Here is the first gallery of pictures, taken on the way to and in Barcelona

Local time: 2:12 pm, Tuesday Afternoon. Location: The middle of the Adriatic Sea, en route to Venice.

I'm writing a lot, but I didn't bring my floppy down to dump it all to the site. First installment should be up within a few hours. As it's around 5am Pacific time, that means it's probably already up by the time most folks are reading this.

-Kevin

Hey all! Hello from Barcelona! True blogging will probably wait a bit until I have a more reliable (or at least comprehensible) means for doing so. Specifically, I have two tays worth of pictures ready to go in a web gallery, but the means to only put 1.4 Megs of photos up. Blar, blar, long story, paying for access by the minute.

Anyhow, on with the trip: The flights from Oakland to LAX to Munich to Barcelona went largely without hitches with the exception of Emily´s airporter never coming. They were 5 minutes late: She called and they said they'd be there in 15 minutes. They were 20 minutes late: She called and they said they wouldn´t make it at all. Panic and Taxi later everything was okay except for a stressed Emily.

Barcelona is beautiful. The pictures would speak louder than words, and they will, but they may wait until tomorrow, when we get on board the ship which has a reliable, albeit pricy, internet cafe.

So this is how I plan to blog on the trip: Virtually all the photos I take will go into web galleries and will be posted within a day or two of the stop. Later on (possibly much later on, as in after the trip) I'll go back and do nice things like culling, cropping, color adjusting, and all the stuff most of you could probably care less about.

What I will do is attempt to supply a narrative of some of the more interesting, or otherwise incomprehensable pictures, basically letting the pictures tell the story of the journey, like a little internet sitting on my shoulder.

So the cruise portion of the trip begins tomorrow, when we set sail for Nice, France. Along the way I'll relate the sights seen in Barcelona. Right now it's hot and humid here, but the sights are great, the people nice, and I'm enjoying one of the few places I can actually speak enough of the language to understand and be understood (weird internet cafe computer rules notwithstanding).

Well, I'm off to upload the first part of the first gallery, which will probably be mostly travel pictures. Please pay no mind to the broken links clicking through to the later pictures. They'll be up soon.

Hope all is well wherever you call home, and I'll write again soon.

PS: I´m keeping a record of 'interface abnormalities' I find along the way, like the 'pull-flush' toilet. You can take the geek away from his job, but you can't take the job out of the geek I guess.

So, after months of planning (well, mostly months of waiting and days of planning) today the Foxes set off on Vacation 2K1: Europe!

Of odd coincidences, Jim and Diane are visiting the Bay Area at the same time as I'm visiting their European shores, which means that while I won't be able to see them as much as I'd like, they'll see a whole lot of my apartment, as they're housesitting for the duration. [waiving] "Hi!"

Fred's caring for Kisa, the bags are packed, the tickets are, well, ticketles, I have my passport and my toothbrush and, most importantly, my digital camera, an extra battery and a net connection on-board ship, and so I invite you to join me on a tour through the Mediterranian. Web galleries at every stop and prosaic wit thrown in for free.

The first stop is Barcelona. Actually, the first stop is the Oakland Airport, then Los Angeles International, then Munich, then Barcelona, about 20 hours later. So, it's a day's travelling for me and probably another day or so before the first report.

There's something weird and powerful about having 20 people (okay, big family trip, did I mention?) from various places in the country wake up on the same morning, drive to their respective airports with their respective lives packed into rolling suitcases or otherwise put on pause, and hop on planes to meet at junctures along the way to the final destinations, individual nodes coming together like tributaries forming streams and a mighty river, or like an inverted family tree, racing backwards through time.

What it means to me is spending some quality time with family I really only see once or twice a year. Thanks to Alan for such a fabulous trip, and it's my goal this trip to really try to bring the excitement onto the blog.

I've got the Gameboy, Powerbook, Elph, and Archos Jukebox. I'm ready to go for a ride.

While we're all gushing over Ernie's triumph, let us not forget that you heard it here first.

So I jumped onto the blogwagon and bought 69 Love Songs - The Box Set by The Magnetic Fields. This 3 CD set with (you guessed it) 69 songs (23 per disc) is really damn eclectic. They break rules all over the place too. Great sounds, with maybe a lower-key sound than the B-52s but better lyrics. Kind of a TMBG experimental-esque sound. There are some fantastically original songs in here, most of which are only 2 minutes.

Here's one of my favorites, "Absolutely Cuckoo" which happens to be the first track on the first disc:

Don't fall in love with me yet
we only recently met.
True I'm in love with you but
you might decide I'm a nut.

Give me a week or two to
go absolutely cuckoo,
then when you see your error
then you can flee in terror.

Like everybody else does
I only tell you this 'cause
I'm easy to get rid of
but not if you fall in love.

Know now that I'm on the make
and if you make a mistake
my heart will certainly break
I'll have to jump in a lake

And all my friends will blame you.
There's no telling what they'll do.
It's only fair to tell you
I'm absolutely cuckoo.

If that sounds at all good, get the CDs. You won't be disappointed.

Isn't it something like the name of your first pet and the street you lived on when you were born?

That would explain Bambi Francisco, I guess.

Hey, I still fully intend to write up my Weakest Link experience, but since I don't want to keep folks waiting, and today and tomorrow are especially busy days for me, I'm posting the Weakest Link Tryouts Gallery now for your viewing pleasure.

If anything, you'll probably want the narrative more after seeing the pictures, to help make sense of the montage.

If you just want the gritty details or another perspective, check out the field reports from Ernie or Min Jung.

Happy Monday!

Fluffy Battle Kitten is a particularly nice weblog, and not just because the name comes from Buffy TVS. In just 20 minutes reading it's made its way into my bookmark list and my recommended sites.

I was walking by the ASUC travel agency today and checked out their flight fare board. Not that I'm planning on making any flight arrangements in the near future, but I was startled to see that round trips from San Francisco to Tokyo are down to $550. Seriously.

I mean, if you have the time and the interest, how could you not? I've never seen them for less than $1200 RT. Japan is definitely in my 'top five' places that I still need to visit.