Travel ARCHIVES
23 December 2007
Hawaii is noisy. Noisy, noisy, noisy. Winds sweep the palm fronds just outside this house until. Just before dawn, a veritable din of birdsong swells such that it's impossible to distinguish any one call. "I wake up when the...
20 March 2006
While cutting across the southeastern tip of Nevada I noticed that my engine warning light was on. It's usually a reminder to replace the oil. But I'd just gotten that changed a few weeks prior, and so I spent the...
20 March 2006
Launch Flickr album American Desert > Perhaps the most revolting food combination I've eaten on this trip has been Cheetos with roasted red pepper hummus. Hey, cut a girl some slack. The hummus had played admirable escort to a...
19 March 2006
"The sky is ThisBig right now," declared my neighbor John as he spread his arms wide. Three of us were lying on the asphalt of my street Sunday morning, pure and simple sunshine bolstering a pretty tenuous acquaintance. (Don't worry,...
07 February 2006
Currently knee-deep in mischief, planning an early July bike trip in mediterranean Spain and either Morocco or Tunisia. Shooting for about 10 days of alternating hard riding and hard rocking. Parts of our crew speak fluent French and Spanish, but...
04 September 2005
Back in June my friends and I were grocery shopping for dinner ingredients, and I called my mom to ask if we happened to have celery in the fridge. The deviled eggs recipe called for just one stalk, and as...
31 August 2005
One Sunday morning early in my stay in Paris I set out for the flea markets and Montmartre (19th-century artists' neighborhood) for a bit of browsing and just got knocked over by a few too many people (shopkeepers, waiters,...
25 August 2005
Janet wanted more food, less geek. Well, food's over! At 6:30 this morning I woke up slightly dazed to the sound of my phone buzzing. Kyle and I had set up a wake-up buddy system, and while I can't imagine...
17 August 2005
Tonight the school organized a dinner (out!) for all of the currently ongoing classes: ours (basic cuisine), basic patisserie, and intermediate patisserie. After 9 hours of class i followed my friend Alexandra home for quick showers (faster commute) and then...
16 August 2005
As I woke up last (not the recently-occurred, but the one before) Sunday morning, a funny question occurred to me. Probably because of the absinthe Saturday night. Never again, my green fairy. When I got home after 6 hours of...
09 August 2005
Current classmate Willson has been maintaining: Will's Eats for photos and impressions, LCB Notes for class notes, and a Flickr photostream... as well as tournering/turning extra mushrooms on the side. Crikey. The self-styled youngandhip has some personal jottings about his...
07 August 2005
Every day I wake up around 9 as my flatmate clomps around his morning routine. It's a converted artist's loft, and you can play hide-and-go-seek with anything that might be reputed to be "insulation" or "soundproofing". Though he is...
04 August 2005
Last night after I got home in fumes I joined my across-the-alley neighbors Antoine and Cécile for a drink. They're both about my age, the brother probably more exactly close but the sister doing. (N.B. Cécile the sister is...
04 August 2005
When I came wide-eyed into Paris I wanted to drink in all of the architecture, the daily bustle, the small wonders with open eyes and ears. Within a couple of days I'd bought an iPod shuffle and set it to...
25 July 2005
Orientation at 9h30 today, a 3-hour break midday, and then class from 15h30 to 21h. Straight freakin' through. My brunoise (2mm dice, for crying' out loud) was "parfait" but, well, julienne, yeah... And did you know celery gets PEELED? I'm...
24 July 2005
I just covered the first half. My neighbors and people I've met (as in, got to know more than 5 seconds' worth of) have been super duper hospitable and welcoming. They're awesome and I think they're going to go a...
24 July 2005
Je sais maintenant (je l'ai juste découvert) pourquoi le monde aime les Français. C'est à cause de l'embouchure qui est nécessaire pour parler la langue. Même les enfants, les petits bébés l'ont. Voyager seule, c'est jouer la roulette. À...
20 July 2005
I reached the apartment without a problema dn as promised the concierge had a key ready for me. The spot is accessed by tunnelling under a high rise and emerging in a charming alley of brick, wrought-iron furniture, and brightly-painted...
19 July 2005
With an insouciance borne of too much air travel — three transcontinental round-trips a year, for starters — I leave home 1.5 hours before the flight's scheduled to leave. The drive usually takes 26 minutes on the nose via...
18 July 2005
Advice from Maisy: Unfortunately, your name is pronounced the same as the French version of Michael, but you probably already knew that. So first, I suggest that you create a new french identity with some kind of "de" in it....
13 July 2005
Last Thursday, I undertook the Who Needs Hardcore When You Have Hard Rock? bicycle tour. For extra rock, note that I wrote my captain's log out by hand with a fuschia Uni-ball Vision: business on the outside, bidness on the...
12 July 2005
The day after our return from I notice some nominally itchy bumps clustering on my knuckles, and subsequently spent the next 18 hours wondering about their possible source: Unnoticed mosquito bites. Nah, it was too cold for bugs except the...
16 June 2005
I'm heading the wrong way, swimming upstream. I've convined my mother that it's not worth it for her to drive me across rush hour New York City to get to JFK Airport, so instead we wait together at the local...
18 May 2005
Last June, I was on a mission to dropped my (still license-less) brother off at nerd camp in DC. Now, the typology of aforementioned nerd camp doesn't really matter. Nerd camps have appeared in the fabric of bookish American youth...
08 March 2004
...is how to say "Iceland" in Icelandic, and that's just about the only word in the language I can get my tongue around. I'm having serious trouble with Ferðaskrifstofa, Lónsöræfi, and Hópferðabílar. From formal study and singing works in various...
01 March 2004
Iceland, my children. Iceland. Iceland, you ask? But you don't even speak the language! Never fear, kids and caboodles. I just want to go to Iceland, and I can swear it will be awesome if you jump aboard for the...
22 August 2003
While I've backpacked a fair amount and bicycled a solid accumulation of miles over the past few years, what I haven't done is combined the two. More specifically, I'm not as confident planning bike trip meals. Unlike any backpacking trip...
22 August 2003
Here's how to reach me by mail over the next few weeks: Michelle Lee c/o General Delivery [Town, State, Zip] Please hold for southbound cyclist Expected arrival [Date] Friday 8/29: Amboy, WA 98601 Wednesday 9/3: Florence, OR 97439 Saturday 9/6:...
21 August 2003
I've been a little absent lately, mostly because for most of the summer I spent most of the working day staring dumbly at the computer screen and in my free time wanted to practice my distance vision as much as...
04 January 2003
That Central Time update that didn't happen last spring? I'm making up for it now. Heard a succession of stories about my connecting flight out of Chicago involving weather delays, an unwieldy mess left by the Ohio State football team...
31 March 2002
Rats. I just realized how cool it would have been to rack up an update in Central time, and I've missed my chance. But time shouldn't matter too much anyway, since I'm not planning to upload this immediately after I'm...
29 March 2002
Wan and I woke up on top of a mountain today. I'm in Kentucky right now. I'm not sure which is more of a shocker statement, so I guess I should just start over from the beginning. Today's been quite...