Thailand Trip - LA

Thailand was an amazing trip that I'll never forget. I'm finding travelling is addictive - the more trips I take the more I want to take. I had such a good time on this trip for many reasons: Thailand is a beautiful country with very friendly people, I learned a lot about its culture and history, the weather was great, and Erin is a great partner to travel with. Erin and I complement each other very well - I handle the important documents and money, Erin finds the fun places to visit, and we work out the logistics together.

The tour we booked started and ended in Los Angeles so we decided to get ourselves to LA a few days early and spend the weekend with my uncle Hal. Jason and Melissa had never been to California before so we hit some of the famous LA landmarks.

We flew into LA on Friday afternoon and met Hal on Venice beach. It was chilly but we enjoyed a nice dinner and saw muscle beach. We then drove up to Santa Monica beach and had a drink at the end of the pier.

Hal conveniently lives just a couple miles from Hollywood and has several friends who work in show business. Both Friday and Saturday nights we went to an improv theatre on the Hollywood strip to see some of his friends perform. Afterwards we walked up Hollywood Blvd (midnight on a Friday to make it more interesting) to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to "see the stars"

On Saturday we took a nice hike in Griffith Park to the infamous Hollywood sign (which I found out used to read Hollywoodland but it was naturally shortened when weather damaged the end of the name around 1950), went to the Farmer's Market, the LaBrea Tar Pits, and the ritzy Rodeo Drive.



It was a nice weekend to kick off the trip and to break up the long travelling time to Thailand.

Killer Commute

This "morning" I made one of the world's all time longest commutes to work, from Bangkok, Thailand to Zeeland, MI. Needless to say, I was a little late (4.5 hours!)

Airport transfer, wait in airport, 4 hour flight to Taipei, wait in airport, 12 hour flight to LA, wait in airport, delay, wait in airport, 4 hour flight to Chicago, wait in traffic, drive to Zeeland. Total commute time - 34:31:29. Total commute distance - about 10,000 miles.

Thailand was amazing and you can be sure I'll have plenty to say about it in upcoming blog entries. To keep the reading manageable, I will write a summary about short segments of the trip and update it every 1-2 days. For example, tomorrow I plan on writing about the two days we spent in LA.

Bangkok

I won't include any pictures until we get home, but here are some first impressions after 2 days in Bangkok

Traffic-It isn't as dangerous or wild as I expected, mostly because there are so many cars that all the roads are a complete gridlock and no one can drive fast. Also, the stop lights are so long in each direction. Yesterday, a 1 mile stretch took us 20 minutes because we stopped at 3 lights in a row that were red for 5 minutes! I timed them. Time the longest light you can think of in the states and you'll be amazed how long that actually is.

Dogs-there are a lot of stray dogs walking around the city. They are calm and not protective or curious at all. I haven't seen anyone who actually owns a dog or is walking one around.

Smell-The smell in Bangkok is one of 4 odors: Thai food, sewage, exhaust, and occasionally flowers/fruit

Electricity-The power lines were obviously built after the buildings because they run haphazardly around. They are a huge jumbled mess so if anyone has electrical problems, the electrician must be a genius to figure it out.

Winter Weekend

On Friday I went on my first cadet camp-out in 11 years. It was a fun night with the boys that included capture the flag in the dark and 16" of snow and a fire building contest. We also hung out inside and played games.


Unfortunately, a huge blizzard hit Saturday morning with temperatures around 10, 30 mph winds, and a barrage of snow so we cut our camp-out a little short and headed back to church. The 30 miles back to church were definitely the worst driving conditions I've ever experienced. For the first 10 miles we were on country roads with no tree blocks so there were many moments of complete white-out where I couldn't see the road in front of me. Those were scary moments as I was driving a van full of cadets. Thankfully we made it back safe and sound.

Here is a picture of the house across the street from me. Just a couple hundred feet away and you can hardly see it from all the snow. Storms that big don't happen very often in GR.

I had planned on joining Jason, Darren, and Evan up at the cottage after the cadet camp-out but told them there was no way I was coming up. Instead, they drove back and we had our annual winter cottage weekend in Kentwood.

What started out as a crazy idea turned into a great new sport...and tubing practice in the off season. Darren wanted to take advantage of the rare ultra-snowy conditions by going sledding behind a car! So we found an empty parking lot and tried out our new sport. It was awesome!

This picture shows it all: Jason hanging his head out the window so he could see where he was driving, the back gate open for the spotter, and a good refection of how ridiculous the weather was - driving wind, heavy snow, bitterly cold, supersledding.

Check out this video of Evan, including barrel rolls.

Later we turned to neighborhood supersledding so that we could whip Captain Enthusiasm (Darren) into snow banks at 20 mph. Darren was addicted, and one of his rides lasted 3.5 miles.

The rest of the night included DDR, Settlers of Catan, Poker, and lots of fun.

Extremes

Work is definitely more interesting and more fun when I'm super busy. It tests my organization and problem solving skills much more than normal, but it messes up the rest of my day. I never take my work home, but lately I keep thinking about work all through the evening and even in my sleep. That stinks! For 3 days in a row I've set my alarm for 6:00 am but woken up 15 minutes BEFORE it goes off with work on my mind and haven't been able to go back to sleep.

In other news, January was a good month for my 2007 goals. I'm on pace to do more than 60,000 push-ups in 2007 and right on pace for 1,000 miles running even though January is the hardest month to run in.

Extremes

Work is definitely more interesting and more fun when I'm super busy. It tests my organization and problem solving skills much more than normal, but it messes up the rest of my day. I never take my work home, but lately I keep thinking about work all through the evening and even in my sleep. That stinks! For 3 days in a row I've set my alarm for 6:00 am but woken up 15 minutes BEFORE it goes off with work on my mind and haven't been able to go back to sleep.

In other news, January was a good month for my 2007 goals. I'm on pace to do more than 60,000 push-ups in 2007 and right on pace for 1,000 miles running even though January is the hardest month to run in.