– turn the ethereal into your reality –

Fans of Trip Hop will like this one.  I am a huge fan of the merging of hip-hop and blues.  The downtempo chill-out vibes emanating from my hi-fi.  Good stuff.  Incomplete sentences.

Dig it.  Good album to relax to… Or make out, if that’s more your style.

Personal favorite tracks:
Crimson
Even Though
Blood Like Lemonade
Recipe For Disaster

Amazon affiliate link:
Morcheeba – Blood Like Lemonade

My friend posted this picture on facebook:

And I got to wondering about how the US cities would overlay, so I spent the 5 minutes to create an overlay.  Here’s the result:

Being from Western Massachusetts, I most certainly say “Soda.”  Living in Southern California, I still say it.  :)

This explains why no one could ever agree on this while I was going to school at RIT in Rochester, NY, as it’s right on the line.  Other locations of note are St. Louis, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City… and where else?

So, what do YOU say?

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*Writing this post reminded me of a video I saw MANY years ago, in the early days of the Internet, before youtube. One of them, was a video of a guy drinking his first “soda pop” and I believe it was set to “Bitch” by the Rolling Stones. It may have been directed in a “Tarantino” style. It may have been called “pinecone.” My memory is surely questionable, but if any readers know what I’m talking about, please forward me along to the video as I couldn’t find it on youtube!

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I get antsy.   Frequently.  This last weekend I got so damn antsy that on a whim I threw the saddlebags on the bike and headed in the general direction of The Salton Sea.  Proof that this was a spontaneous call, the sun was already setting:

There’s a spirit to doing long, particularly solo trips that just puts me in a different state of mind.  I think it’s about as close to meditating as I ever get.  I really wanted this to be a trip to set my spirit free, so I decided to avoid highways and just grab a hotel wherever I felt like it, and if I happen across a road that is calling my name, to go down it.  After all, gotta suck that marrow out of life (Thoreau, go look it up.)

It was all going well until I rounded the bend and ended up on the north-facing slope.  Then my dry, warm, albeit dirt road turned into a snowy icy mess.  I’ve never seen a road change conditions so quick!  It took me about 20 minutes to get the bike 10 feet.  Of course I tried, I don’t give up easily.  And on that note:  race inspired street tires are awful in the snow.

After finally making it to The Salton Sea, I held up the night in this quaint little Motel – The Sea & Sun:

I give it 4/5 stars.  It loses a point for no wireless internet, but gains 5 since I didn’t get murdered in the middle of the night because honestly, what do you expect from a motel in a ghost town?  Was it gorgeous?  Fuck no.  Did I sleep well? Yes.  And albeit a bit divey, the bed was pretty nice, actually.   At $50/night they really could use that wireless internet.

I picked up two pretty strong wireless signals there, but when asking the clerk he was pretty adamant about there not being any wirelss [for hotel guests].  Better take your internet porn with you!  As a marginally comical side note:  There’s a Starbucks up the road about 7 miles at the local trucker stop with free WiFi.  There is also a Motel in Salton City, which is just slightly more “vibrant” than Desert Shores.  Maybe they have wireless?  It’s a little harder to find though, since Salton City is a labyrinth of unused roads.  At least Desert Shores is compact, and has a very obvious main drag.

Salton City is laid out the way you might expect a 5 year old to plan a city.  You know how they like to make curvy roads in suburbs, as if to try and pull the wool over your eyes because “look curves make it less monotonous!”  Well that’s how Salton City is laid out.  Now imagine there are about 0.2 houses per road.  That’s right, for every 5 roads, there’s one house.

Good luck finding your way.  Lucky for you, they all have street signs!  Also it’s completely flat and appears to be common practice to just drive in the direction you want to go, whether or not there is actually a road there.

It’s the “fastest body of water in the US” for boating due to it’s high salinity (No boating on the Great Salt Lake?) That’s why this boat ramp is so well maintained.

Did you notice the dead fish in the last photo?  This is one of the most foul smelling places I’ve ever been to.  At first, the highway on the ride in smelled of Parsley (which I like) and then cat urine (which I dislike).  The Salton Sea smells, predictably, like salty water and rotting fish.

After finding not much interesting at the Salton Sea (I didn’t find the famous landmarks of the trailer or car rotting into the ground, as in classic form I didn’t give myself enough time to actually explore the area) I headed out and found myself riding right into Ocotillo Wells. The SV really isn’t much of an off-road bike, but luckily a lot of the trails are pretty tame, if you’ve got any off-road experience. Certainly easier to ride than the snowy road the night before…

After dicking around in Ocotillo Wells for a while on a bike built for something completely different, I headed out [the long way] towards Julian, CA to get me some World Famous Apple Pie!

I spent about 30 seconds deciding not to get in line, about 3 minutes taking pictures of the line, and about 30 seconds getting back on the road towards Palomar Mountain.  Fucking ridiculous.  No apple pie is that good.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Image of the sunset from Palomar Mountain.  You can just barely make out the Pacific Ocean, San Clemente Island, and the edge of Catalina Island (on the right).

Sunsets (a haiku)

Sunsets blow my mind
In person roxors my socks
Pics of ’em suck ass

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So… I’m a bit of a big deal, being a swanky photographer and all.  Interested in high resolution images?  Drop me a line and tons of cash, and they can be yours!