Fish and Ships, Part 2

Last time, which was this morning, I told the intrepid fans of this blog about my adventures at the Baltimore Aquarium. Only problem was that I never got around to talking about being at the aquarium. Instead, it was a rationalization of why I never drove anywhere, and therefore don't know where anything is in Maryland.

This time, I'll talk about the trip. Eight of us were going to go the Aquarium. People have told me for a while that Baltimore's Aquarium was one of the best in the nation, and yet, in all the years I've been at Maryland, I've never gone. Six of eight were grad students. One was Dave's high school buddy who's now a programmer, and the last was me.

We parked at some garage, and headed to the aquarium. The whole area seems oddly decorate, almost a combination of turn of the century buildings made modern by Disney or some amusement park. Bright neon signs abound. Brick buildings that go up a hundred feet or so. Yet, these were modern shops like Barnes and Noble or the ESPN Sportzone.

The Aquarium is split into two sections. One part, which is the smaller, is the dolphin section. Apparently, they have regular shows, but ever since one of the dolphins gave birth, the shows have been put on hold. We went through that section rather quickly before heading into the main section.

Now, I was running low on memory on my SD card, and had yet to move the photos to my computer, so I went earlier that day to buy a cheap 128 M card, which would provide me about 100 photos. As I put that in, I put my other card into a small pocket of my small camera bag. I was mildly concerned the small pocket, which did not have a cover nor a zipper would not hold the chip. On the other hand, I didn't expect to flip the camera pack over, so I thought it was reasonably secure.

I was split between being paranoid, and yet not being paranoid enough. Every once in a while, I'd check to see if the SD card was there. The first time, on the dolphin end, it was.

The larger part of the aquarium is several stories tall, and you move up using a tilted escalator, which doesn't use steps (think of it like a tilted plank, but using
an elevator mechanism---something like what they use to move luggage at an airport).

Somewhere on the third or forth floor I noticed my SD card was missing and began to panic. More than half the photos were not downloaded (well, maybe fewer than half). So, I took the elevator down to the first floor, and began to look around. The problem was lighting. The floors are not well-lit, so it was hard to see a card that's barely larger than your thumbnail.

Oddly enough, the escalator thingies were not working, and I was soon to find out why. I ran into two workers who told me various floors were already shut down. In fact, to make it easier to close the Aquarium, they close the lower floors and slowly close the upper ones. Because there are no down escalators (only down elevators), they can make it more challenging to go down.

They told me the floors had already been swept and I'd have to go to the lost and found, and in the meanwhile, I should head back up if I wanted to see the rest of the Aquarium before it closed.

Great, just great.

So, up I went to rejoin the group, thinking I should have been more paranoid and put the card somewhere safer. Then, I saw the two people, a tall guy and a blond girl, a few minutes later. They came over to tell me that, not twenty feet later, they spotted it on the ground. She had seem something shiny, and picked it up.

I looked at the card, and it looked right, so I was happy to get it back. Really, the odds of that happening had to be close to nil, and yet there it was. I then put the card into my wallet, where it would stay secure the rest of the evening.

We had to rush to see the rest of the Aquarium. I must say it does look fairly nice, although one really has to like aquatic life to enjoy it. It's probably more fun than going to a museum, but is about on the same par.

We were shoved to some very humid section of the Aquarium which resembled a rain forest, then from there, saw large tanks which manta rays and once we got lower down, plenty of sharks. It's amazing how photogenic the fish are. They stay in schools, they move around. They even had a few birds that flew and swam. Generally, you think of a zoo where not much happens, unless you get lucky, and yet fish and related sea animals have to move around all the time.

Once we left there, we went to one of Dave's favorite restaurants: Nacho Mamas. We had one big restriction. Grecia is vegetarian, and there are plenty of places that just have seafood or seafood and meat. Nacho Mamas, I was surprised to discover, is absolutely tiny. It can seat maybe 40-50 people tops, and has a bar that can seat maybe 10 people. The place was packed.

We had to wait half an hour to get seated, so most of the people were outside. Dave and I sat down at the bar. Dave recommended a magarita for me, while he had a "Natty Bo" which is short for National Bohemian. It's not quite a local brew, being made in Pennsylvania, but close enough. After my magarita, I had a Natty Bo, too, and it tasted much like a standard American beer, ie., moderately bland. Already, after these two drinks I was getting pretty toasted, as I had had nothing to eat.

When we finally got seated, I ordered yet another mixed drink, this time a Tequila Sunrise. I think I'm not ordering this anymore. A tequila sunrise is something like tequila, orange juice, and grenadine. Well, grenadine tastes like life savers, and I don't think I care for that. I suspect it's called a sunrise because the drink has two distinct layers, one orange (due to the juice) and one red (the life savers flavored grenadine).

Then, I made the mistake I always make. I ordered too much. I love getting soup, so I had some chicken soup. It was Mexican style or some such. But after that, I was stuffed, and I still had seafood pasta coming. I could barely eat that, so I just picked at the seafood parts, and ignored the pasta.

In the meanwhile, I could barely stay awake, and was dozing away. No one else bothered to have any alcohol, so they stayed coherent. But then, no one was is as much an alcoholic wimp as me.

Finally, we headed back. We came in two cars. Dave knows Baltimore pretty well, and certainly, how to get to and from this restaurant. The other car was lead by Nick the Greek, who, yes, is really Greek from Greece. Despite having a native Marylander in Jay, and despite getting directions from Dave, they got lost, though not terribly so.

Meanwhile, we were speeding back. There was a bunch of heat lightning going on, though no sound of thunder. Mostly, I didn't notice because I wanted to sleep. Still, I was yapping incoherent stuff until we got back. Since I was still suffering from alcohol, I left my car at school. Dave drove me back.

As we got back, we just beat the thunderstorm that hit, which brought with it more lightning, and a lot more rain.

At that point, we proceeded to just talk for another hour or so. This wasn't exactly smart because Dami, our friend, wanted a ride to the airport, and we needed to be up by 6 to make that happen, and it was already 1:30 AM when we got back, and it was edging to 3 AM as we were talking. But I find late night is a pretty good time to talk, especially if one is feeling confessional.

I won't go into much details about the conversation, not that it was terribly original or novel anyway. We reached no epiphany, no grand insights. Just talked.

There are worse ways to spend a night.