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One of my friends is getting married in Cape Cod next weekend, so I figured I’d make it an extended trip of sorts, and hang out in Boston for a week. Woo. So, I’m here in Boston (Chelmsford, actually) for the Labor Day holiday, visiting grandma and just kind of relaxing…

Woo.. what a weekend… I opened the weekend with the Superstars first victory of the season. (ok, it was a forfeit, cuz the other team didn’t have enough guys, but a win’s a win.) But, we still scrimmaged, and I got my first hit of the season, an RBI single. Woo. I was 0/5 before the broken ankle, and now I’m 1/5 after the broken ankle, so statiscally speaking, the broken ankle improved my batting average.. not that I recommend it.

Anyway, Jablow, Kai and Pius share the same birthday (the 13th) and Michelle’s is this week too, so they (minus Pius, cuz his moochie-ass is back in Jersey) had a fabulous birthday celebration at Hog Island Oyster Company, which is like 50 miles north of San Francisco in Marshall, CA… Up there, you can buy sacks of oysters for like $36 bucks or something, and sit there, shuck them, drink beer, bbq and in general have a frolicking, oystery good time. Good stuff. Happy birthday Jablow, Kai, and Michelle (oh, and Pius too).

Dana organized a fabulous trip to Pigeon Point this weekend, which is about 50 miles south of San Francisco right on the California.. The Pigeon Point lighthouse has a hostel there, that we all stayed at (for which Dana has been trying for years to get reservations) — it’s $30 a night, and arguably one of the best locations for a hostel in the world… Perched right on the cliffs of the California coast, right underneath a gorgeous working lighthouse.

It was a fantastically warm, clear, fog-free night… and we even spent a few hours in the hot tub, which was perched right on the cliff’s edge. Sooo nice… True to hostelling style, we cooked a tasty dinner in the communal kitchen (although since we had a big group, we basically filled one of the houses).

Most of the folks had biked down the 1 that morning from San Francisco (about a 50 mile ride), and I decided to ride with them back up to the city on Sunday.. We took a different route back than they had taken on Saturday, so we ended up going past the San Gregorio General Store (super cool market with a bar and bluegrass music).. then up La Honda (um.. it was like a 15 miles of UPHILL riding.. ouch) to Alice’s Restaurant for lunch… Then, up Skyline to Crystal Springs (with some awesome downhill.. I hit a max speed of 39.7 mph.. woohoo).. When we reached Crystal Springs, my legs were dead tired, so instead of continuing the 25 miles back up to SF, I chickened out and dropped off the ride at my parents’ house, who convienently live like a few miles from Crystal Springs. Considering that I only just got back on my feet from my broken ankle a few weeks ago, I was happy with the 47 miles that I did.. That said, congrats to Dana, Davin, Dan, Chris, John and Mike who all did 125 miles this weekend.. that’s awesome…

I made a little wayfaring map of the part of the bike ride that I did this weekend.. granted, it doesn’t show elevation change, but I promise that there’s a HUGE hill in between the coast and the inland bits, so that’s why I’m so tired today…

Woo! It’s good to be in California.

Update: Dana posted her pics from the weekend here.

Woo… yet I embark on yet another trip today.. this time to Chicago. I’m excited, I haven’t been to Chicago since I was there for training with Anderson Consulting (back before it was Accenture) back in 1997. Last time I was in Chicago I was pleasantly surprised, since I thought that it would be more like sleepy Cleveland. But no, it’s actually quite a huge city with a kickin’ nightlife, really great art museums, and tasty food.

I’m meeting up with a bunch of ol’ OHS friends… Brian, Aveh, Jeff and Ryan. We haven’t all been in the same room since like 1993; it’ll be great to see all of them. Hehe.. just surfing around Ryan’s site just now and check out this article about him… nice pose, Ryan.. that’s “blue steel” if I’ve ever seen it.

So yah.. off to Chicago in a few hours… if you have any cool spots that I should hit while I’m there, let me know. Hopefully we’ll catch a Cubs game, and I’ll be able to hit a few more places in my Roadfood book.. Chicago is a Roadfood haven.

I am a little worried about the weather.. it’s supposed to be like 90 degrees out every day.. Am I to wear *gasp* shorts? Eeeek. I don’t think I even own any.

Woo.. just got back from a action-packed Vegas weekend with the Jerks… I’m exhausted and broke now, but it was an awesome time. 15 of us made the trip up this time, and once again, we drove. I’m not sure why we always seem to forget what an ordeal the 10 to 12 hour drive is, but every time we go to Vegas it seems like someone suggests we drive, and we all are like.. hmm.. really? we did that last time and it didn’t suck (that bad). But ask us somewhere around the 7th hour, especially on the way back, and I’m sure we’d tell you that flying is a much nicer way to go. And i LOVE roadtripping.

Anyway… it was a great weekend.. I played poker at the Aladdin and Mirage and made some money, but I promptly lost it all (and then some) playing craps and blackjack. Grr.

I didn’t take many pics while in Vegas, but I think other people did, so I’ll post pics when available. Hersh has already posted a video of the trip that he made.. Apparently, Hersh and I didn’t hang out at enough, cuz if you watch the video to the end, Hersh says that I’m not in the video, and I have my own little bit (thanks Hersh). But… If you look closely, I actually made it into the video for about .5 seconds… Maybe I’m camera shy now that I’ve gained several pounds of broken ankle fat. Hmm.. which reminds me.. soon to come.. project “dennis is too fat and can run around on his new ankle, so let’s fix that.” Oh boy.

Well.. I’m off to New York City and Philadelphia for the Memorial Day weekend.. It’s AJ’s 30 birthday, so we’re celebrating it with a weekend of fun in the city of Brotherly Love. Cheesesteaks and Yuengling.. woohoo.

Wahoo! so for alot of my friends’ 30th birthdays, it’s a big deal, so we’ve been going on a trip somewhere to celebrate and stuff.. Last year, Jo’s was in the Bahamas on a cruise, Korby’s was in Vancouver, Jablow’s was in Vegas.. fun fun fun.. So, since my birthday is coming up, i’m planning to hit up Austin for south by southwest. I was in Austin last year, but missed SXSW by a week, and it looks like mad fun.. 1,100 bands!!

In looking through the list.. Hmm.. most of these bands I’ve never ever heard of, but I guess that’s the point of SXSW.. I really want to see:

• The Avalanches
• Her Space Holiday
• Hey Willpower
• Morningwood
• Belle and Sebastian
• Mogwai
• Cat Power

Of course, Mongolian Candidate will be there.. so don’t miss their show, for sure. Uh, they’ll be playing at whichever hotel or house we’re staying at.

So, come on down to Austin and celebrate my birthday with me! And.. Let me know if there are any other bands on the list that you think I should see — 1,100 is a lot to look through!

Here’s some great links I’ve found about SXSW:

• The Unofficial SXSW Blog
• Great Forum Post about what to expect

Crap.. since I just decided yesterday to do this whole trip thing, I’m realizing now that most people have booked their accommodations like months ago. So, um, if you have a place for us to stay (as in, can we rent your house for the weekend), then let me know please…

Woohoo.. another blog meme wagon to jump on.. Willo put together a list of cities that she visited in 2005 (cities in which you’ve spent at least one night).. I guess this meme was really kicked into high gear by Kottke last week.. hmm… 7 days to reach me, that’s a little slow.. oh well.. here’s my year in cities.. It was quite a travel-y year, it seems.

In rough chronological order… Entries with *’s were visited multiple times…

Beijing, China
Shanghai, China
Hangzhou, China
Hong Kong, China
San Francisco, CA *
Hillsborough, CA *
On a ship between Miami, FL and the Bahamas
Chelmsford, MA
Providence, RI
Hanover, NH
New York, NY *
Las Vegas, NV *
Stateline, NV
San Luis Obispo, CA
San Diego, CA
Tucson, AZ
Van Horn, TX
Austin, TX
Sulphur, LA
New Orleans, LA
Hot Springs, AR
Guymon, OK
Vancouver, BC Canada
Hatch, UT
West Yellowstone, MT
Cody, WY
Salt Lake City, UT
Twin Falls, ID
South Lake Tahoe, NV

Wow.. that’s a lot, but I guess I did a lot of travelling last year.. new years in China, and then 2 roadtrips, plus the multiple birthday trips.. woo! This year has started off with New York, Hoboken, and San Francisco already, so already I’m on my way to another banner travel year..

Though the week has been peppered with nasty not-so-nice weather, New York has delivered a fantastic experience in every other aspect of the trip.. Actually, the occasional bouts of freezing rain have kept the whole city blanketed in that damp movie set like quality, so maybe that’s a good thing.. So it was quite the accidental reunion here in New York for a whole bunch of my friends — somehow, like 20 of my friends from San Francisco ended up here for the new year.. good times..

So, for new years, I first headed over to Kevin’s for a little party with Eric and his friends.. They made a bunch of tasty food, but I had to leave before they got the the fondue… Damn, missed to boiling cheese-fest. Like I mentioned before, a bunch of us headed down to the Falls in Soho for the evening, so I had to join up with them (especially since I paid the $90 for the open bar, and I had to get my money’s worth).. The Falls was packed by the time I got there. Although from what I hear, it was packed at 8:55 since the open bar started at 9pm, I guess everyone wanted to get as much drinking in as possible.

As for shenanigans… as any evening with an open bar promises, there were plenty… Granted, Andy and Meredith left at about 11:50pm and celebrated the New Year on the PATH, but as for the rest of us, I’m pretty sure we got our fill of the open bar.. So yah.. there were a lot of shenanigans that I won’t get into, but at least one has made it onto the glorious Internet. And the others are probably best left in our collective foggy memories happily ringing in the new year…

Well.. I’m headed back to New York again.. this time for two weeks, so I’ll be spending new years’ eve there. For NYE, I’ll be at The Falls at some party that Korby found, so come and meet up with us if you’re around…

So.. I’ve been in New York for a little over a week now, staying at Audris’ house and then Korby’s house (thanks Audris and Korby!)..

As expected, NYC is awesome… The first week I was here was defined by the nonstop torrent of rainstorms. I mostly stayed in Audris’ house; thankfully Audris’ house is huge so that was pretty ok with me.. It was seriously raining a ridiculous amount, I’d run across the street to get lunch or something, and come back to the apartment soaked to the bone. Yuck. We did go see an awesome play called “Sides” though, which I highly recommend.. Audris also took me to a lovely film, called “Three Extremes“. And by lovely, I actually mean, the grossest, most disgusting movies that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Uh, thanks Audris.

On Saturday, the sun came out finally, and since then it’s been absolutely gorgeous here… On the recommendation of Ben, Korby and I went to the DUMBO arts fair in Brooklyn.. I’ve never walked over the Brooklyn Bridge (and neither had Korby), and since it was a nice day out, we did.. Man, that bridge sure is awesome, I can’t believe they built it over a hundred years ago..

Korby had bought a nightstand from some Russian furniture store in Brighton Beach, so he somehow convinced me to go with him that day and carry it back to his apartment in Manhattan.. I mean, I’m not very hard to persuade for such a journey, he and I are legendary for pointless trips like circumnavigating the entire bay area on public transit and driving to alaska and back, and at least this one had a purpose.

So we took the subway (of course) to Coney Island. I’ve never been to Coney Island, and the only real thing I know about the place is that hot dog place, Nathan’s (yes, of course I had one). Ok, Coney Island was… super super creepy. It’s the end of summer and all, so none of the rides were operating, and the brisk, cold wind whipping through the fences and ferris wheel made an eery howling sound reminscent of some sort of 1973 b-grade horror film. Check out this movie I took of Coney Island.. creepy, right?

Anyway, since we were in the hood, we had some Russian food in Brighton Beach (which, incidentally, is also a fantastic place to buy fur coats, fur boots, fur hats, fur mittens and fur socks) and grabbed Korby’s brand new nightstand from the Russian furniture store. Since it’s Korby, we take the subway back to his house, which includes three transfers, 7 flights of stairs (plus 6 flights of stairs that we went up, and then back down, since the 4-5 doesn’t run at the station we were at). Oh what fun.

It’s been great seeing all of my ol’ Cornell and SF friends here in NY — man, there are alot of us back here, which is great… There’s so much to do here.. Eric and I went to some speakeasy in Hell’s Kitchen yesterday that was sooo cool — it’s just a non-descript door on a side street, and you have to ring a buzzer to get in and everything. Fun. Miss Kittin is playing at the Maritime tonight and Liz Phair is at Irving Place. Tomorrow Death Cab for Cutie is at Irving place, and Thursday I’m trying to decide between Demetri Martin (the comedian) and Mates of State… Decisions, decisions… Hmmm.. yes, yes, I like the New York.

I’m headed to New York City for two weeks… I’ll be attending BlogOn 2005 on the 17th and 18th, so I thought I’d head out early and hang out in New York for a bit… A ton of SF folks have slowly made their way out to NYC in the past few years, so it’ll be nice to see everyone again..

After a few weeks of gorgeous weather here in San Francisco, I’m not sure what I think about the New York forecast… Hmm.. rain? Like, water falling from the sky? I think I vaguely remember what that is…

Ok.. now that I only have two states in the union (North and South Dakota) to visit to have visited all 50… I’m already thinking about the next roadtrip… Blanchard, North Dakota.. What’s in Blanchard? The tallest man-made structure in the world, of course!

It’s almost equidistant from San Francisco and from New York… (ok, 8 hours more from SF, but you New Yorkers can go through Canada to tack on some mileage).. So I say we have a little SF-NY reunion BBQ there.

Come on.. who’s with me?

Since I love making movies, here’s the august roadtrip movie (45mb download) from my latest trip for your viewing pleasure.. enjoy.

Days: 8.
Total miles travelled: 3,199
Number of tires blown: 0.
States visited: 7.
National Parks visited: 3.
Money lost in Vegas: $221.
Money lost in Winnemuca: $1.
Money invested in California Lottery: $1.
Number of Walmarts visited: 2.
Number of times lost in suburbs of Brigham, UT: 1.
Number of times God brought up in conversation by strangers: 2.
Number of McDonalds visited: 0.
Number of Roadfood places visited: 2.
Number of Roadfood places dined at: 1.
Number of Bison spotted: 27.
Number of Jablows spotted: 2.
Number of Sinclair Dinosaurs spotted: 2.
Number of Marshmallows roasted: 11.
Number of Rocks collected: 5.
Number of Geologic features identified: 271.
Number of Aspen pictures taken: 6.
Number of Rainbows seen: 2.

I also made a google map representation of the roadtrip, if you have google earth installed, check it out, it’s kind of neat.. ok, geeky.

And.. so yah, that’s basically the trip…

From Yellowstone, we drove north up through Montana since I wanted to see the Big Sky country and all… Granted, I’m easily swayed by advertising slogans and all, but I swear the sky really is bigger up in Montana. I mean, the skies in Idaho were cool, but those would be more like “Rather Large Sky” country rather than the “Big Sky” country you get up in Montana. Right at the border between Montana and Idaho, you can feel the sky shrink a little bit. Really!

We stayed the night in Twin Falls, Idaho — which bills itself as “The World’s Most Overlooked Place”. Now, what the hell kind of slogan is that.. that’s second only to Kalamazoo, Michigan’s slogan, “Yes, there really IS a Kalamazoo.” Ugh… Nothing will ever come close to my favorite town slogan.. “Ithaca is Gorges.” Anyway, Twin Falls should really be renamed No Falls, Idaho. Apparently, due to seven years of drought, they’ve turned OFF the falls so that the farmers can irrigate their crops. So there’s really nothing to look at (maybe that’s why it’s overlooked). I mean, at least rename it Twin Cliffs, Idaho or something. Sheesh. Then again, Twin Falls wasn’t all that bad.. we were treated to an encore presentation of the sunset and rainbow that we saw the night before in Yellowstone (my wise friend Doug once told me.. “sunsets happen every day”).

And that’s it… Natalie and I made it home safely.. I think the trip was about 3,000 miles in total… Natalie earned herself a silver medal in roadtripping on her inaugural performance on a classic american roadtrip (she earned extra points for the geology lessons). And no flat tires this time.. Hmm.. come to think of it, this is my ONLY major roadtrip without a blown out tire… Alaska trip.. blown out tire.. Southwest trip, blown out tire.. hmm.. Maybe I’ve learned something after all of these miles..

And.. here we are… the “reason” for this roadtrip.. Yellowstone.

So I saw this movie on the Discovery channel a few months back called “Supervolcano” — it basically talked about how the Yellowstone caldera is the largest caldera in the world, and when it erupts, it will wreak havoc on the world by erupting enough ash to put us into nuclear-winter for years to come. Whoohoo.. Now that I wanna check out. Turns out, you can’t really see the caldera, cuz it’s like miles under the earth, but with that much magma that close to the surface, it makes for some really neat geologic features to check out. And since it erupted before, most of the rock and bits around yellowstone are volcanically formed and stuff. All around Yellowstone are stinky, steamy holes (which geologists call fumaroles).. so cool. The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is tinged yellow with the sulfur from the guts of our earth, which makes for one hell of a scenic Kodak moment. But..honestly, why call it the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”? Like, “Grand Canyon” is already taken, I think they should call it the “Great Canyon” or something like that so that it can stand on its own naming merit.. Every time you say “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” you’re reminded of the OTHER grand canyon, and it’s pretty damn cool on its own. Hmm.. maybe I call it “Pretty Damn Cool Canyon” from now on.

Now, the volcano-y and geothermal bits of yellowstone are what I was expecting to see… What I was also pleasantly surprised about in Yellowstone were the incredibly beautiful forests that had been burnt in forest fires in years past.. When a forest fire rips through a region in Yellowstone, it leaves a gorgeous swath of burnt spindly trees in its wake. Supposedly the lodgepole pines won’t release their seeds unless there’s heat from a forest fire, so fires are an integral part of their life cycle. After the fire, the landscape is left barren, though life quickly starts to inhabit the rich fire-burnt soil. Since different parts of the park burn throughout the year, it’s almost as if you’re walking through a timeline of what happens in each year after a burn..

Anyway… since we were being touristy, we headed over to good old faithful to hang out with all of the European tourists. There sure were a lot of Europeans checking out our country. We met Italians, Dutch, Germans, and even people from Iowa. We got to old faithful right about 2 minutes after it erupted, so we had to wait for another 92 minutes or so before it erupted again. When it finally did erupt, it was really very exciting. really. honest. for real. whoopee!!! Nothing like some geothermally superheated water to get the adrenaline going.. I’m thinking that I will build myself a geyser right in downtown San Francisco. I’ll charge tourists like a buck to get a good look. I’ll be bigger than the mystery spot.

After old faithful did its thing, we ventured on to take a look at some more geothermal springs and such when a mad super crazy thunderstorm blew in outta nowhere. We were walking towards some gurgly spouty thing when all of a sudden like a dozen Italians come running out of nowhere shouting something about “storm!” “storm!” (in italian, of course) and pointing at the huge looming storm cloud that was shooting lightning every which way. Pretty damn exciting. Armed with my half broken hello kitty umbrella, we ventured onward to get a better look at the storm.. I haven’t been in a good thunderstorm since the summer of 1996 when I was making toilet paper in Mehoopany, PA, so I was really jazzed to be in a real, live summer storm once again. It had everything.. lightning strikes, enormous claps of thunder, hail, and the torrential downpour of buckets rain… So fun!! Man, living in San Francisco has really made me miss crazy weather like this. The storm made for some fantastic photos though… the sun was still peeking out from under the clouds low on the horizon which meant.. rainbow!!

Of course, this was the one night that we decided to camp.. lucky for us though, right as we pulled into our campsite, it stopped raining long enough for us to roast a bunch of marshmallows over our campfire…

After one wild and crazy night in Salt Lake, we hightailed it out of Utah, heading for Yellowstone. After spending a few days in Utah, it’s funny to see how many devil-based names of things are in Idaho.. Devil’s Lake, Hell’s Mouth, Bezelbub’s Lagoon… it seems like everything in Idaho is named to scare the poor Mormons back in to Utah. We made it to Yellowstone in the early afternoon, through the West Yellowstone, MT gate.. I had heard that there was a night rodeo in Cody, WY, so we zipped through the park quickly (ok, we did stop for a little bit at some bubbling geologic features, and did see some bison and elk).

Cody, Wyoming claims to be the rodeo capital of the world, and has a rodeo every night at 8:30pm during the summer. It was all I ever wanted from a rodeo and more… The rodeo consists of various incarnations of lasso’ing something or riding some sort of bucking animal. As the night progressed, the animals being lasso’ed or ridden got progressively bigger (as did their riders). So, starting with the 12 year old cowboys riding little calfs, the night ended with the professional cowboys riding big badass Bulls. In the middle, there was a crazy event where all of the kids in the audience got to run around the stadium and chase a poor calf (with a ribbon tied to it) — all for a free dairy queen sunday. Ahh.. good ol’ clean American fun.

Yeeehaaa.

After Vegas, Natalie and I drove north to Utah to Zion National Park.. Zion’s pretty cool, with big rocks and stuff and we had time to do one quick hike to the weeping rock. Natalie’s a geologist, so all along the trip she was able to point out the cool geologic features and stuff… Which basically meant that we’d stop at the side of the road and she’d excitedly run off to look at some rocks or something.. My college roommate Jon was a geologist too, and I remember him telling me that geologists were really bad drivers since they were always paying attention to the rocks along the side of the road.. I can see why now. But it sure was cool to have a geologist along on the roadtrip, I learned a whole lot.. Now I am well versed in schist formation, metamorphic rocks, and all sorts of neat sounding things.. Science is fun!

The next day, we drove to Bryce Canyon.. Bryce Canyon ROCKS. I think it’s cooler looking than the Grand Canyon.. I mean, the Grand Canyon is cool and all, but it’s just cool cuz it’s really, really big. Bryce Canyon is sooo pretty, and the size of the features seem more accessible than Grand Canyon. We did the Peekaboo Loop Hike, which took us away from most of the crowds. Though it was rainy and overcast throughout most of the day, the beauty of Bryce Canyon was still able to shine through. In the middle of the hike, I sat down on a bench to get a bit of rest and spotted a cute little bird hopping about. I took a picture of it. Then it pooped on me. They say it’s good luck, but I think they just tell that to people to make them feel better after they’ve been pooped on by a bird. Yuck.

After Bryce, we headed out on highway 12.. which is designated as a national scenic byway. It’s damn scenic and definitely makes it on to dennis’ “official list of damn scenic drives”. The scenery drastically changes from the reddish rock of Bryce to a more tannish variety which Natalie found more interesting.. The two-laned driving was twisty, hilly, and slow-going and going the whole way from Bryce to Boulder (about 100 miles) took over 3 hours… The drive from Boulder to Salt Lake City (about 200 miles) was much, much faster…

When we got near SLC, I gave dipasquo a call since he’s spent a lot of time in Salt Lake on business…

me: hey dan, we’re about to get to Salt Lake..
dan: uh huh.
me: so, does Salt Lake have a night life or anything?
dan: hahahahahahaha. no.

Yah.. so I guess the mormon’s don’t party hard or anything… and considering it was a Tuesday night when we pulled into SLC, it was quieter than mime in a library.

Well.. I just got back from yet another roadtrip. Unlike my last roadtrip, which I was able to document in a very, very detailed fashion, I had only minimal Internet access.. And, unlike the last roadtrip, this time I wasn’t alone — Natalie joined me, which was a welcome addition. Natalie’s from England, and this would be her roadtrip — and considering that Europeans don’t really drive nearly as far as we American’s do, I don’t quite think she was prepared for how much driving an American roadtrip involves (or at least, a roadtrip with crazy me).

Our first leg was the longest haul of the trip.. San Francisco to Vegas. The drive from SF to Vegas is quite a trek through California’s central valley.. Notable stops along the way were Pea Soup Andersen’s in Santa Nella, CA for the pea soup (what else??) and The Mad Greek in Baker, CA for the strawberry shakes…

Upon our arrival in Las Vegas, we joined up with the Jerks for the celebration of Jablow’s 30th birthday. By the time we got to Vegas the Jerks had already been drinking for quite some time, especially Tom Kim who apparently didn’t realize that Friday night was the “calm” night out in preparation for glorious Saturday shenanigans. After brunch at Mandalay Saturday morning, I set out to give Natalie a grand tour of Vegas.. The plan was to start with the Big Shot at the stratosphere, then to Circus Circus, then to see the new Wynn, then to the Mirage to see the rainforest, then to the Venetian, Bellagio, Paris, and New York, New York… But.. it turns out that I’m a bit too optimistic in my time estimates.. Turns out, doing anything in Vegas takes like 3 hours, so we only got to hit up the Stratosphere before it was time for dinner.. Ooops.

Saturday night was the biiiig celebration for Jablow.. Jo has some great photos of the night.. We went to The Mix which is on the top floor of TheHOTEL at Mandalay Bay.. For a Saturday night it was actually pretty uncrowded and we had no trouble getting in even at midnight, so that was a pleasant surprise to not have to wait in line for something in Vegas.. Needless to say, most everyone did a good job celebrating Jablow’s 30th year, and a good percentage of us ended up on assorted bathroom floors cursing sin city… But, I won’t elaborate since.. what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and all, right?

But man.. good times.. good times…

Anyway.. happy birthday Jablow!! (and Pius too, and the Kaibash too, man.. three Jerks born on the same date.. insane)

It’s been an ongoing tradition to plan a trip whenever one of my friend’s turns 30, so this weekend was Korby’s birthday party in Vancouver… We all flew up to Seattle (since it was cheaper) and then drove up to Canada in a rented van. Kim made us all wear matching shirts.

Man, Vancouver is lovely. Clean city, cute girls, and cheap living — what more could you want? We saw a few places for sale in downtown Vancouver for like $250,000 CDN.. I think you can maybe buy a shoebox here in San Francisco for that. Crazy.

At the US-Canada border, Tom Kim chats with the border patrol:

“Hello.”
“Hello.”

“What was your purpose of your visit to Canada?”
“Uhhh… ummm.. Just looking around.”

“Hmm. So, what was your purpose?”
“Ummmm.. yah.. just looking around, you know.”

“Did you purchase anything in Canada?”
“Ummmm.. not really.”

“How do you know all of these people?”
“Ummm.. I don’t know.. I guess.. Ummm.. I used to work with him, I think.. and uhhh… I think they all went to college together”

“Please turn off your engine and open the door.”

Geez.. I mean, honestly… Tom Kim is the most suspicious innocent person I’ve ever met… “Not REALLY“?!?! Just looking around“?!?!? Haha.. man, maybe you “had to be there” but it was damn funny. Well, it was damn funny because we didn’t get cavity searched. That wouldn’t have been funny. Ok, maybe a little.

Anyway.. happy birthday Korby!