Matt Newman

Jan/Feb/Mar 2019 travel

2019-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

After the stay in California, I didn’t do a load of travel in the first three months of 2019, mostly due to being staffed in Chicago & spending some time there. Also, there isn’t a lot of easily accessible hiking in winter!

This post covers what I was up to for the first three months of the year, and is mostly about Chicago.

Chicago

Early weather

Chicago in winter is a level of cold that I’m not well acquainted with 🥶

I drove up from Cincinnati, and was blessed with a snow storm the night before my drive:

I guess it was a sign of things to come - a fortnight later was the 2019 polar vortex, which shut down most of the city for a couple of days. It was the only time I saw the river completely frozen over:

I was staying a very short distance from work and decided to walk during the cold weather, which was an experience. My face was completely covered, except for my eyes, which watered. Of course the water from my struggling eyes froze, along with the tiny bit of hair that was exposed and water condensing in my nose (producing a satisfying crunch when I pinched my nostrils).

Field Museum

I went full tourist in Chicago and purchased a CityPASS, good for entry into 5 attractions. The first I visited was the Field Museum. For some reason I don’t have loads of photos here, but the main things I remember are

the huge collection of taxidermied animals
SUE the T. rex
the Underground Adventure

Art Institute of Chicago

I’m not normally one for art museums, but The Art Institute has a great collection, including a number of paintings by van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, Warhol and more. The Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, Arms, and Armor (an ongoing exhibit) was another highlight, and I was amazed at the detail in the 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms.

Skydeck Chicago

I’ve been told by locals that under no circumstances am I to refer to the Sears Tower by it’s new name, The Willis Tower. Regardless of the name, the views from the The Skydeck are spectacular:

Museum of Science and Industry

I think the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is my new favourite museum, with the Deutsches Museum in Munich a close second.

It’s absolutely huge, I could easily spend far more than a day there. A few highlights, in no particular order:

Avalanche simulation in the Science Storms exhibit.

Mirror maze in Numbers in Nature exhibit.

The mirror maze was oddly peaceful for the few seconds I was in there alone! For the rest of the time I was just trying to avoid running into the kids that were barrelling though.

Tornado simulation in the Science Storms exhibit.

U-505 submarine, captured during World War II.

St Patrick’s Day

St Patrick’s Day in Chicago was an experience … I knew it was a huge event, but I didn’t expect the streets to be packed from 7:30 AM.

The Chicago River is dyed a vibrant green on St Patrick's day.

… Spring?

I’ve been warned that March warm weather in Chicago only lulls you into a false sense of security. As I’m writing this it’s closer to the end of April & I’m hopeful the worst of the cold weather is finished. As a reference, here’s a recent photo of Maggie Daley Park & Grant Park - it looks a little more inviting than the photo earlier in this post!

LA & Spartan Race

I visited LA briefly in December on a trip to go hiking in Joshua Tree National Park, but most of the time in LA itself was spent sitting in traffic.

I went back in January to do the Spartan SoCal Sprint just outside of LA, and had a chance to see a little more of LA itself.

Griffith Observatory is definitely worth a visit, for the exhibits as well as the views of LA.

On Saturday we spent some time in Venice Beach area, including the Venice Canals and a ride along the boardwalk and ocean front walk. It was a nice change from the winter in Chicago!

Seattle

I had planned a trip to Chicago the weekend after the polar vortex hit Chicago, but my flight out was cancelled due to the weather. I still made it out of Chicago the next day, but that made for a fairly short trip, so I changed my plans to spend the time in Seattle itself and ditched the hiking I was planning in Mt Rainier National Park.

I stayed right near Pike Place Market which turned out to be a great spot.

Some notable places:

Piroshky Piroshky bakery: I may have returned here more than once, fodder was delicious but not entirely compatible with my desire to be somewhat healthy 🤣
The Gum Wall: one of the most germ ridden attractions in existence

The original Starbucks
Underground tour: it was interesting hearing about how Seattle was built, it is honestly a miracle they didn’t just give up. Wikipedia has some info on the underground.
Seattle Center: I’d like to go back here, there is loads to do. It was the site of the 1962 World’s Fair. The Space Needle, MoPOP and the Chihuly Garden and Glass are apparently all worth a visit, but I just walked around the area without going in.

South Lake Tahoe

My first trip in March was to South Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing. There was a little more snow there than I’ve seen in Australia before 😂.

The base of the resort is at 1,907 m and the top is 3,068 m, so it isn’t super high but its location near the lake means lots of snow (the peak of Mount Kosciuszko is 2,228 m, so most of the Thredbo resort in Australia is less than 2,000 m).

Toronto

The second trip for March was to Toronto, again a short trip so I really only had time to explore part of Old Toronto near where I was staying:

St. Lawrence Market
Distillery District
Yonge-Dundas Square
CF Toronto Eaton Centre
Kensington Market

California

2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been fortunate to spend some time in The Golden State in November and December. I haven’t made it over here much, as it’s a long way from where I have been based in the east of the states.

Part 1 - San Francisco

After working most of Friday from the ThoughtWorks office in the SoMa (South of Market) area, we took a walk through Chinatown to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, where I got my first views of the bay.

Despite being very hilly, SF is a walkable city. We continued down to Fisherman’s Wharf and on to the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marine District. I didn’t get many photos, but it’s an interesting place originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.

We rented bikes on Saturday, and rode from North Beach across the Golden Gate Bridge, back to Sutro Heights and through the Presidio on the way back. Lots of great views, the photos below don’t really do it justice!

I think this might have been the first time I’ve seen the sun setting over an ocean … I’ve always lived near eastern coasts so sunrise over the ocean feels more normal! 😂

Part 2 - Los Angeles and Joshua Tree National Park

In early December I was in LA for a couple of days before flying back to Australia for the Christmas break. We did a bit of hiking, and saw a little of LA as well.

The first hike was the Mount Zion Loop - Sturtevant to Winter Creek Trail

For the second day we drove to Joshua Tree National Park and did the Lost Horse Mine Loop Trail.

I managed to sneak in a visit to The Getty:

And to Griffith Observatory to get the obligatory selfie with the Hollywood sign before flying out on Sunday:

Part 3 - Drive from LA → SF

After landing in LA on Boxing Day morning, I took a couple of days to drive up to San Francisco, mostly along California State Route 1 (a.k.a. the Pacific Coast Highway). It’s a lovely drive, a few highlights include:

Beautiful beaches along the way:

Elephant seals:

The Buzzards Roost trail in Big Sur State Park:

Carmel-by-the-Sea:

And finally Monterey:

Part 4 - San Francisco (again)

I spent the last four days of 2018 running, walking and hiking my way primarily through SF, in an effort to work of combined Thanksgiving/holiday party/Christmas calories 😂

The only visits outside SF were to Sausalito and a hike in the Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve in Berkeley. Some select photos:

Pawleys Island

2018-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

For Thanksgiving this year I stayed with some friends at a house in Pawleys Island, a town and island in Georgetown County, South Carolina.

It was a relaxing time, with lots of walks on the beach and way too much food.

We were also there for a king tide, which produced some minor flooring and had us worried for out rental car. It was amazing to me how many of these places are so close to the ocean, you could see the dunes getting washed away during the higher tides.

Acadia National Park

2018-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

My fourth trip in what has turned into a very busy October was to Acadia National Park in Maine, the easternmost state of the US. I flew into Boston, drove up to Acadia & stayed in Airbnbs nearby.

Acadia National Park is beautiful, and is the first coastal park I’ve visited (other than the Everglades NP, it’s nice in a different way).

The first hike I did there was up Cadillac Mountain along the South Ridge Trail. Cadillac Mountain is the highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard (though it’s still not very high at 466 meters).

The weather wasn’t great to start, but the views were still worth the effort.

Some pretty strong winds had the clouds blown away in no time!

The last part of the loop went down part of the A. Murray Young Path which had amazing fall colours on display.

The second hike for the day was The Beehive Loop Trail, plus a little of the Champlain North Ridge Trail.

The clouds had been well and truly blown away by this point!

Sunset at the The Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse was a great finish to the day.

Salt Lake City

2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Last weekend I was able to do some hiking near Salt Lake City in Utah. There were some stunning views of Great Salt Lake from the flight. The Lucin Cutoff causes differences in salinity in three parts of the lake. The corresponding difference in algae growth is visible in the photo below.

The first hike we did on Friday was the Mount Olympus trail:

It was a long, steep climb but the views from the top were worth it!

The group I was with continued on to Lake Tahoe on Saturday, but I stayed in the area to do a couple more hikes. First up was the Lake Blanche Trail:

After Lake Blanche was Bells Canyon Trail:

This trail started out looking very different to the snow that was at Lake Blanche, but there was lots of snow on the trail by the top.

I’m happy anywhere aspen leaves are shaking in the wind!

Alaska

2018-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

I flew into Anchorage after work on Thursday night, landing at a reasonable time thanks to Alaska being four hours behind Eastern Time. We stayed in Anchorage on Thursday, did some work from there in the morning and drove up towards Denali National Park on Friday afternoon.

Before leaving Alaska, we stopped at an outdoor store to buy some bear deterrent spray. This National Park Service video convinced us, though it was unlikely we’d run into a grizzly on the hikes we had planned. Neither of us fancied running into a male bear given they can tip the scales at 680 kg and stand 3 m tall.

The drive was nice, we were lucky with the weather for the whole weekend. We did a couple of short hikes on the way, at Thunderbird Falls and Little Coal Creek before arriving at our accomodation for Friday and Saturday nights. On Friday I saw a little of the northern lights; our host woke us up as they were out. When he woke me up I raced outside in my pajamas with a jacket on top which was inadequate given the weather! In hindsight I wish I’d gotten dressed and stayed out there longer. It was a bit bright where I was standing so didn’t get any good photos.

We were staying about 35 minutes south of the park entrance, so we still had a short way to go on Saturday morning. We ended up driving further north in search of coffee, and ended up at the nearest ‘large town’ of Healy (population around 1,000) where we found somewhere that was still open. We drove through a few small communities that were all boarded up for the winter which was bizarre to see. A lot of the businesses shut down completely and the people working there move south to somewhere warmer for the winter!

The drive along the eastern edge of Denali National Park featured some breathtaking views of the mountains. Denali Mountain was almost always visible in the distance. It’s the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit of 6,190 m (for reference, the highest mountain in Australian peaks at 2,228 m). The upper half is permanently snowy.

The first hike was the Savage Alpine Trail, the first photo I took on the hike was of a ‘bears frequent this area’ warning sign so we were happy to have the spray. It was super windy in some parts, here’s a video which tries to capture it (turn your volume down before opening it). After the hike we drove into the park until reaching the point where the road is closed for the winter at the Teklanika River.

On the way out we got our wish of seeing a bear from a safe distance, I’m glad we got to see one in the wild. It’s a fair distance in this video, but it gives you some idea of the size. A group of people assembled to watch and as you can see about half way through the video it must have got a bit spooked! We didn’t do loads more on Saturday, but did head out again late at night to try and see the northern lights.

Sunday was a late start, but we did a full on hike at Bison Gulch (a ‘gulch’ is the name for a valley formed by erosion). I recorded the hike on Strava and plotted it on Google Maps:

Photos from the hike start here in the album. It was pretty brutal, we climbed 1,259 m and a lot of that towards the end was over very loose shale. Here’s one of us up near the top:

It’s lucky we went when we did; a couple of weeks later and it would have been rather chilly! I think the snow there is from some early falls a week before we arrived. We were ridiculously fortunate with the weather. It was relatively warm, with clear skies. The whole place seemed so remote, the air was super fresh and the stars were all out. Other than the bear, we also saw a couple of moose and a pair of mountain goats.

All the photos from the trip are in an album on Google Photos (some of the links above should jump to certain spots in the album).

Philadelphia

2018-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

This weekend I visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city. It has plenty of historic sites from the American Revolution, as well as a fairly famous prison and the Philadelphia Museum of Art which is potentially better known for “Rocky” than the art.

I didn’t have big plans (I was looking for a relatively quiet weekend after the week tripping around CO/UT), but still had a busy Saturday. The day started with a train to the Wissahickon Valley Park. From there I did some hiking/walking through Wissahickon Valley and on to Boathouse Row, along the Schuylkill River. That leg (recorded on Strava) came to 18.5 km, and the walk downtown came to roughly another 12 km, so I definitely got my steps in for the day! Here’s the route I took through the city centre:

That took me past Boathouse Row, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eastern State Penitentiary, Washington Monument Fountain, Rodin Museum, Parkway Central Library, Logan Square, Love Park, Reading Terminal Market, Sonny’s Famous Steaks for a Philly cheesesteak, and a load of spots in Independence National Historical Park.

The walk from Wissahickon Valley also included lots of historic buildings and bridges. A few highlights of the day follow.

Statue of Tedyuscung

At a point along the trail in Wissahickon Valley, there is a statue positioned fairly high up the valley, showing a Native American looking out over the valley. It’s a fairly huge statue, and I didn’t expect to come across it, but I’ve done some reading about it since. The history of the sculpture is here (the marble version I saw was dedicated in 1902), though apparently it’s a bit contentions with one local calling it “a monument to ignorance”.

Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary was the first major prison based on the principle of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement. The idea was the inmates would practice penance through silent reflection upon their crimes and behaviour. The whole prison is designed around this idea. Inmates never saw anyone for the entire duration of their sentence. The walls are solid and at least a foot thick. Each prisoner has their own exercise yard. The guards even wore socks over their shoes so the silence wasn’t disturbed. This understandably went fairly terribly, with lots of inmates mental health taking a hit. The prison operated using solitary confinement from 1829 until 1913, and it closed in 1971.

The city council intended to redevelop it, but the site was abandoned for around a decade and fell to ruin. It was ‘stabilised’ before opening to the public as a museum in 1994, but large parts of the prison are as they were after the period of abandonment:

There was also an exhibit at the end of the tour about prisons today and mass incarceration, which was pretty sobering.

More photos from the day are in an album on Google Photos.

Colorado & Utah hiking

2018-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

I attended Explore DDD in Denver again this year, after enjoying the conference and Denver itself so much last year.

This year I took a couple of days off work before the conference, and planned a road trip to do some hiking in the area. I made it to one of the parks near Boulder, five national parks in the area, and a quick hike near Colorado Springs on the way back to Denver.

It was a fun week of hiking (89 km) and driving (2,261 km), with a little planning required:

AllTrails worked really well for organising hikes. I paid for a lifetime Pro membership, which meant I could download trails for offline use (very handy in the more remote parks)
Airbnb rooms near the hiking spots meant I could get up early and beat the crowds & heat
An America the Beautiful Pass covered the entrance fees at all the national parks
A 3L Osprey Raptor 14 pack kept me hydrated
KEEN Targhee III Low WP hiking shoes ensured that my feet stayed dry and had decent support

Boulder Open Space

First up was Chautauqua Park in Boulder, CO. A couple of colleagues based in Denver/Boulder recommended hiking here, and I’m glad I listened.

The route below is a combination of the Royal Arch Trail, First and Second Flatiron Loop and the Green Mountain Loop.

The hike had amazing views of the Flatirons & Royal Arch:

Rocky Mountain National Park

I visited the Rocky Mountains National Park last year, but as you can see from the earlier post linked above, the weather was a little different this time.

I was lucky enough to drive past a fairly huge elk chilling very close to the road.

Most of the hiking I did was in the Bear Lake area, on the Emerald Lake and Sky Pond via Glacier Gorge trails.

The mountain lakes & aspens were spectacular:

There was a very friendly marmot up near Sky Pond, though he was probably just looking for food:

Arches National Park

Sunday saw me driving from Boulder to Arches National Park in Utah, through Grand Valley.

The Devils Garden trail was amazing, with the 88 meter Landscape Arch a highlight.

Canyonlands National Park

Next up was Canyonlands National Park. I stayed near La Sal on Sunday night, which made the Needles section of the park a better option than heading back north to Island in the Sky.

The Chesler Park Loop was one of the highlights of the whole trip. The landscape looks other-wordly at times, and it was a lightly trafficked trail.

Mesa Verde National Park

After staying in Cortez on Monday night, I visited Mesa Verde National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park is best known for the cliff dwellings built by the Ancestral Puebloans.

I managed to get in early and score a ticket to a guided tour of Cliff Palace, a dwelling built around year 1200.

Other than the Cliff Palace tour, the only hike I did here was Petroglyph Point, which passes a large petroglyph panel. The carvings were likely made around the same time as the cliff dwellings were built.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

The final national park I visited was Great Sand Dunes. This was a rushed visit, but I wanted to make a stop in the park to see the contrast of sand dunes and mountains. In my mind dunes belong in deserts or at the coast, not at 8,200 feet elevation in the foothills of mountains.

Zion National Park and Las Vegas

2018-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Last weekend a I took a couple of days off to see some of the western United States, with a visit to Zion National Park and Las Vegas.

Zion National Park is absolutely stunning. We did a couple of hikes, the first was to the peak of Angels Landing, a 454 m high rock formation (total elevation 1,760 m). The trail was built in 1926 and is cut into solid rock most of the way. It’s only 3.9 km to the top, but it felt much longer given the elevation and the temperature (it was about 40 °C).

The photo below was taken from somewhere near the start of the trail, Angels Landing is the peak in the foreground of the photo on the left side.

The view from the top was worth it though!

Given how hot it was on the first day, we set out a little earlier for our second hike to Observation Point. The line for the buses into the Canyon was already quite long, so we took the opportunity to walk the Pa’rus Trail to the second bus stop.

I’m glad the buses were full, as the Pa’rus Trail provided some amazing views along a fairly flat and safe path. It was nice to have a casual stroll and look around without needing to worry about veering off the track!

The walk up to Observation Point runs through Echo Canyon Passage, which was a nice change of landscape and the canyon walls also offered some protection from the sun.

Observation Point itself made the hike worthwhile, it’s a great vantage point for almost all of Zion Canyon.

We were all flying out of Las Vegas, so on Sunday afternoon we drove back to Las Vegas and explored there a bit. It was roughly what I expected - lots of bright lights and tacky touristy things 🤣. The Fountains of Bellagio were pretty impressive though!

Brown County State Park & Nashville, IN

2018-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Last week was my final week staffed in Cincinnati, so I finally got my act together, booked an Airbnb and drove across to Brown County State Park in Indiana. I’ve been meaning to go there for a while, as according to MTB Project and Singletracks the state park and surrounding areas have some of the best trails in Indiana.

I wasn’t disappointed - the state park is amazing. Miles of well maintained trails (gravel, downhill flow, technical sections/rock gardens) coupled with amazing views made the trip worthwhile.

Washington DC

2018-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

I’m at the airport about to head back to Cinci after a couple of days in the US capital.

It was a good trip, though I almost missed my flight thanks to leaving a bag at security and only realising when boarding had already started. The 1 km run to security and back while wearing boots and wondering if I was going to make it got my heart rate up!

The moment I left the airport in DC a motorcade stopped all the traffic which I guess is a fairly regular occurrence here.

On Friday night I walked about 8 km from my hotel past the Marine Corps memorial, around Arlington national cemetery (you’ve probably seen this in movies rows and rows of white tombstones), across into DC, to the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, north to the White House, past the treasury and to a local pub for a nightcap. It’s crazy how close all these attractions are. While I was outside the White House a guy next to me said to his mate, not too quietly, “I think I see Donald standing at the window in his underwear, crying” at which point I burst out laughing.

The big green area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington monument is called the National Mall extends even further east to the US capitol building. Its surrounded by museums, monuments, memorials and other federal buildings.

On Saturday I caught the Metro and started at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum which someone from work recommended, it was filled with really cool stuff. There was also a fighter jet simulator there which would roll upside down and everything, it was pretty great! It was a short run but I think I’d have made myself sick if it was too much longer.

The national art gallery was on the other side of national mall, so I went there next. There was lots of … art. I appreciated a few things but I can only handle so many portraits of stuffy old white dudes. The oldest painting I saw was from 1247, and there were loads of pretty old sculptures. There was a painting by da Vinci and more recent names I know like Andy Warhol.

From there it was a short walk to the United States Capitol, which is the most impressive building around. I was able to go inside the rotunda, but the full tours were all booked out.

The Library of Congress is reachable from the Capitol via a tunnel, so I went there next - another super impressive building. Jefferson was apparently a big reader and his collection of books was there, they weren’t all dated but some were super old.

Another Metro ride home and a run closed out Saturday. Managed 9km at just over 12 km/h (with a few stops for stretching and photos) despite the temperature sitting at around 30°C. Theodore Roosevelt Island was really nice.

New York City

2018-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

I spent the last weekend in New York City, doing the tourist thing. I went with very few plans and met up with another guy from work who has spent a year in NYC. Despite a several hour delay and change of airline & airport on the flight there, it was a successful trip!

Saturday played out as a busy day! In order:

Run in Central Park

Grand Central Station

The High Line - a park that’s been built on decommissioned overhead train tacks
Oculus - a $4 billion transit station

9/11 Memorial - pretty sobering to think there were two massive buildings full of people where the monuments now stand
One World Observatory, 102 floors up

Stone Street - a street in the historic district with lots of old bars, it was absolutely packed though because of Cinco de Mayo

The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog, which won a few ‘worlds best bar’ awards in 2016
Wall St
Trinity Church
Staten island ferry

Times Square
Dinner at Ipanema
A Housewarming in Brooklyn, where we ended the day

Sunday was a quieter day. We spent most of our time in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), an area in Brooklyn with pretty great views of the city. We went to Grimaldi’s pizza, which is one of the old, amazing pizza places in NYC. A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge closed out the weekend:

Miami, Florida Keys & Shark Valley in the Everglades

2018-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

I spent last weekend in Miami! South Beach/South Pointe Pier was the first stop, and the weather played along nicely.

The nearby Art Deco Historic District had some classic Miami colours:

I spent Friday evening wandering around Wynwood. The urban art there is amazing, the below is just a tiny sample.

On Saturday I drove the Overseas Highway from my hotel to Key West.

The drive down was beautiful, though it’s a little bizarre being on some of the really long bridges.

I had to take the obligatory selfie at the Southernmost Point of the Continental US in Key West.

There was loads more to do in Key West, but I didn’t have loads of time given I was doing the drive back to Miami the same day - I definitely have to visit again!

On Sunday I went to Shark Valley in the Everglades where I hired a bike and rode a 24 km loop. There were so many alligators!

The tower at the half way point of the loop provided a good view, and was my last stop for the day before heading to MIA and back to CVG.

Dallas, Trinity River/Bishop Arts/Downtown

2018-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I went for a walk through some of Dallas that I haven’t explored yet, despite technically living here for about 9 months (I say technically, as a lot of that time was spent travelling for work). I made a rough map of my walk using On the Go Map.

Following are a few notable points on the trip.

Trinity River and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge:

Lockhart Smokehouse - a reasonably famous BBQ place, where the ‘Texan Vegetarian’ section comprises of chicken/turkey, instead of beef 🤣:

The delicious taster flight at Bishop Cider Co:

A 30-ft eyeball in downtown Dallas, which is quite hard to miss:

And finally, this sign, which I feel captures so much of what it is like walking in a US city other than New York:

I never did spot the pavement in that area, but at least I know not to expect one to appear now that it’s ‘ended’.

The lack of people walking here continues to blow my mind. I walked an hour from the Bishop Arts District to downtown, and didn’t walk past a single person. A group of young guys went past in a car and one of them yelled “ain’t y’all heard of Uber?”, further affirming my belief that everyone thought I was crazy for walking. I guess it’s not that surprising given a couple of times the pavement I was walking on came to a major road and just stopped, leaving me to backtrack and find somewhere else to go.

Denver and the Rocky Mountains

2017-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Last week I went to Explore DDD (which I would highly recommend) in Denver on Thursday and Friday, joined a tour to the Rocky Mountains on Saturday, and explored Denver on Sunday.

Content of the conference aside, even the view from the venue was pretty amazing:

Sadly the weather was pretty poor on Saturday for the Roucky Mountains visit, and there wasn’t lots to see out of the lookout 12,000 ft (~3600m) up:

Denver is a cool city, figuratively and literally. It’s quite high, almost exactly one mile above sea level. The Colorado capital building is in Denver; the stairs out the front have a plaque to show which one is exactly one mile above sea level, but measurements kept getting more and more accurate, so there are actually three plaques!

A few random facts from the visit:

The trees with yellow leaves in the picture above are aspens, and they actually grow in clumps all connected via a common root system
Denver convention center is the 13th largest building in the world
The Broncos (the Denver NFL team) have sold out every home game for the last 23 years
If attacked by a black bear, fight back
Up high, where the trees can only grow for a few months a year, a tree thats 2-3 inches thick might be 80 years old
A building that’s part of the Denver art gallery contains no right angles
The eagle atop the Denver local government building was made by someone who hated the mayor who planned the construction of the whole building. Apparently you only see eagles with their wings in that position when they’re a) about to take off, or b) defacating
In Denver, 1% of every public construction project must be set aside for a public art installation nearby the building
The Denver mint makes coins for China
This art piece was meant to be for a primary school and was trying to make a statement about the perspective of children (the horse atop the chair is actually a full size horse). However, the school didn’t like it and it ended up at the library. Another installation at the convention center pokes a bit of fun at this piece.
‘Iseewhatyoumean’ is the name of a huge blue bear who’s always trying too see what’s happening in the Denver convention center, and is consistently voted the favorite public are installation

Despite the weather it was a fun weekend, I’m looking forward to going to Explore DDD again in 2018.

Europe

2016-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

The post below is a concatenation of multiple emails I wrote during the trip, apologies if it seems a litte disjointed.

I’m writing the first part of this as I sit on the train on the way to Salzburg, there’s about an hour left of a trip that takes a little under two hours.

I had three very busy days in Munich, managing to see

Deutsches Museum
Marienplatz
BMW welt
BMW museum
Olympic park
Tollwood SommerFestival
Residenz (external and garden)
Englischer Garten
Schloss Nymphenburg, Gardens & Outbuildings
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

The museum was awesome, I kept thinking how much I would have loved a museum like that when I was little. It was primarily a technical museum - the sections were mining, marine navigation, oceanography, foundries, machine tools, metals, power machinery, marine navigation, electric power, new technologies, physics, energy technologies, pharmaceutics, historic aviation, ceramics and glass production, paper, musical instruments, astronomy, measures and weights, computers, mathematics, microelectronics (I geeked out a bit in these last three), chronometery and geodesy. It is a really big place, you could easily spend upwards of an hour in each of those sections. I spent about 6 hours in the museum and easily could have spent twice that, though maybe over two days; there is only so much museum-ing I can handle.

First up on Thursday morning I went to the area of the city where the BMW headquarters and factory are located.

There is also building called BMW Welt (‘welt’ -> ‘world’) which was like a showroom on steroids. They had some Rolls Royces there too because BMW, Mini Coopers and Rolls Royces are all either owned by one company or they have some partnership going on. I planned to do a tour of the BMW factory but it was sold out (until August!) so I settled for the museum.

The BMW museum had all sorts of stuff from the life of the company over the last 100 years and talked about how much it’s changed, from manufacturing military parts to bikes, cars, airplane engines and even pots and pans at the end of the war. They used POW labour at one point during the war which I didn’t expect given a company like BMW, but this was during the war when they had a lot less control over their operations.

Once I was done at the museum I made my way into Olympiapark where the 1972 Olympics were held. This whole area has been turned into a public space and the stadium and halls are still used for events. While I was there an event that’s on this weekend was being setup, and there was wake boarding and some slopestlye mountain biking going on. They were still completing the mountain biking track so no one was doing full runs but there were pretty massive jumps in there. I got a video of one guy casually doing backflips for the crowd!

I also spotted an event called the Tollwood Sommerfestival from a lookout so I went and had a peek there. It had a cool vibe and would have been good fun later in the evening, but it was a long way from where I planned to finish the day.

From the Olympic Park I made my way back to Munich Residenz where the Bavarian monarchs used to live but didn’t have time to go inside. It’s a museum now but I just checked out the externals and went through the courtyard on my way to the Englischer Garten.

The English Gardens are massive, I only walked through half of them in then end despite plans to go from one end to the other. There is and really cool spot at the start of the gardens where the water flows in (not sure if it’s flowing through or recycled through the canal system in the park - maybe both), there were people surfing there! They’ve set something up that makes an artificial wave across the canal.

In the middle of the gardens is this relic of a bit of a China craze that went through Munich a while back. There is this pagoda type thing, and all around is the most German food/drinks setup ever. So many 1L mugs of beer! I had my dinner of sausages and sourkraut there along with a wheat beer before making my way home.

First up on Friday I went to Nymphenburg Schloss which is a huge palace some Bavarian rules used to live in. Construction started in 1664 and there were still buildings being added and pretty big modifications being made to the grounds until 1825. Water is a very big feature throughout the grounds and is provided by a 2km long channel that brings water from a nearby river. There was a really run down looking building called the Magdalenenklause in the gardens, but it was actually built to look that way as an escape from the prim and proper life at court.

After I’d wandered all around the gardens and reached appropriate levels of sunburn, I made my way to Dachau, where there was a concentration camp. This wasn’t a camp where mass executions were carried out in gas chambers, though there was a chamber built there. The people running Dachau instead really believed in ‘extermination through labour’, whereby they overworked people until they pretty much died of exhaustion. The gates to the camp said “work shall set you free”, though freedom in this case normally meant death. There were 32 huts each originally built to house 250 people, but apparently they each held upwards of 1000 people towards the end of the war. Over 40,000 people died/were executed there in the twelve years it was operating. Sobering place.

After Dachau it was time to head to Salzburg which was very easy to figure out. The public transport in Munich is amazing, I had no trouble getting around despite not knowing the city and not understanding what anyone was saying or what anything said.

This is yet another instalment that’s being written while on the train, this time from Salzburg to Vienna. I have internet on this train, and it’s probably faster than what 99% of Australian ISPs provide (thanks Tony). It made me laugh when I connected to WiFi and saw this immediately:

… ‘this is of course free’. In Aus this would cost an arm and a leg and take four hours to set up.

During my two days in Salzburg I visited:

Festung Hohensalzburg - a fortress
The Domquartier - a museum combining the church and residence of the ‘Prince-Archbishop’
Kapuzinerberg - a mountain in the middle of town, not as heavily fortified as Festung Hohensalzburg
Schloss Mirabell - a palace built around 1606
Augustiner Brauhaus
A few other places around Salzburg, though only the exteriors:
- Mozarts geburtshaus and wohnhaus (where he was born and lived, respectively)
- Christian Doppler’s geburtshaus
- About 1000 churches

Festung Hohensalzburg was probably the hightlight for me. There is evidence that there have been people on Festungsberg since year 0180, and construction started on Festung Hohensalzburg in 1077. It’s no wonder people have been using it as a stronghold for so long, it is an amazing place to put up a strong defence (it’s actually never been taken by force, but was surrendered once during the Napoleonic War of the Second Coalition in 1800 when the ruler at the time bailed to Vienna). I think the only people to actually attack it were some peasants in 1525 who were promptly repelled. The fortress was commissioned by the ‘Prince-Archbishops’ of Salzburg. These guys were the supreme rulers, as they’re non-secular princes as well as archbishops of the church. One of the really interesting things there is the ‘Salzburger Bull’, which is a very loud mechanical organ that was used to signal various things to the town (photo here). The fortress was used as a military outpost until 1861.

Next up was the Domquartier, a museum that combines a palace where the Prince-Archbishops used to live and do the princely thing and the cathedral where they used to be pray and carry out their duties as archbishops. The residence building was initially built in 1604 and the cathedral in 1614. The two buildings have been joined on the second level since one of the Prince-Archbishops decided they didn’t like getting their feet wet when walking between the two. The museum is setup so that you follow the path that a visitor would have followed when seeing the Prince-Archbishop, which mainly involved going through several extravagant rooms. The first room is huge and not as fancy, but the further along you get the smaller and more expensive-feeling the rooms get, this is apparently because the more important you were the further into the palace you could get. The rooms all have portraits of Alexander the Great painted on the ceilings, which were all indirectly drawing comparisons between Alexander and the Prince-Archbishops you were about to see. Sadly I don’t have any photos of the interior of the palace as they weren’t allowed.

It was a bit of a rainy afternoon so I started making my way back to the hotel and decided to check out Augustiner Brauhaus on the way. It’s massive - 5,000 square meters internally and with a beer garden that can sit 1,400 people. The beer is rolled out in massive barrels from which people fill up their steins.

On Wednesday I went to Mozarts geburtshaus and wohnhaus but decided I’d had enough of museums and instead went for a walk up the Kapuzinerberg. The Kapuzinerberg is a mountain in the middle of town, not as heavily fortified as Festung Hohensalzburg. There is one castle up there (Franziskischlössl) and a massive wall that goes all the way back towards the river to another stronghold. This second stronghold could be used to defend the eastern side of what was at the time the only bridge across the river (Hettwer-Bastion). I walked the wall back from the Franziskischlössl to the Hettwer-Bastion, going past some signs that looked vaguely like they were warning me about something. Building this wall now would be a pretty impressive feat, let alone building it in three years from 1629-1632. I think it would take the Brisbane City Council about 100 years and several billion of machinery. The Franziskischlössl and the wall were built such that there are no angles were attackers could hide without being under fire. The main drawbridge into Franziskischlössl is protected on three sides, and there were watchtowers built within shouting distance of each other all the way back to Hettwer-Bastion.

From the end of the wall I made my way to Schloss Mirabell - a palace built around 1606, also for the Prince-Archbishops. The palace building itself is still used by the local council and events and concerts are held there, but the gardens are open for all to see. One of the features of the gardens are 14 marble dwarfs which were put there in 1710 as part of an outdoor theatre. Several scenes from The Sound of Music were shot in the gardens.

Ahoy! (which is apparently a common greeting used by people in Bratislava as well as by pirates)

In keeping with the train theme, I’m starting this update on the train back to Vienna.

Since arriving in Vienna on Sunday night, I have checked into our Airbnb, done some exploring of Vienna, and spent the day in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Bratislava just on the Slovakia side of the Austria-Solvakia border and only an hour in the train from Vienna.

We went for a walk along part of Donauinsel on Monday morning. Donauinsel is a roughly 20km long island in Vienna on the Danube River. From there we walked back towards our apartment, hoping to walk through a local university but somehow walking past a horse racing track and a huge construction site. After a lunch at home with groceries from the local supermarket and Kirstens arrival we headed off to explore some of Vienna.

From the bridge to Donauinsel, we’d seen a very large church nearby so we had a look at that first. The church was ‘Heiliger Franz von Assisi’, or the St. Francis of Assisi Church. It was built much more recently than most of the churches around here, construction only started in 1898! The interior was quite plain compared to how it looked from the outside:

After checking out the local church, we caught the U-bahn (Untergrundbahn, or undergroud railway in English) to Schönbrunn Palace. The first part of the mansion there was built in 1548 and was normally occupied by members of the Habsburg Monarchy, including Franz Joseph, the longest-reigning emperor of Austria. It’s been a museum since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. It’s a pretty striking place:

The final stop on Monday was Karlskirche (or St. Charles’s Church) which was built between 1716 & 1737. The columns outside this church are pretty unusual:

I will send another update about Bratislava, but it’s Wednesday morning now so I’m off to explore some of Vienna :)

I’m not writing on a train this time, but having a relaxed day in Vienna as my feet feel like they’re about to fall off. I will probably head out and go to a museum or something this afternoon.

As I said in my last email that we went to Bratislava on Tuesday which was a really good trip. Most of our time there was spent on a free walking tour of the city (‘free’ but tips expected - our guide was really good though). I made a map of the path we took.

There are a lot of statues in Bratislava, including one of Hans Christian Andersen (author of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Nightingale”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “Thumbelina” …) which we would have walked straight past if our guide had not pointed it out. The back of the statue has lots of things from his stories. Another one is the ‘man at work’:

Courtesy of Frettie on Wikimedia Commons

This statue doesn’t really have a name, but a sign warning saying ‘Man at work’ was put up after people kept tripping over him. According to the locals his name is Cumil and he is the quintessential Bratislavian man at work, as he just chills out all day and perves on the tourists. The executioner below has been present for quite some time in one form or another:

This is at the entrance to the lane where the executioner used to live (his house is now a massage parlour!). The lane where the executioner lived was next to Michael’s Gate, part of the fortifications for the city build in the mid 14th century. A second gate was added along with a 90° corner in the 17th century, so that enemies had to slow down even if they breached both gates.

From Michael’s Gate we walked on to the Slovak National Uprising Square. This square, as well as another in the middle of the city, were important sites in the Velvet Revolution which in 1989 ended the communist rule in then Czechoslovakia (the split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia happened in 1993).

After the SNP Square we visited The Church of St. Elizabeth/The Blue Church/The Smurf Church which was built in 1908 and is very, very blue:

After a final short walk we were sitting at the entrance to a building when our guide was telling us more about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. She handed around a physical copy of a rather controversial photograph. I haven’t included it here, as the image isn’t in the public domain, but after looking at it we realised we were sitting on the stairs of the building in the background!

The tour guide also told us some interesting stories about traditions in Slovakia. For men, easter apparently involves pouring water on the women in your life and lightly hitting them with willow sticks. Christmas means it’s time to catch a carp and keep it in the bathtub for a few days before eating it for a Christmas meal.

I did some exploring of Vienna yesterday, but I will send another email about that!

I’ve finally got around to writing up what I got up to in Vienna, while I’m on the train of course! We’re currently on the long ride from Vienna to Mainz. The good thing is the train is currently going at 170 km/h. I’ll split this into a few emails, the first one is about Wednesday when I explored the inner area of Vienna.

I started out at the Belvedere, a complex consisting of two palaces, a botanical garden and even a small zoo. The large palace now houses a museum (or an art gallery, I can’t remember - there are so many galleries and museums in Vienna). The palace was built was built as a summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy sometime in the early 1700’s. Savoy was a big fan of animals and had a small zoo setup there, though that’s all gone now.

On my way to the centre of old Vienna I walked past Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee (the Heroes’ Monument of the Red Army), a Soviet War Memorial built in 1945 (that is at times a little unpopular with the locals, as the Soviets caused quite a bit of damage when they took the city in a battle from 2 to 13 April 1945 and in the weeks following the battle).

From there I walked north to the Ringstrasse (Ring Road) which forms a loop around most of the old buildings and museums. There was lots to see, but I didn’t actually go into many places as they all had a roughly €10 entrance fee and there wasn’t time to do them justice on the Wednesday. I walked past a bunch of places inside the Ringstrasse, including

The ‘Haus der Musik’ was my first stop inside the Ringstrasse, it is kind of like a museum with ways for people to explore sound and how sounds are generated. Entry was a bit expensive and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go in, but there was a choir performing in the lobby. When I heard the person organising the choir speak after one of their songs, I thought they had a bit of an Australian accent. Sure enough, it was a choir from Adelaide called Young Adelaide Voices.
A bunch of embassies
Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera), an opera house that opened in 1869
Albertina, a museum/gallery built in 1805 with approximately 65,000 drawings and approximately 1 million old master prints
Hofburg Palace, a massive complex including Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National Library), Michaelerplatz (an archaeological site), Joseph Square, Heldenplatz, Kaiserappartements (see the image below)
Austrian Parliament Building, completed in 1883 & still used today
Rathaus (town hall) also opened in 1883. There were a bunch of massive screens setup for people to watch the Euro Cup, we came here on Thursday night to watch the Germany/France game
Burgtheater, a theatre built in 1888

Google Maps view of a few of the places I visited

The final stop for the day was Stephansdom (St Stephens Cathedral), one of the larger churches in Vienna (the bell there is the largest in the country and weighs just over 20 metric tonnes). The original church on the site was consecrated in 1147 and the cathedral in its current form was finished in 1359 (some parts are still from the old church).

The one place I did pay to go into on Wednesday was the katakomben (crypts) at the cathedral. The crypts have been there since the 13th century, and everyone who died in the town used to be buried down there. There are remains from 11,000 people (400 people per room) buried under the church over 30 years until 1783 until the smell grew too strong to run masses and they also ran out of space. When they ran out of space they had prisoners empty out full rooms, clean the bones and stack them neatly in ‘bone houses’ so they used less space. We weren’t allowed to take pictures down there, but there were rooms stacked floor to ceiling with all sorts of bones, though skulls & femurs were the most recognisable. Duke Rudolph IV is in the crypt, who died in 1365 (his coffin was replaced in the 18th century as the old one was falling apart).

The final interesting fact from the crypt is that when a member of the Habsburg family (who used to run the show here, the same family I’ve mentioned earlier) died, there used to be disagreement about where their remains should be placed, as there were three locations that were of particular significance to the family. What ended up happening is that each location got a piece - their heart was sealed in a chalice type thing and sent to one location, their other organs where sealed in another larger container and placed in the crypt at St Stephens, and their bodies were put into a coffin and stored at the palace (I think, I might be wrong on the location). Some of the containers that the organs are in are larger than then others, the guide told us this is because some of them sprung a leak! The leaky container just gets resealed in a larger one whenever it happens. Apparently it happened a few years back and they had to close the crypts for a week because of the smell.

On Thursday afternoon I visited Kaiserliche Schatzkammer (the Imperial Treasury).

The treasury was split into two sections, secular and ecclesiastical. There were a bunch of interesting things in there. In no particular order:

a ‘unicorn horn’ from the 1500’s, which was actually the tusk from a narwhal
a part of the ‘True Cross’, though I swear if you added up every piece of the cross you’d have a forest
the point from a ‘holy lance’ in 750 - ‘a guarantee of divine assistance of victory in battle’ (after all, what’s more holy than winning wars?)
artefacts from the ‘Order of the Golden Fleece’, a secular order of chivalry from 1430. I don’t know what is particularly chivalrous about a sheep skin, and the chain their members wore has a golden but droopy looking sheep on it.
the basin the royalty were baptised in - solid gold!
a 2.68 carat emerald vessel which an emperor tried to use as security for a loan in the 17th century, but was too priceless to be valued
a swordbelt for the imperial sword, from the 12th or 13th century
John the Baptist’s tooth (apparently)

I also walked past this store on my way home:

I guess marijuana is legal in Austria!

On Friday I went to Seegrotte Hinterbrühl. “Hinterbrühl” was an underground gypsum mine until 1912 when a blasting operation in went awry and 20 million litres of water flooded the mine. It was opened as a tourist attraction in 1930 and has been open to tourists since then, with the exception of World War II. During WWII the mine was used as a factory for Heinkel He 162 jet fighters during, there were 2,000 people working down there as the underground site couldn’t be bombed.

Currently 50,000 L of water have to be pumped out every day to keep the water level constant. The water is super clean and apparently drinkable, though very mineral heavy. It was also surprisingly cold down there at only 9 °C. The guide was doing his thing in German, but I heard someone else translating for their friend and asked if I could listen in.

Burg Lichtenstein was also nearby. It was originally built during the 12th century, destroyed by the Ottomans in 1529 and 1683, and remained in ruins until 1884, when it was rebuilt. I only realised while doing some reading to write this email that the family who established Liechtenstein the country (or principality?) took their family name from the castle, and the country is named after the family. The castle wasn’t open for tours, so I just had a walk around there and the surrounding forest. There was a amphitheater built near the castle around 1800 which is now all overgrown, it was surreal walking through it.

You can see almost the whole structure in the background of the image below.

I got chatting to the two people I was eavesdropping on at the caves and they recommended going to Schneeberg mountain south of Vienna, so I decided to do that on Saturday.

Getting there was a bit of a debacle - I was on the train which was meant to be going all the way to my destination and we’d been stopped at a train station for a while, which was odd. Soon enough a ticket inspector wandered through the train and said something to me in German which I didn’t understand. After I made it clear I didn’t speak German, he just said the destination station I was going to, and I nodded. He then pointed at a train on the other side of the station and said one of the only German words I know: “schnell, schnell!”. “Schnell” is roughly “quick”, which was enough instruction for me. I galloped and hopped on the other train just before it left.

Eventually I made it to Puchberg am Schneeberg, which is at the foot of the mountain. I’d been planning on maybe hiking up the mountain but I didn’t have enough time so I caught the ‘Schneebergbahn’ train up to the top. The track up is a cog railway that was built from 1895-1897.

There was still a decent walk up to from where the train station is to the peak, and I didn’t have loads of time, so I powered from Berghaus Hochschneeberg (1800m) to Klosterwappenhohle (2076m) and Kaiserstein (2061m) and then back:

(the map above is from OpenStreetMap, which is an open source alternative to Google Maps and often has more detailed walking/hiking/biking tracks).

I was a little underprepared for how windy and cold it would be up there (there is still some snow that hasn’t melted yet). Here is me with my hands firmy in the pockets of my inadequate jacket:

The cold was worth it though, the views were amazing:

Johannesburg & the ThoughtWorks Pan Africa Away Day 2016

2016-02-29T00:00:00+00:00

I’m back in Australia after a quick trip to South Africa to attend the ThoughtWorks Pan Africa Away Day 2016.

I left on Tuesday morning, and was early to the airport in Brisbane so I got on an earlier flight to Sydney before flying to Johannesburg. The flight from SYD-JNB was good, it was the first time I’ve flown with Qantas internationally and I was pretty impressed. I was following the sun so by the time it got dark here I’d been in daylight for about 20 hrs which was a very long day!

ThoughtWorks SA had organised a pickup from the airport and the hotel, so a driver picked me up from the airport. On the way to the hotel he told me about how different areas had different races living in them during apartheid. Some nicer looking houses have very serious security, but apparently home invasions are becoming less of a problem. There were still some questionable characters in parts though so I’m sure home invasions still happen, it’s interesting how much the crime rate varies depending on who you talk to.

I spent Wednesday in the ThoughtWorks office. It’s a nice office and much bigger than Brisbane despite having a similar number of people working out of it. I met some of the locals and another traveller here for the away day from Brazil. All up there were 32 international visitors, some there doing talks, some attending like I was and a lot from ThouthWorks leadership/management. The guests were from Brazil, China, Ecuador, Germany, India, Kenya, Singapore, Turkey, UK and the US.

On Thursday we did a tour of Soweto, an area in Johannesburg. First we walked through some of Motsoaledi, an ‘informal settlement’ (a.k.a. shantytown/favela). There are around 8,000 people living there - you should be able to pick it out on Google Maps. One thing I found pretty crazy in all these areas is how much Coca Cola sponsors things - most people there don’t have running water, but there are Coke signs everywhere!

From there we went to Vilakazi Street, which is the only street in the world to have two Nobel Peace Prize winners living there - Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Mandela’s house is a typical government built house from that era, a very basic four bedroom place. It’s now a (small) museum:

After reading some of what he and his family put up with, it’s pretty amazing he was as forgiving as he was when was released from jail!

We also went to the Hector Pieterson Museum which is all about the anti-Afrikaans Soweto Uprising - in 1976 some politician decided that all schools (where students were already struggling with English) would now run lessons in Afrikaans. A whole load of students refused to go to school, and lead a march and the police reacted pretty brutally - 13-year-old Hector Pieterson was one of the first to be shot dead.

On Friday we left to Khaya iBhubesi, the venue for the Away Day. Despite the name translating to ‘home of the lion’ there wasn’t a lot of wildlife around, though there were some lions there in an enclosure.

Friday and Saturday were mostly talks from ThoughtWorks Global and Africa leadership. There were events on Friday and Saturday night too, so I didn’t get a whole load of sleep (though I think that made jetlag easier to handle when I got back; I slept the whole flight back and then the whole night on Monday too!).

On Sunday we drove back to Johannesburg and then I went with two people from the Ecuador office to the Apartheid Museum. It’s crazy how arbitrary the laws were in that time!

After the museum I was off to the airport.

It was a really good trip even if it was a bit quick. It would have been good if I had more notice and could plan to visit other countries in Africa, but I guess that will have to wait until next time!