mim’s blog

Well, I got back from the cross country trip last week, but haven’t had time to write about it. I still don’t, but I’ll at least tell you that I’ve posted some pictures from the trip, mostly from Chicago, South Dakota, and Yellowstone.

I’ll also try to summarize the trip: We drove 3333 miles in 8 days. I passed through the following 13 states: NY, NJ, PA, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT, ID, WA. We camped three nights, at Myre/Big Island state park in Minnesota, in Badlands national park in South Dakota, and in Bear Butte state park in South Dakota. We saw the world’s only corn palace in Mitchell, South Dakota and we stopped at Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. We saw lots of friends: Harley and Maureen in Chicago, Amrys in Madison, and Paul Pham, Manuel and Shannon, Basil, and Liz in Seattle. We spent an extra day in Chicago at the Art Institute and on an architectural boat tour. We spent a morning hiking in the badlands. And we took a day to drive around Yellowstone. We got around 38 mpg in the Prius.

I’m currently on a road trip with my sister across the country. She’s moving to Seattle for a year, so we’re driving her car and her stuff there from Philly. I’ve always wanted to drive across the country after hearing my dad’s stories about his intracontinental travels and this was the perfect opportunity. I’m taking lots of pictures, but can’t get them off my camera until I get home. And since we’re generally camping, internet connections are few and far between, so I’ll write up my thoughts and all when I get home. I know you’ll be patient.

Marios did not actually say that last quote of the week. In fact, no one in Greece says it. Oscar Wilde says it in The Importance of Being Earnest, and he says it like this: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”

“As we say in Greece, ‘the problem with women is that they are too much like their mothers, but the problem with men is that they aren’t enough like their fathers.’”

A friend of mine died last weekend. Kevin “Frostbyte” McCormick. He was the best electrical engineer I’ve ever met. He was always ready and willing to help out at tep long after he’d graduated and we poor sops were still wetting our pants. He made incredible art. The word brilliant leaps to mind.

I didn’t know him well enough. Hard to believe he’s gone. These things always take a while to sink in with me.

So I was in london for a conference (the fifth international symposium on music information retrieval (!)) and it was time to fly home. I was spending the afternoon visiting my cousins who said they’d give me a ride to the airport train. We had to wait for my actual cousin Michael to get back from work, which was supposed to be around 5:30 and my flight was at 8:30pm. So he gets in around 6, he has to get dressed to go out on the town, which takes another few minutes, and then we get in the car. We drive, running over i don’t know how many speed humps along the way, into the driving-restricted and traffic calmed central district, and then arriving at Victoria station around 6:30.

The train to Heathrow leaves from Paddington station, so I get on the tube, which takes its merry time, stopping for a few minutes here and there, getting me to Paddington at 6:55, but the next train doesn’t leave until 7:10. That gets me to the airport at 7:25. I walk up lots of stairs, escalators, ramps, etc, until I finally get to the terminal, where I wander around for a few minutes looking for somewhere to check in.

I find an automatic checkin machine and notice that newark isn’t one of the flights listed on the screen for check in. I ask someone working there. They respond, “Newark?!?! Go talk to the Virgin helper ladies over there.” The Virgin helper ladies tell me, “You have to check in an hour before your flight, it is now 55 minutes before your flight, sorry. You can go book a flight for tomorrow morning over there.” No amount of arguing or eyelash-batting will persuade them. I rebook my flight for the next morning and sleep in the airport for the second time in two weeks.

For IAP (that’s MITese for January) 2004 I travelled like a madman, 19257 miles to be precise. Above is a map of the trips. I went from Boston to Amsterdam to LA to Santa Cruz to Philadelphia to Belize City then back to Philly, back to Santa Cruz, and back to Boston. Of course, this doesn’t include the stopovers in Chicago, Memphis, Phoenix, Charlotte, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.