travel

In April, 1997, I took a bus from Grinnell to Aspen, CO to attend the first annual conference of the short-lived Alliance For Community Networking (AFCN), an organization that aimed to "bridge the digital divide" with public computing centers nationwide. The conference itself was pretty forgettable, but I had a great hike up Aspen Mountain and took a few photos.

Spring break of my senior year of high school (1994) I went to visit my friend Javier and his family in Mexico City. Spring break of my junior year of college (1997) I returned to visit them again, this time in Uruapan and Michoacán. Here are my photos from the two trips.

In August of 1993 I went with my parents to Japan. We traveled with my uncle Carl, who was living there at the time, visiting Tokyo, Tokushima, Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto. See an album of my photos from the trip.

In the summer of 1993, I was the delegate from Oklahoma to the Department of Energy's Supercomputer Honors Program ("Superkids") at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Because I wasn't allowed to bring my camera into the lab, most of my photos are from the off-site banquet at the end of the two weeks.

Saturday, July 14

On Saturday morning we paid our respects to the farmers' market in Forsyth Park before hitting the Interstate to Atlanta.  Our first stop in Atlanta was the Contemporary Art Center, which was in a surprisingly rough-looking neighborhood -- we were pretty certain our GPS had led us astray!  It doesn't help that the museum building looks kind of like a warehouse that burned up in a fire, but we had to assume that was intentional.  The exhibit featured several artists who were aiming to stretch our comfort zones.  There was a mostly-nude lady dancing erotically with a dead salmon, for example.  And there was "Hennessee Youngman's" thought-provoking (satirical) video on "How to be a Successful Black Artist."

Monday, July 9

On the first day of the conference, we rode the ferry together over to the convention center and had an overpriced breakfast in the conference hotel; then I rode back to our hotel on the Savannah side of the river.  Jessie attended an all-day workshop on image-based narrative inquiry, while I gave my successor at Prairie Star District UUA an orientation to her new tools and responsibilities.  I also drove out to a grocery co-op on the far side of Forsyth Park to pick up some food for future breakfasts and moved the car to a cheaper lot for the week.

When Jessie returned to the hotel, we went for a swim and had dinner at Vinnie Van Go-Go's before attending the conference's opening reception.