A Blog About Things We Do

Things We’ve Done

I fought with the A/C, and lost…

In the past, when traveling to a new place, Kev and I have splurged and opted for the extra fancy amenities. Now, mind you, besides a bed with (what we’re hoping are relatively) clean sheets, and a private toilet of some kind (you never know just how handy that might be!), every living situation we have truly ever stayed at is meager at best. BUT when we just arrive somewhere, we might opt for a room with A/C – just to get acclimated, you know?

Well, our arrival here was no different. We chose to go all-out, and with our rickety double bed, “clean” sheets and private bathroom, we went for the A/C. Great choice. Upon arriving in Mumbai at almost 11 pm it was 84 degrees. We’d be happy to have it.

After a rough night of sleep our first night due to myriad issues (incessant honking outside, torrential downpour thanks to the lovely monsoon season, dogs barking, overall jetlag, and various unfamiliar noises, we also had to struggle with our unbelievably loud air conditioner unit. When turned on, old man A/C was noticeably agitated having to work so hard to cool our tiny sweat-inducing room. Grumbling, moaning – coughing with frustration, hour after hour he bitched and moaned about being needed.

Yesterday turned out to be a pretty rough day on the streets as well for us. After waking up close to 1 pm, we finally ventured outside to exactly what we knew to expect, and worse. A simple task of finding me a suitable outfit to wear (after finding a place online just minutes from our guesthouse, securing GPS coordinates, and feeling fairly confident that we could find our destination just .1 miles away) took over 2 hours, with nothing to show for it. A trip to check out the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminu train station to learn how to purchase tickets to get South turned in to a comical 3-hour scavenger hunt to find various individuals responsible for the acquisition and approval of various applications by various people which were needed AFTER the purchase of our (quite expensive!) tickets (that we weren’t ready to even purchase).

“Please, sir. Yes, yes. Just go there and find Department Manager of Operations at the end of platform 1, CCM Building 2nd floor….yes, yes. You will find him.”

*On second floor at the end of platform 1…*

Us: “Namaste. CCM Building?”
“Oh no, sir. Not here. CCM building on 2nd floor! (then motions outside, beneath us and down the street) In ancient building. You will see.”

seriously?
—
“You need to submit application for coupe.”
Us: “What type of application? We don’t have an application?”

*rips off giant hunk of random scrap paper*
“This is your application, sir. Write these things and give application in box. Does not need to be formal…”

guess not!

3 hours of this craziness and more. This, along with cows, limping dogs, scrawls of families, bright colors, dim lights, blaring Bollywood music, dirt, garbage and monsoon rains in open air train terminal. On some level, all stuff we have seen traveling before – but yet so. so. different.

6,000 questions later, 300 wrong places visited, and our application finally submitted – we left on the verge of tears coupled with crazed, maniacal laughter. It was exhausting and frustrating and hilarious at the same time. Again, exactly as we expected, yet worse.

Needless to say, I was really looking forward to getting back and having a rock-solid night of sleep. If there’s anything I know about myself, sleep is paramount to a successful day for me. So we crawl into bed and within minutes, I’m wiping off the slime that has accrued all over my face. With old man A/C turned on, we attempt to ignore his grumbles without avail. On and off. Off and on. Beady sweat, face slime, on. Grumble, grumble BITCH, off. All. night. long.

So, now, here I am, awake – writing and reflecting on our last 24 hours at 6 am, when sleep is what I want most. Old man A/C, you win. I suppose though, this has given me a chance to nail down more specifics about our day…

On the docket today are the following tasks:

1) Purchase salwaar kameez to wear
2) Check out Fort (our current “neighborhood) and visit Eros theatre to watch Bollywood film with new friends
3) Head to Girgaum Chowpatty to watch sunset, and witness dunking of Lord Ganesh idols into Arabian Sea to end Ganesh’s Birthday celebration

Sounds feasible (and pretty fun), right?

Here’s to another (in the words of our new British friends) MENTAL day!

September 4, 2014
Mumbai is not the same as Bangkok – Travel to and Arriving in India

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.

September 4, 2014
Canada Part 2 and 3 and 4!

Well, blogging while in Canada proved more difficult then I had expected. Mainly because of a lack of power, the fact that it’s not super easy to drive and type, and the fact that we were nearly always moving somewhere. So now I’m home, short on time as our India adventure is about to begin, and looking back.

So, in the interest of time, I’m going to post a few photos that will generally give an idea of what the rest of our trip looked like.

First, Lake Louise/Banff/Jasper.

We really liked Banff. It was, for us, more enjoyable then Yosemite. The water was all very beautiful, though not super practical as far as swimming went as it was pretty cold (glacier runoff) and mineral rich and so not great visibility. But awesome. The actual town/city of Banff was pretty awesome as well.

Here’s a video of some of the non-glacial water:

And here is a video of glacial water:

Lindsay at Lake Louise

We went to a hot spring pool in Banff (the Upper Springs). This was awesome, although I’m guessing the water was about 1% spring water, 99% tap water. Still very nice.

The campground itself we stayed at in Banff was a very nice national park. Of interest was the fact that our campground was completely enclosed by a electric fence to keep the animals from eating us.

So, after Banff the plan was to head to Calgary and check out the city. After arriving, we realized that Calgary, while nice enough, didn’t really have a huge draw for us personally. We decided to move on, but wanted to see at least one “touristy” thing before we left.. We saw the Calgary Stampede from the outside, and then we read in our guidebook that there was a “bazar” with lots of interesting shops and coffee. Coffee sounded pretty good, so we opted to check this out. It was a crappy strip mall, it turns out. Thankfully, I had refused to pay the ridiculous parking meter so stopping into this place didn’t cost anything, but still we were not impressed.

After leaving Calgary we ran into something that we knew we’d hit: flat wheat fields for ~1000 miles.

Honestly, we knew that we were going to have flat land because everybody and everything we read said as much, but it really was crazy. Almost flat roads, for days of driving. We camped along the way and ran into some of the worst mosquitos either of us had ever experienced.

One night, near Regina, Saskatchewan Lindsay and I decided we wanted a short break from driving and to eat dinner at a sit down sort of (cheap) restaurant. We drove forever, looking for SOMETHING that was open that wasn’t fast food. We ended up sitting down at a place, looking at the menu and realizing that the food, even at a small hole in the wall crappy sort of place was super expensive (for our budget at least). This isn’t a very exciting story, but it was one of the most frustrating things that happened on the trip. We wanted so bad to eat, to stop driving, etc.

During this boring part of the drive, while I was driving, Lindsay often played The New Super Mario World

We stopped, for some reason, in this beauty of a town: Grenfell.

Eventually we made our way to Ontario.

First, we bought some smoked fish near Lake Superior:

Video of Sai eating some great smoked fish

Then, we camped for a night at Lake Superior Provincial Park, which was awesome awesome. Probably one of our favorite places actually that we camped. We managed to catch a sunset which was awesome, and I was quite excited about swimming in Lake Superior…. On the down side, in the morning, just as I was coming back from taking a “shower” in the lake, Lindsay said, “well I think Sai has ringworm.” We looked at Sai’s stomach, and it sure LOOKED like ringworm, so we packed up camp and headed for the/a city.

To be continued/finished…

September 4, 2014
On the road

Well, we’ve done it. We are on the road. Currently writing this blog post from my cousin Alicia’s kitchen table [edit: this isn’t actually correct any more, but I wanted to finish this post and post it for historical purposes anyway – we’re now in Sault Saint Marie].

The past few days were a bit of a whirlwind, although that’s a bit of a cliche. I think. Honestly, maybe it’s not, I don’t know.

Let’s call it a whirlwind. Basically, I worked up until Monday, June 30, and cleaned and packed. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was saying goodbye to great friends/people. The weekend before we left we painted the walls in apartment, fixed holes, replaced blinds, etc. Frankly the entire process was a little frustrating as we moved into our apartment taking over somebody else’s lease and the apartment was never cleaned or painted originally. Much of the paint on the wall was pealing, not because of our use or misuse, but just because the paint had been applied poorly some 4+ years ago. One night we were up until around 1 am painting walls. It got to the point where we literally DUMPED paint from the bucket onto flat surfaces (like our lofted bed) and rolled it smooth. And I replaced two different sets of blinds, which, let me tell you, was a pain in the ass. In the future, at least in my own house, I’ll buy the $15-$20 blinds instead of the $5-$7 blinds as they are about 5x more difficult to hang.

Anyway, we packed our car. The car packing has been a bit of a touchy issue between Lindsay and me. In short, I wanted to have lots of room in the car so we didn’t feel like we were totally crammed in, Lindsay wanted to save money by getting more stuff in the car. We had more arguments then I’d care to admit about the car, over a greater period of time then I’d like to admit, but in the end we got everything fitting. We basically have the car packing down to a science, and at least the camping stuff we need on a daily basis (tent, sleeping stuff, cooking equipment, and food) is easily accessible.

I’m going a bit out of order here (it’s been really tough to sit down and write anything!), but basically after work on Monday we had one last night in Oakland. We had a sushi dinner at Ichiro, our favorite local sushi restaurant, and spent a few last hours cleaning and doing a check out with Dan, the manager at our apartment. Then we went to bed. The next morning we hit the road.

Not that interesting, but I have to say that at no point during all of this did I feel particularly emotional. Which is sort of sad really, because generally I’m a very emotional guy. I think the sad truth is I had SOO much going on in my head, so many little stresses (health insurance while traveling, figuring out what to do with our mattress before we left, money, canceling various things, etc, etc). I regret not having had the chance to “mourn” the loss of our life in Oakland. Since leaving, I’ve felt a bit of sadness from time to time, but I think that might just be the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Oakland was such an amazing place, and I have so many amazing memories. I still can’t think of a better place to live.

Anyway, the first place we stopped on our road trip was Portland, Oregon to visit my family (Aunt Kim, Alicia, Justin, Jack, Charlie, Andrew, and Malia). We spent two and a half, three-ish days there and had an awesome time. My cousins (though I hope one day I might be called Uncle Kev) Jack and Charlie are awesome little kids and I’m very happy to have been able to see them for a second time. We went swimming, drank coffee, drank beer, etc. A very nice time.

We started our real trip in Seattle – we camped in a pretty great campground called Saltwater State Park, which was great. On a whole, of the places we’ve camped so far, this was probably a nicer campground – we’ve for various reasons ended up camping at a lot of RV Parks which are generally flat, ugly places (that are easy to get to, relatively cheap for tent campers, and most importantly close to the cities we want to visit!).

Working on a website

Seattle was great. We did a bit of research on the different neighborhoods within Seattle so that we could get a feel for the different areas within Seattle. We went to perhaps 4 or 5 different neighborhoods, walked around in some, etc. A highlight for us was Green Lake, which was a place for “power singles” and “power couples” (I mention this because I thought it was funny), had a really amazing lake (the neighborhoods namesake). It’s a bit tough to tell you how great Green Lake was, but it was just a super busy, high energy lake. Lindsay (or maybe me) described it as Lake Merritt with a nice beach and a raft with a high dive in it with swimmable, warm water.

Next up was Vancouver. Which we loved. Vancouver was very much a West Coast city, and especially as we drive East across Canada it becomes more and more clear there there is a different between a West Coast city and a Mid-West city. I’d say Vancouver is a city that we could very much live in. For one thing, it seemed really well organized, and clean! One of the small strange things that stuck out to me was that every garbage can in the city had a nice, high quality garbage bag in it. Coming from Oakland where garbage bags were done away with and in their place heavy duty inner garbage cans were used, I appreciated this. I’m not sure trash bags are as efficient, but even the garbage seemed cleaned. Vancouver also felt very multi-cultural. There were TONS of different accents and languages that we heard walking around.

It’s a bit difficult to explain how Vancouver felt. We were there for two days. It felt very different from the US, but I can’t say if that was all in my head or not. Everybody we talked with was friendly, and the place felt like it was healthy without being over the top or preachy about being organic or vegan or etc, etc, etc. The other thing that was a big confusing was that there were SOO many people outside in bathing suits, on the beach, etc. From what I understand, the weather in Vancouver is generally worse then that in Seattle, but we didn’t get a good sense of this because it happened to be an incredibly nice few days of weather when we were there. Even on a weekday, it felt like a busy day in the busiest of beaches. I went swimming (twice!) in the ocean, and Lindsay ran and swam both days we were there. This was all in Stanley park, which was great, if anybody ever visits.

Parking in Vancouver was generally a bit of a chore. Actually to the city planners credit, it was pretty impressive that when downtown we almost always ended up easily finding parking, but never at a place that wasn’t pay by the minute. This was something else that stuck out to me.

I visited the Maritime Museum, which I really enjoyed. One thing I’d like to do more on the trip is visit museums, but that can be a bit difficult with a dog (it’s HOT outside, so we can’t just leave Sai in the car unless we happen to find covered parking), but I was very happy to visit this museum. The Roch, which is a famous ship, was there, as well as a much of displays about various ships/tugs/etc that came out of Canada.

We camped at an RV park in Vancouver, the first of many to come. This is a bit sad, that we are camping at so many RV parks, but oh well! At least we were close to the city.

I’m going to post more, and hopefully a lot more photos, but internet is a bit scarce at the moment. More importantly, time on the computer is a bit scarce at the moment.

July 18, 2014
Russian River and Packing is Underway
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.
June 16, 2014
We’re going to India: Part One – India Visa Hell with BLS in San Francisco

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

May 25, 2014
Disneyland and 1AM Fancy Mineral Bath

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.

May 1, 2014
A few photos from recent trips

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.

February 23, 2014
Camping on the North Coast Part 2: The Sea Awakens

Lindsay and I decided to go camping again this weekend. It was awesome. It really is so incredibly awesome that we live only 2 hours from such an unbelievably beautiful place.

I am tired, so this will be a short one [edit: never mind!]. The reason I’m tired, is because that video (above /\) was taken at around 7am this morning, on the way home from our awesome camping trip. You might ask, “Why were you already packed up and on the way home at 7am?” You might not ask that, that’s fine too. Regardless, the reason is that about an hour and a half before that (let’s call it 5:30 AM) a giant wave broke over the rocks we were sleeping behind and we woke up literally sliding along the sand in our tent on a layer of frigid ocean (side note: I thought it was “fridged”, but it turns out that’s not a word). It’s difficult for me to describe how crazy of an experience this was for me. OK, not THAT crazy in itself, but the lead up made it seem pretty crazy.

When the water hit the tent, it wasn’t a gentle misting or something like you’d experience if it starts raining and you’ve left the rain fly off. It was exactly like if you were sleeping on the beach, in the water. I think I said “there’s the water” (read on – I had been sort of worried about this!). I’m actually pretty proud of Lindsay and myself, we JUMPED out of bed, QUICKLY looked for my headlamp (which I always keep next to me in the tent), then I dragged the tent over rocks and through a foot of water in places and dragged it up to our car. Then we ran back down to where the tent was and looked for all of our stuff that had been carried away by the water.

Luckily because of my “feelings” the night before (see below), I actually relocated all of my dive gear a ways up from the tent. But still, the water had come WAY up and had washed my gear all over the place. Somehow, the only thing that was actually lost was a glove (which is a bummer, because they’re 40 dollar dive gloves!). Oh, also Sai’s dog bed, which was wet, we threw away.

The night of this “incident” (i.e. the period leading up to being woken up by the the sea), I kept waking up (I’d guess every 45-60 minutes or so) because the crashing waves were just so loud. Having slept on this very beach in the past I knew how loud it could be with the waves breaking over all of the rocks nearby but it was still hard not to be woken up. And each time I woke up, I got a bit panicked and thought, “Oh shit are the waves coming closer? Is the noise getting louder? Should I check outside and see where the tide is?” And each time I woke up I thought “Kevin you’ve already gone over this, you’re being an over cautious worry-wort.”

(Note the “christmas tree” and it’s location relative to our tent – I figured it would have been washed away long ago if the tide came up that far)

The strange part is that before getting in bed, where there was still a bit of light out, I was walking down to the tent from our car and noticed that there was a line of seaweed up quite a bit from where I had seen it before, or in other words, it seemed like the tide had at some point recently been up very high. I spent a good 15 minutes (not an exaggeration) debating with myself about whether or not I should be concerned with where we had set our tent up. I walked around a bit more and examined our camping spot, but there was a fire next to our tent some time ago it seemed, but all of the coal/burnt wood remnants/etc were all in one central spot (not scattered all over the place). Plus our tent spot was elevated another 2-3ish feet from the sand Plus, I knew that if I suggested to Lindsay that we pack all of our stuff up and move our camp a hundred feed off the beach she would tell me I was being crazy. And I’m trying to get better at not worry about everything all of the time, so I tried (see previous paragraph) to just ignore my thoughts and go to bed.

Anyway, enough about that. It was a pretty good adventure type situation.

Otherwise, the trip was great! I tried out my new speargun for the first time and did some spearfishing/freediving. The visibility was TERRIBLE, so I didn’t see much, but it was still fun to get in the water. The speargun is pretty great I think, though there are a few small issues. First, the safety has a tendency to “turn on” automatically, with the slightest brush. So I think that’s just something to be mindful of, or possible fix. I would never really trust it anyway, so perhaps I could just disable the safety altogether (though I probably won’t). Second, the monofilament that attaches to the spear itself is secured using a metal crimp. The crimp itself is fine/good, but if the metal crimp is below the spear shaft when you lock it into the gun then the pressure (“moment”?) applied to the spear inside of the trigger mechanism causes the trigger to lock. This took me a good 10 minutes to figure out, but is an easily avoidable issue, just a slight pain in the ass, especially when wearing 7mm gloves with cold hands. Note in the photos above, which I suppose look cool enough, the sad reality is that I was dicking around in the sand trying to get the trigger unstuck.

I also have one sad thing to report: I sat on my kindle and broke it. Special thanks to Dean for the Kindle in the first place. Anyway, this happened around 9:30pm, just as I was getting to a great part in my book Red Seas Under Red Skies (the second book in the Gentleman Bastards series – the first being Lies of Locke Lamora). Anyway, I was and still am sad about this. I really liked my Kindle. I’m replacing it, but still. It sucks to loose something great/valuable, and have it be a total waste and totally your fault.

And now, a few more photos from the weekend:

Lindsay took some of these too, it was a team effort

<3 p.s. Lindsay is a great person to spend a weekend camping with. Love you Lindsay!

January 13, 2014
Camping, Crabbing, and Freediving on the North Coast

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!!!

November 11, 2013