A Month of Travel, All Within The Country

Sorry it's been so long between posts, but I've really, really liked seeing that moose head picture on the top of my blog.

It's been a long two months of travel (October and November) and for once I haven't even left the safe confines of the US of A. After coming home from my sister's wedding in mid-October, I visited Santa Cruz, Honolulu, Disneyland (SoCal) and Las Vegas:

• Honolulu

  Honolulu was nice. I was there for a company junket and it was only for four days, but Hawaii is still Hawaii.
  
  
  
  Shelley and I hadn't been to Hawaii in about three years and really enjoyed ourselves -- mostly doing nothing.




• SoCal

  Later that week, we had to go to another junket -- but this time for Shelley's company. I was dreading going to this (as it was at Disneyland) but it turned out pretty damn good. Weather was cool and the park was mostly empty.
  
  
  
  
  Shelley got to meet the Incredibles.
  
  
  
  
  And we snuck out of the company festivities on Sunday to go down to the coast. This is Newport Beach just at sunset.
  
  




• Vegas

  Just a week after getting back from SoCal, I was off to Las Vegas for a week to help run a training conference for my company. It was friggin exhausting, but I did get to go to a subzero bar (Minus 5 Experience).
  
  
  
  
  Yes, this was a complete waste of money. And yes, that is Elvis. But I think that is the point of Vegas.

I've just got back from Chicago and Columbus this week, which rounds out my travel for the year. I'll try and get those pictures up this week.

Moose

Street Moose, originally uploaded by /k.

Overall my blog is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's personal stuff, occasionally geeky stuff but mostly it's just travelogues.

But on some days, it's just a picture of a guy in a Moose costume giving me the "hang loose" sign while he passes out flyers on the streets of Honolulu.

1000K

I forgot to post this back in August, but I recently passed the official "you're too old to still be doing this" mark for business travelers:

While this does get me Premier Executive status for life, I am disappointed that they no longer name a plane after you at 5 million miles. It really takes away the motivation.

Amy's Wedding

Amy's Wedding, originally uploaded by /k.

Two days of flying back to Ohio this weekend resulted in Shelley and I seeing my younger sister married (and my niece Grace).

More photos on my Flickr page.

SF Commute

SF Bay Ferry, originally uploaded by /k.

I've been commuting into San Francisco quite a bit lately and the 2.5 hour drive into the Bay Area has really started to grind on me. It isn't really the distance, but the lost time and hassle of driving. So I am experimenting with ways to regain that lost time this month. The first one of these was the BayLink Ferry, which goes across the San Francisco Bay from Vallejo to the Embarcadero on the SF waterfront (near Fisherman's Wharf). As the video below shows, it's a pretty nice trip and only takes one hour. Along the way, you get to see Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island and the SF skyline. However, that's only half my journey since Vallejo is one hour from my house. I may try taking the Capital Corridor (Amtrak) later this month.

My Summer Vacation (2008 Edition)

As I mentioned in my last entry, I actually did have a large number of half-assed half-done posts from this summer, that hadn't progressed enough to be posted. Instead of trying to finish them, here they are in their half-baked glory:

• I bid farewell to my goat neighbors. This made me sad, as the goats were much more lively than the horses. And they used to continuously screw with their owners whenever they weren't promptly fed (which is often with my slackass neighbors). As a tribute to my goat friends (of which I nicknamed mama, runt and rowdy), I present to you my favorite video of rowdy the goat:
  
  



• I became a professional photographer:

  Hi /k,
  
  I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released second edition of our Schmap California Guide:
  
  Arco Arena
  
  Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please enjoy the guide!

  Sadly, this photo sucks. And it came from my old Treo mobile phone.



• We endured high winds and epic wildfires. For a few weeks in June/July, it literally looked/smelled/felt like the entire state of California was on fire. And being near a large body of water, we got to see a lot of the firefighting preparations first hand:
  
  



• The summer was not completely without travel. I had to make a quick swing through Asia to present at our fiscal year kickoffs, which basically meant that I flew for about 10 hours every other day for one week to present for 1 hour total. However, this did leave some free time which I was able to fill. Below is a picture of the Sapporo Beer Station, which is on the Sapporo Beer Headquarters grounds in Ebisu-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
  
  
  

I am sure there were a few others things along the way, but this should bring you up to date.

Shibuya Dawn

Shibuya Dawn, originally uploaded by /k.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's certainly not because I've been busy -- in fact, just the opposite: I didn't travel much over the summer at all. And because of that, I got lazy and have about 7 half-baked blog posts in my editor. So I am going to try a different tack and just post quick ones for a while.

Here is today's bit of Zen. It's a stop-motion video from my hotel room window of the sun rising over the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo. I made it with iStopMotion and my MacBook's isight.

Goats

Goats, originally uploaded by /k.

It's goat season again here in El Dorado county.

Every year, when we move from the wet winter to the dry summer, fields of grass become super-combustible fire hazards. Unfortunately, it is not cost effective to mow and then remove the dead grass, so a cottage industry of shepherds rent out their goats and kids (baby goats) to munch on the drying weeds. It seems like a win/win, especially to my dogs who like to watch them.

I caught this group deforesting the back side of Wild Oaks park, but my next door neighbors (the caretakers of Whitey and Brownie) have also rented some for their pasture. You can't see him, but there is also a sheep dog (goat dog ?) somewhere in the pasture guarding over them.

if case you are thinking about it, it appears http://goatcentral.com/ is the place to call.

Moment of Zen

Circular Quay, originally uploaded by /k.

After a terribly busy week here in Sydney (it was truly twelve hour days almost all week), I got early on Saturday to take in Circular Quay with a bit of quiet.

This concludes my quick to trip to Australia. I'm just throwing things into my bags to catch my flight back to Los Angeles and finally NorCal.

February + March Update

Let's see, where did I leave off in February?

Oh yeah. I got back from China and was actually in NorCal for a few weeks. This bliss was interrupted by a weeklong trip to (suburban) Chicago for a work conference. The picture below basically sums that trip up:

Snow in St Charles by /k

Snow and boredom.

I was home barely 48 hours when I headed out for Seoul and more meetings. This was simply boring. Not even photo worthy as I basically walked between my hotel and the office for four days.

Escaping the cold in Seoul, I flew down to Hong Kong for, yes, more meetings. At least the weather was quite better, so I could at least get out and see some nightlife. I hadn't been to Hong Kong for several years, so I just wandered around for the most part.

Hong Kong Admiralty by /k

The one highlight of this whole trip was a touristy trip to the top of Hong Kong island (The Peak) to have dinner. As I didn't have to expense the beer nor the food, it was quite enjoyable.

The Peak by /k

That pretty much ended the international part of my travel. Unfortunately, I had one more set of meetings down in Santa Cruz. Once that was done, I have basically been home. Except last weekend's trip to New Orleans, which would be a entirely different post.

[FV]lickr

Louie in the Snow, originally uploaded by /k.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I have been toggling between crazy busy on travel and completely lazy at home. However, when I saw that the good people at Flickr had added video for their Pro accounts, I figured it was a good chance to hoist some more dog videos on you.

Above is a video of Louiedog running through the snow near Sierra at Tahoe around Christmas 2007. As he was originally from Nevada City (which is about the same altitude), he seems completely unfazed by the snow.

I'll post something tomorrow to update you on my latest exploits. Probably with video.

Gotham

Trying to catch up on my bloging.
This is the Jin Mao Building in Shanghai. And my hotel when I stay there (Grand Hyatt Shanghai). Reportedly the tallest hotel in the world (the lobby is on the 54th floor). My room was on the 67 floor and it made me dizzy going up the elevators (it took THREE to get to my room). There's a bar on the top floor and you actually look down on the Shanghai needle (actually called the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower) from the window. Trippy.

However, the thing that strikes me most about the hotel is the design. Whenever I see it, I expect to see the bat signal silhouette on it's side.

Maglev

I've spent the last two weeks shuttling around China, reviewing some of my company's offices. I'll write up a longer entry later this week, but I wanted to post some video while I was still thinking about. The clip below shows my trip on Shanghai's Maglev train between the city and Pudong International Airport. The clip is almost the entire ride -- since it last only 7 minutes to cover 30 KM.



Although it doesn't show on the video well, the train leans about 30 degrees.

I'll have some more pictures and video from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou later this week.

Zeke's Relations

Although this looks like Zeke, this is actually his mother and brother in Monterey last weekend.



Remi (Zeke's mom) is on the right and Riley (Zeke's lookalike brother) is on the left. Ed (Remi and Riley's owner and breeder) says that Riley is well behaved but pretty vocal. Apparently, the shenanigan gene skipped him.