From last week’s DesignCon trade show. Hard at work with a PCB Designer/Engineer visiting the National Instruments booth.
That’s Bhavesh, my colleague, in the left-center of the shot. I cut a couple video interviews during this show, too. I posted them to the ‘professionalism’ side-bar on the family blog; you can watch my funny mug say incomprehensible things on your computer screen by following the links there.
CNN today is running an article from Rick Steves, the professional European travel expert. The article is on strategies for packing light.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/09/17/europe.travel.packing/index.html
It was rather validating for me to read how Steve travels. I have learned to travel almost identically to Rick over the years. When C and I did our pilgrimage to Israel, we did check one bag each – our expedition-sized internal frame backpacks. Otherwise, we just carried on what we needed for the flight, plus a couple survival items in case the bags were delayed.
It’s a good article for travelers. I’m blogging it here so as to not lose it.
Leaving Anaheim, just before 5PM, we drove up I-5 to Lost Hills (NW of Bakersfield), then turned west on Hwy 46 to Paso Robles. From there, we picked up the 101 into Salinas and then Monterey. I think we got to the Blue Lagoon at about 2am.
With a quick unpack (C had packed one carry tote with each persons' clothing for the Sunday whale watch - only one bag needed!), the kids went into bed and we grownups took a quick shower before crashing.
The wake up call came at 7:30. One hour to get ready; departure at 8:30 to make the 9:00 boat departure on time. We were all tired, strung out and underslept. It was difficult, but we did it.
I think I'll let some of the photos do the talking on the whale watching trip. It was a one-of-a-kind Father's Day present, that's for sure. Pleasant enough; lots of marine mammal action all morning. The slow, rolling boat motion, coupled with the relative lack of sleep succeeded in rocking both children to sleep on multiple occasions. They woke up excitedly to see the animals, though.
Off the boat at 1pm, we bought a seafood lunch to fill our stomachs, then took off for the low-altitude flight 12-hour home. We headed up 101 and into San Jose. Then we veered inland on 680 and 880, avoiding the east bay area, through Fremont to Vacaville an onward north on the 505 until connecting with I-5 in Dunnigan (North of Sacramento)
At Dunnigan, I'd put 505 miles on the tank of gas I'd gotten in Lost Hills. Portland is less than 500 miles away from this spot, so I filled up one last time before home. With Subway sandwiches tucked away in the car with us, we ate when hungry and peed only once as we pushed on home, past Mt Shasta in the throes of a beautiful pink-tinged sunset, over the Siskiyous and up the Willamette valley. C slept most of this stretch, getting about 3 hours of car sleep. Finally, I gave the wheel to her about 20 miles south of Roseburg and she saw us all the way to the driveway.
It was good to be home.
As I walked in the door, after a week away, tired and draggy, I took quick look around. The place was clean and tidy - just how we'd left it. The rooms were all organized and finished-looking. I didn't see home improvement projects in my minds' eye when I looked around. Instead, I saw a finished-looking home with a lot of neat detail throughout. It felt much more finished than it felt in-process. This ability to see the place as 'done' is a tipping point for the rehabilitation wrap-up.
It takes a lot of getting used to, this big tank on the Mercedes. We're all the way to Anaheim on 2.5 tanks of gas. Fill up near Chico, then again south of San Luis Obispo. Here in Anaheim, we still have a half-tank. You could almost forget you need gas!
Disneyland Highlights:
The hotel room was close. The convention center was a five minute walk; the parks were a ten minute walk if the parking lot tram wasn't running. If it was, then there were only four minutes of walking in the ten minute commute. Not that different than our walk from the Paradise Pier hotel back in 2004.
For all the cachet that comes from staying in a Disney property, we had a nice time using the value motel approach. C, who usually prefers more stars on the hotel rating than the Jolly Roger could dish, even said it was a pleasant enough time. This trip, value weighed more heavily than 'effect.' More days in the park were better than a nicer room experience.
We spent Saturday night driving out of LA and up to Monterey. Back for whale watching, dude!
We got in to Monterey after dark, and checked in to our mid-20th-century drive-up single-story motel, the Blue Lagoon. At $65/night, it isn't fancy. But it was clean and functional. We just needed a place to sleep, shower and change. It was that, without doubt.
Monday morning, after rousting the kids, packing the car once again, and loading up, we were off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This facility was orginally funded by the Hewlett family (as in Hewlett-Packard), and opened about 25 years ago or so. I first saw it in 1986, and it was mighty impressive then. Now? It's over twice the size and truly spectacular.
The Aquarium sits on the ocean side of historic Cannery Row. The aquarium building itself once was a cannery. In fact, the cannery's original boiler system is preserved in-situ in the lobby of the aquarium.
We spent all day. In fact, we had to hurry through the second half of the facility, because the original building took up six of our scheduled eight hours! There was so much to see. Sharks. Sheephead fish. Touch pools with bat rays. Species upon species of beautiful jellyfish. Diver shows. The works. The one exhibit voted MOST COOL by the entire Johnson family? The lone Cuttlefish, off in the corner of the kids exhibit. R is fascinated with the color-changing capabilities of Cuttlefish. After spending some time with this guy, we all came to share R's enthusiasm for them.
Finally, at 5PM, we started off on the six-hour mostly non-interstate drive to Anaheim. We got there uneventfully. The car, steadfast as it continues to prove, got us there with nary a clunk or clatter.
On the drive to Anaheim, C called for a family consultation. She floated the idea that we change our schedule and spend Father's Day back in Monterey. As she suggested this, she held up a brochure for whale watching in Monterey Bay. Apparently, there were three simultaneous whale populations working through the Monterey area: blues, greys and humpbacks. The vote was to see if the schedule change was do-able. After a few quick phone calls, it turned out it was. We canceled one day in Anaheim at $160/night, booked one day at the Blue Lagoon again at the weekend rate of $100/night, and reserved our space on the 9am whale watching trip.
I guess that pretty much tells us all what the family thought of Monterey and Santa Cruz, eh?
We needed a getaway. That became clear as we got going on our trip. It seemed that the whole family was ready.
The drive to San Francisco got started a couple hours later than we had planned. C and I needed a bit more sleep before we felt safe to drive. We pulled away from the front of the house at about 6:15 on Saturday morning, and arrived in San Francisco at about 5pm. It was almost that uneventful.
We got some McDonald's breakfast in Cottage Grove, drove straight through almost to Sacramento before needing gas (that's a LONG haul), and made our approach on San Francisco from the north bay, so as to cross the Golden Gate into town. It all went without a hitch. C had built up a bunch of map references for us - Google Maps routes and addresses. We didn't have a AAA trip-tik for this trip and she felt out-of-the-know. What we did have was a new GPS for the car, a Garmin Nuvi 220. C was used to the less-than-helpful guidance our old GPS unit gave us. But slowly, steadily, as I used the Garmin to fill in the details she didn't have (and was stressing over), and used the Garmin's POI add on feature (which I'd loaded with key points of interest to us) to dynamically keep us on track, she started to realize that this GPS unit really DID make a difference.
The car managed everything just fine. This is our first official road trip in the '94 S320 Mercedes. It is abundantly clear to me that the initial owner(s) of this car pampered it to no end. That, coupled with the Mercedes tradition to over-engineer the S-class cars means that this scoot does NOT show it's age at all. We motored right along. In fact, at one point, I was doing between 75-80mph on open, straight, traffic-free interstate. C turned to me and said "This is a nice car. Rides really well. Why are you driving it slower than normal? Are you pampering it?" Of course, when I told her we were doing 80, she chuckled. We talked about how this car was designed for the autobahn, and that 80mph is hardly even stressing it. "This is a great road trip car, after all" she concluded.
We got an average mpg between 20mpg and 21mpg for the trip down. Looks like the mpg is creeping upward with every tank. We did better on the second tank than the first.
The San Francisco hotel was nice enough. On Lombard Street close in, it was a well-placed base for giving the kids a taste of the city. The GPS took us right to the driveway; now C was satisfied that we had a reliable electronic alternative. The hotel was a motel style, with room doors opening to the outside. The building was shaped like a courtyard, however, with car parking on the street level underneath the rooms. Nice and secure for inner SF. We unloaded, freshened up, and set off to see San Francisco in the afternoon.
First stop was Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf. From there, we rode the cable car to Chinatown and had dinner. By the time we finished dinner, it was around 10 in the evening. Rather than futz with the bus home, we took a cab back to the hotel, and slept a tired, satisfied sleep.
Sunday morning turned out to be sunny and warm. We drove down the crooked part of Lombard, then doubled back to Fort Mason Center to have brunch at Greens restaurant.
The Brunch was just lovely. Greens is just as nice as it was twelve years ago. The view from our table was of the bay, and the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. Magnificent. I was a bit worried. In twelve years, did Greens improve or fall into a tailspin? Restaurants can change a lot in a decade, after all. For us, it was nice to see that they held steady over the long interval. It was like a step back in time for C and I...just as we remembered it. So that's what made it so poignant to be sitting there with our kids. Everything was the same in three dimensions, only the fourth dimension (time) had changed.
We finished with some trinket shopping in Chinatown, a banana split in Ghirardelli Square, then got out of town for Santa Cruz and Monterey.
The whole goal in stopping in Santa Cruz was to ride the Giant Dipper roller coaster. Built in 1924, of wood, on the beachfront boardwalk, it remains essentially unchanged. M was too short to ride, and C was unwilling. But R and I rode it a couple times. He said it was way different from anything else he'd ever ridden. And with that comment, I said to myself "Well, then. Mission accomplished!"
M was struggling at Santa Cruz. She was too short for many of the rides. at 49 inches tall, she couldn't make the 50-inch cutoff for most of the thrill rides. Amazingly, though, the Double Shot ride - a reverse bungee cannon shot (like on the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas) had a 48 inch height requirement. M qualified. Even MORE amazingly , she wanted to go on the ride very much. Her older brother, however, refused to go. Said it was too scary. So M and I took the ride. As I got on, I called out to C "Hey, if I die, remember that the car has about a half-tank of gas. You'll need to fill up by Sacramento." She just laughed at me. As we waited in line, I turned to M and said, "You know what? With this laryngitis, when I scream like a little girl on this ride, nobody's going to know!" She thought that was a funny thing to say.
Well, the ride lived up to the anticipation. We rocketed up about 75 feet in just a couple seconds, then fell 50 feet just as fast. The launch caught M off guard and the acceleration slammed her face into the restraints. banging her nose pretty hard. The rest of the ride, she was calling out "I'm hurt, I'm hurt!" I was worried. At the end, though, she hopped off, announced that was awesome and then told me about banging her nose. R may have ridden all the roller coasters at Santa Cruz, but for the rest of the evening, M had bragging rights over her brother for doing something that he could have done but chose not to.
The drive to Monterey was at sunset. Nice. With the sunroof open and pleasant, we all felt relaxed and in harmony as a family.
More on Monterey in another post.
Over the past couple days, I've gotten confirmation that a trip to the Design Automation Conference is in the works. Given that the DAC is in Anaheim this year (right across from Disneyland), and given that I'm getting some business trip expenses help on this trip, we're investigating a family road trip to Anaheim. I do my show work, and the family kicks back for almost a week in Anaheim to jump-start their summer vacation.
While I'm definitely going to Anaheim, the family portion of the trip is not yet finalized. The timing is tricky, requiring the kids miss the last three two days of school, as well at their gymnastics Mini-Olympics events. So, it's an idea, but not yet a full-blown plan.
5/15 UPDATE: It's now a full-blown plan. We had a family meeting last night to discuss. The kids are fine with missing Mini-Olympics and a couple days of school. Somehow, I figured they WOULD be. We also have an itinerary to work from now.
