Honeymoon with my Brother (by Franz Wisner)

Franz Wisner (author of Honeymoon with my Brother) spoke yesterday at our Rotary club lunch about his experiences, writing the book, and travel. In a nutshell: after getting dumped just before his wedding, he and his brother decided to go ahead and use those non-refundable tickets for Costa Rica and go on a little vacation. They returned with a new outlook on life, and promptly quit their jobs, sold everything they had, and took off on a two-year, 53-country trip around the world.

It's a great book (and a true story), but what makes this meaningful for me is the story of his grandmother, who when she heard about their plans to scrap their current lives, careers, etc. and travel around the world thought it was a terrific idea. Valuing travel experience above stuff...that resonates with me and our mission at TheBigDay.

Franz is a great speaker as well--if you get a chance, definitely go see him.

It's a boy!

We had our ultrasound this morning, and the baby cooperated...we can tell it's a boy!

In fact, the little guy was squirming and wriggling up a little storm in there, rolling around, turning over, wiggling his little arms and legs...

Portland Japanese Gardens

Mel & I visited the Japanese Gardens here in Portland this past Saturday...and were reminded what a beautiful city we live in! Rhododendrons were in fine form...pics from the gardens are here.

Live Internet Weddings in Hawaii

One of our partners in our 21st Century Wedding contest is Live Internet Weddings, based in Hawaii. Larry Fair, the owner/founder, started the business after an accident which left him disabled. He'd thought his productive life was over, and that he'd be on disability forever, but got the idea for webcasting destination weddings and realized that he could do this work even with his disability. His son moved to Hawaii and together they started the business. They were able to launch the business with the help of The Abilities Fund.

Fabulous Fiji!

Being a scuba diver, I've always wanted to go to Fiji. The corals there are supposed to be fantastic (there's a cool IMAX film called Coral Reef Adventure which has a lot of footage of diving in Fiji).

Fiji never seems to get the attention in the press that Tahiti does, and in a way it's a shame...but the "plus" side is that roughly equivalent resorts seem to be a fair bit less expensive in Fiji as a result. Fiji doesn't have the overwater bungalows that Tahiti is famous for, but you get the same kind of private island luxury resorts. Really great for a honeymoon.

Real-time travel info, flight stats, etc.

How late, how often, and how come: Gary Price of Resource Shelf posted an article on real-time info websites, including FlightAware. There's also Portland-based FlightStats with free widgets for both flight status and flight ratings (on-time, cancelled, avg delay, etc.) which is pretty cool.

Honeymoon checklist

I just updated our honeymoon checklist at TheBigDay...some new "lessons learned" from my own honeymoon trip to Africa. Who'da thunk that a tented safari camp in the middle of the Maasai Mara wouldn't have an ATM? You know what they say: good judgment comes from experience...and experience comes from bad judgment :-).