Not too much happened today from a traveling perspective. Natalie’s relatives and friends joined us throughout the day to visit, so we never had an opportunity to even leave the house. The amusing part of the day was as each set of relatives arrived, we would reset the champagne and appetizers. I, honestly, lost track of how much I drank that day. That night we headed over to a little Russian restaurant and were treated a very fine three-course dinner. During the dinner, at least one member of the family that ran the restaurant was playing old Russian folk songs. After the dinner, everyone joined from the kitchen and played at least another 8-9 songs. Dinner and a concert, well worth it!

Today was our first great outing! We started the day with the normal waking up around 10:00am, taking our time to leave the house. Using the subway we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe as our first major tourist spot. The Arc was just as impressive as I thought it would be. Natalie and I grabbed some tickets for admission and headed to the top. Only 218 steps later, we arrived at the indoor, top exhibit featuring models of the Arc and related statues. A few more steps later, we were treated to an amazing view of the Champs-Élysées.

After the Arc, we caught the subway again and headed for the Eiffel Tower. The trip was easy enough, but once you got off the subway you were bombarded with street peddlers offering you rare, once-in-lifetime key chains of the Tower. In case you missed the rare deal, look no further than two feet away and you find the same item for a different price. The Tower was just as large and magnificent as I thought it would be.  The lines to enter the tower, on the other hand, were larger and much more impressive than I thought. The lines were crazy, maybe three hours later you had a chance to enter (and that was for the stairs line). Needless to say, we opted to walk around the garden and take a few pictures enjoying the wonderful weather we had.

After some lunch at a tourist restaurant, which was way over priced and not the greatest food, we headed back along the Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde. This is the famous location for the guillotine during the French Revolution. The same guillotine that took the heads of much of the French aristocracy including Louis XVI in 1793. We arrived at the place just before sunset, so naturally we were treated to the best possible light and skyline conditions for pictures.

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Today is Christmas Day! We started off the day properly by sleeping in after a great Christmas Eve. As it was Christmas Day, nothing was open and so little was seen. After breakfast we attended a Christmas mass at Jean-Pierre’s nearby church. The service was great, but the temperature in the church was so low we were grateful to leave (not enough layers). After the service, we headed back to flat to enjoy a 2-hour lunch and warm back up a bit.

To finish out the afternoon, we headed up to Sacre Coeur Cathedral just before sunset. Unfortunately, we were unable to photograph the interior of the cathedral, which was amazing! But the outdoor and neighborhood shots were nearly perfect with the sunset that we were given. You can see more of the photos here (please login first). After the cathedral, we headed into the nearby town of Montmartre, which is kind of the “west hills” of Paris. Within the square, are dozens of artists, all eager to draw your portrait in about every style available.

To help warm back up and being fairly tired of just sitting, we opted to walk over half the way back to the flat. This again was enjoyable as we got to see more of Paris that is not frequented by tourists. Once the walk got the best of our feet we hopped on the nearest subway and headed back to relax the rest of the night.

Today was our first full day in Paris and it was Christmas Eve! It was tough to fall to asleep during the night, you felt tired going to bed, but actually falling asleep was a challenge. That was until about 3:00a, then you were out cold. We slept in until about 10:30a, which still felt like waking about in the middle of the night. But guilt and the smell of breakfast forced us out.

After a great breakfast, we set out with Jean-Pierre to head to the Christmas Market near La Grande Arche de la Défense. The Christmas markets were nothing special, except for the food that was being offered, but it was a our first chance to see the Grande Arche and try some hot spiced wine. Which was much needed since it was so warm out.

After enjoying and photographing the market, we headed back on the subway to Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral was absolutely incredible, and provided a nice break from the cold wind. The inside was immaculate, but very dark and difficult to photograph. We spent at least an hour inside the church photographing the interior. After feeling warm enough, we headed back outside to photograph the main entrance, including a picture of St. Denis. Finally we decided to walk around the church admiring it’s elaborate structure. But, the wind continued to get the best of us, so we called it a day and headed to find the nearest restaurant to warm back up. Nothing like a Quiche Lorriane and hot chocolate to do the trick.

Ah, there is nothing better when starting a vacation then a 6:00am flight! Yes, in order to make this whole trip work we had to leave from Chicago at 6:00am to catch a flight to Frankfurt, then only to arrive in Paris in mid-afternoon the next day. That’s the one thing I hate about flying to Europe is that you must kiss off a day. Our flight to Chicago was delayed an hour due to snow in the Chicago area, as a result they were slowing down the incoming flights. I was a bit nervous because we were not given more than 90 minutes to make the connection and I was under the impression that we were going to have to change terminals to catch the Frankfurt flight. Over an hour later we were leaving PDX on our way to Portland. Upon arrival in Chicago we were offered a great reward by the travel gods that our departing flight for Frankfurt was the gate across the hall, doesn’t get any easier than that. After grabbing some quick food and attempting to bribe the attendant to giving us business-class seats, we left ORD for FRA. The flight over was uneventful and 8 1/2 hours long. All attempts to catch some sleep failed, and the movies they offered were lame. God bless the PSP!

After landing in FRA around 6:00am the next day, we tried to figure out where our Paris flight was. The problem with FRA is that unless you are flying on Lufthansa, FRA will not assign a gate number until about 30 minutes before your flight. Normally not a problem, however many of the concourses have split levels with different gates above and below, security control is at the start of the level. So if you gate is on a different level than you are on, you must exit security and go back through on the next level. Natalie and I were getting quite tired by this point, so we decided to guess where the flight was going to be and camped out near the monitors until the gate was posted.  After enduring security, we headed for the gate, and Paris.

Once we got on the flight, I was beat and decided to nap a bit. Natalie called Jean-Pierre (Natalie’s uncle) to inform him that we were on-time and all was good. I awoke about an hour later expecting to be preparing to land, only to find that we have not left yet. Apparently there was a different excuse for why we did not leave every time they provided an update on the PA. Again, over an hour later we finally left for Paris. This is the beginning of my stance that Air France sucks.

Jean-Pierre met us at the airport and drove us to his flat near the Bastille in downtown Paris. We took a much needed nap for a few hours and woke up in time for an aperitif and dinner. Finally, the end of a very long trip to Paris, can’t wait to see some sights tomorrow.

Is it the 11th Commandment that the vacations must go by so fast? Seriously, it barely felt like we were there a week and then it was over. Needless to say, we have a great time and were able to do most of what we were hoping to do. In short we dove six dive sites including two sites at Lanai: No-Name Paradise and the Second Cathedral.

Day1: Our trip started with arriving at in Maui around 1:00p on Friday afternoon. After getting our bags and rental car we headed south to Wailea to the Marriott Resort & Spa where we were treated a great suite with two balconies over looking the ocean. During the afternoon we headed just south of Wailea to the Lava Shores at Ahihi Bay. The setting was great for pictures, but the lighting due to the large cloud lingering above us made capturing the shot against the bright ocean damn near impossible. After enuring the rough roads out to the park, we headed back to teh resort to tour the beach and lounge at the salt-water pool. Later that evening we headed up into the shops at Wailea at ate at the Cheeseburger in Paradise, which was surprisingly good considering how touristy it appeared.

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Day 2: Taking an opportunity to sleep in a bit, which means we awoke around 6:00a because that it is 9:00a PST, we headed over to the Longhi’s Restaurant in the same shops from the night before. All I have to say was the french toast good, the potatoes good, the juice good! We didn’t have to check-out until 11:00a, and when you wake up at 6:00a that leaves you plenty of time for snorkeling. Natalie and I heading down to the point and got in a good 90 minutes of swimming before having to head back. We checked out of the hotel and headed back to OGG to pick up Dan, Sarah, and Katie as they were set to arrive soon.

Day 3: Spend most of the day chilling at the resort or diving.

Day 4:

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Starting the morning by grabbing some more tanks and heading to Mala Ramp for one of the most amazing dives we have ever gone on. We were treated to sharks, turtles, noodle people, and more fish than I could possibly keep track of. Later that day we toured the town, and ate once again at Cheeseburger. That night we ended up playing one of the most die-head games of Gloom ever! Might have gone better if it was not for all the Mai Tais, thanks Dan!

Day 5: Decided to head back to Wailea for the day to do some shopping and of course more diving. Some of the wet weather was coming down from the North Shore, so it was nice to escape a bit to the better weather of the South (well as south as you can get on a small island). We wrapped up the day with a 2 1/2 hour whale watching trip that was incredible. We witnessed a group of males competing for a single female, who herself was with a young calf. Seemed like the female was generally uninterested in the males, but they were quite content to beat themselves up over her.

Day 6: Oh yeah, boat dive day!!!! This year we took a boat dive to Lanai, despite all the warnings about it being a very rough ride. It was a bit rough, but really nothing to be concerned over. We started the dive at Nowhere site which was a massive reef formation just 40 feet down. It featured a few little crevasses and an abundance of life. Our second dive was at the 2nd Cathedral which is a huge rock formation, allowed for some extensive cavern diving. The caverns were home to many fishes, and reef formations.

Day 7: The road to Haha. . .was very wet. The bad weather finally stopped teasing us and went for all its glory. The trip was quite wet, ask Dan. But nonetheless we toured a few falls, and made it to Hana only to discover that there really were no good restaurants there. Since some people we dying of hunger, we had to head but on the mostly-single-lane road to town. This was too bad, Hana was quite beautiful despite the weather, I did wish we could have spent more time there.

Day 8: Time to head home. If we weren’t depressed enough about that, we decided to head to our favorite kabob place only to find out that they were closing up shop due to the economy. Hell of a way to end!

The entire album can be viewed here (login required):

http://www.andyandnataliepics.com/v/andyphoto/maui2009/

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Okay, so it has been a little while. . .maybe a long while. Natalie and I just got back from Origins 2009 in Columbus, OH last weekend and in short we had a great time! For those who are unfamiliar with Origins, it is a gaming fair every year that offers you the opportunity to match wits and strategies with your friends.

Origins is not a super-LAN party, but a everything-except-computers gaming fair. This was our chance to hook up with the east-coast friends who will not be able to see at Dragon*Con this year (thank you economy). We played a whole assortment of games including “Arkham Horror“, “Pandemic“, “Spirit of the Century“, and “The 3 Commandments”.

On Friday, my goal was simple: depart customer’s site in St. Louis travel to Columbus. Of course, American Airlines went out of their way to make that as difficult as possible. Departed STL for ORD with no problems or delays, however once I got in ORD I was under a false-sense of comfort with my flight was on-time. Once on the plane already to go, the captain announced that we were going to be held to allow 20 folks arriving on a late international flight make the connection. That’s cool if you are like 10 minutes or so late, but not on the order of 90 minutes! The sad part was that there were 20+ people up on the standby list for that flight and more waiting for the next flight, AA could have easily filled the sits. And much to my misfortune the 20 people we were waiting for were middle-schoolers returning from a European trip.Wish airlines extended me the same courtesies when I was running late.

Anyway, finally arrived in Columbus and headed over to the Crowne Plaza to meet up with everyone. Most of our friends were quite drained from lengthy drives to get to Columbus. We all agreed that beer was a cure for this night.

Early Saturday morning, Natalie and I set out on our first quest: locate Starbucks! After some much needed caffeine was acquired, we headed back to the convention center and joined up with everyone else. The first game was “Spirit of the Century“, which I was not able to join since we had too many people already. No matter, I am really not into games that do not have a board or screen, but let me tell you it was damn entertaining to watch. After a short lunch at the North Market, we headed back to play “Arkham Horror” for the first time. Well second, sort of. We tried previously, but after spending 2 hours to setup the game and even longer to try to understand how to play, we kinda gave up. Needless to say, playing with experienced players was extremely fun! Later that evening with headed over to a friend of Mur Lafferty for a BBQ and game of “Pandemic“. “Pandemic” is one of those games that does not take a lot of instruction, but a fair amount of strategy and team cooperation. After the BBQ we headed back to the convention center to swing by the boardroom with John and Laura to get our free game. We ended up with “The 3 Commandments” which at first looked to rank fairly high on the suck-meter. But after playing a few rounds it ended up being one of those very entertaining games that would do well at a party (better if drinks are served).

Not-so-early on Sunday morning, we met up with everyone at Max & Erma’s restaurant for a breakfast. Some of the group had to depart so afterwards, others had the opportunity to hang around for a bit. Finally around noon most everyone had to leave after visiting the Dealer’s room one last time. Natalie and I headed back up to the boardroom to play a round of “The Red Dragon Inn“, which in my opinion was not quite worth the hype (although Gog is awesome). After playing enough games to last a few months, we headed over to Comfest which happened to running that weekend and it was only a few blocks away. Both of us were quite hungry but this point so we treated ourselves to some great BBQ, visited some of the art booths, and could not avoid the people-watching (google Comfest you will understand). After Comfest, we drove over to the Columbus Zoo for the afternoon. Now the Columbus Zoo is like half-zoo and half-amusement park. We definitely regretted not bring our swimsuits, but had a great time nonetheless. The night was topped off with a visit to Schmidt’s German restaurant for dinner which included: 1L of Warsteiner, Sauerbraten, German potato salad, chocolate cream puff, and fudge. Oh yeah!

Finally, Monday morning we left the hotel and headed for home. Of course, that was not a easy as that sounded either. Thanks to the idiocy of Expedia, I couldn’t just adjust one segment of my flight for business, I had to cancel it out and then start over. Of course though we you start over you can’t get the same flight because it is full (yes even with my cancellation, the Expedia rep thought this was ridiculous as well). Needless to say, Natalie and I could not travel together the whole way back. But all was well, we had an event-less return to Portland.

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So I was thinking the other day of places that we have dived, good and poor dives. There have been many less interesting or down-right dangerous dives, like anything Oregon Coast. But we have also been privileged to dive some the greatest dive sites on the planet, specifically the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Here’s a list of great dive sites we have enjoyed in the order of awesomeness:

1. Poor Knights Islands, North Island, New Zealand
2. Molokini Crater, Maui, US
3. Kapalua Bay Beach, Maui, US
4. Breakwater Point, Monterey, CA, US
5. Edmonds Water Park, Edmonds, WA, US

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Who currently travels or has traveled as a part of their job? I am among those who are required to do a fair amount of travel for my job. While I have been fortunate recently to have received many local or west-coast opportunities, it is not uncommon to hop on the plane to fly to the east-coast or another country on a weekly basis.

As frequent traveler, there are only a few benefits of this lifestyle, the most important being the point accumulation for hotels, airfare, and car rentals. As frequent travelers you should never, ever have to pay for your vacations. Of course, like many the last thing you want to do is head to the airport for your vacation. I am more than willing to make the exception for some place tropical or European.

You are rewarded for your frequent travels by obtaining different elite levels, each one granting you more privileges and opportunities than the previous. With programs like Platinum-members, Premier-Executives, 1K members, MVP-elite, and so on. . .it is easy to start to look down upon those poor individuals who are holding a “group 4″ boarding pass or get to stay on the second floor when you are offered the 47th floor with concierge service. One needs to remember that at the start of our traveling, we too had the opportunity to guard the lavatory back in row 36. I guess it is easy to look back simply because the rewards appear to diminish as you climb the ranks. Sure there are plenty of perks, but they become less significant. Does the 47th floor really offer a better view than the 45th floor?

It hit me the other day that I have been overlooking an aspect of traveling elite-ness. As I boarded a flight to Atlanta, I noticed that I recognized one of the crew members. I had seen Jim and the rest of the crew for this flight on a few other previous flights. Now this got me thinking, what type of status do you acquire when you get on a first-name basis with TSA members? The airport coffee shop staff?

I think that this should serve as a reality check, if you know too many people (especially those that are not from your home airport), you may be traveling too much!

So many months back Natalie found out that Jonathan Coulton was going to be performing at the Mission Theater again. We had such a great time at the show, that missing an opportunity to see another one would be unforgivable. Little did I know that some evil will had set it’s sights on me.

I had made arrangements to depart on UA581, leaving Chicago at 3:25p, arriving in PDX around 5:30p. Plenty of time to make the concert at 8:00p. Well, “plenty” was what I got.

So the whole cluster-fuck of a trip started like this:

~2:30p Gate change to Concourse B from Concourse C.

~3:05p Ready to board, all crew aboard, and first-class called up to board. Suddenly a problem has been discovered with the aircraft, need to change planes. Gate change #2.

~4:00p New plane located, however we need to change gates yet again. Gate change #3.

~4:15p Wrong gate, need to move again. Gate change #4.

~5:10p Supposed to be leaving at this point, however the crew is still “cleaning” the aircraft. At this point it is taking over an hour to polish it up.

~5:30p Still cleaning, however there are a lot more people entering the plane, and no one is coming out.

~6:00p Captain announces that there had been a security issue and the crew was instructed not to provide details. She apologizes and assures us the plane is safe and we are ready to board. The security issue was the crew found some book in Arabic with no owner, so according to United policy they had to sweep the plane and re-screen all bags.

~6:30p Almost ready to go, the captain is getting pissed that the boarding is taking so long. Announces that everyone needs to sit down in 60 seconds or else the crew many be flying illegally due to the time previously spent in flight. At this time four people get up and choose to hover around the bathroom. The crew is running around with their heads cutoff. Apparently they over booked a flight that was able to accommodate 20+ standbys, and they were looking for two volunteers to take another flight. Nothing was getting me off the plane. Finally the volunteers were selected and the door was closed.

~7:00p All alboard, finally we have pulled away from the gate only to stop on the tarmack. All outbound flights have been postponed due to a huge thunderstorm over head. Captain is on the PA wanted to start a trivia game to guess how fast the winds are, offering a bottle of wine to the winner.

~7:30p Tornado warning issued for O’Hare, some planes are returning to the gates.

~7:45p We are cleared for departure and get the hell out of ORD! Only four hours late!