Aug/061
Eastbound on I-90
I am writing this on an inn somewhere near I-90 between Buffalo and Albany, New York. After visiting Washington D.C. We went out to the atlantic coast and stayed a full day (two nights) on a campground near Ocean City in Maryland. We spent the day visiting a water amusement park and the beach itself. 
Leaving Ocean City and Maryland on Thursday we drove through tiny Delaware and settled on a campground rather close to Philidelphia in Pennsylvania. We had a full day there where we went canooing and visited downtown Philidelphia seeing the Liberty Bell and another bunch of assorted "old" stuff and new sky scrapers. That night we decided on a whim to head for Niagara Falls which we hoped we could reach and still make it to New York Monday to drop off our car at JFK. We left Philidelphia Saturday and visited Andy at Swarthmore where we had lunch and got a quick tour of the Swarthmore College Campus, we then headed for Niagara Falls.
Surprisingly we managed to get all the way to the falls on that same Saturday, passed the border into Canada (after almost running a stop sign at the border) at around nine in the evening and saw the illuminated Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian side. Now, being in Canada we tought we might as well see if we could make it all the way to Toronto which is about 160 km from the falls. We drove 60 kilometers of the way that evening and slept the night at a rather plain motel near Hamilton, Ontario. We woke up Sunday (yesterday) and drove the rest of the way to Toronto in the light Sunday morning traffic and saw the CN Tower (very high!)and the Skydome (very wide). Immediately after this we left Toronto and headed back to the falls which we saw again in daylight, we then waited almost three hours in traffic before we could cross the border back into the US upon which we set the course for New York City.
Today we are roughly 500 km from the City and we have to return the car by 8 in the evening, this should be no problem. We have booked a room at the Manhatten Broadway Hotel for the first two nights.
I would have liked to post some pictures, but the wireless connection here at the Inn is too slow for that. (EDIT: I am now back home and have uploaded the pictures)
Aug/065
Now “Live” From Washington D.C.
I am currently sitting in front of the toilet building here at our camping site in Washington D.C. We do not have power at our tent site so we decided to "steal" some power from the shaving outlet of the mens room :) Unfortunately, I do not feel like sitting in front of the mens room all night so my various portable equipment will still remain without power (this includes my cell).
Yesterday we drove through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, we walked three of the numerous trails we passed along the narrow "Sky Drive" passing through the park.
We arrived at our D.C. camping site yesterday and spent today touring the Smithsonian Aerospace Museum and walking past Capitol, the White House and the large obelisk, which probably also has a fancy name.
Aug/060
Ping Ping
Heya guys and gals, we suddenly found ourself on a free WiFi here at Kao Camping in Virginia USA, which is the third state we've visited today (the two others being Tennessee and North Carolina). We are still alive, although our tent and towels were completely flooded last night in a heavy thunderstorm in the smokies. Well, I'm off, I would like to preserve some battery on this thing. Have fun where ever you are :)
Aug/060
Born To Be Wild?
Mette and Rune arrived late last night and we went to get our car - a 3.3 V6 Huyndai Sonata with automatic gear and GPS, a mighty powerfull car :)
Anyways, pictures might follow if we find somewhere to go online, now we are going shopping in Durham.
Aug/062
The Dorm And The Department
By popular demand, here are some pictures from the department, my dorm room and my walk from the dorm to the cs building. Rune and Mette will arrive tonight, tomorrow I will take them on a tour on campus (if I can find my way round this place) and then we have some various shopping to do before we leave Durham wednesday.
I am pleased to see that my absence does not have a negative productivity influence on the rest of the people on Turing-0.
Aug/062
Hiking and Tubing
Saturday I went with a couple of the Duke computer science people to Hanging Rock State Park in North Carolina. We hiked the few miles from the parking lot to the rocks and took some nice pictures and enjoyed the view.
After the hike we went straigth to the tubing place about an hour away where we met up with more people and set out on the tuping "cruise". This was my first time tubing and I had never heard of the concept before, but it is actually a great and relaxing experience drifting slowly down a wide river with your butt in the water and a floating cooler by your side, I would definitely like to do this again some time.
More pictures here. You will notice that the waters of the Dan River are quite brown, the river was quite muddy due to a storm the night before our trip.
Jul/064
New Camera
I finally bought a camera, the Canon SD700 IS (AKA IXUS 800 IS). I am very satisfied with the camera, it has an excellent build quality and good image quality. The camera even worked out of the box with GPhoto and GTHUMB. Right now I am trying to decide if I should stick with F-Spot or switch to the WINE powered Google Picasa for GNU/Linux.
The picture was taken yesterday at Hanging Rock State Park and has been cropped and resized in The GIMP.
Jul/060
Disc Golf
I'm leaving the office for today to go play disc golf, should be fun (and varm). I guess I should have played some more freesbie before I left Denmark - I am sure I will lose big time :)
Jul/061
Eno River State Park
The day before yesterday Andy took me hiking at the Eno River. 
We saw a bunch of different animals, including a large snake, fireflies and numerous frogs and toads. In total we spent about two hours walking the narrow trails by the river.
Yesterday I was sitting at my temporary Duke office, and found, what I thought was a bit of dirt, on my right leg. It turned out to be a tick instead. It must have been sitting on my leg since the Eno trip the day before. I raced up to Andy and got a tweezer and some antiseptics, I succesfully removed the tick, and it is now alive and well, crawling on my desk inside a water bottle. I am keeping it for now in case I caught any disease from it. It looks very much like the one in the picture, which is an American Dog Tick (Dermacentor variabilis).
Jul/066
Hooligans
Today Lars got me a Duke CS t-shirt, I wonder if I dare wear at at Turing-0. In other news I am going to see some baseball this evening. The game is supposedly very boring, I know it will be jazzed up sometime in the next 994 years, but that will not do me any good now :). Yesterday I went to a pizza place called Randys Pizza, their pizzas looked huge so i ordered two slices and some fries. Apparantly, in America even the pizza slices are large, in spite being quite hungry, I only managed to eat one slice and the half of the other one, I left my fries mostly untouched. Another weird thing over here is that they have chloride in their tap water, now I have seen that many places - but here they actually use this kinda water slightly filtered for the coke machines with the result that I get an distinct after-taste of chloride with every sip, like drinking pool water. Or maybe it is just a combination of a placebo effect with my paronoia mixed with the fact they actually have a slightly different way of making coke here (they use a different kind of sugar or something).