Tag: travel

Canadian Travels and Weird Internet Friends

Posted by Chris – May 15, 2009

This week business took me on my second-ever cross-the-border trip, once again to Canada, though this time to a part of Canada (Toronto) that felt much less alien then last time (Montreal). Something about them still speaking English in Ontario makes it a little more comfortable.

Anyhow, there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing as we sandwiched a day of customer meetings and round-trip travel into a 48-hour window, but I did get the chance to finally meet, in person, some “weird internet friends”: Dan, Laura, and Wally. First, a little photographic evidence, then, the narrative.

Dan and Laura:

dan_and_laura

Wally, Dan, and me:

the_guys

It should come as no real surprise by now to anyone that reads this blog that I have a group of “weird internet friends”. We’ve had some visit in our home, and met up with others in Minneapolis, Nashville, Lincoln, and Charlotte. Each time I’ve found them to be decent, enjoyable people, and we’ve had great times visiting. I had a little extra anticipation this time, though; Dan and I had hit it off so well online that I figured our in-person meeting would either be brilliant or amazingly awkward.

This meeting fell into the brilliant category. Without minimizing my enjoyment of Wally’s company at all, I have to say that Dan and Laura felt less like new acquaintances and more like long-lost family. We had a fantastic time visiting, eating dinner, and drinking coffee far too late into the evening.

While it is a nearly 12-hour drive from Toronto to Cedar Rapids, I extended the invitation to Dan and Laura that I’d extend to any of my weird internet friends (and you know who you are) – any time you have a long weekend and want to come visit, we have a spare bedroom, an expandable dining room table, and all the excitement of Eastern Iowa for you to enjoy on your visit. Hope to see you soon.

Denver

Posted by Chris – August 20, 2008

OK, so bad travel plans notwithstanding, I made it to Denver on-time on Monday evening. Tuesday was spent in an all-day FAA DER Recurrent General Training class (boring), and today and Thursday I’m attending the National Software and Airborne Electronic Hardware Conference. It’s sponsored by the FAA and NASA Langley Research Center, and there are some really interesting topics if you’re into safety-critical airborne software. Which, I know, none of you reading this are. :-) So enough about the conference.

Haven’t really seen much of Denver yet, though I may atone for that this evening and travel about. I’ve just got too many things on my to-do list for this week. Sermon prep for Saturday, new Conversation Cafe website (now branded Topics On First – check it out! – but it’s still the beta version of the site), planning orders of service for the fall, updating church bylaws and membership covenants… so much to do, so little time.

Denver is a little bit frustrating, location-wise, because you think you’re in Colorado, there should be mountains… but there aren’t really any mountains in Denver. You can see them off in the distance, but they’re still too far away to get to without some more serious time driving than I’ll have. Oh well. Maybe one of these summers we can hit them for a vacation again.

Well, lunch hour is almost over so it’s time to head back to the conference. Good times.

its wisdom, who can measure?

Posted by Chris – August 17, 2008

Work necessitates that tomorrow I travel from Cedar Rapids to Denver to attend three days of FAA training. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound too bad, travel-wise. CID -> DEN is only a two-hour flight, and one US airline, when not eternally funding the estate of George Gershwin with its advertising budget, provides three daily non-stop flights from our fair city to the Mile-High.

But wait! This is no ordinary travel planning. This is corporate travel! Per the guidelines of our corporate travel policy (its wisdom, who can measure?) I have been routed on a different airline from Cedar Rapids first to Dallas-Fort Worth, and only then to Denver. For those scoring along at home, that’s 850 miles and two hours south-by-southwest to DFW, a 90-minute layover, then another 800 miles and two hours northwest from DFW to DEN. Which is quite obviously far superior to the 700 miles and two hours directly west from CID to DEN. To ice the proverbial cake, the forecast for both CID and DEN tomorrow calls for nothing but sunshine. DFW? 80% probability of thunderstorms.

Two years ago when I attended this training travel was a mess and I ended up driving through downtown Atlanta at midnight searching for my hotel; last year DFW gave me delays heading to New Orleans and I was trying to avoid the bayou and find my hotel after even The Big Easy had fallen asleep. Even with this year’s circuitous routing I am scheduled to arrive in Denver before 7 pm MDT, so it will take some serious delays if I am to achieve the three-peat. Still, with travel plans like this, anything is possible.

Washington Vacation 2008: The Beach

Posted by Chris – July 14, 2008

After arriving late on Monday and having vehicle difficulty, we took the new minivan out to the Washington coast to spend a couple of days at the beach. We encountered several of these signs along the way… not something we typically see back home in Iowa.

DSC_6670

The three-hour drive to the appropriately-named Long Beach brought us from temperatures in the upper 70’s in the Seattle area to 60 degrees, fog, and 30 mph winds in Long Beach. Yowza! We were glad we had remembered to pack jackets. We stayed at the Lighthouse Oceanfront Resort as part of a little deal where I created them a new website. We had a two-bedroom condo that, when the fog was out, provided us a view of the Pacific from our deck. The girls had much fun on the beach even in the cold; Laura found a real live clam, which stayed real and live until it had set in our minivan for a day, at which point it became real and very ripe. To spend actual time in the water, though, we enjoyed the heated pool at the resort.

DSC_6603

DSC_6607

DSC_6623

The second day we ventured out to check out one of the nearby lighthouses. We tried to figure out how to reach the lighthouse on Cape Disappointment, but couldn’t figure out which road to take. So instead we visited the North Head Lighthouse, and while we couldn’t tour it (no children under 7 allowed on the tour), we still had a nice little walk and got some nice pictures of the lighthouse and the coast. Apparently the North Head Lighthouse records some of the strongest winds along the Pacific coast. We didn’t quite blow away, but it was seriously breezy.

DSC_6682

DSC_6671

DSC_6687

Having traveled to the coast, the one thing Becky really wanted to eat was seafood. We did a little research and tried out a couple of different places that appeared to be somewhat family-friendly and within our budget. My conclusion is that seafood places in tourist towns must plan to sell you overpriced seafood and then make up for it with terrible service. The first night we tried a place called Doogers, and while my food was decent, the server totally forgot to bring me the Diet Pepsi I ordered. Becky’s combination platter was completely missing one of its major elements, a fact which wasn’t brought to light until Becky decided to ask for help identifying each of the elements on the platter. They went ahead and cooked up a razor clam and brought it out to her at the end of the meal, but still, come on, folks. The second night we tried The Crab Pot, supposedly a local favorite since 1946. We thought that surely it would be an improvement over Doogers. No such luck. Higher prices, poorer food, and incredibly awful service.

Still, though, we found a local bakery that was fantastic, and overall very much enjoyed ourselves in Long Beach. It would have been fun to have another day to spend traipsing around, but our schedule called us to move on. Next up: Yakima, en route to Leavenworth.

DSC_6637

Note: I’m putting all the pics from the trip in this set on Flickr. There are far more than what I’m going to post on the blog. Grandparents will want to visit the link to see all the pics. :-)

In Seattle

Posted by Chris – July 8, 2008

Day 1 of our vacation finally brings us to Seattle. Our flights were only delayed a little – we arrived at SEA maybe 30 minutes after our scheduled arrival time. Our luggage came through intact. (Had we known that the minivan we are renting had built-in child seats, we could’ve saved ourselves one piece of luggage… but ah well.)

The girls handled the trip wonderfully. Addie was mostly excited about seeing all the airplanes – her little nose was pasted to the window as much as possible, though she had to be up on her knees to see out the plane window – she’s too short to see out otherwise! Laura’s greatest excitement came from seeing the mountains out the airplane window. She’s never been to the mountains before, and when she saw the snowcaps, she let out a loud whoop, and kept yelling “Mountains, Mommy, mountains!”

We got in our aforementioned minivan and headed the few miles to our hotel. I was thinking the van felt a little funny but wasn’t quite sure. When we got to the hotel, it was definitely feeling funny… and yep, there was a flat tire on the back. Ugh. As frustrating as it was to have rented a vehicle with a flat right off the lot, I must say that Alamo handled it pretty well – I called the local rental place, they told me that it’d be no charge since it was right off the lot, they forwarded me to roadside assistance who had somebody at my location within 45 minutes to put on the spare. Then I drove the van on the donut spare back to SEATAC to exchange it for a different van. That was an hour and a half I would have preferred not to waste, but hey, it’s done now.

Tomorrow we’re headed down to spend a couple days on the coast. Can’t wait.

Packing for the trip

Posted by Chris – July 6, 2008

With the expense of airline travel these days, we thought we might consider a method of cost-reduction for this trip.

Laura demonstrates the proper way to pack the bag:

IMG_5553

She feels pretty safe since she’s just a bit to big to fit into that bag.

IMG_5555

Seattle here we come!

T-minus 7d

Posted by Chris – June 30, 2008

It’s starting to hit home that one week from now we will be on an airplane, with the kiddos, headed for our Washington vacation and Andrew’s wedding. We’ve gotten to the list-making stage. What all do we need to take? What will the weather be like? (It’s a lot different on the coast than it is in Leavenworth where the wedding will be!) What suitcases are we taking along? How many bags will we have to check? Do we have seats assigned on all the flights? And on and on and on.

For me, the most stressful part of the trip is from now until we are at Seatac with a rental car and all our bags. After that, it’s all downhill. I don’t think it’s really gonna be as bad as I’m worried it will be… but I can be a good worrier. I’m really looking forward to this vacation, though – both for Andrew & Heather’s wedding and just for the chance to get away – almost 2 full weeks away from the office once you count the holiday this week and then our trip. It’ll be so nice.

Stay focused, Chris… still three more days of work.

Counting down the days…

Posted by Chris – June 25, 2008

Once today is complete I will have only 6 more working days until vacation… and oh my, am I ever looking forward to it. My brother Andrew is getting married on July 12 and we are using that as an excuse to take a week’s vacation to Washington. (The state, not the district.) We have several days of sightseeing and relaxation scheduled around the wedding, and it should be a great time. We’ll hit Seattle, the Pacific coast, the mountains, and back to Seattle before heading home.

Preparations have been in a lull for a while – there was the frenzy months ago when we purchased our airline tickets, made hotel reservations, etc, but then we put it aside and it’s just been lurking… and now we are back to planning in earnest. At this point Becky is starting to figure out what all needs to be brought along, how we can fit it into as few bags as possible, and so on.

I’ll admit it – the one thing I’m nervous/fearful of on this trip is the airline travel. We’re taking the girls on their first airplane trip, which will be fun, and we’ve planned in longish layovers, to try to ensure things go smoothly… but it’s still a cross-country airline trip, and we’re still connecting through Chicago O’Hare. I will be praying much that things just go smoothly. Once we’re in Seattle with our rental car and all our baggage, the next week should be just brilliant fun.

So that’s my little update for today. I’ll try for a more substantive post tomorrow as a major milestone occurs in the Hubbs household.

Bullet Points from Montreal

Posted by Chris – May 22, 2008

I’ve been in Montreal since Monday night, and it’s my first trip here, and for that matter, my first trip out of the country. I don’t have any profound essays to write but a bunch of little observations that work most easily as bullet points. So here goes.

  • It’s the little things that mess with you. Ordered a Whopper at Burger King the other night (I was craving the fries) and was asked if I wanted “the trio”. What in the world is “the trio”? Ends up that’s what I know better as a combo. [lightbulb goes on]
  • The roads are bad. They aren’t marked very well, the lanes are narrow, and the traffic is horrible.
  • The other weird traffic thing: rapidly-flashing green lights. As far as I can tell, a rapid green is equivalent to a green left arrow in the US; it’s letting you know that it’s safe to turn left, because the folks opposite you still have a red. Rather non-intuitive, but it works once you get the hang of it.
  • Sewing machine stores in shopping malls. Apparently people in Canada really like to sew or something.
  • A big report came out today in Montreal that is the result of a year-long commission holding hearings and taking suggestions on how to deal with all the ethnic and cultural issues they have in Quebec. It’s interesting listening to talk radio this afternoon to hear what people have to say about it. The commission’s conclusion is that the worst of the division is more stirred up by the media than by the ethnic groups involved. Figures.
  • Of course French is the predominant language here in Montreal, but pretty much everyone I’ve run into switches pretty much effortlessly into English. Still, it frustrates me a bit that they have to; it feels like I’m making them do me a favor rather than being able to just interact with them on their terms.
  • Tim Horton’s (a donut/breakfast chain – think a Canadian Dunkin’ Donuts) has tasty food, but no trash cans. Weird. It feels like a fast food, there are lots of tables to sit and eat… but apparently they expect you to just leave your trash on the table. Very strange.

Well, enough of that. Still, it’s been an interesting place to visit. Tomorrow I fly home.

Montreal

Posted by Chris – May 19, 2008

So today was the day I finally ventured outside the good ‘ol US of A; traveling to Montreal, Quebec for the next round of SC-213 meetings. No big details, pictures, or etc so far, but it was nice to actually have decent travel this time around. The flights were more or less on time, the lines were short, the rental car big enough (the PT Cruiser has an amazing amount of leg and head room!) and the hotel comfortable.

Now it’s just after midnight and I’m sitting up too late working on an andrewosenga.net redesign. I finally got the layout working more or less how I want it… now it’s time to make it pretty. Well… that can wait until tomorrow.