Ups and Downs and Everything In Between

This road trip is coming to an end. Sara and I are in New York City for a few days before heading on to drop the car off in Maine. We’ve amassed what must be some hundred over a thousand pictures from the trip, but I’m afraid only a handful will last.

I’ve spent today troubleshooting my HP Pavillion laptop computer after it and Windows XP crashed last night. It died in a sudden death shutdown (a symptom of overheating, which I had noticed getting worse for a while) and wouldn’t start up—not even in safe mode. It hung (froze) on atisgkaf.sys and wouldn’t load any more drivers during the boot process.

I’ve been using the MicroSoft Recovery Console™ from the original installation CD to attempt to recover a previous restore point as described in the linked article. At first things seemed hopeful. After deleting the appropriate files in c:\windows\system32\config, the computer booted into Windows. But only for a few minutes before experiencing sudden death shutdown again.

Unfortunately, a few more attemps yielded no further success until finally running chkdsk from the Recovery Console yielded this depressing message.

The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.

This message usually appears when there is a hardware problem such as, I’m afraid, a (physical) hard drive failure. Ultimately, this means that all those pictures from the road trip I’ve just been on for the past two and a half months might be lost for good. And that is depressing.

However, after yet another reboot into the Recovery Console, chkdsk /r is reporting the following hope-inspiring message:

[…]
CHKDSK is checking the volume...
[…]
29% completed.

So, I guess we’ll see.

So after the Pacific Ocean (and all the National Parks plus Colorado along the southern part of our route), Sara and I decided we were sick of the midlands and wanted to be by the water again. Three days and about that many thousands of miles later, I’m writing from Savannah—in Georgia—on the East (aka the right) Coast. We struck through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama in a matter of days on the Interstates.

Since leaving California I’ve had the distinctly uncomfortable perception that I’m in the “deep South.” Georgia is no different, though Savannah is the current residence of a friend of Sara’s so I don’t mind staying for a while. Soon, however, we’ll head northwards and work our way up the coast. We’ve extended the dates of our trip ’til the seventh of November so the time crunch which bore upon us heavily back in Colorado no longer feels very near.

I am missing home more and more these days—by home I mean more the feeling of a routine, an available social life, and time to work on personal projects than I mean the apartment I can hardly afford in New York City; physical location is not much of a concern anymore—and I am anxious to leave the seat of the car whenever I can. As big and grand and wonderful as this trip has been, it’s beginning to feel as if I’ve put my whole life in some sort of suspended animation and I’d like, now, to reanimate it. It, and all of its momentum I had been building for it last year.

While on this road trip Sara and I are keeping track of our route on the AAA map of the United States on which we marked all the things we wanted to possibly see. I’m thinkin’ that when I get home (or when we have significant amounts of down-time on the road, of which I should mention we’ve had none since we’ve gotten on the road) I’m going to make an SVG movie or something showing our route.

Actually, I hope it’ll be snazzier than just an SVG (or Flash, maybe it’s about time I learned some ActionScript) movie. I’m just feeling a bit of an urge to give myself a coding project to work on. All right, on to the obligatory update.

Das Obligatory Update

Last night we camped just inside Death Valley National Park in the small “town” of Panamint Springs. This morning and afternoon was spent exploring the park, and tonight we crossed the border into Nevada and into Vegas, where we’re spending the night at an RV Park. Earlier, I drove straight up The Strip. That was an experience.

Tomorrow, another experience.

Taking advantage of Internet access tonight, I thought I’d post another quick update about what Sara and I are doing in San Francisco.

Day One, the Walking Tour

Yesterday we did a lightning-quick walking tour of San Francisco’s East side. We started at the Caltrain depot in on 4^th and Townsend, walked up towards Union Square passed the Yerba Beuna Gardens, the Metreon, the Apple Store, and Union Square towards Grant Street. Then we headed straight through Chinatown on Grant Street, and as I predicted we stopped in a bunch of stores.

We then hit Colombus Street, took a left up Vallejo, a right on Hyde, and walked to Lombard Street, the crooked part. Pictures galore, and then down Lombard all the way to Coit Tower. We took the stairs down Telegraph Hill on Greenwhich Street and ended up on the Embarcadero which we next followed all the way up to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Day Two, the Driving Tour

Today, instead of taking the Caltrain, we drove into the city all the way up to the Marina and the Exploratorium (aka the Palace of Fine Arts). I spent two hours being a five-year-old in the Exploratorium before we headed back to the car and drove into Japantown on Geary Boulevard. We ate at a restaurant across from the Peace Pavillion (same restaurant as when I came there a year—no, two years?—ago with Danica), and then walked through the malls.

Afterwards, we drove back down Geary all the way to Lobos Point and down by the Cliff House. We turned into the Sunset district on Lincoln Way, then South on Sunset Boulevard, and finally down several residential streets. We ended up on Taraval and took it down Dewey Road towards Market Street, where we eventually turned onto 17^th Street in the Castro.

We turned right on Valencia Street, and parked on 21^st Street for a stop in Good Vibrations (link is not necessarily work-safe, depending on what you do). The sun had set by the time we left the store, new “literature” in hand, and we walked back up 17^th Street towards Castro Street. I got a button-pin-thing and Sara got some fabric, and then we both had pizza when we turned down 18^th back towards Valencia and the car.

The finale was driving down Mission Street into downtown where we parked a few blocks away from the Metreon and headed into the Imax at Loews to see Serenity. Great fun all around, and yes, pictures are forthcoming.

Photos, as promised. (Though none of San Francisco yet. Sorry.)