The Kindness of Strangers

Several years ago I worked at IBM on a product called SashXB. It was written about twice in Wired, first here, and then here. The second article featured some pretty mangled quotes by me (which make me sound like an arrogant retard, and for which I got crap from my co-workers for quite a while thereafter ;), but more importantly a totally bogus quote from “Jerome Denman, a systems administrator for a Wall Street investment firm.” We figured that the dude was made up, and just chalked it up to the poor standards in journalism today.

Today, this story came out on Slashdot, about how Wired is retracting or correcting hundreds of stories written by one Michelle Delio, since she may have fabricated quotes. Curious, I looked back on those old Sash stories, and who wrote them? Yep, Michelle Delio.

Had you ever had a conversation with someone who’s acted strangely, and only later you realized why? (Something like, “Hmm… John sure was acting weird. Oh, right, his ex-girlfriend was also in the room. No wonder he was antsy when I asked him about this other girl.”)

I hardly ever remember my dreams, but yesterday I took a pretty long nap, and woke up right after having a dream in which the above situation occurred. I was talking to someone in a very crowded room and he had a cute little kid with him, and he acted very strangely when I asked how old the kid was. It was only later in the dream, after this interaction, that I realized why.

The reason is not important, but this experience totally fascinated me. While dreaming, my own brain constructed a scenario complex and subtle enough that even it couldn’t figure it out until later. I don’t know much about dreams (since I never remember them), but it kind of blew my mind. Has this happened to you before? I guess I always imagined dreams as a sensory and emotional adventure, reflecting my own thoughts, and not so much a real-world experience involving interactions with other people who actually appear to have independent thoughts and behaviors.

Okay, here is another sleep story. I have a habit of falling asleep in class, and this is mainly a result of this bizarre trait of mine whereby I get extremely tired whenever someone tries to lecture to me. Having an active discussion is okay, as is learning stuff on my own through alternate media (reading, watching TV, etc.) but when someone is actually telling me information that I have to think about and process to understand, I head towards unconsciousness at an alarming rate. Of course, the better the lecturer (the more engaging and lucid), the less I have to concentrate and the more I stay awake. On the other hand, if I’m at all tired to begin with, it’s a losing battle: there’s nothing I can do to stave it off.

It’s a totally physical response, too: I just start yawning uncontrollably, and then if there’s nothing to stop me, I’m out like a light.

Since I generally feel guilty about skipping class, I remember many times in college just walking into the classroom, taking a seat in the back row, and then passing out for the next hour or so. It was ridiculous. (I’m generally better now because I get much more sleep these days.) I ended up learning virtually all the material myself, in a frenzied rush before finals.

The worst was when I was in high school, also taking physics. Our physics teacher was sub-par; I think the average AP test score the year before was like a 2, and I wanted to get a 5. Luckily, my dad’s a physics professor and he was willing to help me out. He also happens to be an amazing teacher: I’ve read a bunch of his students’ course reviews (illegally, no doubt) and they’re disgusting: “amazing”, “hilarious”, “best teacher I’ve ever had”, etc. Anyway, so here I was, getting one-on-one tutoring from an awesome Yale physics professor… but you also have to factor in the fact that I need about 8-9 hours of sleep a night, and in high school I averaged like 5.

In general, I had gotten kind of used to the the lack of sleep, so I’d hold out most of the time. But when my dad tried to teach me something, my lecture-detection circuit would switch on and within minutes I’d be yawning nonstop. Huge, gaping yawns, sucking in liters of air. My dad, of course, didn’t know about this phenomenon, so he would say stuff like, “Wow, you’re really tired. You need to sleep more!” Which I guess was true, but the point was that after we’d finish with physics… I’d stop yawning. I felt really guilty, but there was really nothing I could do. Luckily everything turned out all right in the end.

Wow, that was a pretty boring story. It would be poetic if you were yawning now too :).

Anyway, I’ve been watching the NBA Playoffs a lot recently, and I just love watching basketball. I realized that there are two big factors determining why watching sports is entertaining: one, for the intrinsic entertainment of watching the game itself, and two, for the pleasure of rooting for the team you want to win (the excitement factor induced by the game).

Of the major team sports I follow, by the first (and more important, I think) factor, from best to worst:
Basketball
Soccer
Football
Baseball

That is, basketball is just an exhiliarating game to watch, even if you don’t care who’s going to win. The athleticism, team interaction, and scoring method all make it awesome.

By the second factor:
Baseball
Soccer/Basketball (tie)
Football

To me, baseball is normally excruciatingly boring, but during the playoffs — when you really care — the long, drawn out pauses between plays that would normally induce boredom actually make the game ridiculously tense and exciting instead. This is an interesting twist.

Best highlights:
Soccer
Basketball/Football (tie)
Baseball

I know you guys really care about this stuff…

I seriously meant to write a serious entry about something serious, but — seriously — I couldn’t be bothered. Not serious is the new serious, anyway!

(Although I’ll probably get to that “serious” topic next time, if you’re unlucky.)

[Edit: I wanted to write something about Everlast’s classic mid-90s song “What It’s Like“, which I heard again at the RSF the other day (after giving the CD a spin a little while back — check the music for a couple of entries ago). Besides being just a totally awesome song, the lyrics perfectly epitomize (what I see as) the liberal movement. They should make this the DNC anthem in 2008.]

I’ve decided to get into good shape. After three months of being sidelined by this hip injury, I need to. The big thing is that in addition to my usual regimen of sports — soccer, ultimate, and tennis, these days — and working out, I’ve started running again. I used to run all the time in high school, and when I stopped in college, it became difficult to start again, since I guess it was frustrating to not be able to run sub-five minute miles, or whatever. Kind of how when I stopped playing trumpet after college, it was really hard to start again, since I knew how good I could be, and it was very frustrating to be so much worse. That battle defeated me, but this one hasn’t (yet). Matt and Joel and I have been doing early morning runs (including 8am today!), and I’m pretty proud of how grueling they’ve been: 4-6 miles with lots of hills. I’m still an out-of-shape slob, but I’m getting better. It feels great to run without my hip constantly nagging me.

The other day Manu told me about a great website idea of his, which I won’t describe here because I hope he gets fabulously rich off of it. But it reminded me of all these random (and inferior) website plans I have lying around. The latest involves some kind of system whereby if you’re getting into a new domain (say, camping, or stereo systems), you can type in what you already have and how much you’re willing to pay, and it’ll tell you what the best thing to buy next is, and … okay I’m too lazy to describe it.

But the classic one, that I’ve wanted to do for years, involves Taboo, the great “board” game. If you play Taboo enough, you invariably run through all the cards, and on subsequent iterations you kind of remember some of the more obscure cards (like “ginkgo biloba”), which makes it less fun. So the point is have a website where you could get new cards. To get new cards, however, you’d first have to
1. supply a new Taboo word that could be used on a future card
2. given ten potential card words (taken from previous inputs to 1) in turn, enter the first word that comes to mind for each of them
So the system would construct a new card by taking a word from 1, and then showing it to like 50 visitors to the site, gathering their word associations (2). It would then tally up the five most popular words from 2, and they would constitute the Taboo words for that card. (It might also ask you in step 2 how hard you think the card word is, so we could have different difficulties available for download.)

This way the more people who used the site for cards, the more new cards there would be. Yay, self-perpetuating! I’d code it up if I thought anyone would actually use it… (and if someone could promise me that I wouldn’t get sued by the makers of Taboo).

Addendum to my previous post
My friend Krishna raised two totally interesting objections to my trashing of the Heisenberg Effect.

1. If the girl falls in love that easily, it’s possible that she might fall out of love just as easily. This one I think you don’t have to worry too much about, since hopefully you’d be able to detect such a trait in her character before it actually happened. But still something to consider.
2. If you start dating and she still likes you much more than you like her, then it’s going to be tough. Actually my view on this is that there’s just about always going to be some asymmetry in a relationship, in terms of how much each person likes the other, and the more the asymmetry, the less likely it’s going to work out. So this is definitely a concern. However, I think that the reason that asymmetrical relationships fail more often is the same reason that motivates the Heisenberg Effect… a lack of respect, a notion of doing better, etc. So if you can fight the Effect (no easy deal) then you can fight this too!

Here are some thoughts on relationships. I realize the irony of posting such musings, given that my audience consists mostly of happily dating, engaged, or married couples, and I am currently single. So clearly if anyone in this set doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to relationships, it’s me.

But then again, what is a weblog for, if not for unsubstantiated blabberings? I’ve got to do my part in making the Internet work, you know ;).

Okay, for the rest of this entry, I’m going use the pronoun “she” for the hypothetical significant other. I think “he” should apply just as well, as per your preference.

1. Resisting the Heisenberg Effect
If, upon meeting, the two of you don’t immediately hit it off, there is going to be some asymmetry; let’s say w.l.o.g. that she likes you more than you like her. The weird thing is that, even if you haven’t formed an opinion about her yet, chances are that if she likes you too much, you’ll be turned off. Essentially, she can like you a lot, or get you to like her, but not both, so for lack of a better name, I’m going to call this the Heisenberg Dating Effect.

This Effect sounds somewhat paradoxical, since after all, don’t you want to date someone who likes you a lot? Well… yes, but the reasoning goes something like this: “Well, I can tell she likes me a lot, and that’s unusual. If she likes me this much, she must think I’m a good catch, which means that I could probably do a lot better than dating her. So maybe she’s not so great after all.” You infer from her affection an admission of inferiority. I’m pretty sure I’ve been on both sides of the Effect (and you probably have too), and this thought process is remarkably subversive. It almost seems to happen on a biological level.

So what’s my point? My point is that the Heisenberg Dating Effect is a load of crap, and you should do everything you can to fight it. This is because in addition to the possibility that she’s “inferior” to you, there’s also the possiblity that she’s a better judge of personality and character than you are. She may like you more simply because it is more apparent to her than it is to you that the two of you would make a good couple (and this makes her, in my opinion, more desirable by far than the average girl). Since there isn’t an easy way to tell these possibilities apart, and since your other option is to buy into the Effect and assume her inferiority not because of any exhibited flaw, but simply because she likes you a lot, it’s in your best interest to keep as open a mind as possible.

In the end, the cost of an open-minded approach is that you may take a little longer to find out that she’s not the girl for you: big whoop. The benefit is that if she is, you win big because she’s already really into you, which is awesome.

2. Important factors in a successful relationship
Here are, roughly in order, what I think are the most important qualities a potential s.o. should have. Okay, this is where you can definitely call me out on my bullshit, but at least in my various failed relationships I hope I’ve managed to learn something ;). Of course, it only barely needs to be said that I certainly don’t think I’m anywhere near perfect in these categories, but they give me something to strive for.

Perspective
Some people might say “rationality” or “reasonableness”, and those are good qualities, but they don’t quite encapsulate what I mean. When I say a sense of perspective, I mean an understanding of the magnitude of (perceived) transgressions and what they really imply, and a willingness to forgive easily when this magnitude is small. It appears to me that many relationships fail as the result of an accumulation of resentment over time: an aggregation of perceived slights and mistakes and irritations (and grudges) that just grow and grow.

Most of these slights really don’t matter, given what’s at stake, but it’s very easy for them to clutter up your head with mental baggage, obscuring the real strengths of the relationship. A person with really good perspective is able to quickly and accurately decide when something occurs whether it’s worth bringing up with the s.o., or whether it should just be discarded, because in the scope of things, it really doesn’t matter. [Edit: A prerequisite to this behavior is a willingness to communicate and discuss problems openly, a quality that is itself so primarily important that I didn’t even think to include it in this list.]

This seems like a simple thing but I think it’s surprisingly hard to get right (I’m definitely still working on it). Since whatever relationship you’re in is bound to be imperfect (and if not — you lucky bastard), there will always be mistakes made and expectations that are not met. Maybe figuring out which failures matter and which don’t is an art (but hopfeully one that, like most forms of art, can improve with practice); whatever the case, having perspective kicks ass.

Niceness
This may not apply to everyone, but I happen to like genuinely nice people. [Edit: By nice I don’t mean “inoffensive”; I mean “kind”.]

A. Determining niceness
The trick is in figuring out if the girl you’re interested in is genuinely nice, or just nice to you (or whomever) in a Machiavellian sense because she thinks she can gain from it. This is an important distinction, first because in some sense I like people who are universally nice (this just appeals to me as a character trait), and second as a matter of self-interest: so she’s nice to you now because she wants to date you, but you don’t want her to turn into a selfish hag at some point just because she figures out that she doesn’t have to be nice to you anymore.

Now this is a nontrivial problem to solve, since if she’s interested in you, she’ll be nice to you no matter whether she’s genuine or a Machiavelli. The key is to observe how she treats other people — specifically other girls (since she might be trying to play other guys the way she might be playing you). You need to gather two data points:

1. How does she treat other girls when there are guys around?
This situation is telling because those other girls are essentially competition, and a self-serving girl has no reason to be nice to them. This is easy to observe in a social setting.

2. How does she treat other girls when there are no guys around?
Ahh, so the problem with just taking data point #1 is that some girls are sneaky, and are nice to other girls when there are guys around, because it makes them seem nice, and hence more appealing. Tricky! I know this firsthand on the guy side, as I have encountered a number of guys who are nice to me when there are girls present, but wouldn’t give me the time of day otherwise, which pisses me off. Anyway, this is a much harder data point to obtain, as you need an informant of the opposite sex, but it can be done.

I’m pretty sure that if both of these tests turn out well, she’s genuinely nice.

B. Parity of niceness
I’m beginning to learn that niceness is a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance. Specifically, if you are interested in minimizing long-term resentment, you might want to make sure you that you’re both the same type of nice. Okay, it sounds like I am crazy, but let me explain. Among nice people there are essentially two kinds, which I can perhaps illustrate with this hypothetical situation:

Say you are having dinner a friend’s house, and you’ve all finished eating. Your friend goes into the kitchen and starts doing the dishes while the rest of you sit in the living room, sipping your drinks. What do you do?

Nice Person Type A will contentedly sit in the living room, having a good time, because he knows that when he has his own dinner party, he will happily do the dishes while everyone else socializes. Nice Person Type B will feel compelled to help out in the kitchen, simply because he cannot sit around while a friend is cleaning up. (Asshole Person Type C will sit around and have a good time, because he knows he’ll never return the favor.) Anyway, both of these behaviors are reasonable, and I won’t presume to say which is better. But this is really a valid distinction (in my observation), and the problem is that while Type As get along great (tit-for-tat) and Type Bs get along great too (both help out in each other’s kitchens), a Type A/Type B relationship will continuously build up resentment, since B will help A out, but feel resentful when A doesn’t offer to help B out. Generalize this to most everyday activities, and you have a problem.

I think it takes a person with a lot of perspective to overcome a Type A/Type B relationship.

Being interesting/interested
Second only to resentment in relationship-killing prowess is boredom. This is the kind of thing where you wake up one morning and realize that you have absolutely nothing to say to your s.o. (… the kind of stuff that happens all the time in John Irving and John Updike books.) You know everything there is to know, you’ve done everything there is do to, etc. This can be fatal.

My friend Sach (about whom I will write in another entry soon) is a veteran of a very long-term relationship, and he has a number of cool ideas about sustaining interest. I’m trying to get him to start a blog, though, so I will not repeat any of those ideas here.

My own thoughts, however, lead me to suggest the following important qualities. To stave off boredom, you naturally want your s.o. to be interesting: a good conversationalist, perhaps funny, knowledgeable, and outgoing (when it’s necessary to be outgoing, like at a party). We all know about this. However, I think an overlooked but related quality is being interested: it can be far more rewarding if your s.o. is curious about the world, about the things you do, about new activities, and so on, than if she’s just just interesting. This is because anybody, no matter how interesting, can only generate ideas at some limited rate, whereas if you’re interested, there are zillions of things in the world around you waiting to be explored.

I am running out of steam here, so I’m too lazy to discuss this further, but hopefully what I said sounds plausible :).

Superficial factors; deal-breakers
These you all know about: looks, sense of humor (except as above), intelligence (I argue why here), etc. Some are deal-breakers (depending on your preference), by which I mean if the potential s.o. is lacking in these qualities, she’s a goner. E.g. if she’s really ugly, or really dumb, sorry. Others are more flexible: perhaps you’d like an athletic girl, but it’s not a huge deal if your potential s.o. isn’t. And so on. Blah blah.

I’ve avoided talking about some other critical traits, such as honesty (when it matters), because I have nothing to say about them except the obvious, and I’m lazy. But they’re definitely important!

From my British friend, yesterday:

Hi guys,

So I’m sitting back in MLK. What a horrible day. Didn’t quite make it out of the country – almost, though. Got to the airport in time, got to the gate, and in conversation with an AA official, they casually mention that given my weird, unofficial-looking “denial” form I might not get back in the country, if it’s not actually a real denial (since my application would still be in proceedings). The plane starts to board, and I rapidly call immigration – go through the familiar 10-stage number menu till I’m finally on 15 mins hold to speak to a person.
The plane is still boarding. The computer tells me they have not yet made a decision on my application, and it takes 90-120 days from my Feb application. The person tells me the same thing. “But that can’t be! I got my I-94 with the denial on this weekend!” “No ma’am, that can’t be – they are only on January 1st applications right now.”

Obviously I’ve been imagining the whole thing, or else the impossible happened, the American government has made a mistake. With my name being called in the background, and 7 people on standby for the flight, immigration tells me they can’t help, dodn’t know what I should do – and to call Customs and Border Patrol to find out if they’d let me back in. I run over, change my flight to the same one tomorrow morning, and call customs. They are E-V-I-L. “I just told you what to do, ma’am”. It must have been in code, because I could promise she didn’t. Someone tells me later they can’t tell us what to do, in case we cite them.
After trailing every corner of SFO after my flight left, exhausted on 2 hours sleep, and so upset at the futility of it all, I move to “Special Alien Registration”, Customs, Downtown “referral immigration” and Security. No one can help, and worse, no one will give me the number of the center that deals with the denial/application. You are only allowed to fax them. I’ve faxed them every day, predictably without results. I fax them urgently – I cannot leave the country, and I cannot stay in it, because you think you have my I-94, but I promise that you already mailed it to me. Next, I can just see it, they are going to turn around and say they can’t process my application since they don’t have sufficient documents. They’ll I’ll have to open a bank account and get myself a gun too.
Anyway, simply put, immigration insists I have not been denied, and will know in 1 – 1/2 months, so I should stay here. Customs insists I have been denied, and have to leave immediately. If I make the wrong call, I won’t see this god-blessed land for 3 years. I either overstayed, or left with a pending application. Not only are the agencies not in sync, but they won’t let me make them listen to one another, and CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) insist it is a denial, and they are the ones who can let me in. Yet it is not a denial on the system, so the system cannot let me in.

Though there is nothing I can do about it, sooner or later I am going to be sitting in an office with 2 big men with moustaches and 10 guns each asking me who do I think I am ignoring American law and not being able to follow simple instructions, like they were today.

Just thought I’d update you all.
I think I’ve aged 10 years.
Love you all, my wonderful wonderful friends. Thank you for everything, and maybe see you tonight.

So one of my best friends is from Britain, and she’s been living here in Berkeley for the past eight months or so. She just found out that the Department of Homeland Security, without any explanation, just rejected her application for a Visa extension, which used to be a routine procedure. This means that she is immediately an illegal alien and must leave the country in 3-4 days. Every day she stays from now on counts against her and could severely impact her chances of coming back to the U.S. So now she has about 72 hours to buy a ticket back to England, and leave her life and boyfriend behind. Naturally, they’re very distraught.

This just makes me furious, because a) it makes no sense at all [1] and b) there’s nothing I can do about it. This impotence is the most frustrating. Can anyone who supports our current immigration policies justify this? Aughghgh.

[1] She’s in love with America, and even majored in American Studies as an undergraduate in England. She is not milking any welfare or public services here. What’s the problem?

—–

The new (and, by now, old) hot item in our office is Geosense, a great little game for improving your geography skills. (Click on “Visit”, then on “Play Alone”; you’re scored by a combination of how close you are and how fast you click.) Can anyone beat my officemate Dave’s record of 6300?

—–

If you had to give up either listening to music or watching movies, which would it be? For me (and most people, I think) it’s a no-brainer: a movie is an immersive medium, in which the watchers essentially participate in the same experience, whereas music is more subjective: it augments whatever else it is you’re doing (or thinking about), and thus is somehow far more expressive and powerful. So movies would have to go.

However, Bill suggested a tougher question: what about music vs. fiction books? Books are still immersive, but somehow more personal (mutable?) than movies. It’s a tough call.

—–

Speaking of books, I’ve been reading a couple on these cross-country flights. I was really looking forward to Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, simply because of his kick-ass articles in the New Yorker. Turns out it’s a bit of a letdown, consisting mostly of an amalgamation of already-published pieces, loosely tied together by a very suspect overall argument. The Mystery of Consciousness (John Searle), which I’m reading now, is far more convincingly argued, and in fact is one of the most lucid books I’ve ever read.

I also finally read His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, after having it recommended to me by many people. The quality of writing wasn’t always great, and there were some plot holes that drove me absolutely nuts, but on the whole I found it inventive, bold, imaginative, and powerful. For a trilogy of “kids’ books”, it’s astoundingly ambitious. Definitely recommended.

—–

I’ve come to the point where I’m no longer limited by opportunity, or money, or ambition, but simply by time: I just don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do. Does this mean I’ve grown up? Because it sucks.

—–

Once I was in a trinket shop with some friends, and we were looking at a Magic Eight Ball, a toy that randomly answers “Yes”, “No”, “Ask Again Later”, etc. when you ask something. One of my (male) friends — let’s call him Liverpool — asked it the classic snide question “Is AJ gay?”

The Eight Ball’s response? “In Your Dreams”. Haha — talk about a great backfire.

—–

I just came back from Wing and Jen’s wedding in Boston. I can’t believe how many people I knew: from my high school, from college, and from work. Even the new people I met there were awesome. I seriously think that I’ll never attend another wedding — even my own — in which I’ll know as many people.

You might start gagging if I were to heap the appropriate number of superlatives on the bride and groom (they really do deserve it!), so I won’t. But it was an all-around wonderful experience.

I’m getting tired of doing these big updates (as no doubt you are of reading them), so it’s a relief that we had only one more day on our trip. On the last day, we got up at 5:20 am, but then I soon realized that it might have been the “spring forward” part of daylight savings time that previous night. We had no way of knowing, though; there was no cell phone reception, obviously, and civilization and radio stations were far away. It would be mid-afternoon before we found out.

Anyway, we packed our bags up and ate a breakfast of snack food: granola bars and so on. On the hike back to the car, we again ran into those mysterious paths through the brush. They didn’t look like human trails (too narrow) or bike paths (too sharp, and anyway off-road biking was illegal in that area). We hadn’t seen any animals big enough to make them, and they seemed well-worn; whatever was making them was visiting pretty often. Our first clue was when I noticed three paths converging on a melon-sized hole in the ground. Then, five minutes later, Naveen spotted it — a big jackrabbit, just five yards from us, bounding away. By the time I had my camera out it was long gone. We saw another rabbit shortly thereafter, too. Pretty cool.

Wildrose Peak
Wildrose Peak is (I think) the third highest peak in Death Valley, and the trail up to it is supposed to offer these great views of the valley floor. We didn’t initially intend to hike the whole way up the trail (8.5 miles round trip), but due to the fact that I remembered incorrectly from the trail map we left in the car, and thought that we were more than halfway to the top at a point where in fact we were only a third of the way there, we ended up doing the whole thing, which was ultimately quite rewarding. The trail, like many of the others we did, was practically deserted: we didn’t see anyone else the entire way up, and only four people coming up on our way down.

At the base of the trail were these huge stone kilns that were used to create fuel back in the mining days. The kilns used to be airtight, and they’d slow-burn wood in there with no oxygen for two days until it formed pure carbon, which could burn much hotter. The carbon was transported down into the valley and used for smelting. The trail itself was quite steep in parts, and at times we felt the lack of oxygen as we hadn’t quite acclimated to the 8000 ft altitude (even though I remember starting many 13000+ ft hikes at over 8000 ft with my family in Aspen). We also had to do a lot of slogging through snow.

The view from the peak, at about 9100 ft, was spectacular. One one side, massive Telescope Peak (the highest point in the Valley) towered over us, and west of that we could see Badwater, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. Apparently, you can also see Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S. from Wildrose Peak as well, but being a typical guy, I only read that part of the trail description after we had hiked back down and were in the car, heading home. Maybe some of the random pictures we took at the top capture it, for all I know :). The trek down was only a little faster than it was going up, since we had to do a lot of navigating through steep snow fields. In the last picture you can see the stone kilns as we take what would be the final steps of our trip to Death Valley. We hit the road at 11:30am.

The Trip Home
All that remained was the eight-hour drive home — more glimpses of middle America, including guns stores and staggeringly expansive crop fields, some kind of refining plant that looked remarkably like a Martian settlement might, and numerous billboards for our favorite accident lawyer, Tito Alvarez. By the time we got back to Berkeley, it was raining.

In a final inventory, we had eaten nearly all of our food, and seen just about everything we wanted to see in the valley (except the top of the Keane Mine!) that hadn’t been washed out by the rains this year. We were in need of showers but otherwise unharmed — and we hadn’t even gotten on each other’s nerves. Naveen turned out to be a superb primary camper, willingly supplying much of our gear as well as driving all the way there and back (since I am horrible at driving stick). We both had enough experience from previous camping trips that all the camping-related aspects went off without a hitch. The total expenses for the trip came to about $120 each, half of which went to gas.

Grad school (and, I guess, the rat-race-ish aspect of the working world) is generally motivated by feeling good after you’ve accomplished something, which I think can lead to a very perverse outlook. This trip was a welcome break from that: you felt good just being there, experiencing, in awe of your surroundings.

This would prove to be our busiest and most exciting day of the trip. We got up at 6:20am, and painstakingly made chocolate-chip pancakes one at a time in our tiny pot from an add-water-only mix. They were surprisingly tasty.

Liberal usage of deodorant kept us from knocking each other out :).

Flowers and Flats
Our first planned destination was the salt flats at the bottom of the valley, but we stopped along the way to check out the amazing wildflowers. The flats themselves were pretty amazing: blindingly white, and, well, remarkably flat and salty. Badwater, at the bottom of it all, is the most bizarre. It’s the lowest and hottest point in the U.S. (and hence a big tourist draw), and yet it encompasses a huge lake, fed underground by springs from the surrounding mountains. Of course, this wouldn’t be Death Valley if it were just any old lake: it’s unbelievably salty and unfit for just about all life, save some surface-skimming insects and one species of snail. You’ve gotta feel bad for the explorers who thought they had found salvation in this hellish place in the form of an inviting, placid lake, only to find out that even their mules wouldn’t touch the water. We tried the water and it tasted great, by the way, as salty things generally do when you’ve been out in the sun; just don’t expect it to quench your thirst.

Devil’s Golf Course
A mile north of Badwater is an equally bizarre salt-influenced terrain. It had the interesting property of looking totally different depending on how close you were. Up close, the salt ridges almost look like mountain ranges, and even closer the beauty and complexity of the salt formations is apparent, but if you step back, together they’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Golden Canyon
Golden Canyon is like Titus from the day before, except generally more colorful and interesting. It’s one of the most popular hikes in Death Valley. At the end is the Red Cathedral, a huge sheer rock face. Surprisingly few of the hikers we met along the way made it all the way to the Cathedral, even thought the hike is only about 1.5 miles each way. We found this a disappointing illuminator of the average American tourist. On the hike up I got to do some amateur bouldering; check out the first picture for an animation of one little attempt (it may take a bit for the images to load). We ended up running back down this one too, but this time I let Naveen take off his shirt instead ;).

Salt Creek
Salt Creek is another beautifully cruel trick, as salty as the sea. It’s also host to the entire population of the endangered Salt Creek pupfish, the only fish that was able to handle the creek’s gradual transition from freshwater to salt. It was pretty sobering to see the whole population of a species in one location. If the creek dries up or gets damaged, these little guys are goners for all time.

Keane Wonder Mine
The sun was already beginning its afternoon descent, and we still wanted to check out the sand dunes, but we decided to try hiking up to the Keane Mine first. It was an amazingly steep hike; the elevation change was something like 1500 feet in a mile. To get a sense of this, check out the huge wood structures supporting the ore tramway in the first picture, when we were about a fifth of the way up the trail, and try to find them in the second picture. They’re not the ones left of center, which were much higher up; they’re the miniscule ones to the right of center, just above the tiny parking lot. We ended up having to turn back with only .2 miles to go before the top, because our camping situation that night was tenuous enough that we couldn’t risk setting out after nightfall, but we did get a glimpse of a mine entrance and some spectacular views of the valley. We didn’t go into the mine. As our guidebook said, “All mine tunnels and shafts are extremely dangerous — cave-ins, poisonous gas, rattlesnakes and abandoned explosives constitute only the most obvious threats — and should not be entered.” I was convinced.

The Sand Dunes
Our last stop of the day was at the sand dunes in the center of the valley. I have no idea why they formed (and didn’t spread), but there they are, occupying several acres and surrounded by a mostly barren dirt landscape. The sand was incredibly fine, and going barefoot and sinking my toes in felt great… probably one of the most pleasant experiences of the trip. Some of the patterns in the sand were mesmerizing, and we also saw several animal tracks. On our way back, there was this curious scene of a large number of photographers snapping shots of two Asian models. I wonder what it was for.

Last Campsite
We wanted to change things up for our last night in the valley, and since we were planning on doing some mountain hiking the next day, we drove up to an altitude of about 5500 feet, and hiked over to a meadow-esque area between two of the biggest peaks in Death Valley, Telescope (11000+ ft) and Wildrose (9000+). It was noticeably chillier up there, and at night I think the temperature dipped well below 40. During the hike we noticed several strange single-track trails through the brush, and couldn’t figure out what had caused them. This mystery would be solved the next morning. We made our last meal of mac and cheese (and canned pineapple chunks), and were in our sleeping bags by 9pm.

We got up at 7:20 and had scrambled eggs (carefully carried in!) with the leftovers from the previous night’s meal. I tried to put my contacts in but it was way too dusty — it’d be glasses for me for the whole trip.

Our first destination was Scotty’s Castle. probably the most tourist-friendly spot in Death Valley. It’s a big mansion in the middle of the desert built by some wealthy prospectors in the early 20th century and named after Death Valley Scotty, a notorious dirt-poor layabout who endeared himself to the wealthy with his outlandish tales.

The Junkyard
Naveen and I decided to explore the fringes of the castle land and came across a junkyard of old, old cars. Not much to say, but they just looked cool.

The Castle
The castle itself was actually pretty boring (though picturesque), although we did see a bunch of lizards and some huge dragonflies. The best moment was when we were at Scotty’s grave, reading the inscription on the monument (“I got four things to live by…”). This funny Asian tourist dude was walking amongst his friends, constantly saying “I have four advice for you!” with a huge grin on his face. Hmm… I guess it was more amusing in the moment.

Ubehebe Crater
That was our last bit of real civilization for a while. On the flip side, Ubehebe Crater was an exhibition in pure natural power. About 3000 years ago (only!), rising magma met a large underground body of water. The water instantly turned to steam and expanded, and the resulting explosion — as strong as that of a nuclear bomb — created a crater 500 feet deep and half a mile wide. That’s hardcore. The thing is enormous. It’s difficult to appreciate the size of the crater from these pictures; check out the tiny people on the trail in the bottom right of the first picture, and in the center of the second one. A little way away we found some clay flats that were remarkably smooth and silky. The whole surrounding area was littered with other, smaller craters, caused by explosions or falling debris from Ubehebe. The last picture is of Little Hebe, one such crater.

Titus Canyon
A narrow canyon with high walls, the floor of which (our “trail”) used to be a road. We ended up running back down the canyon after hiking up it. My attempt to simultaneously (a) cool off while running and (b) make all the cute girls on the trail swoon by taking off my shirt failed miserably, and what’s worse, my neck ended up all chafed from running with my backpack, haha.

That Night’s Campsite
We had some great views driving through the length of the valley, and ended up stopping in the south end, 50 miles from our previous campsite, and parked a couple of miles down a dirt road before striking out across the desert floor. We set up camp near a dried up streambed (the thing I’m standing in). Our dinner: mozzarella, tomato, and pesto sandwiches, and canned soup. That marked the end of our fresh food. We were asleep by 9:30.

Last night I came back from a four-day backcountry camping trip in Death Valley with my friend Naveen. It was, as predicted, awesome. We took a ton of pictures, and I am going to try to document it the best I can, one day at a time, in these next four entries. I don’t think it’ll be as interesting as f18225‘s recent series :), but it’s good documentation for myself, and you might enjoy it if you’ve never been to Death Valley yourself.

If you remember from my previous entry, I broke my camera last week, so I was unable to see any of the pictures I took until I came back. However, some of them turned out okay, and Naveen brought his camera too, so between the two of us, I’ve culled about 80 representative pictures from the trip of the roughly 500 that we took.

Background and Preparation
California is, geographically speaking, an absolutely amazing place. In additional to the gorgeous weather and beautiful coastlines, it also boasts a number of superlatives: the oldest (bristlecone pine) and largest (sequoia) living things in the world, the highest point in the continental US (Mt. Whitney), and the lowest, hottest, and driest points in North America.

These last three are in Death Valley, an isolated national park on the east side California that’s as big as my home state, Connecticut. I went to Death Valley with my family when I was about 10 and we were living in Santa Barbara for half a year. I don’t remember much about it except that it was totally insane, composed of bizarre, alien landscapes. This year it happened to receive the most rainfall it’s gotten in the past 94 years, so all kinds of wild stuff was blooming in the normally desolate place. So when Naveen suggested the trip, I was all for it.

The first step was preparing. We were planning to head backcountry — which means that we could camp anywhere we wanted to in the entire park, as long as we were more than two miles away from any road. This incredible freedom also meant that we had to bring in our own food and water each day. We planned our meals so that we’d be eating the most complex ones (with the most fresh produce) first, ending up with Clif Bars and granola by day four. Here’s a sampling of our shopping at Berkeley Bowl:

Getting There
The drive to Death Valley is about eight hours long and quite convoluted. We got to see lots of interesting aspects of central California, not the least of which was the overt religiosity and obsession with trucks and monster cars. We also glimpsed some human-influenced landscapes that were quite pretty. The main problem was that Naveen’s car CD player was on the fritz, and would often refuse to play a CD altogether, issuing the mysterious E-04 up to 30 times in a row (yes, an eight hour car ride makes you that patient) before finally choosing to play a CD.

The Abandoned Airfield
A missed exit fortuitously brought us to an airfield full of abandoned commercial planes. After driving down a dirt road and then climbing through an abandoned train (note the inscription on on the side of the train; we still have no idea what it’s supposed to mean), we got to take some close-up shots of the planes. Also, on the dirt road we saw our first cool animal: a kangaroo rat! Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take my camera out before it was gone, hopping off into the brush.

Almost There
… by which I mean less than 150 miles away. On the homestretch to the Valley, we drove by a number of “mineral” towns: towns with huge processing plants that worked on piles of stuff like the one below. I wish I had taken more pictures of the towns, as they were fascinating. The roads were arrow-straight, zooming us through broad expanses of increasingly desert-like and hypnotic scenery. We also passed some enormous military-exclusive weapons-testing regions, run mostly by the army and the navy. Together, they are nearly as big as Connecticut, too.

The Valley
We finally got to Death Valley by late afternoon. We didn’t have much time, though: we had to find a good place to park, hike a couple miles into the desert, set up camp, and make our meal before the sun set! We stopped at a prairie-esque region, got our stuff together, filled up our water bottles, and headed out. We found a great camping spot nestled in the hills above the prairie and made camp before exploring for a while. Then we had dinner: black bean, pepper jack, corn and salsa burritos with fresh-cut tomatoes and avocados. We heated the beans and cheese up with Naveen’s little-yet-awesome-yet-expensive backpacking stove and little-yet-awesome-yet-insanely-expensive titanium cooking pot. Yum! But what a pain to clean up with our limited water supply.

It was exhilarating to be able to just strike out in any direction and make camp wherever we wanted. Death Valley is so blessedly unpopular that even now, with apparently record setting numbers of tourists due to the blooming wildflowers, we never saw a single other person during our three nights of camping (although we did see a bunch during the day, of course). It was quite a step up from Yosemite, which is usually packed.

Anyway, by 7:30 the sun had set and the stars were out in full glory. Man, I have never seen so many stars — even when camping elsewhere! The range of vision was unparalleled: not a single tree or cloud to obscure our vision, and the closest big city was Las Vegas, far enough away that the light pollution only seeped into a small portion of the sky. We also saw a number of shooting stars and satellites. These last are fascinating to watch traverse the night sky. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get Naveen’s camera to pick up all the stars, even on a 15 second exposure. Oh well. We managed to stay up till 10:30 talking about random stuff but mostly about girls (as usual), but by then we were pooped and the pitch blackness was enticing us to our sleeping bags. Going to sleep earlier and earlier each night would become a trend on this trip.

We needed to rest well, too, since we’d be hitting some of the crazier bits of the Valley all the next day….