At most cocktail parties (and some weddings), there is a common problem, where you have one hand holding the glass, one holding a little plate of h’ors d’oeuvres, and no hands left to use to eat off the plate. Maybe you haven’t had this problem, but I definitely have.

That’s why I think these are such a great idea. They completely solve the problem. I’m surprised I haven’t seen them before.

Last night while watching “Grey’s Anatomy,” I heard some music in the background that sounded kind of catchy. When I listened a little closer, I noticed that the lyric was, “It puts the lotion in the basket.” Thanks to Phil’s sleuthing, I now know that it’s by the Greenskeepers, and the video is available at ifilm.

The video is made up entirely of clips from “Silence of the Lambs,” and is really creepy. But… it’s really catchy too.

So, when using the navigation system in my car in the bay area before my trip, I generally thought it was ok. It didn’t always pick the best route, but it had all the locations I tried to get to in its directory.

Driving along US route 2 through northern North Dakota and Montana has demonstrated how lacking it is. Almost every town along the route didn’t have any roads in the navigation system other than US 2. Not even the business route of US 2 in some towns. If I lived in that area of the country, the nav system would be useless. Then again, if I lived there, I’d probably know all 15 roads in the town and wouldn’t need the nav system…

Anyways, I’m now back in the bay area, and have been for a bit. As of next Tuesday, I’ll move into a new place in San Mateo, and this chapter in my travels concludes.

When congress repealed the federal speed limit, Montana did apparently post their speed limit as “Safe and prudent,” though trucks were limited to 60 or so. Later, according to my guidebook, this was struck down by the Supreme Court as being too vague. So, now the interstate in Montana has a 75 mph speed limit, and US-2, which I took, is limited to 70 mph (though, 65 mph at night… while I agree that their long empty stretches of road are more dangerous at night, when wildlife could appear out of nowhere, will the 5 miles an hour really make a difference?). On the other hand, I didn’t see a police car on US-2 at all, so maybe enforcement isn’t common.

Josh and I saw Serenity on Friday. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a movie spun off from the short-lived but excellent sci-fi tv series, Firefly. I definitely enjoyed it. I also think that it’s self-contained enough so that someone who likes sci-fi but has never heard of Firefly can enjoy it (as was evidenced by someone in our theater who had been given tickets by a Firefly fan outside the theater).

It was somewhat different from the series though. It seemed more summer-blockbustery than most episodes, and in some cases might have traded off character development for a bigger story. I also noticed a few slight differences from the tv series story, such as the description of how Simon rescued River. Nevertheless, it’s a fun movie, and one I certainly hope to watch again.

Travel plans for today were a bit derailed, but luckily not blown off the road. Instead of casually inspecting the nice little towns and kitschy off-highway attractions of the eastern half of North Dakota, I drove along hoping not to get stuck in the piles of snow in the middle of the highway, or drive off the road when all I could see was the taillights of the truck in front of me. I don’t think that my car is the best choice for deep snow performance, but it got me to a hotel with rooms, power, and dinner, so no complaints.

Yesterday, I wandered around Duluth for a bit in the rain (which in retrospect was terrific weather…). My guide book describes it as “one of the most beautiful and under-appreciated travel destinations in the midwest.” It also says that it is “gracefully etched into the side of tough, 800-foot granite slopes and gazing over the dark harbor hues.” Now, admittedly, the weather conditions might have affected my perceptions, but perhaps this description is a bit overly poetic. Positano, it ain’t.

However, there were two facets that I thought were really cool. Firstly, the whole downtown has a skybridge system, so that you can walk all over the downtown 1 floor up from ground level. Each building has public corridors on the 2nd floor, sometimes with shops, that allow you to walk from one bridge between buildings to the next. Obviously a useful feature in a place where the winters are a touch colder than San Francisco.

Secondly, there’s a drive north of the city called Skyline Parkway, which varies between views over Lake Superior from the top of a ridge to a multi-colored tree lined road winding back and forth over nice little bridges. Probably not pretty enough to warrant a visit to Duluth, but definitely worth checking out if you’re there.

I’m now in Duluth, MN, after driving yesterday from Chicago. Wisconsin is a very pretty state to drive across, especially with the leaves changing colors. It was cloud covered the whole way, but that’s better than raining, which seems to be the prediction for much of the great plains the next couple days. Boo.

Chicago was very cool. I stayed at Josh’s, and he kindly introduced me immediately to Chicago pizza, which was well appreciated after a long drive. We went to check out the Chicago Art Institute, a local art museum with a fabulously diverse collection. One of the installations in the modern art wing was a large rectangle of candies in colorful wrappers on the floor. Each visitor is invited to take one, which was pretty cool.

We also wandered around Millennium Park, which I had read about a bit but is very nice in person. The face fountain — with a large structure with a video of someone’s face at either end of a very thin layer of water which people can walk on — is interesting, but is eclipsed by “the bean”, which is a completely reflective structure in the shape of a bean, kind of. It’s really fun walking around it and seeing the interplay of the reflections and the sights around it.

We had dinner at a jazz/steak place in Evanston with the two guides from the Amalfi coast trip, who live in Chicago, and are really great people. The next day, I went to check out the Museum of Science and Industry, which seems like a great place to bring kids. They have a German U-Boat, U-505, which was captured off the coast of Africa in WWII and was recently moved into an enclosed exhibit hall and cleaned up, and it looks great. The tours on board are a bit crowded, but I guess it was when it was in service as well. They also have a huge model railroad, a replica coal mine, a 727 airplane, and various other exhibits that can easily use up their short opening hours (11am-4pm).

Today, it’s off to North Dakota, where it will hopefully not be snowing. Probably won’t be putting the top down today…

After spending a couple weeks in New York, minus a couple days in Boston, relaxing with my family, I’m back on the road. I’ll be in Chicago this weekend, and then driving through the middle-north of the country, where I haven’t driven before. North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, and then cutting down to return to SF. Woohoo!

I went to see a Mets game with my family while I was in New York, and while they lost, the east coast retained power. I see this as an improvement over the last Mets game I attempted to attend. Maybe next time they’ll even win (yeah right!).

In Boston, I visited with a number of old high school friends that I haven’t seen for years, and they apparently hadn’t seen each other in years either, even though they live in the same city. Funny how that happens. Anyways, we survived a skunk attack (really, it was a friend’s dog who was attacked, but the smell permeates) and went to a karaoke bar… I think that makes it a pretty successful visit. Next stop, Chicago!

So now I’m in Rome, and the kayaking trip is over. It was a great trip. We started in Naples - not my favorite city, but I wasn’t there long - and saw Pompeii. I’ve been there once before, but I definitely think it’s a site one can visit again and again. Unfortunately, the guide this time was saying things that conflicted with what the guide last time said, but I think I believe the earlier guide. For example, in Pompeii, some of the streets have these stepping-stone-like-things in the streets. They are spaced such that a chariot could pass through them, but also a pedestrian could walk across them without stepping down into the street. The previous guide said they were for crossing, as the street was the drainage path and thus one wouldn’t want to step in it. This guide said it was for military defense, as non-Roman chariots would have different axel lengths between their wheels, which I find hard to believe in this case for many reasons.

Anyways, we then strolled around Sorrento, which is a pretty little town. Our hotel was quite near a beach, but some people (me included) had thought it would be closer when looking on its website. Instead we enjoyed our view of laundry drying in the alley. Oh well. We kayaked along the coast of Sorrento the next day, which was quite pretty. There are a multitude of switchback steps down to the water from atop the cliffs, and columns and towers, but unfortunately it also seems to get a lot of the trash from Naples, so the water near the coast is a bit littered.

We took the ferry to Capri, where we stayed in a terrific hotel near Marina Picolo (on the far side of the island from the ferry dock), Hotel Weber. There was a great little beach down some stairs, or a pool at the hotel. On the next day we kayaked around the island, which is about 12 miles, the longest day, but broken up with a cappuccino stop and a lunch stop. At the cappuccino stop, one of the other trip participants, Nina, spoke with a lady up at the restaurant. The lady said she was a psychologist, and complained that she was having a terrible time on her vacation because she was with another lady who had multiple personalities. She said the other lady was down at the beach. Later, when Nina was heading down to the beach, the “psychologist” was heading back up, and when Nina wished her well for the rest of her trip, the “psychologist” looked at Nina as if she didn’t recognize her and then spoke in a completely different voice. Needless to say, Nina got quickly back to the beach and into her kayak.

We ate at a terrific restaurant in Capri called Il Grotello, I think. It was a bit of a walk (there was some debate as to whether it qualified as a hike) from the main town, but well worth it. The next day, we were supposed to kayak back to the mainland. The seas were fairly choppy, but a small set of us set off to paddle. When we got about 1/4 of the way around the island, our guide, Keith, heard thunderstorm predictions over his radio. We had already been debating whether to cross in those conditions (”only” a 4-5 on the Beaufort scale, but in a kayak looking across a 6 mile crossing that seems pretty big…), so we pretty quickly started heading for harbor and ended up taking the ferry across.

We stayed in a hotel in Marina del Cantone, which apparently has a large number of hikes around it. We kayaked back toward Capri a bit to a little out of the way beach, which was a nice place to spend the midday. I even got to try to practice my Italian speaking to a guy who was there with the people he served in the military with who get together every year even 40 years later. Later, we hiked over to Recommone, where there was an absolutely positively spectacular restaurant/hotel (7 rooms) called Il Conca del Sogno. It seems like it might be a splendid place to just relax for a few days and have some great food.

The next day, again, we were supposed to kayak the coast down to Positano, but thunderstorms were passing through, and being the highest point in the water during a lightning storm is not a great idea. Instead we ended up with extra time to wander around Positano. The hotel we stayed at there was right on the beach, which was terrific once the weather cleared up in the afternoon. Also, Positano is a very pretty little town to wander, and, like everywhere in Italy, has some great food, so the day was not lost.

On our last day, we did actually kayak to Amalfi. There were some windy points, but we had a cappuccino break partway through, and then after rounding the point we went under this arch which some people climbed up and jumped off of and relaxed for a bit. In the evening, after wandering Amalfi for a bit, we drove up to Ravello, which has a great central square with small streets winding off it and views down to the coast. We had dinner and then went to a violin & piano concert. Personally, I thought the players seemed talented, but the compositions were a bit too discordant and strange for me, except for the encore. I may also have been influenced by the fact that it was inside and not air-conditioned (or not well, if at all).

Now, as I said, I’m in Rome. Rome never gets old. My feet, though, won’t be able to take too much more walking around. Wednesday morning, I will hopefully catch a flight to Barcelona, and then to New York, bringing my trek in Europe to a close. Till then, I think there are some more ruins and a piazza or two to see.

Hard to believe that I’ve been here for almost 3 weeks, but my time in Siena is drawing to a close. I’ve had a very good time here, and have met many fun and interesting people, and have therefore fallen far behind in updating you all. (The fact that the computers have crashed several times when I was in the middle of an unsaved entry didn’t help either…)

In short, there was the Palio, Siena’s bi-annual major event, and the continual scene of celibration following it; there was a pretty good free concert in the piazza of an Italian singer named Elisa; there was a school trip to Montepulciano, where we also saw the beginnings of the pageantry for their Palio; there was visiting the major sites around Siena, like the Duomo and the main tower; and there were many meals and hours spent in the central piazza of the town. Perhaps I will go back later and expand on some of these, because most could have used their own entry, but for now, I leave it at that.

Tomorrow is my last day at the school, and in the evening many of the students are gathering, and then on Saturday I leave for Naples. In Naples, I will be on a sea kayaking trip which may or may not have easy access to the internet. Thus, perhaps no more news till the 11th, when I start heading back to Barcelona to take my flight back to the States. A dopo.