The Middle East

So freshly home from my Turkey/Israel/Jordan trip I have promptly gotten sick and realized how there is absolutely nothing to do at home. In any case, it was an amazing, though frustrating, trip.

We started in Istanbul. On the first day we asked the cab driver to take us to the 'hippodrome' which is an ancient racetrack up by the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. Of course 'hippodrome' really only means race track. So he drove us 30 min outside of the city to the modern racetrack guarded by the Turkish military, and then kicks us out of the car. That was a fun one to fix, but making your getting lost mistakes in the beginning always kind of takes the pressure off. In any case we eventually made it to all the big beautiful places. Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia included.

Istanbul is laid out in a particular way so that every selling the same thing is on the same street or in the same neighborhood. So you end up with a whole hillside full of plumbing equipment, and a street full of LEDs, an entire shop selling soldering irons.

I went to visit my old physics teacher who now lives in Bahcesehir. I got to meet a lot of really cool boys who are at the school he works at, one of them will be an incoming freshman at MIT next year, andone of them won the Turkish National Science Competition.

He then introduced us to his friend in the Grand Bazaar, so no one tried to steal our money, and we got good deals, and we also got to go into his workshop and see the guys to do the copper carving for

his lamps, which are really beautiful.

After Turkey we proceeded to Israel. We were staying in Tel Aviv, which is a much less religious city, and it is on the beach, and it was wonderful. We did visit Jerusalem and saw my orthodox cousin, who is 18 and is 100% sent on being married within the year and having a million children, so it was really interesting to talk to her.

While we were in Israel we also wen't to Jordan for a little while. Jordan is a fascinating place because it is so incredibly different from the western world. The infrastructure basically doesn't exist. There are a lot of bedouins, but nomadic and settled. Jordan has been making a big effort to settle the bedouins, and have been building them houses, which are actually nicer than the tin shacks or unfinished grey brick houses most people live in. In any case we got to go to Petra, which was amazing. Just as amazing as National Geographic wants you to think it is.

Bedouins in the Jordanian Desert: Petra:

Then it was back to Tel Aviv for a week or so, and then 17 hours on airplanes to get home. One of the coolest things about Tel Aviv, though, is all of the street art, its everywhere, and some of it is actually interesting.

Anyway, I'm home now and trying to kill the time until I start working.

Reido sez...

"Dude, I'd eat stuff that came out of the dumpster"

Ventana Wilderness, CA

Well, I authored the last adventure post of 2010, so I guess I'll write the first for 2011. lshu and I just finished up a 5 night trip through the Ventana Wilderness in Big Sur. Same area in which Tevis climbed Junipero Serra Peak at the end of last May . We were glad to be back in the Golden State and drove down from the Bay Area after doing some grocery shopping.

On our way south, we stopped at the beach at Rio del Mar (36°58'05.44"N, 121°54'23.15"W) to kill some time and enjoy the water and sunshine. Like nature's engineers, we couldn't help gathering some enormous hunks of driftwood and damming up the creek flowing to the ocean.

We loaded up our packs at the Bottcher's Gap trailhead (36°21'14.92" N, 121°48'49.67" W) late that afternoon and headed for our first campsite 3 miles up the trail.

Tevis had planned on coming too, but an excessively slow car repair shop delayed his arrival at the trailhead until later that evening. He spent the night there and, having spoken to the ranger, caught us at our camp early the next morning as we woke up. Over a breakfast of pancakes, bagels, and apples, he related that the ranger had warned of heavily overgrown trails along a portion of the loop that we had planned to take. Tevis then headed out and south to great adventures.

As we hiked in that day, we had our first good view across the Little Sur River valley of Ventana Double Cone Peak (36°17'49.04" N, 121°42'53.77" W), our ultimate goal (circled in red at right).

Upon arrival at Pat Springs Camp (36°21'44.21" N, 121°44'47.47" W), we found the location so ideal that we decided to use it as a base camp. The site felt like it was floating in the clouds with nearly 270 degrees of vista. We were shielded from the prevailing wind by a knoll and there was plenty of water nearby. We climbed up a hill behind our camp that evening to watch the sunset over the ocean.

The next day, we did a ~15 mile day hike to the top of the Double Cone. We started an hour or so past dawn and made it to the peak around 10:40am. The chaparral was uncomfortably dense at only a couple points, and the walk was generally pleasant (though had we attempted our original loop, we would have been in for a tough time. Thanks, Tevis!) The monkey flowers, lupines, and Indian paintbrush were all in bloom. The view down to the big blue Pacific from our 4853ft summit was breathtaking.

The following day, we day-hiked in the other direction, leaving the trail to top a smaller peak with views north towards Carmel Valley.

We brought lots of food and ate in style (for backpackers): quesadillas, dark chocolate, smoked salmon, chai, loads of fruity granola, couscous, carrots, hard-boiled eggs, milk, and dried mango.

We packed out on the 24th (with a detour to Mt. Carmel) and spent our last night at the trailhead. In celebration of completing our trip and summiting the Double Cone, we stopped at Carmel on the way back up to the Bay Area to have double scoop ice cream cones.

Laura learned how to put peanut butter in her granola and I learned how to use a handkerchief. We are both a little less pasty than when we left Boston!

Happy Summer 2011

We made it!! Happy summer 2011 everyone! Some of us are staying in Boston, some of us are headed west, and the rest of us are scattered across the country (and maybe the world!). Post tales and photos of your adventures here, be they wild and crazy and exotic, or simple and more mundane.

Happy trails!

PS If you're doing anything exciting for the Rapture tomorrow, post!

PPS If you get raptured, post!

IDC RoBoCoN, Shanghai

Hiya Putz,

I've been in Shanghai for the past two weeks, building robots with students from countries whose flags are in the picture to the right. The format was much like 2.007, with a contest field and kit of materials, except that here we were in teams. The objective for this year's contest was to collect balls from the “river” and deposit them in bowls. My team created a tilting bulldozer and a kind of funicular to do the job. Unfortunately, a bad solder connection knocked us out of the running in the 2^nd round. The tools available were primitive compared to the equipment at MIT, so the finished products were significantly more crude. Nevertheless, it was great fun designing and building these machines.

I stayed at a visitor hotel on the Minhang campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The weather there was more hot and humid than anything I have ever experienced. Just walking around outside, I could get soaked in sweat.

The five other MIT students and I played soccer with the Brazilians and Thai several evenings. I was pleased that we could all relate so strongly with the sport. I did not have too much trouble with the language as everyone spoke at least a little English. The Singaporeans were especially helpful as most of their population speaks both English and Chinese.

My first day off, I explored downtown Shanghai on foot. I managed to get some spectacular views of the city by making my way to the top of some of the skyscraper hotels. These two shots are from the top (66th floor) of the Royal Meridien looking east across the Huangpu. The bright strip is Nanjing Road, a big shopping and tourist trap. If you look closely, you can see that some of the buildings on the Pudong side of the river have been transformed into huge video advertisement displays. I also went up the beautiful Shanghai World Financial Center (the slender and well-cut one with the hole in the top). The haze of smog prevented me from seeing beyond about 10 miles. The city development is astounding. Cranes and construction sites are everywhere, and the high rises stretch out as far as you can see. I was very impressed with all of the civil engineering. The subway system is excellent: frequent, cheap, clean, fast, extensive, and well marked.

I visited the Expo on two occasions, but only went inside of a couple pavilions. The lines were exorbitantly long and the exterior architecture beat anything that there was to see inside. I could not understand how the thousands of people were willing to wait the often more than 2 hours to see a bunch of propaganda. My favorite was the Polish pavilion. Outside, they were piping some excellent Chopin adapted for orchestral rock. I also enjoyed the mini Tibet pavilion. It had a linear set of LCDs displaying scenes of Tibetan landscapes rushing by to emulate the views from a train.

Lovely, gigantic tensegrity structures hold up the vast fabric awnings over the central Expo axis. Thunderstorms struck both afternoons while I was there.

The Chinese pavilion was certainly impressive, but it reminded me of a bunch of Lincoln Logs. I attempted to get to the top (there is a great garden up there), but apparently only VIPs are allowed.

I made a point to take the maglev train on my way back to the airport. Fast and smooth, but judging by the sparse ridership, it seems to be operating at a heavy loss. As my train passed the other, the coach was jolted twice in quick succession as it hit and exited the other's shock wave. Here is a video of me hurtling along at 300 kph.

To end, a not so great picture of me on the Bund (waterfront), which some Chinese tourists were all too willing to take, and an interesting mural on the Malaysian pavilion.

Oh why not

Some of the delectable food available in China ;P

(I purposefully asked for dishes I wouldn't be able to get in America). I think my relatives called them 木虫, although that must be one of several common names. They actually taste quite nice. If you close your eyes, all you can tell is that you're eating something friend, crunchy, and small. :D

The kids I was with were squeamish about eating this dish, actually. But they do really like pig tails (dish visible to the left back).

EDIT: 8.7.10:  Actually, they are 竹虫, bamboo bore / worm [larvae]. Not wood insects. Sorry, I don't know my insects.

(yes, this is a cross-post from my blog)

Sharks

Watch them hunt us all week.

Happy Shark Week