This is from our trip in July to China and Tibet. I've loved Banco De Gaia's song, "Last Train to Lhasa" because of the images it creates in my mind of somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time. I finally got that chance.

First Train From Lhasa from Jay Barry on Vimeo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dlk0hfCvOQ

Back from our 3 week trip to China, we took photos of us every location we could. Here are the more favored results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjBxGYfv-lY

It's been five years since I received the phone call telling me that dad had died in a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico. Five years of missing visits during holidays and vacations, missed birthdays and missed anniversaries. And all this when I was getting back into the "Look at me, Dad! Look what I can do!" stage of adult life.

2003 had been a good year—at least up until December 1st. Dad got to see me married in April. In July Deana and I had bought a house and had begun extensive painting and planning. And in August he got to see his granddaughter Kate. Things were really looking good.

I had told dad about all of our projects we wanted to do to our new house, but he didn't have a chance to help out. That Christmas, just weeks after the crash, my father-in-law and I hung new doors. By Spring of 2004, when I was in the middle of figuring out the wiring for new fixtures, I wished he could've been there to help me out. Growing up, we moved so often that we rarely had a house that we owned so there was never much repair work to be done and I regret not being able to ask his advice.
I hated all the moving, but it did help mold me into the person I am now—constantly curious about the world. You can put a map in front of me and I can get lost for hours wondering about all the places I haven't been, what kinds of foods, customs and people I'm not getting to experience.

When I became interested in aviation, dad took me to all the air shows, and started paying for my flight lessons. He stressed safety over and over and would sit on the bed next to me while I practiced "talking to the tower." He was there when I did my first solo flight, and he was there to help when I completed my Associate's degree in pilot training. Later I would fly to whichever airport he was working at the time. And after years of him taking me for rides in his helicopter, I finally got to take him for a ride in an airplane. It seemed just perfect, that I was finally the one in control and showing how his penchant for safety and the rules, his patience in sitting by me on the bed while I practice until I got it right, and (of course) his financial help in attaining my own goal of becoming a flight instructor.

Dad rarely lost his composure and it was always a surprise when it did happen. When I was about 10, we went camping down on South Padre Island. We drove the Land Cruiser far down the beach, having to lock the wheels into 4-wheel drive as the sand got soft and deep. Dwight and I were merely riding along in the back, either reading, playing games or picking on each other. We'd bog down on occasion, the wheels spinning out buckets of sand as Dad found a way through. In one such soft spot Dad did get stuck and from out of nowhere he hit the steering wheel with his hand and yelled, "F*ck!" Dwight and I perked up, wondering what was wrong. Dad's face never changed in composure and he just said, "Excuse my French" as he exited the car and dug out the wheels. I had no idea what that meant, but I nearly had to be life-flighted to an ER trying to prevent myself from laughing out loud.

I've noticed this same patience and stoicism in myself. When I do lose it, not only are my friends surprised, but they never fail to bust a gut laughing at me. Later on I can find the humor in whatever situation finally tipped me over the edge, and know where the stamina to remain calm came from.

I take some consolation in the fact that he saw me married to the best woman for me. He enjoyed our wedding so much that our very last conversation was about how much he had enjoyed himself dancing at our wedding. I know he loved Deana and was always happy to come up for visits, or just to hear from her.

It's been hard to assess my life's worth after Dad's death. I couldn't send him cards or even a simple email. I couldn't invite Dad and James up for a vacation or the holidays, or call just him up and ask him for his BBQ recipes. I became filled with uncertainty. And so I feel like I've been floundering for these past five years, asking the same questions and worrying that I haven't done anything to make Dad proud of me by producing a list of my greatest accomplishments.

I want to honor my dad. Even though he is dead, I want to know that he would be proud of me. I'd love to be able to put my arms around him one last time and just be able to tell him honestly what he means to me. It's something I've learned you can never do enough. I know he'd hug me back, tell me he loves me and that he's proud of me. I know he'd tell me he did the best he could to handle the helicopter and tried to fly it the entire way until he crashed into the ocean, and that in anything I ever do, he'd expect the same, and nothing less, from me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ACJhbebEfU

I'm putting this on here partly because they do a nice job of showing a flight and partly because I love this song. Apparently there's a link to win this aircraft, but it's not why I put it here.

My Kerouacian (not to be confused with Kevorkian) journey is coming to a close.  It took three days of driving on average 15 hours a day, sleeping for 4 and the remaining time staggering around zombie-like, bumping into the walls of my hotel room. But it was a fun trip and I got to drive roads I hadn't driven before, see sites I wouldn't normally see otherwise. The longest day (18 hours of driving), took me across 8 state lines, most of which I drove in the rain (not too big of a feat unless you're living in Colorado where they recently passed a law requiring that it not rain).

 

Oddly enough, the worse part of the journey was driving at night when I couldn't see much past the headlights. Falling into second place was eating fast food while driving (in order to make it to the hotel at a "reasonable" hour). And coming in at third was the lack of sleep. For some reason, I didn't mind the long hours on the road and the short hours in the hotel room. I felt awake for the drive and once had trouble falling asleep. I was eager to start driving and see roads and places I hadn't seen before. I even had to cut parts of my trip due to the time it would take to see them. There was just too much I wanted to see.

 

Of course it helped that I didn't really have much work to do on this trip—just had to verify a couple of streets in Nebraska as I passed through—so I made time to stop by Hastings, NE, the birthplace of Kool-Aid and Elmira, NY, the final resting place of Mark Twain.

 

Last afternoon I rolled into Lebanon, NH found a geocache, dropped off the car and had a pleasant talk with HR (I swear they're the best) for a little while before getting dropped off at the rental car agency. The best part of that set up was, due to the foliage in peak color, they didn't have my car and instead had a driver take me down to Manchester. I would've slept, but the driver used to drive trucks all over the eastern seaboard, so we spent the time talking about driving.

 

Now I'm sitting in the Chicago Midway airport where the lousy jerks still charge for Wi-Fi, typing this into a Word doc so I can post it later. My flight boards in an hour and I'm eager to get home.

It wasn't bad enough that I had to drive through Nebraska again, but with the rain and construction, and if you really want to grill me about it, the time I have to make it back to Denver and the distance I have to cover—I'm flat out beat. I drove over 900 miles from Salt Lake City to Lincoln, NE. And I still have two more days of 14+ hours of drive time each. I'm looking at making it to Erie, PA tomorrow, only I'll have to dip south to Indianapolis to avoid the toll roads (how much do those cost anyway?),  before heading back northish to reach my destination.

 

In happier news, I saw Kool-aid's footprints in Hastings, NE (Ran out in the rain, took my obligatory photo, pour my forty over the slab, and raced back to my car. Back in my days, Kool-Aid was a costumed man instead of the computer generated being he is today—like Max Headroom, only with more commercials.

I'm sorry I missed this last year, but that's pretty much how things go whislt out there.



Enjoy!

Sounds like a bad 80's romantic comedy, doesn't it? (Starring Bulwer Lytton as Jay Barry!!!) Hey new photos posted here.

This time there were 6 people total in our broken RV (we broke down 4 times during the course of this trip, not including losing the generator, A/C, and power surges to electrical outlets upwards of 160wats!) But the company was the best and we couldn't have asked for a better crew to travel with. I even got more sleep this time as there was an extra driver.

We left on Tuesday morning due to a couple of us having work to finish up, but leaving after rush hour traffic and driving through Utah and most of Nevada during the hottest parts of the day helped since we had no A/C and it allowed us ample daylight to set up house on the dusty playa.

I think one of my favorite things out there was watching numerous aerial fabric acts, and the all around biking and hiking around to discover all the artwork. Things just seemed to click with the temple Basura Sagrada and the Temple of Community. The art didn't seem as amazing as last year, but there were still some fantastic works to see.

It's always nice to meet new friends, but it was even better to travel with them. This was Boyd and Tia's first trip to the playa, but they were more than prepared and we had the best time running around with them. Although we're not headed back next year, I'm looking forward to when we start planning for the next time.

Black Rock City grew in diameter this year, and although we had bikes, the piles of soft dirt and the distance between things made it hard to travel. We're more than ready to build an art car for easier travels. Overall we only biked about 15 miles in 3 days, but there was also some walking involved as we trekked across the playa from artwork to artwork.

Although I really wanted to stay until the Temple burned, we pulled up stakes early on Saturday, avoiding the major dust storm. It proved fortuitous as it took us a good 12 hours more to get home due to breakdowns, one of which is (once again) getting screwed over by Firestone Auto "care" in Salt Lake City. In case you were wondering, if they check a box that says they've checked something out and found it to be fine, they didn't really examine it. Sadly, this isn't the first time I've gotten screwed over by Firestone as I finally had to quit going to them in Denver as they never seemed to check things here either.

It took 36 hours and three break downs, but we made it in around 3am today.

Photos and more to come!