Los Angeles, CA: The Salton Sea Part I – Capture the Wind

The Salton Sea State Recreation Area is a arid, highly saline lake about 2 1/2 hours east of LA. Borrowing from Wikipedia …

As a result, the Salton Sink or Salton Basin has long been alternately a fresh water lake and a dry desert basin, depending on random river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. A lake would exist only when it was replenished by the river and rainfall, a cycle that repeated itself countless times over hundreds of thousands of years

The sea was created in the early 20th century when the Colorodo River overflowed and burst down into the area known as the Salton Sink. After the flood waters died down, authorities investigated damming the river to prevent such a flood from happening again, leading to the development of the Hoover Dam. Since the Salton Sea had no outlet, the ecosystem was put on a sort of contained overdrive. The salinity is much greater than seawater since the water has nowhere to go but up.

Most striking, however, are the fish die-offs. Due to an abundance of algae and hence a large fish population that feeds on the algae, deoxygenation of the water results in massive fish deaths. Various parasites and bacteria have been discovered that would also contribute to the mortality rate, on top of the salinity of the water.

All of this makes for a really interesting site to take pictures. I had heard only briefly of the area from a photography teacher and one other student, so one weekend I decided to check it out for myself. But first, I would need some gear.

My collection of lenses is nearly complete, save for a solid telephoto. The closest I can get right now is 70mm. To fill the frame without getting within 5 feet of the subject, you really need something north of 150mm. I went to Samy’s Camera in Playa del Rey and rented a Canon 200mm 1.8L lens. The used ones on eBay go for about $4,000. Along with the light meter and tripod I rented, Samy’s put a hold of $5,000 on my credit card.

At first I walked my bicycle down Jefferson Blvd towards the Big Blue Bus stop. The small suitcase that housed the lens was in one hand, the 15-pound tripod loosely contained in my backpack. I had grossly underestimated the sizes of both. After about 10 minutes, realizing how long it would take me to make it back home, I decided to just go for it. I carefully climbed on my bicycle, and slowly started peddling down the sidewalk. Unfortunately, tree roots had grown so thick they were pushing up the concrete slabs of the sidewalk, often making the path impassable. Even more unfortunately, the brakes on my bike don’t work so well, so every now and then I would have to drop both feet to the ground and skid to a stop. Then shuffle myself, the bike and lens over the ruined sidewalk with one hand and two feet.

The next morning I picked up a rental car from Enterprise and set out for the desert. About two hours later I hit the wind farm just west of Palm Springs. When I first saw them on the way to Coachella two years ago, I knew I had to come back to take some pictures. This time, one eye was on the road ahead while the other scanned the rest areas and side roads near the highway. Access to get close enough for a decent picture was limited. And even though I had an enormous lens, I wanted privacy. Finally, I found a service road that ran along I-10, and it looked like I could walk across some open lots, right up to the windmills.

I parked the car near some bushes off the side of the service road, and snapped on the monster. I cautiously walked across the undeveloped land, closer to the power station and rotating turbines. Indeed, there didn’t seem to be a fence until you got within a hundred yards of the first windmill. And even though there were no trespassing or keep-out signs, I was still nervous. After all, I was a brown man walking around power infrastructure equipment with a telephoto lens the size of a small dog.

Taking pictures of those things was about as much fun as I hoped it would be. Even though I couldn’t get right up to them, the lens got me as close as I needed to be. Railway lines ran beside the power station, which provided a nice foreground. I finished off a roll of black-and-white, walked back to the car, and continued east.

Adventures on Public Transportation: Faith In Humanity

A couple nights ago myself, my friend Stedl and Soares decided to grab a few drinks after work. “After Work” for a SpaceX employee has different meanings for each person, so by the time “After Work” rolled around for Stedl, I was already at home, in the middle of some laundry.

I had suggested that we go to the Daily Pint, a dive bar that specialized in craft beer and Scotch, only about a mile up Pico Blvd from my apartment, on the route of the #7 bus. I told Stedl that I planned on taking the bus there, the assumption was that he’d come with me. Immediately he asked “Am I going to die, Bj?” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I tried to calm him down and assure him that a 5-minute ride on the Big Blue Bus wasn’t going to kill him.

San Francisco, CA: Transition

After a few weeks in Boston, I decided to move out to San Francisco and take my brother up on his invitation to stay with him. Plus, I wanted to find a job in that city and actually being there would be a big help.

My time in San Francisco was great, and if I could stay unemployed forever, that’s exactly how I would want to live my life. Simply, I had the life of an American housewife. I’d have a leisurely breakfast in the morning and visit the local farmers markets. On other days I’d go for a run or do some yoga at a wonderful studio down the street (the Yoga Loft, check them out). Then I’d experiment in the kitchen with cakes, pies, cookies, bread, and a host of savory dishes. My brother and his girlfriend Nikki were my guinea pigs.

A couple months after I got there my brother got  a puppy. A little lab-boxer-pit bull mix that we named Newman (after the Seinfeld antagonist, of course). Here’s a ridiculously cute picture of him when he was still a baby:

I soon realized that raising a puppy was not the wonderland of cuddles, fetch and “awws” that I thought it’d be. If it’s anything like raising a child, well, count me out.

London, England: The End?

By the end of my road trip with Phil I was exhausted. Not physically, but mentally and emotionally. I was travel sick, plain and simple. In principle, I really wanted to explore Wales, more of Scotland and Ireland, but I would’ve just been going through the motions. I started toying with the idea of going home.

I decided to head back to London anyway and see my cousin Shanti since I wasn’t able to before I left London the first time. Phil dropped me off at the Glossop train station and after a big hug goodbye, I waited for the train to Manchester with a car’s worth of rambunctious school kids.

On the train to London I considered my options. Backpacking with the wrong attitude is a recipe for disaster. It sounds like a cliche, but you have to want it. Otherwise you walk like a zombie through the streets of ________, never really knowing what you’re seeing or even appreciating it. Backpacking is a drug. People get addicted to it. But knowing when to take a break is the key to enjoying it in the long term (I started down this “backpacking as an addiction” analogy and now it just sounds disturbing).

I contemplated going to Ireland and trying to find a job, but the prospect of conducting the search I performed in NZ, except this time in a big city, it seemed daunting. Especially when I had engineering jobs on the horizon; two years of being away from the software game made me start worrying about my future.

Ambleside, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; York, England: The Whistle-stop Tour

We set off from Glossop by about 10 AM and headed north towards the Lake District, a mountainous area of northwest England and home of the Lake District National Park. In fact, all the land in England higher than three thousand feet likes within the park.

We drove through some of the smaller towns, around several lakes and tried to figure out what we wanted to do. It was nice enough just driving, so by the time it started to get dark, we found one of the villages to stay for the night. It was called Ambleside and I’m sure if it had been during the peak winter season, or even the peak of the summer season, it would’ve been filled with outdoor enthusiasts and travelers. But to our benefit, we found a room at a really nice B&B for a pretty good price.

Manchester, England: Welcome To Manchester

Soon after breakfast on my last day in London I left Rebecca and Nick at the West Hampstead terminal and went to King’s Cross/St Pancras station to buy a ticket for Manchester. Nick fussed over my well-being, “Our man is leaving Rebecca, is he going to be alright?” “He’s been doing this for a while, he’ll be fine.”

I bought a sandwich to go and had a cup of tea while I waited. The train ride was pretty uneventful, though I enjoyed watching the English countryside at a blur.

My last connection was running late, though by the early evening I was finally pulling into Manchester’s Piccadilly station. I called Phil to let him know I had arrived, but it went straight to voicemail.

I walked through the station towards the main entrance, and just as I was leaving Phil a message — in mid-sentence, in fact — I passed an older vagrant kneeling on the ground, looking concerned and confused. Suddenly, when I was only a few feet away, another vagrant rushes towards the side of the one on the floor, sweeps his leg out in stride and kicks the man on the ground squarely in the chest. Phil received a message that sounded something like this:

Hey Phil, it’s Bj. I just got into Piccadilly station and I’m walking through the station now. I’ll head … oh! uh … wha … ok, some dude just got kicked in the chest! There’s some kind of bum fight that just broke out in front of me. Listen I’ll be hanging around the main entrance, just give me a call back.

The man on the ground was clutching his arm and on lying on his side as a couple others pulled the aggressor off him. He didn’t seem like he was in critical condition, and others had stopped to help, so I made my way to look for Phil. I stood near the main entrance of the station and scanned the terminal.

My eye caught another group of people on the other side of the room from where the bum fight took place. One twenty-something was very angrily in another twenty-somethings face. And I must have been just outside earshot because I could’ve sworn they were arguing about one of the mens’ jeans. I stood alarmed and at attention, wondering what kind of place this was.

Phil called me back and asked me where I was in the station. I said I was standing next to what I thought was the main entrance. “Ehm … did you by any chance pass a couple old guys fighting?” “Yes! I’m like right near there.” “OK I know where you are, I’ll be right there.” Phil walked up to me with a grin on his face. He shrugged his shoulders slightly, raised his eyebrows and said, “Welcome to Manchester!”

London, England: The Hidden Gems

I was set to leave London on Saturday and take the train to Manchester where I would meet Phil. On that Friday, my last day in London, Rebecca had the day off from work, so we went on a small cultural tour of the city.

My traveling philosophy is based around doing things that the majority of other travelers wouldn’t do. I don’t like group tours, sightseeing buses, or going to museums for the sake of going to museums. I like visiting quaint neighbourhoods (and their bakeries), neglected galleries and museums, or maybe just spending an afternoon eating lunch in a park.

I met Rebecca in a neighbourhood near the British Museum, and we went to a small used bookstore where Rebecca was searching for a Christmas present for her boyfriend. She told me it was arguably one of the best secondhand bookstores in the city. We found a beautiful print of The Jungle Book as well as one of Jane Eyre, a favorite of Nick’s. We browsed around the store for a while before walking towards the museum. I had no intention of spending any amount of time in the British Museum, but there was one thing I wanted to see. Fortunately, the museum is free, so I had the freedom to spend as much or as little time there as I wanted.

The Rosetta Stone. Just like the Code of Hammurabi, it was another one of those vestiges of my elementary schooling that always stuck in mind. The ancient key that unlocked a forgotten language. I had to see it.

London, England: Neighbourhoods Of Class And Culture

While Nick and Rebecca were at work, I decided to do another tour of the city. After picking up a coffee at a great little Middle Eastern cafe down the street from Rebecca’s apartment I jumped on the tube and went to the Barbican.

The Barbican is an estate in the northern part of the city which encompasses about 40 acres and contains everything from schools to residences to a massive performing arts centre. After WWII that part of London was completed destroyed and much the population had been killed or driven away. The city chose an architectural firm to design and build a replacement. It’s a pretty eerie neighbourhood, in my opinion. London is such a mix of old and new, traditional and modern, that to see such uniform planning — especially in the style of the late 60s and early 70s — was interesting and surreal.

I walked to the Performing Arts Centre and took a look at a small exhibit featuring artwork rendered from images in the film Waltz With Bashir. I passed through the large concrete courtyard and tried to find my way back to the main street.

London, England: An Afternoon in the Heath

The next few posts will be general highlights from my time in London … in no specific order, but I’ll try to keep it chronological.

Rebecca lives in the neighbourhood of West Hampstead, which borders one side of the massive Hampstead Heath. “The Heath” is 790 acres of parkland, one of the highest points in the city and home to the Kenwood House estate. We started by walking through West Hampstead towards another small neighbourhood nearby (can’t remember the name). That area is incredible, with narrow cobblestone streets winding through expensive property. We stopped at an antique shop and browsed for a little while before having some lunch. After lunch Rebecca stopped at a princess store (I’m not sure how to describe it … it’s a store targeted at 12-year old girls — or girls who think they’re still 12 years old — filled with pink fluffy things and glitter), where Rebecca bought presents for a couple young girls she teaches.

We walked through the Heath towards the Kenwood House where we stopped to check out a garden sale of herbs and plants, seed books and things like that. Just outside the Heath, near the Kenwood estate is a small pub that was our ultimate destination. It was the English pub poster-child: low doorframes leading to dimly lit rooms, and all of it built with ancient wood. We had a couple ciders while admiring the decor and sheltering ourselves from the cold and wind outside.

By the time we walked back to Rebecca’s place, it was getting dark and there was an incredible sunset over West London. I tried to take some pictures, but without a tripod and sure footing they didn’t come out very well.

London, England: I Solve The Hat Problem

Previously, our intrepid hero had disembarked after a long journey from Amsterdam and found himself without a single farthing, standing in the pre-dawn, sickly flourescent glow of the Eurolines terminal near Victoria Station …

I needed cash, to begin with, but strangely, I wasn’t hungry. A bakery stand had just opened and a line had already formed for coffee, but though it carried a range of pastries, I usually try to avoid bakeries in dirty bus terminals. A man stopped me and asked me about where I was from, apparently I had a very interesting look about me. The bald head really throws people off.

The foreign exchange booth finally opened it’s shutters and I exchanged my Euros for quid. I left the bus station and walked a block down the street to the Victoria train station. I wasn’t about to spend a day in London lugging my giant backpack around with me, so I needed to find baggage lockers. Unfortunately, by the time I finally found them at the train station, it wasn’t even open yet. I sat on a chair nearby and thumbed through my LP.

Victoria Station is situated west of the city center. In fact, a walk towards the city takes you by Buckingham Palace, Parliament and Westminster. I came up with a general outline of things I wanted to see that day and mapped out my approach.