Jon Camfield

While all the cool kids were offline at ASA this weekend, I was out seeing probably my oldest friend get hitched (we were first introduced at the tender youth age of 6 mos). He had a "destination" wedding in Crested Butte, Colorado (near Aspen) (both their families are from Texas, and they're now living in Alaska, so it seemed a fair location for all).

The wedding was great, and CB, despite it's one-trick pony of being a ski destination, was still a beautiful location.

Photos and HDRs after the jump

So I spent last week in California with A, going to Yosemite, then up to Sonoma, then San Fran and back to LA. It was a long trip but very awesome. I got to catch up with my friend Mike, but sadly missed the other West Coasters. I also got to abuse my CHDK (Canon Hacker Developer Kit) scripts to take some HDR shots, which I'm still tweaking but seem good.

Yosemite was insanely crowded and also wet; which sucked. Fortunately once you get out from the vehicle-accessible spots, the crowds die down immediately, so it wasn't a disaster, and the weather improved a bit. Besides, the clouds make for dramatic HDRs:


(viewing those at full size is much more awesome)

The redwood grove was nice, but I remember Muir Woods as being more dramatic overall, but lacking redwood cameltoe and snowplants:




We hiked to the fissures near Glacier Point, and had to deal with lots of snow; for which I was not really well prepared for.



But the clouds did mask the really really really long way you fall if you misstep there. Which was nice. This was about as clear as it got:

(that's half dome in a cloud)

Sonoma was nice, but parallel to Yosemite you had to get out of the town, which was itself quite the tourist trap full of.. well, tourists.  We drove up to the Russian Creek Valley and had a great time -- basically hitting the wineries I didn't make it to last time I went winetasting in Cali (on a bike)

San Fran was challenging because we really hadn't planned it and A was having a problem with her hip making it hard for her to walk a lot.  We managed to walk most of the Embarcadero/Chinatown/Nob Hill area and used some MUNI bus/subway/things.  We still managed to have some awesome food (tho my attempt at Mexican food was thwarted, we stumbled on to an amazing Italian Place, Caffe Delucchi) The Sushi place (Koo) was good, but not life-changing.

Not much travel of recent. I flew out to San Diego to present at the Youth Service Institute in late December, but barely saw anything outside the hotel. A and I did Texas for the winter holidays -- but West Texas just doesn't change much, which is both frustrating and relieving.

Coming up: A trip to LA to visit A in April, perhaps a longer trip in the summer to the West Coast to do San Fran, wine country, and so on.

We're planning some form of international jump in the late fall when she's back in DC again -- maybe a Europe trip, maybe Argentina.

Granada's a beautiful, chill city that's being slowly re-invaded by Gringos buying it up.  Huge numbers of expats walking the streets.  
 

We got to see a funeral procession:


We climbed a belltower for a great view of the city:


 

At dusk, we took a  boat around "Las Isletas" - a group of ~365 islands formed when Volcan Mombacho erupted a few hundred years back:


  
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  I'm holding off on posting too much about the wedding to try and give Chanita some time to go through all the photos A and I gave her and post them herself. Until then, some photos from our first couple of days in Managua and Granada:

Managua:

  Managua has some of the best street art / graffiti / murals


The Parque de la Paz was a huge bonfire of weapons used during the Sandinista revolution, burnt and concreted over:


It's a country in a big hurry to forget it's troubled past.  This is the Somoza family grave. The Somozas rules Nicaragua for over 40 years, bleeding it dry (they had some great friends, too)
  
The shadow of Sandino on top of Tiscapa:

I so envy Audrey for being the one to capture this moment (by explicit and almost forced request of the village elder, in the glasses, mind you)

Another case of words detracting from the photos:

There's not much text I can throw in here to really explain or improve the photos, so here's an eruption of photos from an astronomical/logical site in Jaipur:






Each of these "small" tools was aligned for its specific zodiac, you can guess ours?



This is a REALLY LARGE SUNDIAL:



This was a fancy star chart/calendar:




And a planet chart:


This smaller sundial could get within 20 seconds accuracy, the large one had 2 second accuracy:

 

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If you haven't seen Wes Anderson's latest; The Darjeeling Limited, I highly recommend it. Standard Anderson, people dealing with distant/absent parents and their own messed up lives, but filmed in India. Not really India-accurate, but hilarious nonetheless, and some awesome shots/scenery. If only the trains were actually remotely like that.

The main for of transit is autorickshaws, which I blogged about from India with my "three riddles" :

1) What's the only thing scarier than an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a shaky transmission?

2) How many autorickshaws does to take to get you to where you want to go?

3) How many lanes does an Indian road have?
(answers at the bottom)

So, what IS an ARS anyhow? It's a three-wheeled gocart-type affair, with a pull-start motor and motorcycle-like handlebar controls. They're about 1/2 as wide as a normal car, and very dexterous moving through traffic. Here's some visual explanation:


not enough?? Fine. Here's a video of a normal, calm ride in a rickshaw. The (unusual) blasting bollywood tunes help you imagine you're a dashing hero out to save a modest female!






So while ARSs are the best in-town transit, it's the trains that get you between towns. Now, you have to fill out forms for everything at the train station; to get tickets, to request information about what ticket to get, to store your luggage... You even have to sign a log book if you wait in the waiting rooms for the reserved-class cars (the ones where you have a reserved seat, as opposed to the "hope you can squeeze on" style. Fully in line with the standards of bureacracy one comes to expect, we discovered where these forms go:
note that this was taken at a chest-high window into a room filled with piles of old forms. I'm sure there's a 27B/6 in there somewhere....

You spend lots of time waiting for trains. We had five train rides, 2 of which were 5+ hours late, 2 ~1 hr late, and one on time. You discover all sorts of things while waiting or riding, such as new flavors of chips (warning, may cause mischeviousness):



And you remember why you're paying exhorbitant amounts for a reserved seat:



Excuse me, conductor, this cow doesn't have a ticket:



Rickshaw Quiz Answers!


1) an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a *good* transmission

2) One more.

3) One more. Tags: delhi indi

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A and I finally merged our massive photosets, took out exact duplicates, and did some work to pick the best couple of hundred photos, so if you ask us for an in-person slideshow, you know what you're getting yourself into. In the meantime, I've updated Flickr with the missing photos; Jama Masjid, a hugemongous mosque in Old Delhi, more Delhi shots, Jantar Mantar, a huge stone astro-nomical and -logical observatory, and some other random shots.

Jama Masjid


We went there because my finely-honed "late afternoon tropical thunderstorm" senses were tingling, and we figured we could find refuge. After wisely toting our shoes (you can't wear shoes in mosques), the sky broke open and deluged the less fortunate:


After the rainstorm we slipped and slided and clammered up a tall and steep minaret/tower to get a view of the city; it was... harrowing, unlit, narrow, and super crowded with 2-way traffic up a 1-way staircase. We survived, with some great shots.

Some pictures of India Gate, government buildings, and the presidential house:


A Hindu temple, and the Bahai temple:







There are three more choice photos from our morning at Humayun's Tomb that I must share.  First:

There is one parrot, and five ninjas, in this photo.

Second, I come halfway across the world to find a country overrun by mesquite trees?  Next time I'll save money and jetlag and go to west texas:


Third:


Important lesson for female travellers: don't get your picture taken with men outside of family groups.  That shit-eating grin on the guy's face?  Yeah, he's grabbing Audrey's ass.  Not that I can blame him, really, but still.