Bachelor Party and Old Men

This past weekend I flew out to Baltimore to help celebrate the upcoming wedding of one of my good friends, Shaun, by throwing him a bachelor party. By party I mean lots of food and old-ish guys running around trying to play sports. Then more eating and sitting around playing poker and Wii. Now that's a party! Seriously, it was a lot of fun and we're all really happy for Shaun.

Brunch at Miss Shirley's Cafe:

Then some outdoor sports at Patterson Park (frisbee and football). I didn't get to take a lot of pictures, but you get the idea.

The wounded warriors after a water break

BBQ time

Margarita time!

Biking in Santa Cruz

A few weekends ago my sister came out to visit us in California. We were able to give her the full Bay Area experience: wine tasting in Sonoma, a night in SF, cupcakes from Sprinkes, sushi, froyo, In-N-Out Burger, and a trip to Santa Cruz. Here are some photos from our bike along the shore in Santa Cruz.

On the road again...

After graduation I got to take a little solo roadtrip from Chicago to Cupertino. I figured that it wouldn't be too bad and could easily cover the 2,168 miles in about 4 days. That means averaging about 7 to 7 and 1/2 hours a day of driving. Although that kind of sounds like a long time to drive a day, it really wasn't too bad.

What helped to pass the time was that I got to listen to a bunch of audio books that kept me quite entertained. My reading list:

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (very funny collection of short stories)
City of Thieves - Daniel Benioff (coming-of-age type of story set in WWII Russia)
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (riveting true story about a disaster on Mount Everest)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (pretty interesting story, but I never got to finish it)

I even got to listen to the short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Overall, quite an eclectic mix of reading (listening).

As for my journey, I pretty much drove due west through 8 different states, and stopped in Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno before making it to California.

Here's a sample of some of the pictures (in chronological order) I was able to take while on my drive. As you can tell, the weather and scenery changed quite a bit!

Finally escaping the storm

Impending storm clouds...

Videos from the storm (notice that it was raining so hard some cars pulled over):





Clear skies again... ahhh...

Pulling into Omaha where the College World Series of Baseball was taking place and I stayed in the same hotel that as the ASU team:

Getting into Colorado

Seeing a Rockies game at Coors Field. Rockies won on a Helton walk-off HR!




The view from the hotel:
The a big salt lake:

My first traffic jam in California :-)
Home sweet home...