Melinda, I'll love you forever

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Luxury Villa Rentals

TheBigDay has partnered up with a very cool new company, The Villa Portfolio, which offers luxury villa rentals for honeymooners, destination weddings, and general vacation travelers looking for something a bit different, a little more personal. I've been working with Robert Eastman, the founder, on this for a bit and am very impressed with what he's got in his collection of fabulous villas around the world.

See the press release.

SEZOENSRALLY (rally, onboard camera)

I miss World Rally Championship on SPEED TV!!!

Rotary Road Rally 2008

Rotary Road Rally 2008

EFR 2008

EFR 2008

Rendezvous: a leisurely tour of Paris by Ferrari

It's a 9-minute tour of Paris by film director Claude Lelouch. The soundtrack is a Ferrari 275 GTB engine (Lelouch's own car), but apparently the car used to film it was actually a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9. I guess I can accept it's better that he drilled holes in a M-B bumper to mount the camera rather than violating the Ferrari's skin.

If you listen carefully, you'll notice a little overzealous mixing of extra tire squeal in places :-( Lots of arguments about the speeds attained in the film...some experts saying no more than 85mph, while Lelouch claimed something over 200kph (about 120mph).

Apparently there was only 1 "lookout" person put in place for safety--near the Louvre.

More about this film here.

Wedding Registry Etiquette

See my article on Google's Knol regarding wedding registry etiquette.

It pays to play hockey on Air Canada

Seth Godin's blog brought this to my attention (I'm quoting him here):

"Air Canada, which my readers generally concur is the single worst major airline in North America, has a fascinating policy. No oversized duffel bags, regardless of weight, unless they contain hockey gear. No shin guards, you pay $80 a bag."

Actually, for reservations made after May 15th of this year, it's now $100 a bag.

Turns out their policy is a bit more balanced than that...it's not just hockey gear that gets the fee waived, it's also snowboards and skis :-). Full details are here.

Reminds me of a contest ran a long time ago to come up with the Canadian equivalent of the phrase "as American as apple pie". The winner was "as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances."

Facebook doesn't like my attitude. HAL?

Occasionally I try to wade through the sea of irrelevant crap that Facebook puts on my page to figure out what my friends are doing etc....and today I got really frustrated with the glacial speed at which Facebook was loading my pages (and jerking elements out from under my mouse).

So I went up to the box where it says "what are you doing right now", and typed in "wondering why Facebook is so annoyingly slow!"

Well, Facebook didn't like that very much at all.

I got an error message something like "Oops, sorry, we can't do that for you, we're working on xyz..."

Then, I clicked on the "Friends online" button in the lower right (where it said several of my friends WERE online), and that magically went to 0 and said something like "can't find any of your friends".

Does this sound like HAL or what???

Best time of year to go to Tahiti

After my trip to French Polynesia about a year ago, a lot of people have asked me what the best time of year to go to Tahiti is...especially when they find out the price difference between low and high season. There's a few factors involved, and while some tropical destinations have fairly radical weather differences in their seasons, I found that January (low season for Tahiti) was really pretty comfortable and beautiful--especially as virtually all the resorts have air conditioning, so you'll sleep well at night.

My eyes, post-Lasik

From Dr. Greg Schober at Macadam Vision Clinic come these pics of my eyeballs, post-Lasik.











I'm thrilled with both the outcome and the care of both Dr. Schober and Dr. Will at Will Vision...I highly recommend both of these guys!

Photos from my Tahiti trip on Flickr

Full sets of all of the photos of each resort I visited in Tahiti in January 2007 are now on Flickr:

BORA BORA
Bora Bora Pearl Resort
St. Regis Resort Bora Bora
Sofitel Motu Bora Bora
Sofitel Bora Bora Beach Resort
InterContinental Bora Bora Thalasso Resort and Spa
Bora Bora Nui Resort and Spa
Hotel Bora Bora
Bora Bora Lagoon Resort

MOOREA
Sheraton Moorea Resort and Spa
Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa
InterContinental Moorea Resort and Spa

TAHITI
Le Meridien TahitiSofitel TahitiInterContinental Resort Tahiti

MISCELLANEOUS
Bora Bora airport etc.

My virtual garage at DriverSide

Discovered a new website for tracking your car info called DriverSide...just starting to build a page for my 1970 Chevy pickup.

I've uploaded a photo of each of the last bunch of cars I've added, but that's about it. Not sure at this point how useful the site is...will experiment for a bit.

New cabinetry - courtesy my father

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Rotary Club of Portland Wine Tour 2008

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Brought to you by the Preserve Planet Earth committee of the downtown Portland Rotary Club.

My Lasik surgery

This is the video of my surgery from April 10th at Will Vision Laser Center in Vancouver, WA. I was so impressed with them--everything (including my prescription) was checked by two separate doctors (in addition to my own eye doctor), plus Dr. Will did his own check as well as reviewing the results and measurements the other two doctors took. Really professional and well-organized and NO WAITING at any of the appointments...it was a very un-doctors-office-like experience!

And I'm now 20/15 and loving it!

Evergreen Air Museum

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Motorcycle Monkey

Riding motorcycles takes years of training...at least, it took ME years of training!

Instructional Sports Camps

I've recently become involved in helping out an organization called Instructional Sports Camps. Founded originally in Mobile, Alabama by Leno Pugh, the organization (and Leno) are now based in Portland, Oregon. The group uses the playing field as a classroom to coach and mentor underprivileged youth, with a mix of professional and amateur athletes, helping the kids develop self-confidence, leadership and teamwork skills. A number of friends and business colleagues are helping them out in various ways; I'm contributing some website and SEO consulting and helping them find other people who will help them advance their cause.

It's a free program for the kids, underwritten by sponsors and a lot of volunteer hours.

To find out more about this terrific sports camp for kids in Portland, visit www.sportscampsinc.org.

Bruce's Pernil Pork

Gotta thank Bruce from Vino for this find...sure is ugly going into the oven, but it turned out fabulous.

Before:



After:

Portland On Fire

Hey, I'm semi-famous :-)

Portland On Fire

And speaking of BBQ....

My friend Bruce, proprietor of the wine store Vino in Sellwood, posted a recipe for roasted pork shoulder on his blog (from a NY Times article originally).


Bruce has actually become quite the blogging fool...tons of good content about food and wines in Portland and from his world travels. I remember not too many years back when Bruce could barely spell blogger, and now he are one :-)

Combining two of my all-time favorite activities

Motorbikes and barbecuing!

This Australian guy takes it to a whole new level though...see the report in the Australian Daily Telegraph.

I understand that the Australian police saw the story in the paper and grilled him :-)

Apparently this guy migrated from New Zealand in August....says he picked up the barbecue left on a nature strip for a hard rubbish collection.

Play Pumps - what a brilliant idea!

Kids play on a merry-go-round...and it pumps clean water from a well. Solves the problem of trying to get drinking water from often-contaminated surface supplies like creeks/rivers, and doesn't require electricity or gas/diesel.

More details at www.playpumps.org. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki's blog, where I first heard of this...