Baltimore made local breaking news (pictured here) and national wires on news that the HiFlyer tethered balloon got stuck for 90 minutes 350 feet in the air during sudden high winds from a storm. At one point, the gondola, which had 15 passengers, bumped into an air conditioning unit on top of nearby Police Headquarters. The balloon was slowly returned to the ground, and some of the passengers suffered minor injuries. Take a look at my blog post and photos from our ride last month. This might be the only way to see the balloon in operation while it is grounded during the accident investigation. And since the attraction has been suffering financially, and will be hurt more by today's bad news, there's a possibility it may not open for business again.

- mike lee - baltimore

... at Kiss Cafe and Bar in Canton.

When daughter and daddy are bored, it's time to make more phonecam pictures!

- mike lee - tickling the blowfish in baltimore again with a factory new color sidekick

Well, I've finally had a catastrophic failure of my Sidekick and am posting via the web interface. I've had a pretty good run for 18 months with three units, and most of my problems have been with the hardware. My run of mobile blogging ended last night.

Call this noblogging.

I was photographing my arrival to Boston and lost my signal at the airport. Thinking a reboot would help, I did that, but then all my application icons disappeared and the date reset to Dec 31st. A hard reset didn't help nor did repeating all these steps this morning with T-mobile tech support result in a fix.

So I have to wait 15 days or more to get a replacement unit. At least I have access to the web interface and a confirmation number to get a T-mobile loaner phone. I'm not looking forward to the apparently common scenario of replacing my Sidekick multiple times. Maybe the Sidekick II will really arrive in August, or maybe I'll switch to some other device.

This is somewhat bad timing given that I was going to moblog my latest visit to the MIT Media Lab, the high temple of technology, and to boot, John Maeda introduced me before my sponsor perspective talk at today's Simplicity workshop as a "moblogger extraordinaire." Tonight, sans phonecam, I'm joining a group of student teams working late into the night to design prototypes of the future of e-mail. This evening should be a blast, and it's a big help that there's WiFi throughout the lab, and broadband at my hotel.

- mike lee - cambridge, mass

I'm riding a cab from downtown Baltimore to BWI airport to catch a flight to Cambridge, Mass. for two days of workshops at the MIT Media Lab. The driver just came to Baltimore 20 days ago after working as a driver in Kansas City. He has thoughtfully mod'ded the passenger area of his car with a rotating fan to channel the AC from the dashboard. In some cabs you're lucky to have AC at all.

- mike lee - bwi parkway

Photo for previous.

Last night's fireworks over Morgantown, West Virginia, the birthplace of Don Knotts.

- mike lee - baltimore

There was no T-mobile signal at all in Morgantown, WVA so I used my other cameras. Photos here: 1) At the Comfort Inn, Cianna shows off some hand-me-downs from Aunt Shelly 2) Entertaining some of her cousins 3) Stopping on the ride home at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Hagerstown, MD 4) "Country Cookin' " 5) A Name Train bought from the gift shop.

- mike lee -

About two hours out of Baltimore, we pulled into Rocky Gap Golf Resort in Cumberland, Maryland for lunch.

Got back home from Chicago last night, did laundry, slept, and now we are starting out on a five hour ride to Morgantown, West Virginia for the weekend. We're meeting wife's folks and her brother's family there as a halfway point between Baltimore and their home towns in Ohio.

- mike lee - baltimore

...of the ad agency where I've been working for the last three days.

- mike lee - chicago