Touring – Hal's Photo Blog

iPhone Tracking Log

Hal — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 06:43:48 +0000

Back in April, it had been pretty widely reported that the iPhone was tracking it’s own movements. A log was kept of the GPS coordinate of every cell tower that the phone had ever connected to, for some reason.

Apple fixed this “bug” in a new update of iOS that’s been around awhile, but I haven’t bothered to update until now. I’ve been on the road since April, and I haven’t wanted to use precious bandwidth downloading a 600MB+ iPhone update.

Also being that I’ve been traveling a lot, I figured that my tracking log would actually be pretty interesting. I ran the iPhoneTracker application, and came up with this map that shows my travels since I bought my iPhone 4 a little over a year ago:

It’s creepily accurate… most of my time was spent in LA, San Francisco, or New York, with frequent stops in Portland, Seattle, Austin, and Chicago. It also shows the routes of several long-distance Amtrak routes (Coast Starlight, Cascades, Southwest Chief, Acela/Northwest Corridor, Ethan Allen Express, and Capitol Limited for those curious), and a half-dozen or so various road trips.

Pretty cool.

Ontario, Oregon

Hal — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:06:11 +0000

After an 18-hour drive from Hamilton, Montana, the band made a quick tour stop on Ontario, Oregon to play a show before hopping straight back on the bus for a 12-hour drive to Reno, Nevada.

After realizing that the bus wouldn’t make it over the mountain pass into Idaho, we chose a flatter, yet more circuitous route that added 150 miles and several more hours to the leg. I was asleep at the time, but apparently at one point we hit a deer. Drove through it would be more accurate… the only damage was to the “Crown Bus” logo on the grille.

Later in the afternoon as we made our way into Boise, the sky put on an amazing performance between short, localized rain showers.

We pulled in just in time to unload equipment into the venue.

Before the show started and as the sky cleared, I spent a few minutes snapping a few photos around Ontario. After the jump…

On the Road

Hal — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:14:56 +0000

We’ve been on the road for three days now. We’re currently somewhere in Western Montana, after crossing all of Wisconsin, South Carolina, and most of Montana, we’ll be spending a few days in Hamilton, Montana.

More after the jump…

Impromptu Gig at Kum & Go

Hal — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 06:09:54 +0000

Somewhere in Iowa on the drive between Cedar Rapids and Minneapolis, we stopped at an unfortunately named gas station to feed Patricia some biodiesel.

While we were fueling, Alma Desnuda quickly grabbed their acoustic instruments and started playing an informal concert/busk in front of the convenience store.

More photos after the jump.

After playing three songs, handing out some free download cards, and selling a few CDs, we jumped back on the road to Minnesota.

Traveling With the Band

Hal — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:58:41 +0000

For the last week, I’ve been on tour with a band from San Francisco called Alma Desnuda. I met up with them in Chicago, got on Patricia, their 45′ modified school bus, and we’ll be working our way West to California for two more weeks.

This is Patricia.

Since boarding the bus, they’ve played shows in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. In a few days we’ll work our way across the Dakotas to Montana.

Working on the bus can be a bit of a challenge. The power inverter is often unreliable and 3G coverage in the rural Midwest can be spotty at best. Sometimes on a tour stop the media crew will literally take over several tables at the bar or venue to get much needed power and bandwidth, this while being exhausted after a 7-hour drive.

Otherwise, touring with a band is an amazing experience. I’ll be posting a lot more photos and video to this blog and theirs in the coming days and weeks.