As we near opening for our next show at the theatre I usually find myself with more free time, though I think that this time around my time will be taken up by getting ready for my honeymoon.  This mainly will involve cleaning the apartment and packing.  I am really looking forward to this trip.  It is the first real vacation that Ruth and I will be taking alone together.  It Should be really fun and I am sure it will feel like it was too short.

We also basically just got back from our trip to Disneyland with Ruth’s family.  That was a lot of fun, and it has been quite a while since I have been to Disney.  Ruth and I flew out and met the family there to spend outs first day at Knott’s Berry Farm.  Smaller than Disney with big rides, but also way bigger lines.  We stood in some pretty long lines to ride the rides.  We actually took to calculating how many people the rides could move in the amount of time we waited in line.  We actually waited around 3 hours for one roller coaster that was about a 20-second ride.

After Knott’s, we headed to Co Co Ichibanya (aka Co Co’s), a curry house that is starting to make a US presence, coming from Japan.  Co Co’s was the Jones’ favorite curry house in Okinawa, so they will go out of their way to go there when they can.  I don’t have anything to compare to, but it is darn good food!

Then it was on to Disneyland where we had two days in the parks including staying till about 1:45AM on New Years.  Disney is a lot of fun even when it is wall to wall people. It is the place where everyone has fun, and if you take a moment to plan your day, you don’t have to spend forever waiting in lines.  We managed to break the Pinocchio ride, as soon as we got in the car, bells started ringing and lights started flashing and they had to evacuate the ride.  Then the fog rolled in so thick you could barely see 100 feet in front of you.  We couldn’t see the New Years fireworks, but we did managed to get stuck in the crowd.  We got to fight against the press and then this great little old lady helped us jump the ropes when the cast members weren’t looking so we could get out of the crowd.  Good times were had by all.

Sunset lights up Balanced Rock at Arches National Park

Of course the other big thing is my photo gallery opening that was last week.  For the month of January I have a display of Utah Landscape photography up at the JCC here in Salt Lake.  It was very exciting to lay out all the prints and see them big and up on the wall.  I don’t have the space to really look at more than one at a time at home.  The opening reception seemed to go very well, there was a good turn out and I have since received a few emails asking about the images.  If you are in the SLC area you should stop by and see the prints, otherwise you can see the images on my website.

So, I have one more backpedaling blog post that I wanted to write.  This is what happens when you are out of touch with technology for a week.  It felt pretty good to do that, but then when you come back and realize that you are behind on things, well, it never really balances out.  At least I can try.

So, upon my return from Ithaca I met my brother in the Salt Lake City airport as he just flew in for the week.  The idea for the week was to do some backpacking in the wilderness around here.  the original plan was to head up to Grand Teton National Park but the weather outlook up there was not so great.  This was a little unfortunate as we had made some pretty good plans for heading up to GTNP, but in the name of safety and such we decided to make a change.

We spent the better part of a day over at REI looking at books and maps and trying to plan a new location and route to hike.  We decided to head up to the High Uintas in the northeast part of Utah.  The weather was supposed to be better there and it is a lot closer to home, so less driving.  We picked up some additional gear and food, and rented some warmer sleeping bags and then went back home to pack for the adventure.

With our packs loaded into the car we headed off into the mountains.  We got off the highway in a small town in Wyoming whose name I don’t remember.  Then we drove out into the middle of nowhere.  We followed a dirt road for quite a while, back across the state line into Utah finally ending up in a snow covered campground.  We passed maybe one car on the way in, probably hunters.  The campground was totally empty, though there were some old tire tracks in the snow.

We set up camp for the first night in the campground.  For both my brother and I, this was our first winter camping experience.  Pitching camp in the snow and cold takes a little more effort than sumer camping.  We packed out an area for the tent with our snowshoes and then pitched the tent.  Cooking in the cold is not much different than other backpacking cooking, it is just cold sitting out in the snow.

Even in long underwear, ski pants, and the zero degree sleeping bag it still got pretty cold cold at night.  We even had two of us in a pretty small tent.  It wasn’t unbearable, but it was cold.  It also snowed for the better part of the night which was a very interesting sound on the tent.  Amazingly, I slept pretty well and the morning brought a fresh blanket of snow and a beautiful sunrise.  It was truly a spectacular morning.

Sunrise over the China Meadows Campground

After making breakfast we broke camp, packed our bags and started our trek off into the wilderness.  Hiking in snowshoes is significantly more difficult and slower than a normal hike.  It certainly was beautiful out.  Right sun, and white snow, and no one else in in sight, not even tracks.  Over the day we hiked  about four miles and towards the end of the day I think that pulled a muscle or something in my leg.  So we found a suitable location to make camp and set up for the night.

The location we found was in a beautiful field broken up by a frozen river.  We decided to play it safe and bear-camp, so we cooked dinner away from the tent and hung all our food out off a tree.  We didn’t really know if it was bear territory or not, but we figured better safe than sorry.  The night was colder than the last, probably due to the fact that there was no cloud cover.

While it might have been cold, I still slept well, the real problem was that I woke up still very achy.  It was very strange, because I do a good bit of hiking and I am pretty active, I suppose it just happens sometimes.  So we decided that the best course of action was to hike back out instead of continuing the trek because we didn’t want to get in any serious trouble.  So we spent the day hiking back to the car.  Overall, aside from my going gimpy, we had a great hike and a lot of fun.

After we got back to the car we decided to call my uncle to see if we could stay at his place in Park City.  With his OK we made our way to the condo.  It was nice to be there, but after taking showers, making dinner and running some laundry, one of the hot water heaters decided to burst.  We were sitting watching a movie and I thought I heard water running and when i went into the utility room I had to wade through an inch or so of water and get under a geyser of water to find the shut off valve.

So, the rest of the night was spent on the phone with my uncle and then trying to get maintenance in to take care of things.  There was a lot of water, it had made it ways down through the floor into the crawl space where the furnace is and even seeped out into the common hallway of the condo complex.  Luckily there was no water in the house, it was pretty confined.  So the late night maintenance people came in and did a lot of vacuuming and cleaning.  The next day they got the plumber in to look at things and figure out what to do.  A real adventure.  All thins considered, according to the plumber, the disaster was inevitable, so it was a good thing we were there.

While the flood was not part of the plan for my brother’s vacation, it didn’t dampen spirits too much.  He went out and hiked on Saturday while I dealt with the plumber and such and then the next day we headed up Little Cottonwood Canyon for one last hike before he had to leave on Sunday.  So, we did get in a bunch of what we had planned, the hiking and camping, interspersed with other adventures.  It was a fun bit of time off.

So that is why I was so out of touch with the nets last week.  It was worth it, an adventure!

It has been quite the busy couple weeks.  Last week started as tech for Dracula at the theatre and then ended with my flying out to Ithaca for the first ever All Theatre Alumni Reunion.  The impetus for the event was the completion of the renovations on Dillingham Center, the home of the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College.  Ithaca College (not to be confused with Ithaca University from the movie Road Trip), or IC, is my alma mater for those who don’t know.  Since graduation I have done my best to give to the college as my time there really made an impact on my life.  My family and I were part of the 430-some-odd donors who raised over $80,000 for the renovation project.  As such, I felt that it was important for me to go because of that and because it would be a fun opportunity to reconnect with friends from school and network with other alums.

The road to my getting to the reunion started well before waking up at 5AM to get to the airport last Friday.  There are not enough words to express my love for my girlfriend who also got up at 5AM to get me there.  However, before that I had to make sure that it would be OK with the powers that be in the theatre since I would be leaving town on opening night of one of the more technically challenging shows of the season which happened to be directed by our artistic director.  I got the OK to go and was able to make the appropriate travel arrangements and fit into some semblance of a budget, so I was pretty happy.  I sacrificed a ski pass to make it happen though, which I think was a decent trade off.

I flew into Syracuse, NY where I picked up a rental car and drove the rest of the way down to Ithaca.  It was kind of fun getting on the highways there and remembering driving them so many times over the four years that I spent in school.  Driving past the landmarks that I remembered and getting closer to Ithaca was very fun and very exciting.  Driving down the last hill alongside Cayuga Lake and then through town, it almost felt like I had never really left.  Realizing that the hotel that I had booked a room at was way on the opposite outskirts of town was a little disconcerting, but it wasn’t like I was going to be spending tons of time there!

The weekend kicked off with a welcome reception for all the alumni which was a little funky, but a good time.  People drifted in slowly as they arrived in town so there were waves of excitement as people recognized old friends.  It was a lot of fun to see all the people from my year and around my year and hear about what everyone is up to now.  Then there were the people who “know” me on account of my father (who is also and IC alum).  the most interesting of those people was my father’s college girlfriend Betsy.  She was quite excited to meet me, and I have nothing against this on account of her buying my friends and I drinks!

Saturday brought the real festivities.  The morning started with a tour of the newly renovated building.  It was almost a private tour as there were only three other people who showed up at 9AM and they still sent out multiple tour groups.  The new spaces look amazing, and the theatre department now has the use of the entire building, all the other departments that used to have offices there have been moved to other buildings on campus.  It looks fabulous even though they say that for a program of that size they are still a few thousand square feet short of what they really could use.

After the tours there were dedications of named spaces around facility.  I went to a few of these, but was not actually able to attend that one for named lockers, which I donated on of.  Could be worse.  I was at one of the student interaction panels where alumni got to talk to students pursuing similar fields of study.  This really was a great thing, and I wish that it had been a little more organized and structured.  I think it was probably a little overwhelming for both the alumni and the students.  For me, this was one of the big reasons that I wanted to go to this event, to get to talk to the students, so I hope that in the future this is something that gets a little more planning.

Following a barbecue lunch a group of us headed off on a Finger Lakes wine tour headed by one of the faculty.  This was a real hoot.  We tasted some good wines, a bunch of bad wines, but in the end, it probably didn’t matter as everyone was having a blast.  After two wineries we were definitely on the party bus as soon as Norm decided to put on some Lady GaGa.  Yeah, the whole bus was dancing and singing and drinking.

Upon arriving back at IC, there was a little time to change before heading to the cocktail reception and gala dinner.  I was smart enough to have put my nice clothes in my car when I left the hotel in the morning so I just found a bathroom and changed.  There was a little more schmoozing and boozing with the alums and I had a chance to meet the new President of the college who seems to be a good guy.

The dinner and festivities were nice.  Sitting with old friends was great.  Here are most of us.  The only thing that bugged me was the the photographer who was walking around would not take our picture with my camera.  I thought that it was a rather stuck-up move as he kind of scoffed at my little point-and-shoot.  I didn’t feel like lugging the nice camera around all evening.  But really, I am a professional photographer and I would never hesitate to take someone’s photo picture with their own camera, it is just a nice, polite thing to do.  Whatever.

Friends from my class and the years around it at the Reunion Gala

After dinner the Musical Theatre Majors sang for us, a song that I don’t actually remember.  I do remember thinking that it would have been much more meaningful and memorable if they had chosen something different.  The song that I would have picked would have been “What I did for Love” from A Chorus Line. I think that would have been very appropriate for the occasion, and would have made everyone cry.

After the singing, the party moved down the quad to Dillingham for the special Alumni-only performance of Chicago.  It was an excellent show.  The designs for the show were done by some notable alums including Paul Gallo (lighting) and Tony Meola (sound).  The students were excellent and the show was so much fun.  It was really cool to see Chicago at IC because it was the first show that I worked on after I graduated and moved out here to Utah.  I enjoyed the show so much, I went back to see it again the next day!

After the performance we shifted venues one last time for the “Sherry Party” redux.  Just one last occasion to schmooze with everyone before people started to go their separate ways.  AS I was staying through until monday morning, I said goodbye to a bunch of people.  Overall, it was a great time.

The rest of the weekend was a lot of fun.  I had time to talk to a couple students, the chair of the department and my old professors.  I saw the show again, and just generally enjoyed being back in Ithaca.  It was a great weekend, and hopefully the first of many such events.

My summer that is.  Yesterday I officially said my goodbye’s at the theatre (just for the summer that is), packed up my junk and this morning I made my trek over to the east coast.  Pretty normal travel day all things considered, 6AM wake-up, have Sunreon pound on my door at 6:20, load up my junk into her car and head over to The Red Moose for a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito.  I can’t remember if I ever mentioned this little coffee shop before, they haven’t been around that long (I believe since December) but they have great coffee and great food.  They are also practically right across the street from my house which could be a dangerous thing.

The traveling today was pretty painless.  I still think that it is a pain in the ass to get from the door of the airport to the door of the plane, but when you fly early enough in the day getting through security is pretty efficient.  In general, flying on Southwest is pretty efficient.  They seem to really be able to get you from one place to the next without much hoopla.  They also have pretty good fares.  I do love sitting in the terminal and on the plane during boarding listening to the agents and flight attendants try to explain to people about the open seating.  There are some people who really just don’t get it.  It isn’t that hard to understand is it?

As we loaded up the first plane (SLC to MDW) I ended up sitting next to a very interesting gentleman who works for the VA hospital right across the street from the theatre.  We shall call him D for the sake of privacy.  It turned out that he was also flying from SLC to MHT, though his reasons for the trip were not quite as upbeat as mine.  He was a very nice man and we had a great conversation for most of the flight.  In fact, by the time that we stopped chatting I only was able to make it about halfway through the new “Alice in Wonderland” movie.  In the end I suppose that isn’t terrible because now I can watch it on a screen larger than my iPhone.  I never did see it in theaters, and I was totally OK with that.

We arrived at MDW a couple minutes early which is a good thing because the layover was only 35 minutes.  I probably should and cold have grabbed some food, but since people were already lining up to board, I figured that I would hit the head and then get in line.  I ended up sitting with the D again and another interesting person who I believe was around my age.  This flight, which was only around 1:30-sin in length, the tree of us chatted the entire time.  I don’t think that I have ever had that much interaction with the people that I have been sitting with (who are not friends or family) on an airplane before.  In the end, D and I exchanged cards, and will probably connect again when I get back to Utah.  He has kids who he would love to see get involved in the arts, and he knows some people at one of the youth theatre organizations that he wanted to put me in touch with.

With an on-time arrival in Manchester I met my parents and I finally got to meet the new puppies.  They are sooo cute!  They are crazy hyper, like all huskies, but they are a lot of fun.  However they did manage to pinch my old Red Sox cap from my bag and chew it up.  It is a little sad, but I am sure that I will get over it (and get a new cap).  So, since it is Friday, I think that I will leave you with one of my father’s photos of the puppies.  The white one is Ava, and the black/silver one is Zoe.

Zoe and Ava on the back porch

I suppose that I should also mention that for the rest of the summer (until mid August) I will be on the east coast, primarily in Maine and New Hampshire working at Indian and Forest Acres camps.  My blogging may be a little more erratic over the summer, but I will keep you all up to date!

Yesterday I rambled about the complete ridiculousness of airline ticketing and pricing.  Today I wanted to continue to talk about airline travel in regards to what you can and can’t do with your luggage and issues with security.

I know that I mentioned it in my previous post that most airlines have started charging you to take checked baggage on your flight.  With the exorbitant price of tickets to start with, I would think that baggage could still be included in that cost.  At $15 for your first bag and $25 (or more) for your second, what exactly are we paying for?  Seeing as every bag doesn’t get handled by it’s own handler, odds are the cost is not directly related to paying the handlers.  With the number of bags each handler moves in an hour, that would be quite a salary!

I understand the weight restrictions on bags, at least to a point.  I would imagine these are in place to protect the baggage handlers.  Slinging 50lb bags of funky shapes and sizes all day can’t be easy, so having a heavy bag could be an issue.  I don’t know if the baggage handlers have a union or anything, but I could see this being a point for hazard pay.

Now let’s look at airline security.  Is it really more than a joke and an inconvenience?  Every “advance” that we make in security protocols in airports is completely reactionary.  Someone tries to put a bomb in their shoe, so we all have to take off our shoes.  Someone decides to try binary liquid explosives so now we can’t take any real quantities of liquids and pastes.  Ironically, the only thing that I think has regressed is the screening of laptop computers in that you used to have to power them up so that the screeners could see that it was actually a working computer.

Sure, we have added a few things in security that are less reactive, but are they really making us safer or just making us spend more time in line in the airport?  Are they more efficient?  Do they invade our privacy?  Many airports are installing/testing full body X-ray devices.  I don’t have anything to hide, and I am sure that most people don’t, but still, does a full body X-ray of myself really need to end up somewhere in cyberspace.  Does airline security take precedence over personal security and privacy?  All that is not to mention the fact that it takes a lot longer to use the full body scan since TSA has to wait for the images to render.

My real thought that comes from all this is that anyone that is determined enough to make some kind of terror act on an airline will find a way to do it.  When you consider how many people and goods come in and out of every airport every day it almost makes all the the security measures that most people see seem moot.  I mean, does every box of donuts for Dunkin’ Donuts and every bag of coffee beans for Starbucks get screened?  Have you ever gone into the FBO section of an airport?  If you are meeting a private jet you can drive your car right out on the tarmac.

So, what’s the point?  Does it really work?  Does all the “security” make you feel more secure?  Have you ever not felt safe flying?