Austin

The river they called a lake.

Vibrant streets

Beautiful buildings

Crazy-eyed bird

Good thing it's still 2011

Best way to get around, obviously

Rays of heaven beaming down on a sea of beauty

Austin City Limits

Alison Krauss

Stevie Wonder

Arcade Fire

We'll be back

Biking Madison

Madison, WI was the setting for CNU19, the annual conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a non profit sustainable urban planning organization. The bicycle culture there was appropriately refreshing, to say the least. There were bikes everywhere, all over. Maybe it was the 1500 visitors they had that week, who knows.

Their new bike share program proved effective. See the lockup station that was found in several key locations throughout the city.

It was free if used for just a half hour, and $10 if taken for more thann that up to a whole day. Besides the fact that it looked like a clunky cruiser with a heavy metal basket welded to the front, they seemed to be well received and frequently used. Again, maybe it was just the conference.

Most surprising to me in Madison was the lack of bike security (which is obviously a huge concern of me in my current city). Bikes were locked up all over (or not) with nothing but cable locks. I saw maybe 3 chains the entire 4 days I was there. I went to rent a bike for the week and they weren't even going to give me a lock until I asked for one. A person I was with asked what happens if the bikes get stolen, to which the shop attendant responded in a confused and slow manner, for which he had no real response. "It's never happened so I don't really know."

There were also these other red bikes that were rented, these for free with a deposit. Although these were old bikes spray painted red. The entire bike, over cables and gears and brakes and everything. Really.

http://redbikes.org/redbike/how-madison-red-bike-program

Texas Time

After a nice Christmas visit with the Brocks in Philly, Jess and I traveled down to Texas, a land far, far away, somewhere in between the United States and Mexico. Texas was a strange land, but the city of Dallas offered striking scenes, reminiscent of suburban America.

And what would middle earth be without Walmarts with aisles wider than my friggin apartment.

Slightly more interesting than car dealers, strip malls and big box stores was a masonry building that assassinated a US president.

Dallas is...unique...I call this "rims and wreaths"

Fort Worth actually possessed most of the authenticity and charm of the region.

Of course, I couldn't visit Texas without getting some authentic food. How about some mountain oysters and chicken-fried steak?

There are a lot of other funny things in Texas too, like the fact that they have two stadiums, one for the MLB AL West right to the east of one for the NFL NFC East. That's just silly. Silly Texas.

Texas was fun!

Thanks to Jessika's wonderful family for their generous hospitality and a great time. All in all, it was a pretty good place to avoid the great blizzard of 2010.

Zion National Park

After the Colorado stint, I flew to Las Vegas, rented a car, and drove to Zion National Park to meet up with Andy. The canyons were quite the contrast to the mountains I had previously climbed, but amazing nonetheless...

Click here for the full collection of photos.

Colorado 2010

It was one of those architecture studio summer reunions, although this time there were only 3 of us. Dan offered a good base camp in Denver so that Graham could drive from St. Louis and I could fly from New York to meet up for 2 days and 2 nights of hiking and camping. The weather was amazing (hot and clear during the day with minimal clouds, and cold at night). We climbed a 14er the first day (Grays Peak) and explored abandoned gold mines the second. Both nights we camped at the base of the mountain with the peak as our backdrop.

Camp

View from Grays

Us 14,280 feet above sea level

A unique aspect of the trip was the premier use of my new Vibram 5 Fingers shoes. With minimal material, the shoes allow one to hike as if they were barefoot (without lacerating the bottom of your foot). I made the Grays hike up in them, then switched to the regular hiking shoes on the way down. They were great for grip, but you could feel everything you stepped on.

Here are the rest of the photos.

After I left Denver I flew to Vegas to rent a car to drive to Utah to meet Andy in Zion National Park...

Shenandoah 4th of July #2

Year #2 for the Shenandoah 4th of July with 4 returning and 4 new. We camped at Andrea's on the river again. We hiked a steep Overall Run. We ate. We drank. We had adventures. You get the point.

Click here for more photos

And check out our ride back down Skyline Drive after our adventurous hike...

Vogue Party

This is late night Atlanta, people. When everything else shuts down, head to the Metro Cafe Diner. It's so much more than you could possibly expect.

Just don't order any food.

Ann Coulter Vogue Party

Sure Exit

It was a great panel discussion, not only because the content was interesting, but also because I was fully assured that if we needed to evacuate the room, there would be an adequate amount of doors. Phew!

This was at CNU conference in Atlanta. I'll have a more serious post on this later.

Greenbuild '09

Paid trip anywhere? Yes please! It seems like Greenbuild is the only time each year I can really take advantage of major expensed anything. It gets better when you get to the hotel (the Ritz), find out they overbooked, and then they send you in a car to their compensation, a luxury retreat in the mountains. Too bad I was there alone. But arriving back at the Ritz, I was upgraded to a luxury suite in exchange for the "inconvenience." Not gonna lie, I was kind of big deal, felt kinda baller that week.

Anyway, here's the conference booth area.

Evening plenary with USGBC President Rick Fedrizzi and keynote speaker Al "I invented the internet and am the former next president of the United States" Gore.

Thursday night was the World Green Building Council cocktail party hosted by Lend Lease. Attending were Lend Lease sustainability professionals and leaders of green building councils from around the world.

Rick Fedrizzi and Lend Lease global head of sustainability Maria Atkinson...

And this is Papago Park that I explored a bit with James after the conference was over.

Check out my flickr for higher res images.

Then I flew to Albuquerque to chill with Page and Joe, which was a great time as well. Then back to NYC and back to work.