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Crystal Cove State Park

Yesterday, I went on a hike with my dad and sister through Crystal Cove State Park.  It was a nice sunset as well as a reminder of Orange County’s sprawl (and penchant for oversized oranges).

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Read Full Post | May 20 2009 | Anson | No Comments » |

Flying Home

Delta Airlines 757 at Salt Lake City

After finishing my junior year, I am now back in Southern California.

Read Full Post | May 12 2009 | Anson and Swarthmore | No Comments » |

Protected: Google Earth File of Paris Trip

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Read Full Post | March 27 2009 | Anson | Enter your password to view comments. |

Paris

I departed for Paris twenty days ago. I stayed in the 5th and spent plenty of time walking, riding the Paris Metro, taking pictures of trains, and eating at restaurants. I made it to all of the obligatory tourist sites, including the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysee, and Notre Dame. My trip seems far away now, but I had a great time and took some fun pictures (click here for a slideshow). I also documented my trip in a Google Earth file.

Read Full Post | March 26 2009 | Anson | No Comments » |

Roller Derby Sellout

Roller derby track

Saturday’s roller derby bout was sold out about more than a week before the event.  I was bummed out, but I’m glad it will likely be a raucous, full crowd when I go to the bout on March 28 that I just bought tickets for.

Read Full Post | February 08 2009 | Anson and Swarthmore | No Comments » |

Philly Roller Girls Season Opener

Roller Derby

The opening bout of the Philly Roller Girls‘ fourth season is on February 7th at the 23rd St. Armory.  I intend on going clad in my Boston Derby Dames shirt.  I’m excited for the ridiculous pseudonyms, hard hits, snarky commentary, and general revelry.  I think I’m most excited about the location; bouts are now in Center City, a few blocks away from 30th St. Station, and about 35 minutes away from Swarthmore.  I certainly have no desire to repeat odysseys similar to the one I endured in Wilmington, MA, trying to reach the home of the Boston Derby Dames (the Shriner’s Auditorium) via public transportation.

Read Full Post | January 28 2009 | Anson and Swarthmore | No Comments » |

Surf Report: Winter Break

I only went surfing once or twice over winter break.  Of course, the waves picked up the day I flew back to Philadelphia:

The surf has been exceptionally flat this winter season, with few waves making their way to shore, leaving surfers anxious for anything they can get.

Read Full Post | January 19 2009 | Anson | No Comments » |

Appearance on Ellen

You can see me in last Tuesday’s Ellen Degeneres show here. I laughed hardest when she made a joke involving mass transit. You can hear me laughing in the background when she mentions taking the C Train Uptown.

Read Full Post | January 15 2009 | Anson | No Comments » |

Traveling Home

While I managed to make it home to Southern California before the airline system got majorly screwed up, my journey  was not without complications.  Before getting on my bus to the Philadelphia Airport, I received an automated call notifying me that my flight on Delta from PHL to ATL would be 30 minutes late.  “No problem,” I thought, “On the scale of things, that’s nothing, and I’ll still have plenty of time to make my connection to Orange County.”  Of course, once I arrived at the airport for my 4:55 scheduled departure, they announced it would be delayed 30 minutes further.  As I started to investigate alternate flights to Southern California, since I would now likely miss my connection, they moved my flight’s gate.

Our old gate was to be occupied by the 5:55 scheduled Delta departure to Atlanta.  I figured that flight would be delayed too, but no.  The flight that was scheduled to leave for Atlanta an hour after ours started boarding before ours.  I found this bearable only because of the mild irony.  The major irony came in the fact that the concourse only had one tow bar for MD-88s, so the other flight’s earlier push-back meant that we had to sit and wait even longer as it pushed back and taxied behind us, on its way to a much earlier takeoff.

With such shenanigans in Philadelphia, I was sure I would miss my connecting flight in Atlanta.  I really didn’t want to spend the night in the Atlanta hotel, so when we pulled into gate B3 at 9:00 PM, I was determined to make it to a flight to Southern California.  The monitors at the gate showed a 9:15 PM flight to LAX at gate A26 and a 9:15 PM flight to San Diego at gate B32.  I figured that these flights had already boarded, but I sprinted the length of the B concourse to get to the San Diego flight (I didn’t want to have run people over on the underground moving walkways to concourse A).  The gate agent somehow interpreted my breathless rants about missing my connection, and I got on the plane to San Diego.  Altogether, the evening was an appropriately hectic end to a very hectic semester.

Saturday was my last airline flight of 2008.  I ended up making 21 takeoffs and landings this year, including my first trips through San Diego, Chicago Midway, Salt Lake City, Raleigh-Durham, and Managua.  I used to love flying and airports, but the airlines and, to an even greater extent, the TSA, have destroyed every last bit of enjoyment I used to derive from them.  Maybe some carbon offsets will make me feel better about all the flying.

Read Full Post | December 24 2008 | Anson | No Comments » |

Cool Trip Back from New York

Megabus at 30th and JFK

This evening, I returned from a trip to New York that will be my last for quite a while.  There were some enjoyable highlights on the ride back.  Of course, I got stuck in an aisle seat and out of respect of others’ personal space (which some of my fellow passengers seemed to lack), I couldn’t lean over to the window and snap any pictures.  What I saw:

1. While I missed the moonrise last night due to clouds, I got an awesome view of a huge full moon rising over Manhattan as we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel.
2. Around Exit 14-14C of the New Jersey Turnpike, the lights of five planes on approach to EWR’s runway 4R could be seen stretching out in the distance.  They appeared to form a downward opening parabola, with the closest light about to land and the farthest just above the lights of the Goethals Bridge.  It almost looked like the lights of the bridge were flying off and skipping over to Newark.  Very cool.
3. One of the tall gas flares at the Linden Cogen Facility had numerous strings of lights attached to the top, spreading out to form a circle at ground level.  That’s right, an illuminated petrochemical Christmas tree.  Only in New Jersey…
4. We passed about 30 utility trucks and cherry pickers with their lights flashing heading north on the Turnpike.  Quite the convoy of reinforcements heading up to get the power back on up in New England.

Read Full Post | December 14 2008 | Anson and Transportation News | No Comments » |

Thanksgiving Travels

Out of service restroom at PHL

Unlike the many travellers who faced delays into the Philadelphia airport yesterday, my Thanksgiving travels went quite smoothly.   I rode the R3 from Swarthmore to 30th Street to catch an Amtrak train to Washington, DC on Thanksgiving morning.  After spending Thanksgiving at my cousins’ house, I drove down to Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon.  Other than some minor traffic congestion and an extended break (including stops at Wendy’s, Sonic, and Wawa) at I-95′s exit 61B south of Richmond, the trip was expedient.

My flight from Raleigh Durham to Philadelphia on Southwest was a piece of cake (and I used one of my stockpiled ATT Wi-Fi cards that PHL gives out to college students for internet at RDU), though taking the 37 to the 109 bus to get back to campus took a while.  The only hiccup I could find the whole weekend was a closed bathroom at PHL.

I had some great food over the weekend: the traditional Thanksgiving fare, Raclette, and my first tastes of pecan pie and Allen & Son’s Barbecue (the Ducks Unlimited stickers on the front window and the taxodermied mallard above my table completed this lovely North Carolina cultural experience).  And, in what has become a Thanksgiving tradition for me at my cousin’s house, I helped make (and devout) four trays of apple crisp.  I may be able to work off the calories by Christmas…

Read Full Post | December 01 2008 | Anson and Swarthmore | No Comments » |

Hopewell Furnace

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

Yesterday my dad and I went for a hike at Furnace Creek State Park, about an hour and fifteen minutes northwest of Swarthmore.  It was a sunny but cold afternoon – there was still some snow on the ground from Friday’s storm.  There were some nice trails in the state park, few other people around, and a fascinating National Historic Site.  Hopewell Furnace was an iron foundry started in 1772.  A restored furnace with a working water wheel is at the site and was very cool to see.

Water wheel to work the furnace's bellows

Read Full Post | November 23 2008 | Anson | No Comments » |