I’m leaving tonight on a week-long trip that will take me to Paris, Caen, Perpignan and Lyon. The bulk of the trip will be me attending a photo festival in Perpignan for work; the rest will be sightseeing. On this trip I’ll be in reasonably frequent contact with the Internet. I’ll try to post a couple of things in this space while I’m traveling.

This is surely one of the best commercials of United’s long-running “Rhapsody in Blue” campaign:

Do you feel better about United than you did sixty seconds ago?

Just uploaded here. Enjoy!

I’m back in New York, and am heading to work this morning for the first time in a week. I had a nice vacation in California and will post pictures soon.

I’ve determined that it’s a poor idea to fly into any New York airport on a Sunday. Yesterday afternoon my otherwise on-time Virgin America flight was on the approach to JFK when the pilot announced we would be circling the sky over Pennsylvania for a while. (Cause: “Weather.”) After an hour or so the plane began to run low on fuel. The pilot put us down at the Lehigh Valley airport in Allentown. We sat there for an hour or so and then flew on to JFK, touching down about three hours late. But we didn’t have it that bad — a Delta flight scheduled to leave JFK yesterday morning sat on the tarmac for seven hours before the flight was finally canceled.

Recall that last month I got stuck in Charlotte trying to fly into New York on Sunday.

Hello from San Francisco. I’m flying back to New York tomorrow after some time out west. I spent five nights camping in the Sierra Nevadas and Yosemite National Park with my friend Doug, and some time here in the Bay Area with my friend Millie. Photos and more stories to be posted soon.

When planning a vacation, I consider it important to check my phone company’s coverage map. Here’s where I’ll be next week:

That looks perfect!!

This time next week, I’ll be high in the mountains on a five-day backpacking trip through Yosemite National Park. There are no towns or resupply stations on our route, so we have to carry everything on our backs. You really think carefully about how much stuff weighs when you travel this way. Right now I’m working on clothes. (Do I bring more than one shirt? How many socks do I really need?) I’ve already tackled food and other basic gear. Some of the things I’ve considered:

• I’ve been comparing labels to figure out which foods pack the most energy per weight. Peanut butter is freakin’ amazing. Skippy has 190 calories in a 32g serving! But Smart Balance peanut butter is even better - 200 calories per 32g. Fig Newtons seemed like a good bet, but they only have 110 calories in a 31g serving. They’re staying back. Cliff Bars are coming. Dried apples are staying back. When was the last time you compared nutrition labels and bought the product with a higher calorie count?
• Not gonna schlep a whole roll of toilet paper. I unspooled a few feet of Scott 1000 (one-ply). Then I wrapped it around a ball-point pen, took the pen out, and put the small spool in a Ziploc.
• Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap is a must. It’s dish and laundry detergent, hand soap and shampoo all in one concentrated bottle.
• Spare shoelaces are another necessity. They can also be used to repair a tent or a pack in an emergency.
• A big thing of sunscreen got decanted into a small squeeze bottle.
• The tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, water filter and stove are all of the lightweight variety. My flashlight is a tiny two-LED number that takes a single, miniature six-volt battery.
• No iPod.
• No cell phone.
• No GPS.
• No compass.
• No Swiss Army knife. (I’m bringing a tiny Leatherman tool that has a blade.)
• No shaving kit. No comb. No mirror either.
• There’s a school of thought that advises cutting your toothbrush handle off, but properly cleaned teeth are a luxury I cannot give up, even for five days.

One of the old Concorde jets is parked out at Floyd Bennett Field, the abandoned airport/park in Brooklyn. Sitting alone on the empty tarmac, it is a bizarre sight (seen above in 2007).

From The New York Times comes this update: The jet’s nosecone was destroyed last Monday when it was hit by a truck hauling equipment to a festival in the park! Per the article: “Within 20 hours of the accident, photos of the damaged plane appeared on the Internet, and Concorde lovers were deploring the level of care it had received during its postretirement odyssey in New York.”

The NYC Aviation board has more pics of the Concorde carnage, which are labeled: “caution: disturbing photos.”

It’s amazing to think that this supersonic jet has basically been scrapped, like it’s an old DC-3 or something. I’m reminded of what happened to the Buran, the Soviet Space Shuttle. What remains of it can be seen in this photo.

I’ve heard it said that Americans are masters of building and operating complex systems. Think about Wall Street. The power grid. The Internet.

The problem is we don’t always seem good at the chores it takes to keep these systems running. Like maintenance. Like educating newcomers about how things work. Despite the amazing incentives not to, Wall Street bankers still manage to make knuckle-headed mistakes that cost themselves and the public lots of money. After the 2003 blackout it became obvious that no living person really understands how our system of electricity works. I heard once that the Space Shuttle is so complicated that we – as in, humanity – do not fully understand it. Now we’re getting ready to scrap it. Sometimes knowledge is so decentralized that it becomes essentially lost. And when the entire system fails, no single entity is responsible.

And yes, I’m about to get to airplanes. Here in the U.S. we have a baffling system of air travel. Many different public and private entities are all working on solving the same problem: transportation. The problem, as I saw yesterday, is that the system was built by people more ambitious than the ones now charged with operating it. Sometimes it’s just that simple: The job is too hard. It’s impossible to get a guy and his suitcase from point to point in the time he was promised when he bought his ticket. We built this system, but we’re not fully capable of operating it. It’s kind of depressing.

Greetings from Charlotte. Wait, Charlotte? What’s he doing in North Carolina? I’m suffering in airline hell, that’s what!

I left Charlottesville, Virginia, this morning. I was supposed to board a 10:20 United flight to Dulles. But that plane was already behind schedule, leaving me no time to make my connection. The airline courteously booked me on an on-time U.S. Airways flight to Charlotte, where I could get a connecting flight to Newark. Fine.

Actually, not fine. In Charlotte, my plane left on time and taxied out. It sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours. Then it taxied back. Now I’m part of a planeload of passengers waiting in the terminal while the airline negotiates with air traffic control for permission to land its plane in Newark. The latest word is that we’re supposed to take off at 5:30 – four hours late. The official explanation for the delay? “Weather.” Except it’s an absolutely beautiful day all up and down the Atlantic seaboard, and the departure boards show most of the other flights are on time.

If I’d left my hotel this morning and kept driving to Brooklyn, instead of to the airport, I’d be there by now. Now I am further away from home than when I started.

Also of interest: At no point today has anyone asked to see my identification.

Update: The plane landed in Newark more than four hours late. The pilot explained that landings were slow-going into Newark due to “puffy clouds.” My suitcase followed about 20 minutes later, arriving on a different plane.