Secret. » somewhere in the big lonely world

A nice friendly NYC trip

Benjamin Parzybok — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:41:01 +0000

We’re going to see a play, some art galleries, eat some good food and weather a hurricane. Your basic NYC trip.

Hurricane hits Saturday night, and the apartment we rented is at the Zone A/Zone B boundary line in the map below. Zone A is mandatory evacuation. Provided our flight doesn’t get canceled, see you on the other side!

Trash trucks, dancing

Benjamin Parzybok — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:37:42 +0000

My friend from wayyy back (we were Congressional Pages together in D.C. in 1987…) Allison Orr is a dance choreographer in Austin, Texas. Not just any kind of dance:

“In 2009, I choreographed the biggest dance of my life—a trash truck ballet featuring 24 employees and 16 large sanitation vehicles from Austin’s Solid Waste Services Department.”

Hundreds of people were turned away. She’s started a Kickstarter project to run an encore performance.

Looks awesome, I’m in!

I’m going on a long walk

Benjamin Parzybok — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:13:14 +0000

I’ll be turning a decade birthday in the next week, and so it feels like a drawn-out space for thinking is needed. What do I want to do for the next ten years? How do I want it to happen? What happened over the last ten years? — by all means a tremendous decade, and my favorite one by far.

My best thinking happens while walking. When I got married I took a four day walk from Portland in the direction of Astoria (some of that scenery was later written into Couch). This time I’m shooting for another four days, but in the opposite direction. It’s a short walk, compared to the work the pioneers did, or this guy, but it’s what I can afford from a schedule where I find myself a part of two startups, a freelance career, raising two children and in the middle of writing a couple of books. I think four days will be ample time to slow the pace down. It also feels like the right thing to do to set off a new decade in the right direction.

Walking also helps me not-think and not-do, both of which I’m also looking forward to.

I’m shooting for walking about 20 miles a day. Is that too ambitious? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when I start. Here’s my route:

View A walk from Portland, OR to BZ Corner, WA in a larger map

I’ve gone over the route carefully — which is a much different approach than my last big walk where I set out on some train tracks and walked until dark, then found a place to sleep. Though undoubtedly I’ll be sleeping in a few farmer’s fields off the road. I’m also doing it much later in the year than I did last time — fortunately the weather doesn’t look entirely wet. I was encouraged by reading Werner Herzog’s book, Of Walking In Ice, in which he walked from Munich to Paris through a blizzard.

Much of the route will follow the Historic Columbia River Highway – which is just incredibly beautiful, if you haven’t driven it. The rest will be on paths or train tracks. I’m going to try to avoid traffic as much as possible.

Of course, I’ll also be tracking my steps, as I’ve been known to do, and if you’re curious you can see (or join in) the competition map I setup on Walker Tracker for that here.

See you on the other side!

The River King paddles a Floating Couch on the Connecticut

Benjamin Parzybok — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:54:56 +0000

Steve Snell “River King” paddled the Connecticut river in a wooden, carved couch boat.

I am almost positive that this is one of the characters from my Couch, my bet is on Erik, escaped from the book. If you run into him, please ask.

Click to make it large enough to read the article.

Oh, and I just found this at steve-snell.com. Definitely worth a look-see. I’m so happy that Erik upgraded with a paddle.

Via my good friend Paul Chaney who found this story on the other side of the pond.

walking, bicycling

Benjamin Parzybok — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:56:17 +0000

1) Bicycling:

Photograph by Carlton Reid, art by Peter Drew of Adelaide, Australia.

2) Walking

Matt Green walked across America in 152 days.

“But perhaps the thing I find most important about walking is how connected it makes me feel to the space I’m passing through. I think it’s because walking is the way we experience our homes. We walk to the fridge, we walk to bed, we walk around the yard. We walk to the copy machine, we walk to the coffee machine, we walk around the grocery store. So this is that same familiar stride, that most basic form of locomotion we know so well, but through vast, immense, unknown places. It’s a way to live a continuous line across the country as if it were my home.”

(from imjustwalking.com)

Your antidepressant for the day

Benjamin Parzybok — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:15:54 +0000

Death Metal Rooster.

Your mileage may vary, but after half a dozen views I feel ready to break some chairs (in a most joyful way!).

The original is definitely worth a watch too.
(Thanks @david!)

Help me figure out this 2D barcode so we can open the portal into the next universe

Benjamin Parzybok — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:44:55 +0000

I snapped this shot in Brazil and my attempts at trying to decode that hand-painted 2D barcode (also called a matrix barcode) in the center of the photo have been in vain. I’d love to know what it says, which is obviously something like “Speak _____ and the wormhole will open”.

Anybody else have experience with barcodes or want to take a crack at it? Click the photo for the fullsize version, or use the crop below. To start you off, here’s a Google search for online 2D barcode decoder, and here’s an iTunes App store search for the same if you have an iPhone. The photo was taken within a block or so of here: Rua de Catete, Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro