Thursday, December 31, 2009


Jamie & Chris in Rio de Janeiro
End Of The Year

Couchsurfers, Abbot Kinney First Friday, Star Trek IV with Leonard Nimoy, LA Galaxy, Portuguese Lessons, Downtown Artwalk, LA Kings, Ross Sea Party @ Mr. T's Bowl, St. Leonard's @ Spaceland, Where The Wild Things Are, Birthday Parties, Thanksgiving @ Carmen's, Wine Tasting in Santa Barbara, Christmas Tree Lighting @ Paramount, Cirque du Soleil's Kooza in Santa Monica, Middle Men, World Cup Draw, The Lovely Bones, Eating, Drinking, Wurstkuche Christmas Party, Charles Phoenix Retro Holiday Slide Show, Chirstmas in Maine and Boston, New Year's on Copacabana Beach in Rio De Janeiro.

2009... started the year in Buenos Aires, spent my birthday in Scandinavia, and ended the year in Rio de Janeiro. Can't complain.

Thursday, November 5, 2009


At Six Flags with Samantha
October Recap - Halloween Events, Brazil calling...

I guess this is what it's come to... monthy updates. It's just so much easier to make a Facebook update than write a blog post. Anyways, this past month was another fun one filled with cool events including... the Motorhead/Reverend Horton Heat concert at Club Nokia, a flamenco show in Santa Monica featuring Paco and Yolanda Arroyo, a Saturday riding rollercoasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain, an LA Kings vs Pittsburgh Penguins NHL game, A Taste Of Dance, a couple of good movies (Up In The Air and Michael Jackson's This Is It), and a bunch of Halloween / Day of the Dead events... Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, Dia De Los Muertos festivals at Hollywood Forever and Olvera Street, the Lucha VaVoom Halloween Show at the Mayan, and my first trip to the West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnaval.

In addition to all of that, something is telling me to go to Brazil. In this past month, there have just been so many coincidences. I've made a bunch of new Brazilian friends in LA, found out that some of my Brazilian friends know each other, was asked to help out the new Brazilian acai and juice bar in Santa Monica, had a Brazilian CouchSurfer stay with me, had dinner at Fogo De Chao, was offered free portuguese lessons in exchange for some computer help, went to a Brazilian samba/pagode party in Marina Del Rey, and found out I have some friends traveling in Brazil next month. So when my work informed me that we were going to be closed New Year's week, there was only one thing to do... buy a plane ticket to Rio De Janeiro!

Monday, October 5, 2009


At the Bowl with Hana & Carola
September at the Hollywood Bowl & Hollywood Forever

My two favorite places in LA during the summer are the bowl and the cemetery and I spent a lot of time in both places this month. I spent that last four Sundays at the Hollywood Bowl and saw the Blame It On Rio Fireworks Finale with the orchestra, Seu Jorge and Bebel Gilberto (9/13), the India Calling World Music Festival (9/20), Disco Fever 3 with Kool & the Gang, Chic, and the Village People (9/27), and Kylie Minogue (10/4). At the Hollywood Forever Cemetery I saw Pee Wee's Big Adventure (Paul Ruebens introduced the film!), Rosemary's Baby, the 1977 Ramones concert film and Night of the Living Dead in 3D (at the Johnny Ramone tribute).

It was a busy month because I was hosting and guiding travelers from Germany, Australia, and Japan. We also went to... the Downtown LA Artwalk, Brazilian Day in LA, the Santa Monica Pier 100th Birthday with Dick Dale and fireworks, a Dodgers vs Pirates baseball game, samba dancing at Dance Downtown, the Red Bull Soapbox Race, Knott's Scary Farm Halloween Haunt, and the Galaxy vs Fire soccer match. Lots of fun!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009


West Quoddy Head Light
Labor Day Weekend in Maine (and Canada)

I spent my 4-day weekend visiting my family in Maine. I arrived on Friday morning in Portland where I immediately started eating some lobster. For brunch I stopped at Bintliff’s American Café in Portland for some Maine Lobster Benedict. Mmmm. After walking around The Old Port for a few hours, we picked up some lobsters to cook at home and had a nice lobster feed for dinner with some steamers, corn on the cob, and Allagash Curieux bourbon-barrel aged beer. Mmmmm. On Saturday, my parents and I headed to Downeast Maine for a 2-day trip up to the northeast tip of the state. The first place we stopped was Acadia National Park where we had more lobster... this time, it was lobster rolls at Thurston's Lobster Pound. Next we hiked some of the carriage trails and stopped at the Jordan Pond House for popovers. Later in the afternoon, we took a walk around Bar Harbor before heading to the Blue Hill Fair. We spent the night in Ellsworth and then went east through blueberry country where I had some delicious haddock and America's best blueberry pie at Helen's Restaurant in Machias. Nearby we stopped at Jasper Beach, a mile-long beach of smooth jasper stones. As the waves move the stones, they make a really strange sound as they slide against each other. The only other beach like this in the world is in Japan. We moved further east, actually to the most eastern point in the United States: Lubec, Maine where you can see the beautiful red and white striped lighthouse at Quoddy Head State Park. My next mission was to get to Campobello Island, which is in Canada. I had a passport, but my parents did not and starting this June, you needed proof of citizenship to get back into the USA. So I walked into the customs station and explained the situation to the officials there who seemed quite shocked that I just walked into their office, but they said it was fine for us to go and gave us a sheet of paper saying we were "non-compliant". So, we crossed the bridge into Canada and went to Roosevelt Campobello International Park and visited The Roosevelt Cottage where FDR spent many vacations as a child and during his presidency and walked one of the hiking trails near the cottage before starting the long ride home.

Saturday, August 29, 2009


Leo is Flying!
Jumping Out Of Perfectly Good Airplanes

I finished out August by doing some tango dancing at Dance Downtown, a Belgian Beer Festival with some CouchSurfers, a big end of summer CS party, and then... skydiving!!!

Leo, Tamar, Konomi, and I joined my pal Elaine and her group for a trip to Skydive Santa Barbara. At Skydive SB, you can choose a 10,500ft, 13,000ft, or 18,000ft tandem jump. Over 90% of people choose the 13,000ft jump, but I decided that since it was my first (and possibly only) time, I'd go all out with 18,000ft which also happens to be the highest tandem skydive in the world. We got there early in the morning and watched a short video about how there's a really good chance we could get seriously injured or killed and they have absolutely no responsibility while signing and initialing a several page contract about 100 times. After suiting up in harnesses, and getting 5 minutes of training, we boarded the plane. We took off and started climbing into the sky. We seemed really high up when my instructed told me we were only at 5000ft and had a lot further to go. I wasn't all that scared or nervous since these guys jump several times per day and our instructors were really relaxed. As we gained altitude, we were given supplemental oxygen on the ride up because the 18,000ft jump is so high. Finally, when it was time to jump, we took off our oxygen masks, put on our goggles, opened up the door and basically fell off the side of the plane.

From 18,000ft you get about 90 seconds of freefall at over 120mph. The air is hitting you so hard, your skin feels like it's flying off your body and it can be a little hard to catch your breath. The only part that bothered me was my ears. The cold air was hitting my ears really hard and it was causing some pain and I actually feared that I was damaging my ears. I had a little pain for the rest of the day but it eventually went away. Maybe next time I'll look into ear protection. At around 5500ft, the parachute is pulled and you come to a very sudden stop and glide the rest of the way down. My instructor let me control the parachute for the ride down before taking over for the landing. We had a soft landing on our butts. Somehow I managed to get rocks in my underwear and also ripped my pants somewhere on the jump... maybe when the chute was pulled. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The ocean views were great and I think I'd do it again. It just happened all so fast and on your first trip you don't know what to expect so it goes by even faster. I think jumping a second time would be even more fun. I didn't pay for the video or pictures, but you can see some pics and vids of the jumps of FaceBook...

Elaine's Gallery
Leo's Gallery
Elaine's Video

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