TheKirklands.net

A Week in New York City

2011-06-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

We flew directly from Montreal to New York City after the wedding. New York was one of the cities we actually missed last year driving around the country. It was initially on our agenda, but as we learned, driving around and parking in big cities can be annoying and expensive. So we skipped New York on the road trip, and just planned to fly in/our sometime later.

I represented Canonical at the Cloud Expo in New York that week. (I have received an unending series of spam from vendors at Cloud Expo ever since that week -- I dare say it was the worst conference I have ever attended!)

Okay, griping aside, we had a great time in New York. I worked until 6 or 7pm each day while Kim was a gal out on the town.

We stayed in a phenomenal location, the historic New Yorker Hotel.

It was built in 1929, in full Art Deco glory.

Our view out of the hotel showed one small bit of Manhattan.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon, and just walked around the town, starting in Times Square, of course.

We dipped into FAO Schwartz to see the giant piano from Big. You can buy your own for $250,000!

We went to an excellent comedy show later that night on the upper east side, at the Comic Strip, and then called it a night.

The next day, Kim hit a few museums while I attended the conference.

She says here favorite part of the Natural History museum was the gemstone collection.

On Monday evening, we met an old friend of mine from high school who's living in New York now. We hung out on the roof top of Lucy's Retired Surfer bar, with a grand view of our hotel.

Cade and I go way back, to high school. We probably hadn't seen one another in 10 years, but it's always fun to catch up with an old friend.

Kim set off sight seeing again on Tuesday, walking around Central Park and taking in the city.

She also visited an arts and crafts museum and loved the quilts.

On Wednesday, we met up with a few of my work colleagues to have dinner and drinks.

Thursday night, we attended the Yankees/Red Sox game at the New Yankee Stadium!

The subways were packed, and we (I) made a bad decision, taking the first train that arrived, which was a local train rather than the express. I think it stopped 40 times, and then quit running, leaving us to catch the express at the end of the line.

Anyway, we were nearly an hour late getting to the game, which really had me bummed that we were to have missed the beginning of the game.

Alas, during our hour underground, the skies had opened, and the game was rain delayed! What a stroke of luck! Or so we thought...

We had some time to kill, so we walked the full perimeter of the stadium, taking in the views from all angles. We also spent some time in the Yankee Hall of Fame Museum, which was a neat look at the history of the team.

My appreciation of the rain delay faded as the hours past. First pitch wouldn't happen until 10:35pm -- three and a half hours late. Wow. Kim was a trooper, though, and surprisingly, we stayed the whole time.

We were excited to see them pull back the tarp and reveal the perfectly dry infield.

Rolling the tarp back up seemed like a colossal pain the butt.

Okay, so what's the first thing you do after uncovering the field because it rained too much?

Yep, you got it. You water it down! I mean, I know why and all. But the irony was just incredible. It rained for three and a half hours, so much so that they couldn't play baseball. The infield was covered, to keep it from getting wet. When it stopped raining, they covered the field. And hosed it down. Yeesh.

So we made it back to our seats before first pitch. We were in the left field bleachers, just above the left field wall. Great seats!

The game didn't finish until 1:30am, and many seats had cleared out by this time, so we moved right down to the front row. We had a few line drives hit in our direction, but no home run balls...

All in all, a great experience! Again, thanks to Kim for sticking it out!

I took Friday off, and we checked out of the New Yorker and into the breathtaking Waldorf Astoria (booked on a Hilton Honors reward).

Another classic hotel, built around the same time as the New Yorker. The original Waldorf-Astoria was demolished for the building of the Empire State Building. The inside is absolutely as lush as you'd expect it to be.

I got to spend Friday wandering around New York with Kim, which was really nice. We walked by St. Patrick's Cathedral.

And stepped into the NBC Studios building in 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Kim was excited to see Juliana somebody-or-another, filming a little clip.

While she was watching that, I stepped out into the hall and a lady asked me if I was in line for the Jimmy Fallon rehearsal. I said, "Maybe. What if I am?" And she said, "Well, they're going back right now, head over that way." So I quickly pulled Kim away from Juliana and Jason Secrest and we saw good hour of Jimmy Fallon rehearsing his Friday night monologue and his "Thank You Notes." This was an awesome experience, and I highly recommend it! He tells a lot more jokes during the rehearsal than he does on the show, and it was really impersonal and laid back. The connection with the audience seemed quite genuine.

We wandered around the NBC gift shop, where Kim bought a Dwight Schrute bobble head, and I bought a Michael Scott "World's Best Boss" coffee mug :-)

The outside of The Rock looks like something out of Atlas Shrugged. I liked it a lot.

We stopped back at the Waldorf for a bit, now that we could check into our room, which was really nice and fancy.

And then we walked a couple of blocks down Park Avenue to Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central is about as iconic as a train station could possibly be.

We took the subway down to lower Manhattan, where we really hadn't been yet on this trip. We started at Ground Zero, to pay our respects, and we were both surprised to see how quickly the Millennium Tower seems to be going up.

We walked to Wall Street next, viewing the New York Stock Exchange from the outside.

And that's right across the street from the courthouse where George Washington was inaugurated as our nation's first president.

You might recognize the bull right down near Wall Street.

We finished our evening at the bottom tip of Manhattan, looking across the water at the Statue of Liberty at night. What a sight.

We left on Saturday morning, happy with our time in New York City, but really excited about getting back home!

:-Dustin

A Wedding Weekend in Montreal

2011-06-06T09:19:00.086-05:00

Kim and I were home from Croatia for less than two weeks, before we were off again, this time to Montreal for a fabulous wedding!

I flew from Austin to Montreal on Wednesday, and worked Thursday and Friday in Canonical's Montreal office (it's always nice to see those folks :-) Kim had two days of school left, but she flew out on Friday morning as soon as should could, and landed in Montreal in the early afternoon.

This was my 5th trip to Montreal, but the previous 4 were exclusively for work, and I had never hung around for the weekend. Wow, downtown Montreal bounces on the weekend!

"...in the summer" as my friend Jono Lange pointed out :-)

We ate some of the best sushi I've ever had on Friday night, which I will dedicate to a post all of its own :-)

Anyway, we stayed in a nice hotel in the old port, with spectacular views of the city.

Kim and I got up early on Saturday morning to do a little sightseeing before the wedding activities commenced. Walking around the Old Port, I saw two reminders of my childhood in Louisiana ... an art gallery called Addis (my hometown)...

...and the Iberville ferry terminal. It was neat to see Louisiana and Montreal so linked.

The Notre Dame cathedral in the old port is one of the most striking features of that part of the city.

We made our way to the science museum on the pier and took an (overpriced) tour of the special exhibit on Indiana Jones, with hundreds of props from the movies. My favorite part was that for each prop or scene that was represented, there was a little bit of real archeology that inspired that part of the film.

Wedding activities began around 4pm and would last at least 12 hours. Yeah, 12 hours. This was one hell of a party!

The wedding itself was held on a little terrace on the top of a building right on the water in the Old Port. It was a beautiful Canadian afternoon, with the light heat quenched by iced lemon-water just before the service.

Montreal is probably the most bi-lingual city in all of North America. Everything is done in both English and French. And so was this wedding. It was quite beautiful, mysterious, and romantic. Kim and I were picking up words here and there during the French portions of the wedding, but it was so much more telling to concentrate exclusively on the body language, facial expressions, and reactions of everyone around.

In any case, Patricia (pronounced pa-TREE-see-ya) and Mathias are such an awesome, awesome couple, we were thrilled to be there for their special day.

We stayed with Patricia and Mathias in Montreal almost exactly a year ago, while we were on our road trip around the country.

And then later in the year, we spent an awesome weekend down in Key West, Florida, again with Mathias and Patricia. That particular weekend was pretty special for the couple as that was when/where they decided to move from Montreal to San Francisco together and would soon led to their engagement and this wedding!

After the ceremony and a good hour of leisure and champagne on the terrace, we went downstairs for a spectacular, sit-down, 4-course dinner.

A series of toasts ensued. Some in English. Some in French. Some of those were in French French (as Mathias is actually from France). And some in Québécois French.

Some stories were really quite animated :-)

I gave the happy couple the one blessing I knew in French, a quite popular saying down in Louisiana, which, surprisingly, I learned, is not so well known in Montreal or Alsace, France ... Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Each time a toast was given, the couple were required to kiss :-) It's a fun tradition.

After dinner, we shared a series a cabs to head to the reception, which was held in a dance studio where Mathias and Patricia work. Mathias and Patricia are themselves are actually professional dancers,and that being how they met, this reception was perfect!

With a live band and a cadre of professional swing dancers, this was one rocking party!

When we left at 3am, we were as exhausted as this little darling. Yet the band played on, and the real dancers were just getting warmed up. Wow.

We had a lovely time, and we wish all the best to the new couple in their new adventures together as a married couple!

:-Dustin

Sushi in Montreal? Yes!!!

2011-06-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

I spent 4 nights in Montreal in June. Half of those I ate at the same restaurant -- the amazing Fu Shi Ltée at 1112 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada.

We sat at the bar both nights, and were dazzled by the visual and culinary artistry!

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 7

2011-05-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

The end of a holiday always comes so quickly, and so it was again for us in Croatia.

We left Murter fairly early in the morning, and drove to Zagreb, stopping at the Nikola Tesla memorial, and the Plitvice Lakes national park.

Tesla was borne in Croatia, and we visited his childhood home.

It was a fun, geeky stop. A few months ago, Kim and I visited Niagara Falls, which also has a significant memorial to Tesla. Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power station at Niagara.

We also saw a demonstration of his original 1-million-volt Tesla coil, which he built in 1899 in Colorado Springs, CO.

There was also a replica of the worlds first remote controlled vehicle -- this little boat built by Tesla too.

We walked through the museum for a bit, and read a bit about his life while following a timeline throughout. But we needed to leave before we really completed the tour, as we wanted to save plenty of time for the Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Plitvice is truly the jewel of Croatia, covering several hundred square miles of pristine wilderness just inside of Croatia's border with Bosnia.

We parked, had lunch, and then walked around the park for about 3 hours, starting with a big downhill trek to this little pier, where we caught a boat across one of the lakes.

The water is absolutely crystal clear, and the fish population is thriving.

The lakes themselves are a series of cascades, bringing fresh water down from the high mountain elevations.

Having cross the little lake by boat, we spent most of the next two hours traversing several kilometers of boardwalks.

We walked past literally hundreds of waterfalls, of all shapes and sizes.

Each of the waterfalls crashed into another "lake" (maybe more like ponds?).

Perhaps most amazing were the colors of each of the lakes. There were so many shades and varieties of blue, green, blue-green, green-blue, green-green, blue-blue...

We got to pay for all this running water somehow. And of course, it started to rain. Again. We spent most of the second half of our walk in a bit of a drizzly rain. I didn't mind getting wet so much as I was disappointed with the lighting for what should have been some amazing pictures.

The vegetation was almost tropical, which is remarkable considering how cold (icy, snowy) it gets here in the winter.

The lakes themselves are formed by the vegetation, which is pretty cool.

We spotted a couple of frogs, and lots of fish.

I really liked how tastefully the boardwalks were constructed.

I thought they fit quite well into the scenery, protecting the environment without ruining the views. I found it notable that there were no handrails anywhere to be found.

We shot two cameras all day, Kim on the SLR and I was on smaller Kodak digital zoom.

Here you can see the vegetation and microbial life under the water forming a wall for another lake. Unbelievable!

Few of the waterfalls were more than a couple of meters.

But each and every one was picturesque.

We had quite a nice time, and very much enjoyed the park. Plitvice should not be missed on any trip to Croatia!

We drove the next few hours on "the old road" (ie, not the free way) back to Zagreb. We had an early flight on Saturday morning, so we opted to spend Friday night in the city. Zagreb is the busy capital of Croatia -- an interesting, old city in eastern Europe.

We stayed at the Palace Hotel, which was a stylish, fancy hotel and very centrally located.

Ante joined us for dinner at a nice restaurant with the tables directly in the middle of the street. It was a busy, bouncing little place on a Friday evening, full of chic, interesting Croatians.

Near our table, there was a public water fountain that garnered the interest of dozens of passersby during our meal. I watched with interest as kids played with the faucet, nuns took drinks, and bums washed dishes.

Meanwhile, back at the dinner table, I enjoyed the chicken gnocchi special.

And Kim had a spinach pasta with mushrooms.

Once again, we appreciated having Ante around to show us Zagreb.

For dessert, we feasted on chocolate-and-hazelnut crepes.

After dinner, Ante took us on a long, evening stroll around Zagreb. We covered several miles, and really got a good feel for the city.

He pointed out the highlights and told us stories about growing up in Zagreb. Like any classic European city, the skyline is dominated by its cathedral's and churches.

Perhaps the most famous of Zagreb's churches is the colorfully tiled roof of St. Mark's. It bears the coat of arms of both Croatia and the city of Zagreb itself.

We also wandered through several of Croatia's public parks, each of which were crawling with teenagers and giant jugs of booze.

Walking back past our hotel, I thought we were just about done for the night, but Ante had plans for us otherwise. Each of us had 3 servings of Croatian brandy -- from right to left, one made from honey, another from blueberries, and the third from walnuts.

Kim liked the one made from blueberries the most, while I favored the walnut brandy.

I'm so glad we did stay out, as it was a lot of fun to chat again with them about our week in their country!

What a week, what a country, what wonderful people! To Ante, thanks so much for your gracious hosting and all the attention and information and help and fun. And to Ante's friends, thanks so much for treating us so warmly and inviting us into your lives for a couple of days.

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 6

2011-05-19T23:07:00.041-05:00

Thursday was a nice, quiet day, waking up in Dubrovnik, and driving back to the island of Murter.

We slept in, and enjoyed a few minutes relaxing on the balcony, feeling the breeze off of the Adriatic. We made an "appointment" to use the jacuzzi in the hotel spa, but upon investigating, we found that the jacuzzi was little more than a 2-person bath tub (hence the requirement to have an "appointment"). So we politely skipped our reservation, and started driving back to Murter.

Again, we passed through a little strip of Bosnia. This time, we stopped in Neum for a coffee.

The high-speed freeway is still under construction, on his way to Dubrovnik.

We made it back to Murter by the early afternoon, and finally had some blue skies and sun. So we donned our bathing suits and walked back down to the beach which held the wedding the previous weekend. All of that was cleaned up, and Kim made me relax on the beach for a few hours. (I get so restless...)

She's oh-so-much-better at relaxation than I am. :-)

We enjoyed the quiet, sandy beach, though, and even went for another chilly swim.

Back at Ante's house, he was in the process of preparing a very special dinner for us ... a Croatian delight -- peka!

It's sort of like a barbecue, I guess. Most houses in Dalmatia have this outdoor kiln, or brick chimney setup, specifically for peka cooking. First, you burn some wood (Almond wood, here, though Ante says that's unimportant), until you have embers or coals.

Then you place a metal pan full of meat, potatoes, onions, and just a little bit of oil on the hot bricks. You cover that pan with a metal lid (that's the peka), which completely covers the pan, and reaches the hot bricks below. Finally, you scoop the hot coals and cover the lid itself with the hot smouldering embers.

And then you wait. 1-2 hours, actually. Oh, and you can't lift the lid at any point to "check", as you'd lose all of your heat inside.

In the mean time, Ante and I drank a couple of litres of beer, and Kim drank some of Ante's family wine, and we Skyped with a few friends and family.

Eventually, the moment of truth... Ante brushed off the coals, and very, very, very carefully lifted the lid, so as to avoid spilling ashes on our food.

And mmmm, did it smell good! Cooked to perfection.

Kim set a lovely place setting outside on the porch, and dug into our giant pan of meat. What an evening :-)

Our last night on Murter, and we had an awesome time. We talked work, travel, and politics. Ante gave us some really interesting perspectives on Croatia's history and politics within our lifetimes.

As you can tell, we had an awesome host. If you're even considering a trip to Croatia, check out Ante's travel company, Jamming Adventures, and I'm sure you won't be disappointed ;-)

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 5

2011-05-18T22:31:00.075-05:00

We work up on Wednesday morning to an unfamiliar sight ... sunshine!

So we had a Kimmie-approved breakfast at the hotel and went directly to the beach below our room.

I can attest that the Adriatic is every bit as cold as the Mediterranean.

But I took a swim none the less! Refreshing...

Spending the morning on the beach, we set out for our touring of the old in the early afternoon. We were ready for our daily intake of ice cream, but this character creeped Kim out enough that we had to find a different gelato shop. Yikes :-o

Ice cream in hand, we started our tour of the city walls. A couple of miles in circumference, we spent several leisurely hours covering every meter of the perimeter. The walls are incredibly tall, thick and imposing.

They offer unmatched views into the heart of the city, and around the surrounding land-, sea-, and city-scapes.

We walked counter clockwise, starting near the drawbridge and the main city gate.

It seems strange sometimes to see daily life still taking place in this historical city. Like Split, homes and apartments have simply evolved into the ancient walls. This laundry is strung between two stone walls nearly 1,000 years old.

It's really quite exposed on the top of the wall, with very little in the way of shade. Or rain cover. Of course, we didn't bring raincoats or umbrellas this time, but lo and behold, it rained. A lot.

We dipped into a little cafe where I had a couple of beers and Kim had a tea. We waited out the storm from inside there.

Although the hard wind and rain had past, there was still a pretty steady drizzle. Near the halfway point of the walk around the city walls, there is an entrance/exit with access to the city. We stepped down off of the wall for a bit and had lunch. Once again, wine, cheese, olives, oil, vinegar, and bread. It was delightful.

After lunch, the sun came out and we climbed back up the wall to finish our walk. The sheltered harbor on the back side is beautiful, and serene.

We're much happier when the weather cooperates. Now we can hit our stride :-)

There were a few places where roofs of some buildings rested on top of the city walls. I enjoyed getting a close look at the simple mechanics of the clay tiles. I'm still a bit baffled by how expensive such tile roofing is back home. It looks so simple...

We really enjoyed the various perspectives of the city, mountains, coast, and sea presented by the walk around the wall. Having spent a few hours and completed the walk, we made our way back down into the old town itself.

Kimmie being the crafty crocheter, she enjoyed flipping through some of the handmade table linens for sale. She picked up a souvenir that should look nice on our dining room table.

When booking accommodations for Dubrovnik, I tried to book the Hilton, as it's quite centrally located. It was unfortunately totally booked. We were nearby though, so we dipped in for a quick look. This hotel was quite famously bombed and burned during the last war, as the city of Dubrovnik was under siege by the Serbian and Montenegrin aggressors.

We both remarked at how much the hotel looked like it belonged in New Orleans :-)

From the top of the city walls, we spotted two different cafes, outside and below the wall, precipitously perched on some rocks overlooking the sea. We spent quite some time wandering on the interior of the walls themselves, trying to find the magic portal out to either one of these two cafes. We accidentally walked through several private courtyards and gardens, reaching dead-ends and tiny cul-de-sacs. I even went back through the pictures on my camera, to make absolutely sure that we had in fact saw the two cafes, and had not just imagined them.

Alas, we found them eventually, and had a wonderful evening, watching the sun go down.

As we sat there for a couple of hours, we watched with great interest as a film crew setup on the city wall and filmed 3 or 4 scenes. We could see a guy with a gun walk up to the wall, and pretend to jump. After several takes of that, a second guy runs to the edge of the wall to look down. Finally, to finish the evening, a stunt man slung at least 4 sacks of sand over the wall, presumably to film the splash. It was really quite amazing!

We figured we were watching a made-for-TV Croatian, Hungarian, or Turkish film. But upon returning home and doing a bit of research, we're pretty sure this was the film crew for Ashley Judd's new TV series, Missing, which sounds like a gender-inverted take on Liam Neeson's Taken.

We watched until the film crew tore down their equipment, which was just as the daylight left us too. What a gorgeous evening :-)

We left the seaside cafe and headed back to our hotel on the bay, outside of the old town, where there's actually a quiet walk with a number of nice restaurants. We had a relaxed evening in that part of town, and another delicious dinner.

Dubrovnik! What a romantic place. We had a great time, and would go back in a heartbeat. And we're really looking forward to see the Missing TV series, and trying to spot the scene we saw filmed here!

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 4

2011-05-17T22:49:00.000-05:00

On our fourth day, we drove from Murter to Split, and then Dubrovnik. We left Ante's house a little before 9am, so when we arrived in Tisno, the drawbridge was open

It's open daily from 9am-9:30am, and 5:00pm-5:30pm. We took advantage of the opportunity to grab a cappuccino and a tea while we waited.

And as we were getting used to, it was a very rainy morning, on our drive between Murter and Split.

We arrived in Split about two hours later, around 11am. Split is an amazing place, Croatia's second biggest city behind Zagreb. The highlight of Split is Diocletian's Palace -- the Roman emperor's amazing retirement home, built between 295 and 305 A.D.

The Palace is incredible in every way. The breadth, the scope, and even its modern evolution. A tremendous amount of the 1700 structure is very well preserved. What's more unbelievable is how integrated the palace is with modern apartments, houses, shops, businesses, banks, etc. Countless structures have been globbed onto the original palace.

Parts of it are untouched, and have more of a Roman ruin feel.

While other parts have been attached to Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and even modern structures.

We paid a couple of kuna to climb to the top of the campanile from which all of the palace and Split is visible.

I couldn't get over how Roman this part of the world felt. It really brought me back to my high school Latin studies.

I was impressed with the seamless blend of ancient to modern, much like the great Italian cities of Rome, Venice, and Florence.

I had hoped this guy might have been an on duty police officer, but I think he was part of some midday presentation :-)

There were a few cruise ships and a handful of yachts in the harbor, so Split was a bit more crowded than our previous days on Murter.

Here's a good sample of a 1700 year old wall and one of the original portals into the city, tied into a 19th or 20th century apartment building on the left.

This is the best preserved of the 4 towers that anchored the borders of the palace wall.

The arches of the original promenade now surround the cathedral at the heart of the palace.

A black granite Sphinx outside of the Temple of Jupiter is thought to be from ancient Egypt, and perhaps 3000 years old.

This rendering of the palace shows how it might have looked around 305 A.D. at its completion. Notice how the Adriatic touches the front wall of the palace.

Both the north and the south entrances to the palace are well preserved.

We had lunch just outside of the palace wall, on a quaint little square, facing some of the medieval government buildings.

What do you know...Croatian wines, olives, oil, vinegar and some delicious cheeses from the famous island of Pag. Hard to beat!

After lunch, we walked around the outer perimeter of the palace walls, and found the statue of Bishop Gregory of Nin. He looks like a televangelist from the Middle Ages.

Bishop Gregory of Nin introduced the Croatian language into mass services in 9269 A.D.

It's afternoon now, which means its time for our daily gelato fix.

And after a couple of hours in Split, we hit the road around 2pm. We took the "scenic" roads from Split all the way to Dubrovnik. This was about 200 kilometers of jaw dropping coastal beauty.

We stopped a good dozen times to take some beautiful pictures, and finally, finally, finally we started seeing some sunshine!

Once the sun comes out, the waters of the Adriatic turn an almost surreal color of blue.

And with the sun, we started seeing some blue skies, for our first time in Croatia.

There's a small bit of the drive that turns inland for a few kilometers, and climbs high up through the mountains. I don't remember the name of this lake, but it's near the border of Croatia and Bosnia.

It actually looks to be two separate lakes, connected by a small canal and this bridge.

Finally, we get to use our sunglasses for more than just style.

So after about 20 minutes inland, we were back on the coast, driving those curvy roads and peering off of some steep cliffs.

We did drive through a small bit of Bosnia to get to Dubrovnik. It's kind of amazing to think about. I remember being 11 years old, in 6th or 7th grade, watching "Channel 1" at school, and seeing the drama of the fall of Yugoslavia with the Yugoslav Wars. And here we were, a couple of American tourists comfortably sightseeing in this part of the world. I think it gives me a bit of hope...

The Scotsman in me loved seeing a thicket of thistles at one roadside stop we made in Bosnia.

Okay, so it wasn't all sunshine. The clouds sort of came and went through the rest of the day.

And the light softened for some nice shots of the islands of the Dalmatian archipelago.

About 4 hours after we left Split, we finally arrived in Dubrovnik.

The Franjo Tudman Bridge is a dramatic, beautiful introduction to this city.

It towers over you, and spans high over one of several bays within Dubrovnik.

We checked into our hotel with a nice view on a decent little beach.

roat teens on our beach.

No matter, we left the hotel for a night out inside of Dubrovnik's Old Town. Like Split, Dubrovnik is an old city, built within a comprehensive set of walls, right on the sea.

While Dubrovnik is much "newer" than Split, still much of Dubrovnik is over 1,000 years old!

Here's Kim in front of the old cistern, with its 16 water spigots.

On the excellent recommendation of my colleague, Claire, we dined at a fabulous restaurant called Proto.

We had dinner outside, on the rooftop terrace, in a classic Mediterranean style.

Our amuse bouche consisted of a small pastry of cheese with a mustard and a balsamic vinegar spread.

We enjoyed some of the best wine of our entire trip.

We also enjoyed a half dozen of the local oysters, from the bay of Ston, which drove through a few hours earlier.

Kim and I split our entrees, which consisted of a filet of salmon in a mustard cream sauce, and a delicious mushroom risotto Dalmatian style.

What a meal! We had a really nice evening, and set out walking around the old town for a little while.

The old town is really pristine and clean. With no vehicles whatsoever allowed in the streets, it's a great, safe place to stroll around at your own pace.

Even within the city walls, there's quite a bit of elevation differences. We hiked to the top of one hill, and could see the Hilton Imperial hotel (under different ownership now), which was somewhat famously attacked during the Serbian/Montenegrin siege of Dubrovnik in 1991-1992.

The ambiance of the city at night is second to none -- we enjoyed it every bit as much as Paris or Venice.

We barely touched Dubrovnik in our few evening hours there on Tuesday. Check our next post for our full day spent touring the city!

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 3

2011-05-16T18:50:00.112-05:00

So the Internet is abuzz with all of this talk about the rapture and the end of the world...

If that had been scheduled for Monday night, then I think Kim and I might have actually been worried... For a couple of kids from South Louisiana, even with some hurricane and tropical storm experience, the wind and rain we felt on Murter on Monday was something!

Each of the windows and doors on Ante's house have storm shutters. They lock, but the seal isn't exactly tight, so with each blast of strong winds, there was plenty of creaking and cracking and eerie noises from the old house :-)

We came to learn later that this was a pretty typical storm, formed by the Bura winds, originating from the mountains inland within the continent, and blowing hard out toward the sea.

And with the rain came many freshly bloomed poppies in the morning.

We spent all of Monday exploring the adorable little island of Murter, which has over 2000 years of recorded history. You can read about it from this picture, yourself. The origin of the name is a bit of a mystery. The word is quite similar to the Latin word for "death", but also similar to another Latin word for an wine press. "Island of Death" sounds pretty ominous, perhaps named by pirates, or sailors, having marooned someone here? There are some interesting ancient burial mounds on a remote tip of the island, so perhaps another possible origin. Who knows :-)

We drove most of the perimeter of the coastline of the island, stopping at a number of labeled historical and archaeological sites.

One of the oldest is this ancient Roman cistern, dating from before 100 A.D. Even to present day, there are no freshwater wells on the island, so the ancient settlers survived entirely on collected rainwater. The freshwater system from the mainland was only introduced in the 1990s. Our host, Ante, recalls as a kid walking to the Hotel Colentum and carrying water jugs back to the house!

The arch, stone, and mortar here are all in exceptionally good shape, for being almost 2,000 years old.

We didn't experience much along the lines of wildlife on this trip, but these giant snails were very beautiful.

A couple of kilometers from the Roman cistern are the ruins of the ancient palace and settlement of Colentum, founded about the same time as the cistern.

Several rooms, or apartments, and numerous doorways are clearly visible within the ruin. The sea itself laps right up into the structure, today.

There's quite a bit more of the ruin below sea level now, which I had hoped to explore with a SCUBA excursion that unfortunately did not come together this time around.

We drove the length of the coastline, from town to town, covering Murter, Betina, Tisno, and Jezera. All of the towns are very similar, with their orange tile roofs, quiet harbors, and deteriorating old vessels.

Compared to the rest of Croatia, there was precious little English to be found in many of this small towns. We had the basics in Croatian, though -- Dobro dan is "hello", hvala is "thank you", pivo is "beer", čaj is "tea", and of course cappuccino is "cappuccino". So yeah, with that vocabulary we survived.

Kim sampled dozens of different fruit teas, from apricot to pomegranate.

The city streets are absolutely tiny, and many of them are two way, but can barely fit one car across. I was quite thankful we were in such a tiny car :-)

And we did manage to find ourself on a couple of roads that just "ended", like this one. I think they might have been closed for the season, or perhaps under construction. I drove over 2 kilometers in reverse, up and down a hill, to get out of this pickle :-)

We had lunch by the sea in Tisno, right next to the drawbridge that connects Murter to the mainland.

Another couple of glasses of their house red and white local wines, I had more cevapcici, and Kim had a pizza.

After lunch, we drove to the far end of the island, toward the town of Jezera. We parked and hiked up to a couple of remote churches, again. Most of them were built in the 16th and 17th centuries, as I recall.

All of the limestone masonry was beautiful. Several of the churches looked like something out of a Dan Brown novel. We were on the lookout for shadowy the Knights Templar.

Having driven quite a few rental cars around several countries now, we have wizened up a bit, and now travel with a wireless FM transmitter that hooks up to our stereo out on our cell phones.

Oh, and Ante hooked us up with Sigic, a GPS navigation system that ran on my Android phone. You can download all of the map data over WiFi, and then use it entirely offline, which was far more convenient than paying $Ridiculous_Amount per MB to use Google Maps.

We definitely took the hard way up the hill to this remote church. Do you see the big fat foot path?

Yeah, well, we missed it somehow, and blazed our own trail up :-) I called it an adventure. Kim might have complained, a little ;-)

I think we ran into this couple almost everywhere we went on the island of Murter :-) It was off season, but I think we were about 30 years younger than the median age on the island.

So that particular church, for instance, was built in 1780, merely 4 years after the United States Declaration of Independence. This was one of the new churches, by the way.

It was phenomenally

As you can see in this picture, each of these churches have fairly thorough lightning rod systems. It does give you a little concern when you hear thunder overhead, and realize that.

To finish our day, we drove quite a ways down a dirt and rock road to the most remote end of the island. Along the way, we noticed what appeared to be a couple of burial mounds. Cross-referencing the map, there was a marked "archaeological site" right about here (without any detailed information), so we just made up our own stories about the place :-)

And that was pretty much our Monday. We felt like we captured the spirit of Murter, Dalmatia, and certainly this part of Croatia. The slow moving, sleepy lifestyle on the island, with its rich history and ancient artifacts struck a chord with us, and fed our appetite for relaxation while on vacation.

In the morning, we would head toward Split and Dubrovnik for a bit more hustle and bustle...

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 2

2011-05-15T22:03:00.065-05:00

We set no alarm for Sunday morning, and really had a nice morning, sleeping in and relaxing. The weather wasn't all that great, unfortunately, with heavy clouds in the skies and a cool, stiff breeze -- not exactly sun bathing weather.

So Ante's house is just awesome :-) It's a family home, built by his grandfather some 30 or 40 years ago. It's something like 5 bedrooms, and actually 3 separate apartments, so there was plenty of room for the 3 of us.

Besides being one of the best Ubuntu High Availability/Clustering experts in the business, Ante also owns a small Croatian tourism company called Jamming Adventures which specializes in kayaking and adventure sports along Croatia's Dalmatian Coast. He's in the process of renovating parts of the house to use the spare apartments as guest accommodations.

Parts of the house had a somewhat craftsman style to it. Kim found it all really quite charming :-)

But the views are second to none! From the third story, you can see much of the island, including the water on both sides. Unfortunately, we didn't have much sun when we took these pictures, but rest assured the colors are in fact spectacular.

The island of Murter consists of about 5 or 6 different small towns, each with their own port and multiple churches.

I counted about one church per capita on the island ;-) Most of them are several centuries old.

We rented a very small car from Hertz for the week. This is our Opel Corsa by General Motors. It had 20 kilometers on it when we started the week, and over 1600 kilometers (1000 miles) by the time we dropped it back off at the airport. Gasoline was over $8/gallon. Ouch.

The weather wasn't quite right for hanging out on the beach, so instead, we set off for a walk around the island.

At the top of the hill, we had sweeping views of the entire island, her constituent cities, and even Ante's house.

Each of the towns are easily identified by their tallest church's steeple.

This was a great way to orient ourselves with our home base for the week.

We are so appreciative of our host, Ante, who's passion about Croatia and Murter are always evident. Note to self: it's awesome to visit a country and stay with a host who owns a tourism company :-)

The island of Murter itself has been continuously inhabited since at least 100 a.d., when the Romans under Trajan founded the city and palace of Colentum. Today, the island's largest hotel goes by the same name. We visited the ruins of Colentum on Monday (see the next post).

We walked from the top of the hill back down to the beach, and a ways around the island. We learned so much from our gracious host.

A familiar site, it was fun seeing the same agave we have in our yard in Austin, growing here on the shores of the Adriatic Sea.

I'm not sure what these flowers are, but they looked something like a purple daisy, growing from a succulent.

We walked from beach to beach, and saw a few families out enjoying the lovely seascapes. We watched intently as this guy made a sailboat out of a deteriorating piece of Styrofoam. And yes, it sailed :-)

Ante apologies endlessly (and needlessly) about the weather. May is a little too early to expect summer conditions on the Dalmatian islands. July and August, evidently, are the peak of the tourist season.

But with the absence of summer weather there was also a total absence of other tourists. We more or less had the island to ourselves!

Walking up over the hill, back toward Ante's house, we stopped to try and capture the moment. This was an ancient place, with hundreds of kilometers of stone walls and Roman ruins two millennia old. Wow.

It's pretty cool to have all of this, in your back yard!

That evening, we said goodbye to Ante for a bit, as he drove back to Zagreb. He was speaking at an open source conference there on Monday. We were on our own for dinner, so we went into the center of the town of Murter.

With it raining, we didn't walk around much, but we did dip into the first eatery we found, a pizza place called Mareta.

We sipped on inexpensive, local wine and had an outstanding pizza, topped with the local delicacy, a smoked ham similar to prosciutto. For dessert, we thought we were getting hazelnut gelato, but it wasn't quite as cold as ice cream, and had a bit more of a hazelnut cream cheese flavor.

In any case, it was delicious!

Ah, and of course, the locals have their own sweet dessert wine, too. I've forgotten the name of it, but it reminded me of Sciacchetrà from Cinque Terre, Italy.

On the way down the stairs and out of the restaurant, we noticed the dramatic display case in the base landing stair. Tucked below this class are a couple of ancient Roman wine vessels discovered in the harbor just in front of the restaurant. Wow.

I tried to line up a SCUBA diving trip, as it would have been pretty awesome to see something like this! Unfortunately, the weather wasn't conducive to diving, and again, the tourist season hadn't really opened.

The rain really started coming down as we left dinner and headed back to Ante's house for the night. Godfather II was the only thing on TV in English (with subtitles in Croatia), and we stayed up way too late watching that :-)

:-Dustin

Croatia -- Day 1

2011-05-14T22:19:00.055-05:00

Friday night in Budapest was a rowdy affair, as are pretty much every UDS closing party. As usual, we rented a bunch of musical equipment and hired a sound crew and the UDS Allstars Band jammed late into the night. I played bass on High and Dry (Radiohead), Wagonwheel (Old Crow Medicine Show), Hard to Handle (Otis Redding), Soulshine (Warren Haynes), and guitar on the epic American Pie (Don McLean), as well as a couple of random jams (and other songs I didn't really know).

Anyway, I stayed up way too late and had a few too many Hungarian beers, so it was a bit of a slow morning on Saturday. I did manage to get up early and drag myself down to the spa to try out these Hungarian baths, on my very last morning in Budapest.

A few hours later, Ante (my friend and colleague who also attended UDS) picked me up from the hotel, and we drove roughly 3 hours from Budapest to Zagreb, Croatia.

We crossed the Hungarian/Croatian border here at Gorican, about halfway between the two.

In Zagreb, I rented a car and picked up Kim who flew all the way over to Croatia, to hang out with me on vacation for a week :-)

Directly from the airport, we followed Ante to one of his friend's 30th birthday party. It was a gorgeous scene, like something out of an Old Navy catalog. There was a picnic table in a field of dandelions and a bunch of young people hanging out in an evidently traditional Croatian way.

As usual, the guys maintain the fire and the grill.

Kim and I quickly learned that Ante was the master chef in this group of friends, so within a few minutes, he had taken over the meat cooking responsibilities.

It's here that I was first introduced to Ćevapčići, a delicious Croatian sausage.

I ate it on a small bun and it was excellent.

Everyone here spoke a good amount of English, and even as uninvited guests, we were made to feel very, very welcome! We landed plenty of advice on things to see and do in our coming days in Croatia.

The land that were were enjoying actually belonged to the family of one of the girls at the party. On the property stood an enormous villa, built in 1806 by her ancestors as a weekend home outside of the capital city of Zagreb.

The house and property had recently been donated by her family to an estate, which was in the process of renovating the interior and turning it into a museum.

Our friends gave us a brief tour through the house. Kim loves this kind of old stuff!

After a lazy afternoon, we set off for our 3-hour drive across the Croatian countryside. It's surprisingly mountainous! We climbed a few thousand feet, several times, and passed through countless tunnels.

And right about sunset, we actually made it to the coast, with the sun falling behind the Adriatic Sea.

Ante lives on the island of Murter (lots more about that in the next post). It was just a little after dark by the time we actually made it to his place and settled in. We took a short, 5-minute walk from his house to the beach, where Ante was quite surprised to see that an enormous portable building was actually standing on his beach! It seems that a (very expensive) local wedding had commandeered the beach for the weekend. We peered into the action for a few minutes and decided against crashing our second party of the day :-)

Needless to say, Kim was whipped by a very long day of travel (Austin -> Newark -> Frankfurt -> Zagreb), but she was a trooper making it this long. While not jet lagged, I was pretty beat too by a jam packed week of working hard in Budapest. It was time to crash :-)

:-Dustin

A Weekend in Budapest

2011-05-09T04:36:00.083-05:00

I traveled to Budapest a few days early, before the Ubuntu Developer Summit, to spend the weekend doing some sightseeing with my buddy Kyle.

We stayed at the Best Western (which was really quite a nice hotel!) and got a good 2 days of sightseeing in. On Friday, we just kind of rambled around Pest on foot.

This is the synagogue, one of the largest in Europe.

And this fountain has sensors that turn off the water when you approach. It was actually quite fun :-)

St. Stephen's Basilica is at the end of this street.

And we had dinner here, at the Tigris. We did not have reservations, but we walked up to the waiter's stand and asked for a table for 2. This is what the restaurant looked like. As I took the picture, the waiter took a long breath and said, "Let me check to see if I have any room..." Kyle and I kind of looked at one another with puzzled grins, and said, "Okay..." He told us that he would seat us if we ate quickly. "Um, sure, whatever, dude."

Anyway, it was a nice meal :-)

On Saturday, we bought tickets for one of the open air city bus tours. For 4500 Forinths, we could ride these buses at out leisure for 24 hours, and also take a tour of the Danube by boat. Not bad at all. We got a really good feel for the city this way.

Pest is quite flat, but Buda is really hilly. It's pretty much spring here, and many of the trees were in bloom.

We crossed the Elisabeth Bridge a couple of times.

Which looks really bright, clean, and new.

The bus stopped for several minutes at of couple of stops, maintaining a precise schedule, I presume. At this stop, I notice a couple of buildings with strikingly ornate balconies.

All of those were taken from the same spot.

We got off of the bus for a bit, and grabbed lunch, making our way over to the dock on the river where we'd catch our boat.

We walked across a square where there were windows that showed some ruins of the ancient Roman city below.

This was pretty cool! I very much would have liked to have explored this a bit. But unfortunately, this was about as much as we could get.

So we waited a few minutes for our boat to arrive.

And got some prime seats right in front, on the upper deck.

We spent about an hour or so riding up and down the Danube, listening to interesting facts about the city in both English and Hungarian.

Here we can see the prominent castle on the hill on the Buda side of the river.

And the chain bridge, designed and executed by the Scotsman, Adam Clark. This was the first permanent bridge built across the Danube to connect Buda to Pest, built in the 19th century.

The Hungarian Parliament building was extraordinarily impressive, with its symmetry and Gothic architecture. It could certainly give the British Parliament a run for its money.

This odd little creature served as the proud masthead of our boat :-)

And this is the oldest of all of the Turkish baths in Budapest.

The rear part of this church is actually a cave in the side of this mountain.

Near the Citadella at the top of Gellert Hill stands Hungary's Statue of Liberty.

Kyle and I had a great time on the river.

After the boat ride, we walked back across the Elizabeth Bridge (named for one of the last queens of Hungary).

The view up the river is quite stunning.

I liked the cable construction of the bridge. It looked quite sturdy.

I bought Kim a handmade table runner from this kind lady.

Kyle and I hiked up Gellert Hill, named for the personage of this statue, Bishop Gellert.

According to local legend, St. Gellert was martyred by pagans who threw him from the top of the hill in the 11th century.

We hiked a few hundred meters up the hill, and were rewarded with some nice views and beautiful weather.

The Basilica from above...

There were several WWII anti-aircraft guns on display from the Citadella, a bunker on the top of Gellert Hill.

Notice how flat Pest is, as the Danube River wraps around that side of the city.

Hungary's Statue of Liberty holds an olive branch high above the city.

She's flanked by a couple of statues, presumably Mercury carrying the torch...

...and Hercules slaying the Hydra?

I didn't make very far down this direction into the city...

A closeup of the olive branch.

We cooled down at the top of the hill with a couple of tall Hungarian beers.

And then back down the hill, and across the bridge.

And finally, we found the right words to ask for "dark" Dreher beers. Mmm. That's better.

We had a nice dinner and called it a night.

The next morning, the weather was a little soggy, so we took a train from Pest over to Buda. Budapest has the second oldest underground metro system in Europe (behind London). The train cars are kind of showing their age.

Across from the chain bridge, there's an impressive tunnel, also engineered by Adam Clark.

And his chain bridge, guarded by two lions on either side.

Next to the tunnel, there's a funicular.

Which we did not ride, but we did walk across a bridge over it, at the halfway point.

We walked around the castle a bit, as the weather cleared somewhat.

And then down to the Labyrinth of Budapest.

The Labyrinth consists of nearly 5km of caves, caverns, and tunnels beneath the castle district of Buda.

We were a bit confused for a while, but eventually realized that it's sort of an underground art museum. There were a number of reproductions of some of Europe's most famous cave paintings.

Parts of the caves were used for religious rituals. At one point, by Christians who were hiding from Pagans. And later, by Pagans who were hiding from Christians.

Some of the caverns were actually connected to houses or parts of the castle above, and were used as wine cellars.

Guess who's Kyle and who's Dustin in this shadow portrait... :-)

Back out into the light of day, we walked around the Cathedral at the top of the hill, where there was some kind of a local festival

There was Hungarian music and dancing, and not a word of English.

For a few hundred forinth, you could have your picture taken with a gorgeous golden eagle.

This bird had some very serious talons.

Walking back down the hill, we killed the last bit of our evening in a Belgian pub, talking about all the things very old friends talk about.

And that pretty much took care of a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Budapest. I checked into the Corinthia hotel around 6pm, and my UDS work started around 7pm on Sunday. More on that in a subsequent post ;-)

Cheers,
:-Dustin

Austin Blind Cafe

2011-03-26T23:53:00.000-05:00

...duplicated from blog.dustinkirkland.com...

Kim and I experienced something truly unique, and entirely perspective-changing a couple of weeks ago...

Accepting an invitation from our friends Christian and Julia, we attended the first presentation of the Blind Cafe in Austin.

I had heard of something similar in London, where several of my colleagues attended a "team building" dinner some time ago. But as far as I'm aware, this was a first for Austin.

We attended with a big group, I think there were 10 of us in our party (of which Kim and I only really knew one other couple). We spent a few minutes in anxious anticipation in the hallway, and received a few instructions from our hosts.

Eventually, we were led through two ante-chambers of darkness by our blind guide, toward our seats in a banquet room, completely and absolutely devoid of all light! You could open your eyes as wide as you could, and strain as hard as you wanted, but you would see absolutely nothing :-) It took quite a while to get used to it, even after the immediate nervousness subsided.

Kim managed to put her hand directly into someone's salad as we made our way to our seats -- oops :-) She sat on the end of a table, and had the security of a wall to her right. I sat on her left, with the rest of our new friends to my left and across the table.

Eating in blindness was a distinct, unique experience. Most of my friends and family know how much I hate salad, but here I had a huge salad sitting right in front of me :-) Under normal circumstances, I might have been able to pick through and eat the "good" parts. But here, I couldn't :-) And I couldn't really tell how much I had left to eat. I think that was the longest salad of my entire life!

Now the salad plate was already served for us when we sat down, but we had to help ourselves to the main course -- rice and curry. We immediately dropped the rice serving utensil on the ground, never to be found again. And so we improvised, with each of us sort of grabbing a handful of sticky rice, cupping it against our forks. The curry was a little easier to serve, as thankfully we didn't drop that spoon. The food was good, if a little bland for my tastes. Everyone was served the same thing, which sort of necessitates a lowest common denominator of accessibility, so the food was vegan and not very spicy. Dessert, though was absolutely delicious! Vegan cuisine is exceptionally good at chocolate and dessert :-) Mmm.

Okay, food aside, the experience was second to none. It was particularly disarming in that most of our conversations were with people whom we had never really met (friends of Christian's and Julia's). This was really interesting, talking and listening, without the aides of reading or displaying body language.

After dinner and still in the dark, we were treated to an excellent concert, mostly led by the organizer/producer of the Blind Cafe, Rosh. He has sort of a John Mayer style, with a great voice and an acoustic guitar. The additional acoustic instrumentation -- a pair of violins, a cello, and a viola, really filled out the ensemble. As a musician myself, it was engrossing to listen, and only listen, to the music in the room around us. With no visual distractions, the music just seemed to pour through me.

At the end of the evening, Kim said that she really didn't want to leave. She was having a great time, and was still in the process of absorbing the experience. The organizers lit one, lone candle in the middle of the room before we left. The revelation of the room around us was mesmerizing, finally being able to "see" how the room was arrange, how big the space was, how far (or near) the next table was, and where that damn rice spoon went! :-)

Listen, if you ever get a chance to attend a presentation of the Blind Cafe in your town, don't hesitate -- do it! Proceeds benefited charity and help with blindness awareness, and you'll enjoy an experience that will perhaps change your perspective entirely. It seems that the event has been held in Portland OR, Boulder CO, and Austin TX so far, and there are events on the calendar for Cincinnati OH and Seattle WA.

:-Dustin

A Week in London in March

2011-03-12T03:42:00.000-06:00

On my way back home from Cape Town, South Africa, my flight itinerary had me stopping in London. I decided to carry that layover and spend a week in London.

I worked from Canonical's home office at the top of the Millbank office building, and I stayed with one of oldest, best friends, Kyle, who's been living in Greenwich for almost a year.

Millbank is easily the tallest building on the Parliament side of the Thames.

And as such, it offers fantastic views of the city. This was my view from the temporary cube I used for the week.

After coffee with the crew...

...I spent my mornings commuting like a million other Londoners, taking a train from Greenwich, transferring onto the tube, and then walking past Parliament...

...Big Ben...

And then up 27 stories, back to the nice view. I spent Monday - Wednesday working on a little project that benefited from some face time with a few of my colleagues in London, and then I took Thursday and Friday off for some sightseeing around the city.

I visited St. Paul's Cathedral.

And then spent pretty much all of Thursday by myself, moving very, very slowly through the British Museum for a good 7 hours.

This is a piece of the Sphinx' beard.

And, of course, the Rosetta Stone.

About half of the reliefs of the Parthenon from Athens is actually here at the British Museum. There's plenty of politics about whether or not the artifacts should be here in London, or returned to Athens. In any case, I enjoyed seeing them, as I was in fact in London and not Athens at the moment. I will probably feel differently when I visit Athens some day :-)

This is one of the Easter Island statues.

And a Buddha from Korea, several thousand years old.

I do of course enjoy my Byobu.

The mummy exhibition is pretty incredible. Hundreds of mummies are on display. Again, not quite sure how I felt about this. Part of me kind of wanted them back where they were originally put, at rest in their tombs. Anyway, I took these pictures for Kim, of mummified cats.

Kyle took Friday off and we spent the day sightseeing together. We started our morning off by catching a boat, rather than a train, from Greenwich to downtown London. This clipper can really move!

We had unusually nice weather, and really enjoyed it. The views of London from the Thames are particularly striking.

I've still not yet ridden on the London Eye, but it's always there, and inviting.

Near the London Eye, we visited the London Film Museum, which has a history of movie making in London, and lots of props on display, such as this one from Alien.

The highlight of the entire museum is the real set of the Tantive IV, from the very first scene of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Always a Simpsons fan, this was a fun picture. I have to figure Homer is about 7' tall, as Kyle, here, is 6'4"!

Fortunately, I was able to rescue Han from the carbonite, and he joined us for the rest of the tour. A little picture shy, I couldn't get him to pose for one with Kyle and I both. (Should have left him in the carbonite).

This is the shirt used by Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, as Arnold unloads a volley of shotgun slugs at him, and he just absorbs them.

And this is Kaylee's jacket from Serenity (which was on sale for 700 GBP).

Here's the animatronic Medusa from the original Clash of the Titans. There was a great exhibit along with it, explaining how that scene was filmed in painstaking detail, manipulating the snakes on her head frame by frame.

After the film museum and a meal and a few beers at Kyle's favorite Belgian restaurant, we met the rest of the family at the British Maritime Museum back in Greenwich.

This museum is just awesome, housed in the old Royal Navy College.

I had talked earlier that day about the guy who ran the London Marathon in full SCUBA gear, so I was quite surprised to see his outfit on display at the museum.

After the Maritime Museum, we hiked up the hill to tour the Royal Observatory, which is the official keeper of Greenwich Mean Time.

Here I am straddling the GMT parallel.

From the top of the observatory, a creepy green laser shoots miles and miles through the London Fog, noting the GMT line across the sky.

After a long day of touring, we sat down and threw back a couple of pints at Greenwich's Mean Time pub.

And later that night, we took in a bit of culture, seeing the two-person, psychological thriller, In a Forest, Dark and Deep, which starred exclusively Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams. I didn't know anything about the play going into it, but I certainly knew Matthew Fox from Lost, and Olivia Williams from Dollhouse, so the opportunity to see them both on stage, in a 2-person play seemed like a good idea. Tickets were very expensive, but our seats were great. The playhouse was excellent -- certainly becoming of London. And the play definitely did not let us down. We really enjoyed the deep, dark story. There was an interesting interplay of building and releasing tension, but consistently stepping up the drama of the situation. I'd say a bit of the story was a little predictable, but still, it was well worth our time and money. I enjoyed it a great deal!

And to finish the night (and my trip off), we of course overpaid for beer and burgers at London's Hard Rock cafe. At my dad's urging, we toured the Hard Rock vault under the office next door, where we saw the Hard Rock's greatest treasures. Considering how much fun Kyle and I have had listening and playing hard rock music over the years, it was a great way to conclude the journey.

I left London the next morning, arriving in Dallas by way of Houston. Kim picked me up at DFW, and we spent the night in Dallas after attending the wedding of our friends Vanessa and Rip (we made it to the ceremony just in time!).

This was, perhaps the most complicated itinerary I've ever traveled. To recap:

I left Austin on Thursday February 24, flying through San Francisco, and arriving in Santa Barbara, CA, where I worked for one day
Later that night, I drove from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, where I spent two nights, and spoke at the SCALE 9x conference
I left Los Angels on Saturday afternoon, arriving in London on Sunday morning, and spent all of Sunday in a Heathrow lounge
I left Heathrow on Sunday night, arriving in Cape Town, South Africa on Monday morning, and worked from Cape Town that Monday through Friday
I left Cape Town on Sunday night, arriving in London on Monday morning, and worked from London Monday through Wednesday, taking Thursday and Friday off for a little touring
I left London on Saturday morning, arriving in Dallas on Saturday afternoon, attended a wedding
And finally, Kim and I drove from Dallas to Austin on Sunday morning

Wow :-) Now that's jet setting :-)

Cheers,
:-Dustin

Driving around Cape Town and Cape Point, South Africa (Part 3)

2011-03-07T18:20:00.169-06:00

Several people have asked about how I felt about my safety while I was in South Africa...

Honestly, I felt perfectly safe for my entire journey. That isn't to say that I wasn't warned. And I think I've been rather travel-savvy. There are do's and dont's. And you have to use your head.

Anyway, I did find it little humorous and confounding when I checked in, and I was giving this motley of keys. There's a remote, with 4 different buttons, to open the gates, and the front and back doors of the lobby. The long, ancient looking key operates the bathroom lock. The tiny, roundish key arms and disarms the alarm system (which I think I set of myself every single day I attempted to set it). The roundish key locked the metal bars on the sliding glass door. And the boxy key locked the sliding glass door.

I needed to review them a few times with our darling hostess Elizabeth to get it all straight :-)

I can happily recommend the Kolping Guesthouse, if somehow, somewhy you ever find yourself way out in Durbanville. It's a very comfortable, warm, inviting place.

I was "shocked" to see energized, electric razor fences around some of the apartments in the neighborhood.

And equally puzzled by the adverts for "Halt Armed Response", with a logo of dude with a spear leaping over a very angry wolf. Or something. There's going to have to be some bad sh*t going down for me to call those dudes.

Anyway, I had an odd predicament on Sunday, as I had to check out of my hotel around 10am, and my flight wasn't until 8:30pm. Moreover, the guest house was a whopping 30 miles from anything particularly interesting. So cabs to and from Cape Town, plus a cab to the airport, plus lugging around luggage all day wasn't particularly appealing.

As the strangest things often do, an interesting solution presented itself, as my cab driver drove me (for the second time) yesterday back to the guest house. Basically, I hired him for the day. He would pick me up at 10am on Sunday morning, drive me around for the entire day, and dropped me off at the airport around 6:30pm. All this for $120, which as quite a reasonable price (assuming you don't get mugged, kidnapped, or killed).

Well it was an absolutely wonderful day. I got to know Addy, my driver, and he got to know me. Brothers from different mothers, he said. I thought that was very nice :-)

We started the day with a stop at Camps Bay, for a little bit of time walking around the beach. It was yet another perfect summer day. It was still early morning for most beach bums, so it was mostly quiet.

Here you can see a bit of Signal Hill, from a very different perspective my previous day's hike up Table Mountain.

And this was the Blues restaurant where we had eaten earlier in the week. Quite a different feel during the daytime.

Addy, on the right, and I had a couple of coffees and a pastries for breakfast.

We stopped at a little fisherman's village (sorry, I've forgotten the name), where I bought a couple of souvenirs, and spotted this jellyfish swimming around in the water below.

I think this is one of the better pictures I took on this trip, of a mess of docked sailboats creaking and bobbing among the morning fog.

We made our way around the bay to the far side of the harbor, and started working our way up Chapman's Peak.

Looking back at the harbor, I could see quite a few impressive homes nestled in the hills.

The clouds were rolling in from the south and east, cold air and moisture sinking below these impressive, powerful peaks.

I thought this blanket of clouds hundreds of feet below was just beautiful.

Winding our way up, and around to Chapman's Peak...

The views of the mountains below got more and more dramatic.

This bird of prey was intently staring at something far, far below us.

These clouds were pouring, like a liquid into a basin, from the ocean on the left to the harbor on the right.

The rock overhang overhead here was pretty impressive.

Addy stopped at one of the local surfer playgrounds. These two gals were just one their way out to the water for the afternoon.

There was a good dozen or so surfers riding some decent waves.

I watched until the clouds overtook our position and we couldn't see the water anymore.

Not that I needed one, but we stopped a huge outdoor clearing house with literally thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of sculptures -- from elephant sized, to hand held busts such as these.

We also stopped at a nearby ostrich farm for a couple of pictures. I did see one ostrich running through the national park, in the wild, which was cool. But I got to get a lot closer to these domesticated ones :-)

This guy strutted right over to me with enough confidence that I back off of the fence several feet!

Speaking of feet, ostriches have the weirdest feet I think I've ever seen on any animal. They look almost like dinosaurs (I guess?).

After that, we made our way into the Cape of Good Hope and the Table Mountain National Park.

Immediately upon entering the park, a wild baboon streaked by our car. I only managed to snap this one crappy picture, but oh my, wow! I mean, a baboon just on the other side of my window! It didn't look very happy, so we didn't stalk it for another picture. Addy expected that we would have seen more baboons, but alas, this was the only one.

Entry to the National Park was surprisingly expensive. Addy says that he takes his family here once a year for a holiday, but he agreed that entry was quite pricey.

Throw these coordinates into your map, or look up Cape Point in Google Maps, and start zooming out. I'm betting that's a very, very long way from wherever you are right now... Boggles my mind.

So this is an old light house at the very top and tip of Cape Point. When I took this picture of myself, I was originally quite pleased that I managed to get myself and the lighthouse perfectly in the picture. Upon further inspection (when I got the picture loaded onto my computer), I noticed that there is a HUGE wedgie falling out of my right ear :-)

I did not hike down to this secluded beach, but it did look quite inviting.

Even with the fog and being among the clouds, it was really, really bright, and hard to open my eyes without sunglasses on.

I hiked up a couple of hundred feet to the top where the lighthouse was, and looked down at some pretty violent breakers. You wouldn't want to swim down there. Oh, and the Atlantic is ice cold down here.

It's hard to tell from here, but that's hundreds of penguins on the rocks! More on penguins later...hang with me...

That's the Atlantic Ocean behind me, and roughly 10,000 miles in that direction is my home in Austin, Texas. Surreal.

So I finished up my time on Cape Point and our next stop was a little beach along the Cape that's full of ....

Penguins!

Of course my association with Linux necessitates a love of penguins. But come on, these things friggin' adorable!

I mean, they'll waddle right up to you...

And look you right in the eye.

I got a kick out of their feet too. Scaly with big honking claws.

Their little wings were cute too. It had an interesting looking texture, but I dared not touch it, as their beaks looked really sharp.

This mama penguin was sitting on an egg.

Yeah, check that out, a veritable penguin egg.

And what comes from penguin eggs, but penguin chicks :-)

They were quite playful, waddling around the rocks...

Taking a swim, and then cleaning themselves off.

This guy was just too cool for school. He was done with all of that waddling and settled into a prone position.

Waddle waddle!

Peck and clean!

Play in the water! Okay, I'll stop now. I took hundreds of pictures :-)

On a more serious note, I guess it's hard to talk about Africa without talking about some its social issues, of which it has had plenty. We drove by Khayelitsha, with over a half million people living in this "shanty town".

My driver, Addy, and I talked extensively about his 40 years in South Africa, the various changes that he's seen in his time. I answered, as best as I could, his questions and curiosities about America and the United States. Somewhat quirky, he was absolutely obsessed with Chuck Norris and his character Walker, Texas Ranger. I fed him as much trivia as I possibly could about Chuck Norris and the real Texas Rangers :-)

Next, we visited a cheetah rescue farm. They have about 20 of these enormous cats on the premises.

There was a handler there in the cage. I was pretty blown away by how affectionate the cheetah was with her. It purred as loudly as a small gasoline engine.

For 30 Rand (about 5 bucks), you could spend 10 minutes in the cage petting a cheetah. Seven years in, I'm still not a big fan of Kim's cat, so I didn't bother :-)

Attached to the cheetah facility was an extensive exhibit with 75+ birds of prey. In fact, there were a few pictures of Mark Shuttleworth on the wall. It seems he's quite the celebrity in these parts.

There was a sleepy Anatolian sheep dog napping in the field. It made me miss my puppies quite a bit.

The birds of prey exhibit was really incredible. This vulture looked like something out of a cartoon.

And this "secretary bird" was bizarre too.

The polka dots on this bird's chest are quire quite distinctive.

This black eagle was pretty suspect of my intentions. I'm not sure, but I think it might have looked directly into my soul. Yikes.

This bird almost looked like a Jim Henson puppet.

This African fish eagle looks a lot like American bald eagles, with a bit more white on the head.

You would not want to tangle with these talons.

I accidentally deleted the video (bummer!), but these two owls would dance when the handler played music on his cell phone. Totally hilarious!

Closing out my day, we made one final stop at a nearby vineyard. There's nearly a hundred vineyards in the area, but exactly one that we could find open past 4:30pm on a Sunday.

So we made our way over to Peter Falke Wines. Not Peter "Faulk" Columbo, but Peter "Falke".

The tasting room was, like Groot Constantia, a Dutch style farmhouse.

It had a very modern, progressive vibe on the inside.

But the weather was glorious outside.

So we had a seat in the shade. At my urging, Addy joined me and had a juice while I tasted the estate wines. He tried olives for the first time, but really didn't like them :-)

I made my way through several whites and a rose'.

And made my way onto the reds.

I enjoyed every wine I had from Peter Falke, and was really disappointed to learn that they didn't export to the States.

My time in South Africa had very rapid come to an end. I talked my excellent driver, Addy, into taking a picture with me.

And I gave him my Ubuntu lanyard, as a very small remembrance of our excellent Sunday together.

Without reservation, I hope to make it back to Cape Town sometime soon! I know that Kim would enjoy the beach and wine country, surely. I'd love to get out a bit further into the countryside, perhaps for a safari. It's a wonderful country, with very hospitable people, beautiful landscapes, and interesting cuisines. I do you you get a chance to visit some day too.

:-Dustin

Climbing Table Mountain and the Cape Town Waterfront, South Africa (Part 2)

2011-03-07T18:15:00.001-06:00

When I learned I was going to South Africa, I knew there was one thing I most certainly would do somehow, someway while I was there... I would climb Table Mountain!

Table Mountain is one of the most famous, most spectacularly perfect plateaus on the planet. You can see it in almost any picture of Cape Town, and if you watched any of the World Cup, you most certainly saw it in the backdrop of Cape Town's football stadium.

I manage to find some hiking to do almost anywhere I travel, and I do much of it alone. I was quite excited when I mentioned my plans to a few of my colleagues and they wanted to join me!

We left the guest house after breakfast and drove toward Cape Town and the foot of the mountain. It truly dominates the skyline from every direction.

We parked quite tenuously on a very steep embankment. This picture just doesn't do it justice...

I had planned on hiking a route called Skeleton Gorge, starting in the gardens on the far side of the mountain. Instead, we drove up a bit of the lower elevations and parked at the foot of the cable car station. This made for a bit more reasonable return trip, as a number of our party had a flight out later in the evening and were on a bit of a schedule.

The cable car up Table Mountain is an icon of the city, and has been around for a very long time. This is the base station. I thought it looked rather imposing, perhaps as a medieval fortification.

The cable cars themselves had been modernized recently in preparation for the World Cup.

I had but a very crude map in my guide book. I wasn't too worried about it, as the trails looked to be very thoroughly marked, but we did snap a couple of pictures of a high resolution topographical map, just in case...

Handy trick I use all the time when hiking... Now that digital cameras are 10-15 megapixels, take a picture of maps when you see them, and save them as a "favorite" in the camera for quick reference! Very, very convenient. At least until your battery runs out :-o

Eight of us started up the mountain on a perfectly clear summer day. The heat and elevation would get to two members of our party, who headed back down and took the cable car up.

As is typical in such a hike, the views of the city below got more and more dramatic.

Our route up the mountain was directly below the cable cars for much of the hike, reminding us that what we were doing was very much a personal deliberate choice -- you know, to put one foot in front of the other, hand over hand scrambling up rocks, climbing 2500 feet in vertical elevation in a little over 3 hours. All that, instead of $10 and a 5 minute ride on the cable car. Me, I loved every minute of the walk ;-) And it's not just because I'm a cheap skate.

The temperatures got pretty warm as we climbed. It was in the 60s when we started, and the upper 80s by the time we finished. I think my time hiking and running in Texas had me pretty well acclimated to the heat, and I handled it well.

Other than a few clouds on the horizon, we had really clear, beautiful skies.

This view, with Signal Hill on the far left, gives a bit of perspective on the tranquility of the day. Here, we about halfway up the mountain, and roughly even in elevation with Signal Hill.

There are guardrails, and some very, very vertical cliff faces on this hike up the mountain. My feet dangled off the edge of this boulder, hundreds of feet above the next lower precipice.

There were several spots of moderate "climbing" required. I'd call a few of the "routes" maybe 5.6's in a US rating. Most were 15 feet or less in vertical ascent, but even a 5 or 10 foot fall could be very dangerous.

Some of the less craggy spots had helper handles and steps. This little scramble had about 4 or 5 of these steps, vertically ascending a large sandstone boulder.

I'm probably breaking a good sweat at this point :-)

Once we crossed right, over the arete, we could see Camps Bay and some of the lovely white sand beaches.

Oh, and no account of South Africa would be complete without an introduction to the incredible Protea flower. It's the national flower of South Africa, and just beautiful.

It looks sort of like a sunflower, attached to a giant succulent plant.

Fortunately, we were going "up", and not "down" here. Truly, some of the scrambling we did up those crags would have been very challenging, blind down climbs.

And roughly 3 hours after we started, six of us made it to the top. Our other two buddies were waiting there at the top for us. What a morning!

Now Claire just insisted that we all drink a Coca Cola when we got to the top of the Mountain. I'm not one to drink a lot of Coke, but damn, she was right. That was one delicious Coke!

Most of the rest of my party needed to leave, to head the airport and such. I had the rest of the day, and the following day, so I hung around the top of the mountain, and hiked the perimeter trail (which was pretty much perfectly flat, as one should expect on the top of a plateau).

As you can imagine, the views from the top are second-to-none in Cape Town!

Having hiked several miles before lunch, I thought I would check in on the beach bums 3500 feet below me.

Yup, sitting around with their feet in the sand :-) Looks like they're having a good time.

Oh, and I understand it's also impossible to visit Table Mountain without making acquaintance with a "dassie" or two! I was assured that this little guy was somehow related to the elephant, believe it or not :-)

Of the souvenirs I did not bring home to Kim, Dassie Droppings are on that list.

Robben Island is quite easy to spot, a few miles off the coast of the Cape Town harbor. This is Cape Town's equivalent of Alcatraz -- an island prison that sadly held Nelson Mandela prisoner for 27 years.

It's also hard to miss Cape Town's brand new football stadium, built specifically for the 2010 World Cup.

It's a striking structure, sort of like a warped tire or rim.

I spotted a number of lizards and other small reptiles, scurrying through the rocks and bushes.

I was warned by our local host to beware of two things ... high winds, at which point a "hooter" (the South African word for "horn") would sound...

...and the "blister bush" which has the annoying quality of causing immediate blisters which are severely agitated by sunlight. The trick was that no one actually knew what this blister bush looked like!

Somehow, we all managed to stay away.

I considered hiking down the back side of the mountain, which would soon be in shade. However, I also wanted to spend some time in downtown Cape Town and on the Waterfront. I managed to convince myself that no trip to Cape Town would be complete without at least riding the iconic cable car once.

I caught a right with a random taxi driver (who would actually define the rest of my trip -- see the next post). He dropped me off near the waterfront at the Dutch clock tower.

Having had only a bowl of granola for breakfast, and an ice cream at the top of the mountain, it was time for lunch!

I set down at Emily's Snack Bar, a quaint little eatery right next to the swing bridge and across from the Victorian African Trading Post.

Here, I positively gulped down a Castle Lager beer (mediocre to the beer nerd, cold and delicious to the thirsty nerd).

And I had one of the best grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches I could recall in recent memory.

As I sat water side, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the seals play in the harbor.

After lunch, I went for a very long walk around town. Somehow, the hike up the mountain just wasn't enough. This picture reminded me of my sweetheart, Kim. Ice cream and blue cheese -- two of her favorite things!

Here's Table Mountain, dominating the skyline. The point at the very top right is the upper cable car station.

Ah, a detail of the cable car station itself. I was up there about an hour earlier.

I walked most of the length of Long Street, which is Cape Town's version of Sixth Street, or perhaps Bourbon Street.

This building, in particular, reminded me of something one might see in New Orleans, with the wrought iron railings and ornate balconies.

My cab driver, Addy, tried to convince me to skip out on downtown and the Waterfront altogether and instead head over to the Rugby stadium and catch the afternoon match. I personally couldn't justify spending my only full afternoon in Cape Town at a Rugby game alone, but I did dip into an Irish pub, and watch a Guinness worth of the game. Some of those dudes look mean!

After wandering around the town a bit, I walked back to the waterfront, and started seeking out a nice spot to watch the sunset. Here, I'm crossing the swing bridge, near where I had lunch.

The Waterfront is quite touristy, and definitely not the sort of place locals congregate. Some of my colleagues described it as Navy Pier in Chicago or Fisherman's Wharf in San Fransisco. That's pretty accurate. It was touristy. But it was also safe, and very clean. I didn't need to spend a lot of time there, but I did want to a feel for it.

I made it down to the end of the Waterfront district and watch the sunset out a ways on the breakers. Here's the sun setting behind the soccer stadium.

The sun would dance on the upper ridges of Table Mountain before trailing off of there too.

And eventually crash down behind the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.

I finished my night at a pub on the Waterfront, watching the end of another rugby match and sipping on the positively delicious local cream liqueur, Amarula. It's a little like Irish cream, but with less of a whisky bite to it. It's made from the fruit of a tree in Africa, which is interesting, in that it doesn't taste fruity at all. You can search the youtubes for funny videos of drunk baboons and elephants, having eaten too many amarula fruit :-)

I hired the same cab driver who took me from Table Mountain to the Waterfront to bring me back to my guest house, way out in Durbanville. On the way home, I negotiated a day rate with Addy, for him to pick me up on Sunday morning, show me around for the day, before dropping me off at the airport in time for my 8:30pm flight. Check the next post for my Sunday spent driving around Cape Point....

:-Dustin

A Lot of Work and a Little Play in Cape Town, South Africa (Part 1)

2011-03-07T18:09:00.073-06:00

I travel a lot for work. And generally, I really enjoy it. It's a great way to see the world, and there is a lot to see out there! I tend to favor the trips that I know about in advance, such that I can do some research, and really prepare myself for the culture, cuisine, and environment.

But sometimes, as things work out, I don't get a lot of notice. This was one such trip. And a trip I dared not miss! I had some very important work to do here, and "here" was somewhere really quite interesting...a place where I had never been, and never really, actually thought I might go!

Cape Town, South Africa! Just a few months ago, I remembered watching the World Cup, spread across the great cities of South Africa, and maybe subconsciously noted that I'd like to visit some day. That day came far quicker than I might have guessed.

I left Los Angeles (where I gave a presentation at the SCALE 9x conference) on a Saturday evening, flying 12 hours from LAX to London Heathrow, spending a cool 9 hours in the Heathrow international lounge, before embarking on the subsequent 12.5 hour flight (again overnight) to Cape Town.

That's right, there's a giant bronze elephant at the airport entrance/exit. Welcome to Africa indeed!

Leaving LAX on a Saturday, I arrived in Cape Town on Monday morning, around 10am, and caught a taxi to the suburb of Durbanville where I was working for the week. You might say that I was in a bit of a haze, having spent the previous two nights more or less in an upright seat on two different planes. No shower either. Day 1 was mostly a haze, and I opted out of the group dinner, dining instead at the guest house, on some quite tasty beef stroganoff.

The Kolping Guest House itself was a lovely property. This was my view from a corner room, looking at the pool and the breakfast/dinner nook.

It sounds like our accommodations varied widely among our group. Mine was a very spacious apartment, with kitchen/dining/futon in the entry room, a bedroom in back, and a large bathroom. Some of us had air conditioning. I did not. Still, I slept very comfortably every night.

The property sported this enormous palm tree...

Whose bark was covered with a soft fern.

I think these are boganvillas, or something similar. Quite colorful.

My Louisiana heritage typically has me pretty prepare for mosquitoes. So I didn't bother with the mosquito "weapons" the guest house team offered :-) I was fine, by the way.

The exchange rate while I was there was about 7 Rand to 1 dollar. So the hotel mini bar offered bottles of local red and white whine for under $10, and beer was about $1.50. Not bad at all!

I spent most of the week acclimating to my new running shoes, the Five Fingers by Merrell. I'm still getting used to them, but I'm up to 6 miles in them now. That was 6 pretty brutal miles, though. I had as many blisters as some of my 20 and 22 milers!

I spent the week working from the Shuttleworth Foundation offices. The grounds are absolutely spectacular! The pool, the sculptures, and the gardens are relaxing, inspiring, and just beautiful.

I really enjoyed the Japanese-style goldfish pond. I took a walk around here every day after lunch.

It was late summer here of course, it being March. There were many flowers in bloom. I heard the head gardener is someone quite special. She's done a fabulous job!

Tuesday night, we had dinner as a full group in the open air at a streetside table in Stellenbosch, at a Cuban restaurant. I sampled several of the local wines and we had lengthy conversations about science fiction literature and programming languages.

Wednesday night, we drove through Cape Town, to Camps Bay with its bouncing beach scene.

We just missed sunset over the Atlantic Ocean, but the dusk colors were still visible when we arrived.

There's no shortage of neon lights and music in Camps Bay.

We ate at a mostly-seafood restaurant called Blues. It was quite metropolitan, and maybe even a little upscale.

I had eight enormous prawns. Already shelled, you just break the head off and eat. Mmm.

And a nicely done cappuccino for dessert.

Cape Town was 8 hours ahead of my family in Texas and Louisiana. I did manage to Skype with Kim a couple of times. I also caught up with my Mom and her class, as well as my sister and her class. It's fun talking to their students about the far corners of the world. The bandwith was considerably better at work, than at the guest house :-)

On Friday night, a smaller group of us visited the oldest vineyard in all of South Africa, Groot Constantia, founded in the late 1600s. Documents here claim that this vineyard was Napoleon Bonaparte's personal supplier of wine while he was in exile (seems the English cut him off from his beloved French wine).

Look Mom, I'm eating my vegetables! Caprese salad for first course.

For my main course, I thoroughly enjoyed the local delicacy, "bobotie", a sort of lamb meatloaf, with fruit mixed in. Very tasty!

For dessert, several of us indulged in a glass of the vineyard's dessert wine. An interesting story accompanies this very special bottle... In 2004, a piece of glass bearing the words "Constantia Wyn" was found off the coast of Delaware. A bit of digging through the annals of history pointed to a South African / Dutch shipwreck in the area in 1774. This particular bottle is produced in the style and spirit of that 18th century gem.

Well, we went this far. I just couldn't do without a local custard/cake and a scoop of ice cream for dessert.

So that pretty much concluded my work week in Cape Town. Not much sight-seeing during the week. I did go for a run most mornings, and enjoyed the flavors of South Africa at night. My next two posts will cover my Saturday and Sunday I spent exploring this unique corner of the world!

:-Dustin

Skiing in Aspen, Colorado

2011-02-06T20:30:00.048-06:00

I spent a weekend in February skiing with a couple of buddies, one of which has a place in Aspen, Colorado. It was my first trip to that part of Colorado, which was really cool. Technically, we were in Snowmass, Colorado, and skied the Snowmass resort.

All 3 of us skied a half day, on day 1. Here we are riding the gondola up.

The conditions were so-so. Visibility was somewhat poor, with a heavy storm blowing in over night. The slopes were packed powder and decent.

Cole is a pretty avid snow- and wake boarder. Here he is, grabbing some air!

It's too bad Kim couldn't make it on this trip, as she would have loved our cozy lodgings :-)

I found this advertisement sadly amusing. Aspen/Snowmass's "Commitment to the Environment" brags about its 2.3 KW solar array for the resort. Sorry, that's just a joke. The array Kim and I have on our roof is 6.7 KW (which is a decent sized residential array, but isn't even on the scale for industrial arrays). I have to hope that this is somehow a typo. Otherwise, they're totally pulling the wool over people's eyes in a pretty shameless marketing ploy.

Okay, off my soapbox and back onto the snow. It was a bit chilly, so I wrapped up tight.

Powder! We got 8" and 10" of new snow on Saturday and Sunday, and it snowed off and on through both days. Gorgeous powder, especially in the trees and through the glades.

I took a break skiing through the glades to have a snack and shoot a few pictures.

Saturday night brought a dump of new snow, as you can see this guy digging his truck out.

There were parts of the day when the clouds cleared and the sun came out, bringing a bit of warmth and better visibility.

Unfortunately, my host, Cole, was laid up in bed with the flu, so I skied of Saturday and Sunday by myself.

The absolute highlight of the Snowmass mountain for me was the trail called Long Shot. Read the "greeting" to this trail...

So Long Shot is a 3.5 mile trail in the most remote corner of the resort. From the top of the lift, you have to hike up a few hundred feet carrying your skis. As a reward, you get to ski down one of the most incredible glades in all of Colorado. Snow covered trees, knee deep powder. Even some unique wildlife. This trail had it all.

Frosted trees.

Almost to the top...

Okay, well, there's actually quite a bit further to go...

About halfway down, I spotted this curious little guy! I spent at least 15 minutes watching him watch me.

Kim thought it was the cutest animal, ever :-)

She did a little research when I showed her the pictures and determined that it's a long tailed snow weasel. Cool!

It scurried back and forth, always keeping a close eye on me.

The snow was actually pretty deep, and it sort of flopped through the snow, rather than on top of it.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty awesome.

The trip back to Austin wasn't exactly ideal. I was flying out of Aspen, through Denver during the Superbowl. Chicago was all messed up from the wretched weather they had been having, which cause a cascade of delays and cancellations that resulted in me spending the night in Denver. (I swear, I'm hating this United/Continental deal more and more...)

I do enjoy traveling, but I really don't like getting stranded in an airport over night :-( This has happened 3 times in the last 9 months, and that's way too much.

Anyway, I can't wait to get back to the snow!

:-Dustin

Snow Day in Austin, Texas

2011-02-04T11:52:00.011-06:00

I left Los Angeles yesterday for London (where I'm writing this now), and I'm seeing the odd pictures of snow in L.A. today.

Of course I missed the best snow day in years back in Austin about a month ago (February 4, 2011) :-( The biggest irony being that I was in Aspen, CO that day, where it didn't snow!

Anyway, Kimmie was home with the puppies and it looks like they had a blast! I was quite jealous...

Enjoy!

:-Dustin

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California

2011-02-03T08:29:00.044-06:00

I attended the O'Reilly conference, Strata, for work in the beginning of February, in Santa Clara, California.

While I was out there, I paid a visit to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I had visited once before, in December of 2008, while on Google's campus for the Ubuntu Developer Summit. However, we had to rush through the museum very quickly, in order to get to our banquet on time.

When we drove through Silicon Valley on our Reboot the Soul roadtrip, we specifically stopped in Mountain View to visit the museum again. However, the damn thing was closed for renovations when we were there (October 2010). Bummer.

Anyway, I took advantage of my proximity to the museum on this trip to visit it again, going through the exhibits very slowly, by myself, soaking it all in. I loved it ;-)

The exhibits start with some really old school, mechanical computers, such as the ancient abacus and here, Napier's Bones. I took an independent study class in college, the History of Mathematics, which comprised of reading the 3-volume text, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. It was fun to see some of the machines that were covered in that class.

This is a scale replica of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine Number 1 (which he didn't quite complete).

Needless to say, the history of IBM was well covered throughout the museum. The Think aspect of IBM's brand is probably the part I appreciate the most, as a former employee.

Always interesting to someone who works in cryptography (eCryptfs, specifically), the Enigma machine! The importance to the eventual outcome of World War II cannot be overstated, of the Allies cracking this cipher!

And here's UNIVAC, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. I think I saw this very machine in the Smithsonian in July 2000.

And the grandfather of all super computers, the beautiful IBM s/360!

Here's a look at the inside of a Cray supercomputer. Look at all of those wires!

I've seen the original UNIX license plate, on the back of Jon "Maddog" Hall's Jeep in New Hampshire :-) This is merely a replica!

Kim really got a kick out of this, the first prototype of the computer mouse, made of wood, and having only one button :-)

And I got a kick out several Speak & Spells that were on display. My sisters and I played with these things for years! I think I played through it's entire catalog of questions over several years. I can still hear it's weird voice intonation :-) As I turned it off, I always thought it sounded more like "ruh-bye" than "good bye". Still, the text-to-voice rendering was highly advanced for the time.

I never owned an Altair, but this computer is a legend of its time.

My parents bought this model IBM PS/1, used at a school board auction for a couple of hundred dollars, at my urging when I was in about 4th grade, I think.

There were only really two mentions of Linux, that I noticed in the museum. One was on an exhibit about Beowulf Clusters, which emerged in the 1990s and could reach super computer capacity and speeds at a fraction of the cost. Beowulf clusters were typically running some hodgepodge of Linux operating systems. Also, this exhibit noted Linus Torvalds, and his easygoing approach to software development and open source software.

This was one of the original Google search racks from the nearby Google campus, assembled entirely from Fry's components. I bet Google necessarily had to make these systems redundant, given the quality of products one typically acquires from Fry's ;-)

I never owned a phone coupler modem, as these came just little before my time. But this does bring back memories of Mathew Broderick in Wargames!

Finally, the grand exhibit in the museum is a 1:1, working scale model of the Babbage Difference Engine #2. There are demos of it working several times per day. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see one this time. Maybe next time!

If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend a visit.

Cheers,
:-Dustin

2011 Cotton Bowl -- Texas A&M vs. LSU

2011-01-07T23:45:00.004-06:00

14 years in the waiting...

Somewhere around February of 1997, I received a large envelope that, in many ways, has defined my life. I was a senior at Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, LA. The envelope contained a President's Endowed Scholarship offer from Texas A&M University, roughly a full academic scholarship and one of Texas A&M's top honors. The following four years were some of the greatest in my life, as I received an outstanding college education and developed a set of core values uniquely entrusted to Aggies.

Football is quite important to people in Baton Rouge, and I was no different. I most certainly grew up an LSU Tiger fan, spending many Saturdays tailgating on the Parade Grounds and attending many games in Tiger Stadium. I distinctly remember how much I despised the Aggies, as they came to Baton Rouge and thumped the Tigers year after year after year. Those feelings, though, changed quite rapidly as I started looking at top notching public engineering universities. I visited Texas A&M several times, and simply fell in love with the campus, culture, academics, and traditions. In fact, I couldn't wait for the next time the Aggies and Tigers met on the gridiron -- Tiger Stadium or Kyle Field! I had become an Aggie.

Little did I know that it would be over 14 years before LSU and Texas A&M would play a football game again. 1995 was the last time they played, and that was *just* before I started to bleed maroon. Dang.

Fast forward 14 years to 2011 (zipping past a pair of national championships by LSU and a number of disappointing A&M seasons), I couldn't contain my excitement when LSU and A&M were paired in the 2011 Cotton Bowl!

With a bit of classic help through the Aggie Network, I scored a pair of face-value tickets -- 45 yard line, 14 rows up, in the magnificent new Cowboys Stadium.

As hard as it was to procure the tickets, it was even harder deciding *who* would get my second ticket... Countless Aggie friends would have given almost anything for that ticket. And my wife Kim, Mom, Dad, and both sisters are all LSU grads. It was a really tough call, but in the end, it was only right to bring dear old Dad -- the football coach and most important man in my life. He has taken me or given my tickets to dozens of LSU football games, and when it came down to my choosing A&M for college, he supported me all the way (which had to be a really tough thing for him to do).

So we met in Dallas the night before the game (Mom came too -- it was great getting to hang out with Mom as always), and caught up with some of our best friends, the Pattersons. Like me, Connor and Craig graduated from both Catholic High of Baton Rouge, and went on to Texas A&M. Unlike me, they really liked school and went for another 10 years or so and became doctors, bless 'em! :-) Connor was actually responsible for scoring the tickets for all of us. I've done my share of teasing Connor about his fraternity, but not a word emerged on that day, as it was a fraternity brother of his who had hooked us up.

We spent an overcast day in the parking lot, sipping beer and enjoying the scenery.

It was almost like a dream, seeing Aggies and Tigers tailgating next to one another. Two of the most important colleges to me, their fans converged here, in one place, having a good 'ole time!

In fact, Kim and I named our dogs "Tiger" and "Aggie" after our respective alma maters. It really was a fun day!

It was pretty getting to hang out with my Dad, and my father-in-law, Bob. My dad is an LSU alumni, and Bob holds degrees from both LSU and A&M!

Needless to say, we had a great time :-)

The new Cowboys Stadium is nothing short of spectacular -- a modern wonder of the world. The NFL Superbowl would be held in the very same venue less than a month later, and many pundits called this Cotton Bowl a "dry run" for the coming Superbowl spectacle.

The hosts spared no expense. LSU and A&M logos were laser etched in glass scores of times around the stadium.

Our seats were every bit as good as they looked on the seating chart.

And the higher-than-HD television monitor was just totally dumbfounding.

We had a great time, and that's in spite of the fact that I was thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly disappointed with the outcome of the game.

(I was sure the Aggies had a better defense, and would have held the Tigers to within a single score, if not somehow pulling out an ever-so-rare post-season win!) It was a classic matchup of my two favorite teams -- something I *wish* would happen on a regular basis (please A&M, take the SEC offer!!!). That said, it was pretty special, just the way it was.

This is a memory that I'll treasure forever. Thanks, Connor, for helping me out with tickets.

Thanks, Dad, for coming to the game. Thanks, Mom, for coming to Dallas, being so close to the game, but letting Dad and I go. And thanks, Kim, also for letting my Dad and I do this.

Gig 'Em Ags, and Geaux Tigers!

:-Dustin

And Christmas 2010 in Louisiana

2010-12-26T08:51:00.031-06:00

After leaving Kim's family and friends in Mississippi and New Orleans, we headed over to spend the rest of Christmas with my friends and family near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As before, we had the both the Airstream and our dogs with us. We setup the Airstream on my parent's property literally on the west bank of the Mississippi River between Addis and Brusly, Louisiana. Here, we hooked up the RV to electricity, water, and sewer, and had two space heaters cranking. We were really comfortable and self sufficient in it, actually!

On the first night, my dad brought over a portable iron fire pit and we sat around and made smores (Kim's favorite).

Our nephew, Gabe absolutely loves playing with Tiger :-)

And I think his brother Luke might favor Aggie, who's giving him a kiss right here.

This is a good night, in my book... Hanging out with family at Christmas time, sitting around a campfire. Good times :-)

Gabe absolutely insisted on taking Tiger and Aggie for a walk, every few minutes. I'm not sure who ended up walking who, as I think each of the dogs doubled Gabe's weight :-)

Jeremy and Price enjoying the family time...

...as everyone was opening presents at Lindsy and Michael's house.

We gave Gabe, Luke, and Jake a complete set of camping gear (most of it gently used on my travels and hiking adventures around 5 continents).

And here's me and Mom. She's always happy when she has all of her kids home for the holidays!

Michael cooked a turkey in an greaseless infrared turkey fryer, which was absolutely delicious. He and Lindsy gave me the same device for my Christmas present!

Gabe loved his puppy blanket too :-)

So that meal was at Lindsy's on Christmas Eve... Of course, we had dinner at Mom and Dad's house on Christmas day.

Speaking of Mom and Dad, here they are, enjoying Christmas dinner, with a fire going in the fireplace behind them.

Kim gave me a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt scotch whisky, which I shared with my Dad, and my brothers-in-law, Michael and Jeremy.

Paw Paw just loves hanging out with his 4 grandsons. Here's Paw and Price.

And just like his cousins, Price adores Tiger and Aggie Too :-)

Aggie is definitely a lover, not a hater.

We did manage to setup one family portrait. What a fine family! Love y'all!

:-Dustin

Christmas 2010 in Mississippi

2010-12-23T12:09:00.006-06:00

A little late to the posting (as usual), but we had a wonderful Christmas in 2010, spending it with both Kim's parents in Kiln, Mississippi (this post), and my family in Addis, LA (next post).

We actually took the Airstream with us on this trip -- our first real road trip with the camper. It's a 1968 Airstream Globetrotter, 19 feet long. Giuseppe the 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD towed pretty well.

We left the canyon in its full fall glory, with the leaves having just turned.

Steph and Josh and Jackson had already made it to Mississippi earlier in the day, having flown into New Orleans.

Not only did we bring the Airstream, but we also brought our pups, Tiger and Aggie :-)

Tiger and Aggie loved the river in Mississippi, and in particular, the big birds that always seem to be around.

We parked the RV on the side of Kim's parents house. Bob helped me with a handful of normal maintenance on the camper. In particular, we worked through a number of the appliances and facilities that I had never actually used in the vehicle. We only made one big mess :-)

Grandpa Bob loves reading to Jackson.

And Jackson liked his puppy blanket.

If you see Bob bellied up to the bar sometime, order him a Grand Marnier!

Steph gave Kim this pretty apron.

And Jackson is sure to be a rock star with an outfit like this.

We spent one night in New Orleans with Kim's friends, Rebecca and Corey.

Of course, we had an awesome meal at one of New Orleans' countless outstanding restaurants, and then headed over to my parent's place for the rest of the Christmas holiday.

:-Dustin

Playa del Carmen, Mexico

2010-12-05T12:29:00.000-06:00

We took a few days after Thanksgiving to join Kim's parent's for a week in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, enjoying the off season and warm weather.

It's about an hour's ride in a cab from the airport in Cancun to Playa del Carmen. The time goes by quickly though...

Our many thanks go to Kim's parents, Bob and Gerri, for bringing us along on this adventure!

Our destination is the little village known as the Sunset Fisherman, where Kim's parents have a timeshare.

Bob takes care of the door man, and he takes care of the rest of us.

This sculpture greets us in the lobby.

Cab rides are usually an adventure in around Playa del Carmen. This cabbie had an interesting assortment of chotchkies hanging from his rear view mirror. Let's see...pictures of kids, a Mary air freshener, a rosary, a baby chicken with a scorpion hanging from it...what does it all mean???

I think Bob, at least, got some well deserved rest and relaxation...

There was some sun, but some overcast skies too.

Kim and I enjoyed some time on the beach.

We particularly enjoyed the Mayan cuisine -- an earthy, interesting twist on traditional Mexican cooking.

We had a couple of nice strolls up and down the beach.

And sunsets are often quite amazing down here.

As are the margaritas!

Mayan for dinner, once again.

Gerri really liked this place!

We had four different types of ceviche, each served on an open face clam shell. Points for presentation.

Bob had one of the spiciest dishes of his life (he says) here. This is a "before" picture, as he's still smiling ;-)

There were at least a dozen parrots hanging out on limbs throughout the restaurant. This guy's claws are absolutely digging into my shoulder here.

Gerri and Kim took a cooking class at the resort. I don't remember what they cooked -- you'll have to ask them ;-)

I only managed to work in one dive all week. I booked a couple of others but they were canceled due to either bad weather or not enough divers. :-( Oh well... The one dive I did do, though, was absolutely amazing! A shark dive at 80 feet. Kneeling on the bottom, 6 of us were totally surrounded by about 6 bull sharks. They circled us for most of a 40 minute dive, within an arm's reach. Absolutely exhilarating! The second of our two dive guides produced this outstanding video of our dive. Thanks Stefan and Bruno of The Reef Marina!

We rode up to Cancun one day, to hire a boat for the day.

This is perhaps the largest flag of any kind I have ever seen in my life.

Our boat came with its own captain and first mate, who took very good care of us. We set out from Cancun and stopped at Isla Mujeres around happy hour, where drinks were 2-for-1.

Needless to say, we were having a good time.

We had lunch and listened to a rock cover band who were apparently from Austin.

After dinner, we were back on the boat and headed back to Cancun.

She sells seashells down by the seashore. No really, she did.

We made it back to Cancun just before sunset.

And just in time for another mouth watering dinner.

Only to be surpassed by this magical Mayan flaming coffee!

An excellent week with the in-laws, thanks!

Adios,
:-Dustin

LSU vs. Ole Miss, 2010

2010-11-20T10:46:00.002-06:00

After the adventure race, I was back home in Austin for 2 nights before hitting the road again. I was back in College Station to give a talk on Byobu and eCryptfs to the Texas A&M University Linux Users Group (TAMULUG).

We spent one night with my good buddy and former roommate Derek in College Station. We picked up and headed toward Baton Rouge on Thursday morning, where I worked for a few days. We were home to visit my mom who was recovering from surgery, and we had our first visit with my family since we started the road trip back in June. It was great to see everyone again.

Kim and I went to the LSU vs. Ole Miss game in Tiger Stadium on Saturday, November 20, 2010. It was a great game, really close, with LSU squeaking out a tight win in the 4th quarter.

Geaux Tigers!

:-Dustin

Huntsville Hammer Adventure Race

2010-11-13T10:46:00.005-06:00

I left directly from San Antonio on Friday, November 12th driving to Huntsville, TX, where I met my buddy Corey. We teamed up for a Texas Adventure Race called The Huntsville Hammer.

Neither of us had ever participated in a so-called "adventure race", but we were both pretty excited about it. All we really knew was that the race was 6 hours long, and consisted of about 6 miles of running, 20 miles of mountain biking, and 4 miles of paddling.

We donned our "I'm running Ubuntu" t-shirts for the start of the race.

During the course of the race, we learned how the race would be conducted. The entire field started out with a 2 mile trail run. I suspect that the goal of this segment was to spread the field a bit.

Once we got back to the starting line, we were given two maps -- the standard state park map and a 20,000:1 military topographic map. We were also given two "clues". We next set out on our mountain bikes for about 10 miles of riding, collecting two more "points".

Points are collected by stamping your "passport" with a special hole punch attached to trees spread throughout the park.

After the refreshing bike ride, we were given a second clue sheet with 4 more coordinates and clues. These were to be gathered by foot, and were quite a bit deeper into the wilderness of the park. Here's Corey climbing a tree for one of the points.

We managed to gather 3 out of these 4 points. The 4th one eluded us, and we wasted way too much time searching for it.

The next four points were to be gathered by boat. We paddled about 3 miles around the lake (some of it in a the face of a very stiff wind), again gathering 3 out of the 4 points. We made the strategic decision to skip the 4th point, as we were starting to run a bit short on time. The rules of the race required that you be back at the finish line by the 6 hour mark or stiff penalties were enforced.

Driving into the park we did notice this sign...

Which you start to think more about right about now...

We got better about plotting the target points over time, and developed a much better strategy about 5 hours into a 6 hour race. Oops :-)

We did finish, and we didn't come in last, so that's something...

Results are here. We came out 22 of 36 teams, so nothing to brag about. But we did learn quite a bit about adventure racing and would have a much better strategy next time around ;-)

Corey and I packed up after the race and drove to College Station for the night, where we hung out at some of my old watering holes on Northgate (Dudley's Draw and Fitzwilly's), watching A&M beat Baylor on TV.

:-Dustin

San Antonio, Texas

2010-11-10T10:45:00.003-06:00

We got back from Miami and Key West late on Monday night, November 1st. But I would not be home long, as I was back on the road again for work by Sunday, November 7th, driving down to San Antonio, TX for Rackspace's OpenStack Design Summit.

I spent Monday through Friday that week in San Antonio, but Kim came down to visit me on Wednesday, which was a really nice way to break up the week.

I hardly took any pictures at all, but I did snap this picture of Kim and I...

Contrast that with another picture of Kim and I in San Antonio, almost 7 years earlier...

Good times :-)

:-Dustin

Key West, Florida

2010-11-01T10:44:00.010-05:00

We had the best of intentions when we started our grand road trip around the country. We had planned on driving all the way to the southernmost tip of Florida -- Key West -- for the 4th of July and Kim's birthday. It seemed like a great way to sort of "kick off" our our drive. Alas, that was not meant to be, as we ended up spending almost 3 weeks in Louisiana and Mississippi dealing with poor Kim's unexpected gall bladder issues.

To get back on track, we had to skip most of Florida, and drove straight through to Savannah, GA for the 4th of July (Kim's birthday). We promised ourselves that we'd visit Key West and southern Florida again some time.

As Lady Luck would have it, I was working in Orlando, FL the last week of October (our first week back from the trip). We made some arrangements with Mathias and Patricia (our friends and hosts from Montreal), and met them in Miami, rented a car, and spent Halloween weekend (a.k.a. Fantasy Fest) in Key West.

Our escapades are chronicled below...

Just across the street from our hotel stood this cute little gem that Kim deemed absolutely adorable. "Kimberly's Sweets and Treats". Pretty perfect.

We had breakfast for lunch at the Blue Heaven. My sister, Leigh, had given us a gift certificate way back when we thought we were going to be in Key West in July. This place inspired a Jimmy Buffet tune of the same name.

It has a charming little courtyard with chickens roaming around. We ate outside and enjoyed the glorious October weather.

After we straightened out a minor issue with the hotel reservation, we finally checked into our room -- a gorgeous two-bedroom suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Casa Marina property on the southern end of Key West.

The resort was really nice! We had an extensive balcony.

And a view of the Atlantic Ocean and the pool -- both of which we enjoyed each day of our weekend.

There was also a little gazebo attached to the resort, out over the water.

All four of us walked out to watch a sunset.

Now this was, in fact, October 31st, Halloween. When Mathias and I booked this trip, we had never heard of Fantasy Fest. I just noticed that hotel accommodations were far more expensive than what I had previously booked on dive trips down to the keys. In any case, we were in for a really exciting night.

Mathias and Patricia dressed in matching sailor costumes, while Kim and I dressed as Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton from HBO's True Blood.

A little True Blood Budweiser helped me get "in character" :-)

Ahhh, that's better...

Fantasy Fest itself was really quite fun. Kim being from New Orleans (and me from Baton Rouge), we're quite familiar with Mardi Gras and parades. Fantasy Fest is perhaps similar to Mardi Gras, involving parades and alcohol and debauchery. Many of the characters in the parade were wearing almost nothing more than body paint, and so I don't have many pictures to show you here :-)

We had a great time at the parade though, which was really long (2+ hours).

I started the next morning out with a little snorkeling from the shore. I swam around the small reef, noting a few barracuda and other small fish.

...after which a guy from the resort brought us all frozen towels. Oh, that was awesome!

Later that day, we booked an excursion to watch the dolphins.

The four of us had a great time on the water.

After about an hour and a half cruising around, we finally spotted a few small families of dolphins.

It was really neat, seeing them surface, and dive back under.

We watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just before heading back to the port.
For our last night in Key West, we treated ourselves to a fine dinner at Cafe Sole. We might have had a few second thoughts as we walked in, and a disgruntled pair of patrons were having an argument with a nearby table and eventually the owner. But we quickly realized that they were just ornery, and we had a fabulous night.

Kim and Patricia...

Mathias and Dustin...

We left Key West on Monday morning, driving the rental car back to Miami where our flights left in the early evening. We had a bit of time to kill during the day, so we spent it at an alligator farm just south of Miami in the northern end of the Keys. Being from Louisiana, I've seen my fair share of alligators. Mathias and Patricia on the other hand, not so much :-)

We watched an "alligator show", with this guy "taming" the savage beast.

It was pretty impressive to see...

After the show, each of held a baby alligator. Some of us took more encouragement than others ;-) I'm proud of you, Kimmie!

Patricia showed this picture to her students back in Montreal. I bet they were probably impressed ;-)

And Mathias and I got a turn.

Finally, we watched a "feeding". You do not want to be on the other side of this fence when this gal is chunking dead rats over. Wow.

What a weekend!

Needless to say, Kim and I were excited to get down to Key West after having missed most of Florida on our travels a few months earlier. And of course, hanging out with Mathias and Patricia again was a real treat. Fantasy Fest was completely unexpected, but an awesome way to spend Halloween. We were pleased with how many people recognized us as Bill and Sookie :-) Snorkeling, dolphin watching, good food, and alligator farms -- all icing on the cake!

:-Dustin

Are We Back Yet?

2010-10-30T10:04:00.000-05:00

Only kinda sorta...

We arrived back home in Austin around 4pm, Saturday October 23, 2010. But, I was on a plane at 11am the following day, Sunday October 24, 2010. Less than 24 hours at home.

So I left Kim back in Austin to get the house in order and get settled in, while I traveled to Orlando, Florida for a week of the Ubuntu Developer Summit. On the road again...

It was a long week of busy work, and I only took one single picture all week long in Orlando, with my phone, actually :-)

The next Ubuntu release is code named "Natty Narwhal", and I thought I'd introduce my European friends what the word "Natty" usually means around here.

So I worked Monday - Friday, and then left Orlando on Friday night, flying down to Miami with my friend Mathias. That was the flight where I met my childhood hero, Andre Dawson.

In Miami, we met up with Kim and Mathias' girlfriend, Patricia (who hosted us when we were in Montreal). We drove down to Key West, Florida for the weekend. More about that in the next post ;-)

:-Dustin

Meeting your Childhood Hero

2010-10-29T18:54:00.001-05:00

Who was your sports hero when you were 8 years old?

Mine was, without question, Chicago Cubs right fielder, Andre Dawson. He had a tremendous swing, a laser rocket arm, a golden glove, and an intensity that was unmatched by most who played the game (his nickname was The Hawk). I wanted nothing more, as an 8 year old kid, to grow up and be just like Andre Dawson.

I was quite happy to see that he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in July 2010, and excited to actually visit the Hall in Cooperstown, NY a week later.

I was happy that he was elected, and excited to visit the Hall and see his exhibit.

Now just imagine my surprise as I'm leaving the Ubuntu Developer Summit sitting on one of Continental Airlines' smallest prop planes in Orlando, FL waiting to depart for Miami, FL. Sitting there, a luggage tag slides by me at eye level. There's a Florida Marlins logo, and a name, Andre Dawson. My heart skipped a beat with excitement. Andre Dawson was one of the 6 other people on my flight!

I spent the next hour reminiscing over the incredible situation. I ran the conversation over in my head a dozen times. Finally, when the plane landed, I walked two rows back and said:

"Mr. Dawson? I just wanted to say that you have been my hero since I was 8 years old. I loved the way you played the game, and wanted to play just like you. Congratulations on Cooperstown, well deserved! Would it be possible to take a picture with you?"

He said, "Oh, uh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Sure."

And, again, thank you, Andre Dawson.

:-Dustin