Doubleperf

These are the bio-diesel beasts that took us up to the top of the mountain for our ziplining yesterday. Very nice.

As seen in Star Markets in Lahaina (not to be confused with the real Stah Mahket), during our requisite daily grocery store stop on the way back from dinner tonight.

We took care of the one thing I really wanted to do in Hawaii right off the bat this morning, as Aimee and I rose at 3 am and drove 90 minutes to the summit of Haleakala, in the eastern half of Maui. We arrived just before 5 am, just as the sky was beginning to go from pitch black to dark blue, looking out from our vantage point above the clouds. The colors in the sky were just spectacular, and when the sun finally began to burn the top edges of the clouds as it rose at 5:41, and audible gasp went up among the 100+ people gathered at the edge of the overlook. The sun rose remarkably quickly after that, a searing red line, then blob, then semi-circle, and finally fully formed, a brilliant yellow.

After the sunrise, I took off on a 12-mile run through the crater (or rather, erosional valley) that was absolutely breathtaking. I felt like I was on another planet, running down hills of black sand and through plains of lava formations and silverswords. Pictures and more description to follow; needless to say, it was well worth it, even the three miles at the end, where I gained a thousand feet of elevation in an endless series of switchbacks. Now it’s time for a nap.

Aloha from Lahaina… We arrived this morning with Aimee’s parents and met up with Mark, Katie, Jack, and Faith at Costco near the airport - a popular shopping spot on a Saturday morning, apparently. We’ve spent some time in the infinity pool, taken in the views from the house, caught a mouse in the kitchen, and made a lot of plans for the week ahead. I’m hoping for a twelve-mile run in Haleakala at some point this week, and we’ve got plans for a luau, some zipline fun, and lots of other good stuff. Aimee noted that there weren’t many similarities between states #49 and 50, but Little Caesar’s Pizza and Tesoro gas stations are making me feel right at home. 50 out of 50!

After an off-hours attempt and thinking I might have missed the show altogether, I spent my lunch hour in an old CBS studio at Mr. Brainwash’s Life is Beautiful: Art Show 2008. It was a pretty great collection of work, much of it familiar from parking lots, buildings, and electricity boxes around L.A., where we’ve seen his signature work plastered over the last few years. Other material, like the classical paintings with modern elements and the rooms filled with books, were new to me. The life-size Nighthawks diner seems to be in progress, and is already pretty impressive.



The show, which seemed originally scheduled to end while we were in Italy, will be continuing through July, so Aimee and I will be returning at some point later on. Where did he get all those books?

The full set is here.

Like Iowa, North Dakota was one of those states I’d managed to miss despite a number of cross-country trips over the years, and visits to Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana. So, when our travel plans called for a trip to Montana in the summer of 2006, I knew this would be our chance to experience North Dakota, even if it meant a bit of a detour.

We arrived mid-afternoon into Fargo from Minneapolis, and took in a Fargo/Moorhead RedHawks game, as well as the Roger Maris Museum, before heading south to Rapid City, South Dakota. It was a brief visit, but we took our time, enjoyed the city, and started to get a sense of the place.

Only one more dot on the map left!

I’m not sure how, after at least four major cross-country road trips, I had still managed to miss Iowa, with places to go and people to see in Chicago, Minneapolis, and St Louis, but I had. And so, during our second trip out to L.A. in 2006, we made a little detour and nudged into Iowa through Davenport, Dubuque, and Dyersville, and had a great time.

We spent out first night in Davenport, in a huge suite at the Holiday Inn Express which we had gotten for free with our points, and which Aimee named the nicest room of the whole trip. We explored the Quad Cities (Davenport, plus Moline, Rock Island, and Bettendorf), did a little riverboat gambling, and called it a night. The next day, we headed north along the Mississippi and west to Dyersville, where we visited the “Field of Dreams,” as seen above, home to the location where the film was shot, and to two competing gift shops capitalizing on the steady stream of movie and baseball buffs who visit.

Back in Dubuque, we had a tasty lunch and a ride on the world’s shortest, steepest railway, the Fenelon Place Elevator. I got a haircut at a great old barber shop, and we were on our way, back east to Wisconsin.

This is one of those things I might normally post a del.icio.us link to, but I couldn’t resist on this one - Legos and archives, two of my favorite things… Watch the video and read the account of the tour of the Lego Vault, where one of nearly every Lego set ever made is kept in compact shelving. I recognize so many of those sets from childhood, before the days of the Harry Potter and Star Wars tie-ins: our castle sets, bought in a Danish department store in 1985, are there, as are the Expert Builder sets Scott had, and when they pull out the Galaxy Explorer set, I felt a little surge of nostalgia, and a painful sensation in my fingernails from prying apart all those blue and gray bricks.

After 24 hours of traveling (by van, airplane, airport tram, airplane, and taxi), we arrived home Sunday night from eight days in Italy, a fantastic trip that was equal parts tourism and family time, in Rome, Florence, and Friuli.



Aimee and I arrived in Rome on Saturday night, found our hotel near the Villa Borghese, and had our late-night dinner (along with the rest of the city) around 11:00pm. The next day, we tackled the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, Trajan’s Column, the Forum, the Colosseum, and the Villa Borghese, interspersed with generous portions of gelato and some tasty meals.



The next day, we got up early and took the metro to Vatican City, where we wandered through St. Peter’s Basilica, took in the unbelievable splendor of the Vatican Museum; the map room was especially impressive and could have warranted an entire morning of ceiling-gazing.



We waited our turn for admission to the Sistine Chapel, through a rabbit-warren of hallways, stairways, and rooms, all filled with people. It was, of course, somehow still well worth it after all of the wait and crowds. As you enter, the signs indicate that you should not talk and should not use cameras or video recorders, though once you enter, you realize that those are the three primary activities of all of the people inside.



I had no idea what to expect, having never really studied the work inside the chapel, and I was pretty stunned. We stayed as long as we could, and enjoyed taking it all in. That night, we wandered across the river to Trastevere and had a delightful evening of - what else? - walking and eating.



All the photos from Rome.

From Rome, we caught a train on Tuesday morning to Florence, where we made our way to our hotel and found Paul and Vicky heading down the street towards us, having just checked in. We had lunch, caught up, and then met Mark, Katie, Nell, and Lauren, to reach our full touring strength of eight.



We had a great time in Florence, from our morning at the Uffizi and up to the top of the Duomo, to an unforgettable dinner at Il Latini - no menus, prodigious quantities of pasta, and a vast platter of meats - and lots of walking along the Arno (where we spied a few nutria swimming) and in the Boboli Gardens. Oh, and one (or two, or three) helping of gelato a day, of course.



The dinners, the views, the nutria, the meats: it’s all in the Florence photoset.



Thursday morning, Paul and I picked up a nine-seat Ford Transit van from Hertz and we all headed north to Friuli, to the town of Tricesimo, where we met the rest of Aimee’s family for Matteo and Laura’s wedding on Saturday. By this point, the rear hatch, sliding door, and passenger door on the van had stopped functioning, which made for a slightly inconvenient but mostly hilarious rest of the trip, with people climbing in and out over seats, through windows, and so on. The five-hour drive went like a dream, mostly thanks to the engrossing group discussion we had over our Meat Bracket, a single-elimination tournament whittling 32 meats from four zones (beef, pork, poultry, and the catch-all “mixed meats”) down to a single champion. It involved brainstorming meats, seeding the eight finalists, and employing lots of basketball metaphors (”Hamburger is that team that has a long and storied history, but their defense is weak, and they’ve gotten this far on reputation alone…”) to whittle down the meats/teams (and yes, I must add that those words are anagrams of one another). Sausage came out on top, though the unexpected departures of such fine delicacies as fillet mignon and veal at the hands of other, lesser meats, made the results come under a cloud of protest. We’ll see what happens with the Meat Bracket of 2009…

We arrived in Tricesimo on Thursday afternoon, and after the beautiful and fun but tourist-filled Rome and Florence, our time in Tricesimo, Udine, Gorizia, Cividale, Fagagna, and Tarcento was a welcome and relaxing long weekend. The countryside was uniformly beautiful, and Matteo and Laura had planned an amazing string of meals and activities for us to enjoy while we were there. The long lunches and dinners gave us time to enjoy the food - definitely some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten - and the company, and I think everyone had a great time. What a week!

Friuli wedding weekend photos.

As I get down to the last few states, the order I visited them becomes a little more clear. By 2003, I was down to four remaining states on my list: Montana, Iowa, North Dakota, and Hawaii. The first of that list to go was Montana, which we drove through in the summer of 2005, between picking up my car in Seattle and heading back to Rochester. We enjoyed the beautiful drive in from Idaho, spent the night in Missoula, and saw some fascinating sights in Butte. Grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes at Montana’s oldest drive-in restaurant were a treat as well, before we headed south to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

As we were planning our move out to Los Angeles in the spring of 2006, we were invited to a friend’s wedding in Helena, so we decided to incorporate the cross-country drive with the wedding, and travel from New York to L.A. via the very northern route, a little out of the way but worth it. We had spent the night in Sheridan, Wyoming, and headed into Montana on I-90, stopping for an interesting morning at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. As we continued west, Aimee’s car was beginning to lose power on uphills and was giving us a bit of a headache, as we didn’t like the thought of breaking down along a lonely stretch of interstate when we had a wedding to attend. We stopped in Bozeman for lunch but couldn’t get any help from the VW dealer there, so we pressed on to Helena with fingers crossed, and pulled right in to V-Dub’s and More, where Eric, seen in the photo above, took care of us right away. It was such a relief to have made it, and for him to tell us that he could have the car fixed (bad plugs and wires, misfiring cylinder) before we needed to be on our way down to L.A. Montana has many scenic wonders, but if I had to think of the sight that made us the happiest, it has to be this one.