Travels

Photo by: Sarmad Ali January 4, 2005 Cyrus on the Capitol Corridor, somewhere between Emeryville, Calif. and Sacramento, Calif., working on a piece for The New York Times.

So, I was looking at my calendar, and I realized that as I’d set it up I was only going to have four business days which is sorta short for going across the Atlantic. I called up American, and so for about $40 more in taxes and longer travel time, I have six full business days in Tallinn. Sounds like a fair deal to me. Depending on what can be achieved on the weekend in Tallinn, I may take a…

Holy crap. It’s really happening. The Wanderlust Geek in me is finally getting satisfied. I’m going to Estonia (!!!) to for a week in March to do some research for my book writing class. Best part? I have enough frequent flier miles to do it and so I only pay taxes. Final flight cost? $50 Wow, (not counting Canada) I haven’t been out of the country since I came back from Senegal in May 2003. Tallinn, here I come! (Anyone…

So I caught a 7:30 am flight (which turned out to be a 7:00 am flight, so good thing I was a little early) from JFK to SEA this morning, which meant that I had to leave my apt at 3:30 am to take the subway, and then the AirTrain all the way out to JFK, and I barely had enough time to check Lane’s bag and make the flight. In Seattle, I was greeted with the fact that my…

Dec. 12 2004 Mood: on the road Music: They Might Be Giants – Drink (glacially slow ; Live at New Haven 2004) I’m really digging the fact that TMBG is such a techno-conscious band (not to mention the fact that they’re awesome). What I mean is that if you’re a free subscriber to their email list, they periodically release free mp3s via their site, and then just the other day, they released a whole live album via mp3 (encoded at…

I’ll be in California from Dec. 20 to Jan. 9 — probably most of that time in Berkeley. Hope some of you folks will still be around then. Returning to OAK on May 20, two days after I graduate.

Then you’d be living in Pitcairn Island, one of my favorite geographical oddities. This island, population 46, currently has seven of its men undergoing a total of nearly 100 counts of sexual abuse, including the mayor. These charges stem from 1999, when a British policewoman visiting the island was told of abuses by a local Pitcairn girl. The residents of the island are descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty and the local Polynesian population in 1790. I love…

So courtesy of Lane, I got a quick trip up into Connecticut. He was taking some Japanese friends living in NYC to visit life outside the city. I hung with Heidi and Martin while the four of them went canoeing and various other things in the Litchfield, CT area. All went well on our way back in our rented PT Cruiser until we hit Armonk, NY and Lane’s friend who was driving said that the accelerator wasn’t working right, roughly…

The new issue of Wired is out, the one with the Governator on the cover — I have a short profile piece on this kid called Aaron Swartz. Go buy a copy, cause it’s not online yet. I was in Canadia this weekend, taking my cousin Nena back to McGill in Montreal. What a cool town. Lots of French stuff, and lots of stuff I didn’t get a chance to explore. I came back with a bellyful of poutine, and…

I got approval for a short piece for Wired magazine! Woo-hoo! I’m in LA through Sunday afternoon — I barely made my flight in OAK yesterday, and the security fuckin’ took my hex key (aka “Allen wrench”), which I have in my Camelbak pocket. C’mon guys, it’s a hex key! (“Sorry, no tools of any kind are allowed on board.”) You’d think that they would have invented a system where people can leave stuff at the security desk and then…