Left Coast Leener

Аргентинская Патагония. Район Ушуайи.


By alex_v_shmarin

Stupid Facebook and their new picture viewing mode has made it difficult to link to picture location sources, so these are smaller.

( Part 1, Joshua Tree )

( Part 1a, Noah Purefoy Art )

( Part 2, Salton Sea )

Хочу съездить с мужем на машине по пустыням и заброшеным местам Ю. Калифорнии. Предположительно на длинные выходные в феврале, плюс пару дней. Муж желает ползать с фотоаппаратом и снимать заброшенные городки и неординарные растения, а я - расслабляться в походном кресле и глазеть на прекрасное. Сильные нагрузки типа походов отпадают в силу моего состояния здоровья, то есть нужно что бы было не далеко от машины. Собираемся в одну сторону ехать по первой дороге до Санта Барбары, в другую по пятой, так что принимаются предложения подобных достопримечательностей по дороге. Лос Анжелес и Сан Диего не интересуют. Предложите по вашему опыту и вкусу конкретные точки в списке ниже, что добавить или убрать, и сколько времени там проводить:

Salton Sea
Joshua Tree
Searles Lake
Death Valley

Также, посоветуйте пожалуйста гостиницу где можно недорого остановиться около пустынь с благами цивилизации типа чистой ванны и интернета. Может Palm Springs?

You DC people are total pussies - there's barely a snowflake on the ground! Andy's friends and dad cancelled, but at least my friends aren't afraid to merely leave the house. I hear things are going to clear up by the time we get to fly to Boston, because apparently all the airports are wussies as well! But at least we're not at Domodedovo.

My mother finds a way to blame me for everything in France - long lines at passport control, lack of airport lockers and cost of luggage storage, train ticket machine malfunction (or actually just bad design), the amount of documentation required to exchange currency, the length of the city blocks and the price of food. Yet, when we make it to the airport with no trouble whatsoever and time to spare, think I get the credit?

Paris was a bit rainy and lacked galettes (or any street food, for that matter), but beautiful as ever. Did a crazy loup and not nearly as much as I could have had I not had slowpoke mom.

At least the flight to St. Pete and the airport was uneventful. We were picked up by my uncle and his driver and went to stay in their apartment, on the same Ikea futon as we have at home. Jumping forward, I'll add that we stayed on another one of those in Amsterdam.

In the city over the next two days, we had the joy of purchasing train tickets from a building dedicated solely to this purpose. We saw the outside of the Hermitage, walked around Nevsky, did a walking circle around the islands and ate at an awesome Georgian restaurant. We met up with my friend Ira and saw a former bread factory converted to an awesome arts space called "Этажи", saw some cool cartoons at their exemplary communal apartment (inserted below the cut) and also got an awesome book with all of the content hand-printed.

Finally, we got on a train to Minsk. More on that later.

( Meanwhile, here are some awesome cartoons. )

P.S. Anybody know WTF is up with the embed code for the first video? My HTML foo is not strong enough.

they have internet here, too!

and possibly, tomorrow, snow.

woke up too early, read LJ 950 entries back.

off to have the one thing i can't find in the states - kletski!

Bernie Madoff was in the news a lot today, and to me, that just kept sounding like "Burning Man." Incidentally, this morning, a very nice girl named Nomusa replied to my Craigslist post and totally made my day-week-month by selling me 2 BM tickets for $420. That's right - First Level, no fees, still stapled to the original receipt. As in, she actually paid the fees and shipping and for some reason didn't charge them of me. Nomusa, you are definitely my hero! (And pretty, to boot!)

And once I get through my latest financial enfuckment, I'll be even more excited!

Думаю, что в этом году мне таки придется съездить в Минск. По традиции мы выбираемся раз в лет 5, и время подходит. Я бы не столько по этому поводу волновалась, но моя тетушка (один из самых любимых людей в мире) еще непонятно сколько проживет, а также надо это приключение провернуть до того, как мы решим размножаться. Даже не знаю как это все смогу провернуть. Усугубляющие факторы возможно угробят эту идею, но как цель надо поставить.

Во-первых это ужасно дорого, особенно из СФ. А я обязательно хочу с Андрюшей, так что все умножаем на два. А я не работаю.

Во-вторых у меня сейчас нет паспорта. Помимо всех остальных проблем с ним, в которые я не буду углубляться, меня корябит его получать, а потом получать еще один с новым именем. Что значит, до поездки нам придется таки узаконить наши отношения.

В-третих, конечно, визы. Я наотрез отказываюсь лететь в сам Минск, я не желаю иметь дело с ихним аэропортом ни за какие коврижки. Тогда варианта два: или получать еще и двухкратные визы в Россию и лететь в Москву или в Питер, или лететь в Киев. Как бы мне не хотелось повидать всех любимых людей в России, это добавляет еще минимум неделю (а у Андрюши осталось не так много отпуска), и уйму денег (которых и так нет). Если в Киев, где у меня тоже есть знакомые, то волнует вопрос насколько нас будут мучать на границе если мы поедем на поезде. Может еще есть какой-то вариант с Вильнюсом, но я его еще не рассматривала. Реальный плюс нелетания в Минск то, что мы не регистрируем визы - контакт с беларускими ведомствами я избегаю, живем мы у родственников, а если остановят - я, мол, только что на поезде приехала, у меня еще 72 часа.

Наверно придется прибегать к услугам агенства для виз, ибо в прошлый раз я без них бы никогда визу не получила - суки в посольстве арестовали мой паспорт. Хоть в этот раз мне не надо будет у них покупать приглашение - надеюсь, Оля сможет выслать. (Судя по ужасному английскому на странице посольства, приглашения вроде уже не обязательны, но судя по странице ихнего МИДа - вроде не избежать. Ничего про регистрацию виз я вообще не нашла.) И что там за котовася со страховкой? Я надеюсь моего Кайзера им хватит.

Но мой опыт пятилетней давности, может что-то изменилось? Надежды мало, особенно с урезанием дипломатических отношений между нашеми странами...

И как все-таки туда дешевле и легче всего попасть?

Whatever you do, if you take the Chinese bus from DC to NYC, do not take New Century, or whatever else they call themselves!

We bought tickets for 10am, and when we got there, there was some rumor that there is no such thing and the next, 11am bus would make a stop in Philly. This turned out to be true, and the rude raspy Chinese woman in charge yelled it at me. When the bus finally arrived, of course there wasn't room for both the 10 and 11am passengers and a crushing mob ensued. We did a smart thing - I ran in to save him a seat and he threw our suitcases into the bottom. Two people were lined up before Andy in the bus's "foyer" as he tried to enter and the rude raspy woman blocked off access to the bus and wouldn't let him through, until I yelled at her for several minutes that I saved him a seat. The next guy wasn't so lucky - she proceeded to punch and kick him down the bus stairs.

When we were finally on our way, we thought things were going relatively well. Until at the NJ-PA split we headed in a third direction altogether, took a huge loop around and headed in the general direction of Philly until we went right past our exit. No problem! Just back up in the leftest lane of the freeway and take a precarious exit next to a leafy abyss.

We did leave Philly relatively quickly and only had minor traffic on the Turnpike, until the actual turn into the Holland Tunnel. Our genius waited so long to merge into the correct lane that we ended up getting a rather scenic tour of Jersey City. Only three hours late in all.

Of course, my friend Jacob said that of the twenty hours of my life that got fuckered up thusly, I spend another 60 bitching about it (in retelling the story), but I think I get to bitch.

My first visit wasn't remarkable, but certainly not pleasant. I was made to hang out with much older kids who didn't care for me.

My second was certainly memorable - the hotel room I was staying in had a kitchenette. The stove decided to explode into a ball of flames. Nobody was hurt but my wallet, since they made me pay for the damages.

The third visit may result in some legal action.

I wasn't actually intending to be here for more than my hour-and-a-half layover. It even happened that my plane from SF was supposed to take us all the way to DC, so I was annoyed with having to take out all my stuff and put it right back on.

We actually boarded on time and were about to take off when a passenger discovered a box cutter blade, I heard later that it might have been in an overhead. So all are made to deplane while the Harbor Police comb the aircraft, and we are shoved through an additional security screening. I should note here that our flight was supposed to leave at 10:30 pm and the SD airport has an 11:30 curfew. By the time we were back from security they told us that they'd be paying a fine to get us out past curfew.

After sitting on the plane for a while, the captain came on and told us that a passenger was missing. Considering the fact that the airport was locked, this was certainly weird. They sent the FBI after him. They found him an hour later and he said he had a bad back and had to leave. Skipping ahead, we found out later that he bought his first-class one-way ticket right before departure, for cash. He had no checked luggage and was wearing shorts and a t-shirt on his way to DC. Anyway, the next announcement the captain makes is that two flight attendants are "uncomfortable" with continuing. At first I thought this was because we are so delayed and they were tired, but no, they are freaked out by the security situation. They were unable to find replacements, and the flight was finally cancelled.

After standing in line for another hour we were given hotel, food and cab vouchers and a $150 flight voucher. Not good enough, fuckers! I am going to raise hell and get United to comp my whole fucking flight! This makes a total of 3 hours of sitting on a plane and hauling our stuff off and onto it, for a total delay of 14 hours (if the replacement flight manages to leave on time). I realize that I don't actually care about xmas and that those Amtrak passengers had it worse, but this is just fucked up. Flight attendants walking off their jobs when a planeload of passengers wants to get the fuck home? There's service for you! Merry fucking xmas to you too, assholes!

All to a continuous soundtrack of xmas music, to make it even better.