Traditional Korean Ghetto

I went to Korea back in May, and then never blogged about it. So now I'm blogging about it. Yay! 

Most of the trip was to help establish an exchange program between my alma mater and SolBridge International Business School in Daejeon.  We spent a lot of time on campus, stayed in the dorms with current students, and became good friends with some of the awesome people we met through the school.  One evening while walking from the school to Daejeon's Old Downtown, a friend asked if we had visited the ghetto.  Ghetto?  She took us around a corner we had all walked past a dozen times without blinking, and we were in the past.

Not a ghetto in the sense of dangerous-place-you-should-never-go-alone, this ghetto is one of the disappearing neighborhoods where you can still see old style Korean apartments, fonts that haven't been used in decades [those deemed uncool, I suppose], and a glimpse of Korea's past.  I noticed a pretty big lifestyle difference between urban and rural locations [similar to the US, really], but this older sort of neighborhood seemed to bridge the gap a bit.

I'm sure you'd rather look at photos than have me continue to ramble on...
You can view a few more on flickr:

Documentaries On North Korea

Hooray for YouTube! Here are two documentaries about North Korea that I recently found, both showing a different view of the country.

Seven Days In North Korea
First up is a 4-part documentary that really shows North Korea in the way that it hopes to be portrayed: a paradise.

There are some comments on YouTube saying that this film doesn't show the real North Korea, but I think it's an interesting view of how the country wants to be seen.  Whether that is reality or not doesn't really pertain to this film, as the journalist is simply being guided around tourist attractions.









North Korea: A Day In The Life
This 3ish-part documentary takes you through a day in the life of a factory worker and her daughter in North Korea.  Part 4 is a bonus montage of North Korean anti-US sentiments.

State High Point - New Jersey

New Jersey
High Point State Park
Just southeast of Port Jervis, NY lies the highest point in New Jersey: High Point.  The Appalachian Trail runs right near High Point (1803' above sea level), which is also the highest peak in the Kittatinny Mountains!  From the top you can see three states: New York, Pennsylvania, and of course New Jersey.
I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, so you can read about High Point on Wikipedia!


It was cold and windy up there, so we took a few photos and then took off for Port Jervis.  We went to Len & Jo's and had some delicious pizza.  So many cheeses!  Along the way we stopped for a photo of the "Oldest Church".


And what would Port Jervis be without some cool trains?


Highpointing Swag
If you're interested in buying some stuff to commemorate your high point visits, well, CafePress to the rescue: State Highpoint Swag!

Bike Theft in Denver

Bike theft is on the rise in Denver.  As of 2008, Kryptonite listed Denver as the #7 Worst US City for Bike Theft.  This blog post digs into the bike crime data made available by the City and County of Denver.

Bike Theft By Neighborhood
Using the reporting tool on the Denver Crime Offenses Website, I downloaded data for each neighborhood in the city/county, from 3/27/11 through 9/25/11.

I compiled all of the bike theft data into this map, showing the best and worst neighborhoods in Denver for bike theft.

Click the image to view full size

So for the first part of 2011, the 10 worst neighborhoods for bike theft are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
CBD	129
Union Station	89
Five Points	76
Capitol Hill	72
Highland	41
North Capitol Hill	38
Speer	38
Auraria	34
Lincoln Park	27
Civic Center	24

And the 11 best, all with 0 bikes stolen are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
Chaffee Park	0
Cory - Merrill	0
Country Club	0
Globeville	0
Harvey Park	0
Kennedy	0
Mar Lee	0
Marston	0
Montclair	0
Valverde	0
Wellshire	0

The top 10 makes sense to me.  They're all neighborhoods with a lot of traffic (pedestrian, vehicle, bicycle, etc), and places where there is generally a lot going on.

I expected the areas around the University of Denver to be a bit worse than they were, especially since I've heard numerous stories of vehicle break-ins on university property.

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
University	18
Platt Park	16
Rosedale	3
University Park	12

Also note, there was 1 bike stolen from DIA.  I still think it's crazy to ride your bike to the airport; it's not a bike-friendly area at all.  It's possible that it was stolen off of a luggage carousel, I suppose.

Bike Theft Map of Denver
I geocoded the data from the Denver Crime Offenses Website using BatchGeo.  The map below will give you a slightly better idea of where bike theft is most common, as far as specific streets and attractions that may be targeted.  For example, the 16th St Mall.

 Click HERE to view in a new tab

I Want To Ride My Bicycle
I won't let bike thieves stop me from doing what I want... Riding my bike!

Electric Utility Outage Maps - Hurricane Irene Edition

I love utility maps.  You have been warned. 

A few days after Hurricane Irene took a swing at the east coast I looked at the outage maps for some of the electric utilities there.  I had heard reports of widespread power outages from news channels back east, but I'd also heard from friends that Irene just wasn't as bad as they had expected (they were in PA, which you'll see in a moment wasn't hit as hard as other areas).  These following outage maps show the huge impact the storm had on electric utilities.  The screenshots were taken on August 30th; about 2 days after Irene hit MD, NJ, PA, NY, etc.

Here's Hurricane Irene's path:

Ok!  Let's start in the southern part of the Northeast...


Delmarva Power (DELaware MARyland VirginiA, for those unfamiliar) had just under 2500 customers without power, as of 2 days after the storm. 

Atlantic City Electric, which covers a large portion of southern New Jersey, had over 4000 customers without power.

PSE&G had 40,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Jersey Central Power & Light had over 60,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Specifically, Monmouth County alone had over 57,000 people without power.

Let's head inland to check out the situation in Pennsylvania.
Met-Ed and PPL both look pretty decent, at least compared to NJ.

Highlighting the hardest hit part of PPL's territory

ConEdison had 33,000+ customers without power.

Here is a roll-over breakdown of where the most affected customers live:

Long Island Power Authority was hit pretty hard as well.

Connecticut Light & Power... This map really shows how hard CT was hit by the storm.  There were a few areas that had 100% of customers without power. 

National Grid

Central Maine Power's website is a bit different. Rather than having an interactive, fairly real-time map of outages, they had a series of images showing outages from 8/28 through 8/30 (when I downloaded information).  I strung their images together in an animation so you can see the change over time, and when the most people were without power.  I apologize for the jumpiness of the image... their maps were all different, and for a quick blog entry I wasn't about to spend hours adjusting each image.  Sorry!

You may need to click through to see the animated image.

If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed the outage maps!  It was fun to see not only the heavily impacted areas, but also to check out the different types of outage maps electric utilities use on their websites.

License Plate County Codes!

I've had this post planned for a while, but this weekend I came across a new reason to finally finish the post. 

Nebraska License Plate County Codes
Aside from states like Tennessee, Georgia, and others that actually list the registrant's county on the license plate, Nebraska makes it almost as easy to figure out where someone is from, just by looking at their license plate.  In 1922 Nebraska instituted a 1- or 2-digit county code on license plates for passenger vehicles.  So if Nebraska 66-**** cuts you off on the highway, you know to look for him at home in Cherry County, NE.  Unfortunately for you, Cherry County is the largest county in the state, and is bigger than Connecticut.

There are a few counties that no longer use the county code system.  Not coincidentally, they are the state's three most populous counties: Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster.  Dakota county had discussed discontinuing use of the county code as well, but in the end they opted to keep county code 70 on their plates. 

If you'd like a list of all of the Nebraska county codes, Wikipedia has one here.   

Other States With County Codes
County codes are more common than I had originally thought!  Not all of them are as obvious as Nebraska's though... I first noticed this because 1 or 2 digits at the beginning of a license plate has to be a code for something, right?  Here's a breakdown of the county codes I've encountered while writing this blog:

• Some states use the same 1- or 2- digit code system that Nebraska does.  They are: Alabama, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. 
• Idaho has a cool system: the first letter of the county, with a number in front of it to differentiate it from other counties that begin with the same letter.  If the county is the only one that begins with that letter, the code is the letter by itself.  For example: 1A is Ada county 2A is Adams county and E is Elmore county. 
• Indiana's county coding system is complicated.  Not as bad as New York, but too much for me to get into in this brief blog!
• Kansas' county codes are "two letters based on the first letter of and another letter in the name of the county", according to Wikipedia.
• Mississippi has county codes that match up phonetically to the county name (in many cases, anyway).  But who cares?!  Their plates have the county name on the bottom!
• New Jersey only does county coding on "courtesy" plates, which are given to those with political connections.
• New York has the most complicated county coding system.  It started in 1973 with each county having a designated letter block.  Just look at this cross-reference on Wikipedia.  So much to remember!!
• Ohio has a different way of going about it.  They have county codes on a sticker in the lower left corner of the plate, with the county name in small text below the code number.

Carhenge
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that I had a new inspiration for finally finishing this post.  That inspiration is CARHENGE!  This past weekend I visited Carhenge, which is a replica of Stone Henge... made of cars. 

Carhenge itself is pretty cool, but inside the souvenir shop is a license plate collection.  There are plates from almost every US state, and Canadian province and territory.  Of course since Carhenge is in Nebraska, there is a huge collection of Nebraska license plates from over the years.  Awesome!

If you're nowhere near Nebraska but would still like to see samples of license plates, WorldLicensePlates is a great source [and not just for Nebraska!].

Alcohol From A Country That Doesn't Exist, Part II: Eureka!

A little over a month ago I wrote about my 1.5 year search for KVINT, the main export of the breakaway territory of Transnistria.  My search had seen many dead ends, including their east coast distributor in the US.  And now I sit here drinking it.  I FINALLY FOUND IT!

Shortly after that article, as one last ditch effort, I emailed their importer in Seattle, WA.  I had emailed them before, and even called a few times only to get no answer or call-back.  This time?  I got a reply!  They gave me the phone number of their distributor in Denver.  DENVER.  My city!  I called the guy, and he told me that Stockade Wines & Liquors at Parker & Yale had several types of KVINT, in addition to a lot of other hard-to-find-in-the-US Moldovan spirits. 

I was leery at first.  I had once driven a total of 3 hours (round trip) to a liquor store that told me they carried KVINT, only to find some non-KVINT on their shelves.  But when I arrived, I found this:

Stockade Wines & Liquors, I love you.

Holy awesome, Batman!  Three types of KVINT!  Which do I buy?!  I went with SURPRISE XO, as it is one of their fancier products.  Might as well go for the best*, right? 

I'm not a brandy/cognac connoisseur, and any review I give is coming from a scotch/whiskey perspective, but here goes.  It's good!  Much sweeter than whiskey, but still quite strong.  It has a nice flavor.  I'm pleasantly surprised, and VERY excited to be drinking something that was made in Transnistria - a country that doesn't really exist! 

Photo time!

It comes in a fancy cardboard box.

Surprise indeed!

This is the bottle inside.

Moldovan Cognac, Imported

That's right.  It's made in Transnistria, and Moldova gets all the credit.  I guess that's the deal when your country isn't globally recognized.

So there you have it.  My quest has come to a successful end! :)


*No, oldest + most expensive doesn't always mean the best.  But... it's a starting place.

Alcohol From A Country That Doesn't Exist

Transnistria!
Since first hearing about Transnistria a few years ago, I have been fascinated by it.  It's a breakaway territory in Moldova, along part of the border with Ukraine.  To over simplify it, in the early '90s Transnistria decided it was no longer part of Moldova, and Moldova disagreed.  (Transnistria had previously claimed to be part of the USSR, but then the USSR fell and Transnistria was stuck with Moldova.) The cease-fire in 1992 seems to pretty much let Transnistria think of itself as independent while not actually being such.  According to wikipedia, "It is organized as a presidential republic, with its own government, parliament, military, police, postal system, and currency. Its authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem, and a coat of arms."  Locally the country is called Приднестровская Молдавская Республика (Pridnestróvskaia Moldávskaia Respública aka PMR).

Transnistria!

Desolation Travel, easily one of my favorite blogs, has two articles on Transnistria.  They also have a far better look at the country, its history, its current state, etc.  Check them out here and here.

KVINT
Since the place is a bit of an abnormality, I decided that I need to try its most famous export: KVINT.  (A noble sentiment for sure.) KVINT is a wine and brandy distillery in Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria.  According to their website their name is an abbreviation of "Коньяки, вина и напитки Тирасполя", the Russian phrase for "Brandies, Wines and Beverages of Tiraspol".  You can tour the factory in Tiraspol... but I'm in the United States with no current plans to travel to Transnistria.  So begins my quest for KVINT!

Where exactly does one find brandy from Transnistria in the US?  There are two phone numbers of US distributors on their website, but no one seems to answer them... ever.  I sent an email to the one on the east coast, which happened to be about an hour from my house at the time, and a few days later they did get back to me asking what I'm looking for and in what quantities.  But just prior to receiving that email, I found information on a wine store in New Jersey that listed KVINT on its website... Sounds promising!

I called the store to verify that they did indeed have a KVINT product in stock, they said yes, I hopped in my car, drove an hour-ish to the store, asked the store employee where I could find KVINT (since he previously told me they had it), and we were off to the Cognac aisle!  Mr. Liquor-Store-Employee pulled a dusty bottle from the back of the bottom shelf and handed it to me.  KVINT?  No.  No?  No.  It didn't have the name KVINT, the company logo, or any other related information on the bottle.  Failure.  I left thoroughly disappointed.

Still Searching...
So now I'm back to emailing the two contacts listed on the website, hoping for a reply.  And if that doesn't work, there are some shady websites claiming to have it available!

Anyone have any other ideas?  Or perhaps know of a place I can buy this brand?

If nothing else, the lack of organization and ease of doing business with this company is giving me a lesson in Eastern European patience.  If it's this hard to track down Transnistria's main export, I imagine other common scenarios are equally difficult to accomplish there!

North America's Highest Paved Road

The highest paved road in North America is right here in Colorado!  With a final elevation of 14,130', the Mt. Evans Scenic Byway winds its way to the top of Mt. Evans.  Starting just outside of Idaho Springs, the route is 28 miles long, and gains over 7000'.





View Mt. Evans Scenic Byway in a larger map

Lakes
Along the way you'll pass two lakes, Echo Lake and Summit Lake. 

• Echo Lake is before the toll station, so you'll find lots of people here.  There are picnic tables, grills, campgrounds, etc.  Echo Lake is at 10,600'.
• Summit Lake is after the toll station, and is right off of the byway.  There is a parking lot and restrooms.  Summit Lake is at 12,830'.

Wildlife 
According to Wikipedia, there is a lot of cool wildlife to see on Mt. Evans, including:

• Mountain Lions
• Black Bears
• Bighorn Sheep
• Mountain Goats
• Yellow-Bellied Marmots
• Pikas
• Elk
• Mule Deer
• White-Tailed Ptarmigans, and a few other birds

I only saw some big horn sheep ewes on my trip in June, so I'll need to visit again. :)




At The Top
Once you finally reach the top, you'll see some people hiking around.  It was in the upper-30s when I was there in June, and was so windy that we opted to get back in the car pretty quickly, rather than walk around.  It is typically very windy up there, and rarely goes above 40°F in the summer (I asked a ranger!).  A good rule of thumb seems to be 40° below the current temperature in Idaho Springs. 

There is a nice overlook area, complete with viewfinders and restrooms.  The view is amazing, and you can see Denver in the distance.



The University of Denver has an observatory at the top, and you can view some regional weather information on their website (here). The observatory is accessible by DU students taking certain astronomy or physics courses, but is not open to the public.

A Few Notes
Aside from bringing a coat so you can explore without being too cold, here are some tips:

• Safety:  There are no guard rails on most of the byway.  It's a winding road, with lots of big drop offs.  The road is wide enough for two cars to drive past each other, but barely.
  
• Engine Braking: On the way down you'll want to do some engine braking, so your brakes don't overheat.  There are a few places to pull over if your car needs a rest.
• Cost: The byway costs $9 per car, and is good for 3 consecutive days.
• Altitude Sickness:  Watch out for altitude sickness!  Even living at over 5000', I still felt a bit dizzy up there!
• Weather:  As I said before, it's windy and cold.  It frequently snows in the summer, and temperatures drop about 5°F for every 1000' of elevation you gain. 

Further Information

• MountEvans.com has some useful information, including road closing info
• Mt. Evans on the America's Byways site
• My photo album on Flickr