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.