• Two-hour drive to San Francisco, goal of our trek. Marriott’s giant bed, 6 pillows, 6 elevators beat any Super8.
  
  
• Haul our gear, a handtruck-load (4 days’ worth plus 2 cartons of puzzles), to 8th floor room. Nearby Kinko’s copies new Q-Bix books.
  
  
• Q-Bix? Kadon’s new puzzle by Christian Freeling. World premiere! Kate did book on laptop while Dick drove cross-country.
  
  
• Evening — Founder's Reception opens 2009 International Puzzle Party; 4 busloads to Computer History Museum, sumptuous buffet, great chats.

  
  Dick and Kate at IPP banquet; in background left, Bill Cutler.
  
  

• On display — an authentic Babbage machine, earliest mechanical calculating device, will solve 5th-order polynomials. Resembles pipe organ:

  
  
  

• ... Or old train car with brass fittings. Babbage never built it (funds ran out). This model, per his plans, privately funded, works. [Thanks, Nathan!]
  
  
• The IPP is for collectors by invitation only. Great to meet old and new friends, see and play with hundreds of puzzles. A moveable feast!

• Fantastic crop of 100 original puzzles presented by inventors and collectors, a time-honored ritual to meet and explain in person.

  
  Pantazis Houlis, puzzle designer/maker, with Kate
  
  

• Kate presents Lombard Loops in honor of SF's famous Lombard Street, the world's crookedest road. Dizzy curves.

  
  Dave Rossetti visits Kate's table for puzzle exchange.
  
  

• Related concept — ChooChooLoops, a bigger version for the world at large—a colorful original polyform set to drive you around the bend.
  
  
• Afternoon talks — Donald Knuth on "wearable puzzles". Cool. Kate makes puzzle necklaces from pentominoes and polyhexes that build shapes.
  
  
• Evening — Haul display screens up freight elevator, through bowels of hotel into ballroom. Set-up looks great, as playable art should.

The Kadon gamepuzzles display...colorful variety.
 

August 8, 2009

• Only six hours for attendees to visit over 100 exhibitors and puzzle creators and buy like crazy — frabjous joy!
  
  
• Collectors came from Czechoslovakia and Mongolia, from Canada and Florida, Azerbaijan, India, Japan, Netherlands and all points between.
  
  
• 3 pm — Panel on "Puzzles in Education" led by Stan Isaacs. Bill Ritchie, Scott Kim, Tanya Thompson, Andy Liu and Kate Jones share views.
  
  
• Bill Ritchie of ThinkFun, Inc., reported on their last 6 years of programs to get puzzles into schools, and the obstacles to acceptance.
  
  
• Hear many diverse views, though all agree:  puzzles are great tools and make learning fun. Go straight to kids and parents if schools resist.

• Walk across Golden Gate Bridge, bus to Sonoma museum for special exhibit, "Puzzles as Art." Thanks, George Miller and Nancy Mintz.

Kate and friend Kimberly, with bridge rising from the morning mist.

Unique vantage point to see the towers line up.

• Golden Gate Bridge, historically a favorite jumping-off point, has help phones and signs: “Jumping is fatal and tragic. Make the call.”

  
  Emergency phone on Golden Gate Bridge may save lives.
  
  

• Golden Gate cables — 80,000 miles of wire, over 27,000 in each cable, dia. 39". Planning seismographic improvements. Do they know something?
  
  
• What color is the Golden Gate Bridge? "International orange." Even workers’ portajohn matches. Built 1933-37. Joseph Strauss, chief engr.
  
  
• Walk around charming Sonoma, eat Mexican lunch at Depot Park, with live music. It’s, uh, warm out here.
  
  
• Shuttle up to George Miller's fabulous hilltop home and exquisitely displayed puzzle collection and wonderful wood carvings of animals.
  
  
• George owns a huge tiger, once a Rosebowl Parade float, made of seeds and organic material. It fills half of a large room. Wow!

  
  Kate and tiger engaged in dental comparison. Tiger wins.
  
  

• Seen from bus to Sonoma:  Military graves, thousands of white stones in precise rows, still saluting and marching after giving their all.

• Leave SF. Marriott charges 13.95 a day for Internet. We opt for last day only, catch up with 754 emails. Head towards NV and east.
  
  
• Intention is to get to I-70 in Denver, follow it all the way home to Baltimore, our dear familiar friend. No more side trips.

• 2 miles west of Wells, NV, Kate at wheel wonders why car shakes at 82mph, tries higher speeds to see where it smoothes out.
  
  
• 89mph is most comfortable. Let’s use that. Oops. Highway patrol arrives, lights ablaze, clocked us at 84. Kate explains truthfully:
  
  
• "Wheels may have gone out of alignment on rough roads in Monument Valley, and we were testing different speeds to check their balance."
  
  
• Nice officer lets us off with verbal warning and a smile; probably never heard that excuse before. Good thing our seatbelts were fastened.
  
  
• Wells, NV, is not so well: get last room in town, Internet works in parking lot only! Last chance for casino action. We choose dinner only.
  
  
• Head east on I-80 across Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, into Colorado. On semi-arid plateau, round shrubs cling tenaciously to sand.
  
  
• Long stretches of white salt flats in Utah, ringed by distant mountains. Kate‘s wet fingertip touches sand, tastes salty. Stuff grows in it!

Kate wants to taste the salt, finds silver spoon in it. What were the chances of that?

• Round furry dunes, like suede from a distance, are covered with shrubs. Later, landscape turns a little greener, rocks a little higher.
  
  
• Donner Summit, 7227 ft. Summer crossing on super highways versus winter with oxcarts. Desperation can make monsters of us all.

  
  Narrow pass through the mountain range, a history of horrors.
  
  

• Cheyenne, WY, switch to I-25 South, towards Denver and I-70. Rings of hills dog our horizon. Tower at CO mile 371 claims: “See 6 states!”

Signs of the times from all over:

I-70 in Missouri lined with billboards, dozens blank, in poor repair, or pitching — AD HERE, or "This Spot is for You."

Unused billboards are eloquent signs of economic downturn.

More billboard pleadings — "Rent this Space" or "This Sign Available" or "You can advertise here, cheep, cheep” (pictures of chicks).

Sign in Indiana — "Recession-proof your business—rent this billboard." Meaning: “Recession-proof OUR business...”

Observations, in no particular order:  Nevada, Wyoming — open spaces, lots of prisons ("Correctional Centers") — don't pick up hitchhikers.

Signs everywhere — “Don’t drink and drive.” “Grab drunk drivers.” "Report DUI." So why do gas stations have walls and walls of beer?

Mirages — On road ahead, vehicles drive into seeming river that keeps receding. How many are led astray by such chimera?

Snapshot — Swiftly moving silver streak in grass follows us: sun glinting on hidden train tracks at just the right angle. Sorry, no photo.

Tunnel vision — Truck carrying 4 metal culverts that from rear look like huge tangent circles; see through them like tunnels. Too fast to film.

Trios — Three flatbeds in pancake stack. Three truck cabs, front wheels shouldered in conga line. Triple trailers, trains on rubber.

Windshield wipeout—hundreds of tiny winged roadkills blur the glass. Scrub at every fill-up, here they come again.

Strange but true — Crossed Missouri River 3 times, West Virginia twice on way home.

• Westminster, CO: — Best Super8 of all. Arrived late, lost an hour. Payback time for hours gained going West.
  
  
• I-70 East to Kansas. Kansas Welcome Center gets top marks, Stecklein & Brungardt, architects, Hays, KS. They thought of everything. Inlaid at entrance:

  
  Kansas wins for having the best rest area of all. This emblem is at the entrance.
  
  

• Round building, every detail clean, elegant, easy to see and use. Doors in women's room open out! Such small details make the joys of life.
  
  
• Corn in Kansas as far as the eye can see. Kansas in August! A few oil wells like big birds peck at the ground. Kansas reclaims another hour.
  
  
• Windmills in WY, UT — dozens of huge silver sunflowers in rows on ridge following the wind. Elegant energy makers.

Windmills parallel the interstate as far as the eye can see.

• Hundreds more in Kansas at mileage markers 220-225 along I-70. In Indiana, see blades riding on 3 flatbed trucks — huge, 60 ft. long?

• Kansas boasts Oz Winery, Oz Museum, Oz everything. The film that made a whole state famous.
  
  
• Kansas is long — 423 miles across. Gently rolling green velvet hills give way to flat earth. Flat, flat to the farthest flat horizon.
  
  
• Kansas loves its religion. Series of religious and anti-abortion signs and billboards festoon the interstate.
  
  
• Strategic Kansas sign placement — "Jesus saves and restores, Pornography destroys" — just before adult book store. Two sides of speech freedom.
  
  
• Elsewhere, "No God, No Peace, Know God, Know Peace." (You think? Then why do perpetual wars in the name of God wipe out millions?)
  
  
• Make it to Independence, MO, by night, watch The Bourne Ultimatum, finally see how it ends. If only reality worked that well...

• Get as far as Richmond, IN. Worst Super8 to date. One small bed, and when one partner moves, the other could get seasick.

• Leave Richmond, Indiana, cross into Ohio. We’ll make it home by 9 pm tonight! Ohio is slow going—low speed limits, high vigilance.
  
  
• Arrive Pasadena as sun sets. Home at last—8000 miles coast-coast in Astro van, www.gamepuzzles.com signs on sides.
  
  
• There’s no place like home, no comfort like my own toilet seat and — look! Internet coverage! Yippee!

Start over?