yet another battle at Kruger?

Last July I blogged about the Battle at Kruger, an epic battle between lions, hippos and Cape buffalo, thanks to a tip from our tour guide at Safari West.

Today, thanks to boingboing, I got a tip to check out a leopard attacking a crocodile at Kruger National Park that was photo documented by Hal Brindley.

Not sure what it is that makes Kruger National Park the site of so many surprising predator-prey combinations, but I'm glad there are folks around to document it so I can witness from the comfort of my keyboard.

A teaser slideshow is below:

still waiting on Mt Whitney 2008 Lottery results

Since I last posted about my Mt Whitney 2008 Lottery results impatience a couple weeks ago, time has c-r-a-w-l-e-d by as I'm still waiting to hear back from the "folks in charge."

While LeftCoast Mom has assured me she'll let me know when the Forest Service letter arrives in our mailbox, I still rummage through our paper-based mail at the end of each day vainly searching for some obscurely marked card that'll let me know I've got the Golden Ticket.

I've even begun to wonder if my lottery application even got there, but there's no way to find out since I didn't send it registered mail OR include a self-addressed-and-stamped postcard with my lottery form. Lesson learned for next time!

Going into this process, I thought they'd send out confirmation of results as the applications were processed. Upon closer reading, however it looks as if ALL lottery applications are processed before the confirmations are sent out. This means I'll be waiting for another month.

This is quite unfortunate, as I'm going to be giving a luncheon talk to coworkers next week trying to recruit a bunch to make it to the summit with me this year. It'd be much easier if I could answer their question of "so when's this going to happen?" with a firm date instead of a "well, if we're lucky, it'll be one of these seven dates in July or August."

In any case, they'll at least know it's time to start getting in shape!

Waiting on Mt Whitney Lottery results

At the beginning of February, I entered the lottery to climb Mt Whitney again this summer (see last year's successful climb pictures here and the video here).

Per instructions, I submitted an application via snail mail at the beginning of February. I'm hoping to lead a group of eight to do an overnight hike (just like last time) on one of the close-to-full-moon Thursday nights in July or August as my first choices, but will be happy just to get the permit for any of the nine nights I listed on the app.

Someone's crunched the data to show how many unused Whitney permits there were last year (see the spike at the end of September that coincided with the snow storm and explains why so few folks were on the trail with us September 29). Given the data, I think our odds are good in that I've asked for non-weekend days that aren't near any typical holidays.

And now I'm stuck in a holding pattern waiting for the permit lottery process to play out. My paper-based application is in a big tumbler with all the others and will be drawn out randomly to get my date assigned (and my check cashed).

So all I can do now is check the mailbox each day to see if I'm a winner. The suspense is killing me!

seeing my dots on the Dopplr map

If you haven't yet signed up on Dopplr, you simply must go there immediately after reading this post to register and start using it. The Dopplr gang have created a great service that allows you to share your travel plans with friends and associates and find out when you'll be in the same city as they are be it at one another's home base or half way around the world.

And, over on the DopplrBlog, they've got a cool post on the roundup of Dopplr user statistics in 2007. The Dopplr gang refer to it as the Dopplr Raumzeitgeist or "Space Time Spirit" (that's the right translation, Dani?).

You'll have to read the post to get at all the numbers, but I found the map (minimized above, click through to see the bigger version) to be the most intriguing part of the report.

Why? Because I can make out the dots I contributed last year by while being a Dopplr user: San Francisco, Boston, Stockholm, Amsterdam, New York, Santa Fe, Seattle, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur. They're all there.

travel security spectacle laid bare

Over the course of 2007, I traveled just shy of 90,000 miles on airplanes, including three jaunts overseas and multiple hops across the country and back. While my United Premier Executive status allowed me to sidestep a lot of the cattle-herding-and-molesting measures put in place by the TSA, I still witnessed a whole lot of "you've gotta be kidding me" measures taken on behalf of so-called traveler safety.

Whether it was the feeble grandmother in a wheel chair forced to stand and be wanded for metallic items or the blatant ignorance of TSA screeners looking away from the screen to talk to each other while several bags passed through unchecked or general unprovoked surliness on both sides of the screening process, I saw a lot of unpleasant and ridiculous stuff.

In retrospect, I dutifully acquiesced to the theatrics/process each time instead of raising a stink, so I really was part of the problem, wasn't I? Yet I always meditated on the "how exactly is this making us safer?" question to pass the time in line. (the answer was always: "It doesn't")

So imagine how pleased I was to see in yesterday's NYTimes Jet Lagged blog pilot Patrick Smith hitting the nail squarely on the head in condemning this theatrical display of security via his post titled The Airport Security Follies. Read the whole thing yourself, or skip to the punch line here:

How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little outrage. In that regard, maybe we’ve gotten exactly the system we deserve.

I'm with Cory at BoingBoing: if there's a revolution, tell me where to bring my pitchfork and torch. I'm there.

Twitter connections in KL

Itsthomas from Twitter
Originally uploaded by Choconancy1

Funny how small this world is.

Until today, I'd only known Nancy (Choconancy1 on Flickr) from Twitter, with a minimal sprinkling of Facebook and phone. Our work has us running in the same circles of people but until we met here in Kuala Lumpur.

Based on tweets, we knew we'd both be in KL at the same time attending the same conference, so bumping into each other was inevitable.

However, in a break between meetings, I tweeted I was about to go visit Central Market here in KL to prop up the local economy. Nancy caught the news and tweeted back to ask if she could join.

10 minutes later, we met in the lobby of my hotel and hopped a cab with my friend Sanjeev and were on our way. Nancy snapped this picture during the rain-soaked cab ride back to the hotel and uploaded our tale to her Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/).

And now we've got photographic proof how the world gets smaller every day.

good things come via Flickr and Creative Commons

Courtesy Flickr mail, I just received notice, yet again, that another of my Flickr photos has been used to illustrate an article.

Back in March of this year, I blogged about my decision to put all my Flickr photos under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and since then, half a dozen, or so, of my photos have been picked up for use by others with attribution back to me (per the license). I get no money, mind you (I'm not looking for $$), but it's a nice little ego kick to see that someone likes a picture I took enough to use it in something they're creating.

This time around, it's a travel guide for Amsterdam that's using a picture I snapped on my Treo of the train at Schiphol airport station. I had an overnight layover, and I was headed to the 'Dam for some Kwok when I snapped a picture of the bright yellow train as a reminder what I'd need to look for as I stumbled back to the station in the wee hours. (kidding!) I was really just so impressed at how yellow the train was... not High-Viz Yellow (like this blog) but a bright yellow nonetheless.

In any case, the picture could have sat in my Flickr stream for a handful of us to enjoy, but thanks to the CC license, more and more people will see the yellow train (and my photo credit) in the travel guide. They might just click through to see my other photos where they could find a photo they need for another project and place it there with the credit. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Or, seeing the photo credit, they might just google my name which will bring them here to the blog where they might find something worth quoting on their own blog with credit back to here. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

BTW, some of my favorite CC'd photo uses so far are this bamboo flooring article showing a bamboo grove pic I'd snapped at Hakone Gardens, and this picture of Mt Hood that's been used to illustrate a lesson on volcanoes in a lesson plan book for middle school students titled Google Earth and GPS Activities for Intermediate Science just published this fall.

Quite the virtuous circle that Creative Commons has facilitated. And to think CC is just about to celebrate its fifth birthday this month.

Who knows where another of my photos will end up next?

mt whitney climbing video

Still trouble-shooting the dramatic pause at the 58 second mark, but here's video I shot at 13,300 feet on the way up to the summit of Mt Whitney.

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 - a dream car

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 driver's side
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

Apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies:

If I had a million Euros... ("if I had a million Euros")
I could not even afford this car! ("no he certainly could NOT!")

Why? the sticker price for the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is 1.1M Euros. And even if I could afford to buy it, I'd only drive it once, to get it up to it's top speed of 407 km/h.

And then I'd put it away in a showroom like the one it's in now with all the great hardwood and lighting and barriers and pay someone to keep the lint off it for the rest of my life.

It's just that beautiful a machine. (Click the photo to see the eight other pictures I took of this car)

Oh, and there was a new Audi R8 in a showroom around the corner that didn't even merit a photo after I'd spent time in the Bugatti showroom. Tough act to follow.

just back from climbing Mt Whitney

Made it to the top at 14, 497 feet. Much colder and snowier than expected, so it took a lot longer than planned. Finally returned to the cars, triumphant, 20 hours after we left. Only half our party made it to the top, and only a handful of folks made it the entire day we were permitted to be there.

More detail to come, but I've just posted my photos over in my Flickr Mt Whitney set.

using Blackberry 8830 outside USA? think again

Something's been nagging me for the last couple days about my new Blackberry 8830 and whether or not I'll really be able to use it in Berlin (Germany) when I fly there this weekend. One of those too-good-to-be-true nags that's probably borne of all my past experiences with Verizon's products not quite working as billed.

So I gave the folks at Verizon tech support a call today just to make sure I'd be able to use my 8830 next week in Europe.

Boy am I glad I made the call today.

Turns out you need to acquire (read: purchase) the "Verizon Wireless Global Support Pack" which is a fancy way of saying: you need to get the Vodafone(TM) SIM card which does not come standard on the Verizon Wireless Blackberry 8830 World Edition.

Beg pardon, but what, exactly, makes it a World Edition phone if it doesn't come out of the box equipped to work around the World?

Maybe the same folks who decided to cripple the GPS also made the brilliant decision to ship the phone sans SIM card.

In any case, the tech support rep was happy to inform me all I needed do was stop by any local Verizon Wireless store and pick up the Global Support Pack for $39.99 and install the SIM card and call back to make sure the phone's ready to go before I leave the States.

So, to the store I went, and surprisingly I wasn't charged for the SIM card (thanks to my being a BlackBerry Global Email subscriber) aside from the 20 minutes it took to wait in queue and then wait some more for the sales guy to do all that hocus-pocus behind the scenes to lock my phone to the SIM card from VZW. (If the stakes weren't so high for my making and receiving calls next week, I might've waited to see if I could buy a SIM card over there so as to have a local phone instead.)

In any case, be forewarned: if you've purchased an 8830 thinking you can use it straight away overseas, be sure to call *611 from your phone stateside to see what all you're still missing before you leave.

Can't wait to blog from Potsdamer Platz, but I've got a mountain to climb in the meantime.

UPDATE: I called the Global Support Services team this morning to double-check all is well and ready for my trip, and I was instructed to update the roaming capabilities on my phone by calling *228 from my phone and choosing option 2 from the menu. Did so, and one minute later, I'm all set to go!

three days to the Mt Whitney Summit

Three nights from now, I'll be a couple miles into my ascent of Mt Whitney at this hour of the night (midnight) as part of a same-day assault on the summit. We'll be covering the full 21 miles of hiking (going from 8,360 feet up to 14,497 feet and back down again) in a single day as we have a day permit to be on the mountain Friday, September 28.

I've been training for this climb the last two months with a variety of exercises running, cycling, hiking and lifting weights (in the process I've shed 15 pounds from my frame, to boot). So, I feel I've done everything I can to get ready, now it's just doing it.

I'm leaving the Bay Area Wednesday with my climbing partner, Victor, to make it to Mammoth Lakes (elev 8,000 feet) to sleep at altitude before making our way down to Lone Pine to meet the rest of our party (six of us total) for dinner Thursday. We'll start hiking around 10pm Thursday night so we can summit by dawn and be back at the Whitney Portal by Friday mid-afternoon.

From there, we'll drop back down into Lone Pine to re-feul our bodies and then up to Bishop to sleep (at last!) before returning to the Bay Area Saturday.

In all, it's going to be a great trip. Per the weather forecast, we'll have mostly clear skies for the hike with temperatures ranging from the low 20s to the low 40s at the summit (about 10-15 degrees warmer down the mountain), and we'll have an almost-full moon to help save our headlamp batteries, as well. Couldn't ask for better conditions.

Now it's just up to my own conditioning. Wish me luck, and help me figure out what the next goal should be so I don't gain all 15 pounds back again!

Best Burger in the USA at Bobcat Bite? YES

I'm a huge fan of Alton Brown (his shows on the Food Network include Good Eats and Feasting on Asphalt), and when I caught a glimpse of a Food Network special on the Best Restaurants in America, I knew I had to see the whole thing to find out where in this fine country I could find the best fried chicken, the best pizza, the best ribs and the best burger.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that the food editors at Bon Apetit magazine had chosen as the best in all the land the green chile cheeseburger at Bobcat Bite outside Santa Fe. Why was I surprised? Because I was scheduled to fly out to Santa Fe the day after watching the special on TV.

What luck!

I did a sufficient amount of research (going to the web site) to get a pretty good idea:
- where the restaurant is (on the Old Las Vegas Hwy, 4.5 miles east of the Old Pecos Trail exit off I-25)
- when it's open (11am to 7:50pm Tuesday through Saturday)
- what to order: a green chile cheeseburger, home fries and iced tea

I pulled up outside the pink adobe building at 3pm on a Thursday. Late enough, I thought, to miss the lunch crowd and early enough to avoid the dinner scene.

The two outside tables (four-tops, each) were full of folks enjoying their meals, so I pulled open the screen door to go inside and took a seat at the long wooden bar that runs the length of the skinny dining area. Behind the bar is a big picture window through which you can watch humming birds flit about the feeder and thrushes and jays and juncos splash around in the bird bath. Between the door and the bar is a single row of tables giving the place a decidedly cramped-but-cozy feel to it. Lots of Old West memorabilia on the walls, and the murmur of good conversations taking place over even better food.

In short order, Bonnie, one of two waitresses working that afternoon, had placed a menu in front of me and told me she'd be back for my order in a moment as she walked down the length of the bar and through the doorway into the kitchen. From my vantage point, I could see the very cast iron griddle stove that had been featured on Alton's program.

While I already knew what I'd be ordering, I opened the menu out of curiosity to see that, on the left side of the page, their sandwich menu ran the gamut from a plain hamburger to my green chile cheeseburger to a simple ham and cheese (ranging in price from $5.60 to $6.85). On the right side, they listed out the various steaks they serve, ranging in price from $12 to $20.

I told Bonnie my order (burger medium rare, please) and she quickly brought my glass of unsweetened tea and I sipped it while looking around the room to see who else I was dining with. Of the 27 seats available inside, there were only four empty chairs to be had. The crowd on hand ranged from a couple tattoo-laden young guys at a two-top talking about cars to a cluster of white-haired friends swapping stories about who'd forgotten what more often. If I didn't know any better, I'd say well over half the customers were locals on top of being frequent guests.

Bonnie and the other waitress certainly made everyone feel at home as they brought out plate after plate of burgers and home fries and refilled glasses of lemonade and tea.

A scant 20 minutes after placing my order, Bonnie set the most beautiful looking green chile cheeseburger in front of me. It's served open faced so you can add lettuce and tomato as you wish before setting the top bun on the patty. The patty was a beautiful brown and thick 10 ounces of ground-that-day choice chuck. The monterey jack cheese was perfectly melted so as to capture the diced green chiles underneath it and not allow them to fall off. The home fries that were scattered around the burger were a perfect golden color... yum.

When I stacked the bun on top of the burger, it was thick enough that I had to consciously open my mouth as far as it would go (just shy of painfully wide), and when I bit in, the taste was heavenly. The texture of the beef was a hearty and moist crumb, the mild jack cheese helped to cool the surprising heat of the green chiles, but all of it worked to really make my mouth sparkle bite after bite. I closed my eyes in bliss. I had found the perfect burger.

Before I knew it, I'd eaten well over two-thirds of the burger, and only ten minutes had passed since the plate was set in front of me. I slowed my attack and enjoyed every chewing motion that unleashed more of the yummy burger taste into my mouth. I started alternating bites of burger with bites of home fries (perfectly cooked and salted just the right amount) trying to stretch things out even more. But, 15 minutes after I'd taken my first bite, the whole thing was gone.

While I wanted to order another burger then and there, I knew it was only a matter of minutes before my stomach would be puffed out to here. I resisted and instead walked up to the register to pay Bonnie for my meal: a grand total of $10.45 (plus tip).

Maybe they sell more steaks at night, but while I was in the place, I only heard anyone order the same thing I was getting: a green chile cheeseburger (supposedly the best in the land).

If you ever find yourself in the Land of Enchantment,

video of battle at kruger

Thanks to Robert, our tour guide at Safari West this week (review of the trip to come later), I was turned on to the amateur safari video below that shows a battle between lions, crocodiles and Cape buffalo. It's worth watching every second of the eight-minute-plus footage.



If not for Robert's educating us on the toughness of the Cape (don't-call-me-water) buffalo, I wouldn't have guessed the eventual winner.

Evidently, the buffalo don't get mad, they get even, and they bring the whole family.

UPDATE: I see that Time magazine has a review of the Battle at Kruger video posted online, too, and it goes a little deeper into the science/behavior stuff (of both the subjects and the video's viewers on YouTube)

airline lost our child's car seat

The kicker on our trip home from Seattle last night was the fact that two of our three pieces made it to SFO with us, just fine.

The missing (crucial) piece of luggage that didn't show up was the car seat for our youngest. I'd been keeping an eye on the odd-size luggage window which is where the car seats are usually delivered, but no luck there. So, after watching the both the odd-size window open and close and the luggage carousel spin for 45 minutes AFTER we'd taken our first two bags off, it was clear no more pieces were coming through. Finally, it was time to make the fateful trip to the baggage claim agents to inquire what was up.

I was able to narrow down which of the bar code claim tickets belonged to the car seat and handed it over to the agent asking for an update on the status of my kid's checked car seat.

"Oh, this didn't even scan," said the agent, looking back and forth between the ticket and her computer screen.

Translation: it didn't even make it INTO the system at SeaTac, so no way it was going to arrive at SFO that night. She apologized for the inconvenience while handing me a form and a pen.

While I was filling out the United Airlines Delayed Baggage Report form, the agent disappeared into a side office.

Then the amazing thing happened: she re-emerged with a brand new Even-Flo car seat for us to use until United was able to find our missing car seat and deliver it to us. We'd simply hand over the loaner when our own was delivered.

Call me a cynic, but I'd fully expected a shoulder shrug and apology, not a replacement seat. So, what could have been a really bad experience turned out to be a redemptive customer service exchange. Nice touch.

Oh, and her final tip for me: don't bother calling the 800-number on the back of the Delayed Baggage Report... call the United Premier Exec dedicated customer support line instead.

Traveling thru SeaTac (boo Hertz)

Couple random observations about traveling through SeaTac this past weekend:

• Always, ALWAYS check for car rental contract before driving away. I've got Hertz Gold, so I can go straight to my car. Did so this time and noticed the contract wasn't there. Spent 5 minutes in the Hertz VIP lounge with several other folks in the same boat. Time well spent, as when we drove out of the rental car garage (and into the rain) to the gate where you show license and contract, there were several cars pulled over to the side with flashers on. I overheard one of the gate agents comment "none of them got their contracts, call those Hertz [folks] and get them out here now!" The agent didn't say "folks" but you get the idea.
• When Hertz says "Green class" and offers you a Toyota Camry, it is NOT the Camry hybrid. I fell for the marketing (and paid $3 a day extra for the privilege), and the extra room in the car was worth it, but if you think you're going hybrid in Hertz's Green Class, save your money.
  
• Pulling into the Hertz car return 36 hours after leaving, the three folks working the return lanes simultaneously gestured for me to get into three separate lanes. I finally picked the one closest to where I wanted to go and stopped the car. The return agents then bickered at each other in a language I couldn't understand until finally one of them started checking out the car for damage. I'm not one for hand-holding at car-return, but a simple "Hi, how was the car, sorry we were confusing you," would go a long way.
  
• If you buy fish at Pike Place Market thinking you can carry it on the plane, be warned that TSA is under strict orders to confiscate your ice. Yes, you read that right. We spent an extra 1o minutes at security as the agent struggled to open our odorless cooler to extract two small ice blocks from within. Given there are no pointy objects available at the checkpoint (they must be discarded prior to screening), it was amusing to watch the guy struggle to get thru the packing tap. No, I wasn't about to volunteer my car key to help, for fear of getting the key confiscated as a potentially deadly weapon, too. The whole remove-the-ice trick was security theater at its finest, and I'm glad our flight was short enough that the prized package of Copper River Salmon filets didn't spoil. Isn't there some way the Pike Place fishmongers can work out something with the TSA folks to mitigate this problem? (oh, and to the TSA lady who suggested we check the box of fish: I'd rather we not just give it away to the baggage handlers... I'd rather keep it close to me for the duration of our trip.)
  

In all, I have to say I'm less than impressed by our trip through SeaTac. I am, however, really impressed with the Seattle area and won't let the airport experience stop me from coming back again.

the fast security lane at SFO

the family is flying to Seattle this morning, and since I saw how busy things were coming back into SFO from Boston last Saturday morning, I knew security would be a looooong wait.

We (me, the wife and two small girls) got to the security line a good 90 minutes before boarding. When we got to the TSA agent to present our IDs, she asked how many of us were together (four) and then she whisked us around the long lines and to a special lane with hardly any wait.

I thought we were going to be subjected to the new puffer technology (where you step inside an enclosed machine and it shoots puffs of air at you from head to toe), but no. What did all the people in this lane have in common? we all were traveling with small children.

Brilliant.

Take those obviously prone to gum up the security screening procedures and give them their special lane. Keeps the other lanes moving quickly, and enables the comraderie and patience of new parents to help each other out.

I even saw them letting the wheelchair bound thru the same lane as us.

A gold star to whomever thought this crowd control measure up.

Maybe I'll borrow a kid next time I need to fly.

how to reproduce 36k ft thinking at sea level?

Today is not the first time I've had some holy-smokes! strategic insight blind-side me mid-flight.

I'm just about to pass over my 50,000th mile flying in the last three months, and besides the toll of the cramped seating arrangement and the challenge of liquids (both to consume and to expend), the cocoon of air travel actually presents me a very fertile space for big-picture thinking.

I divided up this flight into three segments (all segments soundtracked with noise-canceling Shure e4c headphones and a random playlists on my iPod).

• In the first segment, I caught up on all the short articles I'd been printing out and stashing in my "flight folder" (Tom Friedman opinions, CIO mag leadership articles, conference prep materials)
• [break for food and drink]
• in the second segment, I dove into the book I'm plowing through right now (The Difference by Scott E. Page)
• [break for short nap]
• in the final segment, I read all my RSS feeds offline to get inspired by a whole plethora of different perspectives, and that's when the insights hit.

The ideas flow like water, and I madly dash the notes down in an email to myself. And here I sit wondering what is it about hurtling through space that enables this kind of thinking.

Much as I don't want to admit it, I think the catalyst is the one-two-three punch:

• my cocoon of iPod-laced sound
• the lack of distractions from others around me asking questions
  
• and, gulp, the complete lack of internet connectivity.
  

Without connectivity, there's no way for me to satisfy my curiosities by following the links in my RSS reader, so I gobble up the static ideas and perspectives quickly... and that leads the neurons to fire in ways they otherwise don't.

Next time I'm inclined to spend sleepless hours in the middle of the night surfing the web (yes, undisturbed, but no music playing), I'll instead try to reproduce the airplane experience: pop on the iPod, sign off the web and then see if I can get into an uncomfortable seating position.

Bonus points if I can endure the awkward tug of both a full bladder and a dry tongue for full replication of the high-level thinking environment that seems abundant at 36,000 feet.

my favorite Treo 650 map app

I'm still oozing with gushy feelings over having found the Google Mobile Map application yesterday (thanks to the folks blogging at WWD).

This lightweight little app (480KB download) brings all the power of web-based Google Maps to your handheld (mine's a Treo 650) with surprisingly quick speed and decent resolution:

• real-time traffic data
• detailed directions (written and illustrated)
• search results displayed on screen
• satellite images

I couldn't be more pleased to have this little app. What's more, it's not browser-bound, so I don't have to go through the slow launch process of pulling up the web every time I want to use the maps.

w00t!

The only other Treo app that I've found even close to this clever and useful is the Caltrain Schedule for Palm OS, but now that I'm a mile from work, no need to slavishly consult the "next train" info for me.

name change or revised history?

Courtesy a kottke.org link, I discovered this Air & Space article on the First Photo from Outer Space.

Turns out that shortly after WWII, scientists launched a V-2 missile into outer space from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The rocket had on board a 35mm motion picture camera, and it reached an altitude of 65 miles at its apex. The missile crashed to earth, and the camera broke (as you'd expect) but the film survived in its steel case.

Several of the film stills were stitched together to form a panorama that showed over a million square miles of the Southwestern United States. More specifically, of New Mexico, a state I grew up in.

And beyond the golly-gee-willikers nature of the shot, I'm amazed to see that the Jemez Mountains, the mountains I grew up at the foot of for ten years, are called out in the panorama as the "Valle Grande Mts."

Huh. I'd always known that the caldera that makes up the vast interior of the Jemez Mountains was the "Valle Grande" (and more specifically, "Baca Land" after the family that owned the vast expanse).

Granted, the photo was taken when the city of Los Alamos was freshly emerging from its secret-squirrel status as home of the Manhattan Project. But when did the name change? Or was the person in charge of labeling points of interest on the photo a little loosey-goosey with names?

Looking over at Wikipedia's entry on Jemez Mountains, I see that what I knew as "Valle Grande" is referred to by others as the "Valles Caldera." Wikipedia contribution, here I come!