Thank god for Mininova, thanks to that site I finally got my hands on the telecast of State Of Origin 2007 Game 1! It was torture not being able to watch the game live, which was taking place from 4am local time. Leading up to the game I was desperately searching the web for any way I could watch the match, and I learnt a few new things, like a program called SopCast which lets you stream live TV over the net. Network 10 Australia was one of the channels on SopCast, which was exciting in itself, watching it live from the US was so cool, even if it was only the crappy daytime screening of Dr Phil. Todd was walking past behind me when some ads came on, an Aussie girl was talking in an Optus ad and he just loved the accent.
But, Channel 10 is not Channel 9 where Origin would be exclusively played. By this time I was cursing up a storm and it was getting late, I had to give up. The deadline came and went, and I was asleep while the drama played out. Next day I was avoiding headlines and madly searching for a torrent or some video of the match, and suffering mild depression. I got an email from my friend Lisa, the short description in the email said "Hey Jason, Thanks for the emails. I have been great. Just got home from watching State of Origin...". Apologies to Lisa, but her email remained unread in the inbox. Later that day, Mum sent an email about Nikki Turner's new baby Elijah, so of course I read it. NOOO! I shut my eyes and turned away, but it was too late! Amidst baby photos, from mum who never cares much for State Of Origin, she spilled the beans with the words 'Go the Maroons!' It was insidious, I could have cried. I didn't though, coz at least we had won!
Couple days later, after I had gone back to read Lisa's email where she too went into full details, I found the telecast on good ol Mininova. After a playback drama, had it crankin on my laptop, speakers full volume, and the atmosphere of the 50 000 strong crowd at Suncorp Stadium filled Todd's little home in Norman, Oklahoma. And the surrounding neighbourhood. I was so happy, elation, my considerable efforts to get it had finally paid off. The funniest part about the telecast was how, when QLD was down by a 12 point defecit after NSW scored a try right on half-time, was hearing the pro-NSW commentary worry about QLD's comeback ability. Half-time wouldn't have been fun for a QLD supporter, but it was for me, half-time was edited out, so switch to the second movie and straight back to the action.
I was watching this in the early evening, and a bunch of people were coming over to our place to watch the UFC fight we had paid for that evening (Ultimate Fighting Championship). Chris, Adam and Todd were amazed at the full-contact nature of the sport with lack of protective wear on the players, since they are used to American Footballers that are padded head to toe. They might even be interested in watching game 2, and I'm determined to get them to watch it with me. QLD came to a triumphant comeback victory over NSW with a good variety of play that had me going flat out to explain the rules and tactics to the boys. Their questions were funny, coming from American Football, where you are allowed to tackle someone without the ball, you're allowed to obstruct the defense, you're allowed to throw it forward. NRL is very different.
So, the commentary mentioned how it was being broadcast on delay through Fox Sports in the US! I don't know what that delay is, I had looked for it but didn't find it, I'm hoping it plays for all of the US and not just some states. I'll be on the look out for game 2 gotta watch that one properly can't have it ruined for me. It's scary, watching the telecast, after hearing so much American talk, I noticed our accent, even though I haven't lost any of my accent, the only oz voices I hear regularly are my own and my parent's. I'm gonna watch more of Channel 10! ;)
Showing the sport to the boys, hearing them shout 'ooowh that's a big hit' on the big tackles and getting amazed & enthusiastic about the game, makes me think yet again; it's great to be Australian, and even better to be a Queenslander. GO THE MIGHTY MAROONS!
28 May 2007
16 May 2007
Volunteering to help Greensburg, KS
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| Greensburg |
The period of May 4 - 6 2007 saw a tornado outbreak in the US Midwest, one of the most significant outbreaks in recent history. Leading up to the evening of May 4, according to information compiled in Wikipedia on the event, tornado watches were in effect across much of the midwest states. At 8:35pm the first of several Kansas counties were put on tornado alert ahead of a strong supercell thunderstorm. At 9:30pm, storm chasers reported the formation of a tornado to the southwest of Greensburg, a country town with a population of over 1500 which had been on tornado alert for about 20 minutes. At this stage the main tornado also had several satellite tornadoes, and over the next several minutes, grew to an estimated half mile wide, prompting the National Weather Service in Dodge City to issue a rare tornado emergency, the highest alert possible intended for extremely life threatening situations with a large tornado approaching a population center.
At 9:38pm, the tornado, now over a mile and a half wide with estimated winds of 205 mph (330 kmph), hit Greensburg dead-center and proceeded to destroy the town for several minutes. It continued to strengthen as it left the town perimeter, and by the time it dissipated, it left a legacy of a destruction path 22 miles (35 km) long and 1.7 miles in diameter at its widest, 10 dead, 60 injured, and 95% of the town in ruins. Damage assessment the following day prompted the president to declare Kiowa County a disaster zone and the tornado was given an EF5 rating, the first level 5 event since the new EF scale was introduced this year, and the only 5 to have occurred since the infamous May 3 1999 tornado in Moore.
In the aftermath of the tornado the town was completely evacuated within hours as there was no safety from the continuing storms. An hour later and just 20 miles away a second, even bigger but slightly less powerful EF3 tornado 2 miles wide killed a policeman, and the following day another fatality from a 2 mile wide EF3 tornado occurred near Stafford. Some looting occurred in Greensburg and a dusk-till-dawn curfew was imposed, and storms and rain continued to lash the region for several days. The rain soaked the wreckage, and much of what survived the tornado was then flooded or water logged.
Greensburg is 285 miles from where I live in Norman, and during the week I was seriously contemplating heading up there to help out in what was sure to be a huge relief mission. After discussing it with a few people, who mostly thought I was crazy and not serious about driving all that way, one of my friends Mandy (who wants to be a firefighter) was the only person crazy enough to join me. Saturday night I gassed up the Jeep & packed some gear, while Mandy was out clubbing, and went to sleep wondering about what I was going to see the next day. At 5:20am I got up, trod on my sunglasses in the dark, had breakfast and headed up to pick Mandy up from her house in south Oklahoma City at 6am. I almost got in trouble when I got confused by the stupid street names changing and overshot my turnoff to her house by 50m; since it was early in the morning I backtracked the wrong way up the service road, almost got away with it until a car came around the corner and beeped at me, getting the attention of the state trooper at the adjacent gas station whom I hadn't seen before, who was filling up his patrol car and saw the whole thing. I circled through the gas station, sort of waved at him after I noticed him staring at me, he gave a half nod and turned back to his car, probably debating with himself whether or not it was too early to chase down and book a moron in a Jeep.
Driving through northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas on I-35 was great in the fine sunny morning, with fogs over fields glistening with dew and the rivers flowing rapidly as they receded from flood levels. I got hassled at a Kansas toll booth on the interstate by two lady employees who loved my accent, which Mandy thought was hilarious. Stopped for morning tea in a Kansas town where the fuel was relatively expensive but still cheaper than Australia, at $3.16 / gallon. By about 11pm we approached the main intersection of the town to the east of Greensburg, named Haviland. Police had set up a checkpoint and was redirecting traffic north to roads that bypass Greensburg. Mandy and I had a backup plan where if we were asked what our business was, if going to 'help' wasn't enough, she would bung on her best country accent and say we were going to her uncles house to clean up. We got through that checkpoint, and from then on I was on the lookout for anything unusual.
The tall concrete grain elevator which I recognised from aerial shots on the news was visible for miles around, and it marked the approach of the town. We passed a group of motorhomes, and three trucks with mobile houses on their trailers, belonging to owners maybe hoping to become the first to re-settle. A sign informed us of an AM radio station that was broadcasting disaster information, which I turned on. On the perimeter of the town, another police checkpoint was in place, and once again we had to justify our presence. But this time the officer asked what street Mandy's uncle lived in, and after a stupid pause where I looked at Mandy hoping she would say something, I said we were going to call her uncle and find out where he is, and look around. This was apparently good enough for the officer, and he tied a red band around my rear view mirror, and wished me luck. Immediately behind the checkpoint, it was all hustle & bustle. Initially there were probably a hundred cars parked in a field and a huge group of people crowded around a large marquee and walking about, probably the relief mission HQ, or some arrangement for mother's day. I thought for a moment about the mothers who would be celebrating nothing more this mother's day other than being thankful they & their loved ones are alive. I decided that could be our fallback if we couldn't find a way of helping on our own. Driving on to the next intersection, we were confronted by an incredible scene.
I have never been in a disaster zone, and the presentation of destruction around me left me awe struck. There was a bunch of trucks and heavy machinery driving around the highway, in and out of connecting streets, so I had to watch the road and could only take brief looks around me. I turned my camera on and took a bit of footage as I made my way slowly past the hub of heavy machinery work and over to a quieter part of town, and took a right northwards down a random street. I was making mental notes so as to not get lost, because I had correctly guessed long before I got to the town, that there would be no street signs left. It was a week after the event, and though the streets were cleared of debris, there otherwise appeared to be very little sign of progress. But of course, with truckloads of debris being taken away on an hourly basis every day for a week, I realise now that there probably had been loads of progress.
I drove past crumpled cars, with wheels blown out, windows shattered, roofs buckled or torn off, every panel smashed, some on their sides, some stacked on others. Around the cars were piles of rubble, and by rubble I mean the remains of houses utterly destroyed, snapped and broken timber, bright sheets of twisted tin roofing, concrete foundations exposed in places. Streets that would normally be lined with large trees in full spring bloom, now held dark trunks with all but the primary branches snapped off, stripped of bark, standing like ominous sentinels foreboding entry to the hazardous remains of their owner's properties. The naked, snapped trees are a characteristic unique to severe tornado damage, leaves get pulverised in seconds, and in the daylight for a few seconds, a tornado may appear to turn green.
Ahead, an American flag caught my attention, hanging from what looked like a snapped off power pole. I pulled over to the side of the road, turned the radio with the looping disaster information broadcast off, and went to explore a little on foot. The southerly wind, gusting to about 20 knots, kicked up dirt and light rubbish down the street to a height well over your head, so you had to shield your eyes. The sound of the relief effort was ever-present, diesel engines accelerating through the gears, and beeping from reversing trucks. You find the strangest things wandering through debris; amidst smashed chairs and tables, a butter plate undamaged, the tip of a christmas tree, blue tinsel tangled in the wreckage, some plush toys, bathroom products, chopped wood, a street sign. I walked from what was arguably one house pile to another, as no fences remained, the best way to judge properties where the houses were gone was to look for driveways.
I decided to try and hunt down some signs of impact damage, like out of the Twister movie, fence posts flying through doors and stuff. I went over to the most sturdy looking house in the immediate vicinity, which at least had straight walls and part of it's 2nd storey intact. Sure enough, I found exactly what I was looking for, a beam of wood, possibly belonging to a fence or house, rammed clean through the wall near the window, so it was wedged sticking into the room, having blasted away the surrounding wall like a 1ft wide exit wound. I hopped back down into the rubble and found my first souvenir, a small metal watch with a metal band, the links twisted and broken, the face glass gone, but the hour, minute and second hands were still intact. The face said 'HERALA 17 Jewels, Waterproof, Antimagnetic. I slipped it in my pocket just as a man called out from around the side of the house. "May I help you?"
I said "oh, we are just having a look around."
The man said "You shouldn't go in there, there's a sign out the front."
We had walked into the house from the back and hadn't seen the front of the house. From the back , you couldn't tell which way the house faced.
I explained "We're here to help out and were having a look around first."
He pointed to the side and said "Red Cross is organising the relief mission over on the highway."
We started walking out the front and Mandy was following, I explained how we'd seen that area and planned to head back there.
He paused and said "It's just, this is my house."
That came as a shock, and all I could say was "oh" as he stood there looking at his ruined home. He was perhaps in his 50's, with grey hair tied back in a pony tail, a US accent but not very country, he was tall and lean wearing glasses and a cap, in a shirt and jeans torn at the knees. Then I recovered and said "well, we would be all too happy to help you out, if this is your house, if there is anything we can do for you."
Then it was his turn to be shocked. He said "oh...well..." and thought for a few seconds "...actually yeah, I have a bunch of stuff downstairs that I need to get out and load on this trailer, boxes and crates of family stuff, you know."
I offered my hand and said "My name is Jason, this is my friend Mandy, we've come here from Norman." He introduced himself as Gary, and he started talking about the volunteers, how there had been hundreds if not thousands. He said "I'm sorry, I can't help but get a bit choked up, but the response has been incredible." He pulled Mandy and I into a hug and said "god bless you both."
From then on Gary started explaining what his immediate plans were, as he grabbed a torch out of the car and we followed him down the side of his house, through a doorway and down stairs littered with broken glass and strips of wood.The bottom of the stairs was quite dark, and the room to the right was almost pitch dark after the outside light. It was carpeted, but you couldn't really help but walk through the puddle at the bottom of the stairs to get into the room, and since Gary went walking straight through it without caring, I did too. It was a family room in the basement, and he lead us over to a joining section of rooms, and shining the torch on a cramped, little room full of boxes he said "this is where my daughter and I rode it out." He quickly explained what he needed from the room, which was piled on both sides with boxes to the roof, and said he was going to head off to try and find a structural engineer to assess the house to see if it could be saved. A sign out the front he had made had said "do not enter, do not bulldoze".
So Gary shot off and Mandy and I unloaded the boxes. She had the torch and pulled them off the shelves and stacked them out in the family room, while I took them from the family room, through the puddle, up the stairs and out to the trailer. It was only at this time that the shock of being surrounded by debris and destruction wore off and I walked about feeling 'normal', because I had a job to do. We unloaded boxes for maybe an hour and a half, Gary had a lot of stuff, and I just hoped it wasn't junk to him, coz it sure looked like it to me! Didn't take long to prove that I had the better task, it was funny hearing Mandy curse and squeal in the little soaked room when she pulled crates down where water had puddled on top of plastic lids, and this dank stinky water kept pouring over her as she lifted things. We were a bit alarmed at one point, Mandy had pulled something, and suddenly the sound of pouring water started and didn't stop. Turned out to be a false alarm, the roof wasn't about to collapse, just a crate had no lid and was full to the brim with water. It was very heavy, Mandy wasn't sure what to do with it, I said to slosh some of the water out, it's not as if any more damage could be done.
Gary came back as the trailer was almost loaded, only then did I notice that he actually didn't have a car, and was getting lifts from friends and people helping out. He loaded two massive speakers in the trailer, and helped us move some last sodden boxes, and then he asked if we could go for a ride in my car across town to the church, where he could get some bungee cords to tie down the load. So we headed off, and he started telling us about the neighbourhood, asking if we had seen the schools, he would point out where churches stood, the town used to have plenty of churches. He had owned and run an antique store, which was now rubble, but as we drove over to the church, he was waving to everyone he saw, and one fellow walked up to the car so I stopped. They knew each other, as everyone does in a little town like this, and this guy had some antique-ish things that he had nowhere to keep, and was offering them to Gary. Gary is probably on the threshold of a monopoly in a booming industry, for trinkets and antiques that have been through an EF5 tornado, I'm sure there will be a market for them! Gary gave Mandy and I a gift, which he was excited about, he gave us each a 100 year old brick from the church. I thanked him earnestly, but had serious doubts about how I would be able to continue my travels with a brick in tow. But I loaded the two bricks in the boot and changed my mind, thinking it would be a brilliant gift for my flat mate Todd ;)
Gary turned out to be a fascinating bloke, with a good story. He explained with a chuckle how a few years ago, they lived in Vegas, and his wife wanted to move out to Greensburg, for 'a better night life'. Gary's sense of humour and warm, optimistic nature made him instantly likeable. In fact, his optimism was inspiring, he talked fondly of the past, and despite everything that had happened he had grand plans for the future. His wife and son were out of town during the tornado, his wife was involved with Greensburg town marketing, and had the only known copy of the Greensburg town history with her, so it was not lost. Gary had taken his daughter and sheltered in their basement when the warning siren went off, and a short while later, the approach of the tornado was like the roar of a freight train punctuated by crashing thunder. He estimates the tornado was actually over his house for at least a minute and a half. When he emerged onto the scene of chaos, he went across the road calling out the name of the 95 year old lady who lived across the street in a house half collapsed. He called twice, with no answer. The third time he screamed out, and heard a faint reply. He cut almost all of his fingers on plate glass in a door frame trying to get to her, and managed to find her buried under broken furniture and debris. She had bad lacerations to her arm and had lost a lot of blood, and so he tied a tourniquet for her and got her out of there, and looked for a way to get help. They didn't get far on the road, as all roads were blocked with debris, but eventually they made their way out, and near the edge of town they intercepted an ambulance. She made it OK and was fortunately only one of the 60 injured and not 10 dead, quite possibly due to Gary's actions. Gary's fingers were all bandaided and he had stitches, but it didn't hinder him in lifting or anything to do with his hands, which had been working overtime during that week.
When we got back, we tied down his gear with the bungee cords, had lunch, and then he asked if I would like to do a little sightseeing. We started with his house. He said if I wanted a good shot, to follow him. He showed me the living room, where furniture removed from the wall after the storm showed the clean wall contrasting sharply with the wall spattered with dirt and mud. In fact, the entire room, roof included, and all sides were spattered to some degree, eluding to what it is like to have a 200mph breeze comng in your window. He explained how in the wedge of the tornado, all of the leaves, sticks and fine debris flying about at such speed has the effect of sand blasting. He had a 400 year old table & drawers or something which was covered in filth but otherwise undamaged. The kitchen had weird square glass blocks making up the outward wall, and miraculously they were mostly intact, which he explained was much to the disgust of his wife, as they were what she hated most in the house. We headed upstairs, and I was watching my footing closely, checking the structural integrity of the wooden staircase as Gary walked ahead, and when I got to the top, I was shocked to look up suddenly and see blue sky! Infront of me, a large hole existed where a window was, above me, no roof, to my left, a room with no roof and no walls. We turned for the master bedroom, where Gary had a 4 poster bed. I betrayed no hint of surprise when he told me that he had mirrors on the roof of the 4 poster bed, and that one of the 3 panes had lifted up, travelled across the top, down the side of the bed and underneath before shattering. This was evidenced by the fact that the pane, while shattered, was still in a rectangular shape under the bed. We walked over and stepped out his window onto the roof, and made our way along the side of the house. It was sturdy enough, and Gary had apparently already been out here on the roof before. Jumping from one sloped section of the roof to another, we climbed right up to the 2nd story at the front of the house, where a slanted 2m section of wood was all that remained of the 2nd story roof. From this point, I was higher than anything in my immediate vicinity, and level with the tallest remaining structures across town. I took a series of 26 photos for a panoramic shot, keeping a firm footing to withstand the strong southerly wind that was blowing.
Afterwards I headed back down and over to the neighbour's pile to get a photo of Gary's house and where I took the panoramic. There I found the most striking rubble-treasure yet, amidst total carnage, dark and twisted and filthy, was a bright yellow rubber ducky. I took photos of it lying on its side amongst the debris, then picked it up and put it in the back of my car for safekeeping. I'm going to give it to my future kids, and when they're old enough, I'll tell them that their ducky survived one of the strongest storms on earth. Just after I put ducky in the boot a $100 bill blew past me down the road. It was only Monopoly money though!
After lunch, which was my first ever peanut butter & jelly sandwich (not too bad), we made plans to head off. Gary had been visited by a few people who had come over when they saw him there, including the previous owner of the house. The greetings were more than simple hellos, they were more like 'it's so good to see you, glad you're OK'. It wasn't hard to see how rural communities like this bond so closely and pull together in the face of hardship like this. One dude rocked up in a massive canary yellow Hummer with an American flag sticking out the side, and while he talked to Gary, the cutest little girl hopped out of the car & came over to Mandy & I. She was holding an even cuter kitten, which was just chillin in her palm, completely relaxed and peering about with wide eyes, while the little girl patted it and told us all about the kitten being 2 months old, what they were doing with its brothers & sisters, what her Dad was doing here (volunteering).
Mandy & I decided to head off before it got too late, because of our next destination I had to check out on the way home. We said goodbye to Gary, exchanged contact information, and I wished him the best of luck. We did a bit more sightseeing before we left, first heading over to the south end of town, the direction the tornado came from. We passed the theatre, the destroyed schools and smashed school buses, the firies sitting infront of their engines having smoko while their de-roofed base lie behind. I saw a mobile house which appeared to have been lifted up and dropped back down onto a metre high pile of rubble, and while there wasn't a straight wall left in it, it was still sort of intact. 50m off to the left, I saw a wrecked car sitting out in the middle of a field, and another truck in a mini-creek shortly after. Mandy explained to me how it looked similar to the May 3 tornado of 1999, which took out her grandmother's house in Moore. She spent months helping the family clean up. While there was a greater quantity of damage in that tornado, because of the dense population area involved, at least that scene held some houses that remained standing, sometimes right next to others that were blown away to the slab. The word for Greensburg's destruction however was 'complete'. Houses were half-standing at best, and the tornado path encompassed the entire town, leaving no respite to the eye, looking for something, just something that made it untouched.
I went to the encircling road around town hoping to see the swathe of the tornado track in the grass, but the grass had either blown back straight from the winds or the track can't be seen from the ground. Heading back north, to the other side of town, we came to what must have been the edge of the path, where I found the only street sign in town, twisted but standing, and took a photo looking back up Main street.
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Going to Greensburg was a profound experience, you can't help but be filled with empathy towards the people who live there. Seeing Gary choke with emotion as he talked about the volunteer response and people like Mandy and I making special trips to help made it all worthwhile.
To shake Gary's hand in admiration of the optimism he shows when he talks about the future, I left without any worries at all. Greensburg may be all but wiped out, but the spirit of the people is as strong as ever, and I have no doubt the town will quickly become even greater and more wonderful than before. Still, it is a massive undertaking, and I'm glad to have helped in some small way.
Of course, how could I drive all the way up to Kansas and across to Greensburg, without taking a side track through the countryside to a tiny little town made famous by a hollywood blockbuster movie themed on the exact thing I had just witnessed? Yeah, I had to go and check out Wakita, which featured as the disaster zone in the movie Twister, which I'm sure you all have seen. It's like my parent's favourite movie that they watch at least 4 times a year, and it is the one place in Oklahoma that I wanted to see most. The water tower, visible for miles, looks exactly the same as in the movie, and we pulled up near to it and jumped out so I could get my photos. A group of 4 bikers were watching us, and by the time I was done, curiosity got the better of one of them and he came over with his beer and hick accent to find out what on earth we were doing. He was a pleasant young guy named J, who liked his simple name because, in his own words, he liked a simple life. He invited us both over for a beer, and I was like 'um, errr yeah why not!'.
He explained how he and his mates saw us but didn't recognise the car so knew we were from 'out of town', was fascinated to learn I was from further out of town than he could possibly have thought, he was sunburnt to a crisp from mowing grass all weekend, the tear in his jeans exposed half his leg, and he had a friendly innocent disposition. I had trouble understanding his older buddies, especially the grandpa sitting in the chair smoking, didn't understand a single word that came out of his mouth. We had a 'Natural Light' beer, or beer-flavoured water, on the house, and had a fantastic happy hour in the afternoon shade with Wakita locals. Unfortunately, the Twister movie museum was closed for mother's day. It is actually closed most of the time, and only opens when you call the phone number on the door and a lady comes out and opens it up for you. The fellas explained how big the movie was for the town, how the main street (where we were standing) was bustling with people and the town population increased ten fold. The house that collapses, was apparently carefully constructed with hinging parts that swung down in precision timing to create a controlled structural collapse that could be repeated over and over! Everyone ridicules the movie, especially the part where they hang from a water main in an F5 tornado and get a bit of dirt on their face, but they love it all the same.
And that's it! After that we cruised back home doing 80 most the way. A very interesting and rewarding trip. Time to plan the next one, and rest my fingers from typing!
I have put up a few pages on my (incomplete) website, they hold a bunch of photos and video footage that I took on the day. Those pictures are better than my thousand words.
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| Greensburg |
-Jason
15 May 2007
Tornados and stuff
And the last of four backdated emails!
Hi everyone,
Some of you might have heard about the storms that came through the US midwest at the end of last week. I thought I might share some additional details and my own experiences with what happened (I'll try and keep this one a bit smaller than the others, so you can actually go ahead and read it and not need to print it out to read before going to bed!)
It had been cloudy and rainy all week and then thursday March 29 saw the first tornado watch issued near to me. A tornado watch is sometimes declared on a county-basis if the counties lie in the path of a severe storm, or if any evidence of tornados or rotation is given by eyewitness account or doppler radar. I'm in the Cleveland county, which is Norman's county just to the south of the Oklahoma City county. Oklahoma City county was put on tornado watch in the afternoon, and while I was at work thurs avo everyone got excited because staff from the Oklahoma city office had called to say that they were all being evacuated because the Tornado sirens had gone off. Instantly everyone was gathering around people with radios and TV to hear more, and news was unfolding about a 'moderate' tornado on the NorthWest expressway, which is to the North West of the city. The tornado sirens are the same as the old World War II air-raid sirens, and wind up to a piercing wail that carries for miles. A tornado siren going off is the sign to take immediate cover because there is a confirmed tornado on the ground in your vicinity. The siren continues until the threat is over, then it whirrs down slowly over about 10 seconds.
The tornado ended up being a strong EF2 tornado. The EF scale (enhanced-fujita) was introduced in February this year to more accurately estimate tornado winds based on actual damage. I was amazed to see on the TV coverage, one of the huge long-distance power towers (the ones that have 6 or 8 powerlines mounted a hundred feet above the ground) was bent in half sticking over to the side. These towers are all metal, built to endure for years and part of major electrical infrastructure, it's just a metal mesh with no panels, you think the wind would just blow straight through it. It was surreal to see one bent to the side at a 90 degree angle halfway up. Later that night I was chatting to one of my new mates in a bar in Oklahoma City, and he told me that he worked on kitchens and he was in his truck on the way to a house with some finishing touches to the kitchen, and heard on the radio that the tornado had hit that exact area, and upon arrival the house he was on his way to was destroyed.
More info about that tornado has been published here : http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/20070329/
Friday March 30 started off with strong storms down in Texas right from the early morning. It was stormy all day, and after midday, half of Oklahoma State was on tornado watch, given the fact that the previous day had seen 65 reported tornados and 4 fatalities across several states. The watch included my county Cleveland, and all the counties around me. By the afternoon, the dry line was approaching us from the southwest, but infront of the dry line were some of the strongest storms. I went to get some groceries after work (yeah on a Friday; earlier in the week I was nearly broke, down to $30 cash in the wallet with nothin in the bank coz I only get paid once a month, and thurs night the check finally cleared). So I was in good ol Wal-Mart at about 6:15pm, half way through my shopping, when I heard a peculiar noise that was fading in and out of hearing. Straining to listen through the roar of the rain on the roof I realised with a shock that it was a siren, and then about 30 seconds later an announcement was being made over the store intercom that a tornado warning was issued and that everyone had to stop what they were doing immediately and move to the back of the store and gather along the concrete wall. I was asked by two people what the intercom announcement was saying, and I said 'apparently there is a tornado warning, and we need to get to the back of the store against the wall'. Everyone was pretty calm, very blaz-e in fact, whinging about how long this would take, the wal-mart staff were doing a very unenthusiastic job of ushering everyone to the wall, and one lady was loudly saying 'as long as it doesn't take my car, anything but the car!'
I didn't go to the same part of the wall where the other Wal-mart patrons were being herded like sheep; I stood near the entrance to the warehouse out the back so I could hear properly. Above the roar of the rain on the roof, the tornado siren was keeping it's blood curdling pitch but the volume was fading in and out, depending on how many gusts of wind were between me and the siren which was miles away. I figured if the rain & wind changed from a roar to a scream then I'd go and stand in a little recess against the wall away from the doorway, but there was nothing really to hold on to. I then thought how much it would suck to die in a Wal-mart. Still, if I had been at home by myself, as my flat mate is away in Florida at the moment, I would have been packin it at the sound of the siren. So being in a public place for my first tornado warning was a good thing. The tornado apparently touched down very close by, according to another lady I spoke to on the weekend, who said it was down the road from her near the hospital in Norman, and it jumped a few times but was brief. If she is right that means it was just over a mile away from me to the west, but I haven't been able to confirm her claims with any news reports or anyone else. Not that I care too much, as long as I wasn't in it, and yeah, as long as it didn't take my car! I only just got it!
So I hauled ass after that and finished my groceries and headed home to find the roads half flooded and Todd's backyard under at least 6 inches of water. A half hour later I noticed afternoon light and looked west and saw the veil of rain give way before my eyes to blue and yellow skies. There were kids over the road standing on their front porch and they were wow-ing at something and I walked out in the rain and looked back over the house to the east and saw a magnificent full double rainbow. Ran inside and grabbed me trusty waterproof camera and stood in the rain for a couple minutes taking a few photos for a panoramic shot.
So that's my news. Funny that two days later the Gold Coast and the eastern coast of Australia got a tsunami warning from the Solomon Islands quake; crazy stuff! Tornados & Tsunamis, what's next!?
Jason
Hi everyone,
Some of you might have heard about the storms that came through the US midwest at the end of last week. I thought I might share some additional details and my own experiences with what happened (I'll try and keep this one a bit smaller than the others, so you can actually go ahead and read it and not need to print it out to read before going to bed!)
It had been cloudy and rainy all week and then thursday March 29 saw the first tornado watch issued near to me. A tornado watch is sometimes declared on a county-basis if the counties lie in the path of a severe storm, or if any evidence of tornados or rotation is given by eyewitness account or doppler radar. I'm in the Cleveland county, which is Norman's county just to the south of the Oklahoma City county. Oklahoma City county was put on tornado watch in the afternoon, and while I was at work thurs avo everyone got excited because staff from the Oklahoma city office had called to say that they were all being evacuated because the Tornado sirens had gone off. Instantly everyone was gathering around people with radios and TV to hear more, and news was unfolding about a 'moderate' tornado on the NorthWest expressway, which is to the North West of the city. The tornado sirens are the same as the old World War II air-raid sirens, and wind up to a piercing wail that carries for miles. A tornado siren going off is the sign to take immediate cover because there is a confirmed tornado on the ground in your vicinity. The siren continues until the threat is over, then it whirrs down slowly over about 10 seconds.
The tornado ended up being a strong EF2 tornado. The EF scale (enhanced-fujita) was introduced in February this year to more accurately estimate tornado winds based on actual damage. I was amazed to see on the TV coverage, one of the huge long-distance power towers (the ones that have 6 or 8 powerlines mounted a hundred feet above the ground) was bent in half sticking over to the side. These towers are all metal, built to endure for years and part of major electrical infrastructure, it's just a metal mesh with no panels, you think the wind would just blow straight through it. It was surreal to see one bent to the side at a 90 degree angle halfway up. Later that night I was chatting to one of my new mates in a bar in Oklahoma City, and he told me that he worked on kitchens and he was in his truck on the way to a house with some finishing touches to the kitchen, and heard on the radio that the tornado had hit that exact area, and upon arrival the house he was on his way to was destroyed.
More info about that tornado has been published here : http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/20070329/
Friday March 30 started off with strong storms down in Texas right from the early morning. It was stormy all day, and after midday, half of Oklahoma State was on tornado watch, given the fact that the previous day had seen 65 reported tornados and 4 fatalities across several states. The watch included my county Cleveland, and all the counties around me. By the afternoon, the dry line was approaching us from the southwest, but infront of the dry line were some of the strongest storms. I went to get some groceries after work (yeah on a Friday; earlier in the week I was nearly broke, down to $30 cash in the wallet with nothin in the bank coz I only get paid once a month, and thurs night the check finally cleared). So I was in good ol Wal-Mart at about 6:15pm, half way through my shopping, when I heard a peculiar noise that was fading in and out of hearing. Straining to listen through the roar of the rain on the roof I realised with a shock that it was a siren, and then about 30 seconds later an announcement was being made over the store intercom that a tornado warning was issued and that everyone had to stop what they were doing immediately and move to the back of the store and gather along the concrete wall. I was asked by two people what the intercom announcement was saying, and I said 'apparently there is a tornado warning, and we need to get to the back of the store against the wall'. Everyone was pretty calm, very blaz-e in fact, whinging about how long this would take, the wal-mart staff were doing a very unenthusiastic job of ushering everyone to the wall, and one lady was loudly saying 'as long as it doesn't take my car, anything but the car!'
I didn't go to the same part of the wall where the other Wal-mart patrons were being herded like sheep; I stood near the entrance to the warehouse out the back so I could hear properly. Above the roar of the rain on the roof, the tornado siren was keeping it's blood curdling pitch but the volume was fading in and out, depending on how many gusts of wind were between me and the siren which was miles away. I figured if the rain & wind changed from a roar to a scream then I'd go and stand in a little recess against the wall away from the doorway, but there was nothing really to hold on to. I then thought how much it would suck to die in a Wal-mart. Still, if I had been at home by myself, as my flat mate is away in Florida at the moment, I would have been packin it at the sound of the siren. So being in a public place for my first tornado warning was a good thing. The tornado apparently touched down very close by, according to another lady I spoke to on the weekend, who said it was down the road from her near the hospital in Norman, and it jumped a few times but was brief. If she is right that means it was just over a mile away from me to the west, but I haven't been able to confirm her claims with any news reports or anyone else. Not that I care too much, as long as I wasn't in it, and yeah, as long as it didn't take my car! I only just got it!
So I hauled ass after that and finished my groceries and headed home to find the roads half flooded and Todd's backyard under at least 6 inches of water. A half hour later I noticed afternoon light and looked west and saw the veil of rain give way before my eyes to blue and yellow skies. There were kids over the road standing on their front porch and they were wow-ing at something and I walked out in the rain and looked back over the house to the east and saw a magnificent full double rainbow. Ran inside and grabbed me trusty waterproof camera and stood in the rain for a couple minutes taking a few photos for a panoramic shot.
So that's my news. Funny that two days later the Gold Coast and the eastern coast of Australia got a tsunami warning from the Solomon Islands quake; crazy stuff! Tornados & Tsunamis, what's next!?
Jason
New wheels
Third of four backdated emails :)
Hi everyone, got some more news... I managed to get a car! So this means I'm gonna be heaps busier and this will be the last major update for a little while.
I was looking around like crazy for a mid size SUV, something that wasn't a gas guzzler but was big enough to support me in the things I want to do while I'm over here in the States, like weekend trips, heading to the lakes and the snow for water and winter sports, maybe even towing my flat mate's boat so we don't need to bother his old man for the truck. I started looking all around Norman, a couple of websites, getting a lift to the somewhat famous 'mile of cars' in Norman, and after looking over hundreds of cars, I decided on the Jeep Liberty as my favourite make & model. My first experience driving on the wrong side of the road was in a Jeep Liberty Renegade with the car salesman sitting next to me and Rajesh sitting in the back (one of the fellas from the Xyant office who was helping me look for a car, champion).
So Rajesh and this guy were chatting away, and I didn't hear a single thing they said, I was concentrating that much; keep right, indicators are on the wrong side, gear stick is on the wrong side...I managed to do fine though even in moderate traffic. Also tried driving a Saturn Vue but that was too, family-suited, too 'nice' I suppose. The Jeep was more rugged, more powerful, better looking, better fun. But this Jeep had some issues, most of all it was only rear wheel drive. In fact, I was absolutely stunned at the fact that over here, 98% of cars younger than 2000 model are automatic, and then of those that are manual transmission, they were all either rear or front wheel drive. Two car dealers joked 'what do you want a 4WD in Oklahoma for anyway'? They just thought I was crazy, when I asked for a manual transmission four wheel drive, I'd get furrowed brows and head scratches and 'um, well we don't have any of those, in fact I haven't seen anything like that in ages'. Americans love convenience (hence drive thru ATMs, Wal Marts that sell everything you can imagine, and fridges double the size of ours back home full of microwave meals), and unfortunately, manual transmission is seen as an inconvenience.
It made me think carefully about my resale potential, but I just can't do auto, I wanted that manual transmission, and 4 wheel drive incase I get stuck in weather up on the ski fields or whatever may happen. So I started looking wider, and sure enough, in Colorado where it snows, they were relatively abundant. And then I found one car that had everything I wanted. After grilling the sales guy with questions, and getting him to take extra photos of particular areas at my request and email them, I ran the VIN number check (vehicle's history, which has become important since the used car market has become littered with flood restoration jobs from New Orleans) and all checked out. So, a million bank dramas later (bank security is so tight it's a wonder they even give you your own money seriously), the deposit was down and I was trying to get my stranded a-- over to Colorado Springs. I spent a couple days seriously contemplating a plan to hire a car from Oklahoma Airport to Colorado Springs; a drive there and back again that would take all weekend, involving sleeping in the back of the rent car on friday night. My flat mate then looked at flights for me and found one out of Dallas for $200, via Denver to Colorado Springs. I hadn't considered Dallas for the obvious reason I can't get there, but Todd said he had found a motorbike he wanted to look at (he's also in the market for one of those) and was going to cruise down with another mate Chris, and we'd go early and drop me off at the airport. So that was the new plan, and at 3:10am Saturday Morning I was up and getting ready for the 2.5 - 3ish hour drive south to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, Texas. The airport is enormous, with multiple terminals for various airlines, and after getting lost both in the car and then running the full length of a terminal on foot, I made it to the United flight with a short wait till boarding. That was a fair bit of stress think I got another grey hair from that one, because of the consequences of missing the flight, and I've had my fair share of consequences already!
Descent to Colorado showed that most of the snow had melted from the ground from my last visit two weeks previous, and the countryside was like a white tiger's fur print stripes, with only the gullies sheltered from the westerly wind facing north-south having any snow left in them, shining white strips amidst the brownish grasslands. I could finally see the front range, which was in clouds two weeks prior, and it was breathtaking. Snow capped mountains. Colorado Springs is nestled in close to the front range that lies to the west, which extends north and south as far as the eye can see, and eastward is the start of the plains, with no geographical features of any sort.
I got picked up at the airport by Lucas, the internet car salesman, and headed over to Heuberger Motors. Well it was kinda funny, like a love at first sight type of thing, I spotted the Jeep from across the car lot and knew that was it, and a thorough look and drive later, it was sold. I handed over the 'cashiers check' (same as a bank cheque) for $13 000 USD which stung me about 18k Australian. Damn. Still it was a good buy esp when considering prices of similar cars in Australia. So, the feature list is basically as follows.
• 2003 Jeep Liberty Freedom Edition (also known as sport; but an overly patriotic title don't you think?)
• Black
• 3.7L V6 5sp Manual Transmission
• 4WD, RWD when not running 4WD
• 38 000 miles
• Sunroof
• Cruise Control
• Power windows, locking, steering
• mmm, cup holders (two of them! oh wait, they usually come in pairs don't they? I never had any and was always extremely jealous of those with this superior luxury feature)
• Those neat dashboard displays that are white in the day and black at night
• 6 stacker in-dash CD player / radio, 4 door speakers
• Tinted windows (but not for front doors, illegal apparently on SUV's here?)
• Two-tone leather steering wheel and matching black cloth seats with tan leather edges (best of both worlds, durability of leather on the edges, without the cold/heat of leather where you mainly sit)
• Roof rails (I won't bother with racks though, not yet) and once I get a tow hitch, towing capacity of 5000lbs which ought to haul Todd's boat to any lake we desire :)
• $10 000 USD cheaper than the Kelly Blue Book recommended price for that type of used car, which is good
The cruise control quickly became my new toy, and for the third occasion driving on the wrong side of the road, I headed back up to Denver to meet up with Stacey, my first friend I made in the US, on the connecting flight two weeks before from LA to Denver. We spent St Patricks out to dinner and I tried Venison meat loaf. So, confirming my first impressions, she's cool, and it's great to have a friend in Denver. Staying overnight I was up early the next day excited about the interstate drive back to Norman Oklahoma. I had two choices, one quicker route was to head east to Kansas and south to Oklahoma, but that is a flat, straight, boring drive. So I went south as planned, back through Colorado Springs, following the spectacular front range all along. I passed an enormous international speedway, which was a genuinely massive grand stand in the middle of the countryside, and a high-walled circuit track. I also passed a major accident affecting north-bound traffic, where a bus had blown up I'm guessing about 20-30 minutes earlier, with a stack of emergency vehicles driving up the grass on the highway center and traffic backed up for over a mile. Never heard about it on the news tho.
Stopped just short of the border to fill up and grab subway, it was amazing how quickly the countryside changed at the border to New Mexico. The rocky hills, short pines and small bushes gave way to yellow grassy plains and hills with black rubbly slopes crowned with small cliffs. New Mexico was otherwise uneventful, and a bit tiring, and the border to Texas saw another distinct change, to flatness and numerous corn pastures varying from brown and yellow to lush green, all arranged in squares containing circles of crops, and the watering gear wheels around a central point. Another stop in Amarillo, and a second lunch, and on to Oklahoma, where I saw distinct Oklahoman farms straight out of the movie Twister, with a big house, an even bigger shed, and a wind mill, and vast green plains of crops. I was still listening to radio, about the 9th radio station I had passed through, and just after dusk I got to Oklahoma City and headed south the final leg to Norman. By this stage the front of the car was thoroughly plastered in bugs (I had cleaned the windscreen 3 times from bugs already). I got home and what was the first thing I did (after unloading my stuff)? Got straight back in the car and drove with Todd around town and gave him a drive. He's hooked on SUVs now and so his volvo sedan's days are numbered ha.
All told, I covered about 720 miles in that trip, about 1150kms, over about 11 hours. I've already worked out a dozen ways to sit in the drivers seat to make full use of the cruise control, even got a foot rest on the dash for when i'm bare foot. Was equal to the best drive I've ever done, next to the drive west from the Gold Coast to Stanthorpe on a winter friday afternoon / evening a few years back.
There are some good personalities at work, I have been put through a few group introductions, the biggest was at an office-wide meeting in the (large) kitchen to discuss major company developments, Bill the boss said 'we have a couple of new faces here, there is Jason who has come here from Aus-stralia' and someone said with perfect timing 'that's quite a commute'
And they find it funny that the Australian has bought a Jeep Liberty Freedom, pretty much the most patriotic car title around, and when I was asked if I was gonna fly the American flag on it, I said I had an Australian flag on order and 0ZB0Y plates.
Yes so it's late now, i'm behind on sleep, work is full on learning heaps and contributing heaps i've had to hit the ground running there. Meeting more people at work, some guys with similar tastes of adventure sports as me, one guy goes four wheel driving in a Jeep Wrangler (nuts 4 wheel driving though, like oh look at that river over there, lets go and drive through it). And I mean through it as in along it, not across it. That's Kevin, and Adam I met today he also has a boat and goes wakeboarding, one of the bosses windsurfs, and so half of Metavante sounds like it'll be at Lake Heffner or Thunderbird in the spring/summer months. Looking forward to my second summer :D so I can retaliate for all the stories of great surf and hot weather back home with a few pix of wakeboarding and camping by the lake. Every day at the moment is being marked by a big achievement; an important possession bought, some weird US thing or terminology learned, .NET technology ideas for work, simple discovery things like driving down a new neighbourhood the likes of which I've never seen, and I'm sure this will continue for a long time still. Exciting? Absolutely. Challenging? Wouldn't have it any other way. Homesick? No, but I think about everyone back home and other friends abroad heaps. Fulfilling? I'm living my dream, setting my goals and making them happen, and I have plenty more to go!
Hope you all are well and looking after yourselves. I'll be in touch.
Jason
Hi everyone, got some more news... I managed to get a car! So this means I'm gonna be heaps busier and this will be the last major update for a little while.
I was looking around like crazy for a mid size SUV, something that wasn't a gas guzzler but was big enough to support me in the things I want to do while I'm over here in the States, like weekend trips, heading to the lakes and the snow for water and winter sports, maybe even towing my flat mate's boat so we don't need to bother his old man for the truck. I started looking all around Norman, a couple of websites, getting a lift to the somewhat famous 'mile of cars' in Norman, and after looking over hundreds of cars, I decided on the Jeep Liberty as my favourite make & model. My first experience driving on the wrong side of the road was in a Jeep Liberty Renegade with the car salesman sitting next to me and Rajesh sitting in the back (one of the fellas from the Xyant office who was helping me look for a car, champion).
So Rajesh and this guy were chatting away, and I didn't hear a single thing they said, I was concentrating that much; keep right, indicators are on the wrong side, gear stick is on the wrong side...I managed to do fine though even in moderate traffic. Also tried driving a Saturn Vue but that was too, family-suited, too 'nice' I suppose. The Jeep was more rugged, more powerful, better looking, better fun. But this Jeep had some issues, most of all it was only rear wheel drive. In fact, I was absolutely stunned at the fact that over here, 98% of cars younger than 2000 model are automatic, and then of those that are manual transmission, they were all either rear or front wheel drive. Two car dealers joked 'what do you want a 4WD in Oklahoma for anyway'? They just thought I was crazy, when I asked for a manual transmission four wheel drive, I'd get furrowed brows and head scratches and 'um, well we don't have any of those, in fact I haven't seen anything like that in ages'. Americans love convenience (hence drive thru ATMs, Wal Marts that sell everything you can imagine, and fridges double the size of ours back home full of microwave meals), and unfortunately, manual transmission is seen as an inconvenience.
It made me think carefully about my resale potential, but I just can't do auto, I wanted that manual transmission, and 4 wheel drive incase I get stuck in weather up on the ski fields or whatever may happen. So I started looking wider, and sure enough, in Colorado where it snows, they were relatively abundant. And then I found one car that had everything I wanted. After grilling the sales guy with questions, and getting him to take extra photos of particular areas at my request and email them, I ran the VIN number check (vehicle's history, which has become important since the used car market has become littered with flood restoration jobs from New Orleans) and all checked out. So, a million bank dramas later (bank security is so tight it's a wonder they even give you your own money seriously), the deposit was down and I was trying to get my stranded a-- over to Colorado Springs. I spent a couple days seriously contemplating a plan to hire a car from Oklahoma Airport to Colorado Springs; a drive there and back again that would take all weekend, involving sleeping in the back of the rent car on friday night. My flat mate then looked at flights for me and found one out of Dallas for $200, via Denver to Colorado Springs. I hadn't considered Dallas for the obvious reason I can't get there, but Todd said he had found a motorbike he wanted to look at (he's also in the market for one of those) and was going to cruise down with another mate Chris, and we'd go early and drop me off at the airport. So that was the new plan, and at 3:10am Saturday Morning I was up and getting ready for the 2.5 - 3ish hour drive south to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, Texas. The airport is enormous, with multiple terminals for various airlines, and after getting lost both in the car and then running the full length of a terminal on foot, I made it to the United flight with a short wait till boarding. That was a fair bit of stress think I got another grey hair from that one, because of the consequences of missing the flight, and I've had my fair share of consequences already!
Descent to Colorado showed that most of the snow had melted from the ground from my last visit two weeks previous, and the countryside was like a white tiger's fur print stripes, with only the gullies sheltered from the westerly wind facing north-south having any snow left in them, shining white strips amidst the brownish grasslands. I could finally see the front range, which was in clouds two weeks prior, and it was breathtaking. Snow capped mountains. Colorado Springs is nestled in close to the front range that lies to the west, which extends north and south as far as the eye can see, and eastward is the start of the plains, with no geographical features of any sort.
I got picked up at the airport by Lucas, the internet car salesman, and headed over to Heuberger Motors. Well it was kinda funny, like a love at first sight type of thing, I spotted the Jeep from across the car lot and knew that was it, and a thorough look and drive later, it was sold. I handed over the 'cashiers check' (same as a bank cheque) for $13 000 USD which stung me about 18k Australian. Damn. Still it was a good buy esp when considering prices of similar cars in Australia. So, the feature list is basically as follows.
• 2003 Jeep Liberty Freedom Edition (also known as sport; but an overly patriotic title don't you think?)
• Black
• 3.7L V6 5sp Manual Transmission
• 4WD, RWD when not running 4WD
• 38 000 miles
• Sunroof
• Cruise Control
• Power windows, locking, steering
• mmm, cup holders (two of them! oh wait, they usually come in pairs don't they? I never had any and was always extremely jealous of those with this superior luxury feature)
• Those neat dashboard displays that are white in the day and black at night
• 6 stacker in-dash CD player / radio, 4 door speakers
• Tinted windows (but not for front doors, illegal apparently on SUV's here?)
• Two-tone leather steering wheel and matching black cloth seats with tan leather edges (best of both worlds, durability of leather on the edges, without the cold/heat of leather where you mainly sit)
• Roof rails (I won't bother with racks though, not yet) and once I get a tow hitch, towing capacity of 5000lbs which ought to haul Todd's boat to any lake we desire :)
• $10 000 USD cheaper than the Kelly Blue Book recommended price for that type of used car, which is good
The cruise control quickly became my new toy, and for the third occasion driving on the wrong side of the road, I headed back up to Denver to meet up with Stacey, my first friend I made in the US, on the connecting flight two weeks before from LA to Denver. We spent St Patricks out to dinner and I tried Venison meat loaf. So, confirming my first impressions, she's cool, and it's great to have a friend in Denver. Staying overnight I was up early the next day excited about the interstate drive back to Norman Oklahoma. I had two choices, one quicker route was to head east to Kansas and south to Oklahoma, but that is a flat, straight, boring drive. So I went south as planned, back through Colorado Springs, following the spectacular front range all along. I passed an enormous international speedway, which was a genuinely massive grand stand in the middle of the countryside, and a high-walled circuit track. I also passed a major accident affecting north-bound traffic, where a bus had blown up I'm guessing about 20-30 minutes earlier, with a stack of emergency vehicles driving up the grass on the highway center and traffic backed up for over a mile. Never heard about it on the news tho.
Stopped just short of the border to fill up and grab subway, it was amazing how quickly the countryside changed at the border to New Mexico. The rocky hills, short pines and small bushes gave way to yellow grassy plains and hills with black rubbly slopes crowned with small cliffs. New Mexico was otherwise uneventful, and a bit tiring, and the border to Texas saw another distinct change, to flatness and numerous corn pastures varying from brown and yellow to lush green, all arranged in squares containing circles of crops, and the watering gear wheels around a central point. Another stop in Amarillo, and a second lunch, and on to Oklahoma, where I saw distinct Oklahoman farms straight out of the movie Twister, with a big house, an even bigger shed, and a wind mill, and vast green plains of crops. I was still listening to radio, about the 9th radio station I had passed through, and just after dusk I got to Oklahoma City and headed south the final leg to Norman. By this stage the front of the car was thoroughly plastered in bugs (I had cleaned the windscreen 3 times from bugs already). I got home and what was the first thing I did (after unloading my stuff)? Got straight back in the car and drove with Todd around town and gave him a drive. He's hooked on SUVs now and so his volvo sedan's days are numbered ha.
All told, I covered about 720 miles in that trip, about 1150kms, over about 11 hours. I've already worked out a dozen ways to sit in the drivers seat to make full use of the cruise control, even got a foot rest on the dash for when i'm bare foot. Was equal to the best drive I've ever done, next to the drive west from the Gold Coast to Stanthorpe on a winter friday afternoon / evening a few years back.
There are some good personalities at work, I have been put through a few group introductions, the biggest was at an office-wide meeting in the (large) kitchen to discuss major company developments, Bill the boss said 'we have a couple of new faces here, there is Jason who has come here from Aus-stralia' and someone said with perfect timing 'that's quite a commute'
And they find it funny that the Australian has bought a Jeep Liberty Freedom, pretty much the most patriotic car title around, and when I was asked if I was gonna fly the American flag on it, I said I had an Australian flag on order and 0ZB0Y plates.
Yes so it's late now, i'm behind on sleep, work is full on learning heaps and contributing heaps i've had to hit the ground running there. Meeting more people at work, some guys with similar tastes of adventure sports as me, one guy goes four wheel driving in a Jeep Wrangler (nuts 4 wheel driving though, like oh look at that river over there, lets go and drive through it). And I mean through it as in along it, not across it. That's Kevin, and Adam I met today he also has a boat and goes wakeboarding, one of the bosses windsurfs, and so half of Metavante sounds like it'll be at Lake Heffner or Thunderbird in the spring/summer months. Looking forward to my second summer :D so I can retaliate for all the stories of great surf and hot weather back home with a few pix of wakeboarding and camping by the lake. Every day at the moment is being marked by a big achievement; an important possession bought, some weird US thing or terminology learned, .NET technology ideas for work, simple discovery things like driving down a new neighbourhood the likes of which I've never seen, and I'm sure this will continue for a long time still. Exciting? Absolutely. Challenging? Wouldn't have it any other way. Homesick? No, but I think about everyone back home and other friends abroad heaps. Fulfilling? I'm living my dream, setting my goals and making them happen, and I have plenty more to go!
Hope you all are well and looking after yourselves. I'll be in touch.
Jason
More news
This is the second of four backdated emails.
Hi all,
I'm writing from my new home! I think this has to be the most eventful 7 days so far in my life. My new flat mate, Todd, has headed out tonight with a couple of mates up in Oklahoma City but i'm staying home to sort out my gear, and I have a big day ahead checking out cars. Todd's living room is pretty cool, above the gas fireplace he has a huge flat screen TV, I don't know how many inches probably around 42", that screens over 200 channels or something, including hi-definition which looks amazing, and a gadget for recording TV (not Tivo though I don't think), and some interesting gizmo which takes your normal DVD and simulates HD-DVD. It's not true HD-DVD, but it's pretty close. Got the wireless happening as well, it's gadget central here between both of us.
The centerpiece of the living room, and by far the coolest thing I have seen in a long time, is a stage, a wooden stage he re-assembled from college (or school?) days, and he has screwed a mad comfy 3 seater couch to it, and put the other double couch and couch chair infront and to the side of the stage, creating a mini-cinema. So Todd is into wake boarding, has a boat over at his parent's house, has a nuts wakeboard hanging up in his room on one wall, his snowboard hanging up on the other wall, and he works as a civvie aircraft engineer at the Tinker Military Air Force Base up towards Oklahoma City. So basically, he's a champion. We're already discussing going on weekend camping trips to various lakes to go wakeboarding, when I get a car of course, and i'm gonna have to do something with the kiteboarding situation. There are consistent winds and lots of kiteboarders and windsurfers over here apparently. That underwater camera is gonna come in handy after all! I got some learning to do; Todd has these photos hanging up in his room of him getting some serious air on the wakeboard and snowboard, quite inspiring, I'll have to see to that. Can't wait to try wakeboarding, I've been wanting to do it since forever.
As cool as the loungeroom is, my bedroom is definitely not, it currently has my junk everywhere, a half-inflated air bed (we decided to give Todd's electric air pump a burl and the batteries ran out half way, so the thing is charging :) ...yeah and my suitcase is in the corner. The bathroom has another one of those weird bath/shower taps, now i've seen it in 2 from 2 places, I'm guessing it's kind of common. There is no way to change the flow! At least the shower head is a little more forgiving than the one at the (lack of) Quality Inn, where showering was like acupuncture.
I'm still being dumbfounded several times a day at various differences between my old and new homes. For my mates who love KFC, I included a pic of a twister combo. $4.99, plus tax.They don't include sales tax on the displayed price, unlike Australia. Pretty stupid, apparently it's to make you think you're spending less, to buy more. So the sales tax just makes it a nice uneven, very inconvenient number, causing me to regularly fumble around for the right coins, which I am also learning, but I stand there squinting at the coins comparing size and looking for the rough edge vs smooth edge to tell pennies from dimes and quarters and everyone looks at me thinking i've escaped from a nut house. I noticed Amy go through a red light yesterday. I couldn't believe it, and I said why did you just run that red light we're in no hurry, and apparently it's legal to go right on the red if it's clear to the left. I enjoy the reactions I get when I then tell the driver (Amy, Todd and Rajesh so far) that in Australia, red means no go, green means always go, and the light goes out if you're allowed to go when it's clear. They are so shocked at the idea of the traffic light going out. Power points have no switches. You plug your gear in and that's it, on, away you go. Toilets (of course, I had to include toilets in my email) flush half a lake...ok let me set the scene. Open the lid, the pan is half full. My first encounter was in a public toilet, and I thought I had come across a blocked one. I looked at the one next to it, half full as well. Strange, but not so strange to be impossible, but when the third one was also half full I realised well...hahahaha! So after doing your thing, the flush is initially kind of pointless, everything sort of swirls around without going anywhere, as if to make sure you can have a good look and not miss anything, and then a small round jet at the bottom pumps the goods away (turbo charge!), it drains till it's completely empty and then fills back up...half full again. It's so bizarre, I still can't get over it. If we had them on the Gold Coast, the dam would be empty in a week.
There are hardly any desserts. In a store as stupendously massive as SuperTarget and WalMart, like combining K-Mart and Woolworths into one, there are ice creams sure, but I can't see any custards, no puddings, unlike the decent selection we have back home. And forget about Tim Tams, there isn't even any chocolate hardly! There are bars and that's it, I tell these guys about family blocks of chocolate, good ol Cadbury, taking up an entire wall metres (or yards) long, and they can't believe it. So that was particularly alarming, that shopping session.
Had my first storm last night, I was waken up by an almighty crack of thunder at 3:30am. I usually don't care at all about storms, I enjoy them, but I'm so hyped up about this tornado rubbish I'm kinda anxious because I don't know yet how bad a storm has to get before there is risk of a tornado, nor how often it occurs. Todd has mentioned to me twice (thanks Todd good on ya) that we're coming into Tornado season. But Todd's house is on the line, so if he's cool about it, I'm cool too. Don't worry mum & dad, everything is fine, I've got a good plan, if a tornado comes, I'll just put my head between my legs and kiss my a hey Todd tells me that Twister was filmed all around Oklahoma as well as up in that Wakita town. I'll definitely get up there for a photo sometime and send it to you M&D, since it's your fav movie.
I've been making friends here and there, Jeri, who I met on my first night out on the town in Bricktown, an area of Oklahoma City, invited me out to dinner in a Brazilian restaraunt with her family for her sister Mary's birthday. So her family was great, quite a funny mix. Jeri likes her pepper. I saw her take the lid off the pepper and pour, actually poured not sprinkled, pepper into her tomato sauce, till it was 50/50. I was so gobsmacked I took a photo, much to her disgust. Jeri and Mary took me over to Hudson's Hideout, their local bar, where we had a couple of beers. It's a cool place, the kind of local hangout, with lots of regulars. I met my first authentic North American Indian, Van, a Cherokee who used to be in the military he's a champ, so we had a couple of games of pool, and there was a Dart board (plastic tipped darts) and Mary taught me how to play Cricket, which is a dart game. hahaha. That was great fun actually, I never knew throwing darts could be that much fun, the game has some devious tactics, maybe I enjoyed it so much coz I whooped Mary's ass. No doubt about it though, we were both hopeless, so I can't boast.
So I'm in the hunt for an SUV, a compact 4WD, gonna try for a manual but they are quite rare, about one in a dozen or less. I attached a couple of car photos. The big trucks don't have any impact in photos, the real life thing is much more impressive, and ridiculous. Rajesh has offered to give me a lift up to Oklahoma City to check out some dealerships. Hopefully I can land a deal relatively quickly, at least the biggest pressure - finding somewhere to live to get out of the $70 USD-per-night-with-no-kitchen-or-laundry hole that was the Quality Inn. The (not so good) Quality Inn was a necessary step though in this frantic life change, and it was a preferable alternative to other places we drove past.
I start work at Metavante on tuesday, unknown as yet just how I'm gonna get there, but I have a couple of options. For the non-technical recipients of this email, you can skip the next paragraph :) They are a 1.35 billion dollar financial services company, and the particular part of the company that I will be involved with is their check processing software. From what I learnt at the interview, when a customer banks a check, the check is scanned through one of 20-something types of scanners, the image is then retrieved and stored in a couple of versions (one with modified contrast to remove the watermark background to clearly show amounts, the other like an original), and the software then uses optical character recognition to read the dollar description, dollar amount, routing number, date etc, something like 140 fields. and stores the lot in a database, and the images in another special proprietary database. US law requires financial records to be archived 7 years here as opposed to 5 in Australia, and as a result the checks database is currently just short of a terabyte, and there are several terabytes of check images in the other database. Mission critical redundancy and all the rest makes for quite an involved system, on first impressions, using a mix of web applications, services, and windows applications, in a multitude of languages, but all my stuff is going to be .NET 2.0 and SQL server 2005, using Visual Studio Team System and (interestingly) they are on CVS for source control. Metavante is the provider of this technology to all of the top 10 banks and 42 of the top 50 banks in the US.
It all needs to be pretty snappy too so will be good to be working on a system that is above sloth pace like some of those at Austar. Oops, there are Austarians on this email, did I say that out loud? Sorry :)
Anyway, that's enough for now, I'm gonna go and pump my air bed up, fingers crossed the battery on the pump can hack it, as Todd didn't mention anything about having a hand pump. It was pretty funny, the whir of his battery pump was buzzing away like nuts at the start, then after a couple minutes dropped a bit and steadied, then dropped again and after another 5 or so cycles it sounded pretty sick and the air was probably going backwards. Fingers crossed!
Jason
Hi all,
I'm writing from my new home! I think this has to be the most eventful 7 days so far in my life. My new flat mate, Todd, has headed out tonight with a couple of mates up in Oklahoma City but i'm staying home to sort out my gear, and I have a big day ahead checking out cars. Todd's living room is pretty cool, above the gas fireplace he has a huge flat screen TV, I don't know how many inches probably around 42", that screens over 200 channels or something, including hi-definition which looks amazing, and a gadget for recording TV (not Tivo though I don't think), and some interesting gizmo which takes your normal DVD and simulates HD-DVD. It's not true HD-DVD, but it's pretty close. Got the wireless happening as well, it's gadget central here between both of us.
The centerpiece of the living room, and by far the coolest thing I have seen in a long time, is a stage, a wooden stage he re-assembled from college (or school?) days, and he has screwed a mad comfy 3 seater couch to it, and put the other double couch and couch chair infront and to the side of the stage, creating a mini-cinema. So Todd is into wake boarding, has a boat over at his parent's house, has a nuts wakeboard hanging up in his room on one wall, his snowboard hanging up on the other wall, and he works as a civvie aircraft engineer at the Tinker Military Air Force Base up towards Oklahoma City. So basically, he's a champion. We're already discussing going on weekend camping trips to various lakes to go wakeboarding, when I get a car of course, and i'm gonna have to do something with the kiteboarding situation. There are consistent winds and lots of kiteboarders and windsurfers over here apparently. That underwater camera is gonna come in handy after all! I got some learning to do; Todd has these photos hanging up in his room of him getting some serious air on the wakeboard and snowboard, quite inspiring, I'll have to see to that. Can't wait to try wakeboarding, I've been wanting to do it since forever.
As cool as the loungeroom is, my bedroom is definitely not, it currently has my junk everywhere, a half-inflated air bed (we decided to give Todd's electric air pump a burl and the batteries ran out half way, so the thing is charging :) ...yeah and my suitcase is in the corner. The bathroom has another one of those weird bath/shower taps, now i've seen it in 2 from 2 places, I'm guessing it's kind of common. There is no way to change the flow! At least the shower head is a little more forgiving than the one at the (lack of) Quality Inn, where showering was like acupuncture.
I'm still being dumbfounded several times a day at various differences between my old and new homes. For my mates who love KFC, I included a pic of a twister combo. $4.99, plus tax.They don't include sales tax on the displayed price, unlike Australia. Pretty stupid, apparently it's to make you think you're spending less, to buy more. So the sales tax just makes it a nice uneven, very inconvenient number, causing me to regularly fumble around for the right coins, which I am also learning, but I stand there squinting at the coins comparing size and looking for the rough edge vs smooth edge to tell pennies from dimes and quarters and everyone looks at me thinking i've escaped from a nut house. I noticed Amy go through a red light yesterday. I couldn't believe it, and I said why did you just run that red light we're in no hurry, and apparently it's legal to go right on the red if it's clear to the left. I enjoy the reactions I get when I then tell the driver (Amy, Todd and Rajesh so far) that in Australia, red means no go, green means always go, and the light goes out if you're allowed to go when it's clear. They are so shocked at the idea of the traffic light going out. Power points have no switches. You plug your gear in and that's it, on, away you go. Toilets (of course, I had to include toilets in my email) flush half a lake...ok let me set the scene. Open the lid, the pan is half full. My first encounter was in a public toilet, and I thought I had come across a blocked one. I looked at the one next to it, half full as well. Strange, but not so strange to be impossible, but when the third one was also half full I realised well...hahahaha! So after doing your thing, the flush is initially kind of pointless, everything sort of swirls around without going anywhere, as if to make sure you can have a good look and not miss anything, and then a small round jet at the bottom pumps the goods away (turbo charge!), it drains till it's completely empty and then fills back up...half full again. It's so bizarre, I still can't get over it. If we had them on the Gold Coast, the dam would be empty in a week.
There are hardly any desserts. In a store as stupendously massive as SuperTarget and WalMart, like combining K-Mart and Woolworths into one, there are ice creams sure, but I can't see any custards, no puddings, unlike the decent selection we have back home. And forget about Tim Tams, there isn't even any chocolate hardly! There are bars and that's it, I tell these guys about family blocks of chocolate, good ol Cadbury, taking up an entire wall metres (or yards) long, and they can't believe it. So that was particularly alarming, that shopping session.
Had my first storm last night, I was waken up by an almighty crack of thunder at 3:30am. I usually don't care at all about storms, I enjoy them, but I'm so hyped up about this tornado rubbish I'm kinda anxious because I don't know yet how bad a storm has to get before there is risk of a tornado, nor how often it occurs. Todd has mentioned to me twice (thanks Todd good on ya) that we're coming into Tornado season. But Todd's house is on the line, so if he's cool about it, I'm cool too. Don't worry mum & dad, everything is fine, I've got a good plan, if a tornado comes, I'll just put my head between my legs and kiss my a hey Todd tells me that Twister was filmed all around Oklahoma as well as up in that Wakita town. I'll definitely get up there for a photo sometime and send it to you M&D, since it's your fav movie.
I've been making friends here and there, Jeri, who I met on my first night out on the town in Bricktown, an area of Oklahoma City, invited me out to dinner in a Brazilian restaraunt with her family for her sister Mary's birthday. So her family was great, quite a funny mix. Jeri likes her pepper. I saw her take the lid off the pepper and pour, actually poured not sprinkled, pepper into her tomato sauce, till it was 50/50. I was so gobsmacked I took a photo, much to her disgust. Jeri and Mary took me over to Hudson's Hideout, their local bar, where we had a couple of beers. It's a cool place, the kind of local hangout, with lots of regulars. I met my first authentic North American Indian, Van, a Cherokee who used to be in the military he's a champ, so we had a couple of games of pool, and there was a Dart board (plastic tipped darts) and Mary taught me how to play Cricket, which is a dart game. hahaha. That was great fun actually, I never knew throwing darts could be that much fun, the game has some devious tactics, maybe I enjoyed it so much coz I whooped Mary's ass. No doubt about it though, we were both hopeless, so I can't boast.
So I'm in the hunt for an SUV, a compact 4WD, gonna try for a manual but they are quite rare, about one in a dozen or less. I attached a couple of car photos. The big trucks don't have any impact in photos, the real life thing is much more impressive, and ridiculous. Rajesh has offered to give me a lift up to Oklahoma City to check out some dealerships. Hopefully I can land a deal relatively quickly, at least the biggest pressure - finding somewhere to live to get out of the $70 USD-per-night-with-no-kitchen-or-laundry hole that was the Quality Inn. The (not so good) Quality Inn was a necessary step though in this frantic life change, and it was a preferable alternative to other places we drove past.
I start work at Metavante on tuesday, unknown as yet just how I'm gonna get there, but I have a couple of options. For the non-technical recipients of this email, you can skip the next paragraph :) They are a 1.35 billion dollar financial services company, and the particular part of the company that I will be involved with is their check processing software. From what I learnt at the interview, when a customer banks a check, the check is scanned through one of 20-something types of scanners, the image is then retrieved and stored in a couple of versions (one with modified contrast to remove the watermark background to clearly show amounts, the other like an original), and the software then uses optical character recognition to read the dollar description, dollar amount, routing number, date etc, something like 140 fields. and stores the lot in a database, and the images in another special proprietary database. US law requires financial records to be archived 7 years here as opposed to 5 in Australia, and as a result the checks database is currently just short of a terabyte, and there are several terabytes of check images in the other database. Mission critical redundancy and all the rest makes for quite an involved system, on first impressions, using a mix of web applications, services, and windows applications, in a multitude of languages, but all my stuff is going to be .NET 2.0 and SQL server 2005, using Visual Studio Team System and (interestingly) they are on CVS for source control. Metavante is the provider of this technology to all of the top 10 banks and 42 of the top 50 banks in the US.
It all needs to be pretty snappy too so will be good to be working on a system that is above sloth pace like some of those at Austar. Oops, there are Austarians on this email, did I say that out loud? Sorry :)
Anyway, that's enough for now, I'm gonna go and pump my air bed up, fingers crossed the battery on the pump can hack it, as Todd didn't mention anything about having a hand pump. It was pretty funny, the whir of his battery pump was buzzing away like nuts at the start, then after a couple minutes dropped a bit and steadied, then dropped again and after another 5 or so cycles it sounded pretty sick and the air was probably going backwards. Fingers crossed!
Jason
I'm here in the US of A
To begin posts on this blog, I will include backdated emails I sent to family and friends from the beginning of my overseas trip to the USA. This is the first of four.
Where do I start? The past 24 hours has got to be one of the most interesting I've ever had. Well, I got away on time from BNE to LAX, emergency exit window seat all the way ;) and by the time I had gone through the little gadget packets you get with international flights, rubbed my eyes and scratched my butt and lunch was being served. I was curious, lunch seemed more like dinner, and dinner was absent from the schedule brochure; ice cream followed lunch. I found out why, since we were racing away from the sun at just over 1000kmph, in a surprisingly quick time it was getting dusk. We kept flying over all these Pacific islands, dozens of them appearing between the clouds, and L-shaped reef breaks in open ocean, was pretty cool.Then before the sunset we flew across one huge island, which turned out to be Fiji. I took an awesome shot out the window looking back at Fiji with the avo sun turning all the surrounding ocean to shimmering gold.
Dinner was nothin special, but I was starving and pumped everything that came my way. But when the ice cream came, it was like a mango flavoured coating over the ice cream, and when I peeled the wrapper away, there was mist pouring off the thing. Something was weird, coz there is almost no humidity in the cabin air. Turns out, it was showering ice particles which were 'exploding' off the surface, you could see it when you looked closely. I touched my tongue to the end of it, and instantly it stuck to it. I was like wow, thats cold, and kept sticking my tongue on it and peeling it off, as you do. Of course, soon I accidentally stuck my lip to it. I slowly peeled it off, leaving behind a layer of lip then I tasted blood. I tried to hide it by biting on my napkin, and was initially kinda worried at how much there was. But mouth injuries heal quick and was all good, although a bit tender, 3 minutes later. Turns out, when I asked old mate Graham (the steward serving my section), the ice creams had been packed in with dry ice at something like 40 below and they took about 10 minutes to thaw to eating temperature and about 60 other people had caused their lips to bleed as well, and he was going to report it.
Yeah so other things of note was the entertainment system crashed about 4 times during the flight and each time takes about 15mins to reboot. I was watching Man Of The Year (Robin Williams is hilarious and awesome) and it crashed, so me and Vern (my half-bald, moustached, big-shiny-belt-buckled Texan seat neighbour) and Vern's lady (a Bris woman can't remember her name but she was cool) hassled the stewards for some alcohol. Had a couple of quick Jim Beams on the same can of coke (the last beam the guy poured he filled the cup over 3/4), and before long we were story telling. Didn't get much sleep, only trailed off for maybe an hour or two, and we had minor turbulence pretty much most of the night.
Morning came and then through the haze below I spotted the first land, Santa Catalina Island off the coast, and then LA appeared! Pretty cool sight, flew over the harbour, a cruise ship was docked, the motorways go off into the distance beyond sight with cars feeding into massive motorway junctions. Landed and had to keep myself from laughing at some LA african-americans manning the ground equipment, dressed so typically in pants so baggy they walked toward the aircraft having to hold them up with one hand near the crotch and a distinct limping swagger. I went through about 5 officials, all of them more typical LA blacks I love the way they talk, to get thru immigration and customs and to connecting flights. There was a hispanic female officer and an asian male officer having a loud argument over something to do with the queues which was also amusing.
So Frontier airlines is cool, and I think generally, US domestic air travel is much better than Oz, even Virgin Blue whom I thought highly of. I had a Frontier stewardess sitting next to me on an off-duty flight, her name was Stacey, and made friends with her over the flight, taking my grand total of US friends to about four :) Flew over the Grand Canyon, at least I was pretty sure I was looking at the canyon, it was a huge area of canyons, dunno if Grand was on my side of the plane or not. Then later on, on approach to Denver, we came upon thick cloud, and hit some decent turbulence, not totally gut wrenching but a few of those good dropping feelings. Then we came below the clouds and I saw snow dusted over all the ground, about 95% cover, all the way to the horizon. That was amazing never seen so much snow. There was a chill on the wind when we got off, but I was in the airport terminal mostly until the next flight. Had a mad lunch at the airport, Ted the Chef's bistro/bar, and sat around a bar with a bunch of other strangers in a cozy atmosphere. Awesome service, and i gave my first tip of 20% (I asked advice first) to them, and chatted to an american meteorologist seated next to me, told him about good ol BOM.
Yes so, arriving at OK, met up with Amy the lovely cheerful blonde staff assistant, with an 'Okie' accent. Driving back in the company car down the motorway, I saw 10 times as many dual cab utes, huge SUVs and trucks as I've ever seen in my life. Every 6th car I would say, is a big gas guzzling truck utility, big Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges, many with paired wheels at the back, stretched, and they accelerate with a big gutsy rumble, and you can almost see the fuel come out the 3" exhaust. I've been told that Texas is worst for this trend, and Oklahoma is like a mini-texas. All young guys buy trucks, do them up, repair them, restore them, raise them, and just make them loud, only some have any concern for outward appearance. It's amazing, like coast guys are into jap cars, speed and drifting, here its all about the size of your truck and the noise it makes.
So I'm at my hotel, the Quality Inn, its not too bad, it's chilly outside, probably will get down to single digits celcius or low tens tonight, and a brisk westerly breeze about 18knots is blowing. There are American flags sticking up here there over the countryside, and the horizon is flat, 360 degrees. Quite a sight, seeing in the middle of nothing off the side of the motorway, a huge American flag the size of a small house flying about 8 stories in the air. The grass is like, almost monotone, barely any green its more brown/white, trees have no leaves, it's only just emerging from winter here. A tornado hit a school yesterday in, um, Grenada I think, killed 5 kids, and Amy told me as we drove through an intersection about how all the surrounding strip of buildings got wiped out in a tornado in the nineties. I forgot to mention, it was so cool to see little venice-beach style palms dotted all over LA everywhere you looked. I'm running low on sleep, got this hotel wireless thing happening, and it's 12:35pm AEST, and I'm going to bed.
Will have another update soon!
Where do I start? The past 24 hours has got to be one of the most interesting I've ever had. Well, I got away on time from BNE to LAX, emergency exit window seat all the way ;) and by the time I had gone through the little gadget packets you get with international flights, rubbed my eyes and scratched my butt and lunch was being served. I was curious, lunch seemed more like dinner, and dinner was absent from the schedule brochure; ice cream followed lunch. I found out why, since we were racing away from the sun at just over 1000kmph, in a surprisingly quick time it was getting dusk. We kept flying over all these Pacific islands, dozens of them appearing between the clouds, and L-shaped reef breaks in open ocean, was pretty cool.Then before the sunset we flew across one huge island, which turned out to be Fiji. I took an awesome shot out the window looking back at Fiji with the avo sun turning all the surrounding ocean to shimmering gold.
Dinner was nothin special, but I was starving and pumped everything that came my way. But when the ice cream came, it was like a mango flavoured coating over the ice cream, and when I peeled the wrapper away, there was mist pouring off the thing. Something was weird, coz there is almost no humidity in the cabin air. Turns out, it was showering ice particles which were 'exploding' off the surface, you could see it when you looked closely. I touched my tongue to the end of it, and instantly it stuck to it. I was like wow, thats cold, and kept sticking my tongue on it and peeling it off, as you do. Of course, soon I accidentally stuck my lip to it. I slowly peeled it off, leaving behind a layer of lip then I tasted blood. I tried to hide it by biting on my napkin, and was initially kinda worried at how much there was. But mouth injuries heal quick and was all good, although a bit tender, 3 minutes later. Turns out, when I asked old mate Graham (the steward serving my section), the ice creams had been packed in with dry ice at something like 40 below and they took about 10 minutes to thaw to eating temperature and about 60 other people had caused their lips to bleed as well, and he was going to report it.
Yeah so other things of note was the entertainment system crashed about 4 times during the flight and each time takes about 15mins to reboot. I was watching Man Of The Year (Robin Williams is hilarious and awesome) and it crashed, so me and Vern (my half-bald, moustached, big-shiny-belt-buckled Texan seat neighbour) and Vern's lady (a Bris woman can't remember her name but she was cool) hassled the stewards for some alcohol. Had a couple of quick Jim Beams on the same can of coke (the last beam the guy poured he filled the cup over 3/4), and before long we were story telling. Didn't get much sleep, only trailed off for maybe an hour or two, and we had minor turbulence pretty much most of the night.
Morning came and then through the haze below I spotted the first land, Santa Catalina Island off the coast, and then LA appeared! Pretty cool sight, flew over the harbour, a cruise ship was docked, the motorways go off into the distance beyond sight with cars feeding into massive motorway junctions. Landed and had to keep myself from laughing at some LA african-americans manning the ground equipment, dressed so typically in pants so baggy they walked toward the aircraft having to hold them up with one hand near the crotch and a distinct limping swagger. I went through about 5 officials, all of them more typical LA blacks I love the way they talk, to get thru immigration and customs and to connecting flights. There was a hispanic female officer and an asian male officer having a loud argument over something to do with the queues which was also amusing.
So Frontier airlines is cool, and I think generally, US domestic air travel is much better than Oz, even Virgin Blue whom I thought highly of. I had a Frontier stewardess sitting next to me on an off-duty flight, her name was Stacey, and made friends with her over the flight, taking my grand total of US friends to about four :) Flew over the Grand Canyon, at least I was pretty sure I was looking at the canyon, it was a huge area of canyons, dunno if Grand was on my side of the plane or not. Then later on, on approach to Denver, we came upon thick cloud, and hit some decent turbulence, not totally gut wrenching but a few of those good dropping feelings. Then we came below the clouds and I saw snow dusted over all the ground, about 95% cover, all the way to the horizon. That was amazing never seen so much snow. There was a chill on the wind when we got off, but I was in the airport terminal mostly until the next flight. Had a mad lunch at the airport, Ted the Chef's bistro/bar, and sat around a bar with a bunch of other strangers in a cozy atmosphere. Awesome service, and i gave my first tip of 20% (I asked advice first) to them, and chatted to an american meteorologist seated next to me, told him about good ol BOM.
Yes so, arriving at OK, met up with Amy the lovely cheerful blonde staff assistant, with an 'Okie' accent. Driving back in the company car down the motorway, I saw 10 times as many dual cab utes, huge SUVs and trucks as I've ever seen in my life. Every 6th car I would say, is a big gas guzzling truck utility, big Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges, many with paired wheels at the back, stretched, and they accelerate with a big gutsy rumble, and you can almost see the fuel come out the 3" exhaust. I've been told that Texas is worst for this trend, and Oklahoma is like a mini-texas. All young guys buy trucks, do them up, repair them, restore them, raise them, and just make them loud, only some have any concern for outward appearance. It's amazing, like coast guys are into jap cars, speed and drifting, here its all about the size of your truck and the noise it makes.
So I'm at my hotel, the Quality Inn, its not too bad, it's chilly outside, probably will get down to single digits celcius or low tens tonight, and a brisk westerly breeze about 18knots is blowing. There are American flags sticking up here there over the countryside, and the horizon is flat, 360 degrees. Quite a sight, seeing in the middle of nothing off the side of the motorway, a huge American flag the size of a small house flying about 8 stories in the air. The grass is like, almost monotone, barely any green its more brown/white, trees have no leaves, it's only just emerging from winter here. A tornado hit a school yesterday in, um, Grenada I think, killed 5 kids, and Amy told me as we drove through an intersection about how all the surrounding strip of buildings got wiped out in a tornado in the nineties. I forgot to mention, it was so cool to see little venice-beach style palms dotted all over LA everywhere you looked. I'm running low on sleep, got this hotel wireless thing happening, and it's 12:35pm AEST, and I'm going to bed.
Will have another update soon!
08 May 2007
First Post!
Welcome to my blog, the first of two I intend to set up. A thrilling series of episodes, stories, FYI's and memos in my not-so-simple life of being a traveling Australian I.T. professional. No doubt to become a huge time consumer and source of endless mind blocks and creative blanks and literal BS and grey hairs and...
Getting back to the point, I've long deliberated over the idea of setting one of these up, but not thought much about what degree of impact it will have, or even if it will be much use at all even to me. But after beginning my travels at the age of 25 and parting with the sunny Gold Coast for the United States of America, I was tired of emails as soon as I landed and wrote my first news update back home. Jason & Life is the idea, Blogger is the method (at the moment), and expletives will be left out. It's a tough gig, I already feel embarrassed and can hear the scoffs and comments 'oh my god he's got a blog' but here's hoping that it's a success, a medium to send my views and experiences to family, friends and strangers.
Jason & Work will follow once I have something worth saying, and contrary to the voice inside my head when talking about work, expletives will be left out of that too. So if you don't have a working relationship with me then by all means I encourage you to never go there. You'll be blowing bubbles within minutes and will see the geek in me in full swing.
Once again, I thank you for reading and taking interest in the topics of interest to me, don't be afraid to use the comments to spark debate, or write me off, this is intended to be a bit of fun, a bit useful, and maybe somewhere along the line, a bit enlightening.
-Jason
Getting back to the point, I've long deliberated over the idea of setting one of these up, but not thought much about what degree of impact it will have, or even if it will be much use at all even to me. But after beginning my travels at the age of 25 and parting with the sunny Gold Coast for the United States of America, I was tired of emails as soon as I landed and wrote my first news update back home. Jason & Life is the idea, Blogger is the method (at the moment), and expletives will be left out. It's a tough gig, I already feel embarrassed and can hear the scoffs and comments 'oh my god he's got a blog' but here's hoping that it's a success, a medium to send my views and experiences to family, friends and strangers.
Jason & Work will follow once I have something worth saying, and contrary to the voice inside my head when talking about work, expletives will be left out of that too. So if you don't have a working relationship with me then by all means I encourage you to never go there. You'll be blowing bubbles within minutes and will see the geek in me in full swing.
Once again, I thank you for reading and taking interest in the topics of interest to me, don't be afraid to use the comments to spark debate, or write me off, this is intended to be a bit of fun, a bit useful, and maybe somewhere along the line, a bit enlightening.
-Jason
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