Day 1: San Francisco to Santa Cruz

We rode 80 miles today. It was a fantastic ride!! A little wet and foggy to start but it got a lot nicer the 2nd half of the day. I made really good time and finished by 1pm. There was a fantastic tailwind for the 2nd half of the ride that helped me finish 1.5 hours earlier than expected.

Now to relax and hang out with some new friends!


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Day 0: Orientation

Orientation went fairly smoothly. I got to the Cow Palace early and waited in line and made a few friends. The safety video was very funny and moving and featured Jane Lynch, Adam Lambert and many other celebs.

I asked around and found someone else who needed a tentmate and we clicked so we decided to tent together. I joined him for lunch and had a great time.

I'm ready to roll out from San Francisco tomorrow morning! The shuttle bus leaves my hotel at 4am and we ride at 6:30! Wish me luck!

I'm posting a lot more on facebook. Send me a friend request if you want to hear more and see photos!


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Location:Airport Terminal Rd,San Diego,United States

Getting on the plane

So I'm the Southwest plane from San Diego to San Francisco about to take off. I am taking a few days in SF before the ride to relax and visit some friends. It is going to be a challenge to get enough rest while in San Francisco as it's a fantastic and busy city!

I dropped off my bike at the shipping company today. It will be ready for me Sunday morning...


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Location:Airport Terminal Rd,San Diego,United States

Riding in AIDS/LifeCycle next week!

As many of you know, I will be riding 545 miles next week to raise money for HIV/AIDS research and programs. To help support me, visit http://www.normsoft.com/ALC

I plan to keep you all posted through my blog, so keep an eye out and send me encouragement along the way!


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Location:Zoo Dr,San Diego,United States

No TV...

Well, I failed to post about the rest of my road trip... Whoops.

I'm in San Diego now, finally settling in.

After ordering the basic furniture, I decided to skip the TV for now...  I think that technology is getting to a point where it's not really necessary.  The shows that I do watch on TV (House, Simpsons) are available on hulu.com for free or iTunes for a small charge.  I can't find American Idol anywhere legitimate, but it can be had from P2P networks if you're willing to deal with a delay.  Much of the Tour de France can be viewed online as well.  That's about all I care to watch.

I can still watch movies on my PC or Mac, and iTunes makes it really easy to buy/rent a movie and watch it right away.

I have found that I don't miss watching TV at all, and I've drastically cut down on the mind-numbing habit of staring at the tube whenever I have a few minutes lacking in entertainment.  I think this could work just fine for me.

New Orleans

Wow, New Orleans is crazy!  I wish we'd had more time to spend here, but I'm glad we took the two days that we did.

Even a month after Mardi Gras, Bourbon St. was lots of fun.  At 3pm, people were walking down the street holding several beers.  The bars had happy hours with 3 for 1 beers and drinks.  There are strip clubs, bars, restaurants, shops, and even a little gay bar section (that some people call the fruit loop, like in Las Vegas.  It supposedly includes the oldest gay bar in the country, Lafitte's).

Before coming to New Orleans, we stopped at the National Naval Aviation Museum for a few hours, looking at the impressive collection of restored planes, helicopters, and spacecraft.  It was something of a last minute stop for us, and I'm very glad we did!  If you have any interest in aircraft and you're in the Pensacola area, you owe it to yourself to see this museum.  It's free!

We arrived in New Orleans around 4pm and checked into our hotel, the Iberville Suites.  It's quite a new hotel, behind the Ritz Carlton.  The rooms were very reasonable for being so close to the downtown French Quarter in a very nice room.  My room had quite the view, but my father's looked out onto another wall of a hotel.

We walked around Bourbon St. for a few hours, taking in all the sights.  As it gets later, the bars and strip clubs get more and more aggressive trying to get you to come into their establishment.  And the patrons get more and more drunk, just as the police block off the road to all car traffic.  It's quite a scene, and we enjoyed it.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant in the middle of Bourbon St. with a balcony table, which was a great place to people-watch.  The food was decent; my first time trying catfish (at least in a long time).  I quite like it!

I ended up staying up pretty late the first night, and haven't been able to catch up on sleep yet.  I think I'll need a few days to recover!  Yesterday we took a great little bus tour of the city.  We visited a lot of the touristy areas and then went down to the 9th Ward to see the still-devastated houses from Katrina.  Then on to an above-ground graveyard, a public park and golf course (complete with an alligator-filled water hazard), the parade route, a ritzy, residential area, and then back to the hotel.

We enjoyed dinner at a seafood restaurant across the street from our hotel, Deanie's.  Apparently it's fairly popular.  The seafood was mostly deep-fried but was tasty and plentiful.

This morning we are off to Austin, TX for the next part of our journey.  The next few days are going to be pretty travel-intensive until we get to Arizona, where we'll get a few days' rest before crossing the Hoover Dam to Vegas.

Photos on Flickr

I'm posting photos from our trip on Flickr.

Pensacola, FL

Today's trip went great!  We drove straight through from Port Charlotte to Pensacola.  There were a few traffic hiccups, but the TomTom routed us around them pretty well.

It was great spending time chatting with my Dad.  The ride took about 9 hours, which was about what we'd expected.

I joined my friend Laney for dinner in Pensacola.  We ate at a place called Zea, which was quite tasty.  It's across the street from the famous McGuire's Irish Pub, which was ridiculously packed.

Tomorrow we're off to New Orleans!

Shoving out

I've spent a delightful two days with my parents, and now my Dad and I are getting ready to shove out from their home on the west coast of Florida.  Our first destination: Pensacola!  It's a 9 hour drive today, one of the longest in our trip.  We're both excited about the trip and have been talking non-stop about what we're going to see.

I've got a friend in Pensacola who we're going to visit, and then tomorrow we're on to New Orleans!

The Rest of My Life

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, as they say...

For those of you who don't know, I asked Gerald for a separation a week and a half ago.  If you're interested in the reasons, talk to me privately.

I have mixed feelings about this change, but mostly I'm optimistic and excited to start my new life.  I'm wrapping up some things in St. Croix this week and then headed up to Florida to drive cross-country in my Z4 with my Dad.  The original destination was Las Vegas, but now I think I'm headed for San Diego for a little while.  I'm going to take my time and just do what feels right for a bit.

I will try to post about our road trip over the next couple of weeks!

Bellagio Fountains

One of my photos from Las Vegas was selected to appear in the Schmap Las Vegas tour guide.

Pocket Tunes 5.0 Released

Pocket Tunes 5.0 Music/Radio player for Palm OS, Treo, Centro, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and iPod Touch

Pocket Tunes Radio for the iPhone

Apple just approved Pocket Tunes Radio for the iPhone, our latest product!

Listen to your favorite radio stations using your iPhone or iPod touch with Pocket Tunes™ Radio.

Enjoy and happy holidays!

Great Skype addon for Mac iTunes users

This addon works great to show what you're listening to on iTunes through your Skype mood comment: http://www.mybdesign.com/itm/

Gus Gus Little Man Gus

Gus Gus Little Man Gus (aka Gus, aka Doodles, aka Max) passed away last night from complications from his second surgery.  Gerald and I are miserable.

His "scratching post" in St. Croix.

He loved crawling in anything about his size.  Boxes, cupboards, closets, cat carriers, and even sinks.  Every night before bed, he would meow for us to run some water in this sink so he could have himself a little nightcap from the faucet.

One of his favorite sleeping spots in St. Croix.  He made a game out of sleeping in every conceivable spot in the house, but he had a few favorites.

Bye Gus, you will be sorely missed.

Why is it so hard to watch movies anymore?

Okay this is just ridiculous.

I popped WALL-E into my PS3, ready to relax to a nice movie.

Up pops a message that I must perform an update to watch this movie. I just bought this PS3 a month ago. Fine, I say go ahead and do the update. It comes up with this huge progress bar that is moving slower than a turtle with 5 lbs of bricks on its back.

We switched over to the Tivo and watched an entire episode of House and switched back. It's only 50% complete and now it's saying that its network connection has failed. What? I am now downloading the ROM update to a USB flash card to I can upgrade my damned PS3. It's taken over 2 hours to get my PS3 ready just to play a friggin 1.5 hour movie.

Come on! Who decided to make movie watching so painful? I want my money back on my Blu Ray stuff. I'd gladly trade the lesser video quality of a DVD for this ridiculous hassle.

Criss Angel's Believe at the Luxor

Well, if I had paid $25 per seat for the show, I would have felt okay. But we paid $100 for seats on the side of the theater with not a good view. And the spotlights often shone right in our faces; through several acts I had to hold my hand up to block out the lights for a few minutes. What's with that?

The show was just not very good. There were a couple of funny parts, and some musings of "Huh, wonder how he did that". But no, "Holy shit! That was amazing!" type of thoughts that you get when watching any other Cirque du Soleil or magic show on the strip. There was some good dancing, great costumes, and decent choreography. But the plot was all over the place and just weird and didn't really flow at all. The magic was just typical magic tricks that you've seen everywhere (how many times do we have to see someone sawed in half?).

The best part of the show was that Criss Angel walked through the audience at the very beginning and only stopped to shake one person's hand: Gerald's. He was tickled, but he still didn't like the show.

This article sums it up perfectly:

http://vegasblog.latimes.com/vegas/2008/10/criss-angels-be.html

I've seen all 6 Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas, and here is the order you should see them:

• O


• KA


• Mystere


• The Beatles LOVE


• Zumanity


• Believe

In my opinion, the first four are must sees. They will have you on the edge of your seat with awe, and you will talk about it for the rest of your life. If you are in Vegas and it's within your means, go to one (or more) of these first 4 shows! Zumanity is unique and fun in a perverted way and is a good show. Believe is totally skippable, and I wouldn't recommend it.

If you want to see a magic show for that price range, you have to see Penn and Teller. They are the real deal. (My brother-in-law was picked as the "bullet inspector" in the bullet trick, so I know they don't use a plant for that.)

Indian Food!

Woo hoo! I found an Indian grocery store not far from our house in Las Vegas! It's called India Bazar and it's at 4160 S. Ft. Apache. I went there last night to pick up some stuff for supper and was very impressed. They have a full selection of Indian spices, curry pastes (Patak's!), chutneys, etc. They also have nan bread in the refrigerator, several international beverages (including ginger beer which I miss from St. Croix), Indian desserts brought in from a place in California, and lots of frozen Indian TV dinners.

I made the nan bread, chicken samosas (from frozen - just bake for 10 minutes), and chicken Jalfrezi with the Patak's curry paste. It all came out really well except for the nan, which I heated in the oven and ended up making too crispy. It still tasted okay. Next time I may wrap it in tin foil first to keep the moisture in.

Red Rock Canyon Loop

I finally worked up to riding the Red Rock Canyon loop on my bike. It's a really great loop, very scenic. On a bike, it was WAY harder than I thought it would be. I saw my inclinometer get to 11% in some places. Nothing quite like The Beast in St. Croix (which gets to over 20% in places), but it's 5 miles of climbing instead of 3/4. I remember driving this loop with Gerald on our first trip to Vegas in 1999. We saw lots of cyclists, and I remember commenting that they were crazy trying to ride these hills. Well, here I am now, the crazy one. Here's the profile of the ride from my house:



If you're in shape, this is a great outdoor activity to do while in Vegas. You can rent a bike from Las Vegas Cyclery at 8221 W Charleston Blvd (where I bought my bike), and then make the ride straight out to the canyon on Charleston.

I'm doing the ride again today with the mortgage broker we worked with to get the loan for our house here. I think he's in better shape than me, so I'll be hurting I'm sure...

Gus is home!

Gus is finally home from the animal hospital. He seems to be very happy to be home. He made a pass of the house, sniffing everything to re-acquaint himself, and then he placed a claim to Gerald's coat laying on the floor near the bed. He's been there since last night, only making forays to eat, drink, and request ear scratching or a warm lap for a few minutes.

We've got about 6 different kinds of liquid medicine to give him 2-3 times a day. He doesn't like that, but he tolerates it.

Phoebe is very upset that he's home. She had been happy as a clam while he was gone, but now she is hissing and growling whenever she sees him.