More eco-driving

An update about my progress with eco-driving. The last few days I've been really driving like a granny and never letting the RPMs get past 2000 and the results are great. I haven't gone under 35 mpg for my morning commute and almost finished above 41 mpg this morning. I may have upset a few of the cars behind me with my snail's pace; alas.

This information is probably a bit of a surprise to those reading this who've ridden in a car I drove. Upon getting my driver's license at 16 I was called upon for a good deal of driving by friends and they agreed that my first driving instructor was James Bond. I did tone my driving down over the years and usually just move the speed of traffic, which can be quite fast in CA or NJ.

The biggest change in my commute is that it takes much more time. But this isn't so bad; way back in the 90s when I transferred colleges, my commute time was cut in half. My morning ritual of hearing a whole side of a 90-minute tape was gone as it sometimes only took 20 minutes to get to school. So I will spend more time in my car now but that allows me a few more minutes of shuffling.

Eco-driving

I've read about eco-driving a bit and gave it a serious go lately. My morning commute is about 10 miles and kept a close eye on my mileage with my ScanGuage, a gift from Frau Goat. My usual morning commute mileage is around 30 mpg, even getting below 29 if I hurry a great deal. But by watching my tachometer and staying under 2k RPM, I got 34, 35, and 36 mpg on three consecutive days. Usually I don't get that kind of mileage unless I'm on the highway for a couple of hours. Give this a shot (and leave earlier since you'll be driving slower).

Tiny Liberia airport

We flew in to Costa Rica at the Daniel Oduber International Airport,just outside of Liberia. We could quickly tell that it was a tiny airport and later figured that it's probably the smallest international airport either of us have used. Not only did we have to disembark with the staircase and walk across the tarmac but the 'terminal' itself is obviously just a converted hanger with a (literally) Big Ass Fan as climate control. It easily beats out our other small airports we've used such as Toledo, OH (international for cargo) and the very quaint Derry, Ireland. It'll be interesting to see how this airport grows, given the great amount of development all over Costa Rica.

Gas prices

Going thru receipts from a recent trip to Costa Rica and came across one from our one purchase of gasoline. We had a rental car briefly (a somewhat rattley but overall decent Daihatsu Terios) and the full tank, combined with Costa Rica's smallness, kept us from having to buy much gas. I was surprised to find that the 4 Liters (almost one gallon) cost us $4.77 (2600 colones), not that much more than what we're paying in the High Desert as $4.39 is the cheapest around us.

Northwest goats

We visited the American Northwest for a llama's nuptuials and took the oportunity to spend a day in Seattle. We went to the Northwest Folklife Festival and had a good deal of good food while hearing lots of good music, such as the Hail Seizures (and I probably saw more washtub basses that weekend than in my entire life up to that point). We also picked up some nice chevre at Pike Place Market and later in Olympia we were excited to see Dancing Goats coffee.

Wintertime travels

With the first day of spring here's a chance to reflect upon some roadtrips we took back in the Winter:

- visiting LA is a bit of a road trip w/ babygoat getting more and more active. We were able to visit the excellent Nyala once again and enjoyed a good deal of tasty Ethiopian food.

- took a drive up to the Sacramento area and spent most of a day in beautiful Napa. This included a trip to Sterling Vineyards, a beautiful winery atop a hill. The view was slightly better than the wine. And since we were in the area, we were able to make a stop at the Jelly Belly factory and pick up some more delicious Belly Flops.

Vacation pt. 4: Houston etc.

To finally finish off the story of our travels on our summer vacation; as stated before, we did get a meal at Taquerias Arandas but saw no goats there. Food was alright, however.

During our drive from Austin to Louisiana and then back from Louisiana to Houston, I was amazed at the rock radio we heard in Texas. The playlist was stuff I was familiar with but I hadn't heard in a while: lots of Zeppelin, Hendrix, and the Black Crowes' first album. After a few hundred miles it finally came to me: this sounded just like LA rock radio back when I was in high school.

We took some time to see Houston and I really enjoyed Space Center Houston, if only to see all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules up close as well as the Saturn V rocket. I also learned a lot about SkyLab, the biggest gap in my knowledge of the American space program.

The next day we visited the very cool Art Car Museum which had some great dioramas on the Abu Ghraib scandal as part of the more conventional collection. We followed this with a visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science which was decent and very much what we expected, although lots of oil money obviously went into the huge exhibit on oil extraction. We followed these experiences with a trip to the local Chinatown where we were quite pleased to find a fully vegetarian place that did a lunch buffet, Pine Forest Garden. Usually even the vegetarian Indian places don't do a lunch buffet so this was pretty exciting.

We spent our last couple of days at the Westin Oaks Houston, which is connected to the Houston Galleria, a huge and very beautiful mall near the city center. Lots of nice enclosed spaces to walk around in and finally, after visiting 4 different hotels during our trip, we get one whose room didn't seem to me a smidge too small for the furniture. For the most part, I still like the way the Starwood group does their hotels; Babygoat had no major complaints, either.

We finished off our summer trip with a visit to the the Spoetzl Brewery, the place where they make Shiner Bock. The tour wasn't terribly exciting but the samples of their beers were quite worth the while. Taste the bock!

Halloween Potty

Something else that forktine sent along that made this Halloween my scariest in a while: an extended discussion of the shelf toilet. We encountered this not in Poland or Germany but while visiting forktine in Vienna a few years ago. While I see it can have advantages of no splashback, the shelf itself holds things far too long and close for my, uh, taste. I don't remember it from our many travels in Germany and Poland but it will certainly keep me from placing Austria high on my 'countries to revisit' list. And if you would like to see overeducated folk talk potty, there's a good forum at the Chronicle for you. I suppose I shouldn't be so harsh, as we've been very interested in the composting toilet brochure we got from Sun-Mar; at least the shelf-toilet gets rid of the stuff.

Vacation, pt. 3 - New Orleans/Baton Rouge

The next leg of our summer travels took us into Louisiana, where we visited some family near Baton Rouge and babygoat got some playtime with an infant cousin. We also took a couple of days to check out New Orleans and found the main tourist areas to be nice enough, although you get less than one mile away from the river and it begins to look like Katrina was just there yesterday. If they don't do something about it, New Orleans runs the risk of being like Atlantic City but with fun places to go nearby.

On our way out of the state, we stopped at an artist's studio to get a print of one of the unique Louisiana Mud Paintings that goes very well with our bedroom decor.

Vacation pt. 2: Austin

This is about 2 months late but late props are better than none.

Had a great time around Austin for a few days in early July. Got off to plane and had our first big taste of humidity in a long time. We got a more welcome taste of Fiesta Market the next day, it really is an amazing grocery store that combines the good cheap produce of Mexican markets with a huge selection typical of a college town. 4th of July was a nice bbq w/ friends and we enjoyed watching others engage in fireworks fights. Saw some sights around Austin, too, including the scenic loop near Fredericksburg that reminds one of how it's the rolling hills of the Austin area that make the landscape more interesting that the rest of Texas. Took a trip down to San Antonio, too, where we went on a walk thru the Alamo and for some reason the whole place failed to make me see what was so brave about staying there to die when, as Molly Ivins said, "even Sam Houston told them to get the hell out of there."

One of my highlights was (again) the incredible 1-2 punch of Waterloo Records and Amy's Ice Cream. They're two amazing places right in the same strip mall and if I lived in Austin I'd go there at least once a week. Got some good food in Austin, too, and not just from our very gracious hostess. Had a good vegetarian meal at Veggie Heaven one night and then before we flew back to Vegas we made a great pit stop at Polvo's (and I thought Polvo was just a noise band).

Vacation pt. 1: Vegas!

Our trip began up in Las Vegas where Ms Goat completed her set of Beatlesfests (NY, Chicago, west coast) begun long ago. We stayed at The Excalibur and they provided less than royal treatment tho the location was better than we've had before. Tho one can't stop whilst strolling through a casino, there are lots of lights to keep the baby distracted and plenty of opportunities to make jokes like 'I'm putting her on 47 red!' to gawkers.

At the fest I met Pete Best and babygoat met Denny Laine; it was a little weird to have many attendees ask if we were 'starting her out young', almost a tacit admission that they were in a cult. There was some live music there, too, with Laurence Juber putting on a fine display of technique in his solo guitar recreations of Beatles tunes and a cover band called Liverpool doing a good reproduction of the entire Sgt. Pepper's album (probably the only time I'll ever see Within You Without You live). On the down side, The Pete Best Band was not remarkable except for having two drummers (weird for a band led by a drummer) and Peter and Gordon should have stayed retired.

While there, I had a tune from the Diamonds Are Forever soundtrack stuck in my head, a bopping number called The Whyte House (2.2 M mp3) that is played during a casino scene; John Barry is the man. Gandhi was again excellent food and we've yet to find a casino buffet there that's truly vegetarian friendly tho we hardly starved. I didn't do as well on the slots this time but I was glad to see that Slotsky was still around: I'm very amused to see a slot machine named after a socialist revolutionary.

When in Columbus

Took a short trip to Ohio recently and while we didn't have a chance to enjoy all Toledo has to offer we did get to see a bit of Columbus. It was quite nice, a decent college town in the middle of a whole lotta flatlands. If you're ever near the university, be sure and get a bite to eat at Mad Mex, which had some of the best Mexican food I've tasted in a state not bordering Mexico.

You Know What I Did Last Summer?

I had saved these links last July and just never got around to posting them. I'm happy to plug those that deserve it so here goes:

We took a drive up to Napa in early July and enjoyed the chance to escape some desert heat. With some local friends we visited a bunch of nice wineries and I tasted wine that someday I'll be able to afford to buy by the bottle: Sullivan, Summers, Cakebread and Silver Oak were all excellent. After a couple of days there, we visited some friends in Davis before heading down to Monterey to check out the fun Monterey Bay Aquarium and enjoy the lovely shores of Pebble Beach.

On the way home we stopped by the Cat House, a feline conservation center (not a brothel). I had hoped to take a nice picture of their ocelot for this blog but he didn't feel like posing that (very hot) afternoon. Maybe next time.

Goat report, 2/3/06

Meet Neptune, the rescued goat! We visited the New York farm of this group back in 2002, when we were camping near the Finger Lakes. Nice place for a summer trip, especially since it's near fine wineries.

San Diego

A little bit of catching up in this post... we went down to San Diego for Thanksgiving as a member of the Goat clan lives down there w/ her husband and his kids. It was really nice down there, I'd never gone down to just enjoy the city, I was usually just there to see a show or something. We spent an afternoon on Coronado Island, which included a walk thru the Hotel Del Coronado and along the beach, and the next day checked out Balboa Park and took a brief walk thru the Japanese Gardens there. We also learned how to play cribbage, so we're well on our way to becoming old ladies.