Popocatepetl

Mexico City is in a valley--a large valley. Just southeast of the city is the second largest peak in Mexico--an active volcano called Popocatepetl. Here it is topped with snow, even though Mexico City is a balmy 75 degrees during the day.

stretched to the limit

I'm not sure why Mexico City abruptly ends at this road.

welcome back

The lovely view returning to San Francisco this week.

fleet week II

Spectators enjoying Fleet Week.

Fleet Week

This past week was Fleet Week in San Francisco. All day long, low-flying jets circled the peninsula. It was so loud in the apartment that conversations halted, and outside car alarms went off when the planes came low.



I shot this from a 16th-floor apartment in the Marina.

phantom jet

I'm hoping for some clear skies today! This is a shot from a Christmas Eve flight to Singapore in 2008. I'd never seen the plane's shadow like that before.

sky queen

This photo is from last year but I just re-discovered it. It's the Unisphere in Corona Park / Flushing Meadows, Queens.

climate change

Another shot from a plane! But this one is cool, too. This shows how quickly the terrain changes in the East Bay. On the right, you can see the San Francisco Bay, then as you trace left across the photo (west), you can see the mountains and then the desert of the valley.



Well, at least I think it's cool.

west south west

I shot this just a few minutes after taking off from San Francisco and heading to Chicago. I like that in this photo you can see a golf course wedged between an industrial zone and the Oakland airport.



This photo is facing south and heading west over the San Francisco Bay.

an atlantic leap

I took a huge leap of faith across the Atlantic Ocean to travel with a man I met recently.



I hardly slept on the flights over. I was too excited! This is the sunrise over Portugal.

comings and goings

Landing back at Changi International Airport in Singapore after the few days in Langkawi.



I wonder when we will meet again.

my kind of traffic jam

My friend Nicole and I took a break from the Singapore life and hopped a budget flight to Langkawi, a Malaysian island. I forget that traveling to other countries is so easy...from other countries. Anyhow, Singapore closed its airspace for a few hours for some military exercise, and all the flights were delayed for a few hours. Here, you can see all the planes lined up behind us to take off, most of them fellow budget airlines doing short flights of a few hours or less.

i'm somewhere else

I'm away right now, automating posts. I hope my trip is going well. Posts to come, obviously...

...So this is an old photo, of when I was boarding the little plane in Calama, Chile (the DESERT), for a short flight down to Santiago. This was last March, on my SPRING BREAK 2009, but so more tame than GGW. This photo for me---this is the stuff that dreams are made of. It has all the critical elements of solitude, desert, and travel. After I took this photo, I found myself seated next to a guy with the strangest accent. He was ethnically Chinese, but raised in Moscow, residing in MONGOLIA, and living the heretofore-unheard-of rock star life of a geologist. He got flown to all these remote, fascinating parts of the world, courtesy of big corporations looking for the next great resource to exploit. When we got to Santiago de Chile, I hitched a ride to the city center with their chartered geologist bus, stashed my big backpack at their fancy hotel, and then he bought me lunch.



I really loved Chile.