Yoav's Space

#rtw2012 - India

2013-04-26T09:23:00.000-04:00

This is one in a series of posts about my recent round-the-world (RTW) trip, all collected under the #rtw2012 label. You may wish to read them in order for context and background.

This one is about my time India, which was spent mostly in Delhi, the capital, but also featured a trip to Agra for the Taj Mahal. Those are detailed below.

The story starts months before I got to India, when I needed to get my visa. It was by far the most painful and cumbersome visa process of my entire trip, or any other trip I've ever taken. The entire thing is outsourced by the Indian government to a private firm, Travisa, which does not make it easy. Pro tips in lieu of a long story: use Internet Explorer (yes, it still exists apparently...) on their web site, have many paper copies of everything, and be ready to spend a solid full day or two working to get this visa.

Eventually, though, you get there...

The (new) Delhi airport is not bad. It's tiny, but clean and air-conditioned.

India is the only place on my trip that I left NOT wanting more. It's a huge, diverse country, and I only saw a tiny chunk of it. Most people I met, especially my Apache Software Foundation friend Avdesh Yadav, were friendly and great hosts. I imagine other parts of the country are beautiful, offer many experiences, and have about a billion other gracious hosts. In other words, I'm giving India the benefit of the doubt, but I'm still not in a rush to get back.

I flew in on Thai Airways, another good flight on that airline. A driver met me at the airport, courtesy of my Delhi hotel. He was a cool dude, fairly young, walking in a big rush. There was a nice "welcome to India" moment where he just stepped over a couple of people who had just fallen on the sidewalk at the airport, bags and all, without helping them. I paused to help them up, and he pulled me by the arm to move on.

There's a rickshaw on the left, and another on the right...

This was a precursor to his driving, which was pleasantly brisk. At some point we passed between two rickshaws on the "highway," prompting me to ask whether the passing lane was on the left or the right. He laughed, saying "This is India, no driving rules."

The temperature was a balmy 110 degrees F (43.3 degrees C) when I arrived, and the highs for the week I spent in India were all about the same. The entire time was smoggy and humid. I last saw blue skies before starting our plane descent into Delhi, and only saw them again on the flight out of the country.

Refreshing.

Eventually we made it to my hotel in Connaught Place, in the middle of the city. I checked in, which was handled professionally and quickly, took a long shower, and grabbed a nice lunch at the hotel restaurant.

It's worth noting all the food I had in India was delicious. I ate some at restaurants, and some on the street, against everyone's advice. I never got "Delhi Belly" or anything like that. Maybe it's because I've been eating strange stuff all over the world for years, maybe it's because I carefully watched to see what many locals were getting freshly-made, and got the same, or maybe I just got lucky.

I was still pretty tired from the many Bankgkok shenanigans, so after lunch I watched a couple of episodes of The Wire (thanks again, E ;)), and took a long nap. I met a friend for drinks at Q'Ba, a nearby bar, which claims to be among the top 50 in the world. It's a decent place, but I can probably think of 50 bars I like better in NYC alone.

Not bad, but way over-rated.

The next day was one of the best in Delhi. I signed up (in advance) for a Delhi "Heritage Walk" in the Chandni Chowk area. These are small group walking tours led by a local guide. To my surprise, I was the only non-local, and one of only two non-native, people on the tour. (The other being an expat who's there for years.) Our guide, Chhavi Sharma, an archeologist, was excellent. This walk is highly-recommended.

We were to meet at the "Red Temple", properly named the Sri Digambri Jain Lal mandir. I had read about the Delhi metro, and wanted to try it out. (One of my themes during the trip was to try every common local mode of transportation, e.g. rickshaws and such, where possible.) It's one of the newest and most modern infrastructures in India.

Waiting for the train at Rajiv Chowk.

In a classic "welcome to India" moment, the token vending machines in this new train system, in a central station (Rajiv Chowk), at rush hour, were all out of service. After standing in line for a while with a lot of other people, I bought a "SmartCard" from an employee, and that got me on. The train ride itself was pretty good, actually. It won't be confused with Tokyo, but it's not awful.

The tour had us walking along and around the entire Chandi Chowk area, with several stops, some mentioned in my (iPhone app) guidebook, and some that I would not have found by myself. The street and surrounding markets gradually got more and more crowded as the morning went on.

The main street of Chandi Chowk. Peeps sleep on and around the street like that all over the place.

The Jama Masjid mosque was impressive. The "guards" at the entrance, who looked like ordinary criminals to me, were trying to charge a lot of money (relatively) for slippers (since one has to take one's shoes off to walk around a mosque, and it was the usual 110 degrees, on a baking hot floor surface...)

Ablution fountain at Fatehpuri Masjid.

Although Jama Masjid is better known, I actually liked Fatehpuri Masjid better. It's smaller, calmer, more intricate in some ways. I also enjoyed the spice market with its view, and some of the hidden residences and temples which are set back a few blocks from the street, accessed through shadowy (and shady) little alleys. Although it's crowded, it felt safe.

That's us walking through one of the back streets towards a semi-hidden temple. Guide Chhavi is front right. One of this group is not like the others...

One of the cool things about the guided walk was that I was the only person not living in India among our entire group. Almost everyone there were native locals looking to learn more about their culture and heritage, which I appreciate. You can see that in the above picture.

At this point I was hungry for a snack, and there are numerous stands on the streets around the mosque. I grabbed some kulfi, thereby violating just about every piece of advice my international travel + disease doctor gave me before the trip. Street-side, semi-frozen, liquid-based food in Old Delhi? It was delicious, and had no negative side effects.

After this it was time to walk all the way back east along Chandi Chowk, exploring a bit by myself, heading towards the famous Red Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, seat of the Mughal Empire. I was looking forward to this, and it was kind of disappointing.

First of all, you have to walk a solid kilometer or two from the end of Chandi Chowk, the main approach point, where all the taxis, rickshaws, and buses drop people off, to the actual entrance of the Red Fort. Why not place them more conveniently? Especially on blistering hot days, such as this one, I thought this might be a hindrance to less fit people. And indeed, many locals and visitors alike were sort of sitting by the side of the walking approach road, just in the sand (no benches or anything...), looking about to pass out.

Welcome to India, visitors! Please pay 25x the local entry fee.

The Red Fort itself is OK. It's not amazing. I see its historical value, but it's not well-maintained. In fact, and this was another "classic" India moment, I saw local teenagers taking stones off the walls of some of the internal structures. At first I thought I was imagining this, but upon closer approach, I was right. So I notified a guard (who was not nearby at all, in fact I had to search hard for one), who just shrugged and said it was normal. It doesn't seem "normal" to me to be actively destroying a World Heritage site...

The one area where guards were vigilant was a shaded staircase, which was pleasantly cool at ~90 degrees (compared to the 110-degree surroundings), and where some older visitors were trying to sit down for a moment of rest in the shade. No, no, no! Over there the guards make sure to keep everyone moving, not enjoying the shade, much less sitting down. Such an unwelcoming venue.

One last thing about this big, central tourist attraction: no water (or drinks of any kind) for sale at al. If you want some cheap fake jewelry, there are plenty of options. But water? Not so much.

I was again hungry at this point, and pretty done with the Red Fort, so I started to make my way back out the long, winding access road. As I got close to the main road at Chandi Chowk, we were stopped, everyone. Soldiers blocked off the access, keeping us standing outside in the heat. Why? No one knew. Great.

McAloo Tikki? Hmm. Didn't try it. Wanted street food.

I still don't know why, but we waited there about 45 minutes in mid-day heat. I never saw sirens or police or a motorcade, which was my initial guess, e.g. some politician visiting by. Oh well. I took a rickshaw back to my hotel, not feeling like riding the metro again that day.

I met Avdhesh for lunch at a local Punjabi-style restaurant, Pind Baluchi. It was packed with locals, always a great sign, and the food was delicious. Most of my meals in India were excellent.

Lunch at Pind Baluchi.

After that, it was time to chill out for a bit before my next adventure, an attempt to see the sunset at Ashkardam. I say "attempt" because I was told by the rickshaw driver it might be a bit crowded, and I should get there early. So I did, which was a good thing.

There were huge lines queuing up outside, which I thought was for security, but no. The temple does not allow any electronics inside, so we all had to check our cell phones. This was a bit scary for me, as it was my main device for communicating and navigating during the trip. But that piece turned out fine: just an hour or so in line...

Approaching Ashkardam temple (having taken the metro here).

The Ashkardam temple is beautiful. With the sunset's golden light, it looks like something out of a Disney movie. But is it worth the hours spent waiting in line? I'm not sure. Is it peaceful with everyone running around? Not really.

The next day, I planned to go to Agra for the Taj Mahal. And I planned to do it by train, so I bought a ticket in advance, having researched the train options, train stations, and particularly train travel classes. There are all sorts of stories about Indian trains and their nightmares, but I wasn't particularly daunted.

Train ticket from Delhi to Agra

I was wrong. Although the trains are nowhere as crowded as I thought, not nearly as crowded as Tokyo's or some of the Hong Kong trains I took, they are simply filthy, nasty. All the street food I had was fine, but looking at the train and sitting inside for a few minutes, I got a bad feeling, got up, and left.

My train boarding at the station.

I called the hotel to arrange for a private driver to Agra (and back) the next day. Once they confirmed that, I went to the Qutub Minar, another major historical complex in Delhi. That proved to be perhaps the most positively surprising one of the trip, quite relaxing and peaceful. Walking around there and reading about its history was a nice contrast to the hectic nastiness of the train station.

A plane flying over the Qutub Minar.

From the Qutub Minar, I went to the last major religious complex I wanted to visit in Delhi itself, the Baha'i Lotus Temple. This place was awesome. It's a beautiful, soaring structure, with nice gardens around it. But more importantly, it has a calm to it, and a welcoming feeling. It was nice to feel, not just read about, that central Baha'i tenet.

Lotus Temple -- way better professional photos available online.

Right outside the temple, I had some amazing street-side roti from an old lady. I wish I could have that same roti right now. I think she was mostly there for the construction workers on a project nearby, since they were the only customers beside me. I took the metro back to Rajiv Chowk, by now used to the SmartCard and the metro signage.

Dinner was early-ish at Circa 1193, back near the Qutub Minar. Really nice view from the outdoor terrace, decent food. I was excited for the next day, a trip to Agra for the Taj Mahal.

The next morning my driver Vinay picked me up for Agra. He was a very cool guy, we chatted most of the way there. We started early enough (6am on the road) that we did not encounter much Delhi traffic, and quickly got on the NH2 "highway" to Agra. I put "highway" in quotes because it's tiny, poorly paved in sections, nearly always full of trucks and other objects, including people and cows crossing...

During this trip to Agra I called my little sister to wish her a happy birthday. Why is this blog-worthy? Because it was my single personal phone conversation with my family during the entire trip.

When we got into Agra, we met up with a certified local guide (extortion, but cheap as such, so not worth arguing), who took me into the Taj Mahal. It's all that and a bag of chips, no doubt. Absolutely worth visiting. Far better maintained and guarded than the Red Fort or any other tourist attractions I visited in India.

Again, all sorts of better pro shots and posters available online.

It was pretty sparse while I was there in terms of people. Maybe it was the time of year, or the heat, I'm not sure. And most visitors were local to India, although there were definitely others from all over the world.

The Taj Mahal is smaller than I expected, but it's immaculate and gorgeous. I went everywhere, including the minor sites, and it still only took about an hour. Afterwards I invited driver Vinay to lunch, so we had some Kum Aloo Kashmiri in a local restaurant he chose, before heading back to Delhi.

A couple of observations from the drive: Faridabad is apparently always busy with truck traffic, trucks often have stickers on them saying "blow horn," and "use dipper at night," which means to use high beams at night. Why are high beams called "dippers?" Not sure.

Delhi newspaper before the London Olympics...

I was craving coffee, so I bought a local newspaper and went to a coffeehouse recommended by Vinay. The coffee was awful, but it was interesting to read the newspaper.

I went back to Q'Ba (above) to watch the NBA Finals game, and then it was time to pack things up for my airport transfer. The airport process itself was painful as expected, because the entrance guards require a printed (on paper) itinerary, no digital substitutes (e.g. looking at the email on my phone) accepted. Oy.

There was one redeeming quality: the Turkish Airlines (shared with other airlines) business lounge at Delhi's international terminal is awesome. It's one of the best I've ever seen. And I was there alone at 5am, so it was super-quiet and peaceful, a change from everything else in India.

The airport lounge.

Overall, India is a fascinating huge country, and I only saw a tiny chunk of it for a short time. There are a lot of places I haven't seen, like the entire countryside, Mumbai, the other big cities, the tech sectors and such, Kashmir, and lots more. Almost everyone I met was very nice. Maybe I'll come back one day...

Next stop, Istanbul!

#rtw2012 - Bangkok

2013-02-19T20:39:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series of posts about my around-the-world trip in 2012, all collected under the #rtw2012 hashtag. You may wish to read the previous ones for background and context.

Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, was a fascinating place to visit. I over-use the word "awesome," but Bangkok is awesome. I'm excited to go back there in the future, and I was excited to get out alive with only minor injuries to the body and spirit.

You (or at least I) watch movies like The Hangover Part 2 (a cinematic masterpiece!) and think it's exaggerating the lawlessness, the crudeness, the rawness of the city. No, it's not. In fact, it's the opposite: Bangkok is all that and then some.

In the interest of full disclosure, this post contains more intentional omissions than most (maybe all) of my other posts about this trip. There is some sketchy stuff going on in this city, some unusual experiences that are not easy to find elsewhere. If you know me well enough that we hang out in person, just ask me, ideally over drinks, and I'll gladly share some good stories.

Vertigo / Moon Bar at sunset. Solid drinks, good place to meet.

If you're thinking prostitution or drugs, those are not it. Not my cup(s) of tea, never have been. Even if I were into prostitution, which I'm not, seeing teenage girls who are undoubtedly trafficked / abused in various ways is not an attractive thing. The streets are littered with them, and they are (or seem) desperate for business, but I found that to be very unappealing.

The airport in Bangkok was pleasant, clean, efficient. I had no issues flying in or out of the country, including immigration. Upon arrival, my driver picked me up by baggage claim, and one of his first questions was whether I'm Muslim. When I said no, he breathed a sigh of relief, and said that's good, because "they all go 'boom boom.'" That was an interesting welcome to the country.

I checked into the Majestic Grande hotel with no issues. It was a very nice hotel, I liked it. During my trip, my lodging split was roughly 1/3rd hotels, 1/3rd AirBnb apartments, and 1/3rd friends (or friends of friends), not counting Israel of course. Service at this hotel was excellent throughout my stay here.

As I did in most destinations during this trip, I immediately went in search of some pickup sports, particularly soccer. It's a great way to meet people, as I wrote in detail earlier. (That post is now among my top 3 most-read posts ever.)

While I did find and play some soccer that evening, there was also a game of sepak takraw in the same park, so I tried my hand at that. I suck at it, not surprisingly, only having played once before. But the guys were impressive to watch anyhow. At least until a monsoon rain started, sending us all back to the BTS SkyTrain.

The back side of this park is where we played sepak takraw.

Bangkok offers many modes of transportation. I tried them all, on purpose. The BTS SkyTrain is a very good option, but it only serves big main streets. The buses are awful, crowded, stuck in traffic the whole time. If you can walk long distances, that's a decent option, although pollution makes it less appealing. The tuk-tuks are not much better, since they are open (so, pollution...) and subject to traffic.

Riding the BTS SkyTrain to Siam station.

Riding on the back of a tuk-tuk in Bangkok's Chinatown.

My favorite mode of transportation ended up being the most efficient one, but also most dangerous -- surprising, right? Motorcycle taxis.

I kept hiring motorcycle taxis, most of which appeared to be driven by unlicensed teenagers. It was a thrill riding in the back as they weaved in an out of traffic, sometimes getting so close to vehicles that they pushed off them with one arm to maneuver. Yes, you read that right.

Here are a couple of videos shot from the back of a motorcycle, one in rush hour traffic, and one coming back to my hotel around 7am, near sunrise.

These are both jittery as I shot them one-handed with my iPhone, which I was trying to balance on the driver's helmet as he was weaving around traffic. Sorry about that. Still, they're fun ;)

The food in Bangkok was amazing. I ate almost exclusively street food, and it was among the best food I've ever had, anywhere, Thai or not. It was all very cheap, freshly made, well-spiced, and delicious. There is some kind of food cart literally every 10-20 feet throughout the main areas of the city, often staffed by some old lady who doesn't speak English.

Yes, these are piles of insects at a street food stance. Delicious.

My MO at these carts is simple: look around for a crowded one, observe, and when I see someone ordering something I like, point at it and say "same same" (or the local equivalent). It seems to work reasonably well all around the globe. I also make sure they make it fresh, as they do have pre-made dishes in Styrofoam containers available, but I don't want those.

All-you-can-eat sushi + shabu (not seen) for ~$10! Great deal.

Some of the food, like the insects above, is not for the faint of heart. I greatly enjoyed it. I didn't get sick at all, not once during the trip, maybe because I've been eating strange and unusual foods for many years now.

Amusing name, very good restaurant.

I did have one meal at a fancy restaurant in Bangkok: Eat Me, a nice and excellent restaurant, was very good. It was a good chance to hang out with Kelsey and YBot, good people both.

The temples and palace(s) were amazing, well worth the visit. My favorite was the temple of the Emerald Buddha, but the entire palace complex was mesmerizing. I spent almost a whole day there, despite the heat and humidity, a lot longer than I expected.

At the palace complex.

Inside the room with the emerald Buddha.

The reclining Buddha (Wat Pho) and temple of dawn (Wat Arun) were also worth a visit.

View from the top of the Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun).

The reclining buddha is huge.

In Bangkok, as in nearly every stop on my trip, I volunteered to help some locals in need. This time I spent most of a day with an organization called In Search of Sanuk, under the chaperoning of the amazing Prae Vashudara, who proved to be an excellent local guide. We bought and delivered groceries, food, and supplies to local immigrants who are having various troubles. We spent the afternoon with them at their housing (a generous word...), hearing their stories and seeing how we could help. It was great.

Walking around Nana Plaza at 4am.

A lot of people talk about Bangkok's famous nightlife. It is indeed raucous, entertaining, and eye-opening, in both good and bad ways. There are really no holds barred here, very few (if any) laws observed, and the message is very clearly that you can buy whatever you want, often for very cheap.

Sirocco. Yeah.

Although I definitely walked around the famous places like Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza, the thing that I liked the most were Bangkok's rooftop bars, loungers, and restaurants.

Blue Sky at the Sofitel, a good place to meet a fellow kitesurfer ;) Hi Signe!

This city absolutely dominates this category, more than any place I've ever been, far better than New York City, Tokyo, or other similar-scale cities. Between Vertigo / Moon Bar, Sirocco, Red Sky, Blue Sky, Nest, and more, it's a dominating trend, and it rocks. I wish I had more nights to enjoy more of these spots.

Red Sky. It looks even better at sunset in real life.

All of them had solid drinks (not cheap), good service, and a great ambiance. I met great people, saw glorious sunsets, and just enjoyed the atmosphere. This is what I miss the most about Bangkok. Except the food. Maybe.

The Nest off Sukhomvit Soi 11.

Khaosan Road is a world-famous destination, too. I spent an evening there with some friends from the previous night, and also met up with Rania, who turned out to be a superstar in multiple ways. These few days in Bangkok will probably lead to some multi-year friendships.

I did not go to the country-side, nor to other cities like Chiang Mai, nor to the islands like Phuket and Ko Samui. All of those are on the list for future trips. I'd love to see more of Thailand, but this trip was about big cities, history, culture, and nightlife.

I did go to Lumpini (sometimes spelled Lumpinee) stadium for some Muay Thai kickboxing. There are a couple of ways to get a ringside seat, and I chose the more athletic approach, which paid off big time in getting to know some of the wrestlers and their coaches. I shot a couple of videos and had a great time watching the fights, the rituals, the spectators as much as the fighters.

Up close and personal at Lumpini stadium.

I also had a surprise at Siam Ocean World: they let you dive with sharks in the tank. That was a lot of fun, although not quite as adrenaline-inducing as my past open water dives with similar sharks.

And now, we dive with sharks!

Overall, Bangkok was fantastic. I'm very happy with the memories, experiences, and friends gained. I look forward to visiting Bangkok again, and seeing more of Thailand, in the future. If you're an experiential, adventure-seeking traveler, Bangkok should be high on your list.

Trip report: one-day winter Presidential Traverse, January 2013

2013-01-15T19:11:00.000-05:00

This blog post is a detailed accounting of a hike Alissa and I did this past Saturday, January 12th 2013.

Up Valley Way near the Madison Hut.

We did the Presidential Traverse, a fairly well-known hike that encompasses climbing up and down all the mountains named after US presidents in New Hampshire's White Mountains. You should read the brief Wikipedia background if you haven't.

For some background, here's a good Backpacker Magazine article ("A winter traverse of the Presidential Range is the most coveted–and riskiest–mountaineering feat in the Northeast.") and another good one from the AMC Outdoors magazine ("Attempting a Presidential traverse in winter is like playing Russian roulette with the weather.")

Sunset near Mount Eisenhower.

You might have noticed those two articles are from 2008 and 2006, respectively. That's kind of old in our internet age. This is because very few people attempt a winter Presi. The rest of this article contains more details, but this is a dangerous hike. It's long, strenuous, subject to intense weather, and thus requiring serious gear, real outdoor orientation / route-finding / navigation skills, and a high level of fitness. Please don't read this and try it unless you're very sure of what you're doing.

Unless you're a hiker, you might find this overly verbose and/or boring. I am writing it because when we did our research, we found very few (less than a handful) trip reports for doing this hike in the winter, and especially in one day. The (very) few folks who do this hike at all seem to do it in a couple of nights, sometimes one night, but hardly ever in a day. Hopefully this will be useful to similarly-aggressive hikers ;)

If you're a reader of this blog, this blog post might seem familiar. Alissa and I did the same traverse, also in one day, but in the late summer / early fall, and I wrote a trip report for that. It's obviously much safer and easier (in some ways, not all...) during a warm summer day, with many other hikers around.

Alissa has her own great blog, and she's written up her own account of our hike, with considerably more humor than mine :)

Alissa tagging another summit. Hat off, no weather concerns, ice tools fastened. (That's my ice axe in the snow.)

As Wikipedia notes: "Consequently, those wishing to tackle a Presidential Traverse in winter must be exceptionally fit, experienced in winter mountaineering and compass orientation techniques, very familiar with the terrain, and have high quality winter gear. Lacking any one of these puts one in serious peril of requiring expensive and hazardous rescue, even death."

That said, if you can do it, the rewards are awesome. The views are spectacular, assuming you get any clear windows. We had a total whiteout on the initial couple of ascents, and then a nice clear afternoon before the early sunset. There may well be no one else on the trails, at all, much less the summits, so you get all the quiet and solitude you want. The surface mixtures presents really fun crampon / microspike / snowshoe / boot challenges. And the overall feeling is great, but you already know that if you're even contemplating this hike,

OK, on to some details.

We did the "classic" traverse route, going north to south, starting at the Appalachia trailhead and ending at the AMC Highland Center in Crawford Notch. Not many people do this traverse in any season, but when they do, this is the common route. Most do this in 2-4 nights, depending on their level of fitness. We wanted to do it "Alpine-style," meaning we had to go fast and light. As people say, "in the mountains, speed IS safety." This can be very counter-intuitive, until you grok the meaning of "objective risks."

We got started later than our summer Presi, both because we wanted to get an extra hour of sleep (we only had about 4 hours anyways, due to late arrival and Boston-area road traffic on a Friday evening...), because we knew we'd be doing bunch of hiking by headlamp anyhow, and because we knew the weather would be warming up a bit as the day went on. Our official start time was 5:42am.

Near Edmands col.

We took the Valley Way trail from Appalachia to the Madison Hut, a gain of more than 3,000 vertical feet over a little more than 3 miles. The route was nicely snow-packed, and we made it to the hut a little before 8am, a good pace. Sunrise was not much of a sight, because a dense wet fog was covering everything, so we couldn't see much. We actually didn't see the big hut building until we were about 30 yards from it :)

We tagged Mount Madison's summit about 20 minutes later, in a quick scramble up from the hut. The winds were gusting to about 50mph, well higher than forecast, and continuing the wet whiteout conditions. Nonetheless, we're both used to strong winds in the Whites, and this was a fairly easy ascent.

Yours truly ascending up Mount Madison in a whiteout.

We did drop our packs at the Hut (outside obviously, since like all huts, this was is closed and locked down), but just for speed. This way we could practically almost jog up and down Madison's summit cone.

By the way, for the curious: neither Alissa nor I use hiking poles, since we have decent balance and go faster without them, but YMMV. Some people really like them, but I've found my balance and speed improved once I stopped using them.

We cam down from the summit, had a snack, put on the packs, and set out towards Mount Adams. We both prefer the Star Lake trail to the Gulfside trail at this point, even though (or maybe because...) Star Lake is more exposed and challenging. In the summer, this trail yields amazing views, but in the winter whiteout conditions, the views were about the same everywhere.

A summer view of the top of the Star Lake "trail," whose scrambles we love but others don't, by Pixel.

Mount Adams had chest-deep snow everywhere, and while Alissa scampered gracefully, for me this was the hardest ascent of the day. We made it up at 9:20am, about an hour after Madison, which is about the same pace as our summer Presi, i.e. reasonably fast.

We continued down the Gulfside trail, i.e. traversing Mount Adams, to Thunderpoint Junction. We made it to the junction side quickly, in less than 30 minutes, despite the continuing whiteout. Here, however, was the one place where we got a little lost.

Cairns were hard to find in the snow and fog, but we saw snowshoe tracks, so we followed them a bit. Within 0.1-0.2 miles, we both realized we were off trail. This is where it pays to know the surrounding environment well, and to have some route-finding skills.

A fallen USFS trail sign near Edmands Col. What kind of wind would it take to rip this out (16" iron base supports??)

After a quick discussion and map + compass consultation, we decided to follow the ravine line towards Mount Jefferson, our next summit, knowing we'd find Edmands Col that way and get back on the Gulfside trail, just because of the geography of the immediate area. Sure enough, after another ~0.2 miles hiking southwest along the ravine line, we picked up a cairn and the trail, always a re-assuring thing.

We passed Edmands Col and ascended Mount Jefferson, one of my favorite summits. Even in the summer, you often have this summit to yourself, with its gorgeous views. I don't know why it's overlooked. Needless to say, on this winter day, we didn't see anyone even remotely around, but that was pretty much true for the whole hike.

We tagged Mount Jefferson at 11:45am, a bit more than two hours after Adams, partially due to losing our way a bit, and partially because it's a long slog. In the summer we were able to jog much of this part, but not this time.

On our way to Jefferson. Those are trees buried in snow, and Alissa is warm enough to take off her hat...

Fun fact: In doing Mount Adams, Mount Jefferson, and Mount Washington in sequence, you climb the three highest mountains in the northeast US, right after each other.

From Jefferson we continued towards Mount Washington on the Gulfside trail. You pass Mount Clay, a relatively minor peak but still part of the range. This was a good mental checkpoint for me, because you know the biggest climb is ahead (Mount Washington), but you have a good gauge on your physical fitness, having done three serious summits and several thousand feet up and down already.

Me ascending past Mount Washington's Cog Railway.

The good news is that I was feeling strong, and getting stronger, at this point. Alissa is pretty much always strong, though we kept checking in with each other at regular intervals, making sure we agreed on the current bailout route if that was needed.

Near Mount Washington is where we saw the only other group of hikers that day. There were six of them, all in snowshoes. Apparently they were trying for a traverse, too, but we were passing them quickly even though they started more than two hours ahead of us. They had already decided to bail out after Mount Washington when we got to them.

Mount Washington summit in the early afternoon.

I'm pretty sure our relative ascent speed in our crampons and no poles, compared to their snowshoes and poles, did not help motivate them to go on. I think they made the right decision to bail out, though, and applaud them for not having summit fever.

Our ascent of Washington was quick and uneventful. By this time the weather had cleared up somewhat. I was on the summit the previous weekend in much tougher conditions, with a bigger group, so this part felt easy. And to my surprise, I found that the more I climbed, the stronger I felt.

One of the snowshoers took the only picture of us together during the hike.

We tagged Washington's summit just after 2pm, a little after the time I'd gotten there the previous weekend just doing Lion's Head up from Pinkham Notch, and about 2 hours and 20 minutes after Mount Jefferson.

Another Mount Washington Summit view.

After a quick obligatory picture break at the summit, we kept moving, not even stopping to eat. I knew I wanted to check out the emergency refuge in the Lakes of the Clouds hut, so we'd get a snack there, and change socks.

We were able to hustle down the ~1-mile distance to the hut, and find the refuge. We got to the hut at 3pm, about 45 minutes after leaving Mount Washington.

Never been alone at the Lakes of the Clouds hut. Gorgeous afternoon views.

My socks were wet, a bad thing, although my feet were feeling fine. Nonetheless, I changed into my spare liner socks, spare outer socks, and put on new toe warmers, just to be safe. This worked, and I'm glad I carried these extras, as I always do in the winter. We took about 20-30 minutes here to do the above, plus eat, drink, re-hydrate, assess how we were feeling, etc. We both agreed, easily, that we can finish out the traverse, so we set out.

Looking back north towards Mount Washington from the Lakes of the Clouds hut.

Mount Monroe, the next peak, is one of my favorites. It's a relatively easy and short ascent, at least if you're in decent shape, and the views are stunning. You often get great views looking back north towards Washington. We also had the sunset and its highlights on the southern Presidentials which were still ahead of us. We reached Mount Monroe at 4:15pm, with the sun close to setting.

Moving south towards Franklin.

From there we continued to Mount Franklin, not technically required for the Presi, but an extra peak we bagged in the summer, and so we tagged it this time as well. The views were still stunning, with the sun right behind the enormous cairn at the top of Mount Eisenhower, the next Presi-required peak. We tagged Mount Franklin at 5pm, around the time we turned on our headlamps.

From the summer, I remember the slog between Franklin and Eisenhower being long and annoying, but maybe it's because I stopped a couple of times to help other hikers, including splinting someone's ankle. Yay Wilderness First Responder training!

This time, however, hiking at night by headlamp, all by ourselves with no one for miles around, it was a great time. We made it to the summit of Franklin by 5:45pm, so we were moving really fast, especially considering the length of the hike to this point. We both enjoyed looking at the stars come out, and we could see the lights from the Bretton Woods ski resort nearby, a gorgeous clear night.

This passage near Mount Jefferson reminded me of the Hinterstoisser Traverse. Thank god it's not.

The hike from Eisenhower to Pierce is pretty easy, and much of it is at the very top of the tree line. We reached Mount Pierce around 6:30pm, and stopped for a while, turned off our headlamps to look at the stars. It was perfectly quiet and still, no one else around, and plenty of shooting stars. A moment like that is pretty hard to find.

From Mount Pierce we chose not to do the detour to Webster, which is not named after a president and adds a very boring couple of miles to the trip. I personally felt like Mother Nature had graced us with amazing weather for ~6 hours, after the morning whiteout, and I didn't feel like pushing our luck more than needed.

Instead, we booked it down Crawford Path to the AMC Highland Center. That's still a non-trivial hike, more than 3 miles and 2,000 feet of elevation drop, but we booked it, feeling strong, and ready to jog out the rest of the way. We reached the AMC Highland Center in the dark, roughly 14 hours after we started the hike, 2 hours slower than our summier Presi pace.

Unparalleled views in the afternoon, just before sunset, near Mount Eisenhower.

All in all., this was one of the best hikes I've ever done, maybe the best (up with the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu.) The physical and mental challenges are equal, and both are immense. You should definitely do a summer Presi, and feel like you've got that covered reasonably easily, before even thinking about a winter attempt.

In terms of gear, it's the same principle as always: layers, insulation, no cotton (all moisture-wicking synthetics or SmartWool), have spares you can change into, and adjust by listening to your body. Don't get wet, because whatever's wet will freeze, and then you're in trouble. You should be warm while moving, and then put on an extra layer while resting.

Near Mount Monroe.

We didn't rest often, drinking water on the go from our CamelPaks, and eating small bars and snacks pretty much every hour or so. I had a number of Clif's Shot Bloks bars, a couple of Kit Kat bars, a couple of Red Bull energy drinks, some salami and cheese, and some of Alissa's Chex Mix. It's actually not a lot of food, given that we spent several thousand calories each on the hike, easily.

I did drink all 5 liters of water I brought with me. This is bad, and it means I should have brought more water. Alissa had plenty of spare water, since she apparently never drinks :) So I drank most of hers as well, and ended up hydrating just fine.

I had my big bomber Mountain Hardwear parka in my pack, but never used it. Alyssa used hers briefly on Mount Madison, but then didn't use it again the rest of the way. That's partially because we both kept moving all the time, and also because we're used to the weather, and because the afternoon was relatively calm in terms of winds.

Tagging Mount Pierce, our last summit of the day.

I wore an expedition-weight base layer, insulating shell pants, a winter running zipup, and my light rain shell all day, along with a thermal beanie, liner socks, and thick mountaineering socks, liner gloves, and mitts. That's it. I had a balaclava but never used it. Same with my extra top layer, my parka, and my goggles.

I had the ice axe in my hands pretty much the whole time, but more out of habit than need. I only used it a couple of times in icy spots.

Panorama shot near sunset. Love this one.

I'm happy to add more material to this post if readers have questions. Just post them in the comments below.

Finally, but most importantly, some thanks: to Alissa, the best hiking partner one could hope for, always strong, fast, encouraging, and happy. To Ron, who offered to pick us up from any trail head we wanted in the White Mountains and be our bailout. To Hua (my friend) and Hugh (Alissa's dad), our safety watchers from home.

Climb on ;)

2012 rocked. What's up for 2013?

2013-01-01T18:14:00.002-05:00

2012 was a great year. I have neither the time nor the intention to write lengthy summary post, but the year brought much good.

I believe 2013 will continue in much the same way.
I stopped working at HubSpot and started at Happier, two great (but very different) companies, and I'm excited about that.

I took a trip around the world. I'm still blogging about that, only about 20% done. During that trip, as well as before and after, I've met many new friends. Some through sports, e.g. the amazing November Project tribe, some through other activities, some through mutual friends.

I got a little bit more fit, a little stronger, a little faster, though much progress remains to be had on that front. In the process, I learned more about my body, re-discovered both yoga and football (soccer), and built up skills in other sports, some more obscure than others.

I learned about myself as a person, had a bunch of time for reflection, and crossed a few items off my "bucket list," while adding a few others.

I'm very lucky, and I appreciate it. No complaints here.

So what's up for 2013?

Happier will be a big focus. We want to launch our product to the public, and continue iterating on it quickly, learning from our users and their feedback. The indications of progress here are pretty obvious and many are available to the public: releases, users, active users, etc.

I have a couple of trips planned, as usual to visit my family in Israel, but also a couple of adventures. More on those as they get closer or get done. The next one is actually this coming Saturday, to Mount Washington in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

I will volunteer a bit more, at least once a month, every month. I did some in 2012, including on my trip, but only recently did I find a good source of volunteering activities around me that is online, updated near-real-time, and provides diverse opportunities without consuming a lot of setup time.

I will become a better swimmer. I think I'll hire a coach for a few sessions and see how that goes. I need to get faster in the water for some of the longer distance triathlons on my mind. I'd love to do the half ironman swim in 40 minutes.

I will watch at least one random TED talk every week. Each one is very good, and I want to shake out my talk selection bias.

There will be more. But I'd rather have 3-4 concrete resolutions with accompanying metrics, and stick to them, than a whole hodgepodge of stuff.

Have a great 2013, everyone!

#rtw2012 - Hong Kong

2012-12-24T18:39:00.000-05:00

This is one in a series of posts about my round-the-world (RTW) trip this past summer. They are all collected under the #rtw2012 label. You might want to read chronologically for background / context.

Like the other city-specific posts, this one is very long and detailed. It's more of an online diary for me, than anything else. You might find it overly verbose, boring, etc ;)

Like the other destinations on this trip, Hong Kong had been on my "bucket list" for years. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the Bruce Lee and other martial arts connections, maybe the food, not sure. But it fit neatly within the trip itinerary, and I was excited to visit.

Arrival in Hong Kong (HKG).

The flight over was short and uneventful. Once again, All Nippon Airways (ANA) came through with great service, timely flights, modern comfortable planes, and great lounges.

I stayed in an Airbnb apartment, my first one of many on this trip. It was located on Peel Street in SoHo, right in the middle of the more modern "Central" part of Hong Kong. ("Central" is not just a geographic indication, but also the name of a district in town, which is a bit confusing at first.)

This amazing location was even better because this is a penthouse apartment, with a balcony and great views. My hostess, Inge, was very kind and friendly, a fellow yogi, and spoke English very well. I'm glad I stayed here and not in the one of the very expensive hotels.

Airbnb picture from Inge, not mine. View from the balcony.

The apartment is steps away from the Central-Mid-Levels Escalators, one of the wonders of Hong Kong I'd long wanted to see. Those escalators were fascinating, convenient, fun to ride, even entertaining. I like how their directions are changed during the day to accommodate the dominant traffic pattern by the time of day.

The Central-Mid-Levels escalators in the middle of the day.

On the first day in Hong Kong, after checking in to the apartment, I took the escalators all the way up, and then walked up Victoria Peak as high as I could go.

On the way to the top, I stumbled upon a nice little park among the skyscrapers, featuring a small football (soccer) pitch. As I've written before, basketball and football pickup games were a big source of meeting locals during my trip. Although this pitch was empty, I came back to it later during the trip and had fun playing with locals.

Unusual height and view from the Conduit Service Road playground. Those are 100+-story buildings.

In Hong Kong, however, I ended up playing pickup basketball almost every day. There are a couple of big parks that always had running games while I was there. This was a lot of fun and a great way to meet locals. It was also decent exercise, especially since the temperature was in the 90s (F) and the weather was humid my whole time there.

The main park where I played most often in Hong Kong.

Another game a couple of days later.

Victoria Peak is world-famous, of course. It's been featured in many movies and such. I went to watch sunset there, to see all the buildings light up. The show is even better in person, naturally -- quite dazzling. I stayed there a while and shot a video, which I've since lost ;(

The start of sunset from Victoria Peak.

A few friends sent back near-identical photos and videos, which brought big smiles to my first. There's something very cool about being far away from home, and knowing a friend was standing at your very spot not long ago.

Public transportation in Hong Kong was excellent. I took the MTR several times, the ferries a couple of times as well, including once to Macau (the subject of a separate upcoming blog post), and the buses once or twice mostly to see the sights. The MTR trains run often, clean, fast, easy to navigate, no complaints at all. I took a taxi once, I think, and that was fine too.

MTR to Kowloon.

I tried to walk through most of the well-known areas on foot a lot. I covered big chunks of Kowloon (City and Tong), Tsim Tsa Shui, Sheung Wan, Causeway Bay, Wan Chai, Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei, Jordan, and Admiralty. It was a good amount of walking (10-20km per day) in the aforementioned heat and humidity, which was nice exercise, but I still didn't see as much as I wanted to.

A special shout-out here to David, author of the great Randomwire blog. I've been reading his blog for years, and went back through his archives while planning my Hong Kong trip. David also graciously agreed to meet while I was in Hong Kong.

Sheung Wan (IIRC) from the top back seat on a semi-sketch bus.

I really liked the busy crowded atmosphere on the Kowloon side, especially around Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei. Mong Kok has the highest population density in the world, and I'm not sure I'd want to live there (as opposed to Central or the Mid Levels), but it was a blast to visit.

Walking around Causeway Bay, IIRC.

The street are at least as interesting at night as they are during the day. I stopped by the Temple Street night market, of course. I expected it to be busy and crowded, which it was. But I didn't quite expect how much it would look like every Hollywood director's vision of "Chinatown."

The Temple Street night market.

I actually had one of my best meals in Hong Kong, which generally had amazing, excellent, fresh, cheap street food, right around the Temple Street night market. There was a street corner with 3-4 establishments (a loose word, since it was mostly plastic chairs on the sidewalk...) serving fresh spicy crabs. As in so fresh they were still swimming there in big boxes, and you could pick which one(s) you wanted to eat. Delicious!

The spicy crab place is to the right. Not a great pic, but the only one I had left of this area ;(

There is great food all over Hong Kong. I mostly ate on the street, with a couple of exceptions for famous tea houses and dimsum. OpenRice was a fantastic resource, as were local friends.

Tim Ho Wan in Mong Kok was my favorite dimsum place, and the best dimsum I've ever had, not surprisingly. Apparently since I was there earlier this year, they have received their first Michelin star, making it possibly the cheapest average cost restaurant to have such an award?

I also went to some random places, just walking around and see what's packed with locals. For example, there was a place down the street from me (on one of the "elevator" streets, not Peel itself), where everyone seemed to be having this, so I got it as well:

Simple home-made pork dumpings in a chili-garlic broth with hand-pulled noodles. Yum!

On the way to one dimsum restaurant, I noticed an interesting sign. It appeared to offer a haircut and a massage in the same place. This was intriguing because (a) WTF?, (b) I needed a haircut, and (c) offering haircuts hopefully meant it was a normal massage place, and not one where everyone wanted to provide you with a "happy ending."

These signs for foot massage and reflexology are everywhere, but not often combined with hair salons.

So I went inside, and sure enough, you can get a nice foot massage while getting your hair cut. That was pretty awesome :) After much tallying and re-calculating of costs, since no one there spoke English well, the bill came to $8 US (that's not a typo: eight dollars US, Hong Kong can be cheap for some things...).

Of course, Hong Kong has a lengthy and fascinating history, with much heritage. Among the most interesting places I visited were the Giant Buddha at the Po Lin Monastery, which requires a lengthy fascinating cable car approach, and the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road near my apartment.

"The Crystal Cabin" is the upgraded ($5 more) cable car ride to the Giant Buddha. It has a glass bottom...

On the cable car to the Giant Buddha, which you can see at 11 o'clock.

The monastery is located on Lantau island, on the Ngong Ping peninsula, and the full name for the cable car is the Ngong Ping 360. It was a fantastic experience which I highly recommend. It was also nice to get out of the city for a bit.

3 buddhas at the Po Lin monastery, representing the past, present, and future lives.

Both are beautiful, peaceful, calm, relaxing temples. The Giant Buddha is, indeed, giant. You can see in this picture, taken from the cable car, that it's a sizable chunk of the hill on which it sits. I wish more of my pictures from this part of the trip survived Apple's Photostream issue.

The Man Mo temple I accidentally visited at the perfect time of day in terms of lighting. It was breath-taking, and my photography unfortunately cannot do it justice, even if I had all the photos. Look at this Flickr search for some inspiration, if you wish.

The Man Mo temple entrance. This pic is mine...

A much better photo, from Fion N. on Flickr:

Another historical site that I really wanted to visit is the Kowloon Walled City. If you haven't heard about this place, you should read the Wikipedia article. Now it is a nice park, and a museum commemorating the city, and a part of the old central building. It was fun to visit, and I spotted a good pickup basketball run nearby, but I kind of wish the city still existed.

Kowloon Walled City museum.

Pickup basketball at the park near the Kowloon Walled City museum.

If you've seen the movie Bloodsport, the tournament ("kumite") takes place inside the Kowloon Walled City. Here's the movie scene where they go in for the first time:

By the way, if you want to surprise me with a fun git, the "City of Darkness" photo book about the Kowloon Walled City has been on my Amazon wishlist for a while. Just sayin'...

Finally, Hong Kong also has decent nightlife. I can't share all the stories here, naturally, but I had a blast. A couple of nights stand out.

Street art in Lan Kwai Fong.

I met up with a fellow Apache Software Foundation member, Lars Eilebrecht, who happened to be in Hong Kong at the same time. He knew some locals, and a few of us hung out over a long night in Lan Kwai Fong. This was conveniently close to my apartment. Thanks for organizing, Lars! I don't remember every single detail from that night, but it was a blast.

One of the group stops earlier in the evening. Bjorn (guy in white) doesn't yet have lipstick marks.

One of the fun things about LKF is that there are many small bars / restaurants. I think the above is at Latitude 22, one such establishment. They tend to over-fill, and so the crowd spills outside, with their drinks, to the streets. People walk around and have a good time, in a very positive atmosphere. It felt very safe, to me at least.

Someone in our group suggested starting the night with B52 shots (plural...), one of my fav shots, but not something usually offered up by others. That turned out to be a foreshadowing for the evening.

That's a B52 she's holding. I wonder what I said right before this pic was taken?

Armani / Prive later at night. Note the movie playing on the TV.

Later at night, Armani / Prive was pretty hopping. Fun bartenders and servers, IIRC.

Even later at night, we stopped by a place called Club Feather Boa, although judging by my only picture at that establishment, we would have had fun anywhere at this point.

At Club Feather Boa

On another night, I ventured out of Lan Kwai Fong towards the higher skyscrapers, some of which have loungers / bars / clubs near the top. The views were great, but in terms of rooftop loungers, Bangkok (the next major blog post in this series) has everyone beat.

Nonetheless, Ozone (the highest bar in the world, they claim), Sugar, Sevva, and M Bar were all worth the trip. Ozone in particular stood out for the combination of view and service. The outdoor deck at Sugar was badass as well.

Lily and Bloom was my favorite cocktail bar. They take their craft seriously.

From Sevva, just happened to catch the moon between clouds.

Hazy night from M Bar.

View from Ozone. Not my pic, we didn't have that clear a night :( From Kew's Daily Good Thing.

Another couple of notable places to close out the bars I visited in Hong Kong: PURE and RED, owned by the same people I think, were always packed when I walked by, so I dropped in. They are beautiful places, but nothing unusual.

The entrance to PURE.

Although Hong Kong has amazing shopping, I didn't do much, since I was traveling light with a backpack. I did visit the Apple store just to check it out (exact same as in the US, no surprise), and I did score a couple of cool t-shirts at Paper Tee, a noted original designer.

The Apple store in an elevated area.

I stayed in Hong Kong 4 nights, which was a good amount of time in the city. I could see myself coming back to this great city and exploring further afield, as well as inside the city, a lot more.

From The Atlantic's "Hong Kong, the City Without Ground" article.

A lot of people get confused in Hong Kong's overways, underways, subways, whatever you call them. The entire pedestrian walkway system is very 3-D, which I actually greatly enjoyed. Maybe the geek in me enjoys discovering efficient paths? If you haven't read The Atlantic's "Hong Kong, the City Without Ground" article, it's highly recommended.

I joined several Hong Kong meetup groups, but one stands out: The Hong Kong Eclectic Movie Night folks were friendly, welcoming, and interesting. We got together at 9pm in Lan Kwai Fong to watch THX1138, and that was the beginning of another entertaining evening.

At Hong Kong airport, about to port flight TG601 to Bangkok.

Next up, Bangkok ;)

Guchi's Midnight Ramen, yoga, Art of Flight

2012-12-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

Another collection of quickies from the past couple of weeks.

Yoga:

I've been enjoying yoga a lot more than in the past. I'm leaning more towards the straight-up Vinyasa Flow classes, as opposed to those with hip hop or other fast music.

The music is fun and useful if you want distraction (e.g. when I run, I almost always listen to music), so the same class feels harder without music, but I like it that way.

At the same time, I do really like black light yoga. The effects of the light make the class much more visually interesting.

A shout-out + thank you here to Ame, Goldie, Brenna, Caitlyn, and Sarah, my fave teachers so far.

Yoga has been a great way to learn more about my body, and it's definitely been helping my balance, agility, and flexibility. I still mostly suck at it, but I'm improving, and enjoying.

Oh, and I have a neon-green yoga mat, which turns out to be a highly-entertaining accessory to carry on your back around the Back Bay.

Guchi's Midnight Ramen:

This was my #1 foodie popup to attend, but it's a little bit of a challenge to get into. Nonetheless, with the help of a good friend, I managed to snag a ticket to yesterday's GMR brunch.

It was one of the best foodie events I've been to, in Boston or anywhere, for a number of reasons. The food was delicious. There wasn't a ton of it, just proper portions for appetizer, entree (ramen of course, uni and miso mazemen to be specific), and dessert. This is really nice because they usually over-feed you at these events, which never feels good afterwards.

The ramen was among the best I've had, including in Tokyo.

The other factor which made it an outstanding event was the company. It was mostly local tech people and entrepreneurs. I knew many of them already, met a couple of fun new ones, and the conversation was easy + flowing the whole time.

From left: James Psota, Chef Guchi, yours truly..

Thank you to Jennifer Lum, Drew Volpe, and Boaz Sender for organizing, Bocoup Loft for hosting, and Guchi and Tracy Chang for feeding us.

The Art of Flight:

Went to the 3D IMAX showing of the Red Bull film when it was in town a couple of weeks ago, had a blast :) Mouth agape much of the time, and again a great crowd as one might expect. Just about as many "holy s*#$!" moments as Further, making those the two top snowboarding films of the year for me.

(Watch in HD full screen, not on this blog...)

Finally, totally unrelated and not worth reading: a BlogDash verification link.

Happier

2012-11-15T16:25:00.003-05:00

Before reading this post, think about something that made you happier today. Maybe it was a good experience, good food, a funny joke from a friend or colleague, a decent workout, some positive surprise in the mail, or something else...

Did that make you smile? I hope so. Do you do the above enough? Probably not. Most people don't.

I've joined an awesome software startup called Happier as their chief technology officer (CTO). This blog posts explains why and how it came about.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the end of my previous job, and then I went on a trip around the world. The trip afforded me some time for reflection.

During the trip, I decided I'd move to Israel afterwards, in order to spend more time with my family. The plan was to come back to Boston, help a few companies as a consultant while I rent out my place here, find a place in Israel (Tel Aviv specifically), handle the logistics, and move by the end of 2012.

Literally a couple of days before getting on the plane to Israel for October, a month dedicated to working with a couple of candidate companies I really liked, as well as finding an apartment, I was introduced to Happier's co-founder and CEO, Nataly Kogan.

The introducer, a mutual friend, knew I was heading for Israel. The introduction was more about me helping Nataly / Happier find other developers. When I clicked on the web site and started reading about the company, my jaw dropped.

Hooking our UPS delivery person, Mark, up with a t-shirt.

It is exactly the kind of company I'd been looking for, and gave up on finding in Boston.

I wanted to work on something consumer-facing, not B2B like the last job.

I wanted something I myself would use, as would my friends and family, in order to have a more emotional connection to the product.

But I also wanted it to have a huge addressable market, measured in billions of people, so not something that would appeal *only* to my family and close friends.

I wanted something where the mobile user experience is either the entire user experience or at least the main one, because mobile tech has changed our lives more than anything else in the past several years.

But most importantly, I wanted something with a purpose beyond making money. I want to make the world a slightly better place somehow. I'm still a pragmatic capitalist, don't get me wrong. And I volunteer and do other "pay it forward" activities on a regular basis. But I would love for my job to somehow improve people's lives.

With Happier, that's all present. It's a purpose-driven startup based on a lot of scientific research into human psychology and related behaviors. We all have things that make us happier, and most of us don't do enough of them. Can this product help? Can we put more smiles on more people's faces? I'd love to try.

If you know me back from grad school days, you know I geek out on organizational and behavioral psychology, ever since I got into Dan Ariely and Tal Ben Shahar's work, Nudge, and related research. All of these play a role in this company.

If you only know me more recently, you know I'm an experiential person, seeking adventures, experiences, adrenaline, and actively pursuing my own happiness. Not only that, but I generally encourage, recruit, and push my friends + colleagues to do the same.

Nataly and I clicked right away. We were finishing each other's sentences the first time we met. We both overuse the word "awesome."

Halloween "Happier Hour," soon to be an open-to-the-public event.

Even better, I love the rest of the founding team too. Colin, Ian, Sarah, and Andrew are all great. My good friend Parker has been helping us out, too, and I've worked with him before. I love the loft-style office, which is in the Fort Point area of Boston, near South Station.

I enjoyed talking with the main investors, and share their mindset / approach to the business. It's been a pleasure working with everyone since I got back from my October trip to Israel.

I'm happy to be working on a West Coast-style startup here in Boston. The city has many strengths, but not a lot of this type of company. Bostonians and our investors often demand an obvious and quick-ish path to revenue, which is a perfectly good, valid, and legitimate business (or investment) approach. I'd love to see a few more "pie in the sky" companies in town, though.

What about my family? As always, they are fully understanding, supportive, and generally amazing. I'll continue to spend time with them during trips to Israel.

Like all startups, Happier carries a high degree of risk, but that doesn't bother me at all. I have faith.

I'm excited to be working with this team towards our vision, which will be spelled out everywhere in more detail as we crank towards an app you can grab from the App Store.

Until then, if you want a preview via our beta program, let me know.

One last thing: I chatted about the company with, and got valuable feedback, from several friends in the Boston area, some of whom happen to be among the best, and busiest, business, technology, and product people / investors in the world. Thanks, everyone, for your help.

What makes you happier?

A few odds and ends

2012-11-13T16:52:00.000-05:00

Clearing out my blogging queue with a few random quickies:

Shimizu-no-mai Pure "Dusk" sake, the best I've had recently.

Mario Testino's exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts ("In Your Face" is the exhibit name) was great. Well worth visiting for a couple of hours. My two favorite images were Reese Witherspoon in a red dress (American Vogue, November 2008), and Jennifer Lopez walking some dogs by a pool (also American Vogue, from 2004):

Read more about this pic from the NY Times...

Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco touring show stopped by Boston for a few days last week. I went, and it was fun. I wish they were in town longer, and marketed it more / better in advance. But the athleticism is always impressive. The Chinese poles / bars are always my favorite.

Not my pic -- pics not allowed during show. From their web site.

While we're on the topic of bars, the guys at BarStarzz are just bad-ass, despite the funny spelling. I've been doing a bit more bar work, and generally more calisthenic and isometric work, but what they do is such a different level, it's inspiring. This video is a decent compilation illustrating their principles:

Been doing some yoga, mostly at Back Bay Yoga. It's a good workout, particularly as a complement to my other distance and high-intensity interval training sessions. I like the vinyasa flow work and the hip hop yoga for variety, but I still can't help but laugh (quietly ;)) to myself sometimes at various position names.

Back Bay Yoga Studio entrance pic from Yoga Boston.

Some of my 2000 Bordeaux wines are ready to drink. (If you haven't heard about this vintage, but care about wine, read this...)

I shared a bottle of 2000 Cos d'Estournel with 3 friends at a home-made dinner this past weekend, and after decanting a solid hour or two, it was good to go. Delicious wine, as expected.

Central decanter is a 2000 Cos d'Estournel. Left is also excellent: 2002 Ernie Els Stellenbosch.

Final thought: the November Project is great. It's by far the best workout group I've ever joined, because of its unique combination of community, attitude, enthusiasm, energy, and diversity. I'm proud to be a member, and I think all my friends should try it out, no matter how fit (or not). Everyone has a good, friendly attitude, the workouts are fun, and I can't wait to see how we do over the cold winter months.

Pic from this Monday, the #PiggyBackDashDeck. That's me in the middle, white shirt, black cap, crunching.

I like it so much that I actually wake up very early in the morning for it -- and if you know me, you know that's a big deal.

A few November tribe members at the 1-year birthday "running of the bowls" event. Pic by Elin.

Quantopian and project Zipline

2012-11-12T18:19:00.000-05:00

Quantopian is a Boston-based software startup that happens to employ three good friends of mine. Their product is an engine with a very user-friendly interface to developing, testing, and iterating on stock trading algorithms, as part of an active community of fellow traders. Here's a 30-second overview video:

Naturally, when their product became publicly-available, I wanted to try it out. Trading has always been an area of mild interest to me, not so much that I got obsessed with it, but interesting. That said, I thought to myself I'd try it out in order to help my friends with (hopefully) useful feedback.

To my surprise, I found the product more addictive than I expected. Being able to think of trading algorithms, implement them quickly using only a web browser, and then have them run against 10 years worth of stock data to see how they'd perform -- that's pretty amazing. And it's all done in minutes.

If you have any interest in trading at all, or just want to play to see the user experience, you should check it out.

But then the company did something even cooler. They decided to open-source the engine itself, called Zipline, because part of their (excellent) manifesto is to make this sort of tool available and accessible to everyone, not just traders at big fancy hedge funds or investment houses.

The Zipline readme file has all the information you need to use it, get the code, etc. It's pretty impressive stuff.

I worked with them a little bit on how and where to open-source it, license choice, and more. But the main dude behind it is Thomas Wiecki, who presented Zipline at the recent PyData conference in New York City. (Here is the conference talk description and his slides, for the curious.)

Pydata12 upload from twiecki

To me, when a young company that's not yet figured out its entire scalable business model does something like this, it says a lot about the company's character. They're giving back to the community, they really want to live up to their manifesto, and they know where to focus.

Nicely done, Quantopian. I'm happy to have helped with this project.

#rtw2012 - Tokyo

2012-11-11T04:04:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series of posts about my round-the-world (RTW) trip in 2012, all collected under the #rtw2012 label. You may want to read the earlier posts for background and context.

Tokyo, of course, is the capital of Japan. As a fan of Japanese culture, food, traditions, it has been on my "bucket list" for years. It's probably fair to say Tokyo was the single most desired destination on my trip. Or, put another way, if I couldn't do this trip and had to just pick one place, Tokyo would have been it.

This is going to be a long, very detailed post. It's mostly acting as my personal diary, although obviously if you're going to Tokyo soon, you may find it useful. It's part stream-of-consciousness and part chronological in listing some of the activities I enjoyed.

A few meta observations to start with.

The city is HUGE. It's hard to over-state this. I did some research in advance, as I always do, and you hear facts or figures, e.g. Tokyo has more residents than all of Canada combined. It makes you go "wow," or at least I did. But you don't realize the size of it until you're there in person.

I'd been to other big cities, e.g. Beijing and Shanghai, and obviously New York City, LA, and other big US cities. Tokyo felt bigger than all of them, easily. It's dense, and so high-energy, both human and synthetic (the lights...)

My flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Tokyo Narita (NRT) was excellent.

The Tokyo subway is amazing. Like the rest of the city, it's super-clean. I got the feeling one could easily have surgery or give birth on any random sidewalk or subway station, and it'd be fine. The trains are fast, run on time, have plenty of space, and are usually packed. I had a couple of fun encounters with the famed "people pushers."

It's a mystery to me why the trains stop after midnight-1am or so, and resume at 5-6am or so. Why? It facilitates some fun clubbing, where a lot of people have to stay out (or feel that way) until the first train if they miss the last one. More on that later.

Entering the area where I stayed, Kabukicho, in the afternoon.

The food is so, so good. I love Japanese food and eat it often anyways. It's not surprising that I had the best sushi I've ever had in Tokyo (in fact, all top 3 or so sushi meals of my life were here), but also the ramen, yakitori, and other Japanese specialties.

OMFG ramen (chashumen to be more specific) at a street-side stand with sararimen.

Navigation at the neighborhood level (e.g. Shinjuku vs Shibuya) is easy, whether you do it by subway or other means. Navigation at the street level gets much harder, as many have written before. I think once you grok the block addressing system, though, which can be done on the plane ride, it becomes much easier. This was a great post on the topic.

Taxis are expensive but also mostly not necessary. I only a couple in my week there, mostly because I had to get somewhere in a rush and the subway was closed for the night. I did a lot of subway + walking, and it turned out great. It's also a feast for the eyes and nose. (That turned out to be a theme for southeast Asia in general, not just Tokyo.)

Alone in the back of a taxi going from a club to the Tsukiji fish market around 3:30am.

I stayed in Kabukicho, a somewhat-notorious neighborhood of Tokyo contained within the big, bustling Shinjuku district. Kabukicho is sometimes known as "sleepless town" and it's famous for its nightlife. This was to become a theme for my trip, somewhat, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You do need to be able to navigate in Tokyo, in Japanese, at night, probably having had some drinks, in order to do well there. It was a struggle the first night or two, but I adjusted quickly.

The nearest subway station to my hotel: Higashi-Shinjuku.

The flight was very good. I'm a fan of All Nippon Airways (ANA), as well as the other Asian-based airlines. Their standard of service just seems way higher than American or most European airlines.

The arrival in Tokyo is a bit dizzying, kind of like in the movie Lost in Translation, which I watched on the plane. It's a good movie, by the way, even if you're not going to Tokyo.

I lost most of my pictures from Tokyo, unfortunately, thanks to the Apple Photostream incident :( I have the ones from my Foursquare checkins (look for #rtw2012 #Tokyo in my Foursquare history if you're really curious), and a few other selected ones that I texted friends.

View from the observatory on top of one of the city government buildings.

I went to a few key mainstream tourist sites, and enjoyed them. This is not the place to write about Japanese history, customs, and traditions, but it's always been a fascinating topic to me. The Kaminarimon ("thunder gate") leading to the Senso-ji temple, and that whole complex, was fun.

Kaminarimon ("thunder gate")

Senso-ji temple.

The Imperial gardens were impressive in their calm and quiet, too. The Tokyo National Museum has many amazing artifacts. The Meiji Jingo shrine was peaceful. The views from the tall observatories were impressive. (I went to the government ones, the Park Hyatt Tokyo, and that big mall building in Roppongi.)

The temple cleansing ritual involves dipping, washing, bowing, clapping...

I also really enjoyed a few attractions off the beaten path, at least a little bit: the Japanese swordsmanship museum was incredible, and both the Kokugikan (sumo) and Kodokan (judo) are the respective world headquarters for their sports, with unparalleled tradition and history.

Murals of rikishi (sumo wrestlers) outside the Kokugikan.

For example, if you're a sumo geek like me, this is the ultimate place to dig deep. They had an exhibition of yokozuna knots explaining the difference between the Unryu and Shiranui styles for the ropes, which was awesome.

The Kodokan, like Mecca for Judo.

The Japanese sword museum, officially the Society of Preservation of Sword Art in Japan or something like that, stands out from the crowd. It's out of the way, in a residential area, looks small and is small, but every item on display is a gem. A couple of Japan's nationally-recognized "national treasures" are on display here. I thought a couple of the swords here were more impressive than the two of the "five swords under Heaven" on display at the Tokyo National Museum. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed here, and the old Japanese man keeping watch enforced this with vigilance.

A katana by Masamune from the Tokyo National Museum, via Wikipedia. Not my pic, no pics were allowed...

A short blade from the Japanese sword museum. That's all part of the metal -- amazing.

Another highlight for me was a visit to Kokonoe beya, a sumo "stable" that is run by my favorite rikishi (wrestler) of all time, Chiyonofuji. Like a number of Japanese attractions, this place looks quite ordinary from the outside, a plain residential building. And like a few others, it does not allow pictures inside. I respected that, since getting a visit here is hard enough as it is, and I don't want to ruin it for others in the future.

Nice flowers right outside the building. This should help you find the spot if needed.

Maps are a funny topic in Japan. Almost every business has a web site with directions, usually in Japanese, and a map. Except that the maps are not using a standard common system, such as Google Maps. They tend to be stylized drawings not to scale or reference, so they're hard to use, often confusing. But all you need to do is get to the right block or nearby, and then walk around for a minute or two.

Here is a typical example, from the web site for Sukiabashi Jiro, a 3-Michelin-Star sushi restaurant located in a train station underground, with both an address and a map on the decent web site:

Think you could find it/

And for reference, once you get to the location indicated on the map, you need to go down under the building towards the train station. This is the best and nearest entrance. See the sign? It's not there. On purpose. This is common.

An entrance to this Ginza subway station which is also the closest to Jiro and Birdland.

Thankfully the whole time I was in Tokyo, the weather was warm and nice, easy to walk around.

Some food highlights...

My friend Pier, who happens to be the CTO of Gilt Groupe Japan, was kind enough to show me their office, hang out, and go to dinner at the very nice Hibiki izakaya in Ginza, where we had a wonderful meal full of little treats that are hard to describe and even harder to find outside Japan.

Can you guess what those are?

I wanted to go to Sukiabashi Jiro, the underground 3-Michelin-star sushi bar, since I saw the Anthony Bourdain documentary on it. It's short, you can watch it below. Then the movie "Jiro dreams of sushi" came out and it became even more famous, but I still wanted to go.

How was it? The sushi was incredible. It was the best sushi I'd had in my life up to that point, and I'm not prone to superlatives. (Someone should text-mine this blog for superlatives, it'd make a decent programming interview exercise.)

The atmosphere was less compelling than I'd expect from such a famous place, though. The whole experience felt rushed. The sushi etiquette, that I don't have trouble with. I stick to fairly traditional Japanese sushi etiquette even in Japan, although I don't correct friends who have looser habits. It was more of a rush and an attitude towards an obviously-not-Japanese guest. (I was there with an Asian-looking but not Japanese friend. She speaks a little Japanese, but not fluently, and they could obviously tell...)

I'm still happy I went, of course. "Value" is a very relative question, and Tokyo is a very expensive city, so I'm not really considering that topic here. But the experience was unique and the sushi mind-blowingly-good.

I knew Jiro is hard to find, so I went on a recon trip the first time I was in Ginza. I noticed a yakitori joint across the hall in the same underground subway station corridor, and I was hungry, so I stopped by for a snack without even checking the name. It turns out I was lucky: the place was Bird Land, the first yakitori joint to get its own Michelin star, and it was indeed delicious. (Plus I was there right around opening time. Apparently the line to get in gets epic around dinner time.)

My pictures from Birdland are lost, and (like Jiro across the hallway) the low cell phone reception hampered my checkin. But I had the same chef's omakase menu that most people order, and this Sydney foodies blog post captures it quite well, with nice pics.

Negima yakitori at Birdland from the Sydney foodies blog.

Tokyo has 16 restaurants with 3 Michelin stars, which is a fairly shocking total. That's out of 32 in the whole country of Japan, which, by the way, is more such restaurants than France :) For another comparison, NYC has 7 such restaurants, although I personally think a couple are questionable choices based on my experience there (Eleven Madison Park and Chef's Table), and one (Momofuku Ko) that should make it soon.

I went to another such restaurant, also a sushi-ya, called Sushi Saito. Like Jiro, Saito is a traditionalist, and like Jiro, the restaurant is a tiny bar with 7 seats that's hard to find. And like most times when eating sushi for the first time somewhere new, I get the omakase. But that's where the similarities end, because the experience at Saito was better than Jiro. The sushi quality was equivalent, i.e. incredible, but the service, friendliness, experience, and atmosphere were all much better.

Chef Saito from Sushi Saito. Photograph from Kang at London Eater, a great blog.

I wish I had my pictures from these places. The London Eater blog just had a very good post on Sushi Saito, including a number of pictures, all of which are better than mine. It's highly recommended reading. What he says about the Tokyo fish being fuller, whole-r, better cut, tastier somehow, is very true.

I also had some sushi at 6am, after clubbing. I love how it's available always and everywhere. Such a healthy alternative to other typical post-clubbing foods. More on that in the nightlife section below.

6am chirashi FTW.

My overall favorite meal in Tokyo, the overall best sushi I've had, was at Sushi Dai inside the Tsukiji fish market, around 5:30am one day, after getting in to watch the live auctions. Much has been written about this market, and visiting it, by many people. It was an amazing experience even without the meal.

Inside Tsukiji at sunrise. Them forklifts move fast!

You have to get there in the very early morning, before sunrise, if you want to have a chance to get into the market itself for the live fish auctions. In recent years the market has been in various states of closed to foreigners and visitors, but this year they are allowing a very small (~20-30 folks) supervised group of people in. For some people this is an early wakeup, but I was coming from a nightclub, so it was actually quite easy.

Once inside, you're led around by a guide who's very strict about staying within a small path. This is a Good Thing since small forklifts are buzzing around really fast, and people are swinging sharp hooks into and out of big fish all over the place. There are crawling creatures, wetness, and other assorted fun items all over the place. I really enjoyed it.

Inside the market during the live tuna auctions. Each of those fish is worth a lot of money.

The auctions themselves were interesting, with much inspecting of tuna, yelling, and some laughing.

After the tour I went to Sushi Dai. It was around 5:30am and there was already a line, but it was pretty short for us, about 20 minutes. By 7am, when the auctions and wholesaling is largely done, and the market opens to the wider public, the line often goes around the block, and you have to wait for 2-3 hours, or more.

This toro (fatty tuna) made me cry. Best piece of fish I've ever had.

A number of people have written about Sushi Dai, and I can't add much beyond what they've written, plus they have better pictures, so you may as well read these posts if you're curious: EdEdition, Epicurious Deb, My Food Sirens, and many more.

I had a number of additional small meals, just at random street-side noodle and ramen joints. Pretty much all of them were great. I learned how to operate the vending machines where you pick what you want based on pictures (so helpful), get a ticket stub, and give that to the chef behind the bar. Easy, efficient system.

Another aspect of Tokyo that's worth coverage is its nightlife. It's reasonably well-known as one of the most interesting nightlife scenes in the world. I was lucky to have a friend as a local nightlife guide for part of the time, Tiffany Rossdale. She was (and is) awesome in many ways, and she also introduced me to other cool folks like Christi. Thanks ;)

Tiffany DJing at ageHa, another Tokyo superclub.

One place I'd wanted to visit for a while is Womb, the underground nightclub that's always on the various "best of" lists, e.g. DJ Magazine's Top 100 clubs in the world or M Theory's top 10 list. It was indeed all that and a bag of chips. Excellent sound and lighting systems, very friendly crowd, hard-to-find entrance (sensing a theme here?), lots of fun.

View of the floor at Womb from the VIP area upstairs.

If you haven't seen the movie Babel, it's not bad. One of the characters is a deaf woman in Tokyo, and in one scene she trips on E and goes to a nightclub. The club is Womb and it's a routine night there...

I also got a chance to visit Le Baron (fancy, a little more snooty crowd, but beautiful, very colorful), Vortex (some good salsa music, surprisingly), Rigoletto in Roppongi (good food), R2 in Roppongi (fun crowd), and more.

Hanging at the bar at R2. Very friendly crowd.

I also walked a lot during the day, not just at night. One fascinating district is Akihabara, home of many electronics stores as well as maid cafes. I went to both, and both were fascinating, the latter being mostly just awkward.

The "information" display at a big Akihabara electronics store

On the way up to a Maid Cafe, stopped to watch this kid play a localized Dance Dance Revolution type of game. He kept getting perfect scores on the highest difficulty level. Impressive...

I walked around Harajuku to see the goth kids and other teenagers in fun outfits. That was entertaining.

I figured the long line is for some hip clothing store, but no. Brunch at a very American "eggs n' things."

While in Harajuku, I window-shopped in Takeshita-dori and nearby areas, although I wasn't in a buying mode for much of the trip, traveling light with a backpack. "The Filth and the Fury" did have some nice stuff, though.

Overall, I loved the shopping style in Tokyo. It has a nice edge that we don't often find in the US, although it's similar to Israel.

Shopping in Takeshita-dori often means being part of a human tidal wave.

Aside: while research this area for specific shops, I stumbled upon several good sites, like ShiftEast, which are worth following in and of themselves.

After walking past countless Pachinko parlors, I figured I should try one out, "when in Rome..." and all. I obviously don't know how to play the game well, but with a bit of help from Google and a nearby local, I figured it out. Not my cup of tea, and I was late to dinner anyways, but it was an interesting experience, a little bit of sensory overload, and a couple of sketchy Yakuza-type characters standing around, but overall a safe atmosphere.

I went in here for about 30 minutes, then had to leave. No rush to return.

Finally, a couple of interesting experiences outside the normal tourist realm. These may not be as easy to replicate for other visitors to Tokyo, but they were two of my personal highlights, bucket list items, and delivered some adrenaline.

I've already written about how I played pickup football (soccer) in every destination as a way to exercise and meet locals. After watching the movie Pelada, and seeing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, I really wanted to find the rooftop pitch depicted in both these movies. It's not easy to find, because it's not marked (on purpose) and can only be accessed by one elevator of many inside a nondescript department store in Shibuya.

This description, from the Pelada blog, of the rooftop soccer pitch, is spot-on.

My teammates, right before I went on the field again.

I found it after some searching, and joined a couple of games around sunset. Then the team went out for drinks, as often happened during my trip, and they connected me with folks for my next bucket list item, also related to the above movie: drifting.

This I can't write much about, since the folks are already persecuted enough. But if you're curious about the topic and can spend a night around the Ooifuto port area, ideally with a local escort, do.

Although I spent most of my time staying in Kabukicho as noted above, I did stay at the Park Hyatt for a little bit. This is the movie from the Lost in Translation movie mentioned above, too. I enjoyed their restaurant and bars.

View from one of the hotel bars.

Sadly, it was time to say goodbye to Tokyo. I had a blast, though, and I can't wait to go back for more.

Aside: I was originally thinking of also visiting Kyoto during this trip, but I had so much fun in Tokyo, I didn't want to leave. Next time...

Nice goodbye sign at Narita airport.

Two quick restaurant reviews: Yakitori Zai and OAK

2012-10-06T16:49:00.001-04:00

A couple of places from this past week that I need to get off my blogging queue before getting on a plane to Israel for most of the rest of the month.

OAK Long Bar and Kitchen is the latest incarnation of The Oak Room at the Copley Fairmont hotel. I like the redesign of the space. It feels younger, hipper, more fun, but it's still fundamentally a gorgeous big room with some nice old architectural touches. Overall, a good balance.

LBK board and the (finished) scallop crudo appetizer.

Clambake.

We had a clambake and the LBK board, a charcuterie and cheese board. Both were very good. The ambiance and atmosphere were very good. The noise level was a little high but no big deal. The only really strange thing was the service. Our waitress was older (60ish it appeared), hard of hearing, and gruff. My friend had been to the redone OAK once before, and she said she had a different server that time, but with the same qualities / characteristics. I wonder why that is.

All in all, a good time, and I can definitely see myself going back there.

Then at Yakitori Zai, in the South End, I also had a great time. We ordered a variety of yakitori (skewered meats and vegetables, grilled in a particular Japanese manner), some recommended by the server, and some that are yakitori staples to compare apples-to-apples.

L->R: chicken thighs, chicken "oysters," black cod.

The chicken thigh skewers with Japanese scallions were delicious, as were the black cod (unusual), and the grilled shishito peppers with bonito flakes. We had some good sake to go along with the food, and it's a nice small romantic place. It felt pretty authentic to me, and it was packed, most of the other diners appearing Asian, a good sign at an Asian restaurant.

A running shoe update

2012-10-03T16:41:00.000-04:00

A brief note for the runners in my readership, and for my own record.

Last weekend I replaced my previous running shoes, the Adidas "Adizero Feather 2.0s," due to wear and tear. They are a great minimalist shoe, and served me for nearly 1,000km of running and walking over the past year. I recommend them if you want a very light minimalistic shoe.

Adidas Adizero Feather 2.0

I'm spending more time running as part of my triathlon and other training, so I'm putting more mileage on my shoes, and replacement is natural. I actually got two pairs, for two different scenarios. It's too early to post reviews on these, but so far I like them.

I got one pair of Adidas Climawarm Blast shoes. These are not minimalist, they offer more support, including laterally, which is good, because I'm doing (and planning to do) more trail running. They are also more insulated, again for trails, and also for cooler weather.

Adidas Climwarm Blasts

The other pair I got is an Under Armour Micro G Split running shoe. This is another minimalist shoe, a more direct replacement to the aforementioned Adizeros. These are useful for the gym, shorter runs, walking around, and more. Plus I'm such a fan of the Under Armour Heat Gear material that I wanted to see what the shoes are like, particularly in the hot seasons.

Under Armour Micro G Split

Time will tell how these do.

#rtw2012: San Francisco

2012-09-24T13:13:00.002-04:00

This is one in a series of posts about my recent round-the-world (RTW) trip, all collected under the #rtw2012 label. You may wish to read them in order for context and background.

San Francisco was the first stop on my trip that's significantly far from home on the east coast. Besides breaking up the long flight to the next destination (Tokyo, an upcoming blog post you don't want to miss...), I also have a number of great friends in San Francisco, folks whose company I very much enjoy.

I had been here numerous times in the past, so I didn't do a lot of the first-time-tourist activities.

Arriving SFO.

I arrived on a gorgeous early afternoon in May. The flight was uneventful, except for the checkin process. The agent did a double-take when she saw what type of ticket I was on, and how many stops were on the same itinerary. That led to a good conversation, the first of many such exchanges. Yes, I'm really going around the world. No, it's not a joke, nor a test of your system or service, etc.

I took BART to the Mission, walked through that neighborhood to the Noe Valley area, which was my home in San Francisco. A huge thank you to Leah and Stephen for hosting me, being gracious friends, and showing me a great time. On the way there I passed a number of interesting shops, including this bakery...

This was my first time exploring the Noe Valley. It's a fun neighborhood, filled with good local shops, restaurants, and bars. It's also very hilly, which made for good challenging runs.

Good running terrain.

We went to the "Off the Grid" food truck festival, a fun experience with plenty of good food options, accompanied by a very nice San Francisco sunset on the bay.

Crispy pork belly FTW.

The same evening we hit up "Twin Peaks" for a nice view of the city. I had been to this observation point before, but not at night. It was gorgeous.

The Ferry Plaza farmers market offered plenty of food options. It's fun to just meander around and sample the items, thereby getting a varied large free meal ;)

In every stop on my trip, I tried to play pickup soccer, basketball, or both, as a way to meet people. This little park in North Beach had a lively 5v5 game which provided some extra exercise.

Later that day I met up with Kyle and his Chateau Greenwich crew, who were excellent hosts. Steve, Kathleen, Jon, Taylor, Alfredo, Erin, and everyone else provided gracious hosting, drinking company, and entertainment.

The Chateau Greenwich crew pre-gaming and planning that evening on their roof.

We hit up the Brick Yard, their standard neighborhood bar, for the Celtics vs. 76ers playoff game 7, some late-night Indian food, and even later live music. I still don't know where my hat from that night went.

Kyle and I celebrating a Celtics playoff win at The Brick Yard.

Random late-night live music.

I visited Tartine bakery a couple of times while in SF. It has some of the best baked goods I've ever had, and a visit is totally recommended. Just make sure to come off-hours, because during breakfast, lunch, and afterwork, the line is very long.

Tartine with a mild line.

Stephen and I hit up a random street carnival in The Mission, on our way to Zeitgeist, an excellent beer bar. The carnival certainly provided some entertaining people-watching.

Brunches at Stacks and Fresca (separate days) with a few friends, including long-ago colleague Ryann, and former Boston-area tech buddy Luis (and his wife Clarissa), were both delicious.

Yum.

I did a couple of long walks around town, to the tune of 10-15km each. SF is such a fun city for walking, with gorgeous views around every corner.

From Coit Tower.

Beretta was a great place to meet my friend Matt, who's always cool. We had some snacks, and the place was surprisingly full for 3:15pm, an off-hour typically.

I made sure to hit Four Barrel, Blue Bottle, and Ritual Roasters (twice) while in SF. Excellent coffee to be sure. It's often matched by an equivalent-level attitude, but since I just ordered the pourovers and waited patiently, I incurred no wrath.

Waiting to order at Four Barrel.

Stephen and Leah took me to two excellent dinners, one at Range and one at Firefly. Both were delicious, with great service, great atmosphere, and very good drinks as well. SF is a solid foodie town. I also had a lucky dinner at Manresa, but that's a subject for another blog post.

Jean (another friend who used to work with me at HubSpot) and Sabrina live very close nearby, so we met up with them as well. Jean's working on a very interesting new company called Quantopian, which has since launched its first public product. You should try it out, it's a lot of fun and very interesting.

Delicious dessert at Firefly.

At Firefly, we went on fried chicken night, and it was excellent. But the "peaches and creme" sorbet dessert was truly exceptional.

I spent one afternoon playing some Ultimate and reading up on Tokyo, my next destination, at Dolores Park. Beautiful views, and fun people watching.

Another lunch highlight was a chicken tikka masala burrito from the Curry Up Now Indian street food truck downtown.

I'm probably forgetting some items and people, but overall I had a blast in San Francisco. It was nice to start my trip in a familiar city where everyone speaks English. That would change at the next stop, Tokyo...

Last week was busy but fun

2012-09-19T18:31:00.004-04:00

Quick recap of last week, which ended up being slightly busier than planned, and as usual, made awesome with stellar company.

Went to the new Belly wine bar / gastropub in Kendall Square on Monday with a friend. We're both foodies and she's also industry, so we showed up early a day after they opened, chatted a bunch with the staff, and had a great time. I love their idea, want less Beaujolais on the menu, and wish they took reservations.

Belly before the crowds.

The charcuterie and cheese options at Belly were very good.

After that I met another friend for dinner at Vejigantes, the Puerto Rican place in the South End. There too the food was delicious, and the Coronamea was a fun drink combining a margarita with a Corona. I didn't drink too much, since I had a 5:30am wakeup the next morning to run the stairs at Harvard Stadium.

A Corona - Margarita combination...

The November Project is one of my new favorite things in Boston. I actually joined before my trip, but it's become a regular thing now for me, and the group has grown a lot too. It's free, open to the public, friendly, welcoming, and has many fun folks. Three workouts a week at 6:30am, rain or shine, all weather, all seasons, and they're each hard. I don't do the Monday morning one, but Wednesdays at Harvard Stadium and Fridays at Summit Ave are a ton of fun.

I started and finished before the main group, which you can see above.

Last Wednesday I set a new personal best for the "full tour," i.e. once around the entire Harvard Stadium, which always feels great. It's a brutal workout, maybe the hardest one I do all week. It has not been getting much easier. I wonder how many people will drop as the weather turns wintery.

On Thursday after some morning business, I joined a friend down in Newport, Rhode Island, for an afternoon of polo. I had never seen it in person, and it was interesting, entertaining, and fun. I forgot that each player has multiple horses, or ponies as they're called, leading to a whole bunch of horses being around waiting for their turn to play.

Gaucha, a friendly well-trained horse.

While I can't ride well and can't play polo well at all, this was still a fun experience, especially observing my friend play. Unfortunately I had to leave early-ish to drive back to Boston, missing the post-match BBQ.

I had dinner that night with another good friend and business colleague at Myers & Chang in the South End. I hadn't been in a while but remembered how much I liked the braised pork belly buns. Having just been to Hong Kong (more on that in an upcoming #rtw2012 post), I wanted to compare -- and these stacked up very well.

The next morning, Friday, brought another 5:30am wakeup for the November Project. This time we ran up and down Summit Ave, one of the steepest streets / hills in the Boston area. Years ago I had a tough time walking up this hill, and for a long time I couldn't run up it. On Friday I helped pace a bunch of people on it, which felt great. Progress is being made...

Brogan's pic, not mine, from the hill on Friday morning.

That evening the big event was Paul Oakenfold at Royale, but we grabbed some tequila and dinner at Tico first. I love their crispy pork bellies -- so good! And a nice selection of tequila as well.

Oakenfold was excellent. He's become a bit more mainstream, a bit more Guetta-ish in style over the years, but his technical skills and track selection, as well as crowd reading and reactions, remain top-notch. Without much advanced planning, I've now seen him, Paul van Dyk, Tiesto, Armin van Buurden, and John Digweed live this year, plus a handful of other notable DJs. It's been a great year in that regard.

After Royale closed out, we stopped by Rise, the private after-hours club, for a bit of harder trance. That was fun, as always. (And as usual, I didn't take pictures inside of rise.)

The next day, a Saturday, I went for a short run that turned into a 10K, and then a 5K row in the Charles river, taking advantage of the beautiful weather. Unfortunately I only did this on 2.5 hours of sleep, so it was more of a challenge than usual, but perhaps a good simulation for Ironman conditions.

Another gorgeous September day on the Esplanade.

After that I met a couple of my best friends for lunch at Xinh Xinh, the lovely authentic little Vietnamese place in Chinatown. I had some excellent pho-type noodles, #33 on their menu, a seafood special stew noodle thing.

From there I met up with another crew for the Michigan football game, at Sweet Caroline's near Fenway Park. I didn't realize this was the "home bar" of all Boston-area (or even wider...) Michigan alumni and fans. It's official, with banners and people dressed up and everything. I caught a good video of some cheering after a touchdown, and enjoyed the game atmosphere, even though I have no particular connection to Michigan.

After the game we went down Boylston Street to Sweet Cheeks, as I was craving BBQ. Like any good Jew, I got pork ribs, pork bellies, and pulled pork. We also shared some awesome biscuits. One member of our party, the guy who had the best role in this week's HubSpot "Gangnam Style" video, is from the southern US, and he testified as to the quality of the food at Sweet Cheeks.

Saturday night needs to stay off this blog, I think ;) At least for now.

But then Sunday was also great, as I went with a friend to the Patriots home opening game. We had solid seats down near the field, and it was a beautiful day. Unfortunately the Pats lost in an upset :( They deserved to lose, and I hope they learn some lessons, improve fast, and win the rest of their games. This week at Baltimore will be tough.

Whew, it was a busy week. I did get about 45 hours of work in, too, including a bunch of open-source contributions. Sunday night I slept for about 11 hours straight :)

#rtw2012: meeting people

2012-09-06T19:54:00.000-04:00

This is one of a series of posts about my recent round-the-world (RTW) trip. They are all collected under the #rtw2012 label. You may wish to read from the beginning for context and background.

I did the trip by myself. This was the first time I did a trip of this magnitude / duration alone, though like most people I had done shorter trips, often for business, by myself.

Although I do enjoy time by myself, time to reflect and wander around, it's also nice to have company once in a while. I wanted to meet locals, both for company, and to get some "off the beaten path' tips and recommendations, particularly around local nightlife and attractions.

This proved surprisingly easy. I'm not the most shy person in the world to start with, but I employed a couple of very helpful tools, described below, which made it a cinch to meet people. Maybe this will be helpful to future travels...

Meetup: I joined every interesting meetup.com group I could find, in the various cities on my trip. In fact, I joined so many that I got throttled by the meetup.com site, and got a follow-up email from an employee, asking if I was a real person or a software 'bot. :)

Screenshot of some of my meetup.com groups.

Not all the meetup groups are created equal. Many are inactive, and others had events that didn't interest me. But several meetup groups were absolutely great, having multiple interesting events with fun people, and letting me do things (e.g. kayak polo) I could not have done otherwise.

This is a good place to send a shout-out to the Stockholm Sporty People, Around Berlin in 80 Restaurants, Live Love Laugh Copenhagen, Hong Kong Eclectic Movie Night, Bangkok Beach Volleyball, probably my top 5 meetup groups of the trip whose events I actually attended.

Free and highly recommended, a great way to meet folks. Some cities, like Moscow and Delhi, had a disappointing lack of meetups, but that's OK.

Pickup football (soccer): as I mentioned earlier this week, Pelada was one of my favorite movies of the spring / summer. I re-started playing football (soccer) after many years earlier in 2012, and wanted to keep it up. It's also a fantastic way to meet people. So, partially inspired by this Pelada movie, I did some research looking for interesting groups, venues, and pickup games during my trip.

I played pickup football at every single stop on my trip. Like many sports, the mechanics of the game are fairly universal. What's more important, the dynamic of "hey, want an extra player?" are the same everywhere. It helps to be fit and tall enough to be useful in most areas of the field, I imagine.

No one refused me entry to the game, and in most places people were very welcome. Almost invariably, the team would grab some food or drinks after the game. This was a great way to get additional exercise and meet locals at the same time.

Of all my pickup games, the one that stands out the most is in Tokyo, on top of a big building housing a department store in Shibuya, one of the busiest and most famous neighborhoods around. This is the same game the folks from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift show in the movie.

Here's a good photo of the pitch, by Stuck in Customs, on Flickr.

And here's my Foursquare checkin / tweet / photo from right by the pitch, waiting our turn to face the winners of this match.

Apache, GitHub, and other open-source / software organizations: I looked up the location of fellow members (or committers) of these, and other organizations to which I belong. I emailed them in advance, and universally, everyone was happy to meet for food, drinks, coffee, or similar.

Apache makes it the easiest, with its global committer map, but it's not that hard to Google for information about other people you've worked with. Here, a shout-out to Avhdesh for showing me some excellent Indian food + hospitality. And one to Lars, who set up a banging night out on the town in Hong Kong.

From a rocking evening in Lan Kwai Fong (Hong Kong) with new friends. I can't repeat what I said that caused this reaction. But the B52 shots (what she's holding) are to blame.

Volunteering: this will be the subject of another blog post. I volunteered at every stop on my trip. Usually some small activity that took 1-4 hours, no more, didn't cost me much (if any) money, and was a great way to meet local people (fellow volunteers and organizers). One of my favorite experiences was volunteering with In Search of Sanuk, in Bangkok (Thailand), where Prae stepped up to organize a fun afternoon for me and another woman volunteers, with Sri Lankan refugees. More on this in a separate post.

Friends, and friends of friends: this one is kind of obvious. I have a lot of friends from various places in the world, and they have their own friends. I met a few this way, and I even stayed with a couple. A special shout-out to Tanya and Anna for the Moscow connection, to Seda for some awesome introductions in Istanbul, of course to Steve and Jenn for hosting me in London, and to Leah, Stephen, and Kyle for hosting me in SF, as well as connecting me with Gili in Tel-Aviv. And Nate, thanks again for all the email introductions...

The crew on the roof of Chateau Greenwich on a gorgeous SF day, planning the evening shenanigans.

Bars: this is the obvious one. As a lone traveler, one often sits or hangs out at the bar area of restaurants, pubs, clubs, etc. It's easy to say hi and meet folks that way, just smile and say hi. 95% of the people I met were super-friendly and receptive. A large number of them were interested in practicing their English...

An outdoor bar in the Stureplan area of Stockholm, lots of friendly people.

Airbnb hosts: I used a number of Airbnb apartments throughout my trip, and they were mostly great. A couple of hosts stood out for being extra fun, approachable, happy to hang out beyond just showing me the apartment. A shout out to Isil from Istanbul, and Gunnar and Starki from Reykjavik!

From the amazing Airbnb lighthouse apartment in Reykjavik, which I shared with the fun roomates Gunnar and Starki.

There were numerous other random occurrences: people in museums, tour groups (I only did a couple of those, mostly in Iceland, but they were great), shops, etc. As long as you're open-minded, smiling, and maybe making a small effort with the local language, it's super-easy to meet people.

Overall, out of more than 100 nights on my trip, I think I had dinner alone only 4-5 times. I made a number of good new friends, and have been keeping in touch with them. I hope to host them some day, and / or meet them in other travels...

On this birthday, I feel lucky

2012-09-05T15:37:00.002-04:00

Today is my birthday. I'm feeling luckier and more blessed than usual, which is saying a lot, since I'm often fairly happy with my lot in life.

On this birthday, I want to thank my family and friends. You all are so great, always supportive, always out there, always ready and willing to listen, give feedback, and / or just hang out.

I wouldn't be who I am without you. I don't take it for granted. I appreciate it. I try to be a good friend to you all, and will keep working at that.

Thank you :)

"Let us be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom." - Marcel Proust

The two best movies I saw this summer: Pelada and Running the Sahara

2012-09-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

I saw two great movies this summer, both of which inspired me in a number of ways. They are both documentary films, i.e. real, not fake stories.

"Running the Sahara" chronicles the journey of three men who are trying to run across the Sahara desert. This had never been done before. There are a lot of interesting complexities to the effort, including physical, mental, political, and more. They have to run the equivalent of two marathons per day, in the desert, for more than 100 days straight. It's impressive stuff.

"Pelada" is also a documentary. It's a story about a guy and a girl from North Carolina, recent colleage graduates, who love football (soccer). They go around the world for a year playing in interesting pickup games, video-taping the whole thing. This is a fascinating movie, and it's more insightful / touching than I expected. There are fantastic personalities involved, places, and backgrounds.

Both of these are highly recommended. They are about a lot more than running or football, so you will enjoy them even if you don't run nor play.

Presidential Traverse trip report

2012-09-02T16:04:00.001-04:00

Yesterday (Saturday, September 1st, 2012), my friend Alissa and I completed a Presidential Traverse ("presi") in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

Appalachia trailhead around 3:30am.

This post contains many details, which most people will probably find boring. But I found several trip reports online, which helped my research, so I want to give back to the internet community out there. It's also my diary ;)

The presi is a big and long hike, covering *all* the summits in the Presidential Range which are named after US presidents: Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Washington (highest mountain in the northeast US), Monroe, Eisenhower, and Pierce. There are numerous other peaks nearby, which may be included at the hiker's discretion. (For example, we added Franklin, and meant to add Clay, but skipped it in a speed rush.)

As SummitPost says, "The Presidential Traverse is arguably the most spectacular and challenging one-day hike in the Northeast. Unquestionably, it passes over the highest peak in the Northeast, as well as the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth, a couple of sub-peaks that are just as high, and a couple of “smaller” peaks that are still among the fifty highest in New Hampshire."

Bring it. On the Mount Madison ascent.

You can read much more background and details on Wikipedia and other hiker blogs. The typical traverse is about 20 miles and 9,000 feet of elevation gain. Since you have to walk down everything you walked up, that's about 18,000 vertical feet of elevation change.

In case you don't hike often: that's a TON of elevation change. Walking up and down is much different, and much harder, than walking along flats. It probably sounds intuitive but it's hard to appreciate the degree of difficulty. For many people, 1,000 feet of elevation gain is plenty more than enough to hurt calves, knees, ankles, cause blisters or hot spots, and more -- even before the descent.

The hike is challenging to do in one day. Not many try that aggressive variant. For most people, any one of the above peaks is a good, solid, even notable achievement. (Particularly if more difficult trails are used.) It's a full day of climbing and hiking. Some people do this traverse in 2, 3, or more days, stopping in one of the huts or camp sites overnight.

A shooting star near the Mount Madison summit before sunrise -- lucky capture.

Not us. Alissa and I wanted to push ourselves and do it in one day. We're both reasonably fit, although as it turns out, she's much faster than me in the mountains. I also went a bit heavier than her, gear-wise, carrying some survival, evacuation, and medi gear for both of us. But I think that even on equal weight, she'd still kick my ass handily for speed at altitude.

More on the gear after the hike report below.

We did the traverse from north to south, which is the standard approach. We stayed overnight at a motel in Gorham, NH, waking up at 3am to get started early. The night before, we left one car at the southern endpoint of our hike, the AMC Highland Center. The morning of the hike we drove the other car to the Appalachia trailhead, our northern starting point, and left it there for the day.

We took the Valley Way trail up to Mount Madison. This trail is not easy, gaining more than 3,500 vertical feet in elevation over rocky terrain, in relatively short / steep distance.

We got to the summit of Mount Madison right before sunrise, around 5:30am. It's a steep rocky scramble up and down from the Madison Hut to the summit. We had a gorgeous sunrise there, enjoyed the views for 5 minutes, had a snack, and moved on.

The sun about to rise on top of Mount Madison, around 5:40am.

After coming down from Madison, we walked past Star Lake up the relatively direct Star Lake trail to the summit of Mount Adams. This entire trail is very exposed, all on rocks, often at the edge of the mountain. It's scary if you're not used to it, if your footing is uncertain, or if you're ill at ease scrambling highly exposed terrain.

It also features a couple of chimneys and cracks, which we enjoy, but others might find very challenging. This was actually my favorite ascent of the day, due to its interesting technicalities.

Climbing a chimney up Star Lake trail on Mount Adams.

We got to the summit of Mount Adams around 7:30am, had another snack, stayed 5 minutes, and started moving on the Gulfside Trail to Mount Jefferson.

Mount Adams summit around 7:30am.

We got to Edmunds Col, a useful navigation and pace waypoint, at 8:15am. This is also notable because we walked past a group of three men seated down near the col. We said hi, as we always do, and they cheerfully said hi back. All looked normal and we kept walking forward.

Which is why we were surprised to hear a helicopter approach not two minutes later. It was a medevac / rescue helo, and it landed steps away from where we had walked. As we later found out from a US Forest Ranger, one of the three men had dislocated his kneecap (ouch!) the previous night. The group chose to camp out overnight (luckily they had tents and found a semi-flat area), rather than ask for rescue in that evening's torrential downstorm and low visibility. So this morning the rescue crew came out for them.

Rescue chopper landing near Edmunds Col. Looking at Mount Adams in background.

We kept climbing and got to Mount Jefferson's summit around 9am. Not bad so far: 3 summits and much mileage by the time many people were just having breakfast. Most of our ascent, where again we took the most direct and steep route, was accompanied by the sound of the rescue helo. It finally left while we were near the summit, so it was back to near-silence, with just the sounds of our breathing.

Mount Jefferson's summit has beautiful views. It's about the same quality as the views from Mount Washington, but without the tourists. Highly recommended.

Mount Jefferson summit around 9am. Mount Washington in background.

After another 5 minutes and a snack, we hoofed it down and continued along the Gulfside trail to Mount Washington. We wanted to tag Mount Clay along the way, but missed the loop trail intersection by accident. Maybe we were going too fast to notice, I'm not sure why. We saw its end, and I didn't want to double back a full mile just for Clay.

Anyways, we got to the summit of Mount Washington by 11:15am, almost 2 hours ahead of the target pace I wanted, and well ahead of "book time." We took our longest break of the day here, about 30 minutes to have some pizza, Goldfish, Gatorade, apply moleskin for blister prevention, and refill water.

Crossing the Cog Railway tracks on approach to Mount Washington.

Then it was on to Mount Monroe, via the Lakes of the Clouds AMC hut. I always forget how beautifully-situated that hut is. We were there around 12:30pm, and didn't stop. (Well, I didn't stop at all, but Alissa ran ahead, then waited a few minutes for me to arrive.)

We hustled up Mount Monroe, a fun direct ascent, and hit that summit around 1pm. Then it was a longish but easy slog to Mount Eisenhower.

Mount Monroe summit, looking west.

On the way we passed, and summited, Mount Franklin. It's an easy peak and has some nice views from the top. We continued to Mount Eisenhower, with its huge cairn, which I bagged around 2:15pm. Alissa, again, was there a few minutes before me.

But this time the delay was partially due to her faster pace, and partially because I stopped to help splint up a man's ankle. It was nice to see that I hadn't forgotten my wilderness medicine course. Luckily another hiker nearby had a big multiday pack with a fancy first-aid kit, including a splint.

Public service announcement: if you spend time outdoors, please take this course or one like it.

Summit of Mount Eisenhower, with its huge cairn.

We didn't stay long, and continued to Mount Pierce. I got there at 3:15pm, an hour after Eisenhower, and a solid 15 minutes after Alissa, who was still (impressively) jogging big chunks of the route.

Mount Pierce summit, the last required peak for a presi.

From there we descended to the Mizpah hut, where we did a 2-minute break to fill water and empty bladders, and hiked down the Mizpah Cutoff trail to the end of Crawford Path. Alissa was faster again, and I was stopping a lot to take some nature photos.

I got to the AMC Highland Center around 4:45pm, just about 13 hours after starting the hike. This was hours ahead of book time, and more than an hour ahead of the aggressive personal goal I'd set for myself, so I'm happy with the time. If I had hustled down Crawford Path, I could have easily cut off another 20-30 minutes, but I was chatting with folks and taking lots of photos.

Obligatory victory pose picture at AMC Highland Center, around 5pm.

We finished with plenty of daylight left, which is an important safety factor. We both felt like we still had plenty left in our legs.

Although we declined to do Mount Jackson and Webster on this hike, we would likely add them to a future traverse. The main reason for passing on them this time is that we still had to drive back 30 miles north to pick up the second car, and then drive down to Boston (3+ hours away, at night), grabbing dinner along the way. We made a good conservative choice.

Just a couple of closing thoughts on gear and food / energy.

Although I went relatively light (~25lb pack including water) I still carried (as always) medical and rescue equipment for two, including bivy sacks, supplemented first aid kits, and some cold-weather clothing (e.g. a fleece and a jacket, neither of which I used at all).

I could have ditched this gear and gone lighter. This would have let me switch from light boots to trail runners, covering more ground quicker. In the mountains, speed is safety.

I really like my current backpacking pack, a CiloGear WorkSack 60L. It's so light for its size, so configurable, no wonder it keeps winning the serious mountaineering and alpinism awards.

It's not a beginner's backpack though: you need to be comfortable actually configuring backpacks (cinching, compression, daisy chaining, etc.) to use it well. Mine fits perfectly now, to the point where after this hike, my shoulders and back and neck didn't even feel anything.

My backpack, a CiloGear WorkSack 60L.

I wore Under Armout Heat Gear boxers and shorts all day, and it was perfect. They've got that material nailed. I've raved about these products before, and will continue to do so.

We stopped at every summit to snack. I mostly had Clif's Shot Bloks, but also a couple of simple dark chocolate bars. We had pizza and Goldfish at the top of Mount Washington. I personally drank about 7 liters (!) of water on the hike, and didn't need to pee at all the entire day, so I was probably still a little too de-hydrated. We also each had a Red Bull each in the morning (~3:15am) and another in the middle of the day (~11:30am).

It felt like OK energy intake for me, although our caloric output / energy expenditure was high. For me, using the rough guide at NutriStrategy, I was spending ~650 calories per hour (carrying a 25-lb pack), for ~13 hours, so I spent ~8,500 calories.

This is an under-estimate, too, because I jogged several kilometers overall, not just walked them, and we had a bunch of steeps (both up and down) as well as rock scrambling. My intake was about 3,500 calories all told including the post-hike dinner, above normal, as expected.

We got lucky with fantastic weather, a beautiful day, and an accurate forecast, unusual for the White Mountains.

Alissa added a comment below which is totally true: we under-did the sunscreen. Thankfully neither of us got badly burnt, but we should have re-applied sunscreen throughout the day, and we didn't.

Unfortunately, I did not have WalkMeter or RunKeeper turned on due to iPhone battery consumption issues, so I don't have exact distance nor a KML export. Tallying it up from the trail maps, including some meandering we did to misc peaks, it looks like about 21 miles hiking for our specific trip.

Finally, a key fitness lesson learned: both Alissa and I are capable of sustained serious cardiac output for more than 12 hours straight. This is useful for a variety of challenges we hope to tackle in the future, separately and together. The cardio piece was not a challenge for me. My feet, with their blisters and soreness, were the limiting reagent, by far.

This was a great hike, my favorite one ever. I want to do more long hikes with ups-and-downs. I want to try and go lighter, light enough that I can jog big chunks of the way, meaning sneakers most likely. But there has to be good scenery as well, like we had yesterday.

As I told everyone I passed on the trail: hike smart, hike safe.

#rtw2012 - Foursquare

2012-08-29T13:02:00.000-04:00

This is one of a series of posts about my recent round-the-world trip, all labelled #rtw2012. You may wish to start at the beginning to get the full context and background.

Before starting my trip, I thought I'd go completely offline. And for the most part, I did. I turned off email sync'ing on my iPhone and iPad, except for a new emergency account I only shared with my immediate family. I didn't read Twitter or RSS feeds, didn't really monitor Facebook (although I did get the occasional message about something important).

But my mom made it clear she would have trouble sleeping at night if she didn't know I was alive, at least. I wanted to find an easy and fun (for me, at least) way to update her on my location, but without going into the above time sinks. That's why I resumed using Foursquare, after a couple of years away from the service.

My Foursquare account is connected to my Twitter and Facebook accounts for publishing, so people could see where I was, but I didn't have to manually login to the above, and I wasn't tempted to catch up on news.

I'm happy I did this. Almost every single person I've run into during and since my trip says they enjoyed watching the Foursquare updates, and in some cases living vicariously through them. Glad I could help ;)

German special in Berlin.

Foursquare actually has ~3 types of checkins: private (visible only to me), unshared (Foursquare friends can see them, but they don't get pushed to Twitter or Facebook, and shared (pushed to Twitter, Facebook, other connected apps, or combination thereof). One can control this for each checking, and set defaults.

I use all 3 types, and probably only about 15-20% of my checkins are shared. Otherwise, things get noisy for my audience / followers (on any service). There are also some checkins I (or my company) would prefer not to publish, for various reasons. All 3 types are useful to help one collate a trip journal or diary, as I've done.

I did have a couple of checkins that were supposed to be private accidentally get shared, primarily (but not exclusively) due to Foursquare changing their default sharing preferences with one of their app updates during the summer.

Crossing an item off a list, this one for the Berlin city badge.

I make it a point to never tag anyone else in checkins, nor show faces (typically), unless people ask for it. Although I'm fairly public with my life, e.g. this blog, I don't assume other people would be, so I err on the side of their privacy.

It was still strangely fun to get assorted Foursquare badges, but that is not news. What was actually surprisingly much more useful than in 2010, the last time I used the service, were Foursquare lists. Both "official" (e.g. the ones from 4sqCities) and unofficial (from other users) list helped me with research, planning, and execution of the trip.

A special in Stockholm, Sweden.

The city-specific badges are a nice addition, and they have amusing texts, more so than most "normal" badges. Here are my city-specific badges from Tokyo, Bangkok, Istanbul, Vienna, Moscow, Berlin, and London. Many other cities I visited don't have an official badge yet.

Russian special in Moscow.

I had a couple of "small world" moments, where I checked into a venue in a remote city / country I'd never been, only to find a friend had been there and left a valuable tip. This was especially fun when it happened in off-the-beaten-path, not mainstream, venues, like this record shop in Copenhagen. I texted my friend Maia (who put out this tip), and she enjoyed it as well, on Twitter.

Tip from a friend in a random place in Copenhagen!

It was nice to see some governments (e.g. Iceland, see below screenshots) and companies (e.g. Spotify, also below) using Foursquare to help their causes (tourism and recruiting, respectively). Both used fun, fresh voices with personality -- kudos to them.

Reykjavik airport, via government of Iceland

An important national park in Iceland.

Smart Spotify recruiting.

It was also interesting to see the internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) efforts Foursquare has put in since 2010, clearly visible when unlocking checkins, as you can see in a couple of examples below.

I got my first 10x badge, a Trainspotter, the highest you can get on "expertise"-type badges, which was entertaining.

The Foursquare leaderboard is still an obvious gaming element with little value or purpose. It's too heavily stacked towards new places, and doesn't reward repeat visitors enough. I not only led it during most of my trip, but I routinely had 4x-6x as many "points" as the nearest person, which is not cool, demoralizing, and destroys the gaming dynamic. I'm not sure why they keep this feature.

Occasional funny language ;)

Overall, I'm very happy with my usage of Foursquare. Will I keep using it in the future? I'm not sure, maybe. I've been using it a bit in the US the last few days.

Should I have used Foursquare Places instead? Yes and no. I'd kind of like to have that same data in the Facebook social graph, accessible via API, visible on my timeline as a first-class citizen, and benefitting from future Facebook features. But I didn't want to check Facebook during my trip, and Facebook Places doesn't have the very useful Lists features, not to mention valuable tips / comments from friends and strangers for each place.

#rtw2012 maps and navigation

2012-08-28T14:52:00.004-04:00

This is one of a series of posts about my recent round-the-world trip, all labelled #rtw2012. You may wish to start at the beginning to get the full context and background

This post talks about maps and navigation. This is a pretty important when traveling to unknown / unfamiliar locations, be they big cities (such as this trip) or remote outdoor destinations. No one wants to get lose in a strange place.

The traditional answer, and still a decent one, is to buy maps (or guidebooks with maps). Most people will tell you to buy locally, because the maps are cheaper and more up to date that way. Yet a lot of folks buy maps in advance, which is not bad, as it allows you to plan more.

Because I didn't want to look like a tourist, and I wanted to go as light as possible, as digital as possible, and I had my iPhone with me anyways for photography, I thought I'd try to use it for maps as well. After all, it's got Google Maps, at least for now ;)

But for a trip this big, a simple "lookup where you're going next" use-case is not nearly enough. I was doing a lot of research on places I wanted to visit: attractions, sights, hotels, apartments, bars, clubs, pickup soccer fields, etc. I wanted to mark them all down in advance, if I could, so that I'd have less reliance on last-minute searches.

I spent some hours putting together bookmarks on a custom Google map (even got it a nice URL, http://bit.ly/YSRTW2012) , but that was a waste of time, since I didn't use the map. Loading the map with all these bookmarks required internet access, which I didn't always have, and was much slower than the normal Google Maps speed I'm used to.

As you can see, the map is far from finished, covering only a minority of my destination, and none completely. But it illustrates the point well enough. I stopped it to pursue offline maps. I wanted to find an iPhone app I could use to browse an area while connected, at all useful resolutions (not just static maps at one resolution, often useless), and have it cached locally so that I could use it without internet access.

Reykjavik, Iceland

I wanted that application to support unlimited custom bookmarks, so I could annotate my maps. That way I don't need to look anything up twice. Again, I didn't want to assume I'd have internet access while on the move. And I didn't want to stop at an internet cafe (or any other stop) every time I needed to consult a map.

I also hoped to find something where I could share and export maps, during and after the trip, for my own records, to share with friends, etc.

I found, downloaded, and used Galileo, and absolutely loved it. Two thumbs up for this app. It's not perfect, nothing is, but it met my requirements well. Here are some screenshots of annotated cities, after I'd done my research and marked some spots. The caching and zooming and navigation worked well, even without internet access of any kind.

Air Shaft? Don't know. But nice place coverage.

The data coverage in major areas (middle of Moscow, London, etc.) was good, as was the data coverage in rural Iceland and other areas. I wish they had more categories with visually-distinct icons, but you can use custom icons after all, and I never bothered.

Copenhagen research...

My one major complaint about Galileo is the address search. It seemed like it always returned results at the city level only, making the search nearly useless. That is, any street address you put in, it just recognized the city and took you there. Very strange.

Same Copenhagen map, but with today's walking route (red line) marked.

Some readers probably know I also used Foursquare a lot during my trip. I did, but that was to serve a different need. There's a whole separate post on Foursquare coming up tomorrow.

When relying on digital technology, you always risk it breaking, not working, running out of battery power, and similar concerns. Because I was in big cities, the risk was somewhat mitigated. When I go hiking in remote outdoor destinations, I still get printed maps (ideally recent high-detail topos, etc.)

But for this trip, the above setup worked really really well. I'm very happy with it. I didn't find myself needing a printed map often, if ever. I might have consulted big printed maps on the streets a handful of times, at most, just out of laziness or curiosity.

I also am lucky to have a fairly good sense of direction, so I can navigate fairly easily, and I'm handy with a compass (digital or old school), so I'm relatively confident. This helps, but the technology advances of maps on recent mobile devices help even more.

A couple of quick restaurant reviews: Oishii, Strip T's

2012-08-23T04:07:00.000-04:00

Although I'm mostly writing about my round-the-world trip (see #rtw2012 posts) right now, I don't want to develop a big backlog of other activity-related items. Hence a couple of quick reviews.

Salmon on fire at Oishii

Oishii Boston was the first sushi restaurant I went to once I landed back in the US. It was delicious and beautifully-presented, as always.

The "salmon on fire" is worth getting, if only for the presentation. The maki were good, and I didn't go omakase this time (since I was sharing the food with a friend who said she wasn't that hungry...).

The sake selection has room for improvement, but overall, I really enjoyed this place. It comes the closest to Tokyo out of all the places in Boston, easily.

Nice desserts at Oishii.

Earlier this week I went to Strip T's, a small restaurant in Watertown, out of the main culinary areas of Boston. The place had been getting much press and traction thanks to a new chef, who used to be a chef at one of my all-time favorite restaurants, Momofuku Ko in New York City.

Japanese eggplant banh mi

I had been there before, but didn't review it apparently. I don't know why. I had the same appetizer as last time, the Japanese eggplant banh mi, because it's so good.

This time I also tried their buttermilk fried chicken, although I hardly ever order fried food, based upon a friend's a recommendation. It was good. My friend has the smoked rainbow trout entree, and I think that was better.

Smoked rainbow trout -- delicious.

The service was great, as before. They make you feel like family, in a good non-pushy way. The place is very very loud, which I don't mind, though some might.

#rtw2012 photography, aka where are the photos?

2012-08-22T13:50:00.004-04:00

This is one of a series of posts about my recent trip around the world, brought together by the #rtw2012 label / hashtag. You may want to read the other posts for background.

Before the trip I decided to use my iPhone 4S as my camera. A number of friends made reasonable arguments for bringing a bigger, "more professional," camera along, but I'm glad I didn't listen.

Prague roofs from St. Vitus church.

I didn't want to look like a tourist. I wanted to travel light, without all the extra gear that a more serious camera would entail. I'm also not that great a photographer, lacking both theoretical and practical knowledge to take advantage of the more advanced settings. I wanted to keep it simple, sticking with a light device I know.

I'm very happy with this choice.

My iPhone is hooked up to Apple's iCloud, and uses the newish Photostream feature. This was great, I thought, as it provided immediate (or as soon as I was on WiFi...) backup for all my photos, permitting organization and publishing later.

Stained glass windows inside St. Vitus church.

I took care to make sure each day's photos were not only uploaded to Photostream the same day, but downloaded to my iPad for backup. I thought this provided a reasonable level of assurance about not losing my photos.

Unfortunately, I was wrong :( I didn't read the fine(-ish) print on Apple's site about Photostream only keeping photos online and on mobile devices for 30 days. After that, they are gone, unless you happened to also download them to a desktop or laptop computer, i.e. a non-mobile device.

I lost the photos from the Asia leg of my trip, unfortunately, up to and including Tel Aviv. This sucks, in some ways, both for me and for readers who wanted to see them.

On the plus side, I have many thousands of photos from the rest of the trip. Some are stellar, some are funny, some are bad, and some will definitely raise questions I won't answer here. Stay tuned for them to get posted over the next couple of weeks.

Had I kept my laptop or desktop on, they might have downloaded the photos and saved them locally, but I didn't.

Some delicious sushi.

If you know anyone at Apple who can restore Photostream photos more than 30 days old, please let me know or introduce us. I'm sure they have them, and I'd like to get a copy.

The good news is that I also kept a detailed diary of places I went and things I saw, more than enough to write this blog and share some stories. I also have a few picture from foursquare checkins and such, but I'd love to have the full set.

Overall, I'm happy with the "iPhone + Photostream while traveling" approach. I would do it the same way again, unless you're a serious photographer who really cares and knows how to use a fancier camera well. But I would make sure some non-mobile device is connected and downloading the Photostream photos during my trip.

It did rock ;)

#rtw2012 recap (first thoughts)

2012-08-19T16:13:00.000-04:00

Whew, that was fun!

Just another Friday night / Saturday morning at Fabric (London)

Almost four months ago, back in May, I left on a round-the-world (rtw) trip. I landed back in the US a couple of days ago, and have been struggling a bit with writer's block since. I have so much share, it's hard to know where to start. Also, I much needed to catch up on sleep, laundry, and other things.

This post, my first since I came back, is a short summary. It's part of the #rtw2012 series, which you may want to read chronologically.

Overall, this trip is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I feel lucky and blessed to have had the opportunity to do it. I know most people never do.

I hope and wish all my friends each have a similar opportunity to do their own trip, according to their own interests, preferences, and timelines. I would be glad to help any of y'all plan it, and support you as you go along. Do it, you won't regret it.

Over 100 games including childcare! From Reykjavik, Iceland.

I'm glad I took advantage of this opportunity when it became available. Although a lot of people have similar dreams, many back down when actually presented with the chance. It's complicated to plan, it's challenging to execute well, it's a little scary (especially traveling by yourself). I hope these posts, which will go into a lot of logistical details, help other folks planning their own trips in the future.

The world is an amazing place if you come to it open-minded, without a lot of assumptions or stereotypes, relaxed, and respectful. Nearly everyone I met, and there were many folks, was friendly, helpful, interested, and interesting, if you just take the time to know them.

It goes without saying that the world is also full of interesting places, both historical and new, indoors and outdoors, all sorts of places. You can never see them all, and that's not the goal. I learned a lot on this trip.

I want to thank all my friends and family for the support. Everyone was encouraging in terms of "take this trip, do it for longer than you want, extend it, do more, and take notes / pictures to share when you return." That was great.

Another thanks / shout out goes to my downstairs neighbors Danielle and Dave, who took care of my place while I was away, particularly watering my one plant, Jim.

My local guide at the Hermitage, the best museum I've ever seen, in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Finally, a thanks to all the hosts who had me over, both the paid (Airbnb -- lots more details on that in a separate post) and especially the unpaid one. I hope I was an alright guest :)

The following posts in this series will be thematic, each centered on a particular city / country, or a theme like electronics, street food, cocktails bars, not looking like a tourist, etc.

#rtw2012: packing

2012-05-25T21:41:00.000-04:00

Background: I'm going on a round-the-world (RTW) trip this summer. This is one of a series of blog posts providing additional details. This particular blog post talks about packing for the trip.

Like the other #rtw2012 posts, this one is long and detailed. It's as much for my own recollection years from now as for anyone else. If you're bored, insomniac, or packing for a trip yourself, you might enjoy it.

I tend to travel light anyways, so that's my default. If possible, I want to avoid checking luggage in, since it tends to get lost. Particularly for this kind of trip, where I'm hopping between cities, countries, and continents on an ongoing basis, lost luggage would be a disaster.

I started, as we all often do, with Google: "RTW packing" and similar terms yield a bonanza of great blog posts from multiple sources. If you read them all, as I did, you will quickly see that things converge onto a handful of common pieces of advice:

Take less than you think you'd need. Particularly for normal items (toiletries, simple clothes, etc.) you can buy them as you go along. Lay everything out and consider cutting it in half.

Think about buying local clothing in some places, using it for a few days, and then discarding it. Besides lowering your luggage weight and size, this also has the side benefit that you look more like a local. You might not pass for one, but you will be slightly less likely to get harrased.

Depending on where you're going and the season, think about quick-drying clothes. I happen to be traveling to southeast Asia in June, which is very hot in some places (Bangkok, Delhi) but quite mild in others (Tokyo), and then I go way further north (e.g. St. Petersburg) later on in my trip.

Overall it's a great time of year to travel to these places, but I expect a bunch of heat and humidity in selected areas. I don't plan to give up my sports, either. Specifically, I plan to participate (not just observe) some unique local sports, such as judo, sumo, sepak, kayaking, and muay thai.

I also plan to be walking a lot, and I don't want to do so with my "large" pack full of everything. The need for a lighter, smaller day pack becomes clear.

Finally, perhaps unusual for this kind of trip, and not covered in most packing guides: I also plan to go to several "fancy" restaurants, bars, lounges, and night clubs.

While very few of them absolutely require a suit, jeans + jacket is my default look, the one I plan to use much of the time at night, depending on the place, so I need a jacket anyways. And some Michelin-starred places do ask for a suit. I don't want to feel out of place at Sukiyabashi Jiro or Noma.

After a bunch of reading, some closet inventory, a couple of trips to REI, EMS, and City Sports, here's my packing list.

Outer / main pack: Osprey Porter 46 (2012 model, in Crimson). Love the convertible nature from backpack to relatively sleek-looking carry-on, and I love my other Osprey products. The Deuter Futura line was a close second.

Inside that / day pack: CamelBak Rim Runner (2012 model, in Dark Navy / Orange). I love how tight it compresses, packs flat, has tons of inside pocket, and the hydration pack should be useful on long walks. I've actually been using this pack in my workouts a lot, loading it with 30-40lbs of weight and running, walking, rowing, doing the stairmaster with that extra weight.

Both of these are fairly technical packs with lots of options for compression and attachments. It's worth your time to actually read the pack manual.

Basics: 4 pairs of underwear (quick-drying), 4 pairs of under-shirts (I love my Under Armour Heat Gears, these rock, highly recommended), 4 pairs of socks (Puma low-rises, perforated, quick-drying as well, which I can use with my dress shoes too).

Pants: 1 pair lightweight running shorts, 1 pair athletic shorts (can use for anything, including sleeping and swimming), 1 pair of khaki-type shorts (lots of pockets), 1 jeans (my main pants), 1 suit pants.

Shirts: 4 t-shirts, 2 dress shirts, c'est tout.

Shoes: 1 pair sneakers (I love, love, love my new Adidas Zeros. They are so light! But don't use them unless you have good running posture and stride), 1 pair dress shoes. Note: no flip flops. I never wear them, even to shower, even in semi-questionable places: deal :).

Misc clothing: 1 baseball hat, 1 pair of cheap sunglasses, 1 bandanna, 1 suit jacket to go with the above pants, 1 belt, a normal toiletry kit, 1 heavyweight resistance band. (Thanks to @ChrisKeller, @ItaiBoublil, and @ElenaH13 for the exercise gear tips.), 3 PackLite towels, 1 4L watertight stuff sack, laundry sheets, soap sheets, my wrist watch (not my normal one, I'm taking my mountaineering one, a Suunto Core All Black).

Electronics: my iPhone (for emergencies and as a backup camera), my iPad (for reading on the Kindle app as well as local research), a slim, cheap, high-megapixel camera (Samsung ST76), extra memory cards for the camera (they're microSD, so they're tiny), chargers for everything, 1 set of global Apple adapters, 1 pair of in-ear headphones, 1 Mophie Juice Pack Air for the iPhone (this is awesome, h/t @aenbar), an armband for the iPhone for running.

Meds: a lightweight mountaineering individual kit containing all the basics, augmented with prescriptions for Cipro and Malarone (malaria), tablets for Pepto Bismol, Immodium, Tylenol, neosporin gel, and band-aids of various types (particularly blister-related). Also, a gel stick of high-strength DEET.

Finally, in a waterproof ziplock bag, I have backup copies of my passports, my itinerary, some emergency cash, and extra ziplock bags.

The total weight all in the bag is 9kg or just under 20lbs. Not bad for 3+ months of traveling around the world.

I'm pretty sure I'll find that I'm missing something, and I'm equally sure I'll be able to purchase it locally. I'm just about as sure that I'm taking too much and will discard some things on the trip. Stay tuned for an update during or after the trip.

Here's what it looks like all packed:

#rtw2012: ticketing

2012-05-23T20:45:00.000-04:00

Background: I'm going on a round-the-world (RTW) trip this summer. This is one of a series of blog posts providing additional details. This particular blog post talks about the initial ticket purchase.

These posts tend to be very long and detailed. RTW planners, geeks, and insomniacs might find them fun, though. I'm writing out details for the benefit of my own memories years from now, as well as the many curious friends and family who've requested all the details.

Berlin

I thought the Wikitravel RTW page was very very useful. I'd probably start there.

I also read a couple of sites like http://www.roundtheworldticket.com/, which is not bad. They are also agents who can book your tickets, but I didn't actually use an agent. (I have a general issue with agents, aka the principal-agency problem, but that's not on topic.)

All the usual travel forums, e.g. Lonely Planet's, also have helpful tips on RTW trip planning.

No single airline covers the whole globe, so you pretty much have to use one of the major alliances: Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam all have online RTW trip planning tools.

The apps are a little slow, and at least 2 (if not all 3) use the same back-end, which is Flash-heavy. But according to the forums, especially if you look a few years back, today's state is a vast improvement over the past, when you had to talk with an agent for hours, so that's a win.

Bangkok

After a few days of occasionally playing around with the planners between work-related meetings, I realized I was stuck in "analysis paralysis" mode. There were too many places I wanted to go, so I had to somehow systematically narrow it down.

I slept on it for a couple of nights, before deciding I was going to make this trip about seeing a number of large cities and sites I'd always wanted to visit. That ruled out a variety of other themes, such as long backpacking or hiking, extended sporting trips, and related destinations, and that helped a lot.

I also looked ahead a year or two to see what trips I was likely to make in that time. I have an Everest base camp hiking trip likely in 2013, and a Brazil trip likely in 2014, so those two destinations were off the list as well.

Finally, I asked myself what trips I'd want to do with someone else (e.g. a girlfriend), and given that I'm traveling by myself, what does that mean?

Tokyo

That's how I ended up at the "degustation" or "tasting menu" theme. It's a bunch of big cities with a few days in each. It's a mix of common tourist sites, but also getting off the beaten paths with a bunch of local activities, local sports, some volunteering, clubbing, nightlife, and more.

With that in mind, I went back to the planning tools, this time booking blocks of 1-2 hours to work with them. Planning was much easier now.

The RTW tickets have some common restrictions: maximum one year (not an issue for me), minimum and maximum stayovers at each place (not an issue for me), crossing each ocean once (a little annoying, but not terrible), starting and ending at the same continent (no big deal), maximum mileage (turned out to not be a big deal), and maximum segments or flights you can have (ended up being the limiting ingredient for me).

I ran into the max segments problem again and again. Overland segments count, i.e. if you do a portion of the trip by train (as I will) or boat (not for me this trip), it counts the same as if you took a flight. I think that kind of sucks, but what can you do?

Stockholm

There is one hack I found helpful, which is to use one city as a "base" or "hub" for a little while, and either fly or train ride around it, then get back to it for the next flight. You do these flights or train rides (or boats, if you wish, or cars, or hikes, whatever) outside the RTW ticket. That means you pay for them separately, but if you really want to see some place, it might be the most cost-effective way.

For example, I'm flying to Moscow, then going to St. Petersburg in Russia not on the RTW ticket (Sapsan train in fact), coming back, and flying from Moscow to my next RTW destination.

Similarly, I'm flying into Berlin, then taking a train to Prague. And from Bangkok to Angkor Wat (Siem Riep in Cambodia), also not on the RTW ticket.

This way you can add destinations in a relatively flexible and cost-effective manner.

Reykjavik

The other thing about the RTW tickets is that once you have a valid (theoretically anyways) itinerary, you need to pick your specific flights. You get a cost estimate right before you pick flights, and then a more accurate cost after you pick flights.

Picking flights is done right there within the planning tool, which is nice. But it requires you to select specific dates for each flight, i.e. each stop on your trip. That's a little intimidating, as it brings an element of reality to the trip, which until this point was kind of like playing around in a virtual world.

You don't need to worry too much about the dates, as you can modify them later, including during your trip, without incurring change fees (in most cases). This is different from routing changes, i.e. you want different stops, which do incur change fees (in most cases).

This step requires a lot of research, beyond the initial "I want to visit countries X, Y, and Z," because this is when you need to get a feeling for how long you need in each city or country. For example, how much time did I want in Tokyo? Bangkok? Delhi? This is not a trivial question, and I'll get into it in a future post.

It's also helpful to have a designated "buffer," destination. This is a place where you can spend more or less time if needed, ideally without paying a ton of money, since it gives you flexibility in your trip. For me, that place is Israel, where I visit my family, and it falls roughly in the middle of my trip. (Which is not ideal: you often want the buffer close to the end of the trip.)

It's worth noting that most airlines will automatically cancel the rest of your ticket if you don't show up to one leg of the trip, so you best make those flights.

Finally, after you pick flights, the planner tool re-validates everything, and asks for your information: name, address, passport, frequent flyer numbers, and credit card to book the trip. That's a scary moment because it's a big fee, and because it's very real :)

Istanbul

For the curious, RTW tickets have a really wide range in costs. Mine ended up being almost $8,000, which is not cheap, but not expensive when you consider many of my destinations (e.g. Bangkok or Tokyo) easily cost $2,500 to reach by themselves, and I'm going literally around the world with dozens of stops.

Unfortunately when I tried to actually book my ticket, i.e. pay and confirm, the system had an error. I thought it was a transient error, so I tried again later that day and the next day, but no luck. I ended up calling the Star Alliance international reservations line, which I hadn't done in years, and booking the ticket there.

Thankfully they could pull up my itinerary with all the details based on the online planning tool itinerary ID, so I didn't have to manually tell the agent everything.

And later that day, I got the "standard" airline reservation confirmation email. Those are always exciting, but this one particularly so, since it's so long, with so many stops.

Moscow

Which of the three major alliances you should go with depends on your destinations. The Wikitravel page linked above has more guidelines, e.g. if you spend a lot of time in southeast Asia (as I am), X might be better than Y, whereas in Latin America, Y might be better than X, or whatever.

I ended up going with Star Alliance. Even so, you need a "carrier of record," I'm not sure why, and the system auto-picked Lufthansa for me. Accordingly, it's the Lufthansa international reservations center that emailed me my details, and that's whom I'd call for changes.

That email also had a link, as they usually do, for an online view of the itinerary. The next day I could see it online and select seats for most of my flights, which I did.

I use Kayak to manage most of my trips, and I love their My Trips feature. I forwarded the whole lengthy itinerary to them, to see if they could handle it, and they could. Kudos, Kayak.

However, I quickly found out that this trip exceeds some features in Kayak's My Trips feature set, so I've gone to other tools for detailed planning. More on that in future posts.

At this point I had a confirmed, purchased RTW ticket in my hand, with specific flights and dates, and I was super-excited.

San Francisco