Shots out the window

Made several trips to the Southwest in April and May this year. I always find myself conflicted when choosing a seat - even though my body demands the aisle, I love looking out the window and checking out the scenery. Flying over the Grand Canyon I got lucky a couple of times and got a clear shot or two







There was still some snow in the Sierras as well.

Cancun Vacation

Once Joanna had tax season wrapped up, we took a well deserved escape to Cancun for a week, far and away the longest we’ve ever left the kids. Fortunately they were in the capable hands of Aunt Beth. We had an incredible time snorkeling, visiting the Mayan ruins, eating good food, and laying on the beach.

Out the window of our hotel was the biggest flag and flagpole I’ve ever seen. I took a picture of it while flying, but against the sky without any size reference to compare to, it wasn’t that impressive. Luckily, the army guys took it down for a few days and then came back to hang it up early one morning. Check out how many dudes it takes to carry this thing

And here it is getting run up the pole


While I didn’t catch any good pictures of the fish while snorkeling, I did get a shot of a bunch of shipwrecks stuck on the reef we were swimming around…casualties of a couple recent hurricanes



We decided that although the water seemed slightly chillier than Hawaii, the sea life was more spectacular and diverse. Besides the colorful fish, we saw an octopus, lobsters, barracuda, and lots of different types of coral.

The Mayan ruins were awesome. We drove our rental car out to Tulum and did a self guided tour there…its up on a cliff above the ocean, with a spectacular beach down below… and enjoyed some time in the water since the sun was blindingly hot that day



We also went to Chichen Itza, and had the guided tour on this one…decided we didn’t want to drive ourselves 3 hours out into the jungle so we took the bus. We passed through some towns that were much more traditional Mexico than touristy Cancun, including this little Mayan town that consisted mostly of a single town square where women sold traditional handicrafts



The ruins at Chichen Itza were amazing, and went on for ever. Here’s the main temple that you've probably heard of, the one thats perfectly aligned with the sun at the summer and winter solstice



Here's temple to the rain god, Chac-mool. At the very top, between the two pillars, is a statue of ol' Chac laying on his back, with a platter on his belly. That's where the officiating priest placed the freshly plucked heart of the sacrifice victim as an offering

And just down the way is the ball court, where two teams of warriors would battle it out to get a little ball through the stone hoops that are about 25 feet off the ground. No hands allowed, just feet, hips, and elbows. Our tourguide said it was unclear whether the winning or losing team captain got sacrificed. It would make for an interesting fourth quarter if you knew somebody was paying a visit to the Chacster after the clock ran out

Finally, we picked up some Luchedor masks for Zack and Abbi while we were there…they put them to good use on the trampoline back home – Nacho Libre style

April trip to Dalian

This is what San Francisco looks like out the plane window when your flight leaves on time. Which for my travel through the city is batting less that .500. No fog, no storm, no reasonable meterological phenomenon to blame for a late departure. So it was noteworthy, or at least blogworthy

Unfortunately for this trip, however, clear skies in the bay area were no match for the fogged-in Shanghai airport. I’ve been told that international flights don’t have any trouble landing in China, but the domestic airlines there require clear skies, since most Chinese pilots are not instrument certified, and need to be able to see the runway to take off and land.….Which begs the question what happens if the fog pops up after we’re in the air…
After several hours of waiting for things to clear, the locals started to get a little restless. A crowd of several hundred ganged up on one customer service guy at the counter…fortunately for us we had a Mandarin speaker with us who could go and figure out what was going on. Here’s a short clip of the crowd scene:

Eventually, the crowd prevailed, and the airline sent buses to pick up the stranded travelers and take us all to local hotels that must base their existence on circumstances like ours…think worn out 1970’s dorm room with a swamp in the back yard. It took quite a bit of negotiating for us to all get our own room, since 1) its completely normal to share a room with others in China and 2) the airport crowd scene was repeated again at the hotel, with buses driving up, dropping off the travelers, and then leaving them with nowhere else to go…and not enough rooms to go around.

Here’s the view out the back of the hotel, consisting of an interestingly swampy canal with a few dudes out trying to catch their breakfast. Unfortunately the fog was a little to thick to get a good shot of them in action. Must have been a little too foggy to take the SS Mudsquid out as well. Although it looks to be ready made for the filming of the Chinese version of Huck Finn….or maybe Deliverance.

The next day the fog lifted, and we made it to Dalian for our meetings and site tour. Trusses are going up at the factory. The construction technique they’re using is to actually drop them into place at the end of the building, and then slide them into place.

To better appreciate the scale, here’s a closeup of some fearless ironworkers riding these things into position

A somewhat less impressive construction technique is the one the concrete workers used here to check how dry the concrete was in the freshly poured auditorium…with their boots



We pass this coal fired power plant every day on our way to the factory. Even though it’s not a nuclear plant, the cooling towers always make me think of the Simpsons, and wonder if there’s a Chinese equivalent of Homer at the controls. I need to ask around to find out the Mandarin equivalent of Doh


Lots of shipbuilding going on in Dalian. We passed the shipyard every day as well on our way to the site…I’ve taken a dozen pictures of the gargantuan gantry cranes being used to build the container ships there…and every time the pictures don’t do justice to it. There’s nothing around to give any sort of scale to how huge it is. So I didn’t add it to the blog, but here’s a picture of an oil platform under construction that I thought was interesting, and it actually turned out ok for being shot out of the window of our van going down the freeway

Spring Break in Bend

Things had been warming up a bit in Portland, so I had visions of riding bikes on the endless trails in Sunriver, maybe even playing a little tennis with the kids. It ended up being a little tough to do in a year with near-record snowfall in the Cascade range. Luckily, we packed the sleds and snow gear too, and headed up to Mt. Bachelor for some snow caving and sledding







Dave Jones and his kids joined us for the long weekend while tax-girl was deep in 1099s…good times for the kids to have their buddies around, good man-time for me and Dave too.