Clever Name TBD

This past weekend, my friend Julio Bermejo married Liliana Camarena in Arandas, Mexico. I was surprised and delighted to have received an invitation, and knowing Julio, I couldn't possibly say no: this would be one hell of a party.

And so it was. Seriously, it was nuts.

As with many such things, it begins as a grand adventure. I was at ApacheCon in Austin last week, so Kristen and I met up in Dallas on Friday for our connection to Guadalajara. My flight into Dallas was delayed, so I had to book it on over to the next gate, which, of course, was in a different terminal, and found my sweetie just in time to catch our flight.

Unfortunately, my roll-aboard, which I checked due to increasingly difficult to navigate rules for bringing things with you onto airplanes, didn't run as fast as I did, and missed the flight. So, when we arrived in Mexico, we picked up Kristen's bag, and checked in with the baggage person for American Airlines to find out where my bag was.

To my pleasant surprise, they actually knew. It was coming on a later flight, which should be arriving late that night. OK, cool. Sort of. Because I was going to Arandas. "No problem", she tells me, "we'll send it to you. Where are you staying?"

At this point, I again mention that this is Julio's wedding. Everyone loves Julio; you can't stand within 100 feet of him and not feel taken care of. In this case, however, he was much farther than 100 feet away. More importantly, I had no idea where we were staying. See, the wedding planners were taking care of that. Somewhat confoundingly, I hadn't been told where that was yet.

I had actually flown into central Mexico knowing nothing more than the name of the town I needed to be in. I hoped that I had a reservation in some hotel in that town; I hadn't gotten any confirmation here. And I hoped that someone in this town would be able to tell me which hotel that was. Julio is, I figure, a great adventurer. And if you want to keep up with him, you have to play the game. So here I was, in Mexico, wondering where I would be spending the night.

Which was all fine, except my luggage was somewhere between there and Dallas, and wouldn't be there until late (11:30 PM or so). It was 2:00 PM. So I gave the nice lady my cellular phone number and hoped that it would work, so she could call me and find out where to send the bag the next morning. (I also got a number to call them.)

We went through customs to the main entrance and had to come up with a plan. Option A: stay in Guadalajara until the bag arrives. This is appealing because I really need the bag. I'm not wearing suitable clothes for a Proper Catholic Wedding In A Church, for one thing, and, oh yeah, the suit I got married in myself was in that bag. I want that back. Option B: head over to Arandas and hope for the best. This is the option of the adventurer. We need to find out about our hotel. And we're missing out on some serious tequila action, I'm quite sure.

Speaking of which, Bill is already there. Aha! Let's call Bill. Or his wife Christine. Yes, this will lead to all sort of useful information! A brilliant plan, but a flawed one; neither of them had a working phone with them in Arandas. Kristen, being smarter than I, decided we needed food before making such decisions, so we had our first meal at Wings in the airport.

Fully fed, we decided that we are adventurers and boldly chose Option B. I explained to our cab driver that we need to go to some unknown hotel in Arandas, and he agreed to get us there and help us look for a hotel to stay in. The cab ride itself was actually kinda nice. The driver was friendly and let us chose which CDs to play and offered to stop for tequila or beer if we wanted. I decided I really needed to stay sober at this juncture and declined the offer.

About two thirds of the way into the trip, American Airlines calls up and tells me the bag arrived. I am a bit annoyed here, since it is 3:45 PM. If I'd know the bag would arrive in less than two hours, I'd have stayed at the airport. Anyway, I still don't know where I am staying, so they can't deliver it tonight; it'll have to wait until the morning as planned, because they close the baggage office at 4:00 and I wasn't going to know anything in 15 minutes.

Once we got to Arandas, I got pretty nervous. While it's no metropolis, it didn't look like a small enough town to walk around in search of every hotel for anyone associated with this wedding. We stopped at the Santa Barbara Hotel, where a fellow came out to tell us that they are quite full. I said we're here for Lily and Julio's wedding and just like that we were welcomed in. Unfortunately, I wasn't booked at this hotel, and they had no information about where I could go find out more. They did point out three other hotels which had groups of wedding attendees in them, so off we went.

Next stop: the Castillo de Cristal Hotel. This place was quite noticeable. Blue glass mirrors lined the outside of this "Crystal Castle". I hopped out of the cab, and saw an envelope with my name on it sitting on the front desk. Bingo! Adventure doesn't disappoint.

I gave the drive a nice tip, we checked in, and got settled into our crazy room. All of the rooms in this place were unique. Some were tiny and square, and ours was an oval shaped room on the top floor with two double beds. We had a primo tower setup. We then came downstairs to check out the neighborhood.

The church was immediately across the street. Behind it were several small vendor setups and in front was a square with some shops and bars surrounding it. We walked down the street past lots of shops. Kristen, being tall, white, and blonde, got a lot of interested looks from the locals. When we returned, a bus was parked in front of the hotel, and Bill was in the lobby. Predictably, he had a bottle of tequila in his hand.

And so we have arrived.

In short order, we met the first match of many fellow members of the Tommy’s Blue Agave Club. (I have a Masters Degree in Tequila, Bill has a Ph.D.) Most of the group had arrived early in the morning on a charter flight from San Francisco, were bussed in from Guadalajara, and had spent the day on tours of the Centinela distillery, which was apparently a load of fun. So they were loaded up with bottled of fine tequila, and we spent a while in the lobby having drinks.

And then American Airlines calls again. Impressive, since they presumably closed hours before. I gave them the name of the hotel and the street address, and they told me I'd get my bag that night! This is exciting news. Back to drinking.

We then walked over to the Paradiso bar, down the street, where tequila is on the house, as long as it's an El Tesoro product (El Tesoro and Tapatio). You see, Lily's grandfather, Don Felipe, founded El Tesoro de Don Felipe. Julio, the Embassador of Tequila to the United States, was marrying into a tequila empire. Tequila was flowing like water. We had a impossibly great time. I vaguely remember dinner at a restaurant next door, and don't really know how we made it home.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, my seventh year at Burning Man is behind me. Except for the gradual cleaning of everything we took out there. That'll keep the memories coming for a good long while yet.

This was, as usual, an interesting year. There are lots of things to see at Burning Man.

The interesting this is that I didn't see most of them. Not because there isn't enough time to see them all. (There isn't.) I just didn't try very hard, because I spent all of my free time at my camp. I liked the people in my camp. I liked napping in the big dome we set up. I liked sitting in the Vanagon with my wife and chatting. I liked being at home. And a fine home it was.

That's not to say I didn't see some insanely cool things. Uchronia was impossible not to see if you ever took a walk in the inner playa. And it happened to be quite a bad-ass piece of work, which, when lit at the end of the week, made the biggest, most inspiring fire I've ever seen.

The Flower and Venus Fly Trap were simply stunning. They moved about the playa, towering over everyone and occasionally bending down to interact with the people surrounding them.

I mentioned free time: I have a job at Burning Man, which I do as a volunteer, and it's pretty much a full-time gig. What Kristen and I realized was that, while it's certainly still new and stimulating, we've in a way seen all of this before. We both work because it enables a whole new crop to experience it for the first time. And Burning Man is a good idea that new people should keep coming to. The rest of the time, familiar things are really nice. And home is the most familiar place of all.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I'm getting ready to leave for Burning Man, and Kristen and I decide that we want to crash in Reno tonight before heading up to the playa, so we look into booking at room at the Sands, which is a decent and convenient place in Reno to spend a night.

Most important, they have a $29.99/night "Internet Special," which sounds like a pretty good deal.  What's fascinating about this Internet Special is that, while one might expect that you have to go online to get this great deal, in fact, you can't book it online.  Note the text in the image.  Live and learn.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

…or you'd replace it right quick.

Kristen and I drove down from Canada in our lovely Volkswagon Vanagon Camper. We love Whisker. She's a great van; a home-away-from-home, and a fantastic home at Burning Man. But it was a hard weekend on everyone.

First, I should mention that it was bloody hot, right from the start, and we started in Victoria. The ferry ride to Vancouver was pleasant, but in Vancouver, it was a scorcher.

Once in Vancouver, after a stop for some Indian food, we had gasoline raining out the back of the van. That being a rather serious problem, we stopped immediately (the leak stopped as well, with the engine off), and got towed to Canadian Tire, which, while open at 9:00 P.M. on a Friday, basically refused to work on our van because they don't do Westy's. I now dislike Canadian Tire. Our tow guy then took us to Nic's Garage.

Nic's Garage is awesome. If you break down in Vancouver, go there. Seriously. They were open Saturday AM, and got us back on the road that day. In the meantime, we had a nice day in Vancouver with our friends Marcus and Thomas and Stephanie, and had a lovely (but hot) day around town. Turns out we had a hose go funny on the way to the fuel pump, hence the impressive leakage. We gave them a bottle of wine for the fast turnaround, and continued up past Squamish, for a brief stay at Burn in the Forest. This was quite a nice drive, and the Squamish area is gorgeous.

Then it was time to drive to California. Again with the nice drive through British Columbia, and again with the crazy heat when nearing Vancouver. By the time we got to the U.S. border (we took the truck route, not the Peace Arch), it was brutal, and the wait at the border was killer. Note the van has no air conditioning…

Anyway, beyond the border, we were moving pretty well, and the air flow kept the heat bearable, until we broke down North of Eugene. The engine overheated and we pulled over to the shoulder. The alternator belt had busted off and it caused the V-belt, which powers the coolant system to derail.

So we make a call to AAA and expect a truck in an hour. We get called from the driver, who can't find us, despite our being right at the 231 mile marker on I-5 South. While they are hunting for us, someone stops to help us out. We manage to get a replacement belt (had one in the back) onto the alternator and got the V-belt back in place. At this point AAA calls back and we figure out that my cell phone was talking to a tower in Washington, not Oregon, so they were hunting for us in the wrong state. But we fixed the problem, it seems, so I cancel the service call. (AAA was very apologetic about the confusion.)

OK, so we're back on the road. For about two miles, when the engine overheats again. Apparently, the belts weren't the real problem. So we pull over again, get AAA back on the phone, and wait for a haul to… Well, the Volkswagen dealership sounds like the best bet; likely to have parts and all that. But it's now past midnight, so we find a motel.

Our VW dealer and every shop in town is too busy to look at it that day, so we stay another day. (And spending some time at the very cool Airsteam dealership in Eugene. No offense, Whisker.) We call the next morning and find out that the looked at it (briefly) and think it's a major problem, new engine and all that. A follow-up call to our folks at Van Café convinced us that this dealership in Eugene wasn't the place to get this fixed. But what to do?

Coincidentally, at this point, Kragen drops me a line on IM, to tell me (in Spanish) that he's in Quito, and I mention we're stuck in Eugene. Apparently, he and his wife also have a Vanagon, which overheated in Minnesota, and they brought it home on a U-Haul truck and trailer. Suddenly, we can take our baby home and to the Van Spa in Santa Cruz, where professional hippie vehicle repair folks can give her proper love and attention. We call U-Haul, and $370 gets up a truck and a trailer for 4 days. What a deal! Toss in a bunch more cash for gasoline and we're home at 1:30 A.M. that night.

Anyway, I now have a 17' truck (empty) with a Vanagon in tow in the parking lot here at Apple, to be towed to Santa Cruz tomorrow.

But I had a mocha, so it's time to get to work.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I get a lot of spam in my (USPS) mailbox. I live in a new housing development which is booming, so a lot of it is from real estate agents telling me that I now is a great time to seel my home (and it's also a great time to buy another). But the majority of my mail (junk or otherwise) is credit card and loan offers.

Being the diligent sort, I open all of these and shred the applications therein. It's a routine I'd be happy to live without. Enter this web site:

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

This is apparently run by the major credit reporting agencies and give you a change to opt out of getting such offers. No doubt they are doing this as a result of some legislative mandate. Hopefully, it'll work…

Update:

Some related resources:

 
• National Do Not Call Registry
 
• Online Data Vendors - How to opt out
 
• Annual Credit Report
 
• ChoiceTrust - Review your file

The above list courtesy of The Week.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As of last night, I am a Tequila Master, trained by Mexico's own Ambassador of Tequila to the United States, Julio Bermejo.

Bill took some excellent pictures of the graduation ceremony.

As they say at Tommy's: "My tequila bar kicks your Tequila bar's ass!" It's true.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Abe and Eduardo threw a party at their place in the City last night. This party may qualify in that rare category of parties knows and the "too good" party. That's all I have to say.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The on-playa Ranger training was this past weekend.

Tool & Answergirl made their way to the playa in the Cessna, with a pit stop in Spanish Springs (N86), which is a pretty interesting airport. The reason we stopped there was because it has the cheapest fuel in the area. The field is a dirt strip which is certainly long enough for my plane. The interesting bit is the hillside right next to the field. To land on runway 16, you more or less fly at a cliff then hang a hard left and the runway is right under you. So you can't be too high (as I was) or you might miss the field entirely despite it's length. I did not (go, go, gadget slip-to-land) but I did land past midfield and had to taxi all the way back to the fuel pumps.

The weather was unbelievably perfect. It was overcast, which made me a little nervous, as rain would mean no landing on the playa and a return to the Reno area, but the result was a cool day all the way up to Black Rock and almost all day after we got there. The playa was very firm and there was no dust all weekend, despite the usual high winds. Yay!

The training itself was a blast and it was great to see everyone there. Usually training is kinda boring, 'cuz we've heard the spiel many times before. Camping makes it better. Answergirl and I arrived in the afternoon, so we'd missed all the intro stuff and caught the more interesting tail end. I also went to a shift leader training the next morning and that was actually very useful; we had a lot of good discussions that I found very valuable.

There was also a very pleasant trip to Frog Pond, which involved some GPS-assisted but mostly zen nagivation and skilled driving on Bustin's part. Hot springs rock. I'm quite jazzed up for Burning Man now. Lets go!

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kristen and I just got back from Northern Saskatchewan. If you've never been, see if you have a friend who's from there and get them to take you. I suppose you can go on your own, but towns in Saskatchewan are generally pretty small and far between. The towns often consist of a grain elevator near the one block of downtown and some houses. Mostly, it's all about the farms, and the towns are where you go for some writing paper and aspirin. Or you're retired from the farming scene and want to live where you'll have company the a good chat over every day. Anyway, it's not like there are tourist information centers and so on, so having someone take you who can introduce you to everyone they know is pretty nice.

I loved the TV show Northern Exposure, in a large part because I loved the idea of a little town where Ruth-Anne the shopkeeper can, on an off day, hop onto Chris the radio DJ's motorcycle and drive off, leaving Chris not furious that some old lady stole his bike, but instead simply wondering where Ruth-Anne's taking off to. I didn't quite get the feeling that one could take off on anyone else's bike or anything like that, but then I did get the feeling that everyone knows everyone else in that same sort of way.

For whatever reason, our rental car turned out to be a Mustang convertible, because the other cars were in demand, and we didn't exactly mind the idea of driving top-down. We took full advantage of the view. The scenery is vast, because Saskatchewan may very well be the flattest place on Earth. The best part was that in some places it smells like breakfast; probably the crops. There are farms everywhere, and scenery changes slowly—think Philip Glass.

I also saw some farm equipment that makes heavy contruction equipment look wimpy. It's insane how massive the meachinery is. I might have to return for the harvest, so I can drive one of these things.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was reminded today of the passing of Big Jimmy.

Jimmy was the night watchman at East Campus and other M.I.T. dorms. We all loved Jimmy. It was impossible not to. I met him the first time (of many) that I locked myself out of my room, and it was while having a chat with Jimmy when one of my very best friends told me (with a big sigh) that he's gay, and, of course, there were the frozen burritos. Jimmy was a part of more life-changing moments for more people than anyone, I would guess.

We miss you, Jimmy.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

…the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls.

—Forbes.com

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

My sweetheart is in town for the summer. Life is good.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been working, with the advice of Abe, on an iTunes playlist for a poker game I host every week. I think we got a good playlist together, a good approximation of which I've published in the iTunes Music Store as an iMix.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Something sinister is afoot… So a last week, I posted an entry about this building next to (practically in) the Apple campus. I few days later, I accidentally deleted all of the comments posted to that entry before reading them. That was a result of my not being used to the new MovableType and MT-Blacklist hooey I just installed.

But mysterously, this morning people were telling me that the entire entry dissapeared, which was news to me. I certainly didn't delete it. But sure enough, it's not my web log any more, nor can I find it using the web log management page. Now that's just creepy. Perhaps the building coerced me into deleting the post and then wiped my brain. Ew. And maybe the "accidental" deletion of the comments (which may have contained a warning!) wasn't all that accidental after all. Or maybe Mark (it's possible he's been assimilated) snuck onto my machine while I wasn't looking and did something sneaky. I did let Abe use my laptop while I was logged into it. Maybe he's been assimilated. And he's staying at my house for a few days. So much for sleeping…

I then thought that maybe Google could have cached it, so I did a Google search for "wsanchez invisible building apple" and sure enough, there it was. In fact, Google pointed at the original entry, which is still on my server; it had just be removed form the MovableType database and the index pages. I'm guessing TrackBack pings are broken as well.

In an attempt to rectify things, I have created a new entry with the same date and contents as the original. I might have to set the superuser immutable bit on the blog files or something. We'll see if this lasts…

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am now an Uncle to a very little boy named Matthew. He's pretty OK. You can kind of already tell we're related…

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a best man. This is good. Couldn't be better, in fact.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just got back from a two-week break in Puerto Rico. My sweet and wonderful fiancé Kristen got to meet my family and master the art of playing dominoes.

We spent much of our time in Añasco, on the West side of the island, where my family is, and we went to the beach a several times. Playa Jobos in Isabela and Playa Crash Boat in Aguadilla are favorites.

We also went to the cinema a few times. Movies only cost $5.00 in Puerto Rico, but the downside is that you have to endure freezing temperatures and possibly way-too-loud audio.

There is a strange and annoying phenomenon that happened when people obtained the technology of climate control. It's often more about the other extreme than it is about comfort.

"It's bloody hot outside, so let's make it feel like the Arctic indoors to compensate." Never mind that because it's bloody hot outside, you are wearing shorts and a T-Shirt and being in the Arctic in shorts and a T-Shirt sucks ass. So everyone at tthe movie theater brings a fleece and a blanket, lest they spend the whole time shivering.

Kristen notes that the same happens in Canada, where it's bloody cold, so the inside of the shopping mall is made to feel like an oven. So you walk in wearing six layers and a heavy coat. By the time you get to a store, you've taken off so much clothing that you have no appendages left with which to carry anything you buy.

We also took a few days to tour the island on our own. We spent a couple of nights at my sister Kathy's house in Yauco, father South and a bit East, and went to nearby (a bit more East) Ponce to play tourist the day after Christmas. However, Ponce was a bit of a dud. Seems that right after Christmas, absolutely nothing is open—we couldn't even find food. So it was less fun than expected.

The next day, we went to La Parguera, where we rented a small motorboat and putted around in the Caribbean. The water off of La Parguera has many small islands scattered about. These islands and the mainland coast are covered with red mangroves and have small bits of sandy beach. There are many beautiful small houses that float on the coast of off of one of the islands. We found an island with a dock that encloses some water for swimming in and has a small park on it, and swam there for much of the day. Another, out pretty far from the coast, has a nice small beach on it and in the middle someone had built a rickety home out of some boards, equipped with a small portable TV, a kitchen, and so on.

That night, we took a tour boat (from the same docks that we rented our motor boat from) to the Phosphorescent Bay, which we had actually gone through during the day. There was a full moon out, which is problematic, but we were helped by the presence of many clouds that night. In the water are algae which phosphoresce when disturbed. Once my night vision ramped up, I could easily see the glow in the water as I swished my hand around. I could also pull some of the algae from the roots of the mangroves and have glowing bio-goo in my hand. If you ever make this trip, do not take the large tour boat; take the smallest one you can find, so you can reach into the water yourself. Unfortunately, the development of La Parguera has a lot of boats in the area and the algae are not as numerous as they once were. Apparently, the glow was once far more pronounced.

The next day, we drove to Fajardo, where we took a ferry out to Vieques. If you ever drive to the ferry terminal at Fajardo, go there with some patience. The signage is only marginally useful, and the town is a confounding maze of narrow one-way streets. It took us a few tries to find the right routing through the town.

The ferry itself is quite inexpensive at $2.00, but the ride is a bit rough, even on calm days. If you are prone to motion sickness, you may find yourself trapped in hell for an hour and a half. Kristen and I did OK, but a woman behind us on the return trip was returning her lunch to a ziplock bag for half the trip and decidedly unhappy well before then. You may want to explore air travel options. I, for one, will be renting a plane next time.

Vieques is pretty nice, but the town that the ferry takes you to is decidedly touristy. Many of the business owners seem to be native English speakers, migrants from The U.S. looking to start a business in a quiet little island. We stayed at a quant little hotel called Sea Gate Guest House, which is quite affordable and nice. It was more like staying at someone's home than a hotel; the owners make you breakfast and walk it up to your room, take you into town (which is a walkable distance), and so on.

I should mention that Puerto Rico has its own sounds, which you can't miss (whether you'd like to or not). The most unique is the coqui, a small frog native to and mascot of Puerto Rico which makes a surprisingly un-frog-like sound. You can here these in large numbers every night.

Where my parents live, there are also several roosters, which start making a lot of noise right around when we like to go to bed, and one of which has a remarkably weird and scraggly voice, and as a special bonus, several dogs which, when awakened, like to add their own chorus into the night.

If we were hoping for some quiet in Vieques, we had no such luck. The Sea Gate Guest House is also home to the SPCA in Vieques and several dogs and cats are on the property, as well as a couple of horses. These are fairly well heard at night, but not nearly so much as the apparent thousands of roosters in Vieques. It was like a massive rooster parade on the scale of Bay to Breakers was going on, with a huge choir of roosters progressing from one side of the hotel to the other. So much for restful sleep.

Due to inexperience (this was my first trip to Vieques) and therefore bad planning, we had to catch the ferry pretty soon after we woke up, so we didn't get to spend much time in Vieques. A return trip will have to include some time at the rumored-to-be-fantastic beaches and at the two phosphorescent bays in Vieques, supposed to be far more magnificent than the bay by La Parguera.

Back in Fajardo, we continued on to Viejo (Old) San Juan. Most tourists coming to Puerto Rico will spend much of their time in San Juan, which is where most hotels will be found. Unfortunately, it isn't all pretty. Old San Juan, however, is beautiful, and one can easily spend a few days there, preferably on foot, visiting the local shops and the many historic sites, including the large El Morro fortress.

We stayed at the thouroughly splendid Hotel El Convento, right in the heart of Old San Juan. We had dinner at El Picoteo, a Spanish tapas restaurant in the hotel, then checked in. El Convento is not an inexpensive hotel, easpecially in the high season ($400/night). However, if you come as a walk-in for that night and they have a room available, they can be quite accomodating. We got a room for $200 for the night. Having decided to splurge on a nice hotel in Old San Juan, that suited us just fine, and staying there proved to be a very good call. The hotel is remarkably pleasant, and you can't beat the location. Most importably, especially for Kristen, who was getting low on sleep (I kept waking up early), it was quiet. Really quiet. And the best was comfy. We got the best rest we'd had the whole trip.

But before sleeping, there was more adventuring to do. I called my cousins, who live in San Juan, and went to my Aunt Nancy's condo, as it was her birthday, and everyone was there for the party. Kristen got to meet even more family. My Cousin Carlos explained that she'd met the "country" side of the family out West, and now she could hang out with the city side. After a while at the party, we met Carlos and his girlfriend back in Old San Juan to go out for some live music.

We started at Nuyorican Cafe, where a couple of folk singers we performing, which wasn't quite what we were looking for. They stuck around for the next act, which was an excellent latin band, about eight members, including an 60-or-so year old guitarist who could rock out like nobody's business. After they were done, looking for more, we went to Rumbas, which I'd been to before. There was an act there performing some highly unusual music on a guitar and drum. If the sound guy knew more than "turn it up to 11," it may have been interesting enough to stick around for, but that wasn't the case. We got a bit more of a tour from Carlos, then went back to the hotel.

The next morning we made early use of the pool and hot tub, then were off to check out the city wall and El Morro, followed by some shopping and aquisition of munchies. Then we checked out and drove to Cataño, home of the Bacardi distillery, where we got a tour. The tour was fun, and we got a couple of free drinks. We discovered that we don't really like any Bacardi Rum (possibly any Rum) straight, and that the flavored versions of Bacardi are not really all that. We got the lamest Piña Colada (Bacardi Coco and pineaple juice) and Mojito (Bacardi Limón and soda) ever made, but we did learn that Sprite makes rum go down pretty nice. Bacardi isn't exactly Puerto Rican rum per se; it's made in Puerto Rico now, but it originated in Cuba, and is now headquartered in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, there aren't as many rum distilleries in Puerto Rico as there once were (Serrallés, makers of Don Q, have a sizeable operation), and tours of others are apparently nonexistant. We left with a bottle of Bacardi 8 to take back to Añasco.

The rest of the stay was back home at my parent's house, including New Year's, where we several visitors came to celebrate with us. Kristen and I proved our superior skills as a dominoes team by winning seven games in a row against many formidable competitors, who, much to their grief, admired Kristen's unbelieveable ability to master the game in a week. Perhaps we were just very lucky. Perhaps not.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday night, I picked up Kristen at the airport. The plan of record was for us to spend the next morning in San Francisco doing some shopping, then fly down to Los Angeles for the weekend, so we had decided to spend the night in the City. I drove up in the van so we could crash in the camper for the night.

When I picked Kristen up, it was already pretty late, like 11PM, so we went for a nice dinner at Zuni Cafe (thanks to Payam for the tip). Zuni Cafe happens to be open late, and is really quite good.

Then we drove to the parking lot under the Golden Gate Bridge, which I thought would be a swell place to spend the night. It was quite foggy, so we couldn't even see the bridge, and the fog horn was warning us of rocks every so often. Shortly after we poped the top on the van, we had a light in the window; a police officer had come by to tell us we couldn't camp out there overnight. Bummer.

So we trecked on up into the Presidio, where the housing is and so on, and ended up at a parking lot next to the Log Cabin, under a big tree. Free of police scrutiny, but still within range of the fog horn, I asked Kristen to marry me and gave her the ring we were supposed to be shopping for in the morning. She was pretty surprised, and it was all good.

Friday, instead of shopping, we got some coffee and munchies, then went to Grace Cathedral to walk their labyrinth and generally enjoy the cathedral, which is quite beautiful. We then drove home and flew to Los Angeles for the weekend.

We flew into Burbank airport, got a rental car, and went looking for food. Kristen had never been to Los Angeles, so over the course of the weekend, I gave her the full tour. We drove by the Warner Brothers Studio, by my old apartment in Toluca Lake, and over the Hollywood Hills into Hollywood. We got some dinner on the Sunset strip, where everyone is dressed all fabulous and different, so the people watching was quite good.

By this point, it was pretty late and we were very tired, so we went in search of shelter. We ended up thinking we'd fall alseep in the car, so we pulled into the first motel we could find, which we now call the "Motel Sketchy," in Hollywood. There was a sign: "No drugs. No prostitution..." Yikes. But we were too tired, so we crashed and spent the night worried about the rental car getting stolen. Surprisingly, we slept pretty well.

In the morning we got out of there in a hurry and went to Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade for some brunch, walking by the beach, and shopping. Then we continued the tour of Los Angeles through Westwood, Century City, Beverly Hills, and so on. We stopped at a splendid knitting store called Knit Cafe, did more shopping in Beverly Hills, saw the Hollywood sign, drove through Hollywood Boulevard, and back up to Burbank, where the Best Western is not at all sketchy, checked in there, and had some dinner at the El Torito where by boss at my old job at Disney Kevin used to take us for margaritas.

Phew. At this point, it was time for a nap.

But then we were off again, to downtown Los Angeles for the L.A. Burning Man Decompression Party. That party was under the 1st Street bridge. We were greeted by friendly and familiar faces and announced to several of our friends that we had just gotten engaged. At the San Francisco Decompression Party, I had told several of our engaged and married friends that the following weekend we would be joining the club, and everyone was throughly excited. We got to see a couple of those friends as well as several others at the L.A. party and that was a lot of fun.

A little bit of rain cut our stay short at the party, so we got in touch with Chris and Thairin and met them at The Dresden Room in Hollywood. We helped our waitress by encouraging some squatters to move along and ended up with our own booth next to the band. We got to share our news with them as well, and had a great night there with our fruity drinks and music.

Chris and Kristen got chatting about this artist who worked with a bunch of scientists to present human bodies in this fabulous educational exhibit called Body Worlds. It turns out that the exhibit is in Los Angeles right now, so Chris told us how to get to the California Science Center, and the next day, we went there to see the exhibit. It's hard to describe how cool it is. Real bodies, opened up so you can see exactly what's going on in there, posed and preserved. In case this sounds it, there is nothing morbid or gross about it; it's simply fascinating to see. If you get a chance, get on over there.

We stayed that night in West Hollywood and went to the Improvisation Cafe for some comedy, but they were closed for a private event that night, so we went instead to the Improv Olympic, which is more improv comedy rather than stand-up comedy. There was a John Kerry fundraiser going on there, and while I was getting tickets for the following show, the crowd from the Kerry thing was leaving and Kristen gave me this look. It turns out I was standing next to Eric McCormack, from Will & Grace. I got a great view of the back of his head.

All in all, an action-packed, lovely, educational, and celebratory weekend for us.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This year's Burning Man was, as usual, a grand party. This year was unique is a particularly good way: Kristen (Answergirl) and I (Tool) went together, which is the first time either of us went to the event with someone else, and it really worked well.

We had planned to leave for Nevada on Friday, a week prior to the start of the event, to volunteer with the Rangers in setup and so on, but Whisker (Answergirl's van) had some coolant issues that took a remarkably long time to fix. We ended up staying in Santa Clara until Tuesday. It's amazing how disappointing it can be to stay at home when you are all geared up to go to Burning Man. Especially when all of yoiur stuff is in the van (and therefore at the shop). But it turns out that the weather on the playa during that period was quite terrible, and I couldn't have landed there (I flew in, Answergirl drove) in any case, so really nothing was lost.

In the meantime, we went shopping. Then best of which was in the Haight (in San Fransisco), where I score some great pajamas and a marvelous smoking jacket and Kristen found a couple of really nice outfits. Finally underway, we spent Tuesday night in Reno, did our last round of shopping, and arrived on playa Wednesday.

Pre-event at Burning Man is a lot like Saturday before the event was 5 years ago, where very few people are around and there is a lot of empty space. Nowadays, by Sunday, the city is pretty well filled in. Last year, Answergirl and I met Thursday night working a Ranger swing shift, so we went out on patrol Thursday night to commemorate one year together. That's also the night of Ladie's Night at the Commisary, which quite possibly the best party at Burning Man.

Saturday was my first shift as a Ranger Shift Lead, and I had a good time. It's basically a lot of dispatching via the radio, which involved listening to two radios at a time and so on. Fortunately, I have some practice at that as a pilot. There is also the occasional need to decide what to do about something, which gets pretty interesting. That involves knowing a few things about Burning Man policies, which I get a dose of as a Playa Info volunteer, and some common sense. What's cool is how fast we can react to important situations. For example, a parent got separated from a child one night. I got a description, called in everyone who was on the radio, and we found her in 30 minutes. It was immensely helpful that she was wearing a wedge of cheese on her head. (Note to parents at Burning Man: dress your kids so that they are easily identified; it's not hard and highly valuable.)

Answergirl and I left on Sunday for a break Winnemucca, where we could get a proper shower, do laundry, eat at the griddle. Answergirl knows people (everyone, it seems) in Winnemucca due to a previous-year adventure with the van and so we were well taken care of by the locals.

When we returned, the rest of our camp had arrived, found the spot we were saving and had almost finished setting up the dome. Geodesic domes are really nice at Burning Man. They stay cool and provide a large shelter. Heidi has a special magical talent for making it feel like home and over the next couple of days, it was quite a welcoming space. Carrie can organize the hell out of anything, so out camp was impressively tidy.

We had a great camp, with just the right people.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sofia is a disturbing combination of Payam and cute.

-Wilfredo

Sofia turned one yesterday.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First, if you get a chance to go to a concert in Saratoga, you should, because both Villa Montavo and the Mountain Winery are excellent venues. Outdoors, small, cozy. As an extra bonus, the Mountain Vinery has a fantastic view of Silicon Valley.

Kristen and I went to see Cowboy Junkies at the Mountain Winery Saturday night and is was perfect. Margo, the lead singer, was very sweet and explained that while their music tends towards the pain and mysery side of things, there are nuggets of happy here and there; in A Horse In the Country, it's in the chorus. She and her brother Michael (who writes the songs) were out and had a happy day. On that one happy day, he wrote a song that is happy all the way through, and that's Anniversary Song. It was a lovely night, and we had a great time.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I went to see Indigo Girls [iTMS] at the Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts in Saratoga. The opener was Shawn Mullins [iTMS].

If you like folksy music, guitars, great vocals, a great venue, and the outdoors, this was the place to be. Shawn Mullins simply sounds good, and Indigo Girls are fantastic live. Montalvo is a beautiful, small venue, and it was a perfect night. Things don't get much better than that.

Some great songs on the set list: Fill It Up Again, Perfect World, Power of Two, Least Complicated, Get Out the Map, and Driver Education.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tool and Answergirl (plus special guest star Saucygirl) went on a grand adventure this past weekend. Kristen, Marion, and I loaded up the Cessna and flew out to the Black Rock Desert to attend our annual training for the Black Rock Rangers.

Flying into high desert is an interesting exercise, since it's not something one pratices often. In my case, I had flown nearby (to the Burning Man site) once before (with Caroline and Scotti and gear), but that has the advantage of a prepared (still dirt) runway. This time, we found the camp site (made simple courtesy of GPS coodinates provided by LongPig and daMongolian) and then had to choose a place that looked reasonable to land. I got a note informing me that the playa near the camp was soft, so we touched down farther out on the open playa, on what was practically an infinite runway.

The training itself went very well; Rangers are good people. We met some new faces, and got to explore the desert in a different context than the Burning Man Festival, which was fun. I took Odwally up in the plane and he gave me an arial tour of the area, including 80 Acres (the Burning Man work ranch), and several of the hot springs, which we later got to visit in person. It doesn't appear that landing at or near 80 Acres is feasible, but Haggis tells me that he's seen people land on the road and taxi in from there. I'd have to see it up close to know whether that makes sense to me.

Burning Man is in six weeks. We're ready.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For my birthday I went to go visit my girl for the weekend. I had been to Toronto a couple of times in the winter, and it's a nice city, but it's cold, and I'm not a fan of said cold. In the Summer, however, it's pretty nice indeed.

Kristen and I walked down College street in search of the right place to eat and meet her friends for a drink. We ended up and yet another yummy Italian restaurant (seems to be a lot of those in Toronto) and on the way, we spotted a place with a sign: "Port Bar". It turns out that I'm a big fan of port wine, and Kristen and I have started sampling port. I'm keeping a little notebook and everything. So this was quite the interesting discovery. After dinner, we all (a few people met us at the restaurant) headed over to the port joint, and it was, as I like to say, pretty damned OK.

I think we're going to have to make a trip up to Napa specifically for port tasting and purchasing sometime soon.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past weekend I went back to Cambridge for my 10-year M.I.T. class reunion. Kristen met me at Logan and we had a great time.

One of the things once does on reunions is all those touristy things people that live somewhere never get around to doing: we went to the Boston Pops and took a Boston Duck Tour. The Pops were cool until they broke out into Billy Joel, which is a bit lacking in the interesting department, at least without lyrics. That said, having never been, it was good to go. The Duck Tours are entertaining, even though they keep asking everyone to quack at passersby.

Benana provide the best hospitality in the Greater Boston Area.

Boston is an amazing town. My friend Rodney took us for a marvelous lunch at a Spanish restaurant on Newbury Street called Tapeo, then Ben and Ana joined us for an extensive walking tour of Boston, which is nearing completion of the largest public works project in history, specifically an 8-lane freeway that goes under the city, built through landfill with skyscrapers overhead.

The Big Dig is a phenomenal project that, among other things, got rid of a nasty eyesore of an elevated freeway. When you walk past Quincy market, you longer see a green monstrosity; instead: sky. And two blocks past that, Boston Harbor, which I'd never walked to before. The entire waterfront is being revitalized, with parks, a new massive federal court building, hotels, and so on. A metropolis older than the union of several states that ran out of real estate a long time ago has a whole new district. It's mind boggling, and it's not the first time Boston has seen such change (eg. the Back Bay used to be… well, a bay).

Kristen and I finished the day with a trip to Finale for Molten Chocolate and a Flight of Five Ports, which is simply a sublime way to end the day.

The one negative to the trip was travel. Air travel is rarely pleasant, but American Airlines managed to disappoint on a grand scale on all four legs of my trip. I connected through Dallas in both directions. Leaving San Jose, the flight was delayed because the plane didn't arrive from it's last trip on time. Leaving Dallas, we had to wait for an hour and a half in a warm airplane because the flight crew didn't arrive from their last trip on time. Leaving Boston, the flight was delayed because the flight crew was again absent. And finally, leaving Dallas, we had a delay in boarding because the cleaning crew needed more time and then we had to wait in a hot airplane for half an hour while they replaced a part for the air conditioning system, then for another two hours in a warm airplane to wait for the weather that developed while we were waiting for the A/C to get fixed. Does air travel really have to suck that much? Never mind the joy that is buying tickets in the first place.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Saturday night was Sugam's birthday party at the Phoenix Hotel in the City. Towards the end of the night, Sugam and Katie were talking about Reno, so I suggested that we should go the next day. After some "ask Katie" and "ask Sugam" back-and-forth, we had a consensus.

So Sunday, I checked the weather, all good (great, in fact) and a few hours later we were flying to Reno. The trip took about an hour and 45 minutes, and Reno was fantastic. We ended up playing craps at the Silver Legacy, and had a total blast. Sugam and I both ended up with significantly more money than we went in with, more than enough to pay for the flight, and some designated shopping cash for Katie. Then we flew back via South Lake Tahoe just after nightfall.

All told, a great way to spend a Sunday.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Since the plane got out of the shop, I'm been getting in a lot of flying. This past weekend, I logged over 10 hours of flight time.

Saturday, Klee, Mateo, and I headed north, to Shelter Cove. I flew over Shelter Cove some time ago on a trip up to Eureka, and it really stood out as an airport I had to land at some day. It's on the California coastline in an area where most of the coastline is cliffs, except for this patch of lang that just out and on which is a small town with an airport. According to Yahoo! Maps, if I were to drive from the Cupertino to Shelter Cover, it would take me 5 hours, 39 minutes. Don't think I would ever have made it there by road. The flight took about 2 hours. As we were eating, clouds started to form overhead, so we boogied on out of there, briefly heading towards Japan to get out from under the line clouds forming on the coastine, climbed above, then turned back to Willits for fuel, then back home to RHV.

Sunday, Payam, Mateo, and I went for a trip to the Los Angeles area. Payam's folks live near Zamperini Field in Torrence, so we dropped by for a day at their house, where we had a yummy lunch and lounged by the pool. The trip back was at night on an IFR flight plan. The trip down was hazy, and not being familiar with the airspace around L.A., being under ATC control seemed safest. That worked out well, especially since when we got to Silicon Valley, the entire valley was covered with an overcast layer. I shot the ILS 20R into SJC until we got under the cloud cover, then broke off for a VFR landing into RHV. Payam took some video footage as well as some pictures of the trip.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My airplane finally got out of the shop after a year-long excursion into the joys of zealous maintenance, so I basically let a year pass without flying. Since the plane got back into service, I've been working on getting my profiency back up to snuff, which mostly boils down to flying a lot for practice.

This includes specific operations required in order to satisfy regulations that would otherwise prohibit me from certain other operations because I am not longer current (that is, I am out of practice as defined by FAA regulations). For example, I can't carry passengers unless I've landed a plane 3 times in the past 90 days, and can't carry passengers at night unless I've landed at night in the past 90 days. Having done that, I could, for example, fly Payam and Sugam to Columbia for a great night of sightseeing and unexpected starvation.

I'm also in the process of training to take what's called an instrument proficiency check (IPC), which is a test for pilots who are certified for instrument flight (in low or zero visibility weather) but are not current. As a result, I'm studying for the part of the test where my instructor grills me on procedures, regulations, and whatnot.

I have an excellent book which I used when I was training for the IFR ticket (certification) called Instrument Pilot Flight Traning Manual by Ralf Butcher, which I highly recommend. I also have a book from McGraw Hill called Instrument Flying Handbook. This is a thick and intimidating looking book which I haven't yet read much of, but it looks pretty good from a quick scan.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Another nugget from Mateo's blog: Tickle.com has an IQ test. It's kind of fun, if you like solving problems.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at Max & Angela's house today, and we were watching Bowling for Columbine. This is a movie we've all meant to see forever but for some reason hadn't. It's interesting to consider how much fear is inserted into the collective psyche of America and why, and the film explores thing in a variety of ways.

One of the less dramatic topics Moore brings up in the film is that folks in Canada (Toronto, specifically), don't seem to lock their doors. Angela found that bizarre, and I found it bizarre that she found it bizarre.

I grew up in U.S. Air Force bases for a good portion of my childhood, and for a long time we never locked the door at home, nor did we lock the car at the store. I found it surprising when my Dad first pointed out that I should lock the door; we were no longer living on base, and he started locking up.

When I lived in L.A. (Burbank / Toluca Lake), I often left my door unlocked, and for the several years that I lived in San Jose, I never locked the doors to my house, except the front door. You could go in through the garage by pulling the door open, or through the back door. I never used my keys, and my friends could get it when they beat me home. (In my current house, however, the garage door is electric, and the front door is locked, so there is no convenient way in without a key; though I have scant faith in the ability of a locked door to keep the dishonest out.)

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the different mindsets… My theory is that in a society where one is not expected to be honest, some find unlocked doors to be an opportunity to take advantage of a sucker, whereas when one is expected to be honest, an unlocked door is a normal thing and not a source of temptation.

This isn't to say that dishonest people are going to walk away from an unlocked door in either scenario, but, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think they will walk away from a locked door either. I do think that a borderline honest person (one who "needs to be kept honest") is more likely to behave honestly in a situation when they feel they are trusted. That is, I think the borderline fellow is the one who will find the unexpected unlocked door to be tempting, and the expected unlocked door less so.

There is a fruit stand on Highway 1, out by Santa Cruz, which is open daily. It is not staffed. Instead, there is a sign with the price of the fruit, and a box to drop money into. You take your fruit and drop in some cash. I would bet, and this may be an interesting social experiment, that if they put up a camera, and signs that say "you're under surveillance" and maybe a monitor to show you that the camera is watching you, that if there were a part of the fruit stand not covered by the camera, people would be more prone to stealing from the unprotected section of the stand and the theft rate would be higher overall.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think it's that Santa Cruz fruit stand shoppers are inherently more honest than most. I think it's about expectations.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Angela: Ben, is your love sac as big a Fred's?

Ben: …what?

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning on the way in to work, I got in behind one of those semi trucks that is hauling a couple of large bins of gravel. These bins are open at the top, so some of the gravel is constantly flying off the top and effectively projected at whatever is moving beind the truck, in this case my car. I change lens to pass him on the right, because my exit is coming up, and he signals right; he's getting on the the same exit. I'm stuck behind this damned thing with rocks raining on my car so I slow way the hell down to put some distance between us.

Which got me thinking. A couple of years ago, this happened and one of these small rocks smacked rather forcefully into my hood, making a loud noise and scaring the crap out of me. it also put a noticable ding in the hood, having taken the pain off in a small spot. This was particularly infuriating given that the week before, I'd had the hood repainted.

I have to think that there must be a rule against launching projectiles on the freeway. If some guy's lawn chair flies out of his pickup and smacks into someone's car behind him, I'm sure there would be some consequences. In hindsight, I should have gotten that truck's license plate or something.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend I went to Chicago to visit my sweetheart's family, and today we both had flights home. Since she was leaving in the morning, and I in the evening, I had called on my very good friend Fitz to take me out to lunch and help me kill some time in Chicago. Last time I was in Chicago was for work, and Fitz and Peyton and I went out for some great Greek food, but that was a short evening in the suburbs. This was a whole afternoon. Even better, Kristen got her airline to put her on a later flight as well, so she could hang out with us, and Fitz had talked Karl Fogel into coming along as well.

We had a great time. Chicago rocks (except for the mayor tearing up one of the country's best G.A. airports in the middle of the night for no good reason, which sucks). First, we went to the Hancock tower for drinks and a fantastic view of the city. Karl met us there, and we wandered over to a fantastic Armenian restaurant downtown (Sayat-Nova, 157 E. Ohio; 312.644-9159). The food was excellent, and I tried out the gritty Armenian coffee. Not what I'm used to, but quite good. I know Karl because he is the original driver behind Subversion, and I had a few email exchanges with him about it. He also virtually introduced me to Fitz, a story that Fitz tells better, and we've had a couple of occasions to meet in person. But today, I got to know him a bit better, and I have to say that I'm glad I did. He introduced me to the Spa