Sloshkosh Start

Some of my friends and I arrived in Oshkosh last night…unfortunately the grounds at the airport are soggy from 10 inches of rain last week, so we’ve been relegated to a hard parking lot a few miles north of the airfield…along with a bunch of other people.  I’m being told there are about 5 more of these lots that EAA is setting up until the grounds dry out…along with a couple hundred parked on the road near the entrance to the camping area at the airport.  Good times.

Here are a couple of pictures…the last one is our rig for the week, along with a map of where we’re at (hopefully temporarily).

Oshkosh 2010-07-25 009Oshkosh 2010-07-25 010Oshkosh 2010-07-25 012

 

Map picture

RVs Up the Coast of California

Okay…there should be a lot more coming on this, but I wanted to at least post a few of the pictures.  In late June an early July of this year the Cederstroms and the Williams families headed out to California, rented a couple of RVs, and headed up the central coast and back.  It was a blast!

We did get one dive in at Monterey…but it was nothing to write home about.  I got to use my drysuit in the ocean for the first time, but that was the highlight of the dive…and no video or photos from that one.  More on that later.

Like I said, I’ll get some more details here at some point when things get a little less crazy and travelling has slowed down, but here are some of the pictures from the trip.  I have more, of course, and Rachel took tons as well, so at some point maybe we have to do some pic swapping.  Enjoy.

Headed to Oshkosh!

Many of you know that I am an aviator, a pilot…and I take having fun flying very seriously. Smile  I am also a podcaster and have a couple of shows about aviation that I host and produce.  Part of what I do as both an aviator and podcaster is make an annual pilgrimage to the Mecca of general aviation, EAA’s Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  This show is indescribable, so I won’t really try.  I will, however, say that it’s amazing!  The best part, of course, is meeting all of my old friends and making new ones every year.  Well, that time has come again…and in about a day and a half I’ll be heading up to Osh for a week of airplanes, airshows, interviews, fun, hanging out, rain, heat, humidity, camping…and an all around good time.

I do official coverage of some of the show on my two aviation websites, StudentPilotCast.com and pilotcast.com, but I may chronicle some of the adventures here through pictures, video, and writing…but it all depends on how much time I have (which is usually not very much).  I may at least do some cross posting and get some of it here even if I post it on one of my show sites as well.

For some of the information and coverage that I’ve done at past Airventure, you can see some of it here.  I’m getting excited…as usual, it’s gonna be great!

Blog Migration!

Hey, everyone.  I just migrated my blog to WordPress (the software, not the site) from BlogEngine.NET.  I’ve been using the latter for quite a while now, and while fairly flexible and capable, I got to the point where it required a little too much care and feeding.  WordPress is by far the most widely used blog publishing software and has wide support for themes, plug-ins, etc., which has already made my life easier by relieving me of the need to customize much of what I needed.  Just the administration facilities for handling comments (and more specifically, SPAM comments) was worth the migration.

It wasn’t without it’s challenges, though.  I’ll cover the migration in a near future post, but I wanted to welcome you to the new platform as well as the new look and feel.  I’m using a theme named "Mystique" that I think is pleasing and functional.  To the right side there is a series of tabs where you can look through past posts, browse by keywords or categories, and see recent and popular comments and posts. 

I’ve still got a few issues in migrating all of the media, posts, and links, so bear with me as I get that all worked out (this only affects some past articles).  I also still need to implement a redirections scheme to map my old permalinks to the new ones (the scheme is slightly different now, and I no longer have extensions on the permalinks for forward compatibility).

In any case…let me know what you think…and welcome to my new virtual hangout.

Quick Take #7-A Day at the Phx Zoo.

On Saturday we took the kids to the Phx Zoo to see a Zoo Member Preview of the new Komodo Dragon exhibit.  Merek is a reptile freak, so we knew he would love it.  I put together a Quick Take (my seventh) on the visit.

 

I’ve included some pictures in an album here as well.  Click on the "View Full Album" link and hit "Slide show"  Enjoy.

Halloween Comes

The gateway to the holiday season has come and gone, so here are some of our pictures.

During pumpkin carving, Crystal made gourmet (and messy) caramel apples to get us in the spirit.  The kids also got an impromptu fireworks show off of our patio roof.  Someone was putting on a show north of us.  No pics of the fireworks, though.

Speaking of pumpkins, carving cool pumpkins is becoming our thing, so here are the notables this year.  For last years, check out this post on my main blog.  Enjoy the Jack-O-Lanterns from the Williams’ this year.

Trey's ASU Pumpkin. Go Devils! Merek's Dragon Pumpkin

First up for the pumpkin fashion show is Trey’s Sun Devil homage of Sparky + the ASU logo (two for one!)

Next up is Merek’s dragon.  Fierce looking, for sure.
Cayman's Werewolf Pumpkin  

Finally, we have Cayman’s Werewolf.  Scary…very scary.

  

Some Grand Cayman Diving

Last month my wife, Crystal, and I took a whirlwind vacation with some of our extended family to several great diving destinations including Cayman, Roatan, Belize, Cozumel and Ft. Lauderdale.  I’ve got a lot of video footage and some still photos from the trip, so I put together a little sample from Grand Cayman.  More to follow.

We dove with Casey from Neptune Divers and it was fabulous.  No big animals on our two dives this time, but the terrain on the wall was amazing, and the life around the wreck and reef we did on the second dive was fantastic.  My sister, Brenda, shown here in this video a few times, was on her first dive as a certified scuba diver (see her using her arms? :)). Her husband, David, is featured here too, along with Crystal and I.

I’ll also have a review/recap of our trip shortly.  For now, here is a quick view into the underwater world of Grand Cayman, featuring their world class wall that dives into the abyss just off shore.  Enjoy.

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