Day 2 Santa Cruz to San Luis Obispo.

Day 2 started a little later than originally anticipated, because our extended hang out session in the City. We first headed to Santa Cruz, it was a great opportunity to show Jason some of the stereotypical California lifestyle. As expected there were plenty of people out surfing and generally having a good time. It was a great opportunity to warm up my new Canon T1i .

Hanging in Santa Cruz!

This shot was taken as a rapid succession shot. The waves were big today.

Then we went on to Pebble Beach, a very famous golf course, which is well known for it's lone Cypress tree. It was really cool to see it in day light, as last time I came through here, the sun was setting.  It was a very impressive resort, with a beautiful beach side 18th hole. How anyone gets a good golf score here is beyond me. Personally I wouldn't want to deprive my eyes of the scenery by focusing on golf.

18th hole

The Pebble beach Restaurant

Here's the well know "Lone Cypress Tree", if you look closely it's being held up by wires..

Next we headed off to a quint little town affectionately names Carmel-by-the-Sea. According to Wikipedia Clint Eastwood was Mayor or a brief period in the 80's. It's a very picturesque place, just look at the architecture.

Very beautiful architecture.

 

Jason standing in the coridor.

From there we drove up to San Luis Obispo also known as SLO. We didn't do much there, because we were so tired and hungry from the drive. When we got there, it was after 7pm on a holiday in a small town, so nothing was open. Unfortunately this means we missed out on the whole American Thanksgiving Turkey feast. In a move typically only seen in television, we opted for Chinese food as an alternative. Can't say it was the best food I've had, but at least is was better than waiting 12 hours for something to open up.  (No pictures unfortunately).




I've uploaded some more Pictures onto my MobileMe account.

Here's the link!

Real *Canadian* Road trip Part 1

Finally got a 4 day holiday which I really needed (as my lack of blogging probably indicates)

Jason Cook, a friend of mine from Toronto, came out to visit, and we went on a road trip down the coast to Santa Monica / Los Angles. It was a fantastic opportunity to try my new camera, the Canon T1i.

When Jason and I travel (as we did to Europe a few years back) we don't just sit back and smell the roses, no, we go hard seeing everything we possibly can in the little time we have. It's the same mentality we both share in our work and elsewhere in life. It's probably why we get along so well.

The first night after thoughtfully avoiding the long line at the airport arrivals ( by instead going to the departures ) We first went over to Mike Jutan's to hang out and grab some grub at Mel's Diner. It's a frequent destination of mine when showing people from out of town a little bit of San Francisco.

Here I am smiling for the camera as Jason tries to choose what to eat.

Jason's enjoying his shake, while Mike can't contain his excitement for his sundae.

Hanging out at Mike's place.

It would have been an average night, but that's not the way Jason or I do things. We decided to leave as early as possible in the morning to start on our way.

To be continued!

Update ...

Ok now that I've not only found my cable for my digital camera AND I've bought a new digital SLR, I'm going to try to make writing this blog a bigger priority.

Stay tooned.
Alex

A real American road trip!!!

So in a very last minute Awesome move. Nefeur, Chris, Ross and I took a road trip down the coast of California to Santa Barbara. It was quite a beautiful trip. The mountains are just amazing. Nothing like the "mountain' we have in Ontario (yes no pleural because Blue is the only one even close).

The first day after work we drove to Pebble beach and took a look around. Here are a few of the gorgeous pictures taken of the sunset.

Chris, Nefeur and I posing in the sunset!

I really like this one.

The second day we hit the open road, The view was amazing for the entire drive. Mid day we stopped and rented some Quads and took to the sand dunes in Pismo. I highly recommend it if you love bikes, quads or ATVs. ( Where I'm from a Quad is what you race, and ATVs are usually used for work tasks like farming ) I rented the higher torqued Honda 400EX. Here's a few photos with the guys.

Chris is getting ready to go, bandit style.

Nefeur invented the bandit look.

Here's Chris, Nefeur and Ross

And here's one from the drive:

The coast

we eventually ended the day in S.L.O. (San Luis Obispo).

On the last day we finally made it to Santa Barbara, our final destination.

Very quiet town, had a lot of character.

Driving into Santa Barbara

How'd this happen?

It was a fantastic trip, I highly recommend taking the trip down the coast if you have a few days to spare.

August long weekend in Canada

I went back to Canada for a week in August to visit my cottage, friends and attend Raf’s Wedding.

I didn’t take many shots from the wedding, but here’s a few

Looking sharp if I don’t say so myself.

Cutting the cake


I always take a bunch of pictures at my cottage, Here are a few interesting ones.

Dave’s trying to find cell service with that NON-iPhone device

Here’s a cool shot of me grabbing my camera

Standing near Georgian Bay.
Planing on my big board - It’s a 160 L with a 7.0 Boxer SL Sail
Great for light wind fresh water conditions.

MobileMe Gallery.

I'm really loving this new MobileMe Web gallery. It's so easy to use and it looks amazing. The thing is if it's not super easy to use I won't use it. For example look at my other web gallery.

Anyways here is my California Summer 2009 Gallery.

Here is my older Gallery of Yosemite Camping trip.

More Windsurfing

This weekend I went out windsurfing again, on BOTH days. It was pretty awesome. This time I went out with a 5.4M sail on a 112L board. The reason why this is so good is that I'm quickly learning how to use a smaller board. My water starts are getting even better, and I'm starting to get the hang of the area. It's a much different wind than at the cottage and in Maui.

I hope next time I go out I can get to a ~105L. But it might be time to take a lesson on Tacking and Jibing, cause it's really a lot different than on a 160L Shark (which I have at home in Canada).

No action shots yet, but here I am outside my car.

Look at that awesome wax on the car .

More Visitors

[I forgot to post this but here it is 3 weeks later]

This weekend Andrew came and visited all the way from Peterborough Ontario. He and Mike came down to visit me at Apple, and luck would have it that we just happened to have a beer bash this week. It was a pretty good one to come to because we had the new products out on display from WWDC a few weeks back.

Saturday, we drove back into the city to check our Fisherman's Wharf. It was the usual tour, Mike got his Coffee, I grabbed some fruit. It was good times. We did this leading up to the big event, going to see Transformers 2. Usually I wouldn't get soo pumped up to see an action movie directed by Michael Bay, (he hasn't topped "The Rock" yet). But this was Mike's first credit in an ILM movie. And what a movie to be associated with. Visually it was beyond words (hint hint go see it). All and all it was a good movie, my only complaint is that the graphics were too good, that in production they stole too much focus away from plot development. (More likely they knocked it out of the park because of the lack of a top notch script :p)

It was awesome to see it for the first time with Mike and Andrew.

I didn't take a lot of pictures but here are some

Mike and Andrew at Fisherman's Wharf.

Mike striking a pose with his awesome "in case of emergency - Break Dance" shirt. Andrew strutting cause he's in Cali.

Windsurfing-first time in the bay area

Sunday, after spending some time thinking about it, and looking at the wind conditions I headed back to Boardsports. I decided to get a 10 session pass which I can use to rent equipment. I'm hoping this will allow me to enhance my ability enough so I can buy a smaller board and get the proper sails for it. My hope is that I can improve enough so that I can take another trip to Maui in October or April.

I decided to try to use an even smaller board then the 135L I used in Maui. Today I rigged a 115L with a 5.3 Sail. It was much different with the smaller board and I was pretty rusty at my water starts. But all in all it was a great time. I'm definitely getting better. Oddly enough with the full body wetsuit (aka a "steamer" to those who windsurf) was perfect, and the cold water didn't bother me at all.

It was a great session with about 20 knots with minimal gusting (roughtly 23 knots). I can't wait to head out again!! Hopefully next time I'll get some more *better* images too.

Some more nice conditions.

I'm out for now.

Alex

In search of wind and surf.

Saturday, I decided that I had enough of just feeling the nice breezes coming through the valley. I decided that it was time to go looking for some actual windsurfing conditions. I had heard from some friends that there was some sails over in a lake called Shoreline lake, so hit the nearby park and I rollerbladed around. To my surprise, on that little lake there was some super flat conditions with decent wind. (Around 12-17 knots). I think this will be a great place to try to bring a bunch of friends who are interested in learning the sport. I think it's perfect place to learn the basics and practice the fundamentals. The rental shop on the lake also had pretty decent pricing. (Map)

The rental shop: Silicon Shores @ Shoreline lake.

Sailing on Shoreline beach, nice and flat.

Next I went out to a point out in Pal Alto. It was pretty empty but there was a few people just rigging up. It looked like a place where you'd want to go out with some friends. Not really for me at the moment. (Map)

Pal Alto point (Rigging area)

Someone sailing out of the channel.

Finally I went to Coyote Point (map). This is where Boardsports is located. Oddly enough the name and sign is oddly similar to the place where I bought my rig back in Toronto. I did ask, they are not connected in anyway. It was just coincidence.

Coyote Point was amazing and this is where I found some of the best conditions I've seen since Maui. It was just blasting. The wind speeds were upwards of 25 knots, and according to iWindsurf.com there were gusts up to 35 knots. I'm super excited about this place!!

After talking to really cool shop manager and looking at the gear they had, I headed back to get ready for Nefaur's BBQ.

Unfortunately I did not take any photos, but it was a great time with some good people.

25 knots and some nice chop.

Looking down the shore towards San Fran.

Hey it's Boardsports, but this one is in SF.

To be continued...

WWDC

Last week I spent a good portion of the week at WWDC helping out as much as I could. It was an amazing opportunity, and I had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures that I can post. The highlight for me was definitely the labs. Being able to talk to the developers was amazing.

We (Apple iPhone team) also released iPhone 3.0 OS and announced the iPhone 3GS. I'm great to see that it's getting such an amazing response. A lot of hard work was put into it by fellow Apple Engineers! Good work guys!
-A

Outside Moscone Centre.

iPhone 3.0 feature poster.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard poster.

WWDC and Hockey

So I found out that I'm getting a WWDC pass and I'll be helping out at the conference. That means I'll be spending most of the week up in San Francisco, hanging out with Jutan as well. It should be a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to it a lot. Anyone in the city for the conference should send me a message.

In other Hockey related news, I played another pick up in San Jose, and there was this amazingly good player on the ice who up showed up everyone. I found out afterwards it was Victor Tikhonov from the Phoenix Coyotes. Pretty cool huh? Hopefully playing with someone like that will improve my game.

Yosemite!

This weekend I went up to Yosemite National park with the guys. It was amazing up there! The scenery was breathtaking. I took over 200 pictures.

I think we are going to try to get up there again this summer. Hopefully by then I'll have a digital SLR, I really think my point and shoot isn't doing it justice.

Taking a picture under the waterfall.

Cooking my chicken old school - on the fire.

Nefaur, Chris, Me and Loc

Chris trying(and failing) to put our food up in a tree... away from the bears.

Another great shot.

Just breath taking.

What a sight.

Met a family that were using Llama's to carry their bags. He had no problem posing for a picture.

Nefaur and I found a perfect photo op off the beaten trail. It overlooked everything.