Anytime I hear "Santa Barbara", it makes me think of The Graduate, when Ben is searching for Elaine at her college and he shows up at her fionce's frat house and asks about the location for the wedding.

"Where's the makeout king getting married?"

"Santa Barbara!"

That's where we headed for our final stop for a few days... to Mere's parents house.  The drive down along the coast was really beautiful and we couldn't get over how blue the water was. 

It was a long drive, though... like a really slow rollercoaster... up and down and around...  Don't plan on averaging any more than about 35 or 40 down the coast when all is said and done.  Plus, you'll want to stop at every scenic overlook, too... and you probably should!

We finally made it to her parents house on Sunday afternoon, just in time for dinner.  Her dad is really amazing with their outside grill, but even more amazing as project manager for the construction of their house.  He planned and built their house from an empty patch of land at the top of the hill, and while they're still doing little things like putting in doors and furnishing, its really amazing. 

If I had this pool, I'd be in it everyday... drifting.. here in the pool... Ben Braddock style.

Maybe one day we can get Mere's dad to do a video tour Bob Vila style, because knowing her dad, there's a story behind those lights, the fences, the arch, and every stone... the attention to detail was really impressive.

Mere at home...  finally!

Getting to stay in one place for a few days, as the driver, was a welcome rest.  Her parents were  gracious hosts and joined us for a Dodgers - Phillies game, too.

In the end, the EuroPod (Subaru Tribeca), made it 5594.3 miles, and did 20.9 MPG over that span.  The... ah-hem...  two speeding tickets have been paid for (my mom, who is now reading this blog, and, to her credit, sent me a Plugoo message the other day... didn't know about the second one...) and will not show up on my insurance b/c such is the out of state policy for the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.  It was a little short on pickup, but then again, I'm used to driving a car with 300HP.  It was a very comfortable drive, though, and picking up a portable XM radio was a clutch decision. 

Oh, and for those of you that took bets in the pool...  there were no arguments.  None.  5594.3 smooth miles.

So thanks to everyone who housed us, fed us, met up with us for lunch, brunch, etc...   We had an absolute blast and will be sure to visit you all soon again... and fly there... and stay longer.

Only a couple more stops to go to wrap up my recap.

After Petaluma, we stayed in San Francisco to meet up with Mere's siblings, and hangout with Toby and Brooke, too.

@ptrain's siblings.

I can't speak for Mere, but they're my fave couple that we hangout with... Love the matching shirts!

I can haz nap now?

View from Amy's apt.

Foggy!

Driving the Europod down Lombard St.

Did I ever tell you about my special talent?  I took this picture.  In fact, many of the pictures I have where its just me and another person up close, I took.  I have a knack for flipping the camera around and holding out my arm in a way that makes it look like someone else took it.  In fact, my aim may be better when I'm not actually looking.

My godmother, who I call Aunt A, always remembers my birthday.  So, even though it is actually next week, when I stayed at her house last week, she got me a cake...

This is Aunt A...  her kids have guinea pigs.  Guinea pigs are surprisingly Web 2.0, because they are lightweight, flexible, and have feeds. 

I'm a little bit bleery eyed from not sleeping on the redeye last night, so yes, these are out of order.  Don't know how Redeye VC does it.

We got to spend a day and a half in Yellowstone on our trip and it was really amazing.  We came in through the east entrance via Rt. 16 and stayed at the Grant Village Hotel.  The accommodations were simple but sufficient.  Then, the next day, we spent the whole day working our way north, seeing geysers, waterfalls... all sorts of natural phenomena.  One thing I didn't know about Yellowstone is that the whole thing is sitting on a very thin layer of the earth's crust... making it a haven for hot springs, boiling mud pools, etc.  The springs spew minerals of all sorts of different colors making for some amazing formations.

So, here goes...   First, this is one of the first things we saw when we came into the park.  A Buffalo came perilously close to the EuroPod:

We missed Old Faithful by 5 minutes, but caught this other guy just in time:

Mere has a lot of family in Butte... and that's where her parents grew up, so we made a stop there and stayed with her aunt.  Sorry to take so long to catch up, but this was the Saturday before last.  I had been having too much fun in too many places without wifi to keep up the vacation blogging.

Butte's an interesting place.  Called "the richest hill in the world", Butte was a copper boomtown that  peaked in 1917 and  started to significantly decline in the 50's and 60's.  That didn't stop mining companies from erasing a section of town called Meaderville in favor of a big gaping pit for copper excavation.

The pit closed in 1982 and is below the water line, so it continues to fill with toxic water to this day.  While some residents have renovated Butte's old "copper king" mansions and there are some people moving back in to start new businesses, the big pit is really a sad symbol of what we've done to the environment and how quickly one-industry towns can fall.

On the very bright side, however, Mere's Aunt Gretchen was a very gracious host and gave us a great tour of the town's history...and treated us to breakfast at the M&M.

I just got into California today and will be heading to SF tomorrow.  We've got a full day with friends and family, but we'll be setting up shop at Kennedy's at 9:30PM at night.  Feel free to stop by and say hello!

Mere & Charlie Meetup
Saturday, July 14th
9:30PM

Kennedy's
1040 Columbus Avenue
(between Chestnut St & Houston St)
San Francisco, CA 94133

I'm sorely behind in my tripblogging, mostly because we have such a packed schedule that I didn't really leave time for blogging (good to see I have at least one priority in order...).  However, my pics are mostly up to date here.

Just wanted to let Bay Area folks know that we'll be planting ourselves somewhere for drinks in SF on Saturday night, most likely in the North Beach area... I'd guess around 9ish.   Would love to catch up with blog friends, real friends, etc...

In the meantime, thanks to Drew and Dave from Zillow for inviting Mere and I to Lunch 2.0 yesterday.  It's sort of like a Tech Meetup only its kept to 50 and held in someone's office during lunch, obviously.  Zillow's got a really impressive operating going (and a sah-weet view) and the Seattle tech scene is really buzzing.   

One of my best friends is from Wyoming and she's always tried to get me out there.  Well, Deirdre, I finally got to see it, even if it was without you and after your fam has moved away... better late than never. 

I have to say, I was totally missing out.  July 5th was our big driving day (I'm  a few days behind in posting)... 11 hours from KC to Sioux City to Sundance, Wyoming.  Sundance, just so you know, isn't where the film festival is.  That's in Park City, Utah, for some reason. 

Anyway, by the time we got out there, we were dead tired.  That's what made the surprise jacuzzi so perfect.  We stayed in this great little cabin with a jacuzzi on the front porch.  Every day of driving should end with a jacuzzi. 

In the morning, we played in the fields and hills around the cabin, and then went off to see Devil's Tower.

Well, this answers the question of whether the shirt I'm wearing right now as I blog this was clean or dirty when I pulled it out of the suitcase.  Oh well.

The EuroPod (which is what I've been calling our Tribeca because of its bizzare design) and our cabin.

When I was planning our trip, everyone told me that I had to go see the Badlands.  I had heard of them, but really didn't know what they were or why they were so bad.  It sounded like something out of Mad Max, and to be honest, that's not so far from the truth.  Turns out, the Badlands were basically the bottom of a huge body of water that sat in the middle of North America for hundreds of thousands of years.  Receding water carved out these amazing rock formations  in the middle of nowhere, creating something that really needs to be seen to be experienced.

More photos of the Badlands here.

Ok, catching up... I posted the flat tire pic, and for those keeping up on Twitter, we did manage to get out of Sioux Falls, but I had some other pictures that I wanted to post.  Its a nice little town with a cute main street.

Thanks to the folks at Graham Tire for getting us back on the road!

Q: What did you do on your trip to Kansas City?

A: I bit the tail of the Royals mascot.

Today was a relatively easy day in St. Louis.  We have a very ambitious driving day tomorrow...  in fact, the next few days are going to be...  well, we'll stick with ambitious as the term.  Basically, by the end of Saturday, we'll find ourselves with Mere's family in Butte, Montana.

We did get to see the Arch, where I learned that my fear of heights isn't just about seeing the heights, but also feeling the ride up.  Elevators don't bother me too much, although they did in the WTC...  but the creaky tram system they've got up the Arch was a bit hairy for me.  What's bizzare is that they use the same pods on the tram as were used in the infamous Jeff Goldbloom movie, the Fly.

The small windows at the top of the Arch gave me at least a little bit of security. 

In the morning, there was a parade right outside our hotel.... very Middle America:

On our way out of St. Louis to KC, we stopped in the Dogtown neighborhood to meet up with fellow bloggers Matt Winn and Ashley Cecil.  Ashley's comments about the power of her blog in her career as (an artist interested in the non-profits) started a whole conversation about it afterwards between Mere and I which might lead to her blogging.  We'll see.  This has definitely been a great "people trip" for us... meeting up with old friends and new, family, analog friends and digital ones, too.

We decided to swing by Louisville to catch up with Rob from Businesspundit, who I had been reading and writing to for a few years and finally got to meet in person at SXSW.  We even got to meet Mrs. Businesspundit.  The Mays are a great couple and hopefully, we can take them out in NYC one day.

We didn't really think we'd spend much time in Louisville besides lunch, as we still had to head out to St. Louis.  However, we found a waterfront park that rented surrey bikes that sat you down side by side.

Hilarity ensued:

We got some ices.  The guy at the cart asked us if we had ever heard of "Italian Ices."  He then asked me if I had ever seen a purple spoon, which he handed me.

I wanted to ask him, "Have you ever seen...  anything outside of Louisville?"  :)

BTW... all of our trip pics are on Flickr, here.

And you can keep track of us in real time on Twitter, here.

The Jake is a fantastic place to watch a game.  The Indians beat up on the Rays, but the turning point of the game was Perez coming out of the pen for the Indians in the 7th with bases loaded and no outs with a 3-2 lead.  He got the first out by leaping about 4 feet in the air to snare a chopper back to the mound and throwing home...  finished off the inning 1-2-3...  amazing job.  I went to the game with Mere and my friend Meg from Fordham who graciously opened up her Euclid Heights apt couch to us. 

They're serious about their "I" logo...

Didn't even realize beforehand...  Fireworks night!   We watched from the parking lot roof standing up through the sunroof of the Tribeca.

...they've got undetectable radar technology, and lasers.  I-71 was crawling with cops.  This must be the state's main source of revenue.  Yes, that's right, frickin' lasers.  The cops stood on the side of the road with these laser rifle things pointed at us and our detector went nuts... "Laser alert!  Laser alert!"  It was like we were in Star Trek.

I used to have the original Test Drive for my PS/2...   Remember this image?

$135.   Oops.

Thankfully, from WikiAnswers, "New York and Colorado will not enter out of state speeding tickets at all unless they are serious violations like reckless."   

Good thing.  I don't need my insurance raised.

After the HOF, we drove a few more miles and stopped in Ithaca, NY at the Amazing Grace Bed and Breakfast.  Alicia was a wonderful host and if you stay, make sure she makes you some of her German bread.  May very well be the best bread I've ever had in my life.  The house has some neat grounds around it as well.  You're basically living in her house, though, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for young couples.  :)  Still, the tradeoff for that breakfast...   pretty close call.  (I'm going to get in trouble for that one.)

At the recommendation of Eric, we met up with Jofish while in Ithaca as well. 

Not only did that make for some interesting conversation, lucky for us, he insisted that we stop by one of Ithaca's waterfalls.   I'm so glad we did.  Check these out!

I'll catch up on Cleveland, Louisville and St. Louis next time...   

I'm in St. Louis now.  We have an easy road day as we only have to make it to Kaufmann Stadium for tonight's Fireworks night Royals game against the Mariners.  So, I have a few minutes to catch everyone up.

First off, I'll tell you, I think I have some kind of special gene that gives me incredible driving stamina.  So far, I've done 100% of the driving and we're 1500+ miles in, counting my trip up to Boston for Dave's wedding.  I feel fantastic.  One thing that is helping is that we've gone running each morning, even for a little while, and I'm making sure I get a good stretch in at every gas stop.  Gotta keep those legs moving. 

Mere and I have been keeping ourselves occupied with our portable XM radio, which she has been conscientiously adjusting when it needs a change in the FM output signal.  We've also had some really good conversation.  She has a big book of questions and we had a good social media conversation yesterday.  In fact, she took some notes on it which I will try to get her to post here.

Anyway...  Out first official stop was the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Somehow, even though its only a few miles from NY, I've never gone.   It was alright.  I'm glad I went, but it didn't knock me over.  What was really disappointing was the lack of rich media exhibits.  MLB must have tons and tons of old clips that I've never seen before and I would have loved to see more of that.   Show me more home runs by Willie Mays and highlights from Nolan Ryan's no-hitters from the 70's.   At All-Star Fan Fest a few years ago, they allowed fans to get in a booth and call a inning of a famous game, and save the video.  That would have been awesome.  Its 2007... the Hall needs a serious upgrade for the future because little kids aren't just going to be enamored with old bats and balls alone.

In any case, though, Nate asked for a pic of Johnny Bench's plaque.  I also got photos of other faves of mine:  The lone Met Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan and Wade Boggs, because of Boggs doesn't swing, its not a strike.

The real story of Cooperstown, however, was the serendipitous discovery that Mere has all sorts of softball skills.  There's a beautiful lake up there with a nice park and I had brought two gloves and a ball.  We also bought a Wiffleball and bat while we were up there.  She proved adept at hitting the wiffleball, but even more impressive was her ability to throw and field the softball.  I thought I was going to teach her how to play, but she's a ringer. 

I have all sorts of video on this, but unfortunately, all of the online video services have uploading limits.  The ones that allow editing, JumpCut and MotionBox, do too.  JumpCut even directs you to a shareware tool that allows you to chop up your video before uploading.   I don't want to upload a big video, but I need to edit it down somewhere first.  This should be located in the uploading tools of these services.  I'm more than happy to edit it down to upload, but I don't want to have to use an entirely different set of tools to do it.  Phanfare should do the same thing.   I love their drag and drop uploading tool and that's a great spot for some additional tools.

So, instead, we have some lake pics... I'll edit the videos when I get back.

IMG_0896, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

89 and still lookin' good...

Good Morning Boston, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Day one...or two, depending on whether my cousins wedding in Essex counted. Great pics off Nana and Mere to be uploaded later. It is a gorgeous morning in Boston... If you're here, go for a run or something. I'm walking over to the car now to install the portable XM radio. You cannot imagine how psyched I am for this trip.



--

Sent from my Helio Ocean

So we made a little change on the front end...  the Cooperstown day ends with a few hours to Ithaca, NY.   That will give us 5 1/2 hours to trek across Western NY on our way to the Tribe game in Cleveland.

So here's the map now.  Remember, all those west coast stops aren't actually stops.. they're just a way to get Google Maps to drive on the right road.

So, in terms of cities, stops and opportunities to meet folks...

We have a free day in Seattle on 7/11, both day and night.  Suggestions are welcome and we'll prob do some sort of happy hour type thing for the handful of folks we know in Seattle.

We're also free the night of 7/14 in San Fran.   We might stop in if anyone is hanging out after CommunityNext, but also, @caroliiine is going to be headed into the Bay Area that same night, so we were thinking of maybe doing a NYers invade the Valley thing, too.  Up in the air...

I also just ordered my radar detector.  That should come in by the end of the week...  vroooom.

We picked up a few audio books as well, and I'm thinking of dusting off my XM radio and resubscribing.  Does anyone have the car adapter for it?  Does it work?  I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the adapter for the iPod.

We also managed to avoid camping entirely...   Mere called Yellowstone again and found a hotel cancellation, so we don't have to sleep in the woods.  That would have been a lot of extra gear to carry around for just one night.

Tickets purchased for Royals game on 7/4 and for LA Dodgers on Monday the 16th.  Most expensive seat at Kaufmann was $32, not surprisingly.  At least I'll get to see Ichiro, b/c the Mariners are in town.  I hope King Felix pitches.