January 14, 2011

Wrap It Up

We pulled the ol' Suburban into the driveway last night around 6pm.  After 11 days, 3 states, and over 2,700 miles this was the biggest trip that we've ever taken as an entire family.  Looking back, it all went so well that I know I'd do it all over again.  We learned that our girls are just spectacular travelers; there wasn't one breakdown or crying fit to be had on the road, and as soon as we hit a destination they were just so happy to play and have fun together.  It really makes me look forward to the next road trip, where ever that may be.
Morning drinks...why not?!?

OK, so let's get down the the big game!  What an EXPERIENCE!  It was like the Rose Bowl atmosphere magnified by 50.  There is just no way to describe the feeling of being in a plaza with 16,000 Duck fans during the pep rally, or tailgating in the parking lot of the National Championship game!  Just amazing...





Tailgate Time.  Whiskey shots?  Really?!?

So on game day we headed out early to the stadium to meet up with our group of friends.  We left at 10:30 and were having the first beer of the morning at the Saddleback Ranch Chop House by 11:00am.  After breakfast there we walked by the designated ticket scalping area to get a feel of prices.  Upper level seats were going for $2,000 to $3,000 per ticket, so we moseyed into the parking lot and began to tailgate and meet lots of other Duck fans from Oregon and abroad. Even cam newton couldn't afford THOSE prices!

We partied it up until about 90 minutes before game time and then went back to the scalpers area.  I was really expecting prices to dive as kickoff approached, but not this time.  As we waited and watched, NO ONE was buying and the scalpers were still asking $1,800 a ticket for uppers.  As we reached 10 minutes before kickoff, we decided to head into the Westgate plaza area to watch the game on their HUGE HDTV.  This thing must have been a 50 foot screen that is normally a billboard but became the viewing screen for the game.  It was all we needed...there were fans of both teams everywhere and it was just like standing in the stadium.

  
My Aunt & Uncle live on Cameron Street. 
Our "seats" for the game.
Afterwards, most AU fans were pretty gracious, but we were in no mood to stick around.  We headed back to Phoenix and called it a night.  Tuesday morning we woke up and headed back to Rancho to pick up the kids.  After a quick night out with the family for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory we were back to bed to head to Windsor in the morning.  All day on the road Wednesday led us to Windsor and an improvised home cooked meal.  A quick breakfast on Thursday and it was a LONG drive home in the rain on Thursday. 

Happy to be on the road! Amazing!
Leaving Southern California.
So while I would have loved to have come home with the big trophy, it was a fantastic trip nonetheless!  A great time with family, friends, and fellow Ducks!  Can't wait to do it again!

January 9, 2011

Ducks Land In Phoenix...This Duck Gets Older

Well, after a 5 hour drive from Rancho Cucamonga we pulled into Phoenix a little tired and road-weary, but we were quickly brought back to life by the house full of Oregon fans that we're staying with!  Many thanks to Shawn and Karen Gourley, and Shawn's parents, for putting us up in their spare room for the weekend.  The hospitality is awesome!

So we rolled directly to downtown Scottsdale after a quick pit stop at the busiest sports bar I've ever seen!  Scottsdale is party central for Oregon and Auburn fans, and we spent the entire night and much of the morning at Dos Gringos, the official Duck bar for the game.  The place was amazing, and I'll load last nights pictures onto Facebook to check out. 


Our group at the Bud Light Fiesta party site.

The first beers of many at Dos Gringos Cantina.

Dos Gringos


Aaron, Kenny Wheaton, and me.

Shawn Gourley and I with the Middleton boys, who we used to coach MANY years ago.

Kelsey and Karen Gourley.
We are already running into lots of Lebanon fans here, and I know that many more are arriving today so we're sure to be surrounded by some great Oregonians for the rest of our trip.  Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes as I turn 36 today...wow.  Hopefully I'll get my present tomorrow!  Today we're heading out to the Stadium to check out the activities there, and then at 5pm we'll be back in Scottsdale for the official Oregon Pep Rally and then another night on the town!  This trip has been awesome so far, and should only get better!

January 7, 2011

A Day Of Disney

We loaded up the car yesterday and headed to Disneyland for a day with the girls and my cousin Marc and his family.  It's been a while since I've been to the happiest place on earth, and man, how it's changed.  Gone are the days of pulling into the parking lot (for free; now it's $15) and parking in front of the gate.  Now, after peeling off the first of many $20's of the day, you park in a massive garage and take a tram to the entrance.  Much of Disneyland is the same, which is great because it takes me back to the days at the park with my grandparetns every summer for my yearly trip, but then there's a lot of new stuff for the kids and the parents.

Once we got inside, we hit all of the staples with the kids: The carousel, Dumbo, Storybook Land, Small World, Toon Town, etc.  After s small meltdown on the carousel, the girls slowly warmed up to the Disney experience and really started to love it.  It was just awesome to see the excitement and joy in their eyes!  They really loved the Jungle Cruise, and the highlight of the day had to be the Winnie the Pooh ride and the meet and greet with the characters afterward.  The kids were in heaven!

We cruised over to California Adventure afterward and it was OK, but not as great as Disneyland.  You definitely have to check out the Soarin' ride if you're there, which "flies" you over all of California's landmarks...very cool.

After we were all Disneyed out we headed over with the whole group to ESPN Zone for dinner and then hit the road.  The kids pulled it out again, staying up the whole day without a nap and not having any big meltdowns and not getting to bed until after 9pm, pretty late for them.  Why they couldn't decide to sleep in this morning though...who knows? 

So it was another fantastic day on vacation!  Thanks to Marc and Heather (and Dave!) for the opportunity and for getting the girls a pair of ears!  What a great day with the family! 

Today is a family get together at my Aunt and Uncle's house, and on Saturday we're headed to Phoenix!  Gameday is only 3 days away!
Waiting to get onto our first ride.

Lauren, Cameron, and Samantha.

The end of the day at California Adventure.

Cameron staying loose at ESPN Zone.

Leaving for the night.

Heading back to the car.







Not a fan.



The exhausted parents!

Minnie's House.


Dumbo's ride.
Small World.

Hugs all around.


Toon Town Fire Department

Meeting Mickey.

Tigger was a big hit too.

Lauren passed out before we left the parking lot.
Disneyed out!

January 5, 2011

Welcome to SoCal...Someone turn up the heat!

Another uneventful day on the road on Tuesday ended up with us pulling into Rancho Cucamonga around 5pm.  As we drove down on Monday, I was really struck with the subtle beauty of Northern California; the rolling hills, the pastureland, the livestock, etc.  Yesterday, driving through Central California, I remembered how it's the opposite situation.  What a boring drive. 

On a side note, Californians might just eek out a win over Washington for shittiest drivers on the West Coast. Hey lady, when you're doing 60 in the fast lane when the speed limit's 70, and I come and put my nose in your ass doing 85, that means MOVE THE FUCK OVER!  A dozen times yesterday, I swear...Then, just outside of the grapevine, a nice young lady thought it was a perfect time to attempt to put a red racing stripe on the side of her car and just dove into our lane.  Luckily, I avoided her, but I almost misspelled a word in the text I was sending. Just kidding.

Finally taking a nap.

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First In-N-Out experience.

Breakfast in Windsor; home of Charles Shulz.

Waiting for breakfast.


Snow capped mountains in Rancho Cucamonga. The ol' Suburban needs a rest!

January 4, 2011

Road Trip - Day One

I take back everything I said about fearing a horrific driving experience with our kids!  They were awesome! No meltdowns, no crying, no fighting...and of course no napping, but hey, I'll gladly take that over the alternatives.  As we drove through the snowy southern Oregon wilderness, Lauren was especially amazed by the scenery. You'd hear a whispering "Wow!" and turn around to see her staring not at the DVD player, but out the window at the huge snow covered fir trees.

We blew right past our usual first stop of Yreka since the kids were doing so well, and pushed right on through to Redding where we stopped for a first.  The first trip to In-N-Out for the girls.  They weren't nearly as eager to gorge as their father was, but they did power down a grilled cheese and had a few fries.  They never get fast food, so it was still pretty exciting for them.

After Redding, it was another 4 hours to Windsor. I had forgotten how the last 20 miles or so on Highway 53 can be an absolute nightmare of a drive.  20 miles of hairpin switchbacks coupled with snow covered fog lines and a road still covered with cinders in the dark makes for one stressful drive. Kelsey curled into the fetal position for the majority of it, which was comforting. But we made it, and the Windsor resort is so nice!  I wish we could stay a little longer, but today we push on to Rancho Cucamonga. It looks like our good luck with travel weather is going to continue.  Day 1 is in the books!

January 2, 2011

Load up!

Tomorrow we're loading up the Suburban and hitting the road for a 10-day trip to Glendale, Arizona. We're on our way to the BCS National Championship Game to watch our Oregon Ducks play in the biggest game in their 114-year history. But more on that later. This trip was actually the reason that I started this blog; a way to record the things that we see and do along the way and share them with our friends and family so that the next time you're craving a double-double south of Bakersfield you'll know to get off at Kettleman City and hit the In-N-Out.

I was also hoping for some interaction along the way, where friends could suggest places to stop, places to avoid, places not to miss, etc. But in the middle of all of the holiday madness, I was much to late in getting this page up and running.  Anyway, it's here now, so let's go.

September, 2006
The road trip.  In days past it meant weeks of fast driving, alternate routes, and long trips up and down the West Coast.  I started making solo road trips shortly after turning 16.  In 1997 (I think) I loaded up my Honda Accord with Corby Wilson and we drove from Lebanon to Rosarito Beach, Mexico.  Back in the good old days when there was little fear of being shot in a border town or kidnapped for ransom.  Or the fantastic road trip that Kelsey and I (and Luke) took to Santa Barbara and Palm Desert for our first wedding anniversary.  Carefree and loose, with the open road stretched out in front of us...the world was ours!


Tomorrow, we embark on a different kind of road trip...the family road trip.  The first drive of more than 2 hours that we'll make with our 2 and 3 year old girls.  Now I love my kids, and they're great kids...but somewhere in the back of my mind I have a vision of a double-meltdown somewhere near Stockton with nowhere to hide, and not a cold beer in sight.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe we'll hit the road and they will entertain themselves and stay happy for the entire trip!  We did borrow a sweet dual-screen DVD player from the Gaskey's that may just be our saving grace, and on a trip of 16 hours no amount of TV is too much.

I just want them to have fun and enjoy the trip.  They're going to meet some family that they've never seen before, as well as spend some time with extended family that they know and love.  Isn't that what family travel is really all about.  Hopefully along the way we'll have some amusing stories to relate, and we'll experience places and things that we'll be dying to tell our friends about.  And hopefully, I'll have the fortitude to open the laptop and share the day...or at least open a cold beer and share it with my wife.

In 12 short hours, they journey begins...

Two Safe Drugs, Relatively Speaking

They say the first step to overcoming addiction is admitting that you have a problem.  Well, I have a problem, but I have no desire to overcome it.  There are few things in this world that can capture my attention for hours on end.  The kind of things that envelope and engross you to the point that you look up and two hours have flown by.  So what is it?  Booze?  Pills?  Streaming porn?  Not even close... I'm addicted to Yelp and Google Earth.  There, I said it.  Sometimes I use them both together, at the same time; like an internet speed-ball.  Let's face it, if these vices were physically harmful I'd have been dead long ago.

Let's start with Google Earth. It's zoomable pictures of the entire world, people!  I mean are you kidding me?!?  Anywhere you want to go, anything you want to see, punch it up and there it is!  Blows my mind.  Then they added the street view feature so that you can actually see how shitty your old neighborhood looks now from right in front of the curb. No plane ticket, no driving, just zoom on in.  If I'm driving somewhere new, I'll actually go to Google Earth and look at the path/turns/directions whatever, so that when I'm coming up on a turn I already know what to look for.  Does this make me a loser? No, but it definitely means I have too much time on my hands, and that brings me to my next obsession: Yelp.

Now Yelp's been around for a long time and maybe you've already heard about it or used it, but I'm telling you that the Yelp concept is the greatest thing that's happened to dining in the last 5 years.  Yeah, you can check out a bunch of other crap on Yelp, but this site (and the people who support it) are all about the food!  When you're on the road in a strange town, do you want to archive some bullshit online review from a blowhard food columnist who got a free meal AND a free bottle of wine in exchange for an ass-kissing review of an otherwise overpriced and overrated restaurant.  Of course not!  You want real, honest reviews, from people like you.

This is why I love Yelp.  For the most part, the people posting reviews are average Joe's who know what's good and what sucks, and they're not afraid to tell you about it.  I have a personal success story involving Yelp that lets me know that the owners of restaurants also read the reviews and care about the image of their business.

After our third less than stellar meal at a nearby upscale restaurant, I wrote a scathing review on Yelp, bitching and moaning in great detail. Low and behold, a week later I received an email from the owner explaining that he was sorry to hear of my bad experiences and would I please provide my address so that he could send me a gift card for $100 as a way to try to win my business back.

Now being the cynic that I am, I smelled this dirty dog a mile away.  No way in hell was I giving out my address so that this guy's buddies could leave a flaming bag of dog shit on my porch for me to stomp out on a warm summer evening.  So I did what any of you would have done, and I gave him my in-laws address just in case there was a surprise coming my way.  Just kidding...I gave him my work address.  Two weeks later, the $100 gift card arrived and the next weekend my wife and I went to dinner on the owner.  And do you know what I discovered? A free meal tastes a hell of a lot better than one you pay for!

So, do something good for your community and become a Yelper!  Try new places, write reviews, and be a voice for the average Joe! Then get on Google Earth and look for other nearby places that you can visit and Yelp about.  You'll be speed-balling in no time, trust me...I'm an addict.