Fleet Week 2009

Gosh...it has been a year since I last posted a blog...where has the time gone.
Well this photo sort of sums up Fleet week...

Halloween in Venice

We arrived in late into Venice....so didn't experience halloween this year..
This is the Grand Canal on a Saturday....lots of tourist

Fleet Weekend San Francisco

Every year on the first week of October San Francisco has their Fleet week celebrations. The Blue Angels fill the skies over the city for the weekend.

This year we watched them on the bay aboard Philip's Ketch "Siffleur".

Ireland

This year Jen and I headed to Ireland together for the first time. My sister Maura who lives in Syndey was having her wedding in Dublin on Sept 6th.



We arrived into Dublin on Sept 1st. Spend the night on the town with my good friend Justin and then crashed Maura's hen party.....ending up on Harcourt st until the wee hours of the morning.



We rented a car and headed over to Galway, via Tullamore, Clonmacoise and Athlone.



We spend one night in Clifden and then stayed with Joe and Iris in Athlone.



The following day we spend a couple hours dodging tractors and sped through the back roads to Navan, showered and headed to Balgriggan for the wedding....with 5 mins to spare.



We then spend the weekend in Dublin and flew back to the states on Monday Sept 10th....shattered

Emigrant Wilderness- Surprise Engagement

Well Jen didn't expect that our weekend backpacking in Emigrant Wilderness would be a super meal in front of the camp fire and a proposal of marriage…..there you have it, August 4^th 2007..John Stewart dives into the deep end and signs up for a life of love, happiness and good times with his super chick Jen !!!

Hiking in the Bay Area

The other week, I went for a quick hike over in Marin with Jennifer, Louise and Boris. We started in Mill Valley and headed up the old railway grade to the top of Mt Tama. This went from a quick hike into a marathon hike of 6 hours. The views from Mt Tama are amazing. I have posted some photos on flickr.com

Houston and back

Just back from a productive 3 day customer visit in Houston. Unfortunately I didn't see too much of Houston except for the 2 hour tour on SuperShuttle from the airport to the hotel via every other hotel in Houston. The nice thing about being dropped off last was the driver pumped up the Jazz and got out his harmonica and gave me a free gig for about 10mins. He then wouldn't let me out of the van until I had listened to a Billie Holliday track.

I learnt a few new features of Vault and Auotloader. I have a long way to got to understand all the features of Inventor. There is a lot of information out there in many websites, so have a lot of reading to do. Back in San Francisco and have a race tomorrow night and 3 on Sunday. Looks like the weather is going to be excellent and the wind should be over 20knts in the afternoon.