Portland

I know, I'm not remotely done with posting about going to Arizona, but Xmass is almost amung us and this is fresher in my little mind at the moment, so here goes

Over the USS Hornet

Because of the new job I'm without any vacation or sick time at the moments, so heading up to Portland for thanksgiving meant that I'd have to leave on Thanksgiving this time around. Oddly enough the Oakland airport was rather sparce and stared off with no one in line ahead of me to get into the terminal. That didn't stop TSA from over searching my bag and chemical testing the wrapped charizo I had in my bag. I brought it along so I could make breakfast pasta for the family the next day. The flight up was aboard a turbo prop plane that seated about 40 folks, and I was happy to find that I wouldn't have share my seat for the trip too. The skies were rather clear so I was also able to snap a few photos along the way.

Over Mount Shasta

Over Crater Lake

Dinner with the rents and family went fine, for the first time in years I stayed home and didn't go over or out to see friends after dinner. I mainly hit the internet and started looking for places to go hiking the next day. For msot of time living in Oregon, I rarely crossed the Columbia, so this time around I looked north for a place to hike the next day. So after sleeping in a bit I got up the next day went about making breakfast for the rents. I made version of breakfast pasta (AKA Carbonara), but instead of prescuto, I used charizo I brought up with me. It was different, but wonderful none the less. Afterwards I got into my stinky smelly rental car and headed up north along the 5. This time around I found 2 places to hike both on the south side of Mount St Heleans, the first was called the Ape caves, the second hike was to be in Lava Canyon. After hitting the bottom of the mountain getting away from the river it tunrs out that this area had some snow recently, but it was clear sailing to my first stop. Climbing down into a lava cave was rather easy, at the bottom of the stairs the passageway split into two. One was marked as easy, the second as moderate hike.

A few years earlier I had explored similar caves in california and thought I knew what I was doing, so I chose the later "moderate" rout into the mountain. The trip was about 3 miles underground, with about a dozen semi cave ins along the way (a cave in meaning you'll have to climb and over quite a number of rocks and boulders in order to move forward). About a mile in I found myself looking up a 8 foot wall, at this point the whole moderate hike was pretty much in the toilet and I tried my hands and climbing in the near dark, up wet rocks and almost found myself tumbling back down. At this poiint I couldn't move forward so started to climb back over the rock dree I had passed before my impass. At this point I got lucky, and 20 something couple was at the bottom of the rock pile and starting to climb up. I told them of the impasss and they were nice enough to help me up said wall. I kept up with the couple for another half mile or so, but being old and fat I really found myself not being able to keep up and thanked them for the help and bid them adu. About a half hour later of shuffling over rocks in the near dark I finally came to the of the hike and was happy to see sunlight again.

Out of the hole

The Hike back

Climbing out revealed that I was back up the mountain and had passed into area of frosted snow upon the first around me. It was a rather nice and brisk walk back to the parking lot at this point and I was hppy to get back as I hungry and wanted to store up the backpack I brought along too before starting the second hike about 5 miles away. Unfortunately the drive over to Lava Canyon was a bust as the road had far more snow on it then expected. I actually ended up driving the car sideways at one point as the road was frosted up more then I should have been driving on at the time. So I had to abandon hike number two for the day and headed back to portland in smelliest car I had ever rented (I actually had to keep the rear windows partially open so I could breath).

The only hole and light during my hike

Friday night was spent with a few friends at a local dive bar, which was rather nice oddly enough. The bartender was pretty nice and generous with us to say the least. Though I wasn't up for that much drinking. Around 10 I bid adu and headed back to the rents for a nice long shower. Saturday was spent trying to find jewler who could fix an old watch of mine. I hit up 3 different places and all them said it would be too expensive and time consuming to do the fix in quesiton (broken crown). Oh well, the restof the day was spent helping my mon do her weekly shoping at a fe places so I my sister wouldn't have to deal with it. That night was dinner out with family. Sunday was rather bland and I tried stopping by my favorite german deli, only to find it closed on a sunday. Ugh, so no frozen sausage came back with me that afternoon to Oakland. Oh well. After all it was still a nice tight trip to say the least.

The Rent's cat trying to ignore me

Birthday and Xmass

If you're inclined to exchange presents with me this year for my upcoming birthday and Xmass, here is what I'm looking for . . .

In Who's Name - book Birth/Naitre/Die Geburt: Photographs of Magnum Photos/Photographies De Magnum Photos/Fotografien Von Magnum Photos Magnum Opus - book paperback In Our Time - book Magnum Story - book reading Magnum - book Magnum Magnum - book Kubrick Archive - book Kubrick A Life in Pictures - book

By the TIme I get to Arizona (Part III)

Day three started off early. I wanted to get up and get breakfast and then find myself to Navajo reservation as soon as could. Early though was at 8am and a 20 minute drive around Page Arizona and not finding any place open to eat. Ugh, I did find a convenience store open and ate shit I shouldn't be eating and picked up some water for day in the desert.

I headed south and then east passing the boarder and into the Navajo nation. To the dead east was a huge coal-electric station, that belted out large gapes of gray and black gas and polluted the skyline. I found my off ramp which was just to the west of this place and settled down into small car-line of sorts waiting at the gates to get into the parking lot. The wait was about 30 minutes and few more cars settled in behind me, or tried to double up next to already formed line in hopes of cutting thier way in so to say. To enter the Navajo land or nation you had to pay a fee. Once in you then had to pay one of 4 outifts that licensed to take tours of the various slot canyons found within the Navajo nation. I had already booked a time and tour of the lower antelope canyons and paid extra so I could get the photographer special so to say.

all of the canyons in question are sandstone rock that has been cut and warn by about a 1000 years of flash floods and erosion. The sandstone also has a lot of glazed clay to it, giving it a strong red-orange color, mixed with ambient lighting that filters down to the bottom of these canyons is kind of a once in a life time site that you'll not find any place else.

In all honesty, this part of the trip was one of the two reasons for taking this trip. I had seen over the last few years that a few friends of mine had visited these canyons and wanted to visit them as well, so in the weeks prior and I scoured what trips could be made and centered this trip so I could visit at least 2 canyons while on this trip. For this trip I'd visit the both the lower and upper antelope canyons. Most people I know had visited the upper canyons, the lower canyon from what I could tell would have far less people on it and I wanted to take as many photos I could. So I had booked a photographer special (2 hours vs the normal 1 hour) for both canyons and set up the lower canyon as first tour of the day. Lucky for me, I was the only one to book the photographer special for that time and day so I had about half the canyon to myself and guide for the first hour

My tour guide was 18 your old kid from the Navajo nation named Josh. I have to say that this kid had the world by his balls. What mean by that was he uber friendly, way too talkitive and really out to explore the world around him. He was chatty the entire tour. We actually started at the end of the canyon and then made our way towards the start where the normal tours started. This way we had the canyon to ourselves. I was amused at by all the photo talk he gave me about the canyon and what to shoot, mostly telling me hor to ge the best color in all my shots. I had actually brought along two camera's for this morning, the first being my Leica M7 loaded with Plus-X B&W films on my tripod. Around my neck was my Leica m240 digital camera and in the bag was assortment of several wide angle prime lenses to capture the morning's work.

As you can see from the photos that I've littered here on this blog posting, my interest in shooting in this canyon had a lot more to do with light, darkness and texture found within the canyon and not so much about color and content. In total, I shot about 400 digital picture and full roll and half of B&W photos over a 2 hour period. Many of them at first glance look and felt the same, so I had to spend a lot of time first choosing the right photos from among-st my work and then some time in post production making them stand out from hundreds of others. At this time, I've only developed the lower antelope photos, so all those found here are from that canyon at this time. Anyway, as we started to meet up with the normal tours, josh then found time to flirt and jump into every selfie being taken within the canyon. I have to say I was amused as hell at his energy and gumption.

Anyway, at the end of tour, I tipped him well knowing that he was stuck with me as his only customer for the morning sojourn and headed back into Page Arizona for lunch. As I had a second tour lined up for mid afternoon, I drove around the town after lunch to get a better idea of surroundings, as I drove by the local highschool a cop uturned and stared to follow me. 2-3 minutes later I was being pulled over speeding. It seems that while at the bottom of the hill that the speed limit was 45, they hid a second sign for 30mph half way up the hill and nailed me for going 10 miles over the speed limit. Great, so the trip was going to cost me another $200. Oh well, but I did make my way back to the Navajo nation and found that my second tour hadn't been set up right. While I had signed up for a tour, they had no record of me having signed up a photographer tour that afternoon. In all honesty I was kind of glad as earlier tour had really taken a lot of photo-ness and I had put the M7 away for the second tour (I really didn't want to lug a tripod around again is what it really came down too). So I ended up doing one of the last (normal) tours of the Upper Antelope Canyons that day.

I ended up in the back of a 4 wheel drive pick up truck with 5 german tourests for a 10 minute drive up the canyon to the Upper Antelope slot canyon. This was in effect the main canyon to tour as it was twice as deep and wide as the lower canyon is. What that means was more ambient light and greater vaulted (deep walls) height and even more tourists as whole. I was glad to have done this tour, but the place was packed people and moving around and getting shots of the place wasn't easy. If Could have toured the place by myself, then it would have hands down beaten the lower canyon too, but with large number of folks touring it kind of diminished things for me. Also, once you were done with the canyon, you had to slip back threw it to get to your waiting 4 wheeld drive pick up truck to get back to your car, so I have to say, I really enjoyed the lower canyon more then I did the upper canyon, but was glad to have done both. After getting back, I was then in need of a doing a 5ish hour drive back to Phoenix for the night

By the Time I get to Arizona . . . (part 2)

So, I didn't get out of Sedona till quite a bit later then thought I would and didn't make it to Flagstaff till about 11pm. I had booked a place according to Epedia based on location and price. Well, right after my shower I found I had booked wrong motel of sorts. I could hear the fun being had in the room next to mine with bed slamming against the wall. As you an tell, I didn't end up with the best night's sleep as the fun times went stereo at 6am. Anyway, it was good invitation to get on the road early at least. I had another 2 hours of driving to hit the main part of the Grand Canyon to do and didn't want to deal with crowds if I could help it. None the less it took about 20 minutes to get past the gate even that early in the morning (and off season). I promptly got lost in Grand Canyon Village for the next 30 minutes too. The roads and signage were less then stellar to say the least. The build up of village was odd too. Anyway, I finally broke down and sat tight for about 20 minutes while pured over maps to figure out what I wanted to do. I ended up doing one of the most done hikes you can do in the Grand Canyon. So ya, it actually took me about an hour to find the stupid canyon . . .

As you can tell, visiting the grand canyon itself wasn't really on the top of my agenda for this trip. But my main thoughts for visiting were of course, I had never visited it (other then in photos) and it was on the way to one of those places I had really wanted to go to (see part III). Part of my blah atitude for visiting the canyon was I knew I could really only visit for a day at best and I'd be hitting the most touristy part of too. I was happy though I wasn't hitting it in August (as it would bee too fucking hot, hazy and filled with even more tourest)and Iknew I'd kick myself if I had just blown it off too.

So, I did the Rim/Hermit trail hike. Basically you start at the Bright Angle lodge in the Village and follow the rim of the Grand Canyon till you hit Hermit's Rest. It's about 5.5 miles and fairly flat hike. Dumb me didn't pack much in the way of water though, but I still easily did the walk with two camera's in tow. While the breath of the canyon is really something to see, their was also a mild haze, which made for less then stellar photography. Then add that I was doing this walk during the mid day, meant less then stellar lighting too. That having been said, I oddly enjoined the company I kept running into while on the trail. I rarely head English spoken, with a lot of French, German what I think was Brazilian being spoken with smidgen of Chinese and Spanish along the way. I've oddly come to like hearing non-english being spoken when I explore. The hike took me to most of the same well worn landmarks you'd see along this part of the canyon too. At the end I opted to take the bus back, which was it's own short story. I headed directly to the back of the bus, not really wanted to deal with where some had thrown up seat on the trip to Hermit's rest for obvious reasons. AS we traveled back, the bus quickly began to fill up too. At one point a muslim family boarded and the husband in the group couldn't sit with his kids and wife, so he ended up at the rear of the bus with me. At the next stop a large load of Merkians boarded and none of them would sit next to him. And older couple quickly settled next to me as I had my Powells books tshirt on and they were from the Pacific Northwest and we settled into Portland talk pretty quickly. But despite the crowding, this poor guy was being ignored for, well, for obvious reasons so to say. I can't really stand this type of behavior where everyone isn't being obviously racists, but in fact is being racist. It's stupid as fuck. None of this is generally helped by me as I tend to be anti social and not very chatty with complete strangers to start with. So as we approached the village I leaned out and asked him how he and his family were enjoying their trip. The depressed look on his face immediately did a 180 at this point and he told us he and his family were enjoying their stay in Northern Arizona. the older couple kind of took it from there and added into the conversation at that point. What amused me the most I hate to say was that the guy and his family were native born US citizens and from Indianpolis. The Indianaplis part actually made me laugh, as it surpassed the older couple quite a bit. That just about made my day.

Lunch back in the village was pretty uneventful and as I knew I needed to hit the road again I was back on the road following the canyon rim. I stopped from time to time to snap a few pictures and even took a 30 minute hike out one of outcrops to try and get a shot of the breath of the canyon. The hike was nice, but shots I got were blah. Oh well. I did end up stopping at last fire look out and hiked around as the magic hour hit. I think I got my best shots here of the canyon, but I still had about 2 hours of driving and didn't want to be as late as I had been the day before, so as soon as I could, I was back on the road again.

By the Time I get to Arizona . . . (part 1)

Friday, to say the least was hectic, and probably most productive day of my flash bamb vacation before starting a new job at UC Berkeley. Oh if you hadn't heard I'm now working at UC Berkeley school of environmental design as their new AV manager. Anyway, since I haven't really taken a vacation ages, and since it would be at least a year before I had any real vacation a-crewed, it was high time to get the hell out of Berkeley for a few days.

Anyway, Friday started for me at 4am, yep 4am. I was up and on my way to Oakland airport via bart for a 5;30am flight. My train was maybe 15 minutes late too. Thanks BART. The Oakland airport at 5am was little used, so my flight to LA was uneventful. Actually I had 3 seats to myself on the first flight, that was awesome. I can't actually remember the last time I had even a free seat next to me! The layover at LAX was equally uneventful and the flight too was in that direction. My flight would finish off at Phoenix, where I had spied video tripod on craiglist while I was in LAX, so I 15 drive later and I had scored a very nice (but used) Monfrotto tripod. After that was to be a leserly drive north with scheduled stops on my way to Flagstaff for the night. But my in car map program kind of failed me. Originally I was head to Sedona for a hour long hike. Then stops at some early native American sites. instead the GPS map failed to direct me to Sedona and I noticed some signage for the last of the 3 native American sites. Ugh. So this part of the trip was actually done in reverse, with a stop at Montazuma's well, followed by Montazuma's Castle and then Tizigoot. All were nice, but Castle access was less then stellar I hate to say. Tizigoot was best the best of three to explore and shoot too.

Montazum's well - natural well of soft that feeds into the local river and kept early native americans with water when the river rand dry

Montazuma's Castle - this whole area actually was filled with settlements, but this is the best known one and handled by the national park service. Up until the 60's you could climb up into the rock homes and explore.

Tizigoot- another settlement for central Arizona and one you can actually enter and see.

After this it was an hour drive into the hills to Sedona to see Cathedral rock. Once I hit the town I had a bit of traffic and some absolutely wild shots of the mounts/hills around the town as magic hour approached and lots of fluffy little dramatic clouds I wanted to shoot. Fuck me, I wish I could have spent a week alone in and around Sedona just to hike and photograph. Anyway, I did make to Cathedral rock, just magic hour was hitting I quickly grabbed my cameras and a tripod and hit the 2 mile straight up the hill hike with minor rock climbing to boot. I have to say this was well worth the hike, even in partial dark, as the summet plus magic hour lighting on all the red rocks, epic clouds and skyline made for the most fantiascitly easy shoots of my life. Really I couldn't aim the camera's anywhere without a great photo coming out of it. The walk back down in the dark was something else too. Just ask my back!

The hike ahead up Cathedral rock

About to summet

At the Summet

The view when coming back down in near darkness

After putting my camera equipment away, it was dinner in Sedona and then 2 hour drive to Flagstaff for the night. The next day of the trip would take me to the Grand Canyon. (more to come)

Misc Recent Stuff

So 6 weeks on my current bout of unemployment. The two weeks were eventful and filled with friends. The next 4 weeks have been filled with lots of boredom. I have used the time to get some work done, but I'm also not getting as much done either. Or at least that's what if feels like these days. I'm nearly ready for the next leap forward in life. I have been hiking quite a bit with a 10 hike along the coastal hills this week out in Marin and a trip into SF for the tail end of fleet week. I really dig that area as a whole and would like to spend more time there, but I also need to keep costs down so I'm only going out once a week for stuff like this. Otherwise I'm sticking close to home. On a good note, I'm getting a lot of reading done at least!

I really didn't want to deal with the crowds of SF's latest fleet week, so I put off going into town till last day of it (monday). I had hoped the crowds would have basically been non-existent due to the day being both a school day as well as work day. My first I started on the most northern of docks thinking I'd work south and catch tours of all 6 ships. As you can tell from my tone, I failed here. Actually things started off well with a visit to the HMCS Calgery (Canadian frigate). Getting onto the ship was fairly easy and the tour was rather small and short with access to the flight deck and mainly the open port section of the ship. THe crew was typically "nice", but when I made my way to the stern the crew had let folks (like me) handle some of their fireams. No, none of them weer loaded, but still. People who haven't been around and learned about firearms tend to be really dumb with them too. They tend to think they are toys. So I came threw the bulk head to find woman having her picture taken with a M16 and pointing said M16 at me. Oy vay, I think the 4-5 friends I have that are gun nuts would have taken it better then me, I simply asked that they not point that anything they didn't intend to pull the trigger at and deal with the consequences of having done so. That's some basic NRA training to say the least, I'd have hoped the Canadian NAvy would have taught this to their sailors too. But the two sailors in question looked like they were bored and tired of us dumb Merikans on their boat after 5 days too. I took that good reason to head south along the waterfront to visit all of the US ships. About a half mile down I found the USS Somerset by it's lonesome and found myself what I thought was a modest line to get onto her. An hour later I was up and on the flight deck and waiting in another line. This time to tour the interior of the ship (really just in line to be taken to the bridge). Anyway I have to say the ship in question was pretty fascinating as a whole. Many many years earlier I had been vietnam era ship (that fulfilled the same mission) and I have to say that we've come a long way since then in ship design. After I finished the tour it was 3pm and I knew it would take me 30-60 minutes to get to the next ship and was reminded that the tours would end at 4. So only 2 ships in 4 hours. oy Vay.

In the last two weeks I've had two interviews up at UC Berkeley for an AV position. I have to say that I did give very good interview the first time around, but I went away from it not sure if I wanted the position in question. I was actually kind of hoping they had found someone better then me for the position. SO I was surprised on Monday to get a text from my last supervisor about my references being checked. I ended up talking to a few folks after that about the possibility of taking the job in question. Everyone said I should. I have to say I was surprised at that. Anyway, I heard the next day that they wanted me to come in and have a second interview for Friday. So Friday rolls around and I'm nearly out the door and find I can't find my wallet. great. I can't miss this, so I'm off without out. Second interview as a whole seemed to go well, but I'm not 100% on it due to dealing with full sized dean this time around (the higher up some one is in institute, the better their poker face I've found). It was a long interview, which is generally good. I should hear early this week. On the down side, no sign of my wallet, so this week will be spent at the DMV dealing with them fuckers. Ugh.

and I found my wallet this morning. Ugh

Los Angeles

Another small trip to Los Angeles is done and under the belt so to say. When I heard I was to be laid off this was the first trip I set up to keep me busy and relaxed of sort. The last time around I had stayed in Korea town, but this time around I wanted to stay downtown. It's kind of odd, but having grown up in LA I kind of spent the first 40 years of life avoiding it. What time I spent in downtown was either getting dimsum, or crewing some student film. But since I left LA, the downtown area of LA has kind of fascinated me, mostly it's been the history and all the noir films I've seen over the years. Anyway, I booked a few nights at the Stay on Main, which is a very old flop house conversion (originally the Hotel Cecil). The lobby was rather nice, the rooms were rather sparse and cheaply updated, which oddly enough was exactly what I wanted. The reason was I wanted to spend as little time as possible at the hotel. Anyway, after getting into town my early diner plans went south as my old work colleague was stuck in a long meeting and had to cancel on me. Oh well. So I headed to the hotel and spent the evening rambling about.

That first evening I mainly roamed around the hotel area, picked up some tastie proper Mexican food and snapped a few photos before it got too dark. I was happy to find some of the old downtown I was wanted, but was also struck by all the new young well to do residents who were out and about too.

I was up kind of early on Saturday, tried to have breakfast at the hotel, but really could only have a small bowl of cereal as the rest of the free food looked rather dreadful. Anyway, I left the hotel and wanted over to the LA's flower market in hopes of finding folks at work to shoot (photographically that is), but the whole hood was rather sparse. I suspect most of the bulk of the flower distribution business takes place in the early AM, so most of the folks I ran into were mainly tourist or brides to be on the look out for cutting out the middle man for their upcoming day in the sun.

After the flower market, I wandered south to check out the Santte Alley, which is kind of hidden in the middle of the downtown fashing district. It's an odd mix of local latino and korean stalls filled with stuff. I was still kind of early, but workers and owners were busy setting up for the day's activities none the less.

Around noon, I was off to valley to meet up meet up with an old friend for lunch who had been kind enough to pick up some film equipment I had won in LA auction a few weeks earlier. We spent some time catching up on all sorts of stuff and learned what was up in each others lives and what not. I did get to hear about his current attempts to get a low budget film off the ground. The premise sounded good too.

Afterwards, I headed into hollywood to visit all the places I always visit. Mainly it was old house on haunted hill, a few old record and camera shops. For dinner I met up another old friend who mentioned that the New Beverly was running double feature A Fist Full of Dollars and Yojimbo. Holly shit I cancelled my later meet up and spent the evening in wonder. Actually when we got to the theater, it was technically sold out and we waited in a line that went around the block with the hopes that we'd get one of the 100 reserved seats that they don't sell online. ANyway, the crowd was mainly male and was mainly there for the Leone film, which was rather faided and scratched too hell. It was a good showing none the less and Yojimbo was as always fantastic (and very good print too).

Sunday: I was up early again, but I also had plans for brunch in San Marino, so I didn't have much wandering time as I had on Saturday. Anyway, brunch was catching up with an old friend who I hadn't talked to in about 8 years, I think were were the only folks under 50 in this particular place to boot too. The brunch went rather long, so I headed off to Pasadena to my old friend Norton Simon, so wander the garden and catch up with Degas.

After the Norton SImon, I was off late lunch with a pair of friends I hadn't seen since I was teenager. Our meeting was one of those Facebook things of sorts, the friends in question were from my teenage years and actually slightly older then me, so when we hit college, we started seeing less and less of each other and our grown up ways really cut us off from each other too. Facebook was institute that brought us back together. So by count this as reunion 25 years in the making. Oy vay. Anyway, we caught up, but also talked about those of us who had passed on or had succumbed to mental illness. Mental illness and gamers from the 80's really do seem to walk hand in hand, as a mutual friend of all of us who had come back into contact with via facebook was obviously in midst of a his own long winding meltdown was the last subject of lunch.

Afterwards I was southward bound to Dean's shop, for a BBQ. I ended up getting back to Stay on Main around 1am. I wasn't up as early as I would have liked, so my morning was mainly spent hiking to my last get together in LA for brunch with Debra and her son. I think it had been about 15 years since I had seen my former coworker from UCLA, and I most definitly hadn't met her offspring either, so it was nice way to end my stay in LA. Afterwards it was a 8 hour drive up the 101, with occasional stop to use the xpan and back home for a few days rest.