Kaua'i, 2008

The second week in December, we took a trip to the Garden Isle of Kaua'i. My mom and Mike had a timeshare that we were able to stay at, and with 2 frequent flyer miles and $10, United took us from Boston to Lihue via IAD and LAX. After many hours on Boeing 757s, we finally touched down at LIH.

Day one was really windy. In the morning, Mike and I went for a hike on the NaPali coast. The guidebook said the 5 mile round trip would take about 3 1/2 hours, so Mike and I wanted to see if we could do it in 2. It took us about 1:50, but we were moving. Here's a shot of our destination, a small beach where a stream enters the ocean. Too rough to go for a swim this time of year, but it's a nice senic spot.


Time to get back, we've got a flight to catch!

We had an airplane sightseeing flight around the island as one of our Christmas gifts, thanks mom and mike! We boarded the plane, and began our trip around the island in a clockwise direction. This plane is from Australia, designed for use in the outback. It was less than 1/2 year old, and used much less fuel than a helicopter, so we felt green and safe. More on the green later. The clouds were around 3000' so we couldn't see up into the canyon or any of the waterfalls.



Up we went, I was hoping to sit in the right seat, since I always wanted to be a commercial airline pilot or at least get my private license, but someone else got to due to weight balancing issues. Oh well. We go around the north west end of the island, off of the imposing cliffs of the Na Pali coast and it got very bumpy. This is where a lot of us started to feel a bit green due to the bumps! The view was nice, however, and he's a shot out of the window.

We made it around the island, and our pilot made a great touch down on runway 17 at LIH. I don't get to take many shots from this viewpoint. It reminded me of a good blog I like to follow, check out Rand the NW/DL pilot's blog here.


Rand probably hasn't used runway 17 at LIH as I believe he's used to the other runway, for larger jets. You can see the approach lights just to the left of the runway, right of the pilot's headset. There are 4 Fresnel lenses here to help the pilot see if he's coming in too high or too low. If he's on the right slope, the 2 on the left will be white, the 2 on the right will be red. In this shot, the 3 left are white, the 1 on the right is red, meaning we're a little bit high. However, the pilot corrected soon after this shot and we had a smooth touchdown in a brisk crosswind of about 25 knots. Elizabeth gave him a round of applause after touchdown!

The next day was our Zipline tour. We got to ride 9 ziplines around and over a series of trees and streams, and it was a blast! We had lunch at a swimming hole, jumping of a cliff and enjoying the scenery. Elizabeth and my mom were really scared to go, but they did just fine. Luckily, the first zipline was a short easy "bunny hill" zipline to get them warmed up. Here's my mom crusing across one of the valleys.



That was pretty much our last day without rain for the rest of the trip. The skies opened up and there was no snorkeling or scuba diving for me. We even had thunderstorms and a tornado on the island! Lots of flooding on the roads and some mudslides. Sort of a bummer. The last time I went to Kaua'i, I had bad weather too, so I think I'm done with that island for a long time. Here's a picture of the friend we had outside of our condo. He would make sure that we were out of bed every morning nice and early. I learned to put my earplugs in before going to sleep. I wanted to catch him and throw him on the BBQ, but then I got a close look at those talons! They are pretty wary anyway, so I didn't bother trying to catch him in the end.



ALOHA!

Melamine and you

This week, I made a quick visit to the FDA lab in Irvine, California. The FDA uses one of our instruments, a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (seen here) or LC-MS/MS, to analyze various food products for the presence of Melamine and Cyanuric Acid. These are the compounds you may have heard about in the news recently, found in products from pet food to infant formula to chicken, pork and fish. The good news is that we're pretty safe here in the US, as long as we stay away from food products produced in China, especially if they contain dairy ingredients. The bad news is that some of the products we find a the store contain ingredients that may come from China, but that information isn't on the label. For the most part, melamine isn't too toxic for adults, so the trace amounts that have been detected aren't really too much for adults to worry about. However, it sort of makes you mad that certain food producers are putting these chemicals in our food products in order to make a litte bit more money. Luckily, the FDA is inspecting our food (using the best Mass Spectrometers on the market, Thermo Scientific!), and working hard to keep us safe.

False Advertising?

Here's a picture of Rudy's Country store and Bar-b-q from Round Rock, TX. I was in Austin again last week for work, at a software meeting. Now if you look closely at the small print, you'll notice that Rudy's has the "worst Bar-b-q in Texas!" I ate it anyway, and I can tell you they surely are lying, as this stuff was amazing. The cool part about this particular Rudy's is that it's built into a gas station. My buddy Jamie from work, who is a native Texan, told me that this is how the Rudy's stores are out in the middle of nowhere, so even though this one is in the middle of suburbia/stripmall land, they keep up the theme. I went to lunch with my co-workers, Peter from China and Yoko from Japan (don't worry, it's not that Yoko, this one never would have broken up the Beatles). Peter and I are going to open up a Rudy's BBQ in China some day if we lose our jobs over here. He's convinced that the Chinese would love some good ol' fashioned "worst BBQ in TX," and there would be lines going out the door. I'd believe him too, this was his second vist to Rudy's in 2 days, and he loved it!

Regular Old Trip to San Jose

Nothing too exciting to see here. This is an Airbus 319 at SFO that was just outside the gate where I was sitting, awaiting my flight back to Boston. In the background are 3 747-400s at the international wing of the airport. It's such a good looking plane. These are probably on their way over to Asia, based on the time of day. Take note of the guy in the raincoat on the tarmac on the bike. Looks like they use bikes to get around the tarmac at SFO, way to go!

Quick Trip to Coke

Monday night, I flew down to Atlanta and gave a presentation at the Coca-Cola headquarters. This was cool for me as a life-long drinker of Coke. In the waiting room after we checked in with security, there was a self service bar with fountain Coke, plus a bucket of ice with the little 8oz bottles. I helped myself out to some fountain Coke Zero, although looking back, I should have gone with regular old Coke, since it's my favorite. I haven't been drinking regular Coke though, because Elizabeth worries that it'll give me Diabetes. Since I drink about 3 cans of soda a day, I guess I'll heed her warning. Every once in a while, I do treat myself to a real coke, usually when I'm in Europe, since they still use real sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Flew back Tuesday afternoon. Long way to go for a 20 minute talk, but that's what we do.

Here's the headquarters, picture from Wikipedia, not me.

Deep in the heart of Texas

I traveled to Austin last week to work with our software programmers there. Not much exciting in the area where our factory is, it's north of the city in the land of I-35, with tons of strip malls, hotels, and strip clubs. They seem to have a lot of need for strip clubs, for some reason down there.

I went to a nice wine bar with my friend Jamie from work to watch the Presidential debate. The place was so nice, we went back the next night too. The wine bar is called Uncorked, check it out here.

Here's the Austing skyline just after sunset from the deck of the wine bar. I forgot my camera, so it's this crappy phone camera this time.

More Colorado Fall Colors

Here's a link to some pictures from the disposable Kodak camera.

Rocky Mountain High, John Denver wasn't full of Shit!

I'm in Denver this week for work. Today, I finished up my work at the FDA (working on Melamine in infant formula, dang Chinese trying to make more money with no regard to human safety).

I headed west on I-70 and got off on in Idaho Springs and took the road up towards Mt. Evans, on CO-103. The fall colors on the Aspens were amazing! These are some pictures from my camera phone, crappy quality. I forgot to bring my digital camera this time. I also bought a disposable camera, and will post some of those pictures later. I even took the rental 4x4 for a little bit of off-roading on a forest service road. I got up to around 10,500 feet. I was listening to the Cubs lose the first game of the playoffs. Dang it.

San Jose again

Last week it was a trip to San Jose for work. I flew out to Oakland Monday night, just after getting back from the NYC weekend. I stayed at Anthony and Maria's place so that I didn't have to stay in the boring hotel room in San Jose. Plus, there's the very wonderful bonus of seeing my friends, BBQ in the back yard, great beer at Cato's Ale house, and some fine Belgian beers at a new bar for us, The Trappist in downtown Oakland. Final bonus, no one was shot from our group in Oakland. Here I am with Maria enjoying a fine ale, and there's Bryan ingesting some sort of Mexican tapa. I think he enjoyed it. I had a little too much Sangria at this joint.

NYC Weekend to visit the stadiums

I traveled via Megabus from Boston to NY Penn Station on Friday night to see 2 games in the Big Apple, one at Shea Stadium and one at Yankee Stadium.

Saturday we headed to Queens to see the Meterosexuals Vs. the Hotlanta Braves. We were in luck, because of a rain out on Friday night, we got to see a double header, and a true one, not a Day/Night were they empty the stadium between games. We had great seats, right next to the field, but to see home plate, you had to look basically sideways! I hope the next stadium is better.

Shea Stadium from behind home plate.

View from our "box" seats along the first base line. Braves won the first game, Meterosexuals took the second game.

On Sunday, we went to the Bronx (after dodging rats in the NY Subway system!) to see the Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Yeah, I know they aren't the devil rays any more, but I'm still calling them that! We sat out in the bleachers, it was near 90 and humid! I had one of those giant coca-colas that you can only get at a baseball stadium and it was perfect. The Yankees won, A-Rod hit a grand slam, and Derek Jeter tied Lou Gherig for the most hits in Yankee stadium.


That's me above the Yankee's bullpen. Our seats were just a few rows above this location. Home plate is way over my head back there.

Visitors to "monument park" which has monuments to all the Yankee greats and the retired numbers.

I don't have much nice to say about New York City, so I won't say anything at all other than it was 33 years before I made it here for the first time, it's ok with me if I don't get back for another 33.

Off to San Jose, CA to the office tonight. I'll be working on saving the world's babies from the shady Chinese baby formula manufacturers. Toothpaste, pet food, baby formula, does anyone over there have a conscious at all?

Biking in Copenhagen

Here's a blog about biking in Copenhagen, it's great. Every time I go to Kobenhaven, I am always amazed at all of the people biking, I wish it was like that in the US. It's no coincidence that the Danes are tied with the Dutch for the happiest people in the world, they get to ride their bikes all over!

In Boston, we have a similar blog, inspired by the Danes, you can read it here.

Trip to San Jose this week.

I travel to San Jose, CA quite often for work since my company's division is based there. This week, I had a red eye flight from SFO-BOS on Thursday night, but before that, I made my way to Oakland to see the A's take on my home team, the Minnesota Twins. My friend Maria, who is my old roommate Anthony's girlfriend, joined me at the game. This is what $20 gets you for seating at the Oakland Mausoleum on the morning of the game on Stubhub, nice! The twins lost in the end, but it was fun to wear my Kirby Puckett jersey in another ball park. I just barely made my 11:20 flight back to BOS, but slept the whole flight back. Gotta love the exit row.

Norway back to Denmark Via Sweden

On Sunday, August 17th, Tore and I took the Norwegian Booze Cruise ferry from Langesund Norway back to Copenhagen. Here's the route. It was a 3 hour ferry ride, cost for both of us and the car, just about $20. They make their money off of Norwegians buying duty free liquor!Here's the ferry.


This is Sweden, obviously.

To the Homeland.

Being more than 50% Norwegian, it is surprising that no one in my immediate family has been to Norway. Luckily, I had the chance for a quick, 24 hour blast to Norway this weekend. I traveled by overnight train from Odense to Sandefjord, Norway, where my friend Tore picked me up. We spent the day on a little road trip from Sandefjord to Rjukan, Norway. This is the place where the Nazis were producing heavy water for their atomic research in WWII. Luckily, the British special forces did some cool sabotage and sunk the boat containing their heavy water. Yeah, England! Anyway, it was beautiful up there. On the way back, we drove over a mountain pass, and past an old church that's about 1000 years old.

We headed back to Langesund, Norway, where we spent the night with some friends of Tore's. Our mode of transport was Tore's kick ass 1986 M5 BMW, most excellent for small narrow mountain roads, and we took turns driving it on the route.

See more photos here.

HC's House

Here's Hans Christen Andersen's house. Complete with a Prius.

Odense, Denmark

This week, I've been working in Odense, Denmark. Odense is the birth place of the world's authority on mermaids, H.C. Andersen. This is a picture of the downtown walking street, or "strasse" as they call it in Europe. Lots of Danish flags, they love flying thier flag almost as much as Americans do. I like it.

This week I'm working with the University of Southern Denmark. They are going to be using the Mass Spectrometer to analyze pefluronated compounds in the plasma of people who live in the Faroe Islands. What are PFCs, you ask? They are compounds like Teflon, the stuff that makes your pan non stick and your coat waterproof with GoreTex. Where do people from the Faroe islands get it? From eating pilot whales. Interesting. Don't judge, they've been doing it for about 600 years now. Plus pilot whales aren't really all that rare. Not that I want to try any.

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