everything as soon as I got home and got my first batch underway.

Unfortunately for me, the instructions that came with the ingredients were different than the instructions that came with the hardware were different than the instructions that I’d been familiarizing myself with through my research. I took what seemed like the best from each and ended up just having at it.

All three sets of instructions stressed cleanliness; everything that the beer touches must be sanitized. Bacterial infections are the most common way a batch of beer can be ruined. After an hour of prep – sanitizing counter tops, pots, the fermenting bucket, thermometers, hydrometers, and the stirring spoon, I was ready to begin making the wort. Wort is, simply put, unfermented beer. Wort is made through a variety of methods, but since this is my first stab at brewing, I elected the simplist.

The biggest pot I’ve got is 8 quarts, so I had to do a partial boil. A partial boil involves making a concentrated wort and then adding it to water in the fermenter. I took the grain that came with the kit and steeped it for half an hour, then added malt extract, some hops, and boiled the mixture for just about an hour. The wort has to be carefully watched during this time, because the boiling action causes the proteins in the mixture to foam up. Once the wort hits a stage called “hot break”, the proteins clump together and sink to the bottom of the pot, and the foam disappears. It took quite a while to reach hot break.

After the wort had boiled for sufficiently long enough, it came time to add it to the rest of the water in the fermenter. This took the temperature of the wort from boiling to 90 degrees in a matter of seconds, simultaneously achieving a “cold break” and bringing the wort through the bacteria-friendly danger zone range of temperatures. Whether or not this will work, I’ll find out in a few weeks.

Once the wort was in the fermeter and sufficiently mixed with the water, I shook the fermeting bucket to aerate the mixture. Yeast does, after all, like oxygen. I took a hydrometer reading of the wort to measure the specific gravity of the beer, crucial to determining the alcohol potential of the beer. This batch will be at most 5.5%. Next weekend, when the fermentation is complete, I’ll take another hydrometer reading, subtract the two readings and have a precise measure of the alcohol content of the beer.

Once I’d taken the reading, I sprinkled the packet of yeast on top of the wort, put the lid on the bucket and put the airlock in place, moved the bucket to a safe place and let it sit to ferment.

Then, nothing happened.

So I went to bed.

Overnight, the yeast had a field day. The airlock was bubbling away, releasing bubbles of carbon dioxide every few seconds. The wort was alive, and on it’s way to becoming a batch of beer, and that’s where it stands today. The rate which the bubbles are produces has slowed over the course of the week, but the beer will remain in the bucket until the weekend. As the yeast run out of easy-to-digest sugars, they’ll begin to munch on the more complex nutrients in the wort and give the beer a more distinct, well-rounded flavor. On Saturday, I’ll bottle the beer and let them sit for a few weeks to finish conditioning and carbonate. It should be ready to taste on the first week of January!

crazy like a FOX

The hardest thing about maintaining a blog is maintaining a blog. Also, starting fresh blog posts. The middle is easy because I get tangential sometimes, and the end is super easy, because since this is by no means a formal submission, I just stop.

I just started a new job, one that involves a significant amount of travel. I’m currently in a hotel right next to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (or something like that) henceforth referred to as BWI, just like the airports call it. Yay consistency! My job is actually in Washington, DC, but hotels in the capital are very expensive, so I’ve been taking the MARC in every day. MARC stands for.. Maryland… something… Rail… Commuter… I’m not sure what MARC stands for. The MARC is a service provided by Amtrak, and it’s super convenient. It’s doesn’t run as regularly as, say, the LIRR in New York, but it’s not as infrequent or as expensive as the Acela. It’s like a bastard train. It defies labels.

Anyway. So, one of my best friends is in Nicaragua for the Peace Corps, and she’s got a blog too, detailing her experiences. There’s no way I can even think about coming close to something as amazing as what she’s doing, and I can’t help but comparing this against what she writes about. My entries seem so trivial and empty compared to hers, and that’s probably part of the reason I haven’t updated this in so long. Not the only reason. But a big one.

Right, so I’ll be traveling a lot for the next few years. I was one of the only unmarried young people at my company, so naturally I make a good fit for a job like this in that I’m not tied down to a family or a house. I feel kind of bad for my roommate because there’s nothing to do in my town but he’ll get over it. On Monday, I got up at 3am, drove to the airport, caught a 6:40 to BWI, took a cab to the hotel, checked in, took a shower, got a hotel shuttle to the train station to catch a 9:23 to DC, and then took a couple subways to my site.. I finally got there at 10:30, and they didn’t even have our stuff! That’s working for the government for ya.

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My car is accelerating out of control!

Thanks, CNN, for this little gem.  Here’s a tip for everyone whos car starts accelerating wildly. PUT YOUR CAR IN NEUTRAL. If you drive a stick-shift, it’s even easier. Just push the clutch in! Sure, your big scary engine will rev wildly, but you won’t go anywhere.

Also, my money is on “the guy in the cnn video is a liar”. Can a Prius even go 94?

/rant

Dear Connecticut

Or, how to drive in snowy conditions.

So Connecticut, after our little snowfall Tuesday afternoon, I noticed that you don’t know how to deal with a few inches of snow on the road. This was evidenced by the great number of cars I saw in ditches on the side of the road – there were seven. I also noticed that you struggle to drive uphill when it’s slippery, and cause delays in traffic because you just can’t seem to get moving despite how much you’re pushing that accelerator pedal down. Well, lucky for you, Buffalo is here to offer a few pointers for driving in the snow. So, Connecticut, if you’re reading, pass this little gem on to all your friends, so that a commute in snowy conditions will be less of a white knuckle experience for all of us.

First rule of driving in snow: Don’t. If you can avoid it, don’t go out, don’t go to work, just enjoy some hot chocolate and read a good book.

Second rule: If you have to go out in a car, get into a mindset that it’s going to take you significantly longer to get to wherever you’re going. Don’t try to rush there, that’s how accidents happen. There are a number of things that snow does to the driving surface that make rushing around an extremely dangerous affair. When the roads are slick with snow, slush and ice, your car does not respond well to rapid changes due to the reduced amount of friction between the road and your tires. These rapid changes include quick turns, fast acceleration and slamming on the brakes.

Third rule: When braking, do it gradually and slowly. Since, when on snow, you often don’t know your exact stopping distance; start to brake well in advance of when you normally would. Do so by gently putting pressure on the brakes. If you lock your wheels, you’ll end up in a spin, a snowbank or the car in front of you. When you slam on your brakes, you will lose control of your car.

Fourth rule: Only make a turn if you’re going slowly. If you try to turn your car too quickly on a surface that has very little friction, your momentum will continue to carry you in whatever direction you were travelling before you turned the wheel. This is usually a very disconcerting feeling to most drivers, and often leads to a violation of the third rule, that is, they slam their brakes, causing further loss of control and the aforementioned meeting with a snowbank.

Fifth rule: When starting from a stop, do not floor the gas pedal. There’s a neat little phenomenon called the Coriolis force that will come into play should you choose to give your engine lots of gas. When you spin your tires fast enough, the Coriolis force will actually push your car perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the tires. In other words, if you spin your tires, you won’t get any kind of grip on the road surface, and your car will go sideways. In order to not do this, get in a low gear and accelerate extremely slowly. If you feel your tires start to slip, you’re giving your car too much gas.

Sixth rule: When travelling up a hill, maintain a slow and steady speed, and for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t stop. As a simplification, there are three forces that are dealt with in this situation, static friction, kinetic friction and gravity. When a car is stopped, the force of static friction – two objects not moving in relation to each other – must be overcome. This force needed to overcome static friction is greater than the force needed to overcome kinetic friction, which is the force opposed to the motion of two objects that are moving in relation to each other. Picture a heavy sled, and you’re trying to pull it. Once you get it moving – once you’ve overcome the force of static friction, it’s easier to keep it moving than it was to start. The same is true with a car. With all that in mind, let’s go back to the car on a hill. Once you’ve stopped on a snowy hill, you need to overcome both the force of static friction and gravity. These two in concert with the reduced amount of traction available make starting uphill no easy task. If you do find yourself stopped on a hill, do not try to floor the gas pedal and expect to move forward, you’ll likely find yourself moving sideways and backwards.

Seventh rule: If you find yourself in a slide, you have two options, depending on if you have ABS or not. If you do have ABS, then use your brakes. ABS will pump your brakes far faster than you possibly could, allowing you to hopefully gain control of your car before you hit something. If you don’t have ABS, do NOT slam your brakes. This will only exacerbate your slide. Give the brakes slow, even pressure, and if you feel the wheels start to lock up, let go of the brakes. Then give them slow, even pressure again. If your car is sliding out and starting to spin, steer in the opposite direction of the slide. Keep in mind, however, that if you followed the other rules, you should rarely find yourself sliding out.

That should cover it. Follow the rules, and you won’t total your car. Or anyone elses. And you won’t ruin guard rails. Or trees. Think of the trees.

Oh yeah, and if my science is wrong, please leave a nice comment and I’ll correct it.