One Long Day – Day 1

August 21st, 9 A.M., Central Europe Standard Time... from here on in I blog without a script. 

I'm tired of being on planes.  Or just tired.  I'm not sure which yet.  Actually, the 9-hour flight flew by.  (rimshot)  [And boy are my arms tired...]  But seriously, a most pleasant flight.  Minimal baby crying, mostly smooth skies, and barely palatable in-flight food.  I mean, not zesty.  Thank goodness I brought my own snacks, or I would be starving right now... though I kinda still am.  Fortunately I had an aisle seat, next to a very nice Norwegian lady who works in San Diego 2 weeks out of every quarter.  She's used to the flight, but said it doesn't make it any shorter.  I can only imagine.

On the bright side, our flight had personal on-demand video screens in the back of every seat.  On the not-so-bright side, about 14 of us in one isolated corner of the plane had our video go out about 2.5 hours into the flight.  No more movie for me.  In compensation they did offer 5,000 Delta miles (virtually worthless to me, since all my miles are on Alaska), or a $50 flight credit which I took.  I just listened to music on my iPhone while I attempted to sleep.  I probably slept 2 or 3 hours overall, broken up over the 9-hour flight.  Not too bad I guess.  Though around the 8-hour mark on the flight, I had absolutely had enough of flying.  I started overheating and not feeling zesty, but an increase of airflow managed to shake me out of that.  I've never gotten sick on a plane before, I didn't feel like starting now.  :)

Arrival at Amsterdam was... uneventful.  Amsterdam Shiphol airport is ginormous.  I have dubbed it the "crossroads of the world" because seriously I think I've heard every language and seen every nationality just as I was walking from one gate to another. 

I did find some lovely lounge chairs in a quiet corner of the terminal which is where I'm currently writing this from. 

Yes, they may look like they're from IKEA, and yes they are bolted to the floor, but they are remarkably comfortable. I'm afraid if I close my eyes, I won't open them again, and I'll miss my flight.  So instead I will relax here and blog.  

Oh yes, Amsterdam airport is also THE most confusing airport I have ever been to.  No, really.  It's true.  And I usually navigate airports very well, but this place is a mess.  While I’m thinking about it, what’s up with the Dutch?  I think they have an identify crisis.  First, they’re The Netherlands, but then they call themselves Holland, but as if it’s not enough to call their language Hollandish or Hollandaise (goes great on eggs), they call it Dutch.  What’s going on?  Pick a consistent name and use it!

I now have another hour long flight to get to Copenhagen.  I may take the opportunity to take a quick nap before I arrive, and then force myself to stay awake and be a tourist the rest of the day.  Time to do a bit more exploring of this airport before I head over to the gate.  No rest for the weary. 

4:40pm CEST

I’m tired.  I made it here though.  After taking the subway-like metro downtown from the airport and dragging my suitcase nearly a kilometer across mostly cobblestone streets (sorry suitcase wheels), I made it to the hotel and checked in. 

Just big enough to sleep and be comfortable. 

I then went out exploring and found the Christiansborg Palace where I found plenty of interesting stuff.  The royal halls were strictly no pictures, but the ruins of the old Copenhagen Castle underneath were fair game for all kinds of pictures: 

After that I continued through to the National Museum, stepped inside but decided I didn’t really have the energy to go in today.  So tomorrow will be another challenge. 

A few other pictures of the city while I was wandering…

Scandinavian Adventure Day 0.5

Travel is both exciting and boring at the same time.  Exciting because of the anticipation of what you will soon get to see and do, and boring because of how incredibly long it sometimes takes to get there.  As I say this... I'm sitting in the S concourse at Sea-Tac waiting patiently for the opportunity to board the plane and wait even more patiently for an even longer time.  My flight leaves at 1pm PDT, only to arrive 10 hours later at 8am Central Europe Time.  (You do the math.)  So as a result, if I'm not to be a complete zombie my first day in Copenhagen, I must achieve some level of sleep on the plane, and then force myself to stay awake until darkness comes across Scandinavia (or at least something close, considering how far further North it is compared to home, it will be light forever.)

In honor of my last day on American soil for a couple of weeks, I ate the most American thing I could find for lunch... a hamburger.  OK, that's the story I made up... actually it's just about the only edible food out here at the S gates, and I really didn't feel like trekking all the way back to the main terminal to find something better.

International Travel Observation #1:  50 lbs isn't much.  Actually, I take that back... it WOULD have been a lot more, if I didn't have to haul a bunch of work stuff along with me.  (And yes, "work stuff" includes the stuff I'm hauling back to Sweden that our Swedish intern left here when he went home... though it was also the first stuff that didn't make the cut when I had to jettison cargo to get my bag down to 50 lbs.)

My measure of 50 lbs falls somewhere in the neighborhood of "just heavy enough that I can't lift it comfortably."  My bag was right there on the borderline... and I knew it had to be +/- 50 lbs.  I threw it on a scale at my sister's house before she took me to the airport, and it topped out at about 56 lbs.  Offloaded unnecessary junk, and got it down to right around 50 lbs by that scale.  Not a problem, I can work with that.
Fortunately at the airport, they've set up "pack and weigh" stations so you can get your bag weight right before you get to the check-in agent.  My bag topped out now at 51.3 lbs on the official Delta baggage scale (that I think they just stole from UPS).  A transferred some snackage from the checked to the carryon, and hit 49 lbs.  Success!  Fortunately, the goal was to pack as light as possible for the trip over, so I can have plenty of space to haul stuff back on the way home.  It seems a success so far.

Well that's all the news that's fit to print at the moment.  Hopefully it's a peaceful and relaxing flight... all 10 hours of it.  Then I have about 3 hours to kill in Amsterdam between flights, maybe I'll find something interesting to do there.

Are you ready for this?

Dear Avid Blog Readers In Deep Withdrawal Due To My Lack Of Blogging,
(and the other 99.9% of you who may be reading this...)

Fear not, the blog is about to get pretty exciting again!  As statistically speaking, over 50% of my blog posts are in some way related to me planning, going on, or being on vacation... I'm heading on vacation on Friday!

On Friday afternoon I get on a plane for 10 hours to wake up Saturday morning in central Europe, before hopping over to start my 2010 Scandinavian Adventure in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The reason for the adventure?  I'm spending a week working from our Gothenburg, Sweden office to coordinate a project I'm working on, and couldn't resist the opportunity to tack on an extra week of vacation while I'm already over there.

And due to travelling to some of the most internet-connected countries in Europe, I'll have wifi virtually everywhere I am.  So expect plenty of on-going blog updates.

Stay tuned...

Disneyland Videoblog

Last weekend I met my friends Kristen and Mark down at Disneyland for some good times in the not-always-so-warm California sun. As part of my adventure, I decided to try something new and record a bit of a video blog of the fun. It was my first time using the Flip MinoHD recorder, and it leaves a bit to be desired. As you will notice, there is absolutely zero image stabilization, so unless I was standing in one place, it was pretty hopeless to get a steady shot. But that didn't stop me from getting some hilariously entertaining clips, and a capture a bit of the Disney magic on film. Enjoy!

Pictures and Updates

OK, nearly 3 months since my last post. I'm lazy. BUT, some good has come of it...

Pictures

I finally got around to uploading all of the pictures from Disneyworld back in August. Find them in my photo album. The only problem is that going through them all again made me just want to go back again. Good thing I'm going to Disneyland next weekend. :)

Holidays and Stuff

Well, I survived the holidays. Nothing too exciting there, it was holidays, it was vacation, it was what it was.

OK, on further observation, nothing exciting has been happening. I have a slew of random posts to make about random things. Those are more entertaining anyway. I'll get around to that... in probably 3 months.

Denver - Day 7

A late night and an early morning.  I think I got about 6.5 hours of sleep, and morning came around way too soon.  We had the last men's draw this morning, followed by one women's tiebreaker that was necessary for seeding.  At 4pm today we have one men's tiebreaker as well, followed by the 8pm 1v2/3v4 playoffs for the women.  Fortunately, I don't have to work until the 8pm draw tonight, which means naptime is coming up soon. 

And things are getting a bit hectic around here, as NBC just arrived and they're going to start getting things ready to broadcast the semi-finals and finals live on UniversalSports, their new all-Olympic sports station.  You can find it in Seattle on Comcast channel 115, or over the air (if you have digital antenna) on 5.2.  Check local listings for other stations.  For reference, the schedule is:  

Women's Semi-Final: Friday 4pm MST (3pm PST)

Men's Semi-Final:  Friday 8pm MST (7pm PST)

Women's Final: Saturday 10am MST (9am PST)

Men's Final:  Saturday 3pm MST (2pm PST)

I'll be on the ice working the Friday 4pm and Saturday 10am draws, so feel free to look for me if they get bored showing coverage of the teams and I happen to walk by. :)  

Denver - Days 4-6

So busy I haven't had much of a chance to blog updates.  When I've been in the hotel room, it's been mainly to sleep.  But I have a few minutes here so I thought I'd update the past few days.  

Monday was business as usual, working a few draws and finding times to eat and sleep when it was convenient.  

Tuesday was my day to go do some things around Denver.  I started out by heading down to the U.S. Mint and taking a tour.  After going through a fairly intense security screening just to get in the door, we were taken on a short (about 20 minutes of actual stuff to see) walk through a observation deck where we could see the presses churning out pennies by the thousands (through some hefty glass, so we couldn't get our grubby little hands on them).  It was interesting to see the mint in action, and quite a bit of historical coinage and artifacts were on display, but overall I was unimpressed.  The tour was so constrained, there wasn't a whole lot to see and it just wasn't really worth the trouble, I think.  But I did it, so there.  

After that, I walked back downtown to the 16th Street Mall, which is the main shopping street through the middle of downtown Denver.  It's a pedestrian-only street, with the exception of some extremely convenient shuttle buses that continuously travel up and down the street, so you can just hop on and off as you want to quickly get from one end to the other.  Quite impressive.  

I went to the far end of the street, where I found the Colorado State Capitol building.  As it has become one of my quirky trip traditions to stop at every state capitol I come to, I went inside and wandered around the entire place.  Being a weekday, the house and senate were both in session, and I wandered into the viewing gallery to see a bit of the Colorado legislature in action.  They have a partial museum up in the lower part of the dome of the capitol which I went up to see, though unfortunately you can't climb all the way to the top of the dome, there was a viewing deck at the bottom of the dome.  Pretty interesting.  State Capitols are always fun to visit.  

I did some shopping on the 16th Street Mall and worked my way down to the other end of the city and over to Coors Field.  Not much going on there, but it was good to stop by and see where it was.  Finally made my way back to the car and left downtown.  Upon additional recommendations, I decided to drive all the way up to Fort Collins to check out the New Belgium Brewery.  Just a mile away from it happens to be where one of my sisters works.  I stopped by but she had already left for the day.  In any event, I've been on quite a few brewery tours, but the New Belgium brewery tour was by far the most entertaining I've ever taken.  Just a fantastic place.  

Tonight after I finished officiating at the early draw this morning, I drove back to Loveland, just south of Fort Collins, to meet up with my sister and have dinner with her.  It was good, mainly because if I went to Denver and didn't meet up with her, I'd never live it down.  :)  But we had a good time, and then I came back and here I am.  Now heading back over to catch part of the late draw at the trials before finding some more sleep.  Pictures to be posted later, it's always something.

More to come...

Denver - Day 2 and 3

It's been a relatively uneventful first couple of days here at the Olympic Trials.  Getting into the groove and not getting too much relaxing in at this point.  My initial impression that this wouldn't be much of a vacation has been so far true.  I put up a few pictures that I snapped tonight.  Nothing too exciting there either. I'll try to take some better and more interesting shots later in the week.  

This area (Broomfield, CO) is actually quite nice.  I definitely ended up with a winner with the hotel here.  Free made-to-order breakfast every morning (unfortunately, I'm not much of a breakfast person, so it's not exactly the most thrilling feature, and this morning I actually had to be out of here before they even opened), but the biggest advantage is that I'm not more than about 3 minutes away from the ice arena.  Brilliant.  I haven't had too much time to see much else, but expect to make it into the city on Tuesday.  The high altitude hasn't affected me much at all, though fortunately drinking lots of water and staying hydrated I think has helped that a lot.  What HAS bothered me is the dryness.  My hands especially are getting chewed up, and I need to constantly remember to put lotion on them or else they will die.  

Time to get some rest before the 6:30am alarm goes off.  Why is it always that I get up earlier when I am on vacation than when I'm not.  Something is seriously wrong. :)  

Denver - Day 1

Thus begins a series of blogs on my 8 nights in scenic Denver, Colorado.  I'm here primarily to officiate for the US National Curling Championship / Olympic Trials.  I worked the day today then caught a 6:45pm flight, which departed a few minutes late, but other than that was relatively uneventful.  

Arriving in Denver, I was greeted with sub-freezing temperatures.  All indications were that it had snowed earlier in the evening.  So after my luggage finally coming out, I headed outside to catch the shuttle to the rental car place (which is not so conveniently nowhere near the actual terminal).  After waiting outside in the 22-degree or so cold for about 15 minutes, the shuttle finally came and we made our way to the cars.  I ended up with a red Prius hybrid, at least that's what I think I unearthed when I froze my hand brushing off the layer of snow and then scraping the ice off the windshield and ungluing the wipers.  10 minutes later, I figured out how to turn on the silly car and how to use the 50 bazillion buttons and knobs.  I swear, I think this thing is more complicated than the space shuttle, and at night it looks like mission control, with the actual dashboard, plus the whole touchscreen that controls all of the audio/climate control/engine status, and then my life-saving GPS that I threw up on the dash next to it.  Finally we had liftoff, and I zipped out of the parking lot and on my way (getting something on the order of 40 mpg).  So then I had about 35 miles to get to Broomfield, not realizing that the shortest distance between two points involved toll roads.  $13 in tolls later, just after midnight local time I managed to made it to the hotel.  

Now the hotel I got on Hotwire.  If I was going to be here 8 nights, I wasn't going to pay a whole lot a night.  So with my luck, I ended up with an inn just a mile away from the ice arena where the competition would be.  The front desk closes at 10, but they had left an envelope with my room key out front (there are only 16 rooms here) and I made my way into the nice warm room without any problem.  This room is about as nice as some studio apartments.  King-sized bed, sink, microwave, minifridge, couch, gas fireplace, internet... can't complain too much for the $45/night I'm paying when the going rate for the room is about $129.  I'll take some pictures later.  

Well, at this, I need to get up in just over 7 hours.  Day 2 will continue tomorrow with the opening ceremony and first day of competition.  It should be interesting to see the arena all set up for curling.  

Vacation Wrapup and The Week Ahead

Without much trouble we made it back home from the islands, and never have I been more pleased to have 50 degree weather and a distinct lack of sun.  :)  Unfortunately, now I have a half dozen things to do in the next three days, not counting getting back up to speed with everything going on at work.  Running down the highlights of the calendar:  

• Tonight I need to make my way over to the curling club to meet my Thursday night team who wants to get some practice time in so we might be able to win a few more games this year.  Should be fun, hopefully I'm still awake by then.  
• Tomorrow I have a meeting for the Husky Band Foundation, followed by the customary pop culture trivia night at Jillian's.  That'll be fun and a nice break from work, but unfortunately, all these other things have to be done too.
• Friday kicks off the curling season with, of course, the league I manage.  So as usual I've got the next two days to figure out who all is planning to curl on Fridays, get a rough idea of how the teams will be all organized, and hope that nothing falls through the cracks.  Looking at my recent registration lists, I can see that there'll be plenty of the usual last minute people who didn't see fit to register early, and I'll have to shoehorn them into the roster in some capacity.  Why can't everyone in the world be more organized?  Seriously...
• Saturday I volunteered to help out with another curling open house, so I'll be back up there teaching folks how to curl again.  At least that'll be fun and fortunately with the Huskies bye this week, I don't have to worry about juggling that with a UW football game. :)
• In things without an allotted time, I need to do laundry from my trip sometime.  
• I need to figure out what Vancouver 2010 Olympics tickets I want to put into my order.  I've got about a month to figure that out, but I want to iron it out sooner than later, mainly because it's fun and it'll be cool to plan what I want to try to get tickets for.  How exciting.  And how ridiculously expensive can tickets to the Opening Ceremony be?  Oh, anywhere from $700-$1300 each.  Ouch! 
• Any number of other things I've forgotten.  What a week, what a week...  

Closing out the Week - Days 6 & 7

Sunday was a day of recovery.  We all had originally planned to get out and do things, but instead decided to spend the day around the house, playing in the ocean, and actually cooking and eating some of the food we had bought.  It ended up being a spectacular day.  

Monday Carley, Chad, Maija and myself made our way down to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial.  Last year when I was down here, I was too lazy to wait around for 2 hours in order to do the film and trip out to the memorial, but today we arrived around 11am and got tickets for 1pm.  That gave us 2 hours to leave and go over to Hilo Hatties to procure some fine Hawaiian merchandise before grabbing lunch at McD's and making our way back in time for the 1pm entrance.  

By the time we made it out of Pearl Harbor it was about 3pm and we decided to just head back to the house, having accomplished everything we had planned for the day.  We picked up some last minute provisions at the store before getting home to relax a bit then start making dinner.  We managed to use most all of the food we had bought at Costco, and everyone seemed to enjoy it all.  

After dinner, and making some BBQ smores, we took some time to do some tidying up around the house before we leave tomorrow morning.  I still need to get some packing done tonight, but besides that I think we're pretty much ready to go.  A successful and restful week of vacation is nearly complete.  

I think my internal clock will be a bit askew for the rest of the week trying to get to work on time, but thankfully I tend to adjust better traveling east than west, so I may be OK afterall.  

Aloha and Mahalo.  

The Wedding Day - Day 5

Saturday finally brought about the reason we all came here, Nick and Christie's Wedding.  Those of us spectators enjoyed a nice morning at home, and managed to catch the first quarter of the Huskies terrible performance before heading down the street to the wedding.  

I have to admit, this is the first beach wedding I've ever been to.  The weather cooperated, as we were just out on the beach behind the house Christie's family had rented, and it was slightly breezy with occasional clouds shading us from the sun.  The ceremony was rather quick, and quite nice, but I think we were all glad to get out of the hot sun once it was over and made the drive down the island to the reception.  

The reception was at Ko'olau Golf Course, which also has a large conference center/ballrooms connected to it.  Everything went perfectly (at least as far as I could tell) and everyone had a great time.  

They say a picture says 1,000 words, so go look at the pictures and I'll space you rest of the words.  

What has become a tradition at most of the Husky Band-related weddings I've been to in recent memory, as the evening wears on and the glasses compound on the table, my attempt to fashion a musical interlude was once again successful.  This time though we managed to get it on video for everyone's enjoyment.  

A Leisurely Friday - Day 4

Friday was pretty uneventful, by design.  For once we didn't make any big trips down to the south end of the island, and just took some time to relax and do things around the house.  This is what a vacation needs to feel like sometimes.  

For lunch, I took the opportunity to visit one of my mom's friends from college who happens to live less than 5 minutes from the house we're staying at here in Laie.  They have a beautiful house right on the water.  I remember visiting them probably 15 years ago when my family was down here, and haven't really seen them since.  But we had a good lunch and it was nice visiting with them for a couple of hours.  

I came back home and those of us around decided to head out to the beach.  The surf was quite a bit better than the other days, so the boogie boards were far more functional.  We played in the waves, and got plenty of white sand all over us.  After we were tired, tanned, or toasted, we came back in and later in the afternoon all of the wedding party-related folks were off to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, leaving Annie, Adam and myself to relax and find dinner on our own.  

We decided to go down the street to a local drive-in place with "Hawaiian Barbeque"?  I think what we had was "Chinese food" but it was still good.  There aren't a lot of dining options in Laie, other than making good food yourself.  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and then pretty much relaxed the rest of the evening.  It was nice not being quite so busy.  

Today is the reason we all came... the wedding.  Once again, the wedding-related folks are all gone to get ready, and the rest of us are just hanging around until later.  There's plenty of college football on TV that's keeping us entertained, and we all hope to catch the start of the Husky game (around 1pm here) before the 3pm wedding.  

It's starting to feel like vacation - Day 3

Someone told me it was Friday today.  I'm not entirely sure.  

Whatever it is, yesterday was another eventful day.  Once again, we all seem to get up whenever it gets light out, which usually means sometime around 6:30-7am.  Yesterday was a bit more humid than the few before it, with frequent bouts of rain passing through and a noticible lack of wind.  Today fortunately the wind is back and flushing out the humidity a bit, which makes it much more tolerable.  

After getting everyone ready to go, Christie the bride came by and joined us to go up to Waimea Falls, which after getting to we decided not to pay the $10 to walk up to the actual falls, but went around the outer grounds and enjoyed the grenery of the Waimea Valley a bit.  Then we continued around the island to the obligatory stop at the Dole Plantation.  We rode the Pineapple Express through the pineapple fields, and of course I had the obligatory cup of Dole Whip.  Beyond that thouse, this place has gone from being a creative tourist promotion of Dole and pineapples, to being a total tourist trap trying to sell you everything from the food you eat to the massive amounts of Dole-related and pineapple-themed merchandise.  Not impressed.  

After the plantation, we headed back to the house for a brief moment in the afternoon.  =\\\\\\\-'

".\]

[\;l"]

Sorry for that interruption, baby Maija decided to inspect my keyboard to make sure the keys still worked.  She has now decided to go inspect the TV remotes on the table instead.  :)

Later in the evening, Nick's bachelor party required Chad, Adam, and I to drive down to Waikiki for dinner at Sam Choy's followed by hitting some bars downtown.  Dinner was good, but we didn't do much on the bar front before I was not feeling well from the long running days, and the three of us decided it was time to head back before it was too late, considering we had another hour drive to the north end of the island.  We made it back in around 1am and the night was over.  

Friday leaves a much less busy day, yet should have plenty of stories.  More on that tomorrow.  

Aloha and Mahalo - Day 2

Aloha. This will probably be a rather quick post because I'm tired, and it's been a long day. I guess that means it should be longer, but I'm lazy.

This morning I managed to wake up at, oh, about 6:30am. Or rather, at that point I couldn't really sleep any longer and decided to get up. I wasn't the first up, nor was I the last. But everyone managed to make it up by around 7:30 or so.

We interrupt this blog for a late-breaking observation: when it starts raining and it blows inside halfway across the room to where I'm sitting, it's time to close the windows.

So after having breakfast and everyone decided to get ready, about 9:00 we made our way out and back to the south side of the island (a trip we will likely be repeating several more times on this trip). We went to Diamond Head crater and made the 0.8-mile, up-560-feet hike to the top. Took some great pictures you can check out in the album here.

After Diamond Head a few of us went over to Waikiki for lunch and to wander around a bit, then eventually we all managed to make our way back up the island to the house. After regrouping, we headed over to the Polynesian Cultural Center for an evening luau and their night show. We all had a good time, ate good food, and the show was pretty good too.

Of course, I write these blogs in my head throughout the day, then completely forget about them by the time like now when I write them down. Seriously, there was some pretty funny stuff in my head at one point. Oh well, time to lock up and find some sleep. Tomorrow I've heard a plethora of different "what's happening" ideas, so we'll see what materializes.

Aloha from Hawaii - Day 1

It's about 7pm Hawaii time, which means 10pm for you folks on the west coast, and my goodness, 1am for anyone crazy enough to be reading this who lives on the east coast. Hey, I don't exactly know how far this blog reaches, every day I'm constantly amazed that people I never knew knew my blog existed were avid readers.


Anyway, it's been a long day. I left my house at 6:30am this morning to head to the airport (that's 3:30am Hawaii time). The flight was about 5 1/2 hours long, but overall went by pretty quickly. I had a bit of a headache building throughout the second half of the flight, due probably at least in some part to a lack of sufficient food, lack of sufficient sleep, or the complimentary mai-tai at the beginning of the flight after a lack of sufficient food and sleep. Whatever the case, the flight was done and all is well.


We collected the stuff and fetched rental cars. Annie and Adam got one rental car, and I got a car with Carley, Chad and baby Maija joining me. We made our way from the airport to Costco, though in a nod to primitive research, my car was the one that made it there without getting lost. :) After stocking up on food for the week, in an effort to save in the long run by not eating out much, we made our way along the coast up to Laie. The trip was all of about 30 miles, and of course took at least an hour to get there. But fortunately we're feeling the Aloha spirit now and not worrying too much.


As we pulled up to the rental house, flashbacks to the opening sequence of Magnum, PI. Though my red Chevy Impala does no justice to Tom Selleck's red Ferrari. Oh well, I'll get some pictures posted and you can see for yourself. This house is huge, I believe you could have one heck of a party here if you really wanted to. We'll suffice to hang out on our own and be lazy.


We stepped out the back door, out the gate in the back yard, and but a few white sand steps away was the ocean. Warm water, white (well mostly) sand beaches, who can argue with that? We grabbed a few boogie boards from the house and went down and played in the ocean. After I had had enough salt for one day, we made our way back to de-sandify before heading to the local grocery store to pick up those things we didn't need egregious Costco quantities of. In hindsight, we should have just picked up massive amounts at Costco, as we severely underestimated the inflated costs of groceries on the island vs the mainland. $9.00+ for a gallon of milk... enough said.


We're currently sitting around the dining table trying to figure out what to do tomorrow. It sounds like the current plan is to head down to Diamond Head, through Honolulu to Pearl Harbor, before making our way back up here for (probably) a luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The consensus is that we may be a bit overzealous in attempting to do everything on one day, and that we'll probably make a second trip down to Waikiki sometime later in the week.

We'll see how long we survive... I don't think any of us are motivated to immediately adjust to Hawaii time, but we'll see what happens. It's currently about 10 till 8 and we're all falling asleep. Just wait until we wake up at 5am... maybe...

Las Vegas

A bit of a lack in blogging, after I had appeared to be on quite a roll of the Olympics. Don't fear, there's still more to come there, but first a recap of my Vegas trip last weekend for Jonell and Chris' wedding.

Thursday morning, I had a 7AM flight to Vegas, but decided to try something different and fly down on Virgin America for the first time, rather than my typical Alaska. What a spectacular airline. Now, despite the fact that they don't have any non-stop flights between Seattle and Vegas and I had to transfer through San Francisco, the flight was great. Every seat has satellite television, so I was able to watch plenty of Olympics action throughout my entire flight. Quite comfortable, made the time go by quite nicely.

I met Andrew at the airport (his flight arrived just minutes before mine did), and we got our bags and took a taxi to the Venetian (where the wedding was, and where we were staying). As I was leaving SFO, the captain came on to let us know that "weather in Las Vegas is typical for this time of year, clear skies and a million degrees." Certainly correct on both accounts. As we stepped outside of the airport, it was about eleventy billion degrees, so hot that the real temperature doesn't really matter (can YOU tell the difference between 100F and 110F? I didn't think so.)

The wedding was on Friday afternoon, and was actually very quick and nice (about 10 minutes long) and the about 20 friends and family that were all there had a great time. For dinner that night there was a big dinner planned at B&B Ristorante in the Venetian, which is one of Mario Batali's restaurants. WOW. If that food wasn't some of the tastiest, most amazing Italian food I've ever had (sorry mom), I don't know what is. :) Dinner ended up being about a 3-hour event, after which a bunch of us went upstairs to digest and watch the Olympics.

Saturday night a few of us went to see The Beatles' LOVE by Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. I'd seen this show before, but none of the others had, and I certainly didn't mind seeing it again, despite the price. :) Again, an amazing show. We all had a good time, after which we went back to the Venetian and were gambling the night away. Andrew and I survived the longest, not making it back to the room until about 4:15am. But surprisingly, it didn't feel that late. Overall for the weekend I ended up rather than down, so that was a good victory considering my goal is always just to break even.

Came home on Sunday and back to work on Monday, though a bit tired catching up from the weekend. Now I can relax and watch the Olympics in the comfort of my own home! :)

Crazy Weekend

There will be a short and long part of this report. The short is my weekend report. I was down in San Jose, California for a summer curling bonspiel. Despite the fact that we won 1 and lost 3 games, we had a great time. One of the advantages to losing out early was that we had the whole day Sunday free to do what we wanted. We decided to drive down to Monterey, visited the aquarium (which for my avid blog readers, is on par with the excellence of the Tennessee Aquarium from my last trip), did some shopping down Cannery Row, and then drove down to Pebble Beach and checked out the golf courses and scenic drive.

Flash back to earlier in the day... I get a call from a family friend who has been looking after my parents' house while they were on vacation... their house was broken into. My parents were in Turkey, without any way to contact them until they got home today, and with me down in the Bay Area, I was fortunately able to get a hold of my sister eventually and she went down to help take care of things at the house.

After further assessment, these were decidedly amateur crooks. They broke a bedroom window to get in, after not being able to find an easy way in. They didn't really ransack the place like you'd typically expect... however, they stole some jewelry, silverware, two TVs and a laptop computer. Oh, and to top things off, they took my mom's minivan too (they probably needed something to haul away the stuff in). So after the police to wrote up the report, and CSI:FW processed the crime scene and got some nice fingerprints from the window, they cleaned up a bit of the mess around and the police put out a stolen vehicle alert on the car.

On to today... my parents got back and we told them about what happened. They made it home and took inventory of what was missing and worked on getting things back in order. The insurance folks will call tomorrow to take care of everything.

But wait, there's more! About 9:00pm, less than 30 hours after the incident was reported, they get a call from the FWPD: they've found the stolen van parked at the Denny's on 320th (all of about 3 minutes from my parents house) and asked them to come over to take a look. Apparently these crooks ARE as stupid as they seemed to be. After arriving, they found 3 or 4 police cars surrounding the parking lot and apparently they had two suspects in custody. Unfortunately, most of the loot was no longer in the van, but they suspect it's all close by. After some waiting around for CSI:FW to process the car and get any fingerprint evidence they could, they actually drove the car back home. The car seems to be in good shape, though apparently the police found a crack pipe among other things in the car, and recommended they get it professionally cleaned, which insurance should take care of. In the meantime, the police apparently have already recovered a few things (mainly jewelry-type stuff) off the suspects.

As of the last update, one suspect is in jail being interrogated, one suspect is at the hospital, probably handcuffed to the bedrail, after an untimely run in with one of Federal Way's four-legged finest in the FWPD K9 unit. It sounds as if justice may be served afterall.

Birmingham and Heading Home - Day 5 & 6

My last full day in Birmingham was pretty laid back. After just being lazy around the house all morning, hunger finally necessitated us actually getting up and heading out for the day.

We went to a small local restaurant "Paw Paw Patch"... self-described as "Country Cooking". Anything sterotypically southern is here for your culinary enjoyment. I had some mighty tasty fried chicken, along with expanding my horizons with some fried green tomatoes and creamed corn. The corn looked like it was being eaten for a second time, but was surprisingly tasty. The fried green tomatoes looked fried and tasty, but I could live without them. Andrew got some fried okra, which I tried and found to be decidedly meh. But Southern it definitely was.

We then went over to the Birmingham Zoo, and I took advantage of my nearly-expired membership to the Woodland Park Zoo, which basically gives me reciprocal free admission at nearly every zoo in the country. I saved about $13.50, which made it almost worth it to buy a membership. Nice zoo, nothing too amazing, but definitely had some nice areas and the different climate actually yields some animals you wouldn't see at Woodland Park.

After heading home for a quick break, we went to see a movie at the dollar theatre. Andrew still hadn't seen National Treasure 2, so I saw that again for the second time in 4 days. However, seeing it on something a bit larger than a 12" screen made a huge difference. It was still worth $1.

It is now Tuesday and time to head home after a much relaxing and eventful vacation. After a nice quick flight from Birmingham, I'm now sitting here eating lunch in Charlotte on about a two-hour layover. Sitting here eating my lunch of a bacon burger at the faux airport Chili's, it was a bit surprising to glance up at the televion and see the right honourable senator from the state of Washington, Maria Cantwell, on CNN. Of course, there is no audio, nor captions, other than the byline stating something to do with oil, and furthermore I'm no lip reader, which is good too because I just now realized that Cantwell doesn't really have any lips (other than the ones she seems to draw on her face).

Another hour or so until my flight leaves, in addition to all of my pictures from this trip I've posted online, I realized that I've got several groups of pictures spanning as far back as Emily and Nathan's wedding nearly a year ago that I still haven't posted and labeled. Perhaps most of these will make their way up shortly as well.

O'Hare is the next stop on my journey home, and I highly doubt they provide free internet like the fine hospitality of the south provides. On a side note, this being my first venture to the Charlotte airport, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend being stuck on a layover here. Bright and airy, with plenty of space to relax and not feel like you're stuck in an airport. Admittedly, that might change if you were here for 4 or 5 hours, but for a 2-hour layover it's quite nice.

Back on United for the final two legs of my trip. I'm expecting less than luxurious coach accomodations. I'm also slightly disconcerted that my flight out of Charlotte still has no gate number assigned with just over an hour until departure. Seems a bit odd, but probably nothing to worry about. Along with that, it's already estimated to arrive in Chicago 7 minutes ahead of schedule. Somehow I doubt that.

The voyage home continues...

Chattanooooga - Day 3 & 4

Day three had us heading off to Chattanooga, Tennessee for the night. It's only a little over 2 hours to drive up there, but we made a short detour along the way.

In the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama lives the place where you find all of the things you never knew you lost. The Unclaimed Baggage Center, home of everything you've ever left behind on an airplane, or in your lost luggage, or probably in the airport too. That's right, it all ends up in Alabama. What does that mean? Not a whole lot. In addition to the racks and racks of clothes, you'll find tons of iPods and every other iPod-like-device ever created. Sounds too good to be true? It is. Everything is priced pretty ridiculously, if you ask me. Sure you save a bit of money over what you'd pay for something brand new, but not that great of a deal, especially for an iPod that looks like it's been to Siberia and back (and probably has). On the gimmick scale, this place rates at 9 out of 10... don't waste your time.

After that brief stop, we continued on to Chattanooga. Getting there requires crossing briefly into Georgia, then up into Tennessee. For probably a hundred miles around, you see signs, billboards, and what seem to be trademark birdhouses all advertising...

"SEE ROCK CITY!"

Rock City is basically what it sounds like, a tourist trap at the top of Lookout Mountain, apparently named because you can look out from the top and see seven different states. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but whatever. You'll see plenty of Rock City in the photo album. It's actually pretty cool, but if it wasn't enough of a gimmick, its biggest draw... the brand new Starbucks across the street. Spare me.

We dropped down the mountain and into Chattanooga, found our hotel and checked in then went downtown to see what there was to do. It was pretty late in the evening so the main plan was to find dinner, but we figured out what was there. We found dinner and then eventually made our way back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we headed back downtown and went to the Tennessee Aquarium. Definitely one of the best aquariums I've ever been to, and the fact that it was raining off and on all day long made it good to be inside for a few hours. We had lunch and wandered around Chattanooga for a few hours before heading back down to Birmingham.

Had barbeque for dinner and then were lazy the rest of the day. Still feels like a vacation.

Monday is the last day before I leave Tuesday morning for another marathon of flights back to Seattle. Good times.