Monthly Archives: March 2011

What I'm doing

Day 8

I had a better night on the train, well kinda.  I worked out a couple of comfortable positions to lie in (for some value of comfortable) and I alternated between them.  At one point I thought "There's a blog post in here: 'The 10 most comfortable ways to sleep in a coach seat on Amtrak'" but then I realised I'd have to think up another eight and I'd have to find some way of describing or illustrating them.  So yeah I just got foetal basically.

I woke, of course, to more snow, more big blank snow and then some – today was Minnesota and Wisconsin.  If I kept my mind relatively blank the day before, today was more of the same.  But today I had mobile coverage again, so I could check in on Foursquare (earning myself both the super user's badge and the over sharer's badge) and I could connect a little with others on twitter and by e-mail.  It's amazing how clear it is that you receive only small amounts of useful stuff in e-mail when you see a whole day's worth piled up in your inbox.

So, I did enough writing to assuage my work-guilt, plenty more slow video as the train halted or just got going.  I'm thinking of finding a way to sew these clips together to make a movie that's just views from the train moving slowly.  It needs to not be too repetitive but it will have to wait till I'm back and I've got everything and I've a machine in front of me that can handle editing video comfortably.

The train was filling up.  At Wisconsin Dells, I gave the other half of my double seat to Lindsay, a young singer (an actress really) with a blues band in Chicago.  I gave her a quick beginner's ukulele lesson and sang her a little song.

I had lunch on the train for the first time because my provisions from Seattle had run out.  Not the greatest cuisine on the planet, but it kept me going.

It really didn't feel like 43 hours on that train.  Milwaukee is the cleanest, brightest, most modern Amtrak station I've been to.  Sadly, it didn't have what I was expecting, a spare seat on the train down to Austin on Wednesday/Thursday.  I was told to call after midnight when there may have been some cancellations.  So I started to compose a "Solve it while I sleep" post in my head.

Tracy checked into the station on Foursquare while she was waiting for the lights across the road, so I knew when she was there.  Always good to see her, but just so good to see a known and friendly face after all that time.  After a little detour to her office to pick up choonz we headed for home.

Milwaukee has this weird contrast of being a heavy industrial city but also a lakeside town.  There's one stretch of highway up the coast and on one side I could easily have been going through anywhere in the Black Country and on the other there's this great stretch of water that I know is a lake but looks pretty much like the ocean to me.

@tappsestate is lovely and I got to meet @moethecat  – I struggled to get on the wifi because I didn't read the instructions properly but once I was on I managed to get my fix of getting through e-mail and catching up on twitter and stuff while Tracy fixed up jambalaya for the evening's festivities: a Mardi Gras party at her church (yes, you read that right – a *family friendly* Mardi Gras party that would be finished by 7.30) Part of me wanted to just crash out, but I'm really glad I said yes to going out – we had a great time, lots of laughter, met lots of lovely people, lots of music, a masked parade – great food and I even got a temporary tattoo and some purple beads.

So we were home by 9pm but I had to work quite hard to stay up to talk to Amtrak after midnight.  I wrote my "solve it" post anyway in case I just fell asleep.  In the meantime the option of a lift from one of Tracy's friends dematerialised.  So I was very relieved when I spoke to Connie in California to confirm my reservation for the following day – so I put a little update line in the blogpost and went down to sleep in the TappsEstate Basement, resplendent, as you might expect, with cocktail bar, rainbow flag and kick-ass drum kit.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Solve it while I sleep #3

So I arrived at Milwaukee station today and (I don't know why I hadn't done this before) asked for a ticket to Austin for tomorrow.  No, sorry, that train's fully booked.

Damn.

There are a couple of seats still available the following day if you pay a small supplement, but Wednesday, full.

Um… OK.  It turns out that any unpaid for bookings will be cleared at midnight and I can call them just after midnight and see whether that has happened.  I'm going to do that.

But otherwise I need a way to travel from Milwaukee to Austin, preferably arriving in Austin in the late afternoon, early evening.

Constraints, or things to bear in mind: I don't drive (no licence, never took a test) so can't share driving if someone's going by car.  I don't have enough cash for a flight.  Nor do I have a great deal of cash for gas – I was expecting to have this covered by my rail pass, so while I'm OK to make a contribution, I don't think I can go halves with anyone (truth is, I don't know how much fuel costs in this country, nor how much would be required). 

Just opening up options: If I can find someone to stay with tomorrow night in Chicago with the ability to get to the Amtrak station on Thursday, that might work (if there are still seats on the train on Thursday).  

Let me know what you think or can help make happen, my lovelies.

Thank you… and good night/morning

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 7

A long-distance train journey is a great opportunity for meditation. Especially when you find yourself without a phone signal most of the way and unable to connect to a carrier that will give you data at all. So after waking at Spokane (where a drunk guy was getting thrown off the train) and managing to check in to Foursquare, I was then cut off pretty much all the way across Montana and North Dakota. I managed to make a couple of voice calls and send some texts but that was all.

So I could focus on what was going on inside my head with breaks occasionally to see what was outside the window.

Outside the window, I saw lots of ducks, geese, pheasants, some big black bird with a white head, lots of cattle, horses, several deer and a pack of coyotes wandering across the whiteness of the plain.

It's great to get the chance to just sit and breathe and let the world go by. This is the thing with rail travel on this scale, there's so very little to do and so much time to do it in. Get up and walk about, use the rest rooms, get a coffee, sit in the Lounge car and get a better view and listen to some increasingly slurred conversation, read, write, take photographs and shoot video out of the window, not think too much about what's coming up. 

So that was my day.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 6

Ann and Kevin were the second couple I stayed with who I'd never met before. But most bizarrely, they, like Philip and Tania in SF were an Anglo-American couple. What are the chances? I land in two couple's lives randomly and unexpectedly and both the guys are English. And, I just realised as I was writing this, they both work with wood – Philip's name is Wood and he's a furniture designer. Kevin is a carpenter. He built the sauna that I enjoyed using first thing on Sunday morning.

Yes – he built a sauna in his basement. I woke on Sunday to the unexpected pre-breakfast questions “Have you ever had a sauna? Would it drain you too much to take one? Would you like to?” To which of course the answers are “Yes, No, and Yes Please, Thank You”

So that's how I found myself naked in a stranger's basement. I'd joked with people beforehand that those people who perceived great risk in what I was doing, believed I'd end up being tortured and cut up in little pieces in somebody's basement. This was not torture, it was exactly what I needed. I then got the next exact thing I needed, a little walk in the fresh air to see Puget Sound from high up and then a 6-egg omelet with hash browns and lashings of coffee at Beth's Cafe – a great and popular greasy spoon, which we had to queue up to get into.

The rest of the day was spent being driven around Ann's list of must-see's. These lovely people, friends of an old friend I've only seen once or twice myself in the last 20 years, took me on a fantastic tour of the city. We went to Gasworks Park and looked out across the lake, we saw the Concrete Troll under the bridge and the Fremont Lenin. We wandered around the locks and went to see if there were any salmon climbing the fish ladder. (Not yet, expect Steelheads in a few weeks). We walked through Pike Place Market and bought some provisions for my next journey. Everywhere we went, Ann had somewhere to check of the list, it was delightful. I had to at least stick my head inside the first Starbucks, stuck it in far enough to see that they have a huge pig made out of coffee beans hanging over the inside of the front door. We watched the fish-sellers chucking their wares around. And then went for a fine cup of coffee at a nearby Tully's and grabbed some wifi so that I could feel a little grounded before the upcoming 43-hour marathon.

They delivered me to the station in plenty of time, but we found that of course the train would be starting late (mechanical problems requiring the fitting of a new engine) So I let them get away after I'd given them (and the surrounding passengers) a quick ukulele rendition of “When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful”. Then it was hugs and handshakes and I was off to find my place in the line. In the end the train only left about 30 minutes late.

I had two seats together for the rest of the day – plenty of room to spread out and try different sleeping positions, mostly foetal variations. As we rolled along the Puget Sound I looked over at the islands on the other side and realised that I was suddenly close to the San Juan Islands where Podchef used to live. I wanted to tweet him, but the network service gave out and then I was asleep.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 5

Saturday was my first full train day. I was on board for just about 24 hours. Having snoozed for a couple of hours at a time and checked in on Foursquare when I could I got up just north of Redding and had a look around. Went up to the observation car and sat and watched forests and rivers and lakes roll by. We were still low down and out of the snow so the contrast of the red earth and evergreen trees was startling. In my geographical ignorance, I'd never noticed how much of California there still is, north of San Francisco – and certainly had no idea how beautiful it was. As we started to climb we started to see snow until everything was covered. 

I began shooting video more seriously now that I had my tripod attachment and could keep the camera more still. Lots of cool, calm almost motionless landscapes, but also, I'm guessing, capturing some of the sounds of the train – I haven't listened back yet to see what I've got, probably won't till I get back.  We had to wait for a freight train at Lake Odell which was frozen over.

We ran about 2 hours late for most of the journey. Every now and then we'd make up a little time and then we'd hit a spot where we had to wait for another train or repairs to tracks. So the forests of southern Oregon were lovely but the train was tense with everyone getting off from Eugene onwards knowing that they were going to be late and those of us heading as far as Seattle facing up to the possibility of getting in after midnight. Soon after Eugene there was another bit of slow track and then it started to get dark.

I was tired and together with worrying about what was going to happen I started to get irritated with the conversation around me. The young guy sitting next to me, it turns out was going to Portland to start a cross-country cycle ride. The older guy in front knew all about why he was doing it all wrong and was telling him, over and over – he was taking the wrong route, it was the wrong time of year, he hadn't done enough preparation – the poor kid was OK, but he was clearly starting to waver and not trust the research he'd already done. Of course, I don't know, he might not have done any research at all and this guy might have just saved his life, but I read it much more as tired old big mouth wanting to put the young upstart in his place.

They both got out in Portland, lots of people did. Portland certainly looked beautiful in the dark, lights shining from downtown as we crossed the water. I gave up and went to sleep after we left – there was no point in me worrying. I sent an e-mail to Ann and Kevin to let them know my ETA. They came back and said they'd expected that and it would be fine. We finally rolled in at midnight. As it turned out, my friends had underestimated the Friday middle of the night Seattle traffic and so I got to spend ten minutes or so fending off the eager attentions of taxi drivers, before Ann appeared in the big yellow coat she'd promised and we got in the car.

Now I had to be sociable again. I was ready…

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 4

Friday was my last day in the Bay Area. Briefly after breakfast, I managed to IM with my daughter (who was just about to have her tea) – that felt good, to be able to just chat for a bit, hear what's going on for her, let her know that I'm OK and having a good time.

Robert then gave me a great last day. I said goodbye to Maryam and the boys and we headed to do an interview with a software company – Robert's stock-in-trade. Driving along, I saw the sign for parc “umm… that's parc parc?” “yeah” it was weird that even after being in the area for 3 days it took for me to see that building, just another office building of course, but y'know… parc, for me to really understand that I was actually in Silicon Valley

Robert drove in and around the building for me “yeah over there's the room where they invented the mouse, there's a bit of original PC ethernet on the wall down there”

The place we were actually visiting had no parking spaces “that's how you can tell someone's doing well – no space in the parking lot at 10.30am”

After watching Robert do his stuff, we headed back to USVP for the last few TED Talks including Roger Ebert's brave piece about losing large parts of his face and therefore his voice. And the one about the schoolteacher and the World Peace Game.

Robert then had to take part in the Gillmor Gang which was an hour or so that I could sit quietly do some thinking, catch up with people online and record a couple of video pieces – including one of reassurance to my dear mama.

We had the rest of the afternoon to explore. I got the guided tour of Stanford, a sneaky peak of the self-driving cars, stopped off and saw the Golden Spike and the Rodin garden, – I needed some groceries for my meals on the train up to Seattle and I also needed to get a tripod attachment to hold my N8. Robert took me to a camera store. I spent $14.15 on my phone holder. He spent a little bit more than I did and got some bits of kit that I'm sure plenty of fanboys will be asking him about it at SXSW. So then we finished off with a lightning tour of Mountain View “there's Google” the Computer History Museum “there's a big chunk of ENIAC, there's the original server rack from Google”

And then suddenly we were back at Palo Alto Caltrain station and shaking hands and saying goodbye till next weekend and I was on my own again.

It's only a short hop down to San Jose. And that's where I stayed for the next 5 hours because the train up to Seattle was delayed by nearly 2 hours. I got my rail pass, my ticket to Seattle and the next one too to Milwaukee. And I sat and watched the world go by. I was just nodding off when the call came and we were shepherded onto the train. I sat down, took out my contacts and slept.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 3

I spent Thursday mostly in the conference room at US Venture Partners (USVP) in Menlo Park.  We were the guests of Paul Matteucci who had invited a bunch of people in to watch the live stream from TED which was going on down in Long Beach.  It was my best experience of a TED live stream so far.  

People came and went but most of the time there were enough people to know you weren't alone but not so many that conversations about the content were disturbing.  The piece that stirred the most conversation was Eli Pariser's talk on "filter bubbles" where we get locked in by "helpful" algorithms to only seeing the content "they" think we want to see.  Much discussion on how this sat with democratic capitalism – I was reminded that it's much more acceptable here to invoke national identity "it's our duty as Americans" etc.

I had a long chat with someone about how my art isn't challenging enough.  It feels challenging enough for me…

Anyway, it's not everday I get to sit in a comfy leather chair at a solid wood boardroom table, listen to big ideas and have a VC buy me lunch 🙂  

Thanks Paul, I really appreciated being there.

We went home for dinner and Maryam had made another delicious meal for us – lamb stew with lamb that just melted in your mouth.  And then it was time for American Idol with babies crawling all over me… Milan got hold of my iPod and knew exactly which apps were games he wanted to play, though he got a bit frustrated when he didn't win as easily as he'd hoped.

We had a chat about what I was going to do the next day and I knew that I needed to blog about it to get it clearer in my head and get some input from others.  I realised it's a good way to work if I can let go of "problems" by blogging them at the end of the day and just see what the collective intelligence came up with while I was unconscious.  So that's what I did, and the result is that I have a plan that takes me all the way to Austin, which actually means I have a rough plan all the way to New Orleans 🙂

I woke around 5am to have a little look at how #tuttle had gone, of course everyone had mucked in beautifully and Brian did a fab little twitvid: http://twitvid.com/OSXOH

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Solved – not quite how I expected… but…

So the tagline for this trip has been "What happens when I give up control and ask for help?"

I've been banging my head for the last couple of days against my desire to go to Long Beach and hang out again on The Queen Mary with the very cool people of the BIL conference.  It just wasn't working, Silicon Valley to Los Angeles doesn't really work unless you have a car or a rideshare – and finding someone to stay with was tricky too – I had some lovely offers, but I could tell it was going to be difficult to mix it up with being at BIL – I'm travelling fairly light, but I have a suitcase, a shoulder bag and a ukulele so it's not like I can just walk around anywhere, even when I'm in a walking-friendly city.

So I posted three options last night and went to sleep.  Thanks to everyone who mailed, tweeted and commented.  By the time I got up, I had a plan that covers me for the whole week through till I arrive in Austin.  The only problem with it is: it *sounds* insane 🙂  

So here goes – here's the bones of it:

I'm getting my Amtrak vibe back on.  Tonight, I'm going to take the train from San Jose up to Seattle.  I'll be staying with some friends of a friend – I've never met them, but I have seen pictures of them on Facebook 🙂  I get into Seattle at about 11pm, stay overnight and then have until 4pm to take a look around and hopefully get at least one cup of damn fine coffee!  

I then take an even longer jaunt than last year's Austin to LA marathon.  I'll be on the Empire Builder for 43 hours (yes, two overnights again) to get to Milwaukee, WI where I'll be overnighting on the Tuesday with the lovely Tracey @tapps Apps.  

She will be flying down to Austin the day after, while I will be taking the Hiawatha Service down to Chicago and then the Texas Eagle all the way, arriving in town at 6.30pm on Thursday ready to start enjoying the SXSW fun.

So yeah. Not what I expected, but it's what has emerged.  So I'm going with it.  Thank you for helping me see the next right steps.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Solve it while I sleep #2

OK I'm still in Half Moon Bay but tonight I'm writing at 11.30pm when I'm going to bed, in an attempt to put away stuff that otherwise would wake me at 3 🙂  It seems to me this might be a good regular practice – to write any issues  down before I go to bed and see what you all come up with (if anything) overnight.

I have 3 options for travelling on.  I'm learning from a few hits and misses that I need both a feasible route *and* somewhere to stay where I'm going.  I don't have that for any of the options yet.  Let's see if you can fill any of the holes.

Option 1: Go down to Long Beach, CA – I neither have a ride nor a sensible route for this by other transport – I have one offer of somewhere to stay one night.

Option 2: Take the Amtrak from Emeryville to Denver – I have had promises of contacts there, but no-one I already know to stay with

Option 3: Take the Amtrak from Emeryville to Seattle – I have somewhere to stay provisionally, just waiting for confirmation that the timing's OK

Now that I write it out like that, if I'm intent on moving on out of the Bay Area tomorrow, then Seattle looks like the best idea.  However, that train leaves at about 11.30pm (not my first time joining a train just in time to get to sleep!)  The Denver train leaves at 9.10am – that might actually be too early for me to get there.

So I guess you can help most with places to stay in any one of those cities but also some way of getting from San Francisco to LB

Do with this what you will… Melatonin is dragging me to bed…

I just need to say, I'm not worried about this.  I trust that the perfect answer will emerge in time – and I'll be much more comfortable if I don't try to work it out alone.

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman

What I'm doing

Day 2

I knew that I didn't want my first night to be with friends.  I wanted to be able to do what I did, which was to sit in my room for a bit and then drop off to sleep.  I dropped off to sleep a little earlier than I'd intended, but it's not the end of the world.  But I didn't need to be sociable with anyone.  I was asleep by the time my hosts got back from work.  I did get to spend some time with them this morning, but by then I was more human.

At first I'd planned to stay in a hotel the first night to cover this anti-social time.  But when it came to booking somewhere, I found myself really resistant to everywhere I looked.  That's when I thought I'd have a look at AirBnB.  I'd first heard about it late last year when I was looking for somewhere cheap to stay in Paris (which in the end didn't come off).  But I hadn't really looked at it properly, it seemed a bit odd, I don't know why really.  But when I looked this time, I quickly found something that looked perfect.

And it was. For $89 +$11 fee for AirBnB, I had a beautifully comfy bed in a spacious, light room, in a gorgeously decorated Victorian house a short walk from the BART at 24th St & Mission.

My hosts Tania and Philip made me extremely welcome – I couldn't have asked for a better start to my trip.  I wanted to stay up later to help with jetlag, but by 5pm I was really flagging.  I was able to just shut myself away and slumber and although I was awake for chunks of the night.  

In the morning I emerged and said hello to Philip.  Who knew that the first person I would speak to properly when I hit the USA would be an expat Englishman originally from Dorchester? Tania was a little busier but Philip and I had a lovely chat uncovering mutual interests and resolving to meet up when they come over to London in the summer.

After they left for work, I hung around for a little and caught up with people online.  Then I set out to get some lunch and go up into the city.  I found a T-mobile store and got myself a US sim card for the month.  I now have unlimited calls and texts and 2GB of data for the month you can get me on +1-415-395-6224.

Then I walked along to CitizenSpace the ur coworking space and sat there for the afternoon, sometimes writing, sometimes just being. It was chilly.  I haven't quite got used to the climate and the need for corresponding clothing.

Then I took my first real train – I mean I'd been on the BART but the CalTrain feels like a train – down to Palo Alto where Robert came to pick me up and take me to his home in Half Moon Bay.  It was great to see someone I already knew! After a 45 minute drive we pulled into his garage and then I was into the chaos of a home with two over-excited toddlers.  I was pleased though to have some hot delicious Persian food (rice with dill – yum!)  But I couldn't manage very much longer without sleep.  Took a melatonin and slept through till 3 am when I woke up worried and needed to blog…

Originally posted on Please Look After This Englishman