![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Pre-travel Sunday...
Nov. 3rd, 2002 05:32 pmThere's something about the Sunday before a week of travel that makes it special.
Today, it was getting up at 6 am and getting a good start to the day. Drew was up on the mountain, but that didn't deter me from applying some of that engineering know-how (the part about levers and inclined planes) to load the pick-em-up truck with a huge box of trash that we packed several months ago (and which had been sitting outside, under the porch), as well as with our former washing machine.
While you can arrange for garbage to be picked up in our neck of the woods, many people take their trash either to the collection point on Trujillo Road or to the county landfill that's located another 6 miles down Trujillo. I'd misread the sign the last time I'd passed by the collection point, and thought it was the landfill that operated on Sunday. I was wrong, but there was no harm done.
I went to dispose of the trash with Sasha sitting next to me. Unlike some dogs, who eagerly eyeball the passing scenery and can think of no better fun than to stick their head out the window into a 40-mph breeze, Sasha sits quietly on the passenger side and directs her attention in the general direction of the steering wheel and the dashboard. Weird.
Anyway, the major reason for driving to Atlanta (stopping by Houston on the way back to pick up Lee) has fallen away. The kid has landed a job she's excited about. More power to her. So today, Galina and I estimated what it would take to drive to Atlanta and back from here, and pegged the cost at around $500 (assuming $50 per night for a motel, $20 a day for food, and 3200 miles at 20 miles per gallon and $1.40 per gallon). If I only spent one night in a motel in each direction, the cost comes down $100. There is, however, no getting around the fact that I'll lose two days in each direction watching the miles turn on the odometer.
So I checked out a few of the el-cheapo travel sites on the web, including hotwire.com (not an endorsement). The basic approach all these folks take is that if you want to travel on the cheap, your choices are going to be limited. I took a chance on a fare from Durango to Atlanta and lucked out with a reasonable departure on Tuesday that gets me into Atlanta at 11 pm, and a reasonable return that departs Atlanta at about 9 am and gets me back home around 2 pm on Sunday.
Galina wanted to press on and redo my hotel accommodations, but I drew the line there. Despite the fact I'll be paying a premium rate at the conference hotel, I've found the extra expense worth the cost, since I don't have to traipse around with everything I might need while attending the conference, I don't have to watch the clock if something is going on at night, I don't have to worry about catching cabs to wherever, I don't have to get up earlier in order to get out the door to the conference, etc.
* * * Galina and I finally watched Dersu Uzala last night, a 1975 film written and directed by Akira Kurasawa in a joint venture with Mosfilm. The story concerns an old Goldi hunter, named Dersu Uzala, who comes across a small military engineer detachment that's mapping the Ussuriisk Territory, and ends up being their guide. The old man has no idea how old he is, but he appears to have accumulated a tremendous amount of "woods smarts," that wins the respect of both the officer of the detachment (through whose voice we experience much of the film) and the enlisted men.
We are shown a clash of cultures, both of which are alien to our own, but as I watched the film, I could not but understand and empathize with what the old man was going through. I found his language - a sort of pidgin Russian - strangely crystal clear (maybe because I once spoke like that? :^).
Anyway, I enjoyed the film.
* * * So, all of the pre-departure things I wouldv'e done today, I'll do tomorrow instead. Plus since my mode of travel has changed, I'm going to have to reassess the scope of the stuff I'm taking along with me. (I had intended, for example, to take my Linux laptop with me, but that won't be feasible now.)
For now, though, it's off to the kids' place for dinner. I'm looking forward to this.
Cheers...
Today, it was getting up at 6 am and getting a good start to the day. Drew was up on the mountain, but that didn't deter me from applying some of that engineering know-how (the part about levers and inclined planes) to load the pick-em-up truck with a huge box of trash that we packed several months ago (and which had been sitting outside, under the porch), as well as with our former washing machine.
While you can arrange for garbage to be picked up in our neck of the woods, many people take their trash either to the collection point on Trujillo Road or to the county landfill that's located another 6 miles down Trujillo. I'd misread the sign the last time I'd passed by the collection point, and thought it was the landfill that operated on Sunday. I was wrong, but there was no harm done.
I went to dispose of the trash with Sasha sitting next to me. Unlike some dogs, who eagerly eyeball the passing scenery and can think of no better fun than to stick their head out the window into a 40-mph breeze, Sasha sits quietly on the passenger side and directs her attention in the general direction of the steering wheel and the dashboard. Weird.
Anyway, the major reason for driving to Atlanta (stopping by Houston on the way back to pick up Lee) has fallen away. The kid has landed a job she's excited about. More power to her. So today, Galina and I estimated what it would take to drive to Atlanta and back from here, and pegged the cost at around $500 (assuming $50 per night for a motel, $20 a day for food, and 3200 miles at 20 miles per gallon and $1.40 per gallon). If I only spent one night in a motel in each direction, the cost comes down $100. There is, however, no getting around the fact that I'll lose two days in each direction watching the miles turn on the odometer.
So I checked out a few of the el-cheapo travel sites on the web, including hotwire.com (not an endorsement). The basic approach all these folks take is that if you want to travel on the cheap, your choices are going to be limited. I took a chance on a fare from Durango to Atlanta and lucked out with a reasonable departure on Tuesday that gets me into Atlanta at 11 pm, and a reasonable return that departs Atlanta at about 9 am and gets me back home around 2 pm on Sunday.
Galina wanted to press on and redo my hotel accommodations, but I drew the line there. Despite the fact I'll be paying a premium rate at the conference hotel, I've found the extra expense worth the cost, since I don't have to traipse around with everything I might need while attending the conference, I don't have to watch the clock if something is going on at night, I don't have to worry about catching cabs to wherever, I don't have to get up earlier in order to get out the door to the conference, etc.
We are shown a clash of cultures, both of which are alien to our own, but as I watched the film, I could not but understand and empathize with what the old man was going through. I found his language - a sort of pidgin Russian - strangely crystal clear (maybe because I once spoke like that? :^).
Anyway, I enjoyed the film.
For now, though, it's off to the kids' place for dinner. I'm looking forward to this.
Cheers...
