Well, it finally happened. I bought my Color Sidekick off eBay about eight months ago, and it has functioned beautifully since then. Unfortunately it seems to have broken for the first time: the wheel no longer reacts to being pushed. It will still scroll up and down, but it can’t select anything anymore. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem - I usually use the Sidekick with the screen open anyway, so I will just have to train myself to push the Return key instead of the scroll wheel. I don’t know of any way to get this fixed cheaply, so I’ll just deal with it. If you know anybody who’s looking to get rid of a Sidekick, though (free or sold cheaply), please pass along my name.

Added: The good news is: my wheel is functioning again. The bad news is: my right front tire blew out. I am presently on the shoulder of I-95N, about a mile before exit 169 (Franconia-Springfield Parkway), waiting for AAA to show up. The lady said they’re be here within two hours but that she’d mark it “priority” because I’m on the interstate. I have no idea what happened, the car just started pulling to the right and wobbling so I pulled over and sure enough the tire is flat. I keep watching my mirrors to see if a CVS/Samaritan truck might show up…I’m crossing my fingers but I doubt it will help. The poor kitties at Petco will be hungry by the time I get there - heck, I will be too.

Dear Interstate 95,

I am going to become very familiar with you tonight. In about an hour, I will leave for New York City from my home in Northern Virginia. Normally I take the bus, so you and I don’t have much contact - I just cruise over you without even looking. But this time I need to bring something large back home with me, so I am going to drive along your asphalt-covered curves. I know the way quite well, actually, and I know you are full of rest stops and visitor centers. There are many opportunities for a traveler to take a break from your monotonous path. But I’m really not looking forward to this drive tonight. I don’t have an EZ-Pass sticker, you see, so I will have to wait in line at every tollbooth between here and NYC - and there are many of them. So many it’s not even cost effective to get to know you so intimately.

Somewhere along your Jersey section - that infamous turnpike - I will get to trade with my partner, who will not have seen you at all because her route will have taken her through dreamland. But she will finally take over for me until we bid you adieu in Manhattan. But until then, it is going to be a very long drive, and I am not looking forward to it. Please be kind to me tonight - keep your pathway clear and your tollbooths flowing. And please don’t decide you need a break and sit down for a rest while I’m crossing one of your bridges.

Well, I am writing this at 10pm as we drive through Pennsylvania. There’s phone coverage here but no data, so I am sending myself this entry as an e-mail and it will get sent when I am back in data coverage area. I sent an SMS message to my mom to ask about Harrisburg-area dialup numbers for my ISP, but I haven’t heard back from her yet. I’m hoping to get some coverage in Harrisburg but who knows.

This morning we woke up early so we could catch the 9am showing of The Falls, an Imax movie about - well, Niagara Falls. It turned out the 9am showing was in French, so we had breakfast at Denny’s across the street and saw the 10am movie. From there we drove to Corning, where we’d originally intended to spend the night but couldn’t find a hotel. (Not that we tried very hard.) At the glass museum A and I made our own glass bead ($12 each), or at least helped hold the molding stick and glass rod while the assistant did the majority of the work. The beads have to cool overnight, so they will be mailed to us. I hadn’t brought my camera and my father-in-law only took one picture on his film camera, but if I get that picture from him I will post it. We walked through the museum proper and then rode the bus over to Market Street for dinner. I had seen that a shop up the street had local Cat’s Meow pieces, so as soon as I finished my food I went up the street to buy one. We went back to the car and I drove for a while but I got antsy so A is driving the rest of the way. We called ahead to a Quality Inn in Lebanon, and tomorrow we will go to Hersheypark and on the World of Chocolate tour.

So we will end up not getting home until Saturday, but even if we get up very late Saturday morning we will get home around midday or early afternoon, as Hershey isn’t really too far from home. I am looking forward to seeing our cats, it’s been a long time and I miss them! And oh, to sleep in my own bed!

Added 10:50pm - We’re at Harrisburg and I managed to pull up exact and useful driving directions to our hotel and I am navigating us there. My back is killing me; it will be good to get to any bed and lie flat!

We made it to Toronto! I drove most of the way, from our motel in Monroeville (outside Pittsburgh) all the way to Canada. We switched before crossing the Peace Bridge and then A drove the rest of the way to Toronto. I am really sore and tired, so I haven’t quite caught up on all my e-mail, but I did decide to cough up $10/day (Canadian!) for the net access. Unfortunately I’d left my ethernet cable at home, so I bought one for $5.70 at the hotel gift shop. The ethernet jack is not in a convenient place, so I doubt I’ll spend tooooo much time online, really. I had to rearrange the furniture just to be comfortable with it. (The jack is through DataValet - I had to set up an account with them - and can’t be removed from the desk.)

I’ll try to post some pictures and whatnot tomorrow, if I can. I think we are still planning to go to Paramount Canada’s Wonderland, but A has said that I can choose what we do tomorrow, and we did just go on roller coasters yesterday…so maybe I’ll choose something else. We haven’t seen much of Toronto so far but it looks awesome…I think we could definitely live here.

At this moment I am on I-270 northbound with a destination of Pittsburgh. My wife is driving her parents’ Pontiac Bonneville, and I may or may not end up helping with the driving. I brought the XM MyFi radio, but we’re not listening to it because it’s raining and we only get signal occasionally for a few seconds at a time. We have snacks in the backseat and despite the weather I’m feeling pretty good. I brought my Sidekick (which I’m using now but can’t use once we get to Canada on Sunday) and my laptop so I will presumably be updating at least once a day!

Oh holy god. My entire route home is going to be running at 10mph or less. That’s how fast I’ve been going for the 45 minutes. When there’s no traffic - around 9pm - it takes about half an hour for me to get home from my agency’s office. Today I will be glad if it takes less than 90 minutes. For those of you in the DC area who know the beltway - or those of you who are curious enough to check a map - the radio traffic report claims the outer loop is backed up from New Hampshire Avenue to Route 50. That’s at least 15-20 miles. If there were another route I could take, I would, but I have to get over the Potomac River somehow and going through the city doesn’t seem like a much better option. This is insane. The radio hasn’t mentioned why the backup is so much worse than usual. I really wish I’d left work at 4pm like I wanted to rather than 5pm like I was supposed to.

Added 6:20pm: I think I did the right thing by getting off the beltway at Old Georgetown Rd (Rt 187) and getting back on at River Rd (Rt 190). Before I did so, I could see a Fairfax Connector bus on a tow truck far ahead of me. When I got back on the beltway, I was barely in front of that tow truck. I’d bypassed the merge of I-270 SB and 495, and the average speed now is about 20mph - and I’m in Virginia. I don’t think there’s much point getting back off until Rt 123 - Georgetown Pike goes the wrong way, and the Dulles Toll Rd will be slow (and cost money). No, I will get off at 123. That will be best.

Added 6:50pm: I got home at about 6:45pm. Phew. I didn’t get any mail today - phooey.

Here is a tip for you: if you are driving a car with amateur radio license plates, drive politely and don’t hog the road. Especially do not cut people off, go at a stop sign when it isn’t your turn, fail to stop at a stop sign, or otherwise cause people to slam on their brakes and honk their horns at you. You just never know when somebody you cut off will also be a ham radio operator, and know exactly how to use your license plate to find out your home address and send you nastygrams, sign you up for Scientology mailing lists, or leave stinkbombs on your doorstep.

I hate webpages that say “Make sure you are viewing the most recent version of this page! Refresh often!” Trust me: you don’t update your page so often that I have to refresh every ten seconds.

While most people are probably excited about the week winding down, I am not. This is because of my schedule for the next few days. Tomorrow I have to drive from my home in Vienna to south Alexandria (by 8am), from there to downtown Arlington (by 11am), from there to Silver Spring (by 2pm), and then back home. I then have to drive to Bethesda (by 7pm) and back home again. Early Saturday morning I have to drive to Hunt Valley, which is north of Baltimore, because I am interpreting this weekend at the Farpoint convention. Unfortunately I was never able to get in touch with my co-terp (she left me voicemail, and I e-mailed back but she didn’t respond) so I am going to be walking into this pretty much blind schedule-wise. My co is a sweet older woman with little to no interpreting experience, so this should be interesting…I’m trying to remind myself that just a few years ago I was a beginner too. Anyway, after spending all weekend interpreting, which is exhausting, my wife will drive us home and then we’ve both taken the day off on Monday so I will finally get a break.

I have had a really crappy experience getting to work today. I had been told the job was in Fredericksburg, which is well outside DC but still considered “commuting distance” because many people who live in Fredericksburg do commute to DC…although most of them take the train. But as if it weren’t bad enough that I had to drive that far, it turned out I had been given the wrong location. It wasn’t just off I-95 after all…it was in Dhalgren, at least 30 miles outside Fredericksburg.

So I started making my way there, only to find that my directions were still wrong. I had to pull over no less than three times to clarify where I was supposed to be before I finally figured it out myself (I do carry both DC- and Baltimore-area street maps at all times, but they don’t extend this far south) and made it to the base. I had been told I wouldn’t be able to find the building on my own, so I stopped at the Pass & ID Office for a map. I confirmed that my DOD contractor badge and car stickers would get me on-base, and got back into my car to drive up to the gate. (Because I already have the credentials from the job I work most of the time, when I’m not there I frequently get sent to other DOD facilities.)

When I pulled up to the guard, though, he told me to pull over. I was confused, but he explained that my registration stickers were expired. Yes, that’s true; I keep forgetting to take them out to the car. But I’ve never had a problem getting on the base where I normally work! So he said he would let me on base, but I’d have to leave my car at the visitor center. I tried calling my contact but didn’t get an answer, so I suited up with gloves, hat, and scarf and started walking.

Finally I got a call on my cell phone asking why I wasn’t there yet, and I explained what happened. They told me to wait in a building near me and somebody came to get me. I finally got there at about 10:30, after having left the house at 7:40! I hope I don’t have to come down here again for a long time.

Travel and Myra

Our wake-up call came at 5:30 and we had eaten and checked out by 6:45. We had a bit of panic when it seemed that one of our bags had been lost, but we finally got them to unload some of the bags and it turned out that ours was there after all. The drive south was unremarkable until after we passed through Finike, when we found ourselves directly on the Mediterranean coast - directly on it meaning a few feet away from the cliff straight down to the water. The road is twisty and turns alarmingly sharply, and we’re right behind the driver today so we had a Disneyland-like view as we approached each curve. It’s probably fine if you’re in a car, but our big bus was frequently on both sides of the road and there were a couple of times I got really scared because somebody showed up right on the other side of a blind turn. My girlfriend said it was similar to the Pacific Coast Highway, but I’ve never seen that. The water we’d have plunged into, though, was an incredibly brilliant blue. I found the Church of St. Nicholas almost boring - I didn’t need to spend more than a few minutes there to see everything. Fortunately our guide didn’t talk very long, and when he gave us 20 minutes for looking around and taking pictures we went back out to the street to look at the trinkets in the shops. At a rest stop I had my first experience with being given tea by a shopkeeper. That’s actually fairly common here, and while they’re hoping to get you to buy something it’s still done mostly to be friendly. I had been looking at a package of apple tea mix they had on display, and the owner brought me a small cup (the tulip-shaped glass seen everywhere in Turkey) of tea, indicating it was the same as what I was looking at. Obviously this was to let me see if I liked it before buying it, but at the same time there was no pressure to make the purchase. They do this no matter what you’re buying, too - our entire group was given tea at the carpet school, but nobody would have expected all of us to buy a carpet. I sometimes feel that the custom is a way of kissing up to the buyer (which it is), but I suspect it’s because I’m an American that I have a hard time accepting the possibility that they’re just being friendly. At the same stop, we saw an adorable kitten not more than a couple of months old. He wasn’t really into being held, but he walked around and mewed loudly at everyone. When other members of our group saw me with him, they said “I knew it” - they’re getting used to seeing me playing with stray cats everywhere we stop. The locals probably think I’m crazy for playing with the rats, but my girlfriend and I agreed I can’t help it. She pets most of them too, but I’m the one actively seeking them out. At Phaselis in the afternoon she found a sweet calico with a habit of nibbling fingertips. It didn’t hurt, she’d just gnaw and lick a bit. Phaselis itself wasn’t really interesting; most of the site hasn’t been excavated yet, so the main thing we saw was yet another ancient theater - but we had to climb up a rocky hill to get to this one. The stop at Phaselis also brought us to a small harbor on the Mediterranean - I didn’t get to touch the water, but my shoes got a bit wet. I was glad to get to Antalya; while I love the countryside, suburbs, small towns etc., I find that I just prefer cities. This holds true for anywhere - I like downtown DC, and I love the confusion and constant hectic state of Manhattan. I’m perfectly happy living in the suburbs as I do, and I’d be happy living somewhere rural and isolated, but I like to be in cities. Unfortunately, within an hour of our arrival in Antalya, we heard a series of gunshots from somewhere less than a block away. I didn’t count them, but I suspect it was as many shots as the gun carries, fired in rapid succession. Our guide sat with us at dinner and said he’d heard the victim was the owner of the currency exchange office on the corner just behind our hotel, and that it was probably a personal issue. That didn’t make us feel much safer, but after we finished chatting my girlfriend and I decided to venture out to find an ATM anyway because I wanted to get some cash from my own account. The one right beside our hotel turned out to lack any networks, so we couldn’t use that one. We walked past the currency exchange, which had a long line in front of it and some police tape up. The next ATM we found had plenty of networks, but the intake mechanism was broken and it just hummed a bit when I tried to put my card in. We walked a bit further down the street and came to a large Yapi Kredi building, very well-lit. I’m pretty sure Yapi Kredi is a bank - maybe a credit union. In any case, their ATM was in a little room with its own door off the main entry. I was able to withdraw 10 million lira as a Cash Advance, supposedly from my credit card - my girlfriend says a Cash Advance means you have to pay interest on the amount. I’m still not clear how that works in a normal situation, and I have no idea how it works for me - as I understand it, my check card can masquerade as a credit card, but I don’t actually have a credit account so I’m not sure how they’d be charging me interest. I’m glad I got 10 million lira of my own money, but I’m still nervous about the Cash Advance thing. I wrote up two postcards before going to bed; I’m now all out and will have to get more for the nineteen people still on the list. I hope the cards are making it to the U.S. okay - I pretty much trust the USPS, but I worry about them making it that far. I think I’ve been using more stamps than necessary, so even if rates go up again (which is entirely possible) I should be okay for postage. I spoke to my parents for a bit the last night we were in Pamukkale, and they hadn’t received the one I sent about a week ago. That’s probably not enough time anyway; I’m comfortable believing all of them will make it eventually, but it may not be till after we get back.