Back Home from Potatoland

Well, I made it back home. I got about halfway last night and finished this morning. I've put on about 1000 miles in the last three days, plus 2 full days of work in there too. I'm done. Luckily, with the exception of the last 45 minutes, the weather held out for me even through promises of rain all day today. Now if only I could find my family. I'm sure I left them around here somewhere...

Payback's a b...

...aby. For all the time's I've felt bad about the Mizz crying and potentially keeping people up, now I get a taste. I'm in the crying baby section of my new hotel in Burley, ID. Across the hall is a baby who is apparently not happy with the accommodations. Even better, I can hear Mom over there trying every trick she knows to calm him/her/it down, but no luck. Actually it's not that bad. I hear the baby occasionally, but like most very young ones, it doesn't last long. There's also a kid that once in a while decides to run down the hall yelling back at his sister. I have nightmares of Mizz doing this. It's cute right now while he's doing it at home and he can't run very fast anyway, but that won't last long I'm afraid.

In other news, one of the cool things about my job is getting inside industries and seeing where things come from. However, one of the occasional bad things is seeing where things come from. I worked at a place that processes potato starch, which shows up as an ingredient in all sorts of things. It helps keep McD's fries warm longer than what you can do at home. It sticks the corn to the dog. It keeps paper-thin fast food burgers from falling apart when cooked. Anyway, it's a staple of lots of mass-produced processed foods. However, now that I've seen where it comes from, I'm not as happy. No details today, just ewwwww. Logically, I've seen the precautions that go into the food industry, and everyone has seen the mass hysteria that happens when something bad slips through. Emotionally though, I just have to shiver sometimes and give a big "YUCK". As my boss put it one time, "It's the kind of place that makes you want to grow your own food."

Jewish Ganja

"No hash matzos?" from Yahoo! News

I never thought I'd see the words Passover and marijuana in the same news article. This just struck me as odd.

Where's my freakin' snow?

Once again, the weather forecasters have failed me. Instead of the 4-8 inches of snow promised, we got just a hair under 0 inches. Not just less snow, but not a single flake hit the ground. We did have a few flurries out here, but I'm very disappointed.

It is crazy cold though. And windy as hell.

I took a walk out today, trudging through the bone dry and climbing huge drifts of nothing to check out the feature for which Idaho Falls is named. They looked pretty cool, and again, due to forgetting the camera cable, you don't get to see them. The original falls have been augmented with a concrete wall that stretches about a quarter mile along the length of the river to divert some of the water through a power plant. There's also the remains of an old fish hatchery under one of the bridges that is now a graffiti gallery. And in an odd twist, I found the only non-redneck thing I've seen here in the park along the river. Right next to the falls, in a very picturesque location, was a pagoda-style pillar with some Chinese writing on it. It might have been Japanese, but I don't think so. Anyway, there was no other plaque or anything to tell me what it said or why it was there. Odd.

I'm outta here in the morning. After I finish working in town, I'll head out to Burley, Idaho. Friday, I'll be working there and Heyburn and then hitting the road as far as I can stand and then home Saturday. Finally.

What's new in Idaho?

Saturday, I moved from Pocatello up the road an hour to Idaho Falls. On the way, I stopped at a rest stop that had a sign for a point of geological interest. Turns out it was Hell's Half Acre. Unlike Eastern Oregon's entire canyon, Hell couldn't afford as much in Eastern Idaho. It was actually an area of fairly recent lava flow (4000 years old) that was only lightly covered in soil and vegetation. It was fun to see lava in the middle of Idaho and an interesting stop on a day when I wasn't in a hurry. It was also fun to know that even here, they use the term pahoehoe. What did white people call ropy lava before they found Hawaii?

Had I known how close I was to Craters of the Moon, I would have gone there instead, but I didn't know it was so close until Sunday, and by then I was working. Maybe next time out here.

When I was working on Sunday in Rexburg, I had some time to kill at lunch so I took a ride around town. It took about 9 minutes total. Anyway, I found that they had a BYU campus, and everyone was on the way to the temple. I've seen Mormons before, nothing special there. It just amused me to realize that the entire campus was going to church at the same time. At every other college I've ever been to, the Sunday exodus usually involved a bunch of people with their shirts inside out stumbling home squinting and holding their heads. Not quite the same thing.

I'm in potato land up here. Further down the Snake River Valley, there are also sugar beets, cattle and corn, but up here, it's pretty much just spuds. The place I was working on Monday was in Dubois. (Doo-boys, not Doo-bwah, what are you, foreign? Seriously, that's how they say it.) Dubois had exactly two places to eat. On one side of the road was the Exxon food mart, but on the other side was the Phillips 66 food mart. 66 was much bigger, but not as good as you'd expect. Potato processing plants are interesting. Most food processors work very seasonally, but potatoes can be stored almost a year, so they can be done anytime. Fresh french fries and hash browns all year round. That might mean more if most everything wasn't either dried or frozen before it left the plants.

Today I was working for the nukes at the Idaho National Lab. During the cold war, that place was making bomb parts, but I don't know what they are doing these days. Mainly cleaning up and closing building it looks like, but I'm sure there's something else that I wasn't invited to. Driving out there, you can see the Three Buttes. They're three huge cinder cones that grew up out of an otherwise flat landscape. It was pretty cloudy today though, so I'm guessing it would have been cooler on the weekend when it was sunny and 70 degrees.

It's supposed to snow tonight. 4-8 inches. It snowed a little this afternoon, but then went back to rain. But it's been getting colder all day and should be down below freezing tonight, so we'll see what happens. I'll still probably be able to get around, but the guy working with me was supposed to get over the mountains into Wyoming tonight, and I'm wondering how far he got or whether he'll make it back tomorrow if he did get there.

It's late. I was tired when I got back to the room this evening and took a nap. For 3 hours. So now I'm awake at the wrong time. But morning will still come, so I should at least try to sleep. We'll see how that works out.

Here's one for Marketing Mommy

I just thought of Alma when I saw this cool ad-related video.



There should definitely be more skateboarders on walls.

Hey, wait! I resemble that remark...

The local NPR station out here in Pocatello is doing its fund drive right now. Normally I can't stand listening to these fund drives, but it was on when I turned on the van. Anyway, they were interviewing a couple of kids who are forced to listen to NPR with their parents in the car. Although the younger kid could name some of the station's personalities, the only other thing he could say he knew about it was that he didn't like it. His older sister was a little more nuanced. She admitted that she sometimes liked it, but sometimes not. A lot of times it was a little boring. When asked whether she understood much of what she heard, she said that no, she didn't, and that's probably why it was boring. When asked why she thought her parents liked it, she answered, "because they're kind of boring too."

One more thing...

I'm sure everyone reading this (all 3 of you) have seen the cattle guards where roads cross fences, you know, the bars across the road that cows can't get past. Well, apparently Idaho has the dumbest cows in the country. Here, you get on a highway off ramp and you go through the fence like anywhere else, but instead of bars across the road, they've just painted a few white lines. So, either Idahoan cattle are dumber than average, or Idahoan people are so nostalgic for good-ole' open range cattle herds that they paint lines on the road to pretend it's still true. Which is weirder?

Where's Dave?

Since Sunday, Dave has visited Baker City (by accident) and Durkee in Oregon, and Caldwell, Nampa, Twin Falls, Rupert (seriously), and Pocatello in Idaho. I've worked at a cement plant, a paper chemical manufacturer, a state wildlife forensics lab, a seed distributer, a potato processing plant, a hospital, 3 wastewater treatment plants, and a cheese plant. It's been busy. For the next few days, I'll be in Pocatello, Blackfoot, Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Dubois, Idaho doing all sorts of stuff, and then some more places on the way home. I'm at about 800 miles so far and it's only been 4 days. Today at least, I did have a little bit of time to stop by Shoshone Falls in the Snake River Canyon. I sort of thought it would have more water going over it in the spring than when I saw it last fall, but it wasn't too impressive. It's still pretty cool, but not as wet as I was hoping. I have some pictures and you would be looking at them right now if I had remembered the cord for the camera. Maybe later.

Plus I ran over a groundhog that jumped out in front of my van. Stupid rodent.

It's a great trip so far.

300 miles from home, 100 miles from where I was trying to be

So I spent the night in Baker City, Oregon. I wasn't trying to spend the night in Baker City, Oregon, but my transmission disagreed. I spent the evening and this morning wondering if I was going to get out of that town today or not, since there was one transmission shop and zero rental cars. Turns out it was just a couple of sensors, but it put me a day behind and stuck in Baker City, Oregon (population 10,035). It was every bit as good as it sounds.

Raspberry Beret

So, the Mizz has decided that he likes hats. He likes to put on whatever hats he finds, and although he usually doesn't wear them long, he often tries to find a mirror to see himself. He has even taken to putting on things that might not otherwise qualify, such as pan lids, toy buckets, whatever. This afternoon though, he took it to new heights by putting half a dried raspberry on his head and screeching "HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" until I agreed that, yes, it was indeed a hat. This happened with the second half of every raspberry for the duration of the snack.

Wow, what a pic

That picture's pretty bad. Apparently, a Motorola RAZR in a dark room is not the best camera in the world. Good to know. The good news is that now I know how to do this from my phone. Now if only I had a reason to do so...

Mobile blogging here I come

My first attempt at blogging from my phone. How did I do?

Starlight Run

One of the many cool things about Portland is the Rose Festival. And one of the cool things about the Rose Festival is the Starlight Run. It's a regular race, but with a Portland twist. Everybody runs in a costume. We've seen a pregnant (not really) woman running next to a doctor (not really) and being chased by her husband (maybe) carrying a suitcase (really). There was a tree, which seemed hard to run in since the tree had no arms. There were several guys from Portland General Electric running tied together dressed as a power station, several power poles and a house. Lots of guys in dresses and people in clown wigs. All sorts of silly crap.

Anyway, I've decided to run it this year. That sounds impressive, until you realize that it's only 3.1 miles long. However, I'm in awful shape (you know post-partum and all that), and it's a good motivation to change that. I don't want to be the only idiot huffing and puffing to finish a 3 mile race. I'm trying to get Franny to run with me. Maybe we could do some silly-ass costume together. I need some idea help though, because although I'm motivated to get some exercise and be good for this, I still lack the creativity to come up with something good for a costume. Any ideas?

I Like Lambs

I don't know if this shows too much feminine side or too much immaturity, but dammit, lambs are cute. I don't care about the look of them exactly. It's just that I pass a ton of them driving up and down I-5 and the lambs look like a bunch of toddlers playing and carousing as their parents stand around and have boring conversations about the weather. They're all still pretty small right now, and very playful.

On a related note, I learned recently that most of the sheep I see up and down the valley are not locals. Apparently, they come from further east, mainly Colorado. When it's too cold for them to find food, the owners load them up on trucks and bring them to the grass seed fields of the Willamette Valley (grass seed capital of the world, or so they say). During the winter, the fields are just sitting there, so the ranchers get a cheap place to feed their sheep, the farmers get a little extra money, the sheep get abundant food and temperate weather, and the grass gets chewed up and crapped on. Supposedly, this is good for the grass. Whatever.

A Couple More Hawaii Pics

I was sitting on a jetty in front of the Hale Koa hotel and this was about the best sunset I got to see. January is just not the time for the best sunset-viewing weather. I did like the sun coming through the clouds though. Franny calls these God rays.

I had a tough time getting myself lined up with Diamond Head. This was the best I came up with. I'm sure everyone is sorry for me that I was there by myself. (Would have been better with company though...)

Promised Pics of Hawaii (1 month late)

Here goes nothing. Can Dave post a picture? How about 5?

Some sort of natural lava arch. I just liked it.

The beginning of many miles of lava that crossed Chain of Craters Road in the last 20 odd years. 10 or 20 miles down the road it also covered an entire town. Not crazy fast like the movies. No, these poor people had to watch their town covered and destroyed in slow motion. Apparently some people have started to rebuild above their old houses, even though it just a thick layer of rock. As one local put it, that's where you build if that happens to be the only pile of rocks that you own. I guess if you had beach front property, you made out like a bandit, what with all the new rocks in your front yard.

This is where the lava was actually entering the ocean on the day we were there. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to walk out to it. Apparently it's quite a fireworks show at night.

I saw a lot of postcards that appeared to have posed pictures kind of like this, but as far I could tell, this was the real thing. I was standing on about 6 or 8 feet of lava that had crossed the road and trapped a sign. I was impressed that I could read this one. Another sign that might have been a speed limit sign had all of the black paint burned (melted/boiled?) off and was just white.

Here I was standing in the crater if Kilauea looking down into the caldera, or maybe vice-versa. Anyway it was steaming all around us and it struck me as odd that I was standing around playing tourist in the crater of an active volcano. Not active like Mt. Hood is technically active. This one is currently dumping molten lava into the ocean. What a strange place for a photo op.

More Reviews

I saw a couple more movies this week.

Fantastic Four: I saw this movie in Eugene Monday night on HBO. For free. I still think I got ripped off. I'm not sure what my problem is. I was never a big comic book guy, but I did like the ideas behind some of the stories, so I still want the movie adaptations to be good. The problem is that they rarely are. This one is no exception. Lots of special effects and such, but not much else. So of course it made a lot of money and has a sequel coming and I'll probably end up seeing that too sometime. I'm an idiot. The thing is, it's exactly what I expected, but I watched it anyway. Kind of like rubbernecking. If you haven't seen this yet, don't bother. If you have, feel sorry for me.

The Departed: This was excellent. Maybe not best picture excellent, but damn good anyway, and what the hell, Scorsese's had this coming for years. Franny and I both enjoyed this and I would definitely recommend it. Maybe not for Tutu, but for anyone else.