Gustavus Part 1

Gustavus is a little town right outside of Glacier Bay National Park. It was about 400 year round residents and it reminds me a lot of small towns in Coastal Maine. The only way to get to Gustavus is to fly in, and the easier way is to fly on these little four seater planes. We went with a company called Air Excursions. The pilot was this young guy who never spoke to aircraft control (no need) and informed us that we were free to leave our cell phones on.

The Homestead Bed and Breakfast was one of our most favorite places we've ever stayed. They had bikes for us (a great way to get around a flat island). Here is Lila standing in front of their sign.

This is the "mall" in Gustavus, two businesses, one of which is the Homeshore Cafe. Homeshore is really the only restaurant in town, there are others attached to inns but they have set menus and are kind of pricey. Homeshore has sandwiches, salads, and pizzas and we ate there four times!

Catty Corner to the Homeshore cafe is THE gas station/museum. It looks cute from the outside but since it was never open while we were there, we can't comment on the inside.

This is a view of Lila and the dock in Gustavus. Everyday several fishing boats and whale watching boats go out. We came down to the beach a lot. Lila found lots of old fish guts but you don't have to see those pictures.

These last two pictures are from when we rented sea kayaking in Bartlett Cove, right at the southern end of the park. While kayaking we saw sea otters, sea lions, and a black bear. It was really nice to do some sort of outdoor activity.



We had great weather in Gustavus. The southerners on the island complained about the weather but clearly they hadn't been to New England in the winter, or any other time of year. Southeast Alaska really does look a lot like the Maine Coast, just there are mountains. I really liked it in Gustavus and so did Lila.

There are more gustavus photos coming, largely pictures from our day long cruise to the tidewater glaciers in glacier bay. I haven't offloaded those yet though.

Juneau

After a little excitement getting to Alaska (cancelled flights that we weren't notified about) we arrived in Juneau to a very nice little inn called the Beachside Villa. Here is lila standing in front of the hot tub!


We ate breakfast twice at this place:

The Sliverbow Bakery. It was really good. We had the reddest lox I've ever seen. It was delicious.


Lila and I hiking Mt. Roberts. Mt Roberts is one of the mountains that overlook the city of Juneau. It was a beautiful day, according to some locals it was like the third sunny day that summer. It was really fun to go up from sea level to about 3500 feet.


This is the view of Juneau from most of the way up Mt. Roberts. You can see the city of Juneau on the right side of the photo, the island on the left is Douglas. That is were we stayed, it was about a 20 minute walk into downtown from there - it was nice to be away from the cruise ships.

This is the place that we stayed in Juneau. Its the building to the right of the long aluminum barn thingy. It was a really great place to kick off our honeymoon.

A panoramic photo that Lila took of the mountains from Mt. Roberts.

More pictures will come, we've been having trouble uploading photos. Right now we are in Anchorage and have a solid wi-fi connection. More to come!

Married

Thank you to everyone who helped us have a successful wedding!

Lila's Mom's Garden

I've got to say, Lila's mom is a terrific gardener. Here is just one photo of some of the great flowers in her garden.

The wedding is soon.

Bronx Zoo

The Bronx Zoo is a pretty amazing place. I find it astounding that so many wild animals live within a stones throw of manhattan. Despite forecasts of thunderstorms today, Lila and I went to the zoo and enjoyed an afternoon of sunshine, reptiles, ungulates, large cats, apes, and the less well refined, nyc camp groups.

A Visit From England

Shaun, one of our english friends who we worked with at Killington, came to visit yesterday and today. The itineary included the Museum of Natural History, The Staten Island Ferry, and the Central Park Zoo.

Dip

My friends from High School, Matt, and his older brother mark started a company a few years ago that makes and sells bean dip. It is pretty tasty stuff and available a lot of supermarkets and specialty stores including whole foods! Maybe Camden has seen it on the shelves? In any case, check out the link in the sidebar. They're the shout out.

Also I have a new digital camera and I've decided to add a new section to my blog which will be computer backgrounds. I figure a lot of people like to have nature scenes as their wallpaper so I'm going to start posting some here. If you click the picture, your browser should open it up in a nice large window. The pictures are pretty high rez so they should be good for whatever screen size, unless you are Jon Todd. I hear he uses a 60" LCD these days.

Beach Day

Today Lila and I went to Robert Moses State Park to go to the beach. We walked over to the fire island lighthouse and had a very good time.

Makes me want to buy "not a mac"

Seriously, this is maybe the best comercial I have ever seen.

Ahoy!

We've been out on the water a few times.

The Boat Arrives

Lila and I bought a boat and today it arrived! I have to say its gorgeous. We rigged it today, for practice, and it will go into the water hopefully this weekend!

Blackberry Pearl 8130 review

Despite the fact that I love apple, I went ahead yesterday and bought a blackberry. I was eligible for a new phone and the Blackberry Pearl 8130 was on sale at bestbuy so I went for it.

I'm really happy with it - the operating system is complicated and the suretype keyboard takes some getting used to... but it works flawlessly once you get it.

Naturally the first thing I did to my pearl was to download a theme to make it look more like an iphone. I had some trouble getting the theme to load on the phone but the customer service people at www.mobihand.com sorted it out for me.

One really cool feature is the case that it comes with. The case is unimpressive looking and sort of useless seeming since there is no belt clip. But the case contains a magnet that the phone "notices" when it slides in automatically putting the phone to sleep. You can change how the phone responds to emails for example depending on whether it is in the case or not. I ordered a third party case from otterbox, which comes with a holster that accomplishes the same feature. BTW, there are some videos on youtube of people tossing blackberrys in this case down stairs and into snowbanks.

The GPS feature of the phone, paired up with sprint service anyways, works really well. I used it to drive to some address in White Plains that I had no idea how to get there (I was picking up an ebay purchase, not driving around aimlessly). The gps took me there perfectly.

Overall, its a great phone and I highly recommend it to other people. If anyone out there has any questions I'd be happy to try to answer them!

Day in the park

Lila and I went to Central Park last weekend for her niece cassidy's birthday. Then we say these two guys walking thru the park. Naturally a photo op ensued.



Yes. Thats Lila's older brother standing between Captain America and Spiderman. They said they lost a bet.

Cozumel 2008

Lila and I went for a week to Cozumel, Mexico. We mostly went diving and relaxed at the hotel. The food was excellent.

Mix up in the mail

I ordered this:



and got this:



Sierra Trading Post: Where jesus isn't exactly sure what you ordered.

A welcome houseguest

Fred came to stay for the last four days and I've got a few things to list that I know to be true:
1. A labatts in maine tastes the same as a Labatts in NY.
2. A labatts with fred always tastes great.
3. Dave Duhalde is really loud. All the time.
4. Fred is probably Jon Todd's brother he never had.

If anyone thinks of anything else defining about fred why not post them here.

Keep moving forward!!

I've learned something about myself. Whatever the last pixar movie that I watched is always the best movie I've ever seen.

The most recent:


The movie is all about scientific ingenuity and how you (really you there reading this) could invent the future!!!

And the plot moves wicked fast.

The best bumper sticker I've ever seen

Even better than the darwin fish:

Buy one

Say What?

Words.

Is there anything that unites people the way common language does? Words are complex, elegant, and simple. But I really never stop to think about words.

Here are two documentaries that I've seen that really made me think about words and their place in my life.


Wordplay

A great movie about crossword puzzles, the people who do them, and the people who create them. In my mind the under two minutes nytimes crossword solve contained in the film is equivalent two the crazy kids who solve rubic's cubes in under 30 secs.


Helvetica

This movie is a little slower, and not as exciting, but extremely interesting. Seemingly benign, fonts have a really interesting history brought forth in this very swiss movie.

Good Watching.

Cell phones

Lots of cool stuff coming out of the Mobile World Congress (I can't explain Robert Redford either). Many new phones and the line between computers and cell phones are blurring.

An observant pursuer of information would notice the complete lack of mention of Apple. When do we get iphone 2.0?

The Best meal I've ever had cooked for me

Lila just made me this extremely good fried shrimp dish out of "The Silver Spoon" cookbook. Those of you who know lila, know that she is a great cook. This recipe was so good that I've decided to risk copyright infrigement yet again and post it.

Fried Shrimp in pink sauce

Ingredients:
4 table spoons of tomato paste
3 tablespoons heavy cream
juice of 1/2 lemon, strained
1.5 cups dry white wine
1 teaspoon grated fresh root ginger
1 garlic clove
16 large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 egg whites
vegetable oil, for deep-frying
all-purpose flour, for dusting
salt and pepper

Combine the tomato paste, cream, and lemon juice in a bowl, season with salt and pepper and set aside. Pour the wine into a dish and add a pinch of salt and the ginger and the garlic. Add the shrimp, mix well and let marinate for about 1 hour. Stiffly whisk the egg whites in a grease-free bowl. Drain the shrimp and immerse them in the egg white. Heat the oil for deep frying in a large pan. Spread out the flour in a shallow dish. Holding each shrimp by the tip of its tail, dip it in the flour, then put it in to the hot oil and cook until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spatula and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and serve the pink sauce, handed separately.

Good eating

Nerdcore kinda

was just shown this by lila's older brother. And yes, I'm really excited about adding youtube videos to my blog.

Tim Burton scares me again

This was one seriously scary movie. There were funny bits, and sad bits, but mostly just scary bloody bits. You should probably go see it.

Voices from Macworld

Jon and I left Macworld yesterday and I thought I'd post some show photos as well as some thoughts.

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This was the Apple show floor, pretty much the dominant feature of the expo. There was this big stage and pretty much every hour there was some sort of presentation. The focus of many of these was of course the...

The Macbook Air!!

Here we can see many Apple fans checking out the new ultra-portable. It is really cool. Although it doesn't come with a CD drive, it is able to use any other wifi enabled computer's cd drive. In my opinion the perfect companion to the Air is the mini. you could run a headless mini somewhere out of sight and just use it for storage and the drive.

Of course many other companies were at Macworld. Google had a cool booth...


Naturally there was no where to sit, few power outlets and the wifi didn't work...


All in all we had a really good time. San Francisco is a great city with lots of good food, fun places to visit, and plenty of bars. Also everyone is trendy. So we felt right at home.