Travel on traviscj/blog

christmas commute

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I did a 725-mile drive yesterday from Prosser, WA to San Francisco, CA. I captured the daylight hours with a GoPro timelapse and turned it into a video!

This was the actual loop we took, including the trip up to Washington. We spent two nights in Oregon – one in Grants Pass and one in Portland.

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My GoPro mount held the pictures upside down, so I transformed all of them with a quick

KLR-650 first month & american gumball

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I finally got the title for my motorcycle and realized that I’d owned it for exactly one month!

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So far, I haven’t done anything very adventureous – still getting used to riding again. I had a couple things that were making me nervous about it:

The bike gets warm (>1/2 way on the heat gauge, but still significantly below the red) tooling around, usually on my commute home in the evening.

My Hint for Foreign ATM Machines

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write this tip up for quite a while, but now that I’ve finally gotten some closure on it, I guess now would be a decent time. While I was in Brazil, there were two ATM machine clusters across the street from eachother, both between the beach and the hostel we were staying at. The CITIbank ATMs were more reliable, but the HSBC ATMs were a bit cheaper. At first, it always seemed worth the small extra, but since I never wanted to get much out at a time, I was racking up the bank charges. Also, several people had been using the HSBC ATM without issue, so I figured I would start using that one instead as well. This worked well the first couple of times, but one of the days I went in to get some cash out, it didn’t dispense. Undeterred, I went to one of the ATM machines someone else had just (successfully) used and tried there, and withdrew the money. This time it worked.

David Liff is a Master

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Life is keeping me so crazy that I should not be taking the time to write this, but posting a link here was irresistable. David Liff is an amazing photographer. I think the best comment on that page(if you can make it to the bottom without running out and buying a plane ticket to one of these places) is “Your photos have more life than the subjects themselves!”. Wikipedia, you may be proud. David Liff, thank you.

Mugged!

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Friday started off a pretty decent day in Brazil. I finally got comfortable enough with my phrase book to start busting out phrases to the Taxi driver and it ended up making our taxi rides a fair bit more comfortable, quicker, and cheaper. So, there’s one place that Portuguese is coming in really handy, even if it is even just a tiny bit of it. It’s getting a lot more comfortable interacting with the native Brazilians here, probably for all of us, but it was pretty pronounced today, and I was feeling pretty good about it. I had intended to get some pictures at IMPA, so I happened to have my camera today.

More Updates from Rio

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry for not getting this updated a little bit sooner, but it has been an eventful week sortof. Apparently it’s been almost a week! Time flies, apparently.

Wednesday was pretty standard. More classes, more modeling, more cool climate stuff. IMPA has pretty good coffee for free on supply until 4pm, and all of us Seattlites are pretty much living on it, and on the verge of staging a coup when they try to shut it down. There are currently a bunch of very fun, very loud Irish guys outside the 9-bed dorm room, so everyone in our room is pretty sleep deprived. Hence the coffee addiction. We also finally formalized some ‘cab groups’, or a set of people we’re going to share taxis with for all the taxi rides we’re taking to and from IMPA and other places around Rio.

First Couple of Days in Rio

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So Monday morning was really lazy. Some people went to get a volleyball, a bunch went down to the beach again, and I let my sunburn cool off. It was also really warm and sunny, which is a nice change from Seattle! We left for IMPA around 2, got on taxis to get over there, and eventually made it. The taxi drivers are apparently pretty vicious. We took 5 cabs, 3 got charged around 15, one around 20, and one 25. So they try to rip you off.

IN BRAZIL

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I finally made it to Brazil. It was a very long and tiring flight, but I was seated next to a couple of very nice locals that fed me all sorts of useful information. I ended up pre-buying a ticket from the Taxi company, but apparently this is sortof a bad call, because they way overcharge if you don’t have them use the meter. Anyways, not too big of a deal. He took me right up to the hostel, and a bunch of familiar faces were there.

In Atlanta

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I made it at least as far as Atlanta. The Boeing 757 we flew in had touchscreens in each monitor that told me I’ve traveled 2326 miles so far. Landing was pretty smooth, and the flight was relatively easy. A bit longer than I’d expected, and a little bit more restless than I’d hoped.

I stopped to get some food immediately on arriving, somewhere called Krystal Hamburger. They have a Sausage Scramble Combo, a cup full of scrambled eggs, sausage, and grits! How awesome.

Final Pre-trip Brazil Updates

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have been meaning to write for almost two weeks that I’ve got my Visa back from the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco, which is pretty cool. I saw a picture of it and it looks really sweet. I’m slowly turning into a world traveler! It took about a week inside the consulate, then they FedEx Next Day Air’d it to Memphis, then Spokane, then the Tri-Cities, then Prosser. They dropped it off with Mom.

Brazil Tickets

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a little bit late announcing this, but…. I BOUGHT MY BRAZIL TICKETS!

It ended up being like 1300 bucks, and I have a 13 hour layover in Atlanta on the way there…. but I think that’ll be okay. It’s actually enough time that I think I might go in and see the world’s largest aquarium, the CNN headquarters, and the World of Coca Cola.

We’re going to be staying somewhere called El Misti Hostel, and make up about 70-80% of the residents there. It’s right off of Copacabana Beach, which is very, very exciting.