Author: kevin

In 5th grade (might have been 4th?) I started an origami club. I think there was one other member (Andros? Bob? ), and there were only a few club meetings (we were allowed to stay in during recess and do origami), but it was still a thing. I can’t tell you how many origami books I rented from the library at that point in my life – this is years before I even really knew what Japan was.

This is but one example of how Japan sort of just “fit” into my life, but there are many others (my hate for tipping, the fact that I so enjoy taking my shoes off when I go home, my love for gadgety/techy things, etc, etc).

All of this is to say that Japan was a place that I’ve wanted to go more then anywhere else for a very long time. And now Lindsay and I have gone, and as I type this I am at the Kansai international airport in Osaka getting ready to leave. I am quite sad about leaving to be honest. This is in large part because Japan has been everything I had hoped it would be. Every fantastic idea of what I thought Japan might be turned out to be pretty damn close to reality.

To finish up things with the trip itself, we just spent 4 awesome days in Osaka. We had few expectations of Osaka, but sadly it turned out to be one of our favorite cities. I say sadly because we spent less time here than anywhere else in Japan. Honestly, given the choice to stay in Osaka, Tokyo, or Kyoto (the larger cities we spent real time in), we both might choose Osaka. It felt slightly “grittier” and at the same time a bit more down to earth or something. I don’t know.

To start things off, we spent our first night in a capsule hotel. This was “one of those Japanese things” that I’ve sort of always idealized and wished I could experience, and as with other things it was as great as I had expected.

For those not familiar, capsule hotels are generally geared towards “salary men” who might stay too late working (or drinking) or are traveling and can’t make it home at night and don’t want to pay for an expensive hotel. So they are literally just “capsules” stacked on top of each other that you sleep in.

But it’s like being in outer space! Lindsay took these photos of her capsule (note the sexes are separated)

I had a SUPER drunk guy climb in on top of me sometime around 2am, but he was friendly (I think, based on the few motor skills he was able to use) enough. There are no locking doors, just a wood/fabric mat that covers your door. You can read a lot more about these things on the ol’ internet, but the point is we did this and it was awesome. Also awesome is the fact that you put your shoes in a locker when you enter the capsule hotel, and then you get another locker that has a robe in it that you wear for your stay. There was a Japanese style bath/shower/sauna/soaking area with “free” single use shavers/tooth brush. I would say that one complaint I had is that the common areas allowed smoking and I think my throat is becoming more sensitive to cigarette smoke. Anyway, it was awesome.

After the capsule hotel, we did what we normally did and walked around Osaka a lot. We had ramen, we went to the grocery store, we ate various snacks and drank various beers. We spent a good half a day (if not more) geocaching (though we went like 2/7), and more walking.

We saw the Osaka castle (the photo doesn’t nearly do it justice – it was in a beautiful park, and there was a “Sweet Marathon” going on)

But a REAL highlight for us was couchsurfing with a great new friend, Kyo. Kyo is a super nice guy and he introduced us to a great new friend Nia. Kyo made us a great hot pot dinner one night, and otherwise was just a really nice guy.

Kyo also took us to his office to show us where he works. His company (basically) restores/renovates traditional Japanese houses. I happen to love traditional Japanese houses, so it was pretty awesome. His “office” includes various show houses, which are basically my absolutely ideal/dream house. Think wood burning stoves, fresh mountain air, cut cedar planks everywhere.

And that was about it for Osaka, and Japan. Now we fly to Istanbul.

Pictures will come, but I just wanted to quickly post this while the spirit moved me as pictures likely won’t do justice anyway.

Lindsay and I took a night bus from Kyoto South/West to Hiroshima, arriving this morning around 6:30am. From there we took a road trolley to the port of Hiroshima, where we waited an hour or so for a ferry to take us to the Koyou port on the Island of Etajima. Each step of this trip brought us further from the city, further and further into smaller and smaller towns. People are more likely to stare and wonder what a few gaijins are doing walking down the street with giant packs.

Anyway, after arriving on the Island we took a bus (the bus we suspected took us where we wanted, though we weren’t sure) 3 or so kilometers and then hiked up the side of a hill through the backyards of some UP looking houses (except Japanese). Then bam! We arrived at our current living accommodations, a small, 100ish year old traditional Japanese house. It’s not fancy. At all. It’s got a bunch of random stereo equipment laying around. The couches are warn and mismatched.

It’s currently 38 degrees, and there is no central heat. The doors are all rice paper, which is to say, incredibly thin with very little isolation. The only heat comes from propane fans (I’m hoping we don’t die in a tragic fire), which I have pointed directly at my person. I’m also wearing socks for the first time in 4+ months and one of those expose-to-air-and-shake-to-activate heating pads taped to my chest. I’m still cold, but incredibly happy and content.

Outside the house is a garden with mandarin oranges, a bonfire area (complete with a bench that says “I’ve got 99 problems but a bench ain’t one”), and more importantly a direct view of the ocean. We’re up on a hill, so the view is great. It’s not a “top of the empire state building” view but it is a “top of a hill in a very small rural village in Japan overlooking an oyster farm” view.

Lirdy is currently taking a cat nap. Sadly for her, the heater in the room didn’t seem to turn on, so it’s very cold in there. But she’s under blankets, so hopefully she’s doing OK. We’ll see when she wakes up. Speaking of cats there are two here, but they are actually really great cats. You see, I generally don’t like cats, but at least one of the cats is quite dog like. Actually seems to enjoy petting in a dog-like fashion, and the cat is bigger then many cats I’ve seen so it’s got some substance to it when you pet it.

Having just arrived we don’t have many plans, but our host, Tohei has told us there is the oyster farm/factory 2km away that we can walk to and buy cheap oysters at, so we might do that tomorrow. I also plan on looking for a local bar. And, 6km is an onsen (hot spring/public bath) that apparently looks over the ocean, so that’s on the to-do list for sure.

We’ve got 4 days here, and no plans. Maybe do some reading, and definitely do some programming. And walking.

Hello everybody! Kevin here! How are you!!!?

Anyway, look, let’s get down to brass tacks. As a friend/colleague used to say, here’s the deal:

Lindsay and I had the opportunity to go to Tokyo 5 years ago, when a friend awesomely gave us the opportunity to have an extended layover in Japan on our way from SE Asia to Chicago. But, we were homesick after having traveled for 6 (ish – Nick, we’re using the ceiling function) months on the road. On that almost-layover, we were planning on going to the Tsukiji fish market, for many reasons, but because mainly, I had always wanted to see that. But we didn’t, and went home instead. Since then, it has been an itch I couldn’t scratch, because my hands couldn’t reach, if you see what I mean (it’s like, figurative language or something?).

Switching gears 100%, my favorite movie is Lost in Translation. I don’t say this lightly. It really is. If you asked me to name a single piece of media that is most important to me, it’s probably that movie. And it’s been a part of the reason I’ve wanted to come to Japan, sort of like a pilgrimage. Anyway, a lot of that movie takes place in a hotel called the Park Hyatt.

So, here is what we did:

1. We went to the Tsukiji Fish Market
2. We went to the Park Hyatt, up to the 52nd floor where much of LiT takes place

Can you believe it? We did both things!

The Tsukiji market was pretty awesome. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the largest wholesale fish market in the world. It’s huge. One of the big parts of the market is a tuna auction that happens most mornings. The auction is one of the things we really wanted to see, but it starts at 5am. Only 120 people per day are allowed to watch this auction, and to get a spot you need to arrive as early as possible to get a place. We heard that 4:30AM was a good time, but being the paranoid person I am, we decided to get there at 4AM. This was bad enough, but to make matters worse we are a fair distance (3ish mile) from the market, and no public transportation would take us there at 4AM. So we were left with either 1. pay to sleep somewhere near the fish auction (expensive), or 2. pay a taxi ($40+) to get us there, or 3. walk there. We opted for option 3 on account of our budget, which meant we had to be out of the door at 3AM. So it was an early morning.

It turns out that we were almost LATE at 4AM, as there were only a few spots left. After all 120 spots are taken, the entry door shuts and nobody else can get in. So, at 4AM we got there, then sat on the floor of this room for an hour and 45 minutes.

But, it was awesome!

After the auction, we walked around the market and found ourselves a great place to get a 6AM sushi breakfast! It was a bit pricey (~$25 for both of us), but probably some of the freshest fish you can get, short of eating the fish raw on the boat.

(doesn’t look much like breakfast)

The wholesale fish market itself was amazing. It was far and above better then any fish market I’ve ever seen. Sadly, we don’t have many digital photos of the place (I took a whole roll of film though!), but here are a few random photos:

Overall, one of my favorite things we’ve done in Tokyo.

And then, there was Park Hyatt. We felt quite underdressed and generally like garbage walking into the hotel, which was incredibly fancy and awesome. Walking into the hotel made you sort of wish you were rich, and living a different sort of life. It was pretty amazing.

Anyway, we walked in like we owned the place, despite our feelings, and went straight to the elevator which took us up to the 42nd floor. Here, you step out in a huge huge room, complete with plants and dark atmospheric lighting and fancy people drinking expensive things. But we weren’t at our destination yet. We had to make it to the 52nd floor, which required finding a different lift. We ended up having to ask a hotel person how to get to the top floor, and I slipped in a tacky (feeling) question about when they started charging cover. We walked through the library, found the second lift, and ended up at the New York Bar on the 52nd floor of Park Hyatt.

It was smaller then I expected based on the movie, but I sort of liked that. It made it more believable that the two characters would be able to communicate with each other sitting at different tables without it being super weird/ackward.

Anyway, photos don’t really do the place justice, but here are a few bad ones anyway:

LIT == Lost in Translation

I had a Suntory beer, although a wiskey would have been more appropriate, they didn’t have a Suntory whiskey that I could find, and also it would have cost too much anyway :).

Here is where “Bob” sat

If anybody is curious, the drinks were 1100 Yen for the beer, 1900 Yen for the mixed drink, plus 13% tax (?) and 13% service charge, so the total was around 3600 Yen or 36 dollars for the two drinks. They gave us freeze dried peas and sesame crackers and peanuts in a dish. The service was awesome, if you are into that sort of thing. If we had stayed after 8pm (7pm on Sunday) we would have each been charged 2200 Yen for cover. If you ever visit Tokyo, and enjoy the movie or super fancy/classy/beautiful bars or awesome/amazing views, I’d say this was a great experience.

A great few experiences.

Last night we started our India trip. In short, the travel went about as smoothly as we could hope. We traveled with Swiss Air, and went Chicago -> Zurich -> Mumbai. We didn’t have any brutal layovers, no delays, no baggage problems. The food was pretty good on the flights (we had FOUR meals).

I managed to stay up most of the time, Lindsay slept a decent chunk. My hope (and I had thought I had succeeded) was that I’d avoid most of the jet lag if I was just really tired when I arrived.

When we got to Mumbai, we could right away feel the heat and humidity. Normally when you walk into an airport you automatically feel the cool, crisp, sterile and filtered air and I love that feeling. In Mumbai, we both swear you could smell spices. The air while cooler, felt humid and perhaps a bit dank. And the walls were all wooden panels and the floor was I’d say an Indian print. Basically, coming into the airport it already felt like we were in a different place.

I had read that there were prepaid taxi stands at the International Airport, and more specifically told that there were two sets of taxi stands. One taxi stand was run by private companies (generally more expensive), and one set was run by the government. Of course neither is clearly marked as such, and we were told originally that the non-government taxi stand was the government taxi stand. Pretty standard stuff I’d say. We had an idea of what to look for though, so we ended up going outside and asking a security guard who pointed us in the wrong feeling, but actually right direction.

580 rupees was the cost, and that got us a ~1 hour taxi ride South to Fort, which is an area within Mumbai.

And here is the crux of this blog post: driving through Mumbai at night after being very tired and having not really been around such a place in a while was a crazy, crazy experience. Much of this we’ve experienced before, such as the multiple near-death experiences we had. But, it’s difficult to explain just how insane things seemed. Men, primarily, everywhere on the sides of the streets standing around chatting. Piles of garbage (and when I say piles, I mean hills), complete with large sleeping cows and foraging wild dog. What appeared to be multiple (10? 20?) carnival type lighting situations (think bright, blinking, festive looking christmas lights) that I think may have been temple/shrines. Honestly, it’s just really difficult to explain. But, to be honest and not totally positive, I think both Lindsay and I were overwhelmed. Are over whelmed.

Our plan was to stay in Mumbai for two days then head off somewhere else, but when we were driving I said to Lindsay, “I think we might need a few more then two days to acclimate.” One thing that I think we’ll have to get comfortable with is the lack of females. There were by FAR more guys out last night walking around, and very few females. I want to make sure we’re safe, so it might be just that at night we don’t go out as much, at least not until we get a better feel for what’s safe, what’s not safe, etc.

After we got to our hotel/guest house (expensive, though relatively cheap for Mumbai I’m told, at ~30 bucks a night) we took showers, and went to bed. Somehow, I fell right asleep, but then woke up at 4:25am and couldn’t get back to sleep until almost 6am. This was, literally and figuratively, a dark time for me. Feeling both hot and cold (we have AC in this room which is incredibly loud), and wishing I was under a “real” blanket (as apposed to my silk sheet bed liner), thinking about the chaos that is just outside my door, and the fact that in the morning I was going to have to go back outside and face all of that. I knew that in the morning with some rest I’d feel better and more positive, but at 5 am that didn’t matter much.

But, sure enough, this morning I feel better. It was very nice to be able to talk with Lindsay. I’m very happy to be traveling with her. Full disclosure: I have yet to leave the room yet and it’s almost 2pm! We ended up sleeping in until 12:30, then took some time to organize our packs, get our money situated, and now Lindsay is reading up on Mumbai while I type this up.

By the way, Happy Birthday Brittany!

OK, off for now, time to start the first day in India.

p.s. The reason I Sai this is different than Bangkok, is because I don’t remember feeling like there was just SO MUCH “stuff” everywhere in Bangkok. It felt a bit more like a “normal” city when we arrived, the driving aside.

Packing is now fully underway. Lindsay has spent the past week+ organizing, cleaning, and selling our stuff on Craigslist. Sadly, we still have a long way to go – as I lay in bed typing this, I see our bed stand, our alarm clock, our covers and sheets, our mattress, the artwork above our head, etc. All of that stuff needs to be gone in two weeks. And that’s just in our bed area.

Still, we’ve gotten rid of quite a large number of things:

• My motorcycle
• Our kitchen table
• Our TV and TV stand
• Our blender
• Our chair
• Our couch
• MOST of our clothing

Here are a few photos that don’t quite do the madness justice.

..and a bunch of other stuff. Five, six, seven, eight, maybe more bags of “garbage” have been thrown away at this point. Sadly “garbage” doesn’t mean “totally garage”, but things like pans that are too scratch to be of much value to anybody, but not bad enough to replace. Semi-used craft supplies, clothes with stains, etc. Hopefully by the end of the week things will START to come together, and by next weekend we’ll be ready to sort out the final pieces. The big unknowns at this point are just how much stuff we have in the “keep” pile, and whether it might warrant getting a storage space (Lindsay is very much against this, I have mixed feelings but feel it may be required), etc.

In other news, Lindsay and I (and Sai) went up to Russian River this past weekend with a bunch of friends. We stayed at this great cabin/house/thing right on the river (near Guernyville). There were perhaps 15 of us, and we spent most of the day swimming, playing cards, drinking 1 or 2 or more beers, and just generally hanging out. The water on the river was low, but it was BEAUTIFUL. Possibly BECAUSE it was low and the sun was able to get down to the bottom of the river easily, it was very bright and I had an awesome time swimming around. I got a new housing for my GoPro Hero 2 (Thanks Teeples!) and recorded a few small little video clips which I put together in a video. Sorry for the shaky camera, next time I’ll not move around so much I think.

First, as a few of you know, Lindsay and I are leaving the Bay (at least for a while) and moving to India. “Moving” is admittedly a slightly strong word, as we have no intention of staying permanently, but we are going for a year. Or up to a year. At this point we have very few details as far as what we’re doing in India, but we know this: July 1st, we’ll get in the car and drive from Oakland, CA to Vancouver, CAN (Canada!). From there, we’ll drive across Canada over the period of a month, until we get to Quebec City, Quebec. From there, we’ll go back down through Canada to the US, where we’ll end up in Grand Rapids, MI. We’ll spend the rest of August in Michigan with our families (and I’ll be trying to work as much as I can, if possible). Then, September the 3rd we’ll fly from Chicago to Mumbai! And that’s about the start of the India trip. I’ll post a lot more soon about more details that we do have (our rough Canada camping plan, etc) soon.

But for now, the start of the India trip…

Today was a bit hellish. Not really, all in all, I had oatmeal which I really like, and I got a new battery for my Nintendo DS (thanks Nick). I’m trying to catch them all in Pokemon Black at the moment.

But let’s go back in time, to a simpler time..

The time is last week. I had just gotten done spending days researching Indian visas and navigating the very terrible visa websites. See, the thing is, India outsources the visa application processing to a company. As of today, that company is BLS. As of next week (and this is critical!), it’s a different company. Apparently BLS had many complaints against it, so India cancelled their contract and moved to a different company.

Here is our application (well, part of it), which was one of five or six documents we needed to have ready.

Because of this switch to a new company there was/is uncertainty in how BLS (the current company) would handle this trade off, what would happen if you were midway through the visa process when this transition happened, etc. I thought long and hard about this, but decided that I would rather just take care of everything asap. By “everything” I mean “getting our visa.” We are applying for 5 year multiple-entry visas, which means (long story short) that getting the visa early is not a problem. A 6 month tourist visa is good for 6 months from the date that the visa is issue, and technically the 5-year visa is “used” starting the day it’s issued, but we obviously won’t be in India for 5 years!

Anyway, the BLS website is incredibly confusing, but after spending some time reading and re-reading all of the various instructions on the website I got together what I believed to be all of the paperwork for our visa. I made an appointment (also confusing) and went to the BLS office in downtown San Francisco on Geary. I waited in line for a while, but ended up having no problems.

Until a few days later, when I got an email telling me that I needed to submit an additional document for processing. Basically, the visa application (a from supplied by the Indian government) had a field in which to put the address of your “sponsor” in India. I didn’t realize (and ultimately this is my fault) that the form automatically truncated the address I copy/pasted, and “Mumbai, India” was cut off. So, I had to resubmit the application.

This involved filling out a new application, which wasn’t so bad. Then printing everything out. Also not so bad. Well, as I mentioned it was a bit stressful know that the company I had given 300 bucks to and had my passport was going out of business completely in a few days time, and the website now looked like this:

Anyway, I filled out the form, and immediately the next day went into BLS, making sure to get there at 8:30AM. This was on a Wednesday. Well, I get to the front door and what do I see, but this sign:

Of course there was no notice that BLS would be closed on Wednesday on the website, and what’s more, this was one of the last THREE days the office was open, period. Before the limbo/uncertainty while switching visa processing over to the new company. I was very sad at this point, as I had really tried to do everything “right”, but kept having random problems. Also, though I’m tired and it’s a bit difficult to explain the feeling here, a number of the employees working at BLS actually came up to the door while myself and another person were outside talking about how bummed we were that it BLS was closed. The employees were, from what I can tell, trying to get into the office for one reason or another, but the door was locked. So they were pounding on the door trying to get somebody to let them in, but it didn’t seem like anybody was in the office. It was just a strange feeling, being locked outside of the office with the people who worked in the office, on the side of a busy street in San Francisco.

I tried to get more info about what would happen, when we should come back, if I would have enough time to get my visa processed before switching over to the new company on Friday, etc. They (understandably) told us (as they were calling people and banging on the door) that they weren’t sure what would happen, that they themselves didn’t have jobs anymore at the end of the week, and that they couldn’t tell us anything. Not particularly reassuring. I asked if we’d at least be able to get our passports back, the person I was speaking to said “I don’t know,” which was awesome! They advised me to come back the next morning, early. The office doesn’t open until 9, but they said to get there by 8:30 for sure.

Luckily, being the nerd I am, I got to the office at 7:45 AM the next day (45 minutes before recommended!), Thursday. One day until BLS shut down. And I’m very happy I did, because already that early in the AM, this is what I saw:

After waiting an hour and fifteen minutes for the office to open, I took care of things relatively quickly. Despite the less then ideal experience I had with the BLS and the general Indian visa system, the people at BLS were very friendly and were as helpful as I honestly think they could be. I gave my documentation to a very nice lady, who told me that I would more then likely be OK. She said that if the Indian consulate didn’t finish processing my visa by the time BLS closed for good, then the new company (Cox and Kings I think is the name) would more then likely get my passport and send me an email to pick it up.

Luckily, that never happened. Friday, the next day, around 1pm, Lindsay and I both got emails telling us that our visas were processed and ready for pickup. Marc, being the nice guy he is, let me leave work early (around 5) and I headed to BLS as fast as possible. The office was packed, and seem on the brink of chaos. This was, literally, the last 30 minutes of BLS before it closed for good. I’m very, very thankful, that I was able to get our passports back, barely.

You can see they had already posted the sign up saying that the office was closed.

And here are some of the people waiting.

Anyway, long story short, we’re going to India!

edit: turns out I think we made the right choice to go with BLS. Looks like the new company is currently having a rough time! http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/outsourced-indian-visa-company-angers-crowd/Content?oid=2806904

edit again: And a video showing the continued chaos: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Indian-Consulate-Service-Sparks-Frustration-Over-Delayed-Visas-261037461.html

Lindsay had a few days off for spring break. “Wow, that’s great” – That’s what you might be saying. But YOU ARE RIGHT! It was great! I took a few days off (three, if you want to know) and we had a 5 day great weekend. I should add that prior to this amazing weekend I had an amazing birthday party, thanks to Lindsay, complete with oysters (and a super cool dude who shucked them for us), friends from all over the place, etc.

Anyway, last weekend. Wednesday night we drove down to Big Sur and camped right off the 1 at Kirks Creek, an awesome campground right on the coast. To be honest, I was not in a particularly great mood on Wednesday, mainly because I was very tired, so I took a nap (the second in a week, which is some sort of insane record for me). I woke up from the nap, Lindsay and I had dinner (I believe we had chicken bratwurst, if such a thing exists). Then, we played a game of cribbage, which was a great game of cribbage. After these exiting events, we went to bed (around 9:30pm, although Lindsay stayed up for another hour or so reading).

Around 12:15 we woke up, got in the car, and drove ~20 minutes along the 1 to this insane compound/cult/spa/retreat/magical place. Basically there is this thousand dollar a day spa that is huge, but in the middle of nowhere, and then open up every night from 1am until 3am for clothing optional natural mineral baths. These aren’t just your normal run of the mill mineral springs, they are in this (as I’ve mentioned) insane space, on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. You could see/hear the ocean crashing on the rocks below, and the stars were out and it was a clear night and probably in part because of how tired/dazed I was it was an amazing experience. I’m very happy we went.

The next day at breakfast we weren’t exactly sure what we were going to do to be honest. We had originally planned to go to Disneyland, but earlier in the week we were worried that it might not work out with Sai. But with a bit of sleep I felt a bit more positive/energetic and gave Nick a call to see if he’d be cool with us leaving Sai at his place during the day while we were at Disney. Being the great friend he is, he said “no problem” and the rest is history, which you’ll read about next.

We drove down to LA (which btw, if you have never driven from Northern California to Southern California on the 1, it’s worth doing, it’s a beautiful drive, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it EVERY time you’re driving) which took us way longer then it should. I sometimes talk shit about SoCal (always joking of course), but one thing I really don’t like is that we seem to end up in shitty traffic every time we drive down. Oh well. We drove down to LA OK? That’s the point.

So anyway, Thursday we had dinner and that was great. Then we went to bed. Then we woke up and had what I would classify an amazing day. First, on the drive down to LA we spent an hour or so reading through various tutorials on how to maximize your time at Disneyland and minimize wait times. I won’t go into many details here because you can easily find tons of information on google if you’re interested, but things like how exactly the FastPass system works, which rides tend to have longer lines and at which times, etc. When we got into the part, we ran past all of the families pushing strollers and got in the front of all of the lines, grabbed FastPasses while the other figured out the shortest lines, etc.

Now, + and –

+ We rode most of the big rides without waiting more then 10 minutes (which was insane)
+ Related, but the park was busy (of course), just busy enough, but not so crazy you couldn’t find a place to sit if you wanted, etc
+ I was not scared on any of the rides (the last time I went to Disney I cried on Space Mountain)
+ I genuinely felt really happy to be there, and like it was a “magical” sort of experience. Part of the “magic” was probably just the number of people there that seemed to be having a good time, but it was also fun to be a “kid” (as cliche and Disney commercialish that is to say) and I really appreciate all of the attention to detail, etc. Just a happy sort of place (“The Happiest Place on Earth”!)

– The rides, if I were to be honest, were not as spectacular as I remember. I think a big part of that is just growing up, but on most of the rides we went on I left feeling at least somewhat underwhelmed. Some rides (such as the Matterhorn Bobsleds) I felt very underwhelmed
– Lindsay was perhaps not experiencing the “magic” feeling as much as I did above – not to say that she didn’t have a very good time (she did I think), but she didn’t feel depressed when we left (I did!) and perhaps wouldn’t be as likely to go back next year. I think I could go back to Disneyland in a year and have an amazing time again
– It seems to be maintenance season at Disney, so a number of the bigger rides were closed. Most notably (for me), It’s a Small World was closed, and most notably for other people I tell was the Indiana Jones ride. Also the Finding Nemo ride.
– Autopia was insanely not great IMO, perhaps great for a 3-9 year old kid, but I was pretty upset because I was a great driver and this terrible kid who could barely drive still beat me, even though he kept running into the track and loosing speed! (I’m 90% kidding)

Honestly I was surprised that I liked Disney as much as I did. If I just write down my thoughts about the rides, the food, etc, I wouldn’t probably paint a very pretty picture (just “OK”). But there was something great about the experience and I’m excited to go back.

I took a bunch of photos (black and white, unfortunately) but I haven’t finished the roll yet. I’ll post them when I get them developed/scanned. Also thanks to the Teeples, they purchased my ticket for my birthday and I don’t think we’d have gone without that incentive.

After Disney, we went home and went out and had some great Thai food. Then Saturday morning we woke up and drove home. And that’s about it.

Well, quite a bit has happened since my last post here. I spent two weeks solo in Chicago for work. Lindsay and I went to a wedding in LA. We spent a day in Santa Cruz. I shaved my beard (and am now growing it back again). Actually that’s all I can think of.

Chicago was a great time. I stayed in a fancy hotel and went to a pretty interesting training. Anthea came to visit, as did my mom and Tristan. I ate some great donuts, and a (not pictured) great pizza.

Anyway, long story short, I took a few photos and figured I might as well post a few of them.

Anthea in Union Station

This Panorama turned out pretty well, except that I somehow (even though I SWEAR I did, I always do!) didn’t lock the exposure. So I ended up with two differently exposed photos, which I didn’t spend the time required to try to match more evenly and instead just used photoshops (generally pretty good) “match color” feature. So you can see the seem. I’ll probably go back at some point and do a better job.

This donut place was a chain (or at least there were a number of different locations, I don’t know if “chain” has a technical definition, but in the case I use it to mean “more then one location”), but was very great. The donuts were expensive-ish (2-4 bucks I think?) but were creative/quality enough to justify the price I believe. Case in point: the creme brulé donut had a very hard caramelized sugar shell on it. Which is easy enough to do if you are making creme brulé, but I don’t know they kept trays of the things hard/crackling all day.

This was a really cool old (50s? 60s?) arcade machine in one of the arcades on the Santa Cruz boardwalk area.

We really like Santa Cruz. The rocks are cool and all, but honestly the coolest part of this was the group of kids bodysurfing in the water.

I took this photo because when we move from this apartment someday, I’d always like to remember the few (see:currently in a pretty serious drought) but awesome rainy days we’ve spent in our apartment. I may not want to remember the crocs, but there they were! Edit:Actually, I also should point out that there is a ridiculous amount of grain (if this were digital I’d call it “grain”) on the crocs. To be fair, I did try to bring out more detail from the shoes, so ultimately this is my own fault, but I didn’t actually notice how bad it was until posting this. It’s my fault.

A portrait of Nicola that I like a lot. Good looking guy!

Edit: I realized I mentioned a wedding, but didn’t actually post any photos from it. That’s mainly because, to be honest, I didn’t take any photos that were that worth posting. But, for the sake of keeping track of memories:

This should be an interesting next few months, lots of fun stuff planned. For now, time to go to bed and read “Code Complete” <3 p.s. I finished reading the Gentleman Bastard's third book ("Republic of Thieves"). I really enjoyed it.

Lindsay and I had a 3 day weekend for Veterans Day, and we decided to do some camping sort of activity for the weekend. AND IT WAS A WONDERFUL ADVENTURE AWESOME WEEKEND.

First, because I am guessing people might be wondering and I want to admit this right away: 1) We didn’t catch any crabs 2) I didn’t get any fish while freediving because I wasn’t spearfishing.

That said, honestly this was such an amazing weekend. To start, we left Saturday afternoon-ish from Oakland without any concrete plans, other then we knew we wanted to go camping and we knew that we wanted to go North. Lindsay recently took a “sea foraging” class and was excited about the possibilities of catching crabs (like I was 6+ months ago), so we figured something along the coast. Bodega Bay came to mind and so we sort of had that area in mind. We called a bunch of parks and as we expected (and I worried about!) all of the state parks we called were full and had no availability. BUT, one great lady I talked to told us about a private camp ground near/in Salt Point. I actually forget the name of the place, but she said it was a nice place that was dog friendly so we decided to head there.

It was a two and a halfish hour drive to this campground. When we got there, we paid the nice lady whose property it was, and she told us how to get down to the camping area. It turns out the campground was on the beach, RIGHT on the beach. It’s hard to explain how awesome this place was, but hopefully the photos at least give SOME idea. It’s a working beach, and by that I mean when we arrived there was a huge pile of dead fish heads/bodies sitting on the beach. Everybody there was either fishing or spearfishing, which if you know anything about my recent interests (spearfishing/freediving) then you’ll know how excited I was about this.

Anyway, we got out of our cars and started hauling our stuff onto the beach, and a nice guy (whose name I forget) came over to us (it was dark, so it was MUCH appreciated and we honestly weren’t sure where we should put our stuff) and told us that we could setup our stuff by his tent if he wanted because he had a fire already. So we setup our tent next to our new friends, and sat out by the fire. It was perfect. We were literally 20 feet from the water when the tide is in. And our friend had a good day of fishing and was (as we set up the tent) frying a fresh lingcod in a pan with butter and lemon. And he gave us half the fish, which was more then we could eat. But it was an awesome sort of night, with the waves so close (see photo above).

The next day, Saturday, we woke up earlyish (7:30ish). This was mainly because of the previously mentioned fish heads on the beach were being attacked by a large and angry pack of seagulls (the grey type). First thing up (this moment haunted us for the rest of the weekend) a guy in a small pram type boat pulled up and unloaded a crab pot with FIFTEEN of the biggest, most beautiful dungeness crabs I’ve ever seen. FIFTEEN is a lot of dungeness crab, I’m guessing these crabs would cost you a good $200 bucks at a grocery store. Anyway, it was magical.

The rest of the day we spent driving around Bodega bay looking for a good place to throw in our one hoop net and fish with a small crab snare from a pole. The problem here was that while we have a good chunk of the items required to go dungeness crab hunting, we don’t have everything (like, for instance, a boat). So while in our minds we were picturing ourselves pulling in a trap with 15 dungeness from out in the Pacific, the reality is we were standing on a jetty with 100 (literally-ish, I’m guessing it was around 100) locals and tourists, having little to (in our case) no success.

Still, we got to see Duran beech, which was nice. I took a few photos with my film camera (which I’ll have to develop and scan to share), but it really is pretty cool to see just how many people fish. I’ve said this before (possibly not on the blog), but I feel like fishing/crabbing/sprearfishing out in California is like hunting back in Michigan, or at least there are similarities. The entire beach, which was very very busy, was occupied by people going to put out crab pots for dungeness. No families hanging out on the beach getting a tan, no teens playing catch in the water, just people hunting/fishing.

That evening, back at camp, I rented a Kayak (the lady who owns the property rents out what I am assuming is her Kayak) and attempted to paddle out past the kelp (see photo(s)) and catch us some crab. I quickly realized that even in a cove like we were in, the swell once you paddle out a bit makes it difficult to handle even the relatively light (but awkward) hoop net that I was using. Anyway, I gave it my best but had to come in relatively quickly and didn’t catch anything.

That night (this would be Sunday night, aka last night at this point) Lindsay and I had the entire beach to ourselves, and we cooked up a delicious feast of Trade Joes’ tortellini and a jar of cheap but great pasta sauce (side note: Lindsay tells me that according to a recent story on NPR, real tortellini in Italy is always served in a broth, never in a red tomato based sauce). We ate while watching the sunset, sitting on the beach. As soon as the sun was down we started a camp fire and sat for a few hours by the fire reading (second aside in as many sentences: I finished American Gods), then we went to bed at something sad like 7, mainly because even with a fire it was still a bit chilly laying on the cold sand. Lindsay was probably sleeping by 7:30pm or so, I was a bit of a night owl and didn’t fall asleep until almost 9.

The next day we woke up early, a bit before 7. I made a better attempt to catch us some crabs and kayaked further out. I made sure to organize the line on the crab trap before attaching it to the kayak (I had some trouble before). But, long story short, despite this, somehow the line got tangled when I threw it over and being the total newb that I am (it will not happen again and I learned a lot) I didn’t have the other end of the trap tied to my kayak, so when it went over the side and when the rope ended up getting tangled on itself, there wasn’t enough slack for the floats to make it to the surface. So, long story short the entire trap went under the water, and I felt/feel a bit stupid about it..

BUT, after that, and as much as I honestly didn’t feel like it (at this point being slightly wet and feeling a bit depressed about the stupidity and loss of the hoop net), I went for a quick and very cold but very much wonderful swim/freedive in the cove. It was great. Nothing too crazy, but I recently took a freediving class and haven’t been freediving since then. For the record I feel like a bit of a “tool” saying “freedive” but I guess I should get used to it, that’s what it is I suppose. I didn’t go particularly deep, probably 20 feet or so, but it was deep enough that I was able to swim under/through the kelp, and long enough that I felt like I was actually practicing. Honestly the visibility sucked, and I didn’t see much other then a few smaller fish and a few starfish, but when we go back I’ll feel more comfortable heading out a bit deeper (probably with Lindsay in the kayak) and actually doing a bit of spearfishing.

After that, I took a bit of an outdoor, painfully cold shower, Lindsay (thank you Lindsay!) packed up camp as I was getting out of the water, and then we headed off! Not too much happened after that, we did a tiny bit of exploring in the towns (Bodega bay and Pantaluma) on the drive home, and that was it! Grocery shopping for the week, then we just got back from Barnes and Nobles reading a bit.

I’m very excited to head back North. Now I just need to find a reasonably priced used speargun on Craigslist, and perhaps replace our hoop net.

As always, more photos on flickr!!!