Egypt! T

Here is a choice shot of some yucky sink laundry: socks. Let's just say that walking in Egypt entails a lot of dirt.

Dateline: Luxor, aka The Hassle Capital of Egypt (which is really saying something.)

Egypt is a mixed bag: sometimes wonderful, sometimes crappy. Today was kind of great: a shockingly good vegan lunch, all Egyptian (traditional) dishes where we basically chanced it. Then fun walking in the desert around a huge tomb, and having a tourism police show us what was allegedly Ramses II's toilet, for "baksheesh" (google it: it's a little complicated. Sometimes tipping, sometimes fee for service, sometimes alternative economy, sometimes kinda like petty bribery.)

Tomorrow: more monuments to powerful dead people!

Editor's note:

I'm about to be traveling a lot (again), so through mid-November, this blog is probably going to be fairly low activity. But (a) I'll be back, I promise, and (b) maybe I'll try to make it up to you by posting a ton in the next two days. Maybe: just play your cards right, buckeroos.

How to walk in to LAX and almost get arrested

Note the lack of a sidewalk:

Reference this post about my second-most recent experience with my ongoing project of walking in and out of airports. This is the elaboration on my very vague post, where I walked back in to LAX after a delicious vegan lunch at Veggie Grill, south of the airport, on N. Sepulveda. Here's a hint: the airport police don't dig it when you do this. Dialogue, paraphrased:

Cop at vehicle checkpoint on freeway-like road: "HEY! Get OVER here!"
Me: [gesturing with a big 'Gosh! I have no idea how I possibly got here!' sort of dumb tourist shrug and smile, modeled on my 'big shit-eating grin, doing my best I'm-A-Stupid-Bike-Tourist routine']
Cop: "WHERE are you FROM?!?"
Me: "Uhhh, Atlanta?" [Flashing through my mind: oh, shit: I hope he doesn't ask to see my [Alaska] driver license...]
Cop: "You can't walk here! Can't you see this is practically a freeway?!?"
Me: "Yeah, I see that. Can you tell me how to get out of here?"
Cop: [Now apparently thinking I'm just plain dumb.] Where are you going?
Me: "Terminal 5."
Cop: "Are you flying today?"
Me: "Yep!"

Cop then tells me to cross carefully over the freeway-like road, go down a hill, and get on the sidewalk. At that point, his only other option would have been to drive me out [whether in custody or not] so I actually got to do precisely what I wanted to do.

Anyway, the conclusion from my one attempt to walk in to LAX is like this: it's not a particularly safe idea to walk in to LAX using Sepulveda. I'll have to try something else next time. There is a free shuttle that takes you to and from the subway station, but it's so much more fun to walk in and out!

Now here’s just a list of some stuff:

With props to SNL, but actually, this is just a series of random pictures that I don't have the time (or more accurately, the energy) to blog individually. And an apology: I've been going through and adding labels to some old posts, which I think gets a little weird with some people's feedreaders, which see the re-saved post as a new post. Sorry! (And/or, maybe you need better technology!)

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's: a random plastic bag flying high up in the air. At one point, it was above my 11th floor condo.

Rosemary crusted baked tofu cubes.

One of two vegan pizzas, oddly artsy looking since the camera chose a really low aperture.

Pasta fixins'.

Vegan gnocchi, which was actually really difficult to make. Making the dough was straightforward enough (J did most of it) but boiling them and then sautéing them was hard: in the boil, they wanted to become a big gelatinous blob, and I over-boiled the first batch. Well, lessons learned.

One of my favorite bikes, in front of one of my favorite non-profits.

A circus act, one of many cool things happening on Edgewood Ave during Sunday's Atlanta Streets Alive.

And this is the kind of nasty crap that builds up inside the aerators in faucets (this is from our bathroom faucets.) Fortunately, they're easy to clean (you just unscrew them, pull all the pieces apart, soak in white vinegar for a while, reassemble, and screw it back on.) Know that you might have a washer stuck in the faucet even after you unscrew the aerator, so poke around for it and get it out for cleaning: this is where a lot of the nasty crap hides. (Oh, and I'm adding "home renovation" as a label for this since I don't want to add a new label of "home repair" or the like.)

pharmaceutical reps

Yay! I'm in the waiting room of my doctor's office for an annual physical, and the receptionist just turned away two pharmaceutical reps with a big ass bag o' crap.

Rep, with a huge smile, chirpy voice, and a ton of makeup: "Hey, y'all wanna see any more reps?"

Receptionist: "Nope."

Rep, a little taken aback: "Oh, okay, uhhh... I'll come back."

Receptionist: "Okay."

So, it was probably more because they're busy, or later than normal peddle-namebrand-newly-patented-drugs-that-replace-perfectly-effective-generics visiting hours than anything else, but a good result in any event.

Perhaps the stinkeye I threw the reps both coming and going was unnecessary, since I guess they are doing their crappy jobs in a crappy economy, but their industry is, of course, one reason why the economy is crappy.

And, WIN: the just turned away another rep! (Unfortunately, she said she'd come back tomorrow.)

Okay, fine: here's some food porn

I tossed this together after deciding that the recipe I bought most of the ingredients for, Spicy Mafe Tempeh, on p.95 of Vegan Soul Kitchen, was entirely too involved and time consuming to begin at 8:15pm. So, rather than go with J's time-tested and delicious Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce recipe, I decided to experiment a bit.

What I made is VERY loosely based on 1,000 Vegan Recipes, p.557. It's doubled, uses prepared crushed garlic instead of fresh (which I didn't have), uses less than double soy sauce, uses bottled lime juice, halves the water and then substitutes vodka for it, skips brown sugar, and then uses fresh jalapeños instead of crushed red pepper. Hey, I told it was loose, didn't I?



Oh, and I decided to knock out some fried tofu.

All of the ingredients except for the jalapeños, blended.

Ooooh, yeah: let's get some jalapeños in there!


Some peanut sauce and some tofu, greedily eyeing angel hair pasta.

As could be expected, the tofu and peanut sauce had its way, and it was delicious. Next time, I'd probably add more vodka to thin it out a bit, and probably top it with finely sliced scallions or chives for some color and a little flavor.

More about voting

To any of my readers who think I post too much food porn and bike porn, here's the third post in a row about politics and voting.

The summary: voting thoughtfully takes a long time. With the exception of taking the time to write the previous post to Lesil, I have been doing nothing but researching and voting for the last five hours. Yes, really. Researching the judges took the longest, and this is something that as an attorney, at that an attorney licensed in Alaska, I take very seriously.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of judges standing for retention are, in fact, retained, but I still voted my conscience after careful consideration of every one. Since I've been pretty clear in previous posts about who I'm voting for, I decided to post photos of my completed ballot for the Nov 2, 2010 Alaska general election:

Front (offices and bond issues)

Rear (judges)

I decided I couldn't vote for Bob Buch

And, okay, just so you don't feel like I'm totally neglecting the bike porn, here's a shot with all five of our current bikes in it:

Confidential to Lesil McGuire:

Editor's note: Don't know who Lesil McGuire is? That's okay, apparently neither does she. Marginally, she's "my" state senator in Alaska Senate District N.

Dear Lesil: Not to butt in and make myself your political advisor, but I'm a little concerned about the first line in the main body of your official candidate statement this year. It begins "As a lifelong resident of South Anchorage..."

Pssst, Lesil: here are a few of the problems with that claim: approximately 2.25 inches away in the print version, it notes your place of birth as Portland, Oregon. Approximately 4 inches away, it notes that you attended college and law school at Willamette (here's a hint, Lesil: Willamette isn't located in Alaska. It's in Oregon.) On your website, you write:

Senator McGuire graduated from Willamette University with an undergraduate degree in Speech Communication and Political Science. Following her undergraduate studies, Senator McGuire went on to work in Washington D.C. for two years as a legislative and press aide for United States Senator Ted Stevens. She subsequently obtained her Juris Doctorate from Willamette University College of Law while clerking in the United States Attorney's Office in Oregon. Her law degree was put to use when she came back to Alaska and worked for the firm of Birch, Horton, Bittner & Cherot.

PSSST, LESIL! Washington, D.C. isn't located in Alaska! And despite the old saw about "Anchorage, it's as close as you can get to Alaska without actually visiting", when you're a "lifelong" resident of South Anchorage, you don't normally have to "return" to Alaska.

Now, Lesil, I'm obviously not a lifelong Alaskan, or a lifelong Anchoraguan, but I don't claim to be, especially when running for re-election to the state senate. Please, Lesil, tell me this was a typo, or an early draft, or a joke, and that you didn't actually intend to submit it in your official candidate statement.

p.s. Lesil, congratulations on avoiding indictment or conviction that many of your fellow members of the "Corrupt Bastards Club" got in the political corruption investigation surrounding VECO. Congratulations also on not being criminally charged for being drunk and disruptive on an Alaska Airlines flight from Juneau to Anchorage that caused you, the chair of the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee, to detained for questioning by law enforcement upon landing. It seems that many of the original articles reporting this, including the Anchorage Daily News, and the AP article I linked in my original blog post about it, have disappeared. Unfortunately for you, google has a long memory, as do USA Today and MSNBC.

The Franchise, and Alaska politic

No, not like opening up a Subway, but rather the right to vote. It's something I take really seriously, and I'm sitting here exercising it (I vote absentee in Alaska.) It regularly takes me several hours to vote, since I research every single race, every ballot measure, every bond, every judge up for retention. As I acknowledged to J2 in an email, this is arguably a sillyass waste of time, but I can't feel good about voting any other way.

My current conundrum: the options for the US Senate race are just abysmal. While I appreciate the diligent work the so-called Tea Party is doing to destroy the GOP, I'm obviously not voting for a Tea Party candidate, so Joe Miller is out. I do find it amusing that Miller was disciplined in writing for ethics violations in 2008 when he was the Fairbanks North Star Borough's part-time attorney. While Miller fans might try to claim that it's a partisan hatchet job, the guy making this public, the former borough mayor, isn't a massive Lisa Murkowski fan: "Whitaker has a long and mixed history with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is running a write-in campaign after Miller beat her in the Republican primary this summer. They served in the state Legislature together but Whitaker publicly complained of nepotism when Murkowski was appointed to the U.S. Senate by her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski."

To paraphrase Utah Phillips, "talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator… you know, the light goes on, the light goes off, it’s not going to do anything that isn’t built into it" so Lisa Murkowski's amusing write-in campaign is out.

Who does that leave me? A whack job libertarian named Frederick "David" Hasse (the name in quotes is from the official election pamphlet from the State of Alaska, not my own embellishment.) Why is he a whackjob, you ask? Let's start with hypothetical question #3 in his official candidate statement: "Do you know [...] What the "New World Order" is about?" Somewhat inexplicable for a Libertarian is his #1 plan for the "People's Bailout": "Nationalize the Federal Reserve and place it under Congressional control." Okay, let's move on.

One of the only things I can say for Tim Carter, a retired optometrist from Florida, is that he lives in a ski condo in the shadow of a nice ski resort. He has lived in Alaska for less time (3 years) than I have, but did manage to work the words "Alaska" and "Alaskan" into his official candidate statement 14 times. (Confidential to Tim: "neverstop" is actually two words.)

Non-affiliated Ted Gianoutsos only uses "Alaska" and variants thereof seven times in his official candidate statement, which seems to be running against Frank Murkowski as much as Lisa: "father-daughter" shows up five times. Notwithstanding the opening exhortation in his candidate statement, "Elect me, and YOU win!" this guy = FAIL.

How about the Democratic candidate, a marginally qualified small town mayor? (Will Alaskans never learn our lesson on that?) Scott McAdams is the somewhat bumbling mayor of Sitka, which at population ~8,986, is the fourth most populated city in Alaska. (Yes, really.) To once again call up the memory of Utah Phillips, "Working for the Democratic Party now that’s kind of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic..." Indeed. McAdams wants to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is aggressively pro-war and pro-Afghanistan war, and generally, I just disagree with almost every one of his positions. I mean, this is really the Democratic candidate? It seems that one of the only things he and I agree on is abortion, though his own statement on ""Individual Liberty" is the political equivalent of mumbling with your mouth full of peanut butter and Wonder Bread, which forced me to google him specifically for a position on abortion. He does manage variants of Alaska and Alaskan a whopping 15 times, but he has lived in the Last Frontier for 19 years, so he's a little more justified than Carter in his pandering.

So I'm left with: nobody. I can't decide who to write-in, and I simply cannot, as a matter of personal morality, vote for someone I genuinely don't want to in office. And I don't want Scott McAdams in office. I guess I'm going to leave it blank. To continue with my theme of paraphrasing musicians, here's a little Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Not similarly problematic is the governor's race: I'm actually fine with voting for Ethan Berkowitz, who I have met and spoken with in person at some length. Unfortunately, I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis of Ivan Moore, a local politcal pollster:

"Ethan’s a very smart and capable guy, but [voters] don’t know the man. He’s a personally private person and very few people really know what he’s about, what makes him tick, and what he’s done in his life. The reason they don’t know it is because Ethan hasn’t told us. For years now, he’s shied away from that critical aspect of political life, the telling of his story, and the creation and maintenance of a personal bond with voters. Instead, we get the quips and the gimmicks, and his opponents defining him instead."

I know the man a little (though not nearly as well as a friend of mine does), but Moore is, tragically, correct: he largely lets his opponents define him. This is especially sad when the opponent is a boob, as Don Young is and was in 2008, or a machine tool and corporate lobbyist whore, as Sean Parnell is. (Let's be real: Parnell is really only gubnuh because a certain Tina Fey lookalike is chronically unable to not quit her jobs.)

On a related note, here is some awesome reading on Alaska's somewhat strange gubernatorial succession procedures. I'm particularly fond of the following quotes:
"The Palin administration is a clown car."
"...there have been [Alaska] Cabinet officers in the past who should not be running a hot dog stand, much less standing in line to take the helm of the U.S.S. Alaska."
"Besides, face it, there are only so many Wasilla High School graduates to go around."

Sometimes, I just adore the Daiy News. Few other papers have the cajones to publish snark on the level of Paul Jenkins, who regularly refers to Palin in ways like "our former half governor" and "Demi-Gov".

Ahhhh, Alaska. Sometimes I miss you. Okay, back to the electoral salt mines.

Australia photos, v1.0

Spied at the public bathrooms at Bondi Beach, Sydney. I have no idea what the basis for this is, so naturally, I took pictures of it with both my camera and my digital phone camera:


Lots of good signs in Australia:


Yay!


Uhh, okay? I'm not sure what happens if you don't have AUD$230 on your person, on the spot.

Some good ol' fashioned:

While I'm going through the 228 pictures I took in Australia, here is some good old fashioned FOOD PORN and BIKE PORN to tide over my eager readers!

It's ridiculously simple comfort food today for blunch: organic multigrain bread, earth balance, mashed avocado, coarse sea salt, and freshly cracked pepper. Yum!

Last night, with my continuing inability to get to sleep, I worked on bike stuff until almost 3am (when I took an entire ambien, which I almost never do, to knock myself out.) Among other things, I double-wrapped the handlebar tape on

Another shot, and another way of uglifying your bike: choose accessories and components that are all different colors. Relatively new pedals on there, too: Performance Forte Campus double-sided, with SPD on one side and platform on the other. I was getting annoyed with having to wear my SPD bike shoes or deal with the small SPD pedals every time I rode.

What I didn't account for is the Long Haul Trucker's unusually low bottom bracket, which is great for stability when you're riding with a heavy load, and great for scraping and chewing the shit out of your pedals when you go around corners. I don't actually care: it doesn't impact performance (no pun intended, and I'm too lazy to think of an appropriate synonym right now), and it contributes to the uglifying of the bike.

Speaking of uglifying: here is the newest whip in our collection (well, maybe J's newly built up Surly Cross Check is technically as new, but she had the frame around for a while.) It's a Performance Access XCL 9.7, with 29 inch wheels (which I've wanted for a while.) Note that the provided link is for the 2010 model, and I have the 2009 model, and paid significantly less for it.

I'm super excited that I now own THREE BIKES that ALL fit me, the first three bikes I've ever owned that actually fit me properly.

Now that I sold the road bike that J lovingly built up from frame for me, but was just too small (61cm frame):

and sold my old beater winter commuter,

and J sold her mountain bike that she hated, J and I are up to five bikes between us.

This is down from an all-time high of eight when we lived in Anchorage (in our defense, though, two of those were kids bikes when we were fostering.) Nevertheless, five bikes in our condo is a little crowded, and I need to move a few down to the bike room. The problem is that I find a use for each of them almost every day, and it's a lot more convenient to just grab the bike and jump in the elevator than it is to go to the bike room each time I want to get out one of my trusty steeds.

In between

I can't really imagine flying much more than I do. I mean, I do it by choice, and love the travel, but I spend a lot of damn time in airports. This is an amusing article in the Atlanta Creative Loafing, Weekend at Hartsfield: A half-naked man. Two honeymoons. A 48-hour journey to nowhere by a reporter who voluntarily spent a weekend at my most regular airport, ATL.

My body clock still isn't right from the trip back from Australia. I'm not jet-lagged, in the sense of feeling like crap like I did when I arrived in Spain last year, but I'm not synced up yet to US eastern daylight time. I went to sleep the night before last around midnight, felt fine, then was wide awake at 3:00am. I went back to sleep, and was awoke to a phone call at noon. Then last night, I wasn't tried until 2am, went to sleep immediately, and just slept until 1pm.

I'm getting stuff done during the day and being fairly productive, but I'd like to get back on a regular sleep schedule.

View from the hotel window

That's the Sydney Opera House in the left of the image, and the Royal Botanic  Gardens on the right. Now if we could just get that pesky building out of the way!

Unfortunately, I'm about to check out of the lovely view, to go to a hotel that is less than a third the price.

Sydney for three more days, then Melbourne for two, then back to the real world (and far cheaper, mostly better, beer.)

No, not food porn.

Yes, K, I DO take a lot of pictures of my food. So to mix it up a bit, here is bike stuff: a really nice, curb-separated dedicated on-street bike lane being installed in the western part of the Sydney CBD (Kent Street?)

NON-vegan hotel lounge

After two excellent nights of easily veganized free food, tonight was a failure. Here is mom's nasty plate o' crap. I ate cherry tomatoes and basil. Boo.

But Sydney remains lovely.

I have no idea:

what the panels do to deserve it.



But this is a neighborhood (Bondi Junction) where it's apparently okay to dump mattresses in a city park, so who knows?

Brekky. Blech.

This was what the approximately six year old and his father were having for breakfast, at least to start. (Both plates have nothing but meat, if you can't see that in the picture.) It's like anti-food porn.

The kid wanted my window table. Nope. I assure you, I appreciate the view of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge more than him.

Now the sister and mom have arrived, and they are busily  and loudly moving tables and chairs around.

Vodka and payphone in still life.

Spied in The Rocks, Sydney.

The only logical conclusion: people who drink vodka in phone booths in Sydney have reasonably good taste.

Sydney = expensive

Wanna pay $21.70 for a liter of Lowenbrau at this "beer garden"?

Me neither.

Actually, I don't even want to drink a liter of Lowenbrau if it's free.

Sydney is beautiful. The Museum of Contemporary Art is one of my favorite museums anywhere. And it's FREE! Customs House might be my favorite public library anywhere. And it's FREE!

Planning a long walk for today along the ocean. Then tonight mom and I are seeing a performance at the Opera House, which I can see from the window as I'm writing this. Life is good.

Vegan hotel lounge!

As spied, and eaten at great length, in the Sydney Marriott Circular Quay with mom.  Just pick off the tiny little pieces of feta from the dolmas. I'm starting to feel a little sick to my tum-tum. Maybe more champagne will help!