The Great Railroad Tour of Colorado

I was lax blogging from the road this last trip. Mainly, I wanted to recover from the chaos of the flood, and unwind. A big part of the trip was the Mensa AG, but the other half which was just for my father and myself was our great railroad tour of Colorado. We got to six railroad-related landmarks. I enjoyed all six greatly.

The Monday before the AG, I went to the Colorado Railroad Museum. It's a nice museum. One highlight for me was seeing the Galloping Geese--the first time I'd seen one. (They have two: #2 and #6; I have always had an odd fascination for those railcars.) The other highlight was the Santa Fe Super Chief observation car Navajo; I kept going back in my mind to the thought that my mother may have ridden in that car on her west coast trip when she was young. (Perhaps a longshot, I know, but possible.)

The Monday after the AG, I rode the Georgetown Loop Railroad. That was my least favorite of the narrow gauge railroads--mainly because it's shorter than the others and is currently using diesels. However, I feel it's unfair to describe it negatively--it's still pretty good, and well worth the ride. Also, if you're there, take the mine tour.

On Tuesday, I took the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. That was definitely a high-point of the trip! (Sorry--I couldn't resist a pun.) I was pleased that I had few problems at 14,110 feet. (I was a little short of breath for a moment up there--enough to make me glad my dad elected to remain at the hotel.) I lucked out with my ticket--I had a seat right in front of the cab window of the downhill side of the train. I've never summited a mountain even nearly that high before, and that is definitely the easy way to do it.

On Thursday, my dad and I took the Royal Gorge train. That is a beautiful line--and I recommend spending the extra money for the dome car.

On Friday, we took the Cumbres and Toltec. As a libertarian, I hate to admit this--since this is the only government run operation of the five railroads--but this is probably the best of the five railroads. The scenery along the line is great. The only downside if the line is that you need to ride a bus one way to take the whole line in one day.

The final line we took was the Durango and Silverton. Like the Cumbres and Toltec, it is also a very well-run scenic railroad. The scenery is perhaps the most spectacular of the five routes I mentioned--especially along the High Line. They also have a nice museum at the Durango station. The biggest downside is that it was very crowded.

In short, if you're out in that part of the country, all five railroads are well worth taking and the museum is worth a visit, and all six attractions are very enjoyable.

Finding different roots than expected

I've been bad about blogging about my trip. I've been away nearly two weeks on the railroad tour of Colorado/Mensa AG, and this is my first blog.

Today was a sightseeing day in Colorado Springs. This afternoon, I saw the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Cave of the Winds, and Garden of the Gods. Before dinner this evening, my dad and I tried to find the location of Freedom School, where my parents met in 1962. We took off following the directions in a Gazette article online, and weren't convinced we were on the right track. So, we went back to Palmer Lake, and stopped in the Depot restaurant. They provided directions to a school we passed before. We took another look up (the school was founded in 1927, so if they took over Freedom School's property, they did so late in their history), snapped a picture, and left again.

Since they had been helpful and were convenient (and train themed), we ate at the Depot. In the "too appropriate for words" category, the picture on the wall across from our booth was of the Hopewell station--as in the Hopewell, NJ where we lived in the early '80s. I wouldn't have expected another bit of my past to show up on this side trip!

And the lightbulb goes on...

As long as I'm blogging about the Sheraton, how about this?

Don't take this as badmouthing the hotel--there has been some griping within Mensa because of a mess relating to some plans for homemade food that the hotel feared would violate the health code. Not knowing the local health codes, the exact contract with the hotel, or what else may have happened behind the scenes within Mensa, I have a poor idea of who's right or wrong--though I do tend to think National handled things badly, if only because the official information was cryptic and really uninformative. The hotel, for its part, does have to worry about these sorts of things--if something did go wrong, they'd wind up getting sued for something that wouldn't be under their control or their fault (if anybody's). But I digress. In any event, at least from my standpoint, the hotel's service was good.

However, there was one quirk of our hotel room (1110) that bears comment. Not counting the bathroom, there are five lights in the room--a ceiling light by the door, a desk lamp, a floor lamp, a wall-mounted lamp over the dining/reading table, and a wall-mounted lamp over the nightstand. Of those five lamps, no two are turned on the same way--you use a light switch, a rocker switch on the cord, a knob by the bulb, a rocker switch on the bottom of the lamp, and a push button on the bottom of the lamp respectively.

I think this hotel was chosen for the AG because the room's lights are an IQ test in and of themselves.

...But it's free at the motel.

Why is it that fancier hotels charge for in-room Internet access, but cheaper hotels don't?

I have stayed in 17 different hotels (I think--I may need a recount) since I've gotten my laptop computer. Of those, I believe all but four had free, in-room, high-speed Internet access. (At least in theory--some of them had Wi-Fi that didn't work, and there were a couple where I stayed for one night on the road and never even took the computer out of its bag.) Most of those were chain motels--Sleep Inns, Comfort Inns, a Best Western. Of the four that lacked in-room high-speed 'net access, one had no Internet access of their own--a stand-alone, non-chain motel in NJ--and they had free local phone calls, so I could call my dial-up ISP for free without problem.

Of the four "luxury" hotels I've stayed in since I've had my notebook, one--a boutique hotel in Great Neck, NY, had free Ethernet-based service. The other three--a Marriott in New Orleans, a Disney Resort, and the Sheraton in Birmingham--are the only ones that charge for the service. And, the least expensive of those three, the Sheraton, at least offered free Wi-Fi in the lobby (I'm writing my blog from there now). Perhaps worse, those same three hotels were among the minority in charging for local phone calls--meaning that my dial-up approach wasn't a free option, either.

I'd just love to hear an explanation--other than "they figure you can afford it"--of why the expensive hotels charge for what the cheap ones give away.

Yeah, I'm talking about my trip.

The Mensa Annual Gathering--the main point of our Birmingham trip--was fun. If you're in Mensa and haven't gone to an AG, go to one. If you're not, talk a Mensan into taking you to one or join and go on your own. They're addictive.

However, if you're in Birmingham at any time, I have two suggestions for attractions to visit. The first is the Aldrich Coal Mining Museum in Montevallo. The genteman who runs it was kind enough to open for my father and myself on Tuesday--usually, they're closed Tuesdays; though their website does say they'll open by appointment, we didn't give them much lead-time on the appointment, calling about 45 minutes before we arrived. The museum is in an old company store and office/workers' recreation hall/school building--the former housing a collection of town history artifacts and pictures and the latter housing some more of the collection, but being closer to a building restored to its period appearance. It's a small museum, and hard to find, but I think it's worth a look.

The other attraction is the Irondale Café. This restaurant--the inspiration for the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and the movie based on it--offers some great trainwatching. And the food is good, too.

Travel as a citizen or fly like a turkey.

“You ride a train because you can get on a train as a citizen. You can only get on a plane as a subject of the government.”

Those are the words of Kirk Thompson of Montana, as quoted in an online Missoulan article about activism for a new Montana train route.

It's not completely true--after all, passenger trains are heavily subsidized.

It's also partly true for cars--there's a freedom to driving, but I at least always get a little uneasy when I see a police car on the road--second guessing my driving decisions and actions for the past few blocks when one appears.

All that said, I enjoy flying, but I so hate and fear airport security so much that it's a no brainer for me--if I can, I stay on the ground when I travel.

BLOG - I stand corrected.

Way back in March, based on a spring training game, oh me of little faith expressed apprehension about my team, the Mets.

While they didn't make the World Series, I would note that their 97-65 record was a tie for the best in baseball this year, and they took their fight to the ninth inning of game seven against the Cards--who ultimately won the Series in five.

In the mean time, us Mets fans can only say, "Wait 'til next year."

TRAV - A smart trip to Disney World

On Sunday, I got back from the Mensa World Gathering. From what I've heard, this is the first time the World Gathering was held someplace other than London--in this case, at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. As an event, there were plenty fun and interesting events. (There was press covereage of the event, and I intend to write in the coming days about at least one part of one of the discussions.)

However, I did want to share some thoughts about the resort.

First, the service was a mixed bag. Some people, like the check-in clerk, were very polite and helpful. There were many other employees, though, who just didn't seem to care: when I told one housekeeper out of the room in a few minutes, she responded that she was leaving at three--with a definite implication that I wasn't going to get the bed made if I didn't clear out before then; one server in the Pepper Market told me it would they were out of chicken for the pasta primavera and it would take 10 minutes to cook some more--even though I asked her to start a batch and told her I'd return, I had a 10+ minute wait when I returned because she didn't bother to actually start cooking it; two of the glasses in my room were dirty when I arrived, and the ones I used were not replaced with clean glasses. The service problems were all little things like that--but at the rate of $120 a night, that level of service is, in my book, totally inadequate.

I mentioned the Pepper Market above--that was one of the two food options. The other was the Maya Grill--a sit down restaurant that priced itself out of my budget. The Pepper Market was a food court--offering several types of cuisine. However, even with the food court, the choices felt very limited because each station at the food court had only three or four choices. The prices were high--charging sit-down prices for fast-food service. The limited in-hotel food options were particularly annoying since the WG's food service was considerably less than was offered in New Orleans last year. (The story was that Disney insisted that Mensa not provide its own free food so as not to compete with their food offerings; I haven't confirmed this story.)

Another issue was the size of the property. It took 15 minutes to walk from my room to the convention center; to be fair, we're talking about locations on the opposite side of the property--but it somewhat irked me, despite having booked at the event hotel this year instead of--as I did last year--the overflow hotel, I was staying further from the Mensa activities than I was last year. (To give you a good idea of the size of the property, I saw five meteors on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It may have been the right time for the Persieds, but if you can see five over the course of three nights on a well lit property without making a special effort, then you know you've been out walking a lot.)

I don't mean to imply that the resort was all bad. The main pool was very pleasant. The grounds were very well landscaped, featuring an unusually large number of rabbits (I don't think I ever had a walk to or from my room where I didn't see one--and sometimes I saw several).

Still, the resort did not impress me--unless an event of comparable importance to me is hosted on another Disney property, I don't think I'll ever stay in a Disney Resort on my dime again--not unless they cut their prices dramatically.


(Editor's note: I'd originally titled this blog entry "TRAV - A smart trip to Dizzy World." On reflection, while I tend to think "Dizzy World" is a good label for Disney, I'm not sure it was the best choice for the title of this piece.)

TRAV - Pirate radio 95.9, Rocking the Coast

For much of our time on the road, we listened to "Radio Fiesta 590." Even though it was a Spanish language station, my dad found the polka-like music very agreeable. (I was also pleased that my Spanish was good enough I could get the gist of some of the news stories they broadcast.)

As interesting as "Radio Fiesta" was, on the drive home, we had a even more unusual listening experience, around Melbourne. We picked up an FM Rock station. Their music was, from my standpoint, very agreeable--though I recognized only four songs we heard--Metallica's "Hero of the Day," Korn's "Twisted Transistor," Pearl Jam's "Alive" and the Foo Fighters' "All My Life"--everything they played, would be what I'd describe as hard alternative rock/metal.

The station was not very powerful, and was soon overpowered by Orlando's 95.7. During the entire time we listened (for about ten songs), the only identification they broadcast was "Pirate Radio 95.9. Rocking the Coast!" There was only one commercial during that time--for a program on that station. ("Callahan and..." somebody--I didn't catch the other name.)

I can only conclude it was a real pirate radio station.

I'd never managed to catch an unlicensed station before--the irony of their "illegal status" is that they were better than any of the "legal" local rock stations. (I put that in quotes advisedly--I consider government licensing of radio stations as an unconstitutional infringement of freedom of speech and of the press. That is not an opinion the courts seem to share with me, however.) I don't know why the station owners were on the air. With no apparent way for them to make money, and them risk of onerous penalties if the government catches them (a local TV news story about an apparently unrelated--and not as harmless--pirate station claimed it was a felony to operate an unlicensed station in Florida), it doesn't seem worth it. However, I for one would complain to the FCC if they were taken off the air.

TRAV - Flagler

In the guest book comments, I simply wrote "Wow!"

Flagler's Whitehall mansion--open to the public as the Flagler Museum--is not as big as Biltmore or San Simeon. Of course, both of those estates are in fairly remote locations, while Whitehall is in Palm Beach, and both of the other homes were their owners' main residences, while Whitehall was a vacation home. The entrance hall alone is bigger than my house--that makes quite an impression on its own.

One of interesting touches in Whitehall was the drawing room's gilded aluminum. For about a century after aluminum was first discovered in 1825, no one knew how to generate enough electricity to produce large quantities of the metal; the relatively short period between its discovery and the ability to produce it comparatively cheaply makes the period when aluminum was treated like gold or silver into an interesting footnote. The application in Whitehall's drawing room is an interesting bit of evidence from that period.

In any event, Whitehall is a very beautiful mansion. If you happen to be near Palm Beach, it's definitely worth a visit.

TRAV - Kobe beef West Palm Beach style

My dad and I were both in the mood for Japanese tonight--so we went to Ebisu. When we got there, one of the specials was Kobe beef! And for $25, at that! I couldn't believe it--I'd always believed Kobe beef extremely expensive--on the order of $100 a pound. I asked, and the waitress maintained that it was, indeed, Kobe beef. I just had to go for it. I had no idea what the result would be. The worst cut of the best beef in the world? A piece the size of a postage stamp? A regular steak prepared in some strange "Kobe style" recipe? Who knew?

The steak was small, but not unreasonably small--with the other normal meal items, it was enough to satisfy me, though I wasn't extremely hungry when we had dinner. The presentation, though, was strange--the teriyaki sauce was served on the side, the steak was served on a bed of some kind of brown noodles (which made it look more substantial), and was garnished so heavily it was hard to judge its flavor--spinach leaves, lots of scallions, and a lot of pepper. It was, however, a very tender piece of meat. Despite the unusual presentation for steak teriyaki, it was excellent.

I tried a piece of my dad's sukiyaki, and had some sushi as an appetizer and a bowl of miso soup--all of that was first rate. As for the Kobe beef, it was very good, but if it was the best steak in the world, then being frozen for the 8000 mile trip from Kobe must have taken something out of it. Still, we'll probably go back to that restaurant next time we're down here.

TRAV - Trading beanballs

This afternoon, my dad and I went to see the Mets-Cardinals spring training game. Ugly for Mets fans--the final score was Mets 3, Cards 11. I have to say, I thought the Mets' fielding today was sloppy. The Cards, on the other hand, had their act together. Based on this game, I'd fear this' year won't be much better than the last couple were for the Mets, but the Cards have good prospects for post season play.

One highlight that didn't make the sports page: in his first at bat, Cliff Floyd was hit by a pitch. In his next at bat, Floyd had a decent hit that appeared to bounce off the pitcher's leg! That struck me as a fair payback.

TRAV - "Yes, wonderful things"

OK. My blog is getting way too political. I can't resist speculating here if the Egyptians are trying to prove their friendship with us and/or win back tourism post-9/11.

Regardless of their motives, they sent the exhibition. Unlike the earlier exhibition in the '70s (which I don't recall seeing at that time--probably because I was five when it ended), this time, they didn't send the "full collection"--among the things not sent were Tutankhamun's death mask and his coffin. My overall impression of the exhibit is that it was smaller than I expected, even knowing the more limited nature going in, and that there were fewer gold objects than I expected. I'm not sure just how much I was expecting or, for that matter, what percentage of artifacts they sent, but it seemed to me they weren't showing that many pieces. (That said, the exhibit was quite crowded--they might have had space problems had they displayed more artifacts.) I was also surprised how many pre-Tutankhamun pieces were included in the exhibition--there were two full rooms that dealt with the previous generations leading up to him.

The craftsmanship of the articles was amazing. It's important to remember that these things are almost 3500 years old! I have stuff I bought last year that isn't in as good shape. I don't mean to suggest all things Egyptian are better than all things modern--remember this is the very best of what they made, and it was built to last since it was for the afterlife. One wonders, though, how much of what's made today will last that long in any sort of beautiful or usable form.

It's still--despite being very expensive ($25--not including the audio guide)--worth seeing the exhibition if you get the chance. (It's only coming to four U.S. cities--it has already been through Los Angeles, and it's not going to New York at all--so it's not the easiest show to catch.)

There were a few articles that I thought worthy of particular comment (for a complete list of tomb artifacts, consult the Howard Carter archives, though many of those articles were not in this exhibition):

The two gold images of Lady Tjuya (Tutankhamun's great-grandmother)--her coffin and funeral mask--were particularly beautiful works. If they're even close to accurate depictions, she was a very, very attractive woman in her youth (the age her artist chose to depict). In any case, the likeness is flattering--it's one of the best artistic depictions of feminine beauty among all artworks I know.

There was one cosmetic jar in particular- that caught my attention--a lion seated on the lid symbolized the Egyptians, but the conquered Nubians' and Syrians' anguished heads formed the feet of the jar. I can't help but wonder why the Egyptians depicted themselves in symbolic animal form while their enemies merited human form. To me, that makes no sense. (Why not depict the foes as, say, mice or frogs?)

In the same room as the cosmetic jar and opposite to it, there were three vases/jars. One of them, a light-blue one, was one of the most beautiful shades of blue I've seen--if I had to pick my favorite color, that would likely be it. The two darker blue vases--one which looked like a teapot--were also a beautiful shade. (Now, you get to see my memory elude me: I thought the one I particularly liked was called a "Het Jar"--but I'm not sure, and the term "heset vase" keeps coming up in my search. One of the others was called a "Nemset jar." Since the Howard Carter Archives pictures are black and white and the color is what drew me to them, those pictures are of less value anyway--though I'd like to have been able to link to the object anyway. In any case I can't locate it at the moment.)

If I had to pick out one favorite article from Tutankhamun's tomb in the exhibit, I'd point to the gold dagger (I think this is the one). The sheath and handle were very finely worked. I don't imagine Tutankhamun had much call to personally stab people, but I imagine he'd have been wise to carry a dagger in case his guards abandoned him. If this was the one he had in life, he chose well--it is an elegant piece.

(BTW--if you were wondering, the quote I used for the title is what Harold Carter said when asked if he could see anything upon looking into King Tutankhamun's tomb for the first time.)