Personal
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We left early on Thursday morning to get to SFO in good time for our flight. Catching BART would have been my preferred way to get there, but when I costed up the options it looked cheaper to catch an UberXL (at around $43) than to pay for 5 people at $8.90 per person (it's frankly outrageous there are no discounted BART tickets for kids unless they have a Clipper card). Plus there would have been the not-insignificant effort of walking 6 blocks to 16th & Mission (which is way up on the list of most sketchy BART stations) first…
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It's been really great to be back in the Bay Area. My wife and I lived here from 2000 to 2003 – back when (in retrospect, although it didn't seem so at the time) it was affordable to do so – and being back here is in many ways like coming home. Old friends have gone to great pains to make us feel welcome: it was fantastic to stay briefly up in Novato – taking advantage of the weather in Marin County – and our time in San Francisco itself has been excellent, if a little on the cool side.…
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After leaving Sequoia National Park, we headed across the central Californian valley towards Monterey, stopping for lunch in Fresno. Approaching Monterey we started to get excited, seeing the golden hills of California reminded us strongly of our time living in the Bay Area. Then we hit the bank of fog coming off the Pacific and remembered just how much the temperature can vary during the summer months in this part of the world. Camping might prove interesting. We'd just spent a couple of days of camping in Sequoia – and the previous days of camping were just before the unpleasant…
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Las Vegas pretty much met my expectations (which were admittedly very low). After coming to the city 1-2 times a year for around 20 years for Autodesk conferences, it was strange coming back with my family. We initially struggled to get a room at late notice: between the Black Hat security conference, a huge basketball tournament and the World Poker Championships (plus probably 15 other events I'm not aware of) the city was pretty well booked. In the end we stayed at the Travelodge by McCarran, which was on the helicopter flight path for the airport. We had fun, though:…
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Utah is an absolutely incredible place. We've spent the last week or so discovering some of its State and National Parks. As mentioned previously, we used Dead Horse Point State Park as our base for the first few days, from there visiting Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We then hit the road and headed towards Bryce Canyon, passing through Capitol Reef and staying overnight outside Bryce at Cannonville, so that we could get in early for a first-come-first-serve camping spot. Our stay in Bryce went very well: after a couple of days we got up really early – packed and…
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I enjoy certain aspects of camping. I won't say it's my favourite thing in the world, but there are things about it that I appreciate. Things I like: Chats around campfires The lack of showers Drinking a beer or two (also around the campfire) Waking up in nature Seeing our kids playing together without electronics Things I don't like: Being either too cold or hot (in Yellowstone we were both: we went to bed too hot and woke up freezing) Biting insects Setting up tents in crappy weather Crappy weather in general Here's a quick video I recorded of our…
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Our plan – as you can see from our website – was to spend some time in Grand Teton National Park before breaking the journey south to Bryce Canyon in Salt Lake City. That plan changed in Yellowstone: while in Mammoth Hot Springs we met a really nice family from Oregon who had some interesting advice about visiting the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks while using Dead Horse Point State Park as a base. Thanks, Dan and Meghan! So it was that we headed south through Grand Teton and even ultimately decided to power on through, rather than staying overnight…
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We arrived in Bozeman from Toronto (having changed in Denver) fairly late on Thursday night. After picking up the rental car – and eating a quick pizza in Belgrade – we zoomed over to West Yellowstone, the town closest to the western-most entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The kids really only had a few hours of sleep in a Days Inn before we bundled them into the car and headed across to try to snag a spot at a first-come-first-serve campsite (the only way to get a place in Yellowstone at this time of year, at late notice). We waited…
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For the last year and a half I've been reporting into an Autodesk Research team based mainly in Toronto, so it made sense to include that city in the itinerary of our round-the-world tour. This did mean, however, that almost inevitably my wife and kids would be left alone for the majority of our time in the city, while I spent time with colleagues. I'm part of the Complex Systems Research group, run by Azam Khan. It's an impressive group – many have PhDs, a few of us do not – so it's always an education for me to spend…
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Several people have looked at our trip's itinerary and have reacted in a similar way: Washington DC New York West Hartford Toronto … "Wait a minute… why on earth are you going to West Hartford?" It boils down to this: one of my closest friends lives there. Duncan and I met during our first week or so at University – we played field hockey together – and ended up becoming very good friends: we lived in a shared house during our 2nd year at Uni, for instance. We've stayed in touch ever since, visiting each other in the US, Switzerland…