A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason

Like LiveJournal?  Like A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason?

Now you can have both!*

A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason is now syndicated on LiveJournal.  If you already have a LiveJournal account it’s easy to add the feed to your friend’s page.

Special thanks go out to Dominic for setting this up.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about you probably don’t have a LiveJournal account and can ignore this post.

*Ok, technically you could always have both, but now you can have both in the same browser window.

After spending some time in Denver and Boulder I heading out of town to Rocky Mountain National Park.

It was the 4th of July weekend so I didn’t stay long.  Spent one night up in the mountains and then enjoyed spending a couple hours driving out of the park stopping and taking lots of pictures.  This was a chance for me to play around with my camera a lot.  I learned I really needed a tripod if I expected any of my early morning shots to come out nicely.

This was taken while standing right off of the continental divide.  This picture faces West to the Pacific.

Tomorrow is the start of the New Media Expo here in Vegas.  I’ll be hanging out at the OC Podcaster’s booth, hopefully recording some interviews for a super-cool project I’m working on.

No, you’re not going to get any more details beyond “super-cool” just yet.  Stay tuned!

I’ve taken about 2500 pictures this trip and am working now in getting it down to just a few that are actually good. With the results I’ve gotten from what I’ve gone through so far I figure I might end up with as many as 50 that are worth keeping. Here’s a couple from my drive out to Colorado at the start of this trip:

Both these pictures were taken from a rest stop in Utah. I believe I was on highway 70 at this point, though it might still have been the 15.

I haven’t been to all the states yet, but Utah just might have the best views from their rest stops. They are the sort of views that always make me grateful for the interstate highway system and glad I’m not traveling in a covered wagon across the deserts.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet bought a tripod so even though I was there a little later during a great sunset the low light pictures I took didn’t really come out very well. I guess I’ll just have to go back someday… What a shame.

I’ve been getting the chance to play around with my new camera on this trip and hopefully as I continue I’ll be able to up that ratio of 50 decent pictures out of every 2500.

More pictures coming as I get them sorted.

I’ve made it to Las Vegas where I’ll be for the next week visiting with a friend, starting up work again, and (next weekend) attending the New Media Expo.

This means that I’ll finally get all the pictures I’ve been taking sorted through and the good ones posted here. For now though I have a couple pictures I took earlier this evening while waiting for the AAA guy to come bring me some gas because I’d run out on Highway 93 in Nevada. Yes, that’s right, my little Prius ran out of gas.

In my defense I don’t think that’s completely true. According to the odometer I should have been able to make it another 80 miles or so. I should have had another 2 gallons left. I think it must have been that the gas was so low that for some reason it wasn’t getting to the engine. I don’t know what the outtake set up is on the gas tank, but that’s my current theory.

At any rate, I got stuck on the side of the highway and luckily had cell phone reception and a free trial version of the AAA “Plus” membership that includes a couple (in this case 5) gallons of gas brought out to you if you’re a dumbass and didn’t fill up in the last gas station for the next 90 miles.

The second picture should give you a good idea of exactly where in the middle of nowhere I was. It was empty pretty much the entire 90 miles between Ash Springs and Vegas. While talking to the dispatcher I had to walk about ten minutes to find a marker that would give a good idea of where I was. Even after walking that far I didn’t actually make it to a sign (though I could see one way off in the distance) but someone pulled over and was able to give me directions to pass on.

So I ate my dinner and took pictures, and now I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t try to go more than 450 miles on one tank even if I technically should have enough gas to do it. Here is my favorite picture of the evening:

Has nothing to do with travel, but I’m going to post about it anyway.  Well, actually since it’s what I worked on when I was sitting Yellowstone waiting for the geysers to go off I suppose it’s slightly related.

At any rate, here’s pictures of the skirt I just finished sewing tatting on to.  Still haven’t actually worn it though.  As you can see, it’s a bit wrinkled and could probably use a washing.

The front:

The back (There is another strip on the right.  It’s hard to see because it’s red):

Close up of the design:

Close up of the pattern for the tatters who want to see how it’s made:

I think the pattern came from the web.  I’ll have to look through my printouts and figure out where I got it.  I liked that pattern a lot and think it’s the one I’ll modify for a tablecloth.

Not very exciting for the non-crafters out there, but since I figure it took me about 70 hours for the whole project I’m happy to have finally finished it.