:D


Hopefully I will have time to get them uploaded by this weekend. I'm current through Panama at the moment, which is pretty good for me. I've lagged by as much as two months on photo uploads recently.

Unfortunately, the weather was grey and misty the entire time, so I couldn't capture the bright colors of Strasbourg's buildings under optimal lighting conditions.

ssullivan are you going to spend any time near the Havusupai Tribe?

I have a friend in LAS and he tells me this is an amazing place with beautifull waterfalls in the canyons.

Red Rocks is definitely on the itinerary. Brian and his sister went out there last summer on a weekend trip they took to Vegas. He has already said we're going back together. I've done Hoover Dam before and would do it again.

Thanks. I'll keep that as a possible day trip.

I've been to Zion and Bryce Canyon before, about 20 years ago. I love both, and thought about them for this trip, but unfortunately we don't have enough time. So we'll have to do those on a return trip to the area.

Honestly, trying to pull that off is more work than it's worth. Every time I try to do something like that with any rental car company it totally baffles them and they screw it up somehow. I'd rather just drop the car and go pick another one. Much easier. I have yet to encounter a rental car company that hires people for their thinking ability. They're usually fine with normal transactions. Try to do anything out of the ordinary and it's a mess.

For once, I planned ahead for this trip. I used google maps, wikipedia and TripAdvisor in advance to plan out walking and driving itineraries for each stage of the trip, and filed them away in a binder. The Significant Otter, who is OCD when it comes to planning, was quite pleased. I usually don't plan trips at all, and just wander randomly when I get somewhere, with only a general idea of what I want to see.

Well, the good news on ours is that it appears that the hotel might have forgotten to actually charge us, considering I was just looking at the credit card statement and it's been just over a week since we checked out and that charge has not showed up yet.

Short Story:

He is neither adopted or a biological brother, just a good friend that I call a brother.

Long Story:

When living in Las Vegas I was working for UNLV as the kitchen manager. I had two great employees that worked for me and one summer I took a week off to go work on Mount Charleston and when I returned my boss said that I had to fire these two employees. One employee, adopted brother now, asked me if I still needed a roommate before the trip to which I responded yes, but I don't mix business and professional life and thus can't have a roommate that works for me. After I had to fire him, he asked again and I said yes the room is still avaliable and he moved in within the week.

That was 1999/2000. Over the next four years he was my roommate for about 3 of those years including a year when an older women and mutual friend of ours and a co-worker of his moved in. During the year that we all lived in the same house, we became known as the family to our friends in Las Vegas and it has just stuck in our mind as such.

The part when I started to call him my adopted brother was as he was headed off to boot camp in 2005. He had stopped taking to his parents and was going into the Army to get his life in order and get away from his Mother. I got choked up and felt the connection as a brother when he hands me all this personal paperwork (CC, bank cards, etc) and ask me and his sis to take care of his life for him while is in boot camp. When I went to drop him at the recruiting office his in-take officer asked if his father was dropping him off, that pissed me off to which he just laughed. I also had the pleasure of dodging his mother online several times as she tried to pester me about where her son was.

On and off during these years I have always felt a closer connection to him than my real brother (which by the way, don't mention to your real brother that you are spending time with adopted brother at the Thanksgiving table they tend to get upset). So that is the jist of the story.

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The French in general are :rolleyes:, welcome back.

Morning Box.

I was trying to post yesterday from Shipley in IAH, but I don't think my posts went through. :rolleyes: They were amazing (the do-nuts, not the posts) -- like a denser Krispy Kreme.

Unbelievably I was #9 on the list for my EUA upgrade on the second leg. I think that's the lowest I've ever been. IAH looked like a ghost town though. :rolleyes:

That looks incredible! Unfortunately it's pretty far out of the way for us, and on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon. :(

I'll have to add it to the list for a future trip.

Mornin' box.

Thanks for all the ^^ on the pics, sorry it took me so long to get them up. My gallery is a bit broken, but being it's moving to a new server soon, i'm less inclined to fix it. :)

It's freaking freezing in MSP and I managed to pass out at 9pm last night, can't remember the last time I was in bed that early. But it felt good.

That's always my approach to travel as well. Sometimes I may miss things that I later realize I would have liked to see, but it's (IMO) the easiest way to just experience a city/country.

I may have to break this habit for the honeymoon...

One time I had a last minute business trip to Yellowstone and ended up staying at a private house (outside the park) that had it's own jet hangar and the front street was an active taxi way. It was pretty cool to go have coffee on the front porch and watch planes take off!

mmm Shipley's...

Spokane (GEG) is the best option by far. BOI is something like an 8-hour drive. The resort runs a shuttle to GEG - it's a 45-minute drive. The beast of the equation is getting to GEG from the East Coast. I've resigned myself to the thought that this trip is one tht I can't go out of the way on because of previous references of really wanting to play with my own set of clubs.

I know I won't get there for at least another few years, so it's all academic for right now. The golf event that I'm most concerned with either planning or helping to plan is :-:The :ROLLEYES: Invitational, Presented by The Penalty Box.:-:

It is on my list too. It has been for 5 years :rolleyes: