byron's blog

Did you go to summer camp? What is your favorite memory/story? If you didn't go to camp, do you feel like you missed out?
Submitted by chris.

I never went to summer camp.  I did travel during summer vacations, and racked up close to 300,000 frequent flyer miles from when the airlines began their frequent flyer programs (I was 12) until I went away to college.  But I never went to summer camp.

It seems like a lot of accounts of summer camp that are out there make it out to be this fantastic place that kids return to year after year, progressing from newbies to veterans, and maybe (if they're really lucky) camp counselors.  But I also hear the horror stories (including ones from chris, whose QotD this is), and as a result of the availability heuristic effect, tend to think it's probably just as well that I didn't go.  I managed to keep myself occupied enough, learning about languages and cultures and how airports work, among other things.

This camp, though, sounds really cool... this one I would have wanted to attend at that age.

... and now, so have Steve Betz and blog.Monica.blog (if they care to participate, of course.)

Four jobs I have had in my life:                                                                                                                            

one.   customer support rep
two.   technology trainer
three. software engineer
four.   data entry clerk

Four movies I would watch over and over:
one.   the princess bride
two.   when harry met sally
three. toy story
four.   electric dreams

Four places I have never gone, but want to:
one.   Ireland
two.   Australia
three. Spain
four.   Czech

Four songs on the CD player right now:
one.   Thunder on the Mountain
two.   Tiny Dancer
three. Was I
four.   Miami

Four TV shows I love/like:
one.   Heroes
two.   How I Met Your Mother
three. Six Degrees
four.   Weeds

Four places I've been on vacation:
one.   Santa Fe, NM
two.   Paris, France
three. Monterey, CA
four.   London, UK

Four of my favorite foods are:
one.   chocolate
two.   Acme baguette
three. gruyere cheese
four.   smoked salmon

Four places I would rather be right now:
one.   with my friends
two.   on the water
three. having tea
four.   at the W

What is your favorite board game?
Submitted by I'm Unique.

The first thing that came to mind was The Big Idea, but I then realized that it's really not a board game.

Probably Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition.  Or Trivial Pursuit, the original edition.

What is your favorite cover song?
Question submitted by Ray.

It's hard to pick just one, but for whatever reason the first one that came to mind was Jennifer Warnes' cover of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat".  The Bobs' cover of "Psycho Killer" is pretty good, too.

.

whew!

We've stopped for the night at Little America, which is an oasis of sorts in the middle of Interstate 80, about 300 miles west of Cheyenne.  C. said that walking into the room was like going back in time.  (There's no Internet connection available, and dialup would cost an arm and a leg, so I'm drafting this for posting later.)

The drive from Colorado was pretty uneventful.  I finished reading Persepolis 2, which I had picked up at the Boulder Book Store on Pearl Street.  If you haven't read it and Persepolis, you should (preferably in the right order, of course).  It's an amazing story.

We took I-25 towards Cheyenne, and stopped for breakfast at Johnson's Corner.  E. suggested it, although she herself had never been there.  The restaurant at Johnson's Corner is famous for its cinnamon rolls, which are huge! We ordered two but realized we'd be better off splitting one and taking the other one with us for later.  The place was hopping with people when we arrived, and more were coming in as we left.  According to the menu, it is open 24 hours a day -- it hasn't closed since 1952!

On the outskirts of Cheyenne, we finally reached I-80.  From there, the driving directions read "Take I-80 W (1,170 miles)".  Um, yeah.  :-)

We also seem to have interesting dining experiences whenever we come here.  The last time we were here, we had stopped for lunch.  I had ordered the Little America sandwich: grilled ham and cheese, served with a side of tartar sauce (!).  A waitress -- not ours -- brought me some soy sauce to go along with it.  It turned out that someone at the table next to ours had ordered a stir fry, and the soy sauce was for his stir fry, not my sandwich.  This time around, I tried the coconut shrimp -- they were huge.  The menu said that they were served with "sauce malade", which sounded ominous, but I didn't let that deter me.  It turned out to be orange marmalade, which was surprisingly good with the shrimp.  Unconventional, maybe, but interesting.

Breakfast at Breadworks (E's suggestion)

Iced tea at Pekoe Sip House, and grocery shopping at Ideal Market (which is now a Wild Oats).

Met E at the Boulder Dushanbe Tea House for lunch.  Amazing decor by Tajik master craftsmen.
Before that, we checked out the Boulder Map Gallery a few doors down.

Explored the Pearl Street Mall.  Stopped in at the Boulder Book Store and picked up a copy of Persepolis 2.

Drove up to Estes Park.  Beautiful mountainous drive in the afternoon rain.  Saw the Stanley Hotel (where The Shining was filmed).  Amazing almost full rainbow on the drive back.

Dinner at Snarf's, which everybody I've known that has lived in Boulder has talked about at some point or other.  The sandwich lived up to the hype.

Stopped into Borders on the way back to the hotel and picked up a copy of Jennifer Lynn Barnes' book Golden, which Megan Crane recently featured on her LJ.  It certainly sounds interesting...

It's a long drive through Kansas.  Although it's called the Sunflower State, I didn't really notice any sunflowers until after we'd been almost all the way through the state -- maybe sixty miles or so before we reached the Colorado state line on I-70.  And then there were sunflowers all over the place. There is also a mountain not too far south of the Interstate there called Mount Sunflower.

I also think it's strange that time zone boundaries don't coincide with state boundaries -- part of western Kansas is in the Mountain time zone, for example.

Last night's storms have moved east and north of where we were staying, and the temperatures are cooler now -- only in the 80s and 90s, which is par for the course this time of year.

After talking with our friend E who lives here, we decided to stop in Longmont, where the newer hotels are -- we figured it would be easier to find Internet access that way.  We took the E-470 toll road up the east side  and over the north side of Denver to the Boulder Highway (U.S. 36) into Boulder, then the Diagonal Highway (Colorado 119) up to Longmont.  It all went pretty smoothly, but the toll road cost us $10 in tolls.  (Five segments, $2 each)  Still, probably better than fighting Thursday afternoon rush hour traffic.

Tomorrow we hope to meet up with E, and see some of Boulder and Denver.

We've stopped for the night in Salina, Kansas.  Salina is the closest city to the geographic center of the U.S., according to Wikipedia.

The drive over from Columbia was mostly uneventful.  Lots of corn and soybean fields, and some cows and goats.  A classmate had pointed out over dinner, before we left, that several towns you pass through have signs that say "Welcome to [place], home town of [famous person]".  Local kids make good, that sort of thing.  He also said that there seem to be a lot of astronauts from Kansas.  Maybe it's that you can see the stars from the fields better because there isn't as much light pollution, and that drives people's dreams of becoming astronauts, I don't know.  But it did seem like there were more than a few "home of astronaut [so-and-so]" signs.

We had hoped to meet up with our friend A. as we passed through Kansas City, but unfortunately it was a bad day at work and he couldn't get away from his desk -- too many fires to put out.  We stopped in Lee's Summit, where we had lunch at the local Jason's Deli and frozen custard at Custard's Last Stand, then stopped to visit the local Borders.  While I was waiting for C. to finish browsing, I flipped through a copy of Jane and Michael Stern's Road Food.  I saw the entry for the Brookville Hotel in Abilene and knew we had to stop for dinner there.

The rain had been pouring down for about 90 miles before we reached Abilene, and when we arrived the rain had eased up to a steady sprinkle.  We had planned to stop in Salina, about 40 miles further on the Interstate, and found out that several roads had been closed west of there because of the rain and high winds. 

The Brookville Hotel started out in Brookville, Kansas and has been serving family style chicken dinners since 1915.  In 2000, it moved to Abilene and is located in a replica of the original building.  I had been to Abilene before on a cross-country road trip with my family (more years ago than I care to mention here).  We had stopped there because the Eisenhower Presidential Library is there, and my dad is something of a history and politics buff.  But I digress.  Dinner was fantastic.  The Sterns didn't steer us wrong on this one.  Everyone we met, from the restaurant staff to our fellow diners, was very friendly, and they wished us a safe trip back to California.