The stretch of vitality

Well, I got more of an adventure than I bargained for on Friday. We worked in the morning until about 12:45 and then George, Bogdan, Diana, and I piled into George’s car to head toward Sibiu, a central town about a three hour drive from Cluj. However, earlier in the week we had been discussing going to Turda, a nearby town about 20 minutes away, so I was mentally prepared for that. But apparently these guys were enthusiastic about such a long round trip journey so off we went, George aggressively passing cars and trucks as we zipped along the windy 2-lane paved road that serves as the interstate highway. The roads here don’t quite cut it as highways: not enough lanes, constant curves, and no concept of exits so the highway just goes right through the center of every town you pass, causing a multimile traffic jam at every city.

But off we zoomed, stopping along the way at a great roadside bistro for lunch. At George’s recommendation I ordered the chicken goulash, which was by far the best meal of this trip. Chicken pieces in a pinkish goulash sauce with a side of polenta. Delicious. It was a really great meal. We sat outside but in the shade. George and Bogdan ordered a large piece of pork that came with a large piece of boiled pork skin that was like nothing I’ve seen before. My best guess would have been that it was tongue of some kind. They also had an enormous vat of soup. Diana had the chicken and ham dish that was my original choice prior to George’s recommendation and a funny fancy chocolate milkshake. The restaurant had several sections of tables inside large wooden geodesic domes made out of stained boards joined with steel connectors. That is about as close as I’ll get to Burning Man this year, I guess.

After the delicious lunch we were off again, hitting some traffic at Sebes, some of which George avoided by simply veering off the highway into the residential streets in frustration, following some locals, winding our way to the other side of town, and rejoining the highway again. Sometime around 4:30 or so we arrived at the large outdoor technology museum outside Sibiu. Here they have a lake and large grounds surronding it. They transport various buildings from the past few centuries from every region of Romania and reassemble there here as a museum and park. It has lots of windmills, water mills, sawmills, seed oil extraction buildings, and a few churches. We toured around a good long while before hopping back into the car to visit downtown Sibiu.

Sibiu is a walled fortress city and just by sheer chance there was a large Medieval Festival happening this weekend, so the large cobblestone pedestrian malls and plazas were buzzing with people. The temperature had cooled down and it was quite lovely. We saw some sword fighting, torch fighting, some music performances, and lots of costumes. We also went into some churches and climbed up to the top of the clock tower to enjoy some vistas. We had a nice lazy small dinner followed up with soft serve ice cream. There are young girls operating very small portable soft serve machines for 2 lei (about 60 cents or so) a cone about every 100 meters along the pedestrian mall in Sibiu.

Then we made again the long journey back to Cluj, but this time except for one or two brief backups, there was no traffic, so George was zipping along between 120 and 160 kph most of the way, taking the curves like a race driver. We got back to Cluj shortly after midnight. I certainly wasn’t expecting such an adventure! I had just a few hours to rest and shower before I had to head to the airport for my Cluj -> Bucharest -> London -> Denver journey home.

The rest of the photos from the Romania trip are here.

So I’ve flown out to Cluj-Napoca, Romania once again for work. It’s been almost three years since the first trip, which was incidentally also the start of this blog. The journey out was a long one. Denver to Chicago with a “stop”, which was an entirely different flight on a different plane at a different gate, so why they had indications that it was a single flight is beyond me, and then from Chicago on the big old 747 out to Frankfurt, and the from there to Cluj. The trans-atlantic part was actually not bad. I brought a good pillow and with the help of a sleeping pill was able to doze most of the time. Once in Frankfurt, I had an eight-hour layover (my longest ever) waiting for the only flight of the day to Cluj. No free wifi but I was able to find power outlets, and I had remembered my adapter and also thought ahead to save a bunch of documents from the wiki to my laptop so I could work on them offline and on the plane. It was annoying to have to convert dollars to euros for just two snacks though. I relied heavily on my stash of trusty Clif bars. Several employees at both the immigration desk and ticket counter commented pleasantly on my “pancakes” T-shirt. Even with the long layover, I made it to Cluj and to the same hotel as last time without much hassle. One funny thing about the landing in Cluj is we all got off the plane into a big double bus waiting for us, but there was a long delay, maybe twenty minutes, before the bus moved even after all the passengers were aboard. Then the bus drove us about 60 yards to the main terminal. It was silly. And of course there were no other flights coming in to the airport at that time, so I’m not sure why the bus was required. Another cool thing was that the taxi drivers get into and out of the airport using a fingerprint scanner.

The HP Cluj office has grown! Last time they had probably around 15 total employees. Now it’s up to 98! They’ve taken over two other sizable sections of their office building. We’ve had a fairly full and productive week of training sessions and lab exercises. It’s a shame I’m spending about 4 calendar days traveling only to be here for 5 days. Plus the jet lag has been somewhat bad. I have gone for an early morning jog since I’m awake in the wee hours of the morning anyway three times so far and enjoyed exploring the neighborhoods a bit. I found a park called Parcul Mare that has a bunch of outdoor exercise equipment anyone can use, so I’ve been doing that.

We’ve got our first and only social outgoing scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll be posting about that sometime soon. Photos from the Romania trip are here.

I went out to Vermont for a little Lyons family reunion. The Ireland contingent was there which was a special treat. We had nice weather and lots of great meals. It was a pretty chill schedule. I did a small hike with Deed and Dad and we poked around the Bookstock festival in town and played some mini golf. We also drove into New Hampshire for a reunion of my father’s cousins at Joyce and George’s great lake house. My 92-year-old Great Uncle Chick was there and it’s always fun to see him. Matt and I did some kayaking around the lake and Joyce took folks out on her pontoon boat. Sadly the second group got stuck with engine trouble in the pontoon boat and had to be towed back to the dock. After they were gone far too long, Joan went out in a kayak in search of them. Joyce also took us out to the barn to see her two horses Spirit and Bo, and Caoimhe road a horse for the first time ever.

Photos from the Vermont Lyons reunion are here

The travel back was a bit of a pain. I took a small 10-seater Cessna from Lebanon, New Hampshire to Boston, but then US Airways cancelled my Boston to Washington leg. I got rerouted on an AirTrain flight to Denver but it didn’t leave until about six hours later. So door to door it took me 16 hours to get home. Thankfully Google provides free wifi in Boston Logan so I was able to get some work done on a side project while I was there.

This week is the 2-night Boulder Denver New Technology meetup where the TechStars 2010 startups present their pitches. I only got to see the first two last night. I had to cut out early to walk over to Chautauqua to hear Zoe Keating perform. Tonight the rest of the companies present. It’s a big and enthusiastic crowd. We completely filled the large lecture hall and had to spill over into another classroom upstairs with a live video feed. Also this week is TEDx Boulder, which I’m looking forward to.

Last Friday night I went to the Ogden Theatre in Denver for an Imogen Heap show with Erica, a new friend. Imogen was singing in full force and it was a really great show with a nice long set list. Her band sounded really good as well, particularly the drummer. She did an improvised song for a local charity, and audience-participation renditions of Just For Now and Hide and Seek. We got soaked in thick rain going back to the car, but it was overall really fun.

I went straight from the show to Bill and Leslie’s house. I showed up at 1am, rested a few hours, and then we left for the airport at 3:30am. We just had a lovely week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina for our family reunion. This is our third year in a row. It’s lots of golf and tennis plus some swimming both in the ocean and in the pool and a bit of bicycling as well. There was lots of good food this year, which is featured prominently in the photos. It was a very fun age for Will. He can’t really say much of anything yet but he is happy and fun. He knows High Five and is good at walking around, carrying tennis raquets, and hiding in cabinets.

My sleep patterns were pretty disrupted so I spent two dawns out on the beach watching heat lightning and sunrise. The weather overall was pretty oppressively hot. We got a bit of a break this afternoon with some clouds and a cool breeze, but most of the week it was low to mid nineties, sunny, and humid. Of course we watched a lot of World Cup matches as well, all slunked in along a big wrap around couch and alternating not paying attention, with most people browsing the web on their laptops, with intense vocalization at the interesting parts of the match.

Photos from the trip are here.

I also bought a bunch of new toys! I got a set of my own climbing gear (a rope and some quickdraws) finally. I had been watching prices and got the REI outlt deal of the day – a 60 meter rope for less than $90 (normally they are in the $225 ballpark). Then, after about 12 years of using Linux on PCs as my primary operating system, I bought a MacBook Pro. However, this is mostly triggered by the fact that the EigenD software that accompanies the (hopefully) awesome Eigenharp Tau only runs on Mac OS X. So now shipping to me is an Eigenharp, an electronic instrument designed for live performance, which I have been lusting over for many months since they were first announced, and a tricked out MacBook Pro loaded with RAM and a 256 GB solid state disk drive. I’m hoping the conversion to Mac will be mostly smooth, and I think it probably will, but I’ll miss the awesomeness of the Debian package format and associated tools infrastructure and a bunch of other things. I’ll probably write a post about that on My Professional Blog in a few weeks.

Chris and Tina came out for a Colorado vacation visit! They arrived last Saturday in the morning. Michale and I took them to The Huckleberry for lunch. Then we took a nap since their flight was stoopid early. We went in to Boulder and strolled around the Pearl St Mall. There were some good street performers out that day.

Sunday we all attended the now semi-annual Uncle Eddie breakfast at Lucille’s. It was delicious and fun. Then Chris, Michale, and I went up to Idaho Springs for some white water rafting! We got a brief safety lecture, put on wet suits, booties, splash jackets, PFDs and helmets, and then headed downstream with five clients and one guide in our raft. We did the “intermediate” level trip and it was a lot of fun. The guide makes it a bit overly dramattic, barking out rapid fire rowing instructions that seem not entirely necessary, but it was a really fun outing and not exhorbitantly priced. We went over rapids, got splashed a bunch, huddled down in the center of the raft going over falls, and Michale even got to drag one of our dim-witted companions from another group back into the raft when he tumbled out!

Afterward we hooked back up with Tina and walked into downtown Louisville to dine at the Empire Lounge.

Monday morning Chris, Tina, and I drove down to Colorado Springs for a visit. We first took the Cog Railway to the top of Pike’s Peak. It was cool views going up the mountain. The weather was severely windy and cold at the summit. It was 17 degrees with wind chill to -10 and winds initially running 60 mph or so. We couldn’t make it even from the train to any of the peripheral view points because it was so cold and little dirt and rock particles were pelting us in the face. After only about 10 minutes, the wind hit 90 mph, which we were told is hurricane levels, and everyone had to immediately reboard the train so we could head down and back to safety. At this point decent size hunks of rock were being hurled through the air as everyone covered their faces and made a mad dash for the train. It was pretty thrilling and a big relief to get out of there. The wind was so strong that it took down a tree further down the mountain, and the tree crashed on some power lines which fell across the cog railway tracks. So we ended up stuck in the train waiting for the power company to clear the downed lines for an hour or so.

We ate at Adam’s Mountain Cafe and checked out the big arcade next door full of old arcade games. Then we went to the Garden of the Gods park. That was really nice. The weather was gorgeous and we frollicked around looking at the amazing rock formations. We had dinner in Colorado Springs that night with some yummy guacamole prepared table side.

After we checked into our motel, I had to go scouting for suitable wifi access somewhere as I was planning to work remotely while Chris and Tina went sight seeing on Tuesday. I tried the Manitou Springs library. They had working wifi and a sort of OK table for me to sit at, but my VPN software was blocked by their firewall. Grr. On to the second library. This one was closed for RFID conversion. Grr. Third library was OK though. Ended up at the Sand Creek branch and they had free wifi with decent speed and even though the used the same service provider as the Manitou Springs library, for some reason my VPN worked OK. This whole search took two hours, which is pretty typical. I missed my amazing home office.

So I worked from there Tuesday while Tina and Chris went to the Cave of the Winds. It was a bit challenging working from there and there was no good lunch available, so I fell back to my lifesaver – my trusty Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch Clif Bar. At the end of the day Chris and Tina came back in the car and we hit the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, which was interesting but just a little. We still had some daylight so we went over to the famous fancy hotel The Broadmoor and snooped around a bit, which was actually a lot of fun. Then we stopped at the Ritz in Colorado Springs for dinner before getting on the road back home to Louisville.

I was working the rest of the week, so they borrowed my car and did a few local attractions: the Denver Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, the Celestial Seasons factory tour, and the Silver Plume steam train. Thursday Tina cooked us some delicious apricot-and-mint-glazed lamb skewers, and Friday I did some rotisserie chicken.

The rest of the photos from Chris and Tina’s visit are here.

I took them to the airport stoopid early Saturday and then met up with Michale for the Boulder Creek Festival. It’s really fun. We love watching the little kids in the giant rubber band kid launchers (they had 2 or 3 of them spread around). On Saturday I got two compliments on my trusty “plain text” white T-shirt. Then a big rainstorm hit just as we came upon Lewis and Nancy by chance. So we hunkered down under the library overpass waiting out the worst of the rain. It did last a good long while despite Lewis’s frequent mentions that it would pass in half an hour.

Today we ended up having a big yummy pancakes and bacon breakfast and then again spending most of the day at the Boulder Creek Festival. It was nice and sunny and warm today and we walked and walked and walked all over the place, laughing and eating and chit chatting.

(In case you missed it, there’s a dude on a rope swing in that photo)

The rest of the Boulder Creek Festival photos are here.

As a side note we’ve been watching season 3 of The Office on netflix instant. They’ve really hit their stride now and the episodes are hysterical.

Had a really fun extended trip to California. It was a work trip but I tacked on both the weekend before and after to hang out in San Francisco. I flew out early on Saturday morning (April 24), grabbed my rental car, and met up with Pat to hang out. It was a very groovy and enjoyable experience as I was in a very much “take it as it comes” kind of mood and just enjoying the novelty of San Francisco. Throughout the day, Pat would suggest something and I would say “absolutely, that sounds perfect”. We got Salvadorian lunch, looked at a funny pawn shop, took a nap, rode the bus to the Apple Store and played with all the latest gear, and went over to Japantown for some yummy sushi. After sushi we walked around a bit and saw a funny scene. A pair of drunken college goofballs were stumbling their way across a big overpass and got engaged in a conversation with the group of homeless people under the overpass. This ended with the goofball dropping a small bottle of booze down to the the homeless folks, who then broke out into a rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and were clearly delighted. It was pretty funny.

After sushi we went and got ice cream. I was under the mistaken impression that I am lactose intolerant for the past 18 months. I recently got officially tested and learned that in fact, I am not lactose intolerant. There was much rejoicing. This was an official dairy-fast-breaking celebration and I got a big ice cream sundea (as it was spelled in the store) and it was great. We took a very crowded bus back to Pat’s neighborhood, or so we thought. Something got screwed up and we ended up a few blocks into an area Pat had heard was not safe. So we nervously made our way back into calmer waters, hung out on the roof a bit, then called it a night.

Sunday I packed up my stuff in the car and drove over to Golden Gate park for a nice run. Afterward I met up with my cousin Ed for brunch nearby. Then back to meet up with Pat before heading over to Dani’s house to hang out in her lushly overgrown back yard, chat with some Freedom Community folks, and learn knife throwing. As it usually happens, eventually additional members of “the family” as they say appeared and we discussed what to eat for dinner for about 45 minutes before finally deciding upon Peruvian food. So we all rolled to The Mission and had a big long meal with lots of good chatting (albeit much of the chatting was not entirely appropriate for a restaurant filled with families).

I tried to meet up with Ed again for Classical Revolution, but dinner ran late and all was finished by the time I arrived. And I arrived at the wrong address by a lot anyway, so I just drove down to Cupertino and checked into my hotel.

It was not a good work week to have a sore throat as I had to give two presentations, both of which were being recorded. It was pretty annoying and I really sounded strange. Other highlights included no less than four sushi meals included some served on a little boat and one all you can eat lunch. Friday it was back up to San Francisco to hang at Pat’s where a little party was happening.

Saturday Michale arrived (yay!) and we checked into our hotel and headed over to the Embarcadero to look at the yummies at the farmer’s market. We wondered around along the waterfront up to the wharf. I got a crab cake that I had been jonesing for. We also paid hommage to Pope Joe at Trader Joes so Michale could get her favorite hummus. Pat joined us later for seafood lunch and then napping in a nearby park near Ghirardelli square. Then we got some ice cream before heading back to the hotel. Michale and I took a “nap” from 6pm to 8:30pm and then just decided to give up on going out of the hotel again that night. I ordered room service and then we went back to sleep. Yay for mini-vacations.

Sunday we had excellent breakfast at the diner across the street, walked around a local farmer’s market fair, and then rode the bus out to the ocean. We walked along the beach a ways and then took a long walk through Golden Gate Park. We tried to make our way to Cafe Gratitude for some raw food yummies, and after a few address mistakes, we finally arrived to find it closed due to a power outage. Bummer! So we grabbed some pizza on Castro instead and then took the bus out to Diamond Heights for a party at Marcia’s.

The party was a lot of fun and Michale fit in with that crowd swimmingly, as I knew she would. It was good. There was ice cream cake and swiss cheese and lounging and talking and hot tubbing.

I commuted to work with my boss Monday morning and then back in the evening. I met up with Rebecca and Brian for rock climbing at Mission Cliffs a bit. It’s always fun to visit new climbing gyms. Then it was back to the hotel for early sleep. Tuesday morning Michale and I headed into the BART just as it was opening at 4am only to realize the first train to SFO wasn’t until nearly 5am, which was too late for our flight. So we had to fall back and take a cab to the airport.

Photos from the trip are here.

The Skareckis came out for a big Colorado ski trip adventure visit. They arrived on Wednesday morning and spent Wednesday through Friday exploring the area around Boulder. They hit the Butterfly Pavillion, the Louisville Rec Center featuring its big yellow water slide, and even went indoor skydiving in Lone Tree. Thursday night Marc’s college friend Marissa came over and we had a big dinner with Rotisserie chicken and lots of trimmings. This was followed by an intense game of Bananagrams wherein Michale validated my prediction that she would dominate. Michale and I had to get up early on Friday so we retired around eleven and left the three of them to hang and talk until the wee hours.

Friday after work we had some logistics to deal with. Marc had sent a package with their ski gear UPS for guaranteed Friday delivery. However, with the big snowstorms in the east, it didn’t make it, and we were scheduled to head up to Breckenridge early Saturday morning. So we had to drive around Boulder and pick up some borrowed gear in addition to hitting Sports Authority minutes before close to quickly outfit Sunny with snow pants, gloves, long underwear, and goggles.

We drove up Saturday morning. We sang The Twelve Days of Christmas as well as Sweet Potato in the car on the way up. Marc and Casey also talked at length about how great They Might Be Giants’ Here Comes Science album is, always lamenting how they couldn’t remember any of it. They then proceeded to sing no less than twelve of the album’s nineteen tracks a capella flawlessly. During the trip I loaded it onto my mp3 player for the ride home to verify all the lyrics. Sunny and Casey particularly got fired up for the Einsenhower Tunnel (Einsenhower Tower as Casey calls it) and the Continental Divide.

We rented a sweet ski-in ski-out condo right on the slopes at Breckenridge. The skiing was pretty great. Michale came up Saturday to join us for hot tubbing, swimming, dinner, and skiing Sunday. It snowed five inches Sunday night. Michale and I sat in the outdoor hot tub sipping hot cocoa while the snow fell on us. Marc and I headed out alone Monday morning to ski the freshies and hit the summit. We made a lot of runs between 8:30 and lunch time. Then Casey and Sunny joined us. They found some good runs for Sunny including a few little entertaining themed runs through the trees with castles, dragons, cobras, haunted mine graveyards, etc.

Tuesday was going to be a “perfect storm” of circumstances to try snowboarding. I have a season pass so I’m not concerned about the lift ticket. We had a condo so I could bail and go back to skis if needed. Marc was there and willing to give me a lesson. We had fresh sow and plenty of warmth and sunshine on Tuesday. It was mid week so it was not too crowded. So with all these circumstances aligned, I figured it would be fine to try snowboarding instead of just going off on my own while the Skareckis stuck to green circle runs. So I rented a board, packed a bunch of bath towels into my snow pants to pad my knees and butt, and headed out there. Marc gave me some tips, and within about four runs I was able to get down the learner slope without falling.

The Skareckis went over to lift nine and left me on the beginner run to try to get my skills together. I got the basics but was still not quite stable. After a long lunch break and a nap, I went back out for a few more runs. I made my way over to peak nine with great effort and fear, only to take one run then realize it was already 3:30 and the lifts would close in half an hour, so in order to get back to the condo I would have to B line it back to peak eight. I made it back in time. I was very tired though since it’s very different leg muscles than skiing, so on the slope back to the condo I was wiping out every twenty yards or so. Anyway, it was cool to get a chance to try it, but I have no plans for further experimentation unless unusual circumstances hit again. It’s just too awkward with the undoing and redoing the binding and the awkward pigeon toed shuffle.

We got up early Wednesday morning and went straight to the airport. It was a really fun trip and some great skiing!

The rest of the photos are here.

I took Michale on a vacation to Belize! Belize was on my list of places to go for good scuba diving, and Michale wanted to go some place warm. It’s a very easy trip: 6 hours of plane rides, English speaking, US Dollars accepted. We arrived Wednesday late afternoon in the Belize City international airport, and took a tiny Cessna puddle jumper to Ambergris Caye, the island where San Pedro is. It was the smallest plane (maybe 12 passengers max) either of us had taken. We stopped briefly on Caye Caulker to drop off one passenger and the rest of us stayed on for Ambergris. We got the island flavor right away with the baggage claim being a small section of grass delimited with wooden posts and a chain painted white. One of the handful of airport staff asked us where we were going and called them to arrange our taxi to our condo development. Lelo our taxi driver took us there, narrowly missing people, dogs, and structures the whole way, with that frightening but amazing precision that taxi drivers always have. He was the first to introduce us to the island slogan “No shoes. No shirt. No problem”, which he repeated numerous times.

Wednesday night we just got settled in, strolled through the tiny downtown, and ate mixed seafood pasta at Elvi’s. There was shrimp, lobster, scallops, conch, and calamari in it. Michale started reading up in the guidebooks and guest register we found in the condo that night. “A bit loud at night” is what Michale wrote in her journal. What this means is our condo was just off the street where loud golf carts and cars go past. The old lady occupying the private home next to our condo blares her TV for many hours each day and evening. Drunk people walk by and talk loudly. One day they chainsawed a coconut tree into pieces for several hours just outside the condo. Another day was the hardware store across the streeet’s tenth anniversary and they rented a huge set of speakers and played music all day. It was not the calm tropical oasis I was hoping for.

Thursday was our unscripted exploring day. We wandered out of the condo development out through the streets toward the western shore of the island. We didn’t get far before two young men in a golf cart approached us and pitched us some freebies if we went and looked at time shares at a new resort on the northern side of the island. We hemmed and hawed a bit, but eventually decided to go with them because it seemed like fun and would make a good story and we would get a free day golf cart rental out of it. They were very excited because the prize we had selected out of their manila envelope of prize tickets was a free week’s stay at the resort, which they claimed meant $100 US for them. For all we knew, half of the tickets in the envelope said that.

They drove us up to the resort and chatted away. They explained the new movie theater just over the bridge to the northern section which had recently been built and is planning to open for business in a few weeks. The drove us up into the complex, which was mostly up and running except for the last few units under construction, and otherwise mostly deserted. There was one other couple getting a time share pitch and maybe one or two guests. We were introduced to our salesperson, Karia, a slim freckled blonde woman, wearing, get this, a thigh-length down jacket and wool turtle neck sweater. Now, it was surely cool that day, probably in the mid sixties, but the full on winter garb was quite surprising and amusing. Michale and I set across from her in our shorts and flip flops. The deal was we had to sit through a 90 minute presentation, then we’d get our golf cart rental. So we did and we chatted with Karia about our vacation habits (oh yeah, we told them we had been married for two years, although Michale hadn’t yet begun wearing the fake wedding ring she brought on the trip). Karia explained how she and her daughter ended up leaving Canada to travel and eventually landing in Belize. She showed us a model unit and then finally released us after we declined to buy a time share on the spot, despite her lovely financial models and diagrams she drew on her trusty yellow legal pad. According to Karia, aggressive time share marketing got to be such a problem in Belize that the regulated it such that these places could approach someone only once, give them one pitch, and then the “mark” would have to buy in on the spot, and if not the developer is forbidden from interacting with them further.

So we got a lift back all the way to the southern end of town from another young man in a golf cart with our golf cart rental voucher and 7-day stay voucher in tow. We explored the far south end of town (although the island extends quite a bit further south) a bit before stopping in Ali Babba’s for rotisserie chicken, which was quite tasty. The rest of the afternoon we relaxed, napped, dipped toes in the water, and bought some groceries. San Pedro has a small grocery store every hundred yards, but presumably due to the realities of island sundries, they each seem to carry virtually identical goods. We got the necessary items: coffee, creamer, peanut butter, and some fruit. We ate a yummy meal at Mickey’s featuring salty Belizean style grouper followed by frozen custard and strolling on the beach.

Friday I did my first scuba dive out to a hand-shaped coral formation in open water. As soon as I started to descend, a big three foot ugly looking fish with a prominent lower jaw came up from the bottom to examine me, which was a fun feeling. We saw a nurse shark swimming around and lots of cool fish. Right at the end of the dive some of the others saw a mother and baby dolphin. I missed it since I was the first one out of air and was already on my way up. It’s tough to inhale slowly after twenty years of split-second inhales playing woodwind instruments. As I feared, I got seasick after getting back in the boat despite the drammamine I had taken both the night before and shortly before the dive. I wasn’t feeling very well so I bailed from the second tank dive. It was nice since they go back to the dock and dive shop between dives since the dive sites are mostly very nearby, so I had a chance to bail for dry land instead of bouncing around in the boat while everyone did another dive. The drammamine messed me up so I went and slept in the hammock on our balcony for a good long while.

During this Michale was wondering around exploring on her own. She eventually wondered onto the wrong side of the airport and was a bit frightened by some kids that approached her asking what she was doing there. Thankfully they left her alone though and she came back. Then Michale went for a swim in the sea, but it was still quite cool so I quickly got shivers and got out to spectate. We ate some yummy sushi at the Hummingbird Cafe and then took a long walk up to the northern section of the island. We eventually encountered Legends Burgers and went in for a “dinner 2″ burger with swiss and mushrooms. We chatted with the owner Tyler a bit then hitched a ride back home on a passing golf cart.

Saturday we lounged around the pool. I did some yoga while Michale did her pool exercises while we waited for the last morning water taxi to Caye Caulker, a smaller island about 45 minutes south of Ambergris Caye by boat. Our sea band pressure point motion sickness bracelets worked great for that trip. The water taxi captain wore a CU Buffs hat. We became quite concerned when the water taxi stopped in open water about a quarter mile from Caye Caulker. Another, smaller boat pulled up along side. Without any official explaination or clarity about what was happening, many of the passengers and luggage were transferred to the other boat, which was apparently the one making a Caye Caulker stop, while the main boat continued on to Belize City, or so we figured. We hopped over to the small boat and they took us to the island. Here a local explained that Caye Caulker is “go slow island”. Upon landing, we walked down the dock past the “Sexy-Chicken” boat and the tile placard on the dock reading “Caye Caulker. Go slow.”. Immediately, it was clear that Caye Caulker was what we were looking for and Ambergris not so much. Caulker was mellow, quiet, and mostly free of golf carts.

We wandered down to “the split”, a small gap in the island created by a violent hurricane in the 1960s that boasts fantastic snorkeling right next to the Lazy Lizard bar and grill – “A sunny place for shady people”. This spot has a great vibe. Folks lounged around, snorkeled, ordered drinks, and smiled broadly. A funny group of middle aged men, possibly Australian, sat and drank beer in their black speedo bathing suits on a wooden picnic table half submerged in the sea. Two buxom women and a small boy hung out wearing hats made from palm leaves. We ordered creole shrimp and a chicken burrito, which were Michale’s favorite food of the trip. Then we found a spot of beach with sun for Michale next to shade for me and napped for a while. Then we were ready to do our snorkeling in the split. We saw lots of big schools of tropical fish that hang out in the ruins of old boats and docks in the split. The water is shallow – never more than about fifteen feet, so the snorkeling is great. A funny man in a speedo showed me a somewhat big shark hiding under a piece of wood about ten feet down. We swam over to the other side and saw lots of Trumpet Fish, then stepped out onto the land and walked around the marshy squishy sand on the north side of the split, seeing two big iguanas. As we headed back to the south side, snorkeling back to the beach in about eighteen inches of water, I turned my head and almost bumped into a football-side red octopus right in front of me. I picked my head up and yelled “octopus!” to Michale and we watched him do a funny frightened sideways shuffle away from us.

Saturday night we made a menu error and ordered ceviche at Wild Mango, the best reputed restaurant in San Pedro, only to realize we had no idea what it was and that neither of us liked it since it was so limey and salty. Oh well. We compensated with a banana chimichanga for dessert. Michale was sun burned and spend a good long while applying cucumber to her skin. We relaxed at home and watched “The Abyss” on TV. Probably not the wisest choice ten hours before a scuba dive.

Sunday I went to the dive shop to do the other tank of the 2-tank dive I had bailed on Friday. It was a busy day with lots of divers. The captain said we were going to Hol Chan, which is a fantastic spot for both scuba and snorkeling in a marine reserve. I asked if Michale could come snorkel, ran back to the condo to get her, and we both got on the boat. At Hol Chan the water is very shallow. Two dive teams went in and did our exploring while Michale got to snorkel with a private guide. There were lots of cool fish on this dive as well, including big schools of large shiny Tarpon. Michale also hung out with a sea turtle for a while. After that we zoomed over to “Shark Ray Alley” where nurse sharks and eagle rays hang out waiting for dive boats to feed them. Here we just snorkeled around the boat a bit. It was just us and one other couple and the vibe was very relaxed. The were TONS of eagle rays and it was really cool. They are so graceful and spiritual and other-worldly. It’s really cool to watch them soar under you and snorkel down right above them. We also had some nurse sharks come hang out right next to the boat.

We ate some chicken and ribs at Wet Willy’s on a dock then went and picked up our free golf cart. We drove up as far north as you can go on the cart and then walked beyond that past some of the newer big developments. We found a suitable beach and I napped extensively and pleasantly while Michale splashed around in the water. We ate in that night – egg scrambles on our little kitchenette gas stove. The condo maintenance guy showed me the trick to lighting it: pull it out away from the wall then bang on the gas pipe. Works every time.

Monday we were picked up at our dock bright and early by a speedboat full of tourists headed for the mainland under the guidance of Gus and Juni, our tour guides. The boat ride was really fun. The boat is fast and Gus was funny. The entire area between the reef and the island is very shallow water, so you can almost always see the bottom as the speed boat zips along. We stopped when we saw a bottle nosed dolphin popping up out of the water, then zipped along, narrowly zooming through the frighteningly shallow water between two small land masses topped with mangrove trees, the branches extending out to the boat such that we nearly had to duck under them. After about an hour we were at the mainland and we went up the Belize Old River, eating delicious Johnny Cake chicken sandwiches and eyeing wildlife Gus and Juni pointed out, including egrets, crocodiles, and iguanas.

The group split here with most folks getting on a big green bus to the Lamanai Mayan ruin site, and just two couples headed to the cave tubing site. Michale and I went to the Belize Zoo with Juni while another couple from Scranton PA went zip lining in the jungle. The zoo was really fun. Juni was our private guide, describing each of the animals and usually commenting on whether or not they are commonly eaten by locals and how tasty they are. We saw lots of cool animals up close including Tapir, the national animal of Belize, which are really funny to look at, and Howler Monkeys, which make a super loud scream to mark their territory. They also had some really cool owls and eagles.

After the zoo we joined up with the other couple for lunch at the Jungle Paw resort and then we headed up to the cave tubing site. We walked behind our guide along a path through the jungle, in our life vests and helmets with our tubes overhead. The cave tubing was nice, but not quite as exciting as it would seem. The water is still and shallow and you just paddle your way through some caves and then you are done. Then it was time for another fun boat ride back to Ambergris. We ate a fancy meal of meat and fish at the Sunset Grill on the west side of the island. A big group of Tarpon fish hang out in the water right next to the restaurant (it’s on a dock) and wait for scraps like hungry dogs. You can swarm them by making a throwing gesture. They are pretty creepy.

Tuesday was our last day and travel day back to the states. We got up early to watch the sun rise from the dock. I went for a run while Michale relaxed by the pool with a papaya and a book. We had a nice breakfast at Lily’s Treasure Chest before our trip home via golf cart, water taxi (driven primarily by the Captain’s knee), taxi, airplane, airplane, and car.

Overall the trip worked out really well. We were a bit disappointed with Ambergris Caye. Too loud and bustly. If we were to do it again we’d probably opt for Caye Caulker, which has fewer amenities but is more tranquil. I was a bit bummed Friday afternoon because the diving was problematic with motion sickness, the air and water were pretty cold, and the salt water was starting to irritate my skin, plus my normal sensitivity to sun exposure. So I was starting to feel like the Carribbean was a poor choice. However, once I switched to the pressure point bands for motion sickness, everything was cool. Those things work great! The sun came out, it got hot, and Caye Caulker was fun. I chatted with Michale and then felt really good from then on. Michale and I made pretty good travel companions since we’re both pretty flexible and laid back while traveling.

But there was no time to rest because we got back late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the Skarecki family showed up for our ski adventure!

The rest of the Belize Trip Photos are here.

Band Thanksgiving on Saturday was a blast. I hung out with Marc in the afternoon as he made his final preparations. I was impressed since he had all of the cooking done well in advance, so he had plenty of time to just relax with a G&T and wait for the guests to arrive. Mrs. Mare would be proud. He cooked two turkeys and all the fixings. It was great to see all my old band buddies again and hang with their wives and young children. After the feast, the three girls ages three and seven put on a dance show for us consisting of a few rehearsed moves and lots of improvisation with audience encouragement. As would be expected, there was a fire going strong outside on the patio so we sat around and talked well into the night.

Sunday we took Sunny and her friend Ajahnay to Miller’s Luncheonette in West Long Branch for some real deal New Jersey diner brunch featuring lots of pork roll. It was great. Of course our plan was to head directly from the diner to another huge meal at my parents’ house but that presented us with no worries. That afternoon my Mom made spicy pasta with sausage and meatballs and we ate an early meal “pronzo” style. Monday and Tuesday I worked from my parents’ house. My mother’s side of the family was all in the area, so we did a triple header with a big restaurant dinner Tuesday, more pasta at Mom’s Wednesday, and Thanksgiving at Aunt Elizabeth’s. It was a mighty onslaught of food.

Friday I drove with Chris and Tina up to Poughkeepsie NY to spend a day and a half with them. We had another big Italian meal Friday night then watched V for Vendetta (which I had not yet seen). Saturday we went car shopping with Tina who was unfortunately a victim of a high speed rear end hit and run while stopped at a red light, which destroyed her car. We went to a yummy Japanese place for lunch and under Chris’s guidance I ordered my first legitimate meal of sushi roll. I had a “Black Dragon Roll” which was shrimp tempura down the center with avocado and cucumber and topped with eel. It was fantastic and I had to close my eyes while I chewed the large pieces and savored the flavor combinations. It took 31 years for my palette to be ready for that, but it’s totally there now, and it was great.

Sunday Tina made chicken saltimboca and we played a deadly-serious game of Jenga. We surpassed the 30th “Master” row and spent at least four solid rounds convinced that the tower would surely collapse on the next turn before making it all the way to row 34, 2 away from “expert”.

Sunday was a driving and visiting extraveganza. I drove down to Long Valley NJ to visit with Kate, Steve, Meghan, Tim, and Pat. We hadn’t seen Tim and Pat in quite some time so it was fun to catch up with them and their wives. We all played with baby Will who is a ball of energy and enjoyed the contrast with Meghan’s daughter Maeve who is perpetually still and yawning on the verge of sleep. After that I drove to Cranford and met up with my high school buddy Rich at our old hang out Tony’s Pizza, still going strong in Cranford. Then I drove down the shore to record an episode of "The Jersey Shore Podcast" with Joe P and Dan P.

In the evenings and when I could find a few minutes I had been rummaging through all my old stuff stored in my parents’ basement. Monday it was craigslist to the rescue again as I hired a woman and her son to spend all morning furiously packing boxes, 24 in total, to be mailed media rate USPS to my new house in Colorado. Soon I’ll have my beloved Queen posters displayed again!

I almost missed my flight today due to struggles locating the Enterprise rental car return lot, which is an “off-airport” lot at EWR on highway 1&9. I can’t believe they expect visiting drivers to venture out of the airport into the evil rat’s nest of 37 highways that converges around Newark airport. It’s a maze of 100-yard 2-lane merges and exit only lanes forming a cruel game for the inexperienced drivers my Dad refers to as “Stay Out of Downtown Newark”. Everyone loses at least once or twice. However, I was able to eventually get to the lot, return they smoke-smelling, manual windows and doors, 10 gallon fuel tank crapmobile and take the shuttle into the terminal. But I had to check a bag since I was bringing my soprano sax back as my carry-on bag (or hand luggage as the Brits say) and then after a long delay due to an unmanned X-ray machine and a troupe of about 5 elderly folks in wheelchairs that were pushed to the front of the line for reasons I don’t quite understand, I made it through. I hurried to my gate only to see a big sign reading Ft. Myers. D’oh. Gate change. Then I had a few hundred yards to run to find the nearest gate display and of course whenever I fly Newark I’m looking at no less than five miles of foot travel to my actual gate, so I had to run from C94 to C127, arriving about 6 minutes before takeoff. However, there was some major back up with these folks getting into their seats so a queue had formed in the jetway and it took a while to get everyone seated.

I’m flying back to Denver now and looking forward to hanging with friends this week. Tomorrow is another Paul Mags moonlight hike, which should be fun.

Trip statistics:

• Total time between arriving at jetway and plane takeoff combined for round trip flights: 12 minutes
• Restaurant meals: 5
• Big home-cooked meals: 6
• EZ Pass screw-ups: 1
• Worst rental car agency ever: Enterprise
• Raw audio recorded for a 15 minute podcast: 30 minutes
• Packages shipped: 24
• Craigslist victories: 1

The rest of the photos are here.

This past week at work was fun and exciting. I got to see a lot of old coworkers that I haven’t seen in over a year. I also finally met in person some people I have been working with for almost a year as well. There were lots of fun and yummy lunches and dinners. Monday I went for a jog with Bernie and Matt at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale. They call it a park, but where we ran was really just dikes surrounding reservoirs next to a water treatment plant. It was without a doubt the least appealing place I have gone jogging. The air was stagnant and reeked of numerous nauseating stenches. There were tons of flies in the air. At points I needed to cover my mouth with my hat to filter them out. Even so I’m sure I inadvertently swallowed at least a dozen flies. I still haven’t received a satisfactory explanation as to why Bernie chose that spot other than they always used to run there. Tuesday I went climbing with Tedo and now I can pretty much keep up with him, which isn’t saying much, but I’ve made clear progress. Wednesday night we had a reunion of four early Opsware black belt consultants and it was fun to be all together again and catch up. Thursday there was a reunion of old Loud Cloud and Opsware folk (many of whom had already left by the time I joined) at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto, which was also a good time. Memorable quotes included the following:

• Give me kinky over beautiful every time. — Antonio
• I used to snap my fingers and women appeared. Now I snap my fingers and women are like “shut up”. — Pat
• Turn off the lights and pet me. — Pat expressing the sentiments of a lonely cat that had been embarrassingly shaved

Work wise the week was very busy with lots of meetings and trying to take care of my normal job responsibilities in the small cracks between meetings both scheduled and informal. However, the really fun and exciting part was Bernard and I were secretly cooking up a prototype of migrating my main feature (bare metal OS provisioning) from our current architecture to our newer architecture. I generally worked from 8:30 to 6:30 or so, went out and socialized until 9:30 or 10:00, then came back to the office and coded until 2:00am. We got the whole feature working end to end including a fancy flex based GUI and the back end in one week and ready for a demo to an eager audience at 8:30 am Friday. The demo went great and the audience, who didn’t know exactly what they were coming to see, is now (mostly) supportive of giving us the team we need to fully productize it. It’s pretty cool since I have been working on this feature for about three years now and this will be by far the biggest change to happen under my watch.

Thursday there was another, bigger Opsware reunion attended by a bunch of folks who left Opsware before I joined as well as some folks I worked with that have since left HP. It was good to hang out and chat with them for a while. Friday I picked up Ed at Google HQ in Mountain View and we dropped off my rental car at the airport and took the BART back into the city. Sara joined us for dinner. After much uncertainty we decided on a sushi place that is highly regarded. Sara is vegetarian and Ed was unwilling to try the fish, but I ordered two pieces of the special they had and found it pretty good. Not amazing but I can see the potential and will try some more in the future.

Saturday morning I wondered out of the apartment and found the panhandle and Golden Gate Park. I did a 4.6 mile run around there and was feeling quite good. I’m not sure if the sea level altitude still makes a difference after a week, but my cardio was able to do it effortlessly. It was a cool feeling to pass some flatlanders huffing and puffing while I’m breathing like I am taking a nap. I think that run or the one Sunday morning were probably the furthest I have jogged since I usually quit after 3.5 miles or so. It feels like without too much training I could work up to a half marathon, so I may do that at some point, but probably not soon.

Saturday afternoon I hung out with Ed and Sara and Pat in The Haight. Ed and I had some delicious brunch and then we hit a record store, the Bound Together anarchist book store, and the People’s Cafe. Pat and I went over to join up with Marcia and the rest of the crew for dinner at Marcia’s. It was fun to hang out. Marcia’s crew is pretty darned enthusiastic about their lifestyle, and it’s amusing to be around them in their element. After dinner I washed dishes and the girls went to get into costume for their night out clubbing (panties, mouse ears, big purple boots, etc). One of Marcia’s roommies Ivan came down into the kitchen to eat his dinner so it was just me, Pat, and him there. So we started talking and he had is laptop with him and was lamenting that it was broken and wouldn’t boot. We asked what was wrong and he explained that he had been messing around with dual booting Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux and had deleted some partitions and left his machine unbootable with a grub error 22. Pat and I exchanged an amused glance. The coincidence here is pretty funny. I explained to Ivan that Pat and I were each high level Linux sysadmin gurus and we probably had about 10,000 hours of linux administration expertise between us. It’s just funny. He wondered down into his kitchen for dinner and two strangers who had the precise obscure skills needed to fix his laptop are just standing there. So we made pretty short work of his problem, re-installing his grub boot loader using the GNU parted recovery CD he had used to cause the damage in the first place. This left me amused for the remainder of the night. This is probably second in line of my all-time tech rescue stories after the time I talked Cody at The Kitchen through brining his entire network back up after a power failure over the phone.

Then Pat and I went back to the Mission district and found a Mexican place still open. Pat didn’t eat much at Marcia’s because, as he described it, the food they cook consists primarily of “nuts and berries”. So he had some nachos and felt satiated. Then I got a map from him and walked the 3.2 miles from there back to Ed’s place in The Haight. It took precisely one hour. It was a nice night and I got to walk through some interesting neighborhoods.

This morning I did another run in Golden Gate Park. I saw disco roller skating, which I absolutely adore, as well as people setting up a sound system for outdoor swing dancing. Then Ed and I went back to the People’s Cafe for food and on to a quick driving tour of Pacific Heights and wandering around Fisherman’s Warf briefly. Then off to the airport for the short and pleasant flight back home.

The rest of the photos are here.