Dreams, Moments, Travels
Caroline and I attended Tonopah Rob’s farm dinner fundraiser which was catered by a local chef focusing tonight’s menu on food from the farm. Live entertainment and a slightly cantankerous John were on hand. Why the tension, John? I’m a workaholic and find it nearly impossible to pull away from work. It’s a bad habit, but I don’t know of any other way.
Five of us are in Los Angeles for a virtual reality conference. Caroline, not wanting to be left out, has come along but has her own plans. Before we each go our separate ways, there’s the matter of needing to share at least a bit of time of just her and me, and so it was that we left our motel early and headed down to the Santa Monica pier.
You may not have known it, but yesterday was Caroline’s birthday, and keeping with tradition, we did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to not celebrate it, just another day in the cascade of every day being worthy of celebration.
After dropping Caroline off at a secret location in downtown Los Angeles, I’m returning to our motel to pick up my crew to start our day immersed in tech.
This is Ariana Alexander checking out someone else’s idea of how we might enter virtual worlds. This is the first-ever VRLA conference being held on a couple of small soundstages this weekend.
Meanwhile, Caroline is divulging her location by sending out these images. She’s over in Little Tokyo for an afternoon of browsing and shopping.
It never fails to surprise Caroline that the Japanese took such a liking to this German treat called Baumkuchen, even keeping its original name. Tree cake would be a reasonable translation, and while it’s been popular in Japan for more than 100 years, it never caught on in the United States. But John, it’s right here in Los Angeles? Sure, here at Marukai Grocery, which specializes in all things Hawaiian and Japanese.
Back in the realm of the virtual, Rainy Heath is trying on a full-body tracking setup that demonstrates how to bring realism to motion in reality to VR.
Seriously Caroline? You have a day to yourself and you are geeking out on Spam? [I had no idea there were so many kinds! Caroline]
Brett Leonard, director of the film The Lawnmower Man back in 1992, was maybe one of the most obvious people to be on hand, considering his defining piece of film using some of the earliest computer graphics. A year after his movie (which cost $10 million to make) came out, Caroline and I over in Germany produced a short 3D animated music video that earned us about $8000. While the graphics of both works are highly dated, I better understand what he was up against trying to use state-of-the-art tools that were, in actuality, quite primitive for what we were trying to accomplish.
Brandon Laatsch (center) with his girlfriend, along with Luis Chavez of TimefireVR. Brandon got his start with Freddie Wong at Corridor Digital before they went off to do their own thing. Like myself, Luis was a big fan.
With both of our middle-of-the-day adventures coming to an end, Caroline stopped to take a pause after grabbing an Imagawayaki – red bean stuffed pancake and a coffee next door and then patiently worked on knitting my next pair of socks until we picked her up. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, we all dipped into a nearby ramen shop before my side of the group had the opportunity to explore Little Tokyo.
This is not a photo I would have thought to post, but when Caroline saw me napping in my chair with my favorite orange caterpillar neck pillow, the knitted beany she made me, and a blanket she had tucked around me because I was freezing due to being under the weather like the title says, she thought that I, “Looked so cute” and took the photo. She snapped a couple without me noticing but the one where I looked up to offer her a soft smile made her heart swoon and so, with some reluctance, I offer you a vulnerable and a bit sick version of me you’ll rarely see.
This is my “Really, you want to take my photo 20 minutes after I woke up and haven’t had a sip of coffee yet” face, a face I don’t share often. Considering this long-neglected day isn’t being posted until 2023, I’m guessing no one will ever see it. Yep, this is another of those “Why didn’t I finish posting these images” oversights that took nearly a decade to rectify. So it goes.
I guess this dinosaur at JB’s Restaurant draws the kids in; well, it worked on us, too, as the promise of seeing female dinosaurs frolicking in bikinis spoke loudly before our sleepy brains kicked in and remembered that dinosaurs are extinct.
Trying to add this post proves nearly futile as I’ve run aground from the sea of stories and memories that might have conveyed a little something else to share, or maybe I’m just in a hurry to get this written so I can move on to the next task in front of me.
Not only am I done after writing something or other about this shot of Monument Valley from here in southern Utah, but from this point, Caroline and I were only about 300 miles from home. I often wonder why I neglect to capture something or other of the scenery on the way home and can only attribute it to the need, the burning urge, to just get home after a trip where we feel that we’ve seen and done enough.
Here we are, set to go out on our third river trip, this time on the Yampa and Green Rivers. Yet again, we’ll be traveling with our favorite boatman, Bruce Keller, as well as river friends Steve “Sarge” Alt and “First Light” Frank Kozyn. We first met all three on our Colorado River adventure in 2010, and Bruce has since then also been our guide on the Alsek in Alaska. Our put-in today is at Deerlodge Park in Colorado on the eastern edge of Dinosaur National Monument. Unlike our previous multi-week trips, this “little” sojourn will only be five days long. At Deerlodge Park, we pack up our dry bags, find a personal flotation device that appeals to us, go through a safety talk, and before we know it, it’s time to get to the business at hand.
The brochure promised us plenty of sunshine, flush toilets, and feather beds. So far, our guides have certainly delivered on the first promise; we could not have wished for better weather. Back at the put-in, the terrain was relatively flat and for a moment did not portend that within an hour we’d be entering canyons, but here they are, and with their arrival, a rush of intrigue comes with this change in landscape.
The passage narrows, and it starts to feel as if civilization moves further away from us. While not as expansive as the Alsek and not as deep and broad as the Grand Canyon, the intimacy of the Yampa here in Dinosaur National Monument is already allowing me to feel like this place is of a size that I can take in and almost comprehend.
With the water getting a little choppier, the sense of being somewhere wild grows within. The adventure of the trip starts to take hold.
Geological details surround us. This is about the time I started to dream of a trip without a schedule where we could pull up to the cliffside and examine the sandstone, look for fossils, or just hang out and bask in the location we are so lucky to be experiencing.
It’s just past midday, and we’ll pull into our first camp early to give us plenty of time to set up our tents, build out the kitchen, do some exploring, or just chill out and enjoy the moment.
Our tent is up in minutes, and soon, we are out examining what’s to be found in our new neighborhood. Turns out there’s this gang of lichen hanging out, and while it looks soft and fluffy, looks can be deceiving. We also found a good amount of cacti giving us the stink eye, but no dinosaurs yet…..hmmm, I wonder if any of the other guests could be considered one?
That’s Sarge on the left and First Light Frank on the right; they are the official dishwashers on this trip down the Yampa. I just dare you to try to come between these two former Marines and their dishes. They even travel with their own gloves.
With the rafts tucked away for the night and our bellies full, the only thing left to do was sit around a fire and talk. Like all first days out on a river, this one came with most everyone cutting out early and catching up on the sleep they’d been deprived of over the previous couple of travel days as we converged on Vernal, Utah, where the trip first organized before heading to our put-in this morning. It’s great to be out here on a river again, wondering what big adventure awaits us around the next corner.
Last night, we drove up to Page, Arizona, on Lake Powell to position ourselves for the long drive to Vernal, Utah. Without distractions, the road is nearly 500 miles long and will require about 8 hours to cover. We don’t want to be late, as being well-rested tonight and able to rise early tomorrow is imperative. The boat Caroline is standing in front of is John Wesley Powell’s famous boat, “Emma Dean’, not the real one, but a recreation built by the Disney Company for a movie they made about Powell’s trek down the Colorado. A part of his journey was on the Green River, the same river that we’ll be joining during our big adventure that starts tomorrow.
We may not see Maisy the Donkey often here in Glendale, Utah, but we’d swear that she remembers us as every time we stop, she brays and comes right over for a snuggle.
Maisy was just a youngster when we met; she’s a seriously affectionate donkey.
Not a great photo, I’ll grant but we rarely see Golden Eagles. My apologies for the dearth of images that accompany this 500-mile day, but my attention was elsewhere, as in getting my nerve together for the five days of whitewater rafting that awaits us.