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Its good to be in a hotel with standards, rather nice ones in fact, and the addition of my luggage with clean clothes makes a shower more meaningful. Complimentary juice while we checked in, and welcome drinks at the bar after we unloaded our stuff and cleaned up.

Tomorrow makes 3 days in a row of flying, we're all getting tired of airports. We get up at 4am tomorrow to catch the flight to the islands themselves where we get on the boat for the 7 night cruise, finally several days in the same place again, or at least the same bed, even if the bed is moving around at night.

Dinner at the hotel was decent, first full meal we've had since hamburgers in first class heading out of logan...I'm not counting the chicken/rice thing that was called dinner on the attempted flight to Quito.

Played $2 worth of slot machines at the hotel casino with Ryan's money, walked out handing him $1.70, not bad for a bit of play but I don't see the appeal of spending entire days at the slots.

(edit: GPS coordinates above are now clickable google maps links)

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Finally made it to Quito, spending a short night at the Hilton and catching a 7am flight to the Galapagos islands to meet our ship which leaves tomorrow once we're all aboard. I'm not going to miss any of the aspects of our provisional lodging from last night...the mothball smell, the sheets that weren't fresh, the shower nozzle that was pretty much just an open pipe (though the water was warm and clear which was a plus)

Not much time to take pictures so far but I put a panorama together of the view from our window. Most photos will be uploaded to flickr first.

View from the Quito Hilton

Approximate Location

The annual family adventure takes us to Ecuador this year to tour the Galapagos. The flights have so far been a great example of travel fail.

Our first flight out of logan was cancelled "due to ground conditions" when plenty of other flights were constantly leaving throughout this time. This is another great example of American Airlines using the weather as an excuse to cancel a partially empty flight and cram everyone on the next one to make a full plane. This pushed us back to a later Quito flight which was also delayed because they had to wait for the flight attendants who arrived late to get through customs. By the time we managed to get out and fly down to Ecuador, Quito was fogged in and we were diverted to Guayaquil, put up in an excessively crappy hotel and are now back at the airport waiting to get back on our plane to get us to Quito. A hotel stay without a change of clothes sucks.

I decided to invest in my first hybrid vehicle, well electric vehicle that can be pedaled. I don't drive enough to even remotely justify investing in a hybrid car, but after my housemate got an electric bike kit and I got to try it out, I decided to get one myself. I can easily say its the most fun I've had on two wheels. Currently its powered by a 12AH 36V lead/gel cell battery pack which weighs about 35 pounds. I haven't been able to calculate range very well yet since I haven't done a trip that has exhausted the batteries, but I did the 7 mile commute plus another 2 miles of errands in town and I still had a green power light on my battery meter. Justin has gotten just under 14 miles I think on his and he has about 100lbs on me so I should be able to get more than 14 miles on a charge depending on hills and how hard I push the throttle. Of course if I actually bothered to pedal I could get more range.

I did my first commute on the bike yesterday, unfortunately Boston is a bit ambitious given the condition of the bike paths and the dangers of riding in traffic, however I may try it one of these days, however our Data center is a short 7 mile ride on mostly light traffic, nice neighborhood roads, much more fun than driving on the highway and only about 30-40 minutes instead of 15 minutes by car.

So far cars have been surprisingly courteous, and I think they've been caught off guard when I'm able to keep pace coming out of a red light without pedaling.



Currently the battery pack is removed for these pictures since I didn't want to carry it down to the basement with my camera, its a standard looking bike rack bag though with fold down pannier packs for cargo.

Plants took a pounding today, a hailstorm whipped through with up to pea sized hail...I think things will be okay but there was ripped foliage everywhere.

Hailstorm video