fast time goes

Wow. Time is flying. We’ve been quite busy these past few months. I have a bunch of photos on my camera to put on here, but I don’t have my camera right now, so my iPhone photos are going to provide the story.

We went up to to New York for the first time in way too long to see Tal and Anita. That city is awesome. You can’t really compare it to anywhere else: it just is its own place. We just had a few days, but made it to some of our favorite spots. The Guggenheim has entirely changed since we last went there a year or so ago. My favorite part about that place is the architecture – and how cool it looks with people in it. The guy above was outside the Met, painting on t-shirts. He painted this thing in like 5 minutes. It was so amazing to watch.

This painting was at the Met. How cool is that. A painting of a window with a view – they had an exhibit of these types of paintings going on there. It is like the type of photography you see nowadays with kind of an artsy appeal – and here it is in a painting.

I mentioned the iPhone app Photosynth in a previous post. Check it out, it is awesome to take pictures like this. On the phone you can actually swipe around the photo for a 360 degree view, but this one looks pretty cool too.

Julie’s brother Matt came in town from Hawaii (he is a professor there) for a conference. It was great to spend some time with him and get out and see the city. We’ve lived in DC for two years now and I am still always just blown away by the majesty of the monuments and the feelings I get when I am there – except for when there are tour groups of thousands of annoying teenagers. Those parents that volunteer to chaperone kids on those trips are crazy – that sounds like the worst job ever.

We went up to the National Cathedral with Matt. Beauty spot.

My parents came in town for a speech, just as Julie was leaving to California – but it was so fun to spend some time with just me and my parents. Not sure the last time that happened. My mom and I went to the National Gallery of Art and found this funky exhibit in the East Gallery.

We went out to California for Julie’s family reunion. It was so fun to see everyone. We camped on the beach in San Diego for the reunion with everyone and then the boys took a sailing trip out to Catalina Island for a few days. It was so cool to finally make it out there after Julie’s dad had got me excited about going out there over the past few years. Julie’s brother Dan and I scuba dove which was awesome. Totally unlike other dives I have done as it was a cold water dive. We were wet-suited from head to toe – but seeing the kelp forests and the cold water wildlife was comparable to being in Avatar land – whatever that place is called. 

We moored at Emerlad Bay.  A beauty spot.

One of Julie’s best friends from Jersusalem and her husband are here for an internship this summer. We spent Saturday enjoying the city with them and learning what it is going to be like to have an 18 month old.

I have been traveling here and there for work, from Orlando, to Denver, to Miami, to Delaware, to Philly where I am today for a conference. This is a great city.

Thanks iPhone. The camera is getting better, but they’ve got a ways to go as far as the light sensor goes. Next week we are heading to Bear Lake for my family reunion. I am so excited to see some wide open spaces and be in one of my favorite spots on earth. Julie is too…though she isn’t too excited about the four straight 13 hour shifts she is working this weekend (and on the 4th of July) in order to get some time off to come to Bear Lake, but it will be worth it when she sees the Bear Lake sunsets, the starry sky, skies on the glass, and gets invaded by 20 some odd nieces and nephews. That’s all for now.

Cozumel with the broskis

My dad had the idea way back when to create F&FFE (Fathers and Future Fathers of Eyrealm); not really sure how to describe it, but it consists of my dad, all the brothers, and brother-in-laws in the family.  Once every few years when we are lucky enough to coordinate schedules; we take a trip together. Last week, we all met up in Cozumel for 3.5 days of scuba diving. It was so cool to be there with these great guys who are my brothers, but also my best friends. We had a blast – ate great food – talked – laughed – scuba dove – played basketball against a local team – just enjoyed ourselves. I must say that the diving was some of the most amazing I have experienced, (I’ve been lucky enough to dive in some pretty amazing spots around the world) the visibility was incredible and all the dives we went on were very unique in their own way. The deepest dive was down to about 120 feet and included swimming through caves, all sorts of amazing coral and underwater life. We did some amazing drift dives (where you are moving with the current so you just glide along the reef edge (cliff)). We even did a night dive which was so amazing and eerie at the same time…we had underwater flashlight and saw squid, HUGE crabs, eels, and my favorite – the bioluminescent micro-organisms that we saw in Puerto Rico last year. They weren’t as concentrated, but when you turned off your light and moves around, the organisms would light up all around you like fireflies. On the cave dives it was almost unreal as you looked up through the coral and rock to the shards of light coming down through – I wish we had a camera for that part. I learned that blood is green underwater when I scratched up  the back of my leg on the coral as we swam through one of the caves. Tal described it best when he said that each drive was like flying through a different world.

Anyway, I tried to snap some photos along the way to share. Jonah bought an underwater camera that gave us some great shots, until we went down too deep and well, the camera didn’t like that too much.

We stayed at Scuba Club Cozumel which was a full on dive lodge. Everything you needed was right there. Great food, rooms, pool, hammock, dive gear, lockers, and a dock that the boats would come pick us up at. You could also grab tanks and go out and shore dive. That was the first thing we did when we got there, while we waited for everyone else to arrive. This was relatively shallow so the underwater camera worked.

Tal takes great underwater photos…look at his face in both of these (above and below).

This one is going on the Orange Sky website (me, Noah and Tal’s company).

By the time we got out, the rest of the guys had made it.

This was the sweet little restaurant there…lots of good pieces of fish and homemade Mexican food. That is something that is severely lacking in DC so it was nice to get my fill.

Each morning, the boats would come pick us up and we’d head to various parts of the island for dives.

This is the one picture we all got together. Jared was just finishing his scuba certification so that is why he isn’t in his gear in case you were thinking he was too scared to go or something. He joined us on the next dive.

Here’s a couple of shots of the dive lodge. Then some random shots on the boat as we got ready to dive.

This is right after we finished the night dive. Sorry it is so blurry – a little bouncy on the boat.

This is Buddha, one of the awesome boat hands that helped us out. I made him smile real big.

Later that day – we went and played some basketball at the pro basketball arena on Cozumel (a humble spot). Noah met this guy at the airport who saw that Noah was tall and asked him if he played basketball. Noah said that he did, and that his brothers, dad, and bro-in-laws were coming who were also tall. This guy was the coach of a group of high school/early college kids. So he asked if we would come and play them. So Noah, Tal, Dad, Dave, and I went and played them. The gym was right in the center of town and had cement bleachers built it. A lot of the kids parents and friends showed up to watch. It was  lot of fun – it was about 90 degrees and 183% humidity with not a lot of circulation in there. I think that was the most I have ever sweat in my life. We had a fun game where the team we played took the early lead, but we came back and beat them down the stretch thanks to “Mr. Clutch” Dave Pothier, and a sweet move by dad where he took to Pepe (their best player). Luckily Noah had his phone and we took a photo.

 

The place we stayed was so relaxing; no TVs, just hammocks and the ocean. So we spent the evenings playing cards, talking, and swinging in the hammocks. It was SO cool to be there with all of my brothers. It has been a while since we’ve had talks with all 5 of us.

This is an awesome picture of Jo and Tal watching Noah try a new app on his phone that Josh showed us. It is called PhotoSynth. Totally awesome, try it out.

Jo and Noah went for one last night dive.

This was the sunset that Jo and I shouldn’t have seen. Due to a big old storm in Dallas and the mid-west, our plan never made it to Cozumel to fly out on Sunday. So, we got to spend another day there with Dad (who was staying for another couple of days). We rented a Geo Tracker (amazing right) and drove over to the other side of the island to see what that was all about. It was so fun to spend more time with Jo and enjoy the beauty of the Caribbean Sea. We got up the next morning to get on a ferry to go over to Playa del Carmen, then took a bus to Cancun where the flight I was supposed to be on was full, and so I got fly to Chicago with Jo.

Chicago has a pretty amazing skyline. We are hoping to spend a weekend exploring there this summer.

What an amazing trip! Thanks so much to Dad for putting it all together. This one will be one we’ll be talking about for years and years!

3 years…

Well, May the 2nd marked 3 years since the day that Julie and I got married. Whoa, where did the time go? In some ways it seems like we have been married for so long, and in other ways it seems like it was just May 2nd, 2008. Unfortunately due to a storm in the mid-west, I got stuck in Mexico and by the time I got home on the night of our anniversary, Julie had already left for the night shift at the hospital. Cripes. We decided to celebrate the next day since for a while we were planning the wedding for the 3rd anyway. We went out to dinner and reflected on the last 3 years of our lives, and the fact that we are just getting started. Being married to Julie is such a blessing to me. She makes me who I am. I can’t wait to see what year 4 of marriage holds.

This is a video that I made her for our anniversary…don’t feel obligated to watch, but I wanted to put it up here to remember what an awesome year we’ve had since anniversary number 2.

Dubai UAE

Anyone that knows me know that I love cities. Dubai is one of those cities that I had heard so much over the years and hoped I would get to go there one day. It turned out that Emirates (airline) doesn’t charge any extra on your tickets if you stop over in Dubai for a few days (their way to bring some extra tourism to their country I guess – Emirates is UAE based). When we found this out, it was a no brainer that we’d be stopping there for a few days.

Going from India to Dubai was basically going from one end of the spectrum to the complete other side. From poverty to extravagance. It is interesting to see how an extremely wealthy country uses their wealth. In the case of Dubai, it was to create the craziest, most futuristic city they could. We found a really cool hotel that was just opening so it had “opening rates” that made it affordable to us. We only had two days, but we made the most of it and saw everything we had hoped to.

This was the view from the roof of our hotel.

We first went down to the marina area – the newest, ritziest part of Dubai. I think these were all condo buildings.

Buildings as far as you could see, about a fourth of them were under construction with people working busily on them.

This one one (above) was my favorite. I am excited to see what it looks like when it is finished.

Next we walked up the shore a mile or so to see the icon of Dubai…the Burj Al Arab (well at least until they built the Burj Khalifa…you’ll see that soon).

Unfortunately it was rather windy and sand stormy, but it was pretty amazing to see this thing in person…the 7 star hotel built on its own little man-made island. The cheapest room I could find there was $2000 per night on a discount website. They won’t let you in unless you have a reservation to eat there or are actually staying there. I tried to get in, but no luck…so we admired from the beach. The Arabian Sea was so beautiful – so blue.

Next stop was the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa – all 828 m (2,717 ft) of it. That’s like half a mile. It was just insane to crink your neck up and try and see the top of it.

It was located right next to Dubai Mall, and this Downtown Dubai thing they created which is this huge Lagoon with dancing fountains that is surrounded by all sorts of huge buildings. It was really cool. We ate dinner at a restaurant right at the bottom of the Burj Khalifa on the Lagoon. You had to pay like 50 bucks to go the top which included a wait of a couple of hours, so we just decided to admire it from the ground.

a clip of the dancing fountains

This was the dress of most of the men out for a night on the town. It was so cool to see the men in these and the many of the women in full on burkas. That’s just how they do it. So interesting.

It looked absolutely amazing at night.

Here is the night view from the roof of our hotel. Pretty amazing skyline. The Burj just makes everything else look tiny. In reality though, the buildings that look small were really tall buildings.

The next morning we ventured into Old Dubai. This totally reminded me of Jerusalem and cities I have been to in the middle east. The Spice Souk was amazing. Every spice imaginable – I mainly just liked it for the photos.

These colorful old boats bring everything from electronics, to toys, to furniture to Dubai from Iran. There were tons of them on the water there getting unloaded.

We headed back over to Dubai Mall to see the rest of the mall and to see the fountains at night. The mall is huge. It is over the top and insanely extravagant. This is a chocolate store. Amazing. Then we saw the rest of the crazy stuff in this mall including:

Touch screen 3D maps/directory of the mall.

An Olympic sized ice rink.

A 3 story fountain with statue divers.

An insanely huge aquarium FULL of fish…

Including sharks…you can pay to scuba dive in this sucker.

Candy stores galore, and every store you can think of. We were amazed to see Magnolia Bakery (what the what? (the famous NY cupcake place) – so we got some banana pudding and went out and watched the fountains.

We took one last photo, said our goodbyes to the Burj and jumped in a taxi to the airport to catch our midnight flight to JFK. Holy Cow that was a long flight, but it wasn’t too full, so we were able to spread out a bit.

There you have it, the last stop on our incredible trip. The world is an amazing place. I wish we could just travel all the time, anybody want to hire us as your travel writers?