In November, 2003, from the 1st through the 28th, I went on a trip between the
West Coast and the East Coast of the United States of America (USA).

During this trip I shared many happy times with family and friends, and I saw
many beautiful places and things.

This online collection of 1,933 images may give one a fairly significant
glimpse in to my trip.

My photographs of my trip vary in technical and aesthetic quality.  A picture
begins with a selection of subject.  The camera captures the image, but imposes
its technical constraints on the image, such as resolution, focus, contrast, 
color imbalance, and exposure time effects (like motion blur).

I wanted to write a meaningful caption for many of the images, but rather than
wait for me to write almost 2000 captions, I am making the images available 
now.  There are interesting anecdotes concerning many images, but I am not too
enthusiastic about writing notes for a collection of images that is not, on
the whole, extraordinary (although there are many good images).

I wrote several computer programs to assist me in preparing these web pages.
First, I needed to merge many redundant copies of images to a master set of
images with unique names that could be sorted in a way that matched the 
chronological order in which the images were captured.  Next, I wrote a 
program to reduce all images to half their original dimensions for the purpose
of the web pages.  Finally, I wrote a program to create 62 web pages, each
with its own image set.

The following is a link to a table of 62 sets of images.

Table Of Images

CAUTION: Each 1024 x 768 pixel image averages 113.4 KB, and each image
         set has an average of 32 images, for an average total size of
         3.63 MB, with some pages requiring up to 7 MB of image downloads.
         The total photo collection is 209 MB.  If you are using a 
         telephone based modem, it is probably not worthwhile to view
         these image sets; the quality of the images is not worth the
         really long telephone download times.

    28 Days
 7,000 Miles
    15 States (CA,AZ,NM,CO,KS,MO,IL,IN,OH,PA,NY,MA,CT,NJ,RI)
$2,500 Expenses
    20 Trains (Amtrak, MTA, NJT, SEPTA)
     5 Cabs (NYC, Philadelphia)
     1 Bus (Cape Cod to Boston)
     8 Car trips (Drivers: Sam, Peggy, Tom, Serge, Dad, Arthur, Mark)
     3 Hotels (2 x Pennsylvania, 1 x Massachusetts)
     3 Universities (Penn, Harvard, MIT)
     1 Wedding (Chris and Peggy)
   20+ Relatives
 2,700 Unique photographs
     4 Random encounters with psychiatrists
     2 Childhood homes (West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia)
     5 Major cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia)
    10 Years living in California
   $31 Parking ticket (72 hour limit exceeded on my block in Irvine, CA)

Nov.  1 (Sat): Amtrak:"Southwest Chief" (4): CA             [Dep. 6:45 PM, PST]
Nov.  2 (Sun): Amtrak:"Southwest Chief" (4): CA/AZ/NM/CO/KS
Nov.  3 (Mon): Amtrak:"Southwest Chief" (4): KS/MO/IA/IL..3-7 PM...LSL:IL/IN/OH
Nov.  4 (Tue): Amtrak:"Lake Shore Limited"(48): OH/PA/NY    [Arr. 1:50 PM, EST]
Nov.  5 (Wed): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment
Nov.  6 (Thr): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment
Nov.  7 (Fri): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment
Nov.  8 (Sat): Brooklyn, NY : Chris and Peggy's Wedding Rehearsal Dinner / Tux
Nov.  9 (Sun): Brooklyn, NY : Chris and Peggy's Wedding : Prospect Park
Nov. 10 (Mon): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apt; Ret.tux/Peggy Contacts:Manhattan
Nov. 11 (Tue): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apt
Nov. 12 (Wed): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apt; Stage Deli: A.Clay, J.Zeitlin
Nov. 13 (Thr): Philadelphia, PA: Holiday Inn; Sergio Cortes
Nov. 14 (Fri): Philadelphia, PA: U. Penn, Downtown, South Philly; Holiday Inn
Nov. 15 (Sat): Philadelphia, PA: U. Penn; Psychiatrist; Brooklyn, NY: Bro's Apt
Nov. 16 (Sun): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment
Nov. 17 (Mon): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment; Chris/Peggy back from Paris
Nov. 18 (Tue): Brooklyn, NY : Brother's Apartment; Chris teaches; watch DVDs
Nov. 19 (Wed): Amtrak: Train 86: NYC -> Boston, South Station; Hotel
Nov. 20 (Thr): Boston, MA: Arthur Clay: Harvard, MIT; Dad -> Cape Cod
Nov. 21 (Fri): West Yarmouth, MA (Cape Cod): Dad, Jean, Eva
Nov. 22 (Sat): West Yarmouth, MA (Cape Cod): Dad, Jean, Eva; Bill
Nov. 23 (Sun): West Yarmouth, MA (Cape Cod): Dad, Jean, Eva; Dinner Mom & Mark
Nov. 24 (Mon): Barnstable,MA -> Boston South Station -> NYP(NYC) -> Brooklyn,NY
Nov. 25 (Tue): Amtrak: "Lake Shore Limited" (49): NY (NYC->Buffalo...)
Nov. 26 (Wed): Amtrak: "Lake Shore Limited" (49): NY/PA/OH/IN/IL;   SC:IL/IA/MO
Nov. 27 (Thr): Amtrak:"Southwest Chief" (3): KS/CO/NM/AZ
Nov. 28 (Fri): Amtrak:"Southwest Chief" (3): AZ/CA(8AM); Pacific Surfliner->Irv

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1970, and I lived there until 1993 when I left
the University of Pennsylvania to attend graduate school at University of
California, Irvine (UCI).  I marked my 10th year in Southern California in the
Fall of 2003.  Meanwhile, my parents, brother, and other close relatives live
on the East Coast.  Ironically, I developed a fear of plane travel soon after
arriving in California, and so I didn't make many trips to visit my family
in the past decade.

Early in 2003 my brother, Chris, and his girlfriend of 10 years, Peggy, 
announced they would get married in November in their long-time home town of
Brooklyn, New York.  I was greatly moved and honored by the invitation to
serve as the "Best Man".

I was determined to attend the wedding, but the idea of flying made me very 
anxious.  The feeling of dread mounted as the wedding date approached.  In the
past I didn't give serious thought to alternatives to flying because I imagined
myself becoming just as anxious during a long, drawn-out trip on the ground as
during a significantly shorter, but more intense, plane trip.  However, a couple
weeks before the wedding my mother proposed train travel.  My brother did some
research and pointed out that crossing the country by train only takes three
days.  After visualizing the trip for a week, I bought the train tickets.  The
feeling of doom lifted.  I became excited about the trip.

I planned to stay on the East Coast for roughly three weeks to give myself 
enough time to have the kind of casual, subtle, close experiences that lead to
a feeling of family.  My relationships with my relatives is deeply satisfying.

Visiting familiar places that I haven't seen in many years is also a very 
stimulating and satisfying activity.  Sometimes I am flooded with memories, and
I imagine myself simply stepping back in to an earlier phase of my life.  I am
particularly overcome with complex feelings when some setting is essentially a
perfect match to my old memories, and when I can recall my frame of mind when I
last visited the place; it really seems like it would just take a modest effort
to actually become an earlier incarnation of myself.  I have no desire to be
six years old again, for example, but when I visited my childhood home and
neighborhood school during this trip, and contemplated how close I was to being
able to step in to that life again, I was stunned.  Sure, I am taller and more
cynical than I was when I was six years old, but, wow, I could march right up
to my old bedroom, wake at 7 A.M., and walk to school to do kindergarten
assignments!  This type of thinking reminds me of a fun mental exercise I 
sometimes did in my teenage years: Upon waking up in the morning, but not yet
opening my eyes, I would imagine the bedroom around me being one from my past.
I would visualize all the furniture, walls, windows, and gradually the rest of
the house.  It was really a strange exercise because as long as I kept my eyes
closed, and as long as I didn't hear any uncharacteristic ambient sound, I 
really couldn't be certain I wasn't actually in the other bedroom.  This was 
much less of an intellectual leap compared to imagining being on Mars or being
kissed by [insert contemporary sex idol name here], because my limited sensory
data supported the theory of being in my own bed.  This is self-delusion, and
it also makes me think of unobserved quantities in quantum mechanics (like 
"Schrodinger's Cat").  I guess a subplot of my life is epistemology.

Acela (model of Amtrak train) travels at up to 150 miles per hour, going from
Boston to New York City in 3.5 hours.

My cross-country trip of 3215 miles (as Amtrak travels from Los Angeles to New
York City) took roughly 66 hours, which implies an average train speed of 48.7
miles per hour.  (NOTE: With layovers the average travel speed is closer to 
40 miles per hour.)  In theory, an Acela train could cover the same cross-
country distance in less than a single day!  However there may be many reasons
why this is not practical.  Reaching speeds of up to 90 miles per hour on the
non-Acela train was described as "taking it up a notch" in an announcement to
passengers.

A train engine had an indicator that read "560 gallons", which might be fuel --
and there's no telling how often an engine might be refueled.

My ballpoint pen leaked ink, and my shampoo bottle opened with a loud popping
noise (almost a bang), around the state of Colorado.  Upon arriving on each
coast (East and West), I notice closed plastic bottles with significant empty
space were partly crushed.  (I've had the same pen leaking experience with 
Pilot Precise V-7 fine rolling ball pens during airplane trips.)

General observation: Individuals and groups of people across the USA waved to
the train with obvious smiles.  A pair of workers with hard hats at a refinery,
dudes at a ranch, etc...  Very heartwarming.

Tip: Get a detailed street map (street level detail) for any city you plan to
visit.  It *will* pay for itself!  The only map I neglected to get with this
kind of detail was for Brooklyn, and it ultimately wasted my time and possibly
a few dollars.

Tip: Pack light, then think really hard about how to pack even less!  I was 
really glad I only had a backpack and a cloth bag, but I think I could have
travelled even lighter and more comfortably.

Remark: My photographs only reflect a small piece of the experience of going
to the places depicted.  One must go to the places to absorb the other aspects
of the locations (sounds, colors, smells, motion, personality of people).

Weird Episode: On South Street in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a store
owner ran out of his store and yelled at me for taking a photograph of his
store window.  I think he thought I may have been "casing the joint" (planning
a theft) or maybe attempting to steal his "look".  The idea of "copyrighting"
a store window seems possible, but I would argue that my personal photograph
counts as "fair use".

Weird Episode #2: In front of the CNN studios in New York City, a security 
guard approached me and told me that I had to stop taking photographs with my
tripod.  I could continue to take pictures of the Rockefeller Center plaza, but
I had to collapse the tripod.  I was creeped out.

At the University of Pennsylvania I saw an exhibit in the lobby of the David
Rittenhouse Laboratories (DRL) showing the "Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
(SNO) project, which I also worked on at Penn when I was a student -- writing
software to make measurements of photomultiplier tubes.

New York City subway travels roughly 10 blocks per minute (including stops).
Brooklyn to 57th street Manhattan: Roughly 20 minutes.

Building next to train tracks, visible from Atrak train between NYC and Boston,
has the following Biblical quote:
      "Is it nothing to you, all who pass by?" -- Lamentations

Announcement on train:  "The next station stop in approximately (pause) *now*
...is Utica."  (Chuckles among the passengers)

Midtown Manhattan Real Estate: Rentals: $2K-$8K/month; Purchase: $450K-$1.4M.