Tag Archives: walks

Reviews

Christoph Rehage's China hike

Christoph Rehage walked through China for a year, on foot, while letting his hair and beard grow. The total distance walked was 4,646 km. He took photos of himself along the way, then put them together in a wonderful time lapse video which you can see below. He also kept a travel log, which he’s been posting to his website.

I bookmarked his video a few weeks back and meant to blog it. Now it’s already making the rounds. If I hadn’t procrastinated, I wouldn’t be in the me-too group…

It’s a great video, and a great achievement. It’s amazing to see Christoph’s face change through his trip. He emerges a changed man at the end, and exclaims as he puts up a photo of himself at the start of the trip, “Who was this man? Was it really me?” Good question.

The Longest Way 1.0 – one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

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Thoughts

Tightrope walker ad for The Economist

Brilliant ad for The Economist magazine, featuring a tightrope walker that begins his ascent from the sidewalk, and, by walking across interconnecting red ropes, reaches a place high above the city. The tagline is “Let your mind wander.” All I can say is it’s wonderfully done. Does anyone know who the rope walker is?


The Economist Red Wires ad

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Places

Photos from Beach Drive

Beach Drive is a picturesque road that winds its way through Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC and the surrounding suburbs. Although called by different names along its various portions, it starts at the base of the Lincoln Monument as Rock Creek Parkway, NW, and ends somewhere in Rockville, MD, possibly at the end of Dewey Rd. I’ll let you trace it from end to end — it’s fun to follow it on Google Maps — just remember, the road should be inside the wooded areas at all times, and houses shouldn’t line it on both sides.

Certain portions of it are closed during weekends so that cyclists and pedestrians can take walks alongside it without the danger of cars. Road closure details are listed on the NPS – Rock Creek Park website.

Rock Creek Park and Beach Drive are truly one of the places to see in DC. The regular roads can get so clogged at times, and it can become so inhuman to sit in traffic and stare at buildings and cars on either side, that Beach Drive provides a welcome respite from the city.

Literally surrounded on each side by tall trees and bushy vegetation, it’s easy to forget one is in the middle of DC. It’s just beautiful. The only time the road’s proximity to nearby development is seen is during winter, when the houses and the roads are revealed to be only a few hundred feet away or less on certain portions of the road.

Understandably so, my wife and I go there often, and we also take photos. Here are a few taken on a recent trip. Click on each to enlarge it, then click again to view at full size (currently 720 pixels wide).

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Places

A weekend down in Florida

Ligia and I took a mini-vacation this past weekend and flew down to Florida to see my parents. You might remember it as the place where I feel most at home here in the States.

We left our cozy little apartment last Friday morning, and in a couple of hours, thanks to the amazing convenience of modern travel, I found myself wielding a weed whacker in my parents’ yard. After other assorted yard work, a little dazed by the torrid sun, I took refuge under the auspices of a cold shower, where I cleaned bits of grass and plants… from places I didn’t even know I had. There’s something funny about switching computer work for yard work. I just know there is.

So what else did I do? The usual geeky son stuff. I assembled a home theater furniture piece and rewired the various components that made it up, such as the two satellite dish receivers, VCR, DVD player and Apple TV. Now it looks really nice, if I might say so myself.

I installed the latest updates from Apple on their two Macs. Installed SP3 on their XP virtual machine running on Parallels. (Which reminds me, I need to check with my mom soon and see if Parallels will continue to give her grief now that I reinstalled it.)

Also updated their Drobo with the latest version of the Dashboard. By the way, their Drobo is still loud because the fan cranks into high gear prematurely and stays there inordinate amounts of time. I talked about this in my Drobo review, and I’d like to see Data Robotics come out with a firmware update for this problem in the near future.

We also found time to go to the beach, twice. I got to blind everyone there with my amazingly white complexion. It felt good — after all, I worked hard to get it. It took months and months in front of the computer to achieve that perfect pasty pallor.

One of our walks on the beach was at dusk.

As night fell and the sky darkened, city lights became more apparent in the distance.

We attended a friends’ wedding as well. I’d post their photo, but I’m not sure how comfortable they’d be with that, so I’ll stick to a photo of Ligia and I, taken by my mom.

I asked my parents if I could post a couple of photos I took of them, and they agreed. Here’s my dad.

And here’s my mom.

I’m happiest about convincing my mom to sit down with us on the last evening to watch The Awful Truth (1937), one of our most favorite movies. Yes, she enjoyed it.

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A Guide To A Good Life

My favorite pair of casual shoes

–> Updated: these shoes turned out to be terribly put together. The sole came apart from the shoe less than a year after I got them. I asked LL Bean to replace them, which they did. They sent me a new version of the shoes whose soles also came apart from the shoes about a year after I got that pair. So while they were comfortable to wear, their durability was terrible. Caveat emptor. 

I’ve been wearing a new pair of Keen shoes for the past few weeks, and I love them. If they haven’t got the showroom look in my photos, it’s because they haven’t been sitting in the closet.

I spotted them at L.L.Bean and couldn’t resist the design. They looked so comfortable and cool, up there on the shelf, that I had to try them on and get them. Indeed they are comfortable, even for extended walks, and they’re a lot of fun to wear.

One thing I should mention, if you care about that sort of thing: this particular design will make your feet seem smaller. I took a photo of one of my formal shoes next to one of my Keen shoes, just to show you the difference. Believe it or not, the formal shoes are slightly tight on my toes (length-wise, not width-wise). The Keen shoe looks smaller, yet my feet have no problems fitting in there.

While women may love having their feet look smaller, I understand that some men may not go for that sort of thing… Apparently foot size is associated with a certain other size in our vernacular. Personally, I’ve gotten over that, because I like these shoes a lot. Just thought I’d put that out there in case any of the women reading this are thinking about getting them for their significant others.

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