travel

I recently purchased a super-sweet Xootr MG scooter to use as my primary mode of transportation to work. And I love it. It is a "kick" or "push" scooter, not one of those sissy motorized ones. This is all man-power, baby. Although the Xootr was a bit expensive, it is easily one of the most worthwhile purchases I've made in recent years. Here are 10 reasons why:

1) It gets me to work twice as fast as walking.

The most direct route from my apartment to my work is about 1.7 miles, but that includes many of San Francisco's (in)famous hills. The more manageable, level route I usually take is 2.5 miles (5 miles round trip). Walking, this takes me 40-45 minutes each way. Xootr scootering, it takes me about 20 minutes. Over the course of a week, that's an extra 3+ hours added to my life for cold chillin' maxin' and relaxin'.

2) It's a nice workout.
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I went to Boston this weekend and was faced with a common traveling dilemma. Not wanting to check any baggage (emotional or otherwise), at the airport I had on my person at all times my usual items of import for a weekend trip:
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greetings, people of earth. i have safely made the journey home to extremely warm tempe, arizona. to my great surprise, my house is in precisely the same state of disarray as when i left. i was hoping a special european cleansing fairy would have paid a visit, but alas.... i was additionally surprised by the fact that part of the ceiling in my living room is falling down and that my landlord hasn't mowed the damn lawn since i left. i feel like i'm living in a third-world country, damn it, and i'm a jet-setting playboy fresh off a grand tour of europe. ah well...back to reality. if you emailed me while i was away, i'll try to respond to it some day. it appears that i have a few dozen virus-laden messages to delete and protect my 'puter from, so it may take a bit....

hi all - i'm at london's heathrow airport right now. my flight doesn't leave for another couple of hours (the "tube," london's subway, got me here faster than i thought it would), and i saw this internet kiosk and decided to get rid of some of these extra british coins. yesterday i explored london while javier was at work, and saw buckingham palace, took a really cool tour of the secret underground cabinet war rooms (where churchill and govnt conducted much of wwii operations), had a picnic lunch in hyde park, saw shakespeare's globe theatre, and just wandered around a bunch. when jav came home we had dinner at this little italian place by his flat and it was tasty. we talked about old school pals, our 10-year high school reunion (which he attended but i did not), and various other items of interest.
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i arrived in london yesterday morning. it turns out two people from the conference were on my same flight from sweden (heather, who is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the universty of nevada, reno and her husband, who is a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience at UC Berkeley), so we all hung out a bit at the airport and took the train from the airport to central london together. after arriving, i went to my friend javier's work, where he gave me keys to his flat and directions. i then went to his place, sat on his couch to rest for a bit (with the intention of getting lunch in a few minutes) and promptly fell asleep for about 5 hours. see, i had only had about 5 hours of sleep during the past 48 hours and was apparently quite sleepy. jav came home from work around 6:30, and i did my laundry at a nearby laundromat (launderette or something, as they're called here) while he made dinner.
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