DustRhino

We are still organizing photos and text from our trip to post to the website. Don’t worry, they aren’t stuck in a Series of Tubes, we are just being poky. Once we get them up, we are going to post the stories and photos dated to when they happened, so you will have to scroll down a few posts to see them. A little counterintuitive, but will allow us to treat the posts as a travelogue—just imagine you are reading them as they happen.

I am also using Flickr to host the photos, so if you click on one, you will jump to the Flickr website, and the option to see a larger version (look for the tiny magnifying glass above the photo), as well as the rest of the photos. Look for a “Read More” link below the photo when reading posts on the home page of the Dust Rhino website, which is easy to miss—this leads to the rest of the post, which may have additional photos.

Please feel free to comment on this website, as well as in Flickr. We seem to get a bunch of traffic from around the world, and am curious to hear from all of our fans.

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David General, Travel

Suzanne and I are back from our trip to Israel and Egypt. We had a great time, but it taking us a while to get back into the swing of work, and it will probably be a while longer before we get out travel stories and photos posted. Until then, here are some photos from the White Canyon, Sinai, Egypt.

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David General, Travel

With our four-year anniversary this week, Suzanne and I were thinking back to our wedding and honeymoon. Also, a number of friends of ours have visited Buenos Aires over the years, so we thought we would take a little time to note some of our favorite attractions.

Follows is a brief list if some shopping and dining recommendations from memory. I will add more when I get a chance to find our old guidebooks to figure out other off the beaten path suggestions. Read more…

David General, Travel

In addition to my Uncle Joel and Aunt Linda (my mother’s brother), some of my Father’s family also lives in the bay area. My second cousin Lew (my great aunt Regina’s grandson) moved to Marin County this month, and sent me his contact info while we in San Francisco this week. We connected this morning, and arranged to meet after our tour of Napa Valley today.

Since Lew was still unpacking the 500 boxes he moved from Houston, we met at his niece (my second cousin once removed), Alissa’s home in San Rafael, where we met her family, including her three sons. My Father’s family seems to breed slowly, so our generations don’t match up with the rest of the family (Lew is about twenty years older than I am, while his niece is only a few years older than I am).

We had a terrific family reunion, including reminiscing about childhood times in the old Victorian houses in Seagate, Brooklyn. Very entertaining was Lew and Joel comparing their times at Columbia University, as they graduated only a few years apart, and Suzanne and Lew contrasting their times living in Texas.

David General, Travel

Joel took David and me to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. It is indeed one of the best aquariums in the country. The above picture is of a jellyfish that we saw. The jellyfish exhibit is very soothing as you hear vaguely New Age music while walking through the darkened halls and see the transparent jellyfish made luminescent by colored lights in their tanks. The jellyfish serenely glide through the water by pulsing their bell while poison tipped tentacles trail behind them. They appear to have no sense of direction as they swim upside down, right side up, and sideways. I am always impressed by the fact that the jellyfish- an organism with no heart, brain, or bones- can capture and eat fish.

Our next stop was the sea otter exhibit where lunchtime was in progress. Sea otters are one of my favorite animals. This may be a projection of my human emotions onto an animal, but no other animal better seems to experience a “joie de vivre” like the sea otter. I think that people truly feel happy when watching these elegant swimmers play with toys or laze on their backs eating fish.

The Monterey Bay ecosystem revolves around the food and shelter provided by underwater kelp forests. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a wonderful “kelp forest” exhibit that helps visitors understand this unique ecosystem. In the huge tank, sinuous wolf eels, black, white, and red banded sheepshead fish, and spotted leopard sharks swam among the huge swaths of giant kelp. A real highlight of the day was when a diver came into the tank and fed the fish. Impressively enough, he had a microphone in his breathing equipment that allowed him to answer schoolchildren’s questions while underwater.

David’s favorite critter of the day was the Mola Mola, the Ocean Sunfish. According to Wikipedia, the Ocean Sunfish “is the largest bony fish in the world. It is a unique pelagic fish, and specimens of ocean sunfish have been observed up to 3.3 m (11 ft) in length and weighing up to 2,300 kg (5,100 lb).”  David described it as looking unreal, like a “muppet fish.” If you like learning about critters, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is definitely worth a visit.

Suzanne General, Travel