A couple weeks ago, I entered a travel writing contest. I knew that the format was slightly flawed to begin with–the story with the highest user rating wins. While they did limit the number of votes per (computer? IP address?) to one, it was still a system asking to be abused, just as the IgoUgo Photo Feud Contest was abused in June.

I did enjoy reading many of the stories that were submitted, and voted according to how much I liked the story, regardless of the fact that my story was running against them. I didn’t even bug friends for votes. Unfortunately, some people were slightly more unscrupulous, and I found that, even after I and some of my family rated my story, my overall rating was still pretty low. It started out around 3/5 stars, and it slowly slumped, until it ended up at 1.44/5. Other stories boasted even lower ratings, mostly due to the fact that they were posted earlier than mine was. I started to ask more people, but this still didn’t offset the stream of “1″ votes I was getting.

I was starting to feel pretty rotten about my story. It was one that I wrote earlier in the year for Bootsnall that I got some nice comments on; the main reason I entered it in the contest as opposed to one of my favorites was a) it was less than 1,000 words, which was the contest limit, and b) I’m snowed under as the end of the semester swiftly approaches and didn’t have the time to revise/shorten/completely write anew a story. However, the announcement of the winner made me feel much better. Apparently, someone had found a way to constantly vote down all of the other stories, giving them all “1″s, all the while consistently voting their story a “5″. I don’t know who did it and I don’t care to find out, but the eventual winner, Rowena Love, is well-deserving of the $125 grand prize with her story Have Lie, Will Travel. So congratulations, and may the next contest be slightly less dramatic.

Well, even if I am not really updating in a timely manner, we did, in fact, make it to Austin. We had a blast following Google Maps’ directions and finding out that they led us in a huge loop around Austin, at least doubling the time to our original destination (Enchanted Rock)…so we ended up going to Inks Lake and hiking around for a couple miles in the absurdly warm “fall” weather. It was only about 85 degrees outside, which is the perfect temperature for early November, right?

Anyway, as I said, we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, and as Tiffany said, it was good that we didn’t have a GPS system, because that would have taken half of the fun out of it.  Instead of making a straight trip to Fredericksburg, we ended up driving on a windy road around Lake Travis, across which 6-foot-long snakes attempt to slither. The one we ran over really looked like a log until a couple feet before we hit it, and at that point, the choice was either drive over a small cliff or hit the snake. The person behind us also chose the sane option–hitting the snake, in case you were wondering–although I’m pretty sure that if James had been behind the wheel of either car, that might not have been the case.

The scenery at Inks Lake is beautiful, and get this–there are actually hills! Sure, this may seem like a trifle to some, but after living in Houston for so long, it’s a thrill every time I leave the city and get to see them again. We even saw one that Nancy and her friends had dubbed “The Nipple of the Earth” in high school. I’ll post pictures soon (although I’m still a bit backlogged and only part of the way through my Disney pictures, so “soon” might become “after school is finally over”) and then you’ll understand too.

Tiffany thoroughly enjoyed the rocks and pointed out all sorts of different formations along the way. Her major is much more interesting than mine. I can just see people listening as I gasped and exclaimed, “Oh wow! Look at that piece of C code! Isn’t it amazing?”

The day ended perfectly when we went to DQ (okay, the food’s not brilliant, but the Blizzards were great) and then drove home via Oatmeal, TX. Yes, that’s right, the home of the Labor Day Oatmeal Festival. You know you’ve always wanted to go there!

I’ll write more once I get around to a travel journal for this, which will hopefully be sometime over Christmas break. And as I said, hopefully there will be photos to illustrate by then!

Well, tomorrow it’s off to Austin for Tiffany and me. Do I have time to be heading off to Austin for the weekend? Possibly not, but I’m going anyway. We won’t be going camping like we originally planned (apparently, the second weekend in November is the time to go camping in Texas), but we’ll still be spending what is forecast to be a beautiful Saturday hiking in the Pedernales Falls or Enchanted Rock area (whichever one we decide on). Our original plan was to head for Lost Maples State Natural Area–where the leaves actually change color!–but since it is at least a 2 1/2 hour drive from Austin and we won’t have a campsite when we get there, we decided against it. Plus, it’s been a warm autumn so far, so the leaves aren’t changing quite like they normally do anyway.

It’ll definitely be nice to get out of the city and, more importantly, away from a computer screen. That hasn’t happened in a while, and I feel like this will be a good mental rest for the final push through the rest of the semester. So…I’m tugging on those boots and packing a bit of food in the backpack, and I’ll be back on Sunday!

When I went to IgoUgo yesterday, I was really excited to see that I’ve been nominated for the Road Less Traveled Journal Award in the 2007 Ugo! Awards (IgoUgo’s annual writing and photography awards). If you’ve read my Three Peaks Challenge: 36 Hours of Madness journal (which, as the name says, describes my Three Peaks Challenge trip, which involved climbing the three tallest peaks in Britain in 36 hours), and you enjoyed it, please check out all of the other fantastic writers, journals, and photographers that have been nominated and then vote!

Well, welcome to my new website. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my old domain–stomps.org–back because some company decided to buy it up after I stopped renewing my registration, so I’ve moved to this domain instead. The main reason I felt like I should get this domain (instead of using my old blog at BootsAll was really just consolidation. I needed one location where people could access my pictures, travel journals, and blog during my travels abroad next year.

There’s not a whole lot up and running on the site at the moment, since I’m pretty busy in my last semester of school. I’ve got a simple photo gallery that displays the shots I have uploaded to my Flickr page within this website (and with some pretty fancy effects, I might add). I’m still working on a layout for my travel journals, since I want them to be seen in the way that the limits of IgoUgo have never allowed me to. I will get these posted before I leave for New Zealand on January 20, but I will probably spend my free time until the end of the semester trying to get new journals written for the various places I’ve been this year. (Until then, check out my travel journals here.) I’m also going to post maps of various trips and whatever else I can think of to make this a more interesting site.

Now for the main point of this blog: travel. Those that know me know that I’m obsessed, so this blog will be my outlet for when they get sick of listening to me. As I’ve mentioned, I’m going to New Zealand in January for an extended backpacking trip (or at least, extended compared to my three weeks there in early 2005). I plan on being there at least until May, when I’m heading over to Australia for hopefully a much more extended period. While I’m there, I’ll post here about traveling and how life is going in general as an expat; until then, I’ll probably just ramble about preparations for NZ and other completely unrelated topics. Hopefully I’ll do better than I did in posting to my BootsnAll blog, which got updated once a month at most!