Pbur’s Adventures

Apologies for the lack of posts. Work and life have been keeping me busy. One of the things that kept me busy was going to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. I’ve written up a little bit about it over on my Cocoa blog, CocoaDevNation.

This is not exactly the post for those of you afraid of flying. I’ve had this links and videos sitting in a text file on my computer since February when I found them. I was supposed to blog about them a long time ago, but I never could seem to find the time. Today, I made that time.

It all started when I saw this photo:

Then I started searching around for crazy places to land and found the following.

Low Landings

This is a series of YouTube videos of various low landing approaches in St. Maarten.

Next up is anding at Culebra Airport in San Juan.

This last one is a link because YouTube won’t allow me to embed it:

Low Landing in Honduras

Hong Kong

This is a representative clip I found of the landings at the now retired Kai-Tak Airport in Hong Kong.

Finally, I leave you with a link to a story about the most dangerous places to land. Enjoy!

Back in August, knowing that Maggie would be graduating this semester, we planned a celebration trip to Las Vegas. This past weekend Maggie graduated with a degree in English and on Sunday we left for Sin City.

We were already booked into a pretty nice hotel, The Wynn Las Vegas, and when we went to check-in, we were offered to upgrade to a suite for a pretty reasonable charge. I went for it, since we were celebrating for Maggie. All I can say is “WORTH IT”!

We had our own separate entrance and elevators. Up to the 55th floor we went and entered the room. Our mouths hit the floor.

What follows are some pictures of our suite and how freaking awesome it was. They do not do this room complete justice. If you are offered the upgrade to the Salon Suite at the Wynn, go for it!

Congratulations Maggie! I hope you had a great trip!

Our door, with doorbell	Our living room
Dining room	Our view of the strip ( notice we above the Treasure Island )
The Bedroom	The Bedroom TV
The Bathroom Entry	The Bathtub
The Shower ( with rain shower head )	The Bar ( back in the living room )

Over Labor Day weekend, Maggie, Brenden and I went to Denver to visit friends of mine and their 3 boys. Did I mention we drove there? 13 hours of driving there. I was actually amazed at how well Brenden did with being confined for that long. It did make us alter our return drive to try and help him by planning in more running around time.

We had a very good visit. For Friday, our friends had things going on, so we took Brenden down see the Denver Children’s Museum. It was a very awesome place where kids get to just run around and learn about stuff from Firetrucks, to art, to being a vet, to sports. Brenden really liked the simulated grocery store where he pushed a miniature shopping cart around and picked up plastic vegetables and other fun things.

After that, we headed over to the 16th Street Mall and walked up and down it looking for the Tattered Cover Bookstore some of my friends had told me about. We parked, walked to the other end of the mall and didn’t see it. So I finally asked someone and they said “oh, it’s way at the other end”. Turns out, we parked practically on top of it, but we started up a block and missed it.

The next day we went up into the mountains and went to the top of Mt. Evans, which is a lovely 14,000 ft. When we got to the entrance of the summit road at 11,000 ft, there was a weather board there to tell us the temp in Denver ( 80ish ), were we were ( 60ish ) and at the summit ( 40ish, with windchills in the 20s ). It’s amazing how much colder the higher altitudes are.

After coming down off the mountain, we went to this cute little play place called Tiny Town. Brenden loved it! It has all this houses built to toddler size. He kept going back to the same ones, but he certainly enjoyed himself. We even rode their little train.

Sunday was lots of fun at a local rec center that had this amazing water park. It was all indoors and had a lap pool, a lazy river, a kids area and two slides. I rode the slides a bunch and so did Maggie. Brenden had fun in the water, but would occasionally put his face down in it accidently and surprise himself and start to cough water he tried to breathe.

We had a lot of fun with our friends and their family. Brenden got to watch 3 older boys ( ages 2 – 5 ) and learned a bunch, like how to go up and down stairs. He just started practicing it the minute he was shown how to go down the stairs ( he had figured out up already ). The boys loved him and I think enjoyed playing with him.

We’re going to have to make that trip again, but I think next time, it might be better to fly. Or to maybe have an RV so that Maggie and Brenden can run around on the way.

For pics, check out Maggie’s post.

I’ve now been in Atlanta since Monday for a Microsoft Certification Bootcamp to get a certification to help please my company. I’m going to continue to be here until Monday, and even though the company put us up in some nice accommodations, I’m still missing home a lot.

The only thing that’s helping is that we are constantly busy, even after class as we need most of the night to continue to study to get ready for the tests we are taking for the certifications. The only real break has generally been dinner.

One cool thing has been the ability to use iChat to video chat back home with Maggie and Brenden. Although it’s been confusing Brenden that he can hear me and see me, but that I’m not there. He keeps grabbing the phone in the office like he wants to talk to me that way.

I’ll be happy when I get to come back home and see my family. Not to mention sleeping in my own bed. For one of the first times in my life, I’m having a hard time falling to sleep. I’m chalking that up to having so many things I’m trying to store in my head combined with being in unfamiliar surroundings.

The week after the cruise ( the next day in fact ) I left for Durham, NC to attend a training program my employer runs there. The purpose of this training to have the attendees asses areas about their work and life that might be out of balance. The goals of the program is to have you seriously take a long look at what your future goals are and to make plans to achieve those goals.

One of the really cool activities we did during all this learning was to go to Cameron Indoor Stadium and meet with 5 assistant coaches of Duke’s basketball program. After an inspiring video featuring Coach K, we set out onto the court to learn various basketball skills leading up to learning an actual Duke Basketball play. During a break we got to shoot some hoops on the court before we executed the play against other attendees. I’m happy to say the team I was on won during our run.

Here are some photos

Me shooting some hoops, we got to keep the practice jerseys	The Krzyzewskiville sign that marks where students camp out for tickets to the game

For the longest time, Maggie and I have talked about going on a cruise and we decided for our 5th anniversary that it was the right time to book it and have some fun.

After about a month of searching and looking at deals, we finally decided on a 7 day cruise to the Western Caribbean aboard the Carnival Conquest. We were told that we were being “brave” by bringing along Brenden, who’d be about 12 and a half months old for the trip. Even though it caused some interesting things to occur to his normal sleeping pattern, I couldn’t imagine the trip without him.

We left on Mother’s Day out of Galveston and looked forward to 2 days at sea before making our first stop. Those 2 days were a lot of fun and very relaxing. We explored the ship and I even played in a Blackjack tournament, where I almost got to the final table, but alas, was knocked off the board just before round play ended. Monday night was formal night, and we had fun dressing up and being fancy for an evening. We walked out on the main deck afterwards with Brenden to let him run around.

First stop was Montego Bay, Jamaica, which was very nice. It was cloudy and did eventually rain, but it didn’t seem to bother us. We shopped in the morning and for the afternoon we had booked an excursion to go out on a glass-bottom semi-sub to check out the coral reef. Once we got to the reef and after going over it a bit, we got the opportunity to snorkel, which I took advantage of. Maggie was a little scared of the creatures in the water and stayed on the boat with Brenden. They served us Rum Punch on this little trip and it was very strong, although quite tasty.

Next up was Grand Cayman which seemed like the shortest day due to everyone needing to use a smaller boat called a tender to get to the shore. The cruise ships are too large to dock because the water is pretty shallow. It didn’t help that we had an early excursion planned, and that it took most of our time during the day. We did get to stop and get my required Hard Rock Cafe shot glass ( I collect them and have them from just about everywhere I’ve been that has one ). We then rushed over to our excursion and were off to visit Hell, Grand Cayman, a sea turtle farm, and to swim with stingrays. All of these were great and the sea turtles were awesome, but being in the water with the rays was a definite highlight for me. Maggie did make it into the water and held on to Brenden ( who loved splashing and playing in the water ) while dodging the rays.

Our final port of call was Cozumel, Mexico. This day was hot, like really hot. Amazingly, none of us really burned on the trip. I chalk that up to 50 SPF sunscreen applied at least twice a day. In Cozumel, we didn’t have anything planned so that Maggie could take full advantage of the shopping there. They sell a ton of silver since it’s mined near there. Also, I got to go to a Tequila store which had over 200 varieties. I sampled several ( many of which tried to put me on the floor ) and decided on a nice smooth sipping tequila and one that was infused with pomegranate juice which tasted like fruit punch.

We had a scary moment in Cozumel where we thought that maybe we had overheated Brenden ( did I mention it was hot? ), but we did not. All the heat did make him pretty lethargic the rest of the night.

One more day at sea and then we were back home. It was a fantastic trip and I would recommend taking a cruise to anyone. In fact, Maggie and I have decided that cruising is either our first choice or our plan b for future vacations if we can’t think of a place to go.

Here are some photos in fairly random order

The beautiful water of Cozumel	Dad and Brenden hanging out before taking a nap
Dad and Brenden hanging out on the deck	The Burleson Family out on deck on Formal Night
The Burleson’s and the Stingray	Me “kissing” a stingray
One of the many towel animals that were made by our cabin steward	We finally caught a sunset on the last night on the boat

At the end of March, Maggie and I went to NYC for a friend’s wedding reception. We didn’t take Brenden along as we made it a “day” trip, so he stayed behind with Maggie’s mom at our house. When I say “day trip”, I mean, from Arrival time to Departure time was 29 hours! Very quick trip to NYC.

One of the things I’ve talked about on this blog is my absolute love of what I affectionately call “Street Meat”. You know those random food carts around the City. Not the hotdog guys, the guys making chicken and rice, gyros, and various other more substantial meals. I have a favorite of these at Broadway and 40th street. I practically ate there every day I could. It was $4 for a large chicken and rice with a small side of salad. I’d have them mix in a little lamb for a final price of $5. This was by far one of the cheapest ways to get really full in NYC. And after I became a daily fixture, they were really sad to hear I’d be leaving the City.

I had a friend of mine check with the guy to see if he would be open the weekend we went and get this, the guy opened special just because I was coming! When we got there he said he opened because he needed to train a guy on a slower day, but he drove in special to be there when I’d be around. I was touched.

I finally remembered to gets some pictures of things this time as I realized some of you have no clue what I’m talking about, so without further ado:

This is me and the “Street Meat Guy”. Sadly, I’ve never been able to understand his name.

This is him at work making my order. These carts have a grill, a deep fryer, and a place for drinks.

Finally, the finished product.

As if to emphasize my previous post, Maggie and I ran across another interesting vending machine at DFW Airport on our way to NYC:

(sorry for the blurry pic, it’s from my phone)

That’s right, for all your emergency Sony product needs while traveling, there’s a Sony Kiosk at the airport. The items range from the reasonable ( headphones ) to the not so “impulse” ( PSP, $200 noise canceling headphones, digital cameras, etc ).

Ah, what will they sell from a vending machine next?

As I mentioned earlier, we decided to take a trip to visit New York City to see friends and our favorite New York places. As the time to travel neared, I began to get a little more anxious about this “taking a 7 month old on his first plane ride”. Well, as Maggie points out, Brenden was great during the trip. Which was amazing considering some of our travel woes.

It started with our departing flight. We got rushed into boarding the plane and after finally getting arranged in our seats, on a plane with malfunctioning air conditioning, the following announcement is made:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have good news and bad news. The good news is your flight isn’t cancelled. The bad news is that the flight that the pilots for this flight was just diverted to Alliance airport. It will be at least an hour before they will be here and ready to take off.

We are offered to de-board the plane if we want, but if we do, we need to take anything we brought on board. Since we were loaded down with a lot of baby stuff and our backpacks, we decided to wait it out on the plane. Well, 45 minutes later, we’re told that they still haven’t taken off to come to DFW and that it would be at least another hour before they got there. At that point, they recommended that everyone get off the plane. We decided at this point, that was probably the best idea.

Once we finally got on the plane, with a flight crew, Brenden actually fell asleep before take off. So I held him for the first 2 hours or so of the flight asleep on my arm. It made getting a drink and other things an adventure. Once he did wake up, he was in a good mood and made faces with the people sitting around us. Little did we know, we’d need every last ounce of his good mood before we got off that plane.

We land just fine at Newark and start to taxi to the gates. I noticed we stopped quite short of them and then we get the following notice from the flight deck:

I’m sorry to add insult to injury folks, but we were scheduled to park at Gate 34, and unfortunately Gate 34 is currently broken. The ground crew is working on it, but in the mean time, we’re waiting for one of the planes at gates 32 or 33 to pull back and we’ll park there. Sorry for the additional delay.

So we finally get out of the plane at 3:30 PM EST when we were scheduled to arrive at 1:00 PM EST. Gotta love the airline industry.

We had plans to meet with the people I used to work with at 5 PM. Needless to say, we were a bit late for that after getting a taxi and checking into the hotel and getting into the City. But we did make it and had a very good time seeing those folks and them meeting Brenden. Afterwards, we called up some more former co-workers, who had also moved on, and met them at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square. After some delicious Pan Asian food, Maggie, Brenden and I headed back to the hotel to crash as we were all very tired from a long day of travel.

The next day, we made a plan to meet up for lunch with my childhood friend John and his family. They have a new daughter that we hadn’t seen and of course they hadn’t seen Brenden either. They have the cutest little girl and their older boy had definitely grown and was a lot more talkative than I remembered when we lived there.

After lunch, Maggie wanted to go to Century 21 before our dinner plans with some of our dog walking friends (Mark and Valerie, and Suzanne). We went there and braved the crowds, which by the way, were huge as it always gets just before Christmas in NYC. Before coming back to New Jersey, we stopped and looked at the new photos they had put at the World Trade Center site. No matter how many times I see it, when I start to think about it, the events of that day still bring tears to my eyes.

Once back in Jersey, we grabbed a bottle of wine and met our friends at this great Italian cafe that was in our old neighborhood. It was quite an evening as there were two huge parties there making a lot of noise. And this wasn’t the largest of places. The food was amazing as was the conversations. Mark and Valerie were also gracious enough to offer to baby sit Brenden on Sunday, more on that later. They all walked us back to our hotel and we settled down for another good night’s sleep.

Sunday morning, we took the whole family to Central Park. The one big thing we wanted to do while there was to get hot chocolate at this place we had always gotten it while we were living there. Sadly, we found that it was closed at least for the day. We’re hoping not forever.

After that, we made our way back to New Jersey to drop Brenden off at Mark and Valerie’s and made our way back into the City. We ate at our favorite place in Chinatown where we got their amazing steamed pork buns. After that, we headed off to see the New Jersey Devils play the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. I was in hockey heaven as it was a hockey game at MSG and also one of the biggest rivalries currently in the NHL. ( My wife is the best for letting us choose hockey over broadway ) New Jersey ended up embarrassing the Rangers 6-1 and the crowd got “rowdy”, with a fight breaking out two sections over.

We went back to Jersey to pick up Brenden from Mark and Valerie. They had a good time watching him and came to the conclusion that they weren’t ready for the work it takes to have a baby. Not that Brenden was bad or anything, just that they didn’t realize the amount of energy needed.

For Monday, we planned a lot of stops. First we hit FAO Schwartz, then the new 5th Ave Apple Store, Rockefeller Center to see the tree, then M&M World, then we had my favorite meal in the whole city: Street Meat. Yummy! Then we went to see the Macy’s windows and finally headed back to the hotel after a very long day.

On our final day, we went to go see Maggie’s former co-workers at a place in New Jersey. They were very excited to see Maggie and Brenden. After hanging out there, we left for the airport, where we had another fun adventure flying home. Luckily, we were only delayed an hour this time.

Overall it was a great trip. It was really good to see everyone and for us to be able to have a good time bringing the little one along. He won’t remember it, but we have plenty of pictures to prove he was there:

Brenden asleep on the plane

Brenden and Maggie in Central Park

Brenden and I in Central Park

The skating rink from Serendipity

Brenden bundled for NYC

Brenden really, really, liked this mirror in our hotel room

Brenden plays on the piano at FAO, the one in the movie Big

Final score of the hockey game

The Macy’s Windows

Finally, Brenden and I spend a little recoup time waiting for the plane ride home

As a part of our fantastic trip to Niagara Falls, we made a small drive up to Toronto, which was about an hour or so away. On the way, I talked Maggie into being dragged to the Hockey Hall of Fame. I mean, if we’re in Toronto, I’ve got to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame!

For those of you that don’t know me, I’m a huge fan of hockey! Which is really strange since I grew up in North Texas. But I’ve been a fan since I saw my first game on ESPN back in 1989. And once Dallas got a team and I was able to go to games, I was hooked even more.

Once we got there and got in, I was in awe. There was memorabilia everywhere. It would take a lifetime to see it all. I was drawn to the sound of pucks hitting boards and found two games they had setup. The first was one where there were targets projected on a screen and you had to try and hit them with the puck. I did pretty well at that one, hitting 2 out of 5 targets. (Heck, I was happy I could lift the puck)

The other game I was not very good at all. It was a simulation where you played a goalie, putting on the blocker and the glove and grabbing a stick. Then you faced this wall where simulated shots came out of holes. The simuation was of Gretzky and Messier shooting at you. The only shot I saved was the one that hit the post. But I guess, technically, the goalie isn’t responsible for the post.

After doing that, Maggie and I moved upstairs to where they had a “production truck” setup so fans could see how a hockey broadcast is put together. That was really neat. Via the power of computers, I was able to be the director calling the shots of which camera feed to use. Then I was the sound engineer changing various levels of sound during (like ice level, crowd, announcers, etc). Finally, I was responsible for putting together a replay package. It was really fun.

In the same area, you can also test your announcer abilities. Well, since Maggie laughed at mine, I’m guessing I shouldn’t go for a career in broadcasting.

Finally, we made it to the most important room at the Hockey Hall Of Fame: Where they keep the Stanley Cup and all the other trophies. I got pictures of all the trophies and then got pictures of the cup up close showing the year the Stars won it. I also got a picture of me with it, as you can see:

For any hockey fans out there, you must make a pilgrimage to the Hockey Hall of Fame, it is a sight behold.

For the long holiday weekend, Maggie and I decided it was high time to go check out our neighbor to the North, Canada and went to Niagara Falls. What a great choice that was.

Niagara Falls is about a 7 hour drive from where we live in New Jersey through parts of Pennsylvania and Upstate New York. We drove across the top of the Finger Lakes region. We made a stop in Buffalo on the way there which I will be writing about later (hint: It has something to do with Buffalo Wings)

After that small detour we made our way to the border. Now, I must admit that this would be my first time to leave the United States which I know is pretty lame. But I was a little nervous crossing the boarder, which seems silly especially with it being Canada. I had our Passports ready to go, and was shocked that the guy didn’t even look at Maggie’s. He just asked what our nationality was, what was the purpose of our visit and how long we would be staying. Then let us on our way. I was floored.

So we get to our hotel and check-in. We had originally booked a City View room, meaning we would be facing away from the falls. I asked the clerk if they possibly had any Falls View rooms left. She checked and only had a “River View” left. I said we’d take it and up to our room we went. We actually ended up with a partial view of the falls as you can see here

For Saturday morning we had made reservations to ride the Wet Jet Boat from Whirlpool Jet Tours. This ride is an open jet boat that takes you through a class 5 rapid (on a scale of 1 to 6) a few times getting you very, very wet. They also pull up beside a class 6 rapid to show it to us, but can’t go into it because it’s entirely unsafe. These rapids are downriver from the Falls, but are caused because of the thousands of years of erosion by the falls that carved the gorge the river is going through. As it was explained to us, the rapids are compression waves which aren’t caused by rocks, but by the amount of water being pushed through the gap causing a lot of pressure. I’ll be posting a picture later that they took of us plunging into the rapid.

On the way to the Jet Boat place, we took a nice little ride through the Canadian wine country. So many vineyards…so little time. Here’s a picutre we took of the Niaraga River on it’s way into Lake Ontario

That afternoon we drove up to Toronto, which I will be posting about later (hint: I got to see something I really, really cherish there)

That night we had dinner at a nice German restaurant and then tried to get some cash out of the ATM to go the casino next to our hotel. Needless to say, I know where ever ATM is in Nagara Falls now and well, lots of them were having problems connecting with our bank. So we finally gave up and went up to our room and crashed.

The next morning we went for some Tim Horton’s because, well, when you’re in Canada, going to Tim Horton’s for a doughnut is a requirement. After the Tim Horton’s, we tried an ATM at a 7-11 and low and behold, we were able to get Canadian cash out….Casino here we come!

After an hour of gambling where I did fairly well at a blackjack table, Maggie and I made our way to the Maid of the Mist tour. This is the boat Jim Carrey’s character in Bruce Almighty goes on for his “live shot” at the beginning of the movie where they announce the other reporter has gotten the anchor position. Anyway, they take you right up to the falls with the mist blowing on you and you can feel the power of the falls, it was amazing.

After that, we walked back down the river and Maggie grabbed these two shots of the falls, the first is one of the Horseshoe Falls (also known as the Canadian Falls) where you can see a Maid of the Mist boat in the middle of the poole. The other shot is of the American Falls. The rainbows caused by the mist are beautiful.

Finally, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe so I could get a shot-glass and then we made a stop at the other casino and had another hour or so gambling away. I had another decent run on the blackjack table.

And then we hit the road and got quite the hassle from the US Customs Agent coming back into the country. Kept asking us questions and basically made me feel like he doubted we were legit. But he finally let us pass and we were back in the country.