Relevant History

Delays and altruism on the road

I'm in the shuttle from Indianapolis to Bloomington. I got here six hours late, as I gave up my seat on last night's redeye in exchange for an early morning flight. I'm not sure it was a good trade. On one hand, I did get $350 (though it's not cash, I need to use it in the next year, and I'm sure US Airways hopes that I'll lose it rather than use it), and I won't miss any of the critical conference stuff-- I'll still get there in time for this evening's dinner. On the other, I gave up the chance to spend a day exploring Bloomington (though whether the town would really provide entertainment worth $60/hour is unknowable) and do a little early networking. And I accepted the airline's offer to stay in a hotel, though that turned out to be a wash: yes it was free, but it took longer to get the shuttle than I expected, which ate into ime I would have spent sleeping.

On my East Coast trip, I did something similar. I got into JFK around 2 in the morning, in that dead time when the airport has effectively shut down. After about half an hour I got the Supershuttle, and immediately settled in and dozed off. A few minutes later, the driver woke me up Two couples needed to go to Long Island, and if he didn't take them, they'd be stranded and have to spend the night in the airport. Could he take them, and drop them off at their homes first?

I was too groggy to ask why they couldn't drop me off first and then take the other passengers, and I wasn't really obliged to say yes. But my flight was already several hours late, and so I kind of felt like, what's a couple hours more? Plus, I know how much it can suck to be stuck in an airport: for all the appearance of luxury, they're really places designed to move people in and out as efficiently as possible, and are sullenly hostile to people who find themselves stuck. And, in some way, having had such a great time the precious few days at the conference and reconnecting with friends, I suspected that karma would catch up with me if I said no. It was time to rebalance.

So I said yes. We picked up the other passengers, who were pretty damn grateful to be going home. We then barreled out of JFK, promptly got lost, and spent the next half hour trying to figure out how to get to Stony East Oyster Point, or wherever. By the time we rolled up to the Paramount, it was about 5:30 in the morning.

Maybe I've done enough of this kind of thing for the year. But what matters is that I'm here now.

And the flight here was fine. I changed planes in Phoenix, which was a bit more direct a route than my original itinerary, which had me connecting through Charlotte, North Carolina (sigh). And I brought along a copy of Richard Sennett's The Craftsman, which is a wonderfully stimulating book, and which I realize I can blend into three different things I'm working on (that I've got three different-- and more to the point, unfinished-- pieces going simultaneously is a fact we shall not linger over).

The great Strawberry Street Cafe reunion

Wednesday night I got together with some high school friends, and my high school choir director, for dinner at Strawberry Street Cafe, a restaurant in the Fan.

strawberry street cafe, via flickr

These are people I was pretty close to in high school-- I spent a huge amount of time doing choir stuff, and several of us were also the core group for the school's honors and AP courses-- but haven't seen in person for a very long time, and reconnected with on Facebook over the last year or so.

I chose Strawberry Street Cafe because everyone knows where it is, it's kid-friendly, and because I didn't really know it. The place was just a couple years old when I started high school, and it advertised regularly on the radio, so I heard about it... but never went there myself. It remained part of a cool grown-up Richmond that I was too young and poor to visit myself. Reconnecting with my past social reality in a place from a past imagined landscape seemed nicely symmetrical.

strawberry street, via flickr

It was especially lovely to see my music teacher, who was a terrific influence on me, and who went on to run a very successful intensive performing arts school, from which she's retiring in a few weeks. She was an influence not just because I spent a lot of time in her classes, or because I've continued to play (I have my old guitars, but don't really use them; I expect my daughter is going to take them over sooner or later). Of course I continue to love music, but I peaked as a musician in college (I didn't want to devote the time to meeting ever-higher performance standards, to say nothing of taking the hit on my grades). But I learned a lot from her about how to perform, and those bits of craft and instinct have been a great help. It's not just that workshops and talks are performances, obviously they are; but I think you can fruitfully think of a lot of knowledge work as one kind of performance or another. As the Bard said, all the world's a stage; so knowing how to play is always going to be useful.

me and my music teacher

It was a nice reminder that some of the organizing tools I use for work and research are ones that I can use in my social life as well. When you spend a lot of your time with books and words, and come from a profession that alternated solitary contemplation and intensive gossip about colleagues, but featured very little genuine planned collaboration, it's easy to develop a sense of yourself as not that social, and maybe not that good at it. Wrong. As one of my daughter's friends once told a boy who was teasing her about being introverted, "I'm not an introvert. I'm very extroverted. I just don't like you very much."

And even if I do test as an introvert on some psychological scale, I can fake it.

There were eleven of us at the dinner, including two kids, four and five years old. (Most of my class seems to either have 5 year-olds, or 15 year-olds; I'm the only one with one in the middle.) Two of my cohort married each other, two others had remained in regular contact these last 25+ years, but the rest of us were at best erratically connected. So it wasn't just me parachuting into an old social circle for an evening; it was a chance for the circle to reconstitute itself. I don't know why I assumed that people who'd remained in or returned to Richmond after college would have stayed in touch-- Richmond is a big place after all, and life does intrude on old connections-- but the fact that many of us were reconnecting after years was pleasant. It wasn't any less something that people were doing for me... but it was also something I was able to do for them.

And Strawberry Street Cafe was a good choice: the food is good, they were very gracious about our ever-expanding party, and they were welcoming of the kids. For me, it was good for another, entirely unexpected, reason.

For whatever reason I had no desire to go back to my old high school, to the apartments we lived in, or other places I saw on a daily basis; both Mom and I opted for the places that we always thought were special, like the VMFA and Maymont Park. (As one of the characters in Dune memorably put it, "People I miss. A place is just a place." While I admire that gruff practicality and emphasis on loyalty to comrades and family, I don't actually agree with it at all-- places do matter-- but some places remain more attractive than others, for whatever mysterious reason.)

the fan, via flickr

Walking through the Fan, I was struck by how well it compares with similar neighborhoods in Philadelphia or Boston or San Francisco, and how it feels like a great urban area for kids and families; I could appreciate the immense amount of energy that's gone into restoration and renovation of the turn-of-the-century housing stock. As someone intimately familiar with parenting and property ownership, I could appreciate things I couldn't twenty-five years ago, and imagine myself there.

virginia museum of fine arts, via flickr

Likewise, I always liked VFMA, but it felt like an expression of Richmond polite society, a UFO populated by Izod-wearing aliens. But I've spent time in the British Museum and MOMA and the Smithsonian and DMA, I've given a talk at the Globe Theatre, I have a wallet full of membership cards to Bay Area institutions; I'm no longer alien to these people, I am them.

And I can now appreciate that the nicest parts of Maymont compare favorably with similar places in England and the Continent: it's not just a lonely Old South wannabe of a great estate, it IS a great estate.

maymont park, via flickr

Staying away from my high school Richmond and planting myself squarely in the places I imagined as defining grown-up Richmond let me start seeing the place differently. Maybe it's the start of a relationship with the place that has less to do with who I was, than with who I am. Which is good, because in the last year I had the very distinct sense of part of my old self being sloughed off, to make room for something new.

I thought I was visiting to reconnect with some of my past, but maybe I was visiting to create a future.

[To the tune of Carly Simon, "You Belong to Me," from the album Carly Simon: Clouds in My Coffee 1965-1995 (I give it 3 stars).]

On the train to Richmond

I'm on the Amtrak from Raleigh, North Carolina to Richmond, Virginia. We're passing through the low pine woods and fields that I remember from when I grew up here-- to my botanically challenged eye this part of North Carolina and Virginia look pretty similar-- and little towns with white wooden houses and red brick main streets (broken up by the occasional strip mall and fast food complex). So even though I've never travelled this stretch of track, it feels awfully familiar.

Train travel has always felt more fraught with meaning than, say, driving or bicycling. Partly it's the role that trains have played in Southern literature or popular culture: think of the blues and country songs that feature train whistles in the distance, or the first and last train station scenes in In the Heat of the Night. More personally, the train was my Way Out: I first took the Southern Crescent when I went to visit colleges, and most years I would travel back and forth between school and home by train, carrying a duffel bag of clothes and backpack. It didn't hurt that the train from Richmond to Philadelphia left at 4 a.m., which meant I'd go to sleep in one part of the country and wake up in another. (It later became my route to archives and a thwarted affair.) So riding the train became a pretty archetypal thing.

The Raleigh train station is three blocks away from the hotel and conference center, though for some reason the front desk didn't tell me this, and I took a cab. Maybe their sense of distance was more cultural than physical, because when I stepped into the station-- a tiny place compared to Philadelphia or New York, two rooms with wooden benches-- I had the very distinct feeling of having moved from the world of global discourses about sustainable innovation and the cultural factors that support academic-industrial knowledge transfer, to the set of In the Heat of the Night. (There was no Rod Steiger trying to fix his air conditioner, though.) It was a bit of a shock, after several days of hearing English spoken with a variety of accents, along with Spanish, Korean, Arabic. Yes, there's a world outside the conference events. And yes, we are in the South.

It's also a reminder of just how easily intelligent people and well-meaning projects can become almost hermetically sealed in their own worlds. This isn't to criticize the conference organizers-- they did a terrific job, and are rightly proud of the role RTP has played in the development of the North Carolina economy-- but to note how closed a system most conference are. Between the conference hotel, the conference center (which share a common basement, so you can go between them without ever going outside), the restaurants and bars catering to conference-goers, the full schedule of events, the vast numbers of people with whom you exchange business cards-talk-drink-eat-network, and the psychological and physical stresses and challenges of sitting in uncomfortable chairs for hours on end, eating marginally healthy food, and fighting jet lag, it's easy for conferences to turn into their own worlds.

On one hand, it makes sense: you've come a long way and are doing a lot of work, so you don't want distraction; but on the other, it does contribute to a certain otherworldliness in your thinking. This may not be a big thing if you're at a big microbiology conference, but it's a little worrisome when you're in a field that deals very directly with people and their lives, and professes to take an interest in the specifics of place and local culture. I'm not an insider in this field by any means, but I get the sense that there's a tendency to think of regional development or economic development as a problem that can be solved with the right formula or model; and I wonder if unconsciously we tend to assume that people who are already living in the place we're charged with changing-- or the company we're asked to help transform-- are going to be more an impediment than a resource. Likewise, when you're a futurist, it's really easy to get caught up in your own models and abstractions, and to lose sight of the scenarios you write are ultimately really about people. For us, I think, we need a different kind of conference. (Actually I think the whole model of the conference as a mix of academic meeting and trade fair should be overthrown, but that's a different matter.)

Indeed, in my work I've tried to point out that there are often local cultural resources or technical skills that conventional development tends to ignore, and which smart developers or entrepreneurs should try to harness: the pursuit of the New Thing sometimes keeps us from seeing the continuing value of older forms of knowledge. Likewise, we eliminate manufacturing at our own long-term peril: making stuff is actually pretty hard, requires a lot more skill than we knowledge workers tend to acknowledge, and manufacturing exerts a gravitational pull on other economic activities. Both of these argue for approaches that take a more sympathetic yet opportunistic attitude to history and local culture: rather than pave it over, you should ask if the local knowledge ecosystem (as we like to call it) has resources you can reuse. "Sustainable development" (which is a new popular buzzword) should pay attention to knowledge ecologies as well as biological ones, and learn to see local culture as a potentially valuable resource that provides useful services-- just as smart developers will realize that a swamp might provide more value as a bulwark against floods than a parking lot.

Ironic that I argue for preserving and using culture and history after spending so long happily (or sometimes militantly) apart from my own past and the world where I spent the bulk of my childhood. And maybe timely that I notice it now.

So it was kind a relief to get out of that and into something different. After I found baggage check and dropped off my duffel bag (one from REI with rolling wheels and various cool pockets, not the Army surplus one I had in college), I went for a little walk. Lots of old stores selling tires, beauty supplies, and other goods; a few bars or clubs, closed in the morning; and some vacant lots. And in the middle of it was a store converted into an artists' studio.

[To the tune of The Allman Brothers Band, "Melissa," from the album The Allman Brothers-A Decade Of Hits 1969 - 1979 (I give it 4 stars).]

Welcome back to the South

I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina for the next couple days, for the big International Association of Science Parks conference.

I haven't been to North Carolina in ages. I spent a summer at Duke in their precollege program 25 years ago-- it was a great time, but it more or less ruined my senior year, as it deepened my already substantial teenage "I wanna get out of there and get on with my real life and this rinky-dink high school is NOT it" angst-- and I spent a day or two in Raleigh at the NC State archives in 1994 or so, but that was one of those trips where all I was doing was taking notes on old correspondence and had no interactions at all with the place. I don't remember anything about Raleigh itself-- where I stayed, what NC State was like, where I ate lunch-- but I still remember working through the correspondence between Architecture School Dean Henry Kamphoefner and Buckminster Fuller.

The IASP conference is one of the big science parks managers' and developers' conferences. My friend Anthony is doing one of the big talks, and I'm here to meet with our clients, meet various other people, and talk about the next phase of our work on the future of science cities.

I'd forgotten how lush North Carolina is. It's all that summer heat and humidity, which is already showing signs of appearing. California isn't exactly a barren wasteland, but the South always feels more verdant. (It must have been an extraordinary thing to come here from Europe 300 years ago, and to see these spectacular forests.)

I still have visceral ambivalent feelings about the South. On one hand, I like the land, the premium Southern culture places on friendliness and gentility, and the relatively low cost of living; on the other, I remember a certain amount of downside as well (kind of a cross between Faulkner and Bruce Hornsby), and I wonder how much easier a time my bookish, mixed race kids would have here. Probably Atlanta and RTP, which now have pretty large Asian populations and the kinds of service / information economies, would be fine; maybe Richmond would be too. But I'm happy having the kids where they are.

Why I love to travel

It's 5:22 a.m., and I'm in a Supershuttle, headed to the Tampa/St Petersburg airport. I got here less than 48 hours ago, and I'm on my way home. William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices is playing on my iTunes, which gives a curiously spiritual feel to the trip. It's not a ride to the airport, its a pilgrimage.

I was thinking about why I like to travel-- not just like it, but really look forward even to short trips like these.

Novelty. Going to new places is really interesting. Going to London and Singapore is no longer novel, but I'm far from exhausting what's interesting about those places (the only time I've been to the British Museum was with my wife, a year and half ago, and I spent most of it staring slack-jawed at the Rogers courtyard).

I'm good at it. I know how to pack, how to get ready for trips, how to navigate airports and customs and security, how to get what I need from hotel and conference center people, how to find decent restaurants and interesting things to do with a free couple hours. There's a craft to travel, and even though it's as idiosyncratic as writing-- everyone's style is different, even if their objectives are the same-- I've learned to do it pretty well, and am still improving.

There are clear goals. Success is easy to measure: you catch your plane, get to the hotel, get prepared, deliver the talk, facilitate the meeting, build the map, please the client, etc. Not a lot of ambiguity most of the time. This contrasts with a lot of my life, where there are very big, but long-term and amorphous, goals, and the linkage between completing them and the reward is-- not unclear, exactly, but not very tight. You finish a piece for a client, and it may be a month before you get any feedback; six months pass between sending an article to the editors and getting reprints; and I'll probably be years before some of the things I do for the kids pay off (if even if they do, I might never hear about them).

On the road, though, I can practice a measure of decisiveness and focus that's hard to exercise in my normal multitasking, collaborative life.

I think a lot when I travel. Some of my most productive hours and best ideas come on planes. Partly this is a matter of necessity-- often I have to 16 hours to finish that keynote or else-- but there's something liberating about having 10 hours sealed in your own little pressurized, caffeinated world, with nothing to do but think and write. (The fact that most of the time the movies are lousy is a godsend. Singapore Airlines' 100 channels is a bit of challenge for me, but I usually manage to avoid it until the return flight.)

Away from it all, uninterruptible, and accustomed to having good ideas pop into my head, it's easy to get into that state where good thoughts appear. And even if I don't have some intellectual breakthrough, I usually get enough e-mail written to feel okay about the trip.

The privilege. Business travel is stressful in some ways, but luxurious in one important way: you spend a certain amount of your time around people whose job it is to take care of things for you. Not quite take care of you as a person; but in my normal life someone else isn't carrying my bags, doing all the driving, serving the food, getting the conference room set up, etc. At home my wife and I share the labor, I've got the kids doing more things, and they help with small tasks like carrying in groceries; but that's not the same as being in situations where it's someone else's job to do things for you.

And often I'm lucky to be going somewhere as someone's guest. I may be working for them, but the act of traveling imposes certain obligations and courtesies on all parties. Even if you're picking up the cost of a person's trip, you're still nice to them.

Of course, there are also times when it's disorienting and alienating. Sitting in a near-empty terminal in the pre-dawn hours, it's easy for that "what the hell am I doing here" sense of anomie to settle over you. But for now, at least, it's a price worth paying.

Greetings from St Petersburg

I have tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, so I need to get this posted quickly.

My trip to St Petersburg has been short-- any trip where you get in late and go right to sleep, the wake up the next morning and immediately call the airline to do early checkin for your return flight is, by definition, short-- but it's been pleasant. We have a really good client we worked with here, which always goes a long way to making an experience good. And St Petersburg is more pleasant than I expected: it's not very big or exciting, but quite nice. I can see why people live her.

via flickr

The hotel has also been nice. It's a 1920s hotel, restored to its former glory, and is an excellent example of Roaring 20s Florida Mediterranean Hospitality Style. Though a couple things confuse me a bit. For one thing, there's this really complex thing over the bed:

via flickr

Fortunately the painting is bolted down, but the first time I saw it, I thought, that thing's going to kill me in my sleep. Obviously it hasn't, but still, that's not the kind of thought that interior decorating should inspire.

Then there's the furnishing of the bath: lemongrass bath soap, mint thyme shampoo, yuzu bergamot body lotion, and lavender hand soap. Apparently the cool thing now is to feel like you're taking a shower in the kitchen of an upscale Vietnamese restaurant. (Actually, the lemongrass bath soap rocked.)

via flickr

After work my colleague and I found a nice tapas and ceviche restaurant near the marina, and had dinner.

via flickr

We then walked along the marina, which was crowded with people doing some kind of charity race. It was nice to be out and about with so many people.

via flickr

Greetings from the Renaissance Vinoy

Welcome to Hell

The ground transportation waiting room. Christmas Muzak is blasting, the Howard Johnsons courtesy van is circling like a shark...

Wait, did William Hung ever do a country music Christmas album? Lord, take me now.

Made it to Tampa. It's just a bit humid here.

Just landed. Pretty nice airport so far.

At SFO

On my way to Tampa! I have copies of "Miami Vice" and "Wild Things" on my iphone for cultural reference. And some Carl Hiassen. If Florida isn't like it is in the moviess and books, I'll be really bummed.

Packing and planning

I leave tomorrow for the Association of University Research Parks winter conference, in St Petersburg, Florida.

This is the first time I've traveled anywhere with my iPod, and already it's having an impact. Rather than putting the address of phone number of the hotel in my trusty Moleskine notebook, I put the hotel, Supershuttle, airline, and a couple local art museums in my address book, and created a new group called "Alex's Current Trip." I figure whenever I go somewhere, I can fill it with local stuff. It should be handy.

I also find myself doing two things differently when I create addresses. First, I grab the complete address, not just enough to tell a cab driver. And second, I don't bother to copy the directions. Why? Because I figure that I'll use the map program and built-in GPS to generate directions when I'm on the ground. But to do that, I need good (i.e., comprehensive) street address information. Thanks to the map program, my personal economy of information has changed. I don't need directions. I need the information that will help me generate accurate directions.

I'm staying at the Renaissance Vinoy, which is one of the few hotels to have a marina, golf course, AND tennis. Not that I'll use anything more sophisticated than a bar or hot tub. And for some reason the pictures remind me of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. However, it's within walking distance of two decent-looking museums (alas the Salavador Dali museum is not one of them), but I'm not sure I'll have time to swing by either one. But I know they're there.

One thing I wish I could do with iCal is set up an event that has several different dates associated with it. So, for example, if I'm going on a business trip, I'd like an event (or a reminder) a week before that says "Take everything to the dry cleaner / shoe repair." Five days before, "Read c.v.s of people you're meeting." Two days before, "Find suitcase and do laundry." The day before, a whole slew of things: pack clothes, print out confirmations, check weather, etc., etc.. I don't want to have to create these; I want them to be automatically generated when I create a trip.

Greetings from Philadelphia

I'm settled in at the Omni Hotel, in lovely downtown Philadelphia. Actually, I'm not kidding: I'm across the street from Independence Park, near Independence Hall, the Philosophical Society, and other monuments of early American history.

I'm going to spend part of the morning with friends from school, then head back downtown to the Chemical Heritage Society. See the room I'm working in, rest up, then workshop time-- third one in a week, which I think is a personal record.

Philadelphia, Travel

The coolest thing I saw in New York

I visited a friend at the New York Public Library, and got a little tour of the public spaces before it was open to the public. The reading room is normally full; few people who aren't library staff see it like this.

via Flickr

via Flickr

Even cooler, though, was the display in the reception room across from the main reading room. A Gutenberg Bible, and behind it, the original Winnie-the-Pooh.

via Flickr

via Flickr

library, New York City, printing, New York Public Library

At Bucks County Coffee Co., 30th Street Station

Heading to the airport very soon, and thence back home.

via Flickr

New York was fabulous. The place is growing on me. At Penn I was always very dismissive of the place, a reaction against all my classmates who lamented the fact that they were stuck in a provincial backwater. But actually, even if it isn't All That Is Good and Civilized, I must confess that New York is pretty interesting.

via Flickr

My meetings gave me a lot to think about. As James Watson said (paraphrasing here), you should always spend time with people who are smarter than you, because people who aren't can't help you see new things.

via Flickr

Now back to my regular life: my daughter's Little League playoff game is tomorrow, I need to get a new cell phone this weekend, and my camera is starting to have problems. And I've got articles to write.

30th Street Station, New York City, Philadelphia, train

Up

Awake again, after five hours. Haven't decided if I'm going to take my garment bag to Penn Station before heading to NYPL-land, or just carry it with me.

However, that's not the decision to make today. There's a new Alan Furst novel, The Spies of Warsaw, and so the question is, how soon before I can pick up a copy?

Alan Furst, New York City, travel

Entering Koreatown, so shake that Korea now...

I'm going to bed soon, but wanted to post a bit before finally turning in.

I'm staying at the Red Roof Inn on 32nd Street (I believe, anyway). It's surprisingly good, for a place that's substantially cheaper than most New York hotels; my view is nothing to write home about, but I can't really complain about the location.

The hotel describes itself as being "in the heart of Koreatown," but since Koreatown is about three blocks long (it is to Korea as Chinatown is to China, as my brother put it), if you get anywhere in Koreatown you can reasonably claim to be in its heart.

While its small, Koreatown is pretty neat. It's just like being in Seoul, except the cars are different.

We went to Seoul Garden and had some barbeque, a traditional Korean delicacy, along with a wide assortment of pickled and/or highly spiced vegetables.

We then took a little walk around the block, but since my brother lives in deepest Brooklyn, and I thought I was tired, we called it a night.

I kind of look forward to the time when rather than having to sleep, I can just take some Provigil and work continuously for 48 hours on a trip, then go home. So much of business travel is structured by the need to rest; if you could eliminate that-- and in some cities, there's enough activity 24/7 to make it possible-- then all kinds of possibilities open up.

New York City, travel, Koreatown

In 30th Street Station

I'm in 30th Street Station, waiting for my (now delayed) train to Washington DC. This is not an unfamiliar situation: I spent a lot of time in 30th Street Station was I was living here, as it was my portal back home to Virginia, up to Boston to the MIT archives, or other points along the Northeast Corridor.

via Flickr

Another crazy day trip to Washington

On Thursday I did another one of my crazed one-day trips to Washington: Jet Blue redeye from Oakland, spend the day doing stuff, have dinner, then zip back to Dulles and catch the flight home.

Jet Blue is a fascinating experience. It's a pretty good ride, in my view, but their genius is in their making flying essentially indistinguishable from sitting in your living room, flipping channels on the TV. For some reason I find the TV in the seatback in front of me absorbing in a way my TV at home rarely is.

A lovely morning at Dulles International Airport

This time I was giving a talk to a group at the National Academies. These aren't gigs that really pay anything, but the crowd is pretty extraordinary, so it's more an opportunity for professional networking and public service than anything.

Courtyard of the Keck Center, Washington DC

Of course, how much you manage to network depends on how social and awake you are, so I don't do quite as well as some of my always-friendly business development colleagues; but you never fail to meet some interesting people at these things.

The Keck Center is very nice, but since I didn't see a croquet pitch on-site, I have to rate the Beckman Center more highly.

The workshop was quite interesting, and I got a lot of raw material and ideas for my own work. (These National Academies reports represent an amazing amount of intellectual labor.) But by 5:00, I was ready to either fall asleep, or sit to a nice dinner of roasted coffee beans. Instead, I met a friend of mine who lives in the area, and we walked over to Union Station, and had dinner at the Thunder Grill, a Western-ish place.

Thunder Grill, Union Station, Washington DC

The bison burger is pretty good.

Cafe on the second floor of Union Station

After that, we had some coffee, then I headed out to Dulles.

Dulles in the dusk

Technorati Tags: Dulles International Airport, National Academy, travel, washington DC, work

Just enough time to walk around the Smithsonian

Luckily, my meetings on Wednesday were in a government building close to the Smithsonian, so after I wrapped up, I walked over to the Mall.

Congress, via flickr

The National Air and Space Museum was completely nuts: hundreds of people were waiting to get in.

via flickr

So I went over to the National Gallery, which was much less crowded.

In front of the National Gallery of Art, via flickr

I spent some time with the Rembrandts and some other Dutch Masters, then ducked down to the ground floor to an exhibit of 19th century photographs of Paris. (When I was working at Britannica, I went to the Art Institute of Chicago every couple days, and discovered that I got a lot more out of each visit if I just focused on one room, or a few pieces of art-- Impressionist crowd paintings, or Wright's decorative windows.)

Then I caught the Metro back out to western Viriginia, promptly fell asleep, missed the West Falls Church stop (where you get off to catch the Dulles Airport shuttle), and had to double back. Fortunately, my flight wasn't scheduled to leave for another three hours or so, so I was all right.

Technorati Tags: travel, washington DC

Dulles, morning and night

Thanks to JetBlue, I'm getting to know Dulles International Airport better than I ever did before. Unfortunately, I'm still tending to see it twice in the same day. Morning:

via flickr

The main terminal as the sun's coming up....

via flickr

Twelve hours later, I'm back!

via flickr

Still, despite the appeal of Washington, I find I prefer to do this and get back to my family, than stay overnight. Plus it's cheaper, of course.

Technorati Tags: airport, Dulles International Airport, travel, washington DC

Greetings from America's front lawn.. or something

I'm at the Smithsonian, taking advantage of the public wifi system. I'm actually out here on one of my patented Insane Travel Adventures: I took the redeye last night, had a bunch of very interesting meetings today, and am flying back tonight.

Since my day started at 7, I won't feel bad if I spend the rest of the afternoon at the National Air and Space Museum.

Doesn't look like any of my friends are around, so I'm probably just going to engage with the public culture for a while, then head back out to the airport and watch the last DVD of Firefly-- the one with the three never-aired episodes.

So I can't recall: is the Washington Mall America's front lawn, or its playground (that's Boca Raton, I think), or something else?

Technorati Tags: Smithsonian, travel, washington DC

Self-portrait at Dulles Airport

This morning around 6:30.

And while it looks like the picture isn't quite right, I actually felt that fuzzy.

[To the tune of Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way," from the album "The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: travel, washington DC, work

Words every business traveler loves

At Caribou Coffee, 17th and L, NW:

[To the tune of Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon (Single Version)," from the album "The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: cafe, travel, washington DC, wireless, work

In DC

I'm here, and surprisingly awake for having had about two fitful hours' sleep on the plane. I hate sleeping on planes. It's better to just start drinking coffee at the earliest opportunity and work. And the in-flight movie was the new Poseidon disaster film, which basically consists of wet people screaming and trying to find the next door, vent, or shaft that will get them closer to freedom. It's rather like a videogame in that respect: it's all "find the next thing so you can get to the next level. Unfortunately, it manages both a movie about a disaster, and a disaster.

Showing disaster movies on airplaines seems like a bad move. But showing one involving water, at a time when you can't bring any liquids aboard other than your own precious bodily fluids, is a nicely ironic touch.

I'm in a Caribou Coffee on 17th and L, just up the street from National Geographic. The client I'm doing stuff with is just around the corner; another one from earlier this year is a block in the other direction.

I found the one table that has an electrical outlet right beside it, so I'm now recharging everything: iPod and Powerbook, and (thanks to a quadruple shot latte) myself.

[To the tune of Nina Simone, "I Shall Be Released," from the album "The Very Best of Nina Simone: Sugar in My Bowl (1967-1972)".]

Technorati Tags: travel, work, washington DC

How I spent my day

This sums up Tuesday:

Dulles International Airport, 6:45 a.m.

Dulles International Airport, 6:45 p.m.

[To the tune of The Allman Brothers Band, "Soulshine," from the album "Where It All Begins".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Dulles International Airport, travel, work

Greetings from Oakland International Airport

I'm in Oakland International, waiting for a Jet Blue redeye to Washington DC, where I'm doing a day-long meeting with a client, doing a five-hour workshop on the future of science, then heading out to Dulles and catching a 9 PM flight back to California. I'll be gone about 26 hours, I figure.

The combination of anxiety before an event (I always eat poorly and get nervous before doing something for a client, but am able to focus and be On when I have to), sleep deprivation (my son woke up a couple times in the middle of the night), flying out of an unfamiliar airport, and flying on an airline I've never flown on has let me feeling like I've fallen into someone else's life. I know the script, but I'm not this character. I made all the arrangements myself, and of course I'm right on target, but nothing about this trip feels right.

I don't think I've been to Oakland International Airport in about ten years, since I flew out to a History of Science Society conference in New orleans. That time, I actually did go to the wrong airport first: I drove some friends to SFO, thinking that I was flying out of there, too, then discovered as I was dropping them off-- I still had a couple hours before my flight, they were leaving immediately-- that, in fact, I needed to go to the other airport. A mad dash across the bay, some aggressive merging, and I made it to OAK fine. But the story flew ahead of me: when I saw one of my mentors in the hotel bar in New Orleans, the first thing he said was, "Alex! Is it true you went to the wrong airport?"

No wonder I never got an academic job.

I never fly out of Oakland because it feels about a hundred miles farther from home than SFO; in fact, it was 30 minutes door to door, and that was including time listen to the end of the Tears for Fears CD that was in my car stereo, and rearrange my bag and trow out a couple things. And while it feels less like a small airport and more like an overgrown bus station, that small size may be a virtue: you can easily walk to the terminal from long-term parking, unlike at SFO. If I need to keep flying to the East Coast, I might become familiar with the place.

Taking the redeye is partly an attempt to save money. But I'm just not the type to hang out in the hotel sports bar, knock back a couple margaritas, and talk to strangers about March Madness. I'd rather read stories to my kids at bedtime, then dash to the airport and spend the next 24 hours running on nerves and caffeine, than spend the night alone in one of those business traveler hotel rooms that could be anywhere in the world. I'd rather be a samurai and a good parent, and do it the hard way, than take it a little easier.

[To the tune of Al Green, "Rainin' In My Heart," from the album "I Can't Stop".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Oakland, travel, work

View from the cab

From my Tuesday 5 a.m. cab ride from the hotel to Penn Station.

Naturally, I managed to get a cabbie who said he was in his second night on the job.

But I made it to the train station anyway.

Technorati Tags: New York City, travel

A bit closer to heaven

I'm on the flight home from Washington. They're showing distractingly good movies: Walk The Line, which I hadn't seen but which is amazing, and now Pride and Prejudice.

This is one of those planes that has flat-screen monitors that fold down from above the seats, so now my field of vision a dozen Keira Knightleys and Rosamund Pikes are under the covers, giggling after the dance where Jane and Mr. Bingley first see each other-- a scene that, for my money, is the most erotic in the entire history of film.

Technorati Tags: movies, travel

In Dulles

Made it to Dulles Airport. Had to take a cab, as my meetings ran late and the airport shuttle wouldn't get me out here on time, but it's rather difficult to tell a research sponsor that you can't talk to his bosses because you're a cheapskate.

Dulles always underwhelms me. The main terminal is great-- I'm a huge fan of Saarinen's work, and the disconnect between the magnitude of his architecture and the critical disdain in which it's been held has always struck me as a great injustice-- and I like spending time in there; but then you leave, head for the terminals, and you might as well be in Newark or one of the less appealing parts of SeaTac.

I wonder: did airport managers at some point make a conscious decision to use sucky, nondescript architecture, to drive home the point that flying was no longer any big deal? It's not so farfetched. In the 1930s, some airlines trained women pilots, to help cultivate an image of planes as so completely safe that even women could operate them.

Technorati Tags: architecture, Dulles International Airport, travel

Pulling into DC

We're coming into Union Station, in Washington. This is a pretty good trip: three hours is plenty of time to get some serious reading or work done, but since it's only three hours and you can work, it doesn't feel like a major bite out of the day.

Technorati Tags: travel

Acela

I decided to try the Acela, the closest thing in the U.S. to the fast luxury trains they have in Europe. It's not bad, but for the money, it's still not as nice as the DSB, the Danish train system.

The trains themselves are essentially airplanes without wings: the overhead luggage, the folding tray tables, the overhead lighting, and the track lighting to guide you to an exit all have a definitely airplane-like quality about them. It's all nice, and for travel between New York and DC its probably faster than flying, once you figure in the time to get to and from airports.

I'm probably the worst-dressed person on the train: there are lots of people in suits here, reading depositions or clinical trial reports or this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Enough woolgathering. Time to work.

The Northeast Corridor and the memory of desire

The last place I might think would inspire any sort of nostalgia is the Amtrak East Coast service. Some of the views on the New York-Washington route are pleasant enough, but most of it is that kind of slightly depressed urban or suburban that tends to be created by trains in this country.

(It seems to me that in other countries, the value of real estate around train lines doesn't drop as much. But I suspect that places like Japan and Denmark rely more on their rail networks, and have less real estate to work with.)

But for me, I realize, these routes still have a kind of romantic overlay on them.

It snowed. Or maybe that's just really heavy frost

No, I think it's snow. It didn't snow much last night, but it did snow.

Passing through Elizabeth, New Jersey. I suddenly miss my daughter.

Greetings from the Acela departure lounge

I'm at Penn Station, waiting for my train down to Washington. Penn Station is a little nicer than the last time I saw it, which was probably in 1993 or thereabouts. (How is it that I've been to Copenhagen more times than New York in the last ten years? That seems weird.)

Not that it's really nice: Penn Station is, unfortunately, a cramped and crowded space, utilitarian in an utterly graceless way-- absolutely nothing like the old Penn Station, which was one of McKim Mead and White's masterpieces (if memory serves), or the wonderfully renovated Grand Central Station. New York has some magnificent public space, but Penn Station's not part of it. It is, however, a little cleaner than it used to be, and for someone who's only an occasional visitor and very much a tourist, feels like it has a bit less of an edge of-- not necessarily danger, but strangeness that could tip into something else.

Oops, there's my train. Gotta run.

Technorati Tags: New York City, travel, work

Next stop, Washington DC

I'm heading down to Washington bright and early tomorrow morning, for a meeting with a new research sponsor. Actually it won't be bright, but it will be early: I'm leaving the hotel around 5:15, and the train will leave at 6.

I'll be in DC for all of five hours before I have to go to the airport to head back to California. Some trips are like that. But given that I'd like to get back to my kids before bedtime tomorrow (and my kids wouldn't mind my getting back to them), it's worth it.

I've been staying at the Algonquin, which is fabled in song and story for being the home of the famous Round Table, various literary brilliances, and the place where The New Yorker got its start. (Copies of the magazine are placed in the room in much the way the Gideons Bible is in other hotels.)

It's quite a nice place: the simplest way to describe it is that it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect a hotel called The Algonquin to be like.

The Wifi isn't free, but at least there is a good Internet connection, and it has what may be the deepest bath I've ever been in in my entire life. These days, if the bed and bath are nice, and I can get online, I'm happy with the hotel. It's also located near Grand Central Station, Times Square, and all that other Midtown-Theatre District kind of stuff.

It also has a cat.

Apparently it's had a lobby cat for something like 70 years. I know that cats live in some stores, but the lobby seems extraordinarily busy a place for a feline; still, this one handles it with what I can only see as a feline New Yorker "eh, whatever" attitude.

[To the tune of Bill Evans Trio, "Autumn Leaves [Take 1]," from the album "Portrait In Jazz".]

Technorati Tags: New York City, travel

Yaffa Cafe and the history of rock and roll

Yesterday morning, after getting into New York, I met up with my brother (who's an acupuncturist in the city) and wandered around Manhattan for a little while. We went to the Lower East Side, then made our way down into Alphabet City, then up to Union Square.

I actually have no real idea where any of those places are. I've been to New York maybe half a dozen times in my life, and have spent most of it in Midtown (or so I'm told).

We went for breakfast to a place called Yaffa Cafe, on St. Mark's Place, near Cooper Union.

It was fun, in an over-the-top way: imagine if a cafe were to be a cross-dressing cabaret performer, you'd get the look of Yaffa.

And the food was quite good.

Just a couple doors down are the buildings that are on the cover of Led Zep's Physical Graffiti.

Just up the street is a tribute to Joe Strummer, founder (or at least front-man) of The Clash.

Technorati Tags: New York City, travel

In New York

I made it to New York without any surprises, and spent most of yesterday with friends, or prepping for today, in which I'm helping to run a workshop on the future of science and technology. We're in a conference room in midtown that has a rather nice view.

(Looking east)

(Looking northwest, toward Times Square. More pictures on flickr)

Sometimes you get lucky.

I wonder what working in a place with a view like this would be like?

[To the tune of Ahn Trio, "Oblivion," from the album "Ahn-Plugged".]

Technorati Tags: architecture, New York City, travel, work

In SFO, again

I'm outside gate 84, waiting for the redeye to JFK. Apparently the flight is completely booked, in addition to being delayed because of a mechanical problem, and we're all waiting around for a new plane and work about when we're really going to be leaving. (The display says "Departs 10:50pm (Aircraft Available)," which sounds definitive yet hedging.)

However, I just got my seat upgraded to business class, so all is now well with the world. I have achieved a Zen-like state of tranquility.

Okay, maybe not so much. For one thing, I haven't decided if I'm going to try to sleep on the flight (it now seems more likely, now that I have a seat that'll recline more than 10 degrees), or stay up and work-- and if so, work on what. One of my Institute projects? The Encyclopedia of the 21st Century, whose editorial duties promise to stretch roughly through half of the 21st century itself? My Peninsula strategic stuff? Or the end of cyberspace? I hate to admit I've brought some of each, and can go in any number of several directions. But sleep feels like a waste. Plane flights are my intellectual equivalent of beam time at the collider: too precious to waste on anything frivolous.

Though this is an extension of the way I felt about research trips when I was an academic. I planned my research trips with the precision of a military campaign, or at least a scientific expedition: I chose planes and trains on the basis of whether they'd get me into town in time to get in a full day at the archives, and was religious-- or at least monastic-- in my avoidance of anything distracting, fun, touristy, or otherwise not focused around a primary document.

Though I'm now parked beside an electrical outlet, sitting on my knees, with my Powerbook propped up on my two bags. I should be on a tatami mat, arranging flowers or chanting sutras. So maybe things haven't changed that much.

Technorati Tags: travel, work

Back East

I'm off to the East Coast this weekend. I'm taking the redeye Saturday night, spending Sunday and Monday in New York City, then dropping down to Washington DC on Tuesday (after a very early morning ride on the Acela-- I'll finally get to see how good a job IDEO did on their train).

I find myself of somewhat mixed feelings about travel these days. On one hand, I've always liked to travel: I enjoy seeing new stuff, and even kind of like meeting the strains and rigors of being on the road. On the other hand, I really notice being away from my family, even though they hold up quite well in my absence.

I'll have a little time to see some friends on Sunday morning, but after that it's all work: an expert workshop on Monday, meetings with a research sponsor on Tuesday, then on the plane Tuesday afternoon, and back home in time to put the kids to bed that night. Back to what's really important.

[To the tune of Don Henley, "New York Minute," from the album "The End Of The Innocence".]

Samuel Beckett now drives for SuperShuttle

I'm back in San Francisco, sort of. I'm at the airport, and we've driven around the terminal four times, as the driver tries to get a full van. It's like Waiting for Godot, in a hip experimental production. I wonder: maybe I could get a grant for doing performances of modern theatrical works in public transportation-- No Exit on BART, that sort of thing.

This driver is a real pleasure. Not only have I been in the van for 20 minutes, getting a nice little tour of SFO. He's blasting some local talk radio show, and generally has the attitude that we passengers who lack knowledge of SuperShuttle's inner workings and informal rules are an unpleasant distraction from his mission in life, which appears to be listening to talk radio.

I've got my headphones on.

You know those times when you ask someone a question, and they answer it, but in a way that suggests that they've just barely managed to avoid screaming at you about how ignorant you are? That's this guy's m.o. I'm starting to regret adding a tip when I prepaid.

We are getting on the San Mateo Bridge. This is not the way to Menlo Park. Wait, we might be heading for one of the hotels, rather than Hayward.

Now we're sitting at the first drop-- and the driver hasn't let the guy out yet. He's retrieving numbers from his dispatcher, and making the guy sit here. A little unbelieveable.

[To the tune of Dr. Dre, "Keep Their Heads Ringin'," from the album "Death Row Greatest Hits"

Back in BWI

Flying Frontier home, via Denver. This means I'm going to be in transit for about 11 hours. However, D terminal in BWI is a reasonable, if rather anonymous, place to wait for a flight.

I wonder if the increased security in airports, and the longer periods of time people have to spend waiting for flights, has either 1) translated into more money spent at bars, newspaper stands, gift shops, etc. in airports, or 2) inspired any airports to expand their business centers, kids' areas, and other amenities. It would certainly make sense to do so, if people are in fact spending more time in airports.

[To the tune of The Isley Brothers, "The Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing," from the album "Out Of Sight".]

One World Cafe

Next time I go to Baltimore, I think I'll cut out the middleman, and see if I can just camp out overnight at the One World Cafe. I met a friend there for breakfast, then had coffee with some history of science grad students there this afternoon.

"Umm, I think I ordered the LARGE tea!?"
via Flickr

It's a fun place-- a bit shabby in a way that's both chic and genuine, with lots of books and things lying around, and lots of people either reading or talking shop-- and the coffee is excellent. So are the vegan blueberry muffins. (As Homer Simpson would put it, "Vegan... muffins... Aaaaggggh...." Actually, he'd probably never say that.)

No wifi, so far as I could tell. That's a strike against them, but strangely, I don't hold it against them.

They probably don't have any rooms to let, though. Oh well.

[To the tune of The Incredibles, "Closing Theme," from the album "Motion Picture Soundtrack".]

ISI talk

I gave an informal talk this morning at the Information Security Institute, a Johns Hopkins center that does stuff on computer security, encryption, privacy, and the like. (They're the people who cracked the encryption on RFID tags used in a couple well-known contactless payment systems.) One of our people has an affiliation with ISI, and the future of information security is one of those subjects that's both really fascinating on its own, and also has the potential to affect just about everything else that we talk about-- particularly as we do more with the future of pervasive computing.

Of course, one of the big issues with RFID is privacy, which really means a couple things: the degree to which information on tags is available for anyone to access (information privacy); and the possibility of using tags on things to identify and track people (individual privacy). The latter is generally seen as more significant than the former-- though worries about the lack of encryption with passports hit a double-header. In order for the optimistic, nay utopian, scenarios about pervasive computing to come to pass, both kinds of security breaks will have to be greatly reduced.

Talking to some real information security people about these issues was quite useful for me; I hope the students found it interesting. It also turns out that when you speak at ISI, you get a hat. So I'm now the proud bearer of a baseball cap that says "Information Security Institute" on the front, and "Johns Hopkins University" on the back. It makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Where are you going, Dave?

I'm taking a SuperShuttle to BWI. It has a GPS system that is giving the driver directions by speaking them: "Go one point three miles. And. Turn. Right." I've never been in a vehicle that talked to you on a constant basis. It's a bit disconcerting, but I suppose it's safer than looking down at a screen constantly.

And so far we haven't gotten lost, so it seems to know what to do.

We're driving through the city, which gives me a chance to see at least a slice of the place. On my last two visits here, I never got more than a block from the Hopkins campus; indeed, the last time I was anywhere else in Baltimore, I was nine or ten years old, and Harbor Place was brand new.

The streets here are kind of roughly paved and patched, which makes blogging from the van harder. Damned city services obstructing blogging. If Baltimore wants to keep its creative class, it had better deal with this!

I have a frighteningly enormous amount of work waiting for me when I get home, an even larger and more urgent stack than normal.

Heading home

On my way to BWI!

Crab cake heaven

I met up with one of the Hopkins history of science graduate students, a fellow I've had a number of e-mail exchanges with but have never actually met in person before, and went to dinner at Gertrude's, a restaurant in the Baltimore Museum of Art.

I don't think I'd ever been to a nice, sit-down, fancy (but not too fancy, in case anyone asks about my expenses on this trip) restaurant in a museum before, but this one was really good. The crab cakes are outstanding. (Apparently the chef is some kind of celebrity.)

It was a fun time, and good to finally meet. Though after about 3 hours' sleep last night, several espressos, and no food until dinner, I was about as sedate as Dilbert's boss on crystal meth.

In Baltimore

I'm now in Baltimore, at the Inn at the Colonnade. I've got what could be the weakest wifi signal in all of history, but at least the service is free.

Going out to dinner shortly.

Quote of the day

"Everything that could be said has been said, but not everyone has said it." (Mo Udall)

Commerce Department

The Commerce Department is one of those wonderful New Deal-age buildings, with a paradox of grand public spaces and some really crappy private spaces.

Sartorial splendor

One of the things that always strikes me when I visit Washington is how well people dress. Partly it's a reflection of the fact that the government is kind of a formal place; part of it is a Southern thing. (Though that's not universal, of course. I had coffee last night with Epistemographer, who dresses like a character out of a Douglas Coupland novel. But it really works for him.)

The proportion of suits perhaps isn't surprising. What I find more impressive is how many women are dressed like they're on their way to a Kappa Delta reunion. Laura Ashley's reign of terror continues.