Category: Uncategorized

I’m going to list them in the order visited…

1. United States. 1972. I was born here!

2. Canada. 1983. We went to Niagara Falls, and during the trip, the Army Corps of Engineers blew off Terrapin Point. Here’s a cool tidbit: we had a home movie camera with us and the parents set it up on the hotel balcony and filmed the explosion. I couldn’t find any video on YouTube. I should probably see if the parents still have it and try to get it posted. The best way to watch the video? In reverse (which was easy on the old reel to reel spools). Pretty cool to watch a bunch of dust rush to the ground and then have rocks slide up a hill from rubble into a beautiful point.

UPDATE (2018): Dad has a box of our old home movies that I can go through someday to see if I can find this video. But I’ll need to find a projector to view them…

3. United Kingdom. 1988. This was the bell tour summer after sophomore year of high school, I had my first beer in a proper pub in London (shh, don’t tell the chaperones). Fittingly, it was a Faust Lager.

4. Switzerland. 1990. This was the bell tour summer after senior year of high school, 1990. Lots of great memories from that trip including a hike to the first base camp on the Matterhorn (from Zermatt) where Steve and I hammed it up in a great photo that I think Kevin Geiger snapped…

5. Germany. 1990. Bell tour.

6. Austria. 1990. Bell tour.

7. Costa Rica. 2000. Honeymoon! Leena takes me traveling internationally for the first time.

8. India. 2004. We covered a lot of ground over three weeks: Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal), Bombay, Ahmedabad, Modasa, Udaipur, Goa, and Kerala.

9. Netherlands. 2004. This was the first of several business trips to Nike’s European Headquarters in Hilversum.

10. Spain. 2006. We made a quick overnight trip to Madrid from Nike’s EHQ to visit retailers in Madrid. In 2018, we spent time in Spain in October and November on either side of going to Morocco for the first time.

11. Belgium. 2007. A day trip from Nike’s EHQ to Antwerp to visit retailers.

12. Thailand. 2007. I was invited to give a session at Nike’s Asia Pacific sales conference covering features of our newly upgraded portal on nike.net. Leena came over at the end of the week and we added a week’s vacation in Bangkok and Phuket.

13. Australia. 2008. This was our first trip on miles, and the first trip I blogged. I negotiated with work to get three weeks off (normally two is the limit for one stretch) by leaving just before Christmas. I got seats to Sydney (from San Francisco) on the first call (a year in advance) and was told to call back in three weeks for return seats. I did, but no seats were available. I called multiple times each week and soon had the request down pat: any two seats from anywhere in Australia or New Zealand plus or minus a week of our target date, to anywhere in the US. In April, there were two seats from Auckland to Los Angeles on the “plus one week” date (making it four weeks off work). I booked it and asked forgiveness from the boss.

What I didn’t know is that with miles, they book you door to door. So a little work with Alaska and they’d added flights from Portland to San Francisco, Sydney to Auckland (a little over half way through the trip) and Los Angeles to Portland. For no extra miles. And because we’d lived in San Francisco, we booked an early Saturday flight to spend the day with friends (our Sydney flight departed near midnight). Lucky we did! On the day we left Portland, snow was falling and the airport closed for several days just a couple hours after we left. They ran out of de-icer.

14. New Zealand. 2009. This might be my favorite country. The Routeburn track is an all-time highlight. Auckland is great.

15. Mexico. 2009. It took a long time to get to our nearest neighbor to the South. This was the year we did Christmas with Leena’s family. Since everyone agreed that Chicago was too cold in December, we all flew to San Diego and drove down to Ensenada for the week. I’ve since been back twice: to Mexico City and Huatulco in 2015 and through Mexico City en route to Cuba in 2016. We caught the Adele concert in Mexico City in 2016 which was, as expected, fantastic.

16. Argentina. 2010. A great trip to such a large and diverse country. We got our urban fix in Buenos Aires, wine country in Mendoza, the tropics at Iguazu Falls, and snow-covered hikes in Patagonia.

17. Chile. 2010. On the Argentina trip, we jumped over to Santiago for a weekend. Great city.

18. Kenya. 2013. The start of our Africa trip with two amazing safari camps.

19. Zimbabwe. 2013. Victoria Falls and rafting the Zambezi.

20. Botswana. 2013. Two more safari camps.

21. South Africa. 2013. Beautiful Cape Town and Johannesburg.

22. Panama. 2014. We did the tourist triangle: Panama City (and the canal), Boquete (mountain town) and Bocas (beach town).

23. Cuba. 2016. I’m not sure why I didn’t blog anything about this! We visited Havana and Viñales.

24. France. 2017. Our current trip. We just left today after visiting Paris and Bourdeaux. We drove to northern Spain.

25. Indonesia. 2017. After a week in Sydney, we headed to Bali for ~7 weeks early in our Big Trip.

26. Singapore. 2018. We did a quick weekend in Singapore to reset our Indonesia visas (valid for 30 days).

27. Fiji. 2018. We stopped in Fiji for a week in March on the way from New Zealand back to the US.

28. Guatemala. 2018. After a couple of weeks on the Yucatán peninsula we headed a bit further south.

29. Belize. 2018. We were two of three passengers on a small plane ride from Guatemala City to Belize City. We then hopped a ferry to Caye Caulker and spent a week on an island without cars with the motto “go slow.”

30. Portugal. 2018. After a one-day layover in London, we caught a flight down to Porto to start a couple of months in the Southwest of Europe and Northern Africa.

31. Morocco. 2018. We jumped over from Spain and explored Marrakech and Fez along with some day trips to other cities and towns.

32. Columbia. 2019. We spent a month (February into March) exploring.

Today we say goodbye to the sweetest beagle ever, Milo Faust. Gentle, playful, kind, curious, stubborn, and a bit of a troublemaker! We remember taking him back to the breeder to board him a few times when he was a puppy, and while she bred and boarded many dogs, she let us know that he was one of the few that won her over and got to sleep in her bedroom. He loved the beach. He loved chasing his ball in the yard, and when the weather didn’t allow it, we played inside. He chased a raccoon out of the house that one time and got a bit over his head in the fight, but came through with just a few scrapes. He was always anxious when we left him for he just wanted to be with his people. He leaves us on his 14th birthday. 4/17/02 – 4/17/16. Sweet dreams little buddy.

We were off the grid for most of the remainder of the Panama trip, but here’s an after-the-fact recap of the rest of the trip.

We spent a couple more days in Boquete. We toured the Cafe Ruiz coffee plantation, learning plenty about the various processes for drying and roasting coffee beans, the ideal coffee growing conditions in Boquete, and Panama’s place in worldwide coffee production. They emphasize light and medium roasts at Cafe Ruiz. Delicious.

We took a car shuttle from Boquete to Bocas Del Toros on the Caribbean side. The shuttle actually dropped us in Almirante where we took a water taxi to Bocas followed by another water taxi to Al Natural eco resort on Bastimentos.

The resort can host something like 20 people, and we made great friends there. The family-style dinner each night brought together travelers from Costa Rica, America, Spain, Germany, France, Japan, and more. (I’m sure I’m forgetting some.) We spent the days hiking, snorkeling, finding dolphins, touring a local indigenous village (Salt Creek), and relaxing. There may have been some cocktails in there, and there were definitely some beautiful sunsets.

We returned to Panama City for a final day. We stayed in an amazing flat is Casco Viejo that was perfect except for the nearby church with loud church bells every 15 minutes for most of the day. We loaded up on ceviche, had a great meal at Manolo Caracol, and stayed in during a few amazing downpours.

Until next time!

We took a short flight yesterday from Panama City to David, then took an 80 minute bus ride to Boquete. The bus was super crowded, cheap, and full of locals.

We grabbed a late lunch in town at Mike’s Global Grill and we lucked out: it was Mike’s birthday. Instead of the normal high price of $1.25, the beers were $.44 in honor of Mike’s 44th.

Boquete is a relatively small mountain town with a sizable US ex-pat community. I guess the AARP recommended it as a retirement spot some years ago. It is a lovely setting. Today we did a couple of waterfall hikes. Each took a couple of hours.

We booked a boat tour of the Panama Canal and started with a 40 minute bus ride to Gamboa, a town on the Southern end of Gatun Lake. The lake was formed by damming the Chagres River, a river that flows to the Atlantic. At the time it was created, it was both the largest dam on the planet and the largest man-made lake. (Today, Lake Powell is larger.)

We headed south towards the Pacific (and Panama City). The canal crosses the Continental Divide at the Gaillard Cut, the largest excavation needed for the canal.

Gatun Lake is 85 feet above sea level, and there are three locks in each direction to get to sea level. Each lock is 1000 feet long, 110 feet wide, and 39 1/2 feet deep. The largest vessels that can navigate the canal are basically the dimension of the locks with all of two feet of clearance on each side. Such vessels are called Panamax. Here’s such a vessel in the first lock heading to the Pacific.

Each lock holds 26 million gallons of water yet takes just 8 minutes to fill or empty. Here’s our boat in the first lock before the lock empties.

Here we are ~30 feet lower after the lock has emptied.

The canal operates 24×7 and completes an average of 42 transits a day. An average transit takes 8-10 hours; a transit around the Cape takes ~22 days. Panamax-size ships can only fit one at a time through the Gaillard Cut, so there’s a daily schedule to manage traffic. Each vessel is boarded by a Canal Captain at the start of transit who navigates the vessel through the entire canal. Large vessels are also required to be escorted by tug boats. An engine failure at the wrong time could be catastrophic – running aground could close the canal.

The Bridge of Americas at the Pacific entrance is one of two bridges across the canal (the other was pictured at the Continental Divide).

More canal info:

• 35% of commercial boats in operation are too big for the canal. A second set of locks is set to open in 2016. These will be 1400 feet long, 180 feet wide, and 50 feet deep. The expansion cost has passed $5B.
• The canal employs 9000 people full-time.
• Transit is generally first come, first serve. Today, the wait to transit is ~24 hours.
• The minimum fee to use the canal is $3k. Our 120 foot boat was $4k. A typical Panamax boat is $120k. It was noted, though, that boats that size use ~$100k in fuel each day, so it’s very economical to use the canal. The largest fees go to cruise ships and can be more than $400k. Fees are based on size and cargo; passengers command a premium fee.
• The 3-mile causeway built at the Pacific entrance to the canal used about 10% of the material excavated for the canal.
• The original canal proposed by the French was a sea-level canal. Such a canal, however, would not be commercially viable. At the canal location, the Atlantic has tides of just 1 to 2 feet while the Pacific has tides up to 20 feet. This would have created dangerous currents.

We headed to El Parque Metropolitano on Friday morning. It’s an urban park with a few simple hikes that promised views of the city and the canal. We hiked 45 minutes to the viewpoint and had a view of the city but couldn’t see the canal.

Lunch called for a visit to El Mercado de Mariscos – the fish market. Lots of fish!

Yes, of course we got ceviche!

We spent the afternoon walking southeast along the Pacific waterfront and exploring the downtown neighborhood. We grabbed some Italian before heading back to our neighborhood for the evening.

We flew to Panama City via Dallas and Miami on Wednesday, arriving a bit past 10p local time. It wasn’t too hard to fall asleep on Eastern time since we’d gotten up at 4a for an early departure from Portland.

We’re staying near the Pacific entrance to the canal. There’s a 5k causeway that was constructed to connect the mainland to a few small islands and create a harbor (and calm water) at the entrance to the canal. We walked to the end of the causeway. We could see a bunch of huge ships lined up to enter the canal, but only saw a couple go in. No doubt there’s a lot of logistics on who gets to go in and when.

We grabbed some lunch – ceviche, empanadas and camorones (shrimp), tried a few of the local brews (Atlas and Panamá), then took a cab over to El Casco Antiguo.

El Casco Antiguo was built from 1673 after the original site of Panama City (a few kilometers east) was destroyed. The architecture is European; it feels like the French Quarter in New Orleans. We started in La Plaza de Francia.

We spent the afternoon walking the streets and poking our heads in a few shops. We checked out El Museo del Canal. It was entirely in Spanish! Fortunately, Leena minored in Spanish and I took cuatro años in high school, so we managed to put together most of the story. We actually just missed the 100-year anniversary of its opening (August 1914). To summarize a bit… The French started the project, but abandoned it – the project was costing too much in both money and lives. The US took another 10 years to finish the canal. Even today, it would take a monumental engineering effort, so it’s remarkable that it was completed a century ago. We also learned about some of the political history, including US military bases. The ownership by the US and lack of revenue for Panama from the canal boiled over in the late 60s in riots that numbers more than 250,000 people. Jimmy Carter eventually signed a renegotiated treaty that did in fact hand over control of the canal to Panama in 1999. Panama holds Carter in high regard for this; the act was described as an act of political suicide.

El Casco Antiguo is situated on a peninsula and looks across at the modern downtown. Panama City is the largest city in Central America with over 1 million residents.

Random sighting: a guy was riding his skateboard while being towed along by his dog – a beagle! Oh, hey, it’s also really hot and humid here!