Annie Visits LA

Written By: Dan

I've accumulated a good number of frequent flier miles with all this travel lately.  I cashed in some US Airways miles to fly Annie out with me on this business trip to LA.  Annie landed a few days after I got into town.  We had a blast.   It was a short visit, but we made the most of it.

We started Friday off with breakfast in Hermosa Beach.  Followed by a Venice Beach boardwalk afternoon stroll.  We walked by Kevin's apartment.  After finding our way back to our car (and $60 parking ticket) we headed to the Santa Monica promenade for a giant Margarita and then we went to Manhattan Beach to visit Mama D's.  Mama D's makes my favorite dish in all of LA - Spaghetti with pink sauce, and meatballs the size of grapefruits.

We finished our beach bum tour at the Redondo Beach Pier.  With us at the Pier this night was Kevin, Dennis, Lisa, Paul, Allie, Megan, and Brian.  A good sized group, and fun people.  We did all the usual festivities: Beer and live music to warm up, terrorizing the carnival workers (two drunken Tilt-A-Whirl rides), and drinks at Tony's to finish off the night (no Oyster shooters this time).

Our Saturday started off with a hike to the Rancho Palace Verdes tide pools with Dennis and Lisa.  According to Dennis, the trick is to time your arrival to the pools just right.  If not, you just see the beach.  Well, we were in luck.  The tide was out, leaving the ocean floor exposed.  Pools of water between the rocks gave visitors a special interaction with the sea life.  Crabs, starfish, sea urchants sea anemones, and other odd animals were trapped in the pools while the tide was out.  This made for a great time.  The four of us risked life and limb to traverse across a cave to find a blow hole.    Once there we got a show.  See the video below.


After cleaning up, we hit up the town.  Annie had yet to see Downtown LA.  And boy did we ever.  We went to dinner at this place downtown that served only sausages, fries, and beer.  This place was popular.  We waited for 45 minutes in line to get in.  But once we did, it was worth it.  Inside were long picnic tables, family style seating, and a lot of great beers.  If this is what Octoberfest is like, sign me up.

We ended up the night at the Edison.  It is the old Edison Electric building that used to power LA.  Now they have bronzed the equipment, and made a bar out of it.  The bar stretched three stories under the building, sprawling through old equipment, bars, and even the old style light bulbs!

Mid morning Sunday Annie was back on her way back home.  I followed a few hours later.  We were exhausted.  We fit a lot of places into a few days.  Thanks to Dennis and Lisa for their great hospitality.

Tide pools

Things I learned in Panama

A day after my return from Grand Cayman I was back at DTW, headed to Panama.  While spending Valentines day traveling was a downer, I did learn two new things about Panama.

1.  They have a new burger place where they put Velveeta cheese inside the beef.  Best idea since I was at McMenamin's (Portland, OR), where they put tater tots inside the burger.  Don't even try to steal my cheese tater tot burger idea, I got there first.

2.  Balboa is more then a beer in Panama - he was an actual guy.  Everything in Panama is named Balboa (streets, banks, stores).  I assumed they were all named after Balboa Beer, but actually this conquistador guy came first.

Since I'm too lazy to read up, I just asked around about this guy during my trip.   This is what I've been able to piece together:

Balboa has some tax problems.  To solve his problems, he does the first international dine-'n-dash and skips the country on a ship, hidden in a wood barrel.    At some point, the people on the ship must have found him.  Instead of throwing him overboard, he somehow convinces them to him run with this Panama idea.  I'm not sure what their "Plan A" idea was, but it must have pretty weak because they opted to let the guy hiding in the wine barrel run the settlement.

So apparently Panama thing is somehow a success.  No canal yet.  But anyway, Balboa starts running his mouth.  Not sure how gossip works back then, but somehow the King finds out.  So then the King, or maybe one of his boys, goes to Panama and cuts off Balboa's head!  Then the King tells everyone they need to move to present day Panama City.  The citizens were like "Yeah cool, we're good with that.  We were listening to this guy we found in a wood barrel, but you cut his head off.  So we'll go with your idea now."

And that is how Panama was invented.

Grand Cayman Islands

Written By: Annie

Dan and I just spent a week at the Ritz Carlton Resort in warm, sunny, Grand Cayman Islands with the Nuspire crew. We arrived on Monday afternoon and by Monday evening we were on a charter boat to go shark hunting. I caught 4 squirrel fish and Dan hooked 3 sharks. Unfortunately, all 3 sharks got away before Dan could get them in the boat. We even tried luring the sharks with Hint of Lime Tostitos, but to no avail. We'll try again next year.

Tuesday was beach day on Seven Mile beach. This is one of the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen. The water was the most amazing colors of blue and the sand was a smooth, sleak white...just like in a magazine. Dan and I took many long walks on the beach and watched a few sunsets. We even tried Paddle Boarding...not a very effective form of transporation, especially if you keep falling off the board - Dan :).

Wednesday, Dan and I joined friends and collegues, Stacy and Saylor, on a Jeep ride around the Island. We visited the Botanical Gardens and saw both blue and green iguanas, then we ended up at Rum Point for some lunch and a walk on the Pier. Once again the tropical colors of the plant and wildlife are simply stunning. Dan threatened to take the camerea from me if I didn't stop trying to take pictures of every flower and animal I saw. I just wanted to bring it all home. During the evening hours we met back up with the Nuspire gang and enjoyed a wonderful company dinner full of steak and lobster. Thank you Nuspire!

Thursday was an excursion of a lifetime! Dan and I got to snorkal at the original Sting Ray City where we swam and pet incredible sting rays and Dan had a chance to pet a blind Moray Eel named Jr. (Don't worry, no one was Steve Irwine'd. He was stung by a Bull Ray...different animal). I don't think either of us wanted the day to end.

Dan and I experienced a fabulous trip and still wish that everytime we look out our windows the white stuff on the ground was the white sand of the Caymans and not snow.

San Fransisco

Written by: Dan

I traveled this weekend to San Fransisco for NADA (National Automotive Dealers Association) convention.  The show is at the Moscone Center downtown.  The interesting thing about the Moscone Center is that it is actually 4 convention halls connected by underground tunnels.  The show took all halls, so you spend a ton of time underground.
















Another highlight of my trip was dinner with Aunt Nancy and Jim.  I met Jim up for a beer at Union Square.  We met Aunt Nancy at Kutelo's for dinner.  It was a great Italian place with some San Fran style.  The Italian menu still has local wine and fish.    After dinner we went down to the pier and had Irish Cofee at Buena Vista (had original Irish Coffee).  It was a great night with some of my favorite people.



The next day I finished the show, watched the SuperBowl, then headed to the airport for a red eye to Grand Cayman.














* We snuck our way onto a cable car....

My Picture made the paper!

Written by: Dan

I took a picture of the Nuspire NOC (Network Operations Center) for an article the Detroit FreePress was doing on our company.  It made the paper!