Kurt Johnson

Awesome weather on Saturday, and fun to get out and shoot for the second time in a while.  More photos @ Flickr.

A bit hypnotic – Superbowl weekend at City Center.

2011 was a great year for me personally – certainly the best in a while. A couple of weeks ago I took a few minutes over coffee to think about some of the things that made the year special:

• At work, I left McKinsey in July after four incredibly rewarding years. I took with me a whole new skill set in problem solving and project management, a disturbing familiarity with powerpoint, a pile of frequent flyer miles, and dozens of friends I hope to stay in touch with for the rest of my life. In August I started a new job in Dallas and continue to feel incredibly fortunate with respect to the quality of the new organization.
• With respect to the travel bug, I logged my craziest work travel stretch ever with 50 nights in hotels in the first 2 months of 2011 and a new personal record for costliest airplane ticket (about $13,000 for weeklong trip from Houston-UAE-London-Dallas). This year I saw three new countries (Sweden, Russia, Chile) and revisited a bunch of fun foreign cities (Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Dubai). However the travel highlights for the year were all US national parks (see below).
• For food and drink: Beyond the simple resolutions I laid out last year, I started 2011 with the goal of indulging a bit more. To that end I had an informal goal to experience some Micheline starred restaurants whenever I left the great state of Texas. I may have overshot, ending up with several 1, 2, and 3 star experiences through the course of the year. July brought probably my best meal ever – a birthday dinner with friends at the French Laundry in California.
• For friendship – when I decided to leave McKinsey I drew heavily on my network of friends and family. They’ve been incredibly generous to me and the best part of picking a job with a more sane schedule is spending more time with them.

And finally, I had a mini happiness-project looking back at photos from the best days of the year:

Feb 24: The morning after a last minute trip to Dubai – checking out the resurgent construction of residential highrises in the Dubai marina on a cool day in March.  The best part of the day is getting up early (thanks jetlag!) for fresh fruit on the patio of the club lounge on the 8th floor looking out over the palm island and persian gulf. 

April 30th: Started by grabbing a campsite in Zion National Park, driving through the cliffs of Virgin Utah at sunrise, and up to Kolob Terrace Road – still snowed in during May (~8.000 ft).  Made more memorable by sliding around a blind corner on black ice only to find a stranded tourist who’d buried his car in a snowbank…after 90 minutes of chipping away ice under his tires with a ridiculous boning knife we were rescued by a helpful local in time for me to head back to the airport in St. George to pick up Dave.

May 2nd – amazing sunrise as we walked up over the rim of Bryce Canyon to see thousands of hoodoos.  But the day’s young…

Pretty much every day of this road trip was amazing.  This day started with walking over the rim of Bryce Canyon at sunrise, going into the hinterland to hike slot canyons, having an amazing burger at Burr Trail Grill in Boulder, UT, and finishing with a sunset transit of Capitol Reef National Park.

May 4th: The second best sunrise of this particular road trip…

June 22: Crossing the Andes in winter – starting with a drive up the Mendoza river past Aconcagua park; clearing customs around 10,000ft; and ending at…

The W Santiago with an amazing balcony view of El Golf (foreground) and the Andes (hazy at left).  I had a great time in Santiago – fantastic food and under-appreciated relative to Buenos Aires.

July 7th in Alaska.  breakfast burritos on a water taxi in Kenai Fjords National Park  followed by taking sea kayaks around the fjords and watching icebergs calve into frigid water.  At the end of the day we camped on a beach, ate fajitas, and watched the sunset over the Aialik  glacier/bay.

July 17th: A couple of shots from the best food day ever (four michelin stars!).  Breakfast at a cafe in Napa, a spontaneous lunch at Bouchon in Napa, a lot of walking on a sunny northern California day to recover from lunch, a quick stop at the CIA, and dinner with friends at the French Laundry.  Absolutely amazing.

July 31st: An awesome summer weekend with friends in Grand Rapids for burgers + boating + picking up another fun car.

Labor day weekend: Tailgating + LSU game at Jerry World. 

November 24th (Thanksgiving):  Sunset on the Moskva river at the beginning of the Russian winter…later I met up with Kipp for thanskgiving dinner (lamb burger!) and cocktails at a skylounge over Moscow.

Christmas in Florida with family including my newest nephew.  I picked up a sunburn playing tennis on Christmas eve!

All in all, a pretty amazing year.  By design, 2012 won’t have anywhere near as much travel, but I am hitting at least LA (Jan), Vegas (Superbowl), perhaps Yosemite or a park to be determined (May) and the grand canyon (hiking trip near the end of the year). Should be fun!

Clichéd but still gorgeous – St Basil’s just after sunset.

I’m back after a brief but awesome Thanksgiving trip.  More reactions to come.

Taken at the mosque in Delhi, October 2010.

This post is long overdue, but I thought I’d some of the experiences from my most recent visit to Utah.   The Western US is amazing – absolutely mind boggling geology, wide open spaces, and friendly people.  The natural attractions are world class and any serious traveler should have a a trip on their list.  Planning is my least favorite phase of a trip because it’s hard to find clear, directive advice on what to do and how long to allow – so below I’ll share some specific observations and guidance:

Nevada

• Southeastern Oregon and Northern Nevada are really, really, really empty.  I think I went 400-500 miles between stoplights including a stretch on ‘the loneliest road in America’ (north of Ely, Nevada) – but did pass a camper walking along the highway.  It’s actually a little surprising to me how little the landscape and vegetation changed between E. Oregon and southern Nevada – just mile after mile of high desert plains crossed by a small streak of mountains here and there
• There’s really nothing like seeing a beautiful sunrise on a crisp morning where you know you’re the only person around – it’s an experience that’s uniquely yours
• The Washington Post has named Battle Mountain Nevada ‘The Armpit of America’.  This is a bold claim and I’ve spent some time in towns that should be serious contenders for an award like this, so I was of course compelled to visit for lunch and test the claim with a skeptic’s eye.  But in fact it seems like a really depressing town with nothing to recommend it.
• I camped at Great Basin National Park hoping to hike up to see 4,000 year old bristlecone pine trees and Nevada’s only glacier (did you know Nevada has more glaciers than Colorado?)..but in May the road to the top of the park was still snowed in.  I camped around 8,000 feet and woke up to find my water jugs frozen – not exactly the Nevada experience I was planning for.  I went just a little out of my way for this park; it’s an easy place to camp and I was treated to a gorgeous sunrise but if you’re time constrained I wouldn’t trade off a day in Utah to see it.

Utah

• Two books that helped plan Utah were the Lonely Planet guide and “Photographing the Southwest” – which actually has decent guidance on hiking trails.  This was the most scenic leg of the trip and if you weren’t putting it in the middle of a larger road trip you could easily fly in to St. George Utah (or even Las Vegas), rent a car for the week, and drop it off at the airport in Moab/Canyonlands (CNY) or Grand Junction for your flight out.  To give you a sense for how to allocate time in Utah I’ve broken out our itinerary by day:

Days 1-3 in Zion National Park

• Zion National Park is absolutely amazing; the Zion river has cut down into the sandstone leaving a steep valley with incredible sights – e.g. the color contrast between red stone and the vibrant green cottonwood trees. Unless you really don’t hike at all, plan 2-3 days in Zion.  The marquis hike is Angel’s Landing, a ~3 hour hike that ends by climbing up a knife-edged ridge about 1,500 feet above the valley floor.  I highly recommend getting out there early – it’s so much nicer to be the first people up – and later hikers will have to deal not only with opposing traffic passing on that knife-edge ridge but possibly afternoon winds and blowing dust that raise the stress even more.
• Other awesome hikes we did: Observation Point (strenuous, ~5 hour, best views in the park); Hidden Valley (short spur on the way to Observation Point); and Emerald Pools (a little rocky but pretty easy). The Narrows is the other marquis hike in the park – walking upstream in the Zion river as the canyon walls narrow to only a few yards wide and hundreds of feet deep – but we missed it because the river was running too fast to permit hikers
• For a scenic drive, head west out of the main entrance towards Virgin, UT and take Kolob Terrace road up to the mesa – you’ll see postcard views of landscapes, farms, forests, and wildlife.  It tops out around 8,000 feet and in May there was snow and black ice on the road (enough to require winching two of us out)
• After crossing over from Nevada I grabbed a private campsite in Springdale, Utah right outside the gates of Zion National Park.  As a general rule the national parks (and many state parks) have better and cheaper campsites than the private facilities.  If you’re like me and couldn’t get a reservation, show up and do a private campsite night 1 (almost never sold out), then get to the park’s first-come-first-served campsites and snag one around 7-8am after the early risers have left.  At Zion this is the South Campground and it seemed like first-come-first-served spots were pretty easy to find until 9-10am
• The restaurants and hotels in Zion don’t have a whole lot to recommend them, but we did get a great meal at Oscar’s; I’d hit it daily if I were there again

Day 4 – Bryce Canyon and Cottonwood Canyon road

• From Zion we drove to Bryce Canyon, about 60-90 minutes away.  You probably don’t need more than half a day at Bryce Canyon but you should time it such that you’re there starting 15-30 minutes before sunrise or 1-2 hours before sunset.  I keep raving about sunrises in the US West but walking up to the canyon rim, seeing the spires coming into view, and watching the sunrise color the hundreds of hoodoos was absolutely best view of the trip.  Aside from sunrise/sunset on the rim, walk through Wall Street on the Queen’s Garden or Navajo trail (closed in winter).
• On the way out of Bryce stop at Ruby’s Inn for lunch as you won’t have many options if you’re continuing east.  The buffet is so-so but my BBQ pork sandwich hit the spot
• On the strength of the photography book’s recommendation we spent the afternoon driving down Cottonwood Canyon road (4×4 or rental car + tow strap recommended) and were rewarded with spectacular views – in particular Devil’s Garden, the Cockscomb, and Cottonwood Narrows – all are very close to the road.  If you’re feeling adventurous you can put your 4×4 in low and try the VERY steep and narrow Brigham Plains road spur a few miles into the cockscomb
• Kodachrome State Park sits at the paved end of the road and was the nicest campground we stayed at during the entire trip – highly recommended if you can reserve ahead of time.
•  Note that you’re still in the high desert and the altitude provides cold temps at night – we got a hard freeze at Kodachrome in mid May

Day 5 – Slot canyons on Hole-In-Rock Road + Capital Reef at sunset

• Continue driving east to Hole in Rock road (again, rental car or 4×4 + tow strap recommended) where you’ll find an unmarked turnoff for the Peek-a-boo and Spooky slot canyons.  These are incredibly narrow canyons cut into the rock after rainstorms…as in, so narrow you’ll need to leave your backpack behind.  Don’t bring a watch, fancy clothes, or anything else you’re afraid of having abraded as you slide through dusty sandstone.  I would strongly recommend a plastic bag for your camera as without it you’re virtually guaranteed to hear grit in your zoom lens/focus ring after spending a few hours in the dust.
•  If you’re a reasonably serious photographer, try to find a small tripod (light is low and you’ll want small apertures for DOF), use a UV or polarizing filter on your lens (no lens changes in the canyon!) and seal your camera in a clear plastic bag with a hole cut for the end of the lens (use a rubber band around the lens hood/barrel to keep the bag sealed).  The aforementioned photography book gives tips on the best time of day to shoot each canyon (e.g. around mid-day may be best as the canyons are so steep and narrow that morning/evening light won’t penetrate)
• Dave navigating Peek-a-boo canyon:
  
  
•  When you emerge from the slot canyons in early afternoon, head for Boulder Utah and have dinner at the epicurean Burr’s Trail Grill.  We were treated to a mind blowing preparation of polenta, the best gourmet burgers of the trip, and a slice of moist Devil’s food cake cake the size of my head..all a very pleasant high quality surprise in a town of 250 people.
• Time your departure from the restaurant to pass through Capital Reef national park during the 1-2 hours before sunset.  There’s more traffic and bigger cliffs on the west side of the park but for my money the most interesting formations are actually on the eastern end after you cross the Fremont river.  Seeing the diversity of shapes and colors in the cliffs made me consider going back to school to become a geologist.
• Given the diversity of formations at Capital Reef, a serious photographer could spend a week or more there (a major fraction of the photography guidebook is devoted to this park).  Alas we were on a schedule and had to see it in transit

Day 6-7 – Moab and Arches National Park

• Moab is the big town in eastern Utah – filled with adventure tourists and yippies who’ve moved there for the rock climbing, mountain biking, view, etc.  You’ll have quite a few options for shopping/eating/sleeping.  We camped in town at “up the creek” campground because we weren’t early enough to get a reservation at our preferred location – Dead Horse Point State Park
• Arches National Park is right outside Moab and almost everything in the park is close to the road (read Edward Abbey’s classic Desert Solitaire for a sense of the park before the road was built!).  This means that relative to Canyonlands or even Zion there’s a huge number of casual tourists at most of the sights in the park.
• IMHO, one day is enough for Arches NP.  Start by being at Dead Horse Point State Park 30 minutes before sunrise and watching the earth rotate to illuminate the bends of the colorado river through Canyonlands National Park (2nd best sunrise of the trip!).  Be sure to bring $10 cash to pay your parking fee on the way in even if there’s no ranger in the booth – they show up at 7am and make a beeline for the overlook parking lot to write tickets for anyone who didn’t behave honorably.  After sunrise cruise back to Arches NP and do whatever hikes interest you (they’re all short).  Head into town to grab lunch (nothing really stood out; the local brewpub is decent as is Eklecticafe).  A couple of hours before sunset grab your camera, head back to Arches NP, and make the short climb up to the Delicate Arch viewpoint (follow the dozens of other people carrying tripods) to watch the most famous stone arch in america luminesce in the warm tones of sunset with the snow covered La Sal mountains in the background.
• Crash at Deadhorse Point State Park (if you were able to get a reservation) for the night
• Spend the next day or two doing whatever interests you around Moab – the town has dozens of outfitters who’ll set you up for rock climbing, mountain biking, 4×4 tours, etc.  If nothing else, cruise out Potash Road just north of town to see climbers hanging on the side of the road and do some off-roading (search for “poison spider mesa” trail) or just take the road out to the gravel section past the potash mine for views of the Colorado river cutting through red rock.  I found the town itself underwhelming; like so many places dominated by tourists the restaurants and service were a little flat with few bargains to be found…but you’re not in Moab to hang out indoors, right?

From here you can continue driving the “Grand Circle Route” through Cortez, Colorado (Mesa Verde National Park) and Arizona (Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, etc.) or turn in your rental car and catch a flight home from Canyonlands (CNY) or Grand Junction (GJT).

I’d do this trip again in a heartbeat.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurt_j/5797693283/in/set-72157626885755346

Just another mountain view – near the metro station in El Golf.

I came to Santiago with low expectations (“nothing to do there…don’t spend more than 24 hours”) but was very pleasantly surprised.  Buenos Aires is very European, but it’s a European influence from 1880-1950.  Santiago’s European influence feels more 1970-present.  Walking around El Golf near my hotel there were Starbucks, Brooks Brothers, TGI Fridays, etc.  Parts of Vitacura felt almost German – Bauhaus buildings, porsches, contemporary furniture stores, etc.  Presumably Chile’s trajectory of rapid economic expansion since the 1970s brought expats and foreign influence at the same time as Argentina was relatively stagnant and unattractive for foreign investment.

Santiago just feels more vibrant than Argentina; walking around BA, Mendoza, or Rosaria (Argentina) on a weekday gives the sense of pretty low asset and labor productivity – storefronts not open for business, equipment idled, people moving slowly or without purpose, etc.  Santiago has a sharp contrast between the high rent European neighborhoods and the rest of the city but it’s still noticeably more active.  Or perhaps my impressions were skewed positively by getting gorgeous weather in Chile after a week of rain and clouds in Argentina.

As with Buenos Aires it seems the Southern Cone’s days as a cheap weekend getaway are over.  You can get by on $30 per day but to get out and have a good time you’re spending $150/day – cabs and meals are a little cheaper than Texas (especially on the high end) but not much.

I’ve kept my perfect record of encountering youth protests on every visit to South America – tuition hikes in Chile (2011), something undetermined in Mendoza (2011), socialist party rally in Cusco (2007), and cracking down on crime in BA (2006).  I’ve never really felt threatened but I wish I spoke a little more Spanish to understand the context of what I’m walking through and when to GTFO.

Specific travel suggestions:

• Take the free walking tour of the downtown area that meets at the Plaza de Armas around 9am (check google).  It’s great to get your bearings and the tour guides are quite engaging (because they work for tips!)
• Consider taking a bicycle tour of neighborhoods beyond downtown.  TripAdvisor has some suggestions (but TripAdvisor is really getting AstroTurfed these days, so do your diligence)
• The W Santiago is fantastic if you’ve got points to burn…but be sure to get out of that neighborhood to get a feel for what the other 98% of Santiago looks like
• Cabs are really expensive ($15 for a ~10 minute ride) but the metro is awesome.  Figure it out quickly and save your money
• The university area (Bella Vista) has a really coo vibe (a little gritty – but high energy).  I love walking down the street and seeing all the sidewalk cafes with folks sharing liter bottles of beer at lunch.  The single best corner for budget food in South America might be at Constitucion and [    ].  There’s an amazing sandwich bar (‘sangucheria’), a good casual chilean place (Galindo), and a higher end seafood place – plus others nearby that look promising as well.
• Take the funicular (or hike) to the top of Cerro San Cristobal to get a fantastic view of the city.  You can eat in Bella Vista at the bottom of the hill, walk it off by spending the afternoon on the hill, and descend to eat again in the same great neighborhood.
• Beyond Santiago, Valparaiso is a coastal city and UNESCO world heritage site about 90 minutes away which offers a nice 1-2 day side trip, and Villerica (lakes district) and patagonia look awesome if you had enough time to make a second leg down south.

I’d like to go back and spend more time there, although I’m not sure when it’ll happen.

Ice in the water, Kenai Fjords National Park

• Driving (first) and then riding the bus through Denali; almost hitting a moose and her calves; seeing grizzlies and caribou near the road
• Braving the mosquitoes at Wonder Lake to bushwhack across spongy tundra, almost run into another moose, and realize that even if sunset is technically midnight it never really gets dark
• Taking a shower and drying our gear out at the Sheraton after a couple days camping in the rain.  Finding pizza and beer at Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage
• Hiking Bird Ridge just outside Anchorage on the Seward Highway; watching one of the world’s highest tides go out of the Turnagain arm – with incredible mountain views, blue skies, and black bear + bald eagle sightings on the trail
• Kayaking through Kenai Fjords National Park; listening and watching glaciers as they calved small icebergs into the water we paddled through (something dropped every 5-10 minutes!!).  Pulling the kayaks up on an empty beach in the park to camp for the night and cook steak fajitas
• Climbing the trail up to the Harding Icefield – the massive (300-1000 square miles) ice field that feeds all of the glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.  Recovering from the hike in Seward with savory crepes from the Belgian chef at Le Barn Appetit
• Relaxing at the Anchorage Museum’s excellent exhibits on native people and the transformation of Alaska into a natural resource economy (gold, then fishing, then oil)

• Go flight seeing  over Denali.  The park is generally overcast and visitors might only see the mountain on a few days out of the summer.  Had it been clear I’d have booked a flight seeing trip in a second
• Go backcountry camping.  I’m a sissy – tents and sleeping on the ground are fine, but hiking around all day’s more fun without 35 pounds on my back. In any case much of the terrain we did walk on was either wet, rocky, or spongy so allow plenty of time to keep a safe pace if you’re going off trail
• Go fishing.  The fishing is amazing, but none of us are passionate about it and we decided to put the funds to work somewhere else
• See Wrangell St. Elias National Park (beautiful, remote, and just a little too far away for us to justify driving to on this trip) and cross the Arctic Circle (again, would have been too much time in the car)
• See brown bears feeding on salmon at Brooks Falls (books up a year or more ahead of time, requires another $1k or so in airfare from Anchorage)

Other tips

• The weather is hit and miss.  We had an awesome time kayaking but if it’d been raining we probably would have done a day cruise instead of kayaking for 2 days.  If you’re OK with risking things you can defer making reservations until a day or two before the trip and adjust your plans based on the weather
• Get the books Milepost (for driving) and 55 Ways to the Wilderness In South Central Alaska (for hiking)
• Pack some decent rain gear and binoculars in addition to the usual hiking/touring kit

Hikers descending from the Harding Icefield

 

Kayaking through Kenai Fjords National Park (Aialik Bay)

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From reading Wikipedia on the 8 hour (!) domestic flight.  My favorite sentences:

1. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.With the extension of the Aleutian Islands into the eastern hemisphere, it is technically both the westernmost and easternmost state in the United States, as well as also being the northernmost.
2. Mount Shishaldin [an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above the North Pacific] is the most perfect volcanic cone on Earth, even more symmetrical than Japan’s Mount Fuji
3. Alaska is tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States [100 degrees, recorded 8 miles inside the arctic circle in 1915]
4. At the height of Russian America [i.e., pre-Alaska Purchase by the US], the Russian population reached 700.
5. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state’s revenues derived from petroleum extraction
6. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, only a car ferry
7. In 2009 there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of the mitzvah may pose special problems)…In 2010, the local Muslim community broke ground on the first mosque in the state

Crossing over the Andes from Argentina to Chile in July (i.e., winter in the Southern hemisphere).  The pass is about 10,500′ and had just re-opened after 4 days closure for weather.  More photos from my trip are on here and here.

From my first trip to Mendoza – the major city in western Argentina famous for wine production.

• Overnight buses in Argentina can be quite luxurious – lay-flat beds, personal entertainment stations showing US movies, hot meals, etc.  If you’re on a budget the overnight bus is a no-brainer because you pay half the cost of a plane ticket as well as a night’s rate at a hotel.  However quality and timing are more variable than flights…
• Mendoza is pretty quiet in the winter.  The Sheraton seemed to be about 20% full – a few tourists, a few mining and oil company folks, etc.  I’d recommend going sometime in spring through harvest season (Nov-Mar) if possible
• The Park Hyatt is a bargain if you have Hyatt points.  The Mendoza Sheraton is not quite as nice and not nearly the bargain with points
• There are a ton of adventure tour companies, wine tours, and tourist-focused restaurants in town.  If you’re really bold you can take a bus up to Aconcagua Parque and see the highest mountain outside the Himalayas.  The park is on the Chilean border, a few hours scenic drive outside of town following the Mendoza riverbed through the Andes
• Adventure tour companies run activities year round (zip lines, mountain biking, hiking, whitewater rafting, etc.) about an hour’s drive from town.  I’m glad I did the rafting/hiking/ziplining but it would have been a lot more fun in the summer with the river running higher.
• We booked a wine tour through Trout & Wine – not cheap but very well done with an excellent guide.  I think the secret to a fun wine tour is going with people with whom you can have fun drinking…and hitting vineyards with midrange wines so folks aren’t intimidated by the tastings (and probably makes it more affordable as well!).
• From Mendoza it’s a “7 hour” ride over the Andes to Santiago.  I’ve really liked Santiago so far and recommend the trip…with the caveat that the pass can be closed for days at a time during winter.  I booked a bus on a day following a closure and the 7 hour trip turned into 11 hours due to a 4 hour queue at border control.

Without the benefit of any actual data, I think Mendoza is the 2nd most popular destination for US tourists behind Buenos Aires and perhaps Iguazu Falls.  It’s a slam dunk if you want to see Argentina wine country or climb Aconcagua.  For adventure tourists in the summertime I might try Los Glaciares National Park in the south instead.

The Salentein vineyard – gorgeous buildings in the Uco valley at the edge of the Andes.

From a quick trip down to take advantage of a friend’s apartment:

• BA is no longer the land of bargain shopping that I remembered from 2006.  Clothes and food are much closer to parity with US prices, although the highest quality restaurants remain a good value.  I came expecting to pick up leather goods and winter clothes but came away emptyhanded.
• Perhaps it’s a function of trying different restaurants, but the cuisine we’ve had on this trip is much better rounded than 2006 – particularly a higher quantity and quality of vegetables and bread
• The favorite restaurants from this trip: Las Pizarras Bistro, Bella Italia (Excellent across the board; I’ve yet to be disappointed when ordering rabbit)
• It’s surprisingly easy to fall into the local schedule – lunch around 2pm, dinner at 10 or 11, drinks, and a club sometime after 2am
• Brazilian tourists are much more common than I remembered…of course Brazilian disposable incomes have risen quickly, or perhaps they show up year round but the american/european tourists are more present in the Argentine summer?
• Puerto Madera reminds me of the Victory Park development in Dallas – very new and flashy but without enough traffic to feel truly vibrant.  Oddly enough the Dubai Marina might be the most lively of these massive mixed use /high rise condo projects.  A long walk from Palermo through the center/capital and continuing to Puerto Madera is a great way to see the city
• Inflation is a hotbutton political issue (see the NYTimes take).  Subjectively it appears that there’s plenty of production capacity in the system – you notice lots of idle assets and real estate in Argentina relative to the US/Europe or even Chile.
• Tyler Cowen’s take is always interesting.  I particularly enjoyed the factoid that in 1910 more Argentine schoolchildren had two Italian parents than two Argentine parents – by a factor of 2x! Italian influence is everywhere – food, language, architecture, etc.

For your moment of Zen I leave you with this billboard from Palermo Soho.   I thought it was a joke – such a stereotypical take on the Argentine love of all products bovine – but you can actually take home a “Limited Edition Stacker” for about 40 pesos.

If that image is crossing your eyes, it’s 5 flame broiled patties, 5 slices of delicious cheese, and a bacon kicker.  No word on whether you can combine it with fries or helado for a value meal.

Peek-a-boo canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

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View from the balcony tonight – cue tornado sirens!

From a 747-400 over Britain.

Bank doors last weekend in Paris.

Traffic and Changed Priorities in London a few weeks ago.  Seen around the corner from Harrods in Knightsbridge.

My resolutions:

1. Block time to eat right and exercise
2. Increase the energy I invest in maintaining relationships

Both of these are about elevating focus on things that are important but lack any natural urgency to spur action (see Seth Godin or Steven Covey for more on prioritizing urgency vs. importance).

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Is it too early to wish for warmer weather?  I offer an inspirational passage from Anna Karenina:

“on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come”

I’m enjoying re-reading Anna Karenina in small bites – the last time I read it was almost 10 years ago.  My favorite feature of the Kindle service is being able to highlight passages and then quickly see all of your highlights in one place at kindle.amazon.com.  I’d like to be able to easily share my highlights with others…perhaps they work this out in another iteration or two.

From Tea Time With Terrorists:

Sri Lanka is a piece of land covered with food. There is no need for laws that are based on models of scarcity. Sri Lanka is so rich in food, and so covered with it, that you could set down a healthy person, naked, on one side of the island, and that person could walk to the other side of the island, hundreds of miles across, without dying from starvation. The entire island is smeared thick, like a layer of butter on toast, with food. Starvation would never even remotely be a question. Not a day would pass without at least four different kinds of fruit to be picked from the trees. People here don’t know what it feels like to come out of a five-month winter and see buds on trees. It’s a perpetual growth season. Scarcity is scarce, so they don’t know the need for greed since food is growing everywhere and always. They have no need of money for the same reason, and they don’t know why we have shopping malls, overpasses, and models that are grinning and squirming on the covers of diet magazines.

There’s a healthy dose of unsupported assertions and noble-savage-worship in the book but it was worth the quick read to give me some context on the place before I visited.  I found much less extreme poverty than I expected (although I didn’t venture much beyond the tourist corridor).  There are not many marquis tourist attractions unless you have the time to spend a couple of days in the car to the UNESCO sites in the center of the island.  I only found out later that one of my friends lived there for 4+ years and could have provided some great tips in Colombo – but if you are going I’ll get his tips for you.

And on the genesis of the conflict (and the perils of democratic elections):

Appeasing the [Sinhalese] majority seemed the best water to throw on the fire so Solomon Bandaranaike, another “Brown Englishman,” in a 1956 bid to claim the office of prime minister, offered to make Sinhalese the official language. He felt as though it was the only way to avoid the dispute; after all, in a democracy, the majority rules. Or at least that was his reasoning. Acting quickly, he proposed the Sinhala Only Act, a decree stating that Tamil [Sri Lanka's minority ethnic group] would not be used in schools or in government institutions. Twenty-four hours after he proposed the legislation, it narrowly won, with fifty-one of the ninety-five available votes, and over a million Tamil taxpayers became officially illiterate. The majority of Sri Lankans had been appeased, but the eighteen-hundred-year-old differences between the Sinhalese and Tamils had not been erased. History aside, the passing of the Sinhala Only Act meant that from then on, Sri Lanka would distance itself from both its English and Tamil populations. This meant that Ceylon would be a Sinhalese country, as opposed to a Tamil and Sinhalese country. History has shown it to be one of the worse decisions made, because it incited the civil war by denying dialogue with the Tamil minority.

I’m slowly migrating albums over to my Flickr account.  Albums on this website won’t go away, but I won’t update them.  For now all of the albums are public but if you’re featured and want to restrict access I’m happy to comply – just let me know.

Jerome and Radhika’s wedding.  Ahungalle, Sri Lanka

The view from home a few weeks ago.