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I sorta always wanted to go to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, I dropped the ball pretty early on and never entered the ticket lottery. Not that many people got tickets in the lottery process. It then seemed that going to the Olympics would be challenging not just in trying to get tickets but that accommodation and transportation would also prove really challenging and really expensive. $1000/night for a Motel 6 at Whistler? No thanks. So I gave up my Olympic dream and settled for watching them on CBC (yes we get the CBC in Seattle!). Only to discover CBC lost the rights! Bummer, we don’t get CTV in Seattle. Now I was resigned to watching the Olympics on NBC with their tape delays and over dramatization :(.

After enjoying a long weekend of Olympic coverage on NBC we headed back to work last Tuesday. There we heard from Glenn about his trip to Whistler to see the luge and ski jump. We also heard from Chris, our director of finance, who drove up to Whistler for the day to see the luge. I was shocked to hear that he drove to Whistler and back in one day, shocked their was no line at the border, and shocked that you could still get tickets to events. It all sounded too good to be true. And so after hearing from another co-worker’s last minute trip to the Olympics Rob and I plotted our own last minute trip.

Alright, we didn’t plot much :).

The only planning we did ahead of time was buying this $20 parking pass that let us park for the day at Whistler but also more importantly gave us a sea to sky pass that let us drive all the way to Whistler and bypass the mandatory bus system.

Of course with a 5:20 am wake-up call the prudent thing to do the night before was to go to the Booze Olympics at John’s house:

Now we hit the road around 6, got to the border at 8-ish. At the border (truck crossing, not Peace Arch) there wasn’t a single car in front of us, something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. We then zoomed up to Squamish and got our parking pass and were in Whistler around 10:30 (which is a pretty good drive time considering we couldn’t speed because there were so many cops).

Our first stop was the Whistler Olympic Park to see what was going on but they wouldn’t let us in, turns out you can only bus in. So we parked at our designated parking lot which was practically empty:

We then bused to Whistler village and within five minutes were offered bobsleigh tickets (cat-b) at just around list price ($50/piece). Not knowing any better we snapped up four of those for peace of mind and started to explore. The village wasn’t as busy as I would have guessed as we made our way to the box office. There we found many scalpers working their magic and so we picked up biathlon tickets (cat-a) for half of list price ($25/piece!). With the biathlon already underway we quickly caught a bus to the Whistler Olympic Park (20 minute drive way). There we discovered that once you clear security there’s a 20 minute walk to the venue. Fortunately we had Rob’s kid, Thomas, with us and we lucked into them loading us onto an accessibility bus which quickly whisked us to the venue.

There we found the men’s biathlon was over and that we missed it (as expected) so we grabbed lunch and watched the women’s 12 km biathlon from our seats in the grandstands.

Here’s the start:

After Germany won the biathlon we bussed back to Whistler and took a photo in a bobsleigh:

Then headed up the gondola to the Whistler Sliding Center. There we found our first line as everyone waited to clear security (they had metal detectors, etc):

It moved relatively quickly and we were soon watching the third and fourth runs of the two-man bobsleigh. When you first walk in you’re at the bottom of the track and things are relatively crowded and you’re far from the action:

But a short hike will take you up the track to areas where you can almost touch them as they go by at 140km/hr!

They go by so fast. Much faster than it feels watching it on TV. Of course, heading up the track means they go a little slower and makes photo taking a little easier. But if you’re not careful they’re still gone in the blink of an eye.

We snuck out of the bobsleigh a little early to avoid a long line at the gondola and hit the village for dinner. Turns out not many restaurants allow kids! Fortunately the world was busy watching the Canada-USA game and we got a table at Dubh Linn Gate and so I headed back out to watch the last five minutes of the game in the village where there was now a huge crowd. What a devastating loss! Meanwhile Chelsea was at Lululemon replacing what was stolen after her car got broken into.

After dinner we hit the road around 8 pm as the village was getting ready to party. Our drive home was pretty speedy with only one car ahead of us at the border.

All in all a long day; 5 am to 1 am. But so awesome to see two medal events and be in the thick of things up at Whistler. “Next time” we’ll do more than one day :).

So, if you’re like us and live in Seattle and have been thinking of going to the Olympics, talk to your boss or call in sick, it’s totally possible!

Here’s all our photos (first Chelsea’s, then mine).

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A few weekends ago Chelsea and I loaded up her 4Runner and went camping on the Olympic Coast. We went to the heart of vampire country at Second Beach just outside La Push, Washington. Since I couldn’t find much info about camping on the Olympic Coast online I thought I’d blog it up.

View Camping at La Push in a larger map

We got a late start on Friday so Chels grabbed us a room at Red Lion in Port Angeles. It was way over priced but nothing else was available online. In hindsight we should have just found a cheap sleazy motel along the road.

For breakfast we ate at the Cornerhouse just down the street from our hotel. The place was packed, and a bit of a trip; totally what you’d expect from a breakfast diner in a small town.

Driving into La Push you pass first by the trail heads of third beach and second beach before reaching the town of La Push. When we got there it was super foggy and overflowing with surfers. It looked like you could pitch a tent anywhere along the beach. However, we talked to the general store folks and they charge $15/night for a pass to park in their lot and get access to their showers and restrooms.

After checking that out we drove back up the road to the second beach trail head. The parking lot was packed but we got lucky with a spot.

We hiked the 15 minutes into the beach and found that while the parking lot was full the beach was not, and it was absolutely beautiful.

We decided we’d rather camp here so we went back to the car and hauled our stuff in. Which was a trick since we had planned on car camping and not hauling our stuff. So we were quite the site to see lugging everything without backpacks and rolling our cooler down the trail. But it was worth it. Especially with the clouds clearing before the sun set.

To camp at Second Beach the coast is $5/night and you need to store your food in a bear proof container. The ranger did not believe that our cooler was a bear proof container. As for room to setup, there was lots of room on the beach. We setup at the north end and from where we camped you could only see one other tent. There was lots of drift wood on the beach so we cooked over a campfire. I also wasn’t going to lug my very heavy Weber Q down the trail!

On the way back to Seattle on Sunday we had a short detour at Forks to get on the Internet to deal with some work stuff. Forks is definitely Twilight crazy. I think every other store was Bella this or Edward that.

Check out all my photos. Chels has better ones but they’re not online yet.

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This past weekend we made a quick visit up to Salt Spring Island (in British Columbia, Canada) to visit my dad. He was there kicking the dirt on a piece of land he bought a few years ago.

To get there we flew Kenmore Air to Victoria, and then taxied from downtown Victoria to Swartz Bay where we then ferried to Salt Spring (in hindsight the direct flight probably would have made more sense!) The flight was awesome. No lines, no security bullshit, no taking off your shoes and you could use your cellphone most of the flight since the plane flies so low. Plus it cost only a little bit more than taking the Seattle-Victoria ferry (the “Clipper”).

Here’s the 1950’s Beaver we flew in:

We arrived just in time for the Saturday market. Truth be told it wasn’t that exciting.

Here’s my dad’s west facing piece of land on Canvasback Road in the Channel Ridge development. As you can see he has a lot of work ahead of him :).

The B&B my dad and Jill were staying at was right on the water with a great view. It’s also for sale for $1.5mil:

Our view at the Seabreeze Inne wasn’t as nice but it was close to the town of Ganges:

For the flight home we were in a larger Otter, also built in the ’50s:

All my photos

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Thursday afternoon (after travelling to Boston on Tuesday and DC on Wednesday) Ming and I flew to Anchorage, Alaska.

The first surprise was how full the flight is (and there were two more flights after ours!) The second was that there is a time change and it was still light out (hello, east coast to the furthest west coast in less than 24 hrs). The third was that our skis arrived before we even got to baggage claim (this never happens). The fourth was these kangaroos which arrived as we were waiting for our gear:

The fifth was that we were able to walk up and get a rental car for $50 for the weekend from Budget (other car places were up to $50/day!)

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Thanks to Chelsea we spent the last week in Maui.

Here’s my quick guide to Maui! Impatient? Check my photos, and Chelsea’s and my videos.

Get the Book!

Glenn recommended and nicely gave us a copy of Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook. Get it! It was very helpful in terms of figuring out what to do, with what companies, where to eat, had great maps and everything.

Also, read it before you go! I didn’t and wish I had. That way we could have hit the ground running and had activities scheduled from the get go. Also I would have brought a few more things (bug spray, water-proof camera) instead of buying the over priced version there.

Where to Stay

We stayed at the Marriott Wailea the smaller of the two “large” tourist areas. While it didn’t have as many restaurants as Lahania, it still had a good number of nice ones. Our hotel was nice, had several pools (including a nice infinity one), we had a view of the ocean (though it wasn’t as ocean front as we would have liked), good cocktails ($10) and our room had a very comfortable bed. I think I slept 10-12 hours every night.

What Kind of Car to Rent

Definitely go convertible. We got a Mustang one from Budget. Next time we might get a Jeep since some of the roads we drove were pretty rough and there really aren’t any freeways to open up the Mustang on. Though I did hear others complaining about how hard it was to get the Jeep top down as compared to the Mustang’s.

Holy Whales!

There were whales (north pacific humpback) everywhere. You could see them from the hotel pool, when driving, when going scuba, sailing, etc.

Capturing a whale on film proved to be pretty elusive. Here’s the best photo I got of a baby whale:

Here’s a video of us waiting for whales:

Driving West Maui

Not thinking much of it, one afternoon we drove from Wailuku to Kahakuloa to Kapalua to Kanaapali to Lahaina (in other words, counter clockwise around West Maui). It’s not a long drive in terms of miles but it is a slow drive. Very winding road, one lane for many stretches and if you ever missed a turn it’d be a long tumble down to the ocean. Several times we had to back up to negotiate sections when another car was going the other direction.

Along the way we stopped at a blow hole. Here’s a video of it getting the best of me:

Driving Hana

We did the drive from Kahului to Hana and then kept going while most people turn around and go back the way they came after the seven sacred pools. On the way to Hana we took in the scenery and stopped at a few spots. The waterfalls were all kinda tame since it hadn’t rained recently.

We ate lunch in Hana. There really aren’t many food options so you may want to get a box lunch from 808 deli in Kihei before leaving. By the end of the day we were definitely starving and for the hours and hours of driving past Hana there was no where to get even a chocolate bar.

We did stop at the black sand beach:

And the seven sacred pools:

Powered Hang Gliding

To mix up our drive to Hana we went powered hang gliding with Armin. You can find some videos on YouTube from other folks to see what it’s like (we were too cheap to get the $70 video). I was expecting a serious hang gliding operation but we met Armin at the Hana airfield, a tiny airfield that he flew into with his Cessna. He’s got the one hanger there with the only powered hang glider.

Being afraid of heights, the whole thing scared the shit out of me but it was cool once I relaxed to see the same scenery that we were driving through from a completely different vantage point.

We opted for 45 minute flights. I’d recommend the hour flight and ask him to take you up to Haleakala.

Scuba Diving

I’ve never been scuba diving before and I was surprised to find it out it took three days to get certified so we opted for an introductory dive with Maui Dreams instead.

It was blast! Though we had to meet at the boat at 6:30 AM which is a little early for a vacation.

We also didn’t get to go to their dive location of choice since it was too windy. But we did get two dives in, about forty five minutes each and saw lots of little fish, some turtles, and at one point a huge power catamaran drove over top of us (fortunately we were 30 feet down).

Surfing

I took a group lesson with Goofy Foot Surf School. It was two hours and there were only three people in the group. I got up first try, wasn’t that hard. In two hours I rode about five waves. The paddling to catch the waves is exhausting.

Sailing

Given that it was crazy windy I really wanted to go sailing and was excited to learn that you could sail on America II, an America’s Cup contender! Unfortunately it was out of commission for the week with a broken engine. Oh the irony!

Instead we went on a champagne sunset cruise on Scotch Mist II, a Santa Cruz 50. It was pretty breezy so we didn’t do much sailing, they reefed the main and called it good.

Snorkeling

There’s lots of places to rent gear from so we rented gear for the week and whenever we felt like it pulled over and went snorkeling.

Eating

We had lots of great meals. Here are some of the favorites:

808 Deli had great sandwiches (good breakfast sandwiches too).

Nick’s Fish Market at the Fairmont had the best service, great fish too. And when we were too cold to walk back to our resort we found out they had a complimentary shuttle.

Pacific O was the best meal we ate.

IO by the same folks as Pacific O was pretty good too!

Moose’s was surprisingly good for a “chain” pub (okay there is only 3 locations and they’re all in Hawaii).

Cool Cat boasts the best burgers on Maui. Their Ahi sandwich was pretty good too.

Next Time…

Next time I’d like to get out and snorkel or scuba at Molokini, see a sunrise or sunset at Haleakala (we ran out of driving energy after our last two drives… plus you need to wake up at 3 AM to catch the sunrise) and go kiteboarding (it wasn’t windy enough the day I scheduled it).

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Quickly before I board a flight to Las Vegas here are the photos from our trip to Sasquatch on Memorial Day weekend.

Ming, Traci and I went and braved the wet cold weather to see some great bands like REM, Tegan and Sara, Death Cab, The Cure, The National…

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Last weekend we were in San Francisco.

Ming headed down early in the week for Java One then Chelsea and I headed down on Thursday for work.

Thursday night Chels and I grabbed dinner at Bocadillos, a cute little Tapas place just north of our office; we definitely recommend it. We sat beside two folks evaluating what looked like next month’s cover of Dwell.

Friday night after happy hour with our San Francisco office we met up with Ming and John and tried to find some nice lounges in the Mission. We hit some of the top rated ones and they were a complete bust; thanks Yelpers! We then headed to south SoMA and went to Nihon, a whiskey bar, that was pretty reasonable. Then we tried to go to a few more Yelp recommendations but found one to be either non-existent or we were ringing the wrong bell, and one to be quite smelly. To save the night we went to the Redwood Room in the Clifton Hotel which isn’t rated well by the Yelpers but is enjoyable with its art.

Saturday we met up with Katrina for brunch at the farmer’s market and had an outdoors breakfast.

And then headed down to Room and Board and a string of modern furniture stores.

After Room and Board we hit the streets for some protesting:

And then hit up some more modern furniture stores. Some of the ones we enjoyed were Monument, Architectural Elements, Zonal, Propeller and X21 Modern. The highlight was X21 Modern, a store where weird stuff goes to be bought by the San Francisco trendies.

I really liked these binoculars:

Though more practical would be a light:

I also love the Winter Robin at Propeller Modern:

Anyhow, now you know what to get me for my birthday.

Saturday night we dined at Perbacco. Again so-so Yelp reviews but was highly enjoyable.

For drinks afterwards we headed to Bourbon and Branch, a reservations only, speakeasy, with many rules. We highly recommend if you’re into vintage cocktails, cool ambiance and able to play by the rules. After our allotted hour and a half we moved on to North Beach again using Yelp as our guide, only to fail. We then tried to recover by heading to The Matrix Filmore in the Marina where we’ve ended up a few times now.

Sunday we started out with bottomless Mimosas at Lime for brunch. Lime’s a fun dance music playing brunch spot in the Castro. Bring your sunglasses, it is apparently in to wear them to the breakfast.

Next stop was the northern piers for some sight seeing.

In terms of bars this trip was a definite bust and left a bad taste in my mouth. Usually I come home from San Francisco ready to move there but this time not. We really need to find a local guide to help us out because Yelp has failed us time and again. And unfortunately the locals we know are mostly gay or newly arrived and not much help in this department .

So Yelp… Yelp is the talk of San Francisco but yet I hate it. On many trips to San Francisco I have consulted the Yelp. I’ve visited places with high rating, I’ve visited places with low ratings. Much more often than not reality does not match up with the Yelp ratings.

What has worked for me is asking people I know for recommendations. For instance, Jane, is my goto person in San Francisco for restaurants and shopping. She knows where it is going on. Sasha had some good furniture recommendations. Jim knows where the gay’s brunch and Glenn always sends me a long email with sure winners for everything.

What I want is a site where I can get recommendations for people who have similar tastes to my own. Or a site where people I know can write up their recommendations. For instance a friend of my sister’s is visiting in June. What I need to do is point her to the Matt Recommends page, not to Yelp, where she’ll spend hours reading conflicting reviews.

All in all, still a good trip, though I was glad to be home and as always, be sure to bring good footwear. Even when you take the Muni there is still a lot of walking.

Oh, and what’s up with drinks being $10+ everywhere? I felt like I was in Manhattan.

Photos: My photos, Chelsea’s photos and Ming’s photos

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John, Ming, Chelsea and I just booked a trip to San Francisco May 10th and 11th. I’m going down a few days early for work. Should be fun!

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This weekend the guys are up at Whistler for the Telus Festival. Thursday afternoon we arrived to fully stocked condos (thanks JJ) and then that night we went to the pro photographer showdown before drinking too much, skied Friday (it was cold with a little fresh snow), then a fashion show last night (too much ski gear, not enough summer wear) and today it’s hot and sunny and Ming is cooking up some bacon and eggs (I didn’t sleep last night, too much Redbull at the Beagle.)

In other news I’m way behind on blogging. I still need to post photos from Ben’s 30th birthday weekend at Hood Canal and the trip Chelsea and I took to Steven’s Pass last weekend.

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Ming, Joe and I are in the Audi headed to Panorama for heli-skiing. I know a number of people are concerned so here are the avalanche conditions for the area. Of course the heli-ski operations describes the conditions as, “Excellent! In boot-top Pow-Pow!”

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