Epilogue

After being separated from our trusty touring bikes for a couple of months, we decided to bring them down to Portland for some surgery. We decided that we wanted to convert our bikes into Xtracycles. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking—you already have bikes capable of hauling a bunch of stuff, why do you need [...]

Same as it ever was

OK, Seattle isn’t exactly the same as when we left. But a lot of things are, including the Summer Solstice Parade at the annual Fremont Fair—as evidenced by the picture above. In any case, we made it home safe, albeit late due to delays on both of our flights. It has been great getting to [...]

Chilean salmon virus running amok

Since we recently camped outside one of these salmon farming facilities in Chile, I thought I’d pass on this NY Times article about a virus that is devastating the salmon stocks down here. I know this seems impossible, but they think that the fact that the salmon pens are too crowded and too close together [...]

A solution to the plastic problem?

One thing that you can’t help but notice about Latin America is the overabundance of plastic shopping bags. Not only at the supermarket—where the checkers refuse to put more than three items in a single bag—but covering the entire landscape as well. Even this writer from the NY Times describing Los Glaciares National Park in [...]

Monday Nephew Blogging

I suppose I should also note that on November 10, 2007, Cindy and I became aunt and uncle to this little guy:

Braden Christopher Fisher is his name, and he’s surely the only kid on his block wearing booties from Guatemala (guess who sent him those!). We’re looking forward to making his acquaintance when we return.

Miscellany from Uyuni

We got back from our Salar de Uyuni trip a couple of days ago (it was great—more on that later), and we’re hanging out in Uyuni for a few days while Cindy recovers from a small illness. So with nothing else to do but hang out, I decided to write up a review of our [...]

How America lost the War on Drugs

Since the War on Drugs in the US very clearly involves a lot of the countries we’ve traveled through, I thought I’d post this Rolling Stone piece, which details the history of the War on Drugs, calling itself “an anatomy of a failure”. Seems about right to me…

Bike City, USA

Just ran across this NY Times article talking about the bike culture and industry springing up in Portland. Maybe there will be a place in it for us when we return? Or maybe we can steal some ideas and bring them to Seattle…

New spam filter and (lack of) wedding photos

Just wanted to let people know that I changed our filter that keeps spam out of the comments. I doubt anyone has noticed, but one of our posts in particular (the last installment of cat blogging) was attracting spam comments, which I was then deleting (unless anybody needs more information about Cialis?). The little pictures [...]

More on Cuban health care

Why Cuba is exporting health care to the US
An Alternet article with more details about the Cuban medical schools we mentioned earlier. There are no sources to back up the alleged high quality of Cuban health care, but the part about them training doctors from all parts of the world is certainly true.