I was questioned by the NSA today and stalked the King of the Jungle

OK, so I wasn't really questioned, but an NSA cop did make me run through the pictures on my digital camera for him.

My sister Emily, her boyfriend Jon, Mark and I went to the NSA's National Cryptologic Museum today near Laurel, Md.

Afterwards we stopped at National Vigilance Park -- a bit of greenspace off the highway where they parked three big planes. Apparently, all the buildings behind the park are NSA and picture taking is a no-no. We're farting around at the park and an NSA cop rolls up in an SUV cruiser and rolls down the passenger side window.

"How're you doin?"

"Fine. That a digital camera?"

"Yeah."

"Come over to this side of the car please."

I walk over.

"Let me see your pictures."

"Ok..."

I start scrolling through and he sees one he'd like a closer peek at, touches my camera and turns off the preview function.

"What happened?"

"You pressed a button. Hang on."

"OK."

He looks at all the pictures. Nothing scandalous, except maybe this picture of me nearly getting sucked into the jet intake of a EA-3B Navy Recon jet.

(Click pic for photo album)

"Anybody else got a camera?"

"Yeah," Mark says.

"Let me see it."

He scrolls through the pictures, same as before.

"Can I take your picture?" I query.

"No."

"What?"

"No."

"Oh, OK."

"Anybody else have a camera?"

"I have one in the car," Emily says.

"That's OK," he says as he finishes flipping through Mark's pictures.

"How long are you all going to be here?"

No one answers. Cop mumbles something about taking pictures of the buildings behind us.

"Can I take pictures that way?" I ask, gesturing at the buildings.

"No."

"Oh."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the Crypto Museum.

We arrived shortly after 10 a.m. and wandered around for a few minutes before a dude announced he'd give us and the other ramblers a tour of the joint.

It was a pretty good tour, I guess. He covered the bits about the Enigma machine purdy well, but closer to present day started weaving in tales about being vigilant of terrorists and and started explaining history by anecdote and it was a little hard to follow. We wandered off after a while and poked our heads back in every now and again.

Enigma!

Just a couple jolly gentlemen.

Emily shows us how to use some big-ass crypto machine.


Maps are cool.

Mark starts playing war games.

Then we headed over to the National Vigilance Park, next to the NSA. Let me ask you a question: Why the hell would you park a park next the NSA? Do the NSA cops harass every tourist who stops to look at the planes, or did we just look scary?

Maybe it was our four matching pea coats.

Done with the NSA, we hop back in the highway and drive to Baltimore. It's aquarium time!

We get our tickets all sorted out and grab a quick bite to eat before the 4D immersion movie begins.

It was basically a 15-minute edited-down version of a Planet Earth episode with David Attenborough which employed 3-D glasses, squirts of water, vibrating seats, burst of air and bubbles (like the kind you blew with a little wand when you were a kid). It was cool, but definitely aimed at the wee ones.

The aquarium was really cool. We saw lots of neato aminals. Like these guys:

We like swimming, but we also like sitting down to rest our weary flippers.

And this guy:

Look at me! I'm a Waxy Monkey Frog!

And this guy!

Gimmie a kiss! I'm an electric EEEEEEEEL!

Don't forget these fellas!

Pssh! We scoff at you! We poison dart frogs are too cool to face you. Neener neener.

You'd better put down that spear gun, mister, or we'll tell!

The rest of the animals can be found in the photo album.

We were quite thirsty after the rainforest and Australian desert exhibits, so we wandered down to the airport-like strip mall off the water and grabbed a bite to eat and a drink. Which is when we found the King of the Jungle, aka XXX, aka Vin Diesel, aka bad-dresser man, wandering around aimlessly from floor to floor.

Finally a janitor asked him something and he bought some chicken.

"Dude, have you seen my bro?"

Let's get another look at your lovely coat.

"Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period so I don't wanna kill you, I wanna help you. But I can't give you this case, it don't belong to me. Besides, I've already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass."

And with that the great adventure was over. Stay tuned for more episodes of Tan Doug Tours St. Croix!

Tan Doug Tours St. Croix - Episode 1

As some of you may know, Doug played ultimate tour guide to Carrie and I for a week in St. Croix, from the 6th of January to the 14th. It was unbelievable. So unbelievable and cram-packed with adventure, in fact, that I'm going to break the shenanigans up by day, or however I feel like breaking it up when I actually sit down to type.

Mike was good enough to take us to the airport at the ass-crack of dawn on the 6th. I don't know about Carrie, but I was pretty well exhausted, given when we went to bed would have given us about 5 hours of sleep. But the airline called us with an automated message at about 3 a.m. to let us know our connecting flight had been delayed 80 minutes. No biggie, right? Well, that would put us just about too late to catch the last ferry from St. Thomas, where we were landing, to St. Croix, our ultimate destination.

Well while I was enjoying my after-flight piss, Carrie got on the phone to the ferry people, and they said yes, it is leaving in 5 minutes, so you'd better hurry.

We're a ways a way from the marina and I'm sure we're not going to make it, but into the taxi van we go. Whole lot of hurry up and wait, that was. Then taxi man takes off like a whirling dervish and through the streets of St. Thomas we zoom.

And, can you believe it? They actually held the ferry for us. For at least 20 minutes.

It would be a decision they would soon regret.

Everything was fine and dandy on the outer ferry platform until the choppy water starts spitting on us and we get a bit worried about Carrie's laptop. She's not feeling too hot by this point either -- not having taken any Dramamine or anything. Carrie tries to go inside and long story short, pukey puke on the decky deck.

It's a two-hour ferry ride.

Doug met us at the ferry station. The plan was to listen to some live music and drink moonshine in the rainforest, but that plan was scratched as per Carrie's vomitus disposition. (We'd make it to the rainforest our last full day on the island.)

So we headed back to Doug's pimp condo on the coast and mixed up some drinks (equal parts Cruzan mango rum, pineapple rum, orange rum and orange juice) and shot the shit on Doug's porch (which is seriously as big as my last apartment).

Our plan for the following day would be to take a tour of a National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope on the eastern end of the island.

Doug had an appointment set up for the tour at 11 a.m., in theory. We arrived early and joined a couple waiting for the same tour. They'd been pressing the talk buttons outside the gate for some time and had received no response. We broke out the beers at about 11:20 and decided to camp out -- it was to be a battle of wills. How long could they stay holed up beyond the barbed wire? We were willing to find out.

If memory serves, and it may not, we hung out there until a little bit after noon. We'd return later to harass the telescope. We then traveled to the eastern-most point in the United States, Point Udall. It was neato -- probably our first glorious view of the coastline.

You can see Buck Island, a National Park, in the background.

Apparently, there is techincally another eastern-most point of the U.S. in Alaska, across the international dateline.

The Millennium Monument.

After we'd had our fill of Point Udall, it was back to stalk the telescope.

Part of the descent from Point Udall back to the telescope. Sorry it's bumpy.

Back at the radio observatory we thought it would be a grand idea to off-road in the back way, with predictable results.

After that we rolled down the mountain to take a gander at the private yacht club.

Hello birdies!

Our stakeout at the observatory had worked up quite a hunger, so we headed over to Dugggan's for lunch. Back in cell service, Doug called the tour guide and asked "What the hell?" Apparently some errands had taken longer than dude had planned, and he invited us back over for a tour after lunch. Hurrah!

He met us at the gate and took us in the little building. Nearly the first words out of his mouth were used to assure us that neither the FBI or CIA use the telescope to listen to our conversations. Took the question right out of my mouth, since another NRAO scope is located at Green Bank, W.Va., a facility adjacent to the NSA listening station in Sugar Grove. Apparently the facility in St. Croix doesn't have the capabilities for transmission, and its data FedEx'd every few days back to the Very Long Baseline Array headquarters in Socorro, NM.

This telescope is 1 of 10 scattered around the United States that together all function as one giant telescope call the Very Long Baseline Array. It simulates a telescope with a dish 5300 miles across. Holy cow. Check out the PDF brochure and the Web site.

Time for hard hats!

Up we go, all the way to the inside of the dish!

Holy crap this was awesome.

After the tour we headed to the beach. Fortunately, the Open Beach Act of 1994 says resorts can't claim private rights over beaches, so anyone is able to go to any beach on the island. Unfortunately, this is where the food poisoning hit. I won't go into details, but I didn't stop throwing up until about 1 or 2 a.m. (Damn you conch chowder!!)

On the way back to Doug's we stopped at an old sugar plantation overlooking the coast.

UPDATE: Apparently this is not true. I was so addled that I didn't realize this was actually the following day.

The property is for sale and offers a nice view of the coast.

The North Shore, just after sunset.

Stay tuned folks, for more craaazy adventures.

Return from the Islands

The beach by Doug's apartment on St. Croix. This is where I did a little bit of fishing.

Carrie and I have returned from a week in St. Croix with Doug. I'm not going to write a big post today, but suffice it to say it was frickin' glorious. Doug is one hell of a tour guide. Stories and more pictures coming soon!

Bit of news: I will be living and working in Milwaukee this summer, from early June to early September. Boo yah! I have seminars and stuff here in DC next week, and my job starts two weeks from yesterday. I'll be done end of April, at which time I'll roll back to CoMo to defend my master's project. Hurrah!