Life and stuff

We’ve left the nest of the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and the actual road trip part of vacation has started. The scenery started out nice and green close into the city. Too bad it quickly turned into the endless sea of corn fields throughout the rest of our drive through Minnesota and now South Dakota. Mount Rushmore and the spelunking tour in Wind Cave National Park await tomorrow. Quite sad that these days are flying by so fast …

A few other random notes:

• My roommate *still* misses his car (even after owning it for a year)
• Soooo glad I brought some earplugs along (33db attenuation!)
• Hanging out with fellow photo enthusiasts leads to some crazy schedules; been waking up around 4 or 5am to catch the sunrise the past few days. “Sleeping in” is now waking up after 7. Very bad for night owls like me :\

And here’s a few photos from Minneapolis / St. Paul for your viewing pleasure:
St. Paul Skyline from the Mississippi River:

The “Spoonbridge and Cherry” sculpture in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden:

The “Spoonbridge and Cherry” sculpture taken with the fisheye:

The Lake Calhoun Boat Slip:

Come Friday at 1am I’ll be off to Minnesota on a 2-week one-way road trip back to LA.  (Yay!)  Going over the list of equipment that I and 3 friends will be bringing, its definitely the most tech-laden trip I’ve ever gone on.  On the list we have:

3 DSLR bodies + 6 DSLR lenses
3 (or 4) other digital cameras
assorted lens filters + other camera accessories (1 camera bag’s worth)
2 laptops
1 Treo with Verizon EV-DO (+ GPS receiver)
1 position-logging GPS receiver
3 iPods + car kit
1 car inverter
1 (or 2) Nintendo DS
1 power strip
assorted cell phones

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if all the equipment we’re bringing is worth more than the car carrying it (a ‘97 Civic).  And this isn’t even counting clothes, personal essentials, food, and souvenirs that’ll be bought on the way.  The only thing we’re missing (and could probably fit in) is a wireless access point to mate with that EV-DO connection so we could play Tetris DS online during the drive, but that would be just a teensy bit overkill.