Trip - Santa Barbara, CA

I know it's been super long since I've posted - it's been a combination of things, mostly because I'm working on my public talk and concentrating on that ...

Santa Barbara is an awesome place, without a doubt. The best part about going there is the drive from LA - the Pacific Coast Highway is a wonderfully winding road that runs along the ocean. It's got amazing views and excellent surf spots. I don't know if the pictures I've taken quite capture it, but I've tried.


























The drive has to be done in a cool car, though. Lauren and I rented a convertible Mustang from Budget for $30.00/day. I don't know how Lauren got that deal, but it worked out really well - we put the top down like a middle aged couple trying to prove their youth.

The car got good gas mileage, and got us an occasional envious look from some old people, so we pretty much got what we wanted. "It's not fun unless you're torturing old people"
is pretty much my new motto.









You know a trip wouldn't be complete without some pictures of a sunset. The brother we stayed with, Weldon, took us to an amazing beach with a resturant for dinner. Lauren and I got so many pictures of the sunset, and when we looked at them later, they were so good they looked fake. We promise, these photos are 100% real, and are not touched up or photo-shopped at all.

This is probably my favorite picture of the trip. Yeah, that's me on the beach. I'm trying not to put 50 photos on each page, but it's getting more and more difficult.






I think I should have tried to get the name of this beach, but I forgot. I'll just call it "cooler than Seaside Heights" beach. That's actually me standing there, looking cute in my Banana Republic shirt.

Trip - Summer Minor League Game

Minor League Baseball Game


If you're like me, you're not going to drop $200 every time you want to see the Yankees play. Sure, $17 for Mets tickets aren't bad, but then there's the whole hassle of getting into the city. Sometimes you just want to chill in Jersey, right?


This weekend involved a minor league game. Tickets were $8, and if you came in at the 6th inning or later, the game was free. Kinda makes sense if you only feel like hanging out for an hour or so after something else nearby. Enjoy the pics.

Trip - Salt Lake City, Utah

Trip - Salt Lake City, Utah

I know what you're thinking - why go to a place with Mormons when we've survived for thousands of years without Mormons? Well, the answer is that they've got some of the most amazing views I've ever seen. If this doesn't make you want to fly out right now and take pictures of your own - then I've taken some pretty crappy pictures.

While I'm here, I asked one of the people in my training class who knows the area where to go - and he told me Big Cotton Wood is the place. It's a huge canyon between the mountains, and at the end is a ski resort. I should have headed for this place sooner than I did, but I was exhausted because of the time change and my training class and the super long flight.

I found a parking lot for the shuttle bus to the ski resort. It had some of those telescopes that cost $0.25, so I figured if I waited around I'd probably see a cool sunset. This was a difficult shot to get, and I wished I was higher up. I guess I could have stood on the roof of the rental SUV, but that didn't really occur to me at the time.

Sometimes, when you take a bunch of pictures, you say to yourself later - I should have taken one of me, and and a moose. So here it is. No moose.

I'm not going to lie - the flight out here is ridiculously long. Bring a book or something. The last 2 hours of this flight killed me, mostly because my laptop battery died and I didn't even bring a book to read. I talked to the Mormon sitting next to me on the plane for a few minutes, but he was pretty clueless about his beliefs and looked really scared, so I stopped.


As soon as we started landing, I saw this awesome picture, so I asked the Asian lady sitting next to the window to take a picture for me. Apparently, not all Asian people canwork cameras and understand what zoom is ... hence the wing.