going to take a bit of a break away from posting trip pictures, although there's really only yellowstone left, but there's a shitload of them.

i've work 36 hrs in the last 3 days, and no i'm no medical person, so i still have more hrs left in the week to work.

but anyway. a few people sent me this link. little pygmies on the island of Flores in Indonesia. if you know anything about Indonesia, its that island that kinda looks like the Greek lambda. in the past they have found stone tools over there that dated to about 700,000 years ago, but no human remains were associated with them. these finds are, however, only about 18,000 years old, which is still pretty significant, although its well within the range of modern humans, yet in the midst of the pleistocene (ice age).

i'm willing to bet that this find with re-invigor the old dispute about the demise of the large pleistocene fauna. did man kill them off, or was it just climatic changes that did it in. the reason why i believe this is simple. there have been other islands around the world (in northern siberia, and islands off of California) that contained mammoths who turned pygmy after water levels rose, and apparently having a larger population seemed to be the better path for survival than larger individuals, so the general populace on the islands shrank.

but here is the first time i believe the phenomena is associated with human activities. and during the co-habitation, the similar effect was had on the human inhabitants of the newly formed island. so scientists are forced to figure out if the stresses that forced these smaller species are somehow related, if less amounts of similarly used resources by both mammoths and humans spurred the shift to smaller stature, or if whatever allowed a shift to smaller mammoths then, in hand, forced smaller people. i'm not quite sure how that last proposition would work, but i guess a final solution would be to somehow figure out if this was all just an effect of inbreeding. the smaller the population and its diversity, the more likely crazy shit is to happen.

attempting to juggle two jobs.
i'll get to posting more crap when i get the chance.
the best is yet to come. . .

where was i?
ah yes, the wyoming sunsets.
quickly approaching the rockies.
but first. the shoshone reservation which is what we caught at sunset.
oh. and btw. thats shoshone, as in phone. as opposed to shoshoni.
anyway. they had a fatty resevoir.
and it had sprinkled a bit and later cleared up leaving a double rainbow.
here we go, heading for me pot o' gold.
that shit got away from me as the sun started to set even further.
by morning we shall be amongst the rockies.

and here is the morning. this is a range in the rockies called the grand tetons. named by the french cuz i guess some of them actually take on the resemblance of tits.
not quite sure which ones really did it for them, but hey, they're french, eh?
it's kinda crazy how there's just some plains and then, BAM, there are them mountains.
actually, before the mountains there was this little hill. only on the north side did people decide to put houses. maybe the snow blows from the south so that hill blocks most of the drift. i guess there's enough snow around during the year that they have permanent signs up on the freeway banning snow plows from 10pm to 5am.
ah yes. then there's the thing that i was surprised to see. the snake winds all the way from washington state to end up here in wyoming. you can't really tell from the picture, but it's pretty deep. wish i had time to dive in.

finally. the last big thing we saw has arrived. yellowstone. its just to the north of the teton national park. remember that little fire that yellowstone had a bit back. was it '88? i should remember, i was just there. but anyway. the forest is still trying to recover.
other than the dead field of trees, the first awesome thing we came upon was this here waterfall.
since the continental divide is damn near around every corner, the source of this waterfall had to be close. and here it is: Yellowstone Lake. the lake is set in the center of a giant caldera that was created millions of years ago. strung around the caldera are geysers: heated pools of water that are sometimes prompted to spit 30 to 50 feet in the air.
but first, just beyond the lake was another waterfall.
and unfortunately we won't get past this waterfall tonight.
i guess i'll just have to leave you with the view below from the precipice where i took the pictures.

well now.
this is the last state where i took a crapload of pictures.
if you haven't guessed it, it's Wyoming.
also a land of cool, unexpected shit. although i guess most people know about yellowstone.
but we'll get to that later.

first up.
anyone ever see "close encounters of the third kind"?
a mashed potato pilin' richard dreyfus was making an effigy to this national monument:
devil's tower.
the thing stands alone in NE Wyoming, probably a reminant of some ancient volcano, leaving nothing in millions of years past but its hardened core. the native americans of that area said that the tower was created when seven kids were trapped by a giant bear. they prayed to the gods to save them. their prayers were answered: the gods raised the earth above them and shot the kids up past the bears reach. apparently they shot up so far that the kids ended up turning into a stellar body. you know that one: the pleides cluster, subaru, the seven sisters, whatever you wanna call it. in the constellation of taurus.
the bear scratched the shit out of the raised earth, however, which gives it the form that we see today.
the other draw to this area are the prarie dogs. not too sure if you can see any in this picture, but all those dark spots in the ground are prarie dog holes.
i once heard that these guys have the most extensive underground system of any animal. can't quite remember the numbers to actually make it sound incredible. but i'm sure in was on the order of many acres, if not hundreds of acres.

next destination: yellowstone.
but we saw some interesting wildlife on the way.
first there was this big male moose. that thing next to it does look like a bear, but it was in fact only a cow. this was as close as i got to it. eventually it got pissed, made some godawful noise, and ran off with other meese that were hiding behind those trees to the left.

next was some deer. a doe and her fawn. we stopped, took pictures and eventually they hopped that barbed wire fence in the back. well, the mom totally cleared it, but the kid was a pussy and had to weasel its way through it.

next thing to cause us to slow to a stop was this cow. in the back country of Wyoming, these cow are free-range. this one happened to get on the wrong side of the guard rail. i wonder how long he'll last. luckily not too many cars frequent this area.

from here on, the scenery got interesting. the roads led us through small canyon. with a bit of that carved look to it. next came some reminents of what looked like the badlands, but they were not.
some clouds came from out of nowhere and screened the sun. when we passed through those planes we came to a larger canyon. the highway parallels the railroad. you can see the tunnels there to the right.

just now getting into the rockies, the sunset makes some interesting colors.
there's so many more sunset pictures to go, i think i'll wait til i post next time.
enjoy that one you got there for now though.

it's amazing what restarting your computer will do.
anyway. here's a continuation of the badlands.
they may look like the same picture, but they're all from a different angle.
(once again, click on all the words.)
most of those hills led from a plateau down to a little valley area, but some stood alone.
this shit is like cement, so it holds well. some weathered in very odd ways; enough to get holes worn through them.
some had thick ass red stripes going through them.
i thought this was the most picturesque photo i took of the badlands.
i like how the light only hits on the background.
coming to the end of the park, the red began to be accompanied by yellow, which added a whole new flare to the ordeal.

from there we headed deeper into the Black Hills of South Dakota. over yonder to Mount Rushmore. last time i was there, they didn't have this giant fucking parking lot to fill up from the capacity crowds. we came at a good time. late summer, not too many ooglers. but there were these two fuckers. no one else was around to see these guys. i walked up toward them, and they took no notice until i was about 20 feet away. then they booked. if it weren't for those hooves and horns, they almost look like dogs.

ok, this is what we came to see. that walkway has all the state flags and when they were inducted into the union. how about a closeup? i see how it is. you want the whole damn mountain. still bitching? i bet you want a vertical view. goddamn! can't i placate you? what more can i offer? george and abe's profile?! shit!

MOVING ON!

no wait. i know what you want. you want to go back to those goats. am i right? yeah, i kinda pegged you as a goat fucker. well, there you go!
. . . jackass.

well here we go.
not to be outdone, the indian tribes of South Dakota stepped up and demanded a sculpted mountain of their own. so, they got one. and they decided to put one of their pimpingest, most legendary red mans of all time on it: crazy horse.
now, don't scoff. they aint done yet. granted its already been 50 years and they only got the head, top of the arm, and outline of the horse's head, but once i tell you that all four prezzes (george and the lot) could fit comfortably on crazy horse's own head. b'damn.
so yeah. here's what the finished product will look like.
my apologies for the fuzziness. with the flash the mountain in the back didn't show.

now, we're in the heart of the Black Hills. still in S. Dakota. what we got here, you ask?
well. its infamous for where Wild Bill Hicock was shot. you know, aces and eights, the "dead man's hand". that building was the name of the place he got shot: saloon #10. but actually there was a fatty fire that tore through the town and burned down that saloon. they moved up the street a bit because they were formerly in the seedy part of town. actually, where the man got shot was here; still a bar, still seedy, just a different name.
oh and btw, that bust you saw earlier was actually Wild Bill's tomb stone. if you can't read the inscription, here you go. damn i got my bases covered. oh, and i guess that was Custer's territory. he got shanked just a bit east of there in Montana at the Little Big Horn, as you might know. we didn't visit there though. next to Wild Bill was buried calamity jane.
now i didn't get any pictures of her, but i think you deserve to catch a peek. that picture doesn't do her hideousness justice. at least from what i saw on some of the tee shirts they were trying to sell. i think the selling point was the ugly that she exuded.

just under 5 miles from Deadwood (which is what this town was called) is another city called Lead. my dad informed me that it's not pronounced like the metal, but rather more like the opposite of follow: leed.
here they literally struck gold. the fattest vein found anywhere in the world. but it didn't come that easy. they made a hugeass pit in the side of a mountain. with a closer photo, you can see two little openings on either side of the picture. i'm sure when being mined fatty machinery had to make its way through those. so you can get some sort of idea just how large this pit really is.
i think they had some stats at the gift shop nearby it. i guess for every ton they unearthed, they got a seventh (1/7) of an ounce of gold.
go team miners.

i think i'll stop here for tonight. for the next time i post, we shall be in a different state.
can you guess which?
i bet not. . . dumbass.

(was i a tiny bit too saucy tonight?)

been so long.
where'd we leave off?
oh yes. the most underrated state in the US.
south dakota. or at least its western half.
theres this place called the badlands. etched throughout time, kinda like the grand canyon.
but these are more like weathered hill formations. i'll give you a look.
just click on every damn word.
check out the red stripes.
hm. for some reason the program to shrink these pics is busted.
i'll try back again later.
enjoy what you get in the timebeing.

next stop on ye old road trip: niagra. thats what you see when you first run out to catch a glimpse. the building on the right are actually in canada. who knew they had buildings?

walking across the bridge, you get a slightly better view. there's a crazy tower on the US side for viewing the falls, there on the left.

i've always heard that the view is better from canada and i never really found out why til i got there. but once you see it, it's blatantly obvious. the falls are falling on the US side, so to see them, you have to go across to see the best of it. that last picture, you can see all those rocks piled there, apparently that's man-made. somebody in the 20's or 30's thought it would be good to blow a chunk out of the falls a bit. i'm not too sure how accurate that news is, but i guess it would explain the rocks. there are actually two falls to niagra, this other one, is the one i'm assuming to be the one which people choose to go over in a barrel due to the lack of pointy rocks at the bottom.

getting closer to the falls it seemed like it was raining. this shitty flash picture shows the spray. i was getting pretty drenched. walking away from the spray, i thought it had actually started to rain cuz the mist kept falling. but i just had to keep walking to see that it would eventually stop.
this is the closest i got to the falls. fairly impressive.

from here, started the humdrum that is the midwest. we booked through Ohio, hitting all the "big C" cities: Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati. then down to louisville, Kentucky.
Ohio was flat, Kentucky was actually green and hilly, a cool landscape.

then we made a stop in southern Indiana, in Princeton. one of my dad's brothers lives there, so it was a good place to stop. some sort of weird brother ritual. don't got one, so i can't attempt to explain it.
my uncle has two golden retrievers. one is shy, the other a bit more outgoing. this is joshua, the extrovert. you can see timid isaiah is always in character on the right there.

next, was more movement west to St. Louis, Missouri. and here, i momentarily faced my childhood nemesis.
The Arch.
this structure was instrumental in helping me learn of my fear of heights. you get onto the elevators, and as you go up, you have to occasionally go horizontally (as it is an arch and not a tower). so you go up a given amount of feet, and then the elevator has to click over to go up higher in elevation. that click swings the whole elevator back and forth for a few excruciating seconds. but for me, that wasn't the worst part. once you get up to the top, me with my short stature had to lean over to catch a glimpse of the cardinal's stadium and river below.
i freaked. started bawling my eyes out (i guess i should mention i was like 7) and was forced to go down below. my parents think today that i can't go up in tall buildings, but i can. it's not so much the height that bothers me, but the nothing below me feeling. like i'm on a cliff. see, the empire state building didn't do much to me, but overhanging balconeys at the mall kick my ass if i focus on it too hard. anyway. that was a St. Louis driveby.

next in Missouri was Hannibal. the home of Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.
they kept Hannibal's downtown as a quiet tourist trap with a museum dedicated to the famed author. i'm not too sure Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were real people, but there were definite places where Twain would draw from for inspiration. if you can't read the sign.

Hannibal is right on the Mississippi River, only being separated by a couple of dykes in case of flooding. but in the river you can see the islands that Huck and darkie Jim hid out on for a while. i believe one is jackson island, but i might be making shit up.

we had to then head west traversing all of Missouri. and like all good endings, we headed off into that blazing, yet serene sunset.
so i guess that means more tomorrow. . . or whenever.

oh fuck it. i just looked and only have a few pictures of cooperstown.
so let's get it over with . . .

everyone inducted into the hall of fame gets a plaque with their image and a little bio about why they were so great in the sport. for some reason (i suck) some of the pictures are a bit (bit more than a bit) blurry. so please, bear with me. i give my apologies in advance.

i guess we'll start here.
anyone watch the mariner game tonight?
i swung by air and po's place and sat down infront of the tube just in time for po to flip it on and see his tying hit in the first inning for the record of 257 in a season. then the one that surpassed it in the third. anyway. here's the big man, sisler, who he dethroned. more props to ichiro: damn near immediately after he hit that 258th, he scored his 100th run for the 4th season in a row.
mariners = ichiro, see ya, tubby. er, edgar.

moving on . . .
i read a bio about this guy in 4th grade that made me realize how much of a pimp this guy was.
bob feller. an old school pitcher with an old school style. he was one of those guys who'd kick his leg up higher than his head before every pitch. i guess they kinda frown on it now, as it wastes energy, but it did wonders for that man. 3 no-hit games you say?

next, one of the blurries. but one of the two most recognized names in baseball.
lou gehrig. sad story. and also held another one of those records that no one thought would be broken, until some chump named cal ripken jr. stepped up.
records were made to be broken.

now comes the biggest man of them all.
yup. babe ruth, the big bambino. everyone knows this guy.
however, he's also got a record that's close to being overtaken.
714 lifetime homeruns. second in baseball only to hank aaron.
barry bonds is fast approaching. haven't kept up with it, but i know he's at least got 700 now.
what's going on? damn the roids.

growing up, this was my man.
i didn't know him til he was a dodger, but he was still the shit.
reggie jackson. mr. october.
hit 3 homeruns in three consecutive pitches. but i guess you could read that off his plaque.
anyone seen baseketballs? trey parker taped over those slams with roadkill mayhem, or whatever that damn show was called.
reggie was also the intended assassin of the queen of england in one of the naked gun movies.
the dodgers just so happened to be playing the mariners.

the museum also contained memorabilia. some of it really old. gloves from the 1800's that looked like gardening gloves. i'd hate to be a catcher equipped only with one of those.
a random fact: the Athletics used to be known as the elephants. wonder why it got dropped . . .

my last photo is of this damn-near priceless pice of paper with the image of honus wagner.
i may not have the details exactly right, but after a cigarette company had printed one round of this card and shipped them out, honus put a stop to any more. now theres only about 75 known, as told by this site.
recently, some dude paid $1.2 mil to add honus to his collection.

and that rounds out cooperstown.
next stop . . .
you'll see. tomorrow, or whenever . . .

well. i guess i lied. before arriving in boston, we stopped off at where my sister has been living for the past two years. a little place called northampton. i usually just tell people that she lives in boston to make it easier, but as you can see she's about an hour or two away.

it's a small town with a large college draw. something like 5 colleges nearby.
stopped by my sister's boyfriend's place. he does glassblowing. i'm not sure if what i witnessed is actually considered glass blowing rather than just plain manipulating. but anyway. here's the
kiln. what he did was take a red stripe beer bottle and stick it on a metal pole then on into the kiln. then he'd pull it out and manipulate the mouth and neck until it was the same circumference as the rest of the bottle's body. then he goes out and sells them as glasses around xmas time. kinda cool for the beer lover. this is just a random picture of me missing him actually pulling the bottle out and only getting the afterglow.

the next morning we headed for boston where it was wet and poopy. but the weather seemed to fit the atmosphere of our first stop. an old ass cemetery. not only were the headstones pretty cool and indicatory of the christian epoc, but people like Paul Revere and John Hancock were buried there.

all this stuff was along a path called the "freedom trail". an ingenious way for the city to promote self-guided tours. they mark either a fat red line or a darker-colored brick in the sidewalk that takes you all around town. it starts in boston common, takes you by a spired building where colonial meetings went down, past Paul Revere's house and the church he had to climb his ass up to hang the warning lantern. beyond there was a bridge where the tea party started which lead to charleston and the bunker hill monument. up the 294 steps was a nice view of boston that was somewhat hindered by the foggy windows.

ending the freedom trail was "old ironsides". this was a colonial ship that was ahead of its time. it could withstand blows from a cannon and also carried a few of its own.

off the trail was one of the oldest, still standing ball parks--fenway park. one of the few that has yet to succumb to being named after some big company, i.e. safeco or forbes park. so long candlestick . . . this park hangs on to its history, by flying banners on one of its outer walls.

night was about to fall, so we stopped back at northampton to pick up my sister and head out west just as the sun was setting.
from then on, good weather followed us the rest of our way home.

next, continuing with the baseball theme, we headed to cooperstown, NY.
allegedly this is the birthplace of the sport, and therefore the location of its hall of fame.
i'll illustrate what we saw there the next time i post. so, once again, maybe tomorrow.
or whenever.

let's see. where did we leave off? ah yes, private jet.

well. stayed the night in morristown, and in the morning we drove to NYC.
there, of course, you have your time square and TRL, along with this tiny-ass police department in the heart of everything.

walking through the city was this sign placed upon the IRS building. in the seconds it took to snap two shots, you could see it steadily rising. 4 more years!

we eventually arrived at the empire state buidling. it wasn't too crowded, but that was probably on account of the weather. stupid ivan and all his counterparts!
atop it was a bit hazy, as i have said, but you could still appreciate the enormity of the city, and that you were, in fact, 83 stories above the streets below. my ears were popping on the space-shuttle elevator ride to the top.

now that was the heart of manhattan. we took the subway to downtown. first stop, wall street. since 9/11 they've closed it to the public and have fuckers guarding outside during its open hours. i think i've seen speeches and Rage Against the Machine do their thing infront of this here flag. in that picture you can better see the guards.

walking around we came upon the merrill lynch bull. it seems as though he was having a bad day. but then, the shit that makes you stop dead in your tracks.

gound zero.
a crater amidst all the other sky scrapers. at least you could tell there was progress in rebuilding the area. as for the FDNY, i didn't realize that it was located ACROSS THE FUCKING STREET from the WTC. here's a shot of a shot of the damage taken by the department.

walking even further south to the shore, we came to battery park. here they hold a monument to the "down but not out" mentality that makes America great . . . or some bullshit.
that ball of meshed metal was once atop one of the WTC towers.

battery park also holds noteriety for being the spot where you got dumped off after emigrating from ellis island. therefore its the best spot to see the statue of liberty without paying the fee to get on over to her island. can you see that little turd there over on the left? as i said, the weather wasn't that accomodating. i could barely see her from the empire state building, and the photo i took of it isn't worth your time.

well, that's it for New York, unless you wanted to see the post office. sorry, i couldn't fit the whole slogan into one picture.
anyway. this is painstaking and i don't think i could sit here for much longer.
hopefully you're enjoying what you've seen thus far, otherwise my labors are fruitless. tomorrow (or whenever i get around to it) i'll start on boston. there might not be as many photos of that place as in NY. the weather was even more atrocious. yet still an awesome town.
well.
til then.