Seattle's Sauve

July 4th on the Oregon Coast

2009-07-12T13:07:00.001-07:00

This past weekend Cheryl and I joined a good group of friends in renting a house on the Oregon coast near Lincoln City (about a 5.5 hour drive from Seattle). This was primarily organized by Trang and Henry – Thanks guys!

The full list of photos is here.

We decided to leave after the initial holiday traffic died off, so didn’t actually arrive in Lincoln City until well after midnight Thursday night. We were not the last ones in, I believe Shawn and Megan didn’t make it in until well after 1am – Henry and I stayed up to greet them.

The morning came quickly, and we were greeted to a warm day. The sun was having a hard time breaking through the ocean mist near the coastline, but 100 yards off the shore it was clear blue sky. We had each signed up for a meal (breakfast or dinner), and Cheryl and I decided take Friday night dinner. Our first breakfast was an amazing combination of crepes, and quiche – something both Cheryl and I appreciated.

After breakfast we spent some time hanging out on the beach playing with a soccer ball, football, disc, etc…) then headed south to go body boarding at a local beach… We headed down to Devil’s Punchbowl.

We also rented wetsuits because the water on the Oregon coast is freezing cold:

The wetsuits really helped, but we regretted not getting gloves. As soon as my hands hit the water I could feel the pain brought on by the cold water. After a few minutes my hands were numb. Regardless, we bodysurfed for over an hour, and had a great time. Every 5 minutes or so on the way back that night Cheryl would comment on how much fun she had in the waves. There were a bunch of surfers out there hanging out, but I think we caught way more waves, and had more fun :)

Since it was our turn to cook, on the way home we stopped in and bought the ingredients for Cheryl’s famous lasagna, and a bunch of Rainier cherries which were on a great sale – Rainier cherries are so good! We made dinner, and sat back to watch the sun set.

Here was the view from the house:

The next morning, Shawn, Megan, Cheryl and I drove further south with Trang and Henry to go sandboarding in the Oregon Dunes just south of Florence. On our way there we went to the ‘worlds largest sea cave’ to check out the local sea lions.

The view – even without the sea lions was spectacular:

After hanging out with the sea lions it was time to go sandboarding. We rented sand boards from a local place at Sand Master Park, and went south to Honeyman State Park. Sand boards seem like a cross between a wakeboard and a skateboard with a construction similar to the 7ply skateboards I used to ride, wakeboard-ish bindings, and a laminated bottom that has to be waxed prior to every single run. I had set my expectations very very low for sandboarding, it definitely exceeded my expectations though I don’t think it will catch on to be mainstream for a wide variety of (relatively obvious) reasons – until the climate changes a ton at least :)

Here’s Henry getting ready for his first run:

Cheryl surfing the sand:

Shawn and Aaron doing figure 8’s at the end of the day:

Cheryl also took some video. This one is a bit funny because a dune buggy in the background is revving up making it sound like the sand board has an engine. It does not :)

After finishing up on the dunes we headed back north to the house. It was Eric and Oliver’s turn to cook dinner, and they prepared an outstanding salmon dinner - with more Rainier cherries :)

Here’s Cheryl and I hanging out on the deck of the house:

We then sat back and watched a pretty impressive fireworks presentation – given it was not an organized event, just a bunch of random people launching fireworks from the beach. We didn’t bring any, but we had fun watching.

After the fireworks died down, Shawn broke out his guitar, and we massacred a bunch of popular tunes :)

The next day we decided to head out early. Cheryl really wanted to rescue Boots and Charlie from the kennel, so we wanted to beat the holiday traffic rush. We didn’t quite beat the rush, but we did make it back just in the nick of time. Boots and Charlie were very glad to see us.

Until next time!

Some biking, Some Wakeboarding

2009-06-22T20:04:00.001-07:00

Well, the last time I posted I didn’t have a bike, but luckily I found one on Craigslist for a reasonable price. Last year, I took a bit of a spill on my bike, and that bike is still out of commission with a broken rear frame piece, shock that needs serious servicing, and a broken pedal.

So, my new bike is a Transition Bottle Rocket, it’s more of a slopestyle bike than a downhill bike – which is what I’m used to, but so far it’s taken a pretty good amount of terrain.

Here it is:

I’ve had the chance to do a lot of rides on it so far. Some longer cross country rides, some local freeriding, Whistler, and the North Shore. It’s proven to be very versatile.

Here’s a shot from Whistler last weekend (Crabapple Hits):

This is Glade contemplating a steep double roll on the North Shore:

Other than biking, I was invited out with a friend from work to go wakeboarding before work – which requires waking up at an unholy hour. Apparently people who know something about wakeboarding/waterskiing will find the following picture pretty impressive… It’s a flat lake with no boaters… I am not actually a wakeboarder (I’ve only gone a few times), nor do I play one on TV, so the awesome conditions are no doubt lost on me.

Here is Lake Sammamish:

Well, I did manage to clear the wake a few times, but it was not always pretty.

As an example…

Of course, I was shown up by my friend who was pulling backflips, and other crazy things you only usually see on TV. So my wimpy wipeouts were nothing compared to his.

Here’s my buddy with some serious hangtime:

He landed the one before this, but it’s better to have the wipeout on camera :)

I had a few hard landings, one gave me whiplash a bit, and I actually had to go home and rest during the afternoon. The water is a lot harder than it looks.

Anyhow, until next time!

Boots and Charlie

2009-05-17T21:22:00.001-07:00

As many of you know, Cheryl is a big fan of most things furry with four legs. If we lived somewhere out in the country, or worked 9-5, we would definitely consider having a couple dogs – a few retrievers perhaps? Anyhow, with our work/travel schedule, we’ve determined that we do not have the time to properly take care of a dog. To fill the fuzziness void, for Cheryl’s birthday, I gave her the go-ahead to get cats.

Not long afterwards we found ourselves in the ASHA Kitty Harbor shelter, where about 20 kittens were roaming around on the floor, and in various cages. Kitty Harbor is a no-kill shelter that takes kittens in from other shelters that do not have the room to keep them. When we sat down to play with the various kittens I took a liking to “Tom” and “Jerry” as they were called. Cheryl seemed to take a liking to almost any kitten in the place, so apparently it was up to me to determine which ones we should grab. We were looking for 2 since we hoped they could keep themselves busy during the day while we were out.

To make a longer story short we brought home Tom and Jerry:

Who were almost immediately renamed to Boots and Charlie. Boots – because he has four white feet that look a bit like boots, and Charlie – because it popped into Cheryl’s head. The name seemed to fit, so we went with it.

Here’s Charlie in his first few minutes at our house:

Cheryl was pretty excited:

So far they’ve been very good together. Every night they sleep together, and most of the time they aren’t playing around they can be found lying around together somewhere. They are rarely apart.

Here’s them sleeping in a gift basket we got a while back:

Cheryl has already taken them on multiple walks outside:

So, now we have two scratching posts, a feather on a stick, a ball that makes noise when it rolls, and even a laser pointer… But, their favorite toy so far is the brown paper bag that Shawn and Megan brought over for a dinner party.

Here are Boots and Charlie playing in the paper bag:

Here they are on the paper bag:

I think I have about 20 photos of them and the bag.

Anyhow, we’re now on week two with these guys. They were 11 weeks when we got them, and have an easy-to-remember birthday: Valentines day. So far they’re doing great, we took them to the vet for their initial check up today, and they charmed the entire staff – who were all surprised they were so well behaved.

Anyhow, until next time!

Ontario for Sean’s Wedding

2009-04-18T11:18:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Cheryl and I headed to Toronto for Sean’s wedding.

Here are the pics from the wedding.

Here are the pics from Kitchener/Waterloo.

We took the red-eye from Seattle-Toronto, and were lucky enough to stay with Amy and RJ in Kitchener. Since Steve is currently at UWaterloo I was able to go visit with him on campus. He toured me around the new buildings that have gone up since I was last there a few years ago, and I was surprised at how much the campus has changed. While we were in Waterloo I also had a chance to hang out with my cousin Bryan who I haven’t seen in a long time.

Amy and RJ invited Steve over for dinner Friday night, so Steve had a chance to show off his drum skillz on Guitar Hero World Tour with Ryan, Cheryl, and I…

Saturday morning Cheryl and I had to get dressed for the wedding:

We had rented a car, so we drove to downtown Toronto for the wedding, and were glad to meet up with Chris/Pat/Sean at the wedding. The hall was spectacular, it was clear that Sean and Jamie had pulled out all the stops.

Later on we headed north to pick up Cheryl’s mom at Yorkdale, check-in to our hotel, and head over to the reception.

It was great to see the Kirby’s again, but also great to hang out with Jamie and Michelle. I hadn’t seen them since their wedding in the Dominican.

Anyhow, the reception was fantastic, and Sean/Jamie showed off some of their mad ballroom dancing skillz. Not an act I’m likely to want to follow anytime soon.

On Sunday, Cheryl, and I went back to Kitchener to play with Lindsay/Ryan, and Sam.

Here’s Sam as we sat in the sun in the park near Amy and RJ’s house:

I went back to Waterloo while Cheryl played with the kids to save Steve from his Physics studying and take him out for a coffee. We didn’t stay too long because Cheryl and I were planning to take the 2.5 hour trek up North to Midland to meet Cheryl’s mom’s new cats.

Playing with the cats was fun, but all we could hear on the radio was storm weather warnings for the morning, so we cut our morning plans to make sure we would have plenty of time to get to the airport in the afternoon.

As expected, when we woke up we were greeted with 20cm of new snow – a much different sight than the previous day when we were playing with Sam in the sunny park…

So, we began our trip back to the airport early Monday morning:

Luckily the snow turned to wet snow, and finally rain by the time we hit Toronto. The flight back to Seattle was uneventful – just the way I like flights.

One thing I forgot to mention is it was Cheryl’s birthday the week prior to our Ontario trip. We celebrated with the usual crew, but also with Andrea, Stacy, and Steven from Vancouver, and Chloe and Jason.

Cheryl put up a bunch of photos from her birthday here.

Until next time!

Whistler, Vanc, Dallas, and San Jose

2009-03-28T15:56:00.001-07:00

Last week was filled with travel for Cheryl and I.

Friday night we headed up to stay with Jen and Glade on our way to Whistler.

We woke up early to make the day trip out to Whistler, and by the time we made it to Creekside the line-up for the lift was somewhere between 45mins to an hour long. We were worried that we’d be sitting an hour at every lift line, but, although it did take us a long time to get up to the top of the hill, the rest of the day was a bit better. It was definitely the busiest I’d seen it in a long time, but the snow made it worth it.

It had snowed a ton the two days prior, and they had not opened the high alpine up until Saturday morning, so there was more than a bit of snow to be had. We were still able to get fresh tracks when we hiked up to Flute at the end of the day. Glade and I dropped a few ledges, and a 12 foot drop was feeling like 3 feet. So nice… You can imagine there was some pretty huge cliff hucking going on around the mountain.

After heading back to Vancouver, Cheryl and I hung out in North Vancouver – I’m looking to buy a bike, so we toured all the typical North Shore shops, and we ended up hanging out with Kelly at a North Vancouver beach.

Sunday was Jerry’s birthday, so we were invited over to Andrea and Jerry’s for some birthday dinner in downtown Vancouver. Good times.

As soon as we got back to Seattle, Cheryl had to pack for her Monday flight to Dallas. She would be there Monday to Tuesday night. The timing of her trip was bad since I had a 6:50am flight to San Jose on Wednesday morn.

California was sunny, and warm, a stark contrast from the cold pouring rain that greeted me as I drove to the airport Wed morn. And as expected I was greeted with cold pouring rain when I got back late Thursday – ah Seattle.

This weekend is Cheryl’s birthday, so we’re sticking in town, and have friends coming down from Vancouver.

Should be fun!

Marley and Cheryl (and me)

2009-03-19T21:04:00.001-07:00

Evan’s roommate was out of the country, and owns a dog. This combination presented a challenge to Evan, but an opportunity for Cheryl. Cheryl – as you probably know – loves animals, and wishes we had a cat/dog, or something fuzzy with four feet. Anyhow, at some point Evan realized that Cheryl would gladly sign up to walk Paddington without much convincing.

Now, Paddington is a labradoodle… Which sounds like a combination of the work of an insane mad scientist, biogenetics, and bad marketing, but, I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for the result. Knowing nothing of labradoodles except that they are dogs, have four legs, and are furry is enough for Cheryl to agree to take care of it for an indeterminate length of time.

To make a long story short, we somehow managed to get the dog to our neck of the woods, where we have a really nice off-leash area.

Here’s Cheryl getting ready to start our journey:

The dog park is really just over a block from our place, so we don’t have to walk far. It’s once we got to the park that the shenanigans began…

Now, I’ve never been to a dog park before. Back home every area is an off-leash area, so we didn’t have designated spots for walking pets, but I’m pretty sure dog owners don’t like their dogs being terrorized, which is exactly what began as soon as we took off Paddington’s leash.

As soon as Paddington’s leash was unhooked he ran to the nearest dog, and started ‘terrorizing’ it… That’s the only word I can use to describe it. Now, Paddington is not a mean dog, just a playful dog, but it seems like Paddington’s MO is to annoy a dog until it snaps at him, and then it’s time to move on to another friend or… victim. So here we were, watching Paddington move from dog to dog annoying each to the brink of their sanity before moving to the next. It was methodical, and almost genius in its simplicity and predictability. I’m sure if Newton were watching he would find an F=ma equivalent equation that would dictate his behavior. Now, if we called out “PADDINGTON” you’d expect some form of response… You would be wrong.

So, we now had the attention of every dog owner in the park (and there were many.)

At this point Paddington stole another dog’s ball and ran to the other end of the park. I was happy he was terrorizing a ball, and not another dog. Just as I thought he was preoccupied he ran back from the other end of the park to a group of three dogs peacefully drinking water from a bowl in the middle of the park. Paddington stepped directly into the middle of the bowl, and the three dogs slowly stepped back, in what I can only imagine was disbelief. Paddington proceeded to flip the bowl over, and when satisfied, he ran to the other end of the park… Cheryl re-filled the bowl, in time for Paddington to come back, and flip it back over. At this point he started running towards the big St. Bernard in the middle of the park and began attempting to terrorize it.

This did not work so well, and at this point I openly started calling him Marley.

I’m not even going to go into that, but afterwards he decided to run directly towards the biggest mud pit in the park. He did a superman slide into the mud at top speed, then just laid there. Looking around as all dog owners continued laughing at him. He of course took this as a challenge to somehow find a way to get more muddy, then he rolled… Oh yes. What was mixed in with this mud I will not spend time contemplating, but I’m sure it was not just mud. Regardless, Paddington was rolling in it, and everyone was laughing – until Paddington started terrorizing their dogs in his new mud-monster state… Then somehow it seemed less funny to them.

Here’s a shot of Paddington after his first mud encounter:

At some point we managed to get the leash back on Paddington… Then we left the park. I believe this whole thing took about 5 minutes, but we went straight to Lake Washington and made Paddington take a bit of a swim before drying him off.

Here’s Cheryl drying off Paddington back at home:

And from here we somehow managed to get Paddington back to Evan’s house…

Good times :)

Assorted pics from the last couple of months

2009-03-09T18:19:00.001-07:00

After my trip to the Dominican, and subsequent (painful) flight back. I spent some time in Sault Ste. Marie for Christmas. SSM is not quite the Dominican…. At least the weather sure wasn’t.

As an example…

My dad had to shovel off over a foot of snow before being able to BBQ dinner:

This year was the first year not all of my brothers were home for Christmas. Jamie and Michelle continued their Honeymoon in the Dominican Republic over the holidays. The good thing was that I spent the entire previous week with Jamie and Michelle, so I was still able to touch base with all my brothers regardless.

Here, we’re opening presents on Christmas morning. Michael is not in this shot unfortunately, this is mom, Steve, Adam, Nathan, Missy, and Dad.

I flew out on boxing day to head to Kitchener to visit with Cheryl’s family. We had a great time playing with Ryan’s new copy of Guitar Hero World Tour, and tubing in the local tube park just five mins from Amy and RJ’s house. In this shot Ryan, Lindsay, and Cheryl are just getting ready to head down for another run.

Back in Seattle, we’ve been having a wacky winter. Lots more snow this year than I’ve seen in the past 7 years I’ve lived in Seattle. This is a shot of my driveway that Cheryl took after one particularly big dump of snow. Nowhere near what you see in Northern Ontario, but more than usual for Seattle. The strange thing is that Jan and Feb were bad in terms of ski conditions. It’s almost as if it snowed more in Seattle than on the slopes…

Just after getting back from Ontario we found out that both Cheryl and I received our Green Cards. This was a process I’ve been in for a long time, so when Henry and Trang found out they decided to surprise us with red, white, and blue cupcakes. Cheryl and I decided to celebrate with some filet mignon, and sparkling wine (not real Champagne - that stuff is too expensive for our tastes.)

Cheryl’s dad took a job just outside of Vancouver, so he’s now within a short bus drive of visiting us. He came down to spend the day with Cheryl and I, and we went on a tour of the neighborhood.

I brought home massive paintings from both Africa, and the Dominican Republic. They go for $30 or $40 there, so when I found out it was going to cost me over $150 to frame each painting I decided I’d take matters into my own hands. Here’s Cheryl getting ready to stretch my Dominican painting over the frame I built. Much cheaper than getting it done professionally, but we didn’t get all the crimps out of it, so we didn’t do as good a job as we would have gotten if we shelled out the cash. If I ever buy an expensive painting I’ll definitely get it framed professionally.

Cheryl’s mom came up to visit for a week shortly after we got the painting up and running. We ate at our favorite breakfast spot (B&O Espresso), they went to the Northwest Flower and Garden show, and also to the Lion King musical. Here they are on their way over to Bainbridge Island on a ferry. It was still pretty cool to be up on the top deck, but again, not quite as cool as Northern Ontario.

I’ve been snowboarding a few times in the last month, but also had a chance to help out the DirtCorps. They are now working on a legit trail just outside of Issaquah. It’s called the Duthie Hill Bike Park. The next week I went out to another trail to race, but since my bike is out of commission I decided to take photos instead of trying my luck on Cheryl’s bike.

Here’s one of the local riders sucking it up to maintain speed (not height) through a jump:

Anyhow, that was Christmas/Jan/Feb. Hope all is well!

Dominican to Northern Ontario - Bad flight

2009-02-08T13:48:00.001-08:00

So, after spending most of November in East Africa, and then spending a week in the Dominican for Jamie and Michelle's wedding it was time to head back to Northern Ontario for Christmas - where I was sure to find the weather less desirable.

Anyhow, my travel to "the Sault" was worse than any flight I had been on. We didn't end up in the Hudson river, and nobody was injured, so it certainly could have been much, much worse, but I felt it was a bad enough experience to lay it out here... I flew Delta to Toronto, and Air Canada to the Sault.

Apologies in advance for the length of this post. Grab a coffee or some tea :)

First of all, no reasonably priced flights from Seattle flew into Samana, so I flew into Santo Domingo which was a 3.5 hour taxi ride to where I would then take a ferry to get to Cayo Levantado - our resort. Now, I would need to do that trip in reverse to get back to the airport for my 5:45am flight - which meant I needed to leave at midnight (i.e. not bother go to sleep) in order to be there 2 hours ahead of time - short ferry, 3.5 hour drive, then check-in.

Getting to Santo Domingo (Saturday/Sunday)

At about 10pm Saturday night I was drinking Caipirinhas with my parents at the hotel, and checking my flight status - which showed it delayed out of Santo Domingo by 2 hours. I tried in vain to have my taxi postponed so I could get some sleep, but they were not able to push it off any later than 12:30am - meaning I needed to leave the island by midnight. Bummed about this I went up to my room about 10:30pm, and started packing. I decided I'd try and sleep from 11:00 to 11:50pm - which didn't really result in a great amount of rest.

I caught the ferry on time, and the taxi driver was waiting for me when I landed on the main island. I said hi, he said 'no hablo englais', so, looking on the bright side I thought I might get some sleep over the next 3.5 hours... I had forgotten how potholed the road was for the first two hours of that ride. At some point the road turns from potholed mud ridden bumpfest to actual pavement. At this point we were able to get up to speed. Just about the time I started to nod off the van came screeching to a halt from 50mph, coming within inches of hitting a set of cows crossing the highway. With a renewed paranoia of the road, and the three ridiculously well lit toll booths we had to cross in the last hour of the drive I was sure to get no sleep.

We got to the airport at about 3:45am. Faster than I had expected. I walked to the front desk where the attendant spoke very little English again (I was very sorry I hadn't continued to press on with my Spanish books-on-tape I had started a while back.) Anyhow, he was able to communicate that my flight was actually 4 hours delayed, that I would not make my connection in New York, and that he could not find a flight to move me to since New York had a huge snowstorm which delayed 500 flights, so I would have to figure out how I was getting to Ontario once I got to New York. I felt this was fine anyhow because I was having a very difficult time communicating with him, and I knew I'd be talking English to someone in New York.

So, I went to go through security - but security was closed since there were no flights heading out for a long time as a result of my flight getting delayed. Furthermore there were no seats anywhere nearby that weren't taken up by people sleeping on them... I decided to go sit against the wall to wait until security opened. Although the person working security told me it would only be another 5 mins, I waited about 45 mins before they would let me through.

It's now about 5am, and after going through security I found my way to my gate. It showed my flight boarding time as 9:45am, which is a long time to wait (almost 5 hours)... I noticed the gate was completely empty, just me there, so I laid down across 3 chairs, put my safari hat over my head, laid my arm on my carry-on, and tried to sleep. To no avail unfortunately. To make a long story short, the flight eventually left to NY a bit later than expected, but at least I was on my way...

New York (Sunday)

Immediately upon landing I rushed to the nearest Delta agent I could find to check the status of my flight. She told me that it was currently boarding, and there was no chance I could make it. My flight was originally scheduled to board at 12:15pm, and it was already past this time, so she told me she could get me onto the 8:30pm flight, but that my ticket was already gone for the 12:15.

I picked up my bags, and brought them through customs as fast as I could. Although I was almost sure my flight was gone I decided to make a run for it anyhow. When I got to Delta's gate 25 it was pandemonium. They were perpetually boarding 3 flights at the same time, and one of those flights that was boarding was my 12:15 flight even though we were now north of 2pm... The Delta agents at the desk were trying to deal with the mass delays, but were not staffed for it. I tried to get in line to see if I could somehow get my ticket back for the original flight I was on so that I could appropriately connect to my Toronto->SSM flight, but the receptionist was so flustered with just trying to keep people from rioting that she would not talk with me, and directed me to a line I needed to stand in that was 60 or so people long... Given my flight was "boarding" I knew standing in this line wasn't really going to help me... So, I first walked around to see if there was another gate anywhere nearby that was free where I could talk with a Delta agent, I didn't find one... I asked around, was pointed to the direct dial customer assistance phones. 3 of the 6 sitting by gate 25 were free, so I picked up the first. The person at the phone beside me indicated that the phone I was using was broken. I asked if the other two were as well, they said "yup"... I found out the one in the corner had a lose connection, so if I could hold the connection long enough I might be able to get pushed through in time to make my flight. The connection seemed to drop every minute or so, so I knew this wasn't going to work. I asked the folks on the phones that worked how long they had been on hold, and it seemed like nobody was getting through anyhow.

So, I went in the 60 person line. Waited for 10 mins, then was directed to another line which they were using to split up the larger line. I waited at this new line for 10 mins. After 10 mins the attendant left, and we were all directed back to the end of the original line we were waiting in... It was a mess. I knew I was going to miss my flight - I actually called Cheryl to see if she could get through online to see what was going on. To make this part of the story shorter, I didn't manage to get on the flight I was scheduled for, but I did buy 1984 to read, and that was basically what I planned to read until my 8:30pm flight.

Turns out that gate 25 was always perpetually boarding 3 flights. As I sat down I watched flight after flight get delayed 15 minutes at a time, for hours on end, flights went in and out of "boarding" status, people couldn't leave to go to the bathroom because they were paranoid and did not want to miss the call for their flight. Given the static in the announcement lines it was really hard to tell what was going on, so all three flights worth of people were crowding around the displays at the front desk, and it was just a disaster.

Eventually my flight time came up, and went... I thought maybe I missed an announcement, so now I too was going to start mulling around along with 3 other flights filled with upset passengers who had been delayed for hours... My flight changed from 8:30 to 8:45, to 9:15, to 9:45, to 10, to 10:45, to 11... I was giving up, but we eventually got on the flight just after 11... The good news is I had really gotten far into my 1984 book which was starting to get interesting.

Once on the flight the flight attendant notified us that she would be handing out drinks (water) in advance given we were expected to be in heavy turbulence for the entire length of the flight to Toronto. This was not good, and anyone who's talked to me about flying knows I'm more sensitive to turbulence than I probably should be... At this time she also determined that there were three open seats, and called in to have them filled.

Meanwhile I was thinking I would try and get some sleep. I was seated in row 13B, which is the far back row, right next to the toilets. First of all, the seats do not recline, and I really have a hard time sleeping on planes to begin with. Second of all, since our flight was perpetually boarding for over 3 hours, everyone on the flight had to go to the bathroom - every time the door opened it hit me in the shoulder, and there was a perpetual stream of people both large and small jabbing me as they tried to get through to the toilet.

I already thought this was comical, but it got better.

One of the three people that came on was given my seat number... They said "excuse me, but I think you're in my seat"... I double checked my ticket which was clearly printed 13B, theirs was written in hand writing, and at this point it was going to take a fork lift to get me out of my seat anyhow, I'd say printed beats handwriting like rock beats scissors. After a lot of hubbub, the attendants realized they had made a mistake, and let one extra person on. The problem was, his wife actually had one of the other seats, so they sat and argued about whether or not one of them should fly, or if they should both wait out the next plane (which, at this point was likely to be tomorrow morning given the captains latest comments).

This back-and-forth went on for a while, but eventually we were on our way. The captain announced "Message from the flight deck, we are 5th in line for take-off", he announced when we were 3rd, 2nd, 1st... At this point I was starting to relax, and thinking I would get a bit of sleep before we hit turbulence. But then "Message from the flight deck. We have just been informed that our flight attendant has timed out, so we have to go back to the terminal"... Needless to say, this didn't go over well with anyone on-board. I mean... Really, in the last 10 seconds before flying she timed out? Couldn't we have saved 10 seconds of time somewhere in the past 4 hours of delay?

The captain had made '8 calls' into the terminal to try to find another flight attendant at midnight... In about 30 mins they had managed to find someone whose flight to Dallas was canceled, he boarded, and we started the process again. "Message from the flight deck. Sorry to have to tell you this, but it appears the grounds crew has gone in for the night, and legally we need someone to be outside before we can turn the engines back on"... Ok, this was starting to get silly. After the captain made a few calls to the terminal they were able to find a person to get us out - but, by that time we had idled long enough that we needed gas "Message from the flight deck. We are looking to find a fuel truck, but they seem to be all out for the night, I'm sorry, but if we can't get out of the gate soon we will have to unload and try again tomorrow"...

Eventually they found the gas truck, filled up, we had an attendant, and we also had a grounds crew person to lead us out... "Message from the flight deck, not sure if you guys have ever watched the twilight zone, but dooo dee dooo doo.... We are 5th in line for takeoff..." Ah, here we go again.

The good thing was that magically our flight took one hour instead of two somehow - big tail wind I suppose. So we left around 1am, and got into Toronto just after 2...

Toronto (Monday)

In Toronto I also had to go through customs again. The problem was, the carousel where you put your bags after going through customs was now shut down. I asked the attendants what I needed to do, and they said I had to exit and after going to terminal 1 I would need to go back through security... I asked them if there was someone over there at this time of night, and they said "I don't see why not, you should be able to get in"... So I was off.

After getting the bus to terminal 1 I found that I was the only one on the 'connections' level except for some of the cleaning staff. It was now 2:30 or 3, and I called Cheryl to see if she'd ever heard of this before... It was only midnight Seattle time, so she was still awake luckily. The only thing I could do was go up to "Departures", and see if anyone could help me up there.

Departures was a disaster as well. Apparently Toronto had canceled 400 flights the day before, so it was in a similar state to the NY airport. When I got to departures there was a line about 500 people long, some sleeping, some playing guitar, uno, solitare, etc... most looking pretty upset. I couldn't possibly imagine that would be the line I should be in... I mean, I was just in security already, so I should probably just have to drop my bags and go back in - right? I noticed this line started at the ticket purchase line - which didn't seem logical to me. The check-in departures line seemed a lot shorter. After talking with the 10 or so people in that line I decided they were all in the same boat as me (got in too late for the carousel, and were transferring to a domestic flight), so I got in that line, kept reading some of 1984, and even laid down on the floor to try and catch a few zzz's before the flight attendants opened shop (which we were told would be at 4am - it was now about 3:15, so that's not too long to wait). Almost immediately an argument broke out as some folks from the larger line were in a heated exchange with the first few folks in my line - "Hey, we were told we had to go wait in this long line, we've been there for hours, and you shouldn't be there" vs. "Ok, we'll wait for this line to open up and see what happens"... I decided I would just lay on the floor rather than become a part of this argument.

At 4am a flight attendant came to the desk, so everyone got up and started getting their things together. "Sorry, I'm just grabbing some stuff, we open at 4:30"... Ah crap, another 30 mins on this floor.

At 4:30am 3 flight attendants came up to the desks, huddled for about 5 mins - talking about their strategy for dealing with this many people one can only assume. Then they came back and told everybody, the short line, and the long line, that they were in the wrong line, and in reality they needed to go downstairs.

This was where things got nasty. The end of the 500+ person line was in a particularly good spot to become the front of the downstairs line - you can imagine how civil the next few minutes were. Everyone was racing at once to lead this new line. I was a zombie by this time, so I just followed the crowd while everyone ran downstairs and eventually passionate walking and running turned into passionate looking, and confusion. There was no obvious line to form here... Some kept looking, others went upstairs for clarification - I was one of those later folks. Apparently by "Downstairs" they meant "two floors down"... Great - A+ all around Air Canada. Blah.

By the time myself (and hundreds of others around me) found the line it was massive - at the front there was an empty desk unlike the now empty line upstairs, this line does not open until 5am, then a set of the typical switchbacks that define about how far the line should really never surpass, then a line of hundreds of upset people about 3 or 4 across stretching half a kilometer.

It was now about 4:45am. From this line I could clearly see the rental cars. The line I was in was well over a 3 hour line, and the flight I was trying to get on was leaving at about 8am, so the physics of the situation were not in my favor. To make things worse, the lines to customer assistance were blocked and essentially useless.

At this point I decided that the rental car was a better alternative to waiting in this crap line, and that I would go explore other options rather than wait like a sheep in this line. Now, at this point I would like to say that the rental car would most definitely NOT have been a better option - it's about a 7 or 8 hour drive from the Toronto airport to Sault Ste. Marie, and the roads are often not good this time of year - since I hadn't really slept since Friday night... taking a rental car would have been a death wish. But, I was not thinking straight.

So, I stormed out of line, and went upstairs where the 3 attendants were tending to an empty line - they had successfully told everyone they had to have a numbered seat on their card to be in this line - which nobody waiting all night had of course. I walk right up to the desk since there was nobody in line, and a lady stops me just before I get to the desk .."Do you have a numbered ticket?" - To which I say "yes"... She looks at me a bit surprised and says "Ok"... I walk up to the attendant, who asks me for my boarding pass - She says "You have a numbered seat correct?" This is where I start making stuff up. "Yes, I do, the delta agent insisted I had one, but couldn't print off the card. Can you tell me what my seat is?" - "Certainly".. She takes my info, and looks up on the computer - Ah, you've been put on the Tuesday flight... Great.. more than another day of sitting around in the airport.

I asked if they would put me up in a hotel, the answer was no. I told them that it was unacceptable, and that I would then cancel my flight, take a rental car, and bill Air Canada for it. At which point she said "Well, I think I can get you on the 10:30pm tonight" - Keep in mind it's 5am, and this is over 17 hours away at this point... I agreed to it, and asked if I could check my bags. "No, it is our policy that you cannot check your bags if you're not within 4 hours of your departure time". This seemed odd to me. I mentioned that the only reason my bags weren't checked already was because I got in so late last night the carousel at customs was closed - but that didn't help. She said I had to pay to have my bags stored if I didn't want to drag them around for the next 15 hours - so I did.

At this point I didn't want to pay for a hotel for two reasons. One was on principal, and the other was because I thought I could get on an earlier flight if I kept trying. Since I didn't want to sleep on the floor I decided it would be a good idea to go into downtown Toronto.

Downtown Toronto

I found out the TTC now has a bus line that reaches from Kipling station to the airport which is awesome. That means it's only a couple of dollars to go from downtown to the airport.

I got on the bus after paying to have my bags stowed. Unfortunately I left my mitts and toque in my bags, and it was freezing cold at 5:30 in the morning. I got to Kipling, and then tried to determine where to go downtown Toronto. As you can tell I wasn't thinking that straight at this point in time. I soon realized that there probably wouldn't be many consumer oriented stores open at 6am. I was pretty confident there would at least be shelter at the Yorkdale Mall, so that is where I decided to head. I was in the subway with the early commuters, and I was very excited to find out that Tim Horton's was open at the Yorkdale Mall.

I went to the Tim Horton's desk, and asked for a large coffee. I sat down, drank the coffee while continuing to read my 1984 book which was really starting to get interesting. In the background, the local radio was playing. I heard something like "Wow, we're here at Yorkdale Mall where Sears, and The Bay are having their crazy 24 hour sale!!" - Which essentially meant there were shops open for me to peruse in my daze. I went through Yorkdale to find those shops. Everything else was closed, but I did manage to get some Christmas shopping done at Sears. By the time other shops had started to open I sent a few text messages to Steve (my brother) who told me mom was on the 4:10 flight to SSM. I forgot to mention this, but mom/dad were leaving the Dominican a day later than myself, so to see they were going to get in ahead of me felt wrong. I also felt that I might be able to convince a flight attendant to let me on the same flight as my parents - sob story etc... So, at about noon I decided to head back to the airport.

Pearson's International (again)

I came back into the airport, and decided to see how the line was doing downstairs. The people who were in front of me before I stormed out of line were now not even to the switchbacks denoting what usually would be a long line there. They looked pretty upset too.

I walked back upstairs where there were 3 tellers, and a line about two people long. Got back in that line to the same harsh question "Do you have a numbered seat?" Which I did at this point. I went to the desk to plead my case to get on my parent's flight. They said there was a 22 person waiting list (it's only a 50 person flight, so this was not good). I was bummed out. I asked if I could check in my bags - to which they said "sure"... I wasn't sure why now the "4 hour policy" was not in place, but I went back to bag storage, paid them, and then re-checked my bag. It is absolutely dumb I had to pay for storage to begin with, but I'm too tired to argue at this point.

I get through security, and head directly to the Air Canada desk where I plead my case again. The lady there was really nice. She found out that my parents were actually on the 6:10pm flight, and she thought she could get me on it. Now, why couldn't I have gotten on that one rather than the 10:30pm? Nobody knows, and again, I was too tired to really argue that at this point. She said that she would go look for my bag, re-tag it, and that she would call me back when she had a confirmation I was on the earlier flight.

I went to grab a drink, and in 20 mins got the call to go back to the front desk. The guy behind me in line was openly complaining about what a mess his flight was, that he was three hours late, and that he couldn't believe what a pain this was. After I told him I had been traveling without sleep since essentially Friday night he stopped.

So, I was on the 6:10 flight. Sweet, now I decided I would try and find out what gate my parents were coming in on, and when. This... is where I started to both see and hear things.

Yup, I was starting to hallucinate.

Suddenly I started recognizing a bunch of folks that were in the Dominican with us. I heard Jamie right behind me - it was someone else, I saw Chris and Pat Kirby, though when I walked up to "them" they looked nothing like them. Then I heard mom calling my name, looked back and saw/heard nothing. Eventually I saw who I thought were my parents coming down the escalator, I got my stuff together to go meet them, and when I got about 20 feet away noticed they looked nothing like my parents (this happened multiple times). I even started seeing folks who I hadn't seen since High School. It didn't take long before I just stopped trusting what I was seeing. At this point I hadn't slept Saturday or Sunday night, I'd been racing around airport after airport, and it was pretty late Monday already.

It got bad enough that I saw someone that I swore was my dad. He had the same mannerisms, wore similar clothes, had a similar watch, and the same glasses. The one thing strange about it was his hair was a big longer than I would have expected. I thought - well, we've been swimming the past week, so maybe the fact that his hair was almost always wet when he didn't have his hat on hid its length... So, I walked right up to this person. I didn't introduce myself - because again, I didn't trust what I was seeing - but I stood there with the logic that if it was my dad he would recognize me. I was less than 10 feet away at this point - probably more like 5 feet. That's when I saw this person pull out a philosophy book - at which point I was certain it was not dad.

Not too long after that dad/mom/pat started coming down the escalator. I walked slowly towards them, they recognized me, and all was well. They thought I would have been in the Sault for a whole day, so were very surprised to see me. "Aaron! What are you doing here? Shouldn't you have been home a day and a half ago??"... "Ask me about my flight" I said.

Mom/Dad bought me a drink, and we reminisced on the week after I sat them through this tour de force you're now undoubtedly sick of :)

When it came time for our flight to board, a delay was posted - Here we go again! Luckily the delay was only a half hour, and we actually did end up boarding. Better news was the aircraft was swapped to a jet from the prop plane it was supposed to be originally, so the flight took under an hour. The bad thing about that was there was really no time to sleep since we essentially started descending as soon as we hit elevation.

Sault Ste. Marie (Monday)

We got in shortly after 8pm, and went home. I didn't immediately go to sleep, I sat around talking to Nathan, Michael, Steve, Adam, dad/mom etc... I went to sleep at around 11pm. Not having slept Sat/Sun, I thought I would crash as soon as my head hit the pillow, but, my eyes were so sore, and my eyelids kept fluttering violently. This made sleep difficult. Eventually I did nod off, and woke up about 8 hours later.

Things were much better after that :)

Dominican Republic - Cayo Levantado

2009-01-24T18:16:00.001-08:00

After a bit of a break from the Tanzania/Amsterdam trip it was time to head to the Dominican for Jamie and Michelle's wedding. Jamie and Michelle organized a package that had us all staying at the Gran Bahia Principe Cayo Levantado, an all-inclusive, for about a week. Unfortunately Cheryl couldn't make it due to the timing, but I was lucky enough to go.

This resort is actually on a small island off the Dominican. The majority of the island is resort property, but there is a public beach to one side of the island where cruise ships can come by, dropping off people for a bit of off-the-boat relaxation.

I had never been to an all-inclusive before, and wasn't really sure how I'd enjoy it, but it really turned out to be a great time. I definitely got the most enjoyment from hanging around with the family and friends that were able to make it. This was the first time I had a chance to meet Michelle's family, and it was very good to get a whole week worth of interaction in. I think this is probably the most time I spent with my dad, mom, and Jamie since I left for university back in '96... Many moons ago. It's amazing how time flies.

Well, how about a few pics...

This is a view of the "lower pool" of the resort from above. There are two main beaches that are separated by a rock cut, those palm umbrellas at the top of the picture line one of those two beaches...

The one below is Jamie after just buying a thatch hat from the market:

Here's a good portion of the wedding having some dinner at the resort:

This is mom and dad at one of the drink huts. I believe we were drinking Caipirinha's as the drink of choice that week:

The most fun we had all week was probably playing in the waves. I do have some pics of those but I'll keep them off the web since some folks don't like having pics of themselves in bathing suits online :)

This is where the wedding ceremony took place. A great gazebo at the intersection of the two beaches on the resort:

This is myself, dad, Jamie, and mom. It's great to go to weddings where the dress attire is more casual:

I met Jamie for breakfast that morning, and he mentioned that he was re-writing the ceremony... I said it's today at 3 right? Yup, he started from scratch because they had determined the night before that the current one needed more than minor refractoring. Him and Chris did a great job and pulled it together at the last minute!

It was a sand ceremony, and Chris Kirby (the best man) got a bit entrepreneurial when the resort couldn't find him any containers for the sand... He ended up taking two massive conch shells and using those instead... It turned out to be a good touch:

A post wedding picture of the groom's side:

After the wedding we went on a sunset cruise. We had appetizers and drinks from our mini-bars during the ride:

After the boat ride we all came back for some great food... I think it was halibut wrapped in bacon... Mmmm.

Certainly a great day. Congratulations to Jamie and Michelle!!

The rest of the week went off very smoothly too. Mom, Dad, and I went shopping in the market, found all sorts of wildlife while snorkeling, and played in the waves some more. The bartenders continuously mixed very solid drinks, and the scenery continued to please. It did rain a lot while we were there, but the rain came in short bursts and wasn't a problem at all.

So, I would like to thank Jamie and Michelle for such a wonderful week, I am very glad to have met Michelle's family and friends, and it was so good spending quality time with my parents and Jamie as well. You can find all of the wedding pics here.

Until next time!

Tanzania/Zanzibar/Holland

2008-12-07T11:08:00.001-08:00

Cheryl and I flew back from our holiday in Tanzania/Zanzibar/Holland just last weekend. Our safari was with African Eco Safaris, and coordinated by our amazing travel agent from Toronto - Fawzia. What a great time!

We flew out Nov. 8th from Seattle to Kilimanjaro via Amsterdam, went on a private safari through Tarangire National Park, the Ngorongoro Crater, the Serengeti, and Lake Manyara National Park. Then headed to Zanzibar where we stayed in Stone Town a couple of nights before heading to Breezes Beach Resort on the other side of the island. On our way back to Seattle we spent a few days in Amsterdam. We returned back to Seattle Nov. 29th.

Now, the entire full set of pictures (600+), can be seen here. - (WARNING... get a cup a tea. We have a bug out to the usually reliable photo guys - the Kodak site does not deal well with massive galleries.) Below I'll point out a few highlights, and also throw in a couple of selections... Stay tuned for Cheryl's animal highlights reel later this week.

This was the longest vacation I've had since spending 3 months in Australia prior to starting work: many moons ago. The trip was sweet, and the pictures will certainly not do it justice, but... Here it goes...

Day 1, 2 & 3: Seattle to Arusha

As you can imagine, going 11 time zones over takes a bit of time. We flew through Amsterdam on a nonstop flight from Seattle. From Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro was also direct. Overall we spent just under 20 hours in the air.

Upon arrival we were greeted by our safari driver who opened a bottle of champagne for us immediately, and from then we went on to the Kigongoni Lodge for a night in Arusha before heading on Safari.

Arusha is a large city (270k people), and well situated for travel to some of the most incredible parks in Tanzania. We took a quick tour of the city which exposed some of the poverty in a region where we were told 10-15% of the population has both electricity and running water. Many businesses, huts and houses are built with sticks, sand/mud, and thatch roofs - seemingly on the brink of collapse.

Our job there was to take a quick tour around, exchange US$ to shillings, and get going to Tarangire National Park.

Day 4 & 5: Tarangire National Park

Ok, so I knew we were going to be camping in permanent tents, but I didn't realize they would practically be lodges :)

Here's what a Luxury "Tent" looks like...

From the outside:

The malaria nets make the bed look more luxurious:

At this point I realized we weren't really going to be 'roughing it'... Which was fine by me.

Anyhow, on our way into the camp we saw our first animals: Zebras - three of them hanging just outside of the campsite. The rules of the campsite are to stay in your tents after dark given the number of animals that come into the campsite every night. All the tented camps had this rule, and there was a whistle attached to the bed "in case of emergency." A Maasai warrior was around to walk people from tents to dinner and back at night.

Tarangire is known for a couple of things... One is elephants, the other is baobab trees. And we definitely saw a ton of those. In Tarangire we saw giraffes, warthogs, impalas, lions, baboons, mongoose, ostrich, waterbuck, etc. etc. etc. And we didn't really need our binoculars because, as with everywhere we went, the animals are not bothered by the vehicles...

Driving up next to a few elephants:

Elephants have "the right of way":

Trying not to wake the lions as we sit and watch them hang out:

The baobab trees certainly had some girth:

Lone giraffe in the sunset:

One really cool scene we witnessed while in Tarangire was a herd of elephants kick a pride of lions out of the shade of the acacia tree they were under. The elephants simply started moving towards the lions, and one by one they lazily got up and walked away to avoid conflict.

Day 6 & 7: Ngorongoro Crater

The Ngorongoro Crater is a marvel of nature. Here's a panoramic that gives you an idea of its size... As per Wikipedia, it is the worlds largest and unbroken, unflooded, volcanic caldera. Which in its case is a volcano the size of Mt. Rainier that essentially ate itself such that it now appears like a crater formed by a meteor.

In this crater is a stunning array of wildlife including the "big 5": leopards, lions, elephants, buffalo, and the black rhino. There is an estimated 25,000 animals in the crater - including 20 black rhino.

While in the crater we stayed at the Sopa Lodge.

As you can see, we were not roughing it here:

Yes, that's a pool overlooking the crater...

While at Ngorongoro Cheryl and I did a relatively interesting cultural tour of one of the Maasai bomas. The Maasai are probably best known for drinking cows blood. They traditionally truly rely on meat, milk and blood from the cows they herd for their survival. In our tour they explained their social structure in more detail.

While in the crater, we saw pretty much everything we could imagine... including lions with freshly killed lunch (zebra). Just the day before I asked our driver to make sure I saw a dung beetle before I left Tanzania... The next day he stops the truck and asks us to look out the back... Sure enough... Dung beetle with a sizeable dung pile ready to roll. The dung beetle lays their eggs in the dung, which provides a nutrient source for the young when they hatch.

Dung beetle:

Here's a jackal in front of a ton of animals:

Thousands of flamingos hanging out at the soda lake:

Large male lion, behind him a male and female:

Late afternoon view of the crater from the lodge:

Day 8, 9, & 10: Serengeti

Ok, the Serengeti was ridiculous. "Serengeti" is an approximation of the words the Maasai used to describe it: endless plains... Upon entrance it was obvious why they chose those words :)

We were fortunate enough that the wildebeest migration (the largest land animal migration on the planet - where about 2 million wildebeest, and zebra continuously search for food) was a bit early this year, so we managed to drive right through the middle of it on our way into the park.

While at our tents in this park we were given the usual safety warning, but in addition we were given locks to put on our tent zippers "to keep the baboons out"... Apparently baboons have a great sense of smell, and an ability to open zippers, and they make a mess.

While in the Serengeti we saw thousands of wildebeest and zebras, ridiculous amounts of giraffes, impalas, gazelles, and hippos. We saw lions and leopards in trees, and cheetahs - even a kill with a vulture aftermeal.

One night I had a hard time falling asleep after hearing a massive animal near my tent. It stuck around for at least an hour, and I could hear its deep guttural breathing which kept me wondering what it was. In the morning there was a huge pile of buffalo dung outside of the tent - there you go.

But we did stay in luxury tents again:

Cheryl's new favorite animal:

The hippo pool was much more interesting than those at the zoo... When you get a hundred hippo together there's bound to be some pushing, shoving, and other drama:

We saw a ton of elephants (this is actually multiple tons of elephant):

How many lions in this tree?

And... the wildebeest... You'll need to open this one full screen to really see how many there are back there.

Ants on the outside making a path for the ants on the inside... Odd.

Day 11 and 12: Lake Manyara, Town Walk

Wow, I think I've thrown in too many photos already.... Considering we started with over 3000 it's understandable.

Anyhow, Lake Manyara is known for its birds among other things. We did see a ton of interesting subjects from pelicans, flamingos, snake eagles, hornbills etc... There was also another hippo pool with zebra, wildebeest, and buffalo in the distance. There seemed to be an overabundance of baboons, and a few types of monkeys.

Our town walk was interesting, we went to an orphanage where upon entering the kids seem to completely latch on to every limb. 5 kids played with my watch for my entire time in the common room. Afterwards we visited the local hospital, and a banana plantation. We drank banana beer (not so good), and talked with local painters, and carvers. We asked our guide how busy it has been, and he mentioned we were the first people to come by this month. I didn't mention this, but we were traveling in the low season during the "short rains". We didn't notice much rain though - seemed fine to us.

As we walked around the town, kids kept following us, and wanting to understand what was going on.

Cheryl took what turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of our trip (showing the clear excitement from these kids):

Day 13-17: Stone Town, and Breezes

After finishing our safari Cheryl said goodbye to the giraffes, and we took a flight to Stone Town in Zanzibar. Stone Town has a long long history of trade. It was also known as a major center for the slave trade. The roads are very narrow, and cars still try to drive them, so while walking around you're always on the lookout for cars. The maps have street names, but there are few street signs, making orientation a bit more difficult, but the most interesting parts of the town are bounded by one major road and the Indian Ocean, so you can't get too lost.

While at Stone Town we visited the local markets, a few museums, a former slave storage room, and some churches/mosques. The main religion practiced on Zanzibar is Islam, and we were told to dress modestly when walking in public.

Another interesting tidbit about Stone Town are the dhows. The dhows are sailing ships characterized by their triangular masts, and in the past they had been constructed without nails - using rope instead.

Here's a view from the Serena Hotel. We went there for a drink since our hotel (The Dhow Palace) did not serve alcohol.

From stone town we went to Breezes Beach Resort... Which was on the other side of the island. To get there, our driver had to run through 5 police checks - our driver mentioned that police routinely stop people and hassle them for money. He said it was a good job because the police make so much that way.

The infrastructure has a way to go:

Our driver managed to get us there without paying any 'road tax', and we were set for our relaxation time.

Breezes was a great place to finish off our time in Tanzania. White sandy beaches, the warm Indian Ocean, and even an exercise room I could use - and was badly in need of by that time.

Rows of empty chairs waiting for folks to come from breakfast:

The dive boat taking both snorkelers and divers to the training lagoon:

Cheryl and I spent most of our time reading or swimming. At low tide we would go out and look for octopus, and tropical fish - and try not to step on the thousands of urchins on the sea floor as we walked. The reef shoes were a bargain.

At the end of our time in Zanzibar Cheryl put one last message in the sand before heading out to Holland:

Day 18-21: Amsterdam

We left Zanzibar for Dar es Salaam, where we had a long layover before heading to Amsterdam. We exchanged money to euros, finished up some shopping, and went on our way.

When we left Dar es Salaam it was 27 degrees Celsius, the temperature in Amsterdam was a chilly 2 degrees - Good thing we packed our jackets...

We managed to do a lot in Amsterdam. Our hotel (on Dam Straat) was a short walk from the train station, so we didn't even need to buy a pass. We walked by the Anne Frank house, and went to the Dutch Resistance Museum showcasing the atrocities of WWII and what went on in Holland at that time. We went to The Heineken Experience, and took a boat tour around the canals. The Rijks Museum, which had Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God" $100m skull at the time, was definitely worth the entrance fee even though they are still in the middle of renovations. The signature painting at the Rijks is Night Watch (which as one curator put it, is Amsterdam's Mona Lisa), painted by Rembrandt, it is one of the most famous paintings on the planet.

We did not go to the Van Gogh exhibit since Cheryl had already gone there, and we had spent considerable time in the Rijks.

This is me in front of the Rijks:

One thing that's interesting about Amsterdam is the bikes. Everyone bikes here. The streets have designated bike lanes, and bikes seem to have the right of way no matter who you are (pedestrian, or vehicle). This picture shows the bike locker by the train station:

The canals in Amsterdam:

Day 22: Home to Seattle

By this time we were ready to head home. Getting to the airport was smooth, as was the flight. We were lucky enough to fly over Greenland and have an extended sunrise on our way there. It is amazing that we were able to see both the Sahara, and Greenland on our trip - we did cover some ground.

Here's one of the pics over Greenland:

At home all was well. We left Amsterdam at about 1:30pm, and landed in Seattle shortly after 2:30pm, so we were in for a long day :)

Stay tuned for my cheetah post...

Next trip is in a week. I will be going to the Dominican Republic for Jamie's wedding. Congrats Jamie and Michelle!

Birthday + GH:WT Release + Halloween = Great Party

2008-11-05T17:59:00.001-08:00

Three events came together in the same week: The latest Guitar Hero release, Halloween, and my birthday. So, Cheryl and I did what any sane person would do - we hosted a Rocker/Groupie themed Guitar Hero birthday party.

Guitar Hero World Tour is the latest installment in the Guitar Hero series, and unfortunately for EA most people do not know it has Drums/Vocals in addition to the traditional Bass/Guitar of the rest in the Guitar Hero series - clearly in direct competition with the Rock Band series. It's unfortunate they didn't pull together a name that would have made that more obvious. Even after having it since Thursday I still accidentally call it "Rock Band" myself. I imagine this is partly because the term "Guitar Hero" doesn't connote a full band game, and partly because Rock Band is a more obvious name for a band game etc...

Anyhow, I'll probably write a short review of it later, but ... back to the party.

We had a pretty good turnout, with the primary costume of choice being cowboy/cowgirl rockers. Kelly came as a pretty convincing Pat Benatar:

We had great participation, with sometimes up to three people working the drums. Here Megan's on foot pedal, Mona's on right cymbal, and Evan's driving the rest of the pads:

A Domo somehow made it into the house, and it seemed pretty eager to have some cake:

The first casualty in the game was a drum stick - I suppose I was drumming a bit harder than I should have... It is Rock and Roll though...

Henry and Trang lit up the vocals for a few songs. Henry's had Rock Band for a while, so he was pretty comfortable with Guitar Hero:

Kelly and Mick came down from Vancouver, so it was truly an international rock show:

And Mona created a great poster for the event!

Well, my focus will now shift to my upcoming Tanzania trip since it's only a few more days before I take the long flight over there. There are still a lot of minor logistics to nail down before heading out, so here's hoping we get everything together in time.

Until next time!

Ankle fun

2008-11-02T16:27:00.001-08:00

So, it's been over three weeks since my ankle had an encounter with Whistler mountain. The sprain is healed, but the wound hasn't yet scabbed over, and the skin has not yet grown back. This means there's a chance it will still be open when I head to East Africa next weekend. This of course wouldn't be ideal since it's not always easy to get clean water to cleanse the wound. The past few days have seen a lot of improvement, so here's hoping... I've got antibiotics in case anything goes wrong.

During the last three weeks I've seen 3 different doctors who gave 3 different methods for maintaining the wound.

The first was the emerg doctor at Whistler mountain who suggested soaking in salt water, then using Polysporin and then keeping it covered with a tensor.

The second was the doctor on call while my primary doctor was on vacation. I told him what I had been doing, and he said "why the heck would you pour salt in your wounds?", and said that salt water was an old wives' tale. This doctor suggested using hydrogen peroxide, and then Polysporin.

When I had a chance to see my normal doctor I told him what I was doing, and he said "why the heck would you use hydrogen peroxide? You're trying to re-grow skin, and hydrogen peroxide kills all cells including skin cells..." So his suggestion was to clean the wound with mild soap water twice a day, and coat it with silver sulfadiazine which is primarily used on second or third degree burns, but works for regenerating skins on deep abrasions as well.

What struck me most about this is not just the fact that three doctors' methods for treating a relatively common problem could be so different, but more that each successive one thought the other doctors were nuts for prescribing their methods.

Anyhow, although the wound is still open it's looking a lot better than it did even a few days ago, so I hope to see an immense improvement this week. At this point I can walk around with no problems, and although I haven't done too much activity I imagine I should be able to start working out etc... again soon.

Have fun!

Whistler Bike Park closing day - and emergency room visit

2008-10-14T18:03:00.001-07:00

There are a many ways to end the biking season. Some are more painful than others... This weekend was the end of the biking season at Whistler's bike park, but that didn't stop me from ending my season with an injury.

Cheryl and I were lucky enough to be invited to stay with some friends from work. My boss's boss owns a share of a townhouse up in the village, so we had prime lodging!

We got into Whistler late Friday night, and Saturday morning the low of -5 C ensured a chilling start to our day:

A couple of the folks we went with had not ridden whistler before, so we decided to warm up on Crank It Up, and Ninja Cougar. Unfortunately, on our third run I blew out riding on flat gravel. I'm not actually really sure what happened, but my pedal snapped off, and I rolled pretty hard on the gravel - scraping my ankle along the way.

I thought it was a minor scrape, so I continued riding down the hill (without a pedal, derailleur, or chain guide), until I arrived at the next clearing where I looked down at my ankle. I thought I saw tendons, which freaked me out sufficiently that I decided to get off the bike and lie down. I got down right next to a person who took a look at me and said: "I'm an EMT, do you need any help?" which seemed serendipitous. They called the emerg folks, and started to bandage up my foot.

Here's me lying down waiting for the emergency vehicle to come my way:

Here's the EMT, Nishad, and Bernhard helping me into the truck:

Cheryl passing me my stuff after collecting all the pieces:

My bike sans pedal:

In the emergency room the doctor froze my foot. The nurse then went to town on it - cleaning it out very thoroughly. She was very impressed at the amount of dirt and rock she got out of my ankle.

The doctor decided it wasn't a good idea to stitch it together. Firstly there wasn't enough skin remaining in the area to stitch, secondly there was enough dirt that stitching would elevate the risk of an infection.

So, he put a bandage on the wound, and prescribed some painkillers and antibiotics.

Then it was back to the hill to watch people have fun:

My biking weekend was over, so first thing in the morning Cheryl and I decided to head back to Seattle to get some rest, and relax.

I do have pics of the ankle itself, they're not too bad, just bloody enough I didn't want to post them online. Email me if you're interested in seeing it :)

Dragging my feet

2008-09-28T18:51:00.001-07:00

Well, as most (perhaps all three) of my readers know, I've been dragging my feet on my Whistler wedding post. It will appear one of these days :) Until then, here are some photos, and an online photo book.

While I'm dragging my feet I'll throw up a few pics of non-wedding related stuff.

Shawn, Henry, Evan, and I went to Portland, Hood River, and Yakima the weekend just before our wedding celebration. We had a chance to go white water rafting on the Deschutes river, spent some time at the Full Sail brewery, hiked up on Mt. Hood, and also camped at the exact same campsite we hit last time we were there.

Here's us in Portland:

Snow in August on Mt. Hood:

Our campsite:

Maryhill Winery:

Cheryl and I are now planning our trip to East Africa. The logistics are a bit more complex than I thought they would be, but we'll get it organized!

More to come...

Whistler, then Cats

2008-07-22T20:37:00.001-07:00

Well, these past few weeks have been pretty busy. Cheryl and I took a trip to Whistler and had the chance to check out the bike park in peak condition. We mostly rode the bottom half of the hill, but I had the chance to check out the latest and greatest Garbanzo trails, so that was fun.

Jen and Glade came down to Seattle and took their cats which we offered to take care of while they were taking the week down in Oregon/Washington. We had a great time taking care of them, but they definitely were a bit of a handful when it came to chewing cables, and scratching screen doors. Overall it was really fun to have the cats. It was amazing how well the cats got together - they are very mellow, play with each other all day, and actually fetch - which you don't see too often in cats.

Cheryl and I were able to get a Tiger Mt. ride in with Jen and Glade before they headed off down south for more riding.

Here are some random pictures of the cats...

Cheryl trying to take Napoleon for a walk:

Here they are hanging out while Glade/Jen/Trang/Henry and I check out our new kitchen table:

Glade helped me build a work bench and fix the back porch (a few boards were rotten, so we really wanted to replace them as soon as I could). This involved the purchase of a circular saw, a square, and a few other basic things that I just didn't have.

Here's us about half way through the bench building process:

Closer...

And we're done:

Anyhow, I'm not sure what's on tap for this weekend, but I believe I'll be heading out of town. We'll see.

Have fun!

Summer is here

2008-06-26T21:40:00.001-07:00

Well, after a lot of miserable weekends we're starting to see some good sun over here in Seattle. Cheryl and I have been up to a lot of random stuff lately - much of it related to the house of course, but we've managed to fit a few interesting weekends in the mix.

Cheryl even managed to write her first post in a year talking about this past weekend where Stacey and Steven came to Seattle to visit with their two kids. Yeah, we went to the zoo :)

I've probably been grilling too much, but it sure has been good to be able to cook up something quick on the grill at any point - I'm loving the natural gas hookup too. We've gone to Whistler a few times since the last post, and had a good run down the north shore mountains as well to try and test the waters there. The whistler mountain bike park is in peak condition, and the garbanzo lift will be opening this weekend too.

I managed to get a chance to race out in Port Angeles at the Fluid Ride Cup's second event of the year. I raced "Sport" and ended up middle of the pack although I think I could have done better if I had a lighter bike - maybe next time.

I also managed to get a new TV that will help make my gaming setup better.

Here's my old gaming setup:

Here's the new setup:

Here's a shot of our crew camping out at Port Angeles:

I only have one action shot of me in the race, and it's not that good unfortunately:

But my friends posted a lot more pics of the port angeles race here.

Anyhow, that's what's going on over here. Nothing too crazy. We still don't have a kitchen table, coffee table, end tables, etc, but we are enjoying the house so far.

Hope all is well!
-Aaron

Moving in

2008-04-30T10:25:00.001-07:00

Two weekends ago Cheryl and I moved into our new place. We moved a combination of the stuff that has collected in Cap Hill over the last 7 years, and the stuff Cheryl had in storage down near Lake Union. We rented a 17' U-Haul and drove it to Lake Union to start the move where we met up with a few good friends who signed up to help out.

It rained, snowed, and hailed on us during the move. Luckily we were able to back the truck under an overhang for the first part of the move.

Overall it went smoothly, and Cheryl was very excited to get everything unpacked. Here are a few photos to illustrate how excited Cheryl was to be in the new place the first night we were in it - even before the move...

Anyhow, after we moved all our stuff in I took the opportunity to relax for a bit...

Since we moved in we've already implemented our first home improvement - a gas line to the deck for our new BBQ, but that's a post for another day.

Here are some more pictures of the house, pre and post move.

Couple of other things that have happened since the last post... I spent a week in Vegas for the NAB conference (stayed at the Wynn which was nice.). Cheryl's company was a title sponsor of the Seeds of Compassion gathering in Seattle, so we went to Qwest Field to listen to the Dalai Lama speak. We had our first guest at our house this weekend - Andrea came down from Vancouver to check out some Seattle shopping, and the house. I also helped the DirtCorps team prepare for their yearly Bent Event which is this weekend.

Anyhow, until next time!

We bought a house!

2008-04-05T17:58:00.001-07:00

Over the past few months we've been spending a lot of our free time closing on our house which is now officially ours as of the 2nd of April!

It took us a very long time to find this house - we have been looking since Cheryl arrived last summer, and started looking diligently in November. I think Cheryl and I personally walked through ~50 homes, and our real estate agent previewed a lot more than that - finding something we liked at a price we could afford was not easy.

Here's a shot of 110 of the houses our realtor previewed for us:

The biggest issues we had with most of them were lighting, street noise, or age related issues (price and location were all within our bounds since our realtor - Ken Nicholas - did a good job of filtering new listings for us.

Apart from price, the major points we really wanted to nail were:
- Safety: No issues walking, jogging, and biking in the neighborhood at night
- Commute: No more than a 40 min commute for either of us
- Lighting: Lots of natural light
- Proximity to shops: Short walk from restaurants, a bar, coffee, and groceries
- Move-in ready: Doesn't require major work before moving in
- Noise: No major street noise when windows are open
- Size: At least two bed, 1.5 bath

At first look it seems like these points would not too much to ask for, but in our price range it was hard to find a house in Seattle that had even these base characteristics.

Finally we found one though. Here's a shot from the outside:

Here are some internal shots showing the lighting in the main room:

We're likely going to re-paint at least that blue wall sometime soon :) The house is just north of Genesee Park near the Mt. Baker district in Seattle. It's a 3 bed/2.5 bath house with a media room and unfinished basement. The unfinished basement is a decent size and has a patio door that looks out into the backyard. The backyard is relatively small, but since we're a couple of blocks from Genesee Park it's fine with us.

Here's a shot of the unfinished basement - no idea what we'll do with it:

The backyard is a registered "backyard wildlife habitat" which is one reason it has no grass. In the summer it will look a lot nicer as the trees/flowers begin to blossom, but right now it's a pretty muddy place to be.

Backyard:

There are two decks - one off the main level, the other off the master bedroom. Both of these decks overlook Genesee Park, and you can see Lake Washington to the far left. The house is on a small lot, so it's not as big as many of the other housing in the neighborhood, but it's plenty big for us. The master bedroom is pretty small, but we said at the outset in our search that we'd rather a small master bedroom than a small living room space since we don't need that much room to sleep :)

Couple of other thoughts on the neighborhood... It's about a 7 min walk to the Columbia City shops, it's a minute to Genesee Park, and Lake Washington, and the commute for me will be somewhere between 30 and 35 mins. For Cheryl it will be somewhere between 15 and 25 depending on traffic. It's also right across the street from Henry's house which is great because we already know one of our neighbors :) He's lived there for the last year, and recommended the neighborhood to us. The light rail - which is meant to be completed in 2009 - is also a short walk to us. The light rail will travel from the airport, through our neighborhood, and up through the city, so getting downtown will be really easy without a car in the not-too-distant future. It's far enough away from the house that we will not hear any noise from the light rail station as well.

Anyhow, in other news it was Cheryl's birthday this past weekend, and we went out for a great dinner at "The Met" where I had one of the best filets I've had in a long long time - possibly ever - and I've had a lot of steaks... After doing my taxes this year and buying this house it's time to start eating kraft dinner :)

Have fun!
-Aaron

Bainbridge Island in February

2008-03-09T15:52:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Cheryl and I decided to hop a ferry to Bainbridge Island. The weather was really nice, and since I had messed up my ankle at whistler I couldn't really do much else :)

Here's some scenery from the trip over:

We had a pretty relaxing time on the island, went wine tasting, spilled a full cup of coffee at the coffee shop, and really just hung out in the sun until we decided it was time to head back to Seattle. The trip was pretty cheap - I think around $7 each, so it was a great thing to do on a slow, sunny day.

Here's Cheryl resting in the sun on the island:

Until next time!

Whistler, it's been too long

2008-02-24T18:00:00.001-08:00

Last weekend Cheryl and I went up to Whistler, and to visit with friends.

We got to the hill early, met up with Glade and Jen, and rode until closing. The snow was great, the sky was blue - it was a good day.

Here's my new desktop background:

This was the view from the top of the Peak Chair on Whistler. We were above the clouds and looking off towards Black Tusk in the distance.

The rest of the weekend was all about visiting friends we haven't seen in a long time (this was our first weekend back in the country since summer.) Kelly was gracious enough to let us stay at her place, and she hosted a great party for a bunch of friends to come over and visit Saturday night. Sunday we went over to Port Moody to visit with Stacey and Steven, and later Sunday afternoon we headed over to Dana's so Cheryl could pet her cat... :)

I threw a couple more pics here.

Super Bowl Sunday: Great day for skiing!

2008-02-05T22:49:00.001-08:00

Well, of course, this Sunday was Super Bowl... But it also snowed 5 feet over the week at Crystal Mt, so I definitely couldn't miss getting in on that.

Saturday was Crystal Mountain's busiest day in history, so I'm very glad I waited until Sunday to get out and catch some turns. Most people were busy preparing for Super Bowl rather than skiing on Sunday, so it was a good day to go. Given I was going to a super bowl party as well I had to get done skiing early, so I got to the hill by 8:15am. I skied as hard as I could over the morning, and was done by 12:30. It was great: short lift lines, tons of snow, great visibility - the trifecta. Later in my day the visibility started waning, so I decided to pack it in and head back to Seattle.

I realized I hadn't had a haircut in many months, so I got that done. Then I headed to Evan's to check out his new 46" 1080p TV (and the game too.) Sooo much nicer than my 27"CRT - which we couldn't give away if we tried. I'm not really a big NFL fan, but I have to admit the 4th quarter of that game was well worth the wait. For whatever reason I felt bad for the Patriots who ended up breaking their win streak on the only game that mattered... But I'm sure they'll all be fine, I know I've gotten over it.

Hopefully I get out to Crystal again soon. So sweet.

Finally finished Guitar Hero 3 on Expert

2008-01-28T18:00:00.001-08:00

GH3 was more difficult than GH2 to get through Expert. There are really only two substantial hurdles, but they are high... One is Raining Blood which has really only one complex section - Mosh 1 - which you have to be pretty decent to get through, the second is Lou who is a pain.. In co-op mode getting through on expert is way easier because neither of these hurdles exist in co-op - there are no battles in co-op, and for whatever reason Raining Blood isn't in the co-op set-list.

I'm not a fan of the battles (of which there are 3 introduced in GH3 - Tom, Slash, and Lou). How well you do seems to be much more random than the rest of the game. I think Neversoft could have done a better job making the battles require less luck, and more skill, but you get what you get.

Guitar Hero is going to have to innovate fast to fend off competitors such as Rock Band which is a much better party game although their guitar sections are not as well honed as Guitar Hero. I expect to see some interesting community features being released with the next iteration on this genre, and hopefully a lot more songs. We'll see.

On a related note here's a custom Guitar Hero song for "My Baby's Bad" from my brother's band Lion Ride.

Do not rock too hard.

Vegas to Mt. Baker

2008-01-17T20:08:00.001-08:00

This past week I went to Las Vegas to be a part of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Probably the most ridiculous consumer tech show on the planet. I don't think there's been another show that saw Bill Gates and Slash on the stage at the same time... Over 100,000 people came out for the show, so it was a bit busy.

Anyhow, I was manning the booths, and in partner meetings all week, so it was really non-stop from the start. I had the chance to see the show eventually, and also had the chance to hang out in Vegas a bit too.

Pictures cannot describe the magnitude of this show, but here are a few I took anyhow...

Me outside:

Biggest guitar hero screen ever:

Cars, flatscreen TVs:

Random stuff:

Here's an article talking about the top 10 booths at CES...

Out on the town I had the opportunity to walk through many of the popular locations on the Vegas strip, and see a few free shows such as Bellagio's water show, Treasure Island's pirate show, and the MGM Grand lions. We were able to get into some great clubs such as Pure, and of course some of the food was pretty good too.

Fountain show outside the Bellagio:

Inside the Venetian:

New York New York:

I was set to leave Vegas Friday late afternoon, back in Washington the snow was falling in the mountains, so Cheryl booked us a place up in Mt. Baker for the weekend. Friday afternoon I flew to Seattle, and then Cheryl and we drove straight to Mt. Baker for a weekend of skiing. That was a long day, but we had a chance to ski with Jen and Glade in some decent snow.

Cheryl's skis are still in storage in Vancouver, so she had to rent skis from REI. Turns out they don't have high end rentals, so she was stuck with lame skis. She still had fun, but certainly doesn't want to have to rent those again. We skied all day Saturday, with bad visibility, but good snow. The snow was plentiful, but got a bit heavy near the end of the day as the temperature warmed up. Roads were pretty good, but the parking lot was slippery enough to incite a donut competition amongst a few ski buffs.

We stayed in Glacier which is a town just outside of the ski area, and in the morning my back was in rough shape, so we opted to head home rather than ski a second day. There wasn't any new snow, so I don't think we really missed that much.

Christmas in Seattle, and Sault Ste. Marie

2008-01-02T17:08:00.001-08:00

This holiday season I went East on Christmas day, so I was in Seattle for Christmas morning, and Sault Ste. Marie for Christmas night.

Cheryl and I unwrapped our gifts on Christmas eve, which was really fun. She has a stocking which is still in storage in Vancouver, so instead we decided to make our own stockings out of a few paper bags. Pretty high tech...

We had to fly out early Christmas morning, so to catch Cheryl's 6am flight we had to wake up at the wee hour of 3:45am. My flight didn't leave until 8am, so I had 3 hours in the airport to enumerate the reasons I don't like flying. I bought a book to keep me company.

Once in Sault Ste. Marie I was able to relax. The flight was smooth, and the weather co-operated, so all was well. All my brothers made it home, so our biggest problem was to decide whether to open presents right away, or to wait until boxing day. We decided to wait which was good because I still had to wrap my gifts.

Christmas is always fun, here are a few pics I'd like to share...

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care:

The tree was stuffed with presents, and Christmas bling:

Left->Right, Top->Bottom: Jamie, Michael, Nathan, Dad, Adam, Steve, Mom, Aaron, Missy:

Well, after unwrapping gifts we had plenty of time to eat food... Lots of food. Turkey, ham, Christmas cookies, fudge, nanaimo bars, peanut butter marshmallow squares, chocolate, nuts covered in chocolate, truffles, and egg nog... It will take a few workouts to really put a dent in the calories I consumed this past week.

Later in the week we went to our Aunt and Uncle's house (Nina and Bill) for more food... Spaghetti and meatballs. So good. But I do need to get on the treadmill for sure.

Anyhow, we also had a chance to play a lot of Wii... Enough that I almost threw out my shoulder. Tennis, boxing, bowling, Super Mario, and of course - Guitar Hero 3. On Guitar Hero Jamie and I blew through expert co-op with very few problems. We had to do "One" a couple of times before beating it, but otherwise it was pretty quick and fun to get through.

And luckily I was able to watch Nathan's band "Lion Ride" in concert at Foggy's. Lion Ride rocked the house and then rocked it some more. I taped the whole thing, and you can see clips of it here...

Anyhow, all things do have to come to an end eventually, so after all the Guitar Hero, rock, and food I got back on the plane to Seattle in preparation for New Years.

Until next time!

Time for the holidays, and QotSA

2007-12-23T12:45:00.001-08:00

Tuesday night a friend of mine found out they had an extra ticket to the Queens of the Stone Age up at the Paramount Theater. I jumped at the opportunity, and the show was great. The Paramount is a seated venue which I'm not personally fond of when it comes to rock concerts. Having to sit or stand in place for 3 hours is tough for me, so I'd rather have a venue with a general admission area where people can walk around. But it was fun nonetheless.

The last few weeks have been pretty uneventful otherwise. Lots of Christmas parties though! Cheryl and I are looking at housing in Seattle which is a bit rough as it seems to be one of the strongest markets in the US. It's better now than it was last year for buyers, but it's still hard to find something affordable.

Cheryl and I are both off work until the 2nd and we are flying out east on Christmas day. I get back to Seattle on the 30th, and Cheryl gets back on the 29th. It will be good to go home and see our families.

I'm still nowhere near done my shopping for the holidays... Looks like I should get going.