Many people have asked me to take lots of pictures on this trip. And I set out with the idea of taking pictures, as well. I just haven't taken any.

I saw a picture I should have taken. A small stand of trees on a snow-covered mountainside, silhouetted by the sun directly behind, with shadows stretching out below, so that the trees and their shadows became the same, a mirror image of each other.

But there was no place to pull out, and I don't have my 80-200, which is the lens for that. I could have used the 50 and struggled through the snowfield to get close enough... But I drove on.

This is indicative of the way in which much of my life works. Photography isn't any different from anything else. I was completely fascinated with it for a while, and now I'm not. Now it's actual work to do it.

Many of the these fascinations are complex and mechanical. Understanding something complex but which doesn't have a lot of chaos inside. Taking pictures, fixing the van, learning to program computers... These are all complicated but they are closed systems. The chaos part enters when one tries to apply these things to human needs. So for instance, I could take pictures of people, and I could exhibit pictures to people, but that's not the game I signed up for.

Taking pictures is two things: Technique and taste and though I'm always learning, I have sufficient of both of those. Having a reason to take pictures is the hard part. What story am I trying to tell, and to whom? I could have trudged through the snow to get those trees, but who would see the story when I finally got around to showing it?

It's arguments with myself like this that keep me from moving forward, in many different realms.

Sometimes when I think about things before I do them, which is a rare occurrence, I manage to connect a few dots and end up doing something right.

Like, for instance, if it's the beginning of spring, and you're driving along and you see a ski area on the side of a mountain.... And there are a lot of new-ish SUVs around, and they all have ski racks... And you come to a funky espresso drink coffeehouse by the highway.... You can be forgiven for betting that there's a really lovely, fit, tattooed woman in her early 20s inside that coffeehouse who is really an enlightened being whose socioeconomic context allows only that she can express her enlightenment by preparing for you a soy latté.

And you'd be right.

It's nice to have friends.

Specifically, friends in Deming and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Spent some time geocaching with sean, ate some excellent Tex-Mex (Irma's), and generally sat around being satiated the rest of the night. Woke up to discover that a screw had decided to let the air out of a tire during the night. Sean's place is a little remote, to say the least, so when I asked if he knew a place to take it, he hauled out the tire repair kit and did it himself. On my way out of the area, I went into town, aired it up, and it's been fine ever since.

And 'ever since' means the time it takes to drive to Socorro, have lunch with another set of friends, and then drive to Albuquerque with these friends in a caravan. Later tonight will be more feasting and sleeping, and then trying to get up early enough to make it to Vail, Colorado, before nightfall. Unlikely. But we'll try.

Now to go find one of those tire patch kits. Also snow chains.

Geocaching is really interesting because people don't know about it. They have no idea why you're looking around that mesquite tree. You're obviously staring at it for some reason. Do you play with denial? Do you try to project an aura of indifference to the mesquite tree? Or do you go ahead and look like a crazy person who is obsessed with regional plants?

Anyway. At a rest area, where there's a geocache. And it's in a mesquite tree. I'm poking around. I look up and the rest area attendant is there, and she's looking at me with a grin on her face, and she says, "Are you on a scavenger hunt?"

Subsequent discussion covered that the highway people know about it and it's cool, and that some people have silly hobbies like geocaching, while others have hobbies that involve public sex in the woods at rest areas, right next to where the geocache is located. Of course, she didn't actually say 'public sex,' but it's not hard to fill in the blanks.

She mentioned that she'd never seen what was inside the geocache, only that she knew where it was. So I invited her to look with me. And she did.

It's a little plastic screw-top jar with cammo tape all over the outside. Inside were the normal trinkety sort of things, but there was one item which I could tell she really wanted. It was a tiny Holy Bible as a keychain, inside a tiny ziplock bag.

She asked, "Since I work here, it's probably against the rules for me to take something out.. right?" I told her, "I don't think anyone is really keeping track." She expressed concerned that someone might be watching from the satellite. I tried to explain that no, no one was watching. The GPS satellites don't work that way. It's all just fun. She didn't seem convinced. But she took the tiny Bible when I handed it to her.

We talked a little more about her job. She explained that she had some problems with her vision, which made it hard to see the trash to pick up sometimes... Talk like that. I'm probably the only person she connected with all day. Who knows. But then it was time for me to go. And this is when she said:

"Are you Christian?" And I said, "Not exactly. Or, really, not exclusively."

And then she continued: "You know why I want that little Bible? It's because like in Russia, when Hitler killed the Christians and the Jews... If something like that were to happen here, I'd have the word of God close to me, easy to keep secret. Like your scavenger hunt." Then she beamed a huge smile, because she had been clever.

"Yes, a spiritual geocache," I said, and she was very happy.

Then we wished each other well and parted ways.

OK, first of all I'm still in Texas. I have been since November. But yesterday was the first day of traveling back.

And by 'traveling back' I mean driving. In a car other than the Vanagon. Because some generous people in my life gifted me with a vehicle that doesn't leave a trail of liquids or parts. And when I say 'some people' I really mean one person. I'll be selling the van when I get back home, which should be an adventure to write about.

Last night I made it to New Braunfels, TX, and proceeded to have a fitful night of not really sleeping. So I'm getting a late start today. I'll probably make it to somewhere in west Texas tonight. Then tomorrow visiting some folks in southern New Mexico. Monday visiting some folks in central New Mexico. Tuesday visiting some relatives who are skiing in Vail. After that... Who knows? Probably west on I-70 to Moab-ish environs. Then book it home.

While I was in Houston, all the little gaps in me were filled in with depression. Now I'm a little giddy, because it's not there to weigh me down at the moment. I think that people who aren't prone to depression don't have as much need to physically remove themselves from situations in order to detach from them. This is one of the reasons I like travel so much, and also one of the reasons I've been in Texas so long; I've been able to avoid my responsibilities to myself at home in WA. So which unhealthy behavior is better for me? Let's find out.

Presented without comment, because if you get it, you get it.

(Where? Here.)

I mentioned my adventure in a hot air balloon.

So I got one. I show up in places where there aren't lots of property lines and where I can rez stuff, and voila. Balloon. Rodeo has been a good sim for this.

Pick up random people, and ask where they'd like to go, and then we go. And then they give me lovely pictures like this:

The simulated balloon can work like a real one, riding around on the wind. But it also can be steered, which is much more enjoyable for everyone. Second Life winds aren't very consistent; they were designed to make flags flap in the breeze, not to model weather patterns.

Situations and scenarios on Second Life are entirely a context for social interaction. Getting to know three people while you float around and do balloon stunts (under bridges, through gorges, just above the water...) is quite pleasant.

Steff Ling got my avatar started smoking pipes. She has this really great churchwarden made by a friend of hers. You can click on it and it shows you a menu of options, such as how much smoke to make, whether you want it to animate your avatar, and whether to show a burn cycle that actually glows and reflects off the smoke. It's really beautiful.

Meanwhile, I made a pipe of my own. And now I sell it:

Not as feature-rich as the churchwarden, but still... A meerschaum churchwarden of absurd proportion, with a smoulder/inhale/exhale cycle.

I'll have to sell three before I break even on the smoking jacket I got for that picture. Which is another story: I was wandering around Caledon looking for a suitably Victorian place to take a product photo. Along comes a furry named Drake Coalcliff in a hot air balloon who shouts "AHOY! Have a seat and we'll explore!" How to resist such an offer?

We floated around Caledon for a while, talking in pseudo-Victorian idiom (because that's what you do there). He offered to help me out with my product shot, and then a little while later, he was giving me the picture and I was giving him a pipe.

Second Life is like that sometimes.

Official Linden 'blog says this:

Using content, particularly advertising, to deliberately and negatively affect another resident’s view so as to sell a parcel for an unreasonable price, will be deemed unacceptable and dealt with as a violation of our community standards.

And, I mean sheesh... Only a few days after I started buying land to address this problem.

I thought I'd also show off some of our artwork, in order of installation:

The Metaverse HQ of the Association For Whimsical Land Use. Soon there will be a building here which will explain things and link to all the artworks. The plot is basically delimited by the yellow square. It doesn't include the cross.

Anneliese Swindlehurst's 'Perfect Woman' painting offsets the image of the Nicole avatar ad, somehow managing to scold us for even entertaining the idea. Note the cross. (SLURL)

Nostrum Forder's untitled object is alive with motion and shifting color, which we can't see here. The text at the top reads 'All Your Conceptions About Art Are Wrong.' (SLURL)

I picked up this freebie thing at Tooter Claxton's store. It's an ad farm. It's not all that clear from the photo what's going on here, but there's a little pen with tiny ads growing out of the ground, and in the foreground is a packet of ad seeds with typically excellent graphic design. Plant the ad seeds and watch them grow! One day I'll work up the courage to ask Tooter to contribute something site-specific. (SLURL)

I installed my own Old, Old Radio on a larger plot in the midst of an ad farm. It used to be flat, but I made it into a more grassy ravine with trees. You can barely see the cross in the background. (SLURL)

Steff Ling decided to go with the full-contact criticism. She wanted to have it make sex noises, but I thought that might be counter-productive. (SLURL)