The New York Botanical Garden train show is the highlight of that institution’s winter season. Their main greenhouse is outfitted with several train displays and reconstructions of NYC landmarks. The exhibit is quite popular and even though we arrived at opening, we had to wait 3 hours for an available slot. In the meantime, Tee Jay and I went through the rest of the Gardens.
Most of the Gardens were somewhat barren but the larger elements still came out.
 Big Butterfly This was a large butterfly in the Children’s Garden. Around this butterfly were showcases about how plants and animals interact in that delightful prose marking children’s education. Plants aren’t eaten they’re “consumed” and deer don’t shit out seeds they “transport them”.
The indoor part of the exhibit had binocular microscopes. Fact: everything looks cool under a 50x binocular microscope. Teejay and I spent 20 minutes or so hogging them as we just looked at stuff we had on us. Here, Teejay is absorbed with how dirty his glasses are:
 Tiny World We still had some time to kill and walked the periphery of the east end of the Gardens. This boulevard was lined with trees decorated by public school classes and the differences between them were stark.
 Income Disparity Tree The tree to the right is decorated with plastic ornaments, the tree to the left is decorated with pizza box cut outs. The pizza box ornaments each had a wish on the back.
 Heart in the Right Place We made our way to the Haupt Conservatory which had an enclosed staging area with a train theme. There was a conductor on stilts who had a watch that showed the season instead of the hour. Periodically she’d yell things like “all aboard, it’s almost 10 of spring!” I wish I could summon such whimsy on command.
 Conductor Kicks I had seen a few macro shots of the event but the expanse was impressive.
This area:
 Tanjou Was transformed to this:
 Waiting to Enter Suspended to the left is something Tee Jay called the “ewok copter” or “wookiee copter”. I laughed far too loudly at this. Here it is in detail.
 Ewok Copter All of the constructs were made of natural materials like twigs, bark, needles, boughs, berries, nuts, and roots. The cathedral of St. John the Divine was almost five feet tall.
 Sense of Scale Before going to a venue, I try to determine three to five shots I want. One was a low angle shot of a train with a distinction sense of “rushing” to it. Tee Jay politely suffered through my numerous attempts at getting this in several parts. I forgot my basics and failed to consider using shutter priority to catch movement and instead got mediocre shots like this with no sense of motion:
 Close Call Only later did I accidentally get what I wanted but without the sense of size:
 Bridge Blur Tee Jay and I were both decked out with nice cameras and I had my pocket notebook and we were asked by event staff if we were press. We said no, but I’m curious what would have happened if I had answered otherwise.
One technique I used during the day was holding up my camera on my monopod with a wide angle lens on it. The changed perspective made up for my other photographic shortcomings.
 Another High Angle Shot Sadly, the lights on Yankee Stadium are not trapped fireflies.
The exhibits were a parade of beauty and detail set in idyllic surroundings. I’ve rarely photographed something I’d call calming and even the frenetic pace of the trains didn’t break the tranquility. There was very little shoving and all the children were well-behaved.
 Close Splash Tee Jay and I spent a good bit of time during the day failing to take shots and sharing our photographic inadequacies. I hope to do it again sometime, maybe when the lily pond returns.
A piece of lab instrumentation wasn’t functioning. The piece isn’t complicated, consisting of a LCD screen, four buttons, and a way of measuring reflectivity. Still, it’s necessary for some tests, so I called the manufacturer.
Me: The device’s read out doesn’t appear to be working.
Associate: That tends to happen. We can repair the unit for $500 or replace it for $1400.
Me: That’s ridiculous.
Associate: Yes, the repair is generally more economical.
Me: No, the prices in general. I can literally build a supercomputer for $1400 and buy an iPad for $500. No thank you.
Associate: But how will you do the test?
Me: With a stopwatch, like we did before we had your device.
Associate: What about the time savings of the automated test head?
Me: I’m wage not salaried. I’ll gladly operate a stopwatch for the rate I’m paid. Good day.
I regret not dropping in my boss’s observation of “this looks like something built from a kit for Electronics merit badge”.
The 2011 work holiday party was at a restaurant literally a few hundred feet from our main buildings across a field. Most people walked. The party included workers from field offices and even housekeeping. I wonder if the food tasted better knowing they’d not have to clean up for once. The mingling rooms had well-stocked bars and a swarm of servers hustled things on us more aggressively than I’m used to:
Server: Would you like a bacon-wrapped scallop?
Me: No thank you.
Server: Why not?
Me: I don’t like scallops.
Server: These are good, and wrapped in bacon.
Me: No thank you.
Server: All your friends had one. Are you saying they have bad taste?
Me: No *takes scallop*
Server: Good move.
I still don’t like scallops. Either that or the taste of douchebag rubbed off on mine.
The crowd shifted like a flock of Arctic Terns identifying surface fish when the main dining room opened. The line was long enough that it collapsed into a zigzag like we were waiting for a roller coaster. The line for pasta and the line for seafood line merged despite going opposite directions confusing many vegetarians and forming a human traffic circle in which a few people got stuck. Someone I passed on the way to the Philly wraps was still there when I returned later for fiesta tacos. I wonder how long it took for them to realize they had right of way being on the inside of the circle.
We had a guest in work from a partner firm who seemed very excited to work with us. He asked a lot of questions about our processes and what we needed and every “could you do x?” question we asked him was met with a very sure “yes”. I asked a coworker if all adhesives engineers were like this.
Coworker: Adhesives engineer are like that when they’re young and they think they can stick anything to anything. Then they learn. Silicone, monomers, surface oxidation. It’s all there, ready to shit on your dreams.
I have a relative dealing with some health issues and I’ve taken to sending them a periodic baked goods care package which in this case consisted of cookies, truffles, and cracker jacks. I brought the extras into work and when I did a check-up on them saw that all the raspberry truffles were gone. I asked my boss what happened to them:
Me: Do you know what happened to the truffles?
Boss: Yes, I didn’t want the staff exposed to them, so I have them now for safe keeping.
Me: So you took them all?
Boss: No, I didn’t take them. I impounded them.
Me: Impounded them?
Boss: Yes, I want them to be inspected by a raspberry expert before I let anyone else have them.
Me: You know one?
Boss: My wife.
Ah, executive privilege.
Peter and I slept in and caught a late lunch at Jimmy John’s where we talked for about 3.5 hours.
Every day of this trip was wonderful. Thank you, Chris, Christine, Suzie, Chad, Peter, and Audrey for supporting my nomadic notion of Thanksgiving.
Chicago to Philadelphia is a little under 800 miles and I made the trip home with no more than 10 minute gas/food stops and while listening to The Bonfire of the Vanities with a brief “OH GOD GIVE ME MUSIC NOT WORDS” break across Ohio. I arrived home tired but neither aggravated nor worn down and I am glad I can still be old iron butt and pound out 800 miles in a day.
I had trouble getting momentum to leave Cincinnati and went through a stack of mental note cards trying to remember the thing I forgot to say or the item I forgot to pack. Having found none of either and seeing that I was an hour behind, I left into Cincinnati traffic and then received a text message indicating what I’d forgotten: my pillow.
Chad and I were set to meet for a late lunch and shortly before meeting I received a message from him saying that this was the part where I was supposed to cancel last minute. Of the dozen times I’ve driven to Chicago, I’ve only successfully met up with Chad on the way during a quarter of them. After a false start, we met in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut and shook hands with the slimmer, bearded Chad whose first words to me were “what happened to you. It looks like you’ve been shot you lost so much weight”.
We caught up over lunch and then returned to his house where, his entire family including wife and three daughters were present. We watched Return of the Jedi with his two youngest daughters of which the older is a Star Wars fan. She watched the construction of the second Death Star over Endor and commented to her father “Daddy, what’s happening to Darth Vader’s house?” As precious as this moment was, this child was showing non-encyclopedic knowledge of the sacred texts of Star Wars, episodes 4-6, and I was in nerd rage over her usage of the title “fan” until I remembered John Siracusa’s comment: Clone Wars is their Star Wars. In the same way I prefer Next Gen to Star Trek: The Original Series, she recognized these movies as the same universe but the relation of the parts didn’t quite make sense. Let us see where her allegiances lay as she grows older.
Chad made dinner and I enjoyed his skillet potatoes and grilled pork chops and after talking some more I left to make the long ride home, via Chicago. My initial crazy plan was to leave from Chad’s and drive the 12 hours home but instead I replaced that with a three hour drive to Chicago where I would stay over with Peter and Audrey. After arriving there dead tired I was glad I didn’t soldier home.
I had driven some 1000 miles to get to the Condo Above the World but the door opened like I was from a few doors down and just popping in. I would enjoy a future where Peter and I had proximity on our side. We talked about boring adult topics like stretch marks, taxes, academic politics, and plantar warts. It was lovely.
My visit to Cincinnati started as most of my trips involving Suzie seem to; going to her house to pick her up and then going away from there. There are probably other things in Covington, Kentucky, but to me, it consists of a gas station, a Red Robin, and a driveway next to a brick house that a friend of mine sometimes sleeps in (the house not the driveway). Another friend of mine had gotten us an obscenely cheap room at a hotel in downtown Cincinnati and after depositing our things Suzie and I went to the top of the Carew Tower, the second highest building in Cincinnati to, well, see things. The tower itself is a standard steel skyscraper with brick facing built during the inter-war years in a not-terribly-ballsy style of Art Deco that was gimped by the Great Depression. I imagine I would have loved the building the tower could have been but the brass accents and mail drops in the elevator banks remind one of what could have been.
After a brief breakdown of arithmetic from the cashier at the observation deck, the cityscape was ours.
I think Cincinnati is at its best when it remembers that its heritage is as a 19th century boomtown and the city relives that boom every half-century or so. Right now, it’s coming out of another such swing in development that saw billions dumped into developing the downtown area but in a way that the city isn’t aware of itself. Since structures are changing, buildings don’t know what’s next to them and there hasn’t been enough time between revamps for an organic patina of similarity to develop. The buildings could be picked up and re-arranged and you’d have the same city in a way that’d never fly in Chicago or even Tampa.
Rust and packman.
While on the observation deck, Chris Dodds informed me that he had started fasterthanterry.com. Suzie caught my reaction:
 With friends like Chris who needs enemies? Downtown is captivating from street-level and tiny splotches of modernity abut the wealth of development. The city has a history but one that it needs to remind the resident of rather than one that is obvious. Each element feels ad-hoc and I think that confusion stems partly from geography.
And like any city of reasonable size, Cincinnati has its juxtapositions.
Our evening adventure was visiting the light displays at the Cincinnati Zoo. These were neither the displays I am used to at Shady Brook Farms nor the accent pieces I’m used to from the Philadelphia Zoo but simply a lot of lights. 1/2 of the displays were open and the Zoo seemed quite busy. I wanted to get a shot of the main tree and only through a combination of patience and giving people with smart phones the stink eye did I get a clear shot. A non-HDR shot with which I am happy.
The night was warm and we were moving quickly so it didn’t feel terribly holiday-ey, but still, there were illuminated candy canes, outlines of animals, and golden bamboo.
After doing a lap of the park we tried to leave and somehow failed to find the exit after two full rounds. I feel like someone should cut a corner off my Orienteering merit badge card. On the penultimate round we stopped by the elephant hut where I took no pictures. I have little compunction about photographing animals but am rarely happy with pictures of elephants as I can never convey what I consider their intrinsic dignity. With the loss of the Pleistocene megafauna, the animal kingdom only has a handful of land animals that break a ton. Of these, only the elephant breaks 10 tons and represents to me the idea of “this is what land-based animal life can be”. The eye of an elephant is only about a cm larger than a humans despite two orders of magnitude difference in size. I tend to stare at eyes and hands in people and I wonder if this relatively small ocular size gap misregisters their mass to me.
We finally made a right at the correct Santa and made it past the Winter Post Station and into the baffle of ropes back to the main street. After dinner and soft serve we retired back to the hotel room and in defiance of all our previous interactions we were both a sleep before 11 PM. Good day.
Chris: Do you like hiking?
Me: Yes, slowly.
Chris: That’ll work.
Today we hiked the New River Gorge trail in the heart-ish of West Virginia. Considering its shape, history, and denizens, I’m not sure if West Virginia can be said to have a heart but we were going to go into it. The trail head was about an hour from Chris and Christine’s and took us through prime Deliverance territory with many car-sickness-inducing turns. I am familiar with the dilapidation of PA’s failed coal and steel towns, I am intimate with the idea of a left behind hovel, and I find beauty in the Americana of an area that time has moved past but West Virginia was altogether different. PA has rust, oh god does it have rust but it is a polished rust. A combination of dried gangue and insistence wears away the corners of formerly proud industry into dignified relics of an era where an industrial romantic would say a region sacrificed itself to make America great. Bethlehem understands that it will never be what it was and US Steel doesn’t shit itself about its prospects for tomorrow. West Virginia is angry about it. The rust is pointy and comes with a sense of entitlement of “we were supposed to have it great”. Buildings are empty in a haphazard way compared to Austin Dam or Centralia’s more clumped abandonment. PA’s decay is brown with a hint of red, West Virginia’s is a menacing red with a hint of brown.
The supply of cookies I made had been picked away and Jon had a good luck cigarette at the head of the trail. The trail itself was well-made, probably one of the 8th Wonder Trails forged by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the halcyon days of Roosevelt’s Alphabet Soup. Conifers and man-eating rhododendrons lined most of the trail except in places were it was simply a field of dun-color deciduous trunks.
 A Path in the Woods Luckily, this is a problem solvable with HDR.
At the apex, if the several hundred foot summit can be called such, we stared at haze and wreck fall had made of nature.
 Defiant Stone and Pine We walked a bit more and poked our heads out at each new “peak” on the trail showing some new twist to the New River. After a bit, they all looked like this to me:
 Fake TVA Photo I imagine this is what the valley looked like before Ted Turner colorized it.
 Chris in perspective  Staying in Touch After the underwhelming stroll we had a much more compelling lunch of pizza with Gorgonzola cheese, chicken, and pesto, followed by presentable butter toffee ice cream. This was my first exposure to Charleston, WV “the Northern-most Southern town” and wish not destroy the placidity of its quaintness. There was a book store with expensive art next to a pizza joint and an organic ice cream bar with crappy pictures on the wall. The capital of The Land Time Forgot appears to be a New England liberal arts college town. Yes, I know it’s much larger, but I prefer to preserve it as the 2 block x 1 block area I saw.
That evening, the urge to host was displayed by Christine’s interest in board games which Jon took as his cue to go running. I offered to show Christine how to make hazelnut coffee truffles and after a trip to Wal-mart’s circus of bruised souls/fruits we began making them as The Tempest played on TV. “Let’s make truffles” turned into “I’ll make truffles” and we cleansed shitty zipper-ridden Shakespeare from our pallets by watching Top Gear. I hope they too stand the test of time.
The Cast:
 Soldier, Scholar, Beer-Consumer Jon, brother of Christine. Here he ponders Bucky Balls.
 Farty Love? Chris and Christine, my hosts.
<Picture of me not found>
Me!
I slept in after getting a message from a friend that he wanted to be my valentine. I showered, broke the curtain rod, kludged it up, where upon it promptly broke when Jon then showered.
Dinner was a full standard deviation better than most Thanksgivings I’ve had and the sweat potato casserole was hardly the emetic I expected; I normally hate sweet potatoes. Christine told me that the casserole is a way to sneak a dessert into the main course by getting brown sugar and pecans into the human body as efficiently as possible. I support this wisdom.
During grace, we each listed what we were thankful for, a ritual that is not totally alien to me but here I was thrown off as it was genuine with a patina of homespun simplicity Ralph Lauren would burn down a church to achieve. A sample from a traditional Robinson family statement of thanks: I’m thankful that the IRS didn’t pick up on how ridiculous my vehicle expenses were, that I got away mailing so much stuff as media mail when it should have been parcel post, and that EZ-Pass prices have not increased. Chris, Christine, and Jon listed the loved ones in their life where as I listed my car and giant printer as my key pieces of thanks. Apparently one should mention material possessions at such times. Not to say I am not thankful for my family, good health, stable job, friends, coworkers, general inclination of humanity away from violence, etc but those things are givens to me in a way that neither printers nor especially cars have been. Remember, I was abandoned at school for my first day of college when I could find the pair of pliers required to properly jump the station wagon I was driving, and that was the sixth car I had driven in the previous 18 months.
We retired to the couches, made things out of Bucky Balls while watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I felt antsy and asked Chris to go for a walk with me. For next year, I will say I am thankful for friends that don’t tire easily as our “stroll around his apartment complex” covered 5.6 miles. Oh, and I’m thankful for my Fitbit pedometer.
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