High-Octane Gas: Boon or Scam?

For years, I’ve always wondered about the three grades of gas offered at the gas station.  While I know that they recommend the higher grades for certain vehicles — I always use the mid-grade for my Land Rover, and I’m supposed to use the high grade for my scooters — you have to wonder if there is really any difference between the grades.

Can you get better performance (better gas mileage is the most measurable thing) from using higher grades?  More importantly, can you get enough better performance to make it worth buying?

According to this Time Magazine article, a test by Car and Driver magazine says “No”.

However, that’s not exactly what they said.  Here is the actual article, from 2001.  Summarized, what it says is that cars which are intended to run on regular unleaded get very little or no added horsepower and speed from a higher octane, cars which are intended to run on premium fuel experience a drop in horsepower and other performance from a lower octane, and carbon buildup over time means cars designed for lower octane fuels may need to upgrade due to carbon build up and the like.  (One thing I note is that they used only low and high grades — 87 and 91 octane — not the midgrade 89 octane which is also an option.

Before I saw this Time article, though, I had decided to do my own test.  I had noticed that while gasoline prices have climbed — I remember that I paid $1.99 a gallon for low grade on Labor Day Weekend in 2001, and that was the lowest in months, vs. $4.15 a gallon yesterday for high grade — the price difference between the grades has stayed the same, about 10 cents a gallon.  Which means that as a percentage of the price per gallon, premium grade gasoline has effectively become cheaper — it was a 5% markup in 2000, but only about 2% in 2011 — and that means that the viability of any performance (mileage) increase is only half as much to make it worth while.

So let’s look at my Land Rover.  I get between 16 and 19 miles per gallon, depending mostly on city vs. highway driving, although factors like weight in the rear end also factor (if I add a 50 pound piece of equipment, my mileage on a highway trip increases by about 1 mpg).  For the sake of the argument, let’s call it 18 mpg.

I have roughly a 15 gallon tank.  At $4.00 a gallon for 89 octane (it’s a little more than that now, but round numbers work the math easier), that’s a $60 fill up; at $4.10 a gallon for 91 octane, that’s $61.50.  Yup, just $1.50 difference, less than the price of a drip coffee at Starbucks, less than half a gallon of gas; put up against a $60 fill up, that’s almost insignificant.  More to the point for doing math, it’s a 2.5% change in the price.

So back to the mileage.  If I pay 2.5% more for the gas, then I need to get a 2.5% increase in my gas mileage to compensate.  (I’m not sure that’s completely right. With the way percentages work, it’s more likely that I actually need something like a 2.4% mileage increase, but the difference there is not going to be enough to alter the test results any more than my use of “round numbers” will.  If someone wants to work out the numbers more exactly, feel free.)  On an 18 mpg average, that means 18.45 mpg — increase just 1/2 mile per gallon and I will have “won”.

What did my tests show?  I shifted to premium octane for several fill ups, including a road trip to Portland (about 180 miles each way).  My highway mpg increased to over 20, and my city average was over 18 (city would normally be in the 16–17 range); calculated out, I got an increase of between 1.2 and 1.7 mpg over the course of the tests.

That is, I got 2–3 times as much increase in gas mileage as I needed to make the increase in cost worthwhile.  Which means I actually save about $2–3 per fill up by not needing to do them as often.

Let me note a couple things where my tests differ from those of Car and Driver:

• I’m driving a 2005 vehicle.  Technology changes may have improved the performance differences.
• Car and Driver used expert drivers, test tracks, multiple vehicles, and more controlled circumstances, while my test was more informal, real world, and isolated to a single vehicle.
• I tested miles per gallon, while they tested horsepower and speed.
• I used a change from 89 to 91 rather than from 87 to 91, on a vehicle aimed (I think) at the midrange to start with.
• The change in gas prices in the past 11 years has magnified the value of any performance benefits gained, which changes the impact of the results.
• My Land Rover gets relatively low miles per gallon.  Cars which already get higher mileage need to have a bigger value increase to compensate.  (A car which gets 40 mpg has to break, hmm, 41 mpg.  Ooooo…)

I’ll also note this:

• Time Magazine relied on an 11 year old article, but didn’t identify that and the limits that go with it in their article.  Shame on them.  (Some education for when you read something referencing other sources: check what the original said rather than trusting a summary of it, since that might reflect their own biases.  That’s why I’ve provided links to both stories.)

So what is the net effect of this test?  For myself, I have shifted over to premium on my Land Rover (which frankly I don’t drive much anyway; I have put at least twice as many miles on the scooter as on the car for the past 3.5 years).  Should you do likewise?  No, not just on the results of my tests.

But if you are pained by the cost of a fill up these days and if you are curious enough to track your gas mileage for a month or so, I think you should run the same informal tests for yourself.  Get a mileage baseline for both mostly city and mostly highway driving for a few fill ups at the grade you currently use, and then switch to one grade up and track how things change.  Worst case, you’ll see no change of note and you’ll be out the cost of a few cups of coffee over the course of a month.  But I think there’s a good chance you’ll also see enough of a difference to consider making the switch completely.
 

Are All Downtown Bicyclists Assholes?

You’re a bicyclist in downtown Seattle, riding amidst automobile traffic, and the light you are coming up to changes.  Do you:

1. Slow down with the rest of the traffic and maintain your position
2. Lane split past the slowing/stopping cars to come to the “bicycle box” right by the crosswalk, giving you a jump forward when the light changes
3. Pedal like crazy and lane split, then zoom out into the intersection after the light changes to red and make a big sweeping left turn just as traffic going in your new direction starts to roll

You’re a bicyclist in downtown Seattle, riding amidst automobile traffic behind a pickup truck, and traffic is stopped at a light.  When the light changes, the pickup truck starts to roll forward and make a right turn, but then stops partway through the turn due to a pedestrian in the crosswalk.  Do you:

1. Stop and wait for the truck to be able to continue his turn
2. Edge around his back bumper, maybe even a little into the next lane, so you can squeak past
3. Edge around his back bumper, maybe even a little into the next lane, so you can squeak past, and then bang your fist on his rear fender and yell at him for blocking traffic

If you said “a”, you are a tame bicyclist.  (I’m sure you would call yourself “defensive” or something else that makes you sound better.)  You’re not in a hurry to get somewhere, and you figure you’re better off (safer) by staying right where you are.

If you said “b”, you are an aggressive bicyclist.  You are willing to push the envelope of what is technically allowed in order to get where you are going in a timely manner, and you know that you can get away with it.  But you still totally respect that there are other vehicles on the road with you, and that they are way bigger than you.

If you said “c”, you may have been one of the two bicyclists I saw within the space of a minute at the intersection of Pine and 5th last Friday.  You’re totally an asshole and an idiot.  Someday, you’re going to get hit or counter-attacked by a pissed off driver and you’ll likely have deserved it.

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Updated on January 18, 2011

This behavior is apparently called APD (Aggressive Pursuit of Destination), per this listing in Schott’ Vocab Blog.

10,000 Miles on a Scooter — 22 Months — 10 Questions

As of about February 1, 2010, I have ridden roughly 10,000 miles on my scooter.  Here is a series of 10 Questions people might have about scooters and riding them.

1. What do you ride?

I ride a royal blue Kymco People S scooter.  It is a bit different from many scooters, with a somewhat wider front (better wind blocking), a windscreen, a larger seat, and a bigger front wheel.  And the design doesn’t look like a Vespa knock-off (which I liked).

I have three helmets: a full-face with a hinged front (silver), a 3/4-face (silver), and a “skid lid” (black, for summer and buddy riders).  I have also added a Givi trunk on the back, which gives me a good amount of storage (but especially because only the “skid lid” helmet will fit under the seat, so I need it to hold the helmet when I park).

The engine size on my scooter is large enough that I can take it on pretty much any roads I need to.  Not all scooters at this lower end (especially 50cc engines, of course, which are limited to city streets) are able to actually deal with highway speeds, but mine can maintain 55–60 mph much of the time.  (I slow down on steep hills, and I’ve had it above 70 on descents.)  Basically, I just stick to the right-hand lane most of the time and cruise along right about at the speed limit (as opposed to 10 mph over it as many cars prefer to do); so long as I don’t impede other cars, I’m generally fine.

2. When and where did you get it?

I bought my scooter (which I have named “Donny”) in mid-April 2008.

Prior to buying the scooter, I spend a couple weeks checking out models at various dealers around the city (and even down in Kent, 30 minutes south of home; at the time, I was gong down there once a week, so it was reasonably convenient).  It seemed that every time I turned around, I was finding out about yet another scooter brand.  In addition to just checking out looks, visiting the dealers was important for physically sitting on the different models, to imagine myself riding one and seeing how they felt.  I settled on the Kymco becasue it felt bigger and more stable than many of the comparable engine size models.

Ultimately, I bought mine from Interbay Scooters in Seattle, on the recommendation from my manager, who had bought his from Interbay as well.  Some scooter fans I know don’t like Interbay (or didn’t; they have since closed when the owners retired), but I have had good relations with them and good service all along the way.

3. Why did you get it?

Remember the summer of 2008?  Remember the gas prices in the summer of 2008?  Between $4 and $5 a gallon?  In March of that year, I could predict that was going to happen, as prices were already climbing and they always jump further for the summer months.

My car gets about 15–18 mpg (it’s a small SUV, and never was high on the chain of MPG anyway).  About a year before this, I had done a rough calculation that each 5-mile trip to Capitol Hill and back (“to the bars”: shorthand for any in-city round trip further than the 1/2 mile to the grocery store, including the 6.5-mile trip to work) cost me about 2/3 of a gallon of gas.  When gas crossed $4 a gallon, that closed in on $2.50 a trip, which equates to “a beer”.  This meant that I started to evaluate whether trips were “worth” it; going for just one beer would double the actual price of that beer due to the overhead of just driving there and back.

My manager and several co-workers rode scooters and motorcycles, and the cognizance that they got really good gas mileage (like 4 times what my car got) made me ask more questions and start to do some research.  Our building at work has a large concrete area out back where the scooters and motorcycles park, and it turns out that parking is free, which beats the pants of the (subsidized) $90 a month I was paying to use the garage.  In other words, between gas and parking savings, the scooter would be paying for itself.  Saving money is good.
And of course, what boy hasn’t wanted to zoom zoom on a motorcycle, at least a little?

While I did some shopping around to look at different models and read tons of online reviews, my manager let me get some riding practice on his scooter a few times, just in the parking lot across the street from our building, down an alley, and around the block.  It was enough to make sure that I could handle a scooter and actually would want to.

4. Why didn’t you get a “real” motorcycle?

Yes, that’s the way some people phrase the question.  To them, “scooter” equates to “moped” which equates to “bicycle that you can cheat with,” I think.  At a minimum, they see a scooter as a “toy” motorcycle.

Without getting too defensive, such a question is generally clueless, although there is a germ of truth in the idea.

First, there is a legal definition of a “moped”, as defined by engine size (under 50cc) and speed (under 30mph).  Almost nothing you see on the streets that you would identify as a “scooter” falls under that definition.

Most scooters that you will encounter are in the 49–150cc range.  49cc scooters are appropriate for in-city use, topping out their speed between 30–40 mph (slower with more weight and uphill, of course).  I have been told that 125cc and above are allowed to go on the freeway and highway, although not all are appropriate for such; some really don’t have the power to sustain highway speeds, and some are small or light enough that they just don’t belong in traffic at that speed or are prone to wind issues.  But scooters go up from there: 250cc, 500cc, 650cc, just as big and suitable for traffic as any motorcycle.  (In fact, some of the large scooters end up looking not too far off from the larger engine motorcycles used by the police.)

There are few practical differences between a scooter and a “motorcycle”.  (When you say “motorcycle”, think about the visual and physical differences between a cruiser and a sport cycle, yet they are both “valid” motorcycles, right?).  Most (but not all) scooters are automatics, and most (but not all) motorcycles are manual.  Scooters generally have the gas tank under the seat, except that the larger ones have the tank between the riders legs (like a motorcycle).  Handlebar controls and displays aren’t notably different.

Ultimately, the biggest differences between a scooter and a motorcycle are (a) the physical floorboard that scooters have, which encourages a standard seated posture vs. the leaning forward or reclining back postures of sport and cruiser cycles.  (If anything, having a posture between the other two should help prove scooters are part of the larger motorcycle continuum.)  And (b) scooters have a physical cut-through from side to side which motorcycles do not.  (Which can actually be seen as a safety feature, reducing the risk of leg injuries and being trapped beneath a fallen vehicle.)

So, having argued that a scooter is a “real” motorcycle, why did I choose a scooter over another type of motorcycle?  Why didn’t I want something more traditional for a leatherman?  Ultimately, the answer lies in my goal for getting the vehicle — primarily for in-city commuting, to work and the bar and other short hop locations — plus the influences I had around me from co-workers, most of whom rode scooters rather than motorcycles.  Oh, and the price: scooters with small engine sizes are priced less than motorcycles.

One final note is that my initial intent was purely for in-city commute riding, for which I was initially looking at the 49cc options — lighter and cheaper — but I was advised to get at least a 125cc due to the greater power and options it would give me.  As I was told, “Get the bigger one, because in two months, you’ll want it.”  And that was very true.

5. Did you need a special license?

You need a Motorcycle Endorsement for scooters over 50cc (in Washington state; laws may differ elsewhere).  This isn’t a separate license, but an add-on to a regular motor vehicle license.  Obviously, it’s hard to get that endorsement before you get (and get used to) your vehicle, so like with auto licenses, you pass a written test and you can get a temporary permit.  (This shows as a letter on your license, which means you get a new picture and new license, $15 please.)  This allows you to ride the vehicle for three months, but with a couple reasonable limits: no riding after dark, and no passengers, both of which take a level of skill that brand new riders do not have.

(No, of course I didn’t strictly adhere to those limits.  Before the three months was up, I had ridden after dark a few times and with a passenger once.  But those were after a solid two months or so of riding on a daily basis, and I was really careful.)

The recommended path to a endorsement, and the one pushed by the state, is to attend a riding course, typically two 8-hour days on the weekend and about $100, where you can either use your own vehicle or they will supply one for you.  Once you successfully complete the course, you automatically get your endorsement.

The classes are popular.  In spring of 2008, ramping up for the summer and with lots of people on two-wheeled motorized vehicles for the first time, the classes were packed.  Want to take one?  You get your choice: register for one three months from now (which you’ll notice is after the permit would run out), or pay $300 (triple) to get in one only a month out.

You know something?  I’m cheap, my weekends are busy, and I’m a believer that I can do it myself, so I said “Fuck that” and decided to ride the scooter as much and as often as I could.  I rode it to work every day (except one day when I needed to take the cat to the vet).  Once it got light enough later in the evening, I rode it to dance practice, and by June, even to dancing (although, yes, it was twilight and beyond when I would get home, shame shame).  I also rode it to Kent once a week (15 miles, half of it on the freeway; riding to work also had a short stint on the freeway, depending on the route I took).  I even rode all the way to Union once (50 miles each way, plus a ferry trip).

In short, I got lots and lots of experience, riding on all kinds of surfaces, in all kinds of weather, at all speeds and traffic levels.  I also prepared for the riding test bywatching YouTube videos of tests and finding where the test was done locally so I could practice the course (as best as I could figure it).

The course involves tight cornering, straight driving, fast braking, and dead slow weaving in and out among cones.  It was revealing to watch others take the test before I did.  (People had arrived as much as an hour early, so I was like 20th that morning.)  Some were massively unprepared for the test (both scooter riders and those on standard motorcycles), to the point I wondered if they were trying to take the test with mere hours of riding under their belts.  The cones was especially difficult for many people.

So how did I do?  100%.  Aced the test.  (I braked a bit too hard/too fast for my own tastes in that piece of the test, but it was still fine for the test monitor.)
Guess there’s no harm in being cheap and busy and practicing a lot.

6. What about insurance?

Yes, insurance for a motorcycle or scooter is required by law (although you don’t have to show proof of insurance to get your endorsement or vehicle license, I think).

Remarkably, it’s both easy to get and cheap.  I got mine via Geico (they do my car insurance as well).  First year was something like $165 for the year, and then it dropped to like $120.  $10 a month!.  For a year.  Damn!  My car insurance costs that much for a month!  (Actually, it also dropped a little last year, but still….)

Of course, when you think about it, a collision in a car is going to do a lot of damage to the car, and to whatever you hit, perhaps fatally if that’s a person.  My scooter weighs, what, 300 lbs?  Probably weighs 1/8 of my car, cost 1/8 of my car, and would only do 1/8 the damage if I hit something.  Although 1/8 fatal might still be fatal, I guess.

7. Are scooters safe?  Have you had any accidents?

Erm, um, well…  That depends on your definition of “safe”, doesn’t it?  I have had no injury worse than a sprained wrist (knock on wood).

About six weeks after I got the scooter, a motorcycle rider waiting for the same Southworth-Fauntleroy ferry as I was told me “There are only two kinds of motorcycles in the world: those that have been dropped, and those that haven’t been dropped yet.”  (I had dropped mine earlier that day, pulling into a gravel parking lot.)

As best I can recall, here are my scooter boo-boos:

• April 2008: made too tight of a U-turn; dropped it rather than hit a parked SUV
• May 2008: parked on a downhill sloping cobblestone street; couldn’t hold it up when I took it off the stand
• June 2008: pulled into a gravel parking lot
• August 2008: a woman hit the parked scooter in the QFC parking lot and knocked it over
• October 2008: went down on wet pavement while riding, avoiding a car blindly changing lanes; abraded my leather jacket and scraped my elbow
• March 2009: another too-tight U-turn (and I may have been tipsy, shame one me)
• March 2009: someone backed into my parked scooter in West Seattle and knocked it down; I got a small insurance settlement on that
• August 2009: miscalculated the slope of my steep driveway and tipped over from parked position; sprained my wrist trying to stop the fall (and I’m still having problems, 6 months later)
• December 2009: hit black ice while riding; wrenched my shoulder

So while I’ve had my share of dropping the scooter, my worst injury has been a sprained wrist (which is still bothering me know and then, five months later), a total of a few hundred dollars in mostly cosmetic damage to the scooter, and no damage to other vehicles/buildings/people.  (It’s hard to compare to the car, since you can’t “drop” it in the same way.  But if you count bumper taps on up, on my car I’ve been living with a crushed bumper corner for 4.5 years and a slowly growing crack in the windshield for 4 years; fixing those would be over $2000, so I haven’t bothered.)

8. What is great about riding a scooter?  And specifically your model?

Where do I start?

• No cage.  Motorcyclists sometimes refer to cars as “cages”, to indicate that the people in them are stuck in a box.  This is very true.  Not having the roof, the doors, the hood, and the backseat/trunk/tailgate around you increases what you can see immensely.  Did you see that house over there?  How about the raccoons by the side of the road?  Did you get a look at the flowers down that hillside past the guard rails?  See how cool the shadows of the telephone poles are?  Did you catch those clouds racing by overhead? You miss massive amounts of stuff just because the cage of the car blocks your view.
• Sounds and smells.  You can smell the rich aromas of the coffee roaster or the bakery with no rolled-up car windows in the way.  (Okay, you can smell the dairy farm, too.)
• The freedom for small jaunts.  Ever feel guilty that you’re firing up the SUV to go a mile to the store for milk and butter, because it would take an hour to walk, but you need just that couple of things?  (You should.)  Much less guilt on the scooter.
• The freedom for pleasure trips.  During the height of the gas prices in 2008 (and they are creeping up again in 2010!), driving somewhere just for a jaunt, a Sunday drive, was expensive and thus not to be done.  Riding a scooter for a 4-hour round trip?  It cost me like $20 including two ferry fares and an ice cream snack.  Even my trip to Vancouver in August 2008 was only like $30 in gas.
• Parking.  Ever drive around for 20 minutes trying to find a space, and end up paying through the nose for a garage or pay lot?  Now try it on a vehicle that takes 1/3 the space of a car (1/4 the space of an SUV).  Oh look, there’s a fractional space now, and it’s right in front of where you were going!  Any time cost in putting on coat and gloves and helmet are made up on the arrival end by parking being way easier and needing to walk less far after you park..
• The cost of gas.  Actually, the cognitive difference in the cost of getting gas.  Even putting the gas mileage difference aside, when filling your tank costs $5 or less and takes only a couple minutes, it feels very inconsequential.
• The cost of the ferry. My mother lives on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride away.  For the past several years, I have done walk-ons to visit her, having her pick me up at the dock.  Here's how things stack up in peak season: car and driver is $14.85 each way; motorcycle and rider in $6.45 each way; walk-on is $6.90 to Bainbridge, no charge returning.  In other words, for a one-way trip (I could always ride down to Gig Harbor and back up I-5), a motorcycle is actually cheaper than walking on, and it's about 40% the price of driving a car, so it is instantly a lot easier on the wallet to visit Mom or go to her vacation home near Hood Canal.  And what's almost better is that motorcycles (and bicycles) load on the ferry first (or they can squeeze you on at the end; and they unload first, too!), so there's never a worry about not getting on the next ferry when visiting on busy holidays.

Is there anything specifically cool about my Kymco People S scooter?  That’s a lot harder to sum up.  It’s always easier to name things you don’t like, and even things you do like can have a negative angle to them. Is the larger size and non-“Italian” styling of my scooter, which makes it look more like a full motorcycle and less like a Vespa wanna-be, “cool”?  Do I mention the power converted plug under the seat, which I can use to charge a phone or laptop while ridin (finally used it just the other day)?  Do I mention the windscreen, which not all scooters (or even motorcycles) have, but which makes a difference riding and highway speeds and in keeping the Seattle rain off me while riding?

I definitely make mention of storage space, since there's more than you might expect.  On that trip to Vancouver, I took clothing for the weekend — including boots and some leather gear and toys — and a laptop and other needs with me, getting them all stuffed under the seat or in the helmet-sized trunk (which I can detach and carry like a suitcase).  If I were to lasha carry bag on the seat behind me (which would do double duty as a back support), I could do a week-long trip or carry a tent and sleeping bag for camping.

Makes you think about the volumes of wasted space we lug around in cars.  (Which was one of the stoppers for me years ago when I got my current car: I liked little pickups, but somehow the open nature of the truck bed made me that much more aware of the typically empty chunk of metal I would be dragging around everywhere.)

9. What is less-than-great about riding a scooter?

• No phone!  No boat!  No motorcar!  Not a single luxury!
• More seriously, no heater.  It can get damn cold when the weather dips below 40!
• No defroster for the inside of the helmet when it fogs up from my breath.
• No windshield wiper for the face shield on the helmet.  This can get nasty on a rainy night.
• No radio or CD player.  I can’t listen to that new CD I bought or enjoy listening to radio hosts jabber in the mornings rather than playing music (okay, that’s a whole ’nother rant).  Driving by yourself is already a solitary activity; riding a motorcycle without tunes is three steps beyond that.  I do have speakers in my helmet that I can plug into my iPhone, but even at top volume, I get little more that a hint of the song when I’m moving (and less than that when I’m on the highway).  Maybe if I can get some powered helmet speakers…
• Can’t use the cell phone.  Okay, maybe that’s not really someting bad, now that I think of it.  Except for those times when it would be really good to make a quick call, to tell someone my ETA.  I’m sure there are hands-free Bluetooth solutions out there, but my need to use the phone while on the road is infrequent enough to not warrant the cost.  (Aside: a couple years ago, with my old flip phone and driving on city streets in Vancouver, I did wedge it into the helmet to make it a hands-free device for the duration of the one call.)
• Cost of parking.  While parking for a scooter is fairly easy to find, you still usually have to pay full price for it, even though you are only using 1/4 to 1/3 the space of a car.  For parking garages, that’s really dumb, although a handful do have a dedicated motorcycle parking area and a reduced price for such vehicles.  There was talk a couple years ago about ways to fix this in Seattle, with some permitting sticker, but I think the impetus evaporated.
• Design flaw in the system: Gas Gauge.  The fuel display is totally whacked.  While I get 100+ miles to the tank, the gauge sits on Full for the first 40 miles and then starts dropping, so that the 1/2 tank mark is really about 1/3 of a tank left and so on.  You can actually visually watch the gauge very slowly drop through the last 1/4 tank when you’re on the highway.  I’ve learned to adjust to this, but how hard is it to make a gauge reflect reality?
• Design flaw in the system: Speedometer.  Speaking of reflecting reality: the speedomter is always about 5 mph faster than I’m actually travelling, so you have to know how to mentally adjust to get the true speed, and then its an approximation (although isn’t is always?).  A more significant design flow, though, is that the speedometer has an inner circle for miles, in red, and an outer one for kilometers, in white, but only the white circle lights up at night, so you have to know how to convert kilometers to miles (or memorize dial locations) in order to check your speed. 
• Design flaw in the system: Speedometer Cable.  In August 2008, the speedometer cable broke and had to be replaced, and it took Interbay two months to get a replacement.  Then in August 2009, it broke again and I had no speedometer for another month.  Since that also controls the odometer, my scooter shows about 1600 miles less than I’ve actually traveled.  Should I expect this to fail again in August 2010?
• Design flaw in the system: Parking Lights.  The parking lights for the scooter are apparently too high voltage (or whatever) for the scooter’s electric system, and they started causing starter issues (I would have to try two or three times) in December 2008, and the battery itself failed in September 2009.  Interbay replaced the bulbs with dummies, which should prevent the issue, but I lose my parking lights as a result.

10. What other thoughts do you have about scooters and riding them?

Our society is so heavily car-oriented that if you are a regular driver, it takes a huge leap to get out of that mode and into walking, bus, bicycling, or even scooter/motorcycle transport.  Take that jump!

The scariest thing with riding a scooter was the first few times I got on the freeway.  You really have to have a sense of bravado and self-invulnerability to do that, to allow you to not think about the speeds and the other vehicles and the concrete barriers.  Channel the comic book men-without-fear: Green Lantern and Daredevil.  (As opposed to the Men Without Hats.)

One of the biggest concerns that people have is “crazy other drivers”, that is, car drivers who either don’t see/react to people on scooters and motorcycles (and bicycles), or who actively try to cut us off, make us crash, whatever.  I have experienced a couple cases of unaware drivers.  The one who cause my crash in October 2008 was coming off the freeway (and thus probably going over the speed limit) and rapidly crossed all the lanes of traffic; I doubt that he ever saw me and even if he did, I’m sure he didn’t know I went down  And I’ve had a couple times where a car will pull just past me on the left and stay in that lane, where I’m probably in his blind spot; he won’t speed up to see me, he won’t slow back down, and he doesn’t change lanes, although I have to assume he plans to and thus need to be extra guarded.  In general, though, Seattle drivers have been sufficiently courteous, giving me enough room to ride and not generally cutting my safety space or otherwise being badly aggressive.  (People who know Seattle drivers know that they can be, if anything, too polite, to the point that they will hamper both their own and other people’s driving in an effort to let other people have the road.)

Any of the West Coast, South, and Southwest cities are great for scooters pretty much year round, given the usual lack of snow.  The hills in Seattle (or San Francisco) make scooters that much more attractive over walking!  I’ve been surprised, though, to not see nearly the number of scooters that I see in Seattle when I go to Vancouver or San Francisco.  Those cities should be just a scootered up as we are here.  (Amsterdam and New Zealand, on the other hand, there are a couple places which have embraced scooters.)
I participate in events from the gay scooter club, Sqream, including a few in-city rides a year and one or two longer ones.  It’s great to have that added level of support, and none of the people I’ve met in the club are people who overlap into other activities in my life (which is both refreshing and little weird to realize that there are a bunch of other circles in the gay community which apparently never intersect with mine other than in this way.

I have this increasing itch to upgrade my scooter.  The car will be paid off in less than a month.  I expect that I’ll (try to!) wait until at least fall, maybe early spring next year, though.  Larger scooter, or full-on motorcycle?  My boyfriend rides a sport cycle, I see myself as much more of a cruiser man.  (Fits that leather image better that a sport bike.)

Between lower gas costs and free parking at work, but including the cost of jacket, gloves, three helmets, and insurance, the scooter will have roughly paid for itself by the time it is two years old.  That’s a good deal!

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Updated on March 15, 2010

Added moped definition, made a couple other changes.

 

New Zealand 2010: Aftermath

Jet Lag

All my travelling life, I’ve never had much issue with jetlag.  Back and forth across the United States has only been a problem when I’ve had to be up for something early on the East Coast.  (Last summer in Washington DC, I was on the hook to teach an 8:00 am line dance workshop.  That’s 5:00 am West Coast time.  I don’t get up at 4:30 am for anything other than 7:30 am flights, and then I only have to be barely conscious.)  Even the recent trips to Europe were doable, adjusting in a couple days.

New Zealand is 20 hours ahead, or 4 hours behind, and only 3 hours behind since they are on Daylight Savings Time right now.  In theory, that should be no worse that East Coast to West Coast travel, but I’ve had a bitch of a time getting back in synch with Pacific time.  The first couple nights home, my sleep patterns were wonked, and I’ve still been having odd sleepiness for a week since returning.  Much worse than I expected.

Roundabouts

Especially in the mid-size cities (Rotorua, Taupo), traffic lights were not very common.  Large intersections were dominated by roundabouts, instead.  (And here I mean the large roundabouts which serve to actually direct traffic, as opposed to the small ones we get at some regular street intersections in Seattle or the ones with several traffic lights all around them like Logan Circle in Washington DC.  Those only serve to slow traffic down to a crawl; hates them, we does.)  For the New Zealand roundabouts, you slow as you approach the entrance, look right (for incoming traffic), and then enter, go around, and exit… without stopping at all in many cases.  Traffic flows right on through.

They have put some of these in here in Washington in Snohomish and Kitsap counties, and oh, what howling there has been.  Anything different is evil, I guess.  Me, I’ve been paying attention to how much time I spend at stoplights on my way home for the past week, calculating time lost as I decelerate to a stop, wait for the light to change, and wait for traffic to allow me to accelerate back to a cruising speed.  It’s just anecdotal evidence at the moment, but I find that I have to stop or significantly decelerate for just under half the lights (and there are some lesser ones that almost never change, so some are stoppers 50% or more of the time).  And with time spent to come to a stop and come back to cruising speed (about 12 seconds with minimal car traffic) and time spent waiting or dealing with slow-to-move traffic, I’m hitting an average of about 35 seconds spent per light I stop at, or about 16 seconds per light overall.  (As much as 3 minutes of dead time in a 2.5 mile stretch of Rainier Avenue.)

I’ve also tracked stop signs a couple times.  Usually having no more than one car to wait for, these come out at an average of under 12 seconds each.  None of this takes into account left/right turns vs. straight ahead, time of day, weather, etc.  All in all, with probably under 10 seconds delay per roundabout (half that for decelerate/accelerate, the rest for when you have to wait for cars), with my handful of data points, roundabouts look very attractive as replacements for half or more of the signals outside urban cores.

Souvenirs

When I got back and laid out all the souvenirs on the bed to show my boyfriend, one of my cats (Miss Mona) was also there.  I got out he little kiwi — about the size of a songbird — and set it on the bed.  Mona came over, sniffed once, and proceeded to try to eat it.  I took it away, set it aside, and she went for it again.  Literally, just about unhinged her jaw and tried to eat the thing whole.  Guess it was convincing enough for a cat.

Guess I’ll have to keep it at work!

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Updated on March 18, 2010

Airline Safety Videos

In recent years, many airlines (the ones that have entertainment screens viewable by everyone on board) have taken to doing their safety announcements via video rather than live.  Of course, those of us who have flown many times ignore them just like the live ones.

Virgin America has gone to the next stage and done an attractive animated version of their presentation.  This has two benefits: first, they can expect even the most jaded traveler to watch it once, just for the novelty.  And second, they can put some humor into it, especially via the art, without needing to have the flight attendants crack jokes and such, which again will encourage people to watch it at least once.  Here is their video:



Virgin America also had an animated video of Richard Branson, but I can’ find it online.

V Australia has also done theirs in animated form.  In this case, computer animated.  And if I dislike the weird character models used in movies like Up, I outright fear the ones used in this video.  They look like they haven’t slept for two days and have been on a meth-influenced crying jag, and when they smile, they look like they are trying to frighten young children.  Worst.  Models.  Ever.

New Zealand 2010: Rotorua to Wellington (Friday, February 19)

Written on the ferry to Picton (on the South Island), 11:00 am on Sunday, February 21; and some at Los Angeles airport at 5:15 pm on Monday, February 22

This was our big long travel day, about 9.5 hours from Rotorua to Wellington.

We left Rotorua a bit before noon and headed south to Taupo.  Mom needed to change some more US currency, and there was a CD shop I wanted to visit that had been closed when I got back from the kayaking the day before.  In the early 1990s, I had an Internet friend in New Zealand who I met because of a mutual love for Days of Our Lives.  She would send me New Zealand music, including several tapes and CDs from The Warratahs (a country group), and I would send her Calvin & Hobbes collections.  The Warratahs broke up around that time (I’m told), and I’ve always wanted to finish off my collection.  A buddy visiting New Zealand around 1997 picked up their last album for me, but it got ripped off from him in a hostel he was staying at.

Yay!  In the New Zealand music section, they had an 18-track Best Of collection, including several songs from that missing album.  I also bought a Welcome to New Zealand album, a Kiwi Country album (with two Warratahs tracks and one from lead singer Barry Saunders), and a John Denver collection (hey, I’ve only got one song from him in my DJ music!).  The store owner said he was partly responsible for that Warratahs collection being produced: he kept getting requests for Warratahs disks, so he phoned them up (the band, the record company.  I don’t know) and got them to put it out.  We also chatted about American country music for him to stock, and I turned him on to Randy Houser.  To hear him describe it, his distributor is baffled by why he would carry any American country music, much less order dozens of units of various artists.

(He also reminded me that New Zealand does have one famous country singer in its output: Keith Urban.)

(Woo!  I checked out Wikipedia and saw that The Warratahs did re-form and have released two further albums this decade.  Must find!)

We had ice cream cones — I had passionfruit (which they leave the seeds in, oddly), something you never see as ice cream in the States.  The primary ice cream company in New Zealand is Tip Top, and their stuff is indeed fantastic!

I also stopped in at a thrift store we spotted two days before, just so I could tell my boyfriend that I had done so. (Sorry, hon, nothing of interest for sale.)

Next stop was Turangi at the south end of the lake, for gas.  Then we headed down the west side of Tongoriro National Park, home of the three volcanoes (Tongoriro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu), which were given to the country by a Māori chief in 1887.  (The cynic in me wonders if that was magnanimous or an effort to keep them out of the hands of mining companies and the like.)

We stopped for pictures a couple times and at Chateau Tongoriro at the skiing town of Whakapapa, the main entrance to the park.  The Chateau was used as headquarters for the Lord of the Rings crew when filming the Mordor sequences, many of which were done in the park.

(Māori pronunciation: “wh” is pronounced as an aspirated “f” or “fh”, so there is a t-shirt out there that I didn’t see which says “Whakapapa – Your momma did”.  Also, a leading “ng” on words has the “g” almost silent; I think you press the tip of the tongue slightly into the soft palate at the top of your mouth, maybe 1/4" back from where an “n” sound is made.)

We continued down to Wanganui, on the southwest coast.  I slept for about an hour through very windy road; probably good so I didn’t use my phantom passenger foot brake on every curve as Mom drove.  (You know the one, I’m sure.  You use it whenever someone else drives.)  Heading south along the coast, we stopped for snacks somewhere outside Palmerston North (Otago, maybe?).  I got a bag of Bluebird-brand (with a penguin on the bag) “Rashuns”.  On the bag, they looked like Fritos, but inside, they were closer to Cheetos, but “cheese and bacon” flavor and truly foul!

At Foxton, we stopped for dinner at the “66 on 1” American-style diner, and then proceeded to Wellington, where we stayed at the Comfort Inn on Cuba Street.  This turned out to be a block from one of the two gay bars (S & M’s; not a leather bar!) and near a major pedestrian shopping area.  That night, I also tramped up to Dixon Street, which was incredibly loud and full of 20-something drunk straight kids.

New Zealand has sported more motorcycles and scooters than any place I’ve seen, including the good numbers we have in Seattle and even last summer in Europe.  I’ve been incredibly homesick for my own scooter (but in weather like we’ve had here in New Zealand, whether that’s slightly drizzly or super sunny), and envious of the guys (and girls) we’ve seen riding.  New Zealand is unquestionably well suited to riding.  My scooter could have easily handled anything we encountered in the Auckland/Rotorua/Taupo area, although it probably would have struggled with the hills south of Turangi.  I would love to come back in a couple years with my boyfriend and rent motorcycles for our transportation through the country.

We’ve also seen a lot of “Backpackers” hotels/hostels on the North Island.  Daniel, from the Lake Taupo kayaking trip, was one of them: they apparently do most of their travelling by bus (or train), staying in these cheap, small hotels along the way.  They are mostly under 25.  It sounds like a great way to encounter the country for someone of that age, someone less tied to luggage and laptops.  But maybe it could be good for motorcycle tourists, too.

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Updated on March 1, 2010

Updated on April 12, 2010

General updates and spelling corrections.
Added links.
Added travel map

Updated on June 7, 2010

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-zealand-2010-rotorua-to-wellington.html

New Zealand 2010: Seattle to Sydney (Wednesday, February 10 & Friday, February 12)

Written in the terminal at Sydney airport, 7:40 am (Sydney time) on Friday, February 12

Wednesday started with finishing off my packing and calling in for a work meeting, which ended up being cancelled.  As I was waiting on the line, Tuesday night’s episode of Lost started downloading, with a projected finish time of 10:35 am, just after when I wanted to leave.  Being the Lost slut that I am, I waited for it to finish downloading and then transferred it to the iPhone to take with me — which took me until 11:01 am, so I had to scramble out the door to get to the light rail station.

I think this is the lightest I have packed for a trip in ages; I pack heavier than this for a weekend country-western dance event.  That’s mostly because I’m travelling with my mother.  Although we arranged to be in the cities on the weekends, so I’ll mange to get out to experience some gay life in New Zealand, I only packed a vest and boots and jock for my leather gear.  It will have to do.  There’s only one leather-ish bar in New Zealand, anyway: Urge in Auckland.

Once on light rail, I called into my second meeting, which we ended just as I got to the terminal at the airport, so it was well timed.  I expect to get a new build or two of the Android version of our software e-mailed to me while I’m here, to do some spot checking. I shouldn’t be able to play music due to international “geoblocking”; (we only play in the U.S.), but I should be able to install and explore the app outside of that.

I flew Virgin America to Los Angeles, with a nice rate of $99 each way, cheaper than other options.  But as a small airline, they have limited flights (just 8 cities at this time, I think), so I had to leave at 12:45 pm, leaving me with a 5 hours layover at LAX.  Mom’s Alaska flight left about the time I arrived, so she had less wait.

Virgin America is tied to Virgin Atlantic and V Australia and Virgin Blue and all that, but not tightly enough to be considered foreign owned (per a recent lawsuit).  They also aren’t tied closely enough for me to get credit for my flights to Australia and New Zealand on their plan.  And they couldn’t check my bag straight through to New Zealand, either (which is odd, since Mom could via Alaska).

The plane had purple lighting in the ceiling, which I think was meant to be calming and such, but made it feel like a nightclub to me.  (Specifically like the defunct Seattle gay bar Manray, whose decor was white wall panels with pastel lighting behind them.)  Each seat had an entertainment center in it, but the movies and TV shows were pay-per-view, and $8 for a movie was too much.  It also had games, but they weren’t especially well done, and one in particular hung my console once and then the controls wouldn’t activate one of the commands.  So I mostly read (the DC Showcase Presents Booster Gold volume) and did crossword puzzles.  The flight to LAX was quite bumpy.

At LAX, I had to get my back and then re-check it on V Australia.  The crew at ticketing was friendly and engaging.  After I checked my bag, I came back to ask about miles and found that they have Delta as a partner, so I was able to get my 17,500 miles or so for this trip credited, which should give me enough for a free flight there, since my Ireland and Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Berlin flights were on Northwest and Delta as well.

Food choices at LAX were piss poor.  The “Food Court” was Burger King and Starbucks, plus a sit-down fish place, and the Burger King prices were $2-3 higher than a regular BK would charge.  Yow.

While waiting for Mom to arrive, I worked on some blog posts.  After she got there, we found a spot with power plugs and I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives Season 3 (thank you, Netflix).

On the V Australia flight — which had gray ceiling lights, a little less like a night club than Virgin America, but which had a bar between first class and business which restored that impression some — Mom and I were separated by an aisle (I had arranged this at V Australia check-in).  The entertainment systems were better than on V America, with a bundle of free movie selections.  (I watched Up, Zombieland, and 500 Days of Summer — all are recommended — and played Zuma.)

They feed you well enough on international flights.  Even though we left after 8 pm, they fed us dinner (I had Japanese curry chicken with bok choy) and breakfast in the morning (I had cream cheese and apricot crêpes). As well, they have a snack area in economy where you can get chips, cookies, cheese and crackers, and water throughout the flight.  Great idea.

Despite V Australia advertising that they have power plugs at every seat (I think; can’t find the reference now), they don’t.  Economy coach gets screwed, so I didn’t use the laptop during the flight.  But with the movie selection, I didn’t need to.  (And of course, this was an almost 14-hour flight, over night.  I did get about 7 hours of sleep, or sort of sleep — the sort you go in and out of as you try to pretend to get comfortable and hope no one passes by and bumps you.  Maybe 5 hours of real sleep.  Maybe I’ll doze some more on the flight to New Zealand.)

On the V Australia flights to and from Sydney, there was a dedicated women’s lavatory in the Economy section, something I had never encountered before.  I’m not sure if it was there as a privacy concession (a woman-only space), a perceived cleanliness issue (no pee dribbles on the floor, but I routinely hear that women make bigger overall messes of public toilets), or just an awareness that women take longer in the toilet than men do and may need extra facilities (go to a concert or sporting event some time and see the long, long line for the women’s toilet).  Regardless, I did use the women’s toilet once, before they announced that it was women-only and where it was.  (It didn’t look any different on the inside.)  I never particularly noticed it getting used more than others.

According to this article, this gender-specific feature is apparently a new idea.  The article doesn’t mention any other airlines having it, even though V Australia does.

We crossed both the Equator and the International Date Line last night.  My first time for each.  So we’ve swapped seasons to high summer and skipped almost a full day.

At the Sydney airport, I cashed a €20 bill I had left from last summer to get some Australian spending money, and bought a horribly overpriced bottle of water (AU$3.90) for Mom and a latte for myself (priced closer to what you’d expect in an American airport, AU$4.45).  And then I sat and wrote this blog entry.

We’ll be boarding in a few minutes, flying Emirates Air to Auckland.  Based out of Dubai, it’s apparently a two-floor Airbus 380 plane.  I’ve never been on one before, so this may be cool.  The flight to Auckland is about 3 hours and a time zone change.

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Updated on March 5, 2010

Added links and made a few revisions.
Added a chunk on airplane lavatories.

Updated on March 8, 2010

Added travel map.

Updated on April 1, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Movie Review — 2012

Oh my God, what a steaming heap of…

Well, if you turn you brain off…

No, I mean really turn it off.  Don’t think about any of the stuff in the movie.

SPOILERS — SPOILERS — SPOILERS

• Don’t think about the odds of surviving
  close call after close call after close call.
• Don’t think about jumping a limo from the street into a sinking building, through the collapsing floors, and jumping it out the other side (just in time) and down a story or two with one door missing and neither losing any passengers nor setting off the air bags.
• Don’t think about managing to get the plane to take off and then staying just 50 feet off the ground while buildings throw themselves at you.  Instead of going up!  Away from the destruction!
• Don’t think about whether a super-heated volcanic ash plume only a few miles from a just-erupted supervolcano would foul the engines of a small prop plane, maybe melt things, or invade the interior air supply.
• Don’t think about how an ash plume from Yellowstone can reach DC in 7 hours (averaging nearly 300 mph), and only reach Las Vegas (about 1/3 as far away and on the same side of the Rockies) in the same time.
• Don’t think how a plane can take off from the Las Vegas airport, at the south end of the strip, and then cruise over/through the Wynn, the Venetian, and Paris casinos in that order, since those run north to south!
• Don’t think about how they got two fat teens, two little kids, a fat adult man, two normal sized adult men, two adult women, and a small dog into a single Bentley.
• Don’t think about how long it would take for hypothermia to set in atop a Himalayan glacier, for people wearing the same clothes they did in Southern California, Yellowstone, and Las Vegas.
• Don’t think about how a 1500 meter tidal wave manages to make it far into inland India.  And really don’t think how it then increases to be more than 5000 meters high in order to crest the Himalayas.  (And definitely don’t think “Why didn’t any of the brilliant scientists question how a tidal wave would increase in height while travelling over a thousand miles of dry land?”, even if the in-movie answer would have be “We don't know, but there it is!”)
• Don’t think about where the fuel is stored in a plane which falls off a cliff, impacts nose firsts, and explodes as a result.  And don’t think that there should be consistency when another plane runs nose first into the side of a ship.
• Don’t think about how overtaxed the food stores would be on the ships after taking on twice the planned load.  Don’t think “Donner, party of five.  Donner, party of four.”
• Don’t wonder about what devastation hit Africa, the only populated continent never mentioned during the destruction part of the movie.  (Because they actually sideswipe pretend to address that one.)
• Don’t think about why there was no mention of the other half of the surviving rich people of the world at the end.

Once you stop thinking about science and the odds and geography and fuel lines and food… if there’s any of your brain left, you’ll probably enjoy the outright goofiness of this movie.

You’ll definitely be talking about this movie after it’s done.  You’ll be saying:

“What the…
how the…
fuck, that made no sense!”

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Updated on January 2, 2010
 

Europe 2009: Berlin to Seattle (Monday, August 3)

I slept poorly last night.  No disco music on Sunday night, but the cough was just making me miserable.  Good hydration helps, but a good bed does as well.  After a couple hours, I went out to the common room and slept there on the couch for a few hours, then back to my room a bit after dawn.

I aimed to leave at 9:00 to catch my 11:25 flight, but didn’t get out the door until almost 9:15.  And it was raining.  That makes for interesting bookends to the trip, having the first and last days be in the rain, plus the rain midway, on Thursday in Copenhagen.

Long, long flight from Berlin to JFK.  I dozed here and there, through parts of all three movies (The Soloist, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Duplicity); I’ve seen the second and had no real interest in the others.  At least they do feed you on the trans-Atlantic flights (for now, anyway), although Delta wanted to charge me $50 for the second piece of luggage, so it became a heft-and-carry-on.  I also worked on the trip report a bit and read a few Fantastic Four issues (from a collection from the end of Lee/Kirby run; little to write home about in those issues).

The entire trip, I’ve been re-reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, the omnibus collection of the first three volumes.  I think this is my third time though this volume, although it’s hard to divorce it from my past viewings of the three mini-series, so it might only be my second time through; I’m pretty sure I’ve only read the second omnibus once.  My boyfriend and I have been watching them and are about 2/3 through the second mini-series.  I’m right now 1/3 through the third book, right where the DeDe and Prue storylines are about to intersect.  I recall how fucking spooked I was by this book the first time through, since the real-world events that preceded it are some of the first Current Events things that I recall growing up, around age 13.

I have been struck by how much these books are not only products of their time, but also signposts of the mid-70s and beyond.  Beyond the faked (and sometimes simply veiled) society people that Maupin uses, the books (especially the first one) are massively laced with references to current events (the Zodiac Killer), San Francisco (a particular North Beach meat vendor is name checked several times), and pop culture (Pet Rocks, EST, the Walkman, etc.), and of course gay stuff is threaded through everything.  It makes me want to have (or produce) a The Annotated Tales of the City, with footnotes and Wiki entries expanding on all the references.

I’m also aware that Maupin went back to the original newspaper columns and changed things around when compiling them into a book.  What was removed — were plotlines abandoned, were characters dropped?  And what was added?  I presume, for example, that the pivotal destination comment from D’Orothea at the end of the second book — which totally freaked me out when I initially read it — was a book-aimed revision, since it’s a bit too prescient otherwise.  But it would be nice to know for sure.

Customs was done at JFK, and it was a zoo.  They herded us and people from another flight or two like cattle, into a long hallway.  I could see a couple hundred in front of me, and more behind me, all stopped at some barrier.  Perversely, all I could think of was Holocaust references, spotting the sprinkler system shower head above us.  (Maybe I’m sicker than I think.)  I couldn’t find my pen, so I hadn’t filled out the customs form, so once I got to the customs desk, I had to go back over there to get a pen from the airline rep, but she wasn’t a rep and directed me back over there to get a pen from the airline rep, but she wasn’t one either and directed me to get one from an airline rep.  And which point I had a brief explosion — “There isn’t any airline rep!” “I’m sorry, I don’t have a pen, sir” — despite that I could see two in her pocket.  “I’ll help you once the line lets up” as she ushered another 20 people into the room, with no sign of the stream stopping.  She eventually gave me a pen (and I properly gave it back when I was done), and then I had to wait for 200 people in front of me to go through, rather than the 20 who were there earlier.

Utterly destroyed whatever assumed German accent I had left, let me tell you!

Showed that guy my passport.  Filed into the next room.  Showed someone my passport.  Got my bag.  Showed someone my passport.  Dropped off my back for moving to the next flight.  Showed someone my passport.  (Jesus Christ!)  And then they had only one lane open for security check for people going to connecting flights, with a couple hundred to go through it.  They now make us take our shoes off and put them through not in a bin with anything else — even baby shoes have to go on the belt by themselves — which only slows things that much further.  What do they expect to accomplish with this shit other than making people not want to fly, which will only make the airlines have that many fewer customers and complain about costs that much more?

I have no fucking sympathy for the airlines.  Not one shred.  I actively hope a couple of the big ones go under, and gloriously so.  (United, please.  Can’t stand them anyway.)  They’ll blame the consumers, of course, but they’re the ones at fault.  That’s what it will take to wake them and TSA up.

JFK is apparently so crowded for flights that they have to use non-gates.  My flight was at Gate 77, but the signage was for Gates 1-12 and B-something, nothing near “77”.  Turns out that Gate 77 means the plane is parked out on the tarmac and they use a huge people mover to get you to it.  So they loaded us all on it… and then made us sit for as much as 30 minutes, waiting for I don’t know what (late passengers, I guess).  Finally disgorged us onto the plane… and then made us sit, waiting for I don’t know what (late passengers, I guess).  Our 5:00 flight didn’t end up leaving until just before 6:00 pm.

(In Amsterdam’s airport, they announce your name and say you are delaying the flight, and that if you don’t show up right way, they will remove your luggage from the plane.  Good threat, especially if the actually carry through on it.  They should try it in the States.)

I debated getting food at JFK.  If I do, they’ll feed us; if I don’t, they won’t.  Looks like I made the right call and got a piece of pizza (which thoroughly cooled by the time we got onto the plan, grrr), since peanuts will be the only thing we’ll get on the plane.  (Mmm, make that pretzels.  Peanuts are persona non grata on airplanes these days; someone might have an allergy.)  And we’ve been airborne for almost 90 minutes without even beverage service yet.  (You can tell I’m a happy traveler when I’m sick and need hydration badly.)

My boyfriend will be picking me up at the airport.  Hope our late departure will be made up and we’ll get home close to on time.  I’m trying to not nap so I can collapse into bed with him tonight and get good solid sleep.

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Updated on February 9, 2010
 

Europe 2009: Copenhagen to Berlin (Friday, July 31)

I checked out of the hotel, but they didn’t have a locked room for baggage storage, just a roped off area in the lobby (the most unsecure storage I’ve ever seen, not where I wanted to leave my laptop or several hundred dollars of leather gear).  I found that they had lockers in the basement for 20 DKK, though, so I wandered around for a few minutes with my laptop bag until I found someone to point me to them.  They were big lockers, though, so I trekked back upstairs for my bag of leather, then back down, only to find that they took tokens.  So back upstairs and buy the token — which was 2 for 20 DKK.  But I only need one.  20 DKK.  Whatever.   Not that I was the only one to deal with this, as another guest offered me a spare token as I was heading back downstairs again, just a minute too late.  In other words: a little scam.

I went to the Men’s Shop and to X-Rated Leather to take advantage of my contest prizes.

The master’s cap arrived by post this afternoon from the Anco, before I had to leave.  Thankfully!

As opposed to Amsterdam, in Denmark I was better able to isolate both an accent and a “look” for the locals — sort of German with a little lilt to it, and of course hair that is blond to strawberry blond and good facial structure.  The Danes are a handsome people, by and large.  I ended up adopting a little bit of accent, but only a little.

The streets near the Centrum tend to have wide bicycle lanes, twice as wide as in the States.  They usually have a curb about 2 inches high between them and the auto lanes, and another 2 inch curb between that and the sidewalk.  I had much less problem with stepping off curbs by accident in Copenhagen than I did in Amsterdam, although I did find myself sometimes crossing the street and then walking in the bicycle lane for a few feet before remembering that I wasn’t on the sidewalk.

Scooters also ride in the bicycle lanes here.  There were way more scooters here than in Seattle (3 times as many, maybe), but nothing like the number in Amsterdam.

The bicycles typically are not locked up when they are parked here.  I assume this means that everyone who wants a bike has one, so theft isn’t an issue.  But it was surprising to see dozens of parked bicycles, and almost no chains.

I’ve come to despise the cobblestones commonly used here for sidewalk paving.  With all the walking (and dancing!) I’ve been doing, I have developed shin splints, and negotiating the uneven surfaces makes them hurt.

I was surprised by the amount of wood used in Denmark in outdoor, public settings.  Places such as the steps at the Copenhagen Central Station were wooden.  I wonder how often these have to be replaced?

Speaking of steps, the stairs at K3 had phantom bottom steps.  That is, the first step of several of the stairways was flush with the landing, but designed to look like the other steps, complete with edge markings and the like.  This meant that I stumbled on each of those steps for the first several stair ascents and descents, until I started to trust my memory of the staircase and not the visual.

I flew AirBerlin into Berlin-Tegel airport (the smaller and closer-in of the two Berlin airports).  From there, I hopped the 109 bus to the Uhlandstraße U-Bahn (subway), then that to Wittenbergplatz, and then three blocks walk (or drag, in the case of the luggage, getting heavier each leg!) to the Kinky Tulip hotel in Schöneberg.

After a quick nap, I went out to some of the local bars.

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Updated on February 26, 2010

Updated on May 14, 2010

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/08/europe-2009-copenhagen-to-berlin-friday.html

Updated on June 15, 2010

Here’s a short bit about “Copenhagenisation”, heavily promoting bicycle riding in urban areas:
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/copenhagenisation/

Europe 2009: Amsterdam and Copenhagen (Tuesday, July 28)

I had to be up by 8:00 am to catch the train to Schilpol airport, but it turned out the Anco’s breakfast isn’t served until 9:00 am, and indeed the hotel bar are was locked and I didn’t know how to do checkout.  (Much less recover my key deposit.)  Turns out details for that were on a guide in my room that I didn’t read; I have no idea where the guide was, didn’t see it at all.  So I wrote a note with the key and pushed it under the bar door.

Grabbed an orange juice and a pastry of some sort at the HEMA at Centraal Station.  Made it to the airport without incident.  Oh, look!  Starbucks!  Yay, familiar coffee!  But I bypassed it in favor of getting checked in, just in case.  Only checked the one suitcase, so when the big carry-on with my leather in it went through the scanner, they pulled out my chainmail harness and asked what it was.  On the other side of security, there was another Starbucks.  Yay!

Customs in Denmark, was it smooth like in the Netherlands?  Not at all.  By which I mean: not at all.  None.  Didn’t even have to show my passport, other than getting on the plane in Amsterdam.

Fewer signs in Denmark are bilingual than in Amsterdam, even at the airport.  After a few minutes fiddling with the iPhone to figure out what train I might need to take, I had to stand in line at the train ticket counter to get help.  Turned out I wanted Copenhagen Central Station.  Figures.

Long walk on tile and cobblestone paths to the hotel.  I’m getting blisters on my hands from this luggage.  I think it gets heavier each leg.

The hotel room at Cabinn City is… small isn’t the word for it.  It’s about 10–12 foot deep and 8 foot wide; about half-size is how it feels, rather cramped — a walk-in closet.  Two single beds (which I pushed together to make a double.  Modular desk, storage, and closet space.  Bathroom has the shower head in the middle of the ceiling; you pull the curtain around and flip a lever on the sink, and then deal with a wet bathroom floor until it drains/dries.  The whole thing feels very IKEA (although that’s actually in the next country over).

You have to put your room key in a slot by the door to work the lights and outlets; they go out after about 15 seconds if you remove the card.  Took me a while to figure that out, and my laptop ran out of power once despite being plugged in.  Also seems like a great way to leave your card in the room, although it also does prevent big electric bills from lights left on.  (But it also prevents you from leaving a small light on to greet you when you return).

I took a quick shower and booted up the laptop to check out the Scandinavian Leather Men site.  Oh look, that leather club sightseeing tour starts at 14:00, and its now… 1:50 pm (13:50).  Quick, scramble into shorts and shirt and jog over there.  (I chose this hotel because it’s only 10 minutes from both the SLM clubhouse and DGI-byen where the dance competition is being held.)

We then spent about 90 minutes walking through Copenhagen: past the oldest gay bar in the city, by the original Carlsberg brewery location, through the King’s Garden, past the royal palace, down to the water across from the Opera House, and to the new Royal Theatre where we had beer and cider.  There, the rest of the group left for a ferry ride, while I headed back to the Hans Christian Andersen castle at Tivoli to check-in for the OutGames.  Along the way, I bought a basket of blackberries from a street vendor, the only food I had eaten since a pastry about 8 hours earlier.  And then back to the hotel for a nap.

I wanted to get a t-shirt from the OutGames, but they made the (poor, to me) decision to limit different colors to different styles.  The general OutGames design is very loud and busy — dancing silhouettes in front of the multi-colored “bubbles” logo — and I didn’t want it.  I preferred just the single color “bubbles” version (“preferred” meaning “would settle for”; still didn’t like it much), but it was only available in blue or yellow on a black shirt for men; women had two other colors, and another two were only on tanks.  I could have lived with the yellow design, but then the price: 150 DKK ($30) for a t-shirt which I didn’t really like a lot to start with?  No way.

All registered attendees get a participation medal, which they decided to make do double duty as a luggage tag.  This strikes me as very odd: it makes for a pretty heavy luggage tag, and not one that I would want to risk getting yanked off my bag in transit (having had other tags broken, ripped, or lost over the years).  I hope they got a price break by doing this, rather than it costing extra for a nifty but dumb idea.

After the nap, dinner was an egg and tomato sandwich and a creme cheese danish from Upper Crust at the train station.  Cheap and quick.

Tuesday evening was a party at the SLM clubhouse.

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Updated on February 23, 2010

Updated on May 12, 2010:

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/07/europe-2009-amsterdam-and-copenhagen.html

Europe 2009: Amsterdam (Monday, July 27)

Today, it was finally time to do some of the traditional touristy things.  I intentionally saved them for Monday, figuring crowds would be smaller.  I trekked down to the Museumplein, where several of the museums are clustered.  The Rijksmuseum is undergoing major construction, so only had a small portion open, and a long line out the door.  (Looks like I’m never supposed to go to that museum, since my last trip here in 1981, it was also closed [due to Liberation Day, I think].)

Heading toward the Van Gogh Museum, I went through the free part of the Coster Diamonds Museum, but opted out of the paid part (€7.50); the ticket booth was all the way through the downstairs, by which point I had got that museum out of my system — I would likely have bought a ticket if they had been sold at the front.

Next was the House of Bols museum, the oldest distillery in Amsterdam and creators of Gen.  Genever (which was dubbed “Dutch Courage”) was copied by the British as Gin.  Bols is best known today for their myriad of fruity liqueurs in bottles shaped like juggling clubs used in “flairtending” (think Tom Cruise in Cocktail).  The bottles were repeatedly said to be designed “by bartenders for bartenders” but they never mentioned the blatantly obvious juggling club antecedents, which was an odd omission.  This tour (€11) ended with a Genever cocktail (I had a Holland House — strong lemon flavor) plus tastings of a couple of the liqueurs (I tried the Dark Cacao and Peppermint).  I bought a spherical Bols shot glass as a souvenir.

The Van Gogh Museum (€13.50) had only a couple people in line, so I paid for this one.  It was good enough, I suppose, with one floor all Van Goghs, arranged by date so as to give a through line of his work.  In the end, I decided I didn’t much care for his work.  The early stuff was incredibly dark (all blacks and browns), much of his middle stuff had such whacked out perspectives that it detracted from the work for me, and his later stuff became more abstract.  Only his flower pieces really hold any enjoyment for me, and I bought a set of espresso cups with his “Butterflies and Poppies” image on them (a painting I don’t think I had ever seen before).  The other two floors were dedicated to some of his contemporaries, none of whose names (other than Gauguin) were familiar to me and none of which I can recall now.  One set of lithographs struck me: a series called “In Dreams” by Odilon Redon, with one image being a floating head with white skin and a huge shock of black hair; almost certainly an inspiration for Morpheus (from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman), although I’ve not heard of the connection before.

Passed up at the gift shop: a nifty flower vase made of folded waxed cardboard, which will fold flat or pop out into a double vase with Van Gogh imagery on it.  Too expensive, but I considered it for a Christmas present.

Near the Dam Square, I stopped to get my obligatory Amsterdam t-shirt — black with red print “Amsterdam” and the “XXX” city logo.  (Hmm, I wonder if “triple X” = porn stems from the Red Light District?  Must research.)

(The web has conflicting stories.  One theorizes that since “XX” stands for kiss, and since it was once illegal to kiss a woman in a film more than three times, films that went beyond this limit were labelled “XXX”.  Sounds contrived to me.  Another equates it to the “XXX” on kegs of beer, indicating a level of quality or strength.  I couldn’t find any connection to Amsterdam, to newspaper editorial signoffs, or to shirt sizes.)

I planned to go to the Hash, Marijuana, & Hemp Museum, just a few blocks down canal from the Anco, but passed out for a nap instead.  Dinner was a Chinese place, something bland but with a good bit of veggies which I probably needed.

Unlike many other regional cities — be they European like Dublin or American like Atlanta and Houston and Boston — I had a very hard time detecting a Dutch accent.  I usually hear accents fairly quickly and start adopting them unconsciously within a day or two, but not in Amsterdam.  I guess it’s such a melting pot, especially in the Centrum, that it evens out.  By when I left, the best accent I retained was something that seemed a little Italian tinged, if anything.

Amsterdam’s sidewalks are edged by dark colored curbs, carved (I guess, or maybe molded — hard to tell) and in segments with puzzle-piece interlocks.  Very cool, but they vary in height from an inch or less to about 8 inches.  And probably because of the dark color, my peripheral vision identifies them as “street” rather than “curb”, so I have had a very hard time with them.  I keep suddenly stepping off the curb and onto the actual street.  It’s amazing that I didn’t twist my ankle with the number of times I did this.

Amsterdam also seems to be loaded with steep stairs with shallow steps.  I tried to stumble into the basement at the Argos, and the stairs at the Anco were a trip to get the large suitcase up, since they were shallow, steep, and curved!  Most fascinating were the ones at Mauricio’s apartment, which were about three stories up but only 1.5 deep.  It’s a good thing I already tend to take steps with my foot sideways to increase surface area.  (To make matters worse, I racked my shin on the bed frame at the hotel, and then hit the exact same place going up the stairs at the Argos.)

The weather in Amsterdam has been fantastic, but the humidity has been through the roof.  This made the late night walk on Sunday night terrific, but Sunday was increasingly thick and miserable, turning to rain a little bit.

Amsterdam is incredibly flat.  Reminds me of the drive from Houston to Galveston.  No visible landmarks other than town water towers, unlike the West Coast where we always have mountains to navigate by.  Patrick and Chris told me that I had to go about 100 km outside the city to start getting to some hills.

Amsterdam is loaded with bicycles, especially in the Centrum, where there are 50-100 bikes for every car.  (And none of the mountain bikes or 10-speeds everyone has in the States.  These are either single or 3-speed bikes, and all with bag racks on the back.)  The flatness of the Dutch countryside and the narrow streets in the Centrum are undoubtedly the cause of this, making it reasonably easy to bike anywhere you need to go; I imagine it is also quite expensive to own a car here.  It is quite cool to see the racks of bikes, 50 to 100 or more per rack, every slot full.  There were a number of tandem bikes (that’s a bicycle built for two, Daisy), and I even saw one with four seats, for the entire family.

Beyond the bikes, though, are the scooters and motorcycles, especially the scooters.  Probably 8-10 scooters for every car in the Centrum.  Lots of Vespas, naturally, but I saw Sym and Kymco and Yamaha models, too, and some lines I didn’t recognize.  Apparently no helmet law, either.

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Updated on February 9, 2010

Updated on May 12, 2010:

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/07/europe-2009-amsterdam-monday-july-27.html

Europe 2009: Seattle to Amsterdam (Thursday, July 23)

I spent much of the morning scrambling around the house to get those last few things packed.  Where are my leather braces (suspenders)?  (Never did find them.)  Where is the master’s cap?  (Oh, yeah, left it on the corner of the sling frame.)  What the hell am I forgetting?  Was also changing the sheets, doing the laundry, and doing the dishes, to leave the house in a good state.

(Things I know I forgot thus far: bathroom scissors to touch up the beard, and a pack of Kleenex.  Finding some place to buy those in Amsterdam turned out to be a challenge.  No Walgreens on the corner!)

Rusty is going to be house sitting for me while I’m gone, feeding the cats and such.  He showed up at about 9 am, expecting me to already be gone.  So instead, he was able to give me a ride to the Light Rail station, saving me the time of schlepping luggage to the bus and waiting for it.

The new Seattle Light Rail was smooth (as expected). Coolest part was the stage between Rainier Beach and Tukwila stations, seeing parts of the area I haven’t seen before.  Ride was a little bumpy on that stage, the elevated part, but only a little.

There were only two of us on the train at that hour.  Which means I’m expecting mid-August to be when the Light Rail detractors declare it a failure due to low ridership, and start to talk about shutting it down and ripping out the tracks.  (Just wait.)

They don’t have all the bugs out of the system yet, though.  No announcements when coming to a station.  Oh, wait, there’s one: “Now arriving… Rainier Beach Station.  Please hold on to a handrail (etc.)”  Only problem is, the announcement went off as we left the station.

I’m flying Northwest from Seattle to Amsterdam.  Only problem: there’s no Northwest ticket counter listed on the airport map!  Oh, that’s right: Delta is merging with Northwest, so go to their counter.  Was pleased to see that there was no charge for the international flight for either bag; I was fearing an additional $50 or more.  So I ended up checking two rather than carrying two on.  Had to move some from the suitcase to the smaller bag to get under 50 lbs., but that was easy.

Coming out of the subway and into the South Satellite terminal, they were doing some major work on the escalators.  They had one bank completely off and were directing everyone onto the other set, but spacing us about six feet apart, to balance the weigh (I guess; maybe it was just to annoy us).  Never seen such a thing.  Making it even more bizarre, they wouldn’t let anyone take the stairs next to the closed escalator, either, for “safety” reasons.  What the fuck?

Boarding the plane, there were no less than five uniformed security people in the jetway itself.  And then at the plane door, one of the flight attendants was being grumpy on the phone, something like “That’s not the policy we’re supposed to follow.  I’m not doing that on any other flights!”  Mmmmaybe that merger with Delta/Northwest isn’t going smoothly?  Were the security folks there to deal with problem employees?

The overhead bins on international flights are about a foot higher than on domestic ones.  Can’t imagine how those bleached blonde 5'1" real estate chicks can get their shouldn’t-be-a-carrry-ons up there without help.  (Didn’t I make that same comment on the trip report for Ireland last year?  Checking the blog, it doesn’t appear so.  I’m sure I thought it.)

I think I only slept about 2-3 hours on the flight (10 hours + 9 hours of time change).  That’s the problem with a daytime flight.  Unlike the flight to Ireland, this one was packed full, almost every seat taken, so there was no chance to stretch out and try to recline and sleep.  (Poor, poor airlines.  Losing money because nobody will fly.  Bull-fucking-shit.)

Watched two movies — the bromance I Love You, Man and Jim Carrey’s Yes Man.  Both were okay, and like most rom-coms (and these are on the edge of the genre), they work perfectly fine on a 7" screen in the back of an airplane seat.

My seatmate was going to have a 3-hour layover in Amsterdam, and then another 5 hours to the Ukraine.  Ugh.

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Updated on February 3, 2010

Knock on wood, but the predicted “Get rid of it!” call about Light Rail that I feared would surface hasn’t yet, at least not to any degree I’ve noticed.  I’ve taken it to the airport and back several times now — next Wednesday will be the next time, heading to New Zealand — and ridership has increased every time I've been on it.  And I’ve been noticing more people riding it when the trains go by, although I have no idea how the actual numbers are comparing to projections yet.