Rob Church, Kate Davis and Adam Sah (me), on the cover of Vogue, Sept'98

What I Did During Summer Vacation

My (update: now ex-) girlfriend Kate, her two sons (Nik, 13, and Sam, 9) and I went vacationing around the northeast in late July, 1998, so her family could meet me, and so we could hit my High School reunion. Here's the trip report... as usual, you'll have to deal with my bizarre sense of humor. Also as usual, I often forget to photograph everything, so pardon me for the people and places that are missing.

Also, let me apologize for the lameness of this presentation-- I'm very short on time right now, so it was more important to bang this out than to polish it.

Lest you worry about my mental health, I'm writing this on the boring flight back.

But First, The Digital Camera (an executive summary)

By far, the big news on this vacation was the digital camera. See below for more info on life with the camera-- in summary, it beats traditional point-and-shoots all over for quality and convenience. For 99% of the shots, it puts my Canon AE-1 out to pasture. See below for details.

Groton

We went to visit Kate's family, in her hometown of Groton, MA, a small rural town near the New Hampshire border. Here's a typical road in Jaffrey, NH, where Kate's grandmother has a gorgeous old house. This is a view of Mount Monadnock from the backporch. Here's a photo of Kates dad.

One afternoon, we visited Aunt Barb. Pete and Barb's backyard makes my Berkeley yard look like an ingrown toenail (sniff). Nik was showing Sam how to dive into the pool, with little success. Kate fared better.

Kimball's

If upstate NY, NH, and MA are any indication, ice cream is The Big Thing in northeast rural towns. And with good reason: real men eat the Kimball's Special, a banana split sans banana. It's even bigger and grosser than it looks. Kate and I got about 3/4 the way through. The camera barely escaped the carnage.

Now, ordering Kimball's is serious business, kinda like the Chicago Option pits. The lines are huge but move quickly. I got in at 165 and out at 182. And we're not talking about amazon.com stock.

The folks work quickly, behind the safety of screens, which keep away the ever-present New England mosquito population. The patrons are less lucky-- there are only a few picnic tables, and they're all outdoors-- so most people choose to eat it in their cars.

Boston

The next day, we took the T into Boston. There are few photo ops on most subways, but it's not every day that you see a software bug in the subway system. It was rotating between "TEXT TOO LONG" and "ERROR 525344" etc. That'll never happen to Cohera, of course.

Among the other sights, we hit the Boston Commons, and took the obligatory look at the swan boats. Here are some silly photos of the fountain: can you say "projectile vomit"? (3 versions: 1 2, 3)

Finally, we went to Harvard's campus, saw a fountain or two, and then met up with Kate's friend Alice (an Edinburgh prof visiting MIT for the summer) and her "scandalously young" boyfriend, Bert. We went to dinner at a funky place off Harvard Square called Grendel's (great food!)

Cape Cod

Next we took off in her dad's car (thanks, dad!) and drove to Cape Cod. You know when you've been in northern California too long when a drive to the cape "feels" like it should be 6 hours, because it's at the bottom of the map.

One of the downsides of our spontaneous-couple lifestyle (the Right Pair of white sandals takes 3 years to find, the Right House takes 2 hours, 15 minutes) is that you roll into town without a place to stay, which can be a problem at the height of tourist season, even in the middle of the week. On our first night, we stayed in Orleans at an unremarkably mediocre inn. The good parts were the breakfast (!), the price and the nearby beach. The bad parts were the shared bathrooms, BYO soap (!) and the 10am checkout time. We did our get-up-at-dawn thing, to watch the sun rise. They already had us figured out. Here's two of Kate after the sun came up: 1 2.

After that we drove back to South Dennisport, a nifty little town we'd passed on the way. We highly recommend The Garlands, where we stayed very cheaply in an excellent room right on the water. Here's what the beach looked like. The ocean was warmer than it looked-- it's fun to swim in salt water again...

The Road to Providence

We then took off to Providence, to meet up with my sister, now in her senior year pre-med. Along the way, we found a place selling crazy inflatable rafts, and this bridge that seemed to go nowhere. It turned out to be a reverse-drawbridge for trains. The paint is peeling on Brown's buildings-- we think it's a clever ruse to increase their pitiful (by Ivy League standards) endowment. There's a magic tile on the campus, where if you step on it, you never graduate-- here's a photo taken while standing on it.

New Joy-zee

Kate's friend Veneeta (prof at Rutgers) lives in Highland Park, so we drove down to see her and her dog.

After that, we drove up to Hoboken to see her brother, Rob and his fiancee Chris.

Lawn Guy Lan

Back to Long Island (my hometown) to see Mom and hit my high school reunion. The reunion was not that much fun: people cliqued up just like ten years ago and the big attraction was the open bar. There were lots of doctors, lawyers and homemakers, all upscale. Many of the girls still spend 2 hours a day on their hair and there were stiletto heels and new last names as far as the eye could see. One of the coolest guys I met now owns a company that does "Private Sanitation" in NYC, with 22 trucks. Next time you complain about how unfair Microsoft plays, just ask Vinnie where his competitors get recycled. The accents were "shaw" wild.

Kate, forgive me-- here's the photo of you in that killer dress. I don't know why I thought to pose her with a potted plant...

We also spent some time with my old friend Rob out on Montauk Point, resuming our by-the-dozens relationship. I'd clip you in on the conversation, but it's too rude for the Net.

Here's a bunch of the Montauk lighthouse (1 2 3), inside (1,2) and the surrounding cliffs.

We drove back to Groton, MA by way of the Port Jefferson Ferry. The ferry holds cars, so you drive right into it... kinda like that James Bond film where the ship eats other ships...

As we set sail, these mosquito-like jetskiers trailed us, doing jumps in our wake. It was very cool. The remaining Long Island photos are a strange potpourri:

A piece of sculpture I carved as a freshman in college (art major), permanently at mom's house due to lack of earthquake retrofitting.

The infamous Ziti Pizza at Cosmo's pizza joint. Tasted like cardboard -- last time Rob ever gets to pick the spot.

...and that's it.

Camera Details:

The Kodak DC260 currently retails for about $700, with $200 worth of "optional" [read: essential] add-ons. It rocks.

Over-the-top pros:

Never losing a shot because of poor lighting, timing, exposure, etc. You shoot, preview the results and try again. On a tough shot (eg. weird lighting), you go manual with the exposure and/or focus and boom. See below for examples.

The camera will pay for itself overnight: I shot $200 worth of film and developing for the price of 4 sets of AA batteries.

The convenience of already having it digital. No more dups for the family (just email them or better yet, point them at the web page).

For now, the "wow" factor-- models start up conversation with you and you impress your friends and family (whose eyes glaze over when you say "distributed database").

No buying, schlepping or changing film.

You can show people photos during the trip. After every side trip, kate and I would bring back photos to show the family. We'd gather in front of the laptop and voila!

Unforeseen cons:

Just like film, you're probably better off not running your film (Compact Flash RAM) through airport security. But hey-- it's easier to eject than film...

It chews through batteries. Those $40 NiMH rechargeable batteries are a must.

There are lots of annoying user interface mis-designs. I coud rant for a page or two, but I think I'll call Kodak instead. It's still incredibly easy to use-- I just wish blah blah blah blah blah :-)

Now I'm a Believer

Seeing is believing: here are some perfectly reasonable shots. My Canon couldn't do better.

The Infamous Ziti Pizza.

The Brown University Center for Third World Studies.

The canal patrol going past us to that crazy reverse-drawbridge.

Adam in Dennisport, shot through a screen door.

A piece of sculpture I made as a freshman.

Kimball's Special ice cream.

Tough shots:

Some good camera stories:

sand spider. Kate and I are sitting on the beach, when I notice a sand spider crawling on the beach. These things are pretty small and have incredible camouflage, which inspired me to capture this in the 8am beach sunlight. Unfortunately, the camera got confused (a red light went off instead of a green), so I guessed that it was the focus, went into manual, set it for 18 inches and tried again. This time, the exposure was wrong, so I forced it to use its "Daylight" algorithm, and voila-- a pretty good picture.

action photos. I discovered that "burst" mode isn't that great for action photos because 3 fps really isn't enough-- you don't necessarily get the shot you want-- and for your trouble, you get poor resolution. Also, the camera isn't smart about shutter speed, so you get blurred to death. For an example, see Kate's son, Sam, diving. I found it better to half-press the trigger, track the object in the viewfinder, and time it manually. You still lose a fraction of a second, but the results arre obviously better. For example, see this picture of jetskiers jumping in the wake of the Port Jeff ferry.

timed photos. Without the benefit of the manual, I had to teach myself to use the timer. As with everything else, it was pretty easy to use and basically did the right thing. WYGIBTWYS (what you get is better than what you see). In real life, this ziti-pizza tasted like cardboard. :-)

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