Hmm, that is a good question, young grasshopper. I've basically been an East Coast lad my whole life, bouncing around from town to town on the American Northeast. Sure, I've flown to Texas once, Kansas City twice, and California thrice, and I've driven west as far as Buckeye Lake, Ohio for a Grateful Dead show, and to Chicago for a Phish show, but that's just peanuts. I want to go for the whole shebang. The stuff inside, between the coasts, has been a void in my experiential world, which I now must go out and feel. So, thus be my quest this summer, to drive around this good ol' country and take in the culture. To inhale that gooey American goodness that is to be witnessed. And to make all you mofo's still working at your day jobs to feel the tinge of wanderlust, envy, and maybe even pity.
So, just before the ripe old age of 18, I moved to Philadelphia, PA, to attend the University of Pennsylvania. Majored in physics and philosophy, minored in Japanese, math, and astronomy, and did other wacky things, for example, actually learning how to play keyboards. This entailed playing in a few kickass and not-so-kickass bands, as well as sitting in some of the jazz/blues jam sessions around town. I was also part of an even wackier organization of young men, which some people call a frat, we called it pi lam, hell, or the Order of Yargan Knights.
Then, at the age of 22, I moved again to Boston, MA, working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. For the curious, I was in the Electro-Optical Materials and Devices Group, doing research for the Photonic Analog-Digital Converter Technology program. After about 2.5 years of this research, I realized that I didn't know squat as far as physics is concerned, and that it's time to go back to get my PhD.
So, once again, I am moving to another North-East city, Baltimore, MD, to get my grad physics degree at Johns Hopkins University. So, before the grueling 6+ years of hellish grad school, I decided to quit my MIT job two months early, and romp around the good ol' US of A.
Allrighty, glad you asked. Firstly, my main goal is to relax, have a good time, and avoid stress. So, I basically have no itinerary, I drive wherever I want each day, stopping wherever I want, eating whenever I want, and finally finding a place to camp whenever I've had enough for the day. It's a remarkably relaxing lifestyle. In fact, this is the first time I've been unemployed since junior year of high school. There are only two deadlines I've had to meet were picking up Hillary at the airport in Atlanta, and dropping her off again a week later in Austin. Hillary's a woman from Boston who I've been seeing, but we've just broken up due to the impending long-distance thing.
As far as driving, my goal was to make it out to the west coast, for which I have clearly succeeded. Ultimately, I've done about 4 oil changes on the road, had to get pricy break jobs in Kansas City, and new CV boots in Santa Fe. And many many gallons of gas. Ultimately, though, I'd say my car held out pretty good during the 15,340.3 miles that constituted my trip.
Also, I'm a geek. Always was, and probably always will be. So, since I've been conceiving this road trip for many months, I've picked up some funky things in advance. Firstly, I got from my folks for my 24th birthday, a Garmin GPS II Plus unit. For those that don't know, a GPS receiver picks up a signal from 4+ US Satellites, which can give a latitude, longitude, and altitude reading. It's a pretty cool toy, and even cooler to use on a road trip. I also picked up a laptop computer on Ebay (IBM ThinkPad 760 XL). I then found a program through FreshMeat called Garble, which allows a computer running linux to interface with the GPS unit through the serial port. So, I can now track my driving route around the country, and even put it up on this webpage. So far, I can successfully record the GPS info with my laptop. I also got a cell phone (Ericsson KF788), and then a $80 (ouch!) cable to connect the cell phone to the modem in my laptop. My goal was to be able to update this page while on the road, but there were problems with the cell phone, and I didn't really feel like hacking with it most of the time. So, I just settled to keep the page updated from time to time when I got a chance to check in.
Well, you'll notice that the HTML is rather simple. I want this page to be quick loadable, and focus on the content rather than annoying flashiness and other time-consuming crap. Also I don't know java, or any advanced HTML stuff (and really don't have much desire to learn them), so this is what you've got. Love it, or leave it.
All the pictures were processed using the GIMP . The HTML coding (if you can even call it coding) along with the image processing was done on my laptop, running Mandrake Linux 7.1. I've got a dual-boot with windows 95, but after getting linux installed, I haven't used that other OS yet. I recorded all the GPS data on my laptop, as well as the first two weeks of travel logs, and transferred it to my Hopkins account during and after the trip. Now, back at Hopkins, I just edit my page directly (albeit when time allows!). I'm super busy here in grad school (ie, it took 4 months to fully unpack and order telephone service) so PLEASE be patient and check back here every now and then!
I've tested out these pages using Netscape 4.7x, hopefully it's all standards-compliant HTML. Please let me know if it's not.
Send any comments, complaints, bad jokes to me at
