Vacation in Vancouver BC and Portland

Here are some photos from my recent trip to the Pacific Northwest.  The first week or so was spent up in Vancouver BC where I attended a conference and my wife saw the sights.  Our hotel was in downtown Vancouver and the living felt very urban.  Lots of people on the sidewalks at all hours, lots of bicycles, buses, cars, and pedestrians. We saw more pet dogs than children and it definitely seemed a place for yuppies to thrive.

Here's the view from our hotel window:

More than any other city I've visited (including Portland, OR) downtown Vancouver accommodated bicycles.  Note the dedicated lanes and bicycle parking in the median.  My wife rode all over downtown on a rented bike, something she won't do here in Wichita.

Downtown is largely surrounded by a harbor including a seaplane terminal.  I'm guessing this is where some of those vehicles go for fuel, the floating Chevron station.

A fair number of the buses downtown were powered by electricity from these overhead lines.  There were points on some of the routes where the drivers had to get out to switch lines so the bus could continue on its route.  

The Olympic "cauldron" from hosted 2010 Winter Olympics.

The city is very environmentally-oriented which includes growing a lawn on the convention center roof.  

I did not appreciate how major a shipping terminal the city was until I saw this.  Many, many freighters were in the harbor the entire time we were there.

More of downtown from the harbor.  The skyline was full of skyscrapers.  Particularly on the west end of downtown, virtually all of the buildings were over 30 stories tall.  As I said, very urban.

This is art.  There was a sign saying so.  It also said not to touch the art so we didn't.

My wife wanted to go hiking near waterfalls and I knew just the spot.  It had been many years since I had been down to Silver Falls State Park not too far from Portland.  Six miles, 8 waterfalls, good times.

I don't know what happened to this tree but it is clear it hit the ground violently.  I have never seen a trunk this large shattered like this.

Also in the odd-sightings category, a burned-out tree with only the bark remaining?  Maybe?

Conference in Madison

PSERC had there spring meeting this year at University of Wisconsin-Madison and I just got back from  my trip up there.  I'll spare you all the technical details of the conference and instead talk about the general aspects of my time in Madison.

First of all, the campus.  This is a very large campus that is thoroughly integrated into the city.


(All photos you'll be seeing today were taken with my poor quality cell-phone camera.  No justification is provided for such a choice on my part.)

All the buildings you see in this picture are a part of the university.  Almost all of the buildings I saw on campus were at least five stories tall.  I was told the campus had 40,000 students and it stretched literally for miles.  Despite Madison being a relatively small city, walking through campus felt just like walking through downtown in a many times its size.  You might guess that parking was not easily found and you would be right.  This is true not only for cars but also for scooters (called "mopeds") and bicycles.

Many buildings had the moped lots and all had many bike racks.  Madison took bicycles very seriously.  Bike lanes everywhere (some with curbs in the middle of the street physically separating them from auto traffic), demarcation between bicycle and pedestrian lanes on paths, and automated bicycle rental racks strewn throughout campus.

After riding my bicycle as my primary form of transportation for a better part of a decade, I have to say that Madison fully understands and enables bicycle commuting.  Autos, bicycles, and pedestrians; these three all move at distinctly different speeds and to facilite each, they each need their own lanes.  Seeing these three lanes makes me want to move there.

There's always the weather, though.  Humidity was high (> 90%) so even at 75'F I was sweating.  I don't think it would be any more bearable than Wichita's summers even if the highs are ten or fifteen degrees cooler. Winters I would expect to be much colder and snowier than anything I've ever experienced; maybe I don't actually want to live there.

Anyway, back to the campus.  At a big school there is a lot of money very modest percentages of the university budget can produce very impressive results.  We got to tour the newest building on campus and it is was nicer and more impressive than the building where I have my office at Wichita State, also the newest on its campus.

Five or six stories, glass and metal, very fancy looking labs with many millions of dollars of equipment.  It is hard not to feel inferior when surrounded by such impressive equipment.  The advantages of doing research at such a large and well-funded school were clear and made me jealous; I've always had a problem with gadget envy.  It is in times like these that it is good to remind myself that I'm actually very happy with the education and research opportunities I have been granted, both undergrad and graduate.  Expensive toys are nice and they enable some incredible work but there is a lot that can be learned and studies with much more modest means.  I am thankful for the opportunities I've been given.

Lastly, a bit of a rant on the controls in my shower at the hotel.

Two levers one controls the amount of water and the other controls the temperature. The large one rotates about 540 degrees (1.5 revolutions), the other, smaller lever only 45 degrees. To turn the shower on you must rotate the larger one until water begins to flow.  To adjust temperature you then turn the smaller one appropriately.  No wait, that's completely wrong.  To adjust the temperature, you continue to turn the larger handle an arbitrary amount in an arbitrary direction.

After using this fixture for three days I had memorized where the handle should go; the location never made any sense.  And the smaller handle?  It did adjust the amount of water AFTER you had turned on the water with the larger handle.  This is the worst design I have every personally encountered.  (If design decisions like this equally ruffle your feathers, do I have the book for you: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.  Amazing, fantastic book.)

Panoramas

I just stumbled upon a free photo stitcher called Hugin and have been using it to redo the panoramas I have taken over the years.  I previously used Photoshop Elements 3 (which must be around 10 years old) and I have not been very impressed with the results.  Hugin has been great, though.  The software is quite complex and there are settings and options far beyond my comprehension.  Thankfully, there is a three-step bozo mode that by-passes most of the mess and seems to just work, most of the time.  The results are great and I am enjoying being able to breathe new life into these photos.  

Pike's Peak (part-way up)

Pike's peak (almost at the peak).

Kuaui, Hawaii

Kuaui, Hawaii

View of the refineries on the north side of Baton Rouge

Garden of the Gods, near Colorado Springs

Baton Rouge Plantations

My wife was very interested in visiting plantation during our trip and even though we went to three, I think she would have liked to see many more. She and her family are very history-oriented and the continued existence of these old buildings over a century old have great appeal.

Though I do not share her great interest, I did have some mixed feelings about visiting these sites. Not growing up in the South, this was my first direct contact with the pre-Civil War era and, arguably, the root of that war, the in humanity that was so tied up in it: slavery.  I grew up far removed from the troubles our nation's legacy of slavery have and continue to create; I didn't grow up in the South and this is not a part of my cultural identity.  I do appreciate, though, that these plantations can easily be seen as a symbol of that dark mark on our history and it seems awkward to make them historical sites and museums, tourist destinations.  By the same token, they are historical sites, they are significant artifacts of a former time.  Removing or ignoring the buildings serves little purpose and may not be beneficial; ignoring the past gets us nowhere.

I'm embarrassed.  Even though I had nothing to do with it, I'm embarrassed that this is a part of our history and I wish it had never happened. Its like being reminded of some foolish choice made in adolescence or dealing with that drunk uncle at your wedding who has lost all inhibition.  Its true, it happened, it can't be denied; I just want it not to be so.

And make of this what you will: during our time touring these three plantations, I only saw one African-American and she was working as a tour guide.

The philosophical misgivings aside, the plantation complexes and the central homes that are its focus are truly wonderful old buildings.  As all our tour guides said, these plantations were owned by the supremely wealthy of their day.  This was not their only residence and they may or may not have been living there year round.  The United States has largely rejected the more class-based cultures that have been a strong part of Europe's past but these plantations were truly a mark of the aristocracy of that day.  The owners needed and lacked for nothing and had the finest available in all respects.  Who else pays for hand-painted wall-paper murals to be custom-made and imported from Europe?

The age of the plantations is echoed in the age of the trees.  Though not as old as many of the forests I grew up around, the branching, reaching, canonpy-ing of these centurion oaks was impressive. This kind of beauty can only come with time; there's no rushing the slow majesty that is old growth.

There is so much of these houses that exudes the wealth of their creators.  The expansive gardens, the architectural details, the size of the houses in what were very rural settings.  Its hard to imagine having so much material means that your country home could easily house multiple families.

One of the plantations we visited was unique from all the others: it was only forty years old.  All except the columns of this building had burned in the 1950s and over the 1960s the home was rebuilt to its former glory.   It is an ersatz plantation which brings with it a distinct advantage: the building has all the modern benefits of appearing to be a planation with none of the burdens of historical preservation.  The current owners live on the third floor, there are some out-buildings that are rented as a bed-and-breakfast, and receptions are frequently held on the lower two floors.  Though the house is populated with period furniture, it is all reproductions and can be used practically.  When TV or film productions need a planation home, this is the place to go as it can be entirely redecorated as needed. The owners make their entire living by providing this fake plantation for use by whomever needs it.  In my mind, this is an ingenius use of the home and grounds.

Baton Rouge Capitals

Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana and it has a fantastic capital building.  Actually it has two fantastic capital buildings and both are impressive in their own right.  The old capital is a smaller, castle-looking building that has been turned into a museum.

The interior of the building is equally impressive, very ornate, sparkly, and colorful. The main lobby area has a steel staircase winding up to the second floor which holds exhibits and a portrait gallery of former governors.  The staircase, though, gathered my attention immediately.  Because it was made of steel and felt very different than the stairs I normally tread.  It took up much less space than concrete or wood staircases which lead to a small magical feeling, like it was impossible that something so insubstantial could possible support my weight.  And stepping on the stairs had a different tactile feel; no thud of concrete or squeak of wood but a slightly springiness and vibration.  The stairs felt responsive and nimble, not monolithic.

There were several examples of stained glass wonderfully made.  The ceiling above the central staircase was all stained glass and several windows in both legislative chambers were done as well.  Both of these rooms were beautiful and we were told that they were often used for receptions.

The other capital building, the one where the politics gather to work, is an art deco tower  similar to the capital of Nebraska, at least on the outside.  In fact, it was noted in several places that the Baton Rouge has the tallest capital building in the world, Nebraska's is second.

The main lobby of the capital is a barely lit place.  It seems almost every surface is covered in dark marble, dark stained wood, or bronze.  The day we toured was a working day at the capital and there was a constant flow of professionally dressed people in and out of the building.  The lobby was busy and loud; I felt out of place as a tourist, as if I somehow was intruding or getting in the way.

At either end are the legislative chambers, equally ornate but much better lit.  The Senate was not in session but the House was very busy passing legislation.  In the twenty minutes we were there about eight bills were passed.  It was all very perfunctory, so much so that most legislatures spent most of the time talking, ignoring the proceedings, or not being present.  This didn't keep them from voting, though.   The voting used electronic devices at each representatives seat with a big display at the front of the room showing the status of each representatives vote.  On several occasions I saw representatives voting for those around them who were absent.

And there were the pages.  Most say off to the side with nothing to do, waiting to be called on and be made useful.  The only two I saw busy were those assigned to the printers on either side of the front of the chamber.  When a representative printed a document, the page delivered it.

I have no reason to believe that what I witnessed is abnormal in any way as compared to other legislative bodies in this country.  Compared to what is normally airing on CSPAN, the attendance here was quite impressive.  It seems that there is something fundamentally wrong with how our country governs itself when laws are created in such a manner, when the act of governing is given is little attention.  This is easy for me to say, though; I've never had to do what these people do.

Lastly, like Nebraska, the Capital had an observation deck at the top of the tower. The view of the area is impressive: the Mississippi river, the refineries north of town, the downtown area, the LSU stadium and arena.  And the surrounding jungle/bayou/swamp, the ever present explosion of green.

Baton Rogue Landscape

My wife and I just returned from a brief trip to visit family in Baton Rogue, Louisiana where I had my first up-close experience with the Cajun south, the swamplands and bayous that make up the low-lying Mississippi basin. Its easy to under-appreciate the rampant life that this land breeds. From insects to alligators to ancient oaks to strangling vines the whole region explodes with growing things; its probably most accurate to think of the area as a less temperate jungle. one that occasionally almost freezes in the winter.  Its easy to see why agriculture took root down here.

The Mississippi river enables all of this growth and the seasonal floods that we have mostly contained with levies still drive the ecology of the area.  The water table is always just below the surface; I have no idea how they build houses, bridges, and skyscrapers with soil that is always so saturated with water.  The water is always in the air, as well.  The humidity allows the famous Spanish moss to grow of the oak trees and caused me to sweat whenever outside, even when the temperature was not very high.

Our more structured human life is also enabled by the River.  the Mississippi is famous for the commerce it enabled and the area plantations all took advantage of it from the beginning.  We still use it today, but for more sophisticated goods like oil.  North of Baton Rogue is a large oil refinery complex that receives tankers coming in from the Gulf; I don't know if the refined product is similarly transported out the way it came in but it easily could be.

The most exotic creature I experienced was the famous alligator, living in a wildlife refuge we explored.  Most of the time all we saw of them were the famous pair of eyes, watching us watching them.  We were also luck enough to catch sight of one fully out of the water, hiding in the shade of a tree.  None of these animals were very large (by Hollywood standards) but all seemed more than capable of defending themselves from pesky photographers like me.

That same refuge had a bird sanctuary; large platforms several feet above the surface of the water to provide a place for the birds to roost and be protected from the previously mentioned predators.

More to come in the following days ...