Category: Travel
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Autumn Through the Kitchen Window
One of the joys I love most about traveling to Vancouver is that the weather is so often radically different. I love enjoying what makes each season special a bit longer. In spring, it’s cooler up north so the snow hangs on the mountain peaks just a little bit longer. During the summer, Vancouver’s air…
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The Gateway Arch
I love traveling to cities with well-known landmarks. St. Louis is no exception. The last time I was in Missouri was about 10 years ago on my cross-country motorcycle trip. I only touched the extreme southwest corner of the state which doesn’t give me any sort of Missouri credibility. When traveling, I always try to…
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Finding a new I-580
I’m settling into week three (and I know I’m behind on two blogs) but I wanted to quickly capture the essence of my evening. It’s different living in a small town. I’ve never spent a considerable amount of time in a place with less than 4 million people. Reno is the big city in these…
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Kingsbury Grade Run
Now with the motorcycle safely in the garage and most of my gear up here (minus my heated vest), it’s time to go riding. I know at home I tend to like to have my heated vest once the temperature drops below 60°. Given that the air is considerably drier up here I’m thinking I’ll…
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Swedish Meatballs
Looking at the map, my dilemma was clear. I had two great options both in opposite directions from one another. To make the decision harder, I didn’t really have a good sense of how quickly I could travel through the countryside. Norway generally has an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit. I was expecting an…
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Norway: Out on the farm
I’ve long been a fan of Navigon, a navigation app for iPhone and Android. The benefit to using Navigon over Google Maps is that all of the maps are preloaded on the phone. You don’t need cellular data for directions. In general, Navigon worked flawlessly once you get beyond it’s weird UI paradigms. I also…
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Off to Norway
I fulfilled a dream today. I remember in middle school social studies class learning about the world and all of the different places in it. Much like every kid in America, we covered the world in chapters with each culture being a week or two in school. Three chapters resonated with me: Australia, the Nordics,…
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Confessions of a newly converted marsh kid
It was mid August. Long, hot, humid days ruled the week with the occasional thunderstorm that really rocked my world as I miss them immensely living in California. I was traveling all over the Southeast seeing friends and family and everything in between. I was back in the land of front porch culture – where…
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5 Tips for a Great Coworking Experience
I had two great days up in Lake Tahoe experiencing very different coworking spaces. Before that, I’ve been to a couple of different coworking spaces where I’ve stayed over in certain cities and extra day or two. I find that in coworking spaces I’m much more productive for me than sitting in a hotel room…
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Diggin it at Dig This Vegas
Ever since I was kid I’ve been fascinated by the big yellow machines used in construction. As kids we’ve all had the earth moving equipment: bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks in our toy collections. Much like most kids here in the states those toys spent many hours in the sandbox building castles, moats, and other fortresses…
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Chasing God’s Paintbrush at Pyramid Lake
It didn’t seem that long ago that I moved out west. I remember a fraternity brother of mine, Steve, mentioning that I should go see Truckee and the beauty of Lake Tahoe. Driving west to my new life I remember seeing fires often the mountains as we passed through Reno. Jeff and I were sort…
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Off to Central Florida!
This year I’m headed to Central Florida three times on business: once in August, once in October, and once in November. Everyone at work gave me the, “You’re going there?” My good friend Rob whom I visited in Austin last year moved here a few months ago. It’s always great to see friendly faces when…
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Touring the National Mall
Before I left, I had mentioned to my roommates that I was going to be in Washington DC for a business trip. Both of us were thrilled as it turned out all three of us would be in DC at the same time and all of us were taking an extra day to sightsee. We…
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An evening shopping at the National Mall
I’ve never actually been to Washington, DC until now. For some reason we never had a school trip to go see our nation’s capital. Nor was there a family vacation in that neck of the woods. Actually, the closest I ever got to Washington, DC was the trip after college to Lynchburg, Virginia to evaluate…
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Ride On, Bob
Today was one of the first days I felt really far from home. From California, it’s a chunk of flying to get home. From Australia, it’s literally halfway around the world. It takes 24 hours of continuous flying to get to home from here to see family. I got news today that my uncle had…
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Donovan: 43 miles hitchhiking through California
Up to the mountain This weekend is Homoto’s annual board retreat. One of the members has access to an awesome cabin up in Lake Tahoe. When starting my term as president, I felt it was important to gather the full board to have a time of connection and bonding as well as planning out the…
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Sandestin
Man time passes quickly. It didn’t seem that long ago that I wrote the article “Dad is 62.” This year was the big 70. My mom and sister had the idea to surprise him this year a few weeks before his birthday. The plan in his mind was to spend a weekend down in Destin…
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Photographing East Pass
On Sunrise I’ve not been back to Destin, Florida in over 20 years. The last time I remember being there was as a high schooler on family vacation with my parents. We were staying out near Sandestin which is about 10 miles east of the downtown. I woke up early Sunday morning to go take…
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Going to see Jack
I was in Nashville for the Agile 2013 conference. It was fun being in the booth talking with many people about Agile technologies and what’s going on with software development: coding, managing, teaching. There are couple of people out from Australia that had flights the day after the last day of the conference. Tom and…
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Banff National Park
My last few days in Canada were to be spent at Banff National Park. Banff was about 90 minutes to the west of Calgary up in the mountains. I was hoping that the elevation would give some relief from the heat. Bummed that I had lost my phone at the rodeo, I pulled out the…